In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Ronan Levy. Ronan is a pioneering entrepreneur, co-founder and former Executive Chairman of Field Trip Health, author of The Ketamine Breakthrough, and host of the Ronan Levy Podcast. A former lawyer turned innovator in cannabis, biotech, and psychedelics, Ronan focuses on scaling mental health solutions and exploring how altered states can reshape human wellbeing and consciousness.
We touch upon topics of
00:00–01:35 Ronan’s background, cannabis, ketamine, and entering the psychedelic space
01:35–05:11 From lawyer to entrepreneur, cannabis clinics, and discovering plant medicine as real medicine
05:11–09:19 The psychedelic zeitgeist, investment boom, and why the hype cycle has cooled
09:19–12:53 Psychedelics becoming normalized vs pharmaceutical models and the future of adoption
12:53–16:15 Alcohol, cannabis, psychedelics, and personal freedom vs societal responsibility
16:15–19:09 Capitalism, conscious capitalism, and market dynamics in cannabis and psychedelics
19:09–22:13 Running a spiritual business, money, ethics, and balancing purpose with profitability
22:13–24:13 Entrepreneurship as a spiritual path, stress, and personal growth through business
24:13–29:17 Wealth, success, and why money doesn’t solve deeper emotional or spiritual problems
29:17–33:52 Life as a game, meaning, productivity, and embracing both struggle and fulfillment
33:52–35:47 Relationships, self-awareness, and recurring life lessons
35:47–38:22 Cannabis vs psychedelics, product vs service, and different use contexts
38:22–41:22 Responsible use, set and setting, and personal vs ceremonial psychedelic use
41:22–43:01 Longevity, mental health, and what actually creates a long and fulfilling life
43:01–45:24 Psychedelics, neuroplasticity, and unlocking creativity and new perspectives
45:24–47:25 The future of psychedelics, community-driven models, and resistance to corporate commodification
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Ronan Levy at ronanlevy.com, on Instagram @ronandlevy, LinkedIn, and through his new project Fun Loving Company (@wearefunloving on Instagram).
Transcript
Ronan Levy: I describe being an entrepreneur as a spiritual pursuit because it’s always with you. You’re always thinking about it. It’s even if you’re not on your phone or in front of your computer, it’s in your mind somewhere, and it’s hard. You risk everything to make it work. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it.
It becomes a part of your identity. All that work to hit this payoff moment, the day you get that big check, right? And you get that big check, and for an hour you feel amazing, maybe longer but for a short period of time you feel amazing. And then the things that you used to fight about with your spouse, you’re still fighting about.
Those things that trigger you about your kids still trigger you, and all of a sudden you realize that every single problem that you had mentally, emotionally, spiritually is still present. But now you don’t have that excuse. Now you don’t have that story of, “Oh, if I just get this, if I just sell my business, if I make a million dollars, then all of these problems go away.”
All of a sudden you don’t have that narrative anymore. Most entrepreneurs I know who have success hit a spiritual crisis at that point, and “What the fuck? I thought this would solve all of my problems, and they haven’t, and now I have no dream to attach, to hang my coat on anymore.” I don’t think the market for psychedelic medicine, psychedelic pharmaceuticals is going to work.
Just this doesn’t fit in the Western medical model. I think psychedelics just don’t get commoditized very well.
Sam Believ: You’re listening to ayahuasca podcast.com.
Hi, guys, and welcome to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, with you the host, Sam Belyev. Today I’m having a conver- conversation with Ronan Levy. Ronan is a pioneering entrepreneur and a driving force in the modern psychedelic movement. As the co-founder and former executive chairman of Field Trip Health, Ronan held one of the world’s first and largest networks of psychedelic-enhanced therapy centers.
A former lawyer who pivoted into the cannabis and the biotech industries, Ronan had dedicated his career to scaling medical innovation. He’s the author of The Ketamine Breakthrough and host of the Ronan Levy Podcast, where he explores how non-under- ordinary states of consciousness can redefine our understanding of mental wellness, success, and the human experience.
This episode is sponsored by LaWayra Ayahuasca Retreat. At LaWayra, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. LaWayra, connect, heal, grow Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Ronan, welcome to the show. So before we jump in the, the meaty part, let’s talk about your story. What in your life brought you to work with I think cannabis first and then ketamine, and now you’re constantly evolving and progressing.
Tell, tell us a little bit about that journey.
Ronan Levy: Yeah it was an unexpected journey. I think when I graduated high school, I probably would’ve been voted the least likely to start a cannabis company and the least likely to start a psychedelics company. I was not entirely straight edge, but relatively speaking.
I’m sure anybody who has done any work in the psychedelic space will have heard the common refrain from people of, I don’t feel comfortable losing control like that.” And I was certainly one of those kids. But I was also contrarian, I liked to cause mischief and all that kind of stuff.
And I started my career as a lawyer found it very dispiriting and terrible lifestyle so quickly got out. Went through a series of different kinda career changes, mostly within the practice of law, and then through that I ended up meeting some folks who would become my co-founders in a company called Canadian Cannabis Clinics, who were exploring different entrepreneurial ideas and were considering one in the cannabis space.
