 And we are live. All right, guys, we've got a special show for you today. I've got my good friend, Michael Sanders here with me. And today's show, we're gonna be talking about Planet Medicines and Ethiogens. Michael, welcome to the show. Hey, Mia, thanks so much for having me. I'm glad you made it, man. You and I know each other for now, maybe like a year and a half, two years, give or take. You've really shared many experiences that you've gone through and stories. Thank you for sharing those stories. First of all, I just wanna kinda jump in and talk about how did you get involved in this space? Like, what was the catalyst or that tipping point that made you aware of these medicines and how do you get involved? Well, I actually think it started when I was about five years old and I was playing with a toy Ferrari and a toy police car. And I was thinking to myself, like, this is not all there is. And why do people care so much about material possessions? Why are people always talking about the weather and not the universe and asking, you know, who am I and what are we doing here and what the hell is going on? And when I was 14, my dad gave me the book, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley. And in that book, he's talking about a mescaline experience during which the illusion of separation disappears and he becomes one with all things and he felt connected with the table and the walls and the chairs and that there was no separation. So at 14 years old, you know, I could intellectualize what he was saying but I had never felt that but it certainly piqued my curiosity. And then when I was 16 years old, I had my first magic mushroom experience with three of my best friends. And that really revealed to me the interconnectivity of all things. And, you know, I was, it was during a thunderstorm and there was this fence and we were beside a horse field. And I was watching the thunderstorm and I saw this animal that and we were separated by this barrier. And I just decided, I'm like, I'm going to hop this fence and like be with the horse and I pressed my head against it. And it was just like this deeply bonding experience and the horse and I were communicating. You know, it wasn't like a horse and a human being that there was any separation. It was just two conscious entities that were interacting with one another. And so it was that day that really sparked my, my, you know, psychedelic and entheogenic quest. Now, I will say that from the age of 16 until about 26, I used these medicines and entheogens, I'd say more recreationally. I knew I was gaining insights from them and having really wonderful and profound experiences, some of them which were really fun, others which were incredibly difficult. But it was when I was 26 and I went down to the Amazon jungle and had three ayahuasca ceremonies over the course of four days that that really showed me the sort of the benefits of having an intention while using these medicines. And what made you go down there? Like what was the thing that said, yeah, I'm actually going to take the plunge and go down? Well, I first heard about ayahuasca listening to Aubrey Marcus and Joe Rogan talk on a podcast in early 2012. And I knew when I heard them that I was going to drink this strange psychedelic brew in the Amazon jungle at some point. I just didn't know when. And then at the start of 2013, I was going through some really extreme fatigue. I was in a really dark place. I was working as the vice president of an ad agency. I was the co-founder of a startup in the gaming industry. And I was training athletically about 10 to 14 times per week. Never resting, never relaxing, never meditating. Just always go, go, go. So goal oriented, like all these things, right? And it got to the, you know, I was sleeping 10 hours each night and not feeling the slight bit rested. When my alarm clock would go off in the morning, I thought it was some sick joke because it felt as though I'd just close my eyes. And, you know, I was leaving my ad, I would go into my ad agency at noon and have to leave by 3.30 because I was so smoked. And the only thing that gave me any sense of life was to like train and lift weights again. And so I have this love for movement, but it was a love that became an obsession and then a borderline addiction. And then, you know, the breaking point was when I, my strength was pretty much disappearing. And I was only 25 at the time and I stopped getting boners. So like that sucks to not have libido in your mid 20s. Like that's just not where you want to be. And so at that point I resolved, I'm going to put a bullet in my brain if I can't resolve this situation within two years. So I started consulting with a naturopath. He got me to focus on play and meditation. Went to Burning Man for the first time. That's a whole another conversation. But it was upon returning from Burning Man that my best friend Sid asked if I wanted to go down to the Amazon jungle for New Year's Eve of 2013. And as soon as he suggested it, I was all in. And yeah, we headed down there and trekked through the Amazon for a week before leading into our ceremonies. So let's talk about