Name: Healing Back Pain
ISBN: 9780446405034

“one of the chapters that ended up on The Cutting Room floor was about fructose and how T is anti right which also ties into uric acid yes so what I have seen in myself at least it doesn't matter if I am carnivore diet vegan fasting whatever dietary lever I try to pull uric acid is high it just does not matter and that's also hereditary this runs in in my family the other constellation of issues are all cardiac like lipid profile related also hereditary dietary intervention with the exception of one thing that I'll mention are you on a Statin I'm not on a Statin okay well you're able to be is fine just to be clear so I there are different reasons that your lipid profile can be out of whack in my particular case and I might be able to put something in the show notes as a resource in there are sophisticated Labs or companies that will run Labs that sort of f slice a lot of this Boston Heart I think it's Boston Heart yeah and then you need someone to interpret the tea leaves obviously in which case you need a very confident doctor in my case I'm a cholesterol hyper absorber more accurately I'm a sterile hyper absorber which means I can also absorb a lot of steriles from say plant matter which is why automatically if you reduce meat or eliminate meat it doesn't mean that you're cardiac and lipid profile will improve and you actually see a lot of folks for which it goes the opposite direction because they end up consuming a lot more refined carbohydrates they their fast and glucose goes up and they end up with a whole host of issues in some cases associated with fructose right like oh Agave Nector brilliant well maybe not so brilliant and for that reason in my case I'm taking a Zam actually I'm taking something called NEX lasette which is absurdly expensive welcome to the United States in this case but it's a combination of aetam and something called bidic acid aetam very well researched pretty well understood bidic acid a newer a newer player on the scene M but very interesting and the combination of those two plus the uloric are what got a number of biomarkers of concern not crazy and I've done not only the usual cardiac Cal scores which are helpful but incomplete in a lot of ways I've also done angiograms which you do not want to do willy-nilly all the time but I wanted to see if there were any precursor to issues so far so good in my particular case those things plus reducing saturated fat intake differ killer differ screws up all my numbers it makes a difference so in my case you know if it would be a bad idea for me to hit the like MCT smoothies right right so yes Bulletproof Coffee bad idea for me also MCT I don't know if it does it to you but it disaster pants risk goes up yeah yeah risk goes up by about 10x yeah if if you're like run run to the bathroom with the MCT oil yeah yeah if you if you are thinking to yourself you know in 2024 I want to Sho my pants more often I would recommend constipated yeah yeah creatine Double Espresso and MCT oil problem solved don't ask me how I know that but you can guess uh don't don't have that right before you're driving to the airport for your international flight also Pro tip so the minimalist delegation fast delegation re embracing reversible or lowcost possible mistakes yeah quick creative collaborations and then physical reboot and honestly with the physical reboot a lot of that is old news the stuff that works works it's like kettle bell swings Zone skiing yeah zone two which I'll get to very naturally with what I'm going to be doing and in terms of hiking and ski touring and so on basic basic basic like the I shouldn't say Basics the fundamentals are the fundamentals for a reason and just when in doubt return to fundamentals it's like weight training wants a week that is better than nothing once a week and then the zone two but also for me it's like one or two sessions of very very hard technical Pilates to hit everything that I'm going to miss anyway like medial glute and trans by the way yeah and uh that's about it do less than you think you can do if if some of your goals are around physical reboot or recomposition set the bar where you are sure you can clear it yeah right so I want to talk to you real quick about you know you you mentioned the physical body reboot one of the things that all of my Physicians bougie to say all my Physicians my primary care physician tell us President Obama has been has been concerned about is I have slightly elevated blood pressure and it's not to the point where it's we I should have it treated with medicine yeah but you know there's breathing exercises you can do there's a device called respirate which Peter Tia recommends I don't know yeah it's fantastic it hooks around um your chest it's like a strap and then you put in some ear pods that are connected to this device and it walks you through a series of breathing exercises and it's clinically proven to lower your blood pressure so Tia recommends that as kind of first line defense for slightly elevated blood pressure mhm there is a device that is approved in the UK and the EU and it's called ACA and it's a horrible name what ACA not AA they're going to get a froma yeah so it's a AK K TI I a I'm wearing it on my wrist right now okay so if you're watching the video version you can see this thing is smaller than the smallest Fitbit it's super tiny the battery life is 5 days it does every hour blood pressure monitoring it's clinically like proven accurate and AA is testing it right now in his lab with his folks there it is not approved in the US so what I had to do is I bought it online first I I got a VPN I proxied into their website to make it look like it was in the UK and then I bought online shipped it to a friend in the UK who sent it to me in the states I then created a fake iCloud account in the UK with a fake email address and VPN to like I was in the UK on a separate phone that I had not sent in like one of my older iPhones and then I was able to get the app installed through the UK app store because it's not available in the US app store and got it to work so technically this is not legal in the United States Contraband but it's uh you know it's I'm I'm actually monitoring it and the breathing exercises are helping it high salt intake combined with water is huge if you have a salty steak or anything like I can noticed like just like when we remember when we first got into cgms you were way before I was but into continuous glucose monitors you got me into them and you you would be surprised because you would sit there and you'd be like oh banana doesn't do anything and some people banana shoots you through the roof right or rice for me oh my God through the roof I don't know about you but rice for me is a a huge offender rice affects me less than it affects you but it affects a lot of folks yeah footnote and a previous episode we talked about the rice cooker the rice cooker which drains out the water yeah which dramatically reduces the glycemic response so but back to our schedule program yeah we can link that link that in the show notes as well but this for me has been like okay I just had a a salty meal now let me chug a bunch of water along with that meal and actually I will notice a difference I do not get into those what they call like the high orange levels of blood pressure just by my water consumption so meaning you you help or hurt meaning by drink water by drinking more water yes drinking water and there's evidence back this up but he's had people on the podcast have talked about this but anyway it's it's another device that I hope knock on with they submited to the FDA hope is that we'll have this device approved in the states here I don't know next six months to a year so we'll see very cool anything else on the physical reboot side I mean the three months with no booze I think is going to be if you can do it no offense it'll be a revelation I think it's going to be amazing speaking of it you don't looks like you're not a big fan of your own tequila well I I just know you're not really drinking any so well first of all no I mean if you don't like it it's you're just selling it that's fine it's also we started recording at 3 p.m. so usually I'm not a 3 p.m. drinker but you know what I'm going to be in bed by 700 so it you know oh Jesus okay so you know since since we're going we're we're just checking back into the home anyway where they're going to put our socks on and put us to bed no problem yeah yeah all right dude let's retire at the same retirement home that' be so fun so much fun yeah well I'm say say something cheers man see you cheers and uh so let's talk about I always enjoying taking breaks from stuff because I have kind of a wild story which I don't think we've talked about at all I have a number of wild stories oh yeah I got one big one for today you have a big you have a big one too and I think these are going to be interrelated in a sense I'll piggyback half of it after what I believe you're going to share but I took a month off of caffeine anything caffeinated which was the first turkey cold turkey which was the first time I've done that probably I would have to imagine since I was what 16 I mean it's been forever let me ask you a question here why would you do that cold turkey why not just do like oh a half a cup of coffee today and then maybe a quarter cup a few days later like why go this is like the extreme Tim did you get headaches you must have got yeah I got headaches but but it was during a period where I could you had VI no I didn't use vikin I I knew that I could accept the headaches and I had a period of time where there really was a low cost where like professionally I was taking 3 to four weeks off the grid and I knew that I had a grace period where I could sustain it so I did effectively no caffeine no alcohol and I suppose the most important other item no sex no ejaculation which is we can talk about that that's pretty easy uh the the harder one is I did nothing sweet so not just containing sugar but nothing sweet so anything that has an artificial sweetener was out would you consider this tequila sweet I would not consider this tequila sweet and there is a there is a bit of subjectivity for a lot of it it's got sweet notes to it like it's not yeah it's it's got some floral notes to it but by the kind of letter of the law I wouldn't consider this subjectively to be sweet but for instance any kind kind of juice out any type of sweetener of course out let's just say different types of plantains if they are sweet to The Taste they're out sweet potatoes out and is that hard for you that that that's not hard for me it doesn't seem hard but let's just extend this almost every toothpaste has sorbital or some kind of crap in it right that is a sweetener so no brushing your teeth for two weeks I brush my teeth with sodium bicarb just baking soda up I I brushed my teeth with that for for a handful of of weeks and what you also realize is in the US or in this case when I went to Korea if you ask people if if a or C has any added sugar there is sugar or some type of sweetener in almost everything yeah that you come across that was interesting it was challenging cuz it's severely limited what I could eat but the caffeine was an amazing experience now I alluded to this a little bit earlier I'm back on the sauce over the last week week and a half which I regret number one and I'm paying a lot for like there are costs I can explain I so let me let me back up and I'll just give you the the punch tell us why you did this to begin with because you didn't mention that like it wasn't a New Year's resolution why yeah I so the reason I did it started because I was in South America doing a bunch of weird stuff and there were restrictions and then I just extended everything but weird stuff let's let's psychedelics stuff yeah psychedelics okay which which will tie into a part of My Strange story later but I hadn't done the type of training I was doing in South America in probably five or six years and so I took restrictions very seriously I think that is important in my opinion and then I extended them all and I wanted to see in part because I met someone one who said they had stopped drinking anything caffeinated cold turkey because they felt like a loser because they they'd become dependent on it and they missed a really important ski day like one of the first days of the season and they're a really good skier and they were with a group of people and they were the only I believe they were the only person who skipped and that day they were just like no more and to this day you know like two years later caffeine free and wa wait I lost something there when I wake up in the morning and I have a couple coffee I can go skiing why did they miss skiing cuz they couldn't have coffee they were