And they were hesitating on it. I’m like, “Why are you guys hesitating on this?” With- when it comes to cannabis, when you think about business, the biggest question is do you have product market fit? Does your product serve a need in the market that people are willing to b- pay for? And that’s always a hard thing to find, but when c- when it comes to cannabis, you know there’s no problem with product market fit.
People are demanding it all the time. So I’m like, “This is a great business idea. You guys are crazy if you’re not gonna pursue it, and if you’re not gonna pursue it, I’m gonna pursue it.” And after cajoling them for a while, even though none of us were cannabis fans really at all we started the company.
It did really well. We ended up helping probably close to a quarter million Canadians access the legal medical cannabis system in Canada. And through that experience it shift my pers- shifted my perspective. Up to that point, when people talked about plant medicine, I always put quotes around it, air quotes around it, because I’m like, okay, if you wanna get high.
I have no problems with that. But let’s not call it medicine. Let’s not try and whitewash it and give it something, some purpose that it doesn’t have. But through that work in the cannabis industry, I saw that cannabis was real medicine, that plant medicine was actually real medicine. And it opened my eyes and it changed my perspectives.
And after we left the cannabis space with this newfound open-mindedness to plant medicine we just happened to have a conversation with a person who alerted us to what was happening within the psychedelic space. And at that time, this was middle of 2018, and Michael Pollan had just published “How to Change Your Mind.”
MAPS had been granted the breakthrough therapy designation for their phase two clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy. And the thing that really tipped me over was the fact that there were four or five stores online selling mushrooms open web, not dark web, nothing along those lines. Just go www, and you could buy mushrooms in Canada.
And at that moment, I realized the zeitgeist around psychedelics had changed, just most people weren’t aware of it. The collective consciousness had changed its mind, but it’s taking a while to distribute that message. And and so we went out and we got a gram of mushrooms, tried mushrooms for what was the second time in my life, but the first time where I was sober enough to actually appreciate what was happening and realize the potential.
And so started doing a whole bunch of research, saw how not only could psychedelics have a profound impact on how we think about mental health, but for me, what was more motivating was how they could become a springboard for a lot of people to start exploring spirituality in our kind of world of nihilism and materialism.
I had gone through my own journey to discover my own spirituality, and I saw psychedelics as being a really cool platform to help other people reach that. And so that’s how I ended up in, in the psychedelic space and how we started Field Trip.
Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing that story. My story is somewhat similar because I went from being an, an engineer to a psychedelic enthusiast, and now I’m running an Ayahuasca retreat center and a psychedelic podcast.
But yeah, you could never predict that. I was never into drugs. I was never into spirituality. It just kinda like sometimes psychedelics just come in and pluck you whatever life you’re in and just puts you on this path, which is synchronistic and magical in itself. But- Yeah … to talk about zeitgeist in this period where Michael Pollan’s book came out and there was this hype and it was a, a bit of a golden era for psychedelics, and it kinda, kinda quieted down though.
Do you think it was just one of the waves and the more waves are coming, or do you think it’s kinda over? Especially I know you raised a lot of money for your ketamine clinic like basically like almost like the biggest amount ever, and there was all this investment and now it’s kinda like quiet again.
Like what, what do you… From your perspective, like what’s happening? Is it go- is it gonna come again or not?
Ronan Levy: I don’t think there’s gonna be a wave of excitement as it was, but I do think it’s in a much healthier spot right now. I think the wave the irrational exuberance that happened was a combination of the fact that a lot of people, and certainly the initial investors in Field Trip, had made a lot of money in the cannabis space, which had its own irrational exuberance, and so they were looking for the next thing, right?
And interest rates were still low, cash was still flush, people were chasing opportunities, and this had all, all the hallmarks. So I think that, plus the science being very compelling and cannabis rolling out around the world, people could see the chips starting to fall. And so I think that created an irrational exuberance.
Where we are now, I’ve got to the place where I don’t think the market for psychedelic medicine, psychedelic pharmaceuticals is going to work. Just this doesn’t fit in the Western medical model. A Compass Pathways and co- CMPS 360 might get approved, and we may see other psychedelics get approved.
We might see MAPS and MDMA get approved. That would be wonderful. But at the end of the day, I look out, and for most people who are trying, inclined to try psychedelics, you’re gonna have, and this is certainly what we experience at Field Trip, you can look and you can be like, “I’m gonna go sit in a sterile clinic with a doctor and do it in that environment for an obscene amount of money,” or, “I can go to a very well-experienced, well-credentialed, psychotherapist who has led many people through these journeys for a quarter of the cost without the restrictions.”
And I just think that most of the people who are inclined to explore psychedelic in the, medicine in the first place are gonna go down the path of, “I just wanna do it my way. I don’t really need a doctor when I have a qualified professional sitting beside me.” And so it’s a long-winded way of saying that I think psychedelic adoption is gonna continue to accel- I won’t say accelerate, but continue to grow.
I think psychedelics are become, gonna become a de facto normalized part of society, much like drinking a beer or having a glass of wine is. But I just don’t see that irrational exuberance coming in such a spike, that it’ll just be a every day a little bit more people trying it, more people getting used to it, more people going on journeys, more people going down to S- South America on Ayahuasca journeys, and it’s just gonna become a part of life, and I think that’s exactly where it should be.
