Hamid Jabbar | Mitolife Radio Ep #173

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
magnesium, minerals, medicine, ayahuasca, body, plant medicines, experience, people, plant, called, copper, smoking, tobacco, nicotine, deplete, cannabis, day, meditation, psychedelics, eat

Matthew Blackburn 00:19
You're listening to Episode 173 of Mitolife Radio. I'm Matt Blackburn and today, I'm interviewing Hamid Jabbar on plant medicines, sound therapy, mental health, addiction, and how mineral balance and enzyme pathways functioning plays into all of this. If you've been in the natural health field long enough, or studied biohacking and the people in that world, you've likely come across psychedelics / plant medicines, and people using these for cognitive enhancement, or working through stored trauma in the body to finally be able to release it, and just for overall wellness. And what's been interesting to me over the years is noticing this savior complex, like this messianic complex, as Hamid calls it, that can come when someone's taken a lot of plant medicines and they have mineral imbalance. So, I talked about that with Hamid and just the general philosophy around plant medicines are all non-human entities, demons and tricksters. So we talk about the Christian perspective, the traditional perspective, religious perspective on psychedelics, and just cover a lot of topics of - if this is a subject that you've been researching for years or experimenting with or studying, I think there's a lot of new information in here on the mineral connection to these substances. So enjoy the show here is Hamid Jabbar. All right, Hamid Jabbar, welcome to the show.

Hamid Jabbar 02:28
Hey, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matthew Blackburn 02:30
Yeah, thanks for taking the time. This is a really fascinating topic, I've never had a show specifically on this. And we're gonna get into some other stuff like meditation, sound therapy and other cool things that you're into. But one of the things that you share that I love is the emphasis on mineral balance, and how that affects one's tolerance or reaction to plant medicines, or psychedelics. And I think back to - I went to music festivals, just the same one for four years in a row and I just looked around at the people and kind of just studied them and I was slugging back homemade magnesium bicarbonate. And I had my cooler, full of raw goat milk, I was chugging as well. And I just felt like these people, dancing all nights, and doing some good connecting to their body and letting go, but at the same time, really taxing their brain specifically. And so I really, really appreciate that you're getting the word out about this.

Hamid Jabbar 03:43
Yeah and I think it's a wonderful image in my mind to see you there with your cooler of goat milk chugging magnesium at a music festival, you're probably the only one because most of the people that are partaking in these types of activities are probably doing so without a lot of mineral support. And that's one of the areas that I've been trying to sort of push information out about, and to spark some discussions moreso. I think that we have a lot to learn about the interplay of plant medicines, psychedelics, and minerals and I think I might be one of the only people that has gone through Morleys training and spent some time down the mineral rabbit hole who's trying to connect the dots with plant medicines and psychedelics. And so there's a lot of things that people in the plant medicine, psychedelic world, that healing world are completely unaware of, or just haven't thought about, never thought to ask the questions. And so some of the things that I'm getting into now, we're trying to understand how these plant medicines interact with our minerals, are they sapping our minerals? Are they doing damage to an already depleted system and then are there ways to support it? Because what's coming online, at least in the United States is a lot of therapy. Psychiatrists are going to be working with sort of psychedelic medicines more and more, and I think there's an education piece there for them. And, and then there's just other aspects to it, about different cultural aspects. A lot of these medicines are coming from indigenous traditions. And as Westerners were mineral deserts. And so when we approach some of these things, we're coming from a totally different baseline state of health.

Matthew Blackburn 05:47
Yeah, absolutely. I noticed a lot of the big biohackers with really huge followings, have been promoting for several years now, micro dosing, and doing ceremonies, Ayahuasca or combo or various things. And I noticed that at the same time, there's also the push for those usual supplements, the fish oil, the zinc, the liposomal, ascorbic acid, fortunately, not iron that I've seen, but just those three alone will further deplete some one of the things they're already deficient in going into a plant medicine journey, right?

Hamid Jabbar 06:31
Yeah, well, so this is a whole whole area that needs to be researched. And I hope that some people will research it beyond me because I'm spending time trying to figure out how medicines like Ayahuasca work with our minerals. And that there are minerals involved, and that there's mitochondrial activity involved, because let's just take Ayahuasca for instance, which is the one that I think most people are familiar with or speaking out. Ayahuasca contains probably hundreds of alkaloids, we've only really identified a few of them and the ones that we've identified, most of the discussion is about how they're monoamine oxidase inhibitors. And, as you know, from our mutual friend, Morley, anytime you hear oxidase, or oxygenase, you're dealing with a copper dependent enzyme. And then to deal with the effects of inhibiting a copper dependent enzyme. We don't know whether that's stripping copper from those enzymes. We don't know what the long term effects on mineral status are. And even more interesting, there's almost no discussion about some of the other effects that are happening on the mitochondrial level and sort of unraveling this in the last few days trying to, in particular, with Ayahuasca, which is also a acetyl transferase inhibitor in the liver. And acetyl transferase is something involved with our DNA. There's some interesting aspects of genetics going on there and it's not like, we want to inhibit things, we really want to balance things. And what you've identified is something that I had innately identified in myself when I started to work with plant medicines is that, I started to work and I quickly fell out of balance, I was probably on the precipice of being out of balance, actually, I just didn't know it, I was severely magnesium deficient. I didn't know anything about copper but in retrospect, now having done my labs a million times, I was definitely a copper deficient state and the medicines certainly - Ayahuasca which is the primary medicine that I've worked with, it didn't help. It didn't help. So I have a little bit of concern. It's out of love, because I do believe these medicines are really powerful and they can be healing allies, but it's also just out of love for my fellow humans from just running into something and thinking, I can just do this and it's going to be no impact on my health long term or my mineral status or even more so the things you mentioned about preparations, I don't see a lot of that stuff in the preparations the vitamin C and zinc, thank God but I do see a lot of the places that offer these types of experiences and healing modalities, doing really kind of strange diets where they eliminate salt and fat and other things that sort of come out of indigenous cultures and maybe aren't so beneficial for people who are retinol deficient or already magnesium deficient. So those are sort of some of the things that I've been trying to get more information about and talk about.

Matthew Blackburn 10:15
That's great. So, before you did Morleys, Root Cause Protocol program, were you already starting to look into this stuff? Or was that kind of like the catalyst that got you going?

Hamid Jabbar 10:30
Well, my healing journey, so to speak, began when I was probably 13, or 14. And I will tell you that I was probably the first person - now maybe not the first person, but one of the first people in the state of Texas in 1994, to adopt what they called a hunter gatherer diet. Now, you would call it a paleo diet, that's probably - you were maybe five years old but back then, there was no such thing. So my entire life has been sort of going through different paradigm shifts, and seeing the effects on myself, what I really got into was just trying things out on myself, because a lot of the things that I was struggling with just they never were properly diagnosed, they never were properly treated. So it was sort of through experimentation. So I've always been into kind of trying to understand the interplay of diet, nutrition, mental health, these types of modalities - bodywork. And so it wasn't just Morleys training, actually, our mutual friend Paris was the one that introduced me to Morley's work. And I think she sent me your podcast with him, one of your podcasts. And that came, it came at a time where I was just on my own health journey, trying to figure out what was going on with me. And I had figured out all the stops, by myself. So when I read Morley's protocol, I instantly said, okay, he knows what's going on because he had already identified - I already identified that on my own. So I realized, yeah, I resonate with this person. But I think going through more of these training, the thing that I started to notice, because I was heavily entrenched in plant medicine, work at the time, was that a lot of the things that we're trying to remedy through plant medicine work, we're trying to work through traumas, emotional healing, improve our mood, improve our outlook on life, a lot of that is really based in mineral dysregulation. And that isn't really discussed at all. Most of the time, people think mental health is completely separate from physical health but they're intertwined. I mean, they're inseparable. So when I went through more of these training, I really pieced that together. And I saw that all these things that I was trying to remedy with myself with plant medicines are actually a result of mineral dysregulation. So his protocol helped me to rebuild from the ground up to the point where I realized I don't need all these plant medicines. They're not, they're not bad. But they certainly weren't getting to the root cause, which was minerals. And then the added piece that Morley adds in, which is that he really understands that the body is so sensitive, when we start to tweak with one enzyme here, we start to do this over here. And we don't understand the the miracle that is in the body. I mean, it is so complex. So every time I would hear somebody talk about a plant medicine, "Oh, it does this, it raises serotonin" well, it probably does a thousand other things that we don't know about. And it's unclear that all of that stuff is really helping, it's just creating a new out of balance situation that the body will then adjust to, and you'll get to homeostasis, but you may then become dependent on working with the plants, which is this - are the medicines, I've seen this happen over and over, people sort of get dependent on that healing modality because they're not addressing the underlying mineral dysregulation. So that's sort of pivoted me. At least my paradigm shifted again, which I think is a good sign. If your paradigm is not dissolving every few years, you're not digging deep enough. But it pivoted me enough to see that there's definitely minerals at play here. We need to understand more than metabolic ways in which these things manifest depression, anxiety. These are metabolic and we don't think of it that way - the mental health world certainly doesn't. And I have talked to psychologists and, and people that work in therapy, and they want to address these things but they're the go to kind of give them vitamin D, you don't have enough vitamin D. So they don't even understand yet the depths of how to fix these things or are trying to get to the root of it. So there's a lot to be learned in this world. I didn't think that anything I said had any, any kind of audience so sort of surprised that people were, were interested in what I was saying about these things.

Matthew Blackburn 15:36
I think it's awesome. And yeah, like Morley says, "Now the body's frick, and frack and checks and balances" like you said, and made me think of cannabis, which is a really interesting one, because I was in that industry in Southern California for about four years, delivering and working in dispensaries. And I noticed that people were addicted to it, and they were using it, like a drug instead of a medicine. And lately, I've been hearing from the metabolic community, or the Ray Peat people that cannabis increases estrogen. But I also found that it increases pregnenolone. So it's, there's so many factors going on with these substances. I think it that it's like the overuse and the quality probably matters quite a bit.

Hamid Jabbar 16:36
Yeah, well, cannabis - I think this is a good point to just ask you a question. How would you define a medicine, Matt?

Matthew Blackburn 16:47
That's, that is a good question. I guess I would define it as something that you take consciously knowing why you're taking it for what purpose and you know when to not use it and when to imbibe it, with it. That's part of my definition.

Hamid Jabbar 17:08
Yeah, no, it's good because what I've seen is that people now are attaching the word medicine to a lot of things that it sort of puts a benign twist on, on the use. So you may be using it as a drug or as something that you're dependent on, which I've seen with cannabis, and certain other types of medicines. But they're not using it as a medicine. They're basically in an addictive state. So it's, it's not, it's not exactly healing at that point. There's, there's a guy named Gabor Maté, who I respect a lot and he says, addiction is where the cure becomes the cause. And there's a point sometimes with these things, where they create the very situation that we're trying to heal, where they contribute to it. And then you get stuck in a loop, you get stuck in a pattern. And cannabis is one that I think is very easy for people to get trapped with. I don't know very many occasional cannabis users. And most people will tell me if they're using cannabis there, they'll tell you, "I'll use it occasionally." "Well, what do you mean?" "Well, you know, at night before bed." That's quite the usual use.

