We're looking at something that could profoundly change people's lives. It has profoundly changed my life, my wife's life, my dad's wife, all of my friends Aronny that have done it well, I have seen it well.
Eyes Lava for Good and Stand Together in Music Present The War on Drugs Podcast, Season two. This season, we're diving deeper into the real stories behind the War on Drugs, It's impact, it's failures, and the people offering a better path forwards today on the show. Founder guitarists and background vocalist for The Amazing Brothers Osborne, co author of Billboard Hot Country Hits, Stay a Little Longer, It Ate My Fault, Shoot Me.
Straight, and All Night.
Winner of six awards from the Academy of Country Music, five awards from the Country Music Association and twelve nominations, and one award from the Grammy Awards for Best Country Duo Group Performance in twenty twenty two, and a passionate advocate for psychedelic assisted mental health therapy. Mister John Osborne, all right, well, I'm welcome back Season two The War on Drugs Podcast.
Greg Glove really excited about our interview.
Man. We do went down to Nashville, which has been called the white Atlanta, and I can't.
Say that it's not I see that.
Yeah, it is a very music focus. They've got their own little party seede. I enjoyed myself. It's good. I've never seen that many white cowboy boots in my life and I enjoyed it.
Yeah, I love country music.
And to meet John Osborne, like you're from Yeah, he's from Deal Hunt Deal, Maryland, but Liz in Nashville.
Now. It was in his studio, like on the east side of town, and.
Nice studio, man, really nice studio and like just his records and stuff.
It was just like a cool experience to be in there.
And yeah, but we really got into some really deep stuff. And I can't thank him enough for being so open about his own struggles with, you know, mental health, his
speriences with using psychedelics, talking to friends about him. I think it was just a great conversation about what we're talking about here where it's not the right path for everyone, but we need to allow for these things to be discussed openly, honestly and allow for people to potentially gain the benefits of this if it makes sense for them. And I think just the way John went about it and talked to us about it, It was just a really cool conversation.
Yeah, And I think he was very real just about what worked for him.
Yeah.
I think if you're kind of a skeptic about a lot of this stuff, I think this is like a really good conversation because it came from someone that was a skeptic as well, and just kind of those discussions and what his experiences were in very detailed.
And I don't want.
To waste any more time on this.
Good to it, Yeah, good to it now further ado here John Osborne.
Hey, that me and Greg, our guests and sponsors may sound smart, we may even make some good points, but at the end of the day, we're not medical professional.
Okay.
Please don't get your medical advice from a podcast. Anything we say on here does not constitute official medical advice. Relax, consult your doctor before you start any new treatment plans.
Got it.
We are here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Nashville.
We were with.
John Osborne right now, one half of the Brothers Osbourne. We are in his recording studio right outside of downtown on the east side of Nashville.
Come cabin. Yeah, Grammy Winners CMA.
Yeah, all the all the stuff, yes, as yeah.
And the best part about him he grew up about thirty minutes away from me. We were talking before, so we're both Maryland boys. Yeah that was hunt.
Yeah, I see the black eyed Susan.
Uh that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, everyone asks some of their daisies. Yeah, yeah, I know, never forget.
Yeah, never forget never never spent some times in their preakness.
Yeah, couple reading us all the stuff. I mean, what peop don't understand about Maryland. It's actually a big equine state, you know. So I like being in country music. Everyone goes, how did you get into that being from Maryland. I'm like, I don't know.
I didn't know.
I wasn't supposed to get into it. I mean, it's just it's mostly farms. I mean, how you go an hour out of any town and it's just farms, you know.
But people like to draw lines. I have to raise something the horse.
Yeah.
But yeah, thank you for joining us podcast man, and I'm really excited about this.
The same fan for a while.
Before we kind of get into a lot of the stuff we're going to talk about, let's talk about you, so born you know in Deal. It's a small town's on the water, over the water water.
Yeah, we were, we were reliving our Maryland accents earlier.
So no, I love.
Learning about it because I didn't know that. Like, yeah, I love for.
A couple of days of it.
You'll be like you please stuff. But it's a small town called Deal, Maryland. It's on the it's on the chests beat Bed about forty five to fifty minutes east of d C. Where you live now, fifty minutes south of Baltimore. And yeah, man, it's just kind of a very humble town public school, played in bands, you know, just trying to pursue the American dream, you know, just kind of a small kid from nowhere.
Yeah.
And so you've been playing music your kind of whole life for your family? Were they musical or how that all?
Yeah?
Yeah, man.
So my both of my parents would sing and write songs. The reason why I ended up in Nashville is because they would come down to Nashville a lot as songwriters when we were kids. And it's a hard industry to get into. I mean, you know, you know, it is like being in comedy. It's like you have to commit so much of yourself to do it that they, you know, had kids that were at home and jobs and mortgage and all those things and just didn't quite work out
for them. However, it did pave the way for my brother and I to feel like, okay, this seems possible because they they kind of started the trend for us. But it's something that we've always done, you know, always played music. Our parents would sit around the kitchen table and write and sing songs, and it was a very normal thing for us. We didn't realize it was abnormal until we left the nest.
