In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of LaWayra) has a conversation with Jesse Harless, a thought leader in addiction recovery and mental health.
Jesse shares his inspiring journey of overcoming addiction and how he now empowers others as a coach, facilitator, and author of Smash Your Comfort Zone with Cold Showers.
We touch upon topics such as:
Jesse’s personal journey with addiction and recovery (01:25)
Overcoming trauma through self-awareness (06:10)
Role of psychedelics in addiction recovery (08:28)
Jesse’s experience with Ayahuasca (12:45)
Cold therapy and its benefits for mental health (32:04)
Addiction as a coping mechanism (38:58)
The F.E.A.R.S. model for recovery (44:04)
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats, go to LaWayra.
Find more about Jesse Harless at jessieharless.com.
Transcript
Jesse Harless: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com. I did all the work I could for 15 years to address the shadow. And when I started to get into psychedelic cys therapy, it blew the door open to shadows. I could not access these shadows, I could not access. And if you can access these shadows without medicine.
Let me know. When I started to get into medicines, including ayahuasca, I started to see parts of myself I could not access. So I just wanna share that for me and my story, I started to access really deep parts of myself that, 15 years of therapy. All the cold therapy, I was doing all the practices.
I was doing all the stuff where I was in contemplation for hours at a time, days at a time. I couldn’t see what I couldn’t see until I started to utilize psychedelics and psychedelic assisted therapy.
Sam Believ: This episode of Ayahuasca podcast, I interview Jesse Harless. We talk about Jesse’s personal recovery story from addiction. Talk about psychedelics and addiction recovery in general. Talk about the role of fear in addiction, importance of shadow work, addiction as a coping mechanism, and a model called FEA Rs, or fierce.
It’s a very interesting episode. I’m sure you will enjoy it. This episode is sponsored by LoRa Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal,
Jesse Harless: grow.
Sam Believ: Guys,
Jesse Harless: I’m looking forward to hosting you.
Sam Believ: Welcome to Ayahuasca podcast, as always, with you to host Sam.
Today I’m interviewing Jesse Harless. Jesse’s a thought leader in addiction recovery and mental health. Jesse has an incredible personal story of transformation. Overcoming addiction and using his experiences to empower others. He’s the author of Smash Your Comfort Zone with cold showers, and if not you, then who.
He shares their practical steps for healing from trauma and living a life of purpose As a coach and facilitator, Jesse’s work focuses on elevating individuals and organizations in recovery. Pushing them to reach their fullest potential. So let’s dive in. Jesse,
Jesse Harless: welcome to the show, Sam, it’s an honor to be here.
I’m glad we’re connecting for the second time. You were on my podcast a couple days ago it’s a pleasure, brother.
Sam Believ: Yeah, thank you, Jesse. I think there is there’s a very good connection between the topic of addictions and work with plant medicines. I think it’s, it can be one of those matches made in heaven.
So the fact that I spoke on your podcast about medicine, and now you can speak on my podcast about the addiction because we have lots of stories of people coming to deal with the addiction, and addiction is running rampant now in the western world. So tell us a little bit about your own story with addiction and, recovery.
Jesse Harless: Yeah. It’s a story that I don’t often tell often anymore. I used to tell it all the time and Al Cox’s anonymous, I used to tell it all the time, getting asked to speak on commitments and really talk a lot about what happened and then what it’s like now. So it’s been a while since I talked about it, but the short version.
Is, it’s pretty classic, three years old. My dad leaves, never comes back. I fall into, single, my mom’s a single mom with three boys, so there’s all kinds of stressors, money stressors, housing stressors, all kinds of things that are happening, which are being imbibed in my body as trauma.
And that eventually, I try to numb out with all different types of behaviors, pornography at 11 years old, internet pornography and having computer games got massively indicted into computer games, which now today you might become a professional if you do that, but when I was doing that, it was definitely to escape and there was definitely some positives about that as well.
And so high school, I didn’t use substances, but I had addiction to my trauma and my stories and my depression. I couldn’t get outta my own way, even if people told me I’m a great person, I’m loved, I couldn’t hear it, so I ended up just barely graduating high school, had an intervention senior year ’cause I was late so many times.
Just dropped out of my life and. So I went to college and that’s where I got to get into substances. So I started drinking alcohol. I took some psychedelics with alcohol and with a whole bunch of other things and, had my first taste of psilocybin and how that can just smash you right up in the right up in your face when you’re not doing the right thing.
And it shows you like what you’re doing and. Those are some big experiences. At 18, I flunked outta college. I got arrested. All these things happened, and from there I, I had this moment where my father had passed away. We had no relationship, but when he passed away, that was my excuse to dive into cocaine.
