The Legal and Cultural Landscape of Psilocybin Mushrooms in Mexico | Mijal Schmidt ~ 187

Hello everyone, welcome back to Adventures Through the Mind. This is a show 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, presently and across time, human and non-human alike. I'm your host,

and as always, James W. Jesso. This episode of the show is going to explore the historical and modern landscape of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Mexico, politically, legally, and culturally. Throughout the interview, we're going to explore the present-day legal and political conundrum that psilocybin mushrooms are presently in as they sit on the verge

of a significant change in their criminal status in Mexico. We also talk about the impact that the history of psychedelic tourism has had on the indigenous cultures that work with mushrooms in Mexico, and how that history is impacting those cultures today, and how all of this is influencing the complex political situation mushrooms now sit in the middle of. Our guest is Mijal Schmidt. [music]

(upbeat music) Before we get into the interview, a big thank you to the sponsor of this episode, magicbag.co. Magic bag offers ready to inoculate grow bags for your favorite dung loving mushrooms, simplifying the mushroom growing process. They are certified benefit corporation and donate profits to organizations researching and advocating for psychedelic therapy, such as John Hopkins and maps.

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Again, that's magicbag.co, not .com, and use the promo code JESSO for 10% off your order. Thank you, magicbag, for sponsoring this episode. Now here in the show, we don't do a lot of sponsored episodes, very occasionally, assuming that I feel strongly aligned, assuming that I am feeling aligned and supportive of the company that is looking to sponsor the show.

Predominantly, the show's existence and the larger body of my work that I put in to create the show, as well as presently writing a book, is supported through my patrons on Patreon. So thank you very much, patrons. I couldn't be doing this without your show of support, care, involvement, and the sense that what I do has value.

An extra special thanks goes to those who give significantly, some of which for a long time, through their name in the credits here on YouTube, if that's where you're watching it, or in the description to this episode, wherever you are listening to it. Now, with those aspects of the process level of this podcast spoken to, the sponsorship and the Patreon, let me read you the bio for today's guest, Mijal Schmidt.

Mijal Schmidt is a clinical psychologist with a master's in psychoanalysis and musicology. She has been working in the clinical field for over 15 years, and as an integration psychotherapist for over four years. She collaborates with different international organizations, such as ICERs, as an integration psychotherapist, and was just appointed the clinical director at Nectara.

Now, Mijal has been on the show previously for episode 183 titled integrating Ayahuasca and psychedelics in general, and I like her a lot. I think she's got some great stuff to offer, and I really like her work, so you can expect that there's a good chance that I'll be wrangling up another opportunity to interview her in the future as well, but let's not put the cart before the horse. Let's get into the episode actually. So this is episode 187 of Adventures Through the Mind with Mijal Schmidt.

Enjoy. Okay. Mijal Schmidt, welcome back to Adventures Through the Mind. - Thank you. It's great being here again. Let's adventure into it. - So on our last episode, we predominant, or our last interview, we predominantly looked at Ayahuasca and integration, integration generally as there's a lot of carryover, but with a specific look at what is particularly relevant in psychedelic integration after an Ayahuasca session.

And in our preparation conversations around that interview, there was the realization of your knowledge around what's happening right now with respect to mushrooms in Mexico, which is your country of origin, I believe, correct? - Right. - So, excitedly made sense to focus on one and then on the other. So we're here for the mushrooms in Mexico conversation and I'm very excited to be having it.

- Yeah, I'm very, very much excited to talk about my country and what's been going on historically with these elements and that we can see from many different perspectives. It's a topic that's very close to my heart and I really appreciate the mutation. - Well, let's start with a very broad question because I don't know enough about the sort of cultural and even present things that are happening in Mexico to sort of formulate very specific questions.

So I'm gonna give you a big question and I'm gonna let you tease it out and then I'm gonna try to ride along with you here, which is if you could give us a sense of what the present situation is for psilocybin mushrooms and related practices in Mexico and then contextualize that present situation with as much sort of historical usage as is necessary to help us get a clear sense of where the present things happening, where they fit in the larger historical arc of mushrooms in Mexico.

- It is a broad question and it asks, it is a question that yeah, that goes around many different disciplines. So I'll give you an overview in the understanding that my discipline is the clinical one, yet I think I understand the interest, the broad interest about the region and about the situation, the legal situation also with the mushrooms here in Mexico.

So maybe I'll start from there, which is that there is currently a, discussion in the Senate working through law, through the law and how mushrooms are considered here in Mexico and so broadly speaking, mushrooms in Mexico are illegal in every single place that you step your foot on. And so every practice that is done is under the light of the legal, the legality.

However, historically there has been a cultural law or acceptance of a cultural usage from indigenous people of these and other psychedelics, well, plants, let's put it this way. Although mushrooms are not considered plants, but that no botanical products, let's put it. - Okay. - Right? So they have been respected throughout history because they are part of the tradition, Mexico tradition, particularly in some regions, right?

So la massateca, this wahakanya, this area in wahaka is one of the most important ones, but it's not the only one in which mushrooms are used as part of the tradition. So what this law says, which is translated more or less like the law of usage and customs, what this law says is that although illegal, these mushrooms in this case, or the indigenous will not be persecuted if they use it for themselves within their own rituals.

- And this is specific to mushrooms or all the sort of ethnobotanicals. It's like law in Mexico. Is this like an agreed law, like in Mexico, if an indigenous person is doing a ceremony or practice with an otherwise illegal plant that is a part of their indigenous traditions, they will not be prosecuted under the law that otherwise criminalizes possession and use of that substance? - Yes, however, peyote has another type of agreement.

So they have, so right now what they're discussing is about mushrooms, but peyote has another status, and peyote has just kept there in its own status and they are not moving it because these agreements were already discussed some years ago. So since the sacred is intertwined with the law, this is a very important aspect to it. So about the, it's in general, right? But each ethnobotanical product has its own rules, let's put it this way.

But generally, it is considered that the indigenous to Mexico have their own ethnobotanical usages of these and other products and they can use it. They can, if it's within the ritual of their own culture, what the law says is that they cannot include others, let's put it this way, they cannot share it. They cannot distribute it. They cannot sell it.

This has, I think, turned into like this gray area where tourists come to these areas to get mushrooms because it's said that since they're in the usage of the customs of the indigenous, then they won't be prosecuted, right? But these do not include, these does not include any other person but themselves in their own rituals.

- So, okay, so generally what we're seeing now is this situation where generally ethnobotanical use by indigenous people is sanctioned if it's, you know, as long as it's just for them. And then depending on the plant, it might have its own sort of legal context. Right now, there's a legal context being sort of discussed and new on specific for psilocybin containing mushrooms.

While simultaneously, there's a kind of cultural thing that's happening, which I assume is cultural in the proper sense, but also cultural in the sort of like cultural tourism sense of foreigners coming specifically to consume mushrooms in various places in Mexico, because of this kind of assumption that it's not illegal slash probably just a kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, no one's really gonna get in trouble if you stay within certain boundaries.

I mean, 'cause I've been to San Jose, it was like just right out there for sale, you know? So, we're San Jose del Pacifico. So there must be some kind of like the cops ain't coming kind of agreement here. Is that where you, have I gotten a good sense of it?