Matthew Blackburn 18:27
Every single day.

Hamid Jabbar 18:31
So we get into this part where there's there's aspects where I think you're right, cannabis, it has a, it has so many different modes of action. I mean, we couldn't even sit and figure out how it's working. But usually what people are seeking from it are, are temporary relief of certain symptoms. So then the question is, what's the underlying cause? And is cannabis really getting to it? It's probably not, it's probably just symptom relief. Maybe the aspects with estrogen actually help manage iron. This is something that I was talking to Paris about on her podcast, which is, if it's increasing estrogen, and that is somehow helping people then maybe it's because there's an antioxidant effect. And antioxidants sort of step in to clean up the mess caused by iron dysregulation. So it could be helpful but it's a crutch, then - it's not getting to the the root of it.

Matthew Blackburn 19:37
And do you think some of these things like let's just take cannabis, for example, like all of the physical effects aside, just maybe putting someone back into their body could be medicinal? Or I think about coffee, I drink my espresso shots every day from my home roasted beans and I wonder how much the ritual of just that routine that that my body likes is part of the medicine.

Hamid Jabbar 20:06
Well, we've certainly been disconnected from our bodies, I think as a, as a culture as a generation, maybe. It seems like our our generation, I'm gonna put myself in your generation, it makes me feel younger, it seems like our generation is trying to get more in touch with our bodies and get more in touch with the feelings that are there and not just numb them, disconnect them, put them on a shelf to address another time. And, and that is, that's beautiful. I mean, it's definitely part of being a full human, which is understanding how our bodies are communicating to us and our bodies don't speak in English or other languages, they, they're very complex. And so I think that there's, there's really a beautiful movement happening towards that. And it's not just through plant medicines, meditation, certain forms of yoga, dance, they all put us in our bodies ritual, like you discovered with the coffee, and a lot of the plant medicines themselves, cannabis, Ayahuasca, I just name a couple others, like Wachuma and the mushrooms, which aren't plants, but put them in that category. They do put people into their bodies in a way that it's, it's hard to, it's hard to get there, without a lot of training. They amplify the sensations in the body in such a way that they become, they become obvious and you can't ignore them. So I think that that's really helpful to - it's one of the the gifts that they give, which is putting us in that state where we can really connect with ourselves. But at what cost? There's, there's definitely a cost. Usually, that's that's sort of what I, I just want to know, I want to know that if I'm taking something, what is it doing to my copper? Why can't we have a study that talks about the mineral content of mushrooms? Why isn't anybody doing that work? I don't know. What are the mineral content of Ayahuasca or - fill in the blank. Why can't we figure out what the effects are of monoamine oxidase inhibition and acetyl transferase inhibition on minerals? These are the questions that I have. And because I have those questions, I sort of, I have a hard time giving a full green light to these things without understanding more. Now I understand that the native peoples that have a lot of these medicines and their traditions, for example, I've spent time with this people of the Amazon called the Shipibo people. There's a lot of different Shipibo lineages, so I'm not speaking for all of them. But the one that I was with, you would be surprised there, there's nobody there with any gray hair. And they don't have male pattern baldness. And when I say nobody with gray hair, I mean, I saw 90 year old men with full heads of black hair, and their jaw structure. It's sort of the older style jaw structure that we don't see in our culture anymore. Like the fuller Jaws, the teeth aren't all cramped. These people have remarkable mineral status. And so I think this is one thing that people have ignored, which is that, yes, these indigenous people work with these plant medicines and they do it regularly. And they do restrictive diets, but they're so well mineralized. I mean, they've got they've got stores on their bones. And then you take people from our culture who have been depressed for a few years, maybe longer, they took SSRIs and they got off it, they're all medicated, all their minerals are gone. They already have gray hair in their 30s. Now I see gray hair in the 20s. And then they go down in the jungle and they work with these medicines. And they wonder why they come back and they think they were possessed by spirits or this because all their magnesium is gone and all their minerals got sapped. Some of these things are very simple when you start to look at them from mineral status and why people in our culture are are having different relationships developed with the plant medicines, and why people in the jungle have a totally different relationship and they don't have a dependence in the same way maybe. And also, my teacher in the jungle, he's a Shipibo Curandero and it's hard to communicate with him because his second language is Spanish so even his Spanish is terrible. But the last time I saw him was three years ago and he basically told me that he doesn't understand how to heal Westerners that his methods that they've been using in his tribe for thousands of years with ayahuasca and other plant medicines don't work with Westerners. And I think for him, it's it's just a mystery that, that a lot of it is minerals. Now, they don't think of things in minerals, they're very different in their thinking. But if you just look at us versus them, you can tell right away that we're depleted.

Matthew Blackburn 25:35
That's really fascinating about the gray hair. And, yeah, on social media, I often make the point that the powers that be have made things so complicated with supplements, because everyone's taken supplemented, we've been forced, supplemented, even if you haven't taken a supplement out of a bottle, with the iron fortification that started in 1941. And on and on vitamin D being put in the milk. So yeah, it's it's, it takes like another a different perspective, I think, being here in the US to help people get back to balance because you actually need to open up their supplement cabinet and see what they've been dosing themselves on.

Hamid Jabbar 26:22
Oh, I mean, we have our work cut out for us, Matt, because I start to say the word minerals, and then the first response I get from people is okay, what minerals should I just take? Or is there a supplement for that, and it's, it's almost just an entirely different paradigm, when you start to realize it's not as easy as just taking a mineral tablet, these things - and people don't want to recognize that it took us a whole lifetime to get where we are in our body. And they want it to be fixed overnight, with some kind of supplement or pill. And the body anytime it heals - healing is a form of growth, right? When we heal, we're re growing - so growth takes time. And I think we have to start thinking of ourselves more like plants, that it's slow, the healing process is slow, our growth is slow. That's one of the reasons that people seem drawn to working with psychedelics and plant medicines is that there's this trope that goes around, which is one night with Ayahuasca is like 10 years of psychotherapy. I don't know if you've heard that but I've heard that a million times. And I actually think it's pretty true. It is like 10 years of psychotherapy, but we need like, 100 years of psychotherapy. I mean, we're not, we're not done with just 10. There's a lot more to do and it usually uncovers a lot more issues for us to work on. And so it's not an overnight fix.

Matthew Blackburn 28:04
Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if this is going off track here but I'm really curious your thoughts on this with narcissists, I guess you could call them or men with inflated egos, and they can be women too. But I've met a couple guys that really fit this description that, 5-MeO-DMT, and combo and all of these things that they're doing, actually seem to push them deeper into their ego spiraling. And I'm just curious if you've looked into that, or witnessed that, because I think that's something that's not being talked about enough.

Hamid Jabbar 28:48
Yeah so there's so many aspects to the plant medicine world, there's the physical, then there's the psychological. And, people speak of harm reduction, but one of the biggest harms is that you do come - you can, you can just become more diluted in yourself thinking, there's this concept in psychology, it's sort of like a messianic complex. So this is something that I think everybody that's been in the plant medicine world can relate to, which is that they go and they have a transcendent experience of some type. And they feel as though God, Jesus, whoever your God is, your divine was speaking directly to you. And that's a very powerful experience that makes a lot of people really, really open up to spirituality. But the flip side of that is that sometimes it can go into the place where you think you are God. And that you come back and you think that you were spoken to and given certain responsibilities to come and heal the world or to, to work with the medicines to heal other people. And that's a very common thing, then there's the thing that you mentioned, which is that we need to practice something called discernment. And discernment isn't talked about a lot in the circles that, that I've been in, which is to understand that not everything that you experience is literally true. So this is where the ego inflation can occur, which is we may be presented with an experience that's trying to challenge a part of us or reflect a part of us. And we come out thinking, that we've sort of transcended to another level. And it can be a form of ego inflation. So it's a risk - if and that's where the I think the integration piece is coming online, there's more people trying to do this work that they call integration, which is sort of how do we make sense of this, because there's not a framework in our culture. You and I, we go to elementary school, and maybe we grew up in a religious household, we go to church, we don't have a framework to process transcendent experiences, because it's not part of our upbringing. And so then, as adults, we kind of, if we experienced these types of things, we don't know how to make sense of it in a bigger cosmology. So there's a movement to integrate, to help people to bring this type of experience into their life. And I think that's really needed, but more so what I find is that it's, it's on the preparatory end, before people go into these things, they need to really understand, why are we doing this? What's the purpose? And so they're not surprised, but yeah, the ego inflation happens. There's ego inflation in every world, whether it's plant medicine world, or the yoga world, or the meditation world, we've seen the guru complex come and go, it doesn't matter what area you go into, you kind of find it.

Matthew Blackburn 32:11
Right. It's funny, you mentioned Christianity, I was raised Catholic, and I went to Sunday school for like, 11 years, and I've been back and forth over the years with organized religion, just like I went back and forth with veganism and vegetarianism. And I finally left permanently for life, organized religion, about a year and a half ago or so. And my perspective, was contradicting my life experiences growing up. As a Christian, born again, or whatever it was that all non human entities or demons, and tricksters. So, you said, not everything you experience is true and it made me think of that, because from a Christian perspective, they look at someone that takes a plant medicine, let's say like psilocybin, and they see elves or something and the elves are talking to them and giving them knowledge and people that are religious would say those are actually demons that are tricking you. And maybe they are, right? I mean, that's it's possible. Not saying all of them, but some of the some of the entities you encounter.

