April 15, 2025 • 50 mins
Grammy-winning musician John Osborne never imagined he’d turn to psychedelics. But when he went through a mental health breakdown, they saved his life. A skeptic turned advocate, John shares how psilocybin therapy helped him recover from deep depression, persistent anxiety, and more. With research continuing to demonstrate that psychedelics may offer a powerful treatment option for many, why are they still illegal? And how many lives could be saved if we let science and new research shape our drug policies?
A new episode of The War on Drugs will be available every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.
The War on Drugs is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts and Stand Together Music in association with Signal Co. No1.
Additional notes:
To find more information about psychedelics and the evidence-based approaches used to treat various mental health conditions, visit the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) website. LINK
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're looking at something that could profoundly change people's lives.
It has profoundly changed my life, my wife's life, my
dad's wife, all of my friends Aronny that have done
it well, I have seen it well.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Eyes Lava for Good and Stand Together in Music Present
The War on Drugs Podcast, Season two. This season, we're
diving deeper into the real stories behind the War on Drugs,
It's impact, it's failures, and the people offering a better
path forwards today on the show. Founder guitarists and background
vocalist for The Amazing Brothers Osborne, co author of Billboard
(00:33):
Hot Country Hits, Stay a Little Longer, It Ate My Fault,
Shoot Me.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Straight, and All Night.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Winner of six awards from the Academy of Country Music,
five awards from the Country Music Association and twelve nominations,
and one award from the Grammy Awards for Best Country
Duo Group Performance in twenty twenty two, and a passionate
advocate for psychedelic assisted mental health therapy. Mister John Osborne,
(00:59):
all right, well, I'm welcome back Season two The War
on Drugs Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Greg Glove really excited about our interview.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Man. We do went down to Nashville, which has been
called the white Atlanta, and I can't.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
Say that it's not I see that.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah, it is a very music focus. They've got their
own little party seede. I enjoyed myself. It's good. I've
never seen that many white cowboy boots in my life
and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, I love country music.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And to meet John Osborne, like you're from Yeah, he's
from Deal Hunt Deal, Maryland, but Liz in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Now. It was in his studio, like on the east
side of town, and.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Nice studio, man, really nice studio and like just his
records and stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
It was just like a cool experience to be in there.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And yeah, but we really got into some really deep stuff.
And I can't thank him enough for being so open
about his own struggles with, you know, mental health, his
speriences with using psychedelics, talking to friends about him. I
think it was just a great conversation about what we're
talking about here where it's not the right path for everyone,
(02:10):
but we need to allow for these things to be
discussed openly, honestly and allow for people to potentially gain
the benefits of this if it makes sense for them.
And I think just the way John went about it
and talked to us about it, It was just a really
cool conversation.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, And I think he was very real just about
what worked for him.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I think if you're kind of a skeptic about a
lot of this stuff, I think this is like a
really good conversation because it came from someone that was
a skeptic as well, and just kind of those discussions
and what his experiences were in very detailed.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
And I don't want.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
To waste any more time on this.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Good to it, Yeah, good to it now further ado
here John Osborne.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Hey, that me and Greg, our guests and sponsors may
sound smart, we may even make some good points, but
at the end of the day, we're not medical professional.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Please don't get your medical advice from a podcast. Anything
we say on here does not constitute official medical advice. Relax,
consult your doctor before you start any new treatment plans.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
We are here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Nashville.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
We were with.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
John Osborne right now, one half of the Brothers Osbourne.
We are in his recording studio right outside of downtown
on the east side of Nashville.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Come cabin. Yeah, Grammy Winners CMA.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, all the all the stuff, yes, as yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And the best part about him he grew up about
thirty minutes away from me. We were talking before, so
we're both Maryland boys. Yeah that was hunt.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, I see the black eyed Susan.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Uh that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, everyone asks some of their daisies. Yeah, yeah, I know,
never forget.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, never forget never never spent some times in their preakness.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, couple reading us all the stuff. I mean, what
peop don't understand about Maryland. It's actually a big equine state,
you know. So I like being in country music. Everyone goes,
how did you get into that being from Maryland. I'm like,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I wasn't supposed to get into it. I mean, it's
just it's mostly farms. I mean, how you go an
hour out of any town and it's just farms, you know.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
But people like to draw lines. I have to raise
something the horse.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
But yeah, thank you for joining us podcast man, and
I'm really excited about this.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
The same fan for a while.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Before we kind of get into a lot of the
stuff we're going to talk about, let's talk about you,
so born you know in Deal. It's a small town's
on the water, over the water water.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, we were, we were reliving our Maryland accents earlier.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So no, I love.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Learning about it because I didn't know that. Like, yeah,
I love for.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
A couple of days of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
You'll be like you please stuff. But it's a small
town called Deal, Maryland. It's on the it's on the
chests beat Bed about forty five to fifty minutes east
of d C. Where you live now, fifty minutes south
of Baltimore. And yeah, man, it's just kind of a
very humble town public school, played in bands, you know,
(05:11):
just trying to pursue the American dream, you know, just
kind of a small kid from nowhere.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And so you've been playing music your kind of whole
life for your family? Were they musical or how that all?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So my both of my parents would sing and write songs.
The reason why I ended up in Nashville is because
they would come down to Nashville a lot as songwriters
when we were kids. And it's a hard industry to
get into. I mean, you know, you know, it is
like being in comedy. It's like you have to commit
so much of yourself to do it that they, you know,
had kids that were at home and jobs and mortgage
(05:45):
and all those things and just didn't quite work out
for them. However, it did pave the way for my
brother and I to feel like, okay, this seems possible
because they they kind of started the trend for us.
But it's something that we've always done, you know, always
played music. Our parents would sit around the kitchen table
and write and sing songs, and it was a very
(06:05):
normal thing for us. We didn't realize it was abnormal
until we left the nest.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Right right. Were your parents weary about you going into
it knowing how hard it was, or were they the
ones like, oh, okay, we're going to tell you everything
we know and we want to see y'all.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
That the second one, for sure, I'm grateful for that. Again,
it's like you only know what you know. But our
parents they were so so supportive. You know, they weren't
necessarily helicopter parents by any stretch, but they were very,
very supportive. And also they were kind of able to
live vicariously through us. But we never felt pressured to
do it. We come from, you know, quite a conservative area,
(06:41):
but we were like this little like kind of progressive
island within our town. Our parents would not care if
we wanted to be mimes or we wanted to be
a lawyer or a guitar player. They just do it
and we'll support you one hundred percent. I'm very, very
grateful for that. You know, I know a lot of
people and our line of work that their parents weren't
(07:03):
very supportive.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
I could imagine that was tough.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
My parents were.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
My dad's a secret service age, Like he's a He
still terrifies me to this, No I do.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
He's a big dude.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So like if I was like, yeah, I'm gonna head
out and do a music career, he'd been like you.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I mean, you're out of your mind, And he
would be right, because you are. In order to pursue
something like that, you got to be a little crazy
to you know. And I mean, I don't know, to
be honest with you, I don't know. Thirty years later,
I still don't know why I do it, Like I
just am compelled. But you know, for everyone that succeeds
(07:37):
one hundred fail and the successfully is so small, I
understand why a parent would be weary of that because
they would not want to watch their child fail at something,
especially at music. It's you know, it's quite a self
serving industry. I do it because I like it. I
don't do it because I want to share my love
and experience with the world. Now I do it because
I enjoy it, and i'm you know, I don't know
(07:58):
how to do anything else.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah, and your most kids suck at.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
That helps.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, I guess that does kind of help have a
natural ability. But even if you do, there's still a
lot of luck involved. And I will admit, you know,
the harder you work, the lucky you do become. And
I work very, very hard, but I do know that
there is also luck.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Involved, of which I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
But that's you know, you got to be prepared to
take those opportunities when they get it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That's what luck is, opportunity preparation exactly.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And just from my standpoint big country music fan, when
you all were getting on the radio, I was kind
of slowly drifting away from ever listening to country music
radio a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, you both, there's Osborne kind.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Of I was like, oh, thank fucking God, because I
was living in Austin. I was hearing all this great
red dirt country. I'm like, it's never on anything but
like one little local channel or I'm like iPad and
they're like finally, I'm like, oh this is actually And
then there was like christ able To and there's a
lot of these guys that really like I feel you.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
All were a hometown boys.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Man.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I was like, just you didn't even know.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So when I met my wife in Austin, one of
the bars that we were out at the first night
we had like dinner and went out. We were in
West West sixth Street, Star Bar, Shout Out, Starbar. Brothers
Osborne came on. We were kind of like drinking and
dancing as a song we both liked and yeah, I laid.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
One honor at that point, I ever said, so to
shake your hand.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Yeah yeah, man alm a couple of beers.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yeah, he was a wingman from Afar.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
That's right, man, I'm here for you, dude. You named
your first child after me. Oh man, But.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I was going to ask you about you mentioned you've
always had struggles with mental health. Yeah, just can you
give us a little background or yeah, yeah, you said
your whole life kind of.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
So yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So I'll start about five years ago, in twenty nineteen,
I was dealing with really, really bad anxiety. I dealt
with anxiety kind of my whole life. I didn't know
what it was for a long time. I just thought
everyone kind of dealt with it, which everyone does have
anxiety to a degree, but mine was starting to become debilitating.
On stage, I never fel it, In fact, it was
the only way I would stop feeling it. But before
(10:03):
being on stage, and after being on stage, it was
just like, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
My mind was a mess.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And then I ended up contracting something called tennitis or tenetist.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Which is the ringing of the ears.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I started losing sleep, and then it all kind of
compounded it snowball effect. I wasn't sleeping, and I started
like it was nearly psychosis level. It was in my
mind and it was suicidal and all these things. And
I started staying a lot, going to a lot of therapy.
I had to do like a three week stint and
basically rehab, but not for drugs or alcohol, just for
(10:39):
mental health and tons of therapy.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
What was going on in your because you said you've
grown up with anxiety. You know, your whole life, you
didn't really know what it was. I feel very similar
where I grew up anxiety. It was just kind of
told like just calm down or like you're not yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Just don't be nervous.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's don't be nervous, like mom, just don't be anxious exactly.
It's like telling me, like just dunk a basketball.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
I would do it if I hit me. You know.
It's just a different thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I don't really know like pathologically, like where it would
all stem from or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
I do know though.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
As a kid, I was just like I constantly had
this feeling of impending doom. That's something I was always
waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
And I didn't really know why.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I just I felt like someone had a gun to
my head and I was like ship was about to write.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
A moment. And it was that way forty years, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And I learned that like through music that was really helpful.