the ceremonies. How was your experience with that? Yeah, so I often say like it shattered my previous paradigm of reality and showed me something so far beyond my wildest imagination that now informs my entire way of being. And I went down there with, you know, like my father's a specialist in internal medicine. I've done, I've studied a lot of science. I, you know, studied a lot of nutrition, anatomy, things of that nature. And, you know, the shamans down there encourage you to set an intention. And also they suggest that Mother Ayahuasca is this intelligent female entity. And I sort of treated it initially as metaphor, sort of indigenous folklore. And, you know, they have these protocols that you follow a particular diet where you don't eat any red meat or spices. And, you know, I couldn't really understand this in a logical sense. You know, why is, why would not eating sea salt be a good thing? And, but I was, I was open to their practices. You know, I figured they've been doing this for millennia. So surely they're, they have their reasons even if I don't understand them and if I'm going to fly all the way to the jungle to do this, like I want to respect their customs. And, you know, we take a bath with this, these flowers and allow the flowers to dry on us and all with the intention of opening us up to this plant spirit. And then we did a yin yoga where we held postures for three minutes at a time again, trying to open us up. And so this thunderstorm ripped through the jungle at about 7 30 p.m. on New Year's Eve of 2013. And this is when I recognized one, like why it's called a rainforest because it's so powerful down there. And two, that I was embarking on some incredible rite of passage. And then, you know, the ceremony began at 8 p.m. And my intentions were twofold. They were, one, to gain some clarity on my career path and secondly, to retrain certain neuromuscular pathways in my body because I was experiencing some physical discomfort that I had attributed to some past athletic injuries. And so I was the first to drink the ayahuasca. We're inside this Maloka, this beautiful wooden structure. It's sort of like a dome with 40 foot tall ceiling right in the middle. And it has thatched roofing and these wooden walls with screens for windows situated right in the middle of the Amazon. And so knowing, having it being well versed with psychedelics and entheogens, I didn't just want to sit there and wait impatiently for the onset of the effects. So I decided to reflect chronologically upon my year of 2013 because it had been the most teaching year of my life. So I was sitting there meditating and I get to about the month of October in my reflection and then I feel this fire shoot up the right side of my body and expand across my torso. And I'm just like, holy shit, what is happening? And instinctively and intuitively, I sort of telepathically broadcast. It was though I thought aloud, mother ayahuasca, can you please give me five more minutes as I finish my reflection? I think it's important that I do so. And then I feel this voice, this presence respond by saying, yes, my child, take your time and let me know when you're ready. And then the fire receded back down my arm. And Amir, like I thrashed my head to the left and the right, I'm like, who said that? And then I realized, I'm like, holy shit, I'm talking with a plant right now. And so I quickly and intensely finished my reflection. And then again, I instinctively and intuitively telepathically broadcast, mother ayahuasca, I'm ready to welcome you into my mind, into my body, into my soul. These are my intentions. I hope to learn a lot from you. I'm open to whatever it is that you wanna show me and maybe you'll even learn something from me. So at that point, the fire comes back up my right arm, spans across my torso, fills my head, my mind, down my legs. And dude, it was the most beautiful maternal warmth that I have ever felt. And then at that point, these purple and green beams of light that look like aurora borealis, like the northern lights emerge from the middle of the Maloka in the Amazon jungle. And I'm staring at them and I'm like, okay, am I hallucinating? Is this some new dimension? Or did the northern lights somehow find their way into the jungle and they're floating five feet above the ground. And so to test their objectivity, I shifted my gaze over to the left and I'm just like, I'm contemplating. I'm like, what is going on right now? And after about 45 seconds, I turned my gaze back and these beams of light had moved towards me. And they were like a cloud that floats to the sky independent of a viewer's gaze. It doesn't matter whether I'm looking at it or not, like they're these objective entities. And these beams of light then wrap themselves around me and I look down and I'm like, holy shit, I am covered in the northern lights right now. And they turned me over onto my left side into the fetal position and man, like the greatest maternal presence and comfort I've ever experienced. And I truly understood then and there, like, okay, this is why they call her mother, ayahuasca. And no discredit to my own mother, but this was like my