cPTSD, The Climate Crisis, and Healing Trauma with Coral Reefs and Ayahuasca | Greg Wrenn (189)

Hello everyone and welcome back to Adventures Through the Mind. I'm your host as always James W. Jesso and this is a podcast that explores topics relevant and related to psychedelic culture, medicine and research, always with the underlying question of how can we work with and through our psychedelic experiences to become better people, not just for ourselves but for all those with whom

we are nested in relationship. This episode is going to be about complex post-traumatic stress disorder also called CPTSD as well as the climate crisis and how our guest Greg Wrenn managed to heal his CPTSD through coral reefs and ayahuasca. A former Stegner fellow at Stanford University, Greg Wrenn is the author of Mothership, a memoir of Wonder and Crisis which is an evidence-based account of his turning to ayahuasca and endangered coral reefs to heal from complex PTSD. Mothership

was actually awarded the Brittingham Prize in Poetry which is pretty cool. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in the Huffington Post, the New Republic, Al Jazeera, the Rumpus and elsewhere. As an associate English professor at James Madison University, he weaves climate change science into literary studies. A student of ayahuasca for five years, he lives in Shenandoah Valley (I don't actually know how to pronounce that in the he lives in the Shenandoah Valley with his husband

and their growing family of trees). We're welcoming Greg onto the show to explore his experiences with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and how it was that his exploration of coral reefs and his journeys with ayahuasca turned the tide on his lifelong struggle with the condition. Additionally, as both his experience and healing from complex PTSD is intertwined with his journalism on climate science, we also explore how the ecological and psychological effects of the climate crisis

weave into our personal and collective experiences and expressions of trauma. Enjoy! Before we get into the interview featured on this episode, I'd like to ask a quick favor.

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and I very much appreciate you doing so. And without any further ado, here's the interview. Greg Wrenn, welcome to Adventures Through the Mind. Oh, so grateful to be here. So, uh, now you didn't know I was going to ask you this, so I'm going to start it off before I even present your book and just tell you that there was a moment of personal excitement when I was reading

Mothership. And that was when you were talking about E.T., the extraterrestrial. And you mentioned E.T. was one of the prevailing mythologies of your childhood and the other one was Star Trek. Oh, absolutely. And that got me excited because I was like, yes, another one, another one in the group, in my mind of people I have known or encountered that hold Star Trek in good reverence because I love it. It's very near and dear to my heart. Oh, so who's your favorite next generation character?

Next gen character? Well, I don't know who would be my favorite character, but I would say that, let's say I have two favorite episodes that I think reveal a really beautiful moment in, you know, who would be everyone's favorite character, which is Jean-Luc Picard. And it's the episode where Data quote dies

slash he doesn't, they just thought he died. And Picard, that's like a close friend of his. And he has to like hold it together for the entire crew as the captain and show like we just must continue on. But you could see it's just like, he's just so riddled with grief, but he has to just hold it together. And it's like the next episode or the episode after that, which is where he's holding the emotional load for Spock's father, Serak, because Serak is suffering from like Vulcan

dementia and can't contain his emotions. So they do this mind meld where he just processes all of Serak's like greater amplitude than humans experience all his emotions so that Serak can stay in logic for this like meeting. And you just see Picard like Beverly Crusher holding his hand and he's just like bawling and just so much pain and grief and sadness. And those two together just feels like, I don't know, something around masculinity and like, and just really beautiful for me. And I,

every time I've seen the Serak episode, I cry. I can't help it. It's just so moving for me. So that'll be my response to who my favorite character is. Well, I mean, yes, I think my favorite character is Captain Picard also. And I think that he, I mean, the book is called Mothership, but in, you know, really Jean Picard was my father.

He was the father figure that I looked up to and in my imagination, you know, I kind of, I guess, imagined it sometimes almost like an alternate life with him, like being on the enterprise. I think I was probably secretly jealous of what of Wesley. Yeah. So yeah, he's a real inspiration, a hero in addition to E.T. Right. But we'll leave E.T. aside because people want to get into reading Mothership, which I have my copy right here. I see the copy. Hey, hello.

They can hear what, where and how E.T. falls into the larger arc if they read. So let's get into the actual Bulk Lee interview. I appreciate every opportunity to nerd out a little bit about Star Trek, but that's not why I have you here. Absolutely. Or maybe secretly is why I had you here and the rest of the podcast. Wow. Just an excuse. But I'll talk about warp drives anytime. What about dilithium crystals and? Oh, that's so OG.

Anyway, so Greg, you are the author of Mothership, a memoir of wonder and crisis, a book that explores your journey with D.P.T.S.D. and seemingly, at least by the end, coming to some level of substantial healing through the journey you went on in relationship to coral reefs and ayahuasca, which is a wild pairing I have not seen yet anyway. And we're also connected through Rachel Harris, previous guest on the show and someone whose work I look up to quite a bit. So it's nice to have you here.

It's great to be here. It's great to be here. So big question, I suppose. Take it off in whatever bite size amounts you'd like. But I want to start the interview now with the question of what is C.P.T.S.D.? OK, James. So complex PTSD, C.P.T.S.D. is the result of prolonged repeated abuse or trauma from which you cannot escape. And that

trauma, that abuse is interpersonal in nature. So it's different from kind of classic PTSD or kind of single index trauma, as they say in the textbooks, because in that, the veteran, the traumatized veteran is in the forest. He hears the gun shot from the deer hunter in the distance and he's brought back to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. For me, my trigger was bonding with other people and bonding with other people brought me back to the battlefield of my

family, of my upbringing. And so it's a disorder of trust in the end. And it makes really dropping your defenses and bonding with another person panic inducing. And there are a whole host of symptoms that I can go into, which I think might be good for people to kind of know what some of those symptoms are. But basically, like classic PTSD, there are panic attacks, there are flashbacks and nightmares that occur. And those flashbacks can be visual. But for me, more often than not,

those flashbacks were emotional flashbacks. So I'm like, so feelings from when I was two or three or 10 are coming back. Hypervigilance, which is a classic PTSD symptom as well. So chronic anxiety, intense feelings of just being on edge. As I said, CPTSD is a disorder of trust. It's also known as relational trauma. So it's trauma that happens in relationship with another person. And so this persistent distrust of others, difficulty feeling safe with others. I mean,

it's uncomfortable to be around people sometimes, or often for a lot of people. But being uncomfortable is different than like truly feeling unsafe and having your alarm bells be going off when you're in a very benign kind of social situation. Persistent sadness, depression, suicidal thoughts, emotional dysregulation. So not being able to control your emotions. Sometimes that can manifest as explosive anger. A big one would also be dissociation. So just the feeling of not being

real, of being disconnected from yourself and your feelings. And for me, it was also just this chronic sense of being dirty, of being worthless, of being broken, irreparably broken, worthless. And then actually, because I know we're going to be talking about the climate crisis a little bit today, the environmental crisis, and these are actually related symptoms, loss of faith, or a sense of hopelessness about the future. And then kind of at its core, this feeling,

even a conviction, a conviction that life has no purpose or meaning. So those are some of the symptoms. And I should say another big symptom is addiction, compulsions, compulsive behavior. And why do people with CPTSD struggle-- and PTSD, why do they struggle with addiction? They struggle with addiction because that is their system's best attempt to feel better, to keep the traumatic memories and flashbacks at bay, and to just try their best to feel OK in the world.