Hamid Jabbar 33:28
It's fascinating. There's a there's a really fascinating book called, "The Immortality Key" that this, this guy named Brian Muraresku, did a lot of research over 10 years about the history of plant medicines and Christianity in particular. And it's it's a fascinating dive, especially for people who are from a Christian background, maybe people who have come out of it even to see that back thousands of years ago, there wasn't such a big divide between the plant medicine world and the original initial sort of sproutings of Christianity. And some of the rituals have survived like the communion, which is now sort of a placebo communion he calls it, but at the time might have been more of a an active substance. And interestingly, there's Christian religions that work with Ayahuasca, the two churches that have full legal status in the United States to work with Ayahuasca. One is the UDV, União do Vegetal, I don't pronounce it correctly, because I'm not Portuguese fluent. And then the other one, which is the Santo Daime, they've actually gone to the Supreme Court of United States and gotten full approval to work with Ayahuasca, as their sacraments and they're syncretic Christian religions. So it's very interesting because they take Communion but the communion is Ayahuasca. So I think a lot of it, a lot of it is our framework, and the medicines sort of respond to the framework. If you go spend time in the jungle, and everyone's telling stories about the Anaconda and the Jaguar, and they're telling stories about the plant spirits being in this type of form, then that sort of programs the subconscious in a way to experience those things with the medicines, and then the cosmology would be different in the Christian syncretic religions, they don't experience the same things, this experience the saints and other other figures. And then I don't know about the mushrooms, because it seems to be that a phenomenon that the mushroom gnomes are, are sort of everywhere, but there's interesting things that we can learn about religion, I think too, which one, and I grew up in the Catholic religion, of course, my my dad is Muslim, and my mom is Jewish so they raised me Catholic, which that could be a whole discussion that's separate. But the things that I noticed about being in religion, or going to Catholic school, was that it didn't provide a transcendent experience. So it wasn't giving me direct access to "God" and I actually grew up and when I left, that I didn't have a connection that I felt strongly about to any religion. And it was through working with Ayahuasca, actually, that I had experiences that put me in direct contact with what I perceived to be God. And I remember coming out of that going, "Okay, I have to rethink everything." Then and I start to realize that the religions are probably true but through the religions themselves, you don't often get that direct experience. And maybe that's one reason that people are gravitating towards working with these medicines is they're craving, a direct experience of the Divine that isn't always provided in religions, and I think there's beauty and religion. I mean, I used to love the Catholic Church, when I was a kid, just the stained glass, people wearing robes and the ceremony was just nice. I liked it as a kid. And the community community is definitely part of it. But there's, there's a lot of framework that's missing. Yeah, well, I think that the the point of the story is, we don't have the framework. So for example, people that grew up in the Shipibo tribe in Peru, and they grow up from the age of eight, drinking Ayahuasca sometimes with their family, and then it's just part of community life. They don't have to integrate it and they don't have this discernment problem to figure out what's real and what's not. It's just part of the whole lifestyle they have and then you take people from Silicon Valley, or the ones you're mentioning that start supplement companies are, and then they go to the jungle, it's completely a different type of life experience that they're bringing in. And so it's a little harder to discern what pieces of that are part of our truth. What pieces of that to take forward and you can get into the place where you can't discern, what's real and what's not. And I think that gets to the piece on the ego getting out of control sometimes, but, but overall, it doesn't have to be that way. With proper integration, proper support, people can have really life changing experiences, I think, too.

Matthew Blackburn 39:03
Yeah, absolutely. I find it fascinating that people, like you said, come back thinking they're God, like that's very common. And I wonder if it's just such a seductive thought? I don't know if there's been books written about this, but I just think that's a really slippery slope because they say, "Oh, if everything's God, then, every molecule in your body is too, which means you are God." And it's like that's, that can lead to some really dark places really quickly.

Hamid Jabbar 39:37
Yeah, there are books on this. And this has been studied in the field of psychiatry for a long time, because actually, they they pathologized this now I don't like to pathologize things like that but in the psychiatry world, if you think your God, you have a messianic complex and I think that there's a diagnosis that goes along with this. And in the old days, they would probably institutionalize you. There's a difference, there's a fine line between realizing that you are divine. And then and then jumping the line to think that your God, and and so at some point psychiatrists draw the line. And they say, this is where the line was drawn. But I think that, what I've seen is that, if that happens, there's usually a reason that that happened. With that person, they were probably completely dysregulated to begin with, and their experience with the medicines, threw them into a place of complete dysregulation. Now, it could be minerals, it could be hormones, could be all kinds of things, but I start to see it from the mineral, the mineral lens, a lot of it is just no magnesium is left. And there's a phenomenon also where people have the opposite, which is they don't come out thinking their God, but they come out thinking they're possessed by entities or spirits. And I can tell you that I had that. And I've experienced it firsthand and I don't believe in any of that stuff. I remember being in the jungle thinking, I don't believe in possession, there's no way I can't be possessed. I don't believe in this. And they told me, "But it doesn't matter if you believe in it." And see, that is a really powerful thing to say to somebody because it goes into the subconscious. And because that went into my subconscious, then when I experienced some phenomenon, my subconscious said, "Aha, this is it. This is the thing they programmed you with." And I fully believe that had been possessed. But what it is, I don't know what it is exactly, but I do know that you can cure it with magnesium. So I don't know whether it's our wires get crossed and our neurotransmitters aren't -- and we are getting possessed or maybe it's just an epiphenomenon of our consciousness. I can't explain it but I do know that minerals are involved. And I saw last Halloween one of the funniest memes I've ever seen that somebody posted on Instagram, and it said, Are you possessed by magnesium deficiency, and then it listed all of these things, getting attacked in the night, sleep paralysis entities following you around, fans turning on as you walk by them, all kinds of things like that. And I was like, "Oh, I had all that stuff." And, and a lot of it is the magnesium but then I think you you pointed out recently in some of your posts, how your EMF sensitivity went down after blood donation. And I was incredibly sensitive to EMFs and I think there's an iron piece and I did a post, you know, Morley has been talking about iron carrying the frequency of fear. But I have now started to experience things, working with the medicines where I can really tap in and see, "Yeah, there's a lot of iron floating around." And there's a lot of this - and our minerals in ceremony will affect whether we think we're getting attacked or possessed. And it may not be a actual entity, it could be the EMFs. It could be just the iron run amok. And it's a very fascinating field that I wish to know more about.

Matthew Blackburn 43:39
Yeah, yeah, that is really interesting. It was a total spiritual experience donating and like, how have I been talking to Morley for two years, and I just did my first blood donation, since I can remember. Yeah, total shift and everything. And the fear aspect is interesting. I have a Lucia light here, like you lay under the flashing lights, and your brain creates stuff and it's kind of like a hypnagogic trance experience. And I can't stand more than like a one out of five star difficulty or intensity. And so I'm curious to see as I dump more iron over the next few months here or the rest of this year, if that affects me differently if I'm able to go deeper into that light experience. There's so many fun experiments to do.

Hamid Jabbar 44:35
Oh, yeah. I think that people asking for ceremonies and plant medicines, one of the best things people can do is give blood if they're ready for it. And it's almost as powerful if not more powerful and so I'm a big advocate. Paris and I were joking that we need to just hold bloodletting ceremonies where we bring a phlebotomist.

Matthew Blackburn 45:05
That's hilarious. I want to learn home - self phlebotomy but I just I'm here alone, I don't want to like bleed myself out. It'd be cool if there's a better way. I bought leeches last year, but I was too chicken to put it on. Oh, wow. Yeah - no, you first Matt. Because the problem with those is they actually inject substances into you a lot of people don't know that like over 200 different compounds, they actually introduced your system. So kind of questionable. I wanted to ask you, I mean, as far as magnesium, because this might be part of the Q&A questions later, but just to to knock it out here. What do you recommend for magnesium because the guy that I got my float tank from - the sensory deprivation tank, Max, he was saying that Mercola said he couldn't raise his magnesium red blood cell with oral supplementation until he added the transdermal. So what I've been telling people is like, homemade magnesium, bicarbonate, amino acid bound forms, and then magnesium soaks, like, I would do all three. Because people generally aren't taking enough, right?

Hamid Jabbar 46:28
Oh, no, everybody, everybody's deficient. But if you tell people they're deficient, they're just going to run out and grab tons of magnesium and try to take it and it's not going - I can tell you because I've been doing my bloods, the same labs you've been doing now The Full Monty, I've been doing it every two months before my blood donations. And I haven't been able to raise my Mag RBC. It's not that I don't feel good, I feel great but there's aspects to getting the magnesium where it needs to be that are sort of beyond our comprehension right now. I do best with the transdermal. And those soaks that you have are amazing. I mean, it's magnesium chloride, isn't it the the salts that go in there?

Matthew Blackburn 47:18
It's actually mostly sulfate. I forget if it messes with the filtration media running through the the tubes in there, but it's mostly sulfate with some chloride. But if you go to like a sensory deprivation spot, it's 100% magnesium sulfate that they use.

Hamid Jabbar 47:37
Gotcha. Yeah, I'm a big fan of transdermal and I've had this conversation with people who are going to work with plant medicines. So this may not apply to everybody that's listening but some of the people have asked me, "Well, I'm going to a weekend where it's three ayahuasca ceremonies, and we're on a strict diet, can I take my magnesium?" and this and that, and usually what to encourage them to do is to not change anything about what they're doing. The last thing you want to do is just start taking magnesium during the course of something like that, but I do encourage people to take the lotions and the oils, because just transdermally it has a huge effect on our bio - the bioavailability is really there so you can get it through the skin. And it's quite easy in such an environment to just be rubbing magnesium lotion on your feet. Nobody's going to ask you if you feel awkward about taking magnesium because some of these people are, I think their concern is that the social aspects of like being aware of the minerals, but now they're in an environment that has a completely different outlook. So it's this weird, they don't want to get singled out for doing something that's outside the norm. So I just tell them put the magnesium lotion. But I do take baths - I take two baths a day still. I've been doing that for six months. And I can take a little bit orally but not too much. That's a rigorous schedule. That's awesome. Well, people ask me what I do, I say my first job is self care.

Matthew Blackburn 49:29
I love it. It's so important. Yeah, I interviewed Jason Hommel on copper and he he recommends making transdermal called copper sulfate solution. It's like that blue - it's really cheap. You just mix that blue stuff in filtered water and shake it and that'd be next level probably to use pre and post a ceremony is rubbing copper and magnesium.

Hamid Jabbar 49:59
I have tried that too, it's a little harder for me to gauge whether it's doing anything with the copper. I'm not sure why I really do feel it with the magnesium though. I have the the copper, and I can mix it with whatever. I thought about that, too. Whether there's a need for some sort of transdermal thing that's that's kind of a combined thing, too. But maybe in the future.

Matthew Blackburn 50:31
Yeah, I know the GHK, like skincare stuff that Morley talks about, I need to get back on, I was rubbing that on my face every night before I went to bed. It's pretty expensive, that copper serum but that's probably the proven way to get copper transdermally.

Hamid Jabbar 50:50
Yeah, that one, by the way, this is just a secret you can get - that's the reverse skin aging. If you search on that website, they will sell you just the vial of the copper GHK without any serum or without any -

Matthew Blackburn 51:02
Oh, wow.

Hamid Jabbar 51:03
And then you can mix it with whatever you want. And it comes in a little dropper bottle and that's what I got, because I don't like all the ingredients in the serums and the lotions. So I would mix it with emu oil and make my own. And that was great.

Matthew Blackburn 51:22
That's pretty awesome. Wow. I wanted to ask you, because you brought up mushrooms a few times. That's actually the medicine that I have the most experience with. And I think it was Terence McKenna that got me really interested in it, years ago. That was a really interesting time in my life. I was listening to a lot of Bashar and Abraham Hicks and going to channelers in person and listening to Terence, and he had some pretty interesting lectures about psilocybin. I think I started to read his book, was it Food of the Gods? It's pretty fascinating.

