Episode #35

Episode #35: James McCrea Psychedelic Leadership Podcast.

Duration: 01:41:37

James McCrae: Aloha, what’s up, Laura? 

Laura Dawn: Hi, James. We’re making it work; I’m so excited for this conversation. 

James McCrae: How’s the rainstorm going there? 

Laura Dawn: You know it’s Hawaii so it’s like sunny rain showers and torrential downpours have been kind of coming through. And I think I’m just ready to stop apologizing for the things that I just can’t control in my life. To my audience, I’m like, I’m so sorry for the rain, I live in a tiny home bus with no walls and no door and I love my life and so, it’s part and parcel with the gag right now.

James McCrae: Yes, give people the real authentic story without over-polishing everything. It’ll feel like people have a glimpse of being in Hawaii with you. Although I hear we’re not supposed to visit Hawaii at the moment.

Laura Dawn: These are wild times that we are living through and also just, you know, I was talking to a dear friend who is sick with COVID right now and he picked up on a Pema’s book, Welcoming the Unwelcome, and it was just such a message around. And I turned to Pema through the ups through the downs, I’ve seen you post quotes by Chögyam Trungpa as well. And I know that you’re a fan of that lineage, which has been a huge inspiration in my life as well and I think that that just hits the nail on the head right now is like that, we all have to get good at welcoming the unwelcome and moving beyond the polarization of good or bad, right or wrong, you should be this you shouldn’t be this and all the things and just learn how to sit in the discomfort of it all.

James McCrae: Yes. That’s radical acceptance which I think is one of the lessons that Buddhism teaches us is there’s going to be waves in the ocean, it’s about are you going to resist them are you going to try to go with the flow. And the waves don’t bother you as much when you accept them as they are and I also compare it just to, life is a bit like a movie, people are into talking about the hero’s journey, and Joseph Campbell and mythology and things like that. And the hero’s journey is the full spectrum of experience, it’s not and if you watch a movie, any decent movie is, there’s going to be a spectrum of experience that happens in that movie. 

So, anything worth experiencing, and even a life fully lived is going to have a spectrum of experience. And it’s really through the difficult times and the challenging times and facing the unknown that we end up emerging from the night of the soul with a better understanding of ourselves and just being more complete as human beings. So it’s not easy, especially when the times are as uncertain as they are now but I do my best to lean into the uncertainty and dance with life instead of just trying to control it. And that’s every day, that’s a new struggle for me to get to that state of dancing with the uncertainty and the absurdity of life. Instead of wishing, it could be something different that I could control and manage the way I want it to be controlled and managed. 

Laura Dawn: I so resonate with that, I’ve been playing with this word swap for the past year around switching out the word control for influence, and looking at how that completely changes my life relationship. I cannot control everything, but I can have influence in particular areas of my life that is helpful, and I just think that we’re just sort of peeling back the veil of illusion of certainty right now because times are never certain we just had been living with the story of certainty. And the reality is, is that there’s never been any ground to stand on and that’s why I resonate with Chögyam Trungpa’ss teaching’s so deeply around groundlessness is because we’re so afraid we spent all of this time, looking for ground to stand on through clinging to relationships to people to places to the things to identify as this is the story of me. 

And yet that is a very limiting way to live and that instead of being so afraid of the uncertainty, it’s the void where everything emanates from, it’s the source of inspiration; it’s the source of creation, that it’s not horrifying. And it is, in moments when we experienced profound groundlessness, like the loss of a loved one or the passing of a relationship or when I went through the volcanic eruption and it’s those moments of like, severe groundlessness that we connect to ground within ourselves within our being. That it’s the paradox of it, there is a sense of ground in the eternal aspect of who we are and connecting to that place, I feel like is what we’re being called to do right now.

James McCrae: There’s almost like salvation to hitting rock bottom, in a way like my favorite quote from him, I’ll paraphrase it. But he said, the bad news is that you’re falling, it like basically into the abyss, there’s nothing to hold on to, there’s nothing to grab on to, that’s the bad news but the good news is, there’s also no ground. In other words, there is nothing to hit, we’re always falling free-falling into kind of the abyss of life, so to speak, and there’s a certain surrender to accepting that. And when I’ve hit rock bottom, at various points in my life, whether it’s financially or just emotionally or whatever it might be, that’s when you truly learn to let go completely, because you have no other choice. And that’s where grace comes in when we can reach that point of surrender. So, I try to do my best to reach that point of surrender every day, even if I don’t necessarily need to let go because I’m not in a state of crisis. I think when I can do that regularly; I can just flow so much better throughout life on day-to-day.

