The Ayahuasca Era: How Neal Brennan Finally Found Joy (and God)

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I only use these broad terms because I was in a white void before the Big Bang.

Excuse me.

Right after this ad.

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York, New York, 1738.

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I see a little Pablo, but he's in the corner.

So it's,

there he is.

There's my guy.

This is full

around the horn.

Make me big.

Yes.

Am I centered or ish?

Is my eyeliner?

Neil looks fantastic is what.

Thank you.

Is what people here are saying.

Many are saying that Neil looks fantastic.

What else is now?

Am I right, ladies?

What do the people who bother Neil Brennan for interviews mostly want to talk to you about?

Well, for a long time, it was Chappelle Show, and then people said I talked about that too much, and then it was mental health.

People said I talked about that too much.

And now we're into the ayahuasca era.

So pretty great.

That should be the first comment, not this again.

So Neil Brennan did co-create and co-write one of the greatest television shows of all time.

We should reaffirm this.

You might actually remember him from his role alongside Dave Chappelle in their sketch about the blind black dude who did not know he was a white supremacist.

Don't be afraid.

Neil is also responsible, by the way, for one of my favorite Netflix stand-up specials, Three Mics, which I saw him perform live in New York in 2016.

Yeah, I was lucky enough to have dropped out

because I realized early on that these student loans are basically small business loans, and the business is you,

and you're maybe not such a great business.

Look, if they call them small business loans, no 18-year-old kid would ever get the loan because it's a bad idea for a business.

If you had to go to the bank, to the small business desk, and ask me, like, yeah, I'm gonna need $150,000, they'd be like, All right, what's your business idea?

All right, here's the idea.

For the next four years,

I'm gonna get blackout drunk,

but also

I'm going to get a degree in sociology.

But what Neil is here to discuss today is, in fact, his plant-based psychedelic era.

Because the way sports always talks about ayahuasca is through Jets quarterback and casual internet conspiracist Aaron Rodgers.

As Rogers just informed Pat McAfee earlier this month.

I can speak from my own experience.

It was life-changing, has been life-changing, and it's going to be something that I look forward to doing in some form or fashion so I've seen as well.

And so I figured it was time to commune with the person that I know who is most passionate and most experienced about this very subject.

Pabo, you said something to me a long time ago that stuck with me.

Well, it didn't stick with me then.

Came back around.

You needed a quote for like a LeBron article or something.

or maybe deep background.

Sometimes I do deep background, Neil Brennan, the king of deep background.

And we did the phone call and you go, all right, just go back to the Neil Brennan lifestyle of

comedy and sketches and

great, a great life.

And I was like, he doesn't know anything about my life.

And then I've recently come around to your

point of view on my life, which is way, a way better point of view on it.

Then you shouldn't often think about people's perception of you, but if it's better than your own, maybe there's something to it.

Yeah, you want to be the Neil Brennan that I've always imagined you

to be.

I've finally accepted that.

You are on the ayahuasca subject, by by the way.

The person I now know and genuinely like am curious about

because

you testify to the profundity of the change that it that it wrought upon your life in a real way.

I testified about it in the court of Joe Rogan, the highest court in the land, of course.

Imagine if God was real and you could get in front of God, but the only way to do it is to eat mushrooms.

He'd be like, wait, what?

I would argue that's true.

It might be.

I mean, you know what I mean?

Like, in my experience, but it might be.

It's the only way.

Now, the good thing is

it's in me now.

I have credibility in that I was a smug atheist.

And now,

look, the smugness hasn't changed one bit, guys.

But now I believe in a God based on my experiences with ayahuasca, which is like pretty significant.

It's about the greatest endorsement one could give about profundity

that's possible.

I, I agree.

And now I would like to say before I say anything about it,

because you were, you, you, I think you're couching this in the, in the Aaron Rodgers, uh, under the Aaron Rodgers, Rodgers umbrella.

And well, now we are officially.

Yes.

But there's a thing in 12-step programs and AA and all the other ones that you don't say you're in them.