Like I learned how to play guitar, and I gave
my I gave my brain something to focus on, which
was I want to learn how to play guitar. I
want to get better at this thing. It was almost
like a puzzle, but it was also a way of
expressing myself emotionally because I wasn't very good at doing
(12:00):
it verbally. And I still am am that way to
a bit, to quite an extreme. I've learned how to
do it because of therapy, but as a kid, I
just didn't know how to express myself emotionally at all.
So fast forward this thing. I would go to my room,
I would play guitar for hours. I loved it, and
(12:22):
I just didn't want to be around people.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
And then that very.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Thing ended up putting me in front of a tremendous
amount of people, and I'm like, hang on, this is
like the sword I'm falling on. Like I love doing
this thing. I just want to sit in my room
and play guitar. And I do like performing, like that
part's really fun. But I'm having to interact with a
(12:46):
lot of people on a daily basis, and I'm also
facing such criticism and judgment from outside people that I've
never met my fucking life, and it's it becomes important suddenly,
and it all kind of like snowball from that to
the point I couldn't escape it. Like I was playing
music to get away from it. But that was the
(13:07):
very thing putting me in front of it, so I
didn't have an escape anymore. The only thing that I
knew how to do growing up in a blue collar,
working class family was just what my dad did when
times were tough, You just work harder. So that's what
I did. I buried myself in my work. I was
in the studio, I was writing a ton I was
working on the computer, whatever, playing stuff, anything that I
(13:29):
could do that was not me dealing with my shit.
I did until you know, you sweep something, you sweep
it all under the rug enough to where the rug
is sitting on top of a mountain. And that's where
I was, and it all came crashing down in an
epic way. You know, looking back, it was the best
thing that would have happened to me. By the time,
(13:50):
it was the hardest time in my life, no question.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Okay, So you are released from you know, the treatment
after you go in there and get checked and you
said about three weeks, yeahs okay, what was the post
release like treatment plan that they gave us? Like, what
were you doing from a therapy standpoint, a medical thandpoint
where you give the medications or what was that discussion about,
and yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Be curious, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So when they released me, I ended up working with
a really great therapist in town, doing I think two
a week with him. After three weeks of being gone,
like and then coming back in like I didn't see
a stop light, I didn't see a sign for a
gas station. And when you're out like in the wilderness,
when you don't see that stuff for three weeks, you
(14:40):
when you see it for the first time, you're like, damn,
this is what I see on a daily basis. This
is way over stimulating. And and I I did basically
a lot of therapy, a lot of other modalities. I
ended up checking myself into another place called Rogers Behavioral
Health for OCD.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
So I had tenantus.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
My ears were still ringing, having a lot of issues,
and I was hoping that maybe if I could treat
my obsessive compulsive disorder that it would help me learn
how to deal with it. And Rogers' Behavioral Health for
those that have debilitating the CD, is really really amazing
to do great stuff. They do a lot of different
types of therapy, exposure, responsible prevention therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy,
(15:20):
all really really good things for that and people that
suffer tenatus or tonight is. And in that time before
I went there, I was also checked into a hospital
because my attendants came back severely and they put me
on an SSRI, which got me kind of in a
(15:44):
place where I did not want to kill myself. In
full disclosure, I'm still on that SSRI today because it
does also it also.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Sort of it helped with my ears ringing a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And for people that don't know at home, SSRI.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, it's just an anti depressidant, serotonin selective serotonin reuptake
and and not that that matters. I don't even know why,
but I did some research. I'm the kind of guy
that thinks that could think my way out of anything.
It's one of my greatest strengths and also one of
my greatest faults. And I did some research on Reddit
and I found that people were experimenting with with mushrooms
(16:21):
for anxiety depression. And then I heard for tenatus and
I thought, man, this is wild. And I had talked
to some people prior to me going into rehab. I
talked to a friend of mine who did a hero's
dose I mean he said it changed his life.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Is there a I guess there's no like medical standard
for heroes do what is that?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, a hero's dose is between three point five grams
and five grams. I would imagine they get the three
point five grams, is it? Because like for those of
us who bought weed back in the day, that was
an eighth you know, so three point five grams to five,
But you would start at three point five and then
(17:04):
if you are an hour to two hours in you
felt like you needed more, they would give you. I
think call it like a kicker or something like that.
But it was another gram and a half. And I
mean you are like, you are gone, baby. But but
if you're ready for it, it's it's really really great.
He was a really bad alcoholic, just a very unhealthy
(17:27):
person dealing with really intense trauma and depression who was
going to kill himself and as a hill Mary passed.
He just did a big heroes dose and it changed
his life. He's a completely changed man to this day.
Every time I sam, I'm like, I love you dude,
because he took the time out of his day. I
didn't meet him until a year later to tell me
(17:48):
about it. But at the time, I was just like,
the idea of I was so messed up. But the
idea of off, I take a mushrooms which I'd taken before,
Like that sounds insane to me. I'm like, I was
so afraid of even eating the wrong food. I was
a mess. So after doing all of this therapy and
I knew there was still a lot of work to
(18:11):
be done and the SSRIs were okay, but they weren't.
It wasn't really like crushing it. About a year later,
I reached out to a friend of mine who does
guided psilocybin trips, and I was very interested in the idea,
but again just worried. I mean, I felt so delicate
(18:32):
and I felt fragile. I felt like any wrong decision
could just put me back to where I was, and
it was terrifying. So, you know, I did. I read
the Michael pollin book. I watched a bunch of interviews
Michael polland I found Paul Stammettz that guy's kind of
awesome and nutty and I like that.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
And again going on Reddit, like reading.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
A bunch of I don't know, kind of anecdotal stories,
and I talked to my friend who helps people help.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I won't name any names because it's still ille later.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And he's a lovely, lovely, lovely guy. And his wife
was a nurse, was a doctor, and she was convincing,
and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to
do it.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I'm going to do it. And I mentally prepared myself
for doing it. And I knew I.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Had done so much work, so much therapy, so much
self reflection. I was on these SSRIs. I felt strong
going into it, like I'm not afraid, and I felt
ready for whatever is going to happen. I'm ready for
I'm very much like talking about playing in front of
eighty thousand people. I'll do it as long as I
(19:39):
feel prepared, and I have to be prepared for this moment.
And again, this is someone that has experimented with a
lot of different drugs recreationally. And I had so much
fun on mushrooms. I've had a weird experience of mushrooms
that was not very fun, so I was familiar with it,
but in this state, I was just kind of it's
a heavy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You know, were you with anyone in the room or
were you on the guy? Yeah, who was kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Well, my friend who was doing who still is doing
GUYIDS Guided trips, he was there and you are with him.
And so for those of you that don't know about this,
there is a playlist on Spotify that is about six
hours long that is music to guide you through this journey.
(20:26):
And it's kind of like, you know, a progressive musical journey,
even if you're sober.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
It is beautiful to listen to. When you take these drugs.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's supposed to make you feel like it's taking you
where you need to go and what There are two
very important things when taking psychedelics is set and setting.
Set being your mindset you're feeling are going into it.
Setting being where you are and who you're with. And
those are two of the biggest things. And I know
from experience that those things are very important because it
(20:56):
can go south if they're not right. Noticed too boy,
and it just feels like forever you know, and you
just got to wait it out. There's there's no rushing
through it. So knowing those things and trusting him and
knowing that he had already done it with well of
one hundred people at this point, I was I just
wanted to resign to the idea just let go, so
(21:18):
come to it. And I drank three and a half grams,
which is a lot of mushrooms, and listen to this playlist,
and I knew I had a lot to work on.
And then about an hour and a half been I
was just my body melted. I was melting into this
bed that I was. It was my bed, and I felt,
(21:40):
I guess they would call it ego disillusionment, but I felt,
you feel this one with the universe. It sounds kind
of cheesy, but once you strip this ego away that
we all have, you realize that we're actually quite connected.
You know, we're all part of this fabric of space
and time or energy or God, whatever you.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Want to call it.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Something to vine And I was able to see my
life experience almost visually at times from an outside perspective.
I saw like this little kid who was sweet and
kind and sensitive and also picked on as a kid
because I was just kind of like it was way
too innocent for this world, you know. And I just
(22:20):
kind of saw the people in my life that have
maybe maybe wronged me when I was young, feeling love
and compassion for them and thinking, wow, this is so overwhelming.
But one of the things that I ask you to
do and going into this is you have to set
an intention. And I have an issue with feeling happy,
(22:41):
not in the sense of like I need pills that
made me happy. I've always felt guilty if I was successful,
or I always felt guilty if I was happy with something,
or I felt if I was happy, something bad was
going to happen. So I still struggle with it. I'm
better at it. I set that intention, and I kind
of remember this. But the guy that I the trip
was said, I laid on that bed and I smiled
(23:02):
for five hours straight, and about halfway through he asked
me how I was doing if I wanted some more,
and I said I wanted more because I wanted to
do it. I wanted to really just give all of
myself to this thing. I took more, went to the bathroom.
That was crazy, so I was tripping my ass off.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
So long. My god, it does, dude.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You're like totally start checking the calendar, like how long
have I been in there? And so you know, you
go back in, you put the headphones back on, and
you're right back where you were, and I just like
felt so much peace and so much love, and I
felt so unrestrained from being happy. And it like the
visual side of things. It aren't a lot of visuals
(23:46):
because what I didn't mention is you're wearing an iemask
so you can really focus internally, the headphones on and
an imask, and it was the closest I'm not a
religious person.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I'm agnostic. I'll say that I'm not an atheist. I
don't know enough to be an atheist, also know enough
to be that religious, but I will say I'm agnostic.
And after doing that, it makes you realize that there
is something far greater beyond our understanding.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
Of this world.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You know, and you feel quite connected. After coming out
of it, I felt a piece that I hadn't felt
maybe in my life. It was probably the most peaceful
and calm I had ever felt in my entire life.
