In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with , the creator of the Adeptus Psychonautica YouTube channel. Rob is known for his grounded, humorous, and skeptical approach to altered states, sharing honest self-experiments, retreat reviews, and long-form reflections as “an ordinary person having extraordinary experiences.”
We touch upon topics of:
- How an Aya retreat led Rob to start his YouTube channel (02:55–04:45)
- Good retreats vs badly run retreats and red flags to watch for (05:10–11:40)
- Spiritual ego, cult dynamics, and predatory facilitators (08:40–12:30)
- Separating the medicine experience from the retreat organization (10:00–11:50)
- Exploring different Aya traditions beyond Peru (13:10–15:20)
- What it means to be a psychonaut and inner exploration (16:00–19:40)
- Creativity, storytelling, and integration after difficult life periods (21:00–23:30)
- Healing family relationships through shared ceremonies (23:30–25:30)
- Consciousness exploration and daily practice vs ceremony work (26:00–29:20)
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Rob and his work on YouTube at Adeptus Psychonautica.
Transcript
Rob: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com. Once you experience truly psychedelic experience or truly spiritual experience, I would compare it to like when you have your first orgasm as like a teenager, suddenly the world just opens up you thinking, wow, there is something else here. It’s just a whole new world, and I just find that fascinating and particularly that.
Dive into the same experience and have just such a radically different experience each time. Your worldview can be changed, each time. You can discover new stuff about yourself each time. For me, I’ve always liked that experience of just being like amazed by whatever’s going on in that experience. And I tend to think of as an inward experience that what I’m experiencing is me, my subconscious.
I don’t really subscribe to ideas of this is aliens being beaming ideas into my head. I flip flop a little bit on some of these worldviews. But even if we’re just take at that, that this is an inward experience and the depth and richness of that experience is just so vast, then it is, how could you not be fascinated and want to explore more of it?
So that’s why I’m a psych arts. I think we live in a golden age. For someone like me from the north, north of Manchester, to be able to get a metal tube fly across the world, sit with these ancient traditions, be welcomed into these kind of ceremonies, have these mind blowing. Soul expanding experiences.
It is a privilege beyond all privileges. I’m just so grateful. Yeah. I live in this time where I can even know these things exist. If you rewind the clock 50, 60 years, we’ve lived at the perfect age of like information, travel capability, just to be able to do this. I feel such gratitude that these tradition.
You know these tribes share these things with us ’cause it’s amazing.
Sam Believ: Hi guys and welcome to Ayahuasca podcast. As always, we you the host, Sam. Today I’m having an interview with Rob. Rob is the creator of Adapta Psycho Nortica YouTube channel, one of the most trusted channels exploring plant medicine and altered states known for his humor, skepticism, and raw honesty. He breaks down intense inner experiences in a way that’s relatable and ground that.
His channel mixes a long form, self experiments, retreat, reviews, and deep dives into the psychology of intelligence. Rob is also one of the few creators openly discussing the risks from predatory facilitators to spiritual bypassing to traps of chasing cheek experiences. He calls himself, an ordinary person having an extra ordinary experiences.
This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira, connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you, Rob. Welcome to the show. Cheers. I’m pleasure for you, mate. As having you on before we start and tell a story about how you got here, tell us how did you get into this?
To starting a YouTube channel about psychedelics. How did this came into your life?
Rob: Yeah, it actually, it came in from being on an Ayahuasca retreat. And one of the, the downloads I got during that particular retreat was I had a lot of bad habits, a lot of mindless habits, just like extended playing video games, just doom, all the usual kind of, modern stuff.
And I wanted to change that. And it’s kinda logically, if you’re gonna offload some bad habits, the best way to, to get that to stick is to fill the gap with good habits. So what is the good habit and the encouragement was to do something creative. I used to do film studies at college when I was younger.
And while I’ve been on these retreats, I’d just been doing what everyone does, taking lots of pictures, taking lots of little videos, not quite knowing what to do with it, and then it just kinda came through. Okay, why don’t you. Edit all this stuff together as some sort of travel blog was on, was my first idea or just a kind of blog of my experiences.