own biological mother, but this is the greatest mother I've ever encountered. And at that point, I thought, I was thinking like, well, if this is all the ayahuasca experience is, I'm totally happy with that. And I thought I was about to fall asleep. But then at that moment or Mohana is one of the shamans, he starts singing and they sing these songs called Icaros, which the shamans say they channel from higher dimensions and through the ayahuasca and that they're not of their own creation. And it sort of sounds like so, so, wah, wah, wah. And as he's singing these purple, or sorry, these orange and blue shapes start emanating from his mouth and expanding to fill my perceptual field. And I'm just like lying on this mattress, looking around, going like, what on earth is happening? And then Ricardo, the main shaman, he starts singing and these red, green and purple shapes start emanating from his mouth and expanding to fill my perceptual field. And then Arcilia, the final and only female shaman, she starts singing in a full spectrum of colors, explodes from her mouth, like more colors than there are in the rainbow. And all of the shaman shapes combine in the visual space while all of their songs combine in the auditory space, together creating this visual and auditory symphony. And the colors and the shapes are forming this cloud-like entity that occupies about 95% of my perceptual field. And I feel the purple and green beams of light lift me up and send me into this new dimension. While the ayahuasca telepathically imparts to me, Michael, this is a dimension that always exists. It's where you're from, it's where you're going, you're in it right now and I want you to go and explore and don't worry, you're safe. And so then the purple and green beams of light severed behind me like an umbilical cord would and I enter this new dimension. And at that point, these three, what I call humanoid spirits, float down onto the right side of my field and they're each about two and a half feet tall. They're all, they have these dark bodies, they're wearing cloaks and they're outlined in the most vibrant colors I've seen, like a neon light multiplied by a thousand. And one of them is outlined in bright red, another in bright pink and another in bright yellow and all three of them are female. And just something I want to iterate to the viewers is that all of the communication that occurs in this space is telepathic, like it's beyond language and there's nothing lost in translation. So I like to use the analogy of the feeling of falling in love. If you try to describe the feeling of falling in love to your friend who's never been in love, I mean, he or she can intellectualize it, but they don't, your words just, they're just dancing around the concept, they're not actually it. But then imagine you can take your experience of falling in love and planted inside the person, now they know. So that's what all the communication in this realm is like. And as these three humanoid beings floated into my field, again, I wanted to test their objectivity because I have never experienced anything like this. And if they were as real as you sitting where you are right now Amir and or as like this chair in my office, you know? So again, I shift my gaze over to the left and I'm like, what is, what is going on right now? And then the beings float from the right side of my field over to the left and they say to me, they're like, hey, like, aren't you interested in what we want to share with you? And I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm interested in what these other dimensional beings want to share with me. So they start, each of them is showering me with love a different forms of love. And I even had this inclination because at the time I had a girlfriend back in Toronto. I'm like, is this some sort of active infidelity or something, but the beings ensured me. They're like, no, it's more of like a motherly, sisterly, grandmotherly type love. And then at that point, you know, I interacted with these beings that were, they looked like six or seven worm like tubes stacked on top of one another. And they looked like mitochondria from your biology class textbooks, if anyone remembers though, remembers those. And they had these eyes and they would glow bright blue and then bright red. And I recognize that they had this relationship with the gut flora inside of me. So the microorganisms inside of my stomach and intestines. And then I looked down and my gut flora floats up from my stomach and into this perceptual field. And they look like these little white Furby dolls, kind of for anyone who remembers Furby. And these little beings start communicating with me. And they're like, Michael, your body is not just your own, but it's a vessel for trillions of different beings. And you want to make it as welcoming and as inviting to the light beings because we affect your thoughts, your moods, your behavior. So they gave me some direction. And they're like, you know, keep up with your meditation practice, keep up with your nutrition, keep up with movement, play even more. They're like, the more you play, the better you're going