#11 Dirty Biker Acid Operators - Dan Boeckner et Devojka

Dan : [00:00:00] Mais j'étais tout à fait capable d'approcher le type d'état dissociatif mais très ouvert mentalement que j'ai obtenu plus tard en prenant des psychédéliques. [00:00:11][11.1]

Devojka : [00:00:12] D'accord, mais pourquoi vous intéressent-ils en tant qu'essai ? [00:00:15][2.3]

Dan : [00:00:15] J'avais besoin de sortir de là où j'étais par tous les moyens possibles. Il n'était pas envisageable de rester dans cette réalité et de garder la raison. [00:00:26][11.2]

Devojka : [00:00:27] J'avais donc besoin de ne pas ressentir ce que je ressentais à ce moment-là, ce qui est un peu différent. [00:00:33][6.2]

Ronan : [00:00:39] Voici Field Tripping, un podcast consacré à l'exploration des expériences psychédéliques et de leur capacité à influencer nos vies. Je suis votre hôte, Ronan Levy. [00:00:49][9.4]

Ronan : [00:00:51] Vous connaissez probablement Dan Boeckner grâce à "Operators", le groupe de synthpop sombre et fantaisiste dont il fait partie avec le génie de l'électro Devojka. Dan est un chanteur, auteur-compositeur et guitariste canadien. Il est membre de Wolf Parade et, auparavant, d'Atlas Strategic et de Handsome Furs. Devojka est une musicienne macédonienne multi-instrumentiste dont la carrière solo l'a amenée à jouer partout aux États-Unis et en Europe. Puis Dan et Devojka se sont rencontrés. Le reste appartient à l'histoire. Ensemble, ils forment le groupe Operators, qui a sorti son dernier album, Radiant Dawn, en 2019. [00:01:28][37.1]

Ronan : [00:01:30] J'ai le plaisir de vous souhaiter la bienvenue dans le "feel tripping", Dan et Devojka. [00:01:32][2.3]

Dan : [00:01:33] Merci de nous avoir accueillis. [00:01:34][0.7]

Devojka : [00:01:34] Merci de nous avoir accueillis. [00:01:35][1.0]

Ronan : [00:01:36] Mais prenons également une minute pour souhaiter la bienvenue au Dr Dominique Morisano, qui, en tant que psychologue en chef, a un lien étroit avec nos deux invités et avec Field Trip Health lui-même. Bienvenue, Dominique. [00:01:45][9.7]

Dominique : [00:01:46] Nous vous remercions. [00:01:46][0.4]

Ronan : [00:01:49] J'essaie vraiment de penser qu'il n'y a pas de différence entre la vie professionnelle et la vie privée, et que la notion de professionnalisme n'est pas quelque chose qui m'attire. C'est comme si vous étiez une personne, vous savez, et parfois nous devons porter des chapeaux légèrement différents. Mais j'essaie d'être cohérente dans tout ce que je fais, parce que le fait d'être parent, d'avoir des amis et tout ce genre de choses, c'est différent du travail. Mais c'est comme une activité, c'est comme qui vous êtes. C'est juste vous dans des circonstances différentes, alors pourquoi devriez-vous être nécessairement différent de vous-même ? Vous savez, je crois beaucoup à la nécessité d'être fidèle à ce que l'on est. Un grand poète, Taylor Mali, a fait un grand discours. [00:02:24][35.0]

Ronan : [00:02:24] Il s'agit de la façon dont nous, en tant que société, ne parlons plus avec conviction. Nous mettons des "hum" et des "vous savez" entre parenthèses au milieu des phrases, et j'en suis totalement coupable. Il y a une phrase où il dit : "Dites ce que vous voulez dire d'une manière qui témoigne de la détermination avec laquelle vous y croyez". J'ai toujours pensé que c'était une phrase très puissante. J'ai donc toujours étendu cette idée à la perspective de vivre sa vie d'une manière qui témoigne de la détermination avec laquelle on veut la vivre. [00:02:50][25.7]

Dan : [00:02:50] Je pense qu'il est intéressant de constater que la pandémie a essentiellement effacé les frontières entre le travail à domicile et un environnement de travail externe structuré, ce à quoi Dev et moi étions déjà habitués, car si vous êtes un créatif indépendant, vous travaillez techniquement à domicile tout le temps lorsque vous n'êtes pas en tournée et il n'y a pas d'heures de bureau ni de vacances programmées, à moins que vous n'en preniez, ce que vous n'allez probablement pas faire. [00:03:18][27.8]

Dan : [00:03:19] Il faut donc être cohérent dans son travail et dans sa vie personnelle, qui sont désormais inextricablement liés. [00:03:30][11.1]

Dominique : [00:03:32] C'est un peu le grand égalisateur, des réunions avec des gens en costume ou même, vous savez, en tenue militaire, normalement dans des bureaux, et puis tout le monde à la maison avec une casquette de base-ball ou, vous savez, un animal de compagnie qui saute sur leurs genoux ou un enfant qui court dans le dos. C'est beaucoup plus humain, je pense, pour beaucoup de gens. [00:03:51][19.1]

Ronan : [00:03:52] Tout à fait. Je parlais à quelqu'un aujourd'hui et il m'a dit : "D'habitude, je porte une chemise habillée et je porte un short ou des sous-vêtements, comme des sous-vêtements en dessous". Et je me suis dit que c'était un peu comme les cheveux de hockey, où il y a une partie de business à l'avant et une partie à l'arrière. Nous vivons tous, dans une certaine mesure, avec des cheveux de hockey en ce moment. [00:04:09][16.9]

Dan : [00:04:09] Je suis totalement en train de le faire en ce moment même. [00:04:11][1.7]

