Latest / White Fox Talking / E91: The Fight Beyond the Ring with Matthew “The Spider” Morton – Trauma, Addiction and Healing

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E91: The Fight Beyond the Ring with Matthew “The Spider” Morton – Trauma, Addiction and Healing · White Fox Talking

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to the White Fox Talking podcast and vlog.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Tonight's guest is Matthew Morton, known as The Spider, a professional bare knuckle fighter, some of whose fights may not have been in the ring, or some of the biggest fights may not have been in the ring.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: We will be talking childhood trauma, we're talking addiction, years of chaos, and finding a better way through, a recovery through the use of plant medicine.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: And we'd also be welcome, Dave Gallagher, our resident psychologist.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Hello.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Hello.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: And also, as ever, is Seb.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, Tarney.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we should see.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: And everyone.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: And everyone, yeah.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: So cool.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome, Matthew.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me on, guys.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Now I've got your name right.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get with that.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: So can I ask you to just give us a brief summary of all that that I've just said?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Sum it up and then we'll lead on from there.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go right from the start.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Morton.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm an ex-heroine and cracker dict.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a professional bare knuckle fighter.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an ex-criminal, ex really shit burglar.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ex-junky just trying to make use of his life now and the years I've got left.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's quite a lot in there.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: And a bigger mission.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, bigger mission.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, massive mission.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'd like to know more about being a shit burglar, but we'll maybe get on to that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask you, because I think experience of running the or speaking on the podcast and presenting the podcast, we find that a lot of people's issues do stem from being in childhood.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: And what was childhood like?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: My childhood was rough.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So prior, so when my mum and dad were together, I was a really young kid.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: My dad, not maybe the best parentally.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I get along well with him as a mate now.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I was younger, I think he dealt with me the same way he'd been dealt with, so to speak.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe catching a couple of hands and a couple of back hands, and he was quite handsy in terms of like if you were going to be punished, you got you'd get battered.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like mum and dad split up.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I started acting out in school, probably probably due to the fact that, you know, I was young, my mum and dad were splitting up.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like my dad didn't really bother with me when I was a kid after my mum and mum split up.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was constantly chasing him to be my father, and I didn't really, you know, as a kid I didn't really understand that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: My mum then seeked parental help from someone she worked with for 20 years.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: This person was chairman of Penrith Eden Council.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was a prolific sex offender, blood sex offender.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, my mum didn't know this going into it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um I started spending time with him previous to the abuse starting, you know, he was a nice, nice bloke, but I suppose that's what they do, isn't it?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: To mask the way in and to manipulate the way into these situations where they get access to kids after seeing very above board.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my childhood resulted in sexual abuse really early on, and that really shaped the way I grew up.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It shaped the way I perceive relationships close to me, relationships that didn't exist at the moment.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it pers it it sort of destroyed the way I perceived good and evil in the world.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just thought everything was evil as a result of this.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I became a crack and heroin addict at 12-year-old, which you know I mean as as as everyone knows, 12-year-olds are coming through puberty, uh life's hard and challenging enough as it is, and then I'd obviously sexual abuse into that, I had crack and heroin addiction.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: My childhood life was extremely chaotic.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well it sounds it, I'll be honest.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you what sort of age abuse started?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um so from about nine till I was about twelve.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: With the with would you say that the the sort of drug use was an escape.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: Was it still going on while at that age, or was it?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was sort of spinning towards the end of it.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was sort of like when I started breaking away.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think because I was doing drugs, I was hanging around with people, I was getting into trouble, that's sort of probably the end for him pulling back a little bit in the sense of like probably could see things were about to come out and do you know, like that things weren't as probably safe for him as they were.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: For me, drugs and alcohol did a really good way of just shutting my brain down.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've got ADST, my brain's a million miles an hour, um, at the best of times.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it used to be a million miles an hour with horrible thoughts about myself, shame and guilt.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So adding crack and heroin into the mix as as as daft as it sounds, stimulants used to m bring me down and used to make me quiet and close in on myself, and then downers just used to put me to sleep so I could sleep at the end of the night, then became an everyday ordeal for me for nearly 15 years.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Do you well do you recall whether you I suppose it's whether you recognised any symptoms of being ADHD before that abuse started?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's funny.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So reflecting now as an adult and I look back to say prior to the abuse, how I was with say sports, how I was with certain things, I would say it's probably definite the signs were there prior to the abuse.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think, you know, when I was a kid, if you were just a hyper kid, you were just uh you were just into stuff, you know what I mean?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I look back on my life, my childhood, and I look at really into football, but hyper focused on football all at Matter was football, and then it's like you know, I'd watch films like Wallace and Gromet, for instance, yeah.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I I picked Wallace and Gromet because it's the reason I stopped eating cheese when they stopped eating stopped putting Wallace and Gromet film, stopped eating cheese.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: My mum said I used to sit in front of the TV, cheese and crackers, watch Wallace and Grommet.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: She said they stopped making it, you stopped eating cheese.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the hyper focus extended into every part of my life.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when I speak to my mum now, she's like, Oh, you the signs were there, but maybe at the time you don't realise that they are signs, you know, until it's sort of like later on in life.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So how old are you now if you don't mind this?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: 30 years old now.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just trying to put like a time scale on it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: So we're looking at if I can do my maths, 2000s, 90s.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: So this is when people started talking about ADHD more and would be more prevalent, innit?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I think it's like anything, isn't it, with mental health or uh problems you can't physically see.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: People don't believe they're there.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or people look for excuses to sort of even misdiagnose, yeah.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I think massively, especially like now, you look at um women, for instance, specifically, get misdiagnosed with BPD or ADHD a lot.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can either they're misdiagnosed with BPD, but they've got ADHD because the symptoms are very similar, or the other way around.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: At different points in my life, people have either decided that I had ADSD, or are you just saying that to try and get out of the fact that you're a fucking little shit?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're just saying that to get out of trouble, or you're just saying that because your concentration's crap.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying it because I've got ADHD.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what were you like in school then?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a few different secondary schools.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was very disruptive to like getting into fights.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I set a lot of drugs, uh, truant a lot.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I went to five different secondary schools.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got kicked out of one for fighting, moved to another, got kicked out there for drugs, got let back in the first school, I got kicked out of to have another school, and then I just went to a um like a behavioural centre at the end, which was like two days a week, please turn up, please behave.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: At school I was if I was interested in a subject, I was interested in it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So history and still tell you uh stuff about World War II, World War One and Al Capone and things I really enjoyed learning about.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maths fucking hate it.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm actually really good at maths as well, which is really sad because I fucking hair is I think it's boring, and if something for me is boring, it doesn't grip my attention.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've I really struggle to uh to latch onto it almost.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Have you not used signs and cosigns since you left school?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what's that?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not really.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've not really used none of it to be honest.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Basically adding them subtracting, I'm alright, algebra and all that shit.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm brain deadward.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean we talk about quite a lot on podcasts about young people being in a a square box with fitness.