 if you don't mind. I would love to know your experience with psychedelics because there is some research that basically got stumped with with mushrooms and with lsd when treating depression especially yeah and grieving and loss and um I think that is fascinating and it's a shame that I don't necessarily know the data of people who have done it and I don't know if it can you know when weed was treated like kind of like these kinds of drugs that it'll kill you and you're going to ruin the rest of your life I don't know if there's such thing as a bad trip with those drugs that it completely changes your brain people label it a bad trip I just label as a trip so I do want to emphasis a caveat and researchers I'm not in Toronto we have great research one of top researchers in micro dosing is a rodent pet rancor from uft here in toronto so toronto is one of the super clusters of universities focusing on psychedelic research and we're having a massive renaissance and we still need a lot of research you know the contradictions if you mentioned earlier like if you're on benzos if you're on ssri's or sort of the medication or you know let's say you do a genetic screening from 23 and me and you realize you might have a predisposition to psychosis or psychiatric um uh not psych psychosis and schizophrenia so there's there like any any medicine there should be a asterisks where it's like we need to do screening like where are you in your life what are you taking and plant medicines are very different like lsd it's a synthetic but derived from organic material you know it behaves quite differently and funny thing though people don't realize okay so there's something in science called ld 50 lethal dose 50 what that means is what is the amount necessary to kill half the population within the study so it's kind of like a bell curve if you think about it yeah and so lsd and psilocybin no ld 50 you can't do this on nonexistent interesting that's the active ingredient in mushrooms psilocybin yeah okay and then what's the there's ayahuasca and then there's an active ingredient in ayahuasca that di-methyltryptamine DMT that's it yeah um there's but DMT alone is not ayahuasca so ayahuasca is DMT with a MOA inhibitor so you need a MOA MAO MAO inhibitor uh to have the proper effects of DMT now you could get oral DMT but it has to be five MEO DMT from the frog to have the same kind of effects which is like I haven't personally done five MEO DMT I've done DMT with vaping I've done copious amounts of psilocybin shrooms wet dry hero journey of five grams plus I've done iboga nuffle dose micro dosing a low dose of iboga which is quite beneficial lsd a bunch of times peyote but these are all different right and then like any like you mentioned CBT and you mentioned bio energetics like anything that has to be integration so people think they can just take him but whoop and think it'll be better it's like listen if you don't have proper and this is why I always recommend find somebody uh in Toronto believe it or not we we got we got good talent like we're there's really good people who can facilitate and who are both uh psychologically trained as a whether it's a psychiatrist or somebody that understands the mind or have gone through the journey Toronto you know we're blessed to have really good talent over here that can help people wow and I don't know if this is something like we've spoke about kmh for those listening it's the center for addiction and mental health um do they do any work with psychedelics for oh you think they're gonna know no nothing this all is kind of privatized but it's not funded like um he is funded by who though privately oh really hmm so with with with all of these drugs that you've experimented with was there an aha moment in some of those was that something that helped you with depression the best one that's been helping me the most that helps me with my PTSD would be uh integrative MDMA therapy so that one has oh yeah I did not know they used like in lower doses no no you can't do that there's a tipping point so MDMA you can't do micro dosing so the protocol for me is you start with point one so 100 milligrams or micrograms I forget anyways point one and then every 30 minutes you do a bump to then a point zero zero five and point zero zero five so you end up with point two but then there's a system like you know you're you're laying down I have a journal I use my phone as a tape recorder I have something called um sleep mask what the fuck's that sleep mask called minefold it's a 3d sleep mask so it's foam so you can keep your eyes open but it's pitch black oh that's so smart yeah so it's a mine mine mine the mask is called a minefold mask you use it for sleeping as well it's great I want that it's the best best 20 investment you can possibly make oh my gosh okay and so you have all this stuff and you do a lot of integration because you're in the moment and you know for me how I correlate MDMA listen anybody listen to this take this with uh high warning please do not try this on your own please and I just go out you know like I said it really does matter if you're on SSRIs or from benzos for our medication you know really like all medications like anything alive do not mix like consult somebody and we have the Toronto if you guys are in Toronto we have the Toronto psychedelic association which can help you um with any guidance that you need or you can contact maps so multi-disciplinary association of psychedelic studies or research they we have a there's American which American Division which is run by Rick Rubin uh no Rick Rubin that's a producer Rick Dublin and then we have the Canadian one too and so for me that was the best one and then you know other ones like shrooms I always have amazing deep dives and shrooms and then you can combine them like MDMA with shrooms and different analogs like 2CB 2CA and all this stuff right I think this is the conversation that I think needs to be more open when it comes to mental health so the reason that I