Laughing Through the Chaos: Psychedelics, Comedy and Society's Growing Pains | Nick Sun ~ ATTMind 190

Also, like you said, a lot of it has to do with adulting. I think a big thing right now is like, we are throwing a lot of psychedelics into essentially people still in a child, like uninitiated state. So this is why I feel like you are getting a lot of this ego inflation, which is what I sort of go through in the book. A lot of ego inflation, a lot of projection, inability to sort of own what's coming up in sessions.

So I think a lot of it also just comes from the fact that we're chucking like, you know, very powerful non-selective amplifiers into people who haven't actually reached a certain level of emotional maturity to actually contain or hold or even transform or anchor that experience in the embodied world. (upbeat music) Hello everyone and welcome back to Adventures Through the Mind.

This is a podcast that explores topics relevant and related to psychedelic culture, medicine and research, and always with the underlying question of how we can 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. I am your host as always, James W. Jesso.

This episode is going to be an interview with the author of this book, No-Mo Trippin and the author being comedian, Nick Sun. And here's his bio. Nick Sun was a professional international comedian for 13 years, winning several major new act competitions and appearing on television and various comedy festivals around the world. Then in 2015, he drank ayahuasca and went through a healing crisis.

Realizing he had some serious demons to deal with, Nick quit standup to embark on a seven year deep dive into the world of healing, exploring a wide range of modalities, including psychedelic plant medicines, vision quest, qigong, psychotherapy, tantra, martial arts and more.

During this time, he began training and working as an underground psychedelic facilitator for the next seven years, serving ayahuasca, cambo, iboga and San Pedro on the Australian underground psychedelic plant medicine scene. Nick guided over 2000 individual experiences and served everyone from bus drivers to doctors, psychologists, to cops.

His plant medicine facilitation career came to a natural end and he was called to return back to the world of standup comedy, publishing his first book, No-Mo Trippin, which details his most intense years of plant medicine work and transformation, which was between 2015 to 2018 and in a satirical and amusing fashion.

In our interview with Nick, we're going to discuss his personal experiences with psychedelics, including his high usage and how it led him to both become a facilitator and to stop facilitating. We explore his criticisms of Western psychedelic culture, the concept of spiritual bypassing and the challenges of integrating psychedelic experiences.

We also touch on the potential of psychedelics for cultural change, the importance of responsible use and integration and where comedy and humor fit into the navigation of the modern world and its many crises.

Now, if you listen to the show relatively often, you'll probably note that I take a pretty serious, I try to be down to earth and relatable, but I tend to be quite serious in my interviews, being that Nick is a comedian and his work, the book anyways is satirical and amusing, I decided to lean into a little bit more of my playfulness on the show than I typically do. So if you notice I'm coming off like a little bit of an ass, that's by design.

So I hope you enjoy the episode and without further ado, here we go. Okay, how do we start? Let's see, where is No Mo Trippin? Boom, there it is. What, what's wrong? Looks great. - I know, I know, I'm just kidding. You must know this feeling, when you've worked on something for a long time and then you just sort of push it out to the world and it comes back at you and you're like, ah, yeah, that thing.

- Yes, I do with the books here behind me, if people are watching on video and I don't know, maybe it hasn't been long enough since you've written it, but I know sometimes I'll go back and I'll have simultaneously two experiences when reading one of my older books here. One of which is, oh, what the hell was I thinking? And the other which was, who is that guy? Who wrote that? - Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at.

I tried to just go over it again, like to get rid of all the typos and I just was just, I couldn't read it. I couldn't, I just gave up. I was just like, you know what? I'm gonna just go for a walk. This is, someone else can do that. (laughing) This is behind me now. - Yeah, this is what editors are for. - Yeah, exactly. - I mean, I could sit on it while we're talking. It could be beneath me too. - That's true. - I mean, physically. - You're us then. - Literally.

(laughing) I'll try to hold my gas. Anyways. - Feel free to bless it with your gas if you need to as well. I mean, it's very, it's a pretty dirty book sometimes. So it would be completely in line, but it's aesthetic. - Yeah, it definitely gets there. So we're in the interview. Nixon, welcome to Adventures Through the Mind. - Hello, James. For the second time.

- Yes, I mean, technically, as far as the audience is concerned, the second time, 'cause you were on the Psychedelic Cafe about drinking the Australian acacias. - That's true. - But also second, because we recorded this interview previously and it didn't quite work out. - No, no, James got really racist and we had to just, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. (laughing) I'm just trying to cancel him on his own show. That's what I'm trying to do.

- That's gonna be clipped and put out by some bad actors, I bet. - Yeah, yeah, okay. I take that back, then I take full responsibility. No, it's because our timeline for where James is and where I am, listeners, is like completely diametrically opposed. So I either have to do the podcast like five o'clock in the morning or at midnight. So we tried five o'clock in the morning and I realized I am not a morning person. And so now we're trying midnight. So that's the boring backstory.

Behind the scenes. - Well, I mean, somewhat, I guess it is kind of boring. It was exciting to organize though. All right. So no more tripping, no mo tripping. I just picked it up, showed it to the screen, shown it again now for anyone still watching. And yeah, it's a personal account of your journeys in my perspective and I think others extremely deep into psychedelia, but also the series of life choices and experiences you had as a consequence of your journeys into psychedelics.

And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I laughed quite a lot during it, which I understand to be the intention. And I was unsettled, like physically unsettled, sometimes nauseous, sometimes deeply sad. So it is a range of experience reading this book. - Great. Yeah. Yeah, well, I didn't realize I was writing a book. I was really just trying to integrate my experiences as I detailed what I'm describing as like a completely non-traditional psychedelic initiation sort of phase, I guess.

I never meant to go through any of that in the book. I was a comedian for many years and then was struggling with depression and I always loved taking psychedelics and I've heard about ayahuasca, so I tried that. And then pretty much was shut down a completely different trajectory. And along the way, I was just trying to like piece together what was happening and my journal was kind of my integration thing.

And then, you know, the book originally was like 800 pages long of me just like trying to work out what the fuck was going on. And then I managed to whittle it down to like 350 pages. So I would never even think of trying to write a book that way ever again. It was horrible at times. - Well, book writing generally can be horrible at times. A lot of, I think it was Ernest Hemingway said something like writing is easy. You just sit in front of the typewriter and bleed.

- Yeah, and stare at the screen until drops of blood form on your forehead, yeah. - This is a point of technical process. Nick, is there something that you can set your laptop on so it's not shaking so much as you're animating? - Oh, sorry, I'm actually in bed right now. I'm a very professional person 'cause it's fucking cold and it's midnight and I'm not wearing any pants. Like the top half looks very professional. But if I zoom down, which I won't for the listeners.

- I'd have to make it an 18 plus on adults only on YouTube. - I'm wearing boxer shorts. Like I have some degree of monochrome respect, but do I have to put it on? I mean, just try to be conscious 'cause your screen is bouncing a lot, which can be distracting. - Oh yeah, I was moving around, okay, okay. I'll try not to, there we go. All right. - All right, so there's quite a strong theme in the book.

A lot of criticism in what I would describe as like the self-obsessed navel gazing of the Western world and especially in the beginning part of the book or like your journey into Tibet, was it? - Nepal, yeah, yeah. - Nepal, yeah. Like a lot of the savior complex that many Western people fall into when they go to volunteer in other countries. And you express that criticism in this sort of like satirical like thoughts, like your own thoughts and behaviors with yourself as the protagonist.

And these criticisms are sort of projected at yourself and then also expressed as yourself through the course of the book. Can you outline a little bit, just this perspective that you have on the kind of like navel gazing savior complex, where the perspectives came from and what of yourself were you describing in these criticisms? - Yeah, well, I guess for the guys who don't know, I was a comedian for 13 years.

