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The Truth About Addiction
Dr. Samantha Harte is a speaker, best selling author, coach and sober mom of two. She is here to tell the truth about her life, which requires telling the truth about her addiction: how it presents, how it manifests, and how it shows up again and again in her recovery. This podcast is one giant deep dive into the truth about ALL TYPES OF addiction (and living sober) to dispel the myths, expose the truths, and create a community experience of worthiness, understanding and compassion.
If you are a mompreneur and are looking for a community of like-minded women who are breaking all cycles of dysfunction and thriving in business, family, body image and spiritual well-being, join the waitlist below!
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The Truth About Addiction
The Fungi That Saved My Life: Breaking Free From Addiction Through Sacred Medicine
What if true healing demands we explore beyond conventional wisdom? In this deeply personal conversation, John Borden shares his extraordinary journey from cocaine addiction to profound transformation through the therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms.
John's story begins in a familiar place - trapped in cycles of control, substance abuse, and destructive patterns stemming from childhood bullying and deep-seated unworthiness. But when conventional paths failed him, an unexpected psychedelic experience cracked open his perception, revealing emotions and connections he'd suppressed for years.
We explore the pivotal moment when John reconnected with his brother's inspiring recovery journey - something his pre-psilocybin self couldn't access emotionally. This emotional awakening led him to question everything about his life choices, eventually guiding him to leave corporate America behind and embrace his calling as a personal trainer and psychedelic integration coach.
The conversation challenges our cultural tendency to judge recovery paths different from our own. John's perspective isn't presented as the only way, but as a powerful alternative worth considering. We discuss how his "mindset is your reality" philosophy transformed not just his substance use but his entire relationship with himself and others. From the man who couldn't feel to the ultramarathon runner who connects deeply with clients, his metamorphosis demonstrates how addressing root causes, rather than just symptoms, creates lasting change.
Whether you're struggling with addiction, supporting someone who is, or simply curious about psychedelic medicine's therapeutic potential, this episode offers a judgment-free space to consider expanded possibilities for healing. What might be possible if we approached recovery with open hearts and minds? John's journey suggests the answer might be more beautiful than we imagine.
Ready to challenge your assumptions about addiction and healing? Listen now, and consider sharing this episode with someone who might benefit from hearing that unconventional paths can lead to profound transformation.
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Welcome back everybody to the truth about addiction. Today's conversation is quite controversial, might I say, and I'm all about that because I feel like we live in a time where, if we don't agree, we judge, we scream and we shout, and we have lost the ability to have intellectual intercourse. So, that being said, today's interview is with a man named John Borden, who's an author and a coach, and an endurance athlete. His book is called your Mindset is your Reality, but check this out. In 2022, he was in a rough spot in life. He was consumed by addiction and destructive habits and spent all his time chasing immediate gratification. His life was void of emotion, direction or purpose, but an experience with psilocybin changed everything. It helped open his eyes to the good in life, get past his addiction and overcome mental roadblocks that halted his growth. His book provides an unabashed account of the ins and outs of his history with addiction and the changes he has solidified since finding the fungi that saved his life.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, I'm going to leave it there. I can't wait for you guys to dive in. Remember, if you're enjoying these podcasts, please share an episode with a friend. It would mean so much to me. I'm in the business of trying to not just impact people's lives but truly save them, and you just never know what hearing the right thing at the right moment can do. So like comment, share. I love you. I appreciate you. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back you guys to the Truth About Addiction.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited about this conversation. I feel like every episode I have takes the lens of addiction and widens it further and further and further, so that more of us can see ourselves inside of it, not with any blame or shame, but just as a way to feel less ashamed, more connected and to understand that there's no one right way to do this thing called sobriety. And, by the way, if you're listening and you don't have a traditional substance abuse problem, when I say sobriety I'm also talking very much about emotional sobriety problem. When I say sobriety, I'm also talking very much about emotional sobriety, so what it means to walk through life mindfully, where you're working on elevating your consciousness, in the way that you live, love, parent and work. So the gentleman I have here has a very impressive bio and we actually found each other on pod match, which is a whole new thing.
Speaker 1:I'm exploring to get really cool guests on my show and he, like me, you know, has this laundry list of expertise. So I'll just say some of it, because you guys already heard the more formal bio in the intro. But he's an athlete, an author, a personal trainer and a mental health coach and when he reached out I was so fascinated by his journey from addiction into recovery and how that has shaped the work he's doing in the world today. So, john Borden, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, sam. I love that introduction. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today and really happy to discuss addiction and how you know I've overcome it and maybe impart some strength to your listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one thing that I really enjoyed with our talk the other day because we had a little pre talk before this talk is your. You have a peace about you. You have a knowing, a clarity, a calmness. And I don't know about you, but when in my active addiction, you know that part of me was exiled, I mean that that highest level of self was so tucked away. Self was so tucked away, I had no access to her. And because these other parts of me were running my life you know the part that wanted to control everything, including drugs and alcohol, that felt like it had to keep me safe. They were running my life into the ground and then that was so painful that I just put drugs and alcohol on top of it. So just your aura of being able to see that you're in tune with your highest part of yourself.
Speaker 3:Like, who was John Borden before this a million times over the past few months, that it would be so fun to submit a survey to people that knew me before I had my experience with psilocybin and the people who are in my life now, and just ask them you know basic traits about John, what you think that he's like as a person, and to compare the two, because it would be something, something to see, most definitely.
Speaker 3:And you know, the one thing you said about the calmness and peace and presence is something that I get all the time now, and so you know I I thank you for recognizing that, because it's something that I've really brought into my life over the past couple of years and that didn't exist whatsoever.