Devojka : [00:04:11] Oui, c'est vrai. [00:04:11][0.0]

Ronan : [00:04:14] Et vous, Dev ? Comment s'est déroulée cette expérience ? [00:04:15][2.0]

Devojka : [00:04:16] Je porte un pantalon. [00:04:16][0.5]

Ronan : [00:04:18] J'aime la façon dont vous dites cela, comme si c'était une réussite. [00:04:20][1.4]

Devojka : [00:04:21] Je veux dire que c'est parce que c'est un vrai pantalon. Il n'est pas fait d'une matière semblable à un sweat-shirt en coton. C'est donc un peu un exploit pour moi. Mais encore une fois, cela ne serait pas différent même en cas de pandémie. [00:04:33][12.9]

Devojka : [00:04:34] Je n'essaie pas d'être désinvolte, mais il est certain qu'une chose pour moi, c'est que lorsque le verrouillage a commencé, j'ai ressenti un immense soulagement. Avant que cela n'arrive, j'étais dans un état de dépression, quelque chose qui me caractérise, si vous voulez. Je me souviens d'avoir ressenti une sorte de soulagement dans l'anxiété parce que j'avais l'impression que tout le monde était en pause. Je n'avais pas à planifier. Je n'avais pas à me sentir obligée de faire quelque chose. Je n'avais pas à me demander ce que je faisais déjà. J'avais l'impression que tout le monde était aussi en retard que moi, peut-être même un peu plus. Ce n'est qu'au mois d'août que j'ai compris qu'il y avait quelque chose d'étouffant dans tout cela, parce que, comme tout procrastinateur qui nous écoute le sait, les prolongations ne sont pas toujours bonnes pour vous, parce que je ne l'ai pas fait. Ce n'est pas comme si je m'étais dit : "Super, je vais rattraper mon retard". Je me disais : "Je n'arrive pas à croire que nous sommes en septembre, j'ai encore l'impression d'être en avril". [00:05:33][59.7]

Ronan : [00:05:34] C'est fou, non ? J'ai remarqué que je n'ai plus aucune notion du temps. J'ai deux jeunes enfants, un de quatre ans et demi et un de dix-huit mois, et votre perspective du temps, votre conscience générale et, honnêtement, votre capacité cognitive disparaissent après cela. Mais j'ai remarqué que depuis que j'ai commencé, ma perception des jours, des nuits, des semaines, des mois, la seule raison pour laquelle je sais que c'est l'automne, c'est parce qu'il fait froid dehors. Mais à part ça, je n'en ai aucune idée, mon sens de l'espace et de la conscience a vraiment changé au cours de cette expérience, mais je suppose que c'est peut-être un peu comme la répétition du fait de se lever, de ne pas vraiment quitter sa maison, de ne pas vraiment aller quelque part. Il n'y a donc rien à délimiter. [00:06:12][37.5]

Devojka : [00:06:13] Une chose que j'aimerais vous demander, Niqua et Ronan, parce que vous aviez des bureaux ou des endroits où vous deviez aller tous les jours sur une base régulière, pour moi, c'était une sorte de validation de voir, sous une forme très tronquée et expéditive, les gens passer par les phases d'adaptation que j'ai vécues en étant seule pendant tant d'hivers montréalais consécutifs, vous êtes comme, vous savez, c'est amusant. [00:06:36][23.0]

Devojka : [00:06:36] Vous savez, je vais faire de la musculation à la maison. Je vais aller sur YouTube. Je vais prendre des poids, des bandes de résistance, un tapis de yoga. Je vais faire ça, OK ? Je vais lire. Je n'ai pas lu depuis une éternité. Je vais lire, puis je me dis que je vais boire, parce que qu'est-ce que je pourrais faire d'autre ? Et le fait de voir mes pairs passer de "Alors, qu'est-ce que tu fais toute la journée ? Qu'est-ce que tu fais ? À quoi ressemble votre journée ? Qu'est-ce que tu fais au travail ? Comment travaillez-vous ? Et c'est juste comme si j'étais occupé. Je ne peux pas vous dire, je ne peux pas vous dire comment je suis occupée, mais je sais que la journée passe, mais vous avez raison, il y a ces poches bizarres que je dois contourner et puis voir d'autres personnes passer par là en essayant de maintenir leurs routines et puis en se mettant à boire pendant la journée. C'est très réconfortant pour moi personnellement. Mais j'aimerais savoir si cela a été le cas pour vous. Si vous avez eu des idées du genre, oh, ce serait tellement génial de pouvoir travailler à la maison, ça doit être tellement bien. [00:07:28][52.0]

Dominique : [00:07:29] Je travaillais déjà à domicile la moitié du temps, ce qui, je pense, explique en partie pourquoi je suis si souvent en contact avec des musiciens. Mais oui, j'avais ce petit cottage que je louais à Toronto et qui me permettait de m'évader et de me sentir à la campagne tous les deux jours de la semaine pour voir des clients. Maintenant, je ne le fais plus et je paie toujours un loyer, mais j'espère pouvoir y retourner un jour. [00:07:57][28.2]

Dominique : [00:07:58] Je dirais que c'est difficile de ne pas avoir d'échappatoire au fait de voir, vous savez, autant de clients, de travailler sur cette étude non vérifiée, d'avoir littéralement toutes les réunions sur Zoom et d'avoir une journée de 12 heures ces jours-ci, et de ne pas avoir d'espace pour, vous savez, se lever et aller chercher des tacos entre deux clients ou quelque chose comme ça, ou faire une petite pause ou aller dire bonjour à la personne à l'accueil ou juste avoir un peu d'interaction sociale. [00:08:29][31.3]