And once I did that, I found heroin and 20 years old, I’m, shooting heroin. I’m sorting cocaine and I’m down this path where. Just like it was just this numbing out of reality. Addiction was my solution to the pain, and eventually it stopped abruptly. I moved to Florida to escape my addiction. They call that the geographical cure, but it just, I could only stop for so long.
The hard drugs came back to them and got arrested and that arrest was a big one. And that arrest. That, that, that’s the one that woke me up. That was the one that was like, Hey, you’re gonna go to federal prison for seven years? And it was like, oh, I gotta stop waking up. What’s happening? What are my choices?
And I started to surround myself with mentors, fellowship, everything, the Bible, anything I could to I studied scripture like. Like it was a medicine. Like I memorized scripture, like it was a medicine. I used affirmations every single day ’cause my anxiety and panic attacks were so severe at 22.
And so that began my recovery journey.
Sam Believ: Thank you, Jesse. Thank you for sharing your story. First of all, congratulations ’cause not only you were able to overcome the addiction yourself, but also now obviously you’re helping others and, I like how you started your share with the reason, which was your pain.
The trauma of the childhood and I really like Gabor mate’s word and, Gabor is my dream to have him on the podcast, but maybe one day I know he’s also a big proponent of ayahuasca and what he says is the look for the substance, look for the pain. And you was able to identify.
That pain very early. Yeah, now not only you’re doing pretty well yourself. You look great. I never met your addicted version, but you look healthy and vibrant, very sharp and stuff like that. In in your work now with helping others what do you do, for example, for people who are listening to this episode and they’re addicted?
What would you tell them?
Jesse Harless: It’s very different than what I would’ve told them at 22. Now at 41, I would say, if someone is addicted, it’s, we wanna look at what is it providing relief from? What is it providing as a solution to, and it could be many things. It could be trauma, it could be complex trauma.
Could be PTSD, it could be many things. And I think sometimes it’s even financial hardship. There’s so many reasons for why someone’s using a substance or a behavior to numb out. So I would say the first thing is to ask yourself, what is this thing? What is this providing relief from? What am I getting relief from by acting out in this way, whether it’s pornography or sexual addiction?
Or maybe it’s you’re addicted to alcohol. You know what is this providing relief from? And as we get closer and closer to the core, we find fear. And that as we find the fear, we find the real truth of the root of what is this relieving me from? And so start with those questions and then you can start to ask yourself, what has worked for me in the past?
To find relief in a more positive way. How can I find relief? And for some people, they’ve already been through the rodeo, they’ve been to treatment, they’ve been to meetings, they’ve been to church, they’ve been to done, they’ve done all these things and they feel hopeless. So it’s really meeting someone where they’re at in that process.
So the answer is not universal it’s different for every person. But I would say that first step of asking yourself, what am I numbing out? Why, what am I numbing out? What is the feelings, the emotions? What is the reason for this? And start there
Sam Believ: when you talk about looking for that root cause that fear, that internal emotion.
I can’t help but think, in, in obviously in working with thousands of people working with us and sometimes it, whether you’re looking for it or not, it just shows it right. To you. It happens over and over again when people are just presented with with their root issue. What are your thoughts on psychedelics and maybe your own experiences, and do you see a potential there for helping addicted people?
Jesse Harless: That’s a great question. It took 15 years of being an abstinent recovery for me to find psychedelics and utilize them in a therapeutic manner. So I didn’t just come in day one, week one, year one, 15 years into it after doing 10 years of meditation, all kinds of different religious practices, all kinds of different recovery programs.
I came in and found psychedelics. So I think that number one is do your research. Do your research first. Do research. Make sure that this is the choice that you wanna make. Listen to podcasts like the Ayahuasca podcast. Listen to my podcast, listen to other podcasts. Get into the world in the space and make sure that this is the right choice.
Once you have that, have made that decision, then it’s what medicine, all the medicines are different. They’re, none of them are the same. So many of ’em are illegal. If you’re gonna wanna do ayahuasca, you want to come and see Sam in Columbia Laira, right? Because it’s legal there.
They’ve been doing it for years. They’re experts. They know exactly what to do, and they’ve treated many cases of addiction. But if you’re here in the, if you’re I’m not here, I’m in the Costa Rica now, but if you’re in the United States. Ayahuasca is not legal. So what are the legal options?
Ketamine is a legal option there. So do your research on ketamine. Look at the studies. What am I struggling with? Where has ketamine been beneficial for this addiction? I’m facing, and maybe there’s a deeper root cause maybe there’s some type of diagnosis you have. Maybe bipolar or borderline personality disorder.
Make sure that you’re. You’re understanding that here’s what can happen with the potential of utilizing these psychedelic therapies. So do deep research first. And today we have so many free resources to get that information, especially podcasts like this. Do your research first and then understand that.