Because if you say publicly, I'm in AA, and then your people see you drunk, they go, well, A, it doesn't work.

A lot of this, don't listen to any of the spokespeople.

Will Smith's been a spokesperson?

You know, it's like people that have come out and said they did it.

And then everything they do, you go, well, that clearly doesn't work.

So Aaron Rodgers goes after Kimmel and you go, well, clearly this ayahuasca is not working.

Don't credit or blame ayahuasca for anything, including my own conversion, my own road to Damascus experience.

That's just mine.

There are 8 billion people on earth, and

there's going to be 8 billion different experiences around what we call the medicine.

There it is.

Yeah.

I hope that

you would start calling it the medicine.

Aya.

Yes.

I call it.

Aya.

You can't not once you've done it.

You've been on a quest

for something that long predates this specific medicine.

So for people unfamiliar with your quest, with your oeuvre,

how would you have described your relationship with the concept of joy?

So I have a type of depression or had a type of depression, Wink, spoiler, don't want to spoil the punchline,

the called dysthymia, which means you don't experience a lot of joy, if any.

So I'm depressed.

And not the way you normally hear that.

Like, I'm so depressed.

Kobe retired.

I mean, like, I have clinical depression, the mood disorder, and I've had it for as long as I can remember.

I think my brain, whereas most people have,

you know,

oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin, I had a shortage of that.

I had a lot of cortisol.

So I, meaning I'm very

harsh,

I'm obsessed with justice and fairness.

And I think it's a thing you see in

a good amount of people.

So I would take SSRIs, which is a serotonin, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which means serotonin, the little I have gets shot onto my brain plate.

And the SSRI, Zolof in this case, would leave it on the field longer before it would re-uptake it, right?

So

that'll get you a slightly improved mood

i but i just wasn't i was like there's got to be something better there's got to be something better did a thing called tms transcranial magnetic stimulation where i was it's firing magnets basically mri magnets at a portion of your brain did it in la seven years ago did it in china right before covid again all slight improvements but i

felt like there was something better.

And then somebody texted me an article about ayahuasca and was like, We should do this.

And we did it.

And it has, it's been transformational in terms of my overall mood and my kind of perception of most things.

I just have better values

and I don't take things so literally.

And I'm just, it's a better experience for me day to day.

We're talking about pandemic era.

Yes.

Experimentation.

a lot of people bake bread i i drank a amazonian plant medicine with who neil i want to be specific i don't i don't want to say with who just with you've said it before why are you not saying i don't know because it just seems it just seems uh it just seems fishy uh but can i say it

you gotta say it i can't stop you but but a comedian friend of mine sent me the thing was like we should do this and we did it correct correct so um it was chris rock um so listen what I wanted to figure out with you, Neil, um, is that first time, okay,

um, how immediately obvious was it that this was the thing that was the skeleton key that would somehow unlock

whatever image you had, the vault behind which joy was kept from you?

The first time I did it

was

like a private, like just

at somebody's house.

And what I got felt like a sampler

of the ayahuasca in general, meaning I got, I saw the speed with which my thoughts could go.

With mushrooms, you'll have like a

10 hilarious thoughts in a minute.

Yes.

And this was like 50.

And I actually went like, wow, because it was like,

then I cried for two hours about groups of people.

I'm not the most social guy, not more of an introvert, something about like groups of people.

It just felt like something tribal and it was really nice.

And the cry was like pretty thick.

It was like one of those things where you're like, how is this still happening?

And then it was kind of over.

It didn't feel like I had much of a spiritual breakthrough, but it was very pleasant.

I told somebody it's like when you, when you check into a hotel and

there's an ad for the hotel on the monitor, they're like, welcome to the Bayside Hilton or whatever.

It was like that, but for ayahuasca, like, welcome to ayahuasca.

Here you're going to have a sense of tribalism and a thing that you've never felt in terms of connection to all of humanity.

That's right.

Mario Lopez, by the way, still selling movies.

He comes on after.

Yeah, he comes on after.

And by the way, always louder than you want it to be.

When extra's next playing, it's always louder than you want it to be.

