In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Emmy-nominated documentary director Sam Lipman-Stern. Known for HBO’s Telemarketers, Sam opens up about his journey from media burnout and antidepressant use to profound emotional transformation through Ayahuasca, which inspired their upcoming documentary.
We touch upon topics of:
- Synchronicity and how they met
- Initial skepticism and misconceptions about Ayahuasca
- DMT visions and being called to the jungle
- Stopping antidepressants and mental health struggles
- Burnout and disillusionment with mainstream media
- Rebranding Colombia from cocaine to Ayahuasca
- The power of storytelling and why this documentary matters
- Using humor and depth in the documentary
- Ayahuasca showing childhood purpose and healing trauma
- Emotional awareness and masculinity
- Cultural conditioning, parenting, and emotional repression
- Challenges of post-Ayahuasca integration
- Sam’s daily integration routine
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Sam Lipman-Stern at @sam_lipmanstern and watch Telemarketers on HBO Max.
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Go where I am now and after Ayahuasca, the one thing I noticed, I feel a lot more, I was always a guy, and I know a lot of men have this, but I was someone who pushed emotions away and ran from my emotions with everything. If my woman with life, I was family.
I was always trying to live in a, in the chill zone, and thus I labeled emotions or I ran for my emotions. I ran from emotions After Ayahuasca, I’m feeling emotions maybe for the first time, like really strongly, and I’m not running away from them. It’s a learning lesson. It’s something that I need to, that I am working on.
It’s no, you’re fucking stressed right now. That’s okay. Feel that stress. You can do things like go to the gym, do things to help alleviate that stress, but identify those emotions and don’t run away from them. I’m upset with my wife or my fiance instead of running away, talk to her.
Why are you upset about it?
Sam Believ: Hi guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca podcast. As always, really the whole Sam. Today I’m having a conversation with Sam Lipman, stern. Sam was a good friend of mine. We’re doing a documentary together on topic of Ayahuasca. Sam also is a Emmy nominated documentary director. We talk about Sam and his journey synchronicities that led to us meeting his initial skepticism about ayahuasca.
Cultural misconceptions about Ayahuasca, his journey on stopping antidepressants in preparation for his ayahuasca experience. We talk about his mainstream media career and burnout. Talk about rebranding Columbia from cocaine to Ayahuasca, power of storytelling, making integration, more engaging and less boring.
Dark humor and storytelling. We talk about therapy in Ayahuasca for healing trauma and depression, how Iasa gave him a name for his daughter to be born soon. Post Ayahuasca emotional vulnerability, criticism of big pharma and antidepressants. Challenging post ayahuasca integration and Sam’s daily routine to maintain his integration.
It’s a very packed episode and a very interesting one. Enjoy it. This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability. Accessibility and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Sam, welcome to the show.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Thank you so much for having me, my friend.
It’s great to be here.
Sam Believ: We’re recording coming to you from our new podcast studio. This is something that’s very recent that you can see in the background. You can see the Sarah Bravo Mountain. You can see La Wire Maloca, and as you, if you’re watching the show on video, you’ll be able to see some people in Maloca and some action as retreat is happening right now.
So first of all, Sam, great to have met you. You’ve been a good friend and it’s very exciting that now you came to La Wire as a patient. We’re working on this documentary, which I’m sure will be life changing and probably gonna spread the word about Ayahuasca far wide. First of all. Let’s talk about synchronicities and whether you crazy, consider our, the way we met each other as synchronicity.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yes. Yes. Synchronicities. The way we met each other was wild. It was really wild. I was doing, as you remember, I was doing a I’ve been here in Columbia four years, so that, those that don’t know I grew up in New Jersey. I lived in New York City a bunch of years. I lived in Los Angeles a bunch of years.
I met you do about what maybe was it 2021,
Sam Believ: like three years ago?
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, I think. I think so. And. We met right after I had this really powerful sweat lodge experience. Have you ever done the sweat lodge? Yep. Yeah. So where you, for people, those that don’t know you, it’s this Native American tradition. It’s practiced, I believe all over the Americas where you essentially sweat in this tiny, little, tiny little building made out of wood and covered in sacks, burlap, sacks, and you just sweat.
And it’s a pretty psychedelic experience. It can be, it’s really intense. But I, right after that experience, we met at a a little barbecue right after it where,
Sam Believ: And I just before meeting him, I also was doing San Pedro medicine. So we’re both still tripping a little bit.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah.
And we just, we and we, you were manning the barbecue and we just started talking. And the, you asked me, what do you do? And I mentioned that I was a videographer, and I remember you were totally blown away. You are like wait no, wait, are you serious? I was like yeah, I do.
I’m a video director. You’re like, I’ve been fucking manifesting. I’m video director. Like manifesting, like really putting it out there. That’s crazy that you’re a video director. And I had in my own way, been manifesting the ayahuasca experience. And when I heard of, heard that you were, that you had this retreat and and basically were an expert in ayahuasca.
We just, ever since then, we clicked and we’ve been friends. The kids are coming back our children.
Sam Believ: That’s so fun
Sam Lipman-Stern: to see. So cute. Oh my God, that’s really adorable to see our two little four year olds walking back together. That is really cute. Wow. Yeah. But yeah, man, we it’s a lot of, I feel very blessed that we met.
I don’t have a lot of, I’ve been in Columbia, since the pandemic. I don’t really have a lot of friends, and I think it’s rare when you meet friends as an adult and you really click and have a lot to, to bond over both on a friendship level, on a spiritual level.
And now this documentary that we’re working on, which is, really exciting. Yeah, in terms of synchronicity. I think we met for a reason, as to some might, that might sound crazy, but I think this is, this is an Ayahuasca podcast, so it might not sound that crazy, but I think we met for, I think we met for a reason.
Absolutely. Like I know we met for a reason actually, especially after doing ayahuasca two months ago, or a month and a half ago. Like I was told specifically that we met for a reason. The reason being to bring this documentary to the world that we’re working on right now. That sounds wild, but we are living in the wild world of ayahuasca and medicine.
Sam Believ: Let’s talk about the documentary. What made you like pretty much ever since we met? So we met at that barbecue. After both trapping, we manifested each other, interestingly enough, and then. It took me a while. We started like hanging out, but it took me a while to actually get you to drink Ayahuasca, what is what took you so long and why now after actually doing it?
You’re such a believer in it.
Sam Lipman-Stern: It’s really interesting question. So yeah, and I’m totally transparently, when we first met you, maybe a couple months after we first met, we were hanging out as friends and you’re like, dude, you should do a documentary about ayahuasca. And I was right in the middle of telemarketers, which was my last project on HBO, and I was really busy with it, but part of me was like, who’s gonna watch a documentary about ayahuasca?
Because what I knew about it was like, yeah, like kind of hippie dippy, dreadlock hippie dude in Sedona, Arizona. Just I didn’t really know much, if anything, about ayahuasca. And I thought, who, who’s really gonna watch something about it? That was my initial reaction to it. But and we just and I was also in the middle of this big project, so I was like, man, who’s gonna really watch it?
Because what I’d seen was I guess almost like perverted towards the hippie side of things, which I don’t think, which isn’t accurate. It’s just what is there coming what I see coming from the western world,
Sam Believ: the conception in the world right now about ayahuasca is totally skewed.
It’s a very weird and slightly negative connotation. It’s almost like a caricature of what it actually is. A
Sam Lipman-Stern: hundred percent. And that’s what I was thinking when you told me it. But at the same time, I had experimented with DMT starting like 2019, and I had a very clear vision before I even came to Columbia.
And I believe I filmed it. I would fill my DMT experiences and I had a, I smoked DMT and I had a very clear vision and it said, this is years before we met and the vision clear as day. A voice told me, if you wanna learn more, get off antidepressants, go to the jungle and do ayahuasca. And it was like that fucking clear dude,
Sam Believ: it would be so cool if you actually filmed it and you can find it.