And then reach out to people. Reach out to you. Reach out to me. Reach out to people who have experience extensively in different types of medicines. And for me, I’ve utilized. I’ve met Ayahuasca before. I’ve met peyote before, but I’ve only done those each one time. So I’m not someone who you’d wanna come to.
You wanna go to Sam to ask that question, but if you’re talking about Ketamine assisted therapy, I’ve utilized that many times. So that’s something I can speak to more. I’ve also used other therapies, other psychedelic therapies as well. So go to someone, read books, find the information that you’re looking for, do the research just like you would with anything else, unless you’re forced into something, do the research first.
Sam Believ: They could just see that’s very ground, very reasonable reply from you regarding the topic you said to ask Sam. From my perspective, what I’ve seen so far is. A lot of people get get presented with that core issue that they’re looking for. ’cause ayahuasca is, it’s like straight to business.
You might have an intention about something else, and if there’s something more present, they’ll be like no, let’s go, let’s look here. You gotta look here. And we’ve seen a lot of good results with people overcoming weed addiction alcohol, a lot of that. And sometimes surprisingly people come for something else. Let’s say they come to treat depression and then all of a sudden as a side effect, they realize they no longer want to drink because in their process, somehow they addressed that core pain that you’re talking about. But of course, as you say, you gotta be careful. ’cause I ask if you’re.
If you’re psychotic, if you have history of schizophrenia, if you’re taking antidepressants, you cannot just jump in it immediately. You need to prepare yourself, learn, read, and this is it’s very important that you mentioned that, but in your own work, you said you have worked with the oscopy for it.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How was that experience? Did it show you maybe. More of the inner pain that you were not aware of, or what was your intention? What was the outcome?
Jesse Harless: It’s gonna get esoteric if I talk about these things because yeah. To just break down that first experience, I was in the beautiful land of Costa Rica just like I am today.
And I vetted this place. I had friends who were with me who were going to take this experience very seriously. We were gonna do it in a group ceremony. And so it was outside too. It was a very interesting experience. So when I drank the first cup, you’re offered more than one cup if you choose.
And I chose on the first cup to go for a large dose. And I don’t recommend that for everyone. But I did that. And, I would say within 30 minutes I was in an experience that was extremely challenging. There was. As fast as humanly possible, the visions of my childhood and the pain of my childhood were coming at me in speeds that I could not keep up with, and it became so intense that I literally.
My body fluids released. I was it was so intense. It was like this, it was like something was blocked so deep that was being loosened and being let go of, which was this almost energetic cord that was there from the from around the age 10, where I think, where I believe the story that got embedded into my DNA started of this.
This wounding of feeling broken and not good enough and never having enough. I don’t, that’s the best way I could describe it. And that first cup just lambasted, it, blasted into that I would call trauma narrative. And it lasted, it felt like a lifetime, but once it started to, once it started to clear.
I started to have this conversation, dialogue with what I can only describe as grandmother. And I was like, Hey I’m not gonna drink anymore of this ayahuasca, because that was too too intense. And this soft, gentlest, kindness love voice I’ve ever heard was like, really? It was like so common.
It was, and then it convinced me. That I should go for another cup even after that extremely intense experience. And not everyone has that. The people around me, I knew their experience. They didn’t have that experience in the first cup, but I had that in the first cup and I went up, I got the second cup, did the same dose, sat down.
And I was definitely expecting another intense experience and that’s what started, it started to come back at the same intensity. But this time I had some type of choice that I didn’t have the first time where I said, thank you for showing me all of this, what’s next? And it completely passed.
And then I went into this experience of what I can only call this white light coming into the top of my. My crown chakra blasting through my root chakra, like this white light. And the best way I could describe it is I was thrown into an ancient Egypt time where I had this light blasting through me and I started to see all these things.
From things I’ve studied and watched, and maybe it was a past life, I don’t know, but I just started to experience this like Christlike light coming through and that was the second cup. And then I started to, open my eyes and I could see the grids in the sky. I could see things that I really could never see in my normal perception.
The second cup was this really confirming experience of what could be beyond. This lifetime. And I went on to, because I didn’t get I, I felt like I was going to, throw up many times, but I never did. And then on that second cup, I had a conversation with, let’s say grandmother again, ayahuasca.
And I said, if I drink another cup, I’m definitely going to, I’m definitely gonna throw up. And that’s what happened. I drank the third cup and I threw it up. But it was glorious. It was like I was throwing up all that trauma from the first cup. It was like I was throwing up all the stuff that. It never served me in my past.
So it’s, it was a really cathartic experience which also made me a little sad. So I looked at the shaman and the shaman gave me the little drink, another cup, and then I went for the fourth cup. And and that was another beautiful experience. That wasn’t like the first, it was really just another, let’s just say ride of of this knowledge beyond.