Hamid Jabbar 52:06
Yeah, mushrooms are - well, I think as far as sustainability goes, they have a lot going for them. Because they're very easy to grow and they're not damaging to the environment. And they seem to be incredibly powerful as far as what they can do for people. I think maybe just a good place to insert the piece about magnesium, though, because there are a few studies - now again, studies can be taken with a grain of salt sometimes, because I think you and I both know that the scientific method isn't equally applied in every circumstance. But there's some studies to suggest that psilocybin and in which is the primary molecule that's bioactive in the mushrooms, is one of the molecules that requires magnesium, to work. And that in people with magnesium deficiency, it may actually cause vasoconstriction, and stroke like effects. So that's not a common thing that you hear. And I don't think that that's necessarily something that most people experience. But to tie it in with the magnesium piece, one of the first things that I posted on my Instagram about this was just to be aware of your magnesium status before you start working with these plant medicines, because, not only do they require magnesium, they burn through magnesium. And psilocybin as it's becoming more and more widely accepted. I think we're going to see legalization for certain purposes. I mean, some states have pretty much already legalized it or decriminalized it. And it will probably follow in the footsteps of cannabis and be everywhere. And at that point, I don't know that everybody is in a good place to be working with. I mean, we have a largely magnesium deficient population. And it also begs the question, then that's probably why they're working with it is because they're magnesium deficient. Because a lot of the things that are - a lot of the things that they're seeking, especially in the microdose community that the works a lot of mushrooms, they're really kind of crutches in a way, because they're sort of raising dopamine and if you stop then your dopamine drops and you want to start again so - Morley talks a lot about dopamine, but you dopamine is, in order to make it we need we need the proper nutrients. So the question is, is this medicine really solving the problem? No. But can it be a thing that helps with the symptoms? Yes, probably. But I do think that people - I had some discussions after I made a post about this with some people working in the mental health field. And just just so you know, like no psychiatrist, no psychologist that's doing psychotherapy with these medicines is checking people's Mag RBC, to see how magnesium deficient they are. And that might be needed, that might become something that would be standard of care. At least I would propose that it's something to consider. But mushrooms themselves, I think are going to be the first thing that we start to see followed in the footsteps of cannabis. And it's interesting, because a lot of people think, "Oh, it's just mushrooms." and then they take them and it's completely discombobulating. They can have a really, incredibly disorienting experiences that again, without the framework to understand it, can I guess the question is, is it doing any benefit at that point, or is it just making question a lot of things without any answers?

Matthew Blackburn 56:33
Yeah, that's a good point. I'm curious your thoughts on alcohol and tobacco because we covered cannabis, it seems like those three are the most common, outside of the psychedelic world that people take. And I found personally like, even a little bit of tequila Atom Bergstrom got me into it. Antiparasitic, and I just felt drained the next day and that's probably because of its effect on copper and I imagine magnesium too, right?

Hamid Jabbar 57:07
Yeah, alcohol is devastating on magnesium. And we have a magnesium dependent enzyme called, I think it's called acetyl aldehyde. And it has to neutralize aldehyde, which is a byproduct of the ethanol. And because of the magnesium loss that occurs when you drink, and a lot of people are already magnesium deficient. The aldehyde builds up, it's a powerful neurotoxin. I mean, this is just one effect. This is what causes hangovers, because we can't clear it. So if you're getting hangovers, you have a headache. It is a sign that you're magnesium deficient, of course, then not to speak of all of the, the strain on the liver. I mean, this is a very unpopular position. And I'm, I'm not suggesting that we ban alcohol, and just so people know, I'm not a Puritan in this way, I believe that everybody should have access to their consciousness. If you want to experience consciousness in whatever way you want, that should be fine. I think we should all understand that there's perhaps a sales pitch happening sometimes like alcohol is probably one of the most damaging substances that we have in our society, just on the body, just on the psyche. It's not typically going to help people heal from anything. And and it's weird because you hear causes of disease, this and that. Rarely do they point out that Americans are largely drinking way too much. So it's a contributing factor to overall disease and mental health. And it is, as you mentioned, it drains, minerals, there's a point that happens with some people who drink a lot and I used to drink a lot. So I'm coming from a place where I drink for a long time I was a lawyer before I came to my senses. As a lawyer the standard activity was to go to happy hour and drink and then every social activity involved drinking every event involve drinking. And then it just became kind of like the Mad Men era where, glamorizing having a cocktail and there's an allure to that and and I loved whiskies and tequilas and everything. But if you if you end up in a place where you're severely magnesium deficient, there is a point where your body can't process it anymore. And that happened to me, where I could not even to this day, I had one drink last year just with my father just to bond and I was like, it doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel good any more, it used to feel good. So if you get too drained, you don't have the reserves, then you just can't process it anymore. And I think it ships for a lot of people. But alcohol is not something that I typically think of as a medicine, although Paris pointed out to me that it has medicinal effects. And I have seen that like, for instance, when I was in Thailand, I used to go to Thailand, studying old Thai medicine and bodywork. My teacher there told me that their cure for kidney stones, because I used to eat a lot of pineapples, I'd go to the street vendor and buy pineapple and he would make fun of me. He's like, "Oh, pineapple, we use that for kidney stones." And I was like, "Really?" he said, "Yeah, you eat, eat pineapple all day, just eat it all day" and then he said, "The next day, you just drink beer all day." And you pee it out. Because I guess the bromelain from the pineapple dissolves the stone, and then the beer is a diuretic. So you're just gonna pee it all out. So and in the jungle, I was told that they use alcohol for certain medicinal things too, like, especially with the kidneys, because it is such a powerful diuretic. So there's obviously like medicinal uses, but most people are using it for the social aspects and also to calm a very excited nervous system. People are operating with a baseline level that just doesn't feel right. And, and so seeking that relief, but I think tobacco tobacco is fascinating, and I always see your posts with the cigars. And I've been a cigar aficionado for most of my life so I resonate with that. And I've had relationship with tobacco for a long time, different types of tobacco. And tobacco, I think is is a fascinating plant, because it is definitely one of those that has polar extremes, like the the compounds in tobacco are deadly poisons. But on the other hand, they can be medicines, the right doses. It's a really interesting plant and it's probably one of the oldest plant medicines that humans have worked with - tobacco. It's a very, very old medicine.

Matthew Blackburn 1:02:21
Yeah, yeah, I have some really good books on it in my, my bookshelf downstairs, and I just got a new one. It was like the health benefits of smoking tobacco. And I think on the mineral dysregulation context, what I've read about oxidative stress from smoking is vitamin E, and vitamin C. Those are like the front lines of defense, to smoke, like smoking anything from what I've read, and vitamin C and vitamin E work together to mitigate that oxidative stress. So whenever anyone asked me, I just tell them make sure that you're on whole food vitamin C and like mix tocopherol vitamin E, and that helps a lot.

Hamid Jabbar 1:03:10
Yeah, well, we know, we know that everybody that smokes, doesn't get cancer and doesn't get sick. For a long time it's been sort of a blanket statement that, oh, tobacco, cancer, tobacco is going to cause it. And, and I think it again, it just ignores that we're all individuals, and that maybe some people can smoke various things and that has no impact because they've got the right mix of minerals, their metabolism is working well. And then other people end up in a bad situation, because they were already depleted. So it's one of those that I think is complex. And there's many different types of tobacco too. The ones that we use in our culture here, the ones that they make cigars out of, for instance, is Nacoshiana tobacco. It's very high in nicotine. A lot of the North northern Native Americans use different Nacoshiana species, some of them are very low in tobacco or low in nicotine, so they're not very strong. And then the people of the jungle the Amazon they work with, usually a plant called Nacoshiana Rustica, which has about 17 times to 20 times the nicotine, it's very strong. And the the effects are not only attributable to the nicotine, there's ways that's tobacco is cured of current, of course, like could be cured over a fire. Some of them are more fermented and then there's a lot of ways to administer it to so it's not just smoking. Smoking, I think is the most well known, but a lots of cultures around the world have done things like snuffs, whether they take it up the nose or put it in the oral cavity, like between the gums, there's even people that drink tobacco, or they make pastes out of it that you stick between the gums. So there's humans have been trying to figure out different ways of getting it in and, and depending on how you take it in, it has very different health consequences, too. So it's, it's a very complex medicine and I think people are, I would encourage people that work with tobacco to do what you do, which is read a lot of books on it. And there's a lot of books that are really addressing what you're looking at, like the antioxidant support, but then there's books about the spiritual aspects of it too, which are really fascinating, because tobacco is one of these things that has been used in, in North American Native cultures and South American cultures for a long time. And there's a beauty to it. There's some kind of aspect that, that I think a lot of people resonate with.

Matthew Blackburn 1:06:06
Yeah, absolutely. Our friend Paris here asked a good question, she said, "Ask him about the crystal bowls, and sound healing." I actually just got my first crystal bowl set this year, and it just the frosted quartz, just the regular, ordinary bowls. But it feels so good, just playing one for 30 seconds. It's amazing how fast it shifts me into a different state.

Hamid Jabbar 1:06:36
Yeah, I think I saw your bowls on Instagram. That's interesting. Yeah, so one of the other things that I do, among the many things - I kind of can't focus is that I teach people how to work with sound. And I've been, I've been working with sound my whole life, sound and music. Crystal bowls are sort of a new instrument. This might be interesting to you so like those frosted bowls. They were only invented and usually, we think around the late 80s and early 90s. They were throwaways from the last General Electric semiconductor plant in the United States. And what they were was crucibles. So there's an interesting thing, which is that those bowls, they can tolerate a really high heats though they use them in the semiconductor industry to pour molten liquid in. And I think it has to do with this silicon graphics chips are actually sort of crystalline. And so somebody figured out that, oh, we're throwing all these crucibles away but look, they pick a sound, and they make a powerful sound. So they, they're now one of the most popular instruments out there. They work with - the notes that there's many different aspects to sound now, those are primarily going to produce a very sustained kind of tone, right? It's like a very steady, single tone. It's a very, it's almost like a sine wave. And with entrainment, we're very susceptible humans so if you're walking by somebody, and there's a jackhammer, just take your pulse and measure your blood pressure, if so, you had an EEG on your head, and you're standing next to the jackhammer, there'd be some interesting activity. And so this is sort of like the opposite, which is, now you're in a steady tone, that's very, very smooth and your your mind your body, everything gets sort of entrained with that and the effects are profound. I mean, there's there's so many cool things about sound - sound to me is is one of the best medicines and it doesn't dysregulate our minerals, which is why I love it

Matthew Blackburn 1:09:00
Someone told me that with the bowls, in particular, you want to do them indoors, right, like the festivals I mentioned to you, my favorite part every year was usually in a little grass valley they'd have like gongs and all these instruments and they just be playing them for hours and I would just lay in the grass and listen to that. But when you're indoors the sound reflects, right? It's kind of like bouncing around.

Hamid Jabbar 1:09:28
Yeah, you'll get you'll get compression waves so it will come back. When I play outside and I have gongs, I have tons of gongs and tons of singing bowls, the sound just emanates out from the instrument and it just goes off into space basically. So it dissipates pretty quickly. Whereas if you're inside you're getting all of the waves coming back and it's much more pronounced and it's louder and it's sort of like being in a sound chamber them. So I think the effects are better felt inside. I agree with that.

Matthew Blackburn 1:10:04
Interesting. This is a hilarious question that said, "Do you like LÄRABARs?" Paris was like you gotta ask him. It wasn't a question from her, it was some other person. That's probably going to dysregulate you, right?