Sam Lipman-Stern: I think I might have it. You still have your young face like in Oh man. I would love, yeah, that would be amazing. I think I have it. I’m gonna, I’m pretty sure I have it. Let’s hope at least I’ve on audio recording. ’cause I tend to just back everything up. But yeah man so that had happened and then I had my own, I had Why did it take so long?
I stopped the telemarketers was released. Did really well. Thank God. And then I had like some personal struggles. We were both going through some stuff at the same time, like health issues and just a lot of stress from work. And and we, and every time we’d meet up, we would speak a little bit about ayahuasca, I’d say.
And I knew what you were doing. I came and saw the retreat and it just clicked. It was like, okay, this is the time to get off antidepressants. Yeah. Which you helped me out with a lot. Microdosing the whole thing. Get off antidepressants and document the whole thing. Document me getting off antidepressants and start this journey with my good friend Sam with my good friend into this world of ayahuasca.
So it was kinda like, it went f first it was resistance off, mostly cultural resistance. Who’s gonna watch something about ayahuasca? Then it was like, okay, I need this. And it’s calling me, it’s calling me like, I need to do this. I need to do ayahuasca and I need to do this documentary.
Even though I didn’t I didn’t fully put that all together, but it just started going and then after doing it, it’s okay, yes, I was fucking called from the moment I heard that voice in California to how we met, which was crazy. Asynchronistic. I think that the plants are, I’m fully, I fully believe that the plants, that Ayahuasca wants us to do this project.
And and that we, and everything happened literally like it happened. It was meant to be like it’s wild. You saw like a hippie. I sound like a fucking hippie.
Sam Believ: You’re gonna sell me a crystal right now.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Do I actually have some crystals? If you wanna buy some?
Sam Believ: But interestingly, not.
Once again we’ve been massaging this idea for a long time. Skepticism on both sides, just kinda like keeping on a back burner. But the idea was there and then. Literally within the same week I get this weird health scare where I found out that my blood sugar was high because of all the stress.
And then you had your own health scare with the antidepressants where
Sam Lipman-Stern: They stopped working. Yeah, there was some at the same time. It was literally within a week we met up. And you told me about that. And I said, antidepressants aren’t working for me anymore.
Sam Believ: And basically it was like, yeah let’s just do it now we’re gonna finally do it.
Which is interesting. Like why was it so synchronous? ’cause I haven’t had any issues three years after that, before that, and neither have you. It was kinda like we had to meet up and cry about it. And then somehow, yeah, it’s just there, there’s this weird pattern behind everything.
Which becomes more clear once you start drinking at was, it’s like all of a sudden. You stop worrying about oh, let’s, there’s this thing that I need to do and if I don’t push for it, it will never happen. And instead you change to it’s like you float the idea out there in the cosmos and then eventually when the time is right, it would just all falls in place.
And it’s an interesting all view, but let’s talk a little bit about your, why were you so stressed and the whole film industry. It’s a good, and how, really good question, how film industry and just world in general these days is just so conducive to stress and depression.
Sam Lipman-Stern: So I I’ve been working in the documentary world for like full-time at major media companies since 2010, let’s say. So that’s 15 years. I started out at Vice when Vice was like, that they were huge. They were huge. They were the biggest media company for documentaries at the time. I learned a lot of vice.
Then from Vice, I went on and worked at Rolling Stone Magazine, which is also like major media company, but also like a cutting edge media company. And then Rolling Stone Magazine. My last job was 2016. So I’ve been boss Free Boss boss free since 2016, which I’m very proud of. But I continued to working for major media companies.
The thing about. The media industry and what I learned. So I, okay, 2016, I was working at Rolling Stone. It was during the Trump’s first election, and that was the last time I watched the news. Remember I tell you that sometimes I’m like, I don’t watch the news and it sometimes it sounds crazy.
I’m like, they’re like, you don’t know about the fucking tornado that just hit and killed a million people in Tanzania. Or I’m like, I have no idea. Unless someone tells. So I stopped watching the news in 2016 because I worked at Rolling Stone Magazine and even Rolling Stone, which is considered maybe a cool company, but I saw what they were doing on the inside and how the sausages are made in the media world.
And it’s all that the media companies care about is clicks and dollars. That’s all they care about, right? It’s all about views. It’s what is gonna get us the most views? It’s all it does. It doesn’t matter anything more. For example, and I’m not talking politics here, but when, during that 20 15, 20 16 Trump election, it was Trump versus Bernie Trump versus Hillary Clinton.
Bernie Sanders was like a really popular candidate as well. The media in the United States gave Trump 90% more coverage then both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. So they were all just focusing on the Trump circus. Again, I actually, I got to interview Trump, which was actually cool out of that whole thing.
But the reason why the media gave him so much coverage is ’cause he is fucking interesting. He’s a character, he is a circus. He’s he’s always, he knows how to work the media. But they aren’t, the media isn’t covering stories for any type of responsible journalism. Like journalism is unfortunately very much dying.
Maybe the journalism existed at some point, but what I saw was just click bait, at Rolling Stone, how do we make clickbait? How do we make clickbait? How do we get people to click? Eyeballs? Eyeballs. Eyeballs. I was listening to a lot of podcasts during those times, right? Like Joe Rogan, I love Joe Rogan podcast.
And I remember I pitched an idea for a podcast to Rolling Stone, and they’re like, nobody has attention spans anymore in 2015. Everyone, no, you have to think Cat videos 15 second hits, 15 second hits. And I’m like, here, me and my friends are listening to two, three hour, four hour podcasts.
And they’re talking about, no, no one has attention spans. That’s a long basically the idea, what I saw from the inside is that most major media companies only care about the bottom line. And how do we get people to watch the, through the commercial break? How do we hook them? That’s why you see on the 10 o’clock news in the United States, death, fire, murder, baby da dead, and some kittens.
But that’s all so unfortunately so yeah. So that’s basically what I saw and that’s still where we’re at. It’s even gotten worse to this day in terms of where I’m at. So I’m a documentary filmmaker. I love documentary. My goal and my dream has always been try to make the world a better place.
Tell stories to wake people up, to teach people something. And that’s what you’ll see in my work, being that an artist and being someone that wants to make projects that change the world is really fucking hard. Because the philosophy at most of the major networks not to name names, but let’s just think all the networks, all the platforms is mostly the same perspective that I just said.
It’s how do we get people to watch through the commercial, or how do we get subscribers? Women like murder documentaries. It’s, it is what they’ve, women in America love their murder documentaries. Shout out to all the women not just in America. Okay.
Sam Believ: My wife watches the stuff as all. Yeah. So does mine.
Sam Lipman-Stern: They loved
Sam Believ: it. I’m against it. I was like, why are you traumatizing yourself?
Sam Lipman-Stern: And I’m not. We’re not putting down women out there. Look, men love other shit. That sucks too. Whatever. Most networks, what they’re telling me right now and over the last couple years is even after telemarketers did great, I’d go into these meetings at major networks with the executives and, oh, we love telemarketers so much.
It was so good. We would’ve totally bought telemarketers. Oh, thank you so much. What do you And I asked them, what are you guys looking for now? And they’re like, murder documentaries. Yeah. We’re just buying murder. That’s it. Just murder. Oh yeah. But we’re not looking for the serial killers anymore.
Like we don’t want the John Wayne Gacys. That’s already been, that’s already been done. Been there, done that. We want the micro murders, like the little, like the little, the Mississippi murder or murder abroad. If you can get, bring us a murder documentary, we’ll buy it. And that’s the conversation.
So what is that? You have to like, where, what does that It’s it’s the same reason why you see a Million Spider-Man movies or the million action movies. It’s because, they’re thinking a lot. These executives are scared to lose their jobs and so they don’t want to take risks. So for someone like me, it’s always, okay, how do I align with myself with the few they exist, the few people that think deeper than just murder documentaries that exist in the media landscape.
And in order to bring projects that are more diverse and more interesting, like this Ayahuasca project, sell, if we could bring some murder into this, we’d be good. But
Sam Believ: how are you gonna change the world if you talk about murder all the time or yeah, you’re gonna change the world, but not you’re making
Sam Lipman-Stern: it a, you’re making, it’s
Sam Believ: the
Sam Lipman-Stern: problem.