Laura Dawn: I feel like we need to flex this muscle of letting go in micro amounts daily, I kind of feel like that around grieving too. It’s like, we need to sort of like press the pressure release valve around the grief of what we’re moving through on the planet right now and practice all the little ways of strengthening this muscle of letting go, that helps us through those big times of transition that we all go through in our lives where letting go is incredibly hard. And I consider psychedelic space those realms, journeying with plant medicines to be like an advanced training ground for making contact with groundlessness those experiences of like, wow, I am in the void here, there is nothing to hold on to, and being sort of forced to let go to make peace with death to make peace with impermanence. 

There’s so much and that’s why I was so excited to talk with you because I just feel like we just share so many sorts of core areas that were just so interested in and looking at the overlap of those areas. And one of the things I wanted to ask you was, I’ve been following Words are Vibration for a very long time now; I love the work you do. You speak to things that I think about all the time in this way that I’m just like, wow, he just said the thing that I’ve been thinking and I love that about you. And I saw you put out I think it was a post or in your story saying okay, I’m starting to speak on more podcasts now and so I’m kind of curious, considering that, words are vibration, I feel like everyone has a message that sort of a vibrational frequency that’s imprinting the field. What is your core message that you’re stepping out with right now? And why now in terms of speaking on podcasts?

James McCrae: Well, I’ve been speaking on podcasts for a little while now, my first book came out in 2017. And that was with Hay House and is called Shut Your Ego Says, and I started being invited to podcast after that book came out and you know, at the time, I wasn’t ready because I think I was like, trying to promote a book and I was trying to put on the mask of this author and talk about my book. And I wasn’t yet comfortable, just speaking totally freely and just naturally with the people that I was being interviewed by. And then the podcast started coming back up just over this past year when I got really into creating memes, and that’s where my Instagram started to blow up because it turns out people like memes quite a bit they like sharing them. And I tap because I’ve always been a writer, I’ve always been a poet, and just a creative person in general and my whole life, I’ve kind of been balancing, you know, create the visual arts, I used to be a painter, I went to art school, with writing. And I’ve mostly been a writer, but I’ve also been dabbling with the visual arts my whole life and with memes, and with Instagram, in particular, it’s a great way to bring those two together. 

So anyway, when I started creating memes and writing more poetry, during the pandemic, because, honestly, I was looking for new ways to communicate, that regular language just didn’t suffice. It’s like the world has been in such a state of uncertainty and crisis and confusion and absurdity that it’s hard to write about what’s happening in the world without taking a specific side, I’m a conspiracy theorist, and I’m going to tell you what’s going on. Or the experts say this and you should believe it, and here’s why everyone seems to be taking the side. And I didn’t want to do that, none of the sides felt right, or, at least didn’t resonate with me. So I had to develop a language through poetry and mediums, just to communicate the nuance and the absurdity of everything that was happening. And ultimately, all of this creativity was, I was downloading it through these various mediums and I ended up putting them together into a compilation and that’s my new book that’s coming out soon. And it’s a book of poetry and memes and it’s the first-ever book of memes that are being published. 

So, that’s why I’m requested to my followers to be on more podcasts, just to help to promote that book and to tie it back to your question around my core message. I’ve been creative, my whole life and it’s not always easy in our society, to declare yourself to be an artist. That almost seems like saying, you’re an artist is almost some kind of a fancy, exclusive club, that only these kind of like, trust fund painters, or something can claim. And I think that we’ve lost this connection with art and creativity, and the new way of kind of being creative is maybe to start a business or to do something like that. And what I want to do is just to help awaken the inherent Creative Artists within all of us, and to kind of rediscover what creativity can do, because I think we’re all, you don’t have to be an artist, or writer or a painter to be creative. I think we’re all creating every single day of our lives I think being alive isn’t, is inherently an act of creation. We create our relationships, we create our careers, we create our friendships, we create our home environments. And on a deep level, we’re co-creating with the universe to manifest our experience of reality, in and of itself. So, I just want to bring our attention back to our inherent creativity and also do it in a way where it’s funny, and it’s light and it’s easy because I think one of the most important abilities we can have in this day and age is to take a step back and laugh at the absurdity of the universe. I think there’s not enough laughter happening in the world right now. 

