Psychedelic advocacy, psychedelics in UK. Ayahuasca Podcast with Joe Vaughan

In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Joe Vaughan, a UK-based comedian, writer, and advocate for psychedelic medicine legalization. Joe shares his journey into psychedelics, driven by witnessing the transformative power of psilocybin on a close friend. Together, they discuss the potential of psychedelics for mental health, addiction recovery, and the challenges of pushing for legalization in the UK.

If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats, go to http://www.lawayra.com.

Find more about Joe Vaughan at Twitter: @joevaughancomedy.

Transcript

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

Joe Vaughan: Politics follows Public opinion and not the other way around. Politics was 30 years behind public opinion when it came to changing things. So things like, homosexuality, things like women having, certain rights, certain things that we look at now and go that’s as crazy that was legal.

Now with modern media. Things are much more accelerated. So if public opinion starts to move and says we need a fresh look at psilocybin, we need to look at some of these compounds and look at, what they can do. ’cause the data isn’t there. Academics tell me the data’s not there.

We can have people having personal experiences and anecdotal evidence and all the rest of it, but. What they’re saying to me is that the data’s not there. The policy makers won’t change unless the data’s there, but then the data won’t be there unless the public opinion’s there and the people are doing it to create the data.

Sam Believ: In this episode of ayahuasca podcast.com, I have a conversation with Joe Vaughan. We talk about legalization of psilocybin in the uk, Joe’s Ayahuasca experiences. We talk about different ayahuasca traditions. Talk about him living in a transporting era and how psychedelics could have helped talk about mental health crisis and so much more.

Enjoy this episode. This episode is sponsored by Laira Ayahuasca Retreat. At Laira, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Laira connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you. Hi guys, and welcome to Iowa Podcast, as always, with you, the host. And today I am interviewing Joe Vogan Vaughn.

Joe Vaughn. Yeah, Vaughn. Joe Vaughn is a UK based comedian writer, an advocate for psychedelic medicine legalization. After witnessing psilocybin transform his friend’s life, he became. A prominent voice in the thank you plant medicines movement working to reduce stigma around plant medicine in the uk specifically.

Joe, we welcome to the show. It’s great to be here. Joe. Before we begin talking about psychedelics and such, tell us a little about yourself and how did you find yourself in that line of work?

Joe Vaughan: I think I have to go back quite a few generations, is that, or originally my grandfather came from Nigeria to Scotland in the nineties, just after the second World War.

So that, that had a, huge impact on kinda my life growing up in Scotland because there were not many, many black people in Scotland at that particular time. So I kinda grew up in a, in an environment which was pretty harsh, pretty racist fair, fairly tough kind of environment in a port town called Leith.

I dunno if you’ve heard of train spotting the book in the film, but Irving Welsh. But that, that, that is my experience. That is my life. Reading that book is like literally someone writing New York, the narrative of your own story, right?

I had always had, I had a kinda slightly different perspective on life because of my Nigerian family. ‘Cause it was quite unusual and a kind of unique situation. I never knew my granddad, but my mother is obviously of mixed parentage which was, as I say, very unusual in Scotland.

So I always felt kinda, simultaneously, I insider, but I had a kinda slightly outsider’s view of things and a kind of wider kind of perspective because of my, ’cause of my family upbringing. As I say, I grew up in, in a, in Scotland, in Leith in the 1970s, 1980s, and peak kinda transporting era kinda dysfunction.

Grew up around a lot of, drug taking and violence and alcoholism, there was some, there were some downsides as well, but the yeah, it was a kind of quite an interesting environment to grow up in. Follow, following that kinda upbringing.

I ended up moving to England where I went to university and studied and then moved around a bit. I lived in Paris for a while and then went, lived in West Africa for a while and, had a, had a kind of, a job which involved a lot of traveling. And yeah, my, my kinda life has been a sort of a kind of an exploration of kind of stuff.

I always felt like I wanted to just go and. See stuff, do cool things and see stuff was my objective and I’ve largely achieved that.

Sam Believ: So in, in the intro I mentioned that your friend’s story and recovery through psilocybin was a big inspiration for you.

Can you maybe tell us that story?

Joe Vaughan: The, where I used to live in Edinburgh, in Letha was a, there was a part of the local park literally where we all played and grew up as kids. And every September, we would see these kind of people dressed slightly differently, kinda wandering around, like kinda looking at the ground.

And I didn’t realize they were actually picking the kinda naturally occurring, psilocybin, liberty, cat mushrooms that grow in the uk. But there was a field in, in the, the part of Edinburgh and least where I grew up, there was a field of the, where magic mushrooms would grow, so we’d see people picking them.

So it was that was my sort of first not direct experience of psilocybin but over the years of, traveling and going to, going to Amsterdam, psilocybin mushrooms were legal. Then you could buy them in shops in Amsterdam.

And so when you went to Amsterdam for a weekend, you would take psilocybin mushrooms legally not the best environment, not the best setting settings got to be said. But that was just kind part of what you did when you went to Amsterdam for the weekend.

So there’s a friend, a very good friend of mine who I met in England when I went to university, who’d had a very difficult life. He’d been in, in children’s homes. He grew up around violence and neglect. And he’d become a drug addict. An intravenous, drug addict a speed.