because they didn't have coffee that morning and they were so tired oh that they felt like they couldn't do it so they stayed on the ski lift instead of getting off they just went around went straight back down amazing and called it a day and and to their credit under the weather or something but to their credit they were just like this is loser Behavior enough and they went to zero that caught my attention because when you talk to someone no no offense to anyone who fits in this category but let's just say if someone is a Mormon and they've never had caffeine that's not my life right they've never had a hit of the sauce I mean although technically their workarounds like Diet Coke instead of coffee but well we're not going to get into the weeds here but like if somebody hasn't had a taste of the like delicious poison there's so many things right there's so many things like this where it's like okay if you've had one significant other and you've never been out and about in like sampled the buffet of the world like we can't really have it's very hard to have an Apples to Apples talk about relationships like it's just it's a different situation right same with caffeine but this person had been hitting the sauce for decades and then they got off and that was inspiring to me then I had this restriction and I just extended it and just to give the punchline my sleeping issues that I've had for decades every single one just V vanished best sleep of the last 20 years woke up Wide Awake every morning after the first like let's just call like week and a half had tons of energy and got super high volume of of stuff done and what I realized and the part of the reason to answer your meta question why did I do all of these things I was curious what my real Baseline was like what does real Baseline look like what is Tim untouched unaffected by all these various supplements that's another thing I took a month off of all supplements I only I only took my prescription meds like the uloric and so on yeah I got rid of all supplements and no Deca or testosterone anything no de no nothing okay and I was very curious to reacquaint myself with what like the sort of pure Baseline Tim is and turns out Baseline Tim does really well and why go back then why why well you got hung over no I didn't get hung I didn't get hung over it's good after after hangover a little bit of L juice so I also before I went to South America I listened to an audio book which was called or is called the easy way to quit caffeine and that that is an extension of a brand that started with smoking I think it's the easy way to quit smoking and I know people who have literally multiple people who have listened to this they have their last cigarette and they're done and they stop so it's a little hokey but that made an impact on me as well I'll do that for January I'm write that down on my list January no CA and I'm now that I know I can do it I'm definitely going to do it again the reason that I got back on it and this is this is I'll actually add just a little bit of color the first is that there were days without caffeine where I would say to myself I'm tired I really want a cappuccino but I realized because I interrogated I was like well I'm not allowed to have a cappuccino am I really tired and I came to the conclusion that no I wasn't actually tired I just wasn't wired you see what I mean like my my normal had become multiple coffees in the morning and God knows what else so I had taken as my Baseline a default I mean wired sounds too negative but like stimulated State and when that was removed the story that I conjured was I'm tired but when I I was unable to have the cappuccino and I went on to record a podcast podcast turns out great I'm like okay let me revisit this I wasn't tired I was just calm interesting crazy interesting and why did I get back on coffee coffee for me I've realized is probably like alcohol for a lot of folks and there's sometimes I'm not gonna lie look let's be honest here like there are times when it's like I want to take the edge off sure have a drink yeah right but more often CU I don't drink that much I use coffee as like a security blanket when my life gets hit with something unpredictable or unpredicted and things seem a little out of control or I'm not sure how I'm going to make it through something like walking to the coffee shop in the morning and having that coffee it's it's a life raft of consistency yeah we saw this during Co right where people would line up at Starbucks for 3 hours to get a coffee because it was like the one semblance of you know and there's also a high to it so it's like there also a high so even though I realize intellectually that it's counterproductive like when I am feeling as I have been for a host of reasons that I won't bore people with but just gone through a a pretty challenging week or two my response to feeling a little anxious is to want coffee even though it increases anxiety now are you a coffee physiologically I I this this is one thing actually we've known each other for a long time I I don't know the answer this I don't know that have seen you do this are you an afternoon coffee guy at all I don't know that I've seen you do um mate maybe a little bit later but like I I typically do not have coffee in the afternoon yeah and I really try not to have caffeine in the afternoons which I violated this week so in the last like two two days or I should say in the last this just say in the past seven days I have violated that and what I've realized because I've run the N of one now and there are a bunch of different variables so I realize this is imprecise it's not a perfect science is that I can drink coffee and fall asleep that's not the problem but it disrupts my sleep architecture qu sleep I wake up after 3 days very little time 3 days of drinking caffeine I wake up and I have circles under my eyes like dark circles are you are you quantifying this in in the sense of like are you wearing an Ora ring do you have any other data where you're looking at it I'm not currently capturing the data with an aura ring but I have in the past yeah I've seen what it looks like so I know that's the case I'm falling asleep my time in bed if we're just looking at a clock is fine but I'm waking up tired I hate that and then what do you want you want another hit of course you want more of thece juice and there's a lot to be said for it this is not to completely knock coffee like I don't think for the rest of my life I'm going to be caffeine free but now I have a better awareness of what my Baseline looks like so I can return to that so let me tell you something crazy uh this was before I met Daria so I'm I'm trying to go back in in in years now so probably let's just call it 15 years ago I gave up coffee for about 6 months 6 months yeah that's legit well but I wasn't really that addicted to it I was having like a cup every other day or whatever and I I went back and I remember I was living Liv in San Francisco at the time and I went to rual Coffee which is fantastic coffee place great place and I I ordered a tall like single origin coffee and I drank the whole thing when you go 6 months without coffee and you have a full cup of coffee you feel high as a kite super I was like 10x what I feel today with a cup of coffee yeah cuz your body just like I mean it is a powerful drug when you you gone without it for a while super powerful do you have any sense of how long it takes to like get that back like how long do do have you done any research like to get what back that initial like like Childhood High of like that first cup of coffee how long do you go without before you get back you like I don't know I don't know I will say on the opposite end which is what I thought you were asking how long does it take to develop tolerance and experience with withdrawal symptoms it is so fast oh so fast and one day if you go without coffee Serious Coffee drinkers will be headaches yeah well I would say for furthermore if you stop drinking coffee and I'm using coffee as a bit of scape cope here like I love coffee but if you if you go without caffeine and then you get back on caffeine and you're on it for 2 or 3 days and then you stop again my personal experience is you are going to feel withdrawal symptoms and that is unlike most other drugs it is a powerful powerful powerful drug right like it I'm not recommending this but hypothetically if you were to like smoke cigarettes for a few days and then stop you're fine yeah no problem you're not going to have a headache the next day but with caffeine it is an incredibly powerful drug and I think that's in part because it is often disrupting sleep architecture that's my that's my vote at least one question for you one of the things that I have yet to try that I've been really curious about is I know that there are cultures I can't remember I'm going to screw it up I don't know if it's like a Inca or I can't remember exactly which culture it is from Mexico that did high do chocolate almost like like a cacao ceremony where they drink like this like super purified cacao like insane amounts of caffeine and they like reach these kind of spiritual states have you ever heard anything about that I haven't read reports but I know that for instance I want to say in some places in Mexico certainly in Guatemala you have caca ceremonies I don't know I don't I was invited to one one time a caca ceremony so I don't know how much I don't know the historical record right I I don't know how much of these things were used 100 years ago a thousand years ago there are there are many new practices that have created The Narrative of ageold use right for a veneer of credibility when in fact things were very different a thousand years ago you have to imagine Kaka was AA has been around for a while so in the case of cacao my understanding is it contains theob bromine which in of itself is a fascinating word Theo broma Theo like theology broma food food of the Gods theob bromine which is pharmacokinetically it is very meaning just if you look at the graph of peak and halflife and so on it's quite different from caffeine is is my is that the Vaso dilator of the plant what causes cuz I know like kova for example mhm are you familiar with that supplement kovia yeah it's like a it's a caca supplement from a large company I believe yeah from from Mars actually Mars but the crazy thing is is like I was talking to Ronda Patrick about this and she has had one of her I think it was her mother-in-law or something like that high blood pressure takes cavilla drops it down because it's a VISA violator and it's a big fan of it as well and it's been showing cognitive improvements as well yeah I'm not sure it very well could be the case uh I mean when you get the dose makes the poison the dose also makes the Transcendence for a lot of different plants and so in the case of cacao I have experienced higher let's call it higher dose cacao and you can reach an alter state for sure MH I'm going to cave out what I'm about to say with the do not ever do this warning but there for instance there are plants that at high enough doses are absolutely psychedelic which I would never recommend because you can die let me repeat that fatal risk so do not do not try this at home but tobacco as an instance as an example has a very Rich history in South America and elsewhere but especially in South America where high doses of juice have been consumed you have like every mode of administration you can imagine is has been done and is very common down there there's a book by Johannes Wilbert which is titled along the lines of tobacco and South American or tobacco in South American shop omin ISM it is very dense it reads like a PhD dissertation but when you consume pretty much through any route imaginable enough tobacco you can experience a psych experience God can I tell you a story about this I've had this so I was in San Francisco at the time and they have this was call it a decade ago they have a bunch of you know chefs that are very experimental I won't name the chef but it was one Michelin star Chef that tried that that infused tobacco leaves into an alcohol oh boy and you have to be insanely careful if you look up online you like you said if you put too many leaves in the infusion you will have a lethal overdose of you know nicotine that will kill you yeah and so dis Chef knew what they they were doing I would never try this at home they made me a bourbon infused tobacco cocktail and I was like sounds interesting I'll give it a shot hope you don't need to sleep anytime soon no listen I no I Dr I drank this one drink and I'm like having a good time getting a little chatty you know like this is fun and then dude I get up to use the bathroom boy and I swear to God it felt like my feet were sinking into the ground as I was walking