Right right. Were your parents weary about you going into it knowing how hard it was, or were they the ones like, oh, okay, we're going to tell you everything we know and we want to see y'all.
That the second one, for sure, I'm grateful for that. Again, it's like you only know what you know. But our parents they were so so supportive. You know, they weren't necessarily helicopter parents by any stretch, but they were very, very supportive. And also they were kind of able to live vicariously through us. But we never felt pressured to do it. We come from, you know, quite a conservative area, but we were like this little like kind of progressive
island within our town. Our parents would not care if we wanted to be mimes or we wanted to be a lawyer or a guitar player. They just do it and we'll support you one hundred percent. I'm very, very grateful for that. You know, I know a lot of people and our line of work that their parents weren't very supportive.
I could imagine that was tough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
My parents were.
My dad's a secret service age, Like he's a He still terrifies me to this, No I do.
He's a big dude.
Yeah.
So like if I was like, yeah, I'm gonna head out and do a music career, he'd been like you.
Yeah, I mean, you're out of your mind, And he would be right, because you are. In order to pursue something like that, you got to be a little crazy to you know. And I mean, I don't know, to be honest with you, I don't know. Thirty years later, I still don't know why I do it, Like I
just am compelled. But you know, for everyone that succeeds one hundred fail and the successfully is so small, I understand why a parent would be weary of that because they would not want to watch their child fail at something, especially at music. It's you know, it's quite a self serving industry. I do it because I like it. I don't do it because I want to share my love and experience with the world. Now I do it because I enjoy it, and i'm you know, I don't know how to do anything else.
Yeah, and your most kids suck at.
That helps.
Yeah, I guess that does kind of help have a natural ability. But even if you do, there's still a lot of luck involved. And I will admit, you know, the harder you work, the lucky you do become. And I work very, very hard, but I do know that there is also luck.
Involved, of which I'm very grateful for.
But that's you know, you got to be prepared to take those opportunities when they get it.
That's what luck is, opportunity preparation exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
And just from my standpoint big country music fan, when you all were getting on the radio, I was kind of slowly drifting away from ever listening to country music radio a lot.
Yeah, you both, there's Osborne kind.
Of I was like, oh, thank fucking God, because I was living in Austin. I was hearing all this great red dirt country. I'm like, it's never on anything but like one little local channel or I'm like iPad and they're like finally, I'm like, oh this is actually And then there was like christ able To and there's a lot of these guys that really like I feel you.
All were a hometown boys.
Man.
I was like, just you didn't even know.
Yeah, that's right.
So when I met my wife in Austin, one of the bars that we were out at the first night we had like dinner and went out. We were in West West sixth Street, Star Bar, Shout Out, Starbar. Brothers Osborne came on. We were kind of like drinking and dancing as a song we both liked and yeah, I laid.
One honor at that point, I ever said, so to shake your hand.
Yeah yeah, man alm a couple of beers.
Yeah, he was a wingman from Afar.
That's right, man, I'm here for you, dude. You named your first child after me. Oh man, But.
I was going to ask you about you mentioned you've always had struggles with mental health. Yeah, just can you give us a little background or yeah, yeah, you said your whole life kind of.
So yeah, yeah, totally.
So I'll start about five years ago, in twenty nineteen, I was dealing with really, really bad anxiety. I dealt with anxiety kind of my whole life. I didn't know what it was for a long time. I just thought everyone kind of dealt with it, which everyone does have anxiety to a degree, but mine was starting to become debilitating. On stage, I never fel it, In fact, it was the only way I would stop feeling it. But before being on stage, and after being on stage, it was just like, I don't know.
My mind was a mess.
And then I ended up contracting something called tennitis or tenetist.
Which is the ringing of the ears.
I started losing sleep, and then it all kind of compounded it snowball effect. I wasn't sleeping, and I started like it was nearly psychosis level. It was in my mind and it was suicidal and all these things. And I started staying a lot, going to a lot of therapy. I had to do like a three week stint and basically rehab, but not for drugs or alcohol, just for mental health and tons of therapy.
What was going on in your because you said you've grown up with anxiety. You know, your whole life, you didn't really know what it was. I feel very similar where I grew up anxiety. It was just kind of told like just calm down or like you're not yeah.
Just don't be nervous.
It's don't be nervous, like mom, just don't be anxious exactly. It's like telling me, like just dunk a basketball.
I would do it if I hit me. You know. It's just a different thing, you know.
I don't really know like pathologically, like where it would all stem from or anything like that.
I do know though.