Sam Believ: It’s like a market adoption of any, an- anything new, yeah. Psychedelics are kinda new for our culture and they but it happens in those booms and busts, and I guess ’60s was one of them. It’s somewhat different because for a period of time it was, it does happen that a new technology comes and then it gets banned, and then it gets unbanned, and then it gets banned again. So it’s a, a bit artificially constrained, but it was another boom and bust. But I think, Like from my point of view, I know that 8 billion pe- 8 billion people need it. So it’s like the question is, what, what adoption is gonna look like?
We don’t know. But you talk about, as normal as beer and and I know you like to talk about, but, alcohol is normalized, but it’s bad for you. It’s like kills people. My dad’s an alcoholic, my grandfather was an alcoholic, and if I didn’t find Ayahuasca, I probably would also be an alcoholic.
So cannabis is a much better alternative. Psychedelics even better. So what do you think it’s some things that shouldn’t be normal are normal and some, some things that are normal are not really that normal?
Ronan Levy: I think that’s a fair assessment. I don’t cast judgment on alcohol.
I think alcohol has done wonders for me. It– I was a m- very much an introvert, and through the social lubrication that alcohol provided, I learned to be an extrovert. I’m still an introvert, but I’ve gotten over my fear of kind of social situations and talking to people and all that kind of stuff.
I don’t have alcoholism in my family, so I guess it’s a slightly different context. But it’s I don’t know. I’ve come to the place of the world would be better off if we cared for each other, but also respected, the, the simple parable of mind your own damn business, right?
Let people do what they wanna do. Don’t ha- cast judgment. Be there to support them and help them as needed. And let’s stop being so puritanical about telling people what they can and cannot do and let people live them li- live their lives and learn. Obviously, I do come from a bit of an economic lens, which is when there’s extreme externalities and when the costs of people drinking is not absorbed by the person who’s drinking alone, then there should be some consideration about that.
But I’m just way too purit- puritanical. Even with the safety profile of psychedelics, everyone was like worried of if you take a laissez-faire approach to psychedelics, aren’t some people going to get hurt? And I know I I shock and offend some people when I say, “Yeah, and that’s okay.”
That’s part of life. That’s part of living, right? Nothing is risk-free, nothing is harm-free. Nothing has ever been that way. And so when we try to reduce the risk to nearly neg- negligible, all we do is create alternative consequences. And we can see it with the war on drugs, generally speaking, is that, okay, so you banned all these drugs.
It didn’t stop people from using it. As a result, what we have now is a whole bunch of drugs laced with fentanyl, because instead of just normalizing it and giving people access to it, whether they want it or not, you force it underground where there’s actually no constraints, no controls, no safety standards.
So I think alcohol has harms and it has benefits. Cannabis has harms and it has benefits. Psychedelics have harms and they have benefits. And everyone I think has just gotta make some decisions, hopefully informed decisions about that. And I think as a society, we just need there, instead of trying to puritanically ban things, provide more support for people who need help when those bad things happen.
Sam Believ: Yeah, definitely. Or at least get it to the balance where if alcohol is legal, then so should be cannabis, right? And that’s kinda already happening. And but yeah, everything is dangerous. Like I- I’m drinking water, but if I drank… Now just sit down and drink five liters, like that, that could kill me as well.
So you have to be- Totally … kinda trust people that they can make their own decisions and educate them. Be- because I kinda that model where you’re an adult and you have your body, and you can choose what you wanna put in your body or what you wanna do with your body without all the gatekeepers.
Ronan Levy: Yeah.
Sam Believ: You say
Ronan Levy: that- and just on that note and I recognize that’s not a perfect model, that some people are gonna be hurt. If you’re an alcoholic father, it’s gonna have an impact on your spouse and your kids. That’s true, and we should take steps to mitigate that harm.
But I don’t think we should be saying, “No, you can’t drink it. Alcohol is bad.” That’s, that’s- Yeah … where I land. Sorry, I interrupted your question.
Sam Believ: No, I’ll… it’s a good, it’s a good interruption. But so I, for example, I probably had, have about a, a beer or two every week, right? So I’m not like a pro- prohi- prohibitionist, and it’s- Yeah
nice when I do so. And I understand like my dad became an alcoholic because there was a certain moment in his life where the emotions were overwhelming and he wanted to run away from them, so he found alcohol because that was the only thing available in Sov- Soviet Latvia, right?
Ronan Levy: Yeah.
Sam Believ: I have had moments like this in my life where I was like, “I know it’s too much.
Like I, I need some external help.” And, but I had better tools. I had Ayahuasca, I had yoga, meditation. I had therapy, I had coaching. It kinda did not exist back then. So it’s like as long as you provide people with the tools- To choose from. It’s kinda like this mice, y- mice paradise experiment where they put the mice and they gave them cocaine.
They, they would keep pushing that lever. Or was it rats? But then they gave them a perfect place where they could be happy, and they stopped pushing that lever because now they had options. Yeah. I can do cocaine, or I can go hang out with my buddies. Yeah. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.
Ronan Levy: Listen I think that’s reflective, and it’s okay even if the rats go back and every once in a while hit the cocaine, as long as we find that balance, right? It really is finding, the great Buddha, everything in moderation, including moderation. It’s, People will learn.