Everyone’s kind of in a state of crisis, but how can we find our humor in the crisis and that’s why my book title is How to Laugh in Ironic Amusement During Your Existential Crisis because ultimately, reality cannot be as serious as we’re making it. And you tied this into psychedelics and I agree with your point there where the psychedelic journey in many ways is like a sandbox or training wheels for the experience of life and death. You go on a journey, you go deep into the trenches of your subconscious, and sometimes what you find is scary and not fun and seems dangerous, perhaps, but then you find your way out of it. And then when you find your way out of that place, you end up reaching a new place that is more expansive and filled with meaning than where we started. So, it is just kind of like training people to go through that night of the soul, to teach them that there’s light at the other end of the tunnel. And therefore, once you’ve done that, it’s hard to take life overly seriously because we know that all of our problems and all of our challenges in the day-to-day that seem big, in the grand scheme of things, they’re just part of the journey. And holding on to them and taking them too seriously is just going to put a weight on our shoulders.

Laura Dawn: Yes, I so appreciate that, we are just in such deep resonance in terms of your message, and just what I stand for to is like, taking ourselves less seriously. And when you have those, you know I’ll never forget some of my first silicide’s and journeys where I could just really zoom out and look at the expansiveness of the universe and look up at the sky and see the cosmos and just like the irony of just how much I took my life, so seriously, if you cannot laugh in those moments, and it’s just it’s so illuminating. Just that it is so important in our lives, yes, they are incredibly important we are a walking, talking, living miracle and yet at the same time, it’s completely unimportant. We are just going to move through, we are going to be soil back in the ground so soon so, what are we doing with our time here? And if you’re not enjoying it, if you’re not laughing every day and finding the humor in it, then like, what’s the point? And that’s one thing I love about my mother, I inherited her sense of humor, and she loves to laugh and I love that about her. 

And we talked about this in my mastermind program too, it’s like the capacity to invoke the sacred goofball, and like, be able to bring levity and humor to all of it. And I just, I love the humor piece and so I yeah, I there’s so much that I resonate here. And also, I wanted to share that when I was in elementary school, and I don’t know if you’re familiar with Bernie Browns work but she did some amazing research showing that about 80% of people had some teacher or some influence in elementary school that planted like a negative belief that influenced and negatively influenced their path for them into their adulthood. And about 50% of the 80% was related to creativity and I had that experience too and then the teacher told me that I’m never going to be creative because I could not draw and I still have anxiety around putting pen to paper to this day. So, I had to go through a huge process of rewriting my narrative around what it means to be creative, that I’m creative, by definition of being alive that because I cannot paint or draw, and because it still brings me to tears, to put pen to paper that way, because I’m so horrified of like, what I’m going to be staring at, that there are so many other narratives around creativity, and that it’s imperative that we rewrite that narrative. When we look at creative thinking and creative problem solving is one of the most essential mindsets, toolsets of this time that we’re living in, that like actually, creativity is essential for moving through these times of change.

James McCrae: Absolutely. Because we need to create a new world and that means that we have a lot of creative thinking ahead of us to find new systems, to live in, and to find new stories to tell a new song to sing and create a world that’s on the vibration level that we want it to be. And I think that to your point, I think creativity has been too connected to perfection in people’s minds, for me, creativity has nothing to do with perfection like creativity can be raw and rough and imperfect. I mean, look at some of the most celebrated artists like you could look at Jackson Pollock and he was throwing paint on a canvas. I just saw this contest that someone had where they have had a bunch of people create art based on a frog. And then 1000s and 1000s of people voted on, which was the best depiction of a frog and the second-place winner was this immaculate color pencil drawing of a frog it was very detailed and very, just very well done but the first place winner was this ridiculous little stick figure of a frog, that he was so far from being perfect but there was a character to it that people loved and they voted for that above the perfect frog. 

So, look at memes, I wasn’t an okay art student, I wasn’t an okay, graphic designer, I wasn’t the best but a meme doesn’t have to be designed perfectly. I think a lot of the best memes are a little bit sloppy they’re a little bit pixelated, they’ll just there’s something a little bit rough around the edges about them and people resonate with that more. So for me, creativity is about experimentation and finding your process there’s no right, one way to do it. There’s no like, I’m not a very good technically skilled drawer but I’ll do like illustrations with stick figures and if the idea is good, people will like it. So, I think a lot of people are, as you said, kind of afraid to express their creativity because in school, they weren’t the most technically skilled people and neither was I. But I think that’s missing the point where it’s about experimentation, and having fun, and discovering new things. And whether it’s beautiful, or I love punk rock music and punk rock music is raw and edgy and imperfect and that’s why it’s great so.