As a kid, I was just like I constantly had this feeling of impending doom. That's something I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And I didn't really know why.
I just I felt like someone had a gun to my head and I was like ship was about to write.
A moment. And it was that way forty years, you know.
And I learned that like through music that was really helpful. Like I learned how to play guitar, and I gave my I gave my brain something to focus on, which was I want to learn how to play guitar. I want to get better at this thing. It was almost like a puzzle, but it was also a way of expressing myself emotionally because I wasn't very good at doing it verbally. And I still am am that way to
a bit, to quite an extreme. I've learned how to do it because of therapy, but as a kid, I just didn't know how to express myself emotionally at all. So fast forward this thing. I would go to my room, I would play guitar for hours. I loved it, and I just didn't want to be around people.
And then that very.
Thing ended up putting me in front of a tremendous amount of people, and I'm like, hang on, this is like the sword I'm falling on. Like I love doing this thing. I just want to sit in my room and play guitar. And I do like performing, like that
part's really fun. But I'm having to interact with a lot of people on a daily basis, and I'm also facing such criticism and judgment from outside people that I've never met my fucking life, and it's it becomes important suddenly, and it all kind of like snowball from that to the point I couldn't escape it. Like I was playing music to get away from it. But that was the very thing putting me in front of it, so I
didn't have an escape anymore. The only thing that I knew how to do growing up in a blue collar, working class family was just what my dad did when times were tough, You just work harder. So that's what I did. I buried myself in my work. I was in the studio, I was writing a ton I was working on the computer, whatever, playing stuff, anything that I could do that was not me dealing with my shit. I did until you know, you sweep something, you sweep it all under the rug enough to where the rug
is sitting on top of a mountain. And that's where I was, and it all came crashing down in an epic way. You know, looking back, it was the best thing that would have happened to me. By the time, it was the hardest time in my life, no question.
Okay, So you are released from you know, the treatment after you go in there and get checked and you said about three weeks, yeahs okay, what was the post release like treatment plan that they gave us? Like, what were you doing from a therapy standpoint, a medical thandpoint where you give the medications or what was that discussion about, and yeah.
Be curious, Yeah, totally.
So when they released me, I ended up working with a really great therapist in town, doing I think two a week with him. After three weeks of being gone, like and then coming back in like I didn't see a stop light, I didn't see a sign for a gas station. And when you're out like in the wilderness, when you don't see that stuff for three weeks, you when you see it for the first time, you're like, damn, this is what I see on a daily basis. This is way over stimulating. And and I I did basically
a lot of therapy, a lot of other modalities. I ended up checking myself into another place called Rogers Behavioral Health for OCD.
So I had tenantus.
My ears were still ringing, having a lot of issues, and I was hoping that maybe if I could treat my obsessive compulsive disorder that it would help me learn how to deal with it. And Rogers' Behavioral Health for those that have debilitating the CD, is really really amazing to do great stuff. They do a lot of different types of therapy, exposure, responsible prevention therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, all really really good things for that and people that
suffer tenatus or tonight is. And in that time before I went there, I was also checked into a hospital because my attendants came back severely and they put me on an SSRI, which got me kind of in a place where I did not want to kill myself. In full disclosure, I'm still on that SSRI today because it does also it also.
Sort of it helped with my ears ringing a little bit.
And for people that don't know at home, SSRI.
Yeah, it's just an anti depressidant, serotonin selective serotonin reuptake and and not that that matters. I don't even know why, but I did some research. I'm the kind of guy that thinks that could think my way out of anything. It's one of my greatest strengths and also one of my greatest faults. And I did some research on Reddit and I found that people were experimenting with with mushrooms for anxiety depression. And then I heard for tenatus and I thought, man, this is wild. And I had talked
to some people prior to me going into rehab. I talked to a friend of mine who did a hero's dose I mean he said it changed his life.
Is there a I guess there's no like medical standard for heroes do what is that?
Yeah, a hero's dose is between three point five grams and five grams. I would imagine they get the three point five grams, is it? Because like for those of us who bought weed back in the day, that was an eighth you know, so three point five grams to five, But you would start at three point five and then if you are an hour to two hours in you felt like you needed more, they would give you. I think call it like a kicker or something like that. But it was another gram and a half. And I
mean you are like, you are gone, baby. But but if you're ready for it, it's it's really really great. He was a really bad alcoholic, just a very unhealthy person dealing with really intense trauma and depression who was going to kill himself and as a hill Mary passed. He just did a big heroes dose and it changed his life. He's a completely changed man to this day. Every time I sam, I'm like, I love you dude, because he took the time out of his day. I didn't meet him until a year later to tell me
about it. But at the time, I was just like, the idea of I was so messed up. But the idea of off, I take a mushrooms which I'd taken before, Like that sounds insane to me. I'm like, I was so afraid of even eating the wrong food. I was a mess. So after doing all of this therapy and I knew there was still a lot of work to be done and the SSRIs were okay, but they weren't.