Speaker 3:You know, one thing that you had mentioned, sam, is the control aspect, and that was so major to me. I felt like I needed to be in control of every single little thing that went on, and I was hyper diligent about making sure that. You know, whether it's in my personal life or my professional life, that everything around me ran exactly as I wanted it to, and then I learned to chill the fuck out, and with that just came this sense of oh wait, I don't need to control the situation every time, I don't need to run for alcohol or cocaine when I have these certain things coming on. I can just relax and breathe and be with the moment and not stress. And so it's been a very big change of mindset over the past couple of years in getting from that hypervigilant, you know nervous system always upregulated, to the point now where I can regulate myself and get myself to the point of where I'm being bringing my best energy at any time in any situation that needs it.
Speaker 1:Do you have a sense now, when you look back, about why control was sort of a default coping pattern for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had no self-esteem and that ran so many decisions in my life. You know, I don't know if the heart of it was from bullying still or if it was something a little bit deeper seated than that, but I was bullied heavily as a kid. You know a little bit deeper seated than that, but I was bullied heavily as a kid. You know, through high school and everything like that, and it really, you know, decreased my, my sense of self worth and self value. And so I turned to things like sex and you know just that, the social camaraderie that comes from being the guy with coke or the guy that gets the party started or whatever it is, and so that validation that I got, whether it's from being successful with girls or from just being a sociable person, just kind of really fueled my sense of self-worth. And without all of that control over the situation, it was a loss of ego, a loss of control for me.
Speaker 1:That really just led to me not having a handle on things, even though I thought I had everything handled if I'm hearing you correctly when you were younger, if you're going through a period of bullying where you know everything's seemingly out of your control you cannot control these people from what they're saying and doing and how they're treating you then you're doubling down on what you can control and you kind of figure out a solution to your problem, right? Like if I become the guy that has the Coke and is cool and starts the party, then I'm loved and then this validation can actually exist, although it's coming from outside of me, and then the thing that becomes the solution to the problem eventually becomes the problem itself, right?
Speaker 3:So you're doubling down on what you can control and then you actually lose complete control in the process psilocybin, everything else just kind of made sense and I was able to work back my addictions, because now I recognize that I was using those, just as you were saying, as a tool. That was the solution for a long time, until it just absolutely wasn't, and put myself in a position where I was detrimenting my own health to an extreme sense and putting other people's in harm on a constant basis. So it was just a bad, a bad time in my life, but at the same time I'm grateful for it because it showed me how much strength I do have to be able to tackle those problems and come out of it better than ever.
Speaker 1:So I want to say this out loud because of whoever might be listening. The very first thing that happened inside of me when I read about you and you talked about psilocybin was I was like because when I got sober I got sober in New York 16 years ago and I got dragged into an AA meeting and the rule of thumb was you know, no mind altering substance, substances from the neck up, like if you're actually sober, it's not California sober, it's not. It's not sober, but I smoke weed. It's like that is it? We are at least one day at a time going to arrest anything that can change our mind and get to work, spiritually speaking, right? So this sort of old school AA idea of sobriety doesn't have something like psilocybin in it as an option, right, and to a lot of people in AA that would be considered you're not sober. So I want one of the reasons I love having people on that don't have traditional substance abuse, but we're talking about, maybe, emotional cycles of addiction, like people pleasing and how toxic that is, or who have a story like yours, right, where psilocybin changed your life and now you actually help facilitate that with other people.
Speaker 1:It is so important to me that we expand the conversation about what's working and we get out of judgment. First of all, culturally speaking, I think we're in such a strange place where we've lost the ability to have what I call intellectual intercourse. We just scream and shout and judge, and we need to hold space for each other, for our very unique experiences, whether we agree or not. So to anyone who's like wait what? I just need you to stay here with us and listen and feel whatever you want to feel. But just listen, you might be surprised and you might learn something right. So I'm curious you're in the throes of addiction.
Speaker 1:How do you get from whatever dark place you're in to the decision of I'm going to do psilocybin? Was there a person? Was there an offering? Was there a dark night of the soul where you're like something has to give? Because for me, my dark night, my initial dark night of the soul, was I overdosed on cocaine. The very next day I did more cocaine. By the way, I need to say that that's what addiction actually looks like. But I was so spooked by it that I called the only person I knew who was sober and said I'm losing control, I'm really scared. And he took me to an AA meeting, like there was no other option. There was no other anything. That that was it. And it took me a very long time to get back to those rooms and to actually work a program. And you know, the people who are listening have heard my story. So what happened?
Speaker 3:for psilocybin to be introduced and then for you to actually try it yeah well, sam, you know, just like you, I had a moment, uh, when I was in college actually, where I got taken out of my dorm in an ambulance because I was so drunk that I puked in the lobby, uh. And then the next day I went out to a party and I still remember the judging faces of my roommate and the rest of my friends for doing that. But when you have a problem, you have a fucking problem, and you know that continued for nearly a decade I guess over a decade until 2020, when COVID hit and I got laid off from my position at my job. I was left with a lot of free time and all I was doing was drinking, doing Coke and trying to find anything to meet up with off Tinder. And there was a moment, near at the end of the summer, where I had reached out to the guy that I bought Coke from to see if he had ecstasy. I thought I was buying ecstasy from the guy, but he ended up giving me ketamine. I didn't know what ketamine was, but I looked it up online, I checked it on Reddit, I bought a test kit to make sure there wasn't anything that would kill me in it and it said it's a party drug, kind of like ecstasy. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll save that for a rainy day One night. A few weeks later I'm drinking, I'm playing video games, I'm doing lines of coke, it's probably 2am and I ran out of coke. So I'm like you know what, let's try ketamine able to stay up longer, be in a good mood, play video games with my friends.