First of all, it was through speeds, amphetamines, and then through an heroin, and ultimately through methadone. He’d been on methadone for maybe 20 years. Hard, hardcore, a drug addict. And he’d never been out of the UK ever. He’d never had a passport. He’d never been out of the uk.

He, he was practically destitute. He was living on the streets more or less. And I thought I need to do something here. So I thought I’m gonna get him a passport. I’m gonna get him his passport. And we’re gonna go somewhere, we’re gonna go out of the country somewhere. He’d never been out of the uk, never had a passport, nothing.

So we went to Amsterdam and we had a, an experience with psilocybin mushrooms. And it was one of those kind of, quite a euphoric kind of evening, one of those evenings on psilocybin mushrooms, not, I sit alone in the dark, deep introspection. More of a, kind of a.

A quite hedonistic, quite an enjoyable evening of hilarity and big emotions and, a lot of laughing and a lot of, a lot of kind of en enjoyment. And after that experience my friend, I might get emotional talking about this ’cause he, because, he is no longer with us, but he he wrote me a letter to say that, that evening had basically transformed his life.

And that he found a new. Purpose. And he found a new enjoyment, and he found a new motivation and, to be alive. And following that he started to, he’d always had an interest in music. He’s a punk original. An original punk or an oy boy as he called himself.

And so he, he started write writing music. He started writing songs and performing songs. And performing at festivals. Not, he wasn’t headlining at Glastonbury, but he was performing in festivals, his music that he’d written and he was performing. And he, his life just went in a completely different trajectory from the kind of practically homeless, destitute, almost, literally dying.

He had a very, enjoyable kind of next say 10 years. Unfortunately he did pass away in the end through, the alcoholism and he’d been on, he’d been on methadone for, as I say, a very long time. And eventually his liver did pack up. But it, there was enough in that experience for me to go, wait a minute.

There’s something if that can transform his life so fundamentally there’s got to be something in this. And that kinda led, that was about maybe, nearly 20 years ago, I think. I grew up in the 19, late eighties, early nineties, so I was part of a part of the rage scene. Obviously that, that had its own sort of associations with, psychedelics and other recreationals.

But then that was just part of what we did. But, so that was not, that was more kinda hedonistic, but I kinda much more conscious kind of feeling around, around the work. Came to me baby about 20 years ago through my experience with my friend.

Sam Believ: It sounds that. It definitely prolonged his life and probably made his quality of life much higher.

And yeah, with the mushrooms, I’ve had experiences that where it feels less of a ceremony, even when you do it in a ceremonial setting, it feels less of a ceremony sometimes and more of a celebration kinda with the main is being, life is to be enjoyed and there’s a lot to be enjoyed, that positivity.

So I’m a big, I’m a big fan of that medicine as well. I think that. In a perfect world where everything is legal, I see. Like a wellness protocol for an average individual living in the western world, being something like wa ayahuasca ceremony, sorry, Juan Ayahuasca retreat a year. And then maybe one smaller mushroom experience every quarter or so to keep you sane.

And then a lot of integration and a lot of therapy and other modalities like breath work and tapping and you name it. There’s so many now. It’s a beautiful medicine talking about medicines. I know you,

Joe Vaughan: you, yeah. So just say one thing, one thing on that, the Amsterdam experience is quite a cautionary tale because they were selling very high strength mushrooms in shops and people were getting hold of them with no preparation, no understanding, no real kind of sense about what it was that we’re doing, and it was causing a lot of problems.

So that, that kind of. Free for all thing is, as it was in Outstan at the time is probably something that we really want to caution against, because, very clear on this is that, these compounds are, can be so strong, so powerful, so destabilizing that they, they really need to be handled with care so that whole kinda well known.

Kind of process of, you prepare yourself, you, you do the right, preparations understand, you make sure you’re set, setting and intentions are there. You do it with people you trust at a dose level that you can handle. And then you, obviously you need, sometimes people need support on the other side of it as well.

Because, I think, it’s dangerous. Certainly. I would, we’d not necessarily advise that we go back to that situation in Amsterdam where it was a free for all because, it almost delegitimizes the work that we’re trying to do and the fact that we’re trying to legitimize this whole enterprise and in, in a sense, like rebrand it away from.

People getting off their heads in a hedonistic setting and actually, taking this kinda seriously. So I, I’m not, I’m as big an advocate for the dance and the magic of these things as anyone else, but I just would definitely urge caution, when it comes to,

Sam Believ: thank you for adding that.

Definitely thank you for writing that note to it. When I personally speak about mushroom use, I’m talking. Ceremonial use meaning with with some kind of indigenous tradition. But of course there’s also medical use. But in case of recreational use it has to be done very carefully.

Amsterdam is a nice city, but no city should be used for working with medicines except for maybe a microdose. And still, there’s something special about being in the nature and being in a safe container. Both with a sitter or se, preferably several and maybe a ceremonial fire and as you said, preparation, integration, all of the good stuff.

So yeah, definitely not to get people confused, to don’t go ahead and just buy mushrooms and do your stuff. That’s not what we’re talking about. Yeah. It’s not for everyone as well. If you’re, if your mental state is not great and you’re very. Shaky that it can disbalance you even more, especially with I can, I’ve never ever taken psychedelics outside of ceremonial settings, so it’s hard for me to imagine.