Sam Believ: Four women, it’s evil man, four women, just scared to shreds in this scary world, watching murder documentaries. Like, how are you gonna, yeah. So I can see why that could make you depressed. I was
Sam Lipman-Stern: partially depressed because, here I had an Emmy nomination. I was at the highest point in my career and I was getting all these meetings at all the networks.
And I have great ideas, that actually are, really pure documentary ideas like this one, which I think this one is, in my opinion, this is one of the most important documentaries for mankind. And so I was going to these networks and being like, what are you guys looking for? And they’re telling me, we’re just buying murder right now.
So that was part of what brought me to the, to doing Ayahuasca was like, what is my purpose as a filmmaker in a world where, I’m the still an outsider, even though I have the Emmy nomination, I have the most viewed documentary on HBO. So I’m like, really? I got really high in my career, but it’s always gonna be a fight.
And I think it’s, I think it’s a fight a kind of good against evil fight. It’s a murder is what sex was in the nineties. There was all these TV shows, like Real Sex and sex. And I, I love sex. Sex is great. We need sex. It’s awesome. But when you I love murder.
It’s, I love murder sex. Yeah, murder when it’s. You know what? Everything’s balanced. We talked about, we’ve talked about balance a lot, I think in, in, in our conversations. And I think and in storytelling, there needs to be balance. It can’t be all murder. And if it is, then these networks are really doing something evil.
Yeah. And people are gonna lose interest. That’s why we have this platform. We have YouTube, we have podcasts. Why, these networks are going to kill themselves. They’re gonna murder themselves if they don’t take risks on things. They took a risk on telemarketers and it got an Emmy nomination and it got most viewed doc and all these awards.
It’s all about taking risks, just like everything great in life.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Let’s help those networks.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah.
Sam Believ: I’m Netflix. If you’re listening. Netflix did a lot of harm to Columbia by producing narcos. It was 30 years ago. Let it go. Why are you still talking about it? But they popularize it. Some people think that what they’re watching on Netflix is happening right now.
So Netflix has to pick up this documentary because here we’re gonna make an attempt to rebrand Columbia from cocaine to but you said, this documentary is very important. It’s gonna change the lives. I totally agree with you. Why does the world deserve to know about ayahuasca?
Sam Lipman-Stern: It’s so interesting, the world.
So what I, what I. I didn’t, as we’ve been making this documentary, I, one of the things that was important to me, it’s just my personal style, is I didn’t want to do any research before we filmed. So I really didn’t. And I just learned as we went along, as we went to the Amazon, as we interviewed the shamans, as we interviewed suicidal police officers here, or we interviewed just all sorts of people interviewing you, interviewing the Titus, father interviewing all kinds of people, right?
Which we’ve, which we’ve done, I learned along the way. So if you would’ve asked me, why is this project important before Ayahuasca, I would’ve given you a different answer. Before actually doing ayahuasca. What I, after doing, I I, so before doing Ayahuasca, it’s okay, this is a really interesting story.
From what I’ve seen out there, it hasn’t been done well the doc, a documentary about iWatch. There’s tons of stuff that exists on YouTube. I’ve watched it, I’ve watched a lot of it. Just unfortunately, I, it’s not done for in my, the way that I would want to see a documentary done. It hasn’t been done well, they fucking suck is what I’m trying to say.
And not everybody, I’m sure one of you guys out there has a good one. But first, if pre-do Ayahuasca, my thought was, this is an interesting story because it hasn’t been done before. It hasn’t, there hasn’t been a, it hasn’t been a very in-depth documentary exploring ayahuasca as I got to know, the characters getting to know you.
Your story is very interesting. That’s one of the reasons why I was drawn to it. I think your story of coming from coming from Latvia, having a very going down a pa going down a path of a successful path as an engineer, but. Where you could have just lived a very comfortable, normal life, but then being like, this isn’t for me.
And then traveling the world, finding ayahuasca, building this retreat, to me that’s very, and then having the goal of trying to turn Columbia, where most people to this day, when I tell them I live in Columbia, they say, isn’t it dangerous Pablo Escobar? So for your goal to be let’s
Sam Believ: dangerous Pablo Escobar, cocaine cartel, dude, let’s do every fucking
Sam Lipman-Stern: time, bro.
Sam Believ: Maybe if you’re lucky. Coffee.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Coffee. Maybe if you’re lucky. So for your goal, when I heard it, of trying to turn Columbia from being known for cocaine and violence to ayahuasca and plant medicine, I thought that’s incredible. That’s
Sam Believ: and nature and natural beauty.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Exactly.
Sam Believ: And good people.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, totally, man. So first Wa was, okay, this is an interesting story. What is Ayahuasca? I’m meeting all these interesting characters like yourself, like the shaman, like some of the people at the retreat. Let’s do a great documentary about ayahuasca. I didn’t know what ayahuasca really was. I knew it was some kind of a psychedelic that healed people.
And I heard, wow, there are these life transforming experiences, but I didn’t know because you can’t really know until you try it after trying it. It was a whole that thing, man. After trying it, the medicine literally told me, and if I don’t know how you describe, is it gods that I was speaking to?
Was it angels? Was it plants? Was it grandmother? Was it a combination of those things? Maybe let’s just say Gods or angels. The gods told me. We called you here. Thank you for coming. We were the ones that said, go to the fucking jungle and do ayahuasca. Get off antidepressants. Now you’re here. Thank you for coming.
We brought you here for a purpose. Your documentary has been blessed. You need to do it. We brought you here to make this documentary so that we can spread the word about ayahuasca because it’s the thing that’s going to save humanity and planet earth. We need more people to hear about this. And my ego, it’s it’s hard to sell a documentary right now, like literally speaking to these gods.
Netflix is buying murder. They’re like, shut the fuck up, Sam. We brought you here for a reason. The documentary’s blessed. We want you to make this so that more people can just get those seeds. It’s about putting those seeds, right? What makes it, and yeah, man. So that would iowa.
Literally the medicine said, we brought you here for a reason. And how can you fucking refer? I’m such a logical dude, right? I’m not. I was, we have very similar stories. I was an atheist as a kid, teenager into my twenties. I was agnostic. I don’t know, maybe, I don’t know. I have, my philosophy was always, I don’t believe in God.
’cause I can’t see God. It I’m always someone, I have to see it. I have to hear it. After doing ayahuasca, I’m like, I’m a believer. I’m a believer ’cause I saw God, I spoke to God, or whatever you want to call it. And I’m sure there’s a lot of theories on what those beings are that you speak to. So why is this important?
I think what I was told from these beings is that this is the most important thing. Talk about fucking having a purpose. Like I, that was my big one of my questions. What is my purpose in filmmaking? Yo, here’s your fucking purpose. You gotta make this documentary.
Sam Believ: Yeah, I would. I would say, you sound like a crazy man.
I know nothing except if I did not believe everything you say myself. And I didn’t have a very similar message from the medicine as well. And it’s the reason I think is
what I used to think about ayahuasca and understand how people think about ayahuasca is based on, preconceived notions and stuff you hear here and there and it’s just a wrong view of ayahuasca or psychedelics at large. We’ve been programmed to see them negatively now after I’ve been running this retreat for four years and the hosted.
Thousands of people and seeing what it does to them and what it did to me. I have a totally different view of this medicine and it’s, there’s nothing more important right now than to get people to change their opinion because the difference between somebody killing themselves or in somebody living a happy life can be as simple as them doing an IO retreat.
I thoroughly believe that Kurt Cobain and all those famous, you know this, the solo guy from Lincoln Park.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah. If they were Bourdain was an
Sam Believ: all those amazing people that were struggling emotionally, I am hundred percent convinced. If you could give the Myas in good integration, they would still be with us.
I totally agree Percent. People like buying one way tickets here because they think if this doesn’t work, nothing else will. And they get better. They feel better. So I think that culturally. We, there’s mental health crisis and there is no solution. And Ayahuasca offers that solution. And the thing that stops people from doing it is the fear and that they just haven’t seen the other way of looking at it.