And you can't find the remote.

And when you do, you have some questions about why it's sticky.

Now,

that was first time.

So then

did it another, then found somebody, found a ceremony in LA, went, did it, you know, 30 people, more official, you know, more ceremony

and didn't feel anything.

Drank it, didn't feel anything on the first night.

So I said to the guy on the second night, I'm like, hey,

we need to kind of recalibrate because it's worked for me before.

And then I drank, I think a little more and

bullseye was like

right there.

And I was experiencing a lot of joy,

like unbridled joy, like grinning joy, grinning, hot face joy that you might experience on other medicines.

Cops call them drugs.

I call them medicine.

And then I opened my eyes at one point.

I was like, oh, I'm in the presence of a God right now.

It felt like the end of Radius of the Lost Ark when they opened the covenant, opened the ark and the stuff flying around.

It's not evil yet.

It gets evil.

Once it gets to the Nazis, I don't want to ruin.

Radius of the Lost Ark for people.

Spoiler alert.

The Nazis didn't get a connection to God.

If you're, in the, if you're, I'm spoiling it.

I'm not going to say how they did.

You did.

Neil Brennan.

I just got the connection.

I actually got, and I felt like, oh, I'm in the presence of a God right now.

And pretty much since then, it hasn't, I, my, uh,

belief hasn't wavered.

And again, it's not religious.

It's not, I don't need you to not eat certain meats.

You can sleep with whoever you want.

You know, whatever you need to do, you go ahead and do it.

But I personally believe that there's a central creation force based on

the experience I had drinking ayahuasca, but it's carried itself through.

I imagine it's incredibly difficult to fully articulate or intellectualize what it is that was the stimulus that sparked that specific central cosmic force that you now actually have conviction in.

But what do you want people to know

about that feeling such that

we others may benefit from feeling it?

I'm approaching it kind of from a place of self-interest, which is

I would, it's given me not even the God part per se.

I kind of believe my nervous system has been rerouted, which

if scientifically, ayahuasca, the, the, the studies, there haven't been a ton of studies, but the ones they have done, it is something called neurogenic, where it creates new brain cells, which is kind of the only substance that does that on earth,

other than this podcast.

And

so

I can't very well say you're a sucker if you don't believe it or you should or any of that stuff.

And I don't need anyone to confirm it or deny it.

Or it's like, that's what happened.

So I don't, it's a bit of a UFO thing.

I don't need to like, I know I was on a UFO, like whether you believe it or the government,

I don't care.

Is it comforting?

Like the feeling of this knowledge, this conviction is that a comfort to you as the notion of joy or whatever you're questing for is concerned.

It is, and it's really, it can be very scary,

and which is kind of an unexpected thing.

Like, there's a, I feel like sometimes in movies when like a

deity or whatever, a force

appears or is experienced, people throw up.

I get it.

I get it.

Cause I'm like, boy, this is a lot.

This is a lot to sort of think you think.

Cause I can't say I know it.

It's a lot.

It's just that sometimes it's like, it's a lot.

How much for you was there actual throwing up?

Oh, yeah.

People are always very concerned about throwing up.

How many people threw up from alcohol last night?

Just ballpark.

Ballpark.

Ballpark.

And just do America.

And people never say alcohol.

Is that that stuff that makes you throw up?

But that's people's first question with ayahuasca.

So I'm always like, no, you're thinking of alcohol.

That's the stuff that makes you throw up.

Ayahuasca, you might.

I've thrown up once in 15 times, and that's because I drank too much.

You drank too much of the, of, of the, I drank too much of ayahuasca, yeah.

Yeah.

So I can't, I, but any other time, I've never, you, you crap your pants.

No, I've never, I've never seen anyone do it.

I've never, I've seen people throw up.

It's not uncommon, but it's not guaranteed.

No, no judgment on the barf.

Great.

I am, though, curious about how you go from trip number two to

three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

So how does your quest continue such that you're like, this is a thing that I want as part of my actual

upkeep yeah because i was sort of of the mind that i needed to

uh

solidify it

the the sort of thing that had been revealed to me or opened up in me or however you want to say it so that's kind of why i was doing it so much okay and it was yeah it was covet

i had nothing else going on

And it's a beauty.