Speaker 3:No, I got sedated to the point where I couldn't fucking move and I laid there on my bed and still don't have much recollection of exactly what I saw or what I experienced. But I came away from it with the message that I had an addiction, and so my immediate thought was okay, I need to change my environment. So I moved home briefly and then got a job in Connecticut where I moved to shortly after. While I was home in Jersey, I was able to abstain. I was good because I was at my mom's house. I wasn't about to do lines in her house, at least I had control over that much.
Speaker 3:But then moved up to Connecticut and it just got worse and worse and worse and worse. And I had this moment where I had to lay off two employees because of COVID vaccine mandates. And then I got a call from an office manager of one of the offices that I oversaw, saying that two of my employees showed up having just smoked weed and so I immediately just lost it, absolutely broke down and knew, okay, I need to make a major change in my life. So I started looking for new jobs. I was trying to get back into sales. I had been in sales for five years prior to the managerial role that I took in Connecticut, and I had a final round interview for Purina Pet Food to be a prescription pet food sales rep and was amped about that. You know, you get to go work with animals, you go to visit different people, you get to network, so on and so forth. And I had the final round interview on a Friday and then that night I got to go out and sit down and eat dinner at a restaurant for the first time in like three months since I had to fire those two employees I'd been covering their work, needing to backfill positions running all over the place for a very mismanaged company and finally had the opportunity to sit out and eat dinner and I sat down next to this guy who was just like radiating positive energy, and so I'm like, okay, I'll talk to him as a friendly guy.
Speaker 3:We start talking and we find out that we have so many similarities in our lives. We were both competitive baseball players growing up. We were both presidents of our fraternity in college. We both started with a major national company out of college and worked our way up very quickly within that. Now, the difference was that he was a VP and I had gotten fired after four years because my office got broken into and robbed. Because my office got broken into and robbed, and when that happened I never accepted responsibility for the break-in. I thought you know, these guys grabbed a shovel, they smashed in the front window, they ran off with cars this isn't my fault Even though I hadn't locked the keys in the safe at the end of the night, as as his protocol.
Speaker 3:And so I consistently deflected and deflected and deflected responsibility for that responsibility for the breakup of a previous relationship that I had the responsibility of just ending up in Connecticut in the first place and being in a place where I didn't feel like I could meet people, didn't really have social connections, and the guy tells me the one thing that nobody else in my life I either had the clairvoyance or the courage to tell me that nobody else in my life had either had the clairvoyance or the courage to tell me. And that's that. Shit is all your fucking fault. And it took me a second to appreciate it, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. You know, he said it's your fault that you're in Connecticut. If you don't like it, move. And just that afternoon I'd been pumped because I thought I killed this interview with Purina and was going to get this sales job. And then, after I had that conversation that night, I was like, oh my God, I don't want that, I need to escape, I need to go somewhere else.
Speaker 3:So, you know, I started planning to move out of Connecticut. I got a work from home sales job so that I could move. I flew down to Florida and then road tripped up through Georgia and the Carolinas to hit all different cities and see what I liked, decided to move to Tampa. I moved two months later. But everything followed me the partying, the drugs, the chasing girls, whatever. It was just immediate dopamine in any hit. And that continued for about six months. And then my friends and I were planning on going to this festival called EDC. Are you familiar? No, it stands for Electric Daisy Carnival.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 3:I've heard that they have one in Vegas, they have one in Orlando, and we were planning on going to the Orlando one. Now. I tried psilocybin for the first time when I was 18. It was the day after I quit playing baseball thanks to a shoulder injury, and I saw myself as a six-year-old child, staring back at me, asking why I gave up on my dreams, why I wasn't a baseball player anymore, and I had to have a very intense conversation with myself that I was not ready for, so I got scared away from psilocybin for the longest time.
Speaker 1:Can you explain to the audience what psilocybin is for anyone? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So psilocybin is the active chemical in what's commonly referred to as magic mushrooms. It was originally discovered in the modern world in the 50s and then brought into culture through the late 50s and 60s before being made a Schedule I substance during the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Up until that time, it was researched heavily for its efficacy in mental health, whether it's anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, ptsd, addiction. But all that research had to stop in the 70s because it was made a Schedule I drug, meaning that there's no recognizable clinical use to it, which is absolutely insane when you understand how powerful psilocybin is for making positive change. But recently it has begun to be researched again and has been approved as a breakthrough therapy for a number of mental health disorders. When I was reintroduced to psilocybin, it was in part thanks to podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience and his talking about it heavily, and in part thanks to documentaries that I watched on Netflix. One called how to Change your Mind, which has a few different that I watched on Netflix. One called how to Change your Mind, which has a few different sorry. How to Change your Mind is a beautiful documentary that was originally a book by an author named Michael Pollan, who does a lot of writing about plants mostly, but has also done a couple examinations of the effects that they can have on human consciousness. He has another book called this Is your Mind on Plants, which I recommend to everybody for a really deep insight into how caffeine actually changed the world in the 14, 1500s and the effect that it has. And I think psilocybin could have a similar effect to caffeine, but rather than bringing you know, bringing people up and making you energetic, essentially what it does is makes you more empathetic, more connected to the world around you, more caring of others and, you know, just really helps you tap into a number of things within yourself that you may have been blind to without psilocybin.
Speaker 3:And and I absolutely was so when I was preparing to go to EDC sorry, excuse me, sorry, um, when I was planning to go to EDC, I, my friends and I were discussing what we wanted to do while we were there. I was obviously a big time drinking and Coke guy and that was top of mind. But also I had used LSD a number of times over the previous number of years, including at concerts and MDMA. But I couldn't find either and a friend had a connection to get psilocybin mushrooms, so I took her up on that instead with. You know the positive influence of those documentaries and Joe Rogan and you know all the good stuff that I'd heard about it's. You know the beautiful experience that you can have on it I decided why the hell not? Um? So about three weeks prior to the festival, uh, I started to experiment to understand what it would feel like. So I was confident that I would be comfortable in this situation of being around 200,000 people. Uh. So, uh, a friend and I got back from bars on a Sunday afternoon after watching some football and decided to split a one gram chocolate bar. So we each had a half gram, which is not a very large dose.