But I can see that somebody at the festival or in the city with a lot of people, you can get paranoia and maybe even worse things. But talking about medicine than ceremonial setting, I know you’ve also had some experience with ayahuasca. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and similarities or differences you noticed with your mushroom work?

Joe Vaughan: Sure. So I’ve been fortunate enough to go to Peru three times now. So the first time was at the. Temple of the way of light which is near ITOs in Peru. And that was my first experience of a kind of, ceremonial setting. And yeah it’s hard to really put it into words.

I know, that we always use the words ineffable, and it is in a sense, but I’ll do my best. So when we did, talking about preparation experience and integration, the preparation that we did there was actually very good. They did sit down and explain, you know what, it was good, you know what was gonna happen, how the ceremonies were gonna take place, et cetera.

So I, we felt, fairly strong going in, the diet, diet, preparation, et cetera. Flower baths and meditation, some yoga and stuff. So we were fairly well set. Set up to go into the experience. There was a, there was, there were five tobo healers in the ceremony, probably in a ceremony of about 20 to 25.

See, I’m gonna say, I’ll say max 25. So it was one healer to every five participants. And each heeler would go around, every individual. And sing an eco row to them, and, kinda face to face on the map. So they would have a kinda central eco row that would be sung at the start for the, in the maloka and the space.

And then you’d have an individual like I say, eco by each individual healer. And it’s quite hard to explain to people that, when you’re sitting in the dark kinda feeling, under the influence of, of a powerful medicine. And someone’s kinda singing to you in the dark in a language that you don’t understand, but yet you understand everything that they’re saying to you.

It’s a very strange thing to try and explain to someone. I didn’t have a kind of a traditional kinda psychedelic experience. In, in the, the first sort of, three, three or four, four ceremonies, the five ceremonies in total. The first four ceremonies were very much.

Kind of bodily sensation. No, all bells and whistles, as we say, psychedelic, traditional experience. But in each eco row that was being sung, to me it felt like my kind of my my, my personality myself my, the individual that I am was being kinda rebuilt, very much from a, from the kinda bottom up.

On the first ceremony, it felt like they were singing to my, to the, the kind, the baby me, like the small child meet and like a lullaby, and making it feel safe and secure. And then the second ceremony felt like they were singing to, maybe the kind of 5-year-old me, the, the three to 5-year-old me.

And then the third ceremony, it felt like they were singing to the, they can, each ceremony kinda built on this, on the previous one. In each eco row, even from, all the different healers that were singing to me, it felt like they were singing to that, those kind of neglected, damaged parts of myself.

And quite extraordinary, as I say no, no kind of, visions or nothing extreme in that sense. But I so powerful. There’s an experience. And then in the fifth ceremony there was a bit more kind of a visual thing. But I remember very clearly one of the healers, like singing to me.

And all I was hearing was like, you have conditional love. You have conditional love. You have conditional love. This is what you must remember. It was and it was as clear, it was as clear as if someone was speaking to me in English and saying this to me, but it was being sung in a, in whatever the people language is.

Excuse me, I don’t remember it, what you call it but that was my experience of it. So at the end of that. Fi the fifth ceremony. It felt like I’d had a complete, re refresh, reboot, through, through MOT as they say, full kind of service of the machine and the psyche.

And I came away just with a real sense of renewal and. Just, just extraordinary experience. And also, the people I met, some very good friends, the people that I call, great friends. Now in, in the group, as you, you probably know from your own experience, the kind of, a lot of the medicine is in the group itself.

It’s the kind of how people share about the interactions people have the kinda triggering that goes on the kind of, the little, do you know what I mean? It’s the group itself, that group dynamic is quite important as well. So I had, I was very lucky. I had a great group.

So that was the first time, second time was a guy called Don Howard Lola. He had a place called Spirit Quest. Spirit Quest still exists, but Don Howard is sadly no longer with us, but he was he used to, he would work with Wachuma as well. So he’d worked with Ayahuasca, Anwar Tru and he was trying to keep the kind of the, the kind of process that had been developed and was used in Chavin, the kind of the, the mountain civilization in Chavin. And he’d taken a lot of those practices and tried to keep them going and recreate them in in his re his center and near keto.

So I did a white tumor diet after that which was hugely powerful experience as well. There was quite, it was quite an interesting dynamic because there’s a, there was some fairly high profile psychedelics, advocates who were there because it was looking likely it was gonna be Howard’s last, maybe last what do you call it?

Whatchu deta? It looked like it was gonna be his last one. ‘Cause of his, he was in failing health, so there was some quite high profile people there. So again, that was part of the kinda medicine of all the, but he was. Quite an interesting dynamic amongst the people who were there.

But I had a really powerful breakthrough experience on Wachuma, but as Howard says, it’s like a, it’s like a feather wachuma, it’s like a heavy feather, so I had a real, really powerful breakthrough kind of experience, very subtle with what Tur obviously it’s very different from Ayahuasca.

So that was my second experience. And then. I was at the end of last year, I went to back to Peru to the al to Alpa this time to Don Jose Campos place. I dunno if you know about Don Jose Campos, but he was in, he was in jail in Mexico. You might have heard that story about the, but the Peruvian healer who was in jail in Mexico for nearly a year he’s he’s out of jail now, which is great, but he’s got a place near Procal Plus I went to his place and that was more of a proper deta where you were, very basic food while you were there. Minimal interaction. The other, the template of the way of light was slightly more.

