Latest / The Scene Projects / Jordan Kronick on Psychedelics, Trauma Healing, and the Power of Storytelling

Transcript

Jordan Kronick on Psychedelics, Trauma Healing, and the Power of Storytelling · The Scene Projects

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Welcome in to Real Biz.
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I'm your host Bubba Starts, and with me today, director and producer of psychedelics and the
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pursuit of happiness, Jordan Kronik.
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Jordan, welcome to the show.
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Hey, Bubba.
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How are doing?
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I'm doing really well, man.
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We were talking off camera a little bit, about the movie and your experiences, and, it was
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just time to flip the camera on and really capture this.
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And, honestly, that's something that you've been doing, in real life for a long time.
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So before we get into peaking and this amazing movie that you have, you know, created and
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these incredible stories that you're telling.
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I wanna establish a little bit of your story.
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So the floor is yours.
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We'll get a little backstory, and we'll pick it up from there.
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Great.
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Well, thanks for having me.
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Really happy to be here.
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So, you know, I I guess I'm gonna work backwards.
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I was at HBO, a show called Real Sports with Brian Gumbel, for a long time, and, that show
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is sports stories, short documentaries.
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I would direct, produce, and write those short documentaries, and, they took me all over the
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world.
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Some highlights.
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I did a story, at Mount Everest about, rich people, climbing to the top of Everest at the
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expense of sherpas who were dying, to help those people get to the top.
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I went to, Chechnya to interview the dictator Ramzan Kadyrov because he was a huge MMA fan.
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I went to Japan to Fukushima to tell a story about how Japan was trying to repopulate
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Fukushima before the Tokyo Olympics to show everybody that the island didn't have a big
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scar in it, but the place was unfit for habitation.
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So I did maybe 50 stories like that in 20 plus different countries.
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So that that was a great great experience as a director and producer.
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And before that, I sort of started my career at ABC News making documentaries with the
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legendary anchor Peter Jennings.
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And it was with Jennings that I got introduced to the subject matter of psychedelics.
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This is way back 2004.
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We made a documentary called Ecstasy Rising, which was a one hour TV documentary that aired
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in prime time to an audience of 10,000,000 plus about the history of MDMA, the drug ecstasy.
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And, what we did in that documentary is we debunked the science that was underpinning the
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government campaign against ecstasy because it was based on bad science.
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And as a result of that documentary, the government actually retracted those studies and
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canceled its campaign against the drug, which many people in the psychedelic community say
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opened the door for the FDA and the DEA to start approving studies into psychedelics.
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All of those studies got shut down in 1970, and they were now finally starting up again.
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And it happened right in, the same time as this documentary came out, and that was, for the
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most part, the beginning of the psychedelic renaissance, which, has has gone on for twenty
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plus year, and we're at a point now where it is sort of boiling over.
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You know?
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For example, president Trump signed an executive order in April saying he wants to
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fast track the approval of psychedelics, for use in therapeutic settings.
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Yeah.
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Massive.
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God.
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When the news was the news, Jordan, when investigative journalism and these documentary
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pieces, it's so much different now in the media landscape that I think a lot of young people
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have never experienced it.
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Obviously, you you have the the Internet sleuths now that are out there, but we used to
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get these stories directly from the major networks.
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Right?
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ABC and Peter, especially, were bringing these stories to the forefront, and you just don't
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you don't see that a lot in the major media at all.
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You know, there's there's a a funny backstory to ecstasy rising, Bubba.
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The the the thesis of the documentary was to show how ecstasy was the fastest spread fastest
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spreading drug in history.
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That was the story at the time.
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And so, you know, to try to explain why something spreads so far and fast, you have to
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let people who really like it talk about it.
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And you weren't allowed to do that on network television back, you know, in the early two
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thousands.
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You couldn't have people talking about why they like drugs and why they do drugs.
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You know?
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The war on drugs was raging back then, and that just was not allowed.
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But we did that because you have to do that to sort of tell the story of why this thing, you
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know, spread so far and so fast.
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So after the, documentary, aired in prime time, we got a letter from the White House, the
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office of National Drug Control Policy.
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That's the drug czar.
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He operated out of the White House.
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So he sent us a letter, on White House letterhead demanding a prime time one hour
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retraction, to the documentary.
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So we we declined because we, were, very, confident in our reporting.
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And, you know, our journalism brought us to a point where we debunked all this bad science.
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You know?
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The government was using junk science in its campaign against the drug, and that, risks
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their own credibility.
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So it was a sort of what bit of a watershed moment in sort of the the in some of the drug
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war and some of the history about psychedelics.
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Incredible.
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Not many people get to stand up to the White House and the drug czar and to say, no.
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I think that we are in the right here, and we're going to stand on it.
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And to have these stones, if you will, to put it bluntly, to do so.
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And also the backing of, you know, of the organization of the corporation that is ABC, to
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also stand with you.