Speaker 3:On the scale of doses with psilocybin, it generally ranges from like 0.1 to 0.3 grams, which is your standard microdose. 0.5 to 0.75, I would say, is kind of a light dose. You're going to see some visual effects. You're going to feel a little mood elevation, a little bit more emotion present to you, but it's not overwhelming by any means. Up from that you say maybe a gram to a gram and a half is what I call a social dose. That's kind of the sweet spot for me at least. Going to concerts and things like that. It really puts you in tune with the world around you. Music is just absolutely beautiful. It feels like you can really get in tune with the individual notes, the individual members of the band and see how the music's constructed. So really beautiful.
Speaker 3:And then, moving up from that two grams and up, is where you start to enter the territory where you could enter a trip.
Speaker 3:And that's what people probably have on their mind when they first think of psilocybin. Is that the, you know Paisley visualizations and you know melding of sounds and colors and things of that nature, and you know we can get into what those experiences are actually really like. But when we did the half gram, I had no idea what to expect and it sparked this huge cascade of emotion where I just recognized how good it felt to be loved by someone and to feel that and it was like all the emotion that I hadn't felt earlier in my life. I had felt completely blocked from emotion and I can give you a really crazy example that points to that. But I'd been really blocked from emotion and even just taking that half gram just kind of flipped that switch in my mind and said, hey, look at all this that you've refused to internalize, you've refused to accept, see how beautiful it is and go from there. Um, but I, I cried for like two hours straight.
Speaker 1:Uh, it was an intense emotional experience and uh, yeah, it just really unlocked the keys to understanding myself from that point forward so I need to know more because for me, recovery, you know, emotional sobriety has has been such a slow burn, and what I mean by that is you. What it sounds like you're saying is your subconscious was unlocked. It sort of fast tracks this ability to get deep into the subconscious and break open these limiting beliefs that are holding us back, making us feel stuck and sad and isolated. Right and so because that isn't my story the, the amount of work and the amount of spiritual rock bottoms I have gone through in the 16 years of sobriety are so dense and it's taken me so long to unwind and tap into sort of aha moments like that. Not so much anymore, because I'm so connected with my highest self that it's much easier to get downloads and to do self-assessments and go oh my God, this is energetically where I'm stuck. I'm, you know, this is how I'm blocking my blessings.
Speaker 1:So if you have this experience where you're suddenly going, wow, I just got exposed to the fact that from all the hurt I've lived through when I was younger all the bullying, let's say, or it's a great example of being seriously hurt in our formative years If what you had been doing was guarding up against future hurt.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm going to control the world around me. I'm going to get the external validation because inside I feel empty and alone and ashamed and not good enough. If this psilocybin experience reminded you of what it looks like to drop the armor and to not guard against future hurt and to feel love again, that's sort of step one. But then, when you come out of that, what do you do to gain access to the steps that are required to build up enough self-worth where you're like? I deserve to feel that again. I deserve love, even if there might be heartbreak on the other side of it. I just like. It's almost like this unbelievable flash of light after a period of darkness, but easily it could all go dark again. So how did you use that experience as a bridge back to life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, so really, sam it. It was six experiences over the span of about a month that really were step by step by step, unlocking piece after piece after piece of exactly how deeply locked into my own head that I was and how to get out of it little by little. And that's really what I take the reader through during my book is the exact things that I was and how to get out of it little by little. And that's really, you know, what I take the reader through during my book is the exact things that I was experiencing in each moment and how each learning process led into the next, led into the next, led into the next. And, to be honest with you, I didn't have an aha moment right after that experience.
Speaker 3:A week, two weeks after that, I'd come home from a bar on a Saturday and it was about eight nine o'clock and my friends and I had plans to go out and watch the Phillies game. They were in the playoffs and I'm a huge Philadelphia, phillies and Eagles fan. Much less so now, after my experience with psilocybin, I was like, why, why do I even bother watching sports? This is just a waste of time, but anyway. So I had an experience two weeks later, where I took a gram thinking that that would be the magic dose to get me to trip and understand what this is all like. But, like I said before, graham's just a very clear, like present social happy. And when my me and my two friends did that, we walked down to the river walk in the center of Tampa, which is this you know boardwalk, essentially that goes over the river. It's absolutely gorgeous and is a beautiful, beautiful centerpiece to the city. But I didn't really recognize it at that until I went down there this night and I saw just how much life was around and how beautiful it was. And for that one moment I was present and appreciating the beauty around me, and it was the first time that I'd ever done that.
Speaker 3:And so, having this moment where I could say, oh my God, I'm not anxiously thinking about what other people are thinking about me sitting here watching the river, I'm not depressed about the things that happened to me early in life, because in this moment I recognize that they all led up to me getting here at this exact moment where I'm in love with the world around me, my city is great, I have a great friend group, my job is stable, like there's nothing for me to be anxious about. I shouldn't be depressed about anything that happened early in my life, because I'm here and that's beautiful, and so after that, I just started approaching life differently and it was just this very easy, light mindset that I brought into every interaction. And so, whether it's going to the grocery store and talking to the checkout clerk or, you know, striking up a conversation with a random person because I like something that they're wearing, or you know, just as simple as complimenting or holding the door for someone and smiling or whatever, I was just approaching life in a very different way than I had before. And about a week after that, after living in this new experience where I have happiness and joy and so much gratitude for the life that I'm living, I saw a post on Instagram that said single dose new study finds one dose of synthetic psilocybin and cured depression in 90% of participants. And I'm like, holy shit, that's what happened. And it was this huge aha moment where I just finally recognized that this was exactly what they're talking about in those trials, where, you know, I had something that I didn't even recognize that I was depressed.