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well yeah, I think I think I think that's the thing, they try and pin pinhole everyone in the same the same category of learning, the same everyone learns the same, everyone does this the same.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not reality, is it?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some people learn at different rates, some people learn differently in terms of like the learnings.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I learn the best way I've found I've learned now I'm doing university as an adult and now I'm doing college courses as an adult is if I listen to my lectures while I'm doing physical exercise, I retain the information massively because I'm doing two things at once.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it just seems to register with me.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if I'm purposely sat trying to retain the information in and cram it in, it just doesn't sit.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very much the same, I think.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever talk to anyone about abuse when you were a child?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so how I come out about being abused was was a bit of a weird one, really.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I I used to wash dishes um for a a restaurant in Penrith.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I must have been about 14 at this point.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years have passed, things have started to move on.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't really registered at this point.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, obviously I knew that I was being sexually abused, like I knew that what was happening to me wasn't right and it wasn't really register at any point that I was being raped.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like the two I knew what was happening, and I knew I was being raped in the sense of like I knew what was happening to me as a person, and it was horrible how it was making me feel, but I didn't really click that that was like the word associated with it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I I was at work one day just washing dishes, you know, I needed needed money for drugs, so I'd I'd I was always in work turning up, doing my things.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Someone made a joke that probably now, if I heard, I won't repeat the joke, but if I heard the joke now, I'd laugh because my sense of humour has developed into human.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've got quite a dark sense of humour, so things that probably wouldn't make normal people laugh, make me laugh, whether it's cut mechanism for what I've been through, whether it's like just trying to soften things like that.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So someone made a joke and it made me feel sick to my stomach, and the punchline was about it was a meddling McCann reference joke, yeah, and the punchline was obviously about being sexually abused, and it just made me feel sick, like sick to the point where it was like penny had dropped, like I was like, that's what's been happening.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I I remember leaving work, going outside and having a cigarette, and I remember at the time my ex-girlfriend, um, and telling her what had happened.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I don't really know how to deal with this, I don't know, you know, I was 14, she was 14, you know what I mean?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably a bit to tell someone, isn't it?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So she got her mum involved, her mum rung the police, her mum rung my mum, and what'd happened, and from there things started to come out.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was it's a big pinpoint for me that because I come out about being sexually abused, I think a week before my 15th birthday, and I remember on the day of my 15th birthday, sitting in a police evidence room giving video evidence against you know some someone who'd abused me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for a long time I associated my birthday and Christmas with that memory.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it really really ruined quite um quite a pleasant part of me.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know usually you like your birthday and you like Christmas, good good chance for like family, good chance for celebration.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: A good chance for um it's quite a community value holiday, isn't it?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you've got everyone around, celebrates Christmas.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hate anything festive because of that memory.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was like the first time I'd talked about it, really.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so facing up to that at that age, I think that's that was a massive thing, really.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um and as opposed to going into that, can you recall how you felt going into that?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because I suppose that there's a lot of that there's so much evidence that sexual abuse is hidden, but it's because of this people thinking of the shame.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big there's a big stigma there, isn't there?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think especially like so you look at and I'm I'm I'm not saying specifically, but you look at women and and they're believed in the sense of, you know, that they can go to police and and ideally if one comes to you and says that they've been raped, you know, chances are you're gonna believe it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: The stigma there for men coming out about it, you know, because I got like I was I was 14 year old coming out about being sexually abused and going back to school and getting bottles thrown at me and called a faggot, or I was getting chased and attacked by people in my town, and then fully grown men who were 40 and 50 at the time going, Oh, you're a fucking liar, rah rah rah, rah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like so there was that side of things, then there was the side of things that like you had people around the town talking because I was getting arrested all the time.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, my outlet for all this prior to coming out about it was going and doing drugs, being a shit burglar to feed me habit, you know, breaking in people's houses, getting caught, not getting caught, coming out of things.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: People always thought, oh, maybe he's just using this as an excuse to get away with the trouble he's been causing.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it was a a very turmoil point in my life.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: It made me feel very sinken in myself, very withdrawn.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it also made me feel very chaotic and very angry in myself.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Angry at my own actions for letting it happen.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Even though now as an adult I can reflect on it and and you know, no child deserves to go through that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time, in my head, I was thinking, well, what have I done to deserve this?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this happening to just me?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this this must be something I've brought on to myself.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you're surrounded by guilt and shame and and this really uneasiness, and then you sort of don't really know who to trust because that was the chairman of a council, you know, quite a high up, high-up local councillor, quite a well-to-do bloke, and then I was like, I'm not gonna be believed, managed to come out about it, and then I had all the backlash from everyone else.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, leading up to the whole court procedure and leading up was very much I thought, no one believes me.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he's gonna get away with this, and and that quite a sickening thought more than anything, you know what I mean.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think like af after I come out about it, it turned out prehistorically he'd done it to loads of other kids.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Used to work as a boarding school teacher and he'd done it to kids there.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they were from like 20 years ago, do you know?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I look at like in the grand scheme of things now, I'm able to like really give myself a pat on the back because had I not come out about it, maybe it would have happened to other people in the future.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But also these lads that came out after I've come out, they've probably got a bit of closure now as well, you know what I mean?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and they're able to move on.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, I think like ultimately it was was needed, it was the best thing to do.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, other people did come out and yeah, there's like yeah, like five or six lads who used to work at uh boarding school over near Blackpool.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it just goes to show like the height of people's characteristics and how people can just sort of loom in the background and get away with these things, you know what I mean?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's I always feel proud of myself for breaking that loop and and you know, and the reason he'll never do that again.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's cool.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that's that's a good feeling, you know what I mean.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean it's city, I suppose it's sickening for us to hear, you know what I mean?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then when we think about all the other guests that we've had on, you displaying like, we're fighting at that age, you're fighting at that age.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: So you're fighting, you're committing crime, you're doing drugs.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, 12-year-old's quite young to be trying cracking it.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: Apparently, so I've heard.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um so but to be doing that, they're all symptoms of what was happening to you rather than cause and mutation.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than cause and effect, yeah.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the thing is a lot of people struggle to look at the symptoms because you it's it's very easy to look and say, Oh, they're symptoms of once you know the the scenario, yeah.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: The bigger picture.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: But when people are just looking at it from an outside perspective, it's like a lot I think a lot of people just thought it was being bad because my mom and dad is just acting out, you know what I mean?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got involved with the wrong people.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then I was constantly being told I was the problem, you know, even even after I come out about the abuse, afterwards, how I dealt with myself afterwards, oh you're the fucking problem, you're the problem, you know what I mean?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I think for me what was really heavy, I come out about it, spent 15th birthday in the video evidence room, then I spent the next nine months in and out of interviews, in and out of court procedures, reading it in the paper, and that was that was a difficult, difficult for me because there was points where you know you he was on bail and you run away, and then in the paper it's slapped all over the paper that he was missing.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm getting run, oh, don't go to school, don't go do this.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So then it's like the the the fear factor that that instilled in me as a as a to my core now, even I mean, not so bad now, but up until a few years ago, like I could see specific cars that reminded me of freeze, like traumatised.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not so bad now, I've I've managed to process a lot of it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, like I I mean it might sound daft saying this, but I've forgiven him for what he's done to me.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But not not really forgiving him for him, but forgiving him for me, you know what I mean?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh it's too much hatred to harbour onto.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a lot because it's soul consuming.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not healthy, is it, to walk around with that hate.