What we can perceive in our normal perception.
Sam Believ: Very interesting. Sounds like a very eventful experience. It is interesting you mentioned ancient Egypt because my very first Ayahuasca experience and I only had one cup, just one cup. There was no more needed. I don’t think I would be able to take another one.
But he was he was, it was a lot about, feeling joy and it’s almost, it almost felt like I was repressing joy and it all came out. It was very joyful experience. And then ancient Egypt, everything about Egypt, pyramids, shapes, stars. I was, it was a very like Egypt basic experience. I’ve never had one since, but I occasionally, obviously we have word circles and 50 to 70 people every month come through our doors.
I, I, since then. Notice that some people have this very, like Egyptian experiences. I don’t know what it means. My message was that if I go to Egypt, I will receive a gift and obviously then COVID started, so I never went. So I still don’t know, but yeah, I don’t know. Do you know anything or have you made any sense of what is that about Egypt that came up and why?
Jesse Harless: I think it’s a really fascinating timeline that we still don’t know much about. So I think you look at the stories that came outta ancient Egypt and they’re very similar to stories that got repeated later on, even through the Bible. So you see these stories and narratives that were 5,000 or more years old that had already happened and then replayed again in, in current religious texts.
So I think there’s like a repeat of what had happened in the past. Again and again through these different, whatever you want to call them, gods or and experiences. So I think that could have been just a timeline that, how did we, how did the pyramid get built? Can anyone tell me? So I think there’s, there was technologies and there was information and there was libraries and all kinds of things that.
Were available to us. That got lost of course. And I think we’re tapping into some of that ancient, as we clear where our own ego here, we clear where our own trauma of this lifetime, we start to see through the veil that, wow, there’s more information here than what we can understand. And fortunately, they left pyramids for us to be having archeology for proof.
So it’s very interesting.
Sam Believ: Yeah, the ancient megalithic structure is another point of interest of mine. Like I’ve been to a few here in South America and it’s just as an engineer myself, I just look at them and I’m like, I don’t know. How the hell did they manage to move stones that big and put them so precisely to each other?
They, I don’t know what they did and how they did it, but they were definitely very advanced. And interestingly enough, the only other Egyptian related experience IIII, I remembered was last month in one of the ceremonies I was presented by an Egyptian god, it’s like a human figure with the crocodile head.
I’ve never seen him or read about him. I didn’t even know what the God’s name was, but it was teaching me things as like a lecture. And interestingly enough, when I then went on Wikipedia and I. Figure out what kind of God it was and what his name was and what it’s supposed to represent.
It was really precise. So they proved that this mystical stuff that we see it is it’s not just in our ads. There’s definitely something beyond our understanding. And actually, yeah. That’s a topic, that’s a topic for another conversation, but you had this Ayahuasca experience and.
I know you also worked with Bufo, right? I believe you even have some training. Why this medicine? And how was the training? What did you learn?
Jesse Harless: Yeah, so after that experience at Ayahuasca and then a day later we met peyote, I went on to not do medicine for a little while.
Those are really big experiences I wanted to integrate and I was working with a psychedelic integration coach and I was really taking a lot of time. To sit and understand what happened and what I wanna do next. And what came to me was this opportunity to do MDMA assisted therapy. And I did that and when I was there.
There was there was a circle that was offered the next day, which was for five M-E-O-D-M-T, also known as ol. And this was with the synthetic molecule, also known as Jaguar. So there’s the ol various toad, which is directly from the toad and it’s dried the venom. And then there’s this synthetic version, which is known as Jaguar, and they were serving Jaguar.
And I watched these men receive this medicine one at a time. It really blew my mind. And one of them was deeply embedded into addiction recovery too. And I was just blown away by this experience, which planted a big seed for me months later to go and meet this medicine at a small dose. And that experience was very large.
And after that experience, I said, I wanna learn more about this. And not only did I go out and do a much bigger experience, I also signed up for a year long training with five. Is the five M-E-O-D-M-T information of Vital Education. You could check them out at their website. And I actually just interviewed the founders, Joel and Victoria.
That was my last podcast episode that just came out so you could learn all about them. But I wanted to learn more about this experience because that experience, which by the way, I did have an ancient Egypt experience in one of those ceremonies with five MEL. I didn’t want to meet the medicine. It wanted to meet me.
And I think that’s what happens a lot of times when we’re ready, we’re called to the medicine. I did, had no intention of ever doing this medicine and it got presented to me and I did it. And I met it a few times and before I made the decision to do a year long training. Which would be, put me in Mexico for two weeks at the end of it, serving medicine, receiving medicines.