Speaker 3:I was prescribed anxiety medication and knew that I had anxiety, but I didn't know what anxiety was.
Speaker 3:I couldn't label it, I, you know.
Speaker 3:But from that moment forward, I started to recognize what each of these feelings were that were coming up.
Speaker 3:And so, with this new lens, I could dictate my thoughts in response to my emotions, rather than purely reacting to the emotion.
Speaker 3:So where an emotion would come up, such as I'm going out to a bar, my friends are having a drink, I want to feel included. I no longer felt the need to act on that anxious thought and I could decline having a drink with my friends, you know, rather than sitting at home and playing video games until I passed out, I would go out and explore the city and see what life I could find. And so there were just so many little things that acted as small tests for myself in this moment of clarity that, when the moment came up to make the decision, I was reminded of how beautiful life is and how much I enjoy experiencing life, and kept choosing to experience life in a positive way. So where it started as this big aha moment, what revealed itself to me needed to be implemented on a daily basis. Moving forward, and I made that habit for myself is to embrace that learning that I got through my experience and actively choose to live a more connected, more complete life, moving forward.
Speaker 1:So many questions. I'm curious when you were going through this, these breakthroughs and starting to implement these new habits, what were you doing for work at the time?
Speaker 3:I was selling websites to real estate agents.
Speaker 1:How and when did you transition into the work you're doing now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it was a little bit of a long road. I actually did that job for two years. I got it in, I started in February of 2022 and kept that all throughout. You know my experience with psilocybin and when I had this experience, one of the big messages that I got and I connected with God on that sixth day that I mentioned that sixth experience and I got a message okay, you recognize that you are great, you're strong, you're powerful, you can bring so much to this world. Now go help people. And I got that message and I'm like okay, how do I help people? And that was the big question on my mind for a while. Now, a week and a half after I left EDC, I had a realization, and I should explain what I mentioned about not having emotion before. So my brother and we're going to have to tie this all back because it's going to be a long tangent, so I apologize.
Speaker 3:Um, so my brother, uh, was on a very similar path to me a big time partier through his teens and twenties. Now, the difference was that my addiction stopped at cocaine and alcohol, his moved to crystal meth and when the people in his circle got arrested, he was lucky enough to avoid arrest. But he no longer had access to crystal meth so he decided to go to rehab. He came back sober, spent probably three months in New Jersey and was in Philly for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Six months sober, when he was on his motorcycle leaving the meeting, with his friend on the back of the bike, and an SUV ran him over from behind. They tossed it, tossed his body into the intersection and then the SUV decided to run him over and dragged him under the car for three quarters of a mile as blood, skin, bone, muscle all just ripped from his body. Eventually the drivers realized that they needed to pry him out from under the car because he wasn't going to just come loose on his own. So they stopped the car, dragged his body out and dumped him between parked cars on the side of the road the sense of a little boy that was walking his dog. So he called the ambulance, got rushed to the hospital.
Speaker 3:I got a call shortly after Me and my sister went to the hospital and it was probably eight hours until we were able to see him. He was in extreme, extreme critical condition. Uh, there was a good chance. It would be the last time that we saw our brother and my sister was inconsolable. She was broken down, crying. Now he's 12 years older than me. She's 10 years older than me, so they had a very close relationship. Growing up, I had always felt a little removed from them, but she had this emotional, overpowering response. My dad, when he came in and saw him, just collapsed on the floor in tears and I did not cry once. Throughout that whole experience I had no compassion for my brother. I had no sense of what he had been through. I had no emotion other than my brother was an addict. He had hurt me, he had hurt my family. I kind of don't care if he dies or not or not.
Speaker 3:And when I finished my six experiences with psilocybin, the effects and how it affects your thought process continues to expose itself in the weeks and months that follow. But a week and a half after, I was sitting alone in the hot tub on a Friday night when I declined to go out with friends who were drinking and partying, and I sat there in the hot tub on a Friday night when I declined to go out with friends who were drinking and partying, and I sat there in the hot tub and I started to think about my brother and I started to say, holy shit, my brother is an absolute inspiration, because after that accident he relearned how to walk. He got skin grafts over his body. He, you know, became a normal, functioning human being and then got addicted to painkillers, and then got addicted to heroin and then had to go back to rehab. But he came back again and now he's a business owner. And now he's a business owner, and now he's a loving father, and now he's I don't know eight years sober, something like that.
Speaker 3:And when I had that realization, it just cemented the fact for me that these substances can do so much to help people. Because it wasn't just my addictions that it helped. It wasn't just, you know, my, my social awareness, it wasn't just my emotions that I got in tune with. It was, it was literally repairing relationships with the people in my life. And I finally recognized that I could love my brother and that I could break this veil that you know he had hurt me in the past and so on and so forth, and I could embrace the incredible human being that he was. And so I recognized that that was my opportunity to help people.
Speaker 3:Uh was to start writing and to complete my story and tell it as openly and honestly as possible, because, whether it's you know me or my connection with the people in my life, um, or whatever else you can take away from the book, there's so much positive that can come from psilocybin, and so for basically all of 2023, uh, I continued writing, continued writing, um, you know, and there were a number of times that I asked God, I asked the universe. I feel so lost. I shouldn't be doing this job, I shouldn't be selling websites to real estate agents. This isn't me. I need something where I'm going out and I'm helping people, I'm making an impact for people. This isn't me, and the message that I kept getting was don't worry about it, just keep writing, you'll be good. And so I just kept writing.