Dominique : [00:08:30] J'ai vu un mème ce matin, qui parlait de la façon dont Zoom nous épuise. Est-ce que c'est toutes les vidéos ou est-ce que c'est le fait que le monde brûle et que les gens se transforment et qu'il y a un chaos politique ? [00:08:44][14.3]

Dan : [00:08:45] Pourquoi pas les deux ? [00:08:45][0.7]

Dominique : [00:08:46] Yeah, I think people are exhausted, like it’s, it’s been exhausting. So my practice personally has just boomed. I mean, I’m getting many, many emails every single day from potential clients looking for mental health. And it’s reached to the point where I’ve closed my waitlist. I don’t know. It’s been it’s been a really challenging period I would say. [00:09:06][19.6]

Ronan : [00:09:06] I’ve found the experience both exhausting and exhilarating and illuminating. And this is usually a question we get to at the end of the podcast so it’s cool to run with the start. I was an entrepreneur, so for a while I was working out of my one bedroom apartment in Toronto, just doing stuff and I never had an office to go to, so I kind of got into a routine. It’s certainly been novel doing it now, being married with kids. It’s a different experience than I was doing it the first time. So it was easy to hop back into, like the work, not work routine to some degree, I’ve always been pretty disciplined around that kind of stuff. But, you know, the life stuff, like I used to be able to go to the gyms, like integrating that like at the start of this pandemic, like I used to work out a lot. I used to go to the gym two or three times a week and like, I just couldn’t do that because, like, either I was working or I was dealing with the kids and like, you’re in the house, so you can’t really escape. Sometimes like that physical barrier of a door closing behind you actually mean something on a psychic level. And I couldn’t do that. So all of a sudden, like, I wasn’t working out at all, I wasn’t doing any exercise, just trying to get through the day. And then I forced myself to get into a routine where I was doing seven-minute workouts like my doctor talked about how like you just need to get your heart rate up above one hundred and fifty beats per minute. You can do that in like four minutes in a Tabata and that became my workout. So that wasn’t too bad. [00:10:25][78.7]

Ronan : [00:10:25] The harder part for me and it sounds like you may resonate with this, that’s like just the incredible anxiety. Like I’m usually an eternal optimist and for the first time, like I did not see a path out of this. I’m like, the world is collapsing. It was challenging. You know, the silver lining is there. And like that eternal optimism eventually returned when Irwin, the guy I work with who’s been like my coach or therapist or however you want to define him, was like, don’t waste this opportunity. Like this pandemic is bringing everything that you need to deal with. It’s bringing everything that the entire planet needs to deal with the surface. It’s like punching you in the face saying like, hey, here’s the shit you need to deal with. Don’t waste this opportunity. And with that little bit of encouragement, it helped me to go deep and start to confront a lot of the demons I had. But there were many, many nights circling back to like the original impetus of this podcast in this conversation where I’d wake up at three a.m. and there is no way to get back to sleep. So I take some mushrooms, a small dose, like maybe a half a gram or something along those lines. Just close my eyes, very much like a psychedelic trip experience and just ride it out. I’ve always found that at least immediately you have a very positive mood-lifting effect from taking the mushrooms. [00:11:36][71.7]

Dan : [00:11:37] Did you find that you sort of climb the peak of the experience and then you come down and did you find afterwards, like once you’ve sort of come down back to earth, you have any sort of ordering of these thoughts or remove any blockages that you might have? That’s been my experience mostly with mushrooms. [00:11:58][20.4]

Ronan : [00:11:59] A couple of thoughts. One is like sometimes they have very clear, vivid experiences that make sense, don’t necessarily heal it but starts the process. Like late last year, I did a large dose and at first, I wasn’t feeling anything. And then, of course, like it hit me. And the first thing I saw was a moment from my childhood when I was maybe four or five years old. And I always knew it was a pretty traumatic moment and I’ll describe it. My parents split up when I was two. My dad was painted as like this evil bad guy that should be feared, notwithstanding, every once in a while he’d come for visitation rights. And I remember one time, like my mom, you know, standing in her living room in Toronto eating a banana. I don’t know why the detail of eating a banana still in my head, but it’s still in my head. And my mom told me that I was coming to take us for a visitation day. And like, I started crying immediately. I spat out the banana. And, you know, with the benefit of now thirty-five years later, I’d know like that was a sincere and intense moment of a betrayal, like a breach of trust of how could you possibly let that happen to me. Nothing terrible happened on that visit but I remember when he showed up, you know, I tried to run away and hide and all that kind of stuff. And so in this trip, I saw that moment. It wasn’t even seeing it. It’s almost like reliving it. And then what happened is like I kind of like zoomed out and I saw how that feeling of betrayal had been experienced at various points in my life. And so it’s just kind of like that smack in the face of like you need to heal this because it’s still playing out over and over and over again. And so sometimes it’s that clear, that vivid, but other times just kind of feel that click of like something happened deep down and I don’t necessarily understand it, but I sort of come to believe that the world is holographic. And so when you fix something up here, you know, something gets better up here, something changes over here as well, and you start to see it happen. And so I’ve just kind of let go and started to accept, like, I don’t get it, but it happens. And I just kind of know something’s happening. And then maybe eventually it’ll figure it out. Or maybe I just find, like, hey, that thing that I’m used to maybe trigger me when my wife does this doesn’t trigger me as much anymore or something along those lines. [00:14:09][130.6]