And if we can take them through this journey of them first seeing this documentary, I’m gonna watch this because I wanna see the happy, crazy hippies and just Yeah. Laugh at them. Yeah. And take them through the journey till in the end where they’re like, oh my God, I might actually need this stuff.
And then we can save them. And I believe Save the World is all because we’re, it’s almost an arms race between good and evil, where the evil is trying to destroy the world. And the good is trying to prevent it from happening. Not trying to say we’re superheroes, we’re just normal guys. But the evil is also just normal guys.
It’s just normal guys that do their job to make their wage, but they are part of something that creates a lot of harm, and we’re part of something that does the opposite. So it’s it’s very invisible, this sort of fight. We all think we’re good, so anything that I just talked about, anything you want to comment on?
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, so that was another interesting thing about the Ayahuasca, which was, it was it was showing me, and by the way, I love the crazy, so I love documentaries that feature crazy people. I love character driven stories. I’m a fucking weird dude. I’m a crazy motherfucker. I always have been. I’ve always been an outsider.
I’ve never fit in, I’ve always been a weirdo. I live in Columbia, which most people don’t, and whenever I jump on a Zoom with. Net, actually Netflix tomorrow or other companies and where do you live? Columbia. They’re like, wait, what? Live in colo. I’ve always been that dude, I’ve always been out.
I backpacked from Los Angeles to Chile for six months. So I want people to enjoy the crazy listen to this shit, or watch our documentary and see and you can judge it however you want. Like we can let, people can take it however they want. I think at people will, even those people that you know, are joking and laughing all look at those crazy people or those, hippies.
I think seeds are interesting how they grow. Just like our documentary, you put the seed into my head three years ago, Hey dude, what about doing a documentary in Ayahuasca? It’s a really interesting subject. And I was like, nah, not sure. I think it’s gonna be the same thing with this documentary that the goal is getting people to watch it.
Just getting people to watch it and the seeds will grow.
Sam Believ: It took three years for the seed to grow. Now it can take us three years to produce it. And then I’m assuming three years later, lots of people come to the Ayahuasca. So I need to get ready to build more cabins.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, more cabins. We need more cabins.
Ayahuasca showed me that it was other just really clear visions, like basically that we are all so powerful. Every person has their gift and gifts and our goal or our, what our goal on this earth should be, which we lost, like we lost a lot of knowledge at some point, maybe it was religion. Just knowledge was wiped out is what these, the medicine told me.
And our goal, our human goal is partially to find our gift, which we have and fucking and chase that motherfucker. Like really nourish that gift, whatever that gift is. And I think most part of the evil, like we’re talking about the evil, is people that are getting complacent in their jobs. So if you’re getting complacent in your job and you’re not chasing and you’re not pursuing your gift, which you have a gift, everyone has a gift.
I believe that. That’s part, it’s all part of this evil, right? It’s like the murder only watching murder documentaries on Netflix, having, being complacent in your comfortable job, which I get it. I understand. I get the idea. If some, if someone asks me should I get into filmmaking, I’d be oh, I really wanna do filmmaking.
I’m. If someone asked me if they really if they should be a filmmaker, I would say, you can’t do it for the money ’cause you’re not gonna make money for the first 10 years. It’s gotta be for the love of it.
Sam Believ: I say the same thing about people asking me about starting an IO retreat. If you’re in for money, you’re gonna lose.
Sam Lipman-Stern: You can’t. I think what the medicine was like, basically like you have a gift, your gift is filmmaking and also said you’re a warrior of light, more hippie shit. I know Crystals all that told me I was a warrior of light and I believe it. I’m like, I am a warrior of light. I always have been, I’ve always tried to make the world a better place, do good by my friends, could do good in my filmmaking.
I think there is a battle and I think Ayahuasca is on the. Whatever ayahuasca is, whatever that technology is maybe you said it might, maybe it’s a lost technology. It’s pushing us forward to get more people to find out about this because they, it’s a beacon of light and it’s so fucking crazy that we’re talking about it like this.
’cause you, you would never have, you would’ve never heard me say uttering these words. I was such a fucking skeptical. I was such a, an atheist. And then agnostic. I would’ve never, like I sound religious almost. Yeah. And I believe it.
Sam Believ: And given that you sounded even more religious right after the experience, now what, how much time has passed?
Sam Lipman-Stern: I think it’s, no, a month and a half.
Sam Believ: Month and a half. So month and a half. Yeah. It does that to you in a way. People are afraid to drink. Ow. Because they’re afraid they’re gonna lose themselves and never find, but you’re still the same person, just like. Slightly nicer, but yeah, your spiritual views can change drastically.
But let’s go back to the filming process. So yeah, there are a couple documentaries. They’re all a little boring. I know what you’re talking about. Even me, myself, ayahuasca is my life. I run an Ayahuasca retreat. I have an Ayahuasca podcast. I have filming an Ayahuasca documentary, ias, everything.
Yeah. I basically, at least for now, I’m fully dedicated to the topic of Ayahuasca. But I watch these things. I get bored. I can’t see them. I just get bored. So what are we gonna do different? Or what are we, how is it gonna be different that you just won’t be able to stop watching it?
Sam Lipman-Stern: If anyone’s, if anyone out there has seen telemarketers and if you haven’t, go check it out.
It’s on HBO Max. If someone told you should watch this documentary about telemarketers, you’d be like, hell no. I’m not watching that. That sounds so boring about telemarketing. Like something that I hate, but. I would say in a similar way, those that might run from the idea of ayahuasca because of preconceived notions are going to have an incredible ride.
They’re gonna go on a ride like a rollercoaster ride when they watch our film. And that was what we were able to do with telemarketers. We took people on this crazy like gonzo journalism, stoner comedy investigation into the police and with humor, man, that’s one of the things that, that I, if you’re not I said this about telemarketers, and I’ll say the same thing about this.
If you’re not laughing at points when you watch ias, the our documentary it shouldn’t be, I don’t think it, it’s the doc. It’s not the documentary that we discussed. I think that what’s gonna make this what. With some of the pit, some of the pitfalls of some of the other Ayahuasca documentaries.
It’s all serious. It’s all serious. It’s all leaned towards the spiritual side of things. And because of that, it’s too vanilla. It’s fuck, it’s too vanilla. It’s super they’re very vanilla, these documentaries
Sam Believ: and is so diverse and interesting.
Sam Lipman-Stern: There you go. Yeah. We don’t make vanilla documentaries over here.
So I think that what’s gonna what’s gonna make this differently is because it’s gonna be, it, pardon my language, I grew up in New Jersey, so I cursed a sailor, but it’s gonna be a fucking wild ride. And it’s gonna be funny and it’s gonna be sad. It’s gonna be deep. You’re gonna be watching me getting off of antidepressants after nine years.
A lot of people can relate to that. Hearing some of the stories in the word circles of women. A woman who is anorexic, disappearing. What Ayahuasca did for her. That was for me, that was really emotional. A police officer who’s protecting protecting this child from an abusive dad, and then he finds the abusive dad who had murdered the child, the police officer finds him and he becomes suicidal.
Remember, we, he was here during the retreat.
Sam Believ: Here’s the murder document. There’s a,
Sam Lipman-Stern: we got the murder, Netflix. No, I’m kidding. Yeah, it’s. Not funny at all. Not funny. That was but funny too. Yeah. Dark humor. Dark humor. Humor’s. Okay. We love comedy. We like humor. We want to show all the, all those levels, man.
From that, the darkness, mental health issues the comedy to the craziness yeah, it’s fucking laugh at me. I’m talking about, I learned that we’re a race of lost. Gods laugh at that. If you don’t believe it, like that’s good. Like question, question everything. I always say question everything.
Watch the journey. Get, be entertained and then learn something from it and question your own e eventually, I think people that have done it are gonna love it. People who’ve done I who have done ayahuasca are gonna love this ’cause they’re gonna learn a lot more than what they already know. One other thing I noticed from just watching interviews with celebrities that had done ayahuasca, I was like, wait a second.