And so I did that. I then got the idea to review some of the retreats that I’d been on because by that time I’d been on some really great retreats. I’d bit of some absolutely horrific retreats. And so I thought I wanted to amplify the good ones and call out the bad ones. Yeah I made a few of these retreat review videos also along with a couple of just.
My personal experiences with medicine and yeah, I was kinda surprised it, it took off, it started to get a bit of a following and and people seem to like and resonate with the fact that I wasn’t coming at this from this angle of trying to be a guru or a shaman or just, I’m just like, setting the intro.
I’m just an ordinary person having these extraordinary experiences and people seem to click with that. So it just took off and I started doing more and more content and that’s where it got to.
Sam Believ: Cool story. I think good hap good things. That’s how they happen. They just yeah, all over the place.
Kinda like me getting into this line of work. But what is and I like that reasonability. That’s, I would like to believe I have a similar. Similar way of seeing those things. And then kinda working in this space you talked about great retreats, war, bad retreats. Te tell me your worst ever retreat experience.
Rob: Yeah, no worries. And it’s, it is easy ’cause it was my very first one, so it’s surprising that I came back to to do another one. But yeah, my first retreat experience was in Switzerland. ‘Cause yeah, I wanted to try I live in Switzerland. I wanted to try and do this as. Simply as possible.
So yeah, went with a, an organization called Inner Mastery who is quite big around Europe. They put on a lot of retreats and it was, they’re just complete cowboys. It was the higher space they would pack in as many people as possible. You would be served by, I don’t wanna be too derogatory, but basically like kids who.
With good intentions who wanted to serve the medicine, but they’d paid this organization to be like, become facilitators. And it’s not cheap. The amount I did a video breaking down, like the kind of, it was almost like a Scientology kind of structure of how much you pay them. But yeah, I went to this retreat with it was my wife at the time.
They packed like 50 of us into a room. It was literally shoulder to shoulder. We were like that. They. They didn’t give buckets to vomit. They just gave you like plastic bags to throw up into. And as soon as they were talking, it was because I, I’ve been into psychics like 35 years now, and they were just, it was just full of woo, full of bullshit.
It was just run horribly. It was just one of the most uncomfortable experiences ever. But there was something there where I got a little the medicine was I’ve said not great. But there was something there. I thought, okay, this I’ll explore a little bit more here. So the next retreat I found was a a more local group, like a group of friends.
Basically, we just put it a bit like you described when you first started doing it. And again, I didn’t super connect with the medicine, but I, again, I could see there was something there. So I thought, okay, that I was like four ceremonies in. At that point I thought, okay, I’m gonna give this one last try.
Then I’ll know whether this Aya ask Think is bullshit or not. I thought if I’m gonna do that, let’s go to the source. Went to South America, into the Amazon, and did it there. And that was my lights of, okay, wow, this and that was actually a really great retreat. So that was what I came back and from that like a believer.
And that was about, yeah, roughly about 10 years ago now.
Sam Believ: First of all, congrats on persisting. Yeah. Because, I was getting do so many great things for you, but you could have been like, oh, this is just what it is and I’m gonna bounce. There is definitely in this space, there’s there’s a little too much woo and a lot of people that don’t really know what they’re doing, they kinda use Woo to justify Yeah.
Bad behaviors. I dunno if you wanna talk about that sort, the fluffy, like lots of words and little meaning have you noticed that in those kinds of places?
Rob: Yeah. And al also just the, the, there’s certainly that, there’s certainly places where I been where they’re very much just trying to you’ve basically gotta be a believer.
You’ve gotta believe whatever the, there’s so many different traditions and there’s so many different. Versions. Some are very new agey, some are very culty, some are just very traditional talking around lets hot the plants and mother ayahuasca and I’m fine with all of that.