People will adapt. And, if you give them tools and information and a sor- and a safety net if they screw up, then I- it’s an imperfect outcome, but I think it’s the best possible outcome. Rather than trying to deny everything that can con- contain a potential risk or… we see it happening in Oregon and Colorado, which is none of those service centers are being really profitable.
None of them are successful because people are like, “Yeah, I could spend a fortune and go to a service center. I could go over here where I don’t have all the constraints or the expenses and have just a good experience.” And and I saw it with the cannabis rollout in Canada. It’s just like good intentions poorly implemented lead to bad outcomes is what I’ve seen through my life.
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L-A-W-A-Y-R-A.com Yeah, I think in Canada what happened was cannabis was legalized, but the legal model was so complex that people still kept buying it from the street. Is that correct?
Ronan Levy: By and large, yeah. They set up a system where all the legal dispensaries had no way of competing with each other.
They could only buy from the same, distributor. They can’t sell anything else. They can’t have open windows, so it’s like, okay it becomes so generic that there’s no profit left in there. So all of the cannas- the cannabis dispensaries are being closed, and people are going back down to their dealers because it’s just cheaper, easier, faster, and they have better choice.
So it-
Sam Believ: Yeah …
I guess that’s the beauty of capitalism, right? Because people vote with their money, so if they didn’t like that model, they didn’t pay money and it just fell apart. Let’s talk about capitalism and specifically conscious capitalism. And you’re in that world and you raised money and you had successful exits.
L- just any- anything that comes to mind, c- conscious capitalism wise.
Ronan Levy: Yeah. I’m a capitalist because I think capitalism at its core is just a lot of… It’s about liberty, right? And you can do what you want and, and it creates an incentives for healthy competition which I think is net good for the planet.
But as with anything just like drugs and alcohol, it can be abused and create perverse outcomes, and we see that with what happens with the environment and profits at all costs. And I think if people just brought a, what I will call normal healthy lens of try to run a business, run it profit- profitably, run it ethically, treat your employees and your stakeholders fairly.
I think it… Again, it’s an imperfect system, but it’s the best we’ve come up with so far. And again, it’s I think people just need to respect their values and for some people, their values will be the shareholder model, which is like I believe in the shareholder model, which is accumulate as much wealth as possible for me and my shareholders, and that’s okay.
If that’s everybody, then I think we see what happens with it. That doesn’t work. But I think most people I know in business are ethically motivated. We just have a legal construct right now that doesn’t support it. So I think we just need to… Hopefully someone will examine the kind of corporate ethics laws and just say…
And we see that now a little bit with B Corps and all that kind of stuff, where shareholder maximization doesn’t have to be the only goal. That there should be other goals that are allowed that are perfectly consistent with the success of a business. So I think we’re getting there, and I think most people are waking up to that fact that unconstrained capitalism leads to bad outcomes.
Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s something that I think about a lot because obviously I’m in a, I’m in a business, but it’s a spiritual business, right? I run a I run an Ayahuasca retreat, and it’s… One state is on one side, you drink Ayahuasca and you’re spiritual, and you wanna basically give this experience to everyone for free.
But on the other side, you have 30-plus employees, and you have to pay them money, and you have some people that, not really shareholders, but as friends that invested money in my business, and I would like it to be good to them as well. And it’s this, in running a business, inherently there’s this, you operate on the competition, which is like there’s some greed in it.
And it’s, the emotions are basically on the opposite side. And me as the business owner, I have to I kinda get torn in two directions, and I have to find that balance and not… Because if I lean too much into the spiritual side, the business will fall apart. And if I lean too much in the business side, the, it will also fall apart because people will be like, “Yeah, you’re not in it for the right reasons.”
So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, like in your own previous experiences how did you find that balance?
Ronan Levy: Yeah. I think it’s actually very simple, which is anyone who says you should be doing this for free is being entirely disrespectful to you, right? It takes inputs into you, food, water, time, education, whatever, to be able to create an Ayahuasca retreat that’s safe and enjoyable and creates effect, right?
And so everything requires inputs and everything requires outputs. Money is one of those inputs we need. A lot of people have this notion of money being evil. And it can be very intoxicating. There’s no question about that. But money is just a medium of exchange, right? You don’t need money.
You can exchange your Ayahuasca journeys for a goat, that you need for milk and food. That’s perfectly fine. It’s just using dollars or pesos or whatever currency it is is a much more efficient way to do it. So anyone, just to your point, you have people, you have mouths to feed, you have families that you as a business owner are indirectly responsible for by making sure that your employees are paid a fair wage so they can put food on their table, right?
You’re respecting their time, and I’d expect people to respect your time as well. That doesn’t mean you need to charge and scrutinize and squeeze out every last penny and drive your employees to be the most efficient people that have no wasted time or anything along those lines. That means that you’re finding a balance, right?
Same thing with your investors. You gotta respect that they had to do work to have the money to put into your business, and you need to respect their money and make sure that they’re not… They’re getting a return on that, that they’re getting some output for their input. It’s, I think it’s very ethical to make a profit.
I think it’s unethical to ask people not to make a profit when it comes to this, because it’s just the way the world works. A- and I don’t mean to be glib about that, but everything requires inputs and everything creates outputs, and you have to find a way to incentivize that continued Process.