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I think that that's extremely rare, in this day and age in media as these conglomerates have
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gotten larger and larger.
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And, you know, obviously, Disney buying ABC kinda changes everything over there, in, you
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know, in the past and for their future as well.
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But incredible experience to be able to say, hey.
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Yeah.
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I got that letter from the White House, and I said no.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, so that that really, like, started me on this subject matter.
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And what I realized at the time is it's just full of fascinating people, first and foremost.
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So that's always, you know, great as a journalist to be, you know, in relationships
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with super interesting people who are doing really fascinating things.
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And it also was apparent to me that this subject matter had serious legs, and it was
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gonna grow and grow and grow.
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And what happened right at that time is, Rick Doblin, who's the sort of godfather of the
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psychedelic renaissance, the guy who's leading the legalization movement for psychedelics.
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He got his first clinical study off the ground with FDA approval, DEA approval, and it was
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looking at MDMA plus therapy for sexual assault victims.
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So that was the first study that got off the ground, and I tracked that study.
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And he reported that nearly two thirds, almost seventy percent of the women in that study got
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their PTSD significantly reduced and almost cured as a result of participating in that
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study.
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So that was the first.
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And then the second study he did was to bring, again, MDMA plus therapy to military veterans
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with PTSD.
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So he went from sex assault victims to military veterans, and that those were really
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politically sympathetic groups.
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And that really got the ball rolling on the psychedelic renaissance.
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And I just knew I I just gotta stay with this subject matter, and we contemplated, you know,
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in 2007, 2008, doing, a documentary on the psychedelic renaissance.
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But it was just a little bit too early, and and we decided to be patient and wait.
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You know?
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And here we are now in 2026, and there are hundreds of clinical studies on psychedelics
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for everything from depression to anxiety to addiction to OCD to eating disorders, etcetera.
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We've got, like, psychedelic pharmaceutical companies investing, you know, worth with
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valuations in billions of dollars.
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Eli Lilly, a huge pharmaceutical company, just bought a psychedelic pharmaceutical company for
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$3,800,000,000.
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So the psychedelic renaissance is in full bloom, and, you know, that's why we decided to,
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you know, finally get this documentary done to really try and hit this cultural zeitgeist
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moment.
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Yeah.
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The timing is quite right for it, and and I think that your movie is going to do a lot to
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open up the eyes of people who've maybe never touched a drug in their life, right, who who
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had never been, or or at any, you know, PTSD along with it too.
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I think there's two sides of the coin.
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Right?
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People who have not had the traumatic experience don't understand what it's like to
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be traumatized, and people who have never done drugs don't know what it's like to do drugs.
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Right?
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So you're really kinda bringing both of these sides of the story out to people, normalizing
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it a little bit, and saying, hey.
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In the right settings, these these things that you've been told your entire life are bad,
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there's no, you know, there's no good that can come from them are actually helping these
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people.
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So you're flipping the table over on societal norms that have been around for sixty, seventy
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years.
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You're you're exactly right.
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There's a lot of baggage when it comes to psychedelics, and we deal with that in the
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movie.
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We look at how they got criminalized in the nineteen sixties and how Nixon shut it all down
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when he started the war on drugs.
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And we track how this psychedelic renaissance is sort of moving forward and sort of rising,
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you know, from the underground and coming into the mainstream.
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So that so, like, when we made the film, we had two north stars.
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The the first one was we've gotta show all the major psychedelics because we want it to be we
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want this film to be a big tent.
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We want everybody to be able to come into it.
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We want the people who really know about psychedelics to watch this film and say, oh,
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yeah.
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They got it right.
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And we want the psychedelic curious to come into the film and say, wow.
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I'm really learning a lot.
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And then we want, like, the grandmothers and the grandfathers to just find these really
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interesting human stories that are dealing with, you know, universal struggles, PTSD,
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addiction, etcetera.
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So the fur so the first, you know, again, goal was show all the psychedelics.
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Don't bore people with just one psychedelic.
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You know?
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People I feel like if you do a movie for ninety minutes on just one psychedelic, it's a little
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too in the weeds.
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It's a little too inside baseball.
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So we we decided, let's look at all the major psychedelics and just keep the pace moving and
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keep, know, keep sort of exposing you know, maybe you know a lot about psilocybin, but
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maybe you know nothing about ayahuasca.
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So let's have all of the major ones in there.
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So that was the first goal.
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And then the second goal was get the cameras in the dosing rooms because very few projects have
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done that.
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They talk about psychedelics in the past.
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The person in the movie will say, oh, I did them five years ago and everything changed, but
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that loses sort of the urgency.
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So we felt like if we can get cameras into the dosing rooms and see psychedelic healing as it
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happens in real time, that will be the power of the movie.
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And, and we did it, and we brought we brought our cameras into you know, there's four or five
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major scenes of psychedelic dosing happening in real time.