So like, the comedic perspective, you're always sort of like making sure that you place yourself as the target. It's like an old trick you do where you sort of undercut yourself. So then you have license to basically insult everybody else. (laughs) So it's like, it's a really acute exaggeration of my own particular neuroses. But having said that as a comedian, I mean, comedians aren't particularly healthy people.

And if there's one thing I've noticed, 'cause I've just recently returned back to stand-up comedy, it's like, you're pretty fucking self-obsessed. You're going on stage talking about yourself. It's a very self-centered existence. And I found that there really was a link between self-centeredness and depression to some degree. Like when you're very depressed or all that really exists is you and your sort of suffering.

Not that I'd recommend seriously depressed people to go then do charity work like I did. But so I was kind of satirizing, I guess, also this idea of like initiation, like a rites of passage where when you are a child self, you are sort of stuck in this egoic self-centered, myopic, almost narcissistic, I guess, point of view.

And then once you go through initiatory experience, what it does is it actually pulls you out of your limited ego and situates you in a larger collective context, like a community context. And you realize you have a place within the world that is greater than just you as this individual consumer drone baby child man thing. So I was kind of also just linking it into that, I guess.

But also, yeah, what I was making fun in myself was also just a generalized way of being that I saw in the West with most of us child people. And on top of that was like this critique I was reading about the hero's journey, about how, you know, it was very individualist centered. And it was kind of making fun of the whole Joseph Campbell archetypal myth, which I just really liked 'cause I guess I'm a contrarian.

So I was trying to also just hang shit on every possible thing that I could find, starting with myself. Yeah, and just try and twist it and exaggerate it as much into this sort of amplified Hall of Mirrors type of thing. And you know, there's deeper psychological reasons for that because if you obviously attack yourself first, then you're immune to criticism from others. So that's definitely an old comedian psychology trick for sure.

But yeah, but then it kind of turned into something else as well, you know, and it's not black and white. I mean, like sure, people might've been motivated by selfish altruism as I sort of detail, but they still helped out. You know, they still helped a lot of people. They still helped change people's lives. So it was neither black nor white.

I was just, I guess, I guess in general, my point of view is always just trying to find the ambiguities and the fact that everything is really not necessarily easily, you know, added up. So yeah, that's roughly where I was coming from. - Yeah, the-- - In hindsight, that is, when I was writing it, I had no idea. It's just when I'm reading it back, I'm going,

"Oh yes, this is what it's about." (laughs) - Yeah, this premise that you shared, like so many of us are, you know, physically mature psychological children as adults, I guess. I often try to use adult as like a verb, as like an action, and that we adult when we are confronted by circumstances or a context that would otherwise and has generally caused us to react or respond in a childish way.

That's not childlike, I mean childish the way an underdeveloped psychologically person would, and that we choose instead to show up with an adult sense of responsibility, which includes, you know, like an understanding of ourselves nested in a sort of larger order of relationship, not just about me and my needs and my immediate perceptions or interpretations of this. So I like that, especially too, thinking about the hero's journey.

You know, for all the criticisms of the book, I think is, you know, warrants. There's a book I read many years ago called "King, Lover, Magician, King Magician, Warrior, Lover," something to this effect. - Yeah, yeah. - And they talk about the hero's journey and outline it like the hero's journey is, you know, that is the, what's specifically about man psychology, is the process by which a boy becomes a man. It's the process by which a child becomes an adult.

It's not the journey an adult is supposed to be living. Right, like once we exit childhood, we're supposed, like the rest of the story happens once the hero returns and that's adulting. And it is very common that I think, you know, because so many of us are children, we think that the hero's journey is the way the adult is supposed to live when actually it's the process we're supposed to go to in order to get to adulting at all. - Hmm, interesting. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah, I know in some, I was living in Darwin for five years and I was talking to some of my indigenous friends and, you know, when they run kids through law, they're like 14. They go out to the bush for like six weeks and then they come back and they're like, all right, you're an adult now and here's your responsibilities. So it's like six weeks that your childhood basically comes to an end. But with us in the West, I think it's still going right.

40 is new 30, so right on. - But see, there's a term. It's not nepotism, that's a totally different thing. - A neoteny. - Neoteny, that's the one. Yeah, where we-- - Yeah, axolotls. - Axolotls, what? How does that relate to axolotls? - Axolotls, Mexican walking fish, it's like a permanent state of neoteny. - Oh, that's interesting.

So for the listeners, neoteny is where like evolutionarily by, you know, by selective breeding, I would say, or through just, you know, the pressure of evolution, organisms maintain infantile or childlike behaviors or expressions into adulthood. This is what we've done to make dogs cute and cuddly into adulthood where a wolf, which is all domestic dogs are the same species, they're all Canis lupus familiaris, which is the domesticated version of Canis lupus, the gray wolf.

We've selectively bred them through neoteny to, or with the intention of neoteny to have them be like puppies and cuddly and able to be housebroken, you know, domesticated well into adulthood. And we humans have kind of accidentally done this to ourselves as well. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. But I wonder how many generations it takes to flip back to that wild state.

And I wonder if like, because, you know, humans have the longest gestation period in terms of their, you know, their infant stage and their child stage, potentially, I guess, to accommodate the fact that we are more advanced neurologically and all that sort of stuff. So maybe I was thinking maybe this extended adolescence that we're all in has some kind of a greater function that we can't fully see yet. You know, I guess, I don't know what that is exactly.

And there's many arguments that support that it could be a de-evolution. (laughs) I don't know, you wonder like maybe this extended adolescence that we're all going through has some sort of use in the longer term. But yeah, I have no idea. Yeah. - I mean, evolution isn't a straight line. Nothing exists in a straight line except for the invention of our imagination that humans that have decided that things exist on a linear progression, which clearly is just-- - Construct.

- Not the case, a construct, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. If you read enough peyote, it becomes a circle apparently. (laughs) That's according to a peyote shaman I talk to. - Now I had a thought, but I think I've lost it. So I'm gonna let it go. So at some point in your book, you go from having I think one or a couple of ayahuasca experiences that lead you to be like, okay, I need to volunteer, I need to do for others.

And then at some point, it gets to the place where you're like, oh, actually what I need to do is, and this is my personal opinion, eat an outrageous amount of psychedelics, both amount of dose-wise and amount of diversity. - Yeah. - What I wrote down here is like a consumption level, frequency, and general isolation from shared practice.

Basically, at a amount that personally would scare me, not only because I've seen how literally delusional I got back in my days of unchecked foray, but also afraid because of the number of individuals in the world that end up falling into the same consumption patterns and don't come out the other end of it relatively unscathed in the sense that to the degree to which any comedian can, you are functionally normally in society. - I occasionally shit myself, but I'm doing okay.

(laughing) In public no less, I don't do it in private, I'm not a weirdo. (laughing) No, I get what you're saying, man. Like, there's two things which come to mind, which is sometimes actually getting as lost as possible is the best way to find yourself. Not that I recommend doing it that way, but this book ends about five years ago and it did take me about four years to fully integrate the experience.

And that was a lot of sober work, a lot of cheekle and a lot of therapy, a lot of all sorts of shit to sort of ground the experience in my nervous system. What sent me down this road though was like, I kind of got the call that I was gonna be practicing medicine and I wasn't really part of any indigenous land-based lineage that I could refer to. And so I remember talking to a mutual friend of ours that I'm sure would make sense, Julian. - Is it Plant Man?

(laughing) - And so I was like, so how do you do this? And he goes, oh, I just drank every week for a year. And that sort of got me to the right level. And I was like, oh, okay, is that what you do? Okay, so I just was like, right, that's what I'm gonna do. So I just kind of blindly sort of, and I don't regret it. I mean, what I have worked out though is what is the path for some people won't necessarily be the path for other people.