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely not, because I and then you hold the world and you view on the world and you view on people basically on a pedestal based on some shit cunt that's fucking done something horrible to you in your life.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that shit couldn't would have done that to any child.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't specifically me, it was just I happened to fit the criteria at the time.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't and I think really it's sad.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is what it is.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Can't be anything else, can it?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, that is No, and I think if you take it back to just personally, if you take it back to that thought of if you hadn't have spoken up at that time, then that it'd have been just following.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Reframe it like that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And a cycle becomes patterns and and there's things that people don't people don't tend to change them patterns of behaviour and change.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad that, you know, I was able to come out and he was he was able to get jailed for what he did.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I do think the sentence in terms of what he got, like there was me and five other kids, he got fifteen years in total.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think he served four years and he was out.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the extent, I think, of the problem in in society today is they're very quick to give drug dealers really harsh sentences and they're very quick to give people harsh sentences for daft stuff.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you can go on Facebook now and and write something.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: If someone takes offence to it, you get locked up to it and you can be jailed for it.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where where are the people that are hurting innocent children?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Where's their punishments?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like proper punishments, because you can't in my well, in my eyes, my opinion, can't rehabilitate someone like that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: That there's something wrong with you.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's something wrong with you, you core, and you're never gonna be fucking right, you know what I mean.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well I think you speak for most of the population there.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Apart from them in uh them in government anyway.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: So the bare knuckle boxing, bare knuckle fighting, how did you get into that?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: Was that part of this rebellion or?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Randomly, to be honest.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always I've always been a tall bloke.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been involved with rough the rough crowd.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was 12-year-old hanging around with 18, 19 year olds, so I was out burgling at 12-year-old trying to get money for fixes.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I fell in instinctively with the wrong crowd.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then as I've grown up, I've grown into quite quite liking the wrong crowd, to be honest.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think like even though people you know they give them they give them a bad rep, they're just a normal people that have maybe made shitty decisions, but then you look you've got to look at the deeper picture as to why have they made these shitty decisions, what's the cause and effect of them getting in the scenarios that they're in.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So then you're looking at them, how they are with me as tw at 12-year-old, was they were looking after me, they were taking care of me.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were providing me drugs for their own benefit in the sense of you know, feeding their pockets, feeding stuff.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was like the only sense of family I ever really had.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I was always fighting, always fighting growing up, whether it was for drugs, whether it was, you know, like I I could be hanging at the park, but oh I might go over and just just starting in.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up starting, you end up fighting.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I boxed a little bit when I was a kid, probably from like 11 to 12, not not anything serious.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So then when uh a few years ago I ended up I was living in Lee, um, near Wigan, uh Maple Crescent, I was living on Wesley, and I'd gone to the pharmacy to pick a methadone, gone around the back of the pharmacy, some crack and heroin at the same time.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's the last thing I remember.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I remember waking up in a mental health hospital with oddly enough, the pharmacist that'd give me my methadone was sat by my bed.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: She'd been in there visiting me every other day for three weeks, or I'd spent three weeks in psychosis, not really knowing where I was, rattling, being sick, you know.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'd I'd overdosed, she took me to the hospital, then I spent the next three weeks in psychosis and withdrawal.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've come round, I've sort of come too into the sense of like I remember where I am and I remember that moment waking up, speaking to her, her telling me what to do, check in, checking with staff what was going on.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point it was like, I've done my rattle now.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was always my problem getting sober was the feeling.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't like I didn't like hard work.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: So before I got sober, I didn't like doing anything that was hard work, like easy gratification, quick, sound, done, I can fuck off, you know what I mean.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need anything that was overexerted or anything that took any mental pressure because I couldn't I couldn't hack it.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I did three weeks and I wasn't I wasn't feeling sick.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Normally I was waking up in the morning and I was putting, like until I had a bag of bag of heroin and a bag of crack, I was puting.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: More more so the heroin made me physically sick.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: The crack was more of a mental um addiction, but the two go hand in hand.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I did three weeks and I thought, oh fucking hell, I feel sound, I feel alright, you know what I mean?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I feel better than I've ever felt for as long as I can remember.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I started going to the gym in the mental health ward.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I started putting out some feelers, I got accepted into a Christian rehab, so I thought, right, I've not really got anywhere to live.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have, but I owe fucking tens of thousands of pounds off credit cocaine and heroin stuff, but I'm not going back there.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I applied for a Christian rehab, got into Christian rehab, and from there I just started going to the gym, training, training, hitting a punching bag, hitting a punching bag.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought to myself, do you know what I need something to just do?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some I don't know anything I enjoy doing.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: What do I enjoy doing?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy slinging it around the back of pubs and fucking idiots.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm right.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna sign up for a boxing fight.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I signed up for a hybrid boxing fight, which is um boxing in MMA gloves, and that was one of the first professional sanctioned hybrid boxing fights in in England.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did that, I won, knocked him out in the second round, and I thought, fucking hell, really enjoyed this.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I booked a bare knuckle a week later on some really small platform and I won that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I booked another bare knuckle like two weeks after that, and it just from that first six months of getting sober, seeing my time and energy, I think I fought like eight times.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them were bare knuckle off.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was fighting with broken thumbs, I was fighting with broken ribs.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't care whether I was winning or losing, I was just doing it because it gave me a reason to be disciplined and it gave me a reason to stay structured.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: It exerted all my fucking energy for my ADHD because I was hyper focused and I was like, oh my god, this isn't in, I'm enjoying this.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: The adrenaline I got from it was like better than any drug I've ever taken.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: So from there I was like, this is what I'm gonna do.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: It just sort of fell into it by accident, really.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just and you've got that quick gratification as well, don't you?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's super quick, isn't it?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you go into a fight.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's done.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: When it's done, you're like, fucking hell, that was my butt what I like about fighting and what I what I really take from fighting is you get both.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you get the short term gratification from fucking like when when you've won and crowds are cheering you on, that's like a oh my god, I feel meant like that's a on top of the world thing.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get all the grafting as well.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you get the graft, which is the mental exhaustion and stuff like that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I needed.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realise the thing I was missing from my life for the whole 13, 14 years was structure, routine, and discipline.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's stuff I'd never had.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So then to implement it in my own life, but for myself, was was fucking next to nobody, mate.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: That that that was the the monumental point in my life where everything changed.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And all my mates were going, Oh, you've started boxing at 27-year-old, you DAFCON.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, you think you're gonna turn professional?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, watch.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, six months from now, I says, I'll I'll I'll be a professional bear knucklefire.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Will you fuck, will you fuck Vlad's have boxed for 20 years in this gym?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Six months later, I walk back in, four fight contractors.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: There she was up and be fucking smoking duck guns.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: So have you got this?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's just because I'm fucking big, tall, and ugly, and fucking I sell tickets, you know what I mean?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a good story, so it's like almost the fighting aspect of it didn't really matter because I could slap my picture on a poster and it people wanted to know, you know what I mean.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I made my professional bare knuckle debut on uh BKB, um which was BYB at the time, an American company that bought some company in this country, and I thought some lad, actually Yorkshire lads, really nice lad, Alex Wilson.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I smashed him with my teeth out, and I thought, oh fuck, there's the level change, you know what I mean?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So like I'd been just training myself to this point, first six months training myself, going to a boxing gym, sparring and that, but not really having any direction or anything.