Dan : [00:14:10] I mean, I started doing psychedelics when I was 15 years old and I started doing I think acid was the first thing that I did, to be totally straight, like dirty biker acid. So, you know, just like very unpure LSD cut with probably PCP and speed. And, you know, growing up in the place that I grew up in, which was an extremely isolated resource extraction community on Vancouver Island, myself and my very small group of misfit friends wanted to do whatever we could to blast our consciousnesses out of that space, the traveling, traveling, without traveling. So, yeah, definitely when I started taking psychedelics, I was a teenager. I overdid it. I did the classic, the classic fuck up of I don’t feel anything, I need to take more, you know, then just having an oh-shit moment where everything is melted away. But yeah, I’d say three or four times I can remember very clearly like experiencing a total dissolving of my own sense of self. [00:15:19][69.0]

Ronan : [00:15:19] What came of that? [00:15:20][0.7]

Dan : [00:15:20] I mean some of it was incredibly like I don’t even want to say cliched because I think there’s a thread of experience that is very true and very real that runs through a lot of psychedelic journeys that people go on, like no matter what they take. And I think the prime one is a feeling of interconnectedness and whether that’s with events in your own life and the way that you dealt with them, how those are connected and sort of illuminating may be behavior that you have because of those connections or just the interconnectedness of the material world that you live in. Like it’s a good example is, you know, if you’re out in nature, you’re extremely high. And you realize, I think everybody’s had this experience of realizing that the flora and fauna around you are part of a living system. Well, that’s kind of like first-grade Gnostic wisdom from psychedelics. And it’s wonderful to return to that over and over again. Like I had that the other day. We did mushrooms the other day and I had that feeling again. [00:16:24][63.7]

Devojka : [00:16:25] We sat on a tree trunk and I was like, oh, these bugs, and Dan just looked at me and he’s like, it’s their house, man. [00:16:33][8.2]

Dan : [00:16:33] The bug’s house! And that’s the moment I knew I was high. [00:16:39][5.4]

Dominique : [00:16:41] Yeah, I think people experience insights both during the trips and after like depending on what kind of resourcing you have who you have to talk about it, what kind of resources do you have within yourself? Like what kind of practices do you engage in on a regular basis to get inside? I’ve seen people have real aha moments during the experience and after the experience that was like, oh, that’s why that happened. Or that’s why I was thinking about that, woah! That all pieces together from like last year, oh my God. [00:17:12][31.8]

Devojka : [00:17:13] Do you think it helps to talk about them Niqua or to talk through them? Do you think there’s something about that process? I think something that’s intriguing to me about that the process of tripping is that it’s sort of you having to confront things that really only you can confront that other people can’t make you confront, even other experiences, can’t make you confront. And in a way, there’s like a solitariness to the endeavor, but not necessarily in a negative way. [00:17:42][29.2]

Dominique : [00:17:43] Yeah, I do. I mean, especially in the way that I’ve been trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy. I’ve seen profound impacts even from group integration circles where people kind of go around a circle and talk about their different experiences. And they’re like how you experience that as well? Or, Wow, that might be a theme in these experiences or wow, that may be a theme in the planet or the universe or humanity. And sometimes people can pick up on things that like you might not pick up on like, oh, you had this experience, you’re talking about it. And then someone might say, you know, like, let’s just say it’s a therapist, which is not always a therapist, but let’s say it’s a therapist that has been working with you for a while. Might say, hey, that reminds me of like when you were talking about not feeling strong in your childhood or like always needing to feel strong and then you happen to feel very strong in this particular journey, you know, what do you think about that and what does that bring up for you? And like some people might be able to notice touchpoints and highlights that you might not pick up on yourself, where friends might notice that for you, especially if you have friends that are kind of versed in this area. [00:18:50][67.4]

Dominique : [00:18:51] I know some people think of it as a very solitary experience. I think of it as a very connected experience, like the social experience of like, you know, how do you then connect that back to the rest of the world? If you just do it by yourself and you just take it in, you kind of leave and you never really think about it, you might have had the most amazing realization like, woah, the planet is dying and I need to do something about it, you know, and like, you might even come up with all the things you might do on that trip. And then you’re actually distracted, you’re like, oh, I’m hungry. I got to go walk the dog. So there’s an opportunity there. [00:19:25][33.9]

Ronan : [00:19:25] You can see it in everyday experiences. It’s like, you know when people get together to bitch about their wives or their husbands, right, like that shared experience for me, it’s sometimes like it’s nice to just to be cathartic and talk about things that are on my mind. But for me and this goes back to like, how do you define yourself and where do you find security from? I find when I share an experience and someone’s like, oh yeah, that that happens to me too. Or I feel the same way. It makes me feel less fucked up and makes me feel less alone being like, oh, I’m not just a failure. Oh, I’m not just an emotional mess. Like we’re all going through something similar, right. And I think with psychedelics it can just add a lot of texture a lot of colour, a lot of nuance to what those experiences are. [00:20:12][46.3]

Ronan : [00:20:20] During our talk, Dev mentioned that reality is attitude, but I think more accurately that can be expressed that our attitude is our reality. For anyone who has listened to earlier episodes of this podcast, you’ll know I touch on themes of reality creation quite often. Reality creation is the belief that our entire human experience is quite actually only a product of our imagination. While philosophers have debated the metaphysics of this for time immemorial, simply consider what the experience of sight or sound is. It’s nothing more than electrical signals traveling down neurons that our brains convert into what we perceive as reality. And because of this, it becomes easy to understand why psychedelics can not only change our attitudes and emotions, but also our living reality. If our experience of being human is literally all made up in our mind and gets expressed through our attitudes and psychedelics can stretch and change those experiences or attitudes, then even those psychedelic experiences inevitably come to an end. Just like putting your thumb on a piece of play-doh and maybe even adding a little colour, they will leave an indelible impression on the rest of your life. What you do with that experience then, is totally up to you, whatever your attitude. [00:21:41][80.9]

