Using Psychedelics and Natural Altered States to Reduce Anxiety and Increase Athletic Performance featuring Matt Cooper

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert, I'm joined today with my friend, Cooper from Evo Biologics. And we're gonna be talking about a really, really important subject today, and that's how to deal with fear and stress. We're gonna be talking about dealing with those things as a human being and, of course, as a veteran and as an athlete.

And Matt has written extensively about this and trained many professional athletes. But it's also a really timely thing because President Trump recently, during the State of the Union address, he talked about the right to try and the right to try for patients, the right to try for terminally ill patients, you know, to seek alternative treatments that could help them in their state. And we, as veterans, have been dealing with a disease that has shown to be terminal. It's not labeled as a terminal disease, but namely depression and post traumatic stress. So, you know, it's interesting to think about what the government's gonna do about that.

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This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

You need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

Did that sound good, Matt? Are you interested in some macadamia nut butter?

Matt Cooper 00:03:20 (link to this point)

Only if it's tantalizing and in my face.

Chris Albert 00:03:23 (link to this point)

Awesome. Awesome. Anyways, so we've got some pretty serious material here. And, you know, Matt wrote a article about this a few weeks ago, but all of us deal with fear and anxiety. And it's been something that's that's been in the human psyche for for, you know, probably since we've, you know, first stepped on this planet.

We always had to deal with things that we needed to fear, and it it we have it for a reason because it helped our survival at one point. But in today's world, a lot of the things we carry over, they're very different, Right? They're in a very different setting. And a lot of us aren't being chased by saber tooth tigers all the time anymore, we're being chased by metaphorical tigers, you know, through email, through increased connection with the world, through social media, through things our boss wants us to do. And we've got, you know, different levels of fear here.

We've got people who are suffering from terminally ill diseases. We've got veterans who are dealing with depression and people who are dealing with depression and post traumatic stress. And then we've got people trying to perform and trying to perform under the thumb of anxiety and fear. Matt, where should we start with this issue? Because it's a huge issue.

Should we start this conversation with?

Matt Cooper 00:05:00 (link to this point)

Yeah, that's a great question. I know we're gonna cover a lot today. The one thing I'm gonna start with personally for a shameless plug is that Evo Biologics is the old business name. The new one is 12AM Labs. It's 12amlabs.com.

So a, how dare you? B, I had to clarify that.

Chris Albert 00:05:21 (link to this point)

You can still find it if you Google for Evo Biologics. Right?

Matt Cooper 00:05:25 (link to this point)

But Yeah. Google still reads it as that. So you could yeah. It forwards to the new one. But yeah.

So at any rate, I'm with 12AM Labs. I'm also with a company called Fast Twitch in Los Angeles. That's where I train everyday people and athletes, and actually hopefully gonna be doing some work with gang rehabilitation. Are doing some of this. But I think the most important place to start with all of these things is just the nervous system.

And so the reason I'm saying that is because all of these things that relate to it, whether it's the effects of trauma on the body, and specifically today, how we're going to talk about getting rid of that and then stress and anxiety, but also it ties into performance and athletic training. It ties into your overall physiological health, and it even ties into the role of these plant medicines, psychedelics and other items that reprogram the mind body interface.

Chris Albert 00:06:27 (link to this point)

So, you know, when we're talking about the effects of fear and the effects of anxiety and the effects of just stress in general, what kind of things can happen to a human being with an abundance of stress, when these things become chronic?

Matt Cooper 00:06:48 (link to this point)

Yeah, so the short back of the box version is gonna be that you can destroy your health, you can cripple your health, you could feel like shit, you you can have a very bad quality of life. And if you're somebody who's in a fitness or you're an athlete trying to perform, it can actually destroy your performance, especially when they talk about the mental game, that's usually what they're talking about. Now, what happens with that is that you're in a state that most of us have heard called fight or flight, and that's a evolutionarily programmed defense mechanism. And so we need that for real danger. It also is fine to get activated when you exercise.

That's when it's meant to get activated. But the reality is that a lot of us live in a chronic state of fight or flight because we have too much life stress. We might have some undealt with emotional trauma, whether it's PTSD, something as simple as getting picked last on a playground, getting molested, things like that. So everybody has something, whether you know it or not. And you can create this now by just, even if you as an adult, with kind of more advanced emotional equipment, if you will, by perceived stress, work, email, whatever.