Laura Dawn: I think it’s also about coming into our authenticity, too, it’s like what you’re describing is like this culture that we live in, that’s just so perfectionistic and so appearance oriented, and like, can I be this image and yet the rawness, the rough around the edges is learning how to find peace with our authentic selves, with our capacity, even the other day, it’s funny, I posted something on Instagram that was inspired by you and your feed. And I drew it on a piece of paper, and I was, my God, my writing is terrible, the whole thing but it is a healing process, in and of itself it is a healing process. And the idea behind what I posted was good it was this iceberg and it was, this is what you see and it was I’m being a jerk. And then the iceberg underneath was this is what you don’t see I’ve been traumatized, I don’t know how to handle emotions, and actually, it did well and it’s not about the likes or not likes, but it was just like my own process to putting pen to paper and being like, okay, I can accept myself through this process that my fear of drawing is also my path of healing.

James McCrae: I love that. Yes, I think creativity as a path of healing is beautiful, because it’s learning our power as magicians I mean, people say humans are created in the image of God. That’s kind of like a thing in the Bible. Well, what does that mean in the image of God? What is God, first of all, what does that mean? Well, God is the Creator that’s what God is, you can call it a million different names but God is the source of everything around us, the primal source of action of creation that leads to all of this. So, if humans are made in the image of quote God, what could that mean? Other than we also have the capacity to birth new worlds from our source code. So, for me, creativity and spirituality are very much linked and connected. 

I’ve tried many kinds of spiritual rituals and practices over the years I studied Buddhism, became a teacher in Kundalini Yoga, and did a lot of Kundalini meditations as well, plant medicine, things of that nature. And I’ve settled into accepting that creativity is a spiritual path unto itself and my spiritual ritual is, every morning sitting down with a notebook, and trying to tune into the voice of the universe and seeing what the universe is trying to tell me in that particular moment. And it might be a great idea, it might not be there are certain days when nothing comes at all but showing up to put me in that position to receive what it’s trying to come through me for my hat is a spiritual practice unto itself.

Laura Dawn: That just made me think of another thing that used to say, Shogun, I can’t say say’s because he’s not on this plane anymore but he says “The path of awakening is inherently the path of befriending yourself.” And there’s something so rich and deep about that, and it’s subtle and incredibly profound and I have contemplated this over the past 15 years. And I feel like it keeps sort of penetrating new depths in my being, and that is when we start talking about creativity is in and of itself a spiritual path. And letting go of the self-judgment, the self-criticism, the shame, the guilt, the not good enough, the perfectionism, all of that is like contracting away from opening to befriending ourselves. And I don’t think we can learn how to befriend other people or have compassion for other people until we can accept ourselves and befriend our human beings for who we are.

James McCrae: Yes, and people online will ask me, how I’m so comfortable putting myself out there, because I post every day, sometimes twice a day, share my thoughts, regularly and I take for granted that that’s not easy for a lot of people to do. And I’ve been thinking about this, and I think it’s because I write so much I write every day for long periods for years and years. So, I’m just so comfortable with my voice as a writer, because I’m always doing it, I do it in private, I do it in public, I’ll think about an idea for a long time if I put it out, or I might just have an idea and put it out instantaneously. I don’t overthink when I’m putting out into the world and that’s I think I don’t overthink it because I’m just always doing it and I found that voice. So, the world is suffering right now from a lack of communication, I think that we all have amazing hearts and amazing souls but how do we bring what’s inside of us out into the world? 

How can we communicate it? How can we communicate through people that love us? How can we communicate with people who don’t love us? How do we communicate with people we disagree with? You can only express what you have the language to express what you know how to form words around to package a message and ship it to others. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you need to know how to put together an argument in the form of words and express that into the world. And don’t worry if you’re a poet; don’t worry if you’re YouTuber who’s just great at talking. Just find that voice within you finds what’s your angle in this huge global conversation? We’re all having, what’s your contribution? What’s your point of view? Don’t worry about it being so polished and perfect, just get familiar enough with yourself and practice writing in a journal so much that you just know what you stand for. And when you know what you stand for, you won’t overthink it, you’ll just put it out into the world and that’s how you can start engaging with other people and get feedback from people and then make it better because it’s always an ongoing process. It’s never finished, we’re always you know, perfection is a myth. So, just put yourself out there and kind of improve as you go.