- Yeah, so just to round a bit more, the discussion that is being done right now in the Senate is that what they're pushing, you know, the Senate to do is to change the law basically to declassify mushrooms so that researchers can research them because right now they can't, right?

So it falls into this, well, but they are doing it anyways, because they're part of the, you know, the customs of these groups and there are researchers in the area doing research already, but not necessarily can they, you know, provide enough data at the same time that information about groups or specific regions, because that will kind of prove that they're in a legal, right, activities, however. So that's one thing, right?

Push that it is declassified so it can have its own classification, that's a discussion that they're having here. So should we open another classification or should it be, should we put mushrooms in a classification that already exists? And if we do that, how do we do that? How do we classify the substance, right? So that it can be opened to other groups, not only for research, but also for the medical usage as well, right?

So provided by, that's the thing that they're discussing right now and it's not my expertise.

I did ask Jesus from ICRS, but he gave me a lot of information and I'm really grateful for that because he's one of the lawyers that has been in contact with the Senate as well, helping out these law, to shape this law in a better way, where they have been consulting the groups here in Mexico, at least from the Masateca region, to understand what are the needs and what they would like to look like, right?

How they would like to intervene in the decisions of the Senate since they are the original groups working with mushrooms. And so that is another thing that they're pushing, right? In the law that these groups be considerate before any decision made in the Senate, so that they are consulted, that they have an opinion, that they can have an opinion on what the law is going to look like around mushrooms. - Just a question.

Is that sort of outside groups that are kind of lobbying for the inclusion of indigenous voices in the sort of changing legislation, or is that sort of like members of, I'm not sure the political structure there, but members of the Senate, that they are actively aware and they are wanting to call indigenous people in, or is it like you said, Jesus from ICRS, is it other groups that aren't necessarily involved in the Senate discussion being like, no, wait a minute, we need to get

the indigenous people involved? I guess the question is, the involvement of the indigenous people and their sort of considerations being held, is that a product of the government of Mexico generally caring about indigenous voices, or is that sort of outside groups sort of trying to make sure that the government cares for those voices? - I think that a lot of people come from the indigenous groups actually, which they have become researchers and they are the voices of the indigenous.

There are scholars, some of them making masters degrees in Canada, some of them in other parts of the world. And what they're doing is kind of coming back and putting their own voice right into these groups, where they belong, where they come from, to, since they are having this greater right vision of what's going on with mushrooms outside the country.

So a lot of these people are coming back, so to speak, to say, well, we are the indigenous and we should be considered in these decisions and how we want to shape how we are presenting and how we are sharing also these knowledge with the world. So there are many different voices around this, right? Some of them do not agree, of course. Some of them are just trying to not forget about our lineage, right?

The government has been involved historically as well, but we know how governments sometimes don't have the best interest and they try to take for themselves whatever is needed. And so they have pushed a lot of initiatives for these, let's say for Wautla, the humanist, to be the Pueblo Mexico, which is an initiative of calling magic towns to a lot of the towns in Mexico that offer something, right?

But by doing that, what they have been doing is kind of a homogenizing the folklore and selling, but this is, yeah. - It's like turning it into a theme park of Mexican culture or well, pre-Mexican, presently Mexican culture kind of thing. - Right, and it has been shaped to invite a particular tourism to come to the country to kind of, in name of the exoticism that is already out there, that has been already out there throughout time.

And so by this, they have pushed a lot of, yeah, this initiative, what has done is that the idea was that they would give money, of course, to the towns so that they could feed their own practices and they could, of course, better their ways of living. However, this has not turned into that exactly, but a lot of the money given has been lost somewhere, right? And so sometimes these funds or these initiatives don't get to the people really.

And what happens is that the middlemen's kind of, the middlemen sell whatever they think that the country or the region needs, but they're not taking into account the indigenous people who really are the ones who have been living here for ages and they not only need these funds, but they own the land, right? So there has been a lot of movement in terms of, yes, there are some politicians in this case, this woman on the Senate, she's very interested in pushing this law and it was her initiative.

So she's been very, she has been talking to lawyers and people from the international scene to- - And what's her name? - Alejandra Lagunes. So that she has been interested in informing herself about what's going on in the world and she's been pushing this initiative, talking to the indigenous of the Masateca from both sides because the Masateca is like there's the North and the South, so to speak, right?

And they have been also kind of separated because of other initiatives in history and so some of them recognize the others, but some don't recognize the others. And so there are a lot of internal conflicts that they have already had throughout their history, right? Since 1930s probably.

And so this woman, she has been talking to these groups and trying to understand the contemporary uses and she has been talking to psychologists and interviewing psychiatrists and understanding what's the medical use and talking to the authorities in the UNAM, the National University of Mexico, to understand how all the parties involved in what's already going on. And the law, I think it's stopped right now at a certain point, like very recently because it didn't get to an agreement.

- Like it stopped as in it still, it hasn't decided on yet. Like it's not like the law is canceled, it's not happening, it's just like, oh, it's been stymied for a time. - It did stop because of a discussion that happened inside of these groups. And I think that it's a time sensitive discussion as well because these women will, you know, have a period. Is it period? The period of her hand? - Electoral timing or timeframe or something? - Exactly.

And so if we don't see this pass with her, we don't really know what's going to happen with this initiative because as far as I know, we don't have many other politicians interested in this matter. - So that was a little bit around the topic around the law, right? But I think that your question was around usages, cultural. - Yeah, I'll ask you that in a second. I think, you know, it's interesting because, I mean, in many ways, in most ways even, sorry, I just got notified by my partner's mom.

The text came through my screen for some reason being like, hi, and I'm like, oh, sorry, distraction. Okay, so yes, what was I saying? - Hi, partner's mother. (both laughing) - In many ways, you know, the worldwide phenomenon that is psilocybin and psilocybin Mexico's is a no small part, sorry, psilocybin mushrooms. This is no small part because of Mexico, right?

Because of the like long standing traditions there because of the very complicated history of R. Gordon-Watson sort of extracting that knowledge and sharing it publicly and the sort of like, the hippie shroom boom chasing enlightenment in the mountains of Mexico that happened shortly after that. And then, you know, Timothy Leary, he had his first psilocybin experience in Mexico. Like it all sort of like roots back to Mexico.

And it's so interesting that in many ways, now if Mexico does not change their law to create a greater sort of openness to the research, to the cultural traditions, to et cetera, it's sort of like choosing to hold yourself back from being a sort of world leader in a phenomenon that you are the reason it exists. So I'm curious, what is the predominant pushback that this Senator is getting that's making it so that this law is not moving forward?

Is it just technicalities or are there sort of explicit sort of like anti-movement that are against the changing of regulation around psilocybin for some reason? - What's a very good question? And I think that it touches on many different things at the same time. And one of these aspects is it's a cultural aspect, which, so when the middlemen have been, historically have been people who are not looking into indigenous groups, you know, to help them better their lives, right?

- Sorry, who do you mean by the middlemen? - So the middlemen, I mean governments actually. - The thing is this, that sometimes, you know, Mexico is this Republic, right? And then there are states and they have their capital. And then they have shorter or smaller governments, right? Like municipal governments and regional governments. And so there are a lot of like middle, you know, sort of governments within governments.