So in a nutshell, your body doesn't know the difference between these things and if there's a 300 pound tiger chasing you. So if that's the case and you're in fight or flight, all of your body's energy from a cellular level, basically from the mitochondria, which is the little energy batteries of our cells, that gets allocated towards being alert and being on defense because ultimately your body and your brain are gonna do their best to protect you, right? And so from there, everything else from hormones to detoxification, to neurons, athletic performance, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry, all these things sort of get put on the back burner, biologically speaking, just to keep it simple. And then from there, what ends up happening is because all of that cellular energy is allocated on defense and is basically creating and being borrowed from these other secondary areas, you can have people who just shut down various aspects of their health. And so even like in Western medicine, we all know they kind of just try to band aid the symptoms.

But even in functional medicine, you can't even really fully sing their praises because you'll hear people talking about things like adrenal fatigue or chasing the thyroid hormone or going down the pipeline of just the gut. But the reality is that the one common denominator between all of these is that they're fueled by cellular energy from the mitochondria. And so in most cases, like, yeah, there's definitely individual things that we need to do to get some of these health systems back online. But the one thing we can do to support them all is A, just dealing with our shit, which is what we're going to talk about today. And then B, also just on a hard science level, the health of the mitochondria.

Chris Albert 00:09:59 (link to this point)

Yeah, you know, when I deal with clients, just like you, I look into their background. I look into their work life. I look into their family life. I look into different things they're feeling. What how they're sleeping, all of these different things.

And I've been working with a lot of high performing clients lately. So guys who are controlling millions of dollars, guys who are CEOs of companies, people who have a lot of other people depending on them. And in all of these cases that I'm finding, you know, these guys are burning the candle at both ends. So they're not sleeping and they are surviving on limited calories and they are constantly working constantly in front of a screen, constantly trying to figure figure things out and constantly dealing with issues. And, you know, you have to think that for a good portion of human history, life was really fucking hard.

I mean, like, we, you know, we were dealing with dangers on a daily basis. Life was under threat every single day. But in some ways, we knew better back then that in order for us to survive, we had to take some time and and rest. We had to take some time and and heal before we went out again on the hunt and put ourselves in danger of being mauled to death by a by a saber tooth tiger. But in today's world, we've got so much literal comfort around us that I think a lot of people forget to turn it off.

They forget to take the period of time to relax.

Matt Cooper 00:11:44 (link to this point)

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you look at animals or our ancestors to the best of what we know, their stress levels look like a heartbeat monitor in a way. And in that, there was like just sort of nothing and we're chilling. Then there's this like 10 out of 10 on the stress level when there is an actual danger. But that's kind of how we're meant to be wired, right?

There's a great book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers that elucidates on this, but we are meant to have a 10 out of 10 or eight out of 10 or whatever stress level when we're dealing with something like when we're exercising or when we're truly endangered. And then it's meant to go down to like zero. But we kind of have this perpetually elevated three to six out of 10. I mean, that's just metaphorically speaking, level of alertness that we're always dealing with. And so one thing that I do like about Eastern medicine and in some of the Asian cultures, they'll talk about how stress, whether that's, you know, literal life stress, trauma, or as they call it, the human experience and the spirit, issues there do coincide with health issues.

Now, what's cool is that for people who just refuse to go on the woo side of things, Western medicine is really beginning to, and biohackers are really beginning to find the biological mechanisms behind this, which is fucking awesome because when I'm just like you, when I'm working with somebody, I might take an Eastern school of thought where just to get them results and ultimately get them feeling better quicker, is important to be directionally accurate. Instead of just changing one thing, if we're going to really help them, we need to take a full systems approach and look at diet, sleep, stress management, fitness, movement, all those things and more. But from there, what we can do is, let's say your Eastern medicine, you would throw six things at a person and maybe four of them work, hey, at least they get results. But now that we have an understanding behind the mechanisms, we can be even more precise in our interventions for both health, fitness performance and stress and trauma management, which is really cool. One book that I quote the shit out of is The Body Keeps the Score.