So yeah, I did go very deep into that path, but I mean, I'm not really into regrets, although definitely during periods where I feel like it's been a seven year process where it's sort of the start all the way to the, at least a stage where I'm like feeling quite integrated, like by and large. I've, if I look back where I was when I first started to now where I am now, I was like, actually I've sorted out a lot of the stuff that was originally plaguing me, you know, so.

- And to clarify, this sorting out wasn't, oh, it took you five more years of drinking every week or like imbibing something every week. Like from what I understand, you had to take a big step back in order to make sense of everything that happened in this time that you were going so deep. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like 2018 where I was just like, right, let's go help for leather all the way down the wormhole.

And yeah, that was like drinking every week or two, running lots of circles, just going deep into the weirdness of that whole path, the DIY self-initiated, I don't want to call it medicine, Chamonix thing. And then the book kind of ends with me taking my first Iboga flab dose, which was like the grounding, Iboga is a very grounding medicine, so it sort of grounded all the ethereal, primarily the ayahuasca sort of tripped me and you said I was sort of indulging in that first year.

And then that's when I sort of have to take a step back and, you know, kind of ends with me with a warning really, like, you know, be careful what you wish for. And yeah, after that, I took 10 months off and didn't really feel the need to do so many psychedelics after that, you know, and I still occasionally dip my toes in once in a while, but it's very much more purposeful now and I have to have a pretty good reason.

I mean, the book's called "Nomo Trippin" because trippin is like how I interpret that's kind of the way the bypassing, that's the escaping.

So there was also this direction where there was some level of spiritual bypassing in that year, where I was getting a lot of early healings and awakenings and teachings, but then gradually I sort of got lost on the path and yeah, ended up, you know, kind of going down this path where I was trying to escape the pain of being human to some degree in this world through constant, seeking those higher elevated states.

And eventually earth came to meet me and I fell flat on my face and that was the flood dose. And it's just been a humbling process of integration since then and also implementation of like, okay, I've got all this knowledge, I've got all this, also having to sort out, okay, what's good story, what's bad story, what's just batshit crazy stuff. And what's, you know, I've had to really go through some of the downloads I've gotten, be like, okay, is this actually functional in this world?

What does this actually mean? How is this useful? So I guess in some ways it was kind of also map that I was trying to, as some degree personal map, and I'm looking at it and I see there's some root, I've since, you know, got a lot more knowledge and ways of seeing things. So it's still a very rudimentary basic beginners map that I had mapping that process in that state, those states. So yeah, so that's kind of where I got to in the end, yeah.

- You mentioned spiritual bypassing, which is from what I understand, like a means by which we use spiritual practices or experiences in order to evade the challenge, the work or the responsibility of like the actual sort of like healing work, the actual growing work, the actual sort of like adulting.

Can you speak a little bit more about what sort of like deep psychological patterns you think were inspiring you to move towards this kind of spiritual bypassing use of psychedelics, this sort of like escaping pain through transcendence kind of thing? - Well, I think it's avoidance, you know, our whole culture is built on avoidance really. Everything we, our culture is just, there's so many ways to avoid having to feel things.

And, you know, basically I spent seven years being a psychedelic facilitator.

And so many of the clients that I was seeing was basically teaching them basic skills on how to, how to experience emotions, you know, how to be in contact with their feelings, you know, because there's so many ways that our culture basically functions to basically bypass your immediate emotional experience, whether it be through addictions like food and beer and alcohol, Netflix, social media, just all these little, you know, distractions basically

from trying to pull you away from the essential experience of being human on some level, just trying to numb you out. So there was partly part of that. And also, like you said, a lot of it has to do with adulting. I think a big thing right now is like, we are throwing a lot of psychedelics into essentially people still in a child, like uninitiated state. So this is why I feel like you are getting a lot of this ego inflation, which is what I sort of go through in the book.

A lot of ego inflation, a lot of projection, inability to sort of own what's coming up in sessions. So I think a lot of it also just comes from the fact that we're chucking like, you know, very powerful, non-selective amplifiers into people who are, haven't actually reached a certain level of emotional maturity to actually contain or hold or even transform or anchor that experience in the embodied world. So that's kind of, I guess, what I was coming from, yeah.

- When you look back at those consumption patterns at that time, do you feel like either for yourself or generally, you could speak to it, that this kind of consumption amounts to disrespecting the plants or even disrespecting yourself? - I mean, I don't think I was disrespecting myself. I think I was honestly just trying to, you know, get to this in my head, which, you know, was misguided at the time, but I was trying to get to this level where I wouldn't be feeling pain.

And obviously there was quite a lot of pain that was fueling that trajectory. Yeah, I guess I would say there was some disrespect to the plants, like, but it wasn't conscious. Like, you know, I just happened to have access to a lot of them. And I guess also what you're seeing in the plant scene is a lot of people do come from a background of substance abuse and addiction, and then they do discover the plants. And that's where I was coming from.

I would say I was fairly poly drug dependent as I was coming into the plants. And then, you know, you see a lot of people in the scene that come from that place and they're like, "Oh, I found this healthy addiction with the plants 'cause the plants, they're good for me." So there was a bit of that going on as well. But yeah, I wouldn't say there was any conscious disrespect. Like I wasn't, I didn't mean it.

And eventually when I did get slapped, it was terrifying enough to sort of scare me straight. Well, as straight as I can be after doing all that stuff to myself. So there was some kind of, but yeah, I wouldn't say it was sustainable if everyone did it that way, but I really don't think anyone would. Having since given this book to people who haven't done any psychedelics, it seems to just scare them off even more. So it's kind of an anti-drug campaign now, really. So for a lot of people.

- Point of pro, can you bring your screen down a little bit, put yourself a little bit more center of frame there. Awesome. So yeah, it's cool to hear that people reading the book are like, "Yeah, I mean, I don't think it serves us "necessarily to have people be too afraid of psychedelics. "We need the appropriate degree of fear necessary, "but no more." - Humility. - The amount of fear.

Yeah, the amount of fear that is an expression of both humility and reverence, which I guess reverence is a kind of humility. One has to be in a state of somewhat humility in order to revere something else. - Of course.

- But the question I have here is, I mean, clearly it's having this effect on some people, but do you feel like, given how dangerous this kind of consumption, these kinds of consumption patterns can be, do you feel like you are clear enough about the risks of this kind of consumption pattern or relationship with plants in the book? - Yeah, I feel like at the end, I sort of say, like I was pretty lucky not to cook myself and that I saw plenty of people in the scene who did.

And I would say like this drive to like take this many sort of things, it's not common. It's not, there's not many people who wanna do it that way. And it could just be Australia because Australia seems to breed a particular culture of like, I don't know, it's a pretty full on characters here. - Yeah, I've met some. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had to think about it and I was like, yeah, I haven't really met many people who sort of gone down that route.

So, I feel like I, yeah, I guess I feel like I've warned enough people, but if anyone who hasn't really, didn't really take that on, I think they'd probably kind of be the kind of people to do it anyway, right? So if you're out there, I apologize in advance for you cooking yourself and I hope you find your way back home, brother.

And if you do, I'm sure you'll have some very interesting tales to tell and hopefully some more maps and knowledge to share with the community once you stop like, drooling like a vegetable at the bus shelter. - I borderline cooked myself in Australia. - Yeah, you cooked yourself. - Yeah, especially if you fall into certain pockets there, the drug taking culture in Melbourne was, Melbourne was, it's pretty full on. - Easy to just lean into.