It's like somebody asked me, why do you do it so much?

I'm like, because I get to meet God.

Sorry.

A lot of people go to Florida that much during COVID.

Sorry, I got to meet God, you suckers.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Ramy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champain, and Fortune Alcohol by Volume recorded by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in York, New York, 1738.

Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

antidepressants and SSRIs.

Where are you on that regimen after your ayahuasca?

You can't do them if you're, if you drink ayahuasca.

So I've been off them for

two years.

Well, how do you, how in your brain do you distinguish between the mental health benefits and the existential sense you have of what you're here to do?

So because I believe in God, is that affecting my mood?

Or, or

what is it?

What is my

existential purpose?

I don't think it's changed.

Because I had a friend, my friend Bajan, and I, when he did it with me,

he was like, are we going to be able to be capitalists after this?

And

like, I know what he meant, but yeah, I'm still a capitalist.

Neil, are we, are we about to be poor?

No, I mean, that's, he was kind of, he was just kind of like are we going to believe in western values but the thing is you do believe in them less i do believe in them less as

um

a guiding light like i i think i'm i'm apt to want to grow every quarter less than i was before i mean it's like capitalism tells you like if you're not did you make more money this quarter than last quarter then you're a failure like i'm less on that i still have a lot of it in me though but in terms of like my purpose i don't think my purpose has changed other than

ironically i think one of my purposes is to have fun and be and have joy that's one that i feel like i can actually accomplish a little bit as in you now can believe with conviction that you're put on this planet to actually enjoy it yeah i think that that's what my a lot of my professional goals now are emotional meaning I would like to just be pleasant and in a good mood most of the time.

And like, well, what are you going to do for work?

I don't know.

Like, if I, if it's, it's like I could run a juice shop and be, obviously, I'm invested in this competition I'm a part of, but I also am, I'm more concerned with, and then how's it, how am I going to feel?

Right.

The competition is where I wanted to go next, because this notion that

Again, there is a mental processing speed, at least during the experience of taking ayahuasca, that was, that was, I guess, mind-blowing in all of the senses.

To what extent do you consider this a performance-enhancing medicine, let's call it?

Ayahuasca didn't necessarily make me funnier.

DMT did, but that's a whole other issue.

That may be the next chapter or something.

That's the thing called Bufo that I did once in New York.

Am I wrong when I say this is the toad-related thing?

Yes, this is the toad.

I believe this is the one that Mike Tyson talks about.

It takes you to another level.

Ayahuasca is nothing compared to this.

The toad, and it's on the Sonora desert, and it has a venom in it.

You smoke it.

Once I tried it, boom, my brain was still functioning.

My thoughts, I could still talk to myself.

I could hear my mind.

And I was saying, I fed up.

And I killed myself.

I'm dying.

It was just really mind-blowing.

5-MeO DMT Bufo Alvarius is what it's called, or just DMT.

And so...

Like a natural, it's a toad secretion.

They dry it out and you smoke it.

It always seemed too severe to me.

It sounds severe, Neil.

Yeah,

it was too severe.

So I didn't know that, though.

Or I did know it, and then I forgot.

I don't want to say it destroyed my brain.

It was crazy.

It was very crazy.

And it was the experience was crazy.

And then I had a reactivation a week later.

And that was the craziest thing I've ever experienced by a factor of a thousand.

As in, you were just going about your day and then you were like, it's like what they call call it, what they used to call an acid flashback.

Right.

This was like a DMT flashback or reactivation.

So now I'm in life and half of me is on DMT a little bit.

And the thing that they don't tell you, and I found out later, is that 770% of people that smoke DMT, 5MeO DMT, have a reactivation at some point.

Some are short.

Some are, mine was not short.

It opened something up in my mind.

Again, it was like a God

central creation force, what I believe is caveat, caveat, caveat.

It opened that up too much.

What did you see, though, Neil?