Hamid Jabbar 1:10:16
Really fascinating is I mentioned that back in the day, I was sort of eating this paleo diet. And well, for the first 10 years of that there was nobody out there that ate that way. So like, if I went out to eat, I'd have to, like, order the hamburger and strip down everything and just eat the meat and everybody thought I was insane. Of course, I've gotten used to that. And then LÄRABARs came around at some point and I thought, wow, these are sort of, okay, and I didn't eat a lot of them but I I think that's been over 10 years now. So I'm not a LÄRABAR person. I think there's a lot of -

Matthew Blackburn 1:10:59
It must of been on one of your old posts.

Hamid Jabbar 1:11:03
Somebody must have gone back, yeah, that's really funny because I have over 10 years on my Instagram, they probably see me with the LÄRABAR.

Matthew Blackburn 1:11:13
This is a really good one. You know, Ben Greenfield's, I think he's moving closer but he's only a couple hours west to me. I've been to his house a bunch and he was getting really into sananga for a while. And someone asked here, "Is sananga safe for the eyes?" I was squeamish. I wasn't ready for it. I've been offered a few times, and it just doesn't seem fun.

Hamid Jabbar 1:11:41
Maybe a lot of your people don't know what this sananga is so I'll tell them, sananga is an eyedrop that is made from usually the root, the root of a plant and they mix it with water. And you don't put very much, you put one drop. I call it eye murder. That's the way that I describe that, that experience. But I will say that it has a profound effect immediately on your vision. So I do notice that my vision is clearer at certain days. And I'm not sure exactly how it works, other than it could just be flushing out the eye of iron or something. I would love to know what it's actually doing. But that one I think, is as far as it's not enjoyable. It's probably up there with child birth. I haven't given birth, I don't know but it's really not - but there's there's something to it. And, and there's other ones for the eye, fascinating when I was in the jungle, I can't even remember the names because we don't have names in English, but the Curandero would come around and just say, "Oh, medicina time" and then he pour something in my eye or make me snort something and not all of them are painful. So one thing I noticed about sonanga, I think because it's painful, people think, "Oh, this must be doing something." But it doesn't have to be painful to be healing so I've been moving more towards like the softer medicines that that don't cause a lot of pain. Pain is telling us something so it's like, I sort of question some of the really painful ones sometimes.

Matthew Blackburn 1:13:30
Yeah, isn't like kambo one of those because they have to burn holes in your skin.

Hamid Jabbar 1:13:34
Oh yeah, I've had I've had many kambo treatments, they don't burn holes too deeply. It's sort of superficial, they use incense to kind of just get the epidermis open. But that medicine kambo it comes again, for people that don't know, this is a secretion of a frog. That is sort of like saliva sort of consistency that they scrape from the back of the frog. They don't kill the frog, they just they just take its secretion and then they let it go. And it's it's quite potent so they have to put it just through the lymphatic system, just under the skin. I would say that it is the most horrendous thing that I ever have done and each time I do it I think to myself, "Why am I doing this?" It really makes you call into question your whole life when you're doing that because you basically feel within a minute as though you have the worst flu of your life. It's fascinating.

Matthew Blackburn 1:14:50
This is a good question. We had a bunch of people asking, "Should you wait to use plant medicines until you've been working on mineral balance? And how do you know when you're balanced enough to start taking them?"

Hamid Jabbar 1:15:07
I love that question because it's probably the first time it's ever been asked in the history of working with medicines. This is a whole new paradigm. I mean, honestly, as far as I know, I'm the only one that's talking about this. But I would encourage people to, to do some protocol - I've been I've been looking for protocols, of course, the one that I use is Root Cause Protocol but I know your protocol is really similar. And I think it's, it's really helpful for people to get themselves into a state of homeostasis, where they're not needing, they're not needing a lot of alteration to their consciousness. So they're not seeking other plant medicines or anything like that. You want to find a baseline and how do you know if you're well mineralized? It's really challenging. There's the Full Monty tests that we do, and the hair mineral tests kind of give you some insights. When I see people, I'm getting much better at being able to tell them people's bodies, like how the bodies are reflecting mineral dysregulation. And I'm even starting to see that correlation, which is how people respond to things, people who are very quick to get angry or triggered. You know, a lot of times these are signs that there's something going on. So I don't have a blanket prescription but I do recommend that the more people have worked on the underlying mineral health, the better their experience is going to be with the plant medicines, and then the less likely they are to be destabilized by it. Because, as I mentioned, a lot of the plant medicines that people are working with, they strip you of minerals, they're not putting minerals into your body. So if you're going in, already in a deficient state, you're not going to get any better. It's better to go in as well mineralized as you can, especially with magnesium. And then the underlying piece about copper and iron, this is a long term thing. I think all of us that are working to rebuild our ceruloplasmin and then start to manage iron, recognize that it's the long game, that it's not going to happen overnight. And anybody that's working to do that will be better off than people who are not working to do that. So that's my advice.

Matthew Blackburn 1:17:40
Yeah, great points. And we had someone asking about pre and post plant medicine ceremony. What do you say the post is pretty much the same stuff as the preparation?

Hamid Jabbar 1:17:51
Yeah, yeah. It's the same stuff. It depends also how long people are working. This is sort of a vague question, because now, people that are just going to, let's say, like a weekend ceremony, by the way, I think that people that are working with plant medicines recognize that we're at a place in time that in any given big city, just pick LA, Phoenix, New York, any given weekend, there's hundreds of plant medicine ceremonies happening. So this has become a thing and if people are just going for a weekend ceremony, it's not going to be as depleting as say, if they go on a two week thing in the jungle. And the things that happen on the longer the longer processes is that they're going to be eating a diet that's given to them, usually by the place that's hosting. And the diets are really depleting, intentionally so. So like, most of the retreat centers, if you go down to South America and work with Ayahuasca, they're gonna feed you very basic foods like white rice, sweet potatoes, maybe some vegetables, you're not going to get fat, you're not going to like actual dietary fat, and you're not going to get salt. And they typically won't give you sugar. And I think you know, better than most people that when you start to deprive the body of things like salt and glucose, stress hormones end up getting released, and you start to burn through minerals faster. So I think that the people that are doing these longer term ones, if they're going to go down for a retreat or some type of process, they're going to need to be more intentional about how they, they start to bring themselves back because also when you're in a long term, situation where you're working with a plant medicine, your body adjusts to that. So then you start to eat. Let's say you want to come back and you want to eat your grass fed butter. While you may not be able to process it anymore, because your body has now adjusted to a no fat situation. So I think this is how I see people, sometimes they end up in a more restrictive diet than they intended is that they just can't process certain things after working with plant medicines. And so I think it can be challenging. But if they know that that's going to happen in advance, maybe they're prepared for the fact that they might need to readjust to the fattier foods and the richer foods and that they shouldn't just treat it as though, okay, I can't process these anymore, what will happen is there'll be an adjustment period coming back, and then the body will readjust. And I think that's important, especially for the fat soluble vitamins, which you're not getting when you're on these longer, "Dieta Processes" they call them.

Matthew Blackburn 1:20:53
Yeah, is the standard recommendation for the dieta's is to restrict animal foods, because I've glanced at it several years ago. And I thought I recall, like you said earlier in the interview, like no fat, no salt, and you know, don't eat meat is that pretty common?

Hamid Jabbar 1:21:11
Very common, that they'll - there's different traditions, now, I'm not going to say that all of them are like this. But some of the most popular come out of a tribe called the Shipibo people and they often have very strict diets where they don't eat anything with fat. And there's one fish that they'll eat from the Amazon River and this is a very low fat fish, it has a lot of bones. And then there's, there's some exceptions. So when I was there, the Curandero that I was working with, he was much more lenient, and I really appreciate that. And he gave us eggs, which I, I just, I ate so many eggs. And he did give us chicken, and he gave us some some animal foods. But I've heard from other people that went to different Curanderos that it's it's really, really limiting, like, no animal foods at all. And I think that part of it is that they don't want to, when you're doing a lot of these plant medicines, you're purging a lot, you're actually cleansing, you can think of it like having coffee enemas every day. There, they're sort of depleting yourself of bile. So you may not then be able to handle fatty foods as well. And I think there's an aspect of that, and then it's also really to weaken you. Because the weaker you are, the more sensitive you are. And when you're trying to have these kind of connective experiences with with spirituality or your body or just insights, there's a phenomenon that, the more sensitive you are, the weaker you are, the weaker you are, the more sensitive you are, and you actually can have deeper experiences. So they're doing that intentionally based on their their wisdom. And like I said, I think for them for the people of the jungle, that kind of experience and restrictive diet doesn't do long term harm, because if they restrict salts, and they restrict fat, and they restrict sugar during their dieta, they're just drawing all that from their bones, they've got it. But other people that are already depleted may not have it. So it can it can cause more of a cascade. So I think it's just remembering everybody's individualized, and it is common to have animal foods sort of taken out during the process of working with plant medicines.

Matthew Blackburn 1:23:52
Wow. I wanted to ask you, Hamid, about meditation because we didn't talk about that yet. And I've had my friend Mandy Flanders on a few times to talk about nervous system regulation. Like there are people that really focus on the different states, not only sympathetic, parasympathetic, but the vagal, dorsal vagal and all these. I think Atom Bergstrom says there's like five nervous system states and it gets crazy. But my question for you about meditation is, with your experience with it, have you experimented with no stimulation like sensory deprivation style or eye masks or earplugs versus with sound or with light? Because it seems like depending on where someone's nervous system is, just like what the plant medicines, I mean, going back to mineral balance, but with meditation, like it could actually be a stress. Have you looked into that area?

Hamid Jabbar 1:24:58
What could be stress, can you just clarify that?

Matthew Blackburn 1:25:02
Like meditation - meditating with your eyes shut with with no sound. I mean, I guess a float tank, is the extreme version of that. But just just from my experience, like I've noticed, moving, break up, different stresses that I've had trying to float with no light, no sound, I kind of get this anxiety that comes up. And yeah, just curious if you had any thoughts on that because that seems like a pretty interesting rabbit hole.

Hamid Jabbar 1:25:39
Oh, that's, that's a huge rabbit hole. And I think first thing is like, when people say the word meditation to me, it's like saying, they'll say I meditate. I'm like, "Yeah, well, I eat food." Well, because meditation is just such a broad category, like, what food do you eat? What type of meditation and that's kind of I think what you're getting at here is that there's very different types. And they're, they're all going to work differently with our biology and our consciousness. And I've explored so many, one of the things that I still do is teach meditation. And I practice a lot of meditation myself. So yes, I have experimented myself with sensory deprivation type practices. And then you can contrast that with the more mindfulness practices that you're not taking away stimuli, you're just using the stimuli around you to kind of bring awareness to the present moment. And then there's entire practices, like you mentioned with regulating the nervous system and really diving in. So as far as - can some of them bring up anxiety, I would say, that is the number one thing that people experience when they first start to meditate, that I've seen is that they start to feel anxiety. And the way that I have always defined anxiety is that anxiety is kind of the feeling that comes up when there's a subconscious, emotion or sensation that has been suppressed. And the anxiety is in sort of the, the feeling of that suppression. It's kind of like a dissonance, like, okay, there's something I don't like. And now I'm anxious because my, my tendency is to not feel that. And so a lot of the meditation practices actually teach people on how to do the self regulation where you can sit, feel the anxiety, and start to go into it, where you might find that actually, the anxiety then disappears and there's an underlying emotion that can be accessed, or maybe a sensation in the body with some of the more somatic practices where people feel into areas. And you can see, oh, I'm anxious, but then you might find that you're tight. In a certain area, there's a contraction, let's say, like, in the belly, or in the shoulders, or in the neck, or the jaw, and you can start to somatically feel into the areas and see that this is like, part of the way that we hold emotion, we hold tension, and then learning to release it through things regulating the breath, or just through the emotional release. But yeah, I mean, meditation is, is powerful. I don't know how much time we have to talk about it.