They don’t seem to be explaining the experience. A lot of celebrities on YouTube. I saw oh yeah, I did it one night and I didn’t really feel that much but I think I changed me. And I’m like, no, that’s not, I think a lot of people aren’t even doing it.
Sam Believ: No, I think a lot of people do it for the bucket list.
They just drink it one night, barely feel anything, check it off the list and move on, because they’re, a lot of people are afraid to actually face what the Oscar will wanna show them.
Sam Lipman-Stern: So I think people are going to learn so much from this. There’s no, where this can also be like, not just a wild ride, a really interesting story of my, it’s my personal experience into this world that you’ve brought me into.
But but also a bible to ayahuasca. Learning about in integration, that was huge. I had no idea before we started, how much, how
Sam Believ: integration is a very. Valuable but very boring topic. So fucking boring. We
Sam Lipman-Stern: leave it
Sam Believ: till
Sam Lipman-Stern: the very end. It’s so boring, but so important.
Sam Believ: The last episode of the
Sam Lipman-Stern: last season. Yes, exactly. Integration. So important, but so boring.
Sam Believ: It’s, but it’s so important though. It’s, I think
Sam Lipman-Stern: it’s just the word
Sam Believ: integration. We need to find, we need to find, if you can find how to make integration interesting, you can make anything interesting.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Let’s do an integration course.
I think I got some ideas on the integration element.
Sam Believ: So let’s talk about humor, right? Yeah. It’s pretty funny. Just even vomiting is hilarious. Vomiting or people tripping together and just all the stories and like you filming yourself while you’re tripping.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Dude, that was so hilarious. That was so funny.
And just trying to be, I was a, I was trying to be conscious like I was directing the documentary. While tripping on Ayahuasca, and it was hilarious. It was so funny. I was also trying to be conscious of everybody else. You and I did an interview together while I’m on the ground, like liter.
I was we’d be speaking, having a deep conversation and I’d just just zone off into space. And you’re st It was, stuff like that is beautiful, man. The weirder the better.
Sam Believ: Yeah. It was a beautiful day ceremony as well. So normally they ask, people, normally ask guests about their story in the beginning what brought them to Alaska?
I wanna do it different with you. Yeah. Now closer to the end of the episode, but tell us your life story and tell us which parts Ayahuasca illuminated for you. Because there are a few moments that I remember. It was like clearly shown to you. Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting thing specifically about like you protecting that kid and then you Oh, yeah.
Realizing what would happen if you had a happy childhood.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah. So my so I grew up in New Jersey, central New Jersey, which is like one of the most, oh, pause for a sec. Oh yeah. One, yeah. So I grew up in New Jersey one of the most diverse places on planet earth in terms of human diversity. So I grew up in an apartment complex.
My parents were like hippies, Jewish hippies. So we were, yeah, we grew up in this apartment complex. So imagine, we, here we are in the middle of nature where I grew up, it was just brick buildings and your downstairs neighbor is Latvian. Your up to the right is Colombian. To the left is from Africa, like just came over.
Fleeing a civil war upstairs is Indian. And you’re just a bunch of kids playing, and it was really cool. I didn’t think about it, I just, when I was a kid, but girl, looking back on it, what an education. You’re going and eating all these different foods and going to these, into these different cultural worlds.
One of the things that, one of the things that I remembered from in the Ayahuasca experience while I was on Ayahuasca is I had a vision about growing up being maybe nine or 10 in this apartment complex in New Jersey. And I was fighting a lot, like just fighting other kids. And I started thinking, I’m like, why is Ayahuasca showing me this like really vivid visual of me beating up other children?
This is negative. I didn’t like that about myself. And Ayahuasca said, or grandmother was like, no, look, diff look, look closer what you’re doing. And I was actually beating up bullies. Def to defend smaller children that were being bullied in my neighborhood. And it was a really emotional moment for me.
I actually started crying, like out of joy and just overwhelmed because Ayahuasca was like, look what you were doing, you were literally protecting at as a fucking nine, 10-year-old kid. You’re protecting, you’re punching bullies in the face that are picking on little kids. That’s your purpose.
That’s who you are. Like, you can’t take don’t give yourself some credit. That’s what Ayahuasca was saying that’s part, all part of your purpose. Telling stories right now that are hard, that aren’t murder documentaries and pushing against the grain being a voice for the voiceless in a way, that’s doing charity like we do a lot of charity work, like you to you as well.
I never, I didn’t think about those. I never thought about that. I used to fight bullies and never was part of my consciousness until ayahuasca. And that was a really powerful moment. Also combined with El became part of my question, one of my intentions was what’s my purpose in life? And in film, I also, I used to have these dreams, man, for years before doing ayahuasca.
And they stopped after Ayahuasca where I lived in this apartment complex. And I was like 38 or 35 or 30 whatever year, adult, a grown man. And I was a loser. I never accomplished everything, anything in my life. Never accomplished anything, lived with my parents. In his apartment complex. Didn’t have a job, didn’t have a girlfriend, total loser.
Like for me, it was a nightmare to be this. And I would wake up in the morning and I had mental health issues. I was just a fuck I was fucked up and I’d have this recurring dream for years, man. And what the ayahuasca told me was, so basically there was like a really clear division in my childhood.
So growing up in this apartment complex till the age of 12 was like happy childhood. My family was whole kind of almost like a hippie, kinda like a hippie utopia in a way. It was like lots of friends. My family was great, my parents were together. When we moved outta the apartment complex, my family fell into a free fall of chaos where I no longer lived in an emotionally safe household.
And what Ayahuasca told me was. You are ha we’re healing you right now from this trauma. The reason why you have these reoccurring dreams is because of that. That was the last time you felt like safe basically in a family. There’s a very clear in those apartments. So you’re having these reoccurring dreams because a part of your subconscious is stuck there.
And you know what, it made a lot of sense at the time, and I haven’t had that dream anymore. I used to have it a lot.
Sam Believ: So in the way I was trying to show you that if everything was cool and you never had challenges, you would stay where you were and you would’ve been a loser.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Maybe. I thought of it like, I was thinking I was thinking about it like, that’s actually really interesting.
I didn’t think about it exactly like that. That makes sense too. I was thinking of it like there was just part of my subconscious that just never left those apartments. It was like I, part of me never grew,
Sam Believ: never matured, but interesting from all those angles if you analyze it, because from the point of view of like challenges, I meet a lot of people that end up on this sort of healing journey and all them have a rough story and then this story is part of who they are, because if they’ve never had that story, they would never become stronger.
That’s
Sam Lipman-Stern: a really interesting way, you just blew my mind with that perspective on it, that is a really interesting perspective as well. Like I could see that being a really interesting message
Sam Believ: because let’s say, and I’m not saying if you had the happy childhood, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you, we’re happy for you, but it is shown generally that people that have challenges then overcome them.
They, they become stronger.
Sam Lipman-Stern: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. In that case,
Sam Believ: Let’s say in hypothetical world where everything was good, you just stayed in that apartment, but there was no desire to leave it and you would just become, mama’s boy and maybe, maybe it’s a, it shows you like a par part
Sam Lipman-Stern: reality.
That’s, you know what, I think that’s really interesting. I’m gonna think more about that. And there was, and I totally agree.
Sam Believ: Oh, if you wanna get real trippy and start to feel a little panicky,
Sam Lipman-Stern: I like it. Let’s go
Sam Believ: think about that it is actually true and what you’re experiencing here is actually a dream.
Sam Lipman-Stern: I love that. I love it. I love if I start thinking the trippier the better and the panic loopy thoughts like this, I start I like it, dude. I like getting, let’s get weird, man. So that was, oh and yes. So one of the other things was, so after that, the family did get. Crazy. My parents were into polyamory and it was like a constant battle.
So my mom, it was, and my mom was the one that that brought it up. Like she wanted to be polyamorous. I don’t necessarily believe in monogamy. That’s a whole other conversation for another podcast. But when you raise children in that environment, it needs to be very mutually accepted. It needs to be like you have to raise children healthfully in a polyamorous household.