It wasn't really like crushing it. About a year later, I reached out to a friend of mine who does guided psilocybin trips, and I was very interested in the idea, but again just worried. I mean, I felt so delicate and I felt fragile. I felt like any wrong decision could just put me back to where I was, and it was terrifying. So, you know, I did. I read
the Michael pollin book. I watched a bunch of interviews Michael polland I found Paul Stammettz that guy's kind of awesome and nutty and I like that.
And again going on Reddit, like reading.
A bunch of I don't know, kind of anecdotal stories, and I talked to my friend who helps people help.
I won't name any names because it's still ille later.
And he's a lovely, lovely, lovely guy. And his wife was a nurse, was a doctor, and she was convincing, and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to do it.
I'm going to do it. And I mentally prepared myself for doing it. And I knew I.
Had done so much work, so much therapy, so much self reflection. I was on these SSRIs. I felt strong going into it, like I'm not afraid, and I felt ready for whatever is going to happen. I'm ready for I'm very much like talking about playing in front of eighty thousand people. I'll do it as long as I feel prepared, and I have to be prepared for this moment. And again, this is someone that has experimented with a lot of different drugs recreationally. And I had so much
fun on mushrooms. I've had a weird experience of mushrooms that was not very fun, so I was familiar with it, but in this state, I was just kind of it's a heavy thing to do.
You know, were you with anyone in the room or were you on the guy? Yeah, who was kind of.
Well, my friend who was doing who still is doing GUYIDS Guided trips, he was there and you are with him. And so for those of you that don't know about this, there is a playlist on Spotify that is about six hours long that is music to guide you through this journey. And it's kind of like, you know, a progressive musical journey, even if you're sober.
It is beautiful to listen to. When you take these drugs.
It's supposed to make you feel like it's taking you where you need to go and what There are two very important things when taking psychedelics is set and setting. Set being your mindset you're feeling are going into it. Setting being where you are and who you're with. And those are two of the biggest things. And I know from experience that those things are very important because it can go south if they're not right. Noticed too boy, and it just feels like forever you know, and you
just got to wait it out. There's there's no rushing through it. So knowing those things and trusting him and knowing that he had already done it with well of one hundred people at this point, I was I just wanted to resign to the idea just let go, so come to it. And I drank three and a half grams, which is a lot of mushrooms, and listen to this playlist, and I knew I had a lot to work on. And then about an hour and a half been I was just my body melted. I was melting into this
bed that I was. It was my bed, and I felt, I guess they would call it ego disillusionment, but I felt, you feel this one with the universe. It sounds kind of cheesy, but once you strip this ego away that we all have, you realize that we're actually quite connected. You know, we're all part of this fabric of space and time or energy or God, whatever you.
Want to call it.
Something to vine And I was able to see my life experience almost visually at times from an outside perspective. I saw like this little kid who was sweet and kind and sensitive and also picked on as a kid because I was just kind of like it was way too innocent for this world, you know. And I just kind of saw the people in my life that have maybe maybe wronged me when I was young, feeling love and compassion for them and thinking, wow, this is so overwhelming.
But one of the things that I ask you to do and going into this is you have to set an intention. And I have an issue with feeling happy, not in the sense of like I need pills that made me happy. I've always felt guilty if I was successful, or I always felt guilty if I was happy with something, or I felt if I was happy, something bad was going to happen. So I still struggle with it. I'm better at it. I set that intention, and I kind
of remember this. But the guy that I the trip was said, I laid on that bed and I smiled for five hours straight, and about halfway through he asked me how I was doing if I wanted some more, and I said I wanted more because I wanted to do it. I wanted to really just give all of myself to this thing. I took more, went to the bathroom. That was crazy, so I was tripping my ass off.
So long. My god, it does, dude.
You're like totally start checking the calendar, like how long have I been in there? And so you know, you go back in, you put the headphones back on, and you're right back where you were, and I just like felt so much peace and so much love, and I felt so unrestrained from being happy. And it like the
visual side of things. It aren't a lot of visuals because what I didn't mention is you're wearing an iemask so you can really focus internally, the headphones on and an imask, and it was the closest I'm not a religious person.
I'm not.
I'm agnostic. I'll say that I'm not an atheist. I don't know enough to be an atheist, also know enough to be that religious, but I will say I'm agnostic. And after doing that, it makes you realize that there is something far greater beyond our understanding.
Of this world.
You know, and you feel quite connected. After coming out of it, I felt a piece that I hadn't felt maybe in my life. It was probably the most peaceful and calm I had ever felt in my entire life. And I would say that lasted about three or four months after that. The problem is, you know, life happens, and you get back into your ego and you get back.
Into the swing of things.