Sam Believ: I like your idea about charging in goats.
I think it’ll be better than US dollar because dollar keeps dropping in value. Like this year dollar dropped against peso by 25%.
Ronan Levy: Did it? Okay.
Sam Believ: Which means that all of a sudden… And we earn in dollars and we spend in pesos, all of a sudden we have 25% less money without doing anything wrong.
Ronan Levy: Yeah.
Sam Believ: And so w- now we need to increase the price just to keep up, and people don’t like because when you increase the price in spiritual space, it’s “Oh my God, you’re greedy.
What is wrong with you?” Yeah. Yeah, I’m changing my price structure to goats. Two goats for a retreat. Do you have any go- any goats?
Ronan Levy: I don’t, but I think I can dig up one or two. So let’s, Yeah … we’ll start trading in goats. But yeah, exactly. Life is complex. I think people think, in some ways life is very simple.
In other ways, life is very complex. And running a business is very complex. And anyone who has never started a business I don’t think appreciates just how difficult it is and how ongoing it is. It’s– I, I describe being an entrepreneur as a spiritual pursuit because it’s always with you. You’re always thinking about it.
It’s even if you’re not on your phone or in front of your computer, it’s in your mind somewhere. And and it’s hard. You risk everything to make it work. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. It becomes a part of your identity. It’s hard. It’s really hard, and I don’t think people who have never tried to start a business have any appreciation for just how challenging and complex it is.
Sam Believ: Yeah, I remember for a period of time when I was designing my cabins, I remember I was sleeping, and as I was sleeping, I was still, like, moving things around. My brain was still processing. So it’s like working even when you sleep. And it’s strange because you can’t really switch it off.
It’s… And it doesn’t really feel, it doesn’t feel bad. It’s just like you’re so passionate about it, you just can’t stop. Yeah. So on the topic of money and you’ve… you’ve been very successful in this space. I don’t really know much about capital and psychedelic space. I never really was in that.
I went to MAPS once and I kinda saw this side of it, but I’m a little bit more of a outcast with the more sort of Amazonian Ayahuasca retreat. It’s about money, but it’s not that, it’s not that corporate. But you’ve had several seven-figure exits, which is, basically is the definition of success in the capitalism world.
But you still say that, it does not ma- money doesn’t make you happy. And So what happens when… Talk to us about that, you get the external success and you, but you still need to do some work. Talk… Let’s go there.
Ronan Levy: Yeah, sure. Do you have kids, by the way?
Sam Believ: Yeah, I have three kids. One- Yeah … three, and five.
Ronan Levy: Okay. So you’re right in the midst of it. So when I was still a lawyer, I was working at a pharmaceutical company and all the women in the… Or sorry, all the people in the legal group were women, and they all had… Not all, most of them had kids between the age of 5 and 13 kinda thing.
And every day they would come in, and all they would do was complain about having to drive to skating lessons, and do this, and do that, and do this, do that. And then one of them one day asked me, “Ronan, do you wanna have kids one day?” And I’m like, “Based on what I’m hearing from you, absolutely not.” And they’re like, “Oh, but it’s so worthwhile.
When you see your kid skate for the first time, it makes it all worthwhile.” And I’m like, “That math simply does not compute.” And there’s just no way that makes sense. And then you have a kid and you understand, right? And all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, I get it now.” I draw that analogy to business success and what I’ve seen consistently is, everyone tells you that money doesn’t make you happy.
It’s written into songs. It’s everywhere. Money doesn’t make you happy. Money doesn’t make you happy. And notwithstanding the fact that everyone understands it logically, intuitively, just like having kids, you don’t get it until you have money and then realize it never makes you happy. It does provide elements of happiness for sure, but it come…
what happens when you have a degree of success, when you achieve some degree of, say, like monetary freedom, you come to a place where all of a sudden you’ve worked your ass off to start a business, you- blood, sweat, and tears, years, lack of sleep, missing your kids, not being present, et cetera, all that work to hit this payoff moment, the day you get that big check, right?
And you get that big check, and for an hour you feel amazing, maybe longer. But for a short period of time you feel amazing. And then the things that you used to fight about with your spouse, you’re still fighting about. Those things that trigger you about your kids still trigger you. And all of a sudden you realize that every single problem that you had mental- mentally, emotionally, spiritually is still present.
But Now you don’t have that excuse. Now you don’t have that story of, “Oh, if I just get this, if I just sell my business, if I make a million dollars, then all of these problems go away.” All of a sudden you don’t have that narrative anymore. So you’re left with all of your problems, and the solution that you thought would solve those problems has now disappeared.
And so you… Most, most entrepreneurs I know who have success hit a, a, a spiritual crisis at that point. They’re like, “What the fuck? I thought this would solve all of my problems and they haven’t, and now I have no dream to attach, to hang my coat on anymore.” And that’s when you face that, and and you start to realize money doesn’t solve your problems.
Sure, it solves some problems, but not all of them. And you t- have to turn. And that’s why I think almost every entrepreneur I know has turned to psychedelics, because when you don’t have that dream anymore, you gotta find something else. And then when you turn to psychedelics, it just reminds you that everything you need is right with you already, that the things that actually matter, like your family, your friends, your spouse, your kids, the money was never a part of that story in the first place.