Very, it’s a very large medicine. It’s one that you definitely wanna do research on before you choose to engage in that. And obviously do it in a place where it’s offered legally, but I, yeah, that, that’s how I got to find the medicine was through another medicine, and eventually I chose to become a trauma-informed facilitator with the medicine because the experience was such a big one that I just needed to understand.
What are the risks as well for this, for someone to have this because it’s just like ayahuasca. It’s like your life before ayahuasca, life a after ayahuasca, it’s very different reality. A very different set point of your baseline of reality can really change the way we perceive reality. Yeah.
Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing.
Yeah. It’s interesting that you mentioned the calling me. The medicine gives you, I, I remember. Being explicitly called to ayahuasca, even though I’ve never done any psychedelics or drugs as I would call it back then. But the calling is very obvious when it comes. And funny enough the roles have reversed now with the podcast and the retreat and all the content I create, I somehow became the messenger for the Callal on behalf of Ayahuasca.
You’re officially invited to come to Lura because maybe. The reason we’re talking is also part of your calling. So whenever you feel like it. Let’s talk a little bit about shadow work. I know you like talking about it, what is the role of that shadow in somebody’s addiction?
Jesse Harless: The shadow work in many ways. I don’t know if it ends in this lifetime. I’m not sure. Maybe if it ends. You are now enlightened being, and I don’t know too many, 100% enlightened beings here. So the shadow work is something that despite all the work I’ve done, I’m coming up on 19 years of recovery and despite, a master’s in mental health counseling and I don’t even know how many years of meditation now, well over a decade, and all of the work I’ve done with.
All the different therapies. I journaled for 15 years straight every day. I did things really extreme in many ways. And I think that even with the integration work that I did with psychedelics, really deep integration work with not only people who are doctors, psychologists people who are expert coaches in this and many books read and articles and all these things.
The shadow work still continues. Obviously I couldn’t really see a lot of my shadows when I was first getting into recovery at 22. It was a very stressful time. I was doing what I was told to do. Now today, the shadow work is really big because despite my intentions to create a joyful life and have this freedom every day where I feel great and I can eat mangoes and the jungle and have this great experience, there’s still parts of me that are there that are my own, and some are not my own.
Some are the collective shadow, the stuff that comes to me that are my own stuff is this trauma narrative since I was a child that comes through that is from the mother wound. And so this mother wound continues to show up today, and it impacts my business. It impacts our relationships with intimate partners.
It impacts me in many different ways. So the shadow work is just being really honest with yourself and how you’re showing up and what people are telling you for feedback when you have close friends. They become a mirror to your shadow, to your bullshit, and they see things in you that they want to let you know about.
And if your feelings get really hurt, that’s how you know it’s probably part of your shadow. So some people are there to just be a guide and a mirror so you can see yourself as a reflection. And so shadow work, I don’t think ever stops unless there’s some type of way to enlightenment. I think that the shadow work is so key and that’s why doing integration coaching and integration work or work with a really skilled therapist who’s also familiar with psychedelics can be really powerful for integrating these shadows.
Sam Believ: Yeah, I think that is true. It’s like an ever ending battle. But I think you, you discover one shadow belief and you address it maybe. Diminishes power a little bit and two more comes out. I’ve met one of the coaches I worked with, he said he’s now in the round shadow belief number 50 or something like that.
There’s there is no end to that. But it’s nevertheless very important. Then I guess I ask, I can be really good at sometimes. Revealing your shadow studio. So then you can work with them, as you said integrate them.
Jesse Harless: Yeah. I like to speak to that actually. So that’s another thing.
I did all the work I could for 15 years to address the shadow. And when I started to get into psychedelic cys therapy, it blew the door open to shadows. I could not access these shadows, I could not access. And if you can access these shadows without medicine. Let me know, but I, when I started to get into medicines, including ayahuasca, I started to see parts of myself I could not access.
So I just wanna share that for me and my story, I started to access really deep parts of myself that, 15 years of therapy. All the cold therapy I was doing, all the practices, I was doing, all the stuff where I was in contemplation for hours at a time, days at a time. I couldn’t see what I couldn’t see until I started to utilize psychedelics and psychedelic assisted therapy.
So I just wanna share that’s really cracked the door open to really a whole different nervous system. I, my nervous system is completely different than it was before I started psychedelics.
Sam Believ: Yeah, psychedelics is a really powerful tool and if used correctly, can be incredibly efficient. The analogy I like to use is.
Mental health is a journey of digging a tunnel. Psychedelics is is a dynamite. And the other work like integration, meditation, yoga, coaching therapy is shovels and picks because from that analogy, if you, that big explosion to remove this. Big mess of stone is extremely powerful.