You, you’d have interactions you would eat together, et cetera. Whereas this was a bit more. Maybe traditional or rugged, I dunno what you’d call it, but it was literally, off grid very basic foods, minimal interactions and, more of a proper deta than what I’d done up till that point.

Again, hugely powerful experience. I felt a lot of release in that particular experience, again, no real, I don’t really get hugely visionary experiences, shall we say. But I do get these kind of profound breakthroughs and insights. This one in particular was around, around kinda trust and being able to kinda feel able to kinda let go of what is no longer serving me at an energetic level.

Like things that build up in your energy system that just are not. Necessary for your functioning, shall we say. So I had a real kind of, energetic release there. We did a ceremony on Halloween, which was one of the most extraordinary nights of my life. Darkest Night, the night before, maybe night when it was Full Moon.

So the first ceremony was done in Full Moon. So obviously the jungle is bathed in light. This ceremony on on Halloween was just the darkest night I’ve ever, been in, ever seen, ever, not, not seeing anything you can’t see in front of your face. And there was some very powerful kind of energetics in the ceremony.

And yeah, that’s hugely powerful. Then the fact the fifth ceremony was done in the daytime. There was a thunderstorm, jungle thunderstorm were moving around a lot, but in this last ceremony the thunderstorm was right above the maloka. And I’ve never done ayahuasca in the daytime.

It was just, there’s no, I would struggle to try and describe it as as the energy. You could see the energy in the forest with the, obviously with the power of the storm. The medicine and the, the music and, Don Jose Campos does extraordinary work with music.

Not just traditional song ecos, different types of music that he incorporates in ceremony as well. So yeah, just, yeah. Anyway, three times to Peru, each very different, but each trans completely transformative. In their own way.

Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing that. A few things come to mind is number one, you’re mentioning how different ayahuasca is in its it is still a psychedelic and it’s, it can get very psychedelic, but a lot of times, especially when you begin working with it, people expect this big explosion.

But in reality it just softly goes through your body, gets to know you, scans you and shows you stuff. And a lot of times you mentioned group dynamic as well, but we have word circles and then somebody comes to the word circle after first ceremony and they say. I’m not connected to the medicine because they haven’t seen the visions.

And then they proceed describing a complete and very beautiful ayahuasca experience of healing and understanding and learning. So it’s something we it’s something that we deal with every day here at at the retreat. Which is normal. I understand. I understand the hesitancy, but you can get very psychedelic.

So much so that, too much for you and you might regret wanting. To get it so psychedelic. But it’s an interesting medicine because with mushrooms, for example, if you take certain amount of certain mushrooms, you’re gonna have a certain experience with ayahuasca. It’s it can be this, it can be that.

It can be something completely different. Another thing that has to wine is that you say, you, you want to Peru three times and you had three different kind of ceremonies just within Peru itself. There’s some places there’s eCommerce, other places, there’s ceremonial music.

Some places it’s mix of both. Like in our case, aha. And in Colombian tradition, he does erose when he blesses the medicine and whenever he needs to like, organize the energy in the room. But then he actually sings ceremonial music, so using a lot of indigenous instruments. But the sound of the songs are in Spanish and it’s but it’s still, he guides the ceremony through the music.

And what comes to me is like, how great it is that not only the Ayahuasca tradition survived as opposed to, let’s say. In uk you saw people collecting those mushrooms. I can imagine. Ancient Celtic people must have had a tradition in the second one around it, and maybe I can ask you about it later, but it did not survive, it was uprooted.

You would be burned at stake and stuff like that. But here, not only the tradition survive, but there’s so many of them. There’s, within Columbia alone, there’s four. Four or five different tribes that work with Ayahuasca or Jaha, which is a Colombian name for Ayahuasca or ambi. ASCA is another name.

But also within those tribes there are different kinds of tribes and they have their own little accents and they, it’s all traditional. There’s like many ways to skin a cat, so to speak, but we’re kinda lucky to be, to have some. Traditions being preserved for us as not being part of the tradition to be now allowed in it and learn and be able to maybe even go back and recover your own tradition.

So what do you think about that ancient mushroom tradition? Because like in Europe there’s a lot of symbology around mushroom, including in not only Europe India, tension Greece. What do you think? Was there a tradition? Have you been able to find something perhaps.

Joe Vaughan: Yeah just to back to that point about the different traditions, like you’re like, you go to a Catholic mass and it’s a sung in LA and it’s very somber and all the rest of it, but you can also go to a, a Southern Baptist where everyone’s jumping around and dancing around essentially that, just celebrating in a different way.

So I that as a, as an example to people to say, that if you wanna sit with the Yah hour, for example, would be very different experience from sitting with a kinda shabo and and so forth. But it’s all. Celebrating the same thing in terms of, this is the tricky one actually.

The, you, the question about, what was happening over here? They were growing everywhere, right? So they’re growing in Scotland, they go in England, they grow in Wales, they’re everywhere. But I’ve asked, at conferences, I’ve asked, people who study this stuff.