Ronan : [00:21:46] Dan, I had a question for you, when I was reading reviews about Radiant Dawn, the reviewer referred to you as a bleary-eyed, raspy-voiced underdog with no love for the modern world. And that, quote, not a moment goes by on Radiant Dawn when Boeckner isn’t feeling crushed by the weight of modern life and fear of imminent ecological collapse. [00:22:04][17.9]

Dan : [00:22:05] We’ve totally called 2020 with Radiant that, I remember some people being like, oh, this is so bleak, man. [00:22:11][5.5]

Devojka : [00:22:11] It’s not just his sentiment, OK? [00:22:13][2.2]

Dan : [00:22:14] Especially that record was a… I’ve never worked as closely with another human mind on like a music product, you know, then working with Dev on that record. [00:22:25][11.1]

Ronan : [00:22:26] One of my experiences having been in the psychedelic industry, I won’t say I’m part of the psychedelic community per se, because I think that’s kind of like a more tightly knit group that I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m a real part of. But one of the things I found is that there’s a lot of behaviors within that community that seem inconsistent with a lot of the values that psychedelics seem to promote. Emotional awareness, maturity, like all of these kind of things just been my experience so far, it may not be accurate, but like in our very brief conversation, you seem like a very well considered thoughtful, you know, not entirely like pessimistic person. But regardless, I mean, even if you are, it seems to be contrary to a lot of what psychedelics purport to be able to offer psychedelic therapies and just wondering if, like, where that comes from. Like this for you as well, Dev. Like, why such bleakness in your art? And isn’t that consistent with your viewpoint or is it art that’s just trying to make a point? [00:23:20][54.6]

Dan : [00:23:21] Not at all. I mean, I think it’s totally consistent with the… to explain it properly, I’d have to say the art itself and especially the act of performing it is for me someone who’s been in court mandated therapy, like various therapy situations for me, like performing, has always given the best results in terms of emotional catharsis. It’s a very personal thing, but it’s done in a group setting. So I would say my experiences with psychedelics, like going back to the interconnectedness of things, if I’m sitting at home and thinking about ecological collapse or I’m reading a newspaper article about the impending fascist creep in North America and then I do psychedelics, I find that the way that psychedelics expose the superstructure helps me process those facts. And I don’t feel that the art itself, it might be talking about things that are pessimistic, but they’re also full of fantastical wonder. [00:24:28][67.1]

Devojka : [00:24:30] Yeah, I think reviews like that are always interesting because it is almost saying that pointing out reality is an attitude and a negative one at that. The personal arc of that album aside side, the more global issues that we were discussing were very, very real to me. I didn’t think that they were worst-case scenarios. I think they were the scenario that we were actually in, or at least very, very swiftly heading towards. And because of who I am and the background that I come from, it really bothers me when there was an elephant in the room and nobody talks about the elephant and that talking about the elephant is being negative and being a bummer. Dan affectionately calls me a nihilist, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like this is reality. [00:25:18][47.8]

Ronan : [00:25:19] From what I understand, like your experience on psilocybin recently was your first or among your first experiences with psychedelics. I’m just curious why there may have been resistance or hesitation to try. [00:25:30][11.2]

Devojka : [00:25:30] A couple of reasons, specifically for psychedelics I always, from a very young age, I am a product of the D.A.R.E. program, and when Helen Hunt threw herself out the window, I took that seriously. But those scare tactics for me, they were effective. But then specifically with psychedelics, I was sort of made to understand that unless you had a very sound mind, it’d be best not to venture into that. Like shrooms were maybe a bit better, but acid, oh boy. Listen, I have no faith in myself. I was like, oh, I could take something and be on the forever gone train, yeah, totally, that would be me. I’m a candidate for that. I just like it, no question about it. I didn’t interrogate why I felt that way. I would like no that will probably happen to me so I’m going to avoid it. I think that combined with feeling like if I was going to use something like I wanted very consumerists, I wanted something to show for it. So either enhance performance or an ability to socialize when I otherwise didn’t feel like it, like unless there was truly like a quantifiable payoff, I was like, I don’t bite. Why do I want to imagine things that aren’t there? I do remember as a child having experiences that I think are similar to experiences you can have on a psychedelic just like sort of disassociating. I don’t know if that’s the proper psychological term. [00:27:01][90.8]

Dan : [00:27:02] I had similar experiences as well too, like as a kid growing up in a house that was filled with trauma. And I think just like as an aside, like one thing psychedelics have helped me do is work through a lot of traumatic events. But I was definitely fully capable of maybe not completely getting there, but approaching the kind of dissociative but like very mentally open state that I got later on from doing psychedelics. [00:27:32][30.2]

Devojka : [00:27:34] Why did they interest you as something to try? [00:27:36][2.1]

Dan : [00:27:37] J'avais besoin de sortir de là où j'étais par tous les moyens possibles. Il n'était pas envisageable de rester dans cette réalité et de garder la raison. [00:27:48][11.2]

Devojka : [00:27:48] So for me, I needed to not feel however, I was feeling at a moment, which I think is a little different. [00:27:54][6.2]

Dominique : [00:27:55] I think there like two sides, like two sides of approaching the same issue, like for everybody it’s escape. But I think kids brains are very, very powerful, like they’re very powerful, dissociators in the case of trauma. And sometimes people deal with that in different ways, like some people might seek, like traveling without traveling or a journey or some other fantastical thing that they might have heard about, like by taking this, magic thing or eating this magic mushroom like, you know, Alice in Wonderland, I’ve seen kids completely block out and tune out and become somebody else. [00:28:30][34.3]