And then you use the integration to remove the rubble, clean it up, and get ready for the next explosion. Because if you just keep exploding, you just get dust everywhere, it’s mess, you’re not gonna progress much as well. Or your tunnel will collapse and at the same time, if you just do picks and shovels you can get somewhere.
But it’s really slow comparatively to work with psychedelics because they really help you break that pattern. You mentioned cold therapy as well. Not only that, you wrote a book on cold showers and here at Laro, we actually had an IS bath for a few years. It broke recently, so I’m now saving up to get a new one and a better version and also build a sauna.
So I’m a big fan of cold therapy myself. But Why did you write a book on cold therapy? Cold Char specifically, and, what role did it play in your mental health journey as well?
Jesse Harless: Yeah, so cold showers came in 2015. It was information I received from a close friend. He said to me, I live in New Hampshire, by the way, the Northeast, so it was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
It was cold. And he said to me, you should start doing cold showers for 30 days. And I was like, why the hell would I do that? That’s ridiculous. I’ve been taking warm showers my whole life. I’m good. Instead of, having that type of mindset, I just took the cold shower right after he said it. I actually went in and I said, you know what, I’m gonna go do one of these cold showers.
And I turned the water all the way cold and I jumped in and it was super intense and, but I came out and a couple hours later I went to a meeting that I usually go to. And I’ve always had a little bit of, anxiety, like social anxiety and anxiety that came up in public. And I went to that meeting and I had no anxiety and I was like, this is really interesting.
The only thing I did differently was take a straight cold shower, and it got me really intrigued. So I decided to do the 30 days of cold showers in the wintertime in New Hampshire and. That led to like me doing it for years straight every day. And I don’t, again, I do, I recommend that for everyone. No, but that’s what I did.
And so after a few years of cold showers, what ended up happening was I met a group of entrepreneurs that were, writing books and doing different things, and someone challenged me, they said, why don’t you write a book about cold showers? You love these cold showers, you’ve gotten so many people to take and why do you write a book?
I was no expert in cold therapy. I just knew it really benefited me and the people that I told, especially people who were addicted to like serious hard drugs, which is a whole study that you’d have to pay a lot of money to do. There is be people coming to me who are addicted to crystal meth and different hard drugs.
And I would say to them, ’cause this is the best I could do at the time, besides telling them about a fellowship. I would say, why don’t you try to take a stray cold shower for the next 10 days? And they would report back to me and say, dude, this is really helping me. This is helping me to do other practices, other habits that I can stack on top of a cold shower.
And that’s really where I became convinced that there’s something big about cold therapy and just like psychedelics, it might not be for everybody, but for me, cold showers are still a part of my life today. I do both. I do contrast showers, so I do hot and cold. So that’s where I found out about it. It was a challenge that led into, years of the habit.
Sam Believ: Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Yeah. This is one of those very simple things people can try immediately. You don’t, need to do much preparation and then observe how you’re feeling better. I think same applies to mental health issues, like depression can really help you. And as you mentioned, anxiety yeah, unfortunately cold showers here in Columbia are not really that cold, so we do need to set up a special setup.
But yeah, it’s it’s a wonderful tool. You mentioned, you were in this group of entrepreneurs and you have a podcast that’s called Entrepreneurs in Recovery. Understand the recovery part. What is the entrepreneur part? What, how did you pick the name?
Jesse Harless: So the name came to me in a meditation.
I was doing a meditation one day, and this name Entrepreneurs Recovery, came to me in a meditation. But this was also during a time where I landed my dream job at Verizon and I wasn’t happy. To back up a little bit, I spent 13, 14 years at Verizon Wireless at a nine to five job, which is not a nine to five.
You have all kinds of crazy hours. I just dedicated myself to be the best I could possibly be in sales, and I became one of the top salesmen in the company and what ended up happening was I won the highest award you can be offered, which is called President’s Cabinet, would you where you get to meet the president, vice president of the company, you go to Switzerland, all this five star treatment.
When I came back, I got into this new position, which was like I said, my dream job and dude, I was super depressed. I was really depressed. I, in fact, at lunchtime I would often just lay down with depression because I was so just, I thought that I’d be fulfilled by having this dream job, and I was just not fulfilled at all.
So I started to investigate through a book I was reading. Called the Miracle Morning. This guy Hal Elrod and who is an entrepreneur, and I ended up joining his mastermind, which put me around lots of entrepreneurs. And I, these guys were my age. These men and women were my age. And they were making enough money to cover not just their basic nut of what they needed to pay for bills, but much more, many of them.
And I said to myself, I bet I could do that if I put all of my effort that I put into selling technology for Verizon. I bet I could actually pay all my bills on my own. And thus begun the journey in 2017 where I left that nine to five job. I sold my house and I started the path of entrepreneurs and recovery.