And I would say that lasted about three or four
months after that. The problem is, you know, life happens,
(24:41):
and you get back into your ego and you get back.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Into the swing of things.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
However, no matter where I'm at in my life, I
can always resort back to that moment and go, Okay,
what did I learn? And I'm still gaining knowledge from that,
and that was four years ago, and again I had
done it a bunch of times before it, and it
can be very fun, But that was the one of
the single most important decisions I've ever made for myself
(25:07):
in my life.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Still to this day.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
So, being that you had taken them recreationally before, what
was the difference between those and then, like, was there
a different track for you because you've had experience with
it before.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, yeah, so I think the main difference is the
intention behind it. Right, So before I was like, let's
take some mushrooms and go to a concert, which is
very very fun, don't get me wrong, it's awesome, But
it's about setting an intention, you know, like why are
you doing it? So this is a this was a medicine,
right Initially? Yeah, most things that we take started out
(25:40):
as some sort of medicine that we were used by
some sort of natives somewhere around the world. And then
you realize if you do a lot of it, it
makes you feel crazy. Of course, you know, it's college schedule.
Like if I take a lot more, then it's even crazier, right,
And then you take too many and you're like okay,
that was. But when you go into it with the
(26:00):
intention of self discovery and helping yourself and learning yourself,
especially when you are listening to this playlist, and especially
when you have an imask on, because so much of
it can be visual, and you're distracted by the visual
side of things, and it's really fun, it's cool, it's wacky.
But when you don't have those things distracting you, you
(26:22):
become so focused internally that you put like a microscope
on your life. And there is a side to it
that you do. I have read because of Michael Polla
and How to Change Your Mind book, but it does
actually rewire your brain. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. Our
brains are ever changing. It slows down as we get older.
You know, when you're a teenager or a young kid.
I have eighteen month old friends at home. I mean,
(26:44):
the neuroplasticity thing is going hate like haywire. Whereas when
you're older it does slow down. However, it doesn't stop
until you die. Well, when you do psilocybin, it almost
brings you back to being a child again in the
amount of change that your brain can make. And that
is the moment when you go in with that intention
(27:05):
of wanting to fix yourself or help yourself learn about yourself.
Your brain is pliable in that moment. When you do therapy,
and I have done tons of therapy, it takes a
long long time to really notice a result. I recommend
it to anyone. It's very good for you. It's good
to talk about it. But we're talking about things at
a subconscious level. Consciously, we could go consciously, our parents
(27:30):
would go, just don't be anxious. Well, yeah, consciously, that
makes sense. We're talking about things at a subconscious level. Then,
you know, the lizard brain whatever you want to call it, mushrooms,
gets right to that part of your brain and goes,
all right, let's get to work. Fix, let's fix some stuff,
let's learn some stuff. And it's like doing ten years
of therapy in.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
About six hours. You look and word.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
If you look out word again, it's fun. Colors, colors, man,
it's beautiful, you're in space, it's awesome. But if you
look inWORD, there's a lot of work that you can
get done, and it's very intense, and that type of
work shouldn't just be a walk in the park. But
the results are profound.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
I like how you put that, because I don't think
I've ever heard anybody express it that like clearly. Like
we were saying earlier, people be like, well, you took
mushrooms before, you took them again and now all of
a sudden, But it sounds like you went in with intention.
Plus you were coming out of the therapy, so you
had a new set of tools and things take in there.
(28:30):
Most people you hear about people micro doos and that's
kind of the.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
New microdos, and I do microdose, you know frequently. Microdosing
is different. It's kind of I'm guessing what would be
like a macro doose, but slowly over time, doing a
macrodos is just like you know, a microdose would be.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Like you have a house, right and.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
You're like, you know, I'm gonna it's kind of painting
this wall a little bit dirty. You know, maybe after
a couple of years of that, your house certainly looked different,
new fresh. What I'm doing a big heroes doing five
grams is are going in there with such hand, right,
I'm not gonna ship.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Yeah, it's a lot of work, makeover.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Makeover, and we're going to get in there and we
are going and We're going to do it, you know,
and it's gonna be work, and but by the end
of it, I'm going to have a beautiful home that's
just like, you know, it's no different than the home
that I've had my whole life.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
It's just tidy.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It's like, you know, it's just going through your house
and cleaning everything up. Man, It's just it becomes so
much more bearable. It should be treated as a medicine.
That's really what it was intended for, you know, it
should be treated as a medicine. I would venture to
say most drugs that we take were initially used medicinally.
We just decided to take more and see what happens.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Right, And you look at like you said, our efficacy,
like if antidepressants are boosting euro up like two percent
based upon PLACEA, I was like, it's very simar actually
what I do in like criminal justice system, It's like,
what is the c that you're defending that makes people
fail like seven out of ten time really getting rearrested.
You're saying this is success, Like it's very similar.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it is.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Quite frustrating, you know, especially from my own perspective. Granted,
I'm one guy, you know, so it seems anecdotal, but
the more you start peeling it back, you realize that
there are a lot of similar stories to me. Yeah,
you know, I had my dad sit in this very
room on that couch over there about a year and
a half ago, and he did it like we need
because it gives you this is the work that we
(30:30):
need to be doing. So my dad was a little
bit skeptical, because I think anyone should be a little
skeptical because it's not necessarily a walk in the park,
but it shouldn't be like. It can be really fun,
but it can also be really scary because you're confronting
a lot of things about your subconscious that you ignore
on a daily basis. And my dad has a lot
(30:50):
of childhood trauma. His childhood was very, very tricky. But
he's a lovely man, works really hard, he's provided for
the kids, but he carries a lot of things that
really I think he struggles with to this day. And
I just after doing this trip, and my dad was
a hippie, you know, kind of a culture hippie, spoke weed,
(31:12):
He's on all the drugs, but he was a little
bit like nervous. The more I talked about it. After
my first experience, I see like his eyes get really curious.
And he did it, and I felt he was a
lot lighter on his feet the next day, and in
weeks went by and he's like, I'm still kind of
figuring it out, like you know, you can't. It's almost
(31:32):
like learning a truth. It's not a bad truth, it's
not a good truth. It's just a truth that you
didn't know existed your whole life, and you have got
to process that. And I think he's still processing it
to this day. And it was a beautiful thing and
I saw it change his life. And since then, I've
had a ton of friends do it. My wife has
done it, and I've seen some just amazing effects. I'm
(32:02):
just I'm very thankful for for mushrooms. I hadn't even
calling it a drug, you know, again, being a child,
a child of the DARE program, it's just like there
was just like drugs and then there's just aren't. Then
there aren't drugs. That's just so true. That's just the drugs,
you know, so.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Off the top of a building and the street, you always.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Killed yourself, you always, you know, And I'd see one
kid jump off a building once. I thought I was
gonna die from you, like, jumping off a building or
quicksand yeah, like a lot of people die from quick
sand and.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
People up building was running from the cops, Like that's
the only time.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I know, man, It's it was definitely a weird thing.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
There's this stigma against it, you know, which is why
I'm quite open. Was why I'm doing this podcast with y'all,
and I'm very open about it. I'm open about my
mental health. I want to stigmatize one mental health, especially
for men, something that we have a harder time talking
about because of our society, you know, in the way
that we might have been brought up culturally. But I
also want to do stigmatize psilocybin in particular. You know,
(33:12):
Like I'm glad that you are in You're in reform
because we need to do those things that, like, our
criminal justice system is pretty fucked up and it puts
people in the cross hairs, a lot of good people
in the crossairs for wrong reasons. But we're looking at
something that could profoundly change people's lives. It has profoundly
changed my life, my wife's life, my dad's wife, all
(33:32):
of my friends around me that have done it, like
I have seen it with my own fucking eyes, you know.
And this is a guy that has taken SSRIs and
knows that, Like, yeah, I can be helpful, but I
wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Hell, the first SSRI took,
I can't remember the name of it, but that made
me want to kill myself more like I was coming unglued,
(33:53):
like I was scared for my life.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, there's multiple lexturally it can increase suicide initially, and yeah,
to give that any it was crazy. I felt like
I was going fucking nuts, man. And I know what
it has helped people, but god damn it, Like you
are prescribing that. I was prescribed that by a doctor.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And I like our FDA can approve like any more
studies on psilocybin like studies, I'm just like, what kind
of backwards world are we living in here?
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So, you know, I'm grateful that you guys asked me
to be a part of this because I want to
be one of the people.
Speaker 5 (34:40):
It's gonna take an army.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
It's gonna take y'all and other people talking about it
to kind of change the just the stigma and the
conversation around it, you know, I mean, and I know
I've friends that passed away from fentanyl a few years
ago because here is back at work, he got on
some painkillers, pain they quick prescribe pain killers, end up
doing heroin, heroin, this fentel and at the end, and
(35:03):
that story is very common, very very common to I
know people that won't do smoke pot. Like my friend's
dad just was diagnosed to stage for pacreatic cancer. You
won't smoke pot because of the stigma around pot. He's like, Dad,
it could help you your appetite and it can help
pick pain away and give you some comments like I'm
not going to do it because it's drugs.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Like this whole thing is so fucking backwards and fucked
up that we need to be talking about it. We
need to make part of the conversation because people's lives
and livelihoods are at stake. People are in jail, people
are dying all of these things because we have this
misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
And then also I think so much stuff like the
older people, I think just it's illegal. That's a lot
of the old people's argue. That's like, of course we
got the stigma of drugs. You go, it would kill you.
But a lot of them, like my mom was like,
well if it wasn't illegal, and I'm like, I'm in California,
it's legal here.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Try I know, I know, and it is really funny.
I don't want to do it because it's legal. But
a lot of those things, people are like, why don't
trust the government because they give money to these people and.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
Make up your mind?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Man, yeah, pick aln And it's like, you know, just
be educated about it. And that's the thing about drugs
in general. I mean we try to generalize everything, and
then what happens. People end up in jail. People miss
opportunities to treat themselves with certain drugs like cannabis or whatever,
and people miss opportunities to take care of themselves like
I did with psilocybin.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
And I mean, who knows.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
If I kept going down the path that I was going,
I could have killed myself. I was standing at the
edge of the cliff, not physically but psychologically, and I
was staring under the abyss and I was like, I
think I might try it. I didn't, fortunately, and I
do attribute a lot of that to my experience that
six hours of my psilocybin treatment. It's still to this day,
(37:11):
I go back there when I have to, and it's
just one of the most profound lessons ever. And until
we get people talking about this, it'll, unfortunately, I think,
just stay that way.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
No, it's it is the normalizing, it's the abvoscy. It's
showing that hey, I'm in X situation in this. I
know in Kentucky for example, like Dakota Meyer is a
Medal of Honor recipient and he's former military's like, I've
lost more people here to addiction than I ever did
in Fallouja or my tours. And so that's profound and
that's impactful. If he doesn't talk, maybe certain lawmakers don't
listen very least.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
It is not a past.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
It's to one of the guys that went to DC.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
He's been a here and done a lot of advocacy
on Yeah, he's been outside the White House front.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, I'm the only living Medal of Honor recipients ever.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So yeah, yeah, I remember I heard that an interview
about that guy, and we need more people like him.