What did you sort of encounter if you could verbalize what too much was?

The actual experience, the 25 minutes or so, was I was in a white void.

And it was what Michael Pollan, who wrote How to Change Your Mind.

Yes, it's a great book.

Yep.

He smoked 5MAO DMT and he described the place that he went to.

And it was a perfect description.

When I, when I read it afterward,

he went to before the Big Bang.

How's that?

How's that sound?

Does that sound comfortable?

So I was there

and I didn't know anything.

I was an eye.

It was a first-person experience, but I didn't know breathing, sight, direction.

I didn't, any space, any, I didn't know anything.

It was a blank slate of my own comprehension of consciousness.

Again, these are all very big.

It was, I, I only use these broad terms because I was in a white void before the Big Bang.

Excuse me.

That was like manageable, the 25 minutes.

The reactivation is where it started to get.

Crazy because I'm in my life.

I'm walking around in the village.

Yeah, where were you?

I was was in New York.

I was doing blocks in New York.

Yeah, your show,

your last one, Mancho.

Yes, my award-winning Netflix.

Is your life going smoothly?

Are you just floating from event to event, feeling good about yourself?

Because I'm not.

So I'm there doing it, and I'd be walking down the stage to the show going, why are steps

like just stuff that you're, it's like things that I would take for granted.

I was re had to remind myself, like, no, you're a person in life.

It was like real back to basics,

uh, fundamental chess pass, bounce pass life stuff.

And yeah, and I one point I thought, am I in God's imagination?

Just stuff that's not real helpful.

Um, but,

but, uh, but yeah, and, and it was hard.

And it took me what I thought it took about seven or eight months to get through.

And then it turned out it didn't really end until an ayahuasca ceremony last March, where I felt the door close that had been opened by DMT, like in my mind, sort of like a door closed.

And I was like, I was in that that whole time.

Like I didn't realize.

I thought it was over like

a year and a half ago.

And it turns out it was over like eight months ago.

So it was, but now here's the upside:

funnier, more loving, sharper, honestly.

Uh, more because the door got closed, you now have

once the door was open.

I was I was better the whole time.

Oh, I was better the whole time, like, I didn't,

yeah, the I thought the door was closed and I was better, but the door was still open and I was better.

So I was better.

Audiences like me more, just

all intangibles.

And somehow I was freer as a person.

Something that I

want to probe a bit is just the difference between your perception of something and the actual thing you are perceiving.

Because what you're describing are seemingly

benefits that you have noticed.

And I'm wondering, how are you pressure testing these notions?

How do you square that circle for yourself?

Fallen in love more often, like literally, statistically.

I fell in love twice in the last year and a half.

And the year and a half before that, didn't fall in love at all.

Maybe we blame the ladies.

I'd like to blame me, my spirit.

The Big Bang.

I get bigger laughs from crowds.

I can tell.

I never in my life ever felt like Bill Burr on stage before.

And there were a few moments.

where I was on DMP and I was like, oh,

this is what Burr must feel like on stage.

The other way, though, to feel whether this is working in the way that you're imagining, of course, is to hear it from the people whose relationships you are now more open to or nurturing.

Or how do the people around you, Neil, whether it's friends, family, your girlfriend, what do they say about you now?

They say, I mean, I had people that didn't know anything that were like, what did you do?

Like that would just come up to me, like, what did you do?

Like, almost like I got surgery or something.

I'm also just less angry in general, just less argumentative, just stuff that again, I can't quantify per se, but I can tell you firsthand that people that know me well have been like,

What is different about you as a person in a relationship, a person in love?

Uh, I don't want to win as badly,

it's the thing of like, what am I trying to get to?

And

it's, I'm trying to get to like

understanding

and

peace and less recrimination and less,

what am I guilty of?

What are you guilty of?

Because I'm all, I'm Catholic.

I'm Irish Catholic, you know, 10 kids, whatever.

It's all combat.

I don't know if you know anything about me, but I'm the youngest of 10 kids.