And so if anybody wants to really, really see a lot of this stuff and what I'm talking about and how there is a tangible effect in the body, I would read that. I'm an old school guy. I like hard copy books, but in this case, the spoken word is super powerful. So I would get it on your audio book, like Audible or your audiobook delivery service of choice. One to you just while we're at it, man, a lot of people might find that their behavioral patterns are similar to their parents, especially ones that they don't like, and or they might have some sort of irrational phobias that they really feel are their own.

So there's a really, really important segment of research coming out called transgenerational emotional inherited emotional traumas. And so that segment of the human genome that was previously referred to as junk DNA is really not junk DNA at all. It's actually, I don't know DNA or we don't know DNA. And so the things that we're learning about that's encoded in there are actually aspects of who we are, personality, things like that. And so there is a ton of research established and forthcoming as far as the forecast goes about how we can inherit these behavioral patterns from previous generations.

Know, I'll just own my own shit and be vulnerable. Like, at one point in my life, I like almost behaved as if I had been in a very, very scarcity kind of environment, when the reality is I was born in a, you know, nice, normal middle class family, had a great childhood. But looking at my lineage, my parents came from parents, so my grandparents, they really experienced the Great Depression. They were in the thick of it. And so it's almost like, you know, my parents worked government jobs for thirty years and called it a day.

And so I'm really breaking that mold by challenging myself and being an entrepreneur, really. And so what I hope my story can do is help people understand that, like, sometimes you have to own your own shit. Other times you have to kind of acknowledge it and realize that it's coming from someplace else in your family. A lot of people might have that with, like, regards to how they view and perceive sexuality with regards to maybe somebody else in their family is molested or something like that or raped, they're sort of left with those wounds. I think the easiest example that's been researched is how descendants of Holocaust victims are actually like There's a shockingly high correlation with irrational phobias of fire and claustrophobia.

Chris Albert 00:16:48 (link to this point)

Oh, really? That's that's really interesting that it could translate over just just through DNA. And Yeah. That's that's amazing.

Matt Cooper 00:17:00 (link to this point)

One one thing just before just to close that loop. And and I realize I'm interrupting you, I'm sorry. But

Chris Albert 00:17:05 (link to this point)

That's okay.

Matt Cooper 00:17:08 (link to this point)

There's also nurture too. So there is like, you know, there is a reality that somebody who did have their their story, their written story and nervous system and human experience sort of unfortunately tattooed with one of these, they might also, you know, play a role in that and how they raise you. I'm not discounting that. It's definitely a both thing. It's not one or the other.

In most cases, it's both.

Chris Albert 00:17:33 (link to this point)

Yeah. I I wanted to, circle back and ask you about that that scarcity, the notion of scarcity. What do you mean by that? What what were you acting like?

Matt Cooper 00:17:43 (link to this point)

So I've always been somebody, again, just to just to be vulnerable and own my own shit. I've always sort of been a logical left brain guy when I started out. My family, I was baptized, you know, I was fucking dunked, but I only went to church for weddings and funerals. I don't come from anybody like on the woo side of things or anything like that. So I'm very I come from like a very logical left brain family.

And I just noticed that once I became more mature and self aware and checked in with myself, I'm like, man, you really over worry and stress about a lot of things that are like, that isn't you, you know? And also, you've I mean, you've worked hard, you've had struggles, surely, but on paper, you're not coming from a scarcity background. You know, you didn't have to worry about when food is gonna be on the table, not like that. However, you do tend to worry about things in your life to that degree, and you tend to choose safety over risk. And so once I identified that, I began to research this, and that's just, you know, they say most research is me search, and that was the case for me.

And so that eventually led me to where I'm at here. But, you know, it's still a struggle. You know, I'm not speaking from a point of a soapbox. I'm speaking from the trenches, and I hope everybody listening realizes that, you know, I still have my days. In fact, I dealt with both of these things again recently.

You know, you think you learned your lesson on it, but time is a flat circle. I think we're kind of condemned to learn and repeat the same lessons the hard way until we really learn them and rise out of them. But basically, I spent like a year getting burnt out really like shifting into running my own business and not doing like a day job and doing the hybrid entrepreneurship thing where I was trying to do both. And so I overworked myself and burnt myself out. And then so I was dealing with some of that cellular energy deficit stuff, and it also bred more stress than anxiety.