- Yeah, I came from that culture in Sydney 'cause it is a pretty moribund culture. There's not much meaning there and so you just get fucked up and on as many different things as possible. I read statistics that apparently in Australia, there's a higher level of polydrug combinations than anywhere else in the world. Like people in Australia, they're just like, "Yeah, let's see what this does with that." So I think that could be a pioneer sort of tendency in this culture but yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I don't know. I feel like I sort of laid it out. Unless they stop reading the book halfway, they're like, "Oh, this is great." Then yeah, definitely get to the end and there is definitely a pretty sober warning at the end. So yeah. - They gotta get to the "Aboga" chapter for sure. - Yeah, I mean, it is called "No More Trippin'" so it does suggest that there is a sense of closure there.

If it was called "Yo Mo Trippin'" then maybe that'd be the wrong sort of message to put out there but yeah, that's a sequel. - Coming back to spiritual bypassing, if you could go back and I mean, these are always sort of borderline useless questions but we'll throw it out there anyways.

If you could go back, is there any, okay, the reason I'm saying this is useless is because you are where you are now and you got what you got out of it and that obviously has been good but this is more a hypothetical for people who might not have made it past where they're at to recognize in, "Oh, I'm good now but I learned out of these hardships" or whatever. If you could go back, what advice or suggestions might you have offered yourself?

Obviously there was something in all of that that you were missing that you now in hindsight are like, "Oh, here's what I didn't know about what I was doing "or what I wasn't doing or what I thought I was doing "but really I was doing this." What kind of suggestions or advice would you offer yourself? - Firstly, I'd say learn how to drive a car. (laughs) I'm just kidding, but jokes aside, that would have been very useful though during that phase.

I think going through some kind of rites of passage, that's very hard to do in a culture where we don't really have that established thing but this is what I'm talking about. If I'd gone through some level of rites of passage first before I then did the deep dive, I think that would have equipped me with a lot more emotional maturity and a sense of responsibility and accountability to fully process and metabolize everything that I went through.

- So when you say rites of passage, you mean something facilitated by a teacher or an elder or a community? - Yeah, but the thing is we don't have this really anymore. We're not in communities, we're not really indigenous. We've been de-indigenized in many ways. So it's like, I'm not sure what these rites of passages would be. In my head, I would be like, "Well, the only one that I really feel "which made me grow up was the iboga "so I could potentially would have done that first."

And maybe that would have actually given me some more grounding to then... That probably would have just made me go, "Okay, that's enough for a while. "Maybe I don't even have to go through "all that sort of crazy shit in the first place." But just some kind of like, I don't know, just some kind of rites of passage which is missing from our culture to fully like...

'Cause the reason I went down that is because, and a lot of why a lot of people being drawn to the psychedelics is because evidently what the culture they're in is not giving them what they're looking for. So yeah, it's a really complicated question. Like how do we go through something that we have lost in order to equip us with enough abilities or ways of being to then responsibly go through responsible psychedelic use?

So I guess there'll be that, some kind of rites of passage, initiatory cycle. I guess when I started seven years ago, it was much less developed. There wasn't really this sort of growing culture of like integration and like guidance. So, I mean, I had a couple of teachers that I could sort of call if I was in a fix, but it wasn't like a traditional, where you're with a village elder or the village shaman and practicing with them.

And they're always there in the background sort of guiding you with a sort of established lineage of tried and tested practices. It was also very new, it's all very trial and error. Even now it's really just trial and error and that's why you're sort of getting so many people cooking themselves because they're the error. So, it's a real crap shoot.

So I feel like, the way I see it is like, it's like lineages, like you see these guys, they're the ninth or 10th generation of this lineage, but there must be heaps of lineages out there that just never made it because they're, the members of that line just weren't getting it right. And so they would have died or gone mad.

And so I just saw this huge, really what we're in right now is just a huge amount of people just throwing out a whole bunch of different ways of doing it and we're kind of in a process of seeing which ones will survive and what skill sets are gonna be passed down that are foolproof way of doing these medicines, especially in a culture that is not rooted or grounded in any traditional indigenous practices, we're sort of just transplanted free for all where you can do every medicine you want

every weekend if you want really, or from all over the world and then combine that with all these other practices like tantra, breath work, meditation, pranayama, psychotherapy, it's all big free for all. So it's a huge melting pot of like combinations and just seeing what's gonna stick and what's gonna be functional and what's gonna be just either really bad for you or pointless, yeah. - This podcast is brought to you by listeners like yourself via Patreon.

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Alternatively, if you'd just like to send me a little bit of a tip for a particular episode such as this one, you can do so by using the PayPal link in the description to this episode wherever you are checking it out and that's it. Now back to the interview. - So yeah, the free for all, lack of guidance, lack of initiation, this brings me to the next question.

So one of the things you shared in the book which is something that generally concerns me quite a lot with respect to the psychedelic, the underground psychedelic world is that you decided, led by the plants alone to start facilitating people that you had learned simply from taking the plants and from the inspiration of the plants that you are ready now to lead other people. And with respect to the underground, to me this is often a recipe for disaster, megalomania, cult-like dynamics and harm.

It would seem to me that this is how you stepped in into facilitation and although it seems as though you've managed to your way through it without having caused too much harm, how do you look back on those choices in yourself now and also what's your perspective on that kind of decision-making in the sort of larger underground psychedelic facilitation world? - Hmm, yeah, that's a good one.

(laughs) I would say like looking back, there's a certain like advantage in not knowing, when you're doing it, like I just didn't know what I was getting myself into and I would say that my intention was actually quite pure in the beginning, I was like, had this big ecological awakening, like, oh my God, the earth needs us, we need to wake up. And I was just so, I wanted to help. So this was what was, I was sort of, I was like, this is what I can offer to the world to try and shift things.

Having said that, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And yeah, I would say definitely there's a handful of people, especially in those early ceremonies where I dosed them too high and they had really full on experiences and I look back and I still think of that sometimes as going, oh, fuck, that's on my comic. Oh, that's my fucking comic, that's my karma.

You know, I fucking did that, you know, but not that anyone died or they went crazy, they just had, you know, you're trying to heal people. So when you freak them out like really heavily, you know, that does weigh on you quite heavily. - And as it should. - Yeah, as it should. And so some of the lessons I had early on were just ones that were burnt into my soul just from like, oh, okay, now I really know what I'm playing around with.

And yeah, and I would say that it was a rapid learning curve, you know, and I did stop eventually, like it just came to a close because I was like, I kind of, the honeymoon period was over and I realized, okay, it's not as easy as throwing a psychedelic at every person you can meet to change the world. I mean, it does help and I witnessed miraculous healings of a variety of all sorts of conditions that kept me going as well.

But I also came to realize that actually it's the culture that's making people sick, it's the system that's making people sick. And so for me, just to be like throwing psychedelics to try and help the symptoms of a larger disease, which could only really be cured through mass cultural change, potentially aided by psychedelics, but what that looks like, I still haven't really come to a conclusion of.

But yeah, I kind of got to that place, but like, yeah, I mean, it was risky, but I really had this conviction, I had this faith that I've been called and I've since talked to a lot of people who get the calling and the plants make you feel so special, like they've chosen you and you're the chosen one and you're going to be the fucking change agent Instagram influencer to shift things.

So there is this real sudden sense of purpose that a lot of people get, especially after living in a sort of generalized state of meanlessness that is very intoxicating, but I would say it's not very grounded. So there's that saying that many get called, but not everyone makes it. So in traditional cultures, you'd have to go through this sort of the testing period, where you are sent off into the woods for like 10 years, just dieting with plants, going through all the tests.