And so with complex PTSD, there's something called annihilation panic that can come up, which is actually related to, I think, a feeling that comes up sometimes for people in psychedelic experiences. But for someone with CPTSD, annihilation panic is the feeling that you are going to disappear, that you're going to just turn into this scream. It's really hard to put into words, but it's like you almost become this black hole. But it's not during a psychedelic

experience. It's when maybe you've been dating someone, and they just disappear. And then there's this feeling-- a normal neurotypical person might be upset about that and cry or whatnot. But someone with CPTSD, they might feel like-- just what I was saying, this annihilation panic. And so the only way to come out of that annihilation panic, almost like a defibrillator to the system, is what's been called a major jolt to the body. And so that could be alcohol,

it could be sex, it could be drugs. But this kind of compulsive behavior, it also is a best attempt to get out of this black hole and become a person again. So that gives people a sense of what CPTSD is, what complex PTSD, also known as developmental trauma, or again, relational trauma. Because it's all about that relationship you had when you were a child with your caregiver

that was so traumatic you could not leave. And so you have a working model about humanity based on that experience, based on those years with that caregiver, you have a working model of what humanity is all about. And so how could you trust anyone? And when people learn a little bit more about my backstory, they might understand why. It's been really hard to trust people.

So that's kind of an overview of it. Yeah, excellent. Can you, this is a process level, there's a gain on the back of your mic, can you turn it down ever so slightly? The top knob, so you turn it up. Is that better? Yes. Yes. Is that better? Or should I do it more? No, no, that's good. That's good. Okay, great. Because it's when you get it, the way that it was set, you're redlining when you're talking past, like mostly not, but then you're redlining. And

so it sounds crackly. Right. Okay. So thank you. All right. Thank you for that description. You know, you spoke to some of the, you spoke to a number of the symptoms and sort of pointed out how you would experience them. I'm wondering a condition like this, any kind of mental health condition, any kind of medical condition, doesn't, there's the symptoms and how they come up. And then there's the impact of a disease state is truly not just what's happening in the body or in the mind.

It is also how that, how that what happening in the body and mind impacts one's life, their ability to live in the world, their ability to sustain relationships, et cetera. And each person, overall, there might be some categories, some generalizations, some sort of common characteristics, but it'll look different in every person's life, unique to that person. Right. How did your CPTSD manifest for you in your life? It manifested for me in a lot of isolation,

manifested through a lot of isolation. I won't get into this too much on, on, on air, but people can read more about it in my book, but definitely compulsive behavior. So, you know, compulsive behavior, I definitely was, I'll just leave it at this, kind of married to my smartphone and married to certain websites. And, and in the process, really put myself, you know, in, in meeting, in meeting strangers, I'll just, I think people can read between the lines, in, in meeting strangers,

you know, really put myself in danger, you know, really, really put myself in danger. And I, and I talk about this in the book. And, and so it was very, it was very hard to be in relationships with a lot of depth and vulnerability because they scared me too much. I kind of went through the motions of it. You know, like I could show up for two hours at a party and be on, and then I would want to run home and get back on my computer. Right. And, and I know a lot

of men struggle with this. And it's, you know, it's something that's, that's, that's really hard. But yeah, I think, I think, I think from the outside, I looked like someone who was, you know, really successful and in some, and by, by some measures I was and am really successful. But that, that involved me being alone a lot, right? That involved me isolating from people.

And in between acting out, I would, I would work on a book or I would, you know, you know, do, do things, do things to get accolades, I guess you could say, because I'm a writer,

I'm a, I'm a professor. So I think that it looked like a lot of isolation. It looked, I think sometimes I often, I probably looked happy to people, but I had a really difficult time, you know, forming those forming relationships with people that, you know, where I, you know, really felt, really felt seen and heard because, you know, a lot of bizarre things happened to me as a kid, you know, I'm not special in that. A lot of people have abusive, you know, childhoods. They come from

families that are not exactly a good match for them. And so, you know, there's nothing, I'm not special in that by any stretch of the imagination. But it's, you know, it was a very bizarre childhood and you can't go around telling people that. And so I always, you even, you know, I'm a gay man. I came out when I was in high school, but I didn't really come out, you know, like I couldn't, I didn't come out and say, tell people what had happened to me as a kid.

And, you know, and there were people that I confided in about it. But it was, it was like, if people only really knew the depths of my mortification, the depths of how I've been humiliated, they wouldn't want to be my friend. And so they got a kind of cartoon version of myself. And so it was- The version that you felt would be most accepted, the version that you felt you needed to be in order for people to think you were valuable, worthy. Yes. A clown, I could be

wise. I could be a clown. I could be, you know, supportive in the moment. I was a very good listener because I didn't like to talk a whole lot. Now I like talking more. But so it was, it was, it was really, it was really hard, but you know, it also looked like, you know, but there were also, I guess having CPTSD, you know, there's some superpowers that come from that.

Like, I'm really good at meditating. I'm really good at being alone. I like being alone. And I think that, you know, being on, going on these silent meditation retreats in my twenties and thirties, they really prepared me for psychedelic experiences, which I didn't grow up even smoking pot. You know, I didn't really even start smoking pot until I was in my thirties. I didn't, I never, I've never really drunk alcohol. Like I just, you know, so, so meditation really, really prepared

me for my first psychedelic experiences in my late, you know, in my, in my late thirties. And so that was also a really good kind of superpower that came from it. But yeah, at the end of the day, often I felt more like an open wound than a person and I'm using the past tense. Yeah. So I'm sure we will get to that. So, so I mean, I think anyone listening recognizes that,

you know, a trauma of any variety is going to be difficult to resolve. But from what I understand, you know, complex PTSD, there's like a extra level of complexity there because it's so oftentimes associated to events that happened prior to even being able to turn on, you know, declarative or

explicit memory. They're just so buried into one sort of nervous system and sense of self that they don't even have a time or a place that they existed or, you know, the series of events that seemed to propagate it, you know, started before series events can even, could even be recalled. And so because of that, no place, no time means any place, any time, and it can be very difficult to get to the root of or to heal. For yourself personally, what struggles did you face in the

healing process? That's a great question. Well, I think my go-to as it is for a lot of people is talk was, you know, was talk therapy. That was my go-to. And so, but if the act of bonding with another person can be panic inducing, then it's really tricky. It's really tricky because at the end of the day, what is therapy? Big part of therapy, especially for someone with CPTSD, is exposure therapy, right? And so the exposure was, okay, I'm going to talk about what happened

to me. I'm going to be in the presence of this angelic being who I'm paying $120 an hour to listen to me. And I'll just feel that fear and work through it. And eventually I'll stop my addiction and I'll feel okay. And I'll learn to trust again. I'll have that corrective experience that they were so hell bent on giving me. Oh, exactly as the textbooks describe, right? Exactly as the textbooks describe. And so, but no, right? For me, that felt invasive

often and it felt scary. And as I say in the book, and I give some pretty juicy examples, some of these therapists needed considerably more help than I did. And so it, talk therapy was, you know, was something that I engaged in for two decades. I don't want to even add up all the copays and the money I spent doing that. But it kept me afloat, right? It kept me from really treading water. It kept me from killing myself, frankly. I'll just be blunt, okay? It's hard to

say, right? It kept me from killing myself. It kept me going. But, you know, there's a business model there. You know, they would sort of say provocative things like at minute 49 and then, oh, it's time to go. I guess we'll talk about that next time. And so it became, you know, the business model became very clear to me and I began to resent it. And I also just wasn't, you know, as you were saying, it's like I wasn't really getting to the root of what was the root

of all of it. And so, and then of course, some people will be able to resonate with this. I think some of your listeners will be able to resonate with this, you know, Zoloft, Prozac, Selexa. I can't even remember all the names of the different SSRIs, antidepressants that I took. You know, they just, they did very little. They did very, very little. So I don't know. I, you know,

those were the things, you know, and I, you know, I worked, I went to yoga class. But frankly, yoga, like after yoga, I would just feel devastated. I don't know, I would feel like, I would feel annihilation panic after yoga. Because yeah, it's moving all this energy and it's, you know, all this energy is becoming unstuck. And, and it didn't really help. You don't have a context to actually like process that in a good

way. You're just left wide open and streaming all this emotion. Right. And I didn't even have a CPTSD diagnosis then. I was just like, I'm crazy. There is something wrong with me. I'm defective, you know. So, so I was really, James, I was really stumped on what to do. And I could see myself engaging in riskier and riskier behavior with, with, with strangers. And, and so, you know, I, you know, I did end up, I did end up going to Peru, you know, to work with ayahuasca.

And, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? A spoiler. It worked out well for you, but we'll get there. Yeah, it worked out well. And I should say also, I'm skipping over something really important, which was the scuba diving, the snorkeling, like going to these islands, which we can talk about more, but you know, that was a, that was really helpful to, to go to this, to, to go to these reefs and be in silence. Just like meditation was a huge support for me.

And, you know, what we can go, we can go into more detail about this, but I'll just say, like working with these endangered coral reefs, working with them, like being in relationship with these endangered coral reefs that were, are just absolutely stunning, you know, still stunning. While the rest of the world's reefs are bleaching and dying, you know, to spend time with these reefs in the middle of nowhere was so incredible. And I was there seemingly as an environmental

journalist trying to document these reefs before they disappear. But really I was, you know, I was engaging not in equine or horse therapy, but I was engaging in coral therapy. I was, I was, I was developing the ability to feel safe in relationship with other beings. And so I developed that new kind of benchmark for that. And so I, I knew after those experiences underwater, I, you know, many, many experiences underwater, you know, I went there five or six times. It was not

a, just a one time thing. You know, I sort of internalized, okay, this is what safety could feel like in, in relationship with another, another creature. Let's, I want to, I'm going to ask you more about that in just a second. I want to bridge into the climate, climate crisis. How do you feel your, your personal experience of, of, of trauma? I'm just going to say trauma now,

instead of the mouthful of CPTSD. Right. How does your, got it. How does your, how did your personal experience with trauma and how, how it was sort of like showing up in your life and in your work, how did it connect with the climate crisis and how, like, how do you see it connecting? You could do that on like a, like a large level, broad scale, or you could bring it down to the personal level or both. I'll leave that to you. Sure. Right. Cause so I say in the book,

you know, the personal is ecological, the ecological is personal. That's really abstract. What does that really mean? You know, how does someone really live into this experience of, you know, being able to connect your personal trauma with kind of planetary pain or the ecological crisis or whatnot. And so I will, I will say something. I'll be very, very, I'm going to take a sip of coffee here because it's always good to take a little sip of coffee before you say something

that's a little scary. Well, that's sweet bean residue does give us courage. Yes. And thank goodness the coffee is related to chacruna. So, you know, we're in, we're in business. So I sort of answer your question really pointedly. So I was abused by my mom in water until I was almost an adult. And so that's what I'll say about that. But that is not gratuitous. As you know, that's not gratuitous information. That information is really important in answering your question.

Because he, my mom, yes, my mom was my abuser. I could not escape. And it was harrowing. And so I needed to be remothered. I had deep mother wounds. And so what I could, you know, and I think, I think my, I think my addictive behaviors were an expression of my desire to be remothered in a weird way. You know, I think, I think my experiences on meditation retreats, like, like I've always heard, you know, I've heard meditation described as kind of reparenting,

a form of reparenting, which was really helpful. But also to be to be in water, right? I said, what I just said about my mom, what she did to me in water, right? Like to be in water, to be in the ocean. I, you know, I first, so in a sense, that was its own kind of exposure therapy, like being in water and being with these beautiful dying creatures. You know, I was nine when I first saw my, you know, first saw a coral reef. I grew up in Florida. A lot of Canadians come down, I know,

to our state. And so I was nine when I snorkeled my first reef. And, you know, those, yes, those were beautiful dying ecosystems, even at that time. And no one said that they were dying. I don't think anyone even knew they were dying, but I knew they were dying. And so the set and I was, you know, I'm holding hands with my mom, my family is, we're all in our water together snorkeling.

And so, you know, neurons that, you know, wire that fire together, wire together, you know, somehow for me, the sadness I felt at those reefs, being in the presence of these, these beautiful dying creatures and the pain that I felt growing up in my family, that got intertwined for me, somehow, some way. And my magical thinking was, all I have to do is find a pristine, healthy reef. And that trauma circuitry can just be kind of pulled out of my brain and I can be healed,

I can be remothered, I can be restored to innocence. And that's really what we want for the planet, in a sense, is to be restored to its innocence. Impossible at this point, but that's what I think a lot of us yearn for. So I think that, I think that under, so going to Raja Ampat, going to these islands in Indonesia that are so remote, that shelter the most biodiverse reefs in the world and some of the last intact coral reefs on the planet, you know, being underwater, I met

Mother Earth face to face. And, you know, coral even has little uric acid eye spots, so it can, it can see. It was looking at me. I know it was looking at me. I was looking at it. And to spend time with that, with those creatures, to spend time with manta rays, dugongs, which are like a really large manatee, you know, moray eels, orangutan crabs with orange fur. I mean, insanely beautiful, you could even say psychedelic creatures. You know, I developed a relationship with them.

And I felt safe. I wasn't afraid of sharks. I like sharks. I don't like jellyfish, but I'll look at a jellyfish from afar. You know, I like everything under the ocean. Even the banded sea snake, which is so poisonous. It's beautiful. Looks like the Hamburglar's snake. But anyway, so being underwater like that, yes, I felt the beauty and the love from these creatures. But I also, just

like I did when I was in Florida at age nine, you know, I'm so instead I'm 35. I'm underwater with these creatures and I'm feeling the pain of having contributed to their decline for unintentionally helping to destroy these creatures, which are so, so sensitive to temperature. And so, and then so I'm feeling this ecological pain. It's, you know, I know the Great Barrier Reef at that time is bleaching and dying. It's in a far worse bleaching event actually right now

as we speak. But I felt that ecological pain. But I also, because I was so relaxed and because I didn't have my drug of choice, there was no Wi-Fi signal, there was no cell signal, childhood flashbacks came up for me in a really big way. But I was able to kind of experience those because I had the kind of the safety that I felt with these reefs. So it gave me a taste, as I said a little earlier, of what it's like to feel safe in relationship with another creature.

I never forgot that. And I had to go back home. And going back home, I was confronted with the shit, the dystopian shit show that we live in. And, you know, we're soon kind of back to square one. But I never forgot that feeling. And so I think that is, I think this, you know, being with these reefs, being with these reefs, I was able to kind of, you know, the planetary and the personal

really got blurred for me. And I feel that, you know, that these childhood flashbacks, but also these ecological flash forwards, like imagining what the planet will be like in 2030, 2040, 2050, in my lifetime and in your lifetime, you know, those childhood flashbacks and those, you know, ecological flash forwards, they felt eerily similar because I felt panic, I felt doom. And frankly, I don't have a starship yet entrapment. This is our planet. We can't really leave very easily.