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Yeah.
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Really incredible, to to know that something like peaking now exists.
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Right?
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For someone who has a, and we've spoken a little bit about it and people who follow my
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show know my past a bit.
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But I have experience with pretty much every psychedelic that's in your movie.
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Yeah.
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My wife has zero.
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Right?
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And and she's not going to be someone who's going to go out and experiment with those
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things.
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Former correctional officer, she is a teacher.
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She's never going to be able to understand some of the things that only I can share with her
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through my experience.
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Right?
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But where this movie may provide an avenue for her to to understand more about the
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psychedelics and and the experience and, you know, what can be a life changing experience
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for some people, and how that can vary instead of just having a very, like, drugs are bad
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mentality.
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Right?
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And I think that is a a a small example of one that you're going to have at scale.
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Right?
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The more this movie is out here, it's available, and and people are gonna be able to
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consume this, that's really gonna open a lot of people's eyes.
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And it's going to open their eyes because the people who it is helping are, some of our best
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and brightest and people that should be honored in our society, veterans among them, you know,
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athletes that have suffered, you know, concussions and therapy.
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Like, what is happening and the healing that is happening inside of that room is really
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something spectacular.
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Yeah.
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You know, you hit it on the head there.
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We know that was another goal in making the film is let's find relatable and celebrated
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groups of people that are trying the psychedelics and surprising groups of people.
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Not let's not necessarily go to, you know, let's say, a hippie community or a jam band
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community because that's kind of expected.
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Let's, for example, take a professional athlete who made it, you know, in the film.
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We've got an NHL player, Daniel Carcillo.
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He won two Stanley cups.
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You know?
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His nickname is Car Bomb, and he really struggled with concussions and brain injury
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symptoms, you know, memory loss, light sensitivity, appetite loss, headaches,
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etcetera, etcetera, to the point where he wanted to kill himself.
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And he was sitting you know, he told stories of sitting in his truck imagining, as he was
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driving, imagining just pulling off to the side into a tree and ending it all, and he didn't
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know where to turn.
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He say he says he spent $500,000 pursuing treatments for his brain injuries, which were
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at the time, you know, again, major depression leading to suicidal ideation plus addiction.
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And he found, as a last resort, psilocybin, you know, when he did a mushroom journey, and and
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it just created this little shift.
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This just like, this this, you know, slight shift in his narrative, and that was it.
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I mean, that alone is incredible.
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I had the opportunity to watch Daniel Carcillo in a Blackhawks jersey.
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So Yeah.
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I know all about the way that he plays, and, his story is not unique to him.
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There's a lot of these guys, not just in the NHL, but in the NFL or soccer as well.
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I don't think we think about soccer as a a highly, you know, physical sport, but these
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guys are taking balls off their head at 90 miles an hour.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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You get knocked around.
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So so so Carcillo, you know, had this kind of revelation as he sort of punched through his
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problems through magic mushrooms, through psilocybin, you know, he feels like his brain
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was rewired.
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And the scientist in the film has a great description of what of what can happen, you
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know, like like the metaphor being a snowstorm.
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Like, if you've got this depression or this anxiety, it's a rut in your brain that just
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keeps digging deeper and deeper, and that's the way the brain communicates in that pathway, and
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that's what's causing you all of your depression problems.
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And then the psychedelics is like this chaotic snowstorm, and when the snow settles, it often
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just fills in that rut, and it's gone.
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So that pathway has disappeared, and maybe that is the way the healing takes place.
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So for Carcillo, who came through it and and felt you know, he he decided he needs to pay it
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forward.
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So he's committed his life to bringing psychedelic healing to other professional
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athletes, and he's putting he's putting himself out there on social media and other places as
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the guy to call if you're a pro athlete, who needs who needs help.
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And he says he's got hundreds, at this point, thousands of people calling him, NHL players,
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NFL players, MMA fighters, boxers, rugby players, soccer players, and he is bringing
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those athletes to he's got a retreat.
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He had one in, Oregon.
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He's now got one in Colorado.
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And in the film, for example, he gets a call from Stephen Johns, a defenseman for the stars.
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And Stephen says, Daniel, I I'm I'm you know, I need your help, man.
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And within, like, two weeks, we were with Daniel and Steven and our camera crew going to
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Oregon to film Steven, who was having headaches twenty four seven, had tried to kill himself,
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and didn't have anywhere else to turn but to call Carcillo.
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And we show those guys in Oregon, doing a a heroic, magic mushroom dose.
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And Steven says, like, right afterwards, he's like, I can't believe that, like, all it took
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was two to three hours to change my life.
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I've done so much therapy and taking so many antidepressants, and here I am taking
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mushrooms.
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In two hours, I've changed my life for the next fifty years.
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And he goes home, and he gets engaged, to his girlfriend.