Devojka : [00:28:30] So for me, if I was going to turn to any substance, it was just to not feel how I felt. Like at any given moment. And then my interest in it peaked around the time, I would say a few years ago, you know, friends would tell me, oh, it’s like a squeegee for your brain. It’s really good. It’s very clearing and then Dan and I got together in the band and stuff like that and he was very much like all about shrooms and it shows. We have a couple of songs, I meant to point them out in case they’re useful to you, but he’d always introduce them with about how they were about doing psychedelics on Vancouver Island. And I would just like, oh, Dan, come on, please. Like, still weirdly conservative in this first gen Balkan way. But the appeal of what I kind of just interpreted as hacking your mind, that started appealing to me a little bit. But I was still a bit trepidatious and I still wasn’t sure. And then so what I did was I started micro dosing, like really minimal. But one of the times I did it, I didn’t feel anything. But I was able to explain quite eloquently a difficult concept on the flight to Dan, and that’s hard for me. [00:29:46][76.0]

Dan : [00:29:47] And I didn’t know you were micro-dosing either. [00:29:49][1.7]

Devojka : [00:29:49] And he looked at me and he’s like, wow, you’re really like on fire today. And then my eyes really lit up because I was like, is this it because I don’t know if anyone else feels this but then it sort of became this thing of like, what if I’m secretly brilliant? If I do this thing, then suddenly my brain will really come up, come to its own right. It’s it just needs a little extra push. Then I’ll really uncover all the just deeply buried genius that must be living in my brain. But then we scheduled this podcast and it was literally the only kind of homework you really can’t save to the last day. So I did it last week and it was underwhelming. I don’t think I felt it as much as Dan when I did feel it. And I just ended up watching an old Danish movie that I remembered from when I was a child watching on TV. [00:30:44][55.0]

Dan : [00:30:45] No subtitles. [00:30:45][0.3]

Devojka : [00:30:46] No subtitles. Oh, it was Dutch. It was not Danish. It was Dutch. [00:30:51][4.6]

Dan : [00:30:52] Yeah, it was Dutch. [00:30:53][0.5]

Dominique : [00:30:54] But what made you want to watch this movie from your childhood? That’s what I would ask because it’s not the first time I’ve heard this kind of thing. [00:31:01][6.8]

Devojka : [00:31:01] Yeah, so I was feeling very underwhelmed, but also a bit incapacitated. We hiked to the mountain. I remember thinking before, I don’t know, hopefully, I’ll be down to be outside, but like instinctually I was like, I think I kind of want to just be at home and true enough, once we were outside and I wasn’t feeling anything and Dan was, but I was thinking, let’s just get home. I have to pee. Boring, boring stuff. And then we got home. And I think to answer your question, I think it was just that feeling of like, I can’t really do anything else right now. This is a movie that I will periodically remember and then Google. And so it’s always been on the cue of like, if I ever have time, I should watch this thing just for fun because it’s kind of like a weird movie. And then I thought, well, I’m sitting on the couch. I don’t feel like doing anything. There is something concentric about the memory of being a kid sitting in front of the TV, watching the movie and being tripped out by it and being an adult, sitting in front of the laptop watching a movie and being kind of tripped out by it. [00:32:11][69.9]

Ronan : [00:32:12] Did you experience it differently, though? Like one experience I had, it wasn’t a huge doses, like a half a gram. I was at an investor conference actually around cannabis and then someone had mushrooms. I was like, sure, why not? But I was away from the kids, which meant going to bed early was the most sublime pleasure for me because I meant I got to sleep through the night without interruption. And I took it. And like, it wasn’t a super intense experience, but one of my fascinations, like I have two quirky fascinations with television. One is fishing shows. I love fishing shows. And I have absolutely no idea why because for the longest time I’ve had a phobia of fish. And then the other thing is, I love watching those like infomercials like those time life music infomercials where they have seven billion songs of your greatest hits. And there’s an infomercial on of like 1980s like love ballads or something along those lines. And the first thing that struck me, I was like one of the guys is, you know, they have the two hosts who say like oh yeah, they’ll take you back to your favorite memories from high school. And one of the guys was like the former lead singer of some like 80s rock ballad band and like just how uncool he had become. He was like short and chubby and like big glasses and like ill-fitting clothes, I’m like, oh, my God, but I found the intensity of the music and the corniness of it and like the over-amplified love-dovey nature of it, like overwhelming like it just changed that experience. And it wasn’t like I was tripping out, I wasn’t experiencing like different sensations. It was just like emotionally I couldn’t handle that music anymore. Did you find anything like that when you were watching the movie, or is it just kind of the same old thing? [00:33:50][98.5]

Devojka : [00:33:51] What kept confirming itself over and over in various ways to me throughout those few hours was wherever I go, there I am. Whether I know it or not, I think a lot of my idea of what a personal evolution or growth for me would be is something that is very much removed from who I am. And so if it’s related to me in any way, how good could it possibly be? Like I think maybe that’s why I was a bit underwhelmed was because I was like, well, I’ve thought this before. I’ve come to this conclusion before. And it was valuable and so forth. Yeah, I think wherever I go, there I am. And now what, you know, and so that’s where I was left after that experience. But there are other things that are less dramatic or personal that I do find a value, because for me I’m very much more and more it’s like there’s a lot, you know, there’s what you know, you don’t know and then there’s what you don’t know that you don’t know. And there’s something that’s sort of attractive to me in these processes of like, yes, seeing things a little differently, especially since adulthood really has a way of sapping imagination. So just being reintroduced to imagination and to hearing things differently, seeing things differently, being present, there were certainly moments of that time where I felt like this is accelerated meditation in a way, because it’s really an inhospitable state to like look at your phone, right? Which I kind of love. [00:35:26][95.6]