I mean it's it's the best place to start, you know,
start with our troops, like they have sacrificed so much
and they are given so little when they get back
and they are left to just pick up the pieces
on their own. I mean, do anything that it takes
to make this man feel better or woman feel better,
(38:14):
because they deserve it more than anyone, you know. And
why will we take that opportunity from these people?
Speaker 4 (38:21):
You know?
Speaker 5 (38:22):
John? Awesome? Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Is there any foundations, organizations, or anything that you'd like
to advocate for reach out? Like, Hey, I'm really interested
in hearing about John, and maybe this is right for
me if they're a listener, Like where would you recommend
people kind of start or you know, anything that.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
You absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
I will say first and foremost, if you deal with anxiety,
just know that it's it's a normal thing. I'm saying
the things that I wish I I someone told me
when I was going through it that it's a normal
thing that's meant to keep you alive. It's your brain
thinking that it's doing something good for you. So don't
give yourself two hard a time about it. If you
need help, get help, if you need to take SSRIs
(38:59):
or any type of end to press and present. Take them.
And if you want to experiment with any type of
psilocybin or psychedelic journey, there are a million videos. I mean,
just go go to YouTube type of Michael polland mushrooms
and just watch every video.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
That dude is a fucking rock star.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
In my opinion, he's amazing, and he will make you
feel so calm about it, and just like, be patient,
give yourself time, you know.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
I you know, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Look into MAPS, which is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
that's something that has done a lot of work and
that's really phenomenal. And you know, again from a from
a mental health perspective, just be patient and treat yourself
with love, treat yourself like you would treat any person
that you love, and you know, everything will be fine.
And if you want to take some mushrooms, shit and change.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I'm telling you, But John, I think particularly like coming
from where I covering you a big group of friends,
I did too like talking about these things in these
types of very much show you know, industries and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I think it's so helpful and so thank you. What
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I know that there's a lot of people that are
probably huge country music fans, huge fans of you, that
have never heard that before.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And it all starts with it's got to enter the consciousness.
It's got to enter the narrative. We've got to talk
about it. More you talk about something, the less it
stigmatizes it. More you talk about psilocybin therapy, the less
it stigmatizes it. More you talk about mental health. Every
time I bring it up, especially around a bunch of dudes,
I have never once, never once felt judgment. It's always
(40:33):
been intrigue and I always they'll always go, hey, I
struggle with that too. I don't talk about it, and
then they start unload andy, start asking me questions or
my brother has got really bad anxiety, can you help
me there? So people, it's like this unwritten rule that
we're not supposed to talk about it, but really everyone
wants to talk about So the more we discuss it,
(40:54):
the more it becomes part of the guys, I think
the better.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Totally agree.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Yeah, I think that's a great note to close on.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Ye John thinks so with some brothers Osborne, they're bringing
awesome Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Thank you again. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
That was awesome. John Osborne Man was a great interview.
Good interview man. I like, I liked what he was
talking about. I like how he was able to find
his way out the situation he was in and also
(41:29):
pull others out. Yeah, reach out to friends who were
having suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I mean, like, hey, if this works for me, maybe
think about this for you.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
And even to his dad, you know, at that age.
And yeah, so I.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Hear so many more stories about that, Like I don't
think like five years ago, I was sitting around with
friends being like and they were like, oh yeah, I
was getting my mom a gummy to help with.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Her you know, sleep or with you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
But you're hearing those conversations like a little bit here
and there like oh yeah, my my mom or my
like I gave to my sister, Like because people are
starting to hear like these stories more and more from
people like hey, this had a profound impact on my life.
And you know, I'm not a doctor or anything, but
I know, you know, when we're looking at kind of
what works and what doesn't. If you know, SSRIs and
(42:18):
other antidosins and traditional methods of dealing with depression and
PTSD and all these things aren't effective for you because
the data shows like it's effective.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
For some and not for others.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You're screwed, like you're So we need to give other
options like this for people, particularly when we've seen, you know,
a psilocybin research has come in the largest phase two
trial suggests that a twenty five milligram dose of psilocybin
with psychotherapy before and after the dosing was associated with
a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect measured by a change
(42:53):
and depress the symptoms scores. And so that's from a
JAMA study. And there's there's other ones on psychedelics showing
strong therapeutic effects with other ones either at being ayahuasca
or MDMA or in particular psilocybin as we've seen, and
that's really profound. And all we're saying is that these
should be open to discuss with medical professionals and are
(43:14):
these the right things for you? Because we've seen the
problems that mental health and drug addiction can bring and
those go hand in hand so often, and it's kind
of the chicken and the egg thing where the depression
comes and then does the substance. You know, it all
kind of builds off each other when it came first,
and they're all kind of bad and they.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Fuel each other.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
And I also think, you know, a lot of times
I don't hear people talk about psychedelics, yeah, in the
way that he did, like, and I think that's most
people's understanding is you use them for fun, and you
use it to but it can be a tool that
can actually be beneficial.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And I think like his shift in like his understanding
of it, because it was, like you said, it was
like these aren't for things for like medicinal you know,
these are parties or whatever. And his shift and understanding
of like their purposes and maybe what they're able to do.
It almost feels like how our culture and society is.
Like I think we are starting to see that shift
of like frankly, in public policy, it's for me a
(44:18):
lot easier to talk to people now about psilocybin and
these therapeutics, and it is about cannabis in a lot
of ways because they think of like the recreational aspect
of cannabis and there's you know, a scent factor. It's
very open, but there is actually a much more. I
think openness to some of this stuff at like a
(44:38):
more local level, and even with people that you might
not think, like Kentucky is like really trying to do
some stuff like this, and it's being led by like
you know, you know, Republican lawmakers and Democrats are coming.
So it's like strange bedfellows are all come this realization
about that. The veteran community has been really big on it.
So it's actually like in a way, because the medicinal
(44:59):
values are so clear cut and you're able to show
these things with this, it's like I have PTSD and
now I do not. I think that's just easier for
people to get their head around. So it's been it's
been an easier process right now.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yeah, And I can also see that. I guess maybe
because people don't believe weed smokers. You know, like you're
saying it helps with pain. No, you're not. You just
like to get that's always gonna be the underlying thing.
I think with weed smokers. You're saying, you're saying it
(45:32):
does this. You're saying, so, yeah, that's that's funny. You
say that that people are more accepting to the psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
There really are.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, seeing this and seeing more people and kind of
those strange bedfellows of folks being like, hey, this actually
is beneficial, it's actually been.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
I'd rather go in.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I think it's gonna be a It's a less confrontational
discussion talking about psilocybin than it is with cannabis.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Of this platt So that's great.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Easing to think about.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
But it's also to think about the way we talk
about cannabis and policy and discussions like there does need
to be a little bit more I think professionalism and
professionalization about like discussions, yeah, because it is kind of
led by hippies sometimes yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
And also the you know, like you just kind of said,
people went in trying to get the prescriptions, so people
don't trust weed smokers all the way, you know, and
the face that they have of weed smokers is counterculture,
the link when youth, things like that, and if you
can have the face of psilocybin being our veterans, are
(46:33):
people who are PTSD, are people who have anxiety and
they're able to come out of that. I think everybody's
affected by those things, you know. I think people can
kind of like zero in on what they don't like
about weed without looking at what it can benefit. And
it's harder to do that with psilocybin because I think
(46:53):
more people aren't as familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I think you're totally right, and that's what kind of
brings it out.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
So we'll see, you know.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
But again, you know, like things with like the opioid epidemic,
you've seen how like things like iba gain it's a
shrub that you know, we talked to most ethorts about
that that you know significantly reduces you know, opiate you know,
withdrawals and symptoms and wanting to go back to it
and all these things.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
And there's also things that have been there. These are things.
Psilocybin has been here. The mushrooms have been there, I
be again has been there.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You can pluck a mushroom and pop it like and
that's you don't have to still it.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
Yet don't because I don't know, I mean, unless you've
got a field guide to mushrooms and then still probably don't.
But yeah, a lot of natural things, like like you said,
we've been so dependent on the pharmaceuticals and farm and
that I think it's probably even more stuff that we've
forgotten about.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Sure, probably agree now, and thanks again John Osborne. Absolutely, Yeah,
this has been an amazing interview. And next week I
was on the road solo for this next interview.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Riley Coote, who if anyone watch hockey, he is the
He was like the enforcer, bruiser guy. He was the
one getting into fights for the flyers in the It
was mid early two thousand when I was in like college.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah, Philly guy. Yeah, Rossey bullies.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, so like being he was the guy that was
like the bully, and so he talks about that, and
you know, it's awesome when you're like twenty one and
you're watching him fist by and then you get older
and you start learning bout stuff. It's like, oh, I'd
be really interested to hear about like what that looks like.
And he has such an amazing perspective because he had
to be this tough, mating guy that just took so
much trauma and then you don't think about day and
(48:35):
day out, waking up like I gotta go fight the
end today, like that's it's.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Gotta be pain.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
And he just talks about the physical mental toll. It's
such an amazing interview to kind of hear that and
where he's at right now, and how a lot of
the therapies that we've already talked about today with like John,
you know, some of his experience and stories to share.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
So really great interview.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
You can't wait for y'all to hear it.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Until next time.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
I'm Greg Glad in English.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
And that was the War on drugs.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah, The War on Drugs is a production of Lava
for Good and Stand Together Music and association with Signal
Company Number one. Stand Together Music unites musicians and their
teams with proven change makers to co create solutions to
some of the most pressing issues in our country, including
criminal justice, for foreign addiction recovery, mental health, education, free speech,
(49:22):
and ending the War on drugs. Learn more at Standogether
Music dot org. Be sure to follow Lava for Good
on Instagram, Facebook and threads at Lava for Good. You
can follow Clayton English on Instagram, n X at Clayton English,
and you can follow Greg Laude on Instagram and on
X at Greg Latt. Executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
(49:45):
Kevin Wardis, and Collette Wintraub. Senior producers Kelsey Stenecker, Zak
Huffman and Nick Stump. Post production by ten ten, Audio
talent booking by Dan Resnick. Rez Entertainment Head of Marketing
and Operations Jeff Clive, Social media director Ismati Gaudarrama, Social
media manager Sarah Gibbons, and art director Andrew Nelson,
We're looking at something that could profoundly change people's lives.