And really the why entrepreneurs and recovery is because, number one, my life had been dedicated to recovery. And number two, I wanted to study entrepreneurs who knew how to do things I didn’t know how to do. Specifically ones that were in recovery from addiction, sex addiction, porn addiction cocaine addiction, alcohol addiction, work at work, alcoholism.
I wanted to study these people who had all these different types of addictions who were now in recovery and massively successful. So I had these archetype of an entrepreneur recovery, and I set out to. Get around them. And I did. And I was mentored by many of these amazing people. And that led to the start of, entrepreneurs Recovery Podcast, which happened last year, but that took many years for me to do that.
So yeah. So that’s really the reason for the Entrepreneurs Recovery brand.
Sam Believ: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think your stories very similar to mine. ’cause I was also in a very high paying job and a very unfulfilling one. Entrepreneurship was the the direction I also chosen. Yeah, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that are addicted to work.
They’re addicted to substances. Some of them are good at entrepreneurship just because, it’s their coping mechanisms. So let’s talk about, addiction as a coping mechanism.
Jesse Harless: So addiction as a coping mechanism. I think that there’s, when people hear the word addiction, they get triggered.
Many people hear the word addiction. They don’t like it. ’cause when they think of an addict, they think of someone who is addicted to alcohol or stealing money from their aunt’s purse and getting fentanyl. They don’t think of it as themselves. So I think of addiction to me. Is again similar to GABA mate, right?
It’s, any behavior that we do repeatedly that gives pleasure in the short term, but causes long-term and short-term consequences. And so if with that definition, that could be anything, you could have people who are just stuck in their story that they cannot get by. You could be someone who’s addicted to the programming of this world, of all the stuff that we’ve been indoctrinated with that’s keeping you stuck.
You could be addicted to certain foods, you could be addicted to numbing out with technology. Look at how long teenagers are on their cell phone today, I think. What is the average time now? 10 to 12 hours a day. So I think. These things are the norm. I think addiction is the norm. So I think the coping mechanism from addiction is because of all of the lies we’ve been fed, all of the things that we have to deal with to get to the true self.
It’s really challenging and people are more isolated than ever. So you have COVID that happens and now you have people who are coming out of that, still feeling the effects of what COVID did with this incredible isolation and depression. And these restrictions that people are still recovering from.
So addiction in many ways becomes the coping mechanism. And you could be addicted to procrastination. I know people who cannot get started. They go to do something and then immediately they’ll call it a DHD. They’ll be like, I can’t do this. I’m not focused. But in many ways, to me, they’re addicted to certain parts of firing neurochemicals in their brain that continue to keep them very stuck.
And you could look at the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. To confirm a lot of this stuff of getting addicted and that’s why he has a book called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Because that’s a great analogy is like being stuck with that ego concept of self. So coping mechanism it’s like I said, it’s the norm.
I think many people who could, if they could be free of their mind addiction, their emotional addictions. Their behavioral addictions, they could thrive. I really believe they could build a life, we could build a community and a tribalism that we’ve never seen if we could break away from a lot of this stuff.
But I understand it’s really challenging and with what’s happening in the world and this duality, this dualistic nature of what’s happening, it’s really hard not to find ways to numb out.
Sam Believ: That’s a great great analysis of, addictions. You, I’ve met people that are addicted to feeling bad. They, they don’t know other way. And if they feel anything else they get uncomfortable. So they quickly rush back to finding another problem to be focused on. It’s interesting you mentioned Joe Dispenza.
I occasionally do his meditations including one yesterday. It’s hard for me. I do them in the evening before going to bed, and a lot of times I fall asleep. I know he tells you to do seated, but refer to light down. But I went to the event in Cancun. Have you ever been to his events?
Jesse Harless: I’ve never been to his event. I’ve been to a, an all day seminar with him from nine to five, but I’ve never been to like those week long events. No.
Sam Believ: Interesting. I went and it was a very interesting, experience for me and also showing you what is possible when you see a room of 2,500 people meditating and working on themselves.
It shows you that it is possible to get an audience and when maybe when pla medicines as well go mainstream, we will see more people coming to that work. And as you say, building communities of like-minded people that are all, going in the same direction. That sounds, for me, that’s part of my work is plant medicines is at the core of it.
But as I like to say, it’s you come for ayahuasca, stay for the community. We’re slowly building a community of people. Like we have some people coming to visit us and then they love it so much, then they just come here to retire and just stay here forever. And hopefully, eventually I’ll have that that community and maybe it will be an example for other communities to be formed.
One last question I had to you is about spheres model F-E-A-I-R-S. Can you talk to us what it is and why is it important?
Jesse Harless: Wow. You’re probably the third person ever to ask me that question the Fears model is something that I wrote down in my book, and it was after studying all these different entrepreneurs and thought leaders and spiritual leaders, I developed a model which is fears, which is, did you work on your fears today?