And so in this iteration of governments, the initiatives that are pushed are lost because a lot of these people do not belong to the indigenous people. They come from outside, they're appointed by others that have nothing to do with the region, that have no interest in helping people, you know, have a different pursue of their own benefit. So when these, so there has been a lot of corruption and there's a lot of, so indigenous people don't really trust very much in governments.

And that's one thing, right? But there's the other aspect which has to do with tourism in itself. There are many types of tourism, right? And in Oaxaca, Oaxaca we must know is one of the poorest states in the country. - I did not know that. - Unfortunately, and the region around it has been historically the poorest in the country. And you would have thought that this whole movement, right?

The hippo movement and everything that has been going on and still today would provide the indigenous people with a better way of living and it doesn't. And this is given to different, this is given, yeah, from different, because of different reasons. On one hand, one of the types of tourism that has gotten to the region is the hippie tourism. Hippie tourism is not considered a tourism that will provide a lot of means, right? They don't really, they eat whatever they can, right?

They don't really spend much money in the town. They basically kind of don't provide anything to the world, to indigenous, to the town. So, and a lot of what has happened is that since, you know, economically for these town has been necessary to open up to tourism, they have been breaking a lot of traditional rules to accommodate in order to be able to gain some, to make some gainings from something that sprouts from earth, right?

But traditionally, so I'm going around the topic for you to, you know, for us all to have these context because it's not a simple question to answer. It is full of contrasts. So one of the things that has made the Masateka separate and divide is precisely the perception or the inclination towards tourism. Because as you probably know, in "Walta de Jimenez," Maria Sabina started eating mushrooms out of hunger. - Wow, I did not know that. - Not because she had this knowledge of, right?

But because she was hungry and that was what there was. And so she ended up, you know, having this experience with silo-cybing. And of course she was surrounded by people who knew about the work with mushrooms, right? But the work with mushrooms was considered the last resource to go to. And it was particularly for critical illnesses. It was considered also, you know, sometimes to solve certain social issues. And it was introduced also to kind of find certain things.

So it was very much in the social sphere. But it was regarded as something that not only was sacred, but it was something that, it was the resource to which people would look to only when they had no other choice. Now, considering the area as one of the poorest, they didn't also have any pharmacies or any other means to treat illnesses. So what they have had historically are plants. And so that's how it began really, right?

So when Maria was sort of forced, right, to open up the Velada to Wasson, one part of the community turned against her, very importantly, and she was called a traitor. These elements persist. So there are these sort of spheres within Oaxaca where some of the locals consider that, you know, they have to open to the public, they have to open to tourism.

They, you know, it's part of, you know, growing and the movement of a country and a region and also the exposition that they have to tourists and foreigners. And some of their spheres in the same region consider that this would be, again, a movement against the nature of the ritual in itself because one of the elements that is central to indigenous groups in Mexico is the exchange.

And before, you know, Mexica's opening up to trade that came with Spaniards, they used cacao and they used as a bus coin, right? But they also used trading, just trading goods for goods. - Like bartering, the barter system. - Exactly. This is something that persists. This is the core of mushroom trade. Let's put it this way. There's no trade actually because what philosophically curanderos understood and medically is that people would come to them during their diseases.

So it didn't really matter that they had money to pay. Actually, some of them don't even charge because what they do is that they leave this open for the person to pay whatever they consider for their own, you know, in exchange of their health. So there's not a price to it. They haven't, although of course part of it has opened up to, you know, the market, which is a problem right now. Traditionally, this didn't go in the market scheme. This was about healing.

This was about curing a specific illness or understanding what was going to happen in the future with someone. The rules that they had before were very strict and they were very ingrained in the sacred. So a lot of the rules that they had had nothing to do with the market. They had to do with the spiritual aspect or the sacred. Let's put it this way, not the spiritual that came later, but the sacred aspect to the mushrooms.

So going back to your first, to the question is that within these spheres, inside the Masateka, they have discussions given historically by some who chose to sell mushrooms, those who choose not to sell the mushrooms, those who are opening up the ritual to tourists, those who are trying to benefit economically from the ritual, those who choose not to open up rituals to foreigners, those who think that they need to continue protecting the rituals in such a way

that they're not devoid of these sacredness, right? And these discussions and these points of view have made them not only divide, but also has not allowed some of the discussions to actually take place. And some of these important actions to really occur or go further.

So that's something that happened right now with the discussion about what to do and how to, so the question is how to open up some thing that is fundamentally sacred, that fundamentally doesn't go into the market logic yet, that is something that's not being able to stop people from getting into a relationship of, mercantilism, right? Mercantilism? Yes. I don't know the term. Is that the term in English? As in like money trade? Right. Okay, so I can actually appreciate this on some level.

Like my inclination, from my perspective, which is driven by the sort of context of my cultural context, what would be referred to as my demographic, is like, oh yeah, like open it up. Like open it up to science, to research, to medicine, to creating a space for indigenous people to craft a sort of livelihood around these things, specifically because now it's not criminalized, so there could be larger investments being made, but then I can also see this other side of it.

Okay, so then where's all that extra money coming in to set up the next retreat center, and then who's getting paid for these centers? And all of a sudden there is no sort of like, you're deeply sick, there's no charge, like come and be in the ceremony, my community member to like, oh yeah, all the mushrooms are actually presently reserved for the foreigners who are coming and paying two, three, $4,000 a pop for a weekend kind of thing.

And how like on some level I could see, A, that's a risk, how do you regulate so that that doesn't happen? But also the other risk of like, if I imagine myself as an indigenous person from the region, and I think, you know, like, wait, so much has already been taken from us. And I see this as another thing that will be taken from us.

And I would rather, pardon the terminology here, but I'd rather be poor and barefoot honoring the sacred medicine than having money, having sacrificed on my, you know, spiritual, ethical, cultural values, in order to jump on the train of modernity.

I mean, that's a pretty shitty characterization a little bit, but I can appreciate like, this means so much to me, I'm willing to sacrifice aspects of what might be my livelihood to care for this thing that to me is deeply sacred, or like, whatever it might be.

I feel like I'm getting tripped up in my own sort of attempt to sort of take the perspective of an indigenous person, but I can see how the, I could see why, even with all this sort of like, the shining lights of potential, that they would still be like, wait a minute, no. - Well, I think that it is complex. And we probably need to get more acquainted with how they perceive themselves, right?

That's the indigenous, because the notion that we have about them being poor is not the same that they do have about not having goods. It's entirely different.

For us, they are poor, but for them, in many cases, what they consider is that they simply don't have goods, but that doesn't mean that they're poor, because they have such richness in their own culture and in the way in which they live life and their relationships and the connection to nature and the way they under their cosmology and the way they understand their lives, that for them, not having goods is not being poor.

Now, we can understand, at least I would say that, not having water, it's nonsense, right? And that would mean that someone is poor. And it's nonsense to not have water these days, right? Well, we're actually running out of water in Mexico and in everywhere, but what I mean with this is that they have not had services, like running, properly running services from ever.

So I think that, and here, I don't have the last call 'cause it's not my, at all, it's not my research area, but I think that we would need to understand how they think about themselves and about poverty and about richness, which is not the capitalist model. - And I'm gonna jump in and I appreciate you saying that. As I was speaking, I was like, "Something doesn't feel right here."