So those are some ways that, you know, that my trauma kind of, you know, got me to maybe understand the ecological crisis and feel into it. But, you know, also, we live in a society that is so divorced from nature. And when you're that divorced from nature, and that divorced from your body, and divorced from elders with true wisdom, when you're that divorced from common sense, which is what we've what the situation I think that we're in right now, there's going to be

psychiatric problems. There are going to be psychiatric problems, right. And so, in a way, what my mom did to me was it makes sense. Like, she was she was trying to clean me, right. She was trying to purify me. And in a way, that's kind of what we want to do to the planet. You know, and so I, you know, and in a way, I see, you know, I see my family, or really any family, or any aspect of our culture as being a kind of a microcosm for the larger climate crisis, right. So it's just,

it's gimme gimme gimme. And we see that in abusive situations, we see that in addict, people with addictions, you know, they're unable to stop the gimme gimme gimme. And the carbon industrial complex that we've created in our culture, that too is that too is gimme gimme gimme, and it will be our undoing. Traumatized and traumatizing the way that you mentioned it, it's like so disconnected from the living world that there's no sense of the amount of abuse

that's happening to the living world while they gimme gimme gimme. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, so those aren't sort of, you know, those are, it's like, it's like the, it's like when I think about the ecological crisis, it helps me better understand my trauma.

And then when I think about my trauma, it's also a way into understanding, like, like, like, when I, when I remember myself as an addict, you know, that was, I was kind of a, you know, I, I'm kind of a microcosm of the larger, the larger system of 8 billion people, all trying to, you know, to all wanting more, you know, and then because that's, that's the dopamine, that's, that's,

that's how we, that's how we're wired. So I think that, you know, I, I feel that, you know, my mom's abuse of me really gave me, in some ways, it was the greatest blessing of my life, because not only did it prepare me to be underwater, to meet Mother Earth face to face, right, but it also led me to meet Mother Ayahuasca, Madra Ayahuasca, and to which, and Ayahuasca itself, like that, I think of that as an eco sacrament, I think of that as an activator

of ecological conscience. And so that too enabled me to, you know, the next morning after a ceremony, you know, hearing the illegal loggers in the Amazon going at it in the forest, like, you don't, you don't forget that, you know, the rainforest saved my life, Mother Earth saved my life. And so I feel very passionate about, you know, I guess you could say, Mother Earth healed my personal trauma. And so now I feel compelled to reciprocate and try and ease the planetary suffering, the

ecological pain that's, that's, that's, that's going on. So a lot of, lot of ways to get at that, at that question. And it's, it's, it's, but it's, it's, it's something that's, it's really near and dear to my heart. It's really thinking about, you know, this, you know, that the humanity and cult, excuse me, nature and culture, nature and human culture, like, we really need to blur that

distinction. And we also need to blur the distinction between personal and planetary trauma, because what is planetary trauma, but the sum of all the injuries that all these different beings, many of whom are not human beings, are experiencing. Like, it's all just, it's all, it's the sum of that, I think. So, so it's a, it's a great question. I think I might even write a second book just to

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And if you'd like to just be able to be in the know on what I'm doing without having to put in any financial energy at this time, then you're welcome to become a free member as well, both of which are much appreciated. And again, you can do so by heading to patreon.com/jameswjesso, links to which will be in the description to this episode, wherever you're checking it out. Now back to the interview. Well, I like that you started moving towards upwards, towards a more sort of general

scope near the end there. And I want to stay up there for a couple of minutes. This is a question that has two sides. It's something like, what is your thoughts on how the climate crisis is affecting, like directly affecting the mental health of people personally and collectively? And the other side of the question is, what do you feel is the role that the impact that being in and connected with the living world plays in our mental health and our inner wellbeing? How is the damage arming?

How is the being with healing? And obviously we can flip those and see them as contributing to each other, but that's the two sides of the question. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Absolutely. So I think the weird kind of, the weird situation that we're in is that some, many of us, again, I'm not special. A lot of people are doing this. They turn to nature for healing. And yet as they turn to nature for healing, nature itself is in need of healing.

So that's not the sort of Henry David Thoreau kind of transcendentalist, John Muir way of thinking about things, I don't think. There's really something very reciprocal there. And so I'll say in terms of how the climate crisis is affecting people's mental health, I mean, I think that the chemicals in our water and in our air and the microplastics in our water and in our air and in our food,

the, probably the 5G signals from wifi, the list goes on and on. Like there are actual environmental, there's actual pollution, you could say, in our environment that is causing our brains to be, it's not helping our mental health. It's affecting our brains, it's affecting our bodies, it's affecting our microbiome, just the crap that people eat. 90% of our serotonin is produced in our guts. And if you're like the average person eating junk, that's not good. Of course you're

not happy. Of course you're anxious. And then we've got TikTok and all this other crap that's on our phone. And so it's, yeah, I mean, I think that our environment right now in the broadest sense, like the human environment that we live in is so, it's making us crazy. It's making us crazy. We're not meant to live, it's like our genes and our evolutionary heritage and our habitat, which is largely 90% indoors with all the things I just named, all the pollutants and things. Like that's

a gross mismatch. That's not what we need. And also we're so alone where we need tribes. And so I think that the crisis is the climate crisis. You could say, yes, it's a climate crisis, but it's even bigger than climate. It's also just the environment in general. It's just not, like nothing feels, maybe some of your listeners have heard of solastalgia, which is grieving,

it's the pain of no longer recognizing where you live anymore. And so when it is hot, when your sky is covered in smoke like yours was and mine was last summer, when it's January and it's hot or warm here in Virginia, just subtle things like that, or not so subtle things like that, that affects our mental health in big ways. Because we stop having, we cease to have those external markers of safety. Like it's summer, it's going to be warm, but not like a furnace.

And so this is really affecting us. And I think also too, my working with young people as a professor, an English professor, many of them are, I think a lot of them are very uncertain about the long-term habitability of the planet. I think a lot of them are unsure about what organized human life is going to look like if it exists at all by the time they're my age. So I think there's a lot of pessimism that the climate crisis and the environmental crisis are

engendering in us. And it really is causing people to be off. Research has shown for every 10th of a degree that temperatures go up, there's their X number of more suicides in the United States. I mean, road rage and temperatures have been correlated in research. I mean, it's the links between the environmental crisis and the mental health crisis, I think are much

stronger and much more robust than anyone can imagine. And just sort of having good vibes and keeping your vibe high and FaceTime with grandma or whatever, I don't know. Do all these little self-care things, that is not at all enough. It's not enough. And I don't think really anyone knows what to do about it. I want to touch in on this one thing there is around

this self-care. I hope I don't sound like a pleb speaking past his qualifications here, but I believe it's neoliberalism that sort of focuses on the ultimate responsibility of the individual. And that also falls into health. It's like, oh, from a self-care perspective, like, oh, well, if you're feeling sad and overwhelmed or whatever and yada yada, well, you need to do more self-care. You need to take the time to do the things that are good for you. And if you're not doing it,

well, that's why there's a problem. Understandably, I'm not drinking water. I'm not sleeping. I'm not eating well. Of course I'm contributing to it. My own negative experience, my own detrimental, well, detrimental my wellbeing. But there's also larger social forces at work that have a substantial contribution, social, ecological, et cetera, that are contributing to why I may or may not be more

or less inclined to care for myself or even have the capacity to care for myself. And so this premise of pushing for self-care is a kind of premise of further pushing and pushing onto the individual responsibility for the whole thing when the reality is, yes, we're responsible for our choices personally, but the larger thing that's happening right now is not your fault. It's not my fault.

It isn't even our fault collectively necessarily. It's a larger systemic issue that has continuously progressed over time and is advantageous to the profit motives in the system at large to continuously post responsibility onto the individual because we don't have to worry about the issues of what the fossil fuels are doing and how government politics are unfolding and how industry is unfolding if the problem with the crime of crisis is because you drive your

car too much and you're not recycling. And yeah, I think that's what I wanted to say because when you brought up the whole self-care thing, I felt into that and I felt into this comic I saw during the pandemic, which really caught me, which was these two people, business looking people or doctors, and one of them had a clip pad and they're looking at this koala and it's clung to this root and every tree around it is completely burned down and it's clutching and full of anxiety.