However, no matter where I'm at in my life, I can always resort back to that moment and go, Okay, what did I learn? And I'm still gaining knowledge from that, and that was four years ago, and again I had done it a bunch of times before it, and it can be very fun, But that was the one of the single most important decisions I've ever made for myself in my life.
Still to this day.
I'm curious.
So, being that you had taken them recreationally before, what was the difference between those and then, like, was there a different track for you because you've had experience with it before.
Yeah, yeah, so I think the main difference is the intention behind it. Right, So before I was like, let's take some mushrooms and go to a concert, which is very very fun, don't get me wrong, it's awesome, But it's about setting an intention, you know, like why are you doing it? So this is a this was a medicine, right Initially? Yeah, most things that we take started out as some sort of medicine that we were used by
some sort of natives somewhere around the world. And then you realize if you do a lot of it, it makes you feel crazy. Of course, you know, it's college schedule. Like if I take a lot more, then it's even crazier, right, And then you take too many and you're like okay,
that was. But when you go into it with the intention of self discovery and helping yourself and learning yourself, especially when you are listening to this playlist, and especially when you have an imask on, because so much of it can be visual, and you're distracted by the visual side of things, and it's really fun, it's cool, it's wacky. But when you don't have those things distracting you, you become so focused internally that you put like a microscope on your life. And there is a side to it
that you do. I have read because of Michael Polla and How to Change Your Mind book, but it does actually rewire your brain. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. Our brains are ever changing. It slows down as we get older. You know, when you're a teenager or a young kid. I have eighteen month old friends at home. I mean, the neuroplasticity thing is going hate like haywire. Whereas when you're older it does slow down. However, it doesn't stop
until you die. Well, when you do psilocybin, it almost brings you back to being a child again in the amount of change that your brain can make. And that is the moment when you go in with that intention of wanting to fix yourself or help yourself learn about yourself. Your brain is pliable in that moment. When you do therapy, and I have done tons of therapy, it takes a long long time to really notice a result. I recommend it to anyone. It's very good for you. It's good
to talk about it. But we're talking about things at a subconscious level. Consciously, we could go consciously, our parents would go, just don't be anxious. Well, yeah, consciously, that makes sense. We're talking about things at a subconscious level. Then, you know, the lizard brain whatever you want to call it, mushrooms, gets right to that part of your brain and goes, all right, let's get to work. Fix, let's fix some stuff, let's learn some stuff. And it's like doing ten years of therapy in.
About six hours. You look and word.
If you look out word again, it's fun. Colors, colors, man, it's beautiful, you're in space, it's awesome. But if you look inWORD, there's a lot of work that you can get done, and it's very intense, and that type of work shouldn't just be a walk in the park. But the results are profound.
I like how you put that, because I don't think I've ever heard anybody express it that like clearly. Like we were saying earlier, people be like, well, you took mushrooms before, you took them again and now all of a sudden, But it sounds like you went in with intention. Plus you were coming out of the therapy, so you had a new set of tools and things take in there. Most people you hear about people micro doos and that's kind of the.
New microdos, and I do microdose, you know frequently. Microdosing is different. It's kind of I'm guessing what would be like a macro doose, but slowly over time, doing a macrodos is just like you know, a microdose would be.
Like you have a house, right and.
You're like, you know, I'm gonna it's kind of painting this wall a little bit dirty. You know, maybe after a couple of years of that, your house certainly looked different, new fresh. What I'm doing a big heroes doing five grams is are going in there with such hand, right, I'm not gonna ship.
Yeah, it's a lot of work, makeover.
Makeover, and we're going to get in there and we are going and We're going to do it, you know, and it's gonna be work, and but by the end of it, I'm going to have a beautiful home that's just like, you know, it's no different than the home that I've had my whole life.
It's just tidy.
It's like, you know, it's just going through your house and cleaning everything up. Man, It's just it becomes so much more bearable. It should be treated as a medicine. That's really what it was intended for, you know, it should be treated as a medicine. I would venture to say most drugs that we take were initially used medicinally. We just decided to take more and see what happens.
Right, And you look at like you said, our efficacy, like if antidepressants are boosting euro up like two percent based upon PLACEA, I was like, it's very simar actually what I do in like criminal justice system, It's like, what is the c that you're defending that makes people fail like seven out of ten time really getting rearrested. You're saying this is success, Like it's very similar.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it is.
Quite frustrating, you know, especially from my own perspective. Granted, I'm one guy, you know, so it seems anecdotal, but the more you start peeling it back, you realize that there are a lot of similar stories to me. Yeah, you know, I had my dad sit in this very room on that couch over there about a year and a half ago, and he did it like we need because it gives you this is the work that we
need to be doing. So my dad was a little bit skeptical, because I think anyone should be a little skeptical because it's not necessarily a walk in the park, but it shouldn't be like. It can be really fun, but it can also be really scary because you're confronting a lot of things about your subconscious that you ignore on a daily basis. And my dad has a lot
of childhood trauma. His childhood was very, very tricky. But he's a lovely man, works really hard, he's provided for the kids, but he carries a lot of things that really I think he struggles with to this day. And I just after doing this trip, and my dad was a hippie, you know, kind of a culture hippie, spoke weed, He's on all the drugs, but he was a little bit like nervous. The more I talked about it. After my first experience, I see like his eyes get really curious.