where like I was walking down like to the stumps of my knees like I was like my legs were like collapsing as I was walking you're like wait a minute I was like cuz I don't smoke um tobacco at all or anything like that and it like hit me like a ton of bricks and I'm like I am high as like it is a very potent substance like you especially for nonsmokers you got to be really careful so come in Full Circle right so caca powerful fascinating plant sacred in in a number of different cultures tobacco be very careful folks it is powerful and potentially lethal and then coming back to caffeine it is the as I understand it the world's most commonly consumed psychoactive plant right is is number one tea and coffee yeah and it has this place I love my cup of coffee trust me I had one this morning and I think the exercise if you can do it not everyone can but of rediscovering what your Baseline is like what you actually felt like when you were 12 or 15 is writing this down so valuable it is so valuable because I now know what that feels like and I know that I can return to it as an adult yes that it holds true to any that you're doing that you know call it alcohol any substance that you've become dependent upon yeah right it doesn't have to be just caffeine it can be anything that you've like that you almost feel like you can't live without right sugar carbs some activity traveling late night pizza yeah late night pizza I mean like if if you're a road warrior and you just travel all the time cuz you say yes to everything like okay what does it feel like to sit at home if such a thing exists for you for one month what does that feel like and if a bunch of weird stuff comes up like maybe as Tara Brock would say like the you know to the to to one Sage only one question matters what are you unwilling to feel oh my God I have to have her on the podcast that is one of my top guests I yeah so if you haven't read it folks radical acceptance which I owe darar thanks for so if you don't get D is my wife Daria we call him Tim Tim so which came about actually let's give people a real look into the archives so Tim Tim came about cuz we were on a trip to China to drink puera tea all over the place which was one of the weirder trips I've ever been on for a lot of reasons we were in the UN Province together in the middle of nowhere we had we had some very strange experiences on that trip drank a lot of tea had a motly crew of people with us along for that ride and there was another Tim on the trip so the there was a question of how do we keep the two of you separate and you came up with I believe timtim I mean it was a uh collaborative that's how Tim Tim came about so Daria who is neuroscientist by training yeah which is why I actually took the book radical acceptance seriously because at all due respect I love Tara love this book it had a huge impact on me but the title gave me an allergic reaction I was like oh God another one of these like I just I just sounds handwavy okay Kumbaya Didu like okay I just can't do it but the fact that Daria who has one of the one of the lowest tolerances for handwavy stuff that I know of the fact that she said she gained from it gave me permission to dive into it which then had a really big impact on me so coming back though if you feel like you are you can't live without X that is often a great signal or at least a prompt to ask yourself what might an experiment look like for two to four weeks to go without X been super valuable for me that's awesome I'm I wrote it down no no caffine in January I'm going I'm serious you know I might I might Double Down do it with you let's do it yeah yeah no calf all right let's talk about my experiments shall we yeah let's do it I'm excited I'm excited about this cuz I also don't know the details I know that you saw the text messages saw some of the text messages and I was very curious okay so this is a big one um you're pregnant I'm pregnant what was the one where Arnold swarzenegger got pregnant what was it can't remember the name but yes I know the movie basically that's I have the same physique too um so basically you know for for people that that that know me or don't quite know me like you know I've I've I've done a bunch of stuff in terms of being like an entrepreneur and an investor and these different things and one of the the hats that I put on you know a couple years ago was dabbling in the world of web 3 and web 3 for those untrained you know it's cryptocurrency it's it is decentralized internet it is nfts it's art on the blockchain ownership right if if 1.0 is readon internet 2.0 is read WR three is actually owning a piece of what's on the plan so it's a very exciting Frontier and it and it's filled with a bunch of explorers that I would say are it's a small number of people in terms of people that are excited about digital art call it you know 250,000 people or less but it is you know a serious group of people that are enabling a new canvas to take form in front of us and I believe in my heart of hearts that for all the bad press that we see about nfts and all the scams and don't get me wrong there's tons of that there is something true about uh if you had to close your eyes and wake up in 20 years will collectible digital art be a thing of course it will right like and the blockchain is a perfect a perfect place to like prove provenance to prove scarcity there's a lot of advantages there long story short you know I launched something called Moon Birds which was a pfp project I remember the text I got on the day of that launch oh my God yeah so we launched this you know collectible nft and it skyrocketed Way Beyond what we had ever thought so to give you all a sense from launch to one year in over a milon dollar has been traded in moonbird nfts that's so wild um and I did not expect that you know I really didn't but with that comes trading and I have never lived the world of trading I've grown companies to quite some size but never publicly I've never taken a a company public and when you take a company public I.E NASDAQ you know New York Stock Exchange you deal with the ups and downs and feedback from people that are now Stak holders of that particular company it's different this isn't Equity holding nft does not make you a shareholder it's very different but they still pay attention to what is the price of this nft y so when the nft goes up times are good people are happy and when it goes down people are not happy I've had people truly hug me and say they've paid off their house because they sold one of my nfts for $200,000 and they were stoked and it was like tears kind of hugging I've had people basically Tear Me Apart saying I am the other person on the other side of that equation that bought that nft for let's Call it Whatever 50,000 75,000 10,000 doesn't really matter it's all relative to how much that person has as an individual and how are you going to fix this because nfts are down and they need to go up right right and some of it is on you know what we we build to try and build bigger and better things for the ecosystem and try and hopefully prove that we are a company here for the long term it has taken an serious emotional toll on me as an individual MH I've had many many sleepless nights I've had anxiety like I've never had before I've had to work with therapists and I've had to I've had to reach out to my primary care physician and get anti-anxiety medicine which I've never had to do before I have had some dark moments with some some not dark like in suicide but dark as in you know it's destroyed me because I've always considered myself an honest person I've never been here to screw anyone over you're also a very uh I consider you to be an empathic feeler maybe the right word is like you're a deep feeler I am a feeler for sure for sure if something like if something like that is sitting with you you take it very personally I remember when you had like stomach issues oh my God IBS related issues and that so this year I've been you know treated multiple times for you know these types of issues with Physicians all kinds of things they discovered you know the high blood pressure thing was discovered because I have a a brain aneurysm right now that it's on the smaller side and they're watching it and I'm fine but those grow The more stress you're under because the more blood pressure that builds up the larger aneurism can grow and so you know as you can imagine all these things hit you at once yeah and so I I felt overwhelmed I felt like I couldn't go to work I felt like I I kind of just needed to reset you know and huberman who I love who's been on my podcast Andrew hubman is a top 10 podcast now oh my God killing it killing it love that guy he's doing such a an amazing job of executing I don't think I've seen anyone better at doing monologues and and the way that he can do them about scientific topics I mean just if you haven't subscribed to humman podcast I mean it's along with theas you know top five medical podcasts to subscribe to along with Ronda Patrick I mean they're they're all heroes hberman did a a couple Hour episode on ketamine therapy MH and ketamine therapy you know it's used for PTSD it's used for severe depression and it's used for anxiety and it sounded really interesting it rewires neurop Pathways and huberman's episode highly recommend I'm not a scientist but he is and he goes in depth about what it actually is doing on the brain and I always thought of ketamine clinics as being these Shady places these places where you know there are real people with real addictions that they treat you know if you're hooked on everything from amphetamines to you know any type of serious addiction problems they see these types of people and also people that are about to kill themselves like really suicidal like if you go to an emergency room right now and you say I'm going to end my life in the next 10 minutes they will most likely treat you with some type of ketamine to just like get you out of that state it's a very common emergency room Hail Mary to like get you back into a state of like just being okay I don't want to in my life right now and now we can work this out or or take you to an institution where you can get help MH so I was never there but I got to the point where I was like I need to do something dramatic and different and I need to reboot because I can't take the comments I'm getting on Twitter now did you see the huin episode organically did someone send it to you organically just came across it just came across it I was like oh I've always been interested in C I'd heard about Kine in in a recreational setting and you know sadly who is the friend Perry yeah Matthew Perry Just toxicology report came back and said that he was on cemy when he drowned uh and but there's we can get into why that that is in a minute but in a yeah let's focus on your personal experience and I'll just say also ketamine and Jacuzzi or pools or water do not mix ex there are multiple fatalities don't mix those two things well when you go into Academy and you are literally sedating yourself to where they can give you surgery dissociative anesthetic so what what my doctor has told me that the ceman doctor she's an emergency room doctor that that did my treatments is she said to me that if you came she was a 10 year I think 10 or 15 years emergency room doctor and she goes if you came in and you had like dislocated your hip she goes I would inject I would give you what they call a Bolis dose is that what they call when they a Bolis is right I mean they're giving you a lot at once a lot at once they just like push it all in right and she's like I would give you that to about like you know I can't remember the exact X but it was a multiple on what they give you for therapy to put you under so I can get that hip back into place and then you wake up feeling fine unfortunately with with Matthew Perry he took a dose that was equivalent of subconscious fainting falling asleep you know drowning type dose and they said the toxology report I read it he had that level in him that would have put him in that state of of of kind of like passing out right yeah drugs and water don't mix folks don't mix anyway wasn't my point it wasn't the fault of the C I mean it was he was using it recreationally versus Under the supervision of a professional which is which is what is needs so I found this this clinic in in La they literally have the set and setting right so they're all about like you come in it's just beautiful comfortable peaceful music really relaxing reclining chairs I mask because it's important to go inward it's not about just getting this therapy and looking around the room music with like drums and beautiful like sometimes I I I picked my own playlist I did a little bit more like chanting non non you don't want like lyrics or you know