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember in the promo video leading up to this fight, I was like, Oh, you'll need a trip to Turkey, Daf Kunk, so I'm gonna smash your teeth out, yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I remember Did you, after that fight, I was still feeling good?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, definitely.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I lost my pro fights.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: I understand, like, if you watch my fights online, I'm not technically the best boxer in the world, I'm a scrapper, like I like brawling.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've come in swinging and I I like just having a good punch up, you know what I mean?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never ever going to be a world champion, like I understood this even when I started.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I've won a few British belts, I've won a few, you know, do you know like hybrid championship belts?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've got on a professional circuit, but what it allows me to do is stay disciplined, it allows me to stay focused, it allows me to punch the fuck out of someone and get punched without getting locked up.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I get paid for it, I can fucking go home at the end of the day and I'm like lying in bed.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, fucking hell, I can't see out my left eye, I can't feel my right hand, but I feel fucking bent.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just done everyone always says to me, Oh, do you not get scared when you're walking out?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I get a little bit scared, a little bit of fear when I'm walking out to the ring and thought, you know, like as I'm walking into the ring, I thought, it's too late now, you're gonna have to get in there and fucking fight anyway, you know what I mean.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, yeah, I'm talking to myself through the process.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: But win or lose, it's nothing in the sense of like the scariest thing that's ever happened to me happened to me when I was a kid, so I don't I don't fear no man, I don't fear no situation.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Granted, some situations and certain people I would rather not fight, and I would rather not get entangled in drama and do this, but if it comes, it comes, and if it happens, it happens.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Reality is I do this for myself to push myself to be 1% better than I was yesterday to show my son that I'm I'm no longer a smackhead and I'm no longer a shit dad.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've changed and put purpose in the pain that I've gone through, and with a little bit of you know, goodwill and a little bit of kindness to myself and a little bit of help from other people, I've proved that you're never really too far gone, you can fucking change your life around, you know.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like at one point, mate, I was peep I I've never really mentioned this on any other podcast, so I feel like this is a good chance to get this out.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up as a prolific burglar, I was really shit at it, used to get caught.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've caught so many hiding in and out of people's houses, I've been levered in the back of people's gardens, I've been levered under people's stairs, I've been levered all over people's houses trying to trying to burgle.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: There was a point in my life where I was like 18, 19, I was like, I think I'm pretty shit at burgling.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: I keep getting arrested for keep getting caught.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I went into I went into looking at fraud and committing tax rebate, fraud, and then committing like when when the when the government brought back all these bounce back loans for COVID.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't incriminate yourself.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're like an exclusive.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: We like to see you again.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, all all these all these tax rebates and stuff, and I was just flooding money in and I wasn't having to go out and commit crime and do what was stupid, but I was getting like tens of thousands of pounds, and that's where my problem really went.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I got really bad and I was spending stupid amounts of money.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like at one point in 2019, I think I spent 50 grand in three months.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was living in the back of someone's shed.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know whose shed, just in the bottom of someone's garden, and I had about£20,000 in a rucksack, loads of cocaine, and I could have easily I had a house at this point as well.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I could have just opened the door to the shed and left and gone back to my house and smoked crack in my own house.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I got that paralyzed with psychosis and fear.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed in the shed for four days drinking my own piss because I was too scared to go out just so I could smoke crack.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, oh, someone's gonna someone's gonna know I've got cocaine, they're gonna want to share it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like so I just stayed in the shed like uh take took me to a a point of psychosis every time.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: The money I spent's fucking absolutely pedlin.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: But do you know what?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Coming through it, it's proved to myself how fucking resilient I am.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: On your can I ask any injuries, serious injuries from the venical box?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know where this is leading next?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do, yes.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've had my eyebrow hanging over my face twice.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've got stitches there, scar there, scar there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So as a result of a thing fight I had in Wolverhampton on BKB, I got traumatic brain injury, which you know I probably should have stopped fighting then, but I didn't.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: So probably made the brain injury a little bit worse.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, a few broken bones.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: So does this is this where we go to Athletes Journey Home?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: So is this how you got involved in that?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So quite quite quite um mad little story, actually, to be honest, about Athletes Journey Home.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So um I was assigned fighter to BKB or BYB at the time.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Ak Irwin, who is with Athletes Journey Home with Ian McCall.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's also signed to BKB or BYB.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Me and him follow each other.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Irwin has been my one one of my heroes for a very long time in terms of growing up, watching him fight, watching him box, watching him do burn up.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that guy's meant, I want to be just like him, anyway, carrying on, getting wrecked, doing nothing.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then sobbered up, got signed to BKB, got the head injury.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd I'd I've done a few podcasts just talking about what I'd been through as a kid, child abuse.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Mark had seen one of the clips and he was like, Oh, I think I could really help you out.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to come to Columbia?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote back on in this on Instagram.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote back, I'd love to come to Columbia, mate, but my finances do not agree with me leaving the country ever.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I can't even get to Carlisle.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Your email address.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent him my email address.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: I woke up in the morning and had all my tickets were paid for, my retreat was paid for.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, like Valcadez, who owns BKB, has donated£200,000 or or a load of money towards um athletes' journey home.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna take BKB fighters away with, you know, like his part of the money.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was how I got involved.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was shitting myself because I mean, as far as I was concerned, random bloke.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, granted I know who he is, some random blokes offered me to come to South America for a couple of weeks, paid for my ticket.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bit weird, you know.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, oh, might be made, but they paid for my retreat.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go and see who it is, you know what I mean.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to wear what the retreat was?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'd I'd done a bit I've done a bit of research in terms of psychedelics and magic mushrooms for trying, you know, at different points uh while I've been going through psychosis, depression, you know, PTSD, ADHD, just to try and manage it and might know some magic mushrooms, but I've never really took a big trip.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: So then obviously I got invited on the ayahuasca retreat at LaWire.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I had to go and do a bit of a deep dive on it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then I had to think about how I felt with it in terms of my sobriety and my recovery.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Did I see did I see it as a drug and did I see it as me going out and not being sober anymore?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because a lot of people from Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous were like, you go and do that, then you're back on drugs, because that's the way they see it.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: But after a few discussions, funny enough, when with with my church priest um from church ch Christchurch in Siam, she went, Do you think this is you going and using it for recreational purposes to get high?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you going to try and deal with all the stuff you've been through in your life?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I'm gonna go and deal with all the stuff I've been through in my life.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Right, well, she says, Do you believe in like obviously I believe in God and go to church?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, if you believe in God, then you believe that he's put all these medicines here and all the plants on the earth for us to be looked after and for us to look after ourselves, and she quoted a few Bible verses.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, you're right, you're right.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, and even if people don't agree with you, as long as you agree with it and you're alright with it, that's all that matters.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and it was single-handedly one of the scariest, thrilling, exciting, coolest experiences in the world.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: No amount of words or descriptions can do it justice.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for me, that's been like a massive changing point in my life in terms of.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: Can we bring Dave in?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, Dave.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: Transfixed.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: Let's um let's just ask you, Dave, the purpose because obviously, like Matthew's just said, you know, they go go off to this retreat to try psychedelics.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: And some one person's perspective on psychedelics, maybe it's a drug, but you were involved in this retreat as a and studying the retreat.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what's the what's the sort of outline scientific purpose?