It’s just on. If I have to join the cult to, to then I’m that point, I’m I’m not issues. I just wanna be there to have my experience. I’m there to certainly experience the tradition, but I don’t wanna feel like I’m being like a, a gun against the head to do it. And then you then you get these things, if you have an experience where you don’t connect with the medicine, oh, it’s ’cause you didn’t believe in mother io.
Ask me enough. It’s because ’cause you’d have faith in the great leader enough. And that kind of stuff. I’d, I just find it really putrid. So the retreats where I’ve had the most benefit is the ones where you really, you’re guided through the experience, but you’re not, like I say, required to fall on, jump into the cult kind of thing.
Sam Believ: Yeah. I totally agree with that with that vision. And what I like to say is a good retreat is where the information comes from. The ayahuasca itself. Yeah. And what the retreat does is they just basically. Help you go through that process, but you obviously had the bad experience, but something that stick to stick into you.
So would you say better Ayahuasca is still better than no Ayahuasca experience or you’d say like better in no ayahuasca
Rob: or just the excellent one? The thing I like to do, particularly with what I’m talking about, retreat centers, you’ve got to, and I think this is difficult for a lot of people, but you’ve gotta pass out the experience with the medicine.
From the actual experience of the center and the people, because you can, you could be at the best, most luxurious center in the world and have a nightmarish experience with the medicine, or you could be in a shack in the woods, one-on-one with some village shaman and have the most transcendent experience ever.
And I think people struggle with that. So say for the horrific retreats I just described earlier, there were people that are having very preferred experiences with the medicine. And when I came back and said this was cowboy-ish, this was run awfully, this was not a good experience.
I got a lot of, criticism for that. Oh no. The come, the medicine’s wonderful. I’m not talking excited about the medicine, the medi medicine experiences over here that doesn’t justify sticking this number of people in room with three facilitators for 50 people. It was, so I try and pull those two things apart.
I do think, yeah, I think even at that shittier sort of retreat center, there was something there in the metastatic. I thought, okay, there’s something here worth exploring, just not with these guys. Yeah, and I would, and I’d encourage anybody to do that. Just it’s, yeah. Don’t I, what I see a lot of is.
Because people are having such a profound experience in medicine, they start to deify a little bit, like particularly with shamans and stuff like that. So in South America, you have this profound medical medicine experience and then it’s like the shaman gave me this. They’re to sort of power, powerful.
You get, shamans put on pedestals and the centers I’ve liked the most is where the shamans are just the most. Going to earth guys they will sit back and say, Hey, what I’m doing is orchestrating the space. Yeah. I am not giving you this experience. Of course I’m serving the medicine, I’m holding the space, I’m making it safe container, but I’m just a dude.
I’m a dude and this is my calling. And I really appreciate that compared to the guys who just wanna be worshiped, which is, again, it, that just goes in all sorts of weird directions. And you start to see yeah, very inappropriate sexual behavior and stuff like that. It’s, yeah it could be a bit messy.
Sam Believ: The ego, spiritual ego. That’s the most important factor. Like when you ask me about our team, that’s what I told you. That’s what I’m most afraid of. And that’s why we filter. Because those people, they also tend to be, they’re very impressive in the way they present themselves. But it’s like once you learn to see them, you’re like no, we don’t want any of that.
Yeah. Tell us about how you got here.
Rob: To hear in particular it’s funny ’cause I’d had a bit of a kind of blind spot to. Yeah, doing ayahuasca in Columbia. I’d say really doing it anywhere outside of Peru. I think that’s where I, that’s where I had my first major experience. I love the Amazon jungle.
I think even if you go to the Amazon and take Ayahuasca out to the equation, it’s just paradise. It’s just such a beautiful location. So there’s definitely a place in my heart for that. But I think, and although I’d, I did experience various different centers around around Peru. In, yeah, in the Sacred Valley, in the jungle still.
I, I was very focused on p Peru and I think a lot of it’s ’cause I really enjoyed the shabo tradition of ceremonies. It’s very different to what happens here, but I just that’s what works me. Stick with that. And so yeah, I never really considered Columbia for for Ayahuasca until you reached out to me.