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And now he's married to her, and he says he's living his best life.
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That I that's just an incredible story.
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And from my own from my own experiences with psychedelics, that I always felt like a slight
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a a slight shift.
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Right?
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Like you mentioned, a slight not not always a complete, you know, transformation of
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everything, But filling in that rut, I think that's a great analogy for it because it's so
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easy for me, and I was definitely, you know, not, you know, clinically diagnosed with
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depression or anything.
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But looking back on it, could obviously see, you know, signs of depression and anxiety and
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things that we're doing and that the the psychedelics were able to kind of fill those in
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so that at least I could live.
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But I think it's the it's the combination of the psychedelic with the therapy, right,
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especially in the instances of of trauma, whether that be from you know, you mentioned
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the sexual assaults or from military service, which is obviously very close to my heart
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being, you know, a director of marketing and PR for operation combating veteran suicide, that
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those experiences, it's hard to get out of that that spiral, that loop, that everything is just
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on replay.
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And the psychedelics are are merely a disruptor to that.
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And and opening of another door finally for some of this energy to flow through and exactly
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what what Steven alluded to is that, man, that two hours finally having another door open in
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our pathways in that neural network that is our brain that we understand so little about as
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human beings, but is our whole reason for being that it is incredible the effect it can have
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almost instantaneously.
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You know, so you you the word I I really like that you said there is the shift, you know, the
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the subtle shift, and it can really change everything.
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So for example, with Steven, while he was peeking on his mushrooms, he had a
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hallucination where he was skating on an endless rink with the forest on one side and,
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hockey stands on the other side filled with all his family and friends.
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And we create using AI, a visualization of that hallucination in the film.
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It's super cool.
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I think it's really beautiful, and it really brings you into the mind of of the of these
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people as they're telling you their, you know, hallucination stories.
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So Steven is on this rink, and he said that because he had to retire early because of his
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head injury, he felt like a loser.
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And he felt that, like he he felt, like, embarrassed.
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And in his hallucination, skating down that endless rink with all of these friends and
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family watching him, he felt unconditional love.
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And he says he felt for the first time that they all thought that what he did is super
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cool, and they are so proud of him for making it to the NHL, of course.
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You know?
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And that, like, what that he was crying, like, in the dosing room after he came out of the
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mushroom trip telling us this story.
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It so moved him that that little shift that I'm not, you know, I'm not not worthy.
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I actually, have all this support and unconditional love and pride from everybody I
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know.
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That was it.
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That was the shift.
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It's just incredible to me, that you were able to capture these stories because I think, while
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not many of us obviously are going to play in the NHL and be adored by, you know, thousands
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or millions of fans out there, that it is often very easy to forget that we are loved
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unconditionally, that we have so many people around us that are incredibly proud of the
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accomplishments that we have, although we may not be able to see that in our own lives.
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It's incredible.
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Right?
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A guy who makes it to the NHL, you know, the highest level in the world in a sport, like the
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0.0001%, and he and he and he he didn't he didn't have that pride of accomplishment.
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You know?
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He didn't think he was worthy.
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And and and and he he he found that out in that dosing room, and that's what you know, that's
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the the narrative shift that changed everything for him.
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We touched on it a little bit talking before, and I don't wanna give away the whole movie or
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anything.
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And I think that even just the little taste that we're getting in here only, provide more
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context and and a reason for people to go watch.
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But you shared a little bit about the group of veterans, that agreed to not only have you in
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the dosing room with them, but agreed to tell their story predose and to really share some of
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that experience with you.
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So just wanna dive into that vignette a little bit here, for a few minutes.
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You know, so I I should call out Jesse Gould and Heroic Hearts Project.
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They're the group.
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Jesse Gould was an army ranger who struggled with his from his deployments with PTSD, and
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he, you know, couldn't find solutions and found himself in Peru doing Ayahuasca, and that
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changed everything for him.
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So he started this nonprofit organization, Heroic Hearts Project, to bring psychedelic
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healing to other veterans.
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And I think he's, you know, 1,500 or so veterans he's brought, out of the country.
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Right?
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These are veterans who have gotten, hurt in service of their country, and he had to bring
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them out of the country to go find the healing that finally worked for them to places like
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Peru and places like Mexico.
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So Jesse was his group was bringing veterans to Peru for Ayahuasca, so we tagged along on one
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of those expeditions.
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And that's that's how this happened.
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So there were 10 veterans signed up to go on this on this trip.
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And we before they left, you know, we interviewed a lot of them, and that's where we
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got the pre psychedelic stories, you know, and there's three of them, in the film.
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And, you know, they're they're these these people are so raw, you know, from what they
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saw.
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You know, one story is a guy who was, you know, seeing IED destruction and having to clean up
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the body parts of his friends.
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Another was the woman who was raped during her military service while she was getting a tattoo
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by her tattoo artist.