It has profoundly changed my life, my wife's life, my
dad's wife, all of my friends Aronny that have done
it well, I have seen it well.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Eyes Lava for Good and Stand Together in Music Present
The War on Drugs Podcast, Season two. This season, we're
diving deeper into the real stories behind the War on Drugs,
It's impact, it's failures, and the people offering a better
path forwards today on the show. Founder guitarists and background
vocalist for The Amazing Brothers Osborne, co author of Billboard
(00:33):
Hot Country Hits, Stay a Little Longer, It Ate My Fault,
Shoot Me.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Straight, and All Night.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Winner of six awards from the Academy of Country Music,
five awards from the Country Music Association and twelve nominations,
and one award from the Grammy Awards for Best Country
Duo Group Performance in twenty twenty two, and a passionate
advocate for psychedelic assisted mental health therapy. Mister John Osborne,
(00:59):
all right, well, I'm welcome back Season two The War
on Drugs Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Greg Glove really excited about our interview.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Man. We do went down to Nashville, which has been
called the white Atlanta, and I can't.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
Say that it's not I see that.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah, it is a very music focus. They've got their
own little party seede. I enjoyed myself. It's good. I've
never seen that many white cowboy boots in my life
and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah, I love country music.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And to meet John Osborne, like you're from Yeah, he's
from Deal Hunt Deal, Maryland, but Liz in Nashville.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Now. It was in his studio, like on the east
side of town, and.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Nice studio, man, really nice studio and like just his
records and stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
It was just like a cool experience to be in there.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And yeah, but we really got into some really deep stuff.
And I can't thank him enough for being so open
about his own struggles with, you know, mental health, his
speriences with using psychedelics, talking to friends about him. I
think it was just a great conversation about what we're
talking about here where it's not the right path for everyone,
(02:10):
but we need to allow for these things to be
discussed openly, honestly and allow for people to potentially gain
the benefits of this if it makes sense for them.
And I think just the way John went about it
and talked to us about it, It was just a really
cool conversation.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, And I think he was very real just about
what worked for him.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I think if you're kind of a skeptic about a
lot of this stuff, I think this is like a
really good conversation because it came from someone that was
a skeptic as well, and just kind of those discussions
and what his experiences were in very detailed.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
And I don't want.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
To waste any more time on this.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Good to it, Yeah, good to it now further ado
here John Osborne.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Hey, that me and Greg, our guests and sponsors may
sound smart, we may even make some good points, but
at the end of the day, we're not medical professional.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Please don't get your medical advice from a podcast. Anything
we say on here does not constitute official medical advice. Relax,
consult your doctor before you start any new treatment plans.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
We are here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Nashville.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
We were with.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
John Osborne right now, one half of the Brothers Osbourne.
We are in his recording studio right outside of downtown
on the east side of Nashville.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Come cabin. Yeah, Grammy Winners CMA.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, all the all the stuff, yes, as yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And the best part about him he grew up about
thirty minutes away from me. We were talking before, so
we're both Maryland boys. Yeah that was hunt.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, I see the black eyed Susan.
Speaker 5 (03:50):
Uh that's right.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, everyone asks some of their daisies. Yeah, yeah, I know,
never forget.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, never forget never never spent some times in their preakness.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, couple reading us all the stuff. I mean, what
peop don't understand about Maryland. It's actually a big equine state,
you know. So I like being in country music. Everyone goes,
how did you get into that being from Maryland. I'm like,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I wasn't supposed to get into it. I mean, it's
just it's mostly farms. I mean, how you go an
hour out of any town and it's just farms, you know.
Speaker 5 (04:19):
But people like to draw lines. I have to raise
something the horse.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
But yeah, thank you for joining us podcast man, and
I'm really excited about this.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
The same fan for a while.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Before we kind of get into a lot of the
stuff we're going to talk about, let's talk about you,
so born you know in Deal. It's a small town's
on the water, over the water water.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, we were, we were reliving our Maryland accents earlier.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So no, I love.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Learning about it because I didn't know that. Like, yeah,
I love for.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
A couple of days of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
You'll be like you please stuff. But it's a small
town called Deal, Maryland. It's on the it's on the
chests beat Bed about forty five to fifty minutes east
of d C. Where you live now, fifty minutes south
of Baltimore. And yeah, man, it's just kind of a
very humble town public school, played in bands, you know,
(05:11):
just trying to pursue the American dream, you know, just
kind of a small kid from nowhere.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And so you've been playing music your kind of whole
life for your family? Were they musical or how that all?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Yeah, man.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So my both of my parents would sing and write songs.
The reason why I ended up in Nashville is because
they would come down to Nashville a lot as songwriters
when we were kids. And it's a hard industry to
get into. I mean, you know, you know, it is
like being in comedy. It's like you have to commit
so much of yourself to do it that they, you know,
had kids that were at home and jobs and mortgage
(05:45):
and all those things and just didn't quite work out
for them. However, it did pave the way for my
brother and I to feel like, okay, this seems possible
because they they kind of started the trend for us.
But it's something that we've always done, you know, always
played music. Our parents would sit around the kitchen table
and write and sing songs, and it was a very
(06:05):
normal thing for us. We didn't realize it was abnormal
until we left the nest.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Right right. Were your parents weary about you going into
it knowing how hard it was, or were they the
ones like, oh, okay, we're going to tell you everything
we know and we want to see y'all.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
That the second one, for sure, I'm grateful for that. Again,
it's like you only know what you know. But our
parents they were so so supportive. You know, they weren't
necessarily helicopter parents by any stretch, but they were very,
very supportive. And also they were kind of able to
live vicariously through us. But we never felt pressured to
do it. We come from, you know, quite a conservative area,
(06:41):
but we were like this little like kind of progressive
island within our town. Our parents would not care if
we wanted to be mimes or we wanted to be
a lawyer or a guitar player. They just do it
and we'll support you one hundred percent. I'm very, very
grateful for that. You know, I know a lot of
people and our line of work that their parents weren't
(07:03):
very supportive.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
I could imagine that was tough.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
My parents were.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
My dad's a secret service age, Like he's a He
still terrifies me to this, No I do.
Speaker 5 (07:13):
He's a big dude.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
So like if I was like, yeah, I'm gonna head
out and do a music career, he'd been like you.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I mean, you're out of your mind, And he
would be right, because you are. In order to pursue
something like that, you got to be a little crazy
to you know. And I mean, I don't know, to
be honest with you, I don't know. Thirty years later,
I still don't know why I do it, Like I
just am compelled. But you know, for everyone that succeeds
(07:37):
one hundred fail and the successfully is so small, I
understand why a parent would be weary of that because
they would not want to watch their child fail at something,
especially at music. It's you know, it's quite a self
serving industry. I do it because I like it. I
don't do it because I want to share my love
and experience with the world. Now I do it because
I enjoy it, and i'm you know, I don't know
(07:58):
how to do anything else.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Yeah, and your most kids suck at.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
That helps.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, I guess that does kind of help have a
natural ability. But even if you do, there's still a
lot of luck involved. And I will admit, you know,
the harder you work, the lucky you do become. And
I work very, very hard, but I do know that
there is also luck.
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Involved, of which I'm very grateful for.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
But that's you know, you got to be prepared to
take those opportunities when they get it.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
That's what luck is, opportunity preparation exactly.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
And just from my standpoint big country music fan, when
you all were getting on the radio, I was kind
of slowly drifting away from ever listening to country music
radio a lot.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, you both, there's Osborne kind.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Of I was like, oh, thank fucking God, because I
was living in Austin. I was hearing all this great
red dirt country. I'm like, it's never on anything but
like one little local channel or I'm like iPad and
they're like finally, I'm like, oh this is actually And
then there was like christ able To and there's a
lot of these guys that really like I feel you.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
All were a hometown boys.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Man.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I was like, just you didn't even know.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So when I met my wife in Austin, one of
the bars that we were out at the first night
we had like dinner and went out. We were in
West West sixth Street, Star Bar, Shout Out, Starbar. Brothers
Osborne came on. We were kind of like drinking and
dancing as a song we both liked and yeah, I laid.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
One honor at that point, I ever said, so to
shake your hand.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
Yeah yeah, man alm a couple of beers.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yeah, he was a wingman from Afar.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
That's right, man, I'm here for you, dude. You named
your first child after me. Oh man, But.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
I was going to ask you about you mentioned you've
always had struggles with mental health. Yeah, just can you
give us a little background or yeah, yeah, you said
your whole life kind of.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
So yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So I'll start about five years ago, in twenty nineteen,
I was dealing with really, really bad anxiety. I dealt
with anxiety kind of my whole life. I didn't know
what it was for a long time. I just thought
everyone kind of dealt with it, which everyone does have
anxiety to a degree, but mine was starting to become debilitating.
On stage, I never fel it, In fact, it was
the only way I would stop feeling it. But before
(10:03):
being on stage, and after being on stage, it was
just like, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (10:07):
My mind was a mess.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
And then I ended up contracting something called tennitis or tenetist.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Which is the ringing of the ears.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
I started losing sleep, and then it all kind of
compounded it snowball effect. I wasn't sleeping, and I started
like it was nearly psychosis level. It was in my
mind and it was suicidal and all these things. And
I started staying a lot, going to a lot of therapy.
I had to do like a three week stint and
basically rehab, but not for drugs or alcohol, just for
(10:39):
mental health and tons of therapy.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
What was going on in your because you said you've
grown up with anxiety. You know, your whole life, you
didn't really know what it was. I feel very similar
where I grew up anxiety. It was just kind of
told like just calm down or like you're not yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
Just don't be nervous.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's don't be nervous, like mom, just don't be anxious exactly.
It's like telling me, like just dunk a basketball.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
I would do it if I hit me. You know.
It's just a different thing, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I don't really know like pathologically, like where it would
all stem from or anything like that.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
I do know though.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
As a kid, I was just like I constantly had
this feeling of impending doom. That's something I was always
waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
And I didn't really know why.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I just I felt like someone had a gun to
my head and I was like ship was about to write.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
A moment. And it was that way forty years, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
And I learned that like through music that was really helpful.
Like I learned how to play guitar, and I gave
my I gave my brain something to focus on, which
was I want to learn how to play guitar. I
want to get better at this thing. It was almost
like a puzzle, but it was also a way of
expressing myself emotionally because I wasn't very good at doing
(12:00):
it verbally. And I still am am that way to
a bit, to quite an extreme. I've learned how to
do it because of therapy, but as a kid, I
just didn't know how to express myself emotionally at all.