And he did it, and I felt he was a lot lighter on his feet the next day, and in weeks went by and he's like, I'm still kind of figuring it out, like you know, you can't. It's almost like learning a truth. It's not a bad truth, it's not a good truth. It's just a truth that you didn't know existed your whole life, and you have got to process that. And I think he's still processing it to this day. And it was a beautiful thing and I saw it change his life. And since then, I've
had a ton of friends do it. My wife has done it, and I've seen some just amazing effects. I'm just I'm very thankful for for mushrooms. I hadn't even calling it a drug, you know, again, being a child, a child of the DARE program, it's just like there was just like drugs and then there's just aren't. Then there aren't drugs. That's just so true. That's just the drugs, you know, so.
Off the top of a building and the street, you always.
Killed yourself, you always, you know, And I'd see one kid jump off a building once. I thought I was gonna die from you, like, jumping off a building or quicksand yeah, like a lot of people die from quick sand and.
People up building was running from the cops, Like that's the only time.
I know, man, It's it was definitely a weird thing.
You know.
There's this stigma against it, you know, which is why I'm quite open. Was why I'm doing this podcast with y'all, and I'm very open about it. I'm open about my mental health. I want to stigmatize one mental health, especially for men, something that we have a harder time talking about because of our society, you know, in the way that we might have been brought up culturally. But I
also want to do stigmatize psilocybin in particular. You know, Like I'm glad that you are in You're in reform because we need to do those things that, like, our criminal justice system is pretty fucked up and it puts people in the cross hairs, a lot of good people in the crossairs for wrong reasons. But we're looking at
something that could profoundly change people's lives. It has profoundly changed my life, my wife's life, my dad's wife, all of my friends around me that have done it, like I have seen it with my own fucking eyes, you know. And this is a guy that has taken SSRIs and knows that, Like, yeah, I can be helpful, but I
wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Hell, the first SSRI took, I can't remember the name of it, but that made me want to kill myself more like I was coming unglued, like I was scared for my life.
Yeah, there's multiple lexturally it can increase suicide initially, and yeah, to give that any it was crazy. I felt like I was going fucking nuts, man. And I know what it has helped people, but god damn it, Like you are prescribing that. I was prescribed that by a doctor.
And I like our FDA can approve like any more studies on psilocybin like studies, I'm just like, what kind of backwards world are we living in here?
Interesting?
So, you know, I'm grateful that you guys asked me to be a part of this because I want to be one of the people.
It's gonna take an army.
It's gonna take y'all and other people talking about it to kind of change the just the stigma and the conversation around it, you know, I mean, and I know I've friends that passed away from fentanyl a few years ago because here is back at work, he got on some painkillers, pain they quick prescribe pain killers, end up doing heroin, heroin, this fentel and at the end, and that story is very common, very very common to I know people that won't do smoke pot. Like my friend's
dad just was diagnosed to stage for pacreatic cancer. You won't smoke pot because of the stigma around pot. He's like, Dad, it could help you your appetite and it can help pick pain away and give you some comments like I'm not going to do it because it's drugs.
You know.
Like this whole thing is so fucking backwards and fucked up that we need to be talking about it. We need to make part of the conversation because people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. People are in jail, people are dying all of these things because we have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.
And then also I think so much stuff like the older people, I think just it's illegal. That's a lot of the old people's argue. That's like, of course we got the stigma of drugs. You go, it would kill you. But a lot of them, like my mom was like, well if it wasn't illegal, and I'm like, I'm in California, it's legal here.
Try I know, I know, and it is really funny. I don't want to do it because it's legal. But a lot of those things, people are like, why don't trust the government because they give money to these people and.
Make up your mind?
Man, yeah, pick aln And it's like, you know, just be educated about it. And that's the thing about drugs in general. I mean we try to generalize everything, and then what happens. People end up in jail. People miss opportunities to treat themselves with certain drugs like cannabis or whatever, and people miss opportunities to take care of themselves like I did with psilocybin.
And I mean, who knows.
If I kept going down the path that I was going, I could have killed myself. I was standing at the edge of the cliff, not physically but psychologically, and I was staring under the abyss and I was like, I think I might try it. I didn't, fortunately, and I do attribute a lot of that to my experience that six hours of my psilocybin treatment. It's still to this day, I go back there when I have to, and it's
just one of the most profound lessons ever. And until we get people talking about this, it'll, unfortunately, I think, just stay that way.