Dominique : [00:35:27] Yeah. They say you may not get the trip that you want, but you’ll always get the trip that you need, right? And sometimes no experience or an underwhelming experience is the experience. And it’s about what you make of that and what you do with that and understanding that no one experience is going to be the same as the next. If you were in, I don’t know, on a couch or something like with some eyeshades and some music with a therapist, it might be much harder to escape and have control over that situation in the sense of like not being able to kind of face some of these things or have some profound insights, because sometimes when people are under the tendency to overintellectualize something or really try to control something, because that’s something that happens all the time, you know, and this stuff. Like that’s when it’s important for, you know, the therapist to jump in and say, hey, time to go back inside or like, let’s put back on the eyeshades or like trust and let go trust and let go, if you see something, walk towards it and not away from it. [00:36:22][54.7]

Devojka : [00:36:22] I think you’re right. Like the overintellectualize, I was actually quite surprised that I was doing that because I was trying to explain to Dan, I was like, it’s not like I don’t want to feel this or I want to come off as impervious. Like I would love it to be really doing to me what it’s obviously doing for you right now because it seems really fun, but interrogating literally every few seconds of experience. [00:36:47][24.6]

Dominique : [00:36:47] Maybe it didn’t feel safe, make maybe there wasn’t enough of a container there for you, you know, maybe there needed to be a different space and your brain went into protector mode. [00:36:56][8.7]

Ronan : [00:36:56] Or also like in my case, like some of it and the way I conceptualize it, and I’m by no means a psychologist or psychotherapist, but it’s like that first experience, it’s just starting to chip away at some of those walls, right? Like those emotional walls, like the things that force us to overintellectualize. I know I was totally guilty of that, I still am totally guilty of it. But I’ve gotten to a point where I can start to surrender. But it’s a process. It’s taken me like sixteen years of working with Irwin to get to probably just the starting line of this kind of stuff. But every experience I think moves you forward. You’re never the same, even if it doesn’t feel profound, like every time like there’s a little bit of emotion. Dan, there was something I think you wanted to bring up from before. I don’t know if it’s still top of mind. [00:37:37][41.0]

Dan : [00:37:38] Yeah, it was a revelation or I would say maybe ordering of information that was already there in my mind when I did mushrooms a few days ago, I was really focused on going on the podcast and talking about the experience. And I started thinking a lot about what my real thoughts about this resurgence of psychedelic therapy is. And, you know, as somebody who is personally therapeutically used it and had, you know, pretty good benefits in my life and what I landed on was I feel like for this movement to be successful, it needs and this is kind of difficult and I promise it ends on a happy note, but it needs to be contextualized historically. I mean, this is my opinion, this is my feeling about it and how I went into the trip that I had, and what I mean by historical context is that you know, since the 1950s, since Hoffman’s discovery, there has been every single decade a movement to change human consciousness with psychedelics, and unfortunately, the way these things got introduced to the public was through a massive covert intelligence operation run by the American government for almost 40 years that touched thousands of people’s lives in an extremely negative way. Then the 1960s movement, which was public, where you had people like Timothy Leary coming into this orbit of the MKUltra Program and bringing things into universities and sharing them with students, with faculty members until it explodes in popular consciousness. And you had this hippie movement that said we are going to do psychedelics, we’re going to change ourselves, and we’re going to not only change ourselves, we’re going to melt down reality and change the political structure of the country that we live in for the better. And it didn’t work. And then you have the New Age movement in the 1970s, which was basically we can’t change the political structure, what we need to do is focus on ourselves. If we change ourselves, then we will be good enough to go out and change the political structure. That didn’t work either. The rave culture of the 1990s, which had a similar experience with ecstasy, which I was a little too young for it, but I was part of the tail end of it. The idea that this communal experience would sort of push the political needle one way or the other, that didn’t work either. So what I’m hopeful for with this resurgence, is that like Niqua, you were talking earlier about the communal experience, if we can kind of apply this stuff that we’ve all had experience with that we all know affects us in a sort of profoundly contemplative way and then externalize it to our immediate community our neighbors, people we work with, people we might be in a political organization with, then it is, I think, possible to push the needle on some things that aren’t just personal. [00:40:52][193.4]

Dominique : [00:40:52] What I always ask people is like if they talk about an epic trip or an epic journey, I say, you know, do you feel like a better person because of this? Like, do you feel that this experience that you had is changed the world at all? Like, do you feel like that you are going out and behaving in a different way, thus that like the world is a better place because of this journey, this epic journey? You know, it’s interesting the conversations that result from that. There’s also a danger in psychedelics movements, for some people, I guess, ego death, but on the other hand, ego amplification and spiritual bypassing. And like we have to think about all of the shadow and the light, the dark and the bright. You know, in this work. [00:41:31][38.4]

Dan : [00:41:32] I just finished reading an incredible book by Stephen Kinzer called Poisoner in Chief, which came out last year, it’s an exhaustive history of the life of Sidney Gottlieb, who started the MKUltra Program. When I was finished the book, it’s very hard to reconcile the public actions of this man who is a monster in almost every way, and his private life, which was filled with studying folk dancing, doing psilocybin on a medicinal spiritual level, deep meditation and contemplation. You know, it was very hard to reconcile those two Gottlieb’s in my mind, and that kind of underpinned like my trip, I was like, I’m going to go into this and think about it. And that’s what I came out with. But for this to be a successful social and therapeutic movement, we have to look at all these other times we’ve tried this and and look at how they failed and why they failed. Then learn how to fail better bypass that. [00:42:39][67.0]