So fast forward this thing. I would go to my room,
I would play guitar for hours. I loved it, and
(12:22):
I just didn't want to be around people.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
And then that very.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Thing ended up putting me in front of a tremendous
amount of people, and I'm like, hang on, this is
like the sword I'm falling on. Like I love doing
this thing. I just want to sit in my room
and play guitar. And I do like performing, like that
part's really fun. But I'm having to interact with a
(12:46):
lot of people on a daily basis, and I'm also
facing such criticism and judgment from outside people that I've
never met my fucking life, and it's it becomes important suddenly,
and it all kind of like snowball from that to
the point I couldn't escape it. Like I was playing
music to get away from it. But that was the
(13:07):
very thing putting me in front of it, so I
didn't have an escape anymore. The only thing that I
knew how to do growing up in a blue collar,
working class family was just what my dad did when
times were tough, You just work harder. So that's what
I did. I buried myself in my work. I was
in the studio, I was writing a ton I was
working on the computer, whatever, playing stuff, anything that I
(13:29):
could do that was not me dealing with my shit.
I did until you know, you sweep something, you sweep
it all under the rug enough to where the rug
is sitting on top of a mountain. And that's where
I was, and it all came crashing down in an
epic way. You know, looking back, it was the best
thing that would have happened to me. By the time,
(13:50):
it was the hardest time in my life, no question.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Okay, So you are released from you know, the treatment
after you go in there and get checked and you
said about three weeks, yeahs okay, what was the post
release like treatment plan that they gave us? Like, what
were you doing from a therapy standpoint, a medical thandpoint
where you give the medications or what was that discussion about,
and yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Be curious, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
So when they released me, I ended up working with
a really great therapist in town, doing I think two
a week with him. After three weeks of being gone,
like and then coming back in like I didn't see
a stop light, I didn't see a sign for a
gas station. And when you're out like in the wilderness,
when you don't see that stuff for three weeks, you
(14:40):
when you see it for the first time, you're like, damn,
this is what I see on a daily basis. This
is way over stimulating. And and I I did basically
a lot of therapy, a lot of other modalities. I
ended up checking myself into another place called Rogers Behavioral
Health for OCD.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
So I had tenantus.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
My ears were still ringing, having a lot of issues,
and I was hoping that maybe if I could treat
my obsessive compulsive disorder that it would help me learn
how to deal with it. And Rogers' Behavioral Health for
those that have debilitating the CD, is really really amazing
to do great stuff. They do a lot of different
types of therapy, exposure, responsible prevention therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy,
(15:20):
all really really good things for that and people that
suffer tenatus or tonight is. And in that time before
I went there, I was also checked into a hospital
because my attendants came back severely and they put me
on an SSRI, which got me kind of in a
(15:44):
place where I did not want to kill myself. In
full disclosure, I'm still on that SSRI today because it
does also it also.
Speaker 5 (15:53):
Sort of it helped with my ears ringing a little bit.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And for people that don't know at home, SSRI.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, it's just an anti depressidant, serotonin selective serotonin reuptake
and and not that that matters. I don't even know why,
but I did some research. I'm the kind of guy
that thinks that could think my way out of anything.
It's one of my greatest strengths and also one of
my greatest faults. And I did some research on Reddit
and I found that people were experimenting with with mushrooms
(16:21):
for anxiety depression. And then I heard for tenatus and
I thought, man, this is wild. And I had talked
to some people prior to me going into rehab. I
talked to a friend of mine who did a hero's
dose I mean he said it changed his life.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Is there a I guess there's no like medical standard
for heroes do what is that?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, a hero's dose is between three point five grams
and five grams. I would imagine they get the three
point five grams, is it? Because like for those of
us who bought weed back in the day, that was
an eighth you know, so three point five grams to five,
But you would start at three point five and then
(17:04):
if you are an hour to two hours in you
felt like you needed more, they would give you. I
think call it like a kicker or something like that.
But it was another gram and a half. And I
mean you are like, you are gone, baby. But but
if you're ready for it, it's it's really really great.
He was a really bad alcoholic, just a very unhealthy
(17:27):
person dealing with really intense trauma and depression who was
going to kill himself and as a hill Mary passed.
He just did a big heroes dose and it changed
his life. He's a completely changed man to this day.
Every time I sam, I'm like, I love you dude,
because he took the time out of his day. I
didn't meet him until a year later to tell me
(17:48):
about it. But at the time, I was just like,
the idea of I was so messed up. But the
idea of off, I take a mushrooms which I'd taken before,
Like that sounds insane to me. I'm like, I was
so afraid of even eating the wrong food. I was
a mess. So after doing all of this therapy and
I knew there was still a lot of work to
(18:11):
be done and the SSRIs were okay, but they weren't.
It wasn't really like crushing it. About a year later,
I reached out to a friend of mine who does
guided psilocybin trips, and I was very interested in the idea,
but again just worried. I mean, I felt so delicate
(18:32):
and I felt fragile. I felt like any wrong decision
could just put me back to where I was, and
it was terrifying. So, you know, I did. I read
the Michael pollin book. I watched a bunch of interviews
Michael polland I found Paul Stammettz that guy's kind of
awesome and nutty and I like that.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
And again going on Reddit, like reading.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
A bunch of I don't know, kind of anecdotal stories,
and I talked to my friend who helps people help.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I won't name any names because it's still ille later.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
And he's a lovely, lovely, lovely guy. And his wife
was a nurse, was a doctor, and she was convincing,
and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to
do it.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
I'm going to do it. And I mentally prepared myself
for doing it. And I knew I.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Had done so much work, so much therapy, so much
self reflection. I was on these SSRIs. I felt strong
going into it, like I'm not afraid, and I felt
ready for whatever is going to happen. I'm ready for
I'm very much like talking about playing in front of
eighty thousand people. I'll do it as long as I
(19:39):
feel prepared, and I have to be prepared for this moment.
And again, this is someone that has experimented with a
lot of different drugs recreationally. And I had so much
fun on mushrooms. I've had a weird experience of mushrooms
that was not very fun, so I was familiar with it,
but in this state, I was just kind of it's
a heavy thing to do.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
You know, were you with anyone in the room or
were you on the guy? Yeah, who was kind of.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Well, my friend who was doing who still is doing
GUYIDS Guided trips, he was there and you are with him.
And so for those of you that don't know about this,
there is a playlist on Spotify that is about six
hours long that is music to guide you through this journey.
(20:26):
And it's kind of like, you know, a progressive musical journey,
even if you're sober.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
It is beautiful to listen to. When you take these drugs.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's supposed to make you feel like it's taking you
where you need to go and what There are two
very important things when taking psychedelics is set and setting.
Set being your mindset you're feeling are going into it.
Setting being where you are and who you're with. And
those are two of the biggest things. And I know
from experience that those things are very important because it
(20:56):
can go south if they're not right. Noticed too boy,
and it just feels like forever you know, and you
just got to wait it out. There's there's no rushing
through it. So knowing those things and trusting him and
knowing that he had already done it with well of
one hundred people at this point, I was I just
wanted to resign to the idea just let go, so
(21:18):
come to it. And I drank three and a half grams,
which is a lot of mushrooms, and listen to this playlist,
and I knew I had a lot to work on.
And then about an hour and a half been I
was just my body melted. I was melting into this
bed that I was. It was my bed, and I felt,
(21:40):
I guess they would call it ego disillusionment, but I felt,
you feel this one with the universe. It sounds kind
of cheesy, but once you strip this ego away that
we all have, you realize that we're actually quite connected.
You know, we're all part of this fabric of space
and time or energy or God, whatever you.
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Want to call it.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Something to vine And I was able to see my
life experience almost visually at times from an outside perspective.
I saw like this little kid who was sweet and
kind and sensitive and also picked on as a kid
because I was just kind of like it was way
too innocent for this world, you know. And I just
(22:20):
kind of saw the people in my life that have
maybe maybe wronged me when I was young, feeling love
and compassion for them and thinking, wow, this is so overwhelming.
But one of the things that I ask you to
do and going into this is you have to set
an intention. And I have an issue with feeling happy,
(22:41):
not in the sense of like I need pills that
made me happy. I've always felt guilty if I was successful,
or I always felt guilty if I was happy with something,
or I felt if I was happy, something bad was
going to happen. So I still struggle with it. I'm
better at it. I set that intention, and I kind
of remember this. But the guy that I the trip
was said, I laid on that bed and I smiled
(23:02):
for five hours straight, and about halfway through he asked
me how I was doing if I wanted some more,
and I said I wanted more because I wanted to
do it. I wanted to really just give all of
myself to this thing. I took more, went to the bathroom.
That was crazy, so I was tripping my ass off.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
So long. My god, it does, dude.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You're like totally start checking the calendar, like how long
have I been in there? And so you know, you
go back in, you put the headphones back on, and
you're right back where you were, and I just like
felt so much peace and so much love, and I
felt so unrestrained from being happy. And it like the
visual side of things. It aren't a lot of visuals
(23:46):
because what I didn't mention is you're wearing an iemask
so you can really focus internally, the headphones on and
an imask, and it was the closest I'm not a
religious person.
Speaker 5 (23:59):
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I'm agnostic. I'll say that I'm not an atheist. I
don't know enough to be an atheist, also know enough
to be that religious, but I will say I'm agnostic.
And after doing that, it makes you realize that there
is something far greater beyond our understanding.
Speaker 5 (24:14):
Of this world.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You know, and you feel quite connected. After coming out
of it, I felt a piece that I hadn't felt
maybe in my life. It was probably the most peaceful
and calm I had ever felt in my entire life.
And I would say that lasted about three or four
months after that. The problem is, you know, life happens,
(24:41):
and you get back into your ego and you get back.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Into the swing of things.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
However, no matter where I'm at in my life, I
can always resort back to that moment and go, Okay,
what did I learn? And I'm still gaining knowledge from that,
and that was four years ago, and again I had
done it a bunch of times before it, and it
can be very fun, But that was the one of
the single most important decisions I've ever made for myself
(25:07):
in my life.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Still to this day.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
So, being that you had taken them recreationally before, what
was the difference between those and then, like, was there
a different track for you because you've had experience with
it before.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, yeah, so I think the main difference is the
intention behind it. Right, So before I was like, let's
take some mushrooms and go to a concert, which is
very very fun, don't get me wrong, it's awesome, But
it's about setting an intention, you know, like why are
you doing it? So this is a this was a medicine,
right Initially? Yeah, most things that we take started out
(25:40):
as some sort of medicine that we were used by
some sort of natives somewhere around the world. And then
you realize if you do a lot of it, it
makes you feel crazy. Of course, you know, it's college schedule.