anything to distract you and they have you hooked up to a blood pressure cuff that measures throughout the time uh a heart rate monitor like really professional setting it's called Golden afternoon is the name of the clinic in La amazing name it's an amazing name and the doctor there top tier you know School emergency room doctor is legit as they come mhm I so I felt really comfortable cuz you know a lot of this is about set and setting and comfort yeah and safety and safety yeah so I went in there and they I was like I'm going to give this a shot because you know huberman convinced me that that this can help me with anxiety and so you know I I laid down in this comfortable chair turn on the heating like they have a heating element in the chair tilt you back a little bit you know put on my noise cancelling headphones they gave me an IV and IVs does sound hardcore but for for people like you and me that do IVs like or do like blood draws like every other weak who cares like I don't care about this but it does sound how C to most people M they gave me an IV and you know I closed my eyes and I went to a place man I went to a place and it's a beautiful place and it made me over multiple treatments and I did eight in total and they normally do six for depression which is really interesting because she said that it's typically anxiety is harder to to treat than depression in her experience mhm and they gave me eight in total and you two two per week and about halfway through the best way I can describe it is imagine that life is a series of crunches and I say crunches like the ab workout okay whereas like nobody likes to work out their abs right like and cuz abs are like ah AB day like you know nobody wants to do that and I didn't realize it but I had had a 35 lb weight on my chest the entire time I was doing ab workouts and it took that weight off and I had and I still have and it's been Weeks Later a bit of Grace and lightness to the way I'm carrying myself throughout life that is just a piece that I haven't felt since I was probably 10 or 12 years old were you interacting with anyone in those sessions or was it all internal no it's all internal so it's headphones on music eye mask the entire session lasts for about an hour and a half they have a camera that's watching you if if anything comes up one time I had my music accidentally stop and I raise my hand they're in there within 30 seconds they bring you hot tea when you're done they let you take your time to slowly kind of like come to and then you can literally walk out of there and carry on with your day MH and it you know the first session I was like okay that's beautiful second session was a little difficult imagine it's kind of loosening up like like the plaque in your brain and like rewiring circuits and like it's not always going to be easy but by the by I remember the six session I just walked out there and and she Dr Jen came in and she goes how are you and I said I could run a marathon right now I feel amazing I feel like a a weight has been lifted off my chest and I just this is such important work that you do such important work because it's not about being I don't feel there's not an addiction to the substance I don't need to go back some people go back for boosters depending on what they have they have she told me that some people that have depression they'll come back in you know every 3 months every 6 months she say some people she never sees again mhm and it kind of takes the anxiety and and puts it pulls it apart from your body so that you can see it for what it is which is silliness because life is play and and when you realize life is play and we're all here just trying to figure out our yeah why are we taking it so seriously yeah there's a lot that just does not matter it doesn't matter we can just chill man it doesn't really matter so that we have clean drinking water like what the are we complaining about so the the weight on the chest was that something that you can't put words to that you just felt release or and you don't need to get into details but I'm just curious or was there content to it where you're like oh interesting wasn't content content was beautiful I and and I don't know if you've ever experienced this Tim with I I've never done iasa although at some point I would love to try it but like I opened my eyes and it was when the mask on and I was seeing things that were as high of fidelity as what we see today like right now Y where you're like I am in a room right now and I felt very present my dad's passed away I felt very present with a father Source there at times I felt very connected I at one point I saw the entire world and I saw how small I was and I was just like it it g immediately gave me this sense of just like gratitude for that being that little speck but also at the same time not having to take and carry the burdens of the world on me for being that little speck and so there's bits and pieces of that but I would say at the end of the day when you come out of it it's not like you had this Epiphany it's more like Dr Jen calls it the ketam means time on she calls it time time on brain how can we make this sit and do the rewiring on your brain and give you time on brain with the drug and the compound and let it do its work and so it was a lot of surrendering it was a lot of saying you do what you want to do I don't care where you take me emotionally mentally whatever it doesn't really matter it's time on brain with the compound and after a certain number of sessions you just feel this natural lift and lightness and it it felt like I I'm not a ballerina big surprise but it felt like uh it felt like a little bit of a like walking through life is a little bit of a dance now than it is such a struggle it makes me super happy man to hear that and it feels amazing and I remember getting the the text some of the texts from you and I was excited to have this conversation which we haven't had this is the first time we're talking about it it is and I I'll say a few things the first is that I have seen a number of cases where k mean therapy has changed or saved lives so a friend of mine for instance who suffered from depression his entire adult life had a similar experience to yours and he went to a clinic I believe it was in New York City very well-run and he goes back once every 6 months for a single tuneup let's just Sayer session yeah and I actually know also not going to mention their name but some someone we know as a mutual friend who you probably don't know also does this once every 3 to 6 months and separately I know someone who's in law enforcement who is heavily disincentivized from talking about mental health with his superiors because you will be put on leave generally if you even hinted that and you're in certain professions airline pilot for instance MH you're going to be put on leave and it's a on leave is a a nice way to say you probably nice way it's a it's a career risk to bring these things up yeah which puts many more people at risk right there there should be better processes for this but nonetheless he was suicidal at one point we're talking about somebody who was carrying around a firearm all day and ketamine was an intervention that yeah was incredibly effective for him for pattern interrupting and I use that very literally because the pattern was a thought Loop this is personal this is permanent this is never going to change and when you're able to at least interrupt that for a short period of time you provide people with hope or at least a window within which they can consider other options MH so for acute suicide suicidal ideation uh also for chronic pain very interestingly ketamine is super interesting it's interesting you say that because she Dr Jen over this Clinic has told me she treated quite a few people for chronic pain as well and it works quite well so I unexpectedly because have you done it so before I talk to anyone about anything like this generally I am volunteering to be the monkey shot into space so several years ago I did six sessions over three weeks Kine yeah oh dude why did you never tell me this I didn't realize I didn't tell you so I did six sessions this would have been with the mask on and like in the music in this particular case it was music but it was not mask on the way that this particular Clinic ran things was with video which was very strange to me but nonetheless it was sort of nature Scapes and I was like okay well this is new to me I'll try it and it ended up being supremely interesting I was not going in with an acute condition so it was hard for me to evaluate ultimately yeah a lot of the efficacy they found it very strange and I found it kind of hilarious because they would do an intake each day of of active sessions they and they would ask me to do various assessments for anxiety and my anxiety levels were going up over time which they found very confusing because you may have experienced a little bit of this ketaman can compromise your short-term memory in the short term like after session so you might like forget where your wallet is or forget where your backpack is okay so that can happen and that happened to me and it happened to be the case that while I was doing these sessions because I shoehorned it into my schedule I also had a number of huge podcasts coming up like LeBron James and so on and it was freaking me out that I kept forgetting and so my anxiety was going up over the course of treatment which was not typically so I did the same thing they gave me a whole like breakdown it was one to five on you know a bunch of different scales I think it's a pretty standardized like you know thing that they give you I can't remember what the anxiety scales are but like mine went down to literally a one on all of them or zero on all of them which is amazing it is amazing and I I want to mention a few other things so I'm sure hu's episode is is excellent for people who want to have a comprehensive overview of ketaman I'm sure H is great so listen to that first it's fantastic I also did an episode with John Crystal who Dr John Crystal who is the chairman of Psychiatry at Yale who did a lot of the seminal research with respect to ketamine as an anti-depressant in humans so the protocols that get used which I think are generally like .5 Mig per kilogram of body weight Etc over X period of time with Y number of infusions those are the protocols that he developed with his other uh investigators and I want to mention a number of things just to to make sure that I'm doing my my safety first ferris Duty so the first is that part of the reason and this is pure speculation but I think that it was risky for Matthew Perry to use ketamine is that he had a history of abuse ketamine can be very addictive for people who are unwilling or uneager to feel certain things a dissociative anesthetics so if you have for instance a history of alcohol abuse it is I would say increasingly likely that that you might abuse ketamine which is why if someone were to consider ketamine therapy I feel very strongly that it should be IV or yes intramuscular injection and not at home treatment where you have access to say loes or nasal spray cuz there are companies that do loes at home but I will say one thing Tim real quick and I'll let you continue I noticed my desire for alcohol go down y so there are this I think that that can happen and I'm just saying for folks who for instance may be coming out of or part of AA and they have issues with depression my personal take after everything I've seen is that uh prior abuse of alcohol highly correlated to uh potential abuse of ketamine and uh I would say furthermore there are some Urological risks if you use ketamine chronically and alongside that if you use ketamine chronically and this is true for a lot of drugs actually not that's for snorting though right no it's not for SN I mean snorting you would your logical TR otherwise cuz it metabolizing the liver well most people who consume ketamine recreationally well do be their mouth or it'll be a lot of it'll be snorting of one way of one sort or another so they'll either have it in it'll be in suspension and a liquid or it will be a powder they snort in the same way they would snort cocaine a lot of people carry little lockets around their necks with ketamine I've seen this a lot and by the way that's not what I'm talking about here today I'm not those but those are two very different things they are so just to be very clear ketamine therapy with IV or IM has a track record of being incredibly promising for a train physician for a number of other things but where where some folks get lost is they go from they go from instead of clinical setting higher dose supervised they bleed into more casual recreational use in in which case it's very important for me to say that ketamine can be