What if we could talk openly about our use of drugs and mind altering substances? Could we create safe cultures of use around drugs like LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA and others, so that kids… and adults… wouldn’t need to sneak off and experiment behind closed doors, without the information that could keep them safe?
My guest this week is Dr. Rob Colbert, a practicing psychotherapist and a clinical researcher involved in the MDMA-assisted therapy study through the FDA. He is also a member of The Nowak Society, a Colorado community building empowered relationships through the use of psychedelics.
In Rob’s view, their aren’t “Good Drugs and Bad Drugs”… there are just drugs… and we should have the right to safely integrate these substances into our communities through open conversation and education. Not just for the treatment of illness, but for the betterment of well people everywhere.
Enjoy the show.
Hey uncomplication. I found you from the wyckoff vids and ended up here and listened to both the good drug bad drugs. I really loved the podcasts and your insights about how it has helped for your life and the bias war on drugs. I’m 18 and I’ve been interested in psychedelics to help with trauma I got when I was 16 and mental health rather than going down the route of prescribed antidepressants which is what’s been pushed to my by the psychologists and my mother because she would never understand me wanting to implement psilocybin instead. I have experienced both an lsd and mushroom trip in the past and had meaningful experiences and am thinking of either implementing them every so often or trying a microdose.
I’d like to know what your thoughts are on this and if you could bring some guidance to this scenario that would be greatly appreciated.
Hey Nic, good for you – taking your consciousness into your own hands. I fault no-one for using prescribed antidepressants, but when I was younger my brief use of them lead me to feel that it was altering my brain in ways that repressed the aspects of me that were most creative. I opted to go *through* the doors rather than try to close them… and it helped me accept myself and the world (as f*cked up as it can seem). For me, psychedelics are a kind of “punctuation” in the long run-on sentences of life… like a coma – letting me check back in with the universe before going back to the doing’s of life. I prefer being with close friends and out in nature, rather than in busy urban settings. I find that the teachings of earth are profound when we let go, get lost, and open our awareness to what is growing all around us. If you are interested, you can listen to my podcast “My Journey to Uncomplication” which talks about my early encounters with substances like LSD and psilocybin. I think a great compliment to these experiences is reading or listening to philosophers like Alan Watts (Search youtube!) or Taoist texts like the Tao te Ching. Here is my favorite translation: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dao_de_Jing/7dVZ_avGb-0C?hl=en&gbpv=0
I wish you the best, thanks for sharing your story : )