Matthew Blackburn 1:28:56
Yeah, I know a lot of people find peace in walking in nature and going on little hikes. And I've noticed over the years, like walking in areas, especially by myself alone, even if I have a weapon, like one of my favorite things is just being aware of potential mountain lions or grizzly bears. And that necessary heightened awareness so that I can live and survive and kind of like be aware of my environment. That's been one of one of my favorite things to kind of just ground myself into the present moment.

Hamid Jabbar 1:29:41
Yeah, I used to teach a lot more meditation in studio contexts. And one of the things that I would do for people often if I sense that, you can sense like when you're teaching if people are feeling anxiety, if you're tuned to it, I could sense it. I would have people just look around like turn their head to the left, and then use their eyes to really look as far to the left as they can, and then up around look around. One of our primary things is just our sense of our environment. And so a lot of the meditation practices realize this and sort of encourage you to take in the whole environment and actually moving your eyes around is tapping into parts of the nervous system. So there's entire meditations about that. And then, of course, if you go out into the woods, like where you live, I mean, you're going to be using your entire nervous system in that context. So you're actually exercising everything and I think it's probably one of the most beneficial things people can do is just go out and be in an environment like that. But a lot of people think they're going to come to meditation, and it's going to be instant peace. Like they see the picture of the person meditating. They look so happy and then they sit and what do they feel? Like, this is not fun, like, I could be doing anything than this. What am I doing? Why am I here? You know, all the thoughts come up. And so it's really, it's interesting to witness people experience that, but that just means that all of the things that they've been avoiding are starting to come to the surface. And it's usually a process that people have to go to, in order to get to the next level where they can actually sit and it is peaceful, because they've sort of felt a lot of the things that needed to be felt already.

Matthew Blackburn 1:31:32
Hmm, that's awesome. Let's see, this is a really interesting question. Does smoking weed, it's a cannabis, deplete more minerals than ingesting with edibles. So to smoking cannabis, which one's more harsh on your mineral status, would you say an edible or smoking?

Hamid Jabbar 1:32:01
I've been trying to figure this out. I've been looking at the research on this again, Matt, my biggest complaint is that we're entering territory where nobody's doing the research. So it's like, I'm trying to piece together from from different sources. The one thing I'll say about smoking is that it's not necessarily a healthy thing, regardless of what we're smoking, if we're drawing it into the lungs. Now there's, smoking, and bringing it into the mouth, bringing it just up here is different than drawing something into the lungs. So I, I would have a sense, this is just hypothesis and I have no basis for this but because smoking things takes it directly into the blood faster. And it bypasses the entire digestive system, which has many mechanisms to protect from toxins getting in, that smoking is going to be more depleting in general. And that is completely based on no research. It's just my intuition. So I don't know the answer, and I wish that somebody would research that so that we would know the answer.

Matthew Blackburn 1:33:18
Have you seen people smoking, like skullcap? Damiana like Mullein, like these like herbal smoke blends, because the the claims with those is that they were traditionally used as lung medicines.

Hamid Jabbar 1:33:37
I'm not personally that familiar with those, but I know that a lot of herbs are smoked. And I mentioned also that the North American Native American traditions use different types of tobacco. And a lot of those tobaccos are very low in nicotine. Some of the things that happened were that when more of the nicotiana tobacco which is the the main tobacco plant started to be cultivated, I think there's there's some stories about tribes trying that tobacco and finding it way too strong. And so we're mixing in other herbs, one of them is like red willow bark. There's other types of herbs that are added to a lot of the more ceremonial tobaccos that are that are part of the Native American traditions. And but again, people smoking those types of blends. I don't know the difference between inhaling it and not inhaling it. I have interesting stories about this too about smoking in the lungs because I used to spend a lot of time in Thailand and my Thai massage teacher he's a notorious chain smoker. And this very strange because you're sitting there and he's a genius on the body. I mean in so many ways, and he's talking to you and showing you and then he's just was puffing on. I don't know what his brand was Campbell's all day. And the air in Thailand is so polluted, especially that area that he said he's doing it to protect his lungs from the air - from the exhaust. There's a lot of people there that would do in that thinking that builds up a layer that protects them from the bad things. And so I don't know, I mean, to me, my body doesn't like things in my lungs. I will say that, when I take something to my lungs, my body says this isn't good. So I just kind of listened to my body.

Matthew Blackburn 1:35:42
My friend texted me this this morning, kind of synchronistic. He said, "Did you know smokers were more immune to COVID because nicotine binds to the same receptors in the brain that stops them from connecting to those receptors and they control your diaphragms ability to breathe." So when they were saying now's the best time to stop smoking. They outright lied. It's pretty interesting.

Hamid Jabbar 1:36:07
I didn't know that, there was the early on, I was sort of fascinated by by this stuff. And I kind of gave up but there was a study out of France early on that showed that smokers did better in France. And one of the theories back then was that nicotine binds to ACE2. And so if ACE2 is sort of occupied by dealing with nicotine, then there's less entryways for viral replication. But then recently, I read another book, and it's all about tobacco and nicotine is - it works with the acetylcholine receptors. And so, acetylcholine actually regulates cytokine immune responses. So, one aspect of an overactive immune system can probably be addressed by something that plugs into the acetylcholine receptor and that can actually down regulate an overactive immune response so that's another theory as to why smokers did better or do better but I think there's there's a lot so -

Matthew Blackburn 1:37:18
So you recommend everyone go down to their gas station pick up Marlboro?

Hamid Jabbar 1:37:26
Well, early on, I mean, I was following this and I told my dad, I have parents who are in their 70s I told him I said, "Go get some nicotine gum" like we were creating the, the just in case pack. I said, get some nicotine gum and have it on hand because I don't know that smoking is the best way to get nicotine in. Actually, it might be through patches on the skin if you want to do it safely. So I'm not suggesting that everybody run out and try to do this but there are medicinal aspects to nicotine and smoking. And the people of the jungle discovered this too, with with a lot of the ways they work with tobacco. So we don't know all of the mechanisms of action, but there's a phenomenon there for sure.

Matthew Blackburn 1:38:15
Yeah, I think the first tobacco I grew Nicotiana Rustica, I bought the seeds on like eBay or something. And I actually grew them in a pyramid outside, it was pretty cool, like the Russian style steep pyramid, and I ended up making ambil that paste I think I found the recipe on like a Reddit forum or something. And I basically just used lemon juice as the acid to extract and cacao paste and some honey and then some Shilajit. And I gave it to some of my friends and it definitely hit him hard. It's just it was a tiny little jar almost like the Shilajit resin style jars and it was kind of scary because like you said earlier, it's lethal, especially orally. So that's that's the only thing with I think that form of tobacco is it could kill you versus like a cigar you probably have to like chain smoke a bunch.

Hamid Jabbar 1:39:23
Yeah, well, it's interesting too - nicotine because although nicotine, just one drop of pure nicotine is enough to kill a human. But usually because of the way you're administering it through smoking, you're destroying 90% of the nicotine. Or if you take it through the digestive system, your digestive juices, destroy it, and then like these ways of absorbing it through the mucous membrane, you're not getting all of it in your body. So it's sort of, it is very toxic, but a lot of the modes that we take it make it less toxic. But interestingly enough, there's these people that work with nicotine or work with that tobacco, the Rustica which they call them mapacho in the jungle, and they, they slowly drink it, and they get to the point where they develop such a tolerance that they can kind of drink it like tea. And it would be enough to kill an average person but more interesting is that if they stop, it seems to be kind of have created permanent changes to the biology. So I don't recommend people drinking and messing around with nicotine, because it's a very powerful thing and it can kill you, like you said, but, but some of the indigenous traditions have figured out that it's something that can actually change your nervous system. I don't know if that's going to be beneficial for us. But for for the people that work with those plants extensively. Having the ability to drink it takes them to different places, I guess.

Matthew Blackburn 1:41:05
Wow. Yeah. And one of my books that said they did tobacco enemas, and I was considering it for months, but I'm glad I didn't do it because that seems super dangerous if you do it wrong.

Hamid Jabbar 1:41:18
Yeah, those those can be, I mean, you're absorbing it really rapidly. So, the tobacco plants too, you can't just go touch them. They're - some of them, especially where you're gonna get a headache. You're gonna you're gonna absorb through the skin. So yeah, it's a plant to be respected for sure.

Matthew Blackburn 1:41:48
Right and it's carnivorous to right because I would see insects get stuck to mine and they would just be like digested on the leaf.

Hamid Jabbar 1:41:59
That's awesome. I know that there's certain insects that have developed ways to overcome it. Like there's a there's a particular caterpillar that has got a way of neutralizing the the nicotine which kills other insects. And then not only that, it's like as the caterpillar is eating the leaves it exhales the digestive nicotine and that keeps other bugs from eating it. Because the the exhaust from its breath. So it's a fascinating - but yeah, it's full of pesticides. That's what nicotine probably is a pesticide for - to prevent predation.

Matthew Blackburn 1:42:43
Yeah. This is a good one, "What are your favorite sources of copper?" Mostly about magnesium.

Hamid Jabbar 1:42:55
Well, my favorite source of copper is probably bee pollen because I just love it. But it may not be the highest concentration of copper. I like cacao. There's some copper in there. These are things that I like, beef liver, I take it every day. I wouldn't say that. I love it but I love the way I feel so it's kind of it's something that I do and orange juice. You know, the the real vitamin C.

Matthew Blackburn 1:43:34
Yep. Yeah. Ever since Morley told me about the liver biopsy story of that farmer down in Texas that looked at his cattle and found no copper in the liver. It's like, great another thing to depress me about on how unnatural our world is at this point.

Hamid Jabbar 1:43:54
I'm starting to suspect - yeah, I don't know about the beef liver. I think it's gonna be so dependent on the grass they're eating, the soil that it's so similar with the bee pollen. It's like there should be copper but how do we know?

Matthew Blackburn 1:44:15
Right. Yeah, I have a couple of hives here, I'm going to harvest some honey in the next month or two. I'm really excited and I have to figure out how to do the bee pollen thing. Because I think there's a certain way to do it, where when they, fly into the hive, they can drop some into a tray that recollect it or something.

Hamid Jabbar 1:44:35
That's gonna be fun.