Academics, do they, do, what do they think about the kinda druids, what do they think about, different mushroom culture traditions, et cetera. And you draw a complete blank. I can’t find any literature. And I’ve been having discussions with with, friends and colleagues and thinking this, there’s something we might want to have a look into.

But probably quite time consuming given the fact it’s, it’s not immediately obvious. How it was being used, but I think it’s kinda safe to assume that it was obviously we have kinda sacred sites here, that, kinda defy explanation, in terms of the weather positioned and so forth.

There’s obviously different types of communications being had and different levels of technological capability. But yeah, I’ll be brutally honest with you I have not been able to find anything yet, and I hope someone will one day come and say, oh, there’s a rich. Treasure trove of information over here, and then I’d, have to look at it.

But I think just now our kind of working hypothesis is that yes, for sure they must have been using them. Have you tried asking the mushrooms themselves? That’s actually a very good question. No, that’s not something I have asked. Next time I’m, somewhere in a kinda legal jurisdiction.

And, and we can happily look at if I’m in Holland, I might well do that. That might be the question.

Sam Believ: Yeah. With coastal legalization, for example, here in Colombia, the medicines that have been used here traditionally are legal because there are tribes that practice them.

For example, San Pedro and Ayahuasca are illegal when you have an indigenous shaman. However, mushrooms are. Decriminalized, but you cannot serve them to people. And there are, there is a tribe that’s called BER that used to work with mushrooms, but they lost their tradition. So now they’re trying to recover the tradition because yeah, here you have I believe it’s golden teacher or philosophy, COIs, they grow here, everywhere.

Like I am looking from the window to the field. I know in that field, in the cow down, you’re gonna find those mushrooms. I believe that maybe if recovering that tradition would also possibly help you legalizing or decriminalizing or as you were explaining, changing the the status of that drug or medicine.

So how is your legalization effort going and tell our, listen listeners exactly what you’re doing and how. Are you

Joe Vaughan: planning to achieve it? I just, so one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about that I dunno if you came across the work of the late great Linde e who was an advocate for.

Kind of very high dose psilocybin experiences from Detroit, an African American from Detroit, who again sadly is no longer with us, but he advocated for, kinda high dose psilocybin experiences. And he used to organize a, what he called the food of the Gods tour to Mexico where they would go to the site of the thunder mushrooms, like the fact that, where the lightning would strike the mountain.

And apparently around there, the mushrooms would grow and. He would advocate to go and do that. It’s something that I’ve always been it’s been in my mind, that, you’re part of the world, be very interested in that. In terms of the status of. Our work in on what we is called psilocybin access rights.

And so we’re a kind of, a volunteer group. We, we put we’ve got connections within the kinda political, kind of environment the decision to reschedule. Psilocybin has been sitting in the UK government for quite a long time, though, like we had a, we had an administration that was fairly open.

To new ideas. Are we depriving ourselves of opportunities commercially? Are we deprive, depriving ourselves of opportunities in terms of research? Are we depriving ourselves of opportunities in terms of, finding solutions to currently, problems that they, for which there isn’t a solution?

So there was a kind of an openness in government to pursue these kind of new. New kind of areas of inquiry. But then the admin the regime the government kind of fell down a rabbit hole of quite, strange ideas. Like they wanted to start, to start deporting asylum seekers, not deporting.

They wanted to move asylum seekers to Rwanda. It caused, so people would arrive on these, small boats that crossed the English Channel from FRAs into England on these dinghies, on these rubber, dinghy boats, right? And then what they were saying to them was like you can arrive in England, but we are going to send you to Rwanda to as a sort of a way to try and discourage them from coming right.

And of caused a huge kinda political problem and, here, ’cause it was just very strange thing to what to do. So that decision to reschedule psilocybin, which has been sitting there, just waiting for someone in a home office, I dunno what you might call it the Minister of the Interior and European countries.

We call it that the home secretary, the person that’s in charge of, homeland security and immigration and things like that. So that the minister in that department had this, had the kind of the, in the instrument ready to sign and go, okay psilocybin then moves.

But apparently they de sat on it for a long time because they were really bogged down with this kinda whole Rwanda issue. And the department was quite dysfunctional and our government became quite dysfunctional. And it’s, in its later years. So it’s close and there’s, we’ve had, politicians talk about psilocybin with, there’s a labor MP in the uk who advocates for a fresh look at psilocybin because she’s used it to treat her PTSD.

Had a terrible event happen in our life. And then, had PTSD as a result and then was able to find. Part of a solution to the issue of P ts d using psilocybin. Now, obviously you mentioned before different complimentary therapies, like breath work, meditation, cold, hot tapping, whatever it is, there’s a whole, basket suite of tools that you can use in conjunction with the medicine work to you know to reach a kind of a better place with whatever it is troubling you.

But she’s actually spoken in the parliament. Around psilocybin. The Prime Minister at the time, Richie Sunna, answered a question about psilocybin. There are also, o other politicians and people involved in the political kind of fields. Who, who’ve talked about it, who’ve looked at it, it’s been on the tv, so what kind of a, quite a strange place here in the uk where it’s known, it’s talked about.

It’s but no one’s really been brave enough. No one’s really thought, right? I’m gonna be the person that puts the pen to paper and signs this off. Everyone’s watching their back a little bit. No one wants to be the person that kinda makes the move. We’re having similar issues with other organizations trying to get, sort charity status.