And you have to go through your initial tree tests to make sure that you're, this is for like peyote shamans I was reading about, you have to go through this test to see if you're worthy to serve the medicine. And they can't say what it is 'cause it's secret, but it's clearly physically dangerous. And it's a test of your ability and your sort of, yeah, your tenacity, but we don't really have that. So it's sort of, it's unmediated, there's no checks and balances.

There's no one to sort of point another person out going, "Hey, I think you're kind of losing your mind." Or there's no elder, eldership to be like, "Okay, that guy's going a bit crazy, I'm gonna pull him to line." And yeah, there's no apprenticeship sort of, where you're actually just working with a proper experienced current Dara for like 10 years, learning the ropes, just being an assistant like that. So yeah, it is dangerous. It's definitely dangerous.

And I've heard plenty of terrible stories, but also to be fair to the underground, you do hear more terrible stories and good ones, like those are always the ones which end up being told. So I would also say that it's completely unfair to say that it's all bad. Not that you were saying that, but I think there is definitely a coloring. And what I've noticed in the media, especially in Australia, there's a huge slew of anti-individual or underground psychedelic use.

And perhaps rightfully so, there've been a couple of fatal incidences which deserve to be reprimanded and talked about. But I've seen that there's this weird split where it's like, "Don't try and do this yourself, underground bad, and then clinical good, government approved really good." So I see that there's this kind of weird split going on and I get it. Like the government would never be like, "Hey, you should go do this completely by yourself." - Take these illegal drugs.

- Yeah, you should break the law and take these drugs, which will probably make you question the current status quo of everything. So yeah, I can see why that wouldn't happen. Yeah, but now I do feel like now it is gathering steam. Like seven years ago, it was still kind of Wild West and very unknown and there weren't many people doing it.

And then now I don't even know, probably more than half the people sort of doing stuff now, because before we kind of knew everyone who was doing it, it was so small. And then now it's just like- - In Australia. - Yeah, in Australia. And then by the time I stopped, I was like, "I don't know, I've never heard of those people before." So yeah, so yeah.

And I feel like the more popular it's gonna get, you know, when Prince Harry is talking about it in "Woman's Day" magazine and shit, like there are gonna be more people who will get called. And I've talked to people, like I've got called to do the medicine. But I would also say that a lot of the time, these guys do then start serving the medicine and eventually they will have some kind of incident happen where they're like, "Oh, I don't really wanna do this anymore."

So I also know a lot of facilitators who reach their limit and they're like, "You know what? This is too dangerous. This is too much of a hassle." And I kind of reached that point as well. Like I was like, "Man, I cannot be bothered dealing with people's shit anymore. Like I gotta actually just focus on my own stuff." Like, you know? So I also feel like a lot of, there is some drop off at some point, or long breaks, you know?

- Do you, when you talked about like the medicine made you feel special, like chosen, do you think that that's another expression of that same savior complex? Like how do you tell the difference between a message from the medicine telling you that you're meant to do big things and a sort of like reflection of your own sort of like hyper ego projection, making you feel like you need to be the most special then you are the most special and you know, that whole-- - Yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, there's two ways of reading that. I mean, the first way is like, you know, I was raised in an Asian family with a lot of conditional love shit where you have to be the greatest or you don't get any love. So, you know, I look back now and I do tend to read, especially my ayahuasca visions as, you know, a real pinch, big pinch, a huge pinch, like a kilogram block pinch of salt because they should be more read like dreams or projections or wish fulfillments, like it's non-literal.

Some of the, I mean, in the beginning, I got very clear messages, which I still stand by, like, you know, going to Nepal, I think that was very important for me to go do that. So I think at the beginning, a lot of people get messages and maybe in the beginning, the first few journeys, like I think those messages do have some level of weight, but then I think the further you go into your, I don't know what you wanna call it, your career, your tripping career, then it becomes a lot more murkier.

And I was reading a quote from this, Akitas Kurandero called Don Salon, who's a very highly respected ayahuasca, and he was quoted to have said, "80% of what the vine tells you is complete bullshit." So I was like, fuck, if he's saying that, then, you know, I better readjust my, my critical faculties around this stuff.

But, but yeah, and the other way to read this is that, you know, I feel like the plants are sort of ambassadors of Gaia, shit's going down, and they really are just trying to fucking call as many people as possible, and maybe their attitude towards, you know, insanity and death is much looser, you know, if someone goes, one individual goes crazy on the path or dies, then it's not so much of a big issue in like this sort of collective Gaia and intelligence, it's just a drop in the pond, you know,

not that I'm saying that's good, I'm just saying the view, the big picture view, which is how I feel the plants may possibly sort of view things. So I do feel there's some degree of them just mass calling as many people as possible, and the standards were way low, clearly, 'cause I was called, and, you know, to some degree, everyone's a chosen one, you know, you've got to just do the work and risk being nailed to a cross for your beliefs.

So, you know, so yeah, that's the two ways that I'm sort of viewing it at this point, yeah. - Well, you know what, I appreciate the affirmation, I always did think I might be the Messiah. Anyways. (laughs) So what would you say to people who are listening right now who feel like they're qualified to facilitate simply because they've had many deep trips in their lives? - Ah, whoa. Yeah.

Tread carefully, my friend. (laughs) I mean, I was really thankful 'cause like the large part of my career, as a facilitator, it took place in Darwin where I had a very good community of friends. So it was more of a community sort of thing, and I had some really solid people who were sort of my checks and balances, you know, and they weren't yes men at all.

And also I was lucky enough to have a career as a comedian beforehand, which actually was very good immunization against the sort of egoic, the egomania that you can get as a facilitator. There's many traps that you can fall into as a facilitator, and some of them you don't even realize you're in them until you get pulled out of them, you know?

So I would love actually just to write a nautical or some kind of like the traps you can fall into as a facilitator, which is like egomania, sex money power, you know? Fuck, there's a whole bunch of them, just delusional putting your stories into people while they're under the influence.

Not only the negative projection that you get, the negative transference you get from people, but also the positive transference, which I feel is even more insidious when you're getting like 20 people- - Oh, the projection of the golden shadow. - Yeah, that's what warps a lot of people, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's what happens. And I fell for that one very early on.

Just like you have 15 people, you're drinking the medicine as well, everyone's telling you how great you are, and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm the number best." And then slowly, little by little, all of a sudden you start getting an ego, you know? And as soon as you start getting an ego, then that's when things start going wrong, in my opinion. And also your intention changes. I talk about in the book, at the beginning, I am very altruistic. I'm like, "Yes, I need to change the world."

And then my booger trip shows me clearly that the last set of circles I did, I was just trying to get money, you know? Not fully or completely, but like the money thing had infiltrated my intention, so, and I made amends, everyone, don't worry. I gave all the money to charity. So, actually, fuck it. If you wanna cancel me, just cancel me, that's fine. I don't even know who I'm talking to at this point. It's like one o'clock in the morning here. (laughing) - So let me tag in on this.

I think, you know, be careful is a very important sort of message to be had. And even your comment there, like there's so many weird things that we could fall into. I actually did the course with eye seers that Geronimo M.M. was on the show to talk about in an episode called the six pitfalls for psychedelic facilitators or something. And they outlined that like, there are many different harms that can happen to your clients as a consequence of being, you know, not qualified to do this work.

And by qualified, I don't mean certified. There's lots of people with certificates that are far from qualified. And there's lots of people who are qualified that have no certification. But when there are lots of things that could actually harm your, the people who've put you under their care. But then there are things that could end up, you know, like having the facilitator fall into. One of them is sex, money, power. There was like intercultural relationships, legal issues.