Laura Dawn: I’m so curious to ask you about this because, in my mastermind, I have 32 people, this is a huge conversation, people are so afraid of stepping out. And even you know, I’m working mostly with leaders in the psychedelic space and psychedelics are somewhat, still fringe, but depends on who you hang out with. I’m like, yeah, psychedelics are still fringe to some people, but it’s hitting the mainstream, I do want to talk to you about your experience and relationship with psychedelics. But since we’re still on this topic, people are afraid of putting themselves out there for canceled culture and getting shit thrown at them, and people disagreeing with what they have to say. And that’s why I always encourage people to connect to their bigger, why, like, why are you doing this? And when you connect to a bigger than you vision, people are going to probably criticize you but you can hold your seat in the center of it when you’re connected and rooted in that why. And so I’m curious, what advice do you have for people who are so afraid of putting themselves out there because of fear of criticism? And I’m also curious to know, what do you stand for? What are you anchored in and your why?

James McCrae: So, it’s tough you know, I’ve gotten my fair share of criticism online as well, like everyone else, I think that’s the first thing is just like, don’t be afraid, or try to avoid any criticism. Because I don’t care how, I could write a poem that’s just like, beautifully worded, and just very simple and just very inspirational, one person will find a reason to not like it, and they’ll let me know. So, even if I get overwhelmingly positive feedback on something that I create and share, there’s going to be some people that just, they don’t get it, they’re misinterpreting you, they have some specific experience in their childhood that leads them to come to a different conclusion, for whatever reason. So, you’re going to have people that disagree with you, that challenge you and the bigger your platform is, the more of those people you’re going to have, the bigger you are, the more haters you’re going to have, plain and simple. So, the first thing is, do not worry about people disagreeing with you do not worry about haters, they’re going to be there but they don’t have to be there in a major way. 

Like, I get very little negative feedback, even though I’ll always remember the negative feedback more than I remember the exponentially greater positive feedback that I get. So accept it, I think you need to speak out loud to learn the parameters of your voice, and what your audience is looking for from you. So you kind of need to mess up a little bit before you can figure it out because I try to push in different directions just to see where my playground is, where my boundaries are. So, I’ve had times where I’ve gotten maybe a little bit too political, like to specifically political, I’m not a political person but I follow politics as much as the average person, so I have thoughts and I would share certain thoughts and at times, I’ve expressed thoughts that were maybe too liberal for certain conservatives and they would get mad at me, other times, I would share a thought that was too conservative and the liberals would get mad at me. So I’ve got it on every side but the point is, you’re doing this for your benefit to help yourself, learn, and grow. 

So you need to learn where your parameters are, I learned that playing in the world of politics is not for me, and I might gently touch on a political idea here and there we, for the most part, I stay out of that I kind of tested it, I got feedback, I learned that’s not my playground. So, it’s all about trial and error, you don’t learn you only learn from doing you only learn from putting it out there and seeing what works. And sometimes I’ll have a post that I create that I know is a little bit edgy, and I know certain people are going to be offended by it. And I’ll post it anyway because the people that aren’t offended by it are gonna resonate with it even more; they’re going to be so happy that someone said it. And I might get it, some people being like, hey, and I expected that but you have to choose if you’re going to, if you’re going to do something that a lot of people love, you’re automatically assuming the risk that some people are not going to love it. And listen in the world of social media, that kind of thing works, if a message is too flimsy, and too wishy-washy, in no particular way doesn’t have any teeth, no one’s going to love it. So, you do have to accept a certain amount of pushback from some people, if it’s an idea that you agree with.

Laura Dawn: Okay, so we kind of touched on this briefly when we dropped in last week, but they’re you posted something that got kind of a lot of attention around it. I think you took down the post, I think you posted it on a Whim at Night; when you get harsh criticism, what’s your internal dialogue look like, sound like? Because I think that there’s this place where we get overly concerned, and we’re like, my God, we’re getting debilitated by worrying what other people think. And I think that on the other end of the spectrum that also doesn’t feel centered is like, well, fuck everyone I don’t give a shit about anyone. I think that there’s a middle center there, that we aren’t just doing this for ourselves that we have this bigger vision of why we’re doing what we’re doing. And so when you receive that criticism, I’m so curious, how do you talk yourself through it? Because I’ve been through cancel culture moments, and it was hard, I was like, damn, this is like, intense to hold space for. So, what does that look like for you?