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And the third is his name's Brock Hooten, and he was a special operations guy.
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And, you know, he was asked to do extremely aggressive things that he's not he's you know,
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that that he says he's not proud of.
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And he he was struggling so much with the the memories of what he, had to do, that he said,
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if he didn't go to Peru to try Ayahuasca, was gonna go to Ukraine and volunteer to go on the
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battlefield to the front and hopefully die there.
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That's the that's the way he wanted to go out like a warrior.
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So that's where he was at.
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And, and, you know, they all agreed to let us have cameras in their Ayahuasca ceremonies.
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Yeah.
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Really incredible.
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And I know that, a very powerful experience.
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Now I've never done Ayahuasca, but the, you know, the component and one of the components
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of the Ayahuasca, dimethyltryptamine, DMT, better.
27:18
I've had very short, you know, experiences on that.
27:23
And to allow someone to come in and kind of, you know, document that experience, that's
27:29
incredibly brave, to to leave your country and to do that.
27:32
And I think it really shows what these people struggle with.
27:36
I think that accurately defines the struggle that they have on a daily basis by the lengths
27:42
they are willing to go to get help.
27:45
Right.
27:46
Right.
27:47
You know, I they they they all say that they, you know, through the VA, you know, tried
27:53
everything.
27:54
All the talk therapy, all the antidepressants, and they still, you know, were hitting a brick
28:00
wall and had nowhere else to turn, which is why they, you know, contacted Jesse Gould and his
28:07
organization, Heroic Hearts Project, and sorta, you know, took took a chance.
28:12
It's actually it's very funny in the film, this Brock Hooten, this special ops guy, he's, like,
28:20
very skeptical of it. You
28:21
You know?
28:21
He's like he's like, I mean, this is, you know, this is ridiculous.
28:25
What am I doing?
28:26
He says, you know, this is hocus pocus, but, you know, I gotta I gotta give it a shot
28:31
because why not?
28:33
And that guy had his PTSD erased.
28:36
Totally erased.
28:37
I mean, the guy who was gonna go to Ukraine and see if he could kill himself on the battlefield
28:41
came out of his Ayahuasca, experiences, with his PTSD gone.
28:46
And he has a little kid, and we we show him with his kid in the film.
28:50
And he's, like, now a, committed father again.
28:54
So there are real, you know, real stakes here, personal stakes, in involved.
29:01
And, you know, there's that's that's why I think we're seeing so much political will on
29:09
both sides of the aisle to try to find some legalization pathways for psychedelics.
29:15
Because if if it's working for the military veterans, which it seems to be, you know,
29:21
people need to fall in line and get behind it.
29:23
I mean, you've got Rick former governor Rick Perry in Texas, you know, saying that iBullGain
29:28
is the solution.
29:29
You've got Joe Rogan, you know, at the White House with Trump signing the executive order to
29:34
fast track psychedelics, in particular, IvoGain.
29:37
You've got all these military veterans going to Peru and doing Ayahuasca.
29:41
So it's a super interesting time, in this, in this, like, psychedelic space to see where it's
29:47
gonna lead.
29:49
Yeah.
29:49
And for me, I don't think that I ever thought I would see anything like it as someone who was
29:55
always kind of, you know, demonized a little bit for being someone who enjoyed, you know,
30:00
recreationally taking some of these substances and realizing that I probably probably could
30:06
have been prescribed them if there was a path to a clinical sense.
30:10
Right?
30:11
Things that I was struggling with that I was not ever talking about that I didn't want to
30:15
put out there because I didn't wanna be put on antidepressants.
30:18
I didn't wanna be you know?
30:20
And and thank god that my parents weren't, you know, with my hyperactivity as a child.
30:24
They just gave me extra homework.
30:25
They never prescribed me Ritalin or Adderall or anything like that because I would have become
30:29
a completely different person.
30:31
Right?
30:31
But these substances that are occurring naturally in our earth in one form or another,
30:37
right, some of them not so much a lysergic can be, you know, you know, developed from this, at
30:44
least LSA, MDMA kind of occurring naturally in some things.
30:48
Now some of these are synthesized, but they are synthesized from compounds that are very
30:52
natural in our in our field.
30:54
Right.
30:54
And as someone who grew up in South Dakota, very attached to the native American groups
30:59
around here and the culture of that, knowing that we have everything to heal ourselves
31:05
around us.
31:06
And some of these medicines have been used for maybe tens of thousands of years to to treat
31:12
some of the things that are in front of us right now.
31:15
It's kind of wild to think back to, I mean, my entire lifetime, Jordan, and I'm sure most of,
31:21
if not all of yours, that these these compounds and these substances have always been
31:26
demonized.
31:27
They have always been the enemy of society.
31:30
Well, so so let let's talk about addiction then a little bit because we have a a a vignette in
31:35
the film about addiction.
31:37
You know?