Speaker 3:Now fast forward to November of 2023. And on November 30th of 2023, I went out and I had one old fashioned that gave me a headache before I left the bar, left me with a two day hangover, left me anxious and I'm like holy shit. I'd been drinking seltzers and beer, but not liquor. And if one liquor drink does this to me, how long have I been blind to what alcohol has done to me? And you know, for for the year that followed my psilocybin experience. To this point I'd only been having like three, four drinks max. Uh, I hadn't. I'd only been drunk once it was by choice to see if I liked it again, and I didn't. Um, but anyway I I scaled back from binge drinking to, you know, social drinking, what have you, and then had this recognition that I'd been blind to the effects for so long.
Speaker 3:Now, shortly after that, I did my first organized race, which was a Spartan half marathon, what they call the beast, what they call the beast. And when I decided to sign up for that I had all of these limiting beliefs in my mind of why I shouldn't do that race, why I should do the 5k or the 10k, ease myself into it. You know, not put myself in over my head, but I'd taken a bit of a break from psilocybin and started to reintroduce it in November and at that same time was listening to David Goggins Can't Hurt Me, and if you know that book you know how inspirational that man is but that really jumpstarted the. Oh, my God, I'm limiting myself so much more than I deserve to be limiting myself. Sign up for the fucking half marathon, go for it. You're in shape Like, yeah, you haven't run in 10 years, but who cares, just go for it. So I, you know, I gave myself two weeks to prepare. I signed up two weeks before the race. I ran like four times, uh, for a total of, I think, 13 miles in total, uh, but showed up on race day and completed the race and finished in the top 5%. It was like, oh my God, I'm so much stronger, so much more powerful than I gave myself credit, for If I had signed up for the 10K I would have felt so unfulfilled. But I learned to challenge myself and feel so much better for it, and so around that time I had also secured a new job, this one as a VP of sales for a company here in the Tampa Bay area, and felt so awesome about myself. You know I was. I made the decision after that that one drink to give up alcohol I had had. I had gone 38 days after that point, had three beers and then gave it up for good after that. So I count.
Speaker 3:November 30th is really the turning point for me, but anyway, I had this experience that showed me how strong I was. I was starting a new job. It felt so good to be pursuing things that I felt like were in line for me. But then a month and a half into the job, I started to recognize that it just wasn't the path that I wanted to be on. I thought I would be helping people I was working with personal injury attorneys to get better settlement results for their plaintiffs, and it was pitched as something that I could really get behind and really felt mission driven.
Speaker 3:But once I started I just recognized how soul sucking the job was and I had this moment where I went out to play pickleball with one of my closest friends, this guy who just magically moved down to St Pete a month after I did and was one of my best friends through college. So reconnecting with him was awesome. But he's always been a God-centered person and someone who's really been present and good with conversation. And we went out to play pickleball and he recognized that my mind was not on the game. So he's like you just want to go get dinner instead. Like yes, so we go out, we get dinner, we have a great conversation, and I leave and I bike home, and I'm biking home and I'm having all of these intuitive hits that just keep telling me your night's not done. You can't go home to your apartment, stay out, just go on a little bit longer bike ride.
Speaker 3:And so, instead of turning into my apartment complex, when I got there, I turned right and I went down to the St Pete pier. And by the time I got to the pier I just had all of this energy bursting through me. And so I'm pedaling, and pedaling, and pedaling as fast as I fucking can until I get to the end of the pier and there's nobody on the pier at this time, which is super rare. It's the busiest part of town, it's so popular, it's so beautiful, so gorgeous. And I get down to the end of the pier and I have this moment where I just sit there and I break down, crying, just tears and emotion just pouring out of me, to the point where my body's tensing up and curling over. And once I get all that emotion out, I walk my bike back up up the stairs and I go around to this grassy area that's right there, and I sit up looking at the stars and I'm trying to figure out which ones are stars, which ones are satellites, which ones are alien spaceships.
Speaker 3:And at that moment I had a connection with God, for, you know, really the first time, because it was really the first time that I recognized what that connection was in the moment and decided to explore and embrace what the messaging would be. And you know, I asked, like what do I need to do? And you know, I asked, like what do I need to do? And the message that I got was you know what you need to do? I've been sending you intuition your whole life and you've chosen not to listen to it.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, being a personal trainer was something that I'd had in my mind for a long time. I've loved health and fitness since the time I was a preteen and had never pursued it because I got, you know, negative influence from people in my life that would say oh yeah, you can't really make money as a personal trainer, you're going to be locked into X, y and Z. And I just had my judgment clouded by so much negative influence that I just never pursued it. But in that moment on the pier, I looked at myself and I looked at my moment on the pier. I looked at myself and I, you know, looked at my performance in the race.
Speaker 3:I looked at a number of the things that I had done physically up till that point and I was, you know, really heavily into power, lifting um, and knew that I could make immediate impact for people around me by fully embracing the role as a trainer and pursuing what I knew that I also wanted to do is coach people on how to use psychedelics, because I had such an incredible experience and I knew about the positive potential and I knew that I'm the type of person that people will feel comfortable with and helping guide them through that type of experience.
Speaker 3:And so I had this, this moment of connection with God, where he told me you know what to do, just do it. And two days later, I quit my job. I got my personal training certification shortly after that and I started classes with this online program to learn how to coach people through a psychedelic experience and ensure that it's a positively transformational one. And so, from that moment forward, I just put in this plan to create the life that I had, this vision for, and the intuition just kept piling on and piling on and piling on to put me in the right place at the right time and create incredible connections, while also pursuing this passion that I know is meant for me.