Then from there, it not only culminated in a few health issues, but on top of that too, I just sort of realized like, hey, are kind of living out of fear and because that's what stress, anxiety, scarcity all traces back to is fear. And I'm like, you know, that's really not you. So just being self aware, I've been able to run with that and when it's kicking in, kind of be aware of it and then make the decision I know is right for me in spite of that, which is, know, it still can be fucking terrifying, you know.

Chris Albert 00:20:26 (link to this point)

Yeah. I've definitely been there as far as the entrepreneurial journey for one is is crazy because you hear about all these guys, they're they're making millions of dollars on the Internet. Right? And and they're they're out here. They're they're, you know, you see the ads make millions of dollars using Facebook ads or, you know, make millions of dollars doing your online course, but the entrepreneurial journey is hard.

It's really hard. And a lot of times, especially at the beginning, you know, you are in a constant state of fear. You're in that constant state of wondering where the hell your next meal is gonna come from, where the hell your next dollar is gonna come from, whether you start to question every everything about yourself, whether or not you were good enough to even try this in the first place. And, you know, it's there's so many people I know who who are in that state. The question I think for people who are dealing with that and dealing with just life in general is, well, what do you do when you feel that fear?

Because it's gonna happen. It's not like you could just say, oh, that fear, that's irrational. I I have a saying. I say fear is a liar, and it is a liar, but it's a damn good liar. Right?

It's a damn good liar. And it will trick you into to believing that, you know, you're you're completely in danger and that you're complete failure and that, you know, your DNA isn't even worth procreating on this earth. So what do we do when we get to that point? How do we deal with it?

Matt Cooper 00:22:01 (link to this point)

Right, so I will say it's a quilt. You gotta build your own quilt. And so the things that I'm saying, it's not like I'm not trying to give everyone a list of things to do. I'm just giving them a list of things to try. These are meant to be n equals one experiments that you try with yourself and then see what works.

So I'll just sort of give you the rundown from what I do and what I recommend to clients, but some sort of mindfulness practice and meditation helps a ton. But you have to remember that meditation isn't about getting to a higher plane, it's more about letting go. And that's another book that I would check out too, it's called Letting Go by, I believe it's Tawkins or Dawkins. I should know that, but that's really what it's about and it's about being present and feeling your body. It's actually about doing less, not about doing more, and I think that's where a lot of people struggle with it.

So again, I don't come from a family on the woo side of things, so I just started by doing free meditation apps. I'm leaning now towards learning transcendental meditation because people like Jim Carrey, actually Jim Carey, Jerry Seinfeld, people like that, a lot of people who live less lives try it. And so I figured, why not? I'll give it a shot and use that as the next evolution in my mental training. And then period as I, you know, I'm a trainer and training conditioning coach.

Periodizing that just like I would a program for one of my athletes. But yeah, just start with the free apps and then see what happens from there. Set an alarm and do it for fifteen, twenty minutes, ideally twice a day, but at least in the morning. So another thing you could do is we'll leave psychedelics and drugs for last because that will be the most controversial, but honestly, breath work is killer. So most people actually chronically either mouth breathe or they over breathe.

And by that, I mean, they take a huge deep breath in like and then blow it out. So you're meant to breathe in your belly, but a lot of people don't realize, whether it's athletic performance or in times of like stress and trauma, you don't want to under or over breathe. And so you want to actually maximize a little bit more CO2 in your system so you can tolerate higher levels of CO2. So part of that like panicky, need this to end kind of state that happens when somebody's training and doing like heavy conditioning or doing like a long duration isometric hold, like a wall sit or something like that. It's actually the body sort of giving a fight or flight response off to elevated levels of CO2.

And this dates back to when we're babies, the very first time we get stuffed up, we have this freak out moment where we can't breathe, and so then we breathe out of our mouth. And so that's why that natural reflex kicks in on a neurological level when we're panicked like that and have elevated levels of CO2 and or breathe in our mouth. So basically, you don't want to breathe through your mouth at all because it ignites your fight or flight reflex even more. You want to keep it to nasal breathing and you want the exhale to be longer than the inhale. Now credit where credit's due, Huberman Lab, Brian McKenzie and Patrick McKeown, who wrote The Oxygen Advantage, they're doing the coolest things as far as just pure breath work space.