And so yeah, it’s again, money is great, success is great, but if you think it’s going to solve problems, the only thing it solves problems for is that you don’t have to sweat about making, m- the mortgage payment next month, but that’s about it. And I find also, and this certainly I fell prey to this as well, is like you end up buying more stuff.
And one of my favorite movies is Fight Club, and if you’ve ever seen Fight Club, there’s this great line about like that which you own starts to own you. And then all of a sudden you have this money and you’re spending it on shit that only provides temporary happiness, and it gets more and more expensive, and then you need more and more money to support the lifestyle of stuff that’s not actually giving you much more enjoyment in life and it can become very quickly a downward cycle.
You think it would actually make life easier, but in s- many respects, success can make life much more difficult if you don’t know how to manage it.
Sam Believ: Yeah, the… I not only watched the movie several times, I read the book, and the quote that I really like is, “We work jobs that we hate to buy stuff that we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.”
Ronan Levy: Yeah.
Sam Believ: It’s it’s so good. I I quote it a lot. And yeah when you get rich, then you start buying stuff, and then not only- It’s that stuff, but then you have to be afraid of losing it because somebody’s gonna take it away. And so I was never really rich like in a, let’s say, traditional US terms.
But I was rich by my country kind of terms, and I bought everything. I didn’t have no mortgage payment because I bought my apartment in cash because I was earning really good money. Like I, I would make more money in a day than an average Latvian makes in a month. So I quickly outgrew this like rat race.
And I was like… And as I looked at it, I was like as you get all those things, you should be happy, right? That’s what society programe- programs you to believe. And when I didn’t get happy, then I went traveling and eventually found Ayahuasca. And then I had a period of time where I settled down and I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had enough money to never work again and basically live a very humble life, so like an early retirement.
And what happened to me was all of the, Because of not having to constantly survive and not being busy, all of my thoughts and my traumas and my stuff caught up with me, and I became really depressed, and that’s what really brought me deep into Ayahuasca. I kinda logically understand it, but still sometimes I find myself like It gets too busy, like it’s too many problems.
I was like, “I should just sell this retreat and just just just do a podcast.” Or and I f- and I feel that, yes, if I get rid of all those problems, then I could be happier, even though I know and I’ve met so many people, like I’ve had friends that had eight-figure exits and they still were pretty miserable.
Just is there… Philosophically speaking, it’s like I believe the ga- the life is a game that’s uniquely rigged, so you cannot ever win it, because if you win in a game, you switch off the computer. So it’s like there are aspects of life like money or spirituality or for men specifically women, and for women men, that you just can’t solve, because if you were to be able to solve it, then you would lose interest anyway.
I don’t know if you wanna go there.
Ronan Levy: Listen I think it’s cheesy, but I think you win by just being able to play the game, right? There’s the quote from drawing a blank on it. A scientist, I think it was Richard Dawkins actually, who said “We get to die and that makes us the lucky ones.”
And and so like just being alive is winning. And then there’s a quote from my favorite author, Tom Robbins, who says, “Give me life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.” Which is if you can anchor yourself in a belief that this life is just to be experienced, maybe you’re supposed to learn something on a higher spiritual level.
But if you can just get to the place of this life is just meant to be lived, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and just to be experienced and that just to be experienced, and that’s okay. Then all those things become like, “Okay, this is cool. This is hard as fuck. I’ve never done anything more stressful than X, Y, and Z.”
And be like grateful that you have the opportunity to be stressed out beyond belief. It’s a cool experience. And then, you can let it go and be like, “All right. I don’t wanna do this anymore.” So like at the end of the day, I’d… and I’d invite you to the same, if all the stress and stuff that you’re dealing with, if it’s not worth it for you, then I encourage you to stop.
But my, my sense is it’s still totally worth it. Would you prefer it to be less stressful? Of course. It all matters. I had this realization once and I still hold it to be true, not for everyone, but I’d say it’s nearly universally true, that humans have an innate desire to be productive.
We need to do things. We need to create value. We need to create meaning. We need to be meaningful to other people. And as long as that’s true, we’re always gonna be motivated to do something. And as long as we’re motivated to do something, we’re gonna encounter obstacles and hurdles and stresses and all that kind of stuff, and that’s just part of winning because you’re playing, period.
Sam Believ: Yeah. No, I never really considered seriously giving up. It’s not even an option in my sort of preset, but I, it’s, I’m just being open about that. Thoughts do come into my mind, like you said, this illusion of oh if only I could run away and have an exit, and it’s like all the problems would go away.
But- Yeah … but no I can see through it and I do believe that I embody that oh oh here’s another issue. Okay. I’m like what’s universe trying to tell me? What’s my learning in it?” I am really there, but it doesn’t make it any easier,
Ronan Levy: true.
Sam Believ: It’s,
Ronan Levy: It reminds me of Oprah, who has this quote of “Everywhere you go, there you are.”
And it’s easy to con- more con- it’s more easy to contextualize that in the context of relationships are hard. Falling in love is easy, but standing in love is hard. And then when you get to the point that you realize whatever issues you’re encountering with your current spouse, you’re going to encounter them with whoever the next person is most likely, because it’s not their problem, it’s your problem, it makes it a lot easier to stand in love.