And another one that I can't remember, it's a good episode. I'll put a card up for people who are wanting to check that out on YouTube or a link in the show notes. But yeah, that was, I feel like it's important to keep that in mind too. Oh, isolation is the last one that we fall into isolation. - Yeah, yeah, definitely. I went into a big isolation phase, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

- You know, on the flip side to this premise that, you know, people on the underground taking just a bunch of psychedelics and being like, cool, I'm ready to lead people. And the reality is that there's a huge swath of information and skillset and dynamic that you don't have if all you've done is take journeys. With respect to caring for people in their process, especially caring for Western people in a place where cultural usage or tradition for psychedelics is effectively absent.

I mean, mind you, Western tradition does have a tradition. Like modern world has a tradition, but that's like from the '60s, that's not the kind of tradition that is gonna best serve us. Yeah, exactly.

There's this other side of things where the sort of growing perspective for quote, certified facilitators, where the idea on the overground is like, well, I've watched the required hours of lectures, I've done the required in-person training sessions, I've done the workshops necessary, and thus, despite the fact that I have little to no experience directly with psychedelics at all, I am now certified to facilitate people and that makes me qualified.

Which I think is-- - Yeah, yeah, that's incorrect. - No, I totally agree with you. I really don't like the overpsychologization of psychedelics, you know, where it just becomes this big psychological head trip, and it's very Westernized and very unspiritual, and it's the most anti-spiritual sometimes, you know, where it's all about just psychotherapeutic healing and it's so much more than that. It's not just like a head trip.

So I really, and I've talked to, you know, I've met some of these people, you know, these psychotherapists and, you know, they'll take like two or three journeys and then they're sort of, all right, we'll know, now we know how to do this. And I still, on the flip side, having worked with a lot of psychotherapists, like I said, I was sort of in a community and my main checks and balances were actually psychotherapeutically trained people. I learned a lot of skills from them.

So I would say like the best combos, at least for the Western audience, is sort of a combination of like getting some counseling or psychotherapeutic skills, at least just to know how to actually act towards people in under the influence in a way that does not further complicate the situation and in a way that validates their experience and in a way that can sort of help them access their own self healing is really important.

So I was very thankful that I did have psychotherapeutically trained people that I could sort of reference and who sort of trained me as a sort of, you know, highly unlicensed therapist. But then on the other hand, like these, the psychotherapists who've done all the training but haven't done enough of the medicines themselves, I feel like they actually do need to do enough of the medicines where they do know what someone's going through when they see it.

You know, they need to go through all the levels of heaven and hell to be able to fully hold someone in that space. So I'd say that both groups have a lot to learn from each other. - Yeah, agreed. So I wanna move on a little bit and kind of get your perspective on your thoughts with respect to what's happening right now with psychedelics and the mainstreaming process.

In the book, well, I think it wasn't in the book, it was in our prep emails, you expressed that one of the things, one of the topics you'd like to talk about was, quote, "Using psychedelics as a bandaid "to keep a flawed system running." And this is something I'm concerned about as well. I'm not the only one.

A podcast that I follow called "Conspirituality" recently, or I guess several months ago, did an interview with a couple of authors from Symposia who generally I have a love-hate relationship with their reporting 'cause I love some of the things that they do. Other times I think they can be a little rabid in their attacks and a little unthoughtful. But this particular paper, this particular podcast-- - Twisting the truth. - Anyway, so this particular interview I thought was quite good.

And it was about their paper "Beyond the Psychedelic Hype," exploring the persistence of neoliberal paradigm, which was exploring how attempting to integrate psychedelics as medicine in a paradigm that puts health and mental health onus on the individual and not on society in which the individual lives, risks these compounds becoming something to help people come back to enough wellness to go back to working within and for a system that harmed them in the first place.

- Yeah. - Recently I was also interviewed for a course run by Althea Herbal called "The Belonging Course," and he asked me something about this too. And I wrote in advance, and at some point I'll get off my soapbox and hear your perspective on this. This is what I wrote. - Oh, it's good soapbox. - Thank you.

There is a concern that psilocybin mushrooms will, like many other things before them, just get churned up by the capitalist machine and fed like a slurry balm to ease the pain of a dysfunctional society in solely medical contexts that are so well controlled that any individual receiving psilocybin never has to feel like it was society that was the problem.

So we can all have our temporary relief and go back to our consumer pod cogs in the pillage engine burning up life on this planet for the padded pockets of psychopaths. Now that's not to say I don't support.

(laughing) That's not to say I don't support psychedelic medicine or psychedelic therapy or anything, but just this general concern, or that the underground way of doing it is the only way to do it, but this general concern that things are gonna, that before psychedelics can have a positive effect on the world, the world as it is is gonna have a toxic effect on psychedelics. What's your thought on this? - Yeah, I think it's gonna be a two-way street.

I totally understand where you're coming from. It's a classic idea as the MDMA therapy for PTSD war veterans, but then it's gonna be like, well, then that means you can just keep having wars and now we can treat the people who are the casualties. And you're seeing this with the microdosing. It's like microdosing is helping me achieve more in my job and I can make more money because I'm so clear headed. And so you're like, oh, yuck, this is fucked.

So it's just like, okay, what does this look like then? And towards the end of my facilitation thing where I was just like, am I even helping? Sometimes the same people are coming back every couple of months. They're like, oh, I'm depressed again because I'm still stuck in the fucking job I hate and I'm living in this shitty apartment that I hate and I'm not like, I'm like, fuck, am I just enabling this person to basically endure their hellish existence enough to be another cog in the machine?

That's obviously I don't wanna demean their healing process, but not naming any names, but it was just a trend I noticed. So this sort of comes back to my original, what I was talking about before was like, okay, how do we use psychedelics to change culture in a way that doesn't turn it into a fucking weird cult? And what's the bigger picture? And I haven't really worked that out.

I think it would be like, I think that it's actually more for the plants to say, really, for the land and for the country and for spirit to sort of speak of than any self-directed, egoic, human planning control idea. And I think this is, again, this links into this overpsychologization of seeing these medicines as tools. And I'm like, I mean, I'm a fucking dirty hippie.

I'm like, there are spirits, in my opinion, that these sort of plant intelligences that have a greater situated place in the sort of guy and intelligence of which we've fallen out of balance with. So I think this is the next task for all of us ahead is like, okay, how do we actually work with these medicines in a responsible way that changes culture for the better?

So far, all I can really think of is like, I've got a few ideas and that's like basically educating people so they can begin to some degree forming like small, self-sufficient, well, maybe not self-sufficient, but like self-healing groups, where it becomes this more organic process where they don't have to rely on the psychologists or even the facilitators really. Obviously there's a lot of problems and pitfalls in that, but I'm just sort of spitballing shit at the moment in my head.

And then the other parts would be like, yeah, where it'd be potentially used in like more intentional community containers where you can start experimenting with like different ways of being and living and raising children in ways that don't fuck them up from the get-go and where it's woven in to the fabric of that larger social fabric where it is, I don't know, that's kind of where I'm at. It's still very rudimentary and, but yeah, I'm not really sure.

And part of me wonders if I'm even meant to know, it's more about alignment than trying to like design and devise, which is very like dominator kind of way of doing things. Maybe it's more about allowing it to come through us instead of forcing our preconceived ideas of what it should look like and what it's gonna look like, because I think we are living through the end stages of that way of being, yeah.

- And maybe that's our role, is to live through the end stages of this and let successive generations pick up the mantle of actually figuring it out. Not to say that we don't do anything, but what we do is trying to navigate and be honest and forthright and owning the poverty, like the cultural, spiritual poverty of our era. - Yeah, yeah. - We're expecting abundance to be on the other side of it for us personally.

- No. Well, I mean, I had this big a boga trip where my intention was like, "Oh, to heal my self, whatever, some selfish fucking shit." And then instead I got this big download about like, "You guys, this healing that you're going for, it's gonna take several generations to get back to any level of wellness, if you wanna call it that."