The person just writes like, "Oh, this koala seems to be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and depression. The problem is likely that it's lacking pharmaceuticals. The solution will be this medication or something like that. It probably needs therapy. That should make everything better." Totally ignoring the desolation of its entire environment. I see what you're speaking to, even if we're not conscious of it, that there's this subtle sense of

us, sense in us, like something is wrong beyond us. And that is like holding out the rug in some way. And even, sure, maybe the idea that the planet won't be habitable for humans and somehow generations, maybe that's an unreasonable proposition because we can make it as habitable as we need it to be, but how many species and ecosystems have to collapse in order to sustain our way of life until we have to create a whole new way of life that consumes even more to compensate

for how damaged our environment has become from our previous way of life? And how's that going to impact humans? Right. Oh, wow. I felt like I was processing something there. Part of me. James. Yes. I mean, you're making me think about this somewhat ridiculous concept of the personal carbon footprint. Like, many people, most people don't know this, but that was invented. The notion of the personal carbon footprint was invented by a PR firm that a big

oil company hired. From what I understand, climate change, similar, we used to call it global warming, but it got pushed towards climate change because global warming is actually more frightening. Climate change is normal. Things change. Of course, it's changed. Climate's changed all the time. It goes from summer to winter. It's this weird... Yeah. It's all about the nomenclature. And so we feel guilty about our carbon footprints. And yes, we want to try and live with integrity.

We don't want to release more carbon than we necessarily have to. But I know so many young people, and even people my age, who feel terrible about any time they get on a plane. And I'm just like, why aren't you angry at the oil companies? Why aren't you thinking about their carbon footprint? Why are we not rising up to demand systemic change? It's systemic change, not personal, individual change that's going to save us. And people may not like to hear that. It's true.

And no, the sum of our personal choices doesn't add up to the system. I like to say, psychedelics are really important in evolving our consciousness. They're almost indispensable. And neuroplasticity is the most hopeful word that I know of in the English language. And yes, change will happen one brain at a time. And there are 8 billion plus brains on the planet.

That said, there are about 100 human brains on this planet, maybe 200, that really are deciding-- they have the ability to decide our fate. Or they have an outsized impact on the larger system. Absolutely. Absolutely. And they will decide whether those trillions of dollars worth of oil reserves in the ground come out of the ground. And they can't come out of the ground. If they come out of the ground, we're really fucked. So yeah, systemic change needs to happen.

And systemic change is not just you and me and everybody recycling more, or even you, me, and everyone recycling more and going on ayahuasca ceremonies. That's not enough. Yes. As I like to say, psychedelics, they don't bippity boppity boo turn us into a prince charming ready angel or whatever, or someone who can turn water into wine. But they do prime us for new learning. They prime us for new learning. And they prime us to be more compassionate.

But what you do with that more malleable, coachable brain that you have after psychedelics is up to you. And so we can all do that. But at the end of the day, if there are those 200, 300 people, whatever, who are in power, who are making the wrong choices, it won't matter about our good vibes. It won't matter that my brain has been changed to be more compassionate and more socially concerned or whatnot. So we have to really think about how these systems can be

dismantled. And I don't know what the answer to that question is. But I do know that these systems have to be dismantled. And yes, that has to happen on a personal level. But that is just the beginning. That can maybe turn you into a warrior. And then you can begin to rise up and fight against these terrible systemic problems, systemic bad actors, let's say. And that's part of why I wrote this book is I'm not necessarily someone who goes out and protests. But writing this book is my attempt

to sound the alarm and say, hey, there's a whole other way to think about this. And we need to think about, yes, about our individual choices. But we also have to think about systems. And we have to think about the collective and think more like a collective instead of as sort of neoliberal lone wolves having their self care evenings by driving through Taco Bell or whatever. Taco Bell notwithstanding. I love Taco Bell.

Easiest place to get everything with vegetarian. Anyway, so I thought there was something there. Give me a second. What it looks like is different for everybody. You said, this is why I wrote the book. This is my way. For some people, their way is getting part of like NGOs or direct climate activism, activism, extinction, rebellion, et cetera. And for other people, it looks like making art. And for other people, it looks like being a good person in your community. There's all sorts of

different ways that this can look like. Having a podcast. Sure. Thank you. That's one of the ways that I at least fingers crossed believe I'm helping do good that and the books that I'm writing, the books that I have written. And there's a man that I've had on the show a couple of times now, Sky Otter. And he brought up this really beautiful. Yeah, I know. Isn't that a beautiful name? He brought up this premise of like, we don't need to logically understand the direct causal

line of impact from choice and action to ecological planetary benefit. In fact, if we try to, we're only just going to analysis paralysis and disable ourselves from ever really being able to do any deeply meaningful good. We need to do is like, whatever, whatever we need to do to get deeply in contact with ourselves such that we feel what it is to live in alignment with life.

From there, we act from that place and whatever we do acting from that place, which includes all that we do to endeavor such that we can stay familiar with that place and be in that place that is contributing to a greater good. Even if it doesn't necessarily look like getting down to the street and strapping yourself to a tree or something. Also a lot of love and respect to all the people out there who are putting their bodies and their

livelihoods on the line to sound the alarm and try to do direct activism. That's not where I'm at in my life. But I am really grateful to people that people are doing that. Yeah. It makes me think of karma. The Buddha said, don't try and understand karma. You'll never understand it. You'll never understand cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. Unless you're a Buddha, you'll never understand it. And so it makes what you just said made me think of that. It's like,

you act as wholesomely as you can. You act as ethically as you can as a human being, which is tough, frankly. It's always tough to do the right thing, but you do what you can do. You just make that bet that what you're offering to the world is going to be a benefit, but you never really know. Maybe your actions hurt. Who the hell knows? Maybe you getting healed, someone getting healed or something from psychedelics ended up hurting people in some weird

way. I don't know. We don't know these things, but it's important to keep it simple, I think. And keeping it simple and also being grounded in common sense. And when you think about these big oil companies and how they're responsible, they are responsible for 40, 50 years of misinformation about the link between greenhouse gases that they were producing and climate change, global warming. Let's be grounded in common sense and be like, okay, you all need to change. You all need to change.

And I'm going to stop obsessing about, did I recycle every little bit of paper in a given month? Come on. And feeling bad that maybe you didn't, it's not helpful. It's just not helpful. Within a certain degree, I think shame plays a very important role. Shame and guilt does very important social roles as long as they don't get flipped on their head and then become

toxic and damaging. If I feel slightly ashamed of myself and guilty that I just threw something on the ground instead of putting it in my backpack until I can get to a proper reciprocal for it, I think those are the appropriate feelings to have such that I should endeavor to recycle when possible. I should endeavor to do these things when possible, if possible. And how much good am I going to do in my life if I'm so overwhelmed with the anxiety of all the things that I'm not doing

or can't do that I can't really do anything? Yeah. Let's shift, we're not shifting gears, but I want to turn down a different corner here. What role does being in the living world play in our mental health, in our wellbeing? You could take that larger philosophical down to the neurobiological, microbiological elements, but what role do you see being in the living world and feeling connected with the living world has in our sense of capacity, wellbeing, and even,

pardon me, but like give a shit. I'll just pass it on to you. Sure. There's so many ways to answer that question. I think I can speak from my personal experience, but I could also talk a little bit about the research. So in my personal experience, nature is where I felt at home. I always felt at home in nature, even when there were mosquitoes. Growing up in Florida, you end up not caring so much about those.