I just integrate these protocols when I'm working with people too. So I'm definitely standing on the shoulders of giants here. But honestly, just breathing and focusing on your breathing makes you just more present in your body. And oftentimes I find that that will be enough to calm fear, anxiety, stress, or kill the fight or flight reflex during athletic performance. Now, moving on from that, something that I love doing, and this isn't so much an in the moment thing, this is more like you got to do this just like you would, you know, training regimen.

But something I do for people when I'm putting together a program is if they are stressed or they have some shit in their past, which is most of us, I will integrate something called trauma release exercises or TRE. And again, I'm not the inventor of these. Actually, Dr. David Berceli is, and I don't even know technically if he's the originator of them, because mammals do this on their own, right? Like there's videos of polar bears online and other mammals actually undergoing tremors, and animals can do that dramatically, but as humans, we can't.

So it's a series of exercises that actually causes involuntary, what you call neurogenic tremors, and it's targeted at the psoas and pelvis area. But from there, it actually leads up your spinal column, which is that interface of where your nerves come down from the brain and also provide feedback from your proprioceptors, know, Golgi tendon organs, muscle spindles, basically just parts of the body that send and receive information to and from the spinal cord and brain. And so when we do this, we can actually cleanse out and detox some of the physiological effects of how stress, anxiety, and fear truly reprogram our nervous system and cause tension in there. And so in doing this, I usually have people do a protocol of these like twice a week, depending on the severity for like three months and credit to that originating like me being turned onto this and that protocol from my friend Ryan of Cosmic Animal.

Chris Albert 00:27:47 (link to this point)

Is there a video of any of this stuff around or anything?

Matt Cooper 00:27:52 (link to this point)

So here's the thing, there are videos of some of them, but they're very, very heavily protected because, the guy, you know, Dr. David Berceli, he has a certification course around it. So you're probably looking at going to one of his practitioners if you just want to do that work. I actually have videos of this that I will integrate for my clients into their programs. So if anybody does want access to that, just tell we'll put up my contact information at the end or if they have any questions on anything in in the interview for that matter.

But out of respect to him and some of that stuff, work wise, I'll post that.

Chris Albert 00:28:30 (link to this point)

I'll get that up on the show notes. I wanna talk a little bit more about the breath work because that's something that's free and something that's available to people. And I know we're gonna be getting into plant medicines a little bit later on, but, you know, the the thing is plant medicines, I'm I'm totally in favor of them. I'm totally in favor of their use. We're in a place right now that, you know, even though president Trump talked about the right to right to try, a lot of people who could benefit from plant medicines aren't gonna be able to get in touch with them legally.

And those of us who, you know, don't necessarily want to join a church and drink Ayahuasca or things like that. I think that that breath work is a really great way to start or at least gain access to some of these states where you you can, you know, put put fear and anxiety and stress to the side. And I've had both Brian McKenzie and and Patrick McKeown on. I've also had Scott Carney on here, and he spoke extensively about the Wim Hof method. But, you know, each of I think what Brian's doing is really, really interesting because Brian's work is is really integrating a lot of these disparate breathing techniques that are out there where, you know, you've got Wim Hof breathing, which is very different than the Buteyko method that that Patrick McKeown is is talking about.

So how can people start to try to integrate breath work into their routines, and how do you do that for your clients?

Matt Cooper 00:30:16 (link to this point)

So, right. So one thing I should say actually, just to close the previous loop, is that article that you read that initially inspired this podcast that I wrote about combining soul and sport and the nervous system and how I use it for athletic training, but also helping people with health stress trauma. There is a link to videos in that for the trauma release exercises. I'm not the one doing it in that case, and those aren't all the ones that I would do, that is a good one. Also, there's some various eye resets you can do.