Like if I take a lot more, then it's even crazier, right,
And then you take too many and you're like okay,
that was. But when you go into it with the
(26:00):
intention of self discovery and helping yourself and learning yourself,
especially when you are listening to this playlist, and especially
when you have an imask on, because so much of
it can be visual, and you're distracted by the visual
side of things, and it's really fun, it's cool, it's wacky.
But when you don't have those things distracting you, you
(26:22):
become so focused internally that you put like a microscope
on your life. And there is a side to it
that you do. I have read because of Michael Polla
and How to Change Your Mind book, but it does
actually rewire your brain. There's a thing called neuroplasticity. Our
brains are ever changing. It slows down as we get older.
You know, when you're a teenager or a young kid.
I have eighteen month old friends at home. I mean,
(26:44):
the neuroplasticity thing is going hate like haywire. Whereas when
you're older it does slow down. However, it doesn't stop
until you die. Well, when you do psilocybin, it almost
brings you back to being a child again in the
amount of change that your brain can make. And that
is the moment when you go in with that intention
(27:05):
of wanting to fix yourself or help yourself learn about yourself.
Your brain is pliable in that moment. When you do therapy,
and I have done tons of therapy, it takes a
long long time to really notice a result. I recommend
it to anyone. It's very good for you. It's good
to talk about it. But we're talking about things at
a subconscious level. Consciously, we could go consciously, our parents
(27:30):
would go, just don't be anxious. Well, yeah, consciously, that
makes sense. We're talking about things at a subconscious level. Then,
you know, the lizard brain whatever you want to call it, mushrooms,
gets right to that part of your brain and goes,
all right, let's get to work. Fix, let's fix some stuff,
let's learn some stuff. And it's like doing ten years
of therapy in.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
About six hours. You look and word.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
If you look out word again, it's fun. Colors, colors, man,
it's beautiful, you're in space, it's awesome. But if you
look inWORD, there's a lot of work that you can
get done, and it's very intense, and that type of
work shouldn't just be a walk in the park. But
the results are profound.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
I like how you put that, because I don't think
I've ever heard anybody express it that like clearly. Like
we were saying earlier, people be like, well, you took
mushrooms before, you took them again and now all of
a sudden, But it sounds like you went in with intention.
Plus you were coming out of the therapy, so you
had a new set of tools and things take in there.
(28:30):
Most people you hear about people micro doos and that's
kind of the.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
New microdos, and I do microdose, you know frequently. Microdosing
is different. It's kind of I'm guessing what would be
like a macro doose, but slowly over time, doing a
macrodos is just like you know, a microdose would be.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
Like you have a house, right and.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
You're like, you know, I'm gonna it's kind of painting
this wall a little bit dirty. You know, maybe after
a couple of years of that, your house certainly looked different,
new fresh. What I'm doing a big heroes doing five
grams is are going in there with such hand, right,
I'm not gonna ship.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Yeah, it's a lot of work, makeover.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Makeover, and we're going to get in there and we
are going and We're going to do it, you know,
and it's gonna be work, and but by the end
of it, I'm going to have a beautiful home that's
just like, you know, it's no different than the home
that I've had my whole life.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
It's just tidy.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
It's like, you know, it's just going through your house
and cleaning everything up. Man, It's just it becomes so
much more bearable. It should be treated as a medicine.
That's really what it was intended for, you know, it
should be treated as a medicine. I would venture to
say most drugs that we take were initially used medicinally.
We just decided to take more and see what happens.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Right, And you look at like you said, our efficacy,
like if antidepressants are boosting euro up like two percent
based upon PLACEA, I was like, it's very simar actually
what I do in like criminal justice system, It's like,
what is the c that you're defending that makes people
fail like seven out of ten time really getting rearrested.
You're saying this is success, Like it's very similar.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it is.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Quite frustrating, you know, especially from my own perspective. Granted,
I'm one guy, you know, so it seems anecdotal, but
the more you start peeling it back, you realize that
there are a lot of similar stories to me. Yeah,
you know, I had my dad sit in this very
room on that couch over there about a year and
a half ago, and he did it like we need
because it gives you this is the work that we
(30:30):
need to be doing. So my dad was a little
bit skeptical, because I think anyone should be a little
skeptical because it's not necessarily a walk in the park,
but it shouldn't be like. It can be really fun,
but it can also be really scary because you're confronting
a lot of things about your subconscious that you ignore
on a daily basis. And my dad has a lot
(30:50):
of childhood trauma. His childhood was very, very tricky. But
he's a lovely man, works really hard, he's provided for
the kids, but he carries a lot of things that
really I think he struggles with to this day. And
I just after doing this trip, and my dad was
a hippie, you know, kind of a culture hippie, spoke weed,
(31:12):
He's on all the drugs, but he was a little
bit like nervous. The more I talked about it. After
my first experience, I see like his eyes get really curious.
And he did it, and I felt he was a
lot lighter on his feet the next day, and in
weeks went by and he's like, I'm still kind of
figuring it out, like you know, you can't. It's almost
(31:32):
like learning a truth. It's not a bad truth, it's
not a good truth. It's just a truth that you
didn't know existed your whole life, and you have got
to process that. And I think he's still processing it
to this day. And it was a beautiful thing and
I saw it change his life. And since then, I've
had a ton of friends do it. My wife has
done it, and I've seen some just amazing effects. I'm
(32:02):
just I'm very thankful for for mushrooms. I hadn't even
calling it a drug, you know, again, being a child,
a child of the DARE program, it's just like there
was just like drugs and then there's just aren't. Then
there aren't drugs. That's just so true. That's just the drugs,
you know, so.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Off the top of a building and the street, you always.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Killed yourself, you always, you know, And I'd see one
kid jump off a building once. I thought I was
gonna die from you, like, jumping off a building or
quicksand yeah, like a lot of people die from quick
sand and.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
People up building was running from the cops, Like that's
the only time.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I know, man, It's it was definitely a weird thing.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
There's this stigma against it, you know, which is why
I'm quite open. Was why I'm doing this podcast with y'all,
and I'm very open about it. I'm open about my
mental health. I want to stigmatize one mental health, especially
for men, something that we have a harder time talking
about because of our society, you know, in the way
that we might have been brought up culturally. But I
also want to do stigmatize psilocybin in particular. You know,
(33:12):
Like I'm glad that you are in You're in reform
because we need to do those things that, like, our
criminal justice system is pretty fucked up and it puts
people in the cross hairs, a lot of good people
in the crossairs for wrong reasons. But we're looking at
something that could profoundly change people's lives. It has profoundly
changed my life, my wife's life, my dad's wife, all
(33:32):
of my friends around me that have done it, like
I have seen it with my own fucking eyes, you know.
And this is a guy that has taken SSRIs and
knows that, Like, yeah, I can be helpful, but I
wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Hell, the first SSRI took,
I can't remember the name of it, but that made
me want to kill myself more like I was coming unglued,
(33:53):
like I was scared for my life.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, there's multiple lexturally it can increase suicide initially, and yeah,
to give that any it was crazy. I felt like
I was going fucking nuts, man. And I know what
it has helped people, but god damn it, Like you
are prescribing that. I was prescribed that by a doctor.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
And I like our FDA can approve like any more
studies on psilocybin like studies, I'm just like, what kind
of backwards world are we living in here?
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (34:32):
So, you know, I'm grateful that you guys asked me
to be a part of this because I want to
be one of the people.
Speaker 5 (34:40):
It's gonna take an army.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
It's gonna take y'all and other people talking about it
to kind of change the just the stigma and the
conversation around it, you know, I mean, and I know
I've friends that passed away from fentanyl a few years
ago because here is back at work, he got on
some painkillers, pain they quick prescribe pain killers, end up
doing heroin, heroin, this fentel and at the end, and
(35:03):
that story is very common, very very common to I
know people that won't do smoke pot. Like my friend's
dad just was diagnosed to stage for pacreatic cancer. You
won't smoke pot because of the stigma around pot. He's like, Dad,
it could help you your appetite and it can help
pick pain away and give you some comments like I'm
not going to do it because it's drugs.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Like this whole thing is so fucking backwards and fucked
up that we need to be talking about it. We
need to make part of the conversation because people's lives
and livelihoods are at stake. People are in jail, people
are dying all of these things because we have this
misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing is.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
And then also I think so much stuff like the
older people, I think just it's illegal. That's a lot
of the old people's argue. That's like, of course we
got the stigma of drugs. You go, it would kill you.
But a lot of them, like my mom was like,
well if it wasn't illegal, and I'm like, I'm in California,
it's legal here.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Try I know, I know, and it is really funny.
I don't want to do it because it's legal. But
a lot of those things, people are like, why don't
trust the government because they give money to these people and.
Speaker 5 (36:22):
Make up your mind?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Man, yeah, pick aln And it's like, you know, just
be educated about it. And that's the thing about drugs
in general. I mean we try to generalize everything, and
then what happens. People end up in jail. People miss
opportunities to treat themselves with certain drugs like cannabis or whatever,
and people miss opportunities to take care of themselves like
I did with psilocybin.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
And I mean, who knows.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
If I kept going down the path that I was going,
I could have killed myself. I was standing at the
edge of the cliff, not physically but psychologically, and I
was staring under the abyss and I was like, I
think I might try it. I didn't, fortunately, and I
do attribute a lot of that to my experience that
six hours of my psilocybin treatment. It's still to this day,
(37:11):
I go back there when I have to, and it's
just one of the most profound lessons ever. And until
we get people talking about this, it'll, unfortunately, I think,
just stay that way.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
No, it's it is the normalizing, it's the abvoscy. It's
showing that hey, I'm in X situation in this. I
know in Kentucky for example, like Dakota Meyer is a
Medal of Honor recipient and he's former military's like, I've
lost more people here to addiction than I ever did
in Fallouja or my tours. And so that's profound and
that's impactful. If he doesn't talk, maybe certain lawmakers don't
listen very least.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
It is not a past.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
It's to one of the guys that went to DC.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
He's been a here and done a lot of advocacy
on Yeah, he's been outside the White House front.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah, I'm the only living Medal of Honor recipients ever.
Speaker 5 (37:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So yeah, yeah, I remember I heard that an interview
about that guy, and we need more people like him.