I felt at home there. I felt like I belonged there. I felt safe there. I could feel at peace there. I think that just to have that feeling of coming home, that is indispensable to being a healthy person, to being a healthy human being, I think is to be in rest and digest, frankly, instead of fight flight. Being in nature helps us come out of fight flight and helps us, we know that it lowers cortisol levels in the bloodstream, which is an important stress hormone, lowers blood

pressure. When we go camping for a couple of nights, maybe people have experienced this, their sleep improves dramatically. So we begin to align with the true rhythms of the earth and the sky and the days and the nights. That feeling of homecoming is such a balm. It is the balm, and it's also a balm. I think too, being in nature, going forest bathing, which is called shinrin-yoku in Japanese. Some of your readers, some of your listeners might know about this.

Going out into a forest and just having a slow, unplugged walk in nature and taking in the fight insides, which are these aerosolized essential oils that trees produce, those have remarkable mental health benefits. There are a preponderance of negatively charged air ions by the ocean and at waterfalls and in forests. These negatively charged air ions help improve our mood as well. Then just being in a forest too, and I talk about this in mothership, after my first ayahuasca

ceremonies, I went to the most biodiverse part of the Amazon to integrate my experiences. I fantasized about what exactly was I breathing in? I was probably breathing in bacteria from the buttholes of giant river otters. I was probably breathing in pollen from dozens of different plants. It just goes on and on, all the different things that I was breathing in.

Especially going to places that are really biodiverse, some of the temperate rainforests, even thinking about in Western Canada, just these incredibly biodiverse places. When you go to those places, you're breathing in all that wonderful bacteria and other critters, and it does find its way into your gut. It improves mental health, it improves physical health. I think too, just to circle back for a moment, when we're in nature, we develop a relationship

hopefully. We're developing a relationship with Mother Earth. Some people might think that sounds woo-woo or something, but humanity has known that they were children of Mother Earth for tens of thousands of years, probably hundreds of thousands of years. We've known this forever. That's not woo-woo. That's the truth. The lie that our civilization embodies is that we can do it without her, or that we can control her, or we can just live indoors for 93% of our lives, as the EPA

says we do. We can spend our lives eating crap, living indoors for 93% of our lives, and things will be okay. On a world with 13,000 nuclear warheads, I don't think so. Where does grief fit into all of this? There's a lot of grief, but I think that I've spent my life grieving. I've spent my life feeling terrible about myself and regretting my upbringing and regretting the past. I hate to say it, but I don't have time to grieve. I feel like I need to be

working. I need to be talking. I need to be reading. I need to be doing what I'm doing right now, having this conversation with you. Right now, at least, I feel like I don't have time to be sad because I don't want to be immobilized by it. Is grief and regret and sadness, are those synonyms for each other? In my mind, grief contains those feelings, but grief isn't

any of those things necessarily. And leaning into us, speaking of a lack of wisdom or lack of elders, leaning into someone who I hold as an elder in my life, who I perceive as offering wisdom, and literally wrote a book on eldering and wisdom. Stephen Jenkinson, he has aligned something like grief is a way of loving that which has slipped from view. Love is a way of grieving that which has yet to do so. And so when I hear you saying, you know,

you spent all this time in your life, regret and so on and so forth. And now you're at a place where you're like, no, I need to show up to the world. I need to contribute. I need to do to me these are acts of love. And that they're part and parcel with grief. If you weren't, you wouldn't be inclined to do these things if there wasn't grief for what's happening.

So that's why I asked this. That's really helpful. That's really helpful. No, I think it is, because I think in grief, it's like you, what you said, it's, what you say something's disappeared. What did you say? Grief is a way of loving that which has slipped from view. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think some important, I think some important things have slipped from view. I think some important things have slipped from slipped from

view and slipped from view. And, and I think that, I mean, which is, I don't know, like a planet with a stable climate that's slipped from view. I mean, stable, I mean, yes, the Earth's climate has always changed. And but this is, this is different what we're doing, right? This is no, this is our

historical time scales, not geological ones. So, you know, so, so that is, that's gone. I mean, that a planet with a habitable planet or a planet Earth, the planet Earth with a stable climate, the climate that we evolved to be, to thrive in, that's, that's, that nourish, nourish so much biodiversity. Right? Yes. It's not just that humans can survive. It's not just that the planet is changing. It's that it managed to change into this state that was like quite stable

enough that a lot of life was able to express itself. And that's being compromised predominantly by our choices, not your choices or my choices, like we talked about, but our choices collectively.

I agree with that. And so I think my, my work is, you know, it's like, I mean, it's like part of me, um, it's probably just in my soul, you know, and I think, I think this is, I think a lot of people feel this, but, but, but, but especially having worked with psychedelics, you know, in my soul, like I remember when the earth was much more pristine, I wasn't alive in this incarnation, but I, I, in my, in my bones and my cells and my, in my soul, I, I sort of remember what it was like

before the fall, you know, because the ancestors knew that and the ancestors are in me, the ancestors are in you, they're in all of us. And so I think, yeah, I think there's a great deal of grief there. If you, if you, using your definition, there's a lot of grief there and it does propel, um, you know, it, it, it compel, it, it propels or compels us to, to undertake activism, you know, to act because compassion is the quivering of the heart in response to suffering. Yes, quiver,

quiver, quiver, but there's also direct action. And so activists in the, in the broadest sense, right. Taking, taking action and that's propelled by grief and that's propelled by some remembrance of how things, how things used to be and an attempt to tip the scales back towards how things, how things used to be, at least ecologically speaking. Yeah. It's very painful. Yeah. And, and painful enough that there's a number of things coming through my mind. One thing that's coming

up, which is, um, uh, there is no time in my life that I feel the least effective. There's, there's no time in my life that I feel, um, trying to find a nice formulation here. Let me start from the beginning. The times in my life where I feel the least effective in anything I'm trying to do are the times in my life where I feel the least amount of space to grief. It's almost like the more, whatever it is that needs grieving is ungrieved, the more disabled I feel to actually show up to

what needs to be done personally and interpersonally and, you know, socially, collectively. And the, this, a lot of that has to do with a lack of space for grieving because grief, as Francis Weller says, is always too much for one person to hold. We need to come together in it. And with a lack of elders and the lack of wisdom available to us, uh, there isn't people always, there aren't people around to help hold us in that, uh, such that it, it enables rather than just becomes fully disabling.

Oh, you know, I, I often find myself getting to these sort of like defeated, defeated place in the podcast and I don't want to stay here for too long. Because there's a lot of, there's still a lot of beauty, a lot of beauty in the world. Um, yeah, that's reason to keep going in many ways as well. Before we, uh, before we continue, before, before we end, as we're coming up to the end of our time here, not too long from now,

I want to get a little bit more explicitly into psychedelics. Um, I'm going to first go in, you've already talked to it a bit, but I want to get a bit more into specifically where ayahuasca fit in the sort of journey of your healing PTSD, CPTSD drama told myself I wasn't going to use the bumbling bit. Um, and then I'm going to ask you a bit more around, um, what your sort of larger

thoughts are with respect to psychedelics and the climate crisis. So starting with the first question, can you give us a little bit more of a flushed out sense of where and how your ayahuasca experiences sort of landed in your larger trauma healing journey such that it, it seemed to have such a positive effective result? Well, so CPTSD complex, complex PTSD is also known as relational trauma, developmental trauma.