Matthew Blackburn 1:44:41
Yeah, I was shocked they both survived the winter, I guess. I don't know if it's geoengineering or EMFs or both, but it seems like a lot of bees are dying. It's kind of kind of freaky.

Hamid Jabbar 1:44:54
Do they just go to sleep. What do they do in there?

Matthew Blackburn 1:44:56
They just hunker down. I mean, what's interesting is, at the end of winter, or near the end of winter, I went out there and I looked at the hives for the first thing in like five months or so. And there's this whole line of dead bees at the entrance of my two hives. So I think throughout the months, they just put the dead bees at the door, like clean house and it's pretty fascinating.

Hamid Jabbar 1:45:30
There's so amazing. That is fascinating.

Matthew Blackburn 1:45:36
This is a good question Hamid, "Does certain psychedelics interact with minerals in our bodies differently than others?" Like, in other words, do all the psychedelics affect, like magnesium the same way say or, or affect magnesium at the same level, like, say ketamine versus mushrooms versus ayahuasca?

Hamid Jabbar 1:46:01
It's a really good question. And it's one that I'm trying to get to the bottom of. I do know that there's only a limited number of studies done on this. So the ones that we've studied or that people have studied would be ketamine, MDMA, mescaline, psilocybin and LSD. And these are known to deplete magnesium. And as they deplete magnesium, they also sort of dysregulate calcium. And the effects of that aren't just to magnesium and calcium, because people think, "Oh, that's easy, what's the big deal?" Well, the big deal is that once you start to dysregulate, magnesium, thousands of your enzyme reactions aren't going to really work. And then you have issues with your blood, that iron recycling system and, and so there's that class, those are sort of known, then you have medicine, like ayahuasca, which, from my research, there's no research being done on the effects on minerals, but there's things about ayahuasca that we can infer would deplete our minerals, and that is that it's a purgative, that it causes people to vomit and have diarrhea. And anytime you're taking something that does that you're usually depleting yourself of magnesium plus other minerals because the body is excreting a lot. So I would hypothesize that ayahuasca does deplete magnesium through at least that mechanism. And of course, I mentioned that ayahuasca contains a number of interesting alkaloids. One is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor that primarily inhibits monoamine oxidase A, when you start to mess with these oxidase enzymes, you're getting into mitochondrial function, you're getting into like weird areas, that the body can't help but respond with releasing or sequestering minerals in certain ways. That also has acetyl transferase inhibiting properties and it also works a little bit with the melatonin cycle and neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. And so anytime you're kind of working with these neurotransmitters, you can pretty much assume that you're burning through minerals. Again, there's no study done on that. Then you have medicines like totally different medicines like iboga for instance. Another powerful medicine that there doesn't seem to be any research being done on the mineral impact, but I think we can infer just based on the fact that we know anytime you're messing with neurotransmitters, you're dealing with enzymes, you're going to be altering your mineral status in some way. So whether for the good or for the bad, what I would like to see is somebody do some mineral analysis of the medicines like to say, do the mushrooms themselves have copper in them? Does ayahuasca itself have copper or is it loaded with iron? It would be good to know, if you're drinking, 20 milligrams of iron. I think people should know that. That would be something I would want to know. And none of that seems to be of interest. So I might have to be the one that researches it.

Matthew Blackburn 1:49:39
Have you heard of the Paul Stamets stack, it's like Lion's Mane, psilocybin and niacin. That - I wonder if that's actually harmful because my research on PUFA's is being liberated and that's what niacin and does induces lipolysis and I wonder if they're caught causing oxidative stress by doing that - the free fatty acids combined with free iron and increased lipofuscin.

Hamid Jabbar 1:50:10
Yeah, I don't know the biochemistry, I am familiar with that and I have taken that in the past. It's been a long time because I didn't like the effects on my body. But I would assume that anytime we're doing these things, we're messing with our minerals. And I, again, that's another thing like, why doesn't it say when you buy the Stamets 7, they're all mixed together? Why doesn't it tell you what kind of minerals are in? It doesn't really go into that level of detail and I, I would just put a call out to people that say, like, we need to start thinking about this stuff, because it could be very good for us. But again, if it's loaded with iron, we'd like to know that too. I don't know that anyone's cared to find out.

Matthew Blackburn 1:50:58
Mhmm. Have you worked with San Pedro cactus because you mentioned mescaline earlier? That's a really interesting one. Out of like the Andes, right South America.

Hamid Jabbar 1:51:14
Yeah, I have worked with San Pedro. It's, it's otherwise known as wachuma in the Quechua language, and it's a cactus that does come from the highlands, like the Andes Mountains. And it it has a number of alkaloids, I think we know about about nine, or nine to eleven alkaloids, I can't give you the exact number. And one of them is mescaline, mescaline is considered one of the classical psychedelics. It's very similar to psilocybin or LSD. And it works with the same type of receptors. But San Pedro also has other alkaloids, some of them are, some of them are actually like amphetamines. So they, they work with noradrenalin and some of them are monoamine oxidase inhibitors. So it's a really complex medicine. It has multiple modes of action and it works with a lot of different neurotransmitters. So it's not simply doing one thing. And as a result, that particular medicine based on my experience, that one is is particularly depleting of magnesium. And in fact, my experience in the Andes with that medicine, I had the fortune of finding a Curandero that I ended up working with, who taught me a lot. He told me, "This depletes calcium. You need to you need to make sure that you have enough." And then I researched that's actually how I got turned on to the fact that we know it depletes magnesium, but it also does deplete calcium because it's sort of the two of them end up -- regulating each other trying to find balance within the body. So he turned me on to the mineral issue and I think that that particular medicine what wachuma, San Pedro is one that people need to be particularly aware of, it's definitely not something you would do very often. Or you're going to have to take extra steps to read mineralize yourself.

Matthew Blackburn 1:53:21
Hmm. What about - promise we won't go through every single one, but last one, I'm curious, coca leaf - have you experimented with that? Because I had a friend and I think it was in Northern California, it's pretty easy to buy these little, new age shops and tonic elixir bars and stuff. And my friend actually made some, some raw cacao product infused with coca leaf and I loved the feeling, it felt really balancing - good.

Hamid Jabbar 1:53:55
Yeah, that that's another one that's ancestral medicine for the people of the Andes. And they make teas out of it. They usually will chew it and they put some sort of, I don't know what it is, but it helps to sort of digest it, something in their mouth, whether chewing it, and I've had tea, I've chewed it. When I was in the Andes, I kind of -- I would say I relied upon it because at that elevation your body is struggling to to carry oxygen. And there's something about the way that coca works that it enables you to function better at high elevation. So that explains a little bit probably why they use it so much but it's a - it's obviously people think of coca and they think of cocaine for instance, but but the coca leaves themselves are not nearly as concentrated in the active constituents. So chewing it or making a tea it's very very mild. And unfortunately I think because the association with cocaine we're never going to see legalization of coca tea here or coca leaves but there's obviously people that have it available.

Matthew Blackburn 1:55:20
Yeah, well, supposedly Ray Peat got me interested in Mexican Coca Cola which I think over the years it's changed I mean, obviously has from the original but supposedly the original was like more of an herbal beverage than it is now.

Hamid Jabbar 1:55:37
Yeah, we call - all my friends, we call the Coca Cola shamans fuel. Because what we noticed is like in the jungle, a lot of the shaman, the Curanderos, they love Coca Cola. And my teacher - a Coca Cola is different, it's different in Peru, I think it's just a different way of formulating it still. Not saying it has coconut in it still, it might but I think it's more just, it's made with different sugars. But what we asked and they actually use Coca Cola as medicine and I saw it happen in the jungle where somebody needed something. And then the shaman said, "Oh, give her give her Coca Cola." And then you think like with your western line like, "What this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he's giving this person Coca Cola. Come on, the jig is up." No, but actually, the shamans there, they're so in tune with plants that they have taken the Coca Cola and done what's called the dieta with it. So they go and they develop a relationship with it and try to understand what is good for medicinally. And so when we were talking to them, they would say, "Yeah - no, there's a lot of plants in there." And Coca Cola has never released its recipe. It's not one of these patented things, it's based on trade secrets. So they've just kept it secret. And the Curanderos that have dieted Coca Cola, they can tell you, no there's ginger in it, no, there's this plant, and there's this essence. And so they actually have figured out sort of the recipe and, and I think you're right, because in the old days, that's where the name comes from, which is it had coca in it. And of course, not anymore. At least we don't think.

Matthew Blackburn 1:57:32
That's very interesting. Yeah, I grew up on canned sodas, and fortunately, Squirt and Pepsi and fortunately not diet, but it's my understanding the phosphoric acid, that corrosive acid with the aluminum can is the problem. But the acid itself even though you can clean steel drums with it could actually have benefits. There's some interesting research at of India on phosphoric acid medicinally for various conditions. So that's the Coca Cola rabbit hole.

Hamid Jabbar 1:58:11
Yeah, they have other Colas that the shamans use, too, which is interesting. But that's, yeah, I think it the thing that I saw was like, we kind of make assumptions about products or things that we don't think outside the box. And so my experience with the people that jungle using that as medicine, I was like, wow, at least they're free thinking, you know, at least they got out of there.

Matthew Blackburn 1:58:38
Right. Let's see, I think maybe just one or two more questions here. I had to look this one up thoughts on HPPD recovery. And I had to look that up. It's called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. Have you heard of that? The study I found from 2012 was like, this 33 year old woman had been abusing LSD since the age of like, 18. Just like macro dosing it. And I guess it creates, like flashbacks, essentially.

Hamid Jabbar 1:59:17
Well, I'll say I have not heard of that disorder but that's not unusual because I don't really like the labels that are attached to these things. And that come out of usually the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is that's a whole nother conversation, but it's made by the American Psychological Association as a way to diagnose so that they can give medication, it's part of this industry. So in order to give a medication, you got to have a diagnosis. So they have all kinds of labels in there for phenomenon. And it borders on subjective interpretation in a lot of cases because the symptoms have to be sort of matching. But that phenomenon of having persistent flashbacks I think is well recognized within the psychedelic community that you can find yourself back in the experience later. And that also happens with people working with plant medicines like ayahuasca, in particular ayahuasca, people will report that they end up "Back in Ceremony" like all of a sudden, usually at night, though, like when you're kind of near sleep. And a lot of the reason that it can happen, I can't speak to that disorder again, just in general, is that the reasons we end up in those states is that our endogenous neurotransmitters are being altered by the medicine that we're taking. And at certain times, certain conditions, you can actually just endogenously end up altering those neurotransmitters, again, based on just maybe you overslept, or you didn't get enough sleep, or your serotonin dropped, and your dopamine rose for some reason, and you can find yourself then being triggered back into those kinds of states. And so I would hypothesize, again, that people that end up with that disorder, are probably really minerally dysregulated, and probably suffering from magnesium deficiency. There's tons of studies online about magnesium deficiency and mental health issues. And it's just not one of the things that people in the mental health world really address is they don't go after the magnesium deficiency. So my my first intuition would be the person needs mineral support, for sure.