The charity commission is a bit like, shit, if I sign this, is it all gonna, is it gonna, is it gonna harm my career? I get it. I guess it’s the problem with career politicians are more interested in their careers than they’re interested in. Actually doing something, potentially for the good of, good of the country.

So the thing is that, I studied politics. Politics was my major at university, and I always was aware that politics follows public opinion and not the other way around. And they used to say that the rule was that. Politics was 30 years behind public opinion when it came to changing things.

So things like, homosexuality, things like, women having, certain rights, certain things that we look at now and go that’s just crazy that was illegal. It’s crazy that homosexuality was illegal, however many years ago, not in the not too distant past.

It’s crazy to think that, but it took a long time. For us to get there. Now with modern media, things are much more are much more accelerated. So if public opinion starts to move and says we need a fresh look at psilocybin, we need to look at some of these compounds and look at, what they can do.

‘Cause the data isn’t there. People, academics tell me the data’s not there, we can have people having personal experiences and anecdotal evidence and all the rest of it, but. What they’re saying to me is that the data’s not there. So the policy makers won’t change unless the data’s there, but then the data won’t be there unless the public opinion’s there and the people are doing it to create the data.

Do you see what I mean? So we’re not a bit of a catch 22. So what I’m trying to do is try to raise awareness outside of the, the traditional, psychedelics community. Because I think outside of our psychedelics community there’s a awareness is quite low.

In a general population, if you were to ask a hundred people, just ordinary people on the street, what do they know about psilocybin ayahuasca? You’d probably at most you might get, oh, I’ve heard of mitral dosing, or, oh, I saw something on TV about that, but I can’t remember what it was. It’s not something which is really in the public consciousness, and as soon as you say magic mushrooms, people go, all right.

That’s just. People wearing, wolves heads and howling at the moon and barefoot and naked and crazy, so it still has that stigma, because of, maybe what happened in the seventies or whatever. And, certain people might have gone off the rails back in the day.

So I guess the main issue as far as I’m concerned is that we need to get this information out in a way, which is constructive. It’s almost like we have to rebrand the whole exercise to make it palatable for, your average person on the street. So they don’t think that, you interact with psilocybin or have an ayahuasca experience and you’re gonna sell all your stuff, walk around barefoot and you could fuck your life.

It’s ’cause that’s not ideal, and I want to be like the kind of, almost the person that makes it boring. You know what I mean? Average guy, middle, middle aged father, has a normal job. I almost want to be the sort of the person that says, look, you don’t have to start wearing, beads and stuff in your hair or whatever.

Do you know what I mean? I’ve got nothing against that, of course, but just from a mainstream positioning point of view, it makes it difficult when. People think it’s just gonna make you kinda go crazy and lose your mind. But it’s almost like the opposite is true. It’s almost like you can, it can have the complete opposite fit.

You can have your feet very much under you and much more solid than before, if that makes sense. So we’re nearly there, but we’ve got a long way to go in terms of public opinion, like a long way to go.

Sam Believ: Yeah. I also believe the opposite is true, that people that. They, what is normal now, what consider is normal is actually less normal than that thing that they criticize.

But yeah we’re definitely, I believe we’re maybe 10 years away from psychedelics going truly mainstream and hopefully this time as opposed to sixties in the more controlled, in the more organized manner. And regarding politics, I think that. Mental health crisis is not getting any better.

It’s only getting worse. COVID didn’t help. And just the way we live our life and the level of stress and basically in, in health, if you look at health the only aspect of it that didn’t progress is mental health. Everything was improved in the last 50 years or so, but mental health declined.

And this is the solution kind of staring at us. Eventually politicians will have to do something about it because if your population is all, depressed and suicidal and is not able to work, maybe then they will start carrying and be like, yeah, maybe it’s time for us to do something there.

There always needs to be some kind of interest, and as of now, obviously it makes more money to have people. Their daily antidepressants and be subdued and quiet and not asking too much questions.

Joe Vaughan: Yeah, I think in, in, in many respects, we’re looking at our, trying to construct a more positive narrative for the future.

I have children and I get a bit concerned about the relentless kinda negativity that, that surrounds them. They’re told that. There’s gonna be environmental collapse, there’s gonna be, apocalyptic scenarios. There’s gonna be, everything’s gonna fall apart.

Now, I’m not downplaying the fact that we have huge challenges as a species and, a lot of our behavior, probably does need to change. In order for us to have, create that positive narrative. But. So take the example of, so traumatic brain injury in in athletes, right?

So I, I also work for a vet which is designed to raise awareness for some, something like, traumatic brain injury in athletes, right? Currently there’s not, there’s obviously been a lot of work done by neurologists to try to understand what happens in a traumatic brain injury.

What seems to be happening anecdotally with some of the athletes that, that I speak to who’ve been rugby players or ice hockey players or professional fighters is that, these individuals have had, multiple concussions, multiple difficulties in their careers. The treatment options that they were given at the end of their careers didn’t work for them.

They then tooked matters into their own hands and went and had, experiences with different compounds and then found themselves, in much better health and in some cases completely cured, then surely that’s something that we should be looking at. You know what I mean? It is why would you not look at that? And so I work with a network of, academics researchers, individuals, participants yeah, as I say, the whole kinda range of people, psychotherapists, et cetera, to try and build a kind of a very robust framework for this that says, look, if you are skeptical about, the kind of, the safety of these companies, right?