And as you sort of, I'm like, "Oh, what doesn't feel right is I was sort of inherently projecting a kind of like consumer capitalist model or paradigm to the attribution of wealth versus poverty." And if I let that go and describe, if I think about what here in the sort of affluent West is in poverty, it's like life-meaning, relationships, joy. Like there's a lot of material wealth and a lot of emotional, spiritual poverty and relational poverty because of this.

Obviously, there's huge disparity. There's a lot of material poverty in North America as well, of course. But when I think about it, when I try to take myself out of that sort of consumer capitalist paradigm, and I think, "Oh, they're actually protecting their wealth from a spiritual poverty in a way."

Again, it's hard for me not to still project my own stuff on there, but I appreciated you saying that 'cause I kind of opened up at, "Oh, here's something huge that I was missing in what I was saying." I'm trying to be as careful as I can because I don't wanna step on anything that I don't know, right? I'm being very careful because I think that this has many, many sides to it. But let me just probably share something that is, for me, is just really important.

The way in which Indigenous considered the belada, right, the ritual. Belada is the night ritual. So the whole ritual was thought to undergo in the night because it was the time where they would be able, because it was a time where the mushrooms would be able to shed light into the unknown. And there was the presence, the presence of a curandera was needed because the curandera is the one who's able to connect the worlds.

The world, so in the Cosmovision of the Massapex, the world of here is one and the world of there is another one. And the world of there, or the world of the soul, right, or the holy soul is the one in which the world with the mushrooms occur. The mushrooms not only being sacred, but being children that sprout from Earth, where the ones who were able by the ludic aspect to them to convey, right, and shed, convey what the inquiries of the eel were, right?

And to take them and amplify them in this other world to be known and to be answered. There were many reasons for people to work with the mushrooms, but it was not them working with the mushrooms. They sometimes needed to take mushrooms, but generally speaking, the lads were small. They didn't have a lot of people. Not every, not only a small portion of relatives could come.

Mushrooms had to be picked up from, you know, from the hands of a child in particular days to maintain the sacredness and the ludic aspect of the mushrooms so that they could work in their own magic. Let's put it this way, I don't like the magic mushroom side of it, but that they could, you know, do their work as it was. And they couldn't be seen. Mushrooms couldn't be seen on their way of having been picked up to the house where the ceremony took place. And the house was a regular house.

There were no folklore, so to speak. There were no things. It was a very simple thing where the central aspect to it was the mushrooms and their own work. They didn't have integration. They couldn't talk about the rellada. Because so it is very interesting. It was so sacred. It is so sacred that you couldn't talk about it because the whole ritual lasted around nine days.

So the first days were for preparing, you know, the diet and thoughts and, you know, relationships and they couldn't, you know, talk to a lot of people. They had to preserve their own energy so that they would be able to go into the work with the mushrooms and then the intake took place. And then some days following, the soul was still around in the world of the holy soul. So they couldn't just go and talk about it because that was a very sensitive time where things could go wrong.

So this whole, this is just, you know, an example to understand that what they consider the work with mushrooms has nothing to do with the way in which we are using them. And I specifically choose the word using because in the, in Western society, we're thinking about using plants as if the voided from the sacredness, which it's not about thinking about tradition just because, oh, I'm a nostalgic, although I am a nostalgic, right?

But this is about how these groups started working with these ethnobotanical substances and how they understood them and how the structure of the ritual supported not only the quest, but all the work after. So nowadays we have a lot of people with a lot of effects, after effects, critical after effects. And they don't find how to come back, right? Or they don't find how to solve them.

In a way, it is this convocation of culture that has taken out of the ritual, these structure elements that hold, that held together the most important elements to the intake. - Yeah, I could see that, especially, adding to that, like the consumption, even if we just forget about the cultural structure of it, consumption is often happening outside of, outside of a person's regular life.

When you're talking about there's no integration, and then you're like, that's 'cause people don't talk about it, immediately I was like, well, that is the integration. Everybody that doesn't, doesn't talk about it. So when you're not talking about it, you're with everybody else who has also never talked about it. And there's a kind of like, I'm not alone in this feeling right away, because that's the structure of how it is, and that's how everyone goes through it.

And the fact that you're not talking about it is a way that you're connected with everybody else. Like in a way like that itself is a kind of integration, but outside of the cultural context, outside of that specific thing, well, that's just being alienated, because you're not in a context where everyone is doing it, but everyone's not talking about it at the same time kind of thing. - Yet they're not talking about it as they did, because they consider that the work is done already.

So there's not much to explain, because mushrooms are doing their job. It's not, they understand what their role is. They are connectors, they're bridges for sure, the curanderos, but they respect the mushrooms in their own capacity to do what they're doing. So there's not much human intervention, because that is left to other dimensions, let's put it this way, right? - Yeah, it's very interesting. I had never, I've never heard a Sanjathura description of the Vladas.

Unless you had somewhere else, you were going there. As we've been talking about the legal situation and the indigenous sort of like the dynamic between different perspectives on it, amongst the indigenous peoples, as well as the politicians and et cetera, kind of getting into this sort of question of what is it that's trying to be protected by the people who are like, hey, we actually don't want this. Like what is trying to be protected and why? Like you said, like treading cautiously.

I try to as well, I will forever make missteps. But the reality is, like you said, there are already things happening right now that are seemingly in violation to what it used to be, the ceremonial practices in order to compensate for an influx of people. Most historically, obviously there was like the (speaking in foreign language) pardon my, pardon my terrible Spanish. And everything that happened there when all the sort of hippies came in, in the '60s and how it impacted the town.

And then there's growing tourism in San Jose, Del Pacifico and also in Oaxaca. And my experience there is that, as a place for seemingly, I don't know what the actual sort of like local population do, but my sense is that all of San Jose, Del Pacifico's mushroom sort of market is geared towards travelers and foreigners that come in to purchase the mushrooms, eat them with their friends or at the cabana or in the forest and then go home.

There's no sort of like established tradition there that people are sort of like trying to get into ceremony or something. So I know there's these kind of tourism things happening, but is there also a surviving shamanic tradition with mushrooms that is happening like right now that is, I mean, it's probably been altered by the global market, but that there are still sort of like traditional practitioners that are facilitating ceremony happening in Mexico now.

- So there are different perspectives as well because in some people say that a lot of the traditional elements were held from tourists anyways, even back in the fifties, right? So not to really open it up to foreigners because of the nature of the mushrooms in themselves, right? And some say that those kept secrets as in the structure of the belada and other elements have not been open really as they were. Some others have kind of twisted the belada notion to accommodate tourism.

And so what's happening a lot is that what is being sold is a version of a belada with a lot of changes from its original structure because of the type of tourism. There are still here and there, of course, I wouldn't call it shamanic, although that's a widespread notion, but I think that shamanic comes from somewhere else. - Right, shamanism is a term from like Siberia or something, but I meant it in the very loose way. And I actually, that was a misstep by being so loose, but yeah.

- I get it, I get it. But I think that it is important because we don't consider them shamans, although it is also widespread how people refer to curanderos, let's put it this way. They have their own names here in Mexico, like, but. And in the Masateke area, they have the Masateke's names, right, and in, et cetera. But anyways, so there are, to answer your question, yes. There are still traditional practices being done in the traditional way, but what is the pure traditional way?