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, there's a whole raft of things to unpack there, and that's like a subject of a series of podcasts.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: Excellent.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean psychedelics are not recreational, and as you know, they're they're deeply traumatizing experiences in order to face the trauma that you've already gone through in life and we've all gone through traumas.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's it you don't undertake it lightly.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's not not doing a party drug, especially things like ayahuasca, which are purgatives as well.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_04: Which without going into detail, you know, you get a bucket.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's a bit like the uh full metal jacket, you know, the old uh Kubrick film about this is my rifle, this is my bucket.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_04: There are many like it, but this is my bucket.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_04: And you live with that bucket and you live with what comes out of you into that bucket.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's a very harsh experience.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_04: Purgitative is in the physical sense gets rid of the toxins within you, but it also gets rid of the mental toxins as well.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, you do not undertake it lightly.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: And there's a an awful lot of science emerged in the last few years.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_04: Basically, for many decades, in fact, the science around psychedelics was kind of suppressed for various political and governmental reasons.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_04: But in the last ten or so years, uh the science has kind of flourished and there's been a relaxing on the kind of the restrictions on that.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a lot of science come out of that, there's a lot of brain imaging, there's a lot of kind of physical, uh physiological, biological kind of research, which is part of what the athletes' journey home scientific program's about.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, going as I've been on some previous uh research trips into the Peruvian Amazon before the Columbia trip as well.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_04: So what basically in a nutshell is happening is the brain's neuroplasticity is a part of it, is being kind of made more plastic uh from all those kind of ingrained behaviours and and mental habits and entrenched patterns that are laid down through our lives, certainly through childhood, which become difficult to to come out of and addictive behaviours as well.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: And part of the science behind psychedelics is that you're basically rebooting your brain is one way of looking at it, and it's a traumatic kind of process to do that, and that neuroplasticity is basically helping kind of reorganise the brain connections and and kind of break down some of those entrenched uh beliefs and patterns of behaviour, which allows us to then look back at the traumas of our lives and kind of almost stitch together a a meaningful narrative that's helpful moving forward.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_04: So there's elements of that, and again, it's it's a very traumatizing process.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've been part of these ceremonies, I've been part of the process and and experienced it myself, but I've also observed a lot of it, such as when we were there, we were doing brain imaging and all this science work and seeing what's happening in that room, it's it's not pleasant.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_04: But everyone's going through their own kind of process, deeply, you know, deeply impactful process.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, there's a lot going on, and we could get more into that, but it's definitely not like going to a rave and dropping acid.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, it's it's in it's that's not part of what what this is about.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_04: And that there's a phrase called set and setting, which came out, I think it was Timothy Leary kind of era, talked about the the mindset that you go into and the intention you go into that process with is key, and the setting, so as in not being in a rave, but being in a very supportive, therapeutically supportive and facilitative kind of process is very important.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: And and what comes out of that experience needs to be integrated.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: You need to kind of do the work afterwards is is very key to that.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a very disciplined process, and something as you were talking, I was just very interested in the sense of discipline you had in your training uh and and the structure you taught about with respect to getting into fighting, and you seem to have taken to that discipline of training, which I guess be an addiction in itself, positive things.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, healthy addiction.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I was just I was just thinking to myself the psychedelic experience is is quite a disciplined process if you do it right.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the wash especially with the washout period.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think a lot of people don't realise this, like you can't just go.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like so at the at the moment, um I did a wash out period for a breath work course that I've just done, doing a washout period because I'm off back to Columbia to La Wara.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's dietary, it's physical in the sense of you know, less social media, less output, less television, or less sugar, less co no coffee, no stimulants.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the preparation that goes into it to cleanse your body before you get there is massive, and it's it's it's not for the light heart.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not because there's been times this week where I'd have murdered some caffeine, man.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_04: And something you you said to me off camera, it was you're quite sort of there's trepidation about going back.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you've been through it, you've been through all the things in your life.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just because of the I mean, um so I'm going back this time, I'm going as a patient, I'm going to learn to facilitate and to learn and to sort of go along with my studies.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: So at the moment I'm studying psychedelic integration, I'm studying psychedelic mentorship um and then transformational coaching as well.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm hoping that what this will allow me to do.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit worried about the fact that I'm going from a different perspective.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking at from another side of the coin.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Last time we were there, we were made to feel safe, we were, you know, made to feel included.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were there as the patients, whereas this time I'm going to be there as a facilitator and working.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, you know, almost going to be in charge of cleaning them buckets and looking after people in that state.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: So to go from being in that state to looking after people is going to be really interested.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to give me a really good broadened horizon on what to expect in the future with clients.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I'm nervous, but nerves are always good.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's room for growth in there somewhere.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: I suppose that's um what you just said there about you know, nervous about maybe cleaning the buckets.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: You say that lighthearted, but it's a commitment that you're making to these people that are going through that process that you've already been through, and to give your experience.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, what was your experience of going through?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ayahuasca for me, absolutely the best and scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the time when I went out to Columbia, I was with, I was I had a girlfriend, she was pregnant.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: The first, not long before the first ceremony, she travelled out there, not long before the first ceremony, I got a phone call since she'd done a miscarriage.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um for me, again, touching base on what Dave's just said about scene and setting, I thought to myself, oh fucking hell, like this just happened.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really not ready to go and do ayahuasca, like scene and settings fucking upped and fucked off, you know what I mean?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not ready for this.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I sat and spoke to Dave, sat and spoke to Ian McCall, Gareth, Clint, Mark, everyone around me staff, Sarah, Monica, and people.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they all said, Well, what have you come here for?