Ronan : [00:42:39] It’s interesting, I mean, I found that very profound because when people talk about this, the way it comes up was how do we not recreate Timothy Leary? Like, very much oversimplifies the reflection that’s involved, which is you’re right, like this has been attempted throughout truthfully history. But there’s a very good narrative that we can look back at from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s to today. And people who don’t study history are doomed to make the same mistakes. On that note, we always ask this question. I’m going to frame it a little bit differently. What do you think the best way to not make the mistakes of the past are or who needs to see the light most intensely? [00:43:19][40.5]

Devojka : [00:43:20] Well, I mean, like Dan was saying, Sidney Gottlieb, he was doing all of that and it really didn’t impact his bottom line. So that’s the tricky part. I feel like historically it swings too far from focus on the individual to overly focused on the community and integrating those two things. You know, I often say if everyone could take responsibility for their feelings while also understand that how they act impacts other people, I think we’d all get along a little better. But that’s very hard to do. So I know we put it in the water. Everyone does it. [00:43:57][36.3]

Dominique : [00:43:57] Unless we had massive integration like blimps from the sky, like afterwards, like I would be very afraid of just like straight psychedelics into the water stream. [00:44:06][8.6]

Devojka : [00:44:06] Well, then I’m back to the drawing board. I really don’t have an answer. [00:44:09][2.7]

Dan : [00:44:09] Je pense que j'ai une réponse, c'est une double question. Mais je pense que dans un scénario parfait, il s'agirait d'un groupe d'amis, de voisins et de personnes du voisinage que je ne connais peut-être même pas nécessairement. Je choisirais une fourchette arbitraire et je dirais simplement que tout le monde se réunit et que nous allons apprendre à nous connaître. Il est très difficile en ce moment, surtout pendant la pandémie, de ressentir une quelconque communauté physique, pas nécessairement avec son groupe de pairs, mais avec les gens que l'on côtoie, que l'on habite au-dessus, au-dessous ou autre, et cette sorte de communisme acide, je pense que ce serait une expérience intéressante. J'aimerais voir ce qui se passe. L'autre chose serait des collègues de groupe, si j'étais, vous savez, en conflit profond avec des gens avec qui j'ai eu une relation, une relation de travail pendant une longue période. Peut-être qu'une thérapie psychédélique de groupe pourrait m'aider. [00:45:02][52.9]

Ronan : [00:45:02] C'est une excellente réponse. Et je pense que le communisme acide est un excellent nom pour un futur album. [00:45:06][3.7]

Devojka : [00:45:07] Oui, c'est vrai. C'est vraiment agir localement, mais penser globalement. C'est très bien Dan, j'adore ça. [00:45:13][6.5]

Dan : [00:45:14] Je vous remercie pour le temps que vous m'avez accordé. J'ai trouvé cette conversation délicieuse. C'était une conversation réfléchie, instructive, j'en ai retiré un tas de choses et Dev, vous m'avez facilité la tâche. J'aborde toujours ces conversations avec beaucoup d'appréhension en pensant à la façon dont elles vont se dérouler. Vous m'avez tous les deux facilité la tâche. Je vous remercie. C'est, c'est super. [00:45:30][16.5]

Devojka : [00:45:31] Merci de nous avoir accueillis. [00:45:32][0.9]

Dan : [00:45:33] Merci de nous avoir accueillis. [00:45:33][0.7]

Ronan : [00:45:38] J'ai retenu trois choses essentielles de la conversation avec Dan, Dev et Dom. Premièrement, comme le dit Tom Robbins, nous inventons le monde, l'univers, la vie, la réalité, surtout la réalité. C'est un thème que Dan et Dev ont beaucoup abordé. Accepter cette vérité a été l'une des expériences les plus libératrices de ma vie. L'un des sentiments les plus puissants qu'offrent les psychédéliques est celui de l'interconnexion. Ils me rappellent que nous faisons tous partie d'un système vivant, ce qui signifie que nous ne sommes jamais seuls. Nous faisons toujours partie de quelque chose et nous sommes tous responsables de nos contributions au sein de ce système. Enfin, chaque fois que j'ai l'impression que la pandémie me touche vraiment, cette conversation avec Dan et Dev m'a rappelé que tout le monde est touché par la maladie, du simple citoyen aux musiciens qui connaissent un succès incroyable. La pandémie a effacé la frontière entre la vie familiale et un environnement de travail externe structuré. Et ce n'est pas grave si cela a été difficile ou facile ou parfois difficile ou parfois facile et jamais certain, vous n'êtes pas seul. Mais le bon côté des choses, c'est que vous avez probablement beaucoup plus d'occasions de porter un pantalon de survêtement tous les jours. [00:46:51][73.2]

Ronan : [00:47:01] Merci d'avoir écouté Field Tripping, un podcast consacré à l'exploration des expériences psychédéliques et de leur capacité à affecter nos vies. Je suis votre hôte, Ronan Levy. Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, restez curieux. Respirez correctement. Et n'oubliez pas que chaque jour est un voyage d'étude si vous le laissez faire. Field Tripping est créé par Ronan Levy et produit par Conrad Page. Notre recherchiste est Sharon Bella. Nous remercions tout particulièrement Quill. Et bien sûr, un grand merci aux "opérateurs" Dan et Dev de m'avoir rejoint aujourd'hui. S'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît, jetez un coup d'œil à leur dernier album, Radiant Dawn. C'est une expérience sonore magistrale, inspirante et touchante. Nous remercions également le Dr Dominique Morisano, psychologue en chef de Field Trip Health, de nous avoir rejoints aujourd'hui et d'avoir invité Dan et Dev à participer à la conversation. N'oubliez pas de vous abonner à notre podcast et de vous inscrire à notre lettre d'information sur fieldtripping.fm. [00:47:01][0.0]

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