You, there’s gotta be a lot of a lot. The parents have to be on the same page. And my parents were not on the same page. And it was just it was a, it was pretty,
Sam Believ: what it’s called consensual cheating. It’s like you, it’s agreed, but it’s still cheating and there’s still resentment.
Sam Lipman-Stern: That’s what it was from my, in my household, and it was like.
My mom wanted to bring guy boyfriends back to the house, and that made, I never met any because I just stayed outta my house when that, things like that were happening. I I didn’t feel comfortable at home. Now
Sam Believ: the,
Sam Lipman-Stern: that sounds
Sam Believ: pretty traumatic. It was pretty traumatic. The pos in my household.
My dad was a cheating one.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah. My dad and my mom were both going to these like poly foods.
Sam Believ: Same story that I never, and there’s a six story that I never told anyone that still is somewhat haunting me. My mom came to drink ayahuasca here and she, after drinking Ayahuasca here with us, it was also her and my brother and my sister, and she told us that she cheated on my dad the entire time.
He still doesn’t know. He doesn’t speak English though. He’ll never find out. Wow. Wow. But it’s shook my world.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Really? Yeah.
Sam Believ: People cheat now. That’s just what it is.
Sam Lipman-Stern: That’s. So I had a non-traditional childhood, right? And I can speak about this because of healing, and I really recommend people out there do everything, go to therapy.
Some if therapy doesn’t work, if therapy works or if it doesn’t work, go do ayahuasca. Ayahuasca for me was like, so I did therapy. I wouldn’t be able to speak about my childhood with you if it wasn’t for therapy. Because before there was experiences that were like these balls of emotion that were undealt with.
And I, and therapy helped me to open up about those open up so that I wasn’t like the emotions didn’t have weight in a way, it was like, I can talk about it because it was, it’s another lifetime.
Sam Believ: It’s no longer trauma, but now it’s just a memory. It’s a memory, yeah, exactly.
So less of a, more of a memory.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Therapy helped me with that and, then ayahuasca, I feel like cleared out the cobwebs that still existed. There were still some cobwebs, there were still cobwebs and ayahuasca was like, here, we’re gonna clear out that those cobwebs that, and it’s fucking gone though.
And we’re gonna, we’re gonna not only gonna clear out the cobwebs from that past trauma, ’cause there’s always gonna be some subconscious trauma. We’re gonna clear that out and we’re going to rebuild you into the pers and show you who you are, show you, rebuild you essentially. And when I, when at the end of the Ayahuasca experience I was like, I would, I was like a newborn baby, I wrote everything down and here’s where the integration the boring part is. But I’ll just say I wrote everything down, which you guys did such a great job. I will only recommend Low Wire, by the way, to anybody that I know because I know, ’cause I’ve been through it here and I know what you guys do. So everybody that I’ve been telling about retreats, I say, you come here and it’s the only place I can recommend.
I can’t recommend anywhere else. I can only recommend here. One of the things that you guys did so well was like journaling. For example, I have this Bible from the entire experience thanks to you guys, which I wouldn’t have done. And I’m sure a lot of people don’t do it out there of every realization, every answer, including the My daughter’s name, which the, with which ayahuasca’s here’s a name.
We’re gonna, here’s a name. And and I, so in terms of the integration, I, every morning I read the list. Every single it’s so
Sam Believ: interesting because some, we have already more than 20 people that tattooed Lara as a reminder of this experience. Great. Lara logo. Yeah. Like the one on my t-shirt, the one on the micro, if I
Sam Lipman-Stern: had tattoos, I would do it too.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Like this part here, which this is Lara and but you literally got a name for your daughter from Ayahuasca and you’re gonna call your daughter Chano. Anoa. Yeah. And it has a deep meaning. It has a deep meaningly and from Hebrew as well. Yeah. But now basically every time you say her name, you’ll be able to remember.
It’s incredible, man. It’s crazy. There’s no running away from that. Unless you abandon your daughter that
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah. And that’s what’s gonna make this documentary different guys. We are not scared of dark humor.
Sam Believ: Yeah.
Sam Lipman-Stern: We’re hu Laughing is good. The fuck the war on Comedy Man.
Every show at all,
Sam Believ: yeah.
Sam Lipman-Stern: But yeah man, it’s been amazing.
Sam Believ: So you you sound like you feel pretty good. So talk to us about how you felt before quitting antidepressants did this journey and how you feel now. ’cause you haven’t, you’ve been notified the depress for what, three months now
Sam Lipman-Stern: more?
Yeah. I think I got, I think the last time I took antidepressants I believe was January, early January. So we’re talking Yeah, about four months. Yeah, four months. How I felt before was. So antidepressants helped me out in a very dark time, and I don’t say don’t do antidepressants. I think antidepressants are, can be a helpful tool for a lot of people.
For me, it was a helpful tool when I got on them nine years ago, 2016. The issue is that western medicine, similarly to thinking of, we talked about media companies thinking about documentaries as just money. Western, I think the western world thinks about medicine as just money and medicine and health as money.
That’s horrible, right? After I got on antidepressants, there was no question of getting off of them. There was no, no one was asking me, Hey, do you think you might want to get off of them? This is not for the rest of your life. And that’s why would they want you to get off? They’re you’re money, man.
Money money. So things were pretty good. I was li I lived a pretty good life. Antidepressants, my, my anxiety and OCD were sp I got on antidepressants. I had, I struggled with anxiety for years, since I was a kid. General anxiety disorder. And moderate OCDI was diagnosed with moderate o obsessive compulsive disorder and therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants helped out a lot.
Nine years later, this last October, it just seemed like the antidepressants weren’t working anymore, man. I se I felt just back in the darkness, back in the OCD and the depression and the anxiety. And there is something called re depression. Treatment resistant depression, exactly.
So right before we right before we started really getting into the filming of the documentary, I was in a somewhat of a dark place which brought me to Ayahuasca really in a big way. And then where I am, so yeah, I was in a bit of a dark place, or not a bit of a dark place.
I was in a dark place, and you’ll see that in the personal journals that I did while getting off antidepressants, which wasn’t easy, and I was really scared to get off of them. I’m like, what if I go crazy? What if I have to get back on them right away? I’ll be embarrassed. Crazy. I’m fucking insane. Listen to me.
After Ayahuasca where I am now and after Ayahuasca I’ve been off antidepressant, I’ve been off antidepressants. I, okay, so one thing I noticed, I feel a lot more, I was always, I’m guy. I know a lot of men have this, but I was someone who pushed emotions away and ran from my emotions and didn’t for a couple reasons.
I think one was that for work especially, I’m like, emotions shouldn’t live in my work is really intense and stressful and it’s but in general, I think I was with everything, with my woman, with life. I was family. I was always trying to live in a, in the chill zone and thus I labeled emotions or I ran for my emotions.
I ran from emotions After Ihu. I’m feeling emotions maybe for the first time, like really strongly, and I’m not running away from them. And it’s taking me it’s a learning lesson. It’s something that I need to, that I am working on. It’s no, you’re fucking stressed right now. That’s okay. Feel that stress.
You can do things like go to the gym, do things to help alleviate that stress, but identify those emotions and don’t run away from them. I’m upset with my wife or my fiance instead of running away, talk to her. Why are you upset about, I’m living with Emo. I’m an emotional man for the first time, dude, it’s wild.
And I think a lot of, I don’t know, I’m sure women too, but I can only speak as my experience as a man. I think a lot of men, I don’t know if a lot of men, but I’m sure, I know some of my fr male friends feel similarly.
Sam Believ: We’re also, as a person that has thousands of men share, that’s the most common thing. A lot of people come to Oscar to reconnect with their emotions.
It was my intention for at least 10 different ceremonies along the time.
Sam Lipman-Stern: There you go. Yeah. I didn’t know that. I just,
Sam Believ: I definitely was able to tune that emotional dial up.
Sam Lipman-Stern: You know what? There’s nothing wrong with emotions. Like I don’t, I think that’s part of the evil in Western society is we have, and I think it is changing, but that false idea of what’s a man like, why did I think since I was a child, it was bad to cry.
I don’t know. I fucking learned that somehow.