very helpful for people with say treatment resistant depression or chronic depression if you use it chronically though it flips the other way and it actually makes you predisposed to more depression so it's just something for people to be aware of yeah and as is true with so many things more is not better what was the drug that Michael Jackson died of do you remember the name of that I'm not sure I think it was a synthetic opioid or no no no no it was basically some type of anesthetic yeah it was funny I went and you know cuz I'm old now in my 40s I went and have my first col osoby because like you're supposed to do that you know Party Time have you done that yet or no I have yes yes I went and did mine and um and by the way this is this is very sad but do not skip your colonoscopies no a very good friend of mine since we last spoke Roland Griffith who's an amazing scientist from John's Hopkins he died of terminal cancer and uh I had a long conversation with him a few days before he died before I went to South America he was completely raiser sharp up until the end and my recollection is that part of the reason that was caught too late is that he was a few years late in having his exam yeah so I had mine done and they caught uh a couple precancerous as they do with most people these days yeah do your screens and you got to do your screens but anyway long story short when I was going in the anesthesiologist came in the room and he was kind of a funny guy it was cool I like those guys you know yeah and I and I I asked him I said can I have this slow ramp and he's like what's the slow ramp I'm like well you just kind of get to me a little bit at time just I just like feel like going into that like that zone you know and he's like that's funny you say that he's like I'm giving you the same drug they gave Michael Jackson when he died and I was like oh that's crazy I'm like why and he's like he was just addicted to it and so he gave me the slow ramp and I remember this feeling about probably let's call it 30 seconds into it where I felt like I was okay with dying it was just like this moment of like this is beautiful yeah and I was like oh my God this is what Michael Jackson was feeling right now prop prop fall yeah exactly that was it and so I get it but it's but this is like to the point of of Matthew Perry dying in the in the pool like this stuff puts you under it puts you under so that you can have surgery and that that is what ketamine does as well so and ketamine broadly speaking is an incredibly well tolerated safe drug part of the reason that ketamine is I believe listed in the world Health organization's top 100 most essential medicin is because it is generally very well tolerated yes and it does not suppress respiration yes exactly which is a huge one right gigantic and it's an incredible compound and you just need to know the risk profile and there are risk profiles for everything of course you know we have tequila and we have water in front of us water has a risk profile too people die every year of hypon nuta because they drink too much water when they're training for or running in a marathon and that causes disruption of sort of electrochemical signaling and then boom they drop and people die every year you probably didn't hear about this but there was a a a radio host DJ you remember this you know what I'm talking about where they have these water drinking I some overdosing on water this has happened many times right as paracelis would say the dose makes the poison but sometimes the frequency in the use pattern makes the poison yeah and I think ketamine is incredibly interesting and especially cuz the the the when you get into the actual science behind it we're not just using this as an escape it's actually rewiring the brain and and hubman will get into that the the the kind of Neurology behind it and what's happening and why are these are more lasting changes and why some people not everyone but some people can go and do this and they don't ever have to go back for a booster or anything else and it changes them forever so I don't know if I should get into this someone someone we can always cut it well someone very close to me she was close to suicide and she's she's a dear friend she's a sweetheart of a person and she was the first time i' had ever heard a camian therapy this was probably four years ago and she said I was about to take take you know the closest take in her life and she had heard about Academy and therapy it was like kind of new at the time and she paid for the six-pack the six sessions you know the the the full six and and she hated every single session and it was funny when I talked to Dr Jen at at the clinic that I went to she said it's very common people that have depression they don't enjoy the experience and I thought it was fantastic I Lov the whole thing but but like when my my friend said that at sess session six she heard a pop in her brain like a physical pop it's like a psychic Chiropractic adjustment dud literally the depression lifted and she has been amazing ever since so wild and this has been like 5 years ago yeah and it's like I I believe her she's like doing insanely well now yeah and it's like oh my God like dude I I so Tim I just want to like one thank you for how much money and effort you've put into psychedelic research because thanks man I After experiencing this I I realized that there is something here yeah and we don't have it figured out yeah obviously we don't like we're in the baby stages but you know 10 20 30 years with AI maybe 10 years like this will get figured out and it will be largely because people like you help fund this type of research so I just want to say thank you for that thank for saying that brother yeah I really appreciate that and I was so happy to see this text yeah I was so happy I I got to tell you if you're in the if you're in the LA area and obviously you'll talk to her as a doctor this is her advice not ours and you'll you'll go through the whole screening process but golden afternoon uh. Clinic I think is the website and she is an amazing human very caring comes in pre- and post checks in on you like a really well-run facility it you know depression anxiety PTSD War veterans all these people are going in to see her it's God's work if wherever you believe in God or not yeah there are some there are some great clinics out there I will say there are also a lot of fly by night clinics 100% so do your homework yes the the one of the main advantages or it is a main advantage of ketamine as compared to other psychedelics is that in the United States it is currently legal yes and that is a non-trivial advantage and I will say that one question you may want to ask in doing your due diligence if you consider this is an option and I do feel after canvasing many different compounds many different treatments that for for acute suicidal ideation that ketamine is at the very top of the list it is on a very short list of interventions that have incredible promise for at least creating the space for someone to consider treatment options and the question the due diligence question that I recommend and this is true for any type of drug assisted therapy it's actually true for surgeons too it's true for doctors in general ask them what types of Adverse Events they've observed what type of abuse potential they've observed if their answer is everything is always fine we've never had an adverse event yeah that is a huge red flag yes anyone who has enough mileage if they are ketamine Clinic physician if they are an ER physician they will be able to tell you what things look like when things go sideways yes and how they handle those situations and if they don't volunteer any of that it means either they're inexperienced or they're delusional generally 100% And I'm giving people a bit of a break or it means they're lying and in all three cases you do not want to have anything to do with that particular practitioner by the way I I looked her up she's a Princeton Princeton yep go Tigers look at that that's where my do my doctor Phil wolson for in has has done a lot of writing on this do your homework you you're you are signing up for let's just call it psychoactive brain surgery so to the extent that you would do your due diligence related to a surgeon who is going to be physically opening your head carving a hole in your skull and Performing manual brain surgery do a commensurate amount of homework on the person who is going to be providing you with compounds that have a a significant impact on cognitive functioning functioning not necessarily only in the short term but in the longer term yeah you want to hear another crazy drug story let's hear it that's why we're here yeah all right I'll give you a refill speaking of drugs Andrew huberman would would not be pleased disapprove although likes Straight Tequila yeah occasionally a TIA will have a drink or two and he just knows what he's signing up for anyway we we can come back to this part of the reason that you know I had a wild experience in Portugal recently no matter how much wine I have there I do not have a headache the next day it's and and I think it's additive related I I can feel tired it'll up my sleep I mean at the end of the day it is it is alcohol but fascinating how different my physiological response yeah can be in any case that's true with this stuff too for me personally with lava that's great to hear considering I'm consuming a good portion of it yeah a good portion all right so let's I got to talk to you about my tattoo at some point okay should we all right you know what I'm going to leave that as a cliffhanger we're going to come back to Wild drug story that's why I'm here in town oh I didn't know that oh yeah you're going to hear about the the crazy machine what okay let's tattoo and crazy machine what's going on one of the the the premier generative artists by when I say generative what I mean by that for those that don't know is like there's a whole genre of uh art that is code based that that you know you write actually computer science code like and and you create art and one of the the the premier artists in the space that's been sold at chrisy and sou bees and all over the place is Tyler Hobbs he's based here such an awesome guy too another sweetheart guy by the way he told me uh he's always enjoyed hanging out with you he's hang out with you a couple times what a nice guy he's he he and his wife are just lovely beyond words such great people yeah and so Tyler lives here in Austin and you know his nfts you can say what you want of nfts but his nfts are just absolutely gorgeous pieces of Art work and and can sell for at times millions of dollars like they're they're really sought after also a legit visual artist outside of Coach oh my God like I went to the studio today and he pulled open binders that he's been doing for like Decades of his visual art and it's just like he's not in this for the quote unquote nfts like he's an artist like to his core he strikes me as the person that's always saying what's next how can I push things in a different direction right and there's a company based out here called black dot does the has a machine it's a robot that uses not tattoo needles but you know when like people get like their eyebrows like cosmetically tattooed on I can imagine it it's a common thing like some some I don't want to be gender based here but it's mostly women they get it like tattooed on as their eyebrows but like they use a much finer needle than they would say a tattoo gun okay and so this robot this machine uses these really fine needles and what they do is they take and we can put this in the video as well they put this kind of template on your arm that is more or less just like almost like a a QR a massive QR code kind of like grid on your arm so that's my forearm I was wondering about that you sent me a text and I was like what the hell I like is that another is that your tattoo okay no it's just like a giant QR code yeah like a giant QR code across my forearm and that allows the the the optical lenses and the lasers and everything to align the tattoo it is doing 177,000 small micro like pushes into my skin with this needle okay and it does it they can gauge with like these depth sensors like the correct depth of the dermis to go in so that the ink doesn't spread out and fade over time so they can do insanely High Fidelity tattoos like stuff you've never like picture perfect like even when you see those pictures of like oh that person got that baby tattooed on their like chest how cute like imagine 10x the Fidelity of that where you'd be like somebody took a picture and like pasted it on their chest yeah they have a machine that can do that so you're never getting those off if you change your mind what this is is Tyler started with he drew me