It's very difficult to know because this has been so, talking about what this has been opened even before Wassen came, right? Although with him, it had these international repercussions, there were already other anthropologists already working before. And in communication with other anthropologists here and there.

So San Jose el Pacifico has been a place just as work, la rajimena, but the one that has had the most, how do you say this, the most fame to it has been wild love, but San Jose has been there all this time. So it's been a town that we as Mexicans know, it's there and has a long tradition with mushrooms. So it has been open forever. Let's put it this way, right?

And I think that the, it's not only something I think, but what is said is that these towns shape the ways in which they offer in this case, the mushrooms according to the tourism that comes. So there are some specialists, let's put it this way, right? Traditional specialists that have decided not to share anything and only work with Mexicans. There are others who have their own places where they find the mushrooms and they are providing them to tourists in whatever context.

There are some people that are offering particularities like the belada with, and they're selling it as the traditional and original one. But when you go through the practices, you find a lot of differences from one to each other. So there are also different ways of conducting the belada. Did that answer the question? - I think so, yeah.

I'm curious what your take is on, like when I talk with people or people talk about mushrooms in Mexico, like I'd say the vast majority of people, there's two ways they characterize them. I was guilty of this characterization now until you sort of educated me on the history of the mushrooms in San Jose. And the characterization is like, yeah, there was what that did to men is, oh my God, I'm so bad at that. - You are a human is. - What led to human is. And that was where it used to be.

That's where people used to go to tourism for it. But now San Jose is where you go now. And that's where people go as people around the world, Westerners around the world is not just Westerners, go to Mexico, San Jose, specifically for the mushrooms of Mexico.

And so, I mean, obviously I clearly had that misunderstood on a deeper level, but on a surface tourism level, it seems like most of the mushroom tourism for people who are looking to have mushrooms in Mexico are headed to San Jose from what I know. And I would love for you to correct me on that if that's the case. And so my question sort of is around, do you see any problems with that?

Like, do you have any concerns about a kind of growing recognition that, hey, you know, like if you're traveling, we can go to Oaxaca City. And then from Oaxaca City is a quick little jaunt up to San Jose. And that's where you can get the mushrooms or people coming specifically to purchase and consume the mushrooms that are generally out of ceremonial context. Do you have any concerns around that? Do you see any opportunities there that are positive or just negative or what?

- Let me begin by talking about the clinical aspects of it. Right? That's my field. And that is where I do see a lot of consequences like most directly, which are that when you remove the ritual aspects in the intakes of these type of substances, or substance is not the best word, but-- - Ethnopatandicals. - Thank you. When you remove what's around it that holds the word, what we are seeing, what I am seeing in my practice is that people don't make sense a lot about what they went through.

They don't understand a lot of the things that they went through. They don't have a clue what that was. That's in the best case, right? Others just had an awful journey and they keep on having effects, critical effects around how they feel, around how they see the world, how they perceive themselves, how they have a lot of changes and a lot of shifts in perception that they don't know what to do with. - And this is in the subset of people who have negative experiences. - Yes, sure.

Because there's a lot of marketing around the good. I don't think that there are good or bad, but let's put it this way. There are shortcuts right now. We'll get to that in another talk. But people who don't experiment, so people, the marketing is around the bright experiences. And what I mostly see and work with is people who just had awful journeys and now they need to integrate. Well, it's not the only thing that I see. I don't wanna scare people, but I do work with that.

Trying to conduct people or help people to go back to a certain notion of themselves, which if you've lived with yourself for 30 years and suddenly you don't recognize yourself, it is tough. And you need to find the way, not back probably, but some way to kind of reorganize yourself around your own life. That is pretty hard.

And people can spend years doing that after a journey where they weren't taken care of, where the substance was a lot or the endomethanical was just too much or they didn't prepare enough or they didn't integrate. So there are a lot of clinical events around the way in which plants are being consumed currently. That's including mushrooms and also animals with psychoactive properties. - And by that you particularly mean boofo animals with psychoactive properties. - Exactly, right.

And so that's on one hand, but I also consider that the social structure has been affected ever since tourism has gotten into these towns. And the way in which they understand exchange and the way in which they give back to the community. The thing about tourism is a particular type of tourism is that they don't understand the exchange and they don't understand the communication and the giving back.

And I don't wanna say reciprocity because I have my take on that word, that how is used contemporarily, but I'll go back to that for anything, but they don't consider the other as someone to interact with. They are considering the indigenous to extract the endobotanic from them. So the perception is wrong from there, in my opinion, right? Wrong in terms of the other is not a product and the other is not seen as another. The other is seen only as a provider of a substance to get my supply with.

- I guess coming from a world where outside of people who are already your friends and family offering you gifts or making exchange in the sort of the economics of lived personal relationships, the only way we get things is by going to a venue that has goods and we go in there with our money and there is a person who is there, maybe, and they are the facilitator of our acquisition of goods from this venue and they are a cog in a wheel and some of us are more or less likely

to see them as whole people, but for the most part, everyone is playing a function. So I could see how difficult it would be to sort of go and not, how difficult it would be to go and not sort of subconsciously see the cultural space as the venue and the indigenous person as the cog in the wheel, like the cog of the venue that facilitates my acquisition of their goods, even if I may or may not have some sort of like garb.

And I think the term is like, the term is something like, oh, it's a terrible term, the, oh, it's some term that includes the word savage in it where I like just project the most incredible thing, like almost like a reverse, sort of reverse projection instead of seeing them as less, I see them as great and grandeur, whatever, even with that, there's still this thing that we've been taught, this is how we do things and it'd be hard to not just do that when we interact with a culture or a place

that's about stewardship and the etiquette of meeting each other as an other. Yeah, I think I kind of went off on a little track there, but I can see how muddy it would get for people who grew up in a consumer capitalist reality exclusively. - Let me ask you if you see something that I'd like to share with you, which is that it's most, it's exactly, I would say it's almost the same way in which people approach plants. People approach plants wanting plants to serve them in particular ways.

So a lot of the expectations have to do with, I want to be cured from, I wanna get these from, so sometimes the purpose is understood as, I wanna get these from. And when they don't get it, they come out of it very unsatisfied, thinking that what they paid for did not go the way in which they were told it should be. So they consider that there would be some instance where they can claim what they paid for, because they already paid for.

When you're talking about ethnobotanical elements, let me not even talk about how indigenous people see these elements, right? Because they see them with soul and with, etc, the cosmonautism is very rich. - Living people. - Right. - Living person too. - Right, entities and the tetra and tetra, they're the universes. And, but let's not get into that, right? You're in, let me put it this way, bluntly, you're ingesting a plant. There is no guarantee how these will go.

And if you have no clue of who you are before, what do you expect this to, you know, what do you expect from, how do you expect this will come out? So, but let me not get into that, but the focus here is on how do we approach these elements, right, as means that we go and get, and then we shape into how we mean, how we like, which is basically what's been going on with indigenous people.

They're seen for what they can provide, not as the holders of the culture, not as the keepers of the culture, that they have a call on how to do this. That's why I don't like the word reciprocity actually. So I don't think that there are, there is any reciprocity to them. If anything, it should be just a recognition of that they were first. There's no reciprocity, right? Reciprocity means that, oh, you gave me this, now I have to give you this. No, this was there.