And is you invited me here to, to the center. And now that I’m here, I see it. I’m just kinda yeah I’m almost cringing a little bit at just, God, why did, I don’t want to, explore more and so to experience a different tradition, which is so different to what I’m used to, but so beautiful when it’s all right.
And I think that’s something I’m gonna have to really make an effort to get across to my audience because I think there is a lot of value in experiencing these different traditions and I think it’s just like with anything you can very easily get into a sort of a comfort zone of what you know.
And because this is great, it must be the best and there’s nothing else right there with experiencing. And I like to think of myself as a bit of a. A bit adventurous in this regard, like trying different traditions. So I’m super grateful that I’ve Yeah, got the opportunity to come here to lair and ex experience this England tradition.
And yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s and now I’m a bit conflicted ’cause there’s a part of me that will want to come back here, but then there’s a part of me that wanna carry on that journey experience both. So it’s interesting. You should do both.
Sam Believ: I try to, but yeah, I like to say, I like to see this analogy.
It’s if IAS is like flour. Then you can do, but you can do so many things with flour. Like you can make dumplings or you can make pizza, or you can make pasta, or you can make bread or pie. Yeah, those are like different traditions. They kinda use it properly and you’ll still fill your belly up, but it’s like in so many different ways and it’s beauty of it that like this entire world and it is just ayahuasca alone, but there’s also other medicines and different traditions and so many of them were lost.
But, so we kinda. We’re lucky that this one did survive. And it’s a, I can’t help but be grateful that this exists because it’s kinda it’s what’s missing in our, lives now in sort of western world, this sort unknown, ’cause we think oh, everything has been discovered. You’re a au you’re like if I would think au I would imagine a person like you, like experimenting and a au like, is like astronaut, right? It’s like someone who explores Yeah. Explore the inner world rather than, so talk to us about that. What is what is it being a psycho note, why did you become one and why should more people, do it as well?
Rob: Yeah the last one’s a tricky I’m I do think it’s not something necessarily for everyone, and I don’t mean that in a gatekeeper kinda way. But it is, you are I think by being a psycho you’re throwing yourself into the precipice in a lot of ways.
But for me, what I just, yeah. I’m from the north of England in Manchester. There was, when I was growing up. LSD mdm a, these were just very common. And so I got into these things at a very young age and purely from a recreational basis, but there was something there particularly that LLSD that just absolutely fascinating with this, just this the sense of peace and connectness.
I just, at least, I love taking like LSD, going to the park and just lying there and just watching the sky move overhead, just feeling the grass. So even without fully having the kind of spiritual vocabulary, I felt like there was something there, even though I wouldn’t have recognized the spiritual aspects of time.
I was very like militantly, atheist, yeah, very, secure the knowledge. Oh yeah, this is, these substances. It’s just a good time. It makes you think, but never really recognizing the deep element to it until quite a few years later where I started having experiences, which I, in hindsight, I came to recognize as like spiritual experiences.
And then I had to think how do I reconcile this with my sort of diehard atheist worldview? And it was that, that took a while for me to be able to put those two words, toge, two worlds together. But for me, I just, that. Once you experience a say a truly psychedelic experience or truly spiritual experience, I would compare it to like, when you have your first orgasm as like a teenager, suddenly the world just opens up you thinking, wow, what is, there is something else here that I’ve it’s just a whole new world, and I just find that fascinating and it’s particularly that you could dive into the same experience and have just such a.
Radically different world, experience each time your world, you can be changed each time. You can discover new stuff about yourself each time. And for me, I’ve always liked that experience of just yeah just being like amazed by. Whatever’s going on in that experience. And I tend to think of it as an inward experience that what I’m experiencing is me, my subconscious.
I don’t really subscribe to ideas of this is aliens be beaming ideas into my head. I flip flop a little bit on some of these worldviews, but even if you’re just taking it that, that this is an inward experience and the depth and richness of that experience is just so vast then is how could you not be fascinated and want to explore more of it?