Yeah.
No, it's it is the normalizing, it's the abvoscy. It's showing that hey, I'm in X situation in this. I know in Kentucky for example, like Dakota Meyer is a Medal of Honor recipient and he's former military's like, I've lost more people here to addiction than I ever did in Fallouja or my tours. And so that's profound and that's impactful. If he doesn't talk, maybe certain lawmakers don't listen very least.
It is not a past.
It's to one of the guys that went to DC.
He's been a here and done a lot of advocacy on Yeah, he's been outside the White House front.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm the only living Medal of Honor recipients ever.
Yeah.
So yeah, yeah, I remember I heard that an interview about that guy, and we need more people like him. I mean it's it's the best place to start, you know, start with our troops, like they have sacrificed so much and they are given so little when they get back and they are left to just pick up the pieces on their own. I mean, do anything that it takes to make this man feel better or woman feel better,
because they deserve it more than anyone, you know. And why will we take that opportunity from these people?
You know?
John? Awesome? Yeah, thank you.
Is there any foundations, organizations, or anything that you'd like to advocate for reach out? Like, Hey, I'm really interested in hearing about John, and maybe this is right for me if they're a listener, Like where would you recommend people kind of start or you know, anything that.
You absolutely well.
I will say first and foremost, if you deal with anxiety, just know that it's it's a normal thing. I'm saying the things that I wish I I someone told me when I was going through it that it's a normal thing that's meant to keep you alive. It's your brain thinking that it's doing something good for you. So don't give yourself two hard a time about it. If you need help, get help, if you need to take SSRIs or any type of end to press and present. Take them.
And if you want to experiment with any type of psilocybin or psychedelic journey, there are a million videos. I mean, just go go to YouTube type of Michael polland mushrooms and just watch every video.
That dude is a fucking rock star.
In my opinion, he's amazing, and he will make you feel so calm about it, and just like, be patient, give yourself time, you know.
I you know, if you want to.
Look into MAPS, which is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, that's something that has done a lot of work and that's really phenomenal. And you know, again from a from a mental health perspective, just be patient and treat yourself with love, treat yourself like you would treat any person that you love, and you know, everything will be fine. And if you want to take some mushrooms, shit and change.
I'm telling you, But John, I think particularly like coming from where I covering you a big group of friends, I did too like talking about these things in these types of very much show you know, industries and things like that.
I think it's so helpful and so thank you. What you're doing.
I know that there's a lot of people that are probably huge country music fans, huge fans of you, that have never heard that before.
And it all starts with it's got to enter the consciousness. It's got to enter the narrative. We've got to talk about it. More you talk about something, the less it stigmatizes it. More you talk about psilocybin therapy, the less it stigmatizes it. More you talk about mental health. Every time I bring it up, especially around a bunch of dudes, I have never once, never once felt judgment. It's always been intrigue and I always they'll always go, hey, I
struggle with that too. I don't talk about it, and then they start unload andy, start asking me questions or my brother has got really bad anxiety, can you help me there? So people, it's like this unwritten rule that we're not supposed to talk about it, but really everyone wants to talk about So the more we discuss it, the more it becomes part of the guys, I think the better.
Totally agree.
Yeah, I think that's a great note to close on.
Ye John thinks so with some brothers Osborne, they're bringing awesome Yeah.
Thank you again. Thank you, Thank you so much.
That was awesome. John Osborne Man was a great interview. Good interview man. I like, I liked what he was talking about. I like how he was able to find his way out the situation he was in and also pull others out. Yeah, reach out to friends who were having suicidal thoughts.
I mean, like, hey, if this works for me, maybe think about this for you.
And even to his dad, you know, at that age. And yeah, so I.
Hear so many more stories about that, Like I don't think like five years ago, I was sitting around with friends being like and they were like, oh yeah, I was getting my mom a gummy to help with.
Her you know, sleep or with you know whatever.
But you're hearing those conversations like a little bit here and there like oh yeah, my my mom or my like I gave to my sister, Like because people are starting to hear like these stories more and more from people like hey, this had a profound impact on my life. And you know, I'm not a doctor or anything, but I know, you know, when we're looking at kind of
what works and what doesn't. If you know, SSRIs and other antidosins and traditional methods of dealing with depression and PTSD and all these things aren't effective for you because the data shows like it's effective.
For some and not for others.
You're screwed, like you're So we need to give other options like this for people, particularly when we've seen, you know, a psilocybin research has come in the largest phase two trial suggests that a twenty five milligram dose of psilocybin with psychotherapy before and after the dosing was associated with a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect measured by a change and depress the symptoms scores. And so that's from a
JAMA study. And there's there's other ones on psychedelics showing strong therapeutic effects with other ones either at being ayahuasca or MDMA or in particular psilocybin as we've seen, and that's really profound. And all we're saying is that these should be open to discuss with medical professionals and are
these the right things for you? Because we've seen the problems that mental health and drug addiction can bring and those go hand in hand so often, and it's kind of the chicken and the egg thing where the depression comes and then does the substance. You know, it all kind of builds off each other when it came first, and they're all kind of bad and they.