Be like, “Oh, I could end this relationship. I could seek divorce,” but the next person is just gonna… the same problems are gonna come up, ’cause it’s me. And and so just being aware of that all of those things that we don’t like are within us, and then we have full capacity to change them or not, or work through them is, it’s quite liberating actually.
Sam Believ: Yeah, till you kinda learn the lesson it will just keep repeating itself. And then once you learn it, the new lesson comes out, and it’s a never-ending never-ending process of learning. I guess that’s kinda-
Ronan Levy: Yeah …
Sam Believ: the way life is designed. So let’s go back to talking about psychedelics. And you’ve been…
you became a, quite an expert in cannabis as well and then ketamine. So let’s talk about similarities and differences between cannabis and psychedelics.
Ronan Levy: In what context?
Sam Believ: We can talk about it from the use context. I know we talk about cannabis as a product and psychedelics as a service.
We can talk about it from a business context how different it is in in adoption. A- any way you wanna take it.
Ronan Levy: Sure. So I think I’ve changed my perspective. It’s I think I bought into some of the narrative around psychedelics. It’s like psychedelics can be as much a product as cannabis.
We’ve all been, at least me, being fairly new to it, was like, you have to be… I think it was Bram Rector who said this one thing. He posted on Twitter, now X, where he said “A psychedelic conference is the only place you can go to and spend eight hours being told by professionals how important set and setting is and mindset is, and then to walk out that same door and have someone hand you hey, you wanna hit on my 5-MeO pen?'”
kinda thing. And it’s just like- … I think we probably overdo the importance of the container when it comes to psychedelics. Depends on the, again, the context in which you’re doing it. But psychedelics can be a product as much as it can be a service. It’s certainly more oriented towards service than cannabis.
I think in both situations, the power of the medicines are more psycho-spiritual, emotional than physical, physically healing. At the end of the day, everything we experience is experienced through our brain, right? So if you can change the inputs and the outputs through our brain, then you can change the experience of just about everything.
So cannabis oft- very often is used for pain and I think it just shifts your connection to it. Similarly, like I’ve been struggling over the last year with a pinched nerve in my neck that’s causing pain down my arm. And the two most effective treatments I’ve done for it were the days that my wife and I did MDMA together and that the pain went away which just showed me that it’s much more psychospiritual, emotional than anything else.
I think another a- analog between cannabis and psychedelics is like the, the fear of them is just so disproportionate to the reality. That things can be done safely, without much concern certainly is true as well.
Sam Believ: Yeah. So I think psychedelics can be a product if it’s like a microdose or certain ones.
For example I’ve done mushrooms by myself, I’ve done San Pedro by myself, but Ayahuasca specifically, I’ve been in it for more than five years and I’ve done– I’m only now getting ready to be able to do it, to drink Ayahuasca by myself. Just there’s there’s a big difference between different psychedelics.
But Yeah, for sure … I think there’s definitely some, some ways of doing it and yeah, you– What do you, what do, what did you wanna say?
Ronan Levy: No, I was gonna agree. Yes, Ayahuasca is very different, but for example, taking mushrooms, like a gram or two of mushrooms by yourself, at a party, I think that’s totally fine.
Taking a boatload, five or seven grams of mushrooms, I would strongly encourage you to do it in a ser- a situation in which, you’re being supported properly. I’ve actually never taken Ayahuasca, so I can’t comment, but based on everything I’ve heard, yes, you don’t wanna take it as a product and just drop some Ayahuasca on an afternoon and see what happens.
So I think that’s entirely fair.
Sam Believ: Yeah, there’s there’s… and, especially if you’re experienced and you’ve had mushroom experiences before it’s okay to have a little bit by yourself or if you have in a group of friends. I think there is also merit to less ceremonial but more kinda recreational use of some psychedelics in certain settings if there is the skill present, like you know what you’re doing.
Because in the end of the day, like we have shamans here, right? We work with indigenous shamans, and they know what they’re doing. But it basically it’s a matter of skill. How much, how good are you at what you’re doing? And we can kinda get there as well. Like nobody’s born a shaman, right?
They become a shaman. So I also don’t wanna be like, oh, like only do it at the retreat setting. Of course from my business perspective I’m also biased. Oh, of course I’d prefer people to come and only come here. But if you haven’t done Ayahuasca, man, you should come do it with us.
And that’s… I wanna invite you. Sure. Because I think it’s very unique. And it might help you with your pain as well, because it’s a very… It’s not just mental. Ayahuasca is also very physical and somatic. So if it’s something psychosomatic, I highly recommend you come over. We… It would be great to have you over.
Ronan Levy: I’d love to check it out. Yeah. Where are you guys based?
Sam Believ: So we’re we’re located one hour south of Medellín, Colombia.
Ronan Levy: Okay, cool.
Sam Believ: Yeah. It’s it’s we’re in a… We’re not in the jungle, even though Americans think it’s jungle, but it’s more of a countryside. There is a lot of beautiful plants, and it’s…
We’re surrounded by nature, but no malaria, no anacondas, nothing like that. It’s a very… and there, there’s a hospital nearby. But at the same time, you do have connection to the earth. And we have an indigenous shaman, so it’s very traditional. You yeah, y- you just rebranded your podcast recently, and you started focusing more on longevity, on good, long, happy life.