We can. We can go down that way we can do, the kinda safety studies are quite well known. David Nat has done quite a lot of work on that here. But we can look at the kinda safety profile, which seems, it’s fairly solid. We can do, we can do clinical trials, if you’re squeamish about ceremonial experiences, we can do the clinical trial route.

We can do it, we can do absolutely the best quality science you want. We can do it. So why wouldn’t you do that? It’s, it just seems like a complete no brainer. For, for like the governing bodies in rugby, the governing bodies in, ice hockey, the governing bodies in football.

Why would you not, do you know your duty of care to your players? Surely with would indicate that you would want to at least have the discussion. So this is where we are now. We’re trying to, open these doors with governing bodies, open these doors with kinda senior level people of influence to say, we’re not advocating that, people go out into the fields and just eat loads of mushrooms and see what happens. We wanna do it in a really controlled. And structured and safe and responsible way, complete wraparound care, with, with, proper psychotherapy, with proper trained therapists, with, proper, preparation protocols, quality screening, quality integration, quality interactions with other types of, healing modalities.

Be the meditation, breath or whatever. Diet’s usually important. We can have a technological kind of approach to it as well. We can track all this through data collection apps, obviously with all the the GDPR regulations and, data protection and all that.

That’s all there. We can do it all completely professionally and it doesn’t have to be, scary. Obviously the experiences themselves can be challenging, no doubt about it, and with the right dose levels, the right preparation, the right medicine for the right person, the right time with the right structures around them, I really, I’m struggling to see a really good argument against it.

Do you know what I mean?

Sam Believ: Yeah. There’s definitely. The benefits outweigh the risks. And yeah, I do agree with you. It’s a matter, it’s a matter of time that it gets looked at. And meanwhile, yeah, people can just come over here where it is legal and you can do it properly. And traditionally, and still, I believe in the future when it is legal, let’s say, mushrooms possibly, but ayahuasca.

Still, it’s still, there’s a certain charm to coming to the country of origin. It’s kinda like it’s one thing to eat the Swiss cheese in Brazil or something than to go visit, it’s there’s this it’s a little more complex than cheese with, it’s like a ducks because there is a certain spiritual aspect to connection to the land.

But I think that. Legalization is a good thing as long as they do it properly. You said, you’re growing up in a, the age of trade spotting. I know if people seen this movie, but it’s like really gnarly drugs, aids lots of crime and just difficult times. So speaking about drugs for example, what do you see the potential for the psychedelics to also come in, opioid crisis and just, all the synthetic drugs especially given the situation with your friend what have you noticed?

Joe Vaughan: Yeah, so interestingly, Scotland which has a kind of a very shameful sort of statistical record on drugs deaths. So proportionally Scotland does very badly and is kinda top of the league tables for drugs deaths.

So there’s a real realization in Scotland that you know, that something has to be done about this. So they’re, but they’re, what they’re kinda looking at is, and it’s all very noble and it’s all very good, and I’m not criticizing anyone, but they’re talking about, having safe places to do injections, having, clean needles and, things like that.

And obviously, support networks, but. But to me it doesn’t really get to the root cause of why people are doing it in the first place. And and as I say with my friend, if he was a intravenous drug user, I saw the difference in him, with, and I know it’s only one person.

It’s an anecdotal, it’s anecdotal evidence, but. Yeah, I do. I do see a huge opportunity for a fresh look at this. And Scotland has a devolved government, so Scotland is obviously part of the United Kingdom. There’s obviously the central government in London, but there’s also a set of devolved responsibilities in Edinburgh.

And I think health is one of them, or health is one of them. And I saw see that there’s a huge potential to raise awareness in, in, in certain areas. I know there’s people talking about even within the police forces themselves, people, people are looking at potentially, advocating for a fresh look at the PTSD, which is in involved in policing itself.

There, there are areas that I’m, it’s gonna be a longer game potentially with obviously the police forces. Police force are gonna be, nipping over to do ayahuasca anytime soon. There’s no way. Not right now, but, maybe down the line.

But yeah, I think absolutely right. There’s a huge opportunity for a fresh look for some, some pilot studies to take some, just have a look at and let’s get the data. If the data they need. Let’s get the data. If they’re not, if they’re not making the decision because they don’t have the data.

Let’s get them the data then. And I know that with the psychedelic community, there’s a lot of people who think it should be not medicalized. That there should be, it should be, there’s a de there’s a decrim movement, there’s a decrim nature movement. There’s the, it should be, spiritual only there, there’s purists within the psychedelics community.

But I personally am, I’m like. If it’s data they want, let’s give them the data that they want. If it has to be done in a clinical setting, it has to be done in a clinical setting. If it needs to be done, okay, fine. Like you say, there are enough places, in Europe, in Amster, in Holland, for example.

Where people can go. It’s only a hop skip from the jump from, the UK to Holland to do it completely legally. So you know that will be happening as well. So we, I guess they’ve gotta do it on all frauds, right? People who are called to do it safely and responsibly can go to Holland, have the experience come back.