Speaker 1:There's so much here. If I go back for a moment, there's this expression in recovery that says you can't think your way into right acting, you have to act your way into right thinking. And it's interesting because when I hear some of your earlier experiences where you were still just testing your relationship with alcohol but psilocybin had been giving you kind of God shots or intuitive downloads, and it's almost like, for example, right when you were by the river and you started to realize you had radical presence and suddenly, when you weren't in the past or going into the future, you found peace and then you were able to try and start to take some of that with you. Right, you started to to kind of question your relationship with, with a higher power. So there was some kind of prayer happening right. Like what do you want me to know? Like what do you want me to know? Do you feel like the psilocybin gave you a new way to think about the days ahead, such that you could think differently, and then those new thoughts led to new actions? Or do you feel like you didn't quite have a roadmap yet of thought processes that were going to change your life, so you were just acting on the next thing that then allowed you to have more self-worth.
Speaker 1:Because when I think of my journey of recovery, right and I think at the heart of any addiction, I don't care what we're talking about. We talk about gambling, sex addiction, instagram. We're talking about a dis-ease inside, we're talking about the fact that we don't feel whole, and we're seeking wholeness from outside of ourselves, and so that is the root of the trouble. And so if our thought process is stuck in not enoughness, can you ever really think your way into right, acting versus going? Oh, what would a person who did think they were worthy do? And then you take an action in that direction, which is kind of a leap of faith in the beginning, and then you have a better experience than the one you've had and you go oh, I'm actually acting my way into believing that I'm worthwhile.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if that, if that, makes sense, but it's almost like I had to go through these 12 steps a bunch of times until finally I I worked them in a way that I could break free from this bondage of shame and unworthiness that I was carrying on my back, and I had to start to reroute my thinking, which then led me to hear the whisper of God, as I now sort of understand it, and then I could take action in the direction that part of me was nudging me in. And then I could take action in the direction that part of me was nudging me in. So for me I had to break the thinking that was paralyzing me and making me feel unworthy. But it sort of sounds like you acted your way into right thinking. So I'm just curious, like when I break that down.
Speaker 3:What do you make of that?
Speaker 3:Yeah well, so you know, sam, really what it came down to was I saw the way that I was when I wasn't making the right choices, and I saw the effect that it had on me.
Speaker 3:And you know, that could be alcohol, it could be cocaine, it could be, you know, just making selfish choices in the work environment that put myself over others. And I saw the person that I was when I was making those types of choices, and I always knew what the right thing was, but convinced myself that making the wrong choice was appropriate, for whatever reason. And so I always had this, this sense of what is right and what is wrong. I just chose not to follow it. But when I had my experience with psilocybin, what I found myself doing was evaluating the choices more clearly and better, seeing what the positive results and negative results would be of each thing. And so it became this thing where I had a vision for myself and the vision of the person that I want to be and, at every decision point, was asking myself is this decision making me who I don't want to be, or is it making me who I do want to be, and so it just became a habit of making that choice to be the person that I wanted to be.
Speaker 1:The other thing you said. That's really interesting to me because this is a huge impetus for me writing my book. This is a huge impetus for me writing my book, which is that and for good reason, you know you had that man in your life that shined a light back at you for personal accountability right.
Speaker 1:That kind of said. You're the common denominator Like you want to. You want your life to look different. Do something different. What do you expect? Right?
Speaker 1:And in recovery rooms that's very much the case as well. It's very much in the beginning. You know you are a self-centered, self-seeking addict and you need to. You know, sit on your hands, put the cotton in your mouth and just listen, like it is no longer about you. You're actually causing a lot of wreckage wherever you go, and the the part where I come in, and, and it's true that as we get further into these destructive patterns that at one point protected us but now are harmful to us and the people around us, we do a lot of damage. We do a lot of damage and a lot of the time we don't even have an inkling of the ripple effect on our family and friends, right? So I say that to recognize the truth of you know you, you can't heal until you take radical responsibility and also if we're not careful about the reality that, though you and I have different stories and different journeys, the root of our trouble was the same we had a lack of worthiness.
Speaker 1:We had shame about who we were. We have shame about who we were If we are not careful and we come at people and shame them more and say do you see how you're acting? If you keep? You're a piece of shit, cut it out. You want to fucking change? Then change. There's a danger in that as well. There's a time and place to introduce that, and I think you know I don't know if you've heard of IFS. I'm really fascinated by this therapeutic modality.
Speaker 1:So it stands for internal family systems and it's a type of therapy where you sort of identify the different parts of yourself. So you could have a controlling part, which sounds like you and I both have. You could have a procrastinator part. You could have a cocaine addict part, whatever the presentations of all the selves of you are. And we also have the, that intuitive self, like the highest self, the one that does know right from wrong, that we sort of douse with drugs and alcohol and we put external things over it and we can't hear because of culture and our conditioning and our trauma and whatever else. And for me the journey back to self could not happen until I had a really compassionate way to see these parts of myself.
Speaker 1:So the part of me that was trying to control everyone and everything was there from the time I was four years old and I can have my first memory in my house of my mother abusing prescription pills and trying to make it stop and her going. Do you like the things that you have? Because if you like them, then mommy needs to work to have the money to get them for you. And if I need to work, I need to sleep in it. In order for me to sleep, I need to take these. So don't ask me that again. I learned immediately not to trust my capital S self. Okay, how do I control myself and my mood? So mom is okay, so she doesn't burst into tears, so my parents stopped screaming, so my sister isn't in a fit of rage.
Speaker 1:How so that part of me in recovery, that part of you that was still controlling, that was causing wreckage, was there to protect you. It's there for a really good reason, and instead of silencing it and going, you're fucking acting like a piece of shit, bro. My argument is hey, hey john, hey little John, hey little John. Hey, little Sam, tell me why you're here. Tell me why you're here. Why are you trying to control everything? What are you afraid of? Tell me more, and then let me, highest self, talk back to you and say man, wow, you really had to work hard for a long, long time protecting me. Like I get why you keep showing up. I just I need you to know right now, though, that you're, you're hurting me. You don't mean to, but you are, and, and I know you don't feel safe, but I'm here to protect you now, and me, and God and me, and this intuition thing like we're gonna, we're gonna get to know each other, so you don't have to fight so much, and we're gonna show you that there's a better way, there's a happier, more joyful way to live than than this.