And I don't know if you know much about math or kids,

but 10 kids is too many kids everything's combat so this scarce resources conflict yeah yeah so and and

retribution and blame and self-pity and like all of these things that are like my currency are less i just don't feel the need to do them

The notion of how this intersects with therapy is something that I'm curious about too.

Because I think a criticism from afar from people who have not dabbled in psychedelics or certainly done

ayahuasca 15 times or the toad venom once, I think there is this suspicion that this feels like an attempt to get a shortcut, that there is some shoots and laddersing past the work.

Yes.

And you are somebody, of course, who has gone to therapy.

I don't know where you are in your therapy now, but how does this all fit together?

I used to hear that about medication.

Right.

And again, so what I would say is,

all right, how's that Ozempic treating you?

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't, why make,

why the Judeo or the Protestant work ethic of like, you got to earn this?

I didn't earn the problem.

I didn't, meaning the problem was either like abused into me.

My parents were old when I got here.

I'm the youngest, so they were in their 40s when I got here.

They were from the, they were born in the 1930s so they were from the we did the best we could generation if you criticize their parenting in any way they would just go out we did the best we could and i always felt like really that was the best you could so dad you'd get drunk hit your kids and think to yourself no this is me at my best

or humanity has real just walking around issues from jump

you come out the chute you the you're conscious and you're like why am i why do i have a tick it's not so so then it's you got to work to get rid of it.

You didn't work to get it.

It was just given to you.

So, and I went to therapy for 20 years.

It was, and I used to yell at my therapist.

I can't keep talking about this.

It's in my body.

I've done a lot of different kinds of therapy and this is the one that's worked the best.

It's not going to work for everybody.

Some people are, it, it can also, it should be noted, have severe, severely negative effects.

So

what, what do you know about those?

Do you know about those because they've happened to friends of yours?

Because you've read about the negative effects.

I do want to.

I've read about them significantly more than I haven't.

I mean, my own DMT experience

sounds pretty scary.

You know, as much as everybody wants to open up the floodgates of like, it's a revolution.

And then, and then you, you, there's certain MDMA studies, another thing that I've gotten a lot of benefit from MDMA, um,

where like some of them are a little fishy.

You know, some of the studies are a little either cooking the books or the therapists aren't being appropriate.

And, or with ayahuasca or mushrooms, like some people have

short-term bad experiences, whether it's just, it's too much, they, they, they're incredibly disoriented.

Uh, and then I think some people can, you know, quote, lose their mind.

Ayahuasca is not the most pleasant experience you're ever going to have.

Meaning on the medicine, it can be

nauseating.

It can be overwhelming.

It can be psychologically

difficult in terms of like what you're experiencing.

Just in terms of even dealing with a central creation force in my own experience.

It's a lot to go inside the fabric of humanity and consciousness.

It's not the easiest thing you can do on a weekend.

Now, I don't think it makes me a hero for doing it because I have, there's a ton of upside and I am kind of predisposed to be interested in it.

But,

but it's not easy.

It's not a party.

What does the concept of ego death mean here, Neil?

Because I've heard that term.

Aaron Rodgers has said it.

And I'm curious because ego, of course, when it comes to anybody who works in the spotlight in public, you know,

I remember hearing you say this or reading about you saying it, but the notion that like reviews of you co-wrote Half Baked with Dave Chappelle.

And reviews were so scathing that that helped push you towards antidepressants.

I don't know if that's the Western

crucible in terms of what someone in

any business has to deal with of like,

I don't want any extra, I don't need any external validation.

We're social animals.

I don't think you're honest if you say you don't need external validation.

You don't want your mom to love you.

That's external validation.

You don't want your husband.

It's like, it's all your brothers, sisters, community, respect.

I think think it's dishonest to say that we don't, a person doesn't need external validation.

In terms of ego death, that's not something I've experienced.

I've gotten DMT flattened me to the point where I was like, I don't know what's happening.

That's pretty close to, I mean,

it, I don't know if it's ego death, but it makes ego totally irrelevant.

Because your priorities change to like, I would just like to kind of understand what steps are intuitively.