In your opinion, what’s the role of mental health in a long, happy life and then in this case also psychedelics in that mental health?
Ronan Levy: Yeah. So I changed my podcast. It’s had a few different iterations. It’s now called the Ronan Levy Podcast, just because I realized I didn’t wanna be hamstrung to being talking about psychedelics or longevity.
I just wanna talk about whatever, whatever’s interesting to me. I think as near as I can tell from all the conversations I’ve had the secret to longevity is, in the words of George Burns, “Always have a reason to get up in the morning.” And and, that’s it. It’s like the, the secrets are pretty straightforward.
Eat well, sleep well, have a good social life, work on your mental, emotional, spiritual awareness and feelings. I think that’s it. People who are happier, people who have a community people who exercise, people who eat well and sleep well, those are the people who live the longest.
There, there really is no magic to it. It’s always been there. It’s always been pretty well-established. I think every society throughout history has known that pretty well, and we’re just super fortunate right now that the things out of our control, like the viruses, bacteria, some of those things, it’s like we have medicine to support that.
You do the rest pretty well and I’d say you have a pretty good shot of leading a long, full life.
Sam Believ: Yeah. So definitely like what I like to say is you can be super healthy and you can be a biohacker, but then if your mental health is not good, you can just have this perfectly healthy body and you just kill yourself, and then s- there’s no value to it.
So I think mental health is definitely very important. There’s this guy, Brian Johnson, that- Yeah … before even he did this mushroom thing, I was always hitting him up on Instagram. Of course, I he didn’t see it, but I was like, “What about mental health? What about mental health? What about psychedelics?” So maybe someday I’ll get him on the show.
But it’s good to see that now he’s trying mushrooms and opening up to that. So you say that psychedelics can help our species solve many problems we have as species. That’s something I personally am very keen on because as I like to say, you tell me a problem and I’ll tell you how to fix it with Ayahuasca.
So what is- … what is your view there?
Ronan Levy: N– I think psychedelics help lock– unlock creativity, right? They open us up to perspectives. And I think this is not just like a, a spiritual comment. I think we know that they induce what Robin Carhart-Harris has termed critical periods, right? Where you’re just more neuroplastic.
And so if we can unlock the constraints, if we can unlock our worldviews, if we can unlock our patterns of thinking, even temporarily, it opens up the potential for an infinite number of solutions that we may not have been able to see before. And so I think in many ways, your comment about, “You tell me your problem, and I’ll tell you how ayahuasca is the solution,” is probably correct a lot of the time.
But I think it’s really exciting to, to see what the possibility is. I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s book, “The Secret of Secrets” recently which is terribly written, but I’m always curious to see what he’s talking about. And a lot of that’s talking about noetic sciences and how, there’s only one collective consciousness and our brains just act as a receiver for it.
And things like psychedelics just change what we’re receiving, like the signal we’re receiving temporarily and maybe for longer term. And I think that’s probably true, and it just helps us access things that were inaccessible before.
Sam Believ: I think it’s definitely the fastest, one of the fastest ways to change that collective signal to be a little bit nicer.
Ronan Levy: Yeah.
Sam Believ: But obviously we’re not there yet. We’re quite far from it. I’m very excited about future, and I think if… not saying that ayahuasca is gonna fix everything, but it could be that psychedelics could be that catalyst for people to then start doing other things and actually changing, ’cause that’s what it did to me personally.
And then talking about the future, like what are you more, most excited and lo- from your perspective more business-oriented, what, what do you see, like exciting patterns or trends in psychedelic industry that you think are gonna be very profound in the future?
Ronan Levy: In the psychedelic space?
From a business perspective I think the recognition that this doesn’t scale, that this is just, peer-to-peer mostly. Not entirely peer-to-peer, but it’s not designed for, it doesn’t support or work within a corporate context of scale, that it’s more community-driven and is the way it’s going to evolve, and I think that’s probably the right way for, for things to happen.
Sam Believ: So psychedelics have successfully resisted being bastardized by corporate, like the negative of the capitalism, like, oh, like profits. So is that what you’re trying to say? I didn’t know it was a conclusion already.
Ronan Levy: I’m betting that’s the way it’s going to end.
I think, yeah, I think psychedelics just don’t get commoditized very well. I think, as people start to explore psychedelics, they realize the context of big scaling corporate conglomeration for it is not the place for it, … as much as people may try. I think that’s where we end.
So- I th- wonder- wonderful that Compass will get approved for psilocybin and other psychedelics get approved, but I think the business maybe those will be successful businesses, but this business will scale regardless of that. It’ll grow. I won’t say scale, but it’ll grow. If you wanna find me my website is ronanlevy.com, R-O-N-A-N-L-E-V-Y.com.
I’m on Instagram at Ronan D, as in David, Levy, ronandlevy. And on LinkedIn and all that kinda stuff. And just in the process of launching a new company called Fun Loving Company where we’ve developed a legal, natural formulation that mimics what we say is like a half dose of MDMA. And soon to be launching that, so if you’re interested in that, follow wearefunloving on Instagram is the place to find that.
Sam Believ: Thank you, Ronan. Thank you for the episode. Guys, you’ve been listening to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always, with you, the host, Sam 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 wherever it is you’re listening.
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