a sparrow and the reason I like a sparrow is because to me a sparrow is the most common low ego bird to me that's out there it just reminds me that in like like I'm just getting a little sensitive but like reminds me that we are all just sparrows we don't need to take each other like no one's better than anyone else we we're all a common bird we're all humans right and then what he did is he applied an algorithm to it that degrades the bird into a pixelated form over three images oh that's cool yeah and so the last one is his last algorithm of the more pixelated version and so you can imagine I'm getting this tattooed on my arm tomorrow and and so wait you're getting a tattooed tomorrow what is that this is just a stencil oh so I want I want to show you this today of what thec look like so you can imagine a world where literally in the future how long does that stencil last you you could wipe it off and and with some alcohol and stuff but it's like you know just there for the show of the show but you can imagine a world where he can give you an algorithm like he does with his artwork and you can walk in put your arm underneath this machine and get a unique generative piece by an artist that is one of one unique to you as defined by an insanely famous artist imagine if Picasso had the tools in his day to say I'm going to create an algorithm that is a bunch of crazy Swirls and Chaos that is my brain yeah or a bank or whoever bank or whoever and you stick your arm in and you get a oneon-one Picasso like it's it's they're only doing three of them this is a brand new machine and brand new technology and so that's why I'm out here to do a oneon-one Tyler Hobs on my arm with a sparrow so that's tomorrow black dot black dot yeah it's it's a new kind of startup out here a man there's a lot happening here there's a lot happening that's cool it's so cool yeah I want to show you the one they did of the Mona Lisa it's amazing stuff you don't have do you have any tattoos at all you don't do you no I've been thinking about getting my first which is why I asked about the stencil so look at that oh yeah it's like just the eyes of the Mona Lisa right there like but look how look how high fidelity that is yeah that's wild yeah that's that's pretty wild so you've been thinking about getting one I've been thinking about getting one for years which would be Molly Molly's paw prints on my forearm you but not what was that you would not are you serious yeah that' be kind of awesome how ises Molly now Molly's eight between eight and nine the toaster is slowing down man yeah it's it's so sad there's nothing more heartbreaking than starting to see your dog start to go on the decline yeah like he's fall he's falling now like his legs are falling I know we don't have to take the podcast there but yeah know it's bad no but it's like hey toter's been with the podcast since day one you remember you chewing the cables I do I was just going to bring it up man back in the day this was still dig era I guess and we were at your apartment in San Francisco and he was just a little pup chewing on the cables I remember that yeah he's still kicking it though he's still mentally he's sharp as which great which is like nice you yeah it was nice to see him I remember playing with him Friendly Toast yeah what a great dog yeah so for me I it's it's hard for me to imagine a world or any circumstances in which I would regret having the paw prints on on the arm and there are many other how much has that dog meant for you personally because like I've seen you through multiple relationships yeah dogs are like this thing that is just like this steadfast love Yeah like has it been a a good like I mean obviously it's been it must been insane emotional if for you to have a animal like that in your life yeah it's it's changed me fundamentally on so many different ways I think and it's not just the receipt of that love which is it's like a task in it of itself right I mean like to and I and I and I actually saw this at one point somebody had sketched it on to this piece of wood and I came across it and it was like your task in life is to learn how to love and be loved like that's it and being loved is actually not straightforward for everyone MH right learning to receive that in a way so that has been a gift but it's also been a practice of giving and thinking about someone else's welfare and having say a dog as a mirror also for yourself where let's just say early on when I was training Molly I took training super seriously God I was there for that yeah and serious and I was I ended up being pretty good at it and Molly's very well trained but if she up or made a mistake I would I would get upset yeah and you hit her no Jesus Christ I did not hit my dog and beat her with a rod uh so no I wouldn't hit Molly but I would get I would get very very frustrated and then that would scare her and not because I was flashing out but I would just get so frustrated because i' be like God this this 37th time we've done this and it was a mirror because Molly's not doing anything deliberately to piss me off that's ridiculous it was an incredible reflection in the pond for me to see what was going on and to see what's going on with me right like if I'm short-tempered if you're with other people you can weave a story to justify it right well like they should know like God I didn't get any sleep and they know that and why does it always have to be in the morning that they blah blah blah you can you can really Spin A Yarn MH to rationalize why you're upset with someone else but a really loving well- behaved dog are you kidding like that's a you problem pal like that is not a dog problem yeah and so on all of those levels she's just been such a wonderful companion and teacher and I was away from her for a few weeks recently for the first time because I was in South America and absolutely not the right place for a dog where I was in the middle of the Jungle and I really really missed her so I mean God I'm going to really like take us there but like when I think about which I do pretty often like when she has her Decline and then passes like it's heartbreaking for me to imagine and I'm going to get a second dog almost certainly in the next year that would be on my nearest resolutions too and I've thought about this for a few years but I've pushed it off because there's part of me that doesn't want to accept that Molly is Mortal so I pushed it off and push it off but it it's it's time it's good to do it on the sooner side because when they're older like I could never introduce another dog to toaster right now yeah cuz he's just too old to handle that puppy energy yeah versus if you did it now then they can kind of and Molly's really good with puppies and she loves puppies so I'm going to do that very soon uh in the next year and I at one point was volunteering it's a long story but I was volunteering around wolves and I was like preparing the food and so on for these wolves which were those the ones that licked you in the teeth and stuff yeah which were being sort of rehabilitated and raised in captivity because they had either been bred and raised in captivity in which case they can't be released or there any number of conditions that led to them being nonviable as wild releases I saw one of the volunteers had I think it was on his rib cage he had a print from this wolf that he had known for years until that wolf passed away and I thought to myself you know what I've never felt pulled to have a tattoo and the fact that I have no tattoos is kind of Novel now which is funny right like like tattoos are pretty common oh you got to go to Jess my my lady she's amazing so I might I might and I thought you know I really have a hard time I'm imagining regretting doing that and I can also see it being a really valuable reminder of a lot Tim I've got something for you listen to this tell me you know how I said someone was going to play at my birthday like Jess is going to be out there at the same time okay why don't you sign up to get the tattoo at the party I mean not at the party but like the day before the day after or something like that and she is like booked out by like a year like she did Bruce wills's tattoos like she's like no she's like legit as they count she's legit okay all right J Jess machete on Instagram like uh insane all right now she's booked out for five years I just just string this this has been on my list for a while it's been on my list for a couple years and I think partially because I'm nervous you would you would love her can I ask you a question yeah I want to ask you a question that is a little bit more intimate just because we've had some tequila and um uh we're talking about dogs and and just kind of the companionship and and what M speaking of kind of like New Year's resolutions and looking back on life in the last 10 years when it comes to both personal intimate like relationships or private what would you if there's any one thing what would you change about your interactions with either someone that you've been with on an intimate level or someone that like maybe it's like on a more kind of like you know friendship level is there anything that you can look back on and say I would have done more of this that is an exceptional question and you know when I was driving over here I was thinking about another question we have the ultimate Cliffhanger in the crazy drug story so maybe we'll get to that maybe we won't maybe we'll do that the next episode but I was thinking also I was like what would Kevin tell his 30-year-old self my current Kevin like do this maybe not do so much of that blah blah blah thought that could be fun exploration with the interpersonal stuff I think that I would say just because someone needs other things things that are different from your needs does not make them high maintenance and by the way Tim if they looked at you through the same lens you were looking at them through they would decide that you were high mantenance so gather some tools right I would say read the five love languages as cheesy and schlocky as it might seem that is so helpful as a framework for discussion mhm for identifying and easily labeling the different categories of needs that people might have and putting them in some type of order oh interesting you're a quality time person good to know number two would be this oh you're a physical touch and then acts of service person as I am right like these are shared vocabulary that you can use to really avoid and repair a lot of things right so I would say handful of things right so gay and Katy hendris also like conscious loving there are there are a few books a few resources I would say look if you really care about someone commit together to develop a short hand which allows you to not necessarily prevent I don't think prevention is the key I think repair is the key right like if you're in a startup and you're like well let's just prevent all the bad things from happening that's never going to work right shit's going to happen and people are going to have bad days and you're going to say things you regret and they going to be disagreements and by the way if there are no disagreements something's wrong right right 100% And therefore having a shorthand and a set of agreements right like the these are the rules that we agree to play by and we're not going to be perfect I would say that would be very high on the list and I would say for really close relationships it potentially maybe we'll edit this out but who knows MDMA assisted Psychotherapy let's just say anywhere from Once a quarter to once a year no more than once a quarter for a whole host of reasons but I I think that while MDMA assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD is incredibly impressive and I've been very involved with that from I don't want to say day one cuz that's not true but certainly for the last 10 years or so I've been very involved up through phase 3 and and now onward the results with treatment resistant PTSD a complex PTSD where you see people who have had this diagnosis for 17 years suddenly after two or three sessions end up asymptomatic right they would not meet the criteria for PTSD right with durability out to 6 9 12 months it's something that almost defies belief right it it is causing a complete reexamination of Psychiatry as we know it I still think that is second place to coup's work when it comes to MDMA I think that that is that is an incredibly fruitful arena for seeeing the full potential of MDMA assist psychotherapies that that would be another one because sometimes often times couples end up and I know multiple people now who have had this experience with professional guidance which by the way folks currently is legal so before warrant there are legal consequences or at least risks entailed with this not