That’s why I’m a psych ops. And I just feel, yeah, very, just to come back to your point earlier of where we’re talking about the traditions that for, I think we live in a golden age for someone like me from the north, north of Manchester, to be able to get in a metal tube, fly across the world.
Sit with these ancient traditions, be welcomed into these kind of ceremonies, have these mind blowing, soul expanded experiences. It is a privilege. It is a privilege beyond all privileges. I’m just so grateful that, yeah, living this time where I can even know these things exist. If you re rewind the clock 50, 60 years, I would’ve never.
No. So we’ve lived in the perfect age of like information, travel capability just to be able to do this and it’s. Yeah, like I said it is, I feel such gratitude that these tradition, these tribes share these things with us. ’cause it’s amazing.
Sam Believ: Yeah. We also have unique issues as society right now, so I think that it’s all coming at the same time to kind of balance, balance things out.
You obviously came here and I reached out to you. It was pretty synchronistic. I saw your video and you said you’re about to start looking for retreat for, because you’re going through some personal stuff and, yeah. You’re in a pretty low place. That’s why you wanted it. So how do you feel now? Do you feel do you feel better or how do you feel with your
Rob: wellbeing?
Yeah, I feel absolutely, I feel great and I’m, which is not uncommon after retreat, ’cause you are, you certainly get this kind of honeymoon period afterwards. But with what’s happened in the ceremonies this week, I do feel like I’ve bookended a look at a lot of those. It’s been a rough couple of years, I’ll put it that way, without getting too much into the details and it just stripped out a lot of one, one thing I always prided myself on, particularly with the YouTube, but just I always saw myself as a very creative person, a lot of imagination.
I think this look comes across through a lot of my videos and my trip reports. I just really go out there, try to visualize and story tell these experiences. And then to go through what I’ve been through the last two years that just bottomed out to me. And all I was focusing on was legal shit and just problems going on to life.
And this week I’ve, first day I felt like I’d managed to package a lot of that stuff up, put it in the rear view mirror, but also I just felt that creative spark and just kicking it again. And for me that was, it was a major component. ’cause I was. I just love create, I love storytelling so much that I just didn’t feel like myself for the last couple of years, and that’s why I, my channel’s been on hiatus while all this legal stuff’s been going on, and that’s one of the reasons was because I just had to keep my head down while I had some, like this legal case.
But the other thing was, yeah, I just energetically just didn’t have it though. I want, my imagination just wasn’t firing and I’m sat there in ceremonies. I’m just. The storytelling is just kicking off in my brain. I’m like, and and that storytelling, it’s, we’ve talked a lot about integration in this retreat.
That’s how I integrate stuff. It’s, I think that’s how humans integrate stuff. We are telling ourselves a story, a about what, what’s happening, about how our lives fit together. I think when you can’t make that story make sense, that’s where you’re not integrated, but. For me, just be able to sit on these things and work through.
That’s why one of the reasons I talk to a camera, I’m talking to myself, I am I’ve turned the camera on and I start talking to it, and that’s me. Making sense in real time of what’s going on with me. So yeah, this retreat’s been absolutely awesome. I also got to share it with my brother my older brother.
And that’s, again, it’s just been a privilege to, to spend that amount of time. I’ve not spent this much time with my brother for 30 odd years, and now we’re sharing things in spectacular, intimate ways as two adult, men, I’m in the late forties, eighties, early fifties. Now we’re sharing stuff about our childhood, about our lives just about our feelings, and it’s been beautiful.
Sam Believ: Yeah. It was lovely to see you and your brother and you were you definitely, maybe because you were together and you kinda went into a bit of a child mode. I think it is. It’s very beautiful and profound. And we had daughter with her mother here, and sometimes we have the entire family’s house.