to feel. And then they gave me these two specific directions which they said, stop eating dark chocolate and stop eating pork. And I was like, I was like, okay, I'm like, I thought those two things were healthy. And they said, well, they can be, but just not for you on your journey at this time. And I asked them why. And then they showed me in this out of body time traveling perspective, they took me back to the entire month of December leading up to me going to the jungle. And they showed me eating two squares of dark chocolates around four or five PM every day before I'd move, play or train. And then they would show me my sleeps that night. So I was watching myself sleep in the past. And I thought I was getting deep restful sleeps, but they were showing me that I was restless. So I was rolling around. I was waking up in the middle of the night. And they just revealed to me that like these things are this chocolate stimulating you in a way that's not allowing you to fully rejuvenate. And then I asked, okay, what about the pork? And then they showed me memories spanning my entire lifetime. And particularly every time I ate bacon, there would be this immediate lethargy that would follow. And then inevitably a three to four day period of like this low grade inflammation where I'd be slightly lethargic, but I just wasn't aware of it. I wasn't putting the pieces together. And when I watched, like when I was experiencing this, I even said to the ayahuasca, I'm like, oh, that's an interesting correlation. And it responded by saying it's not correlation, it's causation. I'm like, all right. So like since that day, I've never bought pork and I haven't bought dark chocolate. And if somebody feeds them to me, that's okay. But it just fundamentally changed the way I perceive things. And after that, I started, I was navigating this field and seeing that there was an infinite number of beings. And it's like being in a world underneath a world night sky. You see there are stars and then stars beyond those stars and then stars beyond those stars. So that's what all of these beings and spirits in this dimension were like and they were infinite number, infinite in degree, infinite in kind. Some that look like animals, plants, snakes, birds, grass, microorganisms, shapes I have no name for because I had never seen them before and I don't think humans really identify them. And but the interesting thing is that each and every one of them was articulating love collectively, communicating love as a whole and showing me that the fabric of our universe's love that it's the creative force behind all things, the big bang in every one of its predecessors, responsible for every work of art, every painting, every song, every written word, the reason why stars explode and cells divide. It's the child who cries, the bird that flies in the grass that grows through the pavement. It is you, it is me, it is all of us, it is infinite, it is everywhere and it is all. And that knowing, like not an intellectualization but a knowing, a feeling, a remembering instilled me with the deepest sense of peace and bliss really that has since stayed with me and evolved and grown ever since. And so like that's the first, you know, 50 minutes of my first ayahuasca ceremony and I ended up having three over the course of four days. So it was about 18 hours under ayahuasca's care. And you know, one of the things that showed me was that, Michael, you've always wanted to be a storyteller, start writing. And so it inspired me to write my book, Ayahuasca and Executives Enlightenment. What advice would you have for anybody who's, because right now it's like a hot topic. A lot of people hear about ayahuasca and ethugians in general, specifically ayahuasca. Is there any like recommendation or advice do you have for people who are maybe interested in this? Because I think I see, let me, let me point it, put it from my perspective. I see a lot of people who are just jumping the bandwagon and just going in because it's the in thing right now to do, which I find very dangerous. This is something that you don't just play around with at all. You know, it can rip your ego apart, you come back shattered. So from your own experiences, is there any kind of like very common sense advice you can give people who might have an interest towards this? Yeah, I mean, I would say first off, do a lot of research. And if you are thinking about doing it, find a place where there are trustworthy shamans, people you can communicate with in advance to really understand what you're getting yourself into. I also think it's important not to treat something like ayahuasca as a silver bullet that's gonna cure all of your problems because it's really not the shamans say that the real work comes after the ceremonies because she can show you the whole universe, but unless you start to modify your behavior and embody the lessons and the visions and the understandings, then it could be obviously less worthwhile. And I think anyone who's interested in it, who feels a calling towards it, if it's an authentic calling, I think it is worthwhile to further investigate. And then leading up to it, I