And they worked with this before us, right? And in many ways we took it. It wasn't given to us yet. It's interesting, yeah. I see, what was the term you used of what they can do for you? Like you've seen in terms of what they can do for you.

Again, coming back, like for myself, I was raised, I mean, not necessarily by my family, but by my culture or unculture, if you wanna call it that, I was raised to attribute my worth to my productivity, to my productivity, which is intrinsically involved in my acquisition of goods or status or both. And so again, it'd be very hard not to project that onto others if one's sense of self is designed that way.

And I feel like that is in a lot of ways how, I mean, I still struggle with in my day to day, my sense of self-worth is defined by my productivity, because that is very much how it's like in North America. That's how many of us are brought up to see ourselves. I wanna tie back, oh, and we see plants like that. We see people like that. We see stores like that. We see cultures like that. We see even like a vacation spot. I don't see this as a land that I'm like blessed to be in the beauty of.

I see this as a place that I paid to go to and I'm there to get some beauty and I'm there to get some relaxation. I'm there to get some fucking Mai-Tais and have a good time. Right? (laughs) Part of me. But let's go back to, I asked you a question of like, do you see problems and or opportunities with the sort of the mushroom tourism that's happening with respect to Zen Jose? You said, I can't remember if you said two minds or it's complex. You started with your clinical concerns.

- Yeah. - Then you're moving into the sort of cultural concerns. - Right. Thank you for driving me back. (laughs) But would you be more specific in terms of what do you think there will be opportunities? - Well, I don't know. I don't know from an opportunities perspective. I mean, you did talk about the sort of the state of Oaxaca as being one of the poorest in Mexico, like in some respect, okay.

So if I, okay, you're gonna have to pardon, my Western paradigm here, the sort of North American paradigm I have, is like, if I think about like, okay, if what sort of brings money in, there's a lot of things that increase a sort of regions capital or it's sort of wealth. One of those things is tourism. My sense is that at least Oaxaca city, like Oaxaca de Juarez has sort of set itself up to be a spot in particular for food tourism because holy hell, some of the best food I've had in my life.

Wow, right? And close to that, of course, is this kind of mushroom tourism for the small subset of people who sort of, who know, right? And there's benefits to that by increasing money being spent into the region, but there's also problems that can bring in just outside of the whole sacredness of the plants. Like even when I was there in Oaxaca, there was, it was the, one of the days was the women's March.

And there was quite a lot of destruction, which was pretty much erased within 24 hours, which is crazy, but there was a quite a lot of destruction. And, you know, many of the, some of the graffiti was like foreigners go home because, and when I asked about it, can someone help me understand why this is like, this is how people are holding it here.

It was like, well, it seems like the influx of money that comes in from tourism is changing the livability of the city, the sort of cultural, the culture there, the cost of things, it's sort of shifting the town in a way that a lot of people don't like. So, and I'm like, yeah, that's fair enough. And I'm part of the problem in that respect, right? The fact that I'm here. So I could see how there's both opportunities and problems.

So now looking at things in San Jose, are there opportunities that are created? Or is it sort of fundamentally just a management of potential problems with the fact that it has started, like it's starting to be increasingly known as a place for tourists to go get mushrooms. And we're trying to think that the perception of a lawless country is detrimental to the country in itself, the culture, the mushrooms, the journeys, the healing aspect to it.

Because people come and do the things that they wouldn't do in their countries. And that's out of their own perception of things, not because they don't know that it's wrong or that it will harm someone, just because they don't have anyone here, giving them a ticket. So that we're already talking about consciousness, right? Personal ethics. That is just a very complex topic to go into, right? You can't regulate ethics. However, that's why law is there, right?

So this perception is sad on one hand because it doesn't help people regulate themselves. They don't think that they need to regulate themselves. And people don't stop to think, what are the effects of their own intervention in ethics? They don't know, and probably that's why I've tried today to give as much context as I can and as I know, so that people are aware of what happens after they are somewhere or even before. Because some tourists just come, do their thing and leave, right?

But they leave a bunch of other aspects to their presence. So one of the elements that has been played along many stages in the Masateca, another part of the country where there are substance, I think this case ethnobotanical. Ethnobotanicals is that it has introduced a struggle between and a war between people, between groups. It has invited them because some people consider that they should open the boundaries of their own practices.

Some people consider that they shouldn't and they don't get an agreement into this. So some people get more benefits of the tourism. Some people get less. That is already producing a huge difference within these groups. So what tourism has done in many occasions is that they break the social fabric. And so when they leave, these groups don't go back to talk to each other and fix what's been broken. It's just broken and it keeps on being broken. And this divide keeps on growing.

So there's no cohesion inside these groups from where they could organize their actions towards tourism. But what it's happening is that tourism is benefiting from these groups that are open, but the groups that are not open, which also live in the same region, are not being benefited from. And instead of these money coming into the region being invested in the region itself, it goes to particular groups. It's not reinvested in infrastructure. It is being only directed towards certain people.

- Sure, like personal wealth and increases disparity rather than sort of elevates the sort of like the wealth of the commons. - Exactly. So instead of these money being used for having better, that's on one hand the infrastructure that I just talked about, but on the other hand, and this is where I'm torn, is that let's see what globalization has done for the world, right? Wherever you go, you pretty much see the same shops, same structure, the streets and else.

The opportunities that you're talking about, do you think that they would have to do with globalizing cultural practices? Is that part of, because I think that is one of the questions around how do these rituals might bring benefits to the region? - That is a big question. I mean, the other thing too is, if I just like more deeply inquire to myself, it's like are the opportunities that are present more like they're also sort of problem management, right?

The problem management is like, well, here's what's happened with globalization and the sort of like the intentional and sort of incidental colonizing of cultures around the world to sort of like accord to the global market and the sort of interests of the global market. And in that sense, like are they only opportunities because they're opportunities to succeed in an otherwise seemingly glaringly damaging sort of at least culturally damaging sort of force that has moved through the world.

And then the pessimism just creeps on in. But yeah, the thing is like when it comes to the sort of plants, it's like, I don't know, it becomes very complicated. Like I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat of the heat of the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat.

And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat. And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat.

And I've heard Dennis McKenna talk about the heat of the heat of the heat. And psychedelics being a part of that. And any sort of move to institutionalized psychedelic facilitation of any cultural means is going to be a part of that too. And the more local it's trying to sort of position itself, the more churning is going to happen to put it there. Like I'm literally just sharing with you right as it's coming up. So I don't -- I reserve the right to maybe change my mind.

But that kind of comes up when you ask me that question. >> Thank you. I think that we will change our minds and hopefully we do so constantly. I'm with you in that regard. Because I understand the value of psychedelics. I don't -- but I'm partly idealist and partly, you know, very rational about the fact that psychedelics have done great work for a lot of us, right? And I keep on seeing how psychedelics can benefit us all in so many ways.

>> I am a traditional -- I'm a traditional fan because of -- not fan, that's a Portland word. But I respect tradition very much. I consider that tradition has -- not only for the sake of tradition, like, only because of that, you know, not being stubbornly traditionalist, right? I'm a traditionalist, but rather that the structure that is provided with tradition, which is really important for the work with these elements that we don't know a lot about.