Matthew Blackburn 2:01:55
Hmm, yeah. And what's amazing is magnesium is so affordable. I mean, depending if, as long as you don't buy three and eight or do eight pound magnesium baths, like I started out with using the entire $30 bag. But making your own bicarbonate for magnesium hydroxide, or glycinate is pretty cheap, and available for people. And it's just, it's such a simple and affordable solution.

Hamid Jabbar 2:02:26
And that's probably why we don't hear a lot about it.

Matthew Blackburn 2:02:35
Right, I wanted to ask you, Hamid, did you look into these substances? These plant medicines getting stuck in the tissues? Because that's something I've heard over the years, especially with like flashbacks, like, oh, someone cracks your back and the LSD in your spine releases - is that like, bro science, or is there something to that?

Hamid Jabbar 2:03:02
I have not come across that, although that is fascinating -- to think about. It gets stuck in your tissues. I haven't heard that. I think one of the reasons that LSD and these medicines work is that they, they cause a rapid drops in serotonin and, and other things which then causes rapid rises and dopamine. And I think those conditions, like I said, can occur on their own but once you've had an experience with those medicines, instead of just experiencing it like you had before, which was like sleeplessness, it can it can reactivate kind of the neural pathways that were activated, and you can have the experience just totally endogenously. So I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they're being stored. More so just the effects are really caused by what they do to our own neurotransmitters and that can happen on its own. I mean, I'll tell you this too, because there's people that have been meditating without plant medicine, they get into very similar states, like people like Buddhist traditions and yoga meditation traditions, and their art, if you look at it, like the yantra art that comes out of Buddhism, it looks very similar to the ayahuasca art. And these are visions that they have just from meditation. And we know that one of the reasons this happens is that when your eyes are closed, or you're in a dark space, like think that they're meditating in a dark place, dark room or sometimes even actually a cave, you over produce melatonin because it's so dark. And the the constant production of melatonin actually is sort of like a precursor to a lot of the effects that are experienced with ayahuasca, the harmine the harmaline and the tetrahydroharmine which are these active alkaloids with ayahuasca, they're, in many ways, they mimic the effects of melatonin. So people can get into these states just by serotonin and melatonin being sort of altered. And so I think that points more towards the fact that our biology is capable of it. And that the medicines themselves, they're just sort of pushing us further in that direction, and then bringing out effects that could happen on their own.

Matthew Blackburn 2:05:37
I think this is the last question, "Will he host another sound practitioner training in the fall?"

Hamid Jabbar 2:05:44
That's a very specific question. So I do a sound practitioner training, usually twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. And I intend to do one this fall of 2022. But I think it's going to be different than in the prior ones, it's going to be longer and more in depth. So yes, stay tuned, they can always reach out to me. And I'll, I'll put them on a list of people to contact.

Matthew Blackburn 2:06:16
That's awesome. What what does that entail? You teach them the gong, and all the, the didgeridoo and all the cool stuff.

Hamid Jabbar 2:06:28
We learn about the instruments themselves. So we learned about how to play Gong and how to play singing bowls, Native American flute, shamanic drumming, but then we also learn how to put that together in either a class setting, like a group setting, or in a therapeutic setting one on one. And we learn the science of it so we look at some of the reasons that sound works in the body and with consciousness, and then we look at other aspects, sort of the more mysterious aspects and then yeah, it's just, it's really, it's a deep dive into a whole new world, we use our voices. And one of the things that I think is really powerful for people is that we have, we have sort of relegated singing to like a certain part of our population, only certain people can sing. But that's like saying that only certain birds can sing, you know. And it's hard for people to realize that, like, every human actually can sing, we just don't know that we can. And so part of it is just awakening our voices and a lot of people go through that experience, and they find their life starts to change because if you can start to sing, then it's really easy to just speak your truth and you're better able to communicate in all aspects of your life. So people think they're coming for sound, and then often they're leaving thinking, wow, my whole life is going to be easier. So yes, there's instruments and playing and then philosophy, but it's also very communal and lifetime friends are made. So it's a lot of fun.

Matthew Blackburn 2:08:07
That's really nice. I went to - when I lived in Southern California for years, I don't know three or four years straight, I went to so many meetups from that website, meetup.com. And, like multiple a week, I mean, I was going to Dikshas and group meditations and group past life regressions, psychic training. Sometimes I kind of miss that. Some of them I felt like we're kind of a waste of time, but a lot of them were, were really profound. Especially the energy work stuff was really cool.

Hamid Jabbar 2:08:48
Yeah, nice.

Matthew Blackburn 2:08:52
Did you ever get into any of that, like the Diksha or the Reiki?

Hamid Jabbar 2:08:57
I did go through Reiki and there's, there's a lot more to that, because the Reiki was sort of my introduction into energy work. And then they have an entire field of this in Thailand, that's not called Reiki, it's something else. And I've started to notice that regardless of what you call it, there's many modalities working with the same types of things. And there's aspects to our humanity that that are really fascinating. How our energy works and how just being near another person your heart is going to affect their heart and yeah, it's - there's a whole lot to be learned about ourselves through that stuff.

Matthew Blackburn 2:09:44
Yeah, yeah. I wonder if these these Reiki practitioners would, would have even more success if they focused on magnesium and copper and retinol.

Hamid Jabbar 2:09:58
Leaving little bread crumbs Matt, we're not - we're not going in.

Matthew Blackburn 2:10:06
Well your website's awesome. It's hamidjabbar.com. I'll put the link where you guys could check them out. And you have your events up there, blog, contact me button. And thanks Hamid, this was a lot of fun. I learned a lot, this was great.

Hamid Jabbar 2:10:25
Yeah, thanks, Matt. And I'll just tell people that site is my main site and then I've dedicated a new site, which is mainly geared towards minerals and plant medicines. And I'm offering support for people through that other site, which is mineralshaman.com.

Matthew Blackburn 2:10:47
Yeah, and check out Hamid's Instagram too the - your posts on that mineral shaman page are a really great, there's so much free information. That I think if anyone's micro dosing or macro dosing, they should definitely read through all those first.

Hamid Jabbar 2:11:04
Yeah. Appreciate that.

Matthew Blackburn 2:11:08
Right on. Well thanks Hamid, really appreciate that and just stick around as we close out the show. That is all for today's show. Hope you guys found that fascinating. Whether you've had experiences with plant medicines or not, I think I mentioned it in the show but years ago, I went to this music festival called lightning in a bottle in Southern California, three or four years in a row. And there were really interesting speakers there, talking about hidden history, and different health topics. And then of course, there was electronic music, and a lot of mind altering substances. And I noticed the depletion that was happening, it was making people lighter, to some degree, removing their inhibitions, and free flow, dancing and all of that. But I noticed on the physical level, people were depleting what they're already depleted in. And I knew at the time about magnesium, and the importance of animal protein, but I didn't understand about copper and retinol. And now I know there is also likely sodium and potassium deficiency in most of those people from going on the keto diet or intermittent fasting or restricting carbs or animal protein, so many different things, zap the minerals, and magnesium is just one of them but there's also sodium and potassium, which a lot of people are not cognizant about going day to day. And I used to attend a lot of different meetups, energy healings and meditations and past life regressions, channellings, you name it. And what I saw was the same thing, these people were eating fast food or eating soy, or vegan or vegetarian diet. And that really affects how much progress we can make healing on the mental or emotional level. And I think it's awesome that Hamid is bringing that to light and educating people as a RCP practitioner himself, on the mineral balancing. So if you go to his website, hamidjabbar.com, he has sound healing, meditation, mineral coaching, so if you do the Full Monty iron panel, we'll go through it with you. And also hair tissue, mineral analysis HTMA, he offers that as well. And you could find those at mineralshaman.com. I've swung to both sides of the debate that all plant medicines are damaging, and Terence McKenna was a CIA agent or whatever. And the opposite way that they are the thing that everybody needs to heal, I think, the middle perspective that if someone has sufficient magnesium, sodium, potassium, copper coming in retinol coming in, then they can be helpful, but there's always that context piece. And as he had said in the interview, you have to be really careful if you're going to Peru or the Amazon, that you're working with someone that's reputable, and that you can trust because it can turn dark really quickly and it does every day. Not only in those countries but in the US and everywhere, if you're not in the right setting around the right people that have malicious intent, and I think even if someone's alone by themselves, taking something, they could have a bad experience, if they have vitamin and mineral imbalances, and their enzyme pathways are shut down, then that leads to what's called a "bad trip" or something that actually hurts the person's health instead of improves it. I forget if Hamid mentioned it in the show, but maps.org the "Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies" is a really good place to read unbiased research about all of these different subjects and their effects and that's fascinated me for years. I think these are a lot better than pharmaceutical drugs and combined with this information about mineral balancing, people could experience really profound healing, Hamid's, also on Instagram, under mineralshaman, and his name, so I'll put the links below where you can connect with him and go and support his work, he's doing awesome things in the world. And if you want to support this show, you can go to matt-blackburn.com. I have all my recommended products up there. And the updated CLF protocol and I'm almost done writing my first ebook on calcification, lipofuscin and fibrosis, they all connect. And so it's been really interesting to write because I'm finding how to tie it all together in a way that people can understand, that's coherent, which has been kind of challenging, but fun. And what's been slowing that down is issues here on the homestead my main generator being fully off grid went down. And that's not good, because I'm reliant on a backup generator, which charges the batteries like 10% as fast as my regular generator. So I've been burning through the gasoline that gets like a gallon an hour or something like that, that it goes through. And it's been a good learning experience for me and a good test of my nervous system to have all of these things thrown at me. So I keep reminding myself to eat enough calories, enough carbs and animal protein and take all my usual stuff, my Rosita cod liver oil, the vitamin E, the vitamin K2, my beef liver, the Shilajit and then making that adrenal cocktail twice a day, once when I wake up and once mid day, that coconut water, fresh squeezed orange juice and white salt. And with all of that going on, I've been able to keep up and not feel drained. Because I think a lot of people are experiencing that they're just nonstop, go - go - go. And that's where I'm at in my life right now, but they're not replenishing during that or just even taking 5 or 10 minute breaks to just look up at the trees or the sky and just chill out if that's all you have. And these nutritional pieces that I share here on the podcast are so important to facilitating that process of recharging, resetting, all that good stuff. So Mitolife is my brand, that's mitolife.co and you can check out all of the products there. I have the Mag-ATP, which is a mix of magnesium bisglycinate and magnesium taurate. I also have whole food, vitamin C, which is a good idea to take whether you're eating fruit or not just to ensure that that tyrosinase enzyme is coming in constantly to help lasso or bring in copper that's not properly bound to ceruloplasmin. And exciting announcements, the Shilajit should be back by the end of next week and the Mitolife Beef Liver is really close, that's going to be out in the next few weeks for sure. So by mid May, the beef liver will be released. Thank you guys so much for your support. Check out Mitolife Academy on YouTube, where I put up four private videos a month and a live Q&A. There's a new vital life radio episode released every Friday. See you guys next week. Stay supercharged.