James McCrae: You nailed it back to Buddhism, the middle way, that’s always coming back to the middle way, not being too extreme in either way. Because the two extremes would be you either, you get negative feedback, you delete the post immediately, and then you pretend it ever existed. Or you say, F all of you, I’m going to double down on this and start getting in fights in my comment section to defend my point of view, I don’t do either of those things. So, I listened to the feedback I’m getting, so, there is criticism that you should take to heart and listen to and internalize and keep in your consideration, and there’s the feedback that is just completely, honestly, they’re missing the point entirely, and you can’t even listen to it because you have to self-reflect on what you posted, and where the criticism is coming from. I’ve had times when I posted something with the pure intention that it was funny and it was just misconstrued as being maybe for example, disrespectful to women, for example. 

And times like that I’ve grown as a person, because I’ve taken the time to sit with it, and fully understand the point of view where that criticism was coming from because it was something I wouldn’t have maybe even noticed at first. But then if you get enough kind of similar feedback, you can kind of reflect on it and grow from it and be more careful in the future about your wording. Because sometimes, I might have a joke for a meme that, you could phrase these in a million different ways, there’s an idea but the specific language you’re using can be anything. So, it’s almost like every time you post something and you get feedback, you’re sharpening the blade of your communication because you learn how to phrase things and like Words are Vibrations. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten, I’m just much more careful with how I word things because I know how people might interpret them. 

So, I’m trying to maximize the impact of the posts while also minimizing the potential for it to be misunderstood because most of the negative feedback I get it’s not because they disagree with what I’m saying it’s because it’s being misunderstood. So I try to minimize the potential for anything I post to be misunderstood, that’s, that’s the most important if you don’t agree with what I say, that’s different, that’s fine, you don’t have to agree with what I say but as long as I’m saying it in the way that it’s being communicated effectively. So, just to summarize certain feedback, it’s important to internalize to grow from to become a more skillful communicator as a result of, and some feedback if they’re missing the point or it’s just not relevant. And if it’s me, I’ll just delete it, if someone who has a mean post that is just not in good spirits, I just deleted and move on and I have to block someone, I’ll do it. But it’s a delicate balance and you only learn your parameters by jumping in and doing it and making mistakes and then getting better because of your mistakes. But you got to get in the mix, you got to get your hands dirty a little bit and have some people unfollow you and then grow from there because you won’t learn what works for you unless you do it yourself.

Laura Dawn: Yes, I think it’s so much discernment around like, what’s mine here and what’s not mine? I’ve had those experiences where I was like, okay, because I’m fundamental, I’m a white woman, there is nothing that I can say do or anything that’s going to shift this person’s attack on me because that’s their worldview. So it’s like, certain areas that I’m like, okay, I can just do the best that I can, I want to be a good human, I want to do good on this planet. So, what’s mine to own? What’s not mine to own? Where can I do better? How can this be a place of self-reflection without shutting down my voice and my creative channel and without hiding and being like, well, I don’t want to be attacked so I’m going to crawl into the cave and never come out and I’ve had those moments of, my God, I’m just going to just not do this anymore? But I feel that to create change, we do have to push the boundaries. Otherwise, we’re just operating in the box and if we stay in the box, nothing is going to change. So, we need the people to be able to be at the forefront being like, okay, this is new thinking; new thinking is going to get pushback. So, I’ve seen you post about psychedelics and plant medicines. How does your audience react to that? And I’d love to get into your relationship with psychedelics and how they’ve played a role in your healing, your growth, and your creativity. Let’s go in that direction.

James McCrae: Honestly, I’ve never got any negative feedback on the topic of psychedelics. I think we’ve reached a tipping point in America, of acceptance, at least acceptance in terms of being curious. And having, D stigmatizing it because there’s been at this point, there’s been enough research, there have been amazing success stories and there have been respected academics and authors and medical professionals that have taken up this work. And I think that’s what’s been the biggest difference is it’s not the people leading the psychedelic conversation in 2021 are not radical hippies or Timothy Leary Esque figures that are saying, burn down the old world, and we’re all going to just lay in the field and do acid and everything’s going to be okay. That rubbed people the wrong way surprise. Now, we have Michael Pollan and Rick Doblin and groups like maps and other psychic other research, organizations and medical approved it administration of ketamine and psilocybin and things like that, and it’s been proven to help with PTSD or addiction. 

And we’ve learned that these substances do not have the same negative side effects and repercussions as heroin or cocaine or, frankly, even alcohol, they don’t tend to be habit-forming, or have some kind of residual side effect, in fact, personally, after a psychedelic experience, I usually want to distance myself for a long time before I’m ready to jump back in so it’s almost the opposite of, heroin addiction in that sense. So I think that I think that now is the time to go public in a way for psychedelic leaders, because people need it, and I do think it’s, it’s going to be an important contribution to the hea