And indigenous people have been working with these for ages, right? For centuries. And that -- we have so much to learn from that. >> I'm Western, and I have worked with plants, and I am a psychotherapist and a psychologist, and I also do preparation and integration. So I'm pretty much embedded in this world in both sides, right? And I understand that things have also the need to change. And the openness to change is necessary as well. If we are to work with ourselves.

So that's the premise of working with oneself, the possibility of change. So in that regard, plants and psychoactive elements come and play a huge part of that, right? The thing is that the -- how do we think about disparity and how we think about colonial practices and subtraction of nature, right? I would put my attention there and work through that, because I haven't heard that any of the indigenous groups around the world agree with what we're doing with.

And I would love to be part of, you know, those discussions in terms of I do want to hear what they have to say. I do want to give a lot of room for that, because the way in which we are owning our capacity to pay for services is just not only fair, but it has -- it reduces the meaning that we ascribe to things, that we ascribe to what we do with ourselves. So let me put an example.

So when I work with myself and I had to go through different stages of working with myself and I eventually get to this part where I say, oh, okay, now I got this, right? These pieces of myself. Well, you had to go through a lot of things. It's not something I just gained because you paid for it, right? It's something that you worked on. And it's not the same thing that just having a sip of something and then your life changes from one way to the other, because it doesn't happen that way.

So maybe this, you know, constructive dialogues here and there can help us understand the way in which we relate to others, in which we relate to otherness, in which we relate to what we call opportunity. Because if my opportunity is harming someone else, is that an opportunity? If my opportunity is devastating crops, is that an opportunity? When I am consuming and I'm exactly extracting, that gives me this possibility. We kind of get lost there, I think.

So where does my privilege end in that regard and where does the respect to nature start? I think these are questions that we won't solve today. I hope we find pathways to at least integrate these knowledge into our own practices and sustain active dialogues with the indigenous people to bring them in the same journey that we're having. Yeah, it's tough.

I mean, one of the things that came up while you were talking when I was sort of like, kind of as you're asking these questions aloud, sort of letting it be as if I were asking myself those questions in a way. And one of the things that came up was the cost, like monetarily and otherwise, of not making things worse by just going about my regular life while living in North America because of how the system is set up requires unsustainable sort of consumption, fossil fuels, et cetera.

And just like how daunting the task is. And I can appreciate why a lot of people either just stop thinking about it as a sort of protection mechanism or take a really hard stance in one way or another and let that sort of intensity of having decided what they believe to be real and what they believe to be our course of action that is best sort of obfuscate all other complexity because even now, I didn't anticipate we'd get to a place in the conversation.

I was like, "Oh my God, the world, what are we going to do?" But I feel like we're here now. And that's not a bad thing. It's almost like Allah honoring the intelligence of the mushrooms so that the complexity come in so much that we can only sit back and be like, "I don't know." Yeah. I would say that one thing that I get acquainted with constantly, and I hope I will do so over and over again, is the possibility of not knowing.

That allows me to be with others and ask these questions with others and towards somewhere that we can construct together. It's like when you go in a journey, right? You do have your purpose and you ask for the plans to guide you. You don't know where it leads you, right? Because there are so many pathways to yourself that you don't know of that you're trusting that the plan will just be careful with you, right? And that you know how to navigate the journey. I think it's a little bit like that.

And the interdisciplinary dialogues are needed. We won't solve it from only one aspect or one single discipline. What I see as a psychologist is not only I can work with a lot of issues, but I cannot work with all of them, right? Because so many have nothing to do with only the perception of people or only how people relate to the world. A lot of it can for sure, but how do I deal with ecology?

And in the grand scheme of things, it's so how do we do this in a way that our actions do impact what we're doing? I think that these questions are important because if we don't think about what's going on, let's say with toes, because we want. With the Bufo toes specifically. For any other, you know, the Campbell also suffers a lot for us to brighten up our days.

So if we can't, if we don't ask these questions about how our need of getting better and healing is affecting others, is that healing in itself? That's that's yeah, that's a very interesting question. It actually I want to I want to I want to come to a close with a final question shortly, but I feel like we're just at the edge of an interesting sort of journey that we're on now.

And it makes me think about one of the concerns that I have with the direction of psychedelics, psychedelic therapy, etc. And I have this characterization of a significant part of the in the historical practices that there was like intact traditions with entheogenic plants or psychedelic plants. Ethnopitanicals is that a lot of that was, like you said, sort of rooted in this paradigm that saw these plants, these various elements of nature, not as commodities, but as persons.

You know, it's often called an animism that these are living entities in a living world that we actively are choosing to be in relationship with. And what we get from our encounters with the sort of the psychoactive of those plants is is in the context of that relationship, that recognition.

And there's a part of what I got out of working with mushrooms in particular, but like with other psychedelics is a sort of reconnection to that recognition of the living world and the value of building relationships with the living entities that are plants, etc. And I am challenged by maintaining that I live in an urban environment in southwestern Ontario. And that, you know, the socio-cultural context of that is almost entirely contrary to what I just spoke to.

But there's a kind of hopefulness in me that there can be an increased recognition that the natural world is more than just a repository of goods that we use to better, you know, for our civilization or our personal wealth. Yet the sort of direction that psychedelic therapy and that whole thing is going seems to be very geared towards you come in and you pay the therapist to have the mushrooms help you solve your issues. Like I'm going in to fix my depression so that I can be happier.

That's not a problem, right? Like I don't think it's particularly a problem that people don't want to be depressed anymore. I mean, please, I would love it if more people could not be depressed, right? But there's just something about everything is focused and channeled through me. The value of that therapeutically is fantastic, of course, right? Like you're really focusing on stuff, really getting into those issues.

But then it's like the sort of the iPod life, you know, the sort of like the Mifos focused existence. And then the therapy, which is me focused with the Mifokus insights back into the Mifokus focused existence. And then where's the rest of life in all of that? And I think the questions that you're posing for us to ask related to that is the concern I have. And I've heard Laurel Sugden speak to this in a paper, a chapter she wrote for a book about psychedelics.

Her work is predominant with San Pedro. And the sort of question of like, what will we get out of this if this becomes exclusively a tool to sort of correct, you know, aberrations in the individual self? I don't want to give the perspective of doom and gloom. That makes one of us. After all, I've had some fun as well. I think that the spirit of the mushrooms they invite us to find.

And this is a very specific one to find the the ludic aspects of life, because when we are able to play, when we're able to diminish a little bit the seriousness, but not in a denial, the way, in a denying way where, oh, no, everything's fine. Right. But in a way we're OK. This is what's going on. And yes, it might be, you know, hard. But what can I do with it? So how do I incorporate act, act, action to it?

And that then puts us in a double version of things, not in a version where we only remain with a drastic and the critical. And no, we play. Right. Because the diversion means to have a double version of oneself at the same time that we play. And we incorporate fun practices and practices that we can connect to that make us feel joy as well. And though that's the spirit of the mushrooms and we can find that spirit also in other ethnobotanicals.

But I think that we that posing these questions is just as necessary as having fun and as being benefited from these elements that are in nature. And we are part of it. I do think that the how do we work with communities if we don't work with ourselves? So that's a tricky question, the one you're asking, because how do we then impact, you know, big crowds or huge communities, countries, the world in itself? We don't begin with ourselves.