don't call myself an advocate is because a lot of people don't have conversations like this which is why I was so excited to come on here and I didn't know it would even go in this direction which is even cooler um a lot of it is revolves around psychiatry and pharmaceuticals which is fine but that can't be 95 percent of the conversation when there's so many alternatives that we know and when alternatives like this we talk about like psychedelics when we talk about diet I think it's automatically cast in the shadows and thought of as alternative medicine and maybe it's called alternative for a reason but the alternative can be just as powerful if not more than a pharmaceutical this is also a litmus test when you are trying to work with somebody like imagine if you went to a car mechanic and the car mechanic only looked at your spark plugs that's it you'd be like yeah what the fuck you're doing you know I mean like I can't stop man like what are you doing the car works as a whole unit right the alternator has to be there the spark plugs have to be working the the cylinders everything right the whole engine has to be working in unison together you can't just be looking at one aspect of it if you're if you are and that's why I recommend always go by referrals like go to your network ask around and work speaks for itself let me put this that put it that way right so like I said we actually there's really good healers within like Toronto in Ontario um yeah and so yeah as soon as and anytime I hear anybody pooping on like diet doesn't play a role and I look at them like you really are dumb like I'm pretty like you just don't know it's true it's true like you can't ignore that and I think again having these conversations and knowing that there's evidence everywhere and that the body works as a whole is just something we need to to get out there because I know how difficult it is to when when you're in when you know it yourself and you're in kind of that industry and you're following certain people that that spread this kind of information I tend to think that okay then everybody knows about this stuff it's common knowledge but if you go outside of that that circle and see how mental health is talked about depression talked about as a whole like outside of our community people don't know shit and it's so sad the education isn't there the research isn't there the curiosity isn't there the skepticism isn't there that can go back to what we teach kids in school that can go back to what we're learning like it's household upbringing what the public is telling us media social media who the big players are in mental health who's sharing certain information it's just a shame that's like it's a real shame which is why I started depression to expression right the other thing I'd like to say is so we talked about diet meditation CBT the other thing I did recently last year was sensory deprivation tanks yeah and that I still have one for I'm going this month again and I'd like to go like once a month but that is something if you're you can probably combine it with with different drugs if you want to go nuts but hey even even someone without doing like using drugs on top of it just going in sober yeah it's amazing an amazing experience um what's been your experience with the the float first time I ever went so they're 90 minute sessions I went to the one on Queen Street uh Toronto yeah float float Toronto yeah it took me almost 90 minutes to get into the zone then time was up I'm like well fuck that was kind of like the first two times I went to my body get used to it and it's a great experience like it's room temperature your leg pitch black and so the second time I went went a little bit micro dose tiny tiny bit not too much and then this time I brought also a waterproof I'm fucking out of here I brought waterproof these earbuds oh right on what did you play on them just binaural beats so I have like just cool audio stuff yeah cool and binaural beats really helped me yeah yeah it's I had the same experience took me about half the time to relax my neck that was a big thing I like I'm so tense trying to like stay afloat you forget that you can let go and the salts are doing the work for you so that took me a while to get the body in tune and then once that happened my mind could relax so a lot of the time it actually starts with the body and that affects the mind for sure think about any exercise really but that that had a really cool effect on on self-awareness spatial awareness getting out and just walking home and being a completely calm state and I had a feeling that's maybe what what some other drugs can do but that was completely natural and felt felt amazing for me so I'm definitely gonna bring that into my practice every month for those listening yeah the isolation tanks flotation tanks whatever you want to call them you could do it in your own bathroom but you need like 80 pounds of salt so you can float that well in your town you can do at your house uh I've been doing you know since my you know I used to train a semi pro MMA martial arts when I was much younger and I competed professionally kettlebells and I was did a bunch of crazy stuff when I was younger how do you compete in kettlebells you mean kettlebells like the yeah what is that just a lifting contest yeah similar to Olympic lifting like kind of the uh the lifts so the first lift uh well no particular order but first lift would be a jerk you compete with 32 kilos so the jerk is 32 kilos 32 kilos so about like 70 pounds in each hand and you jerk over your head for 10 minutes straight proper form you put down the yeah so then you have the long cycle so long cycle is you start with the swing between the legs bring it up to chest any jerk so that's a long cycle for 10 minutes and then you're counting your reps everything has to be locked out straight proper form then the third lift is a snatch so 32 kilos so you do five minutes left arm snatching up and switch five minutes snatching up and how it works