'Cause like we've been imprinted so deeply from the get-go with these slow out of balance ways, what the best you can do is just clear as much junk as you can from your own shit, try not to pass that onto the next generation and then they start from that point and they try and clear all that. And hopefully they're living in some kind of living situation some kind of community or society that supports that, that process on a deeper level, yeah.

- Yeah. The comment you made around like learning how to raise our kids differently. I've had on the show a handful of times now, a woman named Darshan Narvize and her work is, which calls the Evolved Nest, I have the book nearby. - Oh, I've actually, yeah, I was listening to her talk about the Evolved Nest, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, so I've had her on the show a handful of times and her work is really incredible to talk about the cycle between like the culture adults live in and the culture of child rearing and how the culture of child rearing generates the culture adults live in which generates the culture of child rearing and that the consequence of where we're at now is that we're in a cycle of competitive detachment rather than a cycle of peaceful cooperation that allows for human flourishing

which requires us to sort of revamp the nest we raise our children within which results in and is generated by changing the culture that adults live in. Yeah, I mean, it's a great episode. Again, I'll leave a little card out for people who wanna listen to it. - Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree.

I mean, the reason why, you know, back to the first thing we're talking about, the self-centeredness in our culture is because of how we were raised as children, you know, it's just a sort of self-propelling cycle.

And if you'll grow up in a tribal situation and I've been to a few communities where kids are raised in a more communal setting, they're just a lot more balanced, you know, they've got multiple guardians in a way, everyone's pulling them into line, you know, they're getting love and attachment from not just two people who are heavily overworked all the time.

So, you know, I would totally see how that would just, from the get-go, just not half the problems that we have just wouldn't even be there. Well, half is an estimation, but, you know, definitely. - Many. - It's a big one. - So ending out the interview, I wanna end it out with where you start in your book. And I think you described yourself in 2015 as like a fucked up comedian. And now you say you're back to comedy. - I'm all healed now, James. I have no problems whatsoever.

I'm happy all the time, even when it's really sad. - Wow, this is good. - I am the modicum of wellness. - Not to mention the Messiah. - I can make you just like me for 69.95 a month. - You know, for the low, low price of three installments of 99.99, I can teach you how to convince other people to give you three installments of 99.99. - Yeah, exactly. - Anyways.

- Now, a lot of people call this the pyramid scheme, but yeah, it's a very ancient and sacred-- - But the Egyptians speak-- - And sustainable. - Yeah, the pyramid is a very strong structure. - And an ark-y pyramid. It was built by the ancient aliens. - I am their messenger. What role-- - Oh, you too, all right, shoot. - Don't worry, there are many. - I would talk to him about this. I thought I was the other one, but anyway.

We're gonna have to have a show on the showdown to realize that's not enough, James. - It's happening right now. - Okay, actual question, here we go, here we go. What role, looking back, what role did comedy as an art form play in your mental health challenges at the time, or alternatively, what role did you think it was playing and what role was it actually playing now apparent in hindsight? - Oh man, this is a good question. I mean, comedy can be the medicine, it can also be the poison, hey.

It's been very refreshing going back into comedy now from a healed perspective and just seeing how, yeah, it's not healthy. The whole showbiz, I mean, people, they're clearly broken. Like there's something missing inside of you to still wanna be doing that. And clearly there's still something wounded in me that feels like I still wanna do it. But having said that, I would say that wounding is inevitable in this realm. So it's all about how perspective on that wound.

But now I feel like, and it's been weird coming back, man, 'cause I thought after all this healing, I'd be kind of this uplifting Ted Talk kind of comedian, but it's just the same filthy, borderline offensive stuff that I was doing beforehand. There are some changes. I would say it's a lot more about the truth now. It's not necessarily about, it's not as pessimistic. I guess I am sort of, I view it as like, I'm trying to become more of a channel.

I know this sounds pretentious, but I'm like trying to be, I don't even know why I'm doing it now. It's like, I don't know, it's just like I had to do it. I got really depressed last year and I was like, I don't get it, I've done all this work, I've done so much stuff, why am I depressed right now? And then I kind of went back to comedy and immediately the depression went away and I was like, oh shit, I have to go back and do this as a sort of, this is just one of my callings.

The medicine was a calling and now this is a calling. So yeah, so, and right now I think it's like, the weird thing is, so much crazy shit is happening right now in the world on so many levels. I feel like I'm in a fucking dystopian sci-fi for half the time. Weird alien reality TV show, but like a lot of the comedians aren't really talking about it and I was just like, what? And a lot of the audiences haven't really, not really receptive to it.

Like the other night I took a poll, I was like, how many of you guys actually think that we're gonna be witnessing end stage civilization collapse in our lifetimes? And half the crowd were like, yeah. I was like, how many of you guys actually think that we're fine and everything's gonna be fine? And the other half was like, yeah, what are you talking about? Why is this guy bumming us out? And I was like, wow.

So I've witnessed that we are in a bubble like this, the bubble that we're in, like where we think that things are changing, which they are, like I do feel that there is a great awareness, but I would say that the vast majority of the populace is still quite shut down, you know? So back to your question, like the role of comedy in mental health, comedy can be used as a way to avoid emotions, definitely.

It can be a way to protect yourself and not deal with things, which is definitely how I used to use it, you know, just as an avoidance mechanism. And then there's a kind of comedy which you can use as sort of a lance to get to the root of the issue, you know? And there's not many people who can do that well, because it requires a lot of skill. And if it goes wrong, as I found out recently, the audience really hates you.

So I'm sort of still in this process where I've had six years off and I'm like, that's the kind of comedy I wanna do, that's always my favorite comedians, the ones who sort of get straight to the bone, but I'm still like learning how to ride the bike again. And so my radar can be off sometimes. And it's so interesting, the crowds have changed as well. The attention spans much shorter. You simultaneously got people who really wanna hear off the cuff, crazy shit coming out of people's mouths.

And then you've also got these very PC work audiences who are very easily triggered. And so it's a very interesting time to do comedy for sure. So it's a very, yeah, it's a very weird balancing act that I'm still learning how to fully navigate.

So yeah, but right now, I don't know, the comedy is kind of keeping me sane because I don't know how else to really function in the world right now without like seeing it from this weird, like humorous perspective because everything is just so fucked up in like what would otherwise be a very depressing way. So like, I have to laugh 'cause I was like, I have no idea when they're talking about UFOs in the Washington Senate hearings, I'm like, what the fuck? So like, I don't know.

- They're technically UAPs now. - Yeah, we all know what they're talking about though. And non-biologic human remains, okay, all right. So yeah, so I feel like you have to laugh now because otherwise you're just really sad all the time. (laughs) - So it seems-- - It just crosses it, fuck off. - No, no, we were gonna say the problem is that. - When you're laughing at everything right now, you can come across as a very tasteless psychopath. (laughs) - Glad you finished on that one.

- Sociopath maybe. - So comedians have always been in some respect cultural commentators. Like you have to have a, yeah, for the most part, you really have to have a good sort of like finger on the culture to be an effective artist and comedian being one of those people. And recently, especially in the last 10 years, that I've seen, the role of comedian seems to have been elevated in our culture like quite significantly.

Comedy, standup comedy is a, and even just like televised comedy with comedians not just as people telling jokes, but as people who are sort of like regarded as like important figures in the voice of a generation. Which, for better or for worse, from Sasha Baron Cohen to Joe Rogan to Dave Chappelle to these other people who, for better or for worse, are being sort of like put on a platform as not just comedians, but as important figures leading and commenting and criticizing culture.