31:37
It's a woman who is a twenty five year opioid addict.
31:42
So she started with, oxy, and then she, for a for a back injury that she had, and then she
31:49
moved, to heroin, and then she moved, to fentanyl.
31:54
And when we met her, again, twenty five years into her addiction, she was smoking fentanyl
32:00
eight to 10 times a day.
32:02
And we spent a day with her before the psychedelics, and she was smoking fentanyl on
32:08
camera.
32:09
I mean, very dramatic to watch someone smoke fentanyl on camera.
32:14
And then she shortly thereafter, she went to Mexico to try Ibogaine, which is a psychedelic,
32:24
you know, one of the most powerful ones from an African shrub and a really long trip, twelve
32:33
hours or so.
32:34
And it's it it it it's there's some anecdotal evidence that it's very good for addiction.
32:40
So this woman did four, eyeball gain, doses in a two week period, or a ten day period in
32:48
Mexico.
32:50
And what the eyeball gain can do as described by the people who run this clinic is that it
32:56
could is that it stops the cravings and withdrawals.
32:59
That somehow it blocks those receptors that that that lead to cravings and withdrawal.
33:05
So it gives you a chance to go clean because, you know, so often people try to go sober and
33:13
the cravings and the withdrawals are too overwhelming.
33:16
But with the eyeball gain, it seems to really diminish the cravings and withdrawals.
33:20
The people who run this clinic say they see that every day with with people who have opioid
33:25
addiction, that that they do the eyeball gain, and they and they get it gets rid of the
33:29
cravings and withdrawals.
33:30
So it gives them a chance to maybe, you know, build a new life, an opioid free life.
33:35
So for our, woman who went and did this eyeball game, she, like, just days after, says that
33:43
she's not craving for the first time in twenty five years, oxy heroin fentanyl, and it gave
33:49
her a chance at being sober.
33:51
And here we are sort of a year or or more later, she's sober and in college.
33:56
This is a woman who did it as an opioid every day for twenty five years, spent a lot of time
34:01
living out of her car, four overdoses, really was, like, you know, in jail, I think, 50
34:07
times.
34:07
I mean, one foot in the grave.
34:09
And now on the other side of the psychedelic eyeball game, she's opioid free, and she's
34:14
sober and in college.
34:16
Yeah.
34:16
Absolutely incredible.
34:18
And I think for people who don't understand addiction, they think, well, just quit.
34:22
Right?
34:23
Well, it's not that easy when you're doing drugs like heroin or fentanyl or or any of
34:28
these, you know, the pharmaceuticals much worse than their natural variants occurring in the
34:33
world.
34:34
It's not just a turn it off and quit using it thing.
34:37
The withdrawals, even from something like alcohol, which can have some of the worst
34:40
withdrawals for for alcoholics especially, and because alcohol is so prevalent in our society,
34:46
I think maybe one of the hardest addictions to overcome, you need a hard reset.
34:52
You need something that is going to physically and mentally reset you so you can come out
34:58
fresh again and actually have a chance.
35:00
Because I I believe without that, the the journey, and not that it's impossible, but, you
35:06
know, it's like climbing Mount Everest without a Sherpa.
35:10
Right.
35:11
I I mean, you know and and some people might watch this film and say, oh, you cherry picked
35:18
the people that you put in the film.
35:20
That is not the case.
35:22
These are just the people that we cast for the film.
35:26
Of course, you make decisions when you're casting for a movie.
35:29
You gotta meet the people, and you've gotta, you know, think that they're gonna be
35:33
articulate and good communicators.
35:35
And they have to trust the filmmakers to agree to go on camera and, you know, take
35:39
psychedelics in front of cameras with microphones on.
35:43
But these are the people.
35:44
Like, we are just show we are we didn't leave anyone on the cutting room floor.
35:48
We are showing you everybody that we chose before they had done the psychedelics.
35:53
We got all their stories before, and then we show you, them doing the psychedelics, and then
35:59
we show you what happened afterwards.
36:01
And these are the outcomes.
36:02
We are not, like we are not cherry picking.
36:04
No one's on the cutting room floor.
36:05
This this is the cast that we went into the filmmaking, and these are the actual outcomes
36:10
across the board.
36:11
Well and I think that you have to shoot it that way.
36:14
You you can't leave out the stories if there was one of somebody not being cured.
36:18
You couldn't leave that out because, I mean, we live in the age of the Internet.
36:22
That would come out eventually.
36:23
So you're completely, you know, at at a loss to yourself.
36:27
If it didn't work, it didn't work.
36:28
It really and especially as a documentary filmmaker, it's not really your job to to bring
36:34
the perception.
36:35
All you're doing is putting a camera in there and showing what has taken place.
36:39
So it it is not either your fault or any of your doing that the healing has happened or
36:45
that, you know, to some people's dismay, that some healing, you know, did not happen.