to mention the fact that at least I would say 60 to 70% of MDMA that you might purchase is is adulterated or mixed with something else at this point so you need to be very careful dancesafe.org is a resource I would recommend for testing kits and so on if you're going to go that route I'm not recommending you do anything illegal however people are going to do it anyway International listen people are going to people are people are going to do it anyway I I I just recognize it's like you can't just say to every teenager like don't have sex like kids are going to have sex so let's be realistic about it I did that one time it's fun as had sex no no I did when I 23 I did uh I did well they were kind of ecstasy back then but like holy that is a compound yeah and that can go that can also go sideways just for for record yeah so like there are films out there now how to change your mind the miner on Netflix watch the nbma episode it is excellent yeah and it's pretty heavy because it gets into some PTSD but you'll be able to see live session footage if you want another alternative or compliment he's great and there is also a dock called trip of compassion which is worth seeing which has a lot of session footage as well but those are a few of the things that would come to mind and I would say on a friendship level I might suggest to my earlier self let's just say 30-year-old self right something that I have really embraced and put into action in the last handful of years which is going to sound a little antisocial but I don't view it that way humans have a finite capacity for building and sustaining really deep relationships you just can't do that with everyone and when I've looked back say and I do this every year at a past year review right I look back at my my calendar every week of my last year and on a piece of paper with positive and negative two columns I write down the peak and Peak negative and positive experiences if I look at the commonalities is for the peak positive experiences It's usually the same 10 people or fewer right it's the same cast of characters these are my close friends who are nourishing supportive good influence and before what I would say to my younger self is before you seek to develop a bunch of new relationships ask yourself are you spending enough time as much time as you would like with the people on that short list who you know are guaranteed to be nourishing for you and if the answer is no maybe you should double down on those relationships maybe you should reach out to those people to get something on the calendar before crowds it out before you look for shiny objects MH in new relationships which doesn't mean I don't develop new relationships I occasionally do but I'm at a point where I think recognizing the ephemeral nature of Life the the finite limits the constraints that we have is actually very enabling it helps you to make cleaner faster decisions so for me I would just say before seeking to develop new deep relationships ask yourself the question for my closest Five friends let's just say in the last year did I spend as much time as I would like with those people and if the answer is no reach out to this five first yeah yeah what about you oh man I would say honestly I think that we're at the age now where every day just brings uh a new unknown in terms of like how long are we going to last I've had multiple friends with cancer now I had one friend that I almost lost this year that was in in the you know emergency room for weeks that we thought had stage four cancer and ended up being a horrible uh bacterial infection from some foreign country and it's just I just I just realized like you know there's so many times when we hang out and we and we just you know give a hug and say oh good to see you like blah blah but we don't say I love you you know we don't say you know I you are so essential to me in so many ways and may maybe this is the the ketamine talking but like no but when I went through this whole thing with aaman therapy I realized like at the end of the day love is the this going to sound cheesy but it is like it is the most important thing that we tell each other and that we feel for each other and like when you can really feel that and you say this person is like so important I mean you let them know that and you feel it back I don't know what what's better than that you know yeah yeah what's more human than that too right yeah in a way I mean like love you know you can observe affection and love in in many other species but the ability to verbalize it and express it yeah do you feel that psychedelics brings that out of you because like when I did the the the therapy I I had more love in me than I've had in so long MH do you feel that's a a commonality amongst like psychedelics to to like have a sense of just gratitude for existence for sure I think it's I think it's very common it's it's not always across the board I mean I would say that this might be a controversial statement but the psychedelics to me are similar to there's a lot more to it which we'll probably dive into but kind of like alcohol or power or money in the sense that they magnify what's already there and they term you sometimes here is a non-specific amplifier so I don't think that at all there's no compelling evidence to me that psychedelics if put in the drinking water produce World piece there's no evidence for that right I mean you have plenty of civilizations maybe lithium though no no no remember there was a I remember I remember yeah a little bit of lithium goes a long way yeah yeah people can look this up we'll try to find there are some there's a study that that people in populations where there is more lithium naturally found in the drinking water have lower rates of suicide than anywhere else in all sorts of stuff yeah so we'll see what we can find to put in the show notes I do think lowd dose lithium is pretty interesting very low dose psychedelics are nonspecific amplifier there are many cases of civilizations where they had Human Sacrifice played soccer with human heads and they consume psychedelics I still sacrifice people yeah yeah like you know as we all do you know every once in a while on the solstice I mean it's I think it's all fair game but the feeling of gratitude and love I think for a lot of people who wish to enable that to experience it more who have the conscious or subconscious desire to rekindle those things the experience you're describing is very common yeah for sure and I think part of that is the dissolution this isn't true of all experiences but the dissolution of self and consequently the the felt sense of unity with many or all things which leads you to feel for most people less alone yeah which leads you to feel quite grateful because to State the obvious I suppose I mean the despite the fact that we're more connected than ever with loose I think a lot of people suffer from anxiety and depression that is highly correlated to a feeling of isolation so when you can remedy that by feeling the exact polar opposite in some of these states not necessary but helpful that the the end result of that is is a feeling of gratitude for sure awesome yeah what what was the um before we wrap things up because I know we're coming to the end and you still have some to finish what was the Cliffhanger you said you wanted to you want to tell us yeah so I'll I'll try to keep it short I mean I'll let you I'll tell you what I'll keep it short and then you can excavate okay as you like I'd love to excavate all right so as you know for the last year I've basically been crippled by lowback issues I mean i' I've had trouble there are days when I've had trouble getting up and walking I mean it's been that bad yeah I mean to be honest Tim you first told me about this like 8 years ago or something remember when you got those injections or something like you like I think I have degenerative dis disease yeah so I've had lower back issues for a long time this is also a congenital issue so I have what's called a uh transitional segment in other words the there's a segment in my lumbar there vertebrae in my lumbar area that really mimic a sacral vertebral uh segment and that's problematic for a host of reasons creates an abnormal angle and if you can imagine just bending the paper clip over and over again in ways that it shouldn't be bent that's sort of the feeling in the lowb back and my brother has this there are other people in my family who have this issue so standing extended slow walking like a museum walk cocktail party type of experience can be very painful like the low back locks up but in the last year specifically had all sorts of issues and all sorts of MRIs and Specialists and PT and adjustments and traction and this that and the other thing and it was a disaster and it caused it well let me give myself a little more agency I created a lot of anxiety around this cuz I was like is this the new normal right is is this really The New Normal where well cuz you you project forward like what what is 5 years from now look like yeah I'm like I'm not that old right you know and I'm pretty active and your skinc care is amazing my skincare is amazing I saw your in boy you know what's funny sidebar is how much time you can spend on like a blog post takes six months to put together and it's like you get like crickets and a fart in the wind and then nobody ever reads it again and then someone in your team is like you know what people ask about your skincare let's grab a couple clips and throw it up and it goes bananas I'm on I'm on Instagram and the first thing that pops up to me is like hi I'm Tim Ferris people ask me about my skincare regimen let me tell you I use bronners natural soap what like I like what the is come into yeah so here we are here we are folks your skin looks amazing though breathaking coming back to the the main through line here terrifying experience with the back and I I had more or less given up I was I was in the stage of grief where I was trying to get past denial and accept that this might be the new normal because no one could figure it out and a lot lot of the advice I received many of the diagnoses were conflicting and then decided in part because of this to do a few things and part of that was going to South America which I'm not recommending there are a lot of risks down in South America it's generally like safety fifth it's not safety first so people get into a lot of trouble but I went down and did this did this training which involved consuming a bunch of plants also involved fasting for a week also involved wait wait wait water fast water fast Jesus s days yeah also involved during that week really not sitting and standing very little so he's either hammock or cot basically and I'm mentioning these things because they're confounders Translating that into basic English that means that I can't really point back to one thing and say this is what caused what I'm going to describe but the during the first experience which happened to be with iasa which is a huge gun it's I think treated very casually by people who do not realize what they're signing up for I do not recommend it to most people as my ex who's going to become relevant in a second would tell you I talk many many many more people nine out of 10 which X Out of I'm not going to mention her name but out my most recent X Out of using iasa then I talk into using iasa like nine times out of 10 I say you should not proceed do not pass go for a lot of reasons but in this particular case had a very very very difficult experience uh and I can kind of rank order my hardest experiences over the last you know decade plus and this would be the third most difficult maybe the second for different characteristics which is saying a lot and there was a point at which in that experience all I could imagine was having my head in the lap of my ex like that's all I wanted it was the only thing I could even visualize because I was in the Impact Zone I was just getting hit by 100 foot waves from every angle and there was no respite it was 10 out of 10 there was no wave meaning it didn't EB and flow it was just 10 out of 10 volume from Peak until end of the night effectively it was it was unusual and Incredibly difficult that was true for everyone in the session your Shaman mixed the wrong this guy's famous for having a brew that just cripples cripples people and like like yeah I mean there are a lot of other full-time clinicians from indigenous Traditions who will not drink his Brew I'll put it that way oh Jesus and coming back to the point of the story I'm imagining you know the only thing I can Envision is is this woman holding my head and consoling me that's the only thing I can imagine and then I realized that for a year because we separated a bit over a year ago and this was totally subconscious right