And so when you do get stressed and have anxiety, a lot of times you almost like find like you're sort of like looking around, looking at distractions, feel like you can't manage everything, and you kind of are locked in tunnel vision, and that's a natural element of fight or flight. But ideally, you wanna be more in flow, and then part of that, to give it a contextual scientific definition, that means having for expanding the peripheral vision. And so EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprogramming. And so there are various eye exercises you can do to really expand to that area. And what I also like about this and trauma release exercises are that you really don't have to know what exactly that trauma is.

You don't necessarily have to revisit it in order to get benefit from it because it chases these ghosts in the machine out of your body. And so the reality is that with this kind of work, it's nice because some people just, A, don't know what this is or, B, they might really not want to revisit it, especially some of your listeners who might have PTSD or think that they might have some shit getting kicked up as they hear me talk about.

Chris Albert 00:31:58 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Matt Cooper 00:32:00 (link to this point)

But as far as breath work, that also can help you alter that. Again, your breathing is like the remote control to your body in that it interacts with your nervous system and that ultimately is going to interact with your state. And so when you can shift states, you can be in the presence of danger or whether it's what your body perceives as danger, like stress, or even exercise, if we're talking about athletes. And by changing our breath work, we can make ourselves to be comfortable in these states. And so a lot of times, you know, people talk about how animals can sense fear and stuff like that.

And that's ultimately the biggest thing that's gonna decide whether you're going to get eaten by a shark or a bear or whether they're kind of maybe just going kind of notice you and move on. A lot of that is how you behave. If you can't control that, you probably are going to freak out the animal too. And so obviously, is just an example. It's not a contextual priority for most people.

But yeah, breathing is important for that because you're gonna change your state. And so even if you have the worst of circumstances, you're still gonna have that emotional response. We're not logically doing some BS like spiritual bypassing, but what we're doing is just allowing you to be present and be in that state and know ultimately there it's like, you know, to use the words of Eckhart Tolle, it's like suffering can't really exist in the now. And so it pulls you out of making your mind be in the past or in the future.

Chris Albert 00:33:34 (link to this point)

Yeah. And, you know, just having practiced a few of these things, it's amazing what breath work can do. Like with the Wim Hof method, you can get high as balls just by your own breath. Now, I'm not recommending that that people do this without supervision or anything like that. And I'm definitely not recommending doing something like this every day because you can get addicted to this just like you can any other drug.

But I think people forget that a lot of the drugs were being given, a lot of the things were being prescribed, they already exist in our bodies. We just gotta release them. I think breath work provides a really good way of doing that. With Patrick McKeown's method, I really like the way he goes about things. I've been a lot more conscious of nasal breathing.

And especially when I'm heading to bed and going to sleep, that's a big thing for me is making sure that I'm nasal breathing. And, you know, for anybody who's really interested in that stuff, one, I I definitely suggest that you guys check out Patrick the Patrick McKeown episode we did and also the Brian McKenzie episode that we did. I'll I'll get the links to those up on the show notes. But are you partial to one technique or another or anything like that?

Matt Cooper 00:35:02 (link to this point)

I think it just set and setting. I'm I'm not I mean, Wim Hof stuff is great. That's not what I practice because I just don't have. I mean, I'll probably do it like a phase where I like fully, you know, because I treat my body like a science project. I'll probably check it out a little bit more in-depth, but his is actually designed to more of, at least what I understand, and I could be wrong, but enhance a little bit more of a fight or flight state and cause an adrenal response so that you can bypass unfavorable physical conditions such as ice, you know, and then extreme cold and be okay being in that state.

So in some ways it's it's all related, but it's different than what, you know, Brian and Pat's work is. I'm actually more partial to those guys. In that book, if you wanna check it out, would be The Oxygen Advantage or probably your best bet to find practical application for this is to attend one of, Power, Speed, Endurance's Art of Breath Clinics.

Chris Albert 00:36:04 (link to this point)

The Art of Breath Ceremony.

Matt Cooper 00:36:07 (link to this point)

Yeah. Which our mutual friend, Tone Floreal of, the magic flow bus. He's a he's a flow state coach, in a nutshell and does some other things too, biohacker, which he's he's attended actually.

Chris Albert 00:36:20 (link to this point)

Yeah. No. And Brian's seminars are amazing from what I hear. Both Tone and Andrew both attended the art of breath seminar, and they they were raving about it. They thought it was absolutely awesome.