And

so I haven't experienced ego death.

I have experienced a reorientation in terms of values.

But again, that's just me.

I also think it's

a lot of it's just people talking,

meaning ego death.

One person says ego death, and then the, and then everyone wants to say it.

It's like a new term.

It's like trauma or

toxic or anything.

It just becomes a cool thing.

Anything, any of it.

So like

ego, I don't know.

It sounds cool.

You, if you say, I had an ego death, you're kind of saying like, so

I'm pretty much set in terms of personal behavior because it's not coming from a place of ego because it died.

So I'm going to do everything I, anything I want from here on out.

And it's going to be justifiable to me.

And it's going to make you doubt,

doubt.

When you think I'm wrong, you're going to be like, but he had an ego dude.

So I don't, I almost don't trust anything people say,

including myself, about any of it.

I wonder about the placebo effect.

I think it's one of those fascinating concepts that exists.

Yep.

This notion that we don't fully understand how this works.

The black box.

But somehow our brain, if persuaded of something, can actually enact that something in the absence of actually

the literal something that is imagined.

I suppose what's so encouraging listening to you sort through your own self-scouting report is

you have a conviction that this is making your life

better.

And in the end, whether this is

the venom of a toad or the sacred substance that is

trying to basically just make tea.

Yeah, the ayahuasca.

Or a sugar pill.

Yeah.

I would like everybody to feel better if it actually means

you're better.

Yes.

I would like that as well.

I'm of the mind that

if there's a revolution coming with

psilocybin and

ayahuasca and all that stuff,

that a lot, a lot, a lot of people are going to get help.

And some people are going to get

very harmed.

Now,

for mushrooms, for example,

a couple months ago, guys on mushrooms rushes the cockpit.

Following breaking news, I know you're following this on

an off-duty pilot accused of trying to turn off the engines mid-flight during an Alaska Airlines flight over the weekend.

I know we have new documents.

What have we learned?

This story just took a bizarre turn, Kate.

A new federal complaint says that this off-duty pilot, Joseph Emerson, may have been taking psychedelic mushrooms.

If that plane crashes, this revolution's over.

It's over.

It's a hard thing to spin for the mushroom lobby.

Yes.

And

also the fact the guy hadn't slept in two days.

No one's going to say we need to mandate sleep.

They're going to say we need to mandate an absolute prohibition on mushrooms.

So I'm with you.

And, and as someone who's done it a number of times, I don't know if it would help you.

I can't guarantee any outcome.

It's just a thing that I felt.

And again, they say like, felt called to do.

I don't know.

I, it's,

Chris sends me a text.

I'm like, all right, like, I can figure this out.

But in terms of like, was it divine?

And was it, I, that stuff, I have no idea.

Like, I, I think to even think you you know is you're lying yourself.

It's ego death.

So it's an ego.

It's from the, from the people who brought you ego death.

I was called.

I do think it's funny, though, how preemptive all of us who are in favor of people getting help and the science and really the law catching up to the science and the science catching up to the spirituality.

Whoever's in favor of all of that, we must be, I consider myself in that population.

That's why I'm having you on the show.

I like how preemptive we all are about the ways that this politically

can just crash into a ditch.

Because you started this whole conversation by pointing out,

you may be aware, listener, that Chris Rock and Will Smith have both enjoyed ayahuasca.

You may remember them from such scenes as the time one of them slapped the other in a way that felt like the ego was very much alive.

Yeah.

And

with the Aaron Rodgers thing, Aaron rodgers now the face of this yes

i wonder what you neil brennan if i were to appoint you

political strategist for the thing that we're here to talk about ayahuasca more than any of the other with any of the other psychedelics yes who would you want in the commercial which which person do you think is most persuasive to a larger population of people as to the very notions that you're of course it's the rock but

in some ways, there is something so

private and personal about it, even within terms of Chris, uh, Will, and Aaron Rodgers.

Like, I don't, I don't even know if I should talk about it.

Meaning, like, I don't know if I'm a good spokesman or if I'm painting a picture or if I should paint any picture whatsoever.