Fortunately, given that CPTSD is relational, fortunately, um, when you drink ayahuasca, the attachment centers of the brain light up and they light up just as they would when you're deeply bonded to someone like a parent or a lover or a therapist, if you're that lucky. Um, and so, and so, yeah, so, so, so ayahuasca causes those attachment centers of the brain to light up. It also, um, is an anti amnesic. So it helps you remember the past and, uh,

uh, it causes traumatic memories to resurface. And I know, and not just ayahuasca, certainly mushrooms do that and other medicines, but ayahuasca is particularly, I think, good at that. And so the attachment centers of the brain are lit up. You're primed, I've said, psychologically, I've said that psychedelics prime you for new learning, but they also prime you for relating. And so this is a, this, and so this is why ayahuasca is such an incredible, uh, balm

or medicine for complex trauma. Um, and so these traumatic memories that come up, um, they're not coming up just sort of, how should I say it? When I think about my ceremonies in Peru, they're not just coming up in a vacuum, for lack of a better way to put it. Like the consciousness of Madre ayahuasca is present. The loving, like held container, let's put it that way, that this, this, this, this consciousness of the, of the medicine creates that enables you to kind of

stay with that experience. And you can try to look away, but you know, as your listeners will probably know, there's really no off button for ayahuasca. So you have to kind of relive these traumatic memories. The panic comes up. So Madre ayahuasca in creating this container, she's, she's the supreme exposure therapist, you know? And so she's, she's, she's there with you. She's holding you in a sense you're terrified at times. Um, and so the trauma is able to be released.

You're able to purge, right? The purging that takes place, whether it's in a puke bucket or in the toilet, or if you're crying or you're shaking or screaming or whatever, like these, this is what every person who's been traumatized probably really needs is to kind of get it out, get out the feelings, get out the, the, the, the kind of toxic thoughts and beliefs.

And you get to look at it staring back at you in the bucket, green and chunky. Um, so, so ayahuasca is, you know, is, is, is great in that sense, uh, for, you know, I think that's why it was such an incredible, um, treatment option for me, um, kind of a last resort medicine is because she essentially reparented me. You know, we know that psychedelics reopened the

critical periods for social reward learning. And if you've had a caregiver who was also your abuser, you, you know, you, you need, you need new social, you need to relearn social rewards because your first teacher in social rewards, your mother or your father, um, in those cases, um, they taught you social rewards that you don't want to embody any longer that are probably leading you to, you know, to feel, to feel miserable. So, um, so yes, this, the, the, the, the,

the reconsolidation of traumatic memories is disrupted. The fear, the panic associated with those memories is dissipated. Um, the fear response is reprogrammed over time as you work with the medicine. It's not just one time, but I've worked with it many times. And so, you know, it, it, you begin to reprogram the fear, the fear response so that, yeah, I show up in relationship with other people and I'm uncomfortable sometimes I'm anxious. Sometimes I'm bored sometimes, but I'm not panicking

like I used to. And so, you know, I can say that Madra Ayahuasca reparented me. She, um, she became, I guess you could say my, my new, my new mother. And, you know, just like we have that, you know, these, we, we internalize working models of our parents and bring them out into the world and we listen to them even when we're 65 years old or a hundred years old or 15 years old, like we hear the voices of those parents in a sense that are in our brains. Some of the things that they're

saying are not so helpful. It sounds like our own voice. Yeah. And it sounds like our own voice and we don't realize that it's, that it's our mom or our dad. And so, um, so, so Ayahuasca kind of, in my experience has replaced some of the imprinting that I got from my, from my mom and it, you know, she, she replaced it with, with some of her own. And so I don't, I just don't do the stupid shit I used to do. I don't do the stupid shit I used to do because, um, because I've, I've learned

something really different. I've learned, I've learned a new way of being. I have a, you know, Rachel Harris likes to call it, you know, having a new benchmark for feeling loved, a new benchmark for feeling loved. That's what Rachel Harris says about what, what, what Madre Ayahuasca can give us. And it, um, and also I should say, um, you know, yeah, it's psychedelics are a control, all delete for the brain, but also, um, they enable us to kind of return to this childlike

brain. You know, we get to, we get to regress in order to progress. And so I, um, I, I'm very fortunate as someone who experienced childhood trauma, I was very fortunate to be able to kind of, while on these journeys, regress into a baby, regress into a toddler and be dependent on caregivers in a, in a, in a weird environment in the darkness, you know, to be safe. There was a lot of kind of reenacting and kind of, you know, I think of Ayahuasca as kind of a do-over for, um,

for our, for our childhoods. And so it enables you to, to experience things in six hours, um, that maybe in another timeline, you know, it's, it's decades. So, you know, time is just this, is this magnificent little accordion that we get to, we get to play. So, um, so yeah, I ended up bonding with Madra Ayahuasca and in the process, bonding with the planet, the planet itself,

the planet herself. And from what I understand reading your book, there was the added sort of like fortunate context coming out of that, that you were able to, I mean, maybe, maybe change, change our interiority and reality bears different fruit, but you had the opportunity to, you know, directly apply these things into your life, into the relationships that you were having with friends and into a romantic relationship that from what I understand by the end of your book,

continued to progressively go very well. Um, so it wasn't just that, oh, here, got your healing, cool, ready to go. It was like, oh, great. Now there was this opportunity to actually like, put your feet on the ground with these things and, and change yourself and your life as a concept. Is that correct? That is correct. I mean, so, so when I, when I was living with my now husband, when I was living with my then boyfriend, Tony, um, during the pandemic, you know, that was, you

know, I just, I had come back from Peru on an emergency flight. I had just been working with a lot of medicine. And so we were kind of together in his home and we were like two feral raccoons stuck in a cage. And, you know, it was do it yourself 24 seven exposure therapy for CPTSD. And, and so that again, it primed me for new social reward learning. And we definitely taught each other how to be in a relationship, you know, and to, to, and he he's taught me a whole lot. So,

so absolutely it's, it's, it's still, the boots are still on the ground. I'm still, um, I'm still, I'm still having to work, you know, I'm still humbled. I'm still disappointed. I'm,

I still feel anguish. I still feel grief. Um, when I give myself a chance to fill that and, um, and, but I have hope, you know, I have hope because I know that there are these medicines on this planet that enable transformation to happen, but transformation does not mean again, it doesn't mean you're magically this perfect exalted being with farts that smell like roses. Beg for yourself. No, just kidding. Well, you've got roses on your shirt. So maybe, maybe that's,

yeah. Um, now we're coming, we're coming pretty close, close to time here. So I, I definitely want to ask you one more question and if you've got space for it, I have a final

question as well. Um, and then work with the timeframe as you feel comfortable, uh, as somebody who is, you know, deep as a, as a, um, uh, you know, a professor and someone writing on ecological issues and, you know, not just that, but supporting young people, you know, as a professor, you're supporting a new generation of people who are facing their own relationships with the

ecological crisis. And someone who has had such a positive, uh, has had such positive impact in their life, working with ayahuasca and all of these things sort of blending together.

I'm curious what your perspective is on the role of the, the role that you see psychedelics as they're emerging into the world right now, exploding into the world right now, their impact on the climate crisis, how we're showing up collectively to the climate climate crisis and both positives and negatives that you might be seeing. That's a really good question. And I wish I had a more optimistic answer because as we know, it's all about set and setting. I mean, that's a, that's a big part of

the outcomes from any psychedelic journey. And there's, you know, there's a wonderful new, new nonprofit, uh, founded by Melissa Feinberg out of New York city. It's called psychedelics for climate action. And, you know, a group like that gives me a lot of hope. Um, but I also know that there are plenty of people who are using psychedelics, um, to inflate their egos. And you've, you talked to Rachel Harris, you spoke with Rachel Harris about this at length and I loved

how you kept it real. Um, you certainly did. And, and so, yeah, so psychedelics are being used for, you know, by some people to, to brainwash other people. Frankly, there, there are cults that use, that use psychedelics out there. They're sort of unethical shamans who are using psychedelics to, to just kind of, well, just replicate extractive capitalism, but on the level of, you know, on the level of, of spiritual psychological care. Um, and, you know, there are plenty of Amazon, Amazonian

retreats in which nothing about the environment has ever mentioned. So I think that, um, I think that the psychedelics have opened up a lot of people's minds about helping to save the earth. I don't know if, if enough people have the same, have the right level of urgency that they should.