think it's wise to the best of your abilities to lead the healthiest lifestyle possible because then that will make you more receptive to not only a positive experience, but one that will benefit you. And by a healthy lifestyle, I mean like being very mindful of your thoughts, observing them, recognizing that thoughts flow through you and you can determine which thoughts you're engaging with. A lot of people have negative self-talk. And so I think it's important to start flipping that script. Having a positive disposition, like developing as much self-love as you can for yourself, a meditation practice, like movement and exercise, healthy eating. I think all of these things really contribute to having a strong ayahuasca experience. And yeah, don't just do it because you think it's like a cool thing to do. Really recognize that you are embarking on a serious journey and that it's not necessarily gonna be easy. People often talk about the purging. Pretty much everyone is puking or diarrheaing or you're crying or a combination of all of those. None of it happens by surprise, like you know when you're about to puke, so it's not like you shit yourself or anything like that. But it's kind of like sometimes you just feel like you have the worst bout of the flu ever. And you have to deal with that. And you also have to be willing to like, or I think you should be willing to look at the darkness inside of your own self and like look at your limiting thoughts and your limiting beliefs and the things you are doing to hold you back and be willing to confront them. So I think if you're going into an ayahuasca experience and if you're interested in it, you really have to be open and willing to be shown that like everything you thought might be wrong and could be modified. And not that that necessarily will be the case but I think you just have to have that open-mindedness. So besides like for example, the pork and the dark chocolates, which is a pretty cool story. That's super cool. Have you adopted or changed anything else drastically like through those three experiences that you had? Yeah man, I mean, I feel as though I'm in constant communion with ayahuasca. So I haven't had any ceremony since January 3rd of 2014 but I feel as though I'm speaking with her all the time like through meditation, through dance, through just being like even right now communicating about it, I feel her flowing with me. And so the love is one of the biggest ones. It's a vibration that I wanted and have carried forth with me. And so to the best of my abilities, I embody unconditional love and respect each and everything as a sovereign being that's free to make its own choices. So I don't tend to judge people or things for what they're doing and I just accept them and recognize like, hey, maybe it's not what I would do but they're on their journey and that's what they're choosing. And I've also, you know, I ended up walking away from the startup in the gaming industry that I had co-founded as soon as I got back from Peru. I mean, while I was in the jungle what I thought may have been the most difficult thing in the world to articulate because it was so beyond my previous paradigm of reality that I didn't necessarily think I had the words to communicate it. I, yet I sat in the jungle and it felt like some celestial waterfall was flowing from the heavens through my body and spewing words onto the page as they essentially wrote the crux of the book while in the jungle, you know? And that was the only goal, like the only real goal that persisted from my youth was to write a book that I thought was awesome. So there, like I did it, you know? And I, and it was the most enjoyable experience. And so it was released like a year and a half later. I ended up walking away from the advertising agency that I was a vice president of. You know, it was great. It was financially rewarding. It was really fun. All the people were awesome. But the determining point was when I recognized that my two biggest clients were a bread company and a pork company of which I consume neither. So I'm like, I feel like this is the universe like asking like, okay, are you gonna go down this like safe route? Keep making a lot of money, but it's not really aligned with who you are. Not that I think there's anything wrong with bread or pork if somebody else wants to eat it, but it's not me. And then one of the other like biggest things is that I recognized through the ayahuasca experience how deep my bond with mother nature is. And I'd always felt connected, but this just took it to a whole new level. And I knew leaving the jungle that I was going to be involved with the environment in some capacity, but I didn't know how it would manifest. And five months after returning from the jungle in May of 2014, there was this three week period during which every day I saw the sun and the moon out at the same time. And after 21 days, I made a note in my phone saying, I don't even know if this is astronomically possible, but I'm paying attention. And the very next day, my friend, Charlie calls me and says, Michael, I want you to come meet this clean energy startup. I think you're