Oh, Hi Self
A hopeful, future-facing conversation about consciousness and growth. Matt shares his beginning as a non-drug-user whose first guided session reordered his life, and imagines with the host where wider access to these medicines could lead.
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Episode summary
On Oh Hi Self, a podcast about consciousness and personal growth, Matt joins a host who brings her own retreat experience to a hopeful, future-facing conversation. He starts with his own beginning as a non-drug-user whose first guided psilocybin session reconnected him with his late mother and reordered his life, sending him back to school for a master's. He describes himself now as part of an entheogenic community and as someone pursuing a Doctor of Ministry, and frames these medicines as catalysts that help a person remember who they are rather than cures for any single condition.
Much of the conversation imagines where this could lead. Matt and the host develop a shared picture of a future practitioner who blends modern medicine with the older wisdom of traditional healers, with functional and integrative medicine as a stepping stone toward care that has time for a person's history and support system, not only their symptoms. He argues that the split our culture made between physician and priest is one we could mend, and extends the point across traditions, suggesting that once the rules and weaponization are set aside, people from Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Hindu backgrounds can find the same essence in their own heritage and use these tools to draw closer to it.
He is careful about risk. Matt names schizophrenia as a clear reason not to proceed, urges caution around bipolar disorder given thin research, and warns that some psychedelics combined with common medications, such as ayahuasca with an SSRI, can be dangerous, pointing people to the pharmacist Ben Malcolm for a neutral read on their own situation. He lays out source, set, and setting as the basics, and offers his outlook for the next several years, with continued growth of the medical model, more cities and states decriminalizing for the sake of access, and a religious path in which churches gain clearer legal footing.
Toward the end Matt describes the kind of ceremony he takes part in, a sequence that opens with a heart-opener like MDA, moves to an interconnectedness medicine like psilocybin, and ends with a non-duality experience such as Bufo. He shares what has become a personal study, the recognition that nearly every culture has its own buried history with these plants, from a very old mushroom figure painted on a cave wall in Africa to shamans in Siberia, and his wish to understand his own lineage. He points to his forthcoming Veteran's Guide to Psychedelics, with proceeds going to the Heroic Hearts Project, and recommends Michael Pollan's work, Carl Hart's book, and the film Fantastic Fungi as starting points.