I think that, you know, I think people really need to think about, especially when they're, when they're using ayahuasca, you know, think about the rainforest that it came from, think about the indigenous cultures there who, you know, as our planetary emergency unfolds, they are among the most vulnerable and, you know, we're benefiting from those medicines and they are, you know, and they need to benefit too, and they need to be protected that these, these cultures. Um, so

I wish more was said in psychedelic spaces about reciprocity. I wish more was said, um, in psychedelic spaces about, I know it's a dirty word to some people, but oops, social justice. Like you, you have to, if you're just drinking ayahuasca to, you know, to get a new Ferrari or something, that's, I don't know. I just, that's not how it's supposed to be used. That's not, that's

never how it's been used. That's, I don't think in thousands of years. So anyway, um, but I do, I'm really heartened by some of the research into psychedelics that they do increase nature relatedness, right? They, you've, I'm sure you've heard about this. And, and, and so they, they cause

us to feel, they can cause us to feel an affinity with nature, a stronger bond with nature. And my hope is that even under the worst of circumstances in terms of setting set and setting that folks are, are, are, you know, that their mind, their mindsets are shifting and they are thinking about consumption. Um, but I will say again, not to be negative Nancy or anything, but you know, the point of drinking medicine is not to drink more medicine.

And just like the point of, you know, the point of buying shit is to buy more shit is the point of, to buy, to buy the point of buying more shit doesn't mean, you know, like that, that becomes its own sort of addictive, addictive sort of chain, addictive loop. And so, you know, consumerism is something that, um, that's kind of been our undoing. And so that can also find its way into,

again, into psychedelic spaces and more is better and more, more, more. And, and in fact, there's something I think important about stepping back and integrating these experiences and not reaching for things, not, don't buy anything. Don't, you don't need more medicine. Like be inside, be, be with yourself and, um, be in nature. That's free, you know, and I think that, um, I think all those things are really important. So I'm, I'm sort of optimistic. I'm glad that

the psychedelic Renaissance is taking place. Um, and I just, my prayer is that it's, it's really going to help us evolve our consciousness away from, uh, an eco-sidle one toward, um, toward one that's, that's more, much more loving, not only for the earth, but for one another.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I have a similar sort of posh optimism and, uh, yeah, I mean, there's, there's a big difference in the insights that come through in a clinic with a psychotherapist who's there to help you work with your trauma with head shades and iPhones, iPhones, head shades and headphones and eye shades in a neutrally decorated office than there is when you're sitting outside in a field. Um,

and the latter is hopefully you can, uh, you know, the nature relatedness work. One of the people contributing to that is, uh, Sam Gandhi who's been on the show and he, he has kind of been pushing for, Hey, might, might there be some good evidence to suggest that psychedelic, uh, therapies would be more effective if done in a natural environment? Um, cause I think he sees that too. Um, okay. So yeah, I, I, I, a whole other podcast perhaps on this particular topic.

I want, I want to finish with this last question and then I, I'm going to want to get your information for how people can get access to mothership and, uh, following online early on in the book, you present two questions that you generally offer to your students. Um, as they're, as a part of the course that you're teaching, the two questions are this, what is it like to appreciate an ecosystem that will collapse in our lifetimes? We moved by beauty that we're pushing towards extinction.

My question for you in the end here is, what is the importance? What is the value you see in us posing those questions to ourselves? Now I don't necessarily want your answer to those questions, but I want to know why you feel they're important for us to be asking ourselves. Well, because they're, they're questions that are grounded in reality. We are causing ecosystems and species and creatures to, to go extinct, to suffer and to, to go extinct because

of our actions. And so if you're really paying attention, I don't think you can, I think it's pretty hard these days, at least for me, it's really hard for me to look at a tree and appreciate its beauty and not also think even for just a second, even for a fleeting moment to think about, um, how vulnerable it is to rising, rising temperatures and an erratic climate. Um, so I think that these are questions that are

grounded in reality. They're questions that take us out of our Holocene complacency and really bring us to, um, the concerned boots on the ground attentiveness that the Anthropocene demands of us, right? The Holocene being the climate, the climate era before human beings were the dominant form of the dominant force on the earth and the Anthropocene, of course, the geological era that we're in right

now, that's where humans are the dominant force on the earth. So, so I think that, so asking this question is the asking these questions are, it's, it's really getting us in touch, I think with, with reality, with the truth. And it can wake us up because we still have these, even if we're not included, we still have these naive ideas about nature that probably come from, you know, mainlining Pocahontas Disney cartoons, you know, when we were younger or whatever,

um, you know, and, and Fern Golly, yes. My heart still warms for that movie. Oh, yeah. I mean, and so, and so I think that, yeah, it's hard for me to look at ferns in the gully and not think about rising temperatures and melting ice caps. It is hard for me to think of, it is hard for me to, and I don't think, I don't think that's a problem. I don't think that's,

that's pathological. I think that that's, that's, I think that that's, it's entirely appropriate to, to sort of not know where the beauty ends and the terror or the fear begins, you know, where the, where does the wonder end and where does the crisis begin? You know, I think, I think that that blurred, that blurred kind of situation is, is the very situation we find ourselves in this unprecedented epoch, you could say, in, in, in, in humanity's

evolution. So I, I think, you know, just like people with CPTSD need a major jolt to the body to come out of annihilation panic. I think that you're one of the, you know, I think we, we all need to have a major jolt to our conscience by asking questions like that, and to, and to never forget that, you know, time is running out. People don't want to hear that, but it is. And there's hope, and there's hope. So I, I'm, I'm the bearer of both bad and good news, pleasant and unpleasant news when I'm,

when I'm teaching. Greg, where can people learn more about mothership? Where can they follow your work? Where can they get a copy of your book here? Oh, my gosh. Well, they can go. They can, of course, find it online, Amazon, if they want to go that direction or any other independent bookstore, they can find it. And they can go to my website, which is gregren.com, G-R-E-G-W-R-E-N-N.com,

or they can find me also on Instagram. And I would love to hear from people. And I'm corresponding with a lot of really wonderful souls and, and talking to a lot of wonderful podcasters. You're very thoughtful. You're very, very thoughtful. And so I've, I've, I've especially appreciated this, this, this conversation. Thanks, Greg. So, so have I. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'll get really official here. Greg Wrenn, thank you so much for being on

adventures through the mind. I don't know why I had to like puff my, puff my chest out or something, just, just to feel official enough. Just remember there's also a, like moths with, with skulls. It's a very complex dirt, maybe emblematic of the, of the bearer of good and bad news that you, that you were just a moment ago. But it's not in Ferngully. Yeah, that's not, no. Oh, Ferngully. Okay. This, this is, this is the end. Greg, thank you so much. Thank you so much, James. And cut.

Okay. That was all for this episode of the podcast. If you enjoyed it, please do check out Greg's book, Mothership, a memoir of wonder and crisis available at all major bookstores and online book distributing outlets. You could also follow him on the social media handles that will

be in the show notes to this episode at jamesdbjessert.com. And if you're enjoying this show in particular, and you'd like to stay up to date on episodes being released and other things happening in the larger body of my work that supports and is supported by this podcast, you can follow me on social media, but ideally it would be best if you signed up for my newsletter. You can do so by heading to the link in the description here. You could also join the telegram channel, which again

is also in the link linked in the description here. But if you would like to follow me on social media, you can do so at James W. Jesso and on Instagram at a TTM IND podcast at mine podcast. And I guess that's all. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode and I'll see you on the next one. And until then take care.