gonna be interested in what they're doing. You may even want to become involved. So I accepted his invitation. I go and meet them the next day. I'm seeing their technologies, listening to their philosophies, and I'm like, holy shit, like this whole notion of an energy scarcity or a need to rely on non-renewables, total farce, we can live off renewables. And then they tell me the name of the company is Sun, Moon, Energy. So I get covered in goosebumps. And by the next day, I was a partner in the company. And so I've been on that journey for the last three and a half, four years now. And we're working on bringing infinitely scalable clean energy generation to market. And yeah, man, I feel as though like everything, like my relationships have improved with everybody, not that they were necessarily bad before, but I play a lot more. My life is oriented around play and increasingly so. You know, I have these reminders occur in my life to play even more. So like that's really the central theme of my life. And with that perspective, everything starts to feel like play, you know? Even my work, it's so enjoyable. I find it so fulfilling that it feels like play as well. So yeah, I really feel as though like it's sent my life in a wonderful trajectory. Now, before we went live, you and I were talking about offline, besides ayahuasca, which is, you know, I'll put it on the top bracket. It's one of the most potent and powerful healing substances out there. But besides that, has there anything else or have you used any other plant medicines in your journey of healing? Yeah, I've used a lot. I mean, I mentioned magic mushrooms, psilocybin. You know, marijuana, when I was in high school, I used to smoke a lot of that. It was kind of unconscious smoking, but it did expand my awareness a great deal. And then, you know, be on the plant realms like ketamine, LSD, MDMA, also NNDMT and 5MEO DMT. You know, each and every one of which, all of those medicines have just shown me so much. Like, they're all these incredible teachers with consciousnesses that are there and can show you just such profound insights into everything. So, yeah, I don't know if you want to dive into any of those in particular. Which one have you found out to be the most? Because ayahuasca, that's, you know, the DMT and ayahuasca are two different things. And ayahuasca, if the ceremony takes a lot of time out of you and it's not just like, I'm just going to do it, it's, you're in for a ride. Yeah. But besides that, like for example, you mentioned psilocybin, you know, MDMA, even LSD. Which ones have you noticed that you can almost take as a tool to recalibrate yourself from like a day-to-day basis? Mm-hmm. I, you know, historically, I would say mushrooms, I think mushrooms have been the medicine I've used the most, probably like 60 or 70 times throughout my life. And I find them to be tremendously recalibrating to, you know, step outside of this, because I think all of us as human beings can become indoctrinated to our own identity. You know, like we have an infinite potential of neural pathways that we can be firing and yet we seem to activate the same select few over and over and over again and then that becomes our identity. And so what once could have been this rushing infinite waterfall becomes a narrow stream that has these rocks and debris through these rocks and debris throughout it. And then the psychedelic experience really allows for that rushing waterfall to come back in to remove the debris and the rocks and to allow you to step outside of your identity, step outside yourself and then recognize the infinite potential of all things and how you are free to choose in any given moment and you can change the rest of your life in any given moment. Like you don't have to continue following along that path which I believe is an incredibly liberating perspective to have to know that you're not forced or obliged to continue along the journey with which you're already on. And so mushrooms have been a wonderful way for me to access that understanding, you know, and like on let's say a neurological level there's been a lot of studies coming out recently that demonstrate that through things like LSD, mushrooms, DMT that the prefrontal cortex which is actually your filtration mechanism that determines what amongst the infinite stimuli that's around you will you actually interpret and perceive? So it's filtering out like 99.9% of what's happening around you and then the psychedelic experience quiets that prefrontal cortex. So sort of eliminates the filtration system and then allows the rest of the brain to light up. And so everything's activated much like a child and baby's mind and then all of these new neural connections are now available and they can potentially interact with one another. So like this part of your brain can interact with this part of the brain when previously maybe you haven't been in your day to day life. So mushrooms have been one and I'd say most recently I find that ketamine is absolutely tremendous. It almost feels like a defragmentation of the psyche and it's a very short experience. Now I recognize that a lot of people might