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I've come here to heal, right?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: So why are you just gonna bypass healing?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is happening.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, right, yeah, they're right, I'm on the other side of the world.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this has been a paid opportunity, I'm not to pay for anything.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck it.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: In.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Had the first cup, first experience of ayahuasca.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you're thinking about doing it, do a lot of research into it, do research on your retreats.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't expect it to test men because it tastes fucking vile.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's horrible.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: You do get a bile suite though, yeah.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: You do.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately for me, my bald suite was grape, and I really hate grapes, and I think that was worse than the test of the ayahuasca.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: First, first cup um got me engaged, you know, I set intentions.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: My intention was just to surrender to the medicine and let it do its work.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: You get a lot of people setting really hard intentions, really difficult to follow up on.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought, right, well, if I'm I'm just at peace and I just let myself go, we'll see what happens.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had the first cup, half an hour in, start puking, you know, purging out of both ends, and it's it's intense.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: At times it's very touch and go.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a very specific reason they tell you not to go anywhere without your bucket.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was purging at the time, and I you go through, you're in a malok, uh, all the mattresses are on the floor.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've got about 20 different people going through individual experiences.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the staff at the front facilitating, you've got um the shaman and the music on.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: The music's incredible, they cruiser.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: That that was my favourite part, listening to the music, because even like I don't understand a word of Spanish, I could understand that music in the heart of my soul, you know what I mean?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I don't know what she's singing about, but it's amazing.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I went to the toilet to purge.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: In there, I was trapped in this cubicle, doors shut, and I'm I'm puking loads, and it's getting really heavy.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting you know when you're ill and you've got the flu and you're dripping with sweat and you're sort of like heading your hands and everything's a bit top heavy.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like that, and then all of a sudden I look down at my arms like this.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like I can just see it, I can feel the weight of a baby.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: I look down and there's a little boy in my arms crying his eyes out, and I'm like looking at him a bit a bit back like that, a bit shocked that you know, I'm looking at a baby.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he went, Don't worry, dad, there's nothing you could have done any different that would have kept me kept me here on this earth.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, It's just not my time, like, but when it's your time, he says, We'll play in the future, just take care and t tell my mom I love her.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was it, just disappeared, and then I was balling my eyes, like sobbing uncontrollably.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, I'm still puting and and and purging and I'm like, whoa, this is this is heavy, heavy.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: I walked out, washed my hands, cleaned up a little bit, and lied on my bed.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: From there I just I really tried to just sleep and rest.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was puting a lot.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I kept looking up at the the wooden bamboo, the roof's made out of bamboo, and I always knew when I was connecting with the ayahuasca because like after the first court, it started like going a bit like kaleidoscope A, and I was like, ah yes, that's not wood anymore, and that's when I knew.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the first experience of it was was real intense, real, real scary.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: There was a point, I think, towards the end of the night where um I we reflecting, so when we're talking to people afterwards, she can't talk during the ceremony, so even though like you all know each other, you can't talk, you can't disrupt other people's individual experiences, so you just gotta leave people to it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at one point I've been compulsing and fitting and puking.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I said, I remember coming up to you, Dave, and saying, I feel like all the bad energies just left.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: And three different people from three different ends of the room were like, that was fucking mad, mate.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Looked over and seen demons coming out of you at one point, like loads of black stuff.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, alright.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then Ian McCall was like, Fucking hell, mate, I bet you feel fresh.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like you had like Dementis from Harry Potter leaving your body.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, I feel mint, mate, yeah.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it was mad because three different people from three different ends of the room sin the same thing, you know what I mean?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Going like this, and loads of blackness coming out acting ceremony, just as fucking weird, to be honest.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: First cup, wasn't really feeling anything.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, like I'm not feeling out.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had the second cup, and then went into like this really like I felt sick.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I felt sick as a dog, like more sick than I did the first night, just puting, purging.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then while I'm putting and purging, I'm I'm throwing up number bucket, I get this hand tapped me on the shoulder and I'm looking around and no one's air, and I'm thinking, fucking hell, what's this?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this voice is like, You're right, my mate, who's this?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've seen all the trials and tribulations you've been through in your life.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I've had to put you through all these is because like, you know, you you you might have been through the fire, but it's up for you for like going back and saving other people.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you need to show people where their strength lies, where your strength lies, and go back in and save people.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Yeah, nice, nice, I can do that.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: All I can take from that experience is that was God telling me what to do, what my purpose, what my purpose in life was, and my purpose is to go and help other people.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Previous going to Columbia, I was doing a leadership course with my church, so I thought maybe it's to dwel further into the church community and go and spread the word of the gospel and help people that way.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Started speaking to Ian McCall the next day.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Matthew, I suppose you'd like to come on as an English ambassador for Athletes Journey Home.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Oh, I'd love to.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's that entail?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, we're gonna do some coaching courses, this, this.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then that sort of tied in really well with my experience, you know what I mean.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, right, this is this is mm-plant medicines is where I'm at.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Plant medicines is what I need to look into, and this this is this is what my life's about now.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew it coming from that second ceremony.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Third ceremony, I just slept all the way through.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, day ceremony by far the best, the best of all of them.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was you had 20 MMA fighters, professional boxers, professional burn hook fighters, professional fighters, and we were all just like a bunch of 10-year-old kids running around on my walker, causing grief to the staff, making noise, being stupid, being daft.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: But because it was out during the day, you could see a bit more of the scenery, you could take a bit more of the nature sort of vibe, and and that for me was the best because I just felt like um the first two days felt like a big emotional release in terms of like stuff I've been through and stuff that was meant for me.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: The third day I think I really needed the rest.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think plot medicine knew I needed a good rest and a good sleep to recoup.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth ceremony was like I was a giant kid, which made me tune back into my childhood and tune back into who I was before all that abuse, before all that.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was just a kid, an innocent kid running around having fun, laughing.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was like running around with loads of twelve year old kids your own age, wasn't it?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like we were all just descending into chaos on the last night, and it was it was mint.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it gave me a network of people that are I speak to most of them on a daily basis.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I that's cool as fuck, man.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no, it's like what what a guy.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, does some of the most dangerous outlandish stuff I've ever seen any human being do in my life.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just so cautious about it.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got like Gareth and Clint, and you've got Ian McCall, like SUFC World Champion, Mark Irwin, former former BKB world champion.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are all like really cool people with really cool stories, really interesting stuff.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are into the same, you know, we're we're all fighters, we've all got that trending aspect, but like to to network with like-minded people coming for the same sort of stuff, so to heal, but to also network with people that are on different side of the world, different, different, you know, I've done completely different stuff to me, but you you network and you click and you're like, my goodness, like I've got brothers and sisters now on every avenue of the world.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas before I was just some little Cumbrian lad who just knew Cumbrians, you know what I mean?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the occasional Spanish person from my mum's side.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's like I've got a whole whole group of friends in that arsenal that like if I ever needed anything I could get in touch with.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm off back to Columbia on Monday, which I'm I'm really fucking excited for.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm nervous, but I'm excited.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to be volunteering there with a couple of uh people that were on the retreat and when me and Dave were out there.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited for September when Dave comes back and everyone else comes back and we get to for me, it's gonna be cool to be on the other side of the experience.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Dave was staffed last time and helping helping uh run and help people out during the ceremonies.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be nice to be on that side of things and sort of see where I can fit in and learn a bit more about the plant medicines.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: For me, what it's given me is a complete 180 in my life in terms of like I'm really hyper focused, really interested in what I'm learning.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've met some great people, it's given me an opportunity to travel around and do things that put me out of my comfort zone.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of how I feel after doing ayahuasca, I've never felt as clear-headed, decise, as precise with what I'm doing.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, my ADHD allows me to sit and procrastinate about doing tasks.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: It takes me fucking ages to get started doing stuff.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I find I'm still like that, but I'm like that a little less.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a little bit more focused, you know.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can pick a book up, I can start reading again.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and my avenue for education's come back.