And Fears is an acronym which stands for Focus, elevate, appreciate resilience and self-care. And if we break those east down. I’ll do a high level version of it. So f focus is focus on your recovery. Focus on your priorities. So if you are someone who is struggling with an addiction or they’re struggling with some type of wounding that they sit, can’t seem to get by, focus on your recovery.
So start writing down on a to-do list. What is the priorities today? Maybe it’s starting my day with a cold shower. Maybe it’s starting my day with five minutes of Joe Dispenza’s meditation. Maybe it’s booking the trip to La Wire Lara and starting to do this deeper work, but focus on your recovery.
That’s number one. Number two, elevate your recovery. How do I elevate my recovery? I can do that many ways. One way to do that is through visualization. I, you can start to visualize. What do I wanna see in my mind’s eye of what the outcome of my life wants to be? You start to create that reality that’s beyond this three dimensional reality.
And maybe it’s even a quantum reality of this is what I want to see and have happen in my life. And you can do that in many different ways. One way is visualization. I know some people say they have a hard time visualizing, so then create a vision board. Then put things on a board that you look at every single day.
If you can’t visualize in your mind. Then go ahead and put it on a board where I can walk by it every day and see this is what I wanna create. And again, this is the really high level version of this. Appreciate, appreciate your recovery. Have gratitude, appreciation. I’m in the land of Ura Vida here.
I have so much to be grateful for here. I get incredible fruits. I get incredible water. I got the ocean. I have all these things here. How can I spread appreciation to the people, to the locals, to the people I meet? Spread appreciation to the forest, the jungles, all these things. So increasing appreciation.
Also, it’s forgiveness too, but you’ll have to read my book to go into that. The next is resilience. Resilience and recovery. So when we, when I think of resilience, man, how resilient have you been, Sam? How resilient have I been to get to this place where I am today? And how many people have been resilient in just over the last few years with what we just went through?
So resilience is tuning into that innate resilience that I have that can’t break me no matter what. And that’s also doing things like a cold shower. Do things that remind you of your resilience, tapping into that resilience. It’s also the resilience of your heart. Your heart is a very powerful magnet that is much more powerful than the brain when it comes to energy and electromagnetic energy.
So res the resilience of your heart as you build it through meditation and deep contemplation of mindfulness practices. Can make you more resilient. Finally, is self-care. Self-care is huge. Self-care is the integration process After medicine experience, self-care is what you do after you, you go and you find ways to not drink alcohol anymore, and now you’re gonna find ways to increase.
Your water intake, your diet and nutrition. So self-care is huge for everybody, but especially people who are coming through a recovery process. So that’s the real high level of the fears model. I what I say to people is, did you work in your fears today? It reminds them of thinking of these things and it could be a lot.
So you can just start with one, which can be focus, that’s it.
Sam Believ: It’s a great it’s a great model and it’s very easy to remember. So make notes guys, and, jesse where can people find more about you? Where can they read your books and where do you want them to go?
Jesse Harless: From here
Sam Believ: on?
Jesse Harless: I would say you can go to my website, jesse harless.com.
You could go to the YouTube and check out my podcast. Entrepreneurs Are Recovery Podcast. You go to entrepreneurs recovery.com. Jesse harless.com. That’s the best way to probably find me.
Sam Believ: Yeah, guys. Go to Jesse’s podcast if you go there. What? What are you publishing? Our episode?
Jesse Harless: I think the episode, it’s in about eight or nine weeks, but who knows?
Maybe it gets bumped up a little bit because I really wanna release that because it was such an engaging conversation about addiction and plant medicine.
Sam Believ: So let’s say October-ish go to Jesse’s podcast. And then you can also find him interviewing me. And especially if you’re dealing with addictions, definitely check it out because Jesse knows a lot and he’s a great example that you can overcome them and you can survive and strive.
Jesse. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us. It was a great experience. Thank you for the work you’re doing. Any, anything else you wanna say to the audience?
Jesse Harless: No, I’m really excited. I would say to everyone, follow your gut, follow your intuition, and also use your mind as well.
Be smart. Navigate these waters, reach out to people like Sam and reach out to people who know what they’re talking about in the space. ’cause you can get seriously injured if you’re not wise and you’re not getting, seeking good counsel and receiving medicine from people who are trained. So definitely I would just say, thank you so much, Sam. It’s been an honor to meet you. I’m really excited to come out to La Wire. It’s definitely happening, so I’ll see you soon, my friend.
Sam Believ: Thank you, Jesse. Guys, you’ve been listening to our podcast and I will see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode. 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.
Lara Connect,
Jesse Harless: heal. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.