have some negative connotations associated with ketamine. I certainly did prior to having tried it. And I believe I'm in a small percentage of people who uses it ceremoniously and it really enables, I've even read like research on it in scientific journals and the language they use is quite similar to my own and that says it allows you to step outside of your identity and merge with the one energy that exists amongst all. So you can, you know, it's sometimes, it's called the dissociative. So you step outside of yourself and you become all things. And like I have gone to the origin of the cosmos and merged consciousness with those who are around me to the point that there are no thoughts beyond this one group consciousness that we're all sharing. So you can see like see and be with the thoughts and feelings of one another. And so I find that an incredibly, like I said, defragmenting experience and it's quite a short experience about 45 minutes typically. You know, LSD is another one. LSD is a much longer journey. It's like 12 to 24 hours. And just one caveat I'll say is that with all of these medicines, especially ayahuasca, like I would encourage people to really like block off the time to be with them and to not schedule anything like surrounding them. So I mean, my ayahuasca ceremony, it was like two weeks of just really focused on it leading up to ceremony. And then I think it took me about three weeks to even go back into my advertising agency. So it was like five weeks where I was just devoted to that. And I allowed myself that space. And then with mushrooms in the past, I've always like left two days on the other side of it before anything is scheduled with LSD. There's always two or two days on the other side of it. Especially when I was younger, now I find I'm able to integrate these experiences much more quickly. So I could theoretically even have like a business meeting the very next day, but it's still not something I would schedule if it came up, that's all right. But yeah, I mean, I think they all are incredible teachers and tools. Like MDMA really, when I was younger, it sure, I think I tried it the first time when I was 22 or 23. And it really expanded my heart and allowed me to realize that like everybody wants love. Like everybody wants this connection. And I needn't worry about like, let's say being too affectionate. I think that in, especially like the machoism that exists in like North American universities and like man in this alpha male and like all this shit, like you kind of get disconnected from the idea that like you can just tell your friend that you love them and like you really appreciate them. And like MDMA really showed me that because every time I did it, it's like, everybody's so receptive. Like they love it. It feels so good. And what's interesting is that I feel as though my heart is now expanded beyond any MDMA experience that I ever had back when I was 23. And it's just now like my default, how I am all the time. So as a result, I rarely take MDMA now. Whereas like back when I was 23, when I first discovered I was doing it like every other weekend for about a year. And now it's like maybe once a year or maybe I won't do it at all, you know? So I think like you asked about tools and yeah, I think they're all tremendous tools. And sometimes as well, like there's this saying like once you receive the message hang up the phone. So if you've learned all you can from a medicine and at that point it's just becoming like, you know, whatever there's not that much intention behind it then maybe you don't need to do it anymore. Yeah, that's a good point. And I do want to stress that as Michael just stated there's many different opportunities for you to heal yourself. And it's up to you to figure out what you want to heal first. What's your intention? What's the actual problem you want to do? And you have to figure out what works for you. And what's really important though too is I want to stress that your environment and the group of people you're with and the facilitation of the actual experience is really important. And back in the day when I was young I used to do everything. I was just out there fucking partying. And there's no intention. You just get fucked off in the mind, right? But it's really important that you have a proper intention and a proper environment and proper people around you to facilitate that experience. Totally. Yeah man, I think any one of these experiences could be absolutely hellish in the wrong environment. And you'll probably end up learning a lot from that too. But fuck it, it can be so tremendously difficult. And I also think this active intention and treating these things as medicine and using them ceremoniously extends beyond just that circumstance and then carries over into the rest of your life. So if you treat those situations as ceremonious and intentional then you begin treating other things like whether it's you going to the gym in the morning or like at night whenever you do it and treating that with intention. Like why are you doing this? As opposed to just trying to get through it it's like be with it. Like treat it as how much like