Sam Believ: There were these two doctors that wrote this book. Both of them never had children, but they were basically the people that taught the Western society that you should leave your kids locked in the room if they’re crying, till they stop crying. The whole sleep training.
Sam Lipman-Stern: I’ve heard about this.
Sam Believ: You should make a documentary about it. All right, let’s, it’s a true crime documentary. Yeah, because they literally destroyed several generations of humans. This is why we’re so fucked up now. It’s one of the reasons.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah. I’ll look into that
Sam Believ: because kids need to be held.
When they cry, they need to be acknowledged to be crying. And you have to like, like we, we go sleep with our kids. Till they’re about 1-year-old. And then we we can hear them anytime they wake up, we go talk to them, so it’s it’s not normal to just leave your kids cry for
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah.
So they, yeah. So you have things like that. That’s
Sam Believ: where it’s coming from. And if it if the ingrained in you that when you cry your parents get upset, then you grow up. And then, especially if you’re a boy, it’s man up.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Man up man. Yeah, man up. And dude, I cried in that. I, on all those ayahuasca ceremonies and I really wanted to, for the documentary, I knew it was important and for, it’s not like I forced it.
I fucking, I meant it. I was crying out of joy, out of sadness. Like for Mother Earth. When the shaman, when the Tata was like, I gave that speech at the end I felt like I was crying. Through, Mother Earth was like crying through me, dude. Yeah, it was. And I, and all that stuff’s entertaining, dude.
La like they, people can laugh at it. They can, I’m a little bit embarrassed about it, but it’s,
Sam Believ: if you heard yourself speak five years ago, it’s like Mother Earth crying through me.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Oh my God. Oh my God, dude, my, what is wrong with, I would’ve been like,
Sam Believ: That’s the reality. And yeah.
Yeah. You guys can, if you’re listening and you have somehow still haven’t done ayahuasca, you can, it’s one thing saying forgive yourself, love yourself. Feel the pain of others. It’s like those are just words. But if you drink Ayahuasca and you get that experience and you actually love yourself, it’s such a.
Different thing. And so it’s also like people describe all kinds of different feelings and observations. Like they, it’s a lived experience. Like for them it’s not just word. Like when you say crying for the mother earth, you felt it like it’s your reality now. And even though it sounds crazy, who cares?
Sam Lipman-Stern: It doesn’t matter. That’s the thing. And so we lost so much. And I don’t know. I think what the medicine was like saying or communicating to me was like this tech, this used to exist. Ayahuasca used to exist. It used to be part of mankind globally, and it was lost because of religions.
Think about just like the Catholic church and all the damage the Catholic church did, but all religions, if they weren’t using this medicine and they were saying a. Which that did happen when the missionaries came here and they saw Ayahuasca, and they were like, yo, what the fuck witchcraft is this?
And they try, if you’re so this was what the medicine was saying was I believe that this, that ayahuasca was part of planet Earth. It was part, it was ritual was this, ritual was part of Earth and there was some kind, there was wars and religion, and it pushed it into the
Sam Believ: exile.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Exile in the toughest place to penetrate the Amazon rainforest.
Makes sense?
And it hid there for thousands of years. And now it wants to be known again through us, dude, and through all the, and through all the other people that are trying to put it out there. It makes it, it sounds so farfetched, but it’s like the greatest story, never told.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Some people might say the desire to change the world is Jesus complex or like grandeur, but it only is a complex if you don’t achieve it. And I, he’s gonna hate, and we will make a dent. I’m sure.
Sam Lipman-Stern: One last thing I just wanted to say is like another realization that I had, and you mentioned it early on, but it really was so clear to me.
It was like, if you’re out there listening to this and you’re suicidal and this is, and you are, you’ve got your plan, like you’re going to kill yourself. And I’ve been in very dark places myself and a lot of people have been out there. But if you are suicidal and you’re listening to this and you have two options, one is to kill yourself and the other is to come here and do ayahuasca.
We need your voice here, we need your gifts. This. You’re gonna kill yourself anyway. Why not come and try Ayahuasca? It was I that kept coming to me. Dude,
Sam Believ: there’s nothing to lose. Yeah, just give it a try. If it doesn’t work, we’ll give you a money back
Sam Lipman-Stern: then. You could kill yourself afterwards if you,
Sam Believ: yeah.
Sam Lipman-Stern: And we’ll make a documentary, a murder documentary and claim the money back because you kill yourself. You’re right. But we can, and we’ll make a murder documentary for and Shelton to the Nature Street. Yeah. This is very dark. That’s very, I feel ashamed. Yeah. That’s very dark. Sorry guys. It’s a little, we went a little too dark right there.
Let’s let a light note. Let’s go dark a little bit more. Okay. More dark.
Sam Believ: What is, I ask is not all rainbows and butterflies. What’s the most. Difficult part or maybe like post-integration when you’re like, yeah, what’s the really good, smallest, difficult part?
Sam Lipman-Stern: Really good question, man. Really good question.
So yeah, ayahuasca’s not all rainbows and butterflies. What I, my dad wants to do ayahuasca, and when I told him, and he’s 76, I said, make sure you prepare yourself for the retreat. For the preparation, the retreat, and also the integration element. I think, after doing ayahuasca, I felt, first I didn’t the afterglow was like, was a few days and it was really beautiful.
But it was also scary because it felt like. I was just seeing everything for the first time. Like I had a mango juice. It was for the first time driving down the streets, first time feeling air, first time making love to your wife. Everything was the first time. And that was amazing. But I felt my okay here was here.
Now that I remember I was scared that I was manic. I’m like, oh my am I like manic depressive. I felt so good, like such a high that I was scared I was gonna crash. And the and so I think that
I think that the, the, I think the thing about the I about the, it wasn’t necessarily a crash, but I think that here’s the boring part, it’s just that you need to Neil Brennan. My good friend. Oh, not good. Yeah. Neil Brennan is co-created of the Chappelle Show. We became friends through telemarketers, through my documentary, and he’s arguably one of the best comedians ever.
Amazing writer. But he was you and Neil were my master Yodas in this experience. So Neil, we’d be texting and I was texting him while I was doing Ayahuasca here. And Neil he tried everything for his depression. Super fucking successful guy. One of the most successful people I know.
Horrible. Depression for so many years. Tried everything. Ayahuasca’s, the only thing that worked for him. And so Neil, when I was texting him about it, he’s be careful because it doesn’t last. He’s so you need to do things to integrate the experience. He’s I journal four times a day.
That’s what he told me. And I didn’t understand in the moment. ’cause I was at such a high, I actually texted every single person I knew and I was like, you gotta go do ayahuasca. That was where I was, that’s where I was at in the moment, like coming off of the Ayahuasca.
Sam Believ: That’s why normally we don’t allow people to use their phones.
Smart, smart man.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Because, yeah, and a lot of people were like, I’m never doing that. You’re fucking crazy. And other people were like, that sounds pretty cool. So I think the hardest, the transition into real life is difficult. Especially I’m a guy that luckily doesn’t have a boss, but my job is really stressful and I’m a, and my boss is a, an asshole.
I’m a fucking I’m a tough boss on myself. Here, I think going into the office, going in. So you, let’s say you do your Ayahuasca experience, then you go back into the office in New York City, like the day after. I wouldn’t recommend it. I would say take a week off and work on your integration plan. How are you gonna integrate the experience so that you don’t lose it?
For people who have done DMT out there, you smoke DMT, it lasts for five to 15 minutes and if you don’t write it down like it’s gone, like you’re not gonna remember it. I think Ayahuasca, I think that to make it last and to have a really smooth transition into back into your normal life. I was taking meetings the day after like we’re in the afterglow and I think what I would say is it, that wasn’t the right way.
I should have just, I should have gone a little slower into, back into quote unquote real life. What I’m doing now, a month and a half in, is I have this morning routine, where, and again talking about some hippie shit. But I wake up in the morning, I do a 10 minute, guided meditation.
Then I do like a 10 minute Yik breathing, like one of these Wim Hof type of things. Then I read my entire journal. All I put, I organized all the points ’cause I’m OCD. So I organized all the things I learned into a Google document, like really profound lessons. And I read ’em every morning and then I take a cold shower, then I eat breakfast, and then I work.