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: So like I was just like educating myself on stuff I was interested in, like history, yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: But this giving me like a completely new subject to learn about, and for me it's it's it's mega man.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's mega.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ayuaska did not fix.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, my broken heart, mate, but you know, that's that's just come from years and years and years of people having died to be honest, it fixed that.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the only thing it didn't really fix was like I I think people automatically assume you're gonna take the plant medicine that's gonna come back and it's gonna heal you and it's a one thing fits all, fixes everything.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: But reality is all plant medicines are ever gonna do is illuminate what path you need to walk down.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to you to still put the actions in to fix it.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: So like the integration work's been difficult since I've come back.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in terms of, you know, there's people I used to socialise with that now I just don't have the energy for.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and it's not that they're bad people, it's just that like we we don't necessarily align on the same values anymore.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's certain things that I used to like doing that I don't like doing anymore.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: So there's been there's been changes in my life, but I wouldn't say it's not fixed anything because it's still down to me to come back and do the work, you know.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it illuminated the path.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to come back and I needed to work on how I treat myself.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was a big thing with ayahuasca.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I need to learn to love myself properly unconditionally.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: How can I expect other people to love me if I don't love myself?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then like coming back and the forgiveness thing, forgiving people that have done horrible things to me, because there's even though I uh don't agree with the horrible things that have done for me, there's been horrible things I've done to people that I'll want forgiveness for.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Burgling people's houses, doing horrible stuff.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's been things I've done that I require forgiveness for, so I have to be able to forgive people for things they've done to me, regardless of whether I think it's too extreme to forgive or not.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately that, you know, it's the peace of mind and clarity I need to be able to move on with my life.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, no, I think that's one a really good question.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Basket really illuminated what I needed to sort, and the integration works come back and I've I've managed to box off most of it, I think.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_03: Dave, can I ask you?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: Matthew has just told us about that about what happens in the ceremonies and the purging.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: How do you study what you how do you control a study there?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that's it is a challenge of science.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_04: I mean that that's that's the area that I thrive in.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, all my science, as we've talked about on other podcasts, is about getting out in the wild in the field and seeing real stuff happening.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a challenge, it's a challenge for science.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we probably don't have a lot of time to talk about the whole scientific component of the athlete's journey home, and we can talk more in other podcasts on that.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but there is, you know, stringent ethical protocols that the guys that I'm working with have have put together and put through uh university ethics uh you know processes.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_04: Um and it's it's about working within the kind of space that that you're trying to do the science, but doing some pre and post type of measures.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: So we, for instance, we do brain scanning as part of it.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: We do that beforehand and we do it afterwards.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_04: We have lot there are lots of different cohorts, so it's not just the Columbia one in January.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_04: There's been a couple of other cohorts through Athletes Journey Home, and I think there's 26 people's worth of data so far, and there will be more.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: So you can get around the sort of small scale of a particular retreat and then cumulative you do it across lots of uh retreats.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_04: There's things like microbiome sampling, so you can get biological samples and you can do you can look at the kind of pre and post on on all sorts of elements of biomarkers moving forward.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_04: So so there is to cut a long story short, that there are ways to kind of control the the circumstance to get data from that, but it's it's challenging.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, in obviously in the middle of a ceremony, there's not a lot you can do, and you and you don't want to interfere with that process.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, we did some in-ceremony brain imaging, you can talk about the fact it it's quite an intrusive thing, it's intense, so it's like they asked for volunteers.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you mind if we scan your brain during?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Stupidly, I like volunteering for stuff like this, so I should have never fucking bothered.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't mind doing it one night, but I got roped into doing it three nights on the fucking bounce, and everyone else is all dancing decaroos, going going to the toilet, going out by the fire, and I've got asked to be unplugged from this fucking machine every time I need the toilet, every time I'm like looking at Dev, I'm like just going out, mate.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: It got to a point where you feel bad.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: She's like asking him all I've just been to the toilet, you're gonna think I'm fucking do you know what I mean?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't control if you've ladder or something like that.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then like you're up and down, up and down, up and down, and then like there's different points where like you come back from the toilet and thinking, I just want to go and sit outside for a little bit and sit around the fire, you know what I mean?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't talk to anyone, so I'm big old brain scanner thing on, hanging down.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this is like a swimming cap basically, yeah, swimming cap with loads of wires coming for like you're about to be plugged into one of them machines down there.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh fuck that, so I'm gonna go sit by the fire for a little bit, you know, and just get out.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: I stupidly, there was like 20 of us sat by the fire at this point.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: This like I think there was a busiest that got round by the fire, and I stupidly started pretending to plug myself into the fire, you know, with this electric and everywhere.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've looked around and like Dave's in hysterics, everyone else is in hysterics, and like this.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it was it it was intrusive, and then at one point man, I was just I wasn't even it was pointless me being plugged into the machine because I I basically got the cap on, I got all the liquid put in my hair, and I sat outside, not plugged into the machine for two hours.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, listen to Dave at the end.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I feel quite bad, mate.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Why?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, because I've been here gathering evidence for science, and I've just sat out by the fucking fire all night with it on, you know what I mean?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not collecting of anything.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: But then for the day ceremony, I was so glad not to have it on.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, therein lies the challenge of doing field research as well, and and you it's a learning as well.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_04: You know, protocols devised in the lab, unless you're out there and see what it's really like and what effect that can have, you've got to then bear that in mind for future experiments as well.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, I mean the pre-post is is more where we study because you want to look at like changes in the brain, changes in things like quality of life perception.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and and you know, and again I can unpack that perhaps on another time, but uh you know, there's a lot of preliminary data come out of these studies which we can aggregate together and start to see really quite meaningful changes in people the things like people's depression scores or their PTSD scores or quality of life well-being satisfaction type of scores.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_04: So we're starting to see that in patterns.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's not quite peer-reviewed yet, but you know, before too long we'll be able to publish some of these data.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and the brain imaging is is very useful to see what's happening in terms of that neuroplasticity.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_04: There's certain ways we can look at that.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but yeah, I mean it it is a learning.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's it this field is a learning you know experience for everyone, scientists as well.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's that's the beauty of doing science and being a scientist myself.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's an adventure to find out what works and what doesn't.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think the um sort of attractive thing of doing this podcast today is that you know, this ayahuasca, we've I've heard of ayahuasca over years and people just going off, oh, I've had this great experience, and then next thing you hear of people like Gab O Matic and Graham Hancock and uh you know talking about ayahuasca, but now we've got we've got studies and people studying it because yes, depression and mental health issues.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_03: Can I ask, did you know it it was a science study before you left?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: Would you would you have gone if it wasn't?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would have.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so for me it wasn't for me it wasn't about the science in the sense of like I was going to heal myself, so that's all that really mattered in in terms of me accepting it.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: However, when I found out that it was science backed, and I thought, oh well, you know, we're basically we're basically pioneering studies in in a new field, and then you look at like, especially now since coming back from the trip, the psychedelic space in America and how they've basically done like a massive 180 and and they're being like, oh yeah, we're gonna investigate into psychedelics.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that'll drip feed down as it does every every time in American or research.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really cool.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of what goes on now is you know, doctors are very quick to to to mask problems with pills and tablets.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: I b Ibergain, for instance, you know, people go and do that, it can cure 87% of addictions from the first try, and then you've got ayahuasca healing people from like PTSD or injuries and things like that.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a heal.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not like a a mask, it's not band-aid, it's not uh take this, come back in seven months, do it again.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's take this, go do the work, and it'll change the course of your life.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the the the benefits to it are massive.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: The downsides, I mean, apart from purging, I didn't really see any downside to it.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: Purging's not nice, but then anything in life that's great for you usually isn't nice.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: It usually comes in a little bit of pain, a little bit of sorrow.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think everything in life's gotta be earned, and I think ayahuasca makes sure and make sure and you're healing, definitely.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_04: Just to qualify, we've talked a bit about Athletes' journey home and not specifically mention what it is and Ian McCall.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: So Ian McCall, ex UFC, number one contender, fly weight, become a psychedelic facilitation coach to particularly athletes transitioning out of often combat sports, you know, high impact, high stress careers.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_04: And often what happens with athletes, they come out of you know, their super high achieving career, and what do they do next?