amazingness is like going to the gym and like moving around giving you. Like it's providing you with so much vitality and health and vigor and like it's doing so much. So really like embody that and embrace it or your work, you know? Like rather than trying to get through it like set an intention what is it that you're trying to do with your work? Are you trying to help people or are you just trying to make it till like five o'clock so that you can check out? So I think, yeah like treating these things with intention like you're saying man set in setting is tremendously important. I think especially like if you're unfamiliar with some of these substances you know like DMT for example I think a lot of people will smoke it without a guide or a shaman and I never have. And I just, I can't even imagine how somebody would even arrive to the breakthrough experience. For one I don't, to me it doesn't seem physically I mean I don't think anything's impossible but it seems very difficult to physically inhale enough of the DMT to have the breakthrough experience if you don't have a shaman with you. Because after you take that first inhalation and exhale you basically leave your body and the concept of smoking something is just no longer a thing. So like to think that you would pick up the pipe again and do it it's like no like I don't think that's happening so you need this shaman and also you don't want it to be somebody who's just like you know like put it down your throat like you want somebody who's like keep going like it's gonna be wonderful I'm here for you you know like a proper guide so yeah I definitely say with all these medicines if you're unfamiliar like seek out someone who has experience. Do you have any recommendation like resources for people to check out? Yeah I mean like maps if you wanna do research so the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies they do a lot of research on MDMA assisted psychotherapy they also have like you can look in their back catalogs of research and they have LSD studies. The Hefter Institute H-E-F-T-E-R they do a lot of research with psilocybin both of them do a little bit of research with ayahuasca as well maps is also doing research with ketamine if like one really incredible film if I were to like you know hold any film in the highest regard of just like explaining entheogens I would say it's called neurons to nirvana it's really great it's very scientific I actually showed this film to my dad because when I first started speaking with him about my ayahuasca experience is him coming from a medical background he was initially somewhat dismissive of me telepathically communicating with the Neville Olympians of other dimensions and it took me a while you know like it took me a couple years before we were able to start speaking about it and it was largely due to the fact that I started speaking his language and showing him like hey like look at this film neurons to nirvana that has high production value and is supported by all these like leaders in the fields of psychiatry and psychology and all sorts of you know authoritative figures and then that sort of opened my dad up and allowed him to start getting it and then you know he read my book and then now we can talk about it all the time but so I'd say like neurons to nirvana is a great resource even like if you go on Facebook and look for different groups like ayahuasca is a group on Facebook and there's tremendous resources about people who devote their lives to these practices and these traditions and they're a wealth of knowledge and like they share this stuff so freely you know and like if you're interested in ayahuasca ceremonies you can surely find navigate to find information that way you know some of it might not be tremendously obvious because there's certain legal issues but if they are someone operating in Peru then it's totally legal so they can like talk about it openly. If you're interested in DMT I would say like go on meetup.com there's some good resources that you can find there. I mean I'm sure there's you know Arrowwood E-R-O-W-I-D that's forums where people share their experiences by using different medicines and it's been around for like as long as I can remember I feel like 20 years even maybe. So there's a wealth of information there and then I just think you know like Wikipedia can give you a lot of insight into like the chemical composition of these different substances and yeah just like you know Googling around there's tons of YouTube content of people like expressing their trip reports. Where can people get your book? If you go to my website michaelsanders.co so .co my book there and there's also other tons of stories about different medicine experiences like 5MEO, DMT, NNDMT, mushrooms, aliens all sorts of great stuff. Awesome Michael I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and sharing the experiences you've gone through. So for everybody if you want to find out more make sure about Michael there's a link below the video I have at their michaelsanders.co and thanks again Michael have a great day. You're thanks so much and thanks everyone. See ya, cheers.