as a coefficient score so it's uh you take your weight divided by total reps of your lifts and that's your coefficient score so that's kind of oh geez when I see like I don't want to try kettlebells heavy at least because I see like form is so important with any of that stuff well anything like you start with a barbell if you're doing Olympic lifting or power lifting or even like without weight I see a lot of people at the gym trying to do pull-ups horrible like they don't activate anything it's like right right I'm like are you the guy that goes and like helps them out because sometimes yeah I know it's hard I got my music it's the noise cancellation headsets I got a hoodie half the time like I don't have a hat and a hoodie like I'm fucking Eskimo like this and like sometimes hard to to see these people and not you don't want to be the guy to offer advice but at the same time if it's coming from a genuine place you want to actually help because you could see like yeah that guy's back is going to be messed up in like six months yeah doing that let them be you know I hate when people bother me that's what I don't bother people like I people come up to me ask me about stuff like oh I see this and I'm like fuck off like no disrespect but like I'm here to train then I'm not here for two hours and I hear for chit chat right I'm training like leave me alone like this is my meditation and I'm fucking training right right right well the guy with the hoodie on with headphones on usually is a sign that you know this guy wants to do his thing let him let him be yeah exactly but you use that use the gym for for meditation as you said like I totally get that some people use it to be social and to see familiar faces I'm the same way it's like my time to to you know get back in my body after sitting for a while looking at a pixelated screen so I can totally understand that that's that's your time oh yeah yeah you ever got into breathing like wim hoff like deep diaphragmic breathing there's uh oh geez what's the kind of yoga um kundalini kundalini yoga kundalini yoga gets really into breathing I've I've done that once and it was very interesting I've never felt my lungs that much before like I've never been aware of my lungs that much and what air feels like um but I that's something I'd like to try uh it's really just during my sit-down meditations I'm just inhale exhale very simple but but what are other breathing practices wim hoff is a really good simple one is that the that one yeah and yeah so it's uh okay so it's okay so it's 30 30 on the 30th you exhale you don't inhale you hold as much as you can but you don't want to hold too like so you just hold till you just feel that feeling then you inhale then you hold it until you just get that feeling where you not too hard don't you get like that difficult feeling then you exhale so that's one set how many sets how how many sets I do three okay so then it'll be 90 reps is there is there research into this kind of breathing and how it affects the brain and like oxygenation and that kind of stuff for the mind yeah there's research yeah yeah I'd be interested to see that because I know like just you shallow breathe throughout the whole day until you realize and come to terms with to how you're breathing and have that awareness right and then when you finally do a breath it's like if you pay attention might the bottom of the lungs feel like almost stale like they haven't been touched I know that's not how it works but that's how I feel like finally when you take a bigger inhale you kind of wake up the whole body it's breathing is something that I definitely want to bring into a daily routine and just not sitting down and doing it but just as we're walking just as we're at the gym it's just much easier to do and focus on while let's say you're at the gym because like yeah I fuck around when I walk so I try to hold my breath as much as I can oh that's amazing I do like hypoxia stuff so it's like then just walk am I right and then I can't take any more than exhale but then I don't inhale right away then I hold that exhale as much as I can then I like rinse and repeat that's so that was you know David Blaine the magician yeah the magician that's kind of what he did to train the breathing your train himself to hold his breath for whatever eight minutes or something it's like he would do that until he would get massive headaches and then do it again that guy's a giddy pig that's crazy but I'll do that too like I have a pool in the condo and I'll just go and just stay underwater for as long as I can looking in from the gym they're like is that guy is that guy dead in the pool I just put a hand up yeah what's up but the long story short there's like as we've just attested to there's so much you can do for mental health that just needs to be explored I think people need to have a more giddy pig approach to their bodies and as everyone's different as you mentioned like so what works for some people won't work for others but the point is to kind of find your niche and find what find what works for you and that's kind of the whole point I can't say that something is completely wrong although it's really hard to when you see someone eating McDonald's every day complaining that they have depression I'm like that might be the wrong thing to do but uh holding judgment won't really help anyone long run but I think everyone just needs to figure out their own recipe I agree yeah I think we'll leave it at that that's a great ending everyone figure out your recipe that's right well Scott I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and experiences if people want to get ahold of you learn more about you uh what's the best resource that can reach you yeah depression to expression calm and then let's see check out my youtube channel and my own podcast where I'll be having a mirror on as well and getting him to do more of the talking and explore this a little bit more so depression do expression dot com awesome thanks Scott thanks