And so I guess, I mean, that was kind of like a bit of a tangent, but I have a question for you. It's the final question I have. It has to do with, pessimism isn't really much of an accomplishment, just like prejudice. It's not really much of an accomplishment. It's very easy. And we could put ourselves in a position as though our pessimism or prejudice or nihilism is some sort of intellectual accomplishment against whatever non-rational blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to me, it isn't. - Yeah.

- Defense mechanism, actually. - Yeah. What role do you see humor, and pessimism and humor is, again, a very effective way to, the amnesia, anesthesia, as Francis Weller says, is so integrated into our culture. What role do you see humor, not just comedy, but humor in general playing for all of us right now?

I know that you mentioned that we kind of have to laugh, but how do we stay in that generative role of humor and not fall into a kind of pessimistic cynicism that the laughter, the jokes, and the humor support? - Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you have to, this sounds really hippy, but you have to be sort of in your heart, hey. Like, I find when it becomes too cynical, it can become heartless, you know? And sort of brutal.

And sometimes I'll be listening to comedy just going, "Oh, this is just really harsh, you know? It's just really, for the sake of it, just pretty horrible shit, you know? Pretty toxic." Having said that, regenerative comedy, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered any. Like, comedy is very much about tearing down taboos and exposing bullshit, you know? So I find right now we're living in this world where there's so much bullshit.

Like, literally the emperor's, he's not only wearing no clothes, he's literally jacking off in everyone's faces all the time. And no one's really saying it. So I feel like that's kind of the job of comedy, at least in my idea of what I'm trying to get to, where I'm trying to tell it as it is, man, with mixed results. But like I said, I'm still learning how to ride the bike again. So that's kind of the role I get. But again, it has to be anchored in the heart.

You know, it has to be coming from a place of, I feel like, love for the world and love for the audience. And again, I'm still working through my issues. Like, you know, I'm still working through my rejection issues that I should really have processed by now if the audience doesn't like me. But yeah, it's just trying to come from a position of love instead of like hate and like wounding, you know? So I think that's the ideal level of coming from.

But you know, sometimes you're playing in front of like a crowd of ostensibly horrible fuckwits. So this is where the test happens, you know, where it's like, you can be all love and light, but like when you're playing to like some very drunk hen's parties or box nights and they're out for blood, you can have as many hippie intentions as you want, but it's not gonna wash. So this is where I'm like now, like, okay, a lot of it is audience-based.

Like it is a play between the comedian and the audience. So maybe it is about building an audience of like self-aware, like good people where you can then be given the freedom to explore. - Or if you don't find a way to call any audience into that place. - You know, I think we're actually in times of great division and like polarization, and I'm not sure if unity is where we're at at this point.

I think maybe we do have to follow this, and what I'm seeing with all the comedians coming out right now, 'cause I kind of got heavily into seeing where everyone's at, is like, you get kind of got, everyone's got a comedian for every niche group now. It's like, here's the Italian comedian for the Italian people, and here's the Indian comedian for the Indian people, and here's a lesbian black comedian for the lesbian black people.

And it's like a lot of niche comedy now splitting off into all little groups. So yeah, and right now I just feel like there's so many differences of opinions that everyone has, and maybe I don't have the skillset to fully, you know, bring everyone on board yet, you know, or maybe I'm not that guy, maybe, but I mean, I, all my favorite comedians, you know, they'll always make half the crowd hate them. And that's exciting, so I love that. It's really good texture to get.

And so, yeah, I'm not sure if, I'm not sure if there, yeah, maybe there is, I don't know. I have, I've yet to see it. I've yet to see a comedian take everyone to, you know, exciting places without at least a few of the crowd being, I'm leaving, so, because, you know, we have-- - What has comedy-- - Sorry? - Sorry, this platform we're using has a lag, so it's difficult to quickly interject without it being disruptive. - That's okay.

- I really wanna, I wanna shift away for a second from comedy specifically. I wanna hear, like I, sorry, that lag thing kinda threw off the flow. - All good. - Beyond comedy, sort of same general category of question. What about humor? - Ah, humor in today's-- - Sense of humor, yeah. - Oh, well, you need it to, need to stay afloat, you know? Like, it's the only best defense against the heaviness and the darkness is to make a joke out of it.

It might be a very dark joke, but like, it gives you power. It gives you power over it to some degree, and I was even reading about how they were talking about, you know, if you ever have to deal with an entity in the psychedelic space or in the magical space, one of the best defenses you can have is just to laugh at it because it hates not being taken seriously if you ever meet a demon. So I just thought, oh, that's a really funny, funny little thing there.

And they'd actually even talk about clearing spaces by just laughing hysterically. That's one of the best ways to clear an energetic space. So definitely during these times of great destabilization and craziness and you don't really know what's going on, like comedy is grounding, you know? Comedy is, well, comedy, the comedy where it's not bypassing and distracting you from, but it helps you sort of deal with reality, I think, straight.

If you can find someone who can sort of really just say it as it is and cut through all the bullshit, you know, there's this sort of release that people get where they go, yeah, you're right. That's exactly what I've been feeling, but you've sort of enunciated it, you know? So yeah, I feel like we are in trickster times, you know? Everything's fucking upside down and backwards, forwards, and you have to laugh. Otherwise you're just gonna feel crazy and depressed as fuck.

So yeah, definitely you have to have a sense of humor right now 'cause if you don't, like, how can you not? There's aliens. The aliens are real. 'Cause I'm not pessimistic. I used to be very pessimistic, but as soon as I started following the whole UAP hearings, I was like, oh, I don't even know what the fuck's going on anymore. This is getting weird, so I just sort of, yeah, I'm not pessimistic. I wouldn't say I'm super optimistic. I'm not even sure what I am anymore. I'm just, like, curious.

I'm just like, I just wanna see what happens now 'cause it's just like I feel like I'm in this weird fucking video game now, so yeah. It's very funny to me, but sometimes heartbreaking too. - But that's funny. - All right, let's finish up here. - This is what happens when you drink Ayahuasca 250 times. You laugh at all the wrong places. - Let's bring this conversation to a close today. Nick Sun, it's been great having you on the show here. Really appreciate it. No mo trippin'.

Thanks for the great book. Really enjoyed reading it. While some bits were actually quite uncomfortable to read, but the overall experience was like, nice. Nicely done. - It's not for the fame of hurt. - Certainly not. Yeah, so thank you for that. Is there anywhere you wanna send people from this interview if they'd like to get a copy of the book or follow your work, follow your comedy, et cetera? - Yeah, just, I got a YouTube channel.

Just look up YouTube, Nick Sun. I'm in this experimental phase where I'm recording lots of weird videos, which are, I don't know. We'll just see how they are. It's trial and error. I've got a website, www.nicksun.org. You can get my book from Amazon. Just look up "No Mo Trippin' Nick Sun" Amazon. And as for the comedy stuff, I'm talking to a producer on Friday to how to get myself out there and do all that sort of shit.

So I'm sure once I do, I'll be one of those annoying fuckwits on YouTube shorts with short crowd work clips that go nowhere. But I'll just join the fray. So I don't know. I'm sure I'll penetrate the cultural intelligence, fucking shit stuff. You'll, I'll be around. It's like two in the morning now. I don't know what's happening. - Well, I know what's happening. We're coming to a close. Nick Sun, thank you so much for your time today, for your book and for this interview. - Thanks heaps, James.

Thanks for all the good work you do too. - And cut. - Give this guy some money and donations. - Well, okay. That last cut, that didn't count, but now cut. - All right, all right. - Thanks for tuning into this episode of the podcast. If you liked it, please do share it with a friend or hit the like button wherever you're checking it out. Be it YouTube or on the social media posts that led you here to the episode.

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