Fuel each other.
Yeah.
And I also think, you know, a lot of times I don't hear people talk about psychedelics, yeah, in the way that he did, like, and I think that's most people's understanding is you use them for fun, and you use it to but it can be a tool that can actually be beneficial.
Yeah.
And I think like his shift in like his understanding of it, because it was, like you said, it was like these aren't for things for like medicinal you know, these are parties or whatever. And his shift and understanding of like their purposes and maybe what they're able to do. It almost feels like how our culture and society is.
Like I think we are starting to see that shift of like frankly, in public policy, it's for me a lot easier to talk to people now about psilocybin and these therapeutics, and it is about cannabis in a lot of ways because they think of like the recreational aspect of cannabis and there's you know, a scent factor. It's
very open, but there is actually a much more. I think openness to some of this stuff at like a more local level, and even with people that you might not think, like Kentucky is like really trying to do some stuff like this, and it's being led by like you know, you know, Republican lawmakers and Democrats are coming. So it's like strange bedfellows are all come this realization about that. The veteran community has been really big on it.
So it's actually like in a way, because the medicinal values are so clear cut and you're able to show these things with this, it's like I have PTSD and now I do not. I think that's just easier for people to get their head around. So it's been it's been an easier process right now.
Yeah, And I can also see that. I guess maybe because people don't believe weed smokers. You know, like you're saying it helps with pain. No, you're not. You just like to get that's always gonna be the underlying thing. I think with weed smokers. You're saying, you're saying it does this. You're saying, so, yeah, that's that's funny. You say that that people are more accepting to the psychedelics.
There really are.
Yeah, seeing this and seeing more people and kind of those strange bedfellows of folks being like, hey, this actually is beneficial, it's actually been.
I'd rather go in.
I think it's gonna be a It's a less confrontational discussion talking about psilocybin than it is with cannabis.
Of this platt So that's great.
Easing to think about.
But it's also to think about the way we talk about cannabis and policy and discussions like there does need to be a little bit more I think professionalism and professionalization about like discussions, yeah, because it is kind of led by hippies sometimes yeah, yeah.
And also the you know, like you just kind of said, people went in trying to get the prescriptions, so people don't trust weed smokers all the way, you know, and the face that they have of weed smokers is counterculture, the link when youth, things like that, and if you can have the face of psilocybin being our veterans, are people who are PTSD, are people who have anxiety and they're able to come out of that. I think everybody's
affected by those things, you know. I think people can kind of like zero in on what they don't like about weed without looking at what it can benefit. And it's harder to do that with psilocybin because I think more people aren't as familiar with it.
I think you're totally right, and that's what kind of brings it out.
So we'll see, you know.
But again, you know, like things with like the opioid epidemic, you've seen how like things like iba gain it's a shrub that you know, we talked to most ethorts about that that you know significantly reduces you know, opiate you know, withdrawals and symptoms and wanting to go back to it and all these things.
And there's also things that have been there. These are things. Psilocybin has been here. The mushrooms have been there, I be again has been there.
You can pluck a mushroom and pop it like and that's you don't have to still it.
Yet don't because I don't know, I mean, unless you've got a field guide to mushrooms and then still probably don't. But yeah, a lot of natural things, like like you said, we've been so dependent on the pharmaceuticals and farm and that I think it's probably even more stuff that we've forgotten about.
Sure, probably agree now, and thanks again John Osborne. Absolutely, Yeah, this has been an amazing interview. And next week I was on the road solo for this next interview.
Oh yeah yeah.
Riley Coote, who if anyone watch hockey, he is the He was like the enforcer, bruiser guy. He was the one getting into fights for the flyers in the It was mid early two thousand when I was in like college.
Yeah, Philly guy. Yeah, Rossey bullies.
Yeah, so like being he was the guy that was like the bully, and so he talks about that, and you know, it's awesome when you're like twenty one and you're watching him fist by and then you get older and you start learning bout stuff. It's like, oh, I'd be really interested to hear about like what that looks like.
And he has such an amazing perspective because he had to be this tough, mating guy that just took so much trauma and then you don't think about day and day out, waking up like I gotta go fight the end today, like that's it's.
Gotta be pain.
And he just talks about the physical mental toll. It's such an amazing interview to kind of hear that and where he's at right now, and how a lot of the therapies that we've already talked about today with like John, you know, some of his experience and stories to share.
So really great interview.
You can't wait for y'all to hear it.
Until next time.
I'm Greg Glad in English.
And that was the War on drugs.
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