So definitely something we'll recommend. And we got the links up for that on on the Brian McKenzie show notes too. One thing I wanted to mention about something you spoke about before with the movement and that's EMDR, the eye movement, that's actually currently being practiced by the VA. And if you really wanted to to get that treatment, you can actually request it from the VA. You just gotta put it out there.

I think the current treatments that they have right now are of course SSRIs and SNRIs, cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR. EMDR is kind of like the most experimental thing that they're doing right now. And they're starting to venture down this path.

Matt Cooper 00:37:27 (link to this point)

So I'll riff out on that for a second. That's amazing that they're doing that. It's funny that that's, I mean, it's experimenting because it's new for them, but the reality is this is a little bit more of a direct plug and play mechanism for our own body, our own physiology. Now, when you look at something like this to natural processing, that's the one my friend Ryan also recommended to me, even though I'd doing some of the various eye resets before. I like that also, not just because of it's more, you know, it's more natural.

I'll get a riff out on that in a sec, but it's also just an outcome based commodity. You know what I mean? Like most therapies like talk therapy are just, you you could be sitting there for years and years of like, how does that make you feel therapy? And my friends who might be listening to this will laugh because I'll always jokingly ask people that and also legitimately ask them that, how does that make you feel? But anyways, this is a way to actually truly excavate these things out of your body.

Another thing that like, if you really wanna like relive these things and make sure you're as cleansed as possible from them, what I have a friend named James Siegel and also another friend named Mike Colleen, to be fair. And with these guys, they actually do something like what Tony Robbins used to focus on, which is NLP or neuro linguistic programming. He does it now. That's just one of many things. But this is their main thing.

And they do something called timeline therapy. And that's where you essentially are quote unquote hypnotized, basically in more of a suggestive state, not like fall asleep, the fair fake kind of hypnosis. You're like really hypnotized. And you are They can say things to your subconscious that are trigger words, you know, neuro linguistics. And so you'll relive your whole health history timeline and go back and see what actually happened to you when you were younger and maybe didn't have the emotional equipment to deal with some of this stuff and everybody's got something. And then so from there, after I did that and I've worked with both of these guys, on timeline therapy specifically was with James Siegel. He's in San Diego now, but I felt like there was a big time stick removed from the bikes folks that are my subconscious. So that helped a ton.

And if he, I mean, so that was just something I'd add in as far as SSRIs and prescriptions. I mean, if prescriptions are good and then they help people and ultimately cure a lot, I am a fan. I'm not anti Western medicine at all, but I mean, what the evidence shows and from what I've seen and what many of you probably seen from interacting with these people is like, if somebody has been on one of those things, particularly for a while, that really changes the shape of who they are. And it's like they get relief from their symptoms in the short term. And so I'm not saying that they're I'm not gonna cause unnecessary controversy, but when you never can get back your normal self and who you truly are, that's when I have a fucking problem with these things. And I don't like how liberally they're distributed and how there's an itchy trigger finger for these things to be prescribed when somebody hasn't tried some of these other things, at least first. So on that note, I mean, I would also say when we talk about being in fight or flight as well, one of those downstream pools that gets its resources pulled from is neurotransmitters and brain chemistry. So instead of putting a band aid effect on these things by taking the prescriptions, I am sounding controversial regardless of how many coffee outs I put out there and how much I try to fucking tiptoe around this shit.

Anyways, that's one of the pools that gets pulled from. And you can see it and you see what you see. I know in your case, right, when you've trained and ordered yourself bodybuilders and you're done overtraining and under eating, you you almost started like not yourself or your shell of yourself right before the contest. Am I right?

Chris Albert 00:41:36 (link to this point)

Well, yeah. Anything that changes your brain chemistry is gonna gonna change you as a person. And people have to understand that. You know, and then the other thing is, and I'll on my political soapbox for a second. You know, we we talk about gun laws in the in The United States and and how we need to ban guns and how we need to do this.

Do that. And this might be a very controversial statement, but when we consider the mass shootings that that have occurred over the past few years in almost every case, SSRIs or SNRIs have been involved with the person who committed the shooting. Right? So so, you know, people are talking about banning guns, which I am not in favor of. I am a big supporter of the Second Amendment.