Hopefully they. Come back with a positive, story and just help them hopefully. And then at the same time we can do the clinical trials and then we can maybe join the whole thing up. And we just keep advocating, keep trying to raise awareness, keep trying to stress that it’s not just pure hedonism, it’s not reckless and hedonistic, it’s intentional and therapeutic.

Sam Believ: Those are very good words and hopefully somebody will hear you, Joe. But yeah, that’s, thank you for, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story and sharing your passion and I really hope that, but those, let’s do another episode. 10 years from now when you have achieved your goal and we can celebrate together.

Joe Vaughan: I would love to know your story. I dunno much about, about what you’re doing, but obviously I. I’d love to maybe switch it around and have and ask you about how you got from you, you

Sam Believ: gotta, you gotta start a podcast then. This is how it works.

Although by far is very simple. I am a 36-year-old man from Lavia originally I used to work in offshore and gas with bunch of people from Scotland, including, and about eight years ago I got I was, I was really successful and I had a lot, I was making a lot of money and I reached everything that society told me.

By reaching, I will be happy. But happiness never came. So I started traveling, quit my job, quit my relationship, ended up in Colombia and then started working with ayahuasca, changed my life, and now I’m running arguably the best rated Ayahuasca retreat in South America. And definitely one of the biggest.

And with, I’m focusing on very. Affordable retreats, authentic with, the real shaman and good care, good integration. Trying to find that grounded balance, as you said, not too much beans and and a white line cloth, but like trying to show that it’s Itasca is potentially for everyone.

If you’re having an issue, you can come and experience it and you don’t have to be a certain kind of person to do it. And, we battle fear with trust. I have we have close to 500, five star reviews on Google and 200 plus video testimonials so people can see them and over time hopefully believe that it is not that dangerous if done properly.

But that’s my story

Joe Vaughan: in a very short, that will, I’d love to, introduce you to some of the people that we’re working with because there’s such an important need for for. People like yourself who operate with integrity because unfortunately, sadly, it’s not always the case.

And particularly, vulnerable people, women need to be, need to have that absolute guarantee that they’re safe and that they’re being handled with care. Because obviously the increase in an interest in this is gonna, it’s gonna attract people at anything that attracts people, attracts money, and anything attracts money, attracts, humanity, humanity at its worst.

No, I have, great respect for what you’re doing. And, if the stars aligned, then maybe one day we’ll sit together.

Sam Believ: Every, it looks like every time you go to drink ayahuasca, go to a different place. So I’m assuming the time has come for you to switch a country as well and experience Jaha, Columbia, ayahuasca.

I think you’re gonna enjoy it then. Yeah, we definitely, I’m really proud of what we have created here. It would be great for you to see it and experience it yourself. So you are invited. It’s an official invitation.

Joe Vaughan: Amazing. And I really dig forward to it. When it happens, it’ll be the right, it will be the right thing.

’cause always is, that’s the magic of these things, right? It’s it’s always the right thing. When done with, proper intention and with a pure heart.

Sam Believ: Thank you Joe. And where can people fight you or some of our. Listeners from uk, we actually had people participate that were even in the UK government.

So you never know where can they find you and maybe even

Joe Vaughan: support your cause. The psilocybin access rights is called Par Global, so PAR global, across Instagram and all the usual suspects. That’s the psilocybin access rights campaign. I wanna give a shout out to Heroic Hearts ’cause I’m also an ambassador for Heroic Hearts.

Heroic Hearts is, there’s a US version, there’s a UK version, there’s an Australian version, and there’s a Canadian version. So Heroic Hearts big shout out to them. So that’s quite easy to find. And then Athletes Journey Home, which is the new kind of advocacy vehicle for athletes for, head injury, gambling, addictions, eating disorders, and so on.

So those three things. Global Heroic Hearts and Athletes Journey Hall.

Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing that. We are yeah, I spoke to Ian. Ian McCain or McCall? Ian McCall. McCall. Yeah, we he was the one who introduced me to me, to you. And he’s thinking about coming here in October to, to the wire. So maybe you can join them and, yeah, the, I definitely, I had TBII used to do boxing actually, when I was a teenager.

And I had pretty regular headache. I don’t know if it was ayahuasca that helped me, but probably it definitely didn’t hurt me. ’cause yet there’s some good science showing that psychedelics can help you restore that beaten brain. But for that, go back about maybe 10 episodes. You find my episode with XCFC champion Ian McCall and,

Joe Vaughan: yeah. Yeah. Ian’s a co. I co he’s the founder of the Athletes Journey Home Venture in the us. And I grew up with a boxer, a guy called Ken Buchanan. He was a world champion. He fought Reversal Duran in Madison Square Gardens. So boxing is very close to my heart.

And and I, and if we could find something that can just make the lives of those boxers better as they, when they finish their careers. Yeah, it would be something that would be, almost like a dream, for me to be able to help help people to kinda find that solution.

And I’m always very clear I’m not saying this is the magic bullet. It can be, but, miracles do happen. But I’m saying, it’s, it can be it can be part of the solution. And I’m convinced of it, but part of the solution, it’s not the one and only solution.

Sam Believ: Yeah, those are very wise words. The work will need to be done by you. There is no escape from that. Guys you were listening to Ayahuasca podcast. Hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a conversation with Joe Bone. I will add all the lakes in the description. Joe, thank you for coming on the show.

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