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_04: And there can be a spiral into depression, anxiety, suicide, even let alone the traumatic brain injury side of it with combat sports or full contact sports of all descriptions.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: So athletes' journey home is kind of set up to to help athletes transition into the next phase of life without you know the kind of post-career play exactly, you know, and it and it's it's a very holistic intended process, much like you said, often medicine just masks the symptoms or just treats things in isolation.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's very much a holistic uh sort of process.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_04: So that that's kind of what the athletes journey home.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_04: So a lot of the these retreats tend to be focused around fighters and full contact type of athletes.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: People like Tetan Knox to the edge, but I dare have loved it.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: I've had a few myself.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so as we start wrapping up, I suppose, you're heading back out and you're gonna be to train your training to be a facilitator.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm excited for it.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing a lot of courses at the moment: psychedelic mentorship, psychedelic integration coaching, life and transformational coaching.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've done a lot of work.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I sponsored a lot of people in, rehabitating them through the steps.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Plan with all of this is basically to integrate it all into one big service when I'm done.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Life coaching, transformational psychedelic coaching, the integration work and sobriety work.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think there's a lot, a lot of room, and a lot of what really pulls my interest in this is so many people get stuck on a really broken loop doing drugs, and there doesn't seem to be any form of help.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's services, but they're money-making services, like they want you to relapse essentially, because if people didn't relapse, these services wouldn't get used.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to rehab, great rehab, but again, lots of people were in and out that doors and repeat customers, you know, they've been going there for years on and off.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: So what's really interesting for me about this sort of stuff and plant medicines is the idea that you can go and do it once and you come back and you're healed.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you're not just healing, you're healing your trauma here and healing your ancestral trauma, you're healing loads of stuff, and it illuminates, and I think it's a really natural, holistic approach to it.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: A bit mind-bending at times, and it's it's not for the faint-hearted, definitely not for the faint-hearted, but I think like in terms of like medicine and and and healing, it's it's been the best thing I've ever done in my life.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't sound a bad path to be going on for a little shit from Carlisle, does it?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly, mate.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, after all you've been through and some bag head from Carlisle now, he's in Columbia, Maloka, doing ayahuasca.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's been for me a a big, a big sort of progress marker as well about where I was to where I am now.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a smackhead down alleywhere's burgling people's houses.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're living in someone's sheds.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, living in someone's shed drinking at my own piss.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas now I'm travelling the world, fucking meet meeting cool people like Kane Valcadez is going on this next trip.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got famous UFC fighters, famous BKB fighters, fighters I've looked up to since I was a kid.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to be facilitating their their their uh experiences, and I think that's really cool, man.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a full circle thing, do you know what I mean?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Almost like I've gone from watching TV, watching fighters, wishing I could do something like that, pulling my finger out my ass.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've got no qualifications from school, and now I'm I'm on courses in university and in college.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even qualified to be on these courses, they just let me on out of the kindness of their art.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're not qualified to go on this, but we think you do well with the qualification.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, sound.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: So like I'm training with lots of doctors, lots of people that are like on paper, really intelligent, and I'm really enjoying it because I like learning, hyper focused on it, which is you know working wonders for my ADSD because everything gets done on time and I'm enjoying it.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when I'm enjoying it, I'm soaking up the information more.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've got an opportunity now to go and put a bit of hands-on experience, which I'm really excited for, and to be able to go out and help other people, and to be able to see this gorgeous special.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean, you're very personable, you're very relatable.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I guess you can relate the people.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, have you been into prisons and given talks?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough, I went into a prison in Barney Castle to talk to lifers about exercise and nutrition.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've got time for fucking god and exercise.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: I said, How long have you got mate?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like 20 years and you've got no butt time because but it's right, you know what I mean?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like a lot of people can just they just need a bit of good advice.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: So going to prisons or going to schools, podcasts, and just share my story.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if it just helps one person come out the same sort of shit I was in, then I've done my job.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's massive for me, you know.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you can't undervalue the lived experience side.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: If it wasn't that sort sort of got round, isn't it?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Dave, what's we know what you're gonna be on the podcast again shortly?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe we've already been on, it depends which order we put them out.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you can do something.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what you want me to tell to talk about.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, well you're gonna you're carrying on with the uh athlete's journey, yeah.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we're going back out again.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_04: So just a little bit, yeah.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh yeah, I mean, so I I will be going back out uh as the next phase, the next cohort of Atney Home.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_04: We'll be doing more of the science stuff, building more data sets to to go with what we've done so far.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, this will be my third retreat as I spent uh some time in Peru last year, which was intense.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just interesting seeing the different flavour of different traditions and the different ways that this this is all uh sort of orchestrated.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because obviously there's a big indigenous sort of element to it as well.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just fascinating to see the the indigenous ways of thinking about health and medicine and and lifestyle and how that kind of relates to the the Western medicine traditions, and it's a great marriage, of course, to differentiate and and corroborate each other.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the study hasn't really been released yet, and you're working on it and it's coming out.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean TBC.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_04: The people I work with, uh I don't want to take credit, I'm just a cog in the wheel of that.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_04: But there's been several um several different cohorts, there's there's different stuff uh with uh veterans as well.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_04: So it's not just about the athletes, it's it's about anyone who've got who've been through trauma.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_04: So there's a a bunch of different initiatives going on at once as well at the minute.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um there are uh academic publications will happen down the line.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_04: They're just kind of there's a lot of data to analyse and going back to how do you measure this?
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, there's a lot of data from a lot of different elements of it, uh, and trying to bring all that together is no mean feat, but there's there's lots of experts in various institutions around the world actually helping work on that.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_04: So I I will be going out helping to gather the data and and just kind of be an observer as well.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it's not not my thing per se.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's part of my bigger interest in extremes, extreme stress, extreme environments, and so on.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_04: Dangerous Dave.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_04: It seems to have stuck me.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_04: What I tell people, and it often gets a laugh, even amongst hardened like athletes.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_04: I say, I'm dangerous Dave, and they're like, laugh.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_04: I say, actually, I'm more of a danger to myself.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you both for coming in.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for all this.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it did take a bit of setting up, but we've got it at last, and uh, I think it's been worth it's been worth the setting up.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you to Nick at Ginger Wizard for coming in, and also thank you to Energy Impact who are our sponsors, and we wouldn't be doing this without them.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Seth.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Charlie.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, everyone.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: And if you'd like to support us and help us keep the podcast going, then you can go to buy us a coffee or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalking.com, and look for the little cup.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.