The bypassing, though, is something that we need, I think, to consider and be aware of. Right. Because if we are trying to fix ourselves constantly, it's as if we are in this race of bettering me because I'm flawed. And if anything, I think that we have the capacity to know ourselves from different from a different way. But it's not a race to just continuously be better and the better. This thing that I really dislike, like I want to be the best version of myself.

You are already one version. There's no better version. It's if anything, you can pay attention to what's going on with you. Right. So that it makes you suffer less. You can work on it. And by you suffering less about your own self, you are giving less suffering to others. So it's not that we can just we can't divide. That's the thing. We can't divide aspects of life and say, OK, I'm only going to work on this.

But rather, if we can learn something from ethnobotanics and ethnobotanical, is that relationally is the way in which they work. So how do we think relationally? How does what I do affect others? How would I think affect others as well? What my actions, what is the extent of my actions? Where where where does it get what I do? It doesn't stop there. It has this echo not only throughout regions, but throughout time. So, yes, we can get very philosophical about that.

And that's not the scope of this. But there are many initiatives, I think, working with communities, which is important. But we can't work in the community without working with ourselves. And we can't work with ourselves. We're not working with the community. So this is relation plans for relationally. So, yeah, I would say that it's not an answer. It's just posing more questions. And it's a good question, of course, like it.

Like I said, what I said, it was more a concern of how the sort of like hyper individuality of North American culture is, you know, in the term, in the way that we frame everything on the way back plays a significant role. And it's really the concern around the hyper individuality of the modern world, kind of like usurping the possible relational thinking that psilocybin can offer us or other ethnobotanicals.

And simultaneously, like what good am I if I'm actually using you in your community to feel better about myself, but I can't look at myself. So I'm going to instead try to fix you. Like that's not helping either. So I mean, that's just one example of the sort of like self obsessed, but the selflessness that's actually a kind of covert self obsessed self obsession.

But I have to like, it's like trying to push against, you know, the flow of a river, or maybe like shut the door on a windy day right now because like I have to, we have to end this direction of the conversation to close. But I've been really enjoying this as much as I did go let the sort of like sadness I have for what's coming down the pipeline or happening now come up.

I want to end with a, you know, two questions, one of which is how can we learn more about what you do, how can we follow your work, etc, etc. That'll be the end. But the last one is, do you have coming back to the question specifically of psilocybin containing mushrooms in Mexico. Based on what you're seeing now, do you have any sort of forecast for what might be coming down the pipeline, good or bad. Alternatively, what you would like to see.

I think it's more responsible for me to talk about what I would like to see than a forecast, because that's pretty much impossible. However, I do know that there are people working in the one of the most important psychiatric hospitals in Mexico with psilocybin so they're trying to get research going. So that is already, you know, in the pipeline. So I do wish to see that occurring in Mexico we still have, although, psychiatric hospitals are not currently as they were in use.

We have a lot of we have a huge population that just remain there, you know, because either in other times they were in, put their inside, how do you say that? Inpatient admitted. It's digitalized and their relatives died, or they disappeared or something. So they made the hospitals their homes. So we have a huge population living there still. So it might be the case that, you know, having the opportunity to work with psilocybin, they are able to have another perspective.

For sure, I think that if research grows here in Mexico, we would be able to provide a lot of with a lot of information to, you know, widen the research into anxiety and depression and addictions. And, you know, even there are papers around personality disorders with psilocybin. So I do hope that research is soon open in Mexico because we have so many species of mushrooms with psilocybin.

And we have so much potential to work with them. So I do wish that that would, you know, just grow and open up without the prosecution of legal aspects to it because, you know, it's nature. I think that if we open this also and we work on the, you know, providing more consciousness to people, then people can relate differently to nature, in this case, to mushrooms.

And so that might bring us more respect to nature and probably more care so that we would put a lot of attention. Maybe organizations and institutions would be created in order to protect ethnophthamicals. Nowadays, there are already privates, there are already, you know, people doing this job, but they don't have the support of the government. They don't have the funds. There are people around. They're already doing this, protecting nature in their houses.

And this is amazing. The University of UNAM has one of these initiatives also where they're protecting acholote and they're protecting other species that's an animal, but they're also protecting through the society. So they give plans to society that are in risk of extension so that they can propagate them. So I wish that we would see this much more with ethnophthamicals in this case, right? Not only mushrooms.

I think that the law, I wish that the law does occur, right? That it does change something because it would change our perception towards psychoactive components. It would help out with ethical practices. It would reduce the risk in which a lot of people is getting because they don't have enough information, because it's illegal, because they don't have access to services.

And that is something that I am working on myself, you know, and trying by having also these opportunities with you and others to collaborate and trying to just get the word out there and professionalize as much as possible with it. But by the hand of tradition, the work with ethnophthamicals. I do know that there are a couple of institutions that are already providing some courses.

And I do provide courses in this topic and I work with people who want to prepare either to be a facilitator or to integrate their own experiences. I take into account tradition and I work clinically because that's the way in which it's possible also to get back to certain structure when you lost it, right?

I try to keep this sort of vertical in terms of not being too, you know, fan of either or but trying to keep the center so that we can work with both sides of things in terms of, you know, the clinical aspect and the traditional aspect. Because I think we need them both. And so, yeah, that's that's that's what I think and hopefully, you know, these indigenous groups can get entangled in the work in the professional work.

On that, thank you. You did mention at the end there you are facilitating courses helping people learn for you provide professional training and also professional clinical services for integration and or preparation. So how do people contact you or find out more about the work that you're doing if from here they'd like to sort of either directly get in touch or just be a little bit more following your movements. So, um, I mean people who would like to get in contact with me can just email me.

Almost my contact information is out there but if anything, it's my email is me. My email.com. My website is in progress, and, and so for inquiries about my work and different ways of working with me either clinically or consulting because I do a lot of consulting to organizations and groups as well in terms of ethics, in terms of facilitation but also, um, what does it look like to screen properly. So to reduce risks.

If anyone wants to know more about they can just email me, and I, I'd gladly give more information to the specific people that contact me. Otherwise I think a lot of people find me in LinkedIn. I'm not very active because I have a lot of words so I'm not publishing like you know posting many things around that. But I think I will be doing so in the near future.

Okay, so I'll make sure I won't post your email necessarily on the website to keep those bots away so I'll let people just remember that it was your first and last name at gmail.com. I will put your LinkedIn in the show notes this episode and when your website is live, I'll make sure it's on. Gets retroactively fit into the show notes as well depending on when people are listening to this. Now, once again, great conversation. Thank you so much for for coming on to the show today.

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much. I love the insights that I get with you and being able to spread the word is just really important. Thank you for your care and your interest. Thank you. And cut.

Okay, so that was this episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Hope you found value in it. Hope you found value in me housework of course you can connect with her through the contact details that she mentioned at the end of the interview which will also be in the show notes to this episode at James w jesso.com for episode 187.

If you want to check out more of me housework and you like my conversation with her, you could check out my other interview with her which is episode 183 called integrating ayahuasca and psychedelics in general, I'll provide a link to that in the description to this episode wherever you're checking it out, or in a little card that just popped up on YouTube.

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So that's all thanks for tuning in all the way to the end. And until next time, I was James Jesso and this was adventures to the mind. Take care.

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