Like, I don't know.

Cause in some ways, it is as personal as

a religion.

Like, meaning, who am I to tell you about it?

Right.

My Catholicism is not yours.

We can practice, eat at the buffet of spirituality quite differently under the same restaurant name.

Yeah.

And people don't even read the Bible the same way.

You know, like, there are, there is no book, and there is no

like read the, there's just no, there's nothing.

There's just like you just try it.

Try, and it might, it might change your life significantly.

You would, though, like The Rock to be sent to

a time before the Big Bang.

Well, I feel like he's there most of the time anyway.

A time before SummerSlam.

Again, The Rock's,

or Kevin Hart, one of the other.

What I am marveling at is that there is a certain clarity.

I'm not going to psychoanalyze you through the Zoom screen,

but I do notice that there's a certain clarity that makes me wonder about the stuff that you used to say about your

i won't call them previous with knowledge but at the very least your pre-existing uh anxieties and neuroses i remember in one of your specials in in three mics you talk about how you used to carry an index card around so that you could feel better about yourself to say i have

low self-esteem is not true.

I have no self-esteem.

Like, I don't have the architecture for good feelings.

You give me a trophy, it'll just slide right down.

Like, I just don't have the shelving.

In fact, I used to have to carry around an index card of funny things I'd written or said or directed just to try to remind myself that I was okay.

I'm still doing that, but it's totally different.

Now I do it.

You want to know why?

And I do this.

I started doing this like a month ago.

I do a fact check of my life

out of gratitude

to more to the thing that you said earlier, of like, go back to the Neil Brown.

I have to remind myself because my brain will still try to tell me,

despite all the ayahuasca I've drank, that things are, people are out to get me, or people don't respect me, or all this stuff, all just the negative, the negative feedback loop.

So,

I'm, I still do that.

I do it four times a day.

I just check, just check in like a reality check of like, no, this is what's happening.

that was it was really touch and go back then in terms of um

uh self-esteem now it's the thing i do now is more just to like sweep just to sweep any sort of lingering like nope get out no no no no get out of here get out no no no

like my my girlfriend said it's like cats in a deli like where i'm just like cats in i'm like no get out of here no no no no no

go that's basically what i'm doing yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's part of the thing.

And when I do my reality checks where I go like, you have this.

Stop it.

Stop.

I'm like hallucinating

enemies

and hardships.

I have no problems.

I have no real problems.

Have you watched, did you watch that Beyond Utopia North Korea documentary?

No.

It's about people escaping North Korea kind of in real time on and they have handheld videos.

It's like you, I don't have a real problem.

I don't have problems.

There's a World War II thing on Netflix, and you go, I think this, I have problems.

The Russians are eating their own horses.

I don't have problems.

Someone not responding to my text is not a problem.

So, so I don't know if that's ayahuasca that gave me that or I came to it on my own.

We'll never know, guys.

It's all far too late.

Neil Brennan, I just want to say thank you for being the Neil Brennan finally that I've always been.

Good dream.

I'm finally living your dream.

That's right.

Pablo's American Dream.

Right after this.

So as I sit here at my keyboard wondering what it is that I found out today,

I realize that I have fallen short of my mission here.

Because I'm supposed to find out all I can about ayahuasca.

And

I could have done ayahuasca.

I could have done DMT.

I could have better explained all of this to you.

But I didn't.

And I'm sorry.

Because for all of the Aaron Rodgersization of psychedelics, I do believe they are actually revolutionary.

Ayahuasca is legitimately on my to-do list at some point.

Neil even said that he would consider joining me.

But in the meantime, in an attempt to just better convey what the experience might actually feel like, which is hard to describe, what Neil did instead was text me a link to a song.

A song that is incredibly difficult to categorize itself.

But it is a song that to him resembles how ayahuasca feels.

And so, at the end, here, I just hope that you can join me in closing your eyes and sitting down somewhere

and enjoying the song playing inside Neil Brennan's head.

Same

for

you,

You

are in

my

landing.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production

and I'll talk to you next time.