I mean it's it's the best place to start, you know,
start with our troops, like they have sacrificed so much
and they are given so little when they get back
and they are left to just pick up the pieces
on their own. I mean, do anything that it takes
to make this man feel better or woman feel better,
(38:14):
because they deserve it more than anyone, you know. And
why will we take that opportunity from these people?
Speaker 4 (38:21):
You know?
Speaker 5 (38:22):
John? Awesome? Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Is there any foundations, organizations, or anything that you'd like
to advocate for reach out? Like, Hey, I'm really interested
in hearing about John, and maybe this is right for
me if they're a listener, Like where would you recommend
people kind of start or you know, anything that.
Speaker 5 (38:35):
You absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
I will say first and foremost, if you deal with anxiety,
just know that it's it's a normal thing. I'm saying
the things that I wish I I someone told me
when I was going through it that it's a normal
thing that's meant to keep you alive. It's your brain
thinking that it's doing something good for you. So don't
give yourself two hard a time about it. If you
need help, get help, if you need to take SSRIs
(38:59):
or any type of end to press and present. Take them.
And if you want to experiment with any type of
psilocybin or psychedelic journey, there are a million videos. I mean,
just go go to YouTube type of Michael polland mushrooms
and just watch every video.
Speaker 5 (39:16):
That dude is a fucking rock star.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
In my opinion, he's amazing, and he will make you
feel so calm about it, and just like, be patient,
give yourself time, you know.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
I you know, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Look into MAPS, which is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
that's something that has done a lot of work and
that's really phenomenal. And you know, again from a from
a mental health perspective, just be patient and treat yourself
with love, treat yourself like you would treat any person
that you love, and you know, everything will be fine.
And if you want to take some mushrooms, shit and change.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
I'm telling you, But John, I think particularly like coming
from where I covering you a big group of friends,
I did too like talking about these things in these
types of very much show you know, industries and things
like that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I think it's so helpful and so thank you. What
you're doing.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I know that there's a lot of people that are
probably huge country music fans, huge fans of you, that
have never heard that before.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And it all starts with it's got to enter the consciousness.
It's got to enter the narrative. We've got to talk
about it. More you talk about something, the less it
stigmatizes it. More you talk about psilocybin therapy, the less
it stigmatizes it. More you talk about mental health. Every
time I bring it up, especially around a bunch of dudes,
I have never once, never once felt judgment. It's always
(40:33):
been intrigue and I always they'll always go, hey, I
struggle with that too. I don't talk about it, and
then they start unload andy, start asking me questions or
my brother has got really bad anxiety, can you help
me there? So people, it's like this unwritten rule that
we're not supposed to talk about it, but really everyone
wants to talk about So the more we discuss it,
(40:54):
the more it becomes part of the guys, I think
the better.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Totally agree.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Yeah, I think that's a great note to close on.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Ye John thinks so with some brothers Osborne, they're bringing
awesome Yeah.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Thank you again. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
That was awesome. John Osborne Man was a great interview.
Good interview man. I like, I liked what he was
talking about. I like how he was able to find
his way out the situation he was in and also
(41:29):
pull others out. Yeah, reach out to friends who were
having suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I mean, like, hey, if this works for me, maybe
think about this for you.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
And even to his dad, you know, at that age.
And yeah, so I.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Hear so many more stories about that, Like I don't
think like five years ago, I was sitting around with
friends being like and they were like, oh yeah, I
was getting my mom a gummy to help with.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Her you know, sleep or with you know whatever.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
But you're hearing those conversations like a little bit here
and there like oh yeah, my my mom or my
like I gave to my sister, Like because people are
starting to hear like these stories more and more from
people like hey, this had a profound impact on my life.
And you know, I'm not a doctor or anything, but
I know, you know, when we're looking at kind of
what works and what doesn't. If you know, SSRIs and
(42:18):
other antidosins and traditional methods of dealing with depression and
PTSD and all these things aren't effective for you because
the data shows like it's effective.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
For some and not for others.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You're screwed, like you're So we need to give other
options like this for people, particularly when we've seen, you know,
a psilocybin research has come in the largest phase two
trial suggests that a twenty five milligram dose of psilocybin
with psychotherapy before and after the dosing was associated with
a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect measured by a change
(42:53):
and depress the symptoms scores. And so that's from a
JAMA study. And there's there's other ones on psychedelics showing
strong therapeutic effects with other ones either at being ayahuasca
or MDMA or in particular psilocybin as we've seen, and
that's really profound. And all we're saying is that these
should be open to discuss with medical professionals and are
(43:14):
these the right things for you? Because we've seen the
problems that mental health and drug addiction can bring and
those go hand in hand so often, and it's kind
of the chicken and the egg thing where the depression
comes and then does the substance. You know, it all
kind of builds off each other when it came first,
and they're all kind of bad and they.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
Fuel each other.
Speaker 5 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:34):
And I also think, you know, a lot of times
I don't hear people talk about psychedelics, yeah, in the
way that he did, like, and I think that's most
people's understanding is you use them for fun, and you
use it to but it can be a tool that
can actually be beneficial.
Speaker 5 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And I think like his shift in like his understanding
of it, because it was, like you said, it was
like these aren't for things for like medicinal you know,
these are parties or whatever. And his shift and understanding
of like their purposes and maybe what they're able to do.
It almost feels like how our culture and society is.
Like I think we are starting to see that shift
of like frankly, in public policy, it's for me a
(44:18):
lot easier to talk to people now about psilocybin and
these therapeutics, and it is about cannabis in a lot
of ways because they think of like the recreational aspect
of cannabis and there's you know, a scent factor. It's
very open, but there is actually a much more. I
think openness to some of this stuff at like a
(44:38):
more local level, and even with people that you might
not think, like Kentucky is like really trying to do
some stuff like this, and it's being led by like
you know, you know, Republican lawmakers and Democrats are coming.
So it's like strange bedfellows are all come this realization
about that. The veteran community has been really big on it.
So it's actually like in a way, because the medicinal
(44:59):
values are so clear cut and you're able to show
these things with this, it's like I have PTSD and
now I do not. I think that's just easier for
people to get their head around. So it's been it's
been an easier process right now.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yeah, And I can also see that. I guess maybe
because people don't believe weed smokers. You know, like you're
saying it helps with pain. No, you're not. You just
like to get that's always gonna be the underlying thing.
I think with weed smokers. You're saying, you're saying it
(45:32):
does this. You're saying, so, yeah, that's that's funny. You
say that that people are more accepting to the psychedelics.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
There really are.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, seeing this and seeing more people and kind of
those strange bedfellows of folks being like, hey, this actually
is beneficial, it's actually been.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
I'd rather go in.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I think it's gonna be a It's a less confrontational
discussion talking about psilocybin than it is with cannabis.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Of this platt So that's great.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Easing to think about.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
But it's also to think about the way we talk
about cannabis and policy and discussions like there does need
to be a little bit more I think professionalism and
professionalization about like discussions, yeah, because it is kind of
led by hippies sometimes yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
And also the you know, like you just kind of said,
people went in trying to get the prescriptions, so people
don't trust weed smokers all the way, you know, and
the face that they have of weed smokers is counterculture,
the link when youth, things like that, and if you
can have the face of psilocybin being our veterans, are
(46:33):
people who are PTSD, are people who have anxiety and
they're able to come out of that. I think everybody's
affected by those things, you know. I think people can
kind of like zero in on what they don't like
about weed without looking at what it can benefit. And
it's harder to do that with psilocybin because I think
(46:53):
more people aren't as familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I think you're totally right, and that's what kind of
brings it out.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
So we'll see, you know.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
But again, you know, like things with like the opioid epidemic,
you've seen how like things like iba gain it's a
shrub that you know, we talked to most ethorts about
that that you know significantly reduces you know, opiate you know,
withdrawals and symptoms and wanting to go back to it
and all these things.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
And there's also things that have been there. These are things.
Psilocybin has been here. The mushrooms have been there, I
be again has been there.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
You can pluck a mushroom and pop it like and
that's you don't have to still it.
Speaker 4 (47:28):
Yet don't because I don't know, I mean, unless you've
got a field guide to mushrooms and then still probably don't.
But yeah, a lot of natural things, like like you said,
we've been so dependent on the pharmaceuticals and farm and
that I think it's probably even more stuff that we've
forgotten about.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Sure, probably agree now, and thanks again John Osborne. Absolutely, Yeah,
this has been an amazing interview. And next week I
was on the road solo for this next interview.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Riley Coote, who if anyone watch hockey, he is the
He was like the enforcer, bruiser guy. He was the
one getting into fights for the flyers in the It
was mid early two thousand when I was in like college.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Yeah, Philly guy. Yeah, Rossey bullies.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, so like being he was the guy that was
like the bully, and so he talks about that, and
you know, it's awesome when you're like twenty one and
you're watching him fist by and then you get older
and you start learning bout stuff. It's like, oh, I'd
be really interested to hear about like what that looks like.
And he has such an amazing perspective because he had
to be this tough, mating guy that just took so
much trauma and then you don't think about day and
(48:35):
day out, waking up like I gotta go fight the
end today, like that's it's.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Gotta be pain.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
And he just talks about the physical mental toll. It's
such an amazing interview to kind of hear that and
where he's at right now, and how a lot of
the therapies that we've already talked about today with like John,
you know, some of his experience and stories to share.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
So really great interview.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
You can't wait for y'all to hear it.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Until next time.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
I'm Greg Glad in English.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
And that was the War on drugs.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Yeah, The War on Drugs is a production of Lava
for Good and Stand Together Music and association with Signal
Company Number one. Stand Together Music unites musicians and their
teams with proven change makers to co create solutions to
some of the most pressing issues in our country, including
criminal justice, for foreign addiction recovery, mental health, education, free speech,
(49:22):
and ending the War on drugs. Learn more at Standogether
Music dot org. Be sure to follow Lava for Good
on Instagram, Facebook and threads at Lava for Good. You
can follow Clayton English on Instagram, n X at Clayton English,
and you can follow Greg Laude on Instagram and on
X at Greg Latt. Executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
(49:45):
Kevin Wardis, and Collette Wintraub. Senior producers Kelsey Stenecker, Zak
Huffman and Nick Stump. Post production by ten ten, Audio
talent booking by Dan Resnick. Rez Entertainment Head of Marketing
and Operations Jeff Clive, Social media director Ismati Gaudarrama, Social
media manager Sarah Gibbons, and art director Andrew Nelson,
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