Speaker 1:How do you feel about that? Right, and it's this really broad, comprehensive lens through which we can see our suffering, because we're not trying to exile these parts of ourselves, we're not trying to shame them. We're, in fact, acknowledging why they were there in the first place, so we're attacking it through the opposite lens. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You're here for a reason. You exist for a reason. You've been doing a great job. You've actually kept me alive in a really unstable home, like thank you, thank you for your service, but also you can stand down now, right?
Speaker 1:So I'm curious, like this is stuff that you know. When I coach people, I I weave these things in, right. I have all this time sober and all this practice using the steps in a modern way on whatever the person's pain point is Are you in an unhappy marriage, are you having issues with friendships that keep cycling through, and you're always the giver and everyone's taking from you and you're angry, like whatever the issue is. But I also weave in the stuff that's helped me the most in therapy and all the outside work. I've done so based on your experience. Now, like when you coach somebody and you're training their, their mind and their body, what's your framework Like? Take me through, take the listener through, just so if they want to reach out to you and they want to know more about what you do, what they might expect if they work with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I have two ways that I go about it Now, one just being from a straight personal training standpoint. So you know, I work with people who really want to get in the best shape of their life. I have extreme level of dedication to clients and the results that you're able to get for people is just so fulfilling. And so, from a personal training standpoint, you know, really operate on a lot of athletic movements and bringing out the client's athletic potential, really operate on a lot of athletic movements and bringing out the client's athletic potential.
Speaker 3:From a mental health standpoint, what I do is mental health coaching in two fronts either one without psilocybin and just straight one-on-one coaching and talking.
Speaker 3:And I do a lot of, you know, recommendation of podcasts or books to read or listen to. And just like you're saying, we've been a lot of what I've learned with what my experience has been, because there's been so much that I've taken in over the past number of years on how to just be a better person and how to show up better for the people around you. And then, from a psilocybin standpoint, what I do is actually partner with the Church of Psychedelic Wellness, who administers it to their members as part of Sacred Sacrament, and I coach clients through what that experience is going to look like, both leading up to, during and after the ceremony, so that they can implement the changes that come to them in a positive way. And so I have a combination of the two that I call your change, your fucking life program, which is designed specifically for people who want to get the physical and mental benefits and attack it from both sides, because, you know, really one doesn't exist without the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean you and I are doing very similar work in the world and for that reason, you know, I, I I've done work on the body exclusively and I apologize if you can.
Speaker 3:I hear the dog. I'm gonna go take him out real quick so I can't actually oh okay, all right, I'll leave it be then, yeah I can't even hear it um.
Speaker 1:I know mine's been making little like dream sounds.
Speaker 3:You know when they dream um yeah, this, this one's screaming at the top of his lungs no, it's funny.
Speaker 1:I don't know why, but I can't. I don't hear it I think, I think I'm curious, like if we wrapped up and I said what's the one thing you, whether someone reaches out to you or not, no matter what phase in life they're in, if they're struggling what's the one thing you really want someone to know right now?
Speaker 3:someone to know right now. Well, you know, the first thing just being your mindset is your reality and that's going to be the framework for the rest of what I talk about and that you create the situations in your life by your thoughts around them. The things that happen to you do not create your situations in life, so you have the power to change yourself and change the world around you simply by changing how you think about yourself. And then the second being that you are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. Point being, I had not run in over 10 years before I did that Spartan race that I told you about.
Speaker 3:Nine months after that, I completed a 46 mile ultra marathon. Told you about. Nine months after that, I completed a 46 mile ultra marathon. If someone had told me that in November of 2023, that I would complete 46 miles in August, I would have told them they were fucking crazy, but I had the courage to just go for it. And so that's what I ask of people is just have the courage to attempt something that you think is beyond your means. Have the courage to just go for something that excites you.
Speaker 1:That little kid that you were talking to before is the same little kid that I try to engage when there's something like an ultra marathon or a strongman competition that I did in February and have another one coming up, or my high intensity interval training competitions that I do, or you know whatever it is, just fucking go for it.
Speaker 3:I love that. What a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much. Can you please tell the listeners where they can find you First? Definitely, sam. I appreciate your time as well. My book your Mindset is your Reality a firsthand account of the positive effects of psilocybin, is available on Amazon. I am wrapping up the audio book shortly, so that should be available. I do hate to put a time frame on things, but in the near future my Instagram is my most active social media account. I can be found at Johnny B J-O-H-N-N-I-E-B-E, and my Instagram is psilocybinfit. P-s-i-l-o-c-y-b-i-n-f-i-t. Psilocybinfit.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much. What a fascinating conversation.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you, Sam. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you, sam. Thank you very much. Turn my back and hit my head against the wall. Don't need a crucifix to take me to my knees. Whipping my mistakes to jump over the grief. Breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Sick and tired of the voice inside my head, never good enough, it's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make believe. Hey, gotta break the pattern.
Speaker 4:Find a new reprieve breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, I am ready To make a change. I am bigger Than my pain. There's no Deep inside. I got Left aside.
Speaker 2:I can be Brave and afraid Inside. I got left aside. I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassion, start to calm my mind, Taking tiny steps to loving all of me.
Speaker 4:Trust the process, cause it's gonna set me free, breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got Gotta gotta gotta breathe. Come on One, two, three. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got left alive. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's an awe deep inside. I got left alive.