Why are we not talking about banning SSRIs or SNRIs? They're looking deeper at this issue. I mean, and of course, what we're both saying is extremely controversial. And of course, you all need to follow the advice of your doctors. And neither Matt nor I are telling you to do that.

But when your doctor does prescribe you one of these things, there's probably a good set of questions that you wanna ask before you accept the prescription, right?

Matt Cooper 00:42:53 (link to this point)

Yeah, and also, you're in the driver's seat of your own hero's journey and that includes your health. Consult with health professionals, also like ask, don't be afraid to ask questions and seek second opinions and things like that. Don't be afraid to wipe your own ass basically.

Chris Albert 00:43:12 (link to this point)

Be your own advocate.

Matt Cooper 00:43:14 (link to this point)

Yeah, and I agree with you. The gun issue, I think is, I mean, it's a mental health issue because it's just like some of those things where somebody's driven a car through a crowd or people or things like that. Modality of murder is maybe there are some arguments like, yeah, you shouldn't have RPGs and stuff like that.

Chris Albert 00:43:39 (link to this point)

Matt's gotta tread a very thin line here because he's on a veteran's podcast, but he comes from the Bay Area, San Francisco. So if he goes too far in our favor, he's gonna get his San Francisco card taken away.

Matt Cooper 00:43:53 (link to this point)

Yeah. No. No. I'm actually I don't I don't entirely align with either political party Yeah. For a number of reasons.

But but anyways, I it's it's a mental health issue. It's a it's a love or not love issue. It's not a it's not a gun issue. That's just sort of the weapon of choice. It could be a car, it could be a number of other things. But anyways, before we turn this into a political podcast, what I want to loop back on is the fact that when we can re support your cellular energy and also deal with your shit, there's a better chance that a lot of these things that can influence elements of who we are like hormones and neuroendocrinology, so neuro hormones, and then also the interplay between neurotransmitters and hormones there. When you can reestablish these things, that is getting to the root cause of these issues. It's not band baiting it with a prescription drug that's gonna make somebody a shell of themselves.

Chris Albert 00:44:52 (link to this point)

Yeah, no, I'm in complete agreement with that. You know, since we're on the subject to drugs now, let's start to talk about some of these plant medicines that are, you know, we're we're seeing more and more of. We're seeing more and more talk about these things. And, you know, the organization MAPS, they've been doing a lot of work on things like MDMA and and treatment for PTSD. But there's a lot of people also looking at the non synthetic drugs like the plant medicine Ayahuasca.

People are looking at DMT, cannabis, has just been legalized for recreational use here in California. That's another one that people have been looking at for a while. And I think, you know, both Matt and I have experience with a number of these things. So we can talk a little bit from personal experience with these modalities. But Matt, what do plant medicines do for us?

Or not just plant medicines, but maybe some of the synthetic versions like LSD or MDMA, what do those things do for us?

Matt Cooper 00:46:11 (link to this point)

Yeah, so each one kind of has their own mechanistic quality, but in a nutshell, in context here, so let me think for a second how best to say this.

Chris Albert 00:46:25 (link to this point)

Let me catch it like this, like why is it different from taking an SSRI or why is it different from something that you'd be prescribed?

Matt Cooper 00:46:33 (link to this point)

Right. So the therapeutic use of a lot of these quote unquote drugs or plant medicines, they actually will help us in more of a natural way and make us like naturally, like endogenously meaning within our own body, produce more of these neurotransmitters and help the nervous system health, brain health, and essentially even us out like that with the ultimate goal being that you don't have to do them forever, right? Which that's real medicine right there. It's not putting a band aid on something and saying, Hey, you have to take this forever. Like as a concept, medicine, whether you're something as simple as taking a holistic supplement all the way to taking a prescription drug or doing even the physical stuff like physical therapy and rehabilitation, it's meant to be a temporary thing.

And so these things provide a holistic way or even like, you know, a certain case, like appropriate sort of lab made things like MDMA therapy way to get you back into the right state and to shift states. And so you can use them in a number of ways, right? Like, I can't talk about it too much yet, but I'm going be doing a collaboration project with some of the guys