I think that’s. It’s absolutely amazing thing to do with your family members or loved ones and friends, and
Rob: it’s amazing. But it’s also I must admit there was an element of trepidation around it because I think it could, obviously the ideal is that it goes in, into the kind of thing like I’m just had with my brother, but it can also, go into a very uncomfortable space.
I’ve had that when I was I’ve done retreats before with my ex-wife and we just didn’t. Click at all. In fact, we just end up in very different places. One person has an amazing ceremony, the other person’s had a shitty ceremony. Yeah, it can flip around. So the energies can be very weird though.
Sam Believ: I’m glad your creativity is back and hopefully you’re gonna make a nice video about your experience. I look, I’m definitely looking forward seeing it and but what were you talking about? Going through rough times? I am myself also going through rough times similar to yours and there’s two big problems I’m dealing with at the same time. And I think I would’ve been like completely debilitated, if not for Ayahuasca. Yeah. It’s like I just, whenever I’m like, I can’t take it anymore, I’m, it’s life is too much. I’m overworked and overstressed. I just go back, sit with it and it lifts me up and says do this, do that.
And I of course it’s a luxury and not everyone can live it now as retreat and like I was doing the one ceremony a month, but. Like one, one good retreat a year, I think in. Make most people a bit more saner. I’m surprised. So we got a bit delayed with our interview and now the bus is about to come.
I’m surprised not here yet. So I wanna talk a little bit about more psychotic things. Like I, I looked through your YouTube channel, you did interesting experiments like taking DMT for every day, entire month. Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about DMT. Obviously it’s an active com, one of the active com compounds in the Ayahuasca, but people take it separately.
What did you learn from that? How do you compare doing DMT in a sort of more modern wake as opposed to doing an ayahuasca ceremony? Let’s talk about
Rob: that. Yeah, so the way I would differentiate between the two things, and I’ll just say, first off, I would not. Really advocate for taking ayahuasca at home on my own and that sort of cycle.
I, I don’t do that. I only really only ever do that on retreat. ’cause I think it’s just the community aspect the guided ceremony aspect is important and experience. But for me, DMT on its own is, I think that is almost like one of the most perfect psych art experiences because it’s got a quite short duration.
It’s very potent and it’s just I see DMT as pure consciousness exploration. It’s just consciousness explodes outwards and you just have this experience that’s just beyond imagination. And I think there’s that in itself. It’s awe inspiring. It just reminds you of the wonder and awe of the world.
And I think like you said, when you’re having. Personal problems and stuff going on, just be reminded of how amazing life could be. It’s great for the 30 days thing, one of the one of the questions I was kinda asking myself was, is the value in having that kind of experience, like on set of a daily basis, so let’s say is there value in sitting and meditating every day for 15 minutes?
I would say, yeah. What if during that meditation. What if during that meditation, what if during that meditation you could teleport to the International Space Station and look down on Earth for five minutes a day and just see the totality of civilization of the world, and just have that experience of looking down on all of everything, just for five minutes a day.
Or tell Port to the top of Mo Everest or just look out and just feel that complete or wonder is the value in that. I think there is, I think there’s something there where, just to be able to remind yourself on that daily basis, which I think is, it’s one of the goals of meditation to sit there and just feel completely within yourself on a daily basis.
So that’s what I saw, set it to do. And that was the sort of what I got from it. Just it wasn’t really, I didn’t see it so much as kinda something particularly hardcore, like really pushing the frontier, like blowing my mind in like sometimes I only do quite small doses. Some days I was doing larger doses.
It was a mix. But that experience of just being humble before the universe every day as, as part of a daily practice I found it incredibly beneficial. Yeah, so we could talk a lot, but the bus is here, so what we should do some is when I’m back. Let’s set up let’s do a video thing.
Let’s one we can go deeper into all the psych
Sam Believ: stuff. Sounds good. So Rob, thank you for coming. Thank you for pleasure your psychedelically Virgin brother to us. I’m glad he had a great experience as well. And I hope that’s not the last time I see you. It will be right. Definitely. Guys, you are listening to our podcast.
As always, we do the host and believe and I’ll 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, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you.