36:50
Right?
36:50
Like, it's you can't blame me that everyone who entered this came out changed for the better.
36:57
And, you know, just it was it was incredible experience to bear witness to these changes.
37:02
I mean, you know, as a filmmaker, you're always looking for drama, you know, for for tension,
37:08
for conflict.
37:09
That's what makes good narrative.
37:10
And, in this instance, we, you know, we go to these dosing rooms, and we just know the person
37:17
is gonna take that psychedelics, and really fascinating stuff is gonna happen.
37:22
And it did, you know, across the board.
37:24
And our challenge was to, visualize it because so much of what's happening is taking place
37:31
inside the mind.
37:33
You know?
37:33
So that was a challenge, which is where some of these, animations, these, came into effect.
37:39
And we use them sparingly in the film, but I think they're I think they're pretty powerful.
37:44
Well and especially when you have something to base it off of, someone recounting a story and
37:48
and to be able to provide that visual aspect of it for the entertainment value, but also to
37:54
give that a a little taste of that experience to the viewers.
37:59
Right?
37:59
Just people telling their stories, that doesn't land with a lot of people.
38:03
So many of us are are visually motivated and don't really have the imagination to be able to
38:08
put ourselves in those shoes, but you're now able to take that and and with some of the
38:13
animations even though you sparingly to bring a little bit of that experience to the people
38:19
that are watching the film.
38:20
And now it has an opportunity, with its release coming here theatrically very soon to maybe
38:27
bring other people to healing.
38:28
And I think that to me is maybe the most exciting part of the film as a whole.
38:34
I I wanna touch on before I let you go today, the the first showing of this.
38:39
You got to go to Los Angeles, the iconic Chinese theater.
38:43
I'll just kinda let you tell the story and wax poetic about that experience both as a
38:48
filmmaker and as someone who, you know, is a is in this project specifically.
38:55
Yeah.
38:55
You know, you make a film like this, and it's just, you know, a small group that are making
39:00
it.
39:00
Me as the director, a woman named Hannah Vicente Kleot is the producer, and, you know,
39:06
Trace Driscoll and Jason Schmidt, the editors.
39:09
And we're just for months and months and months, you know, making this thing, and we
39:12
think it's powerful.
39:14
And but we don't know.
39:15
You know?
39:16
And we're showing it to some colleagues and to some business people, and they're watching it
39:21
on their phone or they're watching on their laptop.
39:24
And, you know, they're watching it sort of analytically because they're thinking, is there
39:28
a transaction involved here?
39:30
So in LA, for the world's premier in the Chinese theaters, that was the first time a
39:36
room got to see it, and the room had to surrender to it.
39:41
No iPhone.
39:42
No laptop.
39:44
Surrender.
39:45
Watch the film on a big screen with great speakers, surround sound, and see what it does
39:51
to you.
39:51
That's what we had been waiting for, and that's the experience that we got.
39:55
And it was turbocharged because a lot of people that were in the film were in that audience
40:01
watching it for the first time and seeing themselves in their most vulnerable states,
40:07
before, the psychedelics at their lowest point in their lives and then seeing themselves take
40:13
psychedelics and then seeing, the transformation.
40:16
So it was such a powerful experience, because, it just the whole room felt emotionally moved
40:26
and intellectually engaged.
40:29
And afterwards, we had the like, I think 12 members of the cast that have there's probably,
40:34
like, 25 in the film.
40:35
12 members were there, like, on stage in the flesh so the audience could see, you know,
40:41
these people, after having watched them totally transform their lives.
40:46
And, you know, one story, I think, sort of, encapsulates the experience for me is that one
40:52
of the women in the film, the military veteran, who was, raped by her tattoo artist during her
40:59
military service, she, told tells us that story and shows us the tattoo that is right on the on
41:07
her panty line that she has from her rapist.
41:11
And she tells us, we we we're with her in in the Amazon jungle as she does Ayahuasca, and
41:17
she is shaking uncontrollably.
41:19
And she says it was like an exorcism, like the sexual, all the trauma from the sexual abuse
41:26
was being purged from her body in a physical fashion.
41:29
That's what you see as you watch, her on the Ayahuasca.
41:33
So at the right after the film ended, she said, oh my god.
41:37
I can't believe I chose to be in this film.
41:39
I think it was a big mistake.
41:40
I feel so vulnerable.
41:42
I feel so exposed.
41:43
I feel so raw.
41:44
I don't I shouldn't have done this, and she was really almost having a little bit of a panic
41:48
attack about it.
41:50
And then, you know, we tried to calm her down.
41:52
We went to the after party with her, and person after person after person from the audience
41:58
approached her to tell her how much they admire her, to tell her how brave she is, to tell her
42:04
how important her story is, and to just hug her and cry with her.
42:09
And it happened, like, 20 times to the point where at the end of the party, she came up to
42:14
me and she said, forget everything I told you right after the movie.