it wasn't a decision on my part but I realized I had not allowed myself to feel the complete obliterating heartbreak that was in fact the core response to that separation right like I'd not allowed myself to her or from previous from that separation right like in other words my psyche had seemingly protected me because of my history of depression right which i' I've I've come to manage better than ever before like each year I'm better able to manage it and it's less and less frequent it's less and less intense but nonetheless let's face the facts in college I almost killed myself right so there's a there was a fear at least subconsciously that because of this separation because of starting over it at square one that I could spiral into a deep depression and that could be dangerous so my psyche protect protected me from that by not letting me feel the sadness the pain to the extent that ended up being important which I realized in this moment so I allowed myself to soak in it in that moment I trip reports are so boring most of the time and I apologize to people who might be listening and thinking oh here we go again because I get it trust me but in this particular case I experienced something I've never experienced as soon as I soaked in that and I really soaked in it and it was awful it was so dark and so heavy and [Music] then I felt my back release and literally I've been 90 plus% painfree since that moment and it blows my mind because at that point I couldn't explain it with the fast because the fast and ketones are highly anti-inflammatory and I think that they actually played a role hold on in the durability of things but the fact that there was an immediate release I was going to say interesting it is is interesting I can't explain that through fasting I can't explain that through the just being recumbent right laying down for 7 days because that was yet to come and I would say that I made a a tactical error in the last few weeks which is I was like man like I'm all good and so I've neglected some of the basic self-care and strengthening and PT which I think is important because my low back and and so on which are some of the surrounding muscles have atrophied over the last year of avoiding working with the back there was that experience and for people who may be interested in delving into this a little bit more there is a book I don't agree with everything in the book but it is interesting in the sense that it was written by a western trained MD who ended up then opening a healing clinic in South America focused on iOS in diets which you will read about if you get into the book called The Fellowship of the river so I found that book quite interesting on a number of levels but the reason I bring this all up number one people had recommended this book I think it's called healing low back pain I may be getting the title slightly wrong it could be fixing low back pain but it's by Dr Sarno John Sarno and this book was recommended to me I've read it before and the the general gist is it's all in your head now I took great offense at parts of this book and a lot of it is scientifically indefensible so he unfortunately I threw the baby out with the bath water a bit because he sends a he says a bunch of things that are ridiculous and you know he he cites these success statistics for his method while s simultaneously saying if I interview someone and they say they're not open to a or c i omit them from my treatment and I'm like okay well wait a second your selection is out of control I wanted to bring this up because that book has has helped a lot of people despite its flaws and not everyone will at any point want to consume iasa which I would advise against for 90 plus% of the population uh because it can be very destabilizing for a lot of people and very risky I would say there are a lot of things you should do beforehand right like try the talk therapy try holotropic breath work consider after speaking of doct ketamine after that you can consider other tools um but iasa should be like let's do fifth on your let's do random show on iwasa we could do that possible yeah possibly yeah iasa would be like fifth or sixth on the list of progressions it would not be first uh but I would say the Saro books are interesting I know they've helped people like Brian cman who's been on the podcast amazing writer who was co- creator of billions among others rounders Etc and it's it's something that I've always in theory agreed with yes we store stress that can have a physiological effect there are autoimmune disorders that I think are intimately linked with different types of psychological disturbances so you can address the problem kind of from the physiological side first of course the brain isn't entirely separate there's no kind of cartisian separation of mind and body so yes the brain is physiological but you can you can attack it through content in a way or you can attack it through Pharmaceuticals and Physiology first I think you can go both ways but the the Saro book I think is worth a lot of people reading the second thing I'll mention which is very very simple and tactical if you have lower back pain I'm shocked took me this long to figure it out and say sitting on Hard chairs bothers you or Lum lumbar support helps you for a year I've been going to restaurants and asking if they have a cushion do you have a cushion or a pillow or something I can use to fix up seating situations this is the solution right here this is it this is a Pilates ball this is a prob body Pilates doesn't really matter but honestly this thing folds up six in your pocket and I've been traveling with it I've had it behind my back the whole time and like great for First Dates great for First Dates ladies love Pilates balls and I but I will say for instance like the last time I did a podcast in this seat I did not use this and my back was killing me afterwards but the killing me afterwards is not just an issue for today that's an issue that causes inflammation that up my sleep for three or 4 days use this ball no problem I can put it behind my back or I can put it under my ass and it it folds up and fits in your pocket so anyway folks there you have it from the L to the ridiculous Pilates ball amazing all right how we doing any other topics I I mean I feel I feel pretty good next time we'll get to what you would tell your 30-year-old self anything you'd like to add in that category uh no I just you know I think if we're are we wrapping up now cuz I'd like to say some wrapping up comments wrapping up comments please yeah so my wrapping up comments would be this I recently went out to dinner with five close friends of mine who of which you know most of them just like the crew GL yeah just good friends and one of the things I did is I I went around the circle and I said a few words of gratitude and I think to my earlier point one of the things that's really important to me after coming out of this therapy is just this vulnerability that allows us to speak from the heart because we don't know what tomorrow brings and I just want to say that Tim you have been a friend of mine for so long now and I have appreciated the fact that my career has been a series of ups and downs and all over the place and you have been a steadfast friend someone that sends me some of the funniest videos I've ever seen in my life always keeps it like light-hearted and fun but I know that you care deeply about me and I just want to let you know that I love you and I care deeply about you and and I will always be here to have your back and I'm wishing you a fantastic New Year I hope that you hit all these milestones and more that you want to hit because I know that you are someone that I've always looked up to and someone that is just so inspirational to us all that listen to your show and your podcast because you inspire us to do more and to be better humans and I just want to let you know that that's that means a lot to me and I love you well thanks Kevin that's amazing that makes my night and happy to say it yeah it's the truth I love you too man it's our friendship has been such a such a constant for me such a Lifeline in a way with all the ups and downs and holy I mean both of us have had some pretty wly ups and downs you've had a lot of hot chicks you did I didn't see that coming yeah well you talked about the upside down I like you got a up my friend yeah I mean yeah i' look that's in one category that's in one category had to lighten up the mood a little bit and I'm and I'm and I'm grateful for that and uh you know life is like a box of chocolates right you just never know what's around the corner it's true and it's true that's why it's important to say these things you know it is it is and you know I have I have I'll tell you something you don't know I have your Christmas SL New Year's card from like two years ago so obviously out a date it's like you and Daria and the kids and it's up in my kitchen amazing and I kept it there because I just I love seeing you guys every day and I think about you guys all the time and just have such love for your family and I'm so grateful for our friendships I love you too man it's important to say things are so uncertain and I've never experienced I've had friends pass from cancer for yeah but I've never been with them through I've I've never been there every step of the way from diagnosis to last conversation a few days before they passed that was new for me yeah and it affected really deeply affected me on a bunch of levels and I want to be deeply affected by that right I I I want I don't want to push that aside in part because Roland was so joyful and curious and optimistic until the end in a very genuine way I it wasn't an act it wasn't theater that raised a bunch of aspirations in me right because he was first and foremost a very dedicated season meditator psychedelics were a piece of the puzzle but first and foremost he was a dedicated meditator for decades that's amazing and attributed a lot of his equinity and preparation for death which I got to see firsthand a lot of people talk about it right but let's be honest or I'll be honest I've read all the stoics or a lot of the stoics and I've read all sorts of Buddhism and rehearsed death and momentto mor and this that and the other thing but when I'm actually on as Roland said the final Glide path I don't know how I'm going to respond I don't know I have no idea so to see someone who really like walked the walk in such a life affirming way that Lit everyone up around him was was tremendous and he said what he was able to and he was willing to say what he meant to those people around him who meant things to him and you don't have to wait until you have terminal cancer diagnosis you shouldn't wait just because it it may not be that right it may be a car crash it may be something where you don't get the chance to say these things and so I just yeah it's important to do it now yeah you got to do it great to see you man yeah good to see you all right man happy New Year excited for this is going to be a oh don't you me off a little bit cheers yeah cheers um to to the new year and and to all the listeners out there you know wishing you a happy and healthy New Year and yeah I'm excited to continue this new I mean it's always a a new year of change a new year change and exploration I think the one thing that you and I let's take a sip the one thing that you and I have in common is just this like lifelong pursuit of of evolution yeah of of like figuring out because there the the secret that no one will tell you is no matter how much money you make no matter how much success you have we're all still figuring out and in ROM doss's words we're all just walking each other home well said man I'm going to leave leave it there here we go cheers buddy happy New Year happy early New Year and happy New Year to everybody listening and as always be just a little Kinder than is necessary until the next episode that applies to other people but also applies to yourself take it easy take it easy you know life is short but life is long and we're all just figuring it out and by the way as far as I can tell you never really figure it out no you don't true so so true ctfo chill the out a little bit be a little easier on yourself and we'll put everything in the show notes tnd Blog podcast for all the stuff we talked about Kevin rose.com is a better website Kevin rose.com be sure to check out this amazing new podcast after new podcast Kevin r. is the best place to go forget. blog and uh and keev Kev Kev talk talk coming at you soon thanks for listening everybody bye see you”

Good calories, bad calories

Listen at 49:37 · All mentions on The Tim Ferriss Show

Books mentioned in 2024 New Year’s Resolutions, AI Upheavel, & Much More! | The Random Show (4K)

All matched books in this episode