So I think things like that have allowed me to transition better, but it was like, I didn’t know exactly how to transition. How do you go from the most profound experience of your entire life back to the fucking office? I think that could be hard for a lot of people. And it was hard for me. It wasn’t,
Sam Believ: yeah, like in the perfect world like last month for example, after all the retreats of the month, we did an integration retreat. It was like a five day yoga, meditation, relax. And like honestly, out of 90 people who had that month, only 12 people stayed. So it’s because integration is not sexy Ayahuasca.
Sexy ayahuasca is very sexy. Sexy people don’t wanna do it. And myself included I’m kind also busy. I felt but it’s if we can get more people to do it, then it would be, ’cause for me, like I would love, I would do an integration retreat after every retreat. And so people stay, but it’s also, I would also prefer people to do a one week retreat versus a four day retreat.
The people are busy and they can tell them only can do a weekend, and it’s still better than nothing. So it’s all about this society we live in where.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Busy
Sam Believ: jobs, busy. It all puts us in an unhealthy way of living. ’cause I wish maybe post ayahuasca, imagine there is a world before ayahuasca post ayahuasca all of a sudden, hundred and 60 years from now.
It was an ayahuasca day and everyone drank ayahuasca on the same day. Let’s go. I’m, I want it to happen next day. The planet woke up and everyone was conscious and loving and we redid the civilization where money’s no longer the main priority, right? Oh, I like this. I like this. It’s called utopia.
Beautiful. But let’s say that happened and all of a sudden you can actually do stuff that doesn’t make you money, but you’re still fine. At least you’re full of purpose and you can somehow, it sounds like communism, but. I’ve,
Sam Lipman-Stern: I like where you’re going with this.
Sam Believ: I’ve been I was born in a communist country actually.
My, my birth certificate has this crescent uhhuh, certainly hammer and sickle. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I, trust me, I don’t want this to yeah. Sure. Happen again. So but figure out something new, something that works maybe with ai, blockchain, psychedelics, all mixed together. There’s some kind of like paradigm or, I like it.
It just works. I like it. Let’s say nobody needs to clean bathrooms because robots do it. Sure. But everyone can paint and they can drink psychedelics and integrate, connect with the earth. Yeah. It’ll be pretty, yeah. I fuck with pretty hippie existence, but because right now, yeah, I wanna run, I’m running a spiritual business.
I help people overcome depression. I’m a nice guy, but I need to make money. Sure, of course. Of course. Soon I have to raise the price. Sure. I pride myself into saying we are one of the most affordable trees, but it’s if I don’t have money to feed my family or to build and improve, it’s like money.
Ever second. And when you think about money or you think about business, you automatically have to be like a little greedy. ’cause you have to like every little,
Sam Lipman-Stern: I’m making 10 murder documentaries. So for everyone listening out there, besides this Ayahuasca documentary, I gotta feed my kids. So I do have 10 murder documentaries on the side, just so everybody knows.
But that’s my proof. No, I’m just kidding. But if you you know what, if somewhere proof I need, but bro, but you’re right. It’s, I’m the same, I’m in the same boat. I totally get it.
Sam Believ: Pick up a crime documentary, like a murder documentary. I’m not gonna,
Sam Lipman-Stern: you’re not gonna judge me. I know. You’re gonna make it less evil.
Thank you.
Sam Believ: Yeah. All right, cool.
Sam Lipman-Stern: But I may have to pick up, what I’m trying to say is, I get it. I may have to pick up a murder documentary. So it’s not, I gotta pay the bills too. It’s not
Sam Believ: people, I don’t think that the people, I don’t think that those they’re representatives in the pharmaceutical companies.
They go to the doctors and they say, if you sell my drugs to people and you sell, a lot of them will give you like a kickback.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, that’s, yeah, exactly.
Sam Believ: I don’t think they’re evil. They probably, their company told them that it’s a good medication. Maybe they believe in it, they need to make money.
Sure. And it’s like the system is rigged. So we need to figure out how we can serve, like how. To get to the point where being authentic and being purposeful does not go against you surviving, because if you’re just like,
Sam Lipman-Stern: yes. And it’s so interesting that you’re saying this ’cause it’s exactly what I’m trying to do with film man.
And it’s not the easy way, even Yeah. If you raise your prices a little bit, you’re still gonna be 10 times more affordable than a bunch of retreats we won’t name in Costa Rica or Mexico or in the States. You gotta, you have to, one of the things that, yeah, you have to, we live in a culture where we have to make, we have to make money.
We both have kids, we both have families and money and yeah, it’s really interesting’s. I think that there was a few different subjects one is that I don’t think we’re human beings are living the right way. No I think that the, I like business. I’ve always, I was, I always liked selling things as a kid.
I, I used to buy I used to sell fucking pipes to smoke weed when I was 13 or buy fake Rolexes in New York and sell ’em in school. I always like business, like I do like business. But I think it’s like you don’t want money to ha to, to dictate your, how, your mission, I guess you could say.
Like you don’t, and you don’t wanna hold. You want to be able to have something here that’s affordable, you’ve told me many times, so that it’s not just rich celebrities. Some of these other retreats that are spending a ton of money. You want to, you want people to be able, the people I met at your retreats are everyday people, and that’s a beautiful thing.
You’re spreading you’re spreading this experience to people, to, to everybody. I think that’s an amazing thing. And then, and the, in a similar way, it’s very similar in a similar way. I am, I could only do murder documentaries and I’d be a very fucking rich man. But I’m following, I’m following I’m following my vision.
I’m still making money from documentaries. It’s still something that helped that I got into it because it’s my passion. I could probably make more money fucking installing air conditioners in New Jersey or doing being in a mechanic or something. But, it’s interesting. And then yes nothing against mechanics, nothing against, we love mechanics.
Is there a society out there that exists? Maybe that isn’t a money hungry focused society? Yeah, there’s gotta be. And that’s another documentary series we can do. We can go and see what are other ways that different indigenous people live that have lived for thousands of years without money. You know what, how do they live?
Sam Believ: Yeah. We
Sam Lipman-Stern: got deep.
Sam Believ: For me, it’s every, everything I hear I kind viewed through Ayahuasca lens and like, how can you fix Itasca? And you see everything as a script for the future documentary. That’s because it’s your purpose. And I have mine. So we do have to wrap up. You talk very loudly and the ceremony’s about to start.
Oh yeah. But yeah. Thank you. Thank you man. Thank you for the interview. Thank you for the work. Thank you for the pat passion. Thank you for listening to me at actually doing Ayahuasca. And yeah, let’s do it.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Yeah, man. Three
Sam Believ: years from now, after we win that Emmy,
Sam Lipman-Stern: everybody out there that’s listening to this.
Yeah. Stay tuned to both Sam and my social media for just more updates on this documentary. We haven’t been posting too much about it, but we got, we’re really working hard and really excited about this one. I think it’s going to be a wild, fun ride for a lot of people, including ourselves. We’re having a blast with it.
Yeah. And thank you so much for having me here, brother. I’m glad we, so glad we met and that life is fun. People out there listening go have fun. Follow these paths. When you open yourself up and actually get in touch with some of these medicines, things start to unfold in very interesting, exciting ways.
Life is not meant to be boring. Yeah. Thank you.
Sam Believ: Yeah, we’re not here just to sleep eat and shit. There’s more to it. There’s more to it. And I ask is one of the easiest way to reconnect with that. So on that positive note, thank you Sam.
Sam Lipman-Stern: Thank you my friend. It was great. And that was a good one.
See you in the next episode. Okay, great. Thank you brother.
Sam Believ: Guys, as always, you’ve been listening to Oscar podcast, your host Sam Leave, and I will see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Enjoyed if you’d like to support us and psychedelic renaissance at large, please follow us and leave us a like wherever it is you’re listening.
Share this episode with someone who will benefit from this information. Nothing in this podcast is intended as medical advice, and it is for educational and entertainment purposes only. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity.
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