42:17
This is now the best decision I made in my life.
42:20
I feel like my story is, like, powerful, and, I think it's courageous.
42:25
And I think it's, like, a message that I want other people to hear.
42:29
So, for us, that was just, like, what that was what you hope you can accomplish when you go
42:36
make a movie that it can, like, not only, like, have an audience react in such an emotional
42:41
way, but also have the people in the film feel like they went on a journey that, that that
42:47
changed them, that was meaningful and important.
42:51
Yeah.
42:51
Absolutely incredible.
42:54
The community that is going to be built around this film and yourself.
42:59
And I don't know, Jordan, because you've always been someone who's probably, you know, more
43:03
behind the camera and behind the scenes, but, now I feel like there's a little bit of
43:09
platform that you're going to have as an evangelist for psychedelics as well, whether
43:14
you're someone who used them or prescribes them at all, but people are going to look to you.
43:19
Are there any inclinations, I guess, on your side to to keep digging at this?
43:24
Because like you said, we are in the blooming now of this renaissance.
43:28
You're someone who's been around and has seen it for the last two decades growing to this.
43:33
Do you see yourself doing more films and really digging into the subject matter moving forward
43:39
from here now that the movie is, you know, by all intents, kind of finally birthed and out
43:45
there into the world?
43:46
You know, that's a that's a good question.
43:49
I don't know that I have the answer yet because one of the struggles that we're engaged in
43:58
right now is getting attention for the film.
44:01
And, you know, we we we think that we hope that this can be a place for people to go to learn
44:11
about psychedelics, in an efficient way.
44:14
You know?
44:15
It's a it's a movie.
44:16
It's it's ninety minutes.
44:18
It's got all of the bells and whistles.
44:20
This good music, good good good visuals, interesting characters, you know, incredible
44:26
transformations.
44:27
So we hope that this can be like psychedelics one zero one that you can you can, through the
44:33
experience of watching this movie, really get to understand the the the landscape.
44:38
You know?
44:38
So but we gotta get we gotta get people into the seats in the theaters.
44:43
And it's, a very crowded, noisy, media landscape, and, we gotta figure out a way, to
44:51
get attention.
44:52
And what we do know is that there is a big, psychedelic community out there.
44:58
These are the people that go to psychedelic conferences.
45:01
These are the people that listen to psychedelic podcasts.
45:03
They're on the psychedelic mailing list.
45:05
They're out there, and we just gotta go find them and try to get them to watch this film.
45:10
Plus the military veteran community, plus the mental health addiction suicide prevention
45:16
community, plus the sports community.
45:19
So that's the mission that we're engaged in right now, you know, trying to market this
45:24
thing for this, theatrical release that'll take place in September 25 starting in Portland and
45:29
then spread to other cities, thereafter.
45:31
And, you know, I I I just hope it I hope I hope we we get audiences, and I hope it connects the
45:37
way we think it should.
45:40
Well, I believe that it will.
45:42
I'm very happy to be a small part of that Yeah.
45:45
You know, pushing it out there, allowing you to tell the story, not just of yourself, but of
45:51
the people, the characters inside of this film and really just encourage everyone to go check
45:56
out Peeking Psychedelics and the Pursuit of Happiness, coming to a theater hopefully near
46:02
you.
46:03
A film tour now is on the horizon and getting this out into the world.
46:09
We'd love to be a part of that in every single way that we can, Jordan.
46:12
So I thank you for your time today, and I thank you for for just everything that you've done
46:19
for the veteran community, for the sports community.
46:22
You know, it's something that two things that we're very passionate about here as well as
46:27
being very passionate about evangelizing for the use of psychedelics in that realm.
46:32
So really appreciate all the work that you're doing.
46:34
Everybody can check out peakingdocumentary.com.
46:37
That is peakingdocumentary.com to find more information.
46:43
Jordan, anything I didn't hit on that you wanna plug before I let you go?
46:46
No.
46:46
No.
46:46
It's been great to talk to you today, Bubba.
46:49
I think maybe one parting thought is that, you know, the psychedelics, I mean, it is
46:56
overflowing right now.
46:58
It is not going anywhere.
47:00
You are gonna see, some synthetic psychedelics getting legalized soon.
47:06
You're gonna see some traditional psychedelics getting legalized.
47:11
This is, like, a a, you know, a breakthrough in, in sort of, you know, psychiatry or mental
47:19
health healing that hasn't happened in almost a century.
47:22
And I I I think, like like, you know, it's it's just about to explode.
47:27
So we're just really excited that we're gonna, with this film, kinda make a contribution, and
47:32
and, hopefully, we're we're hitting it at the right moment, which it feels like.
47:37
Definitely does, Jordan.
47:39
Well, thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for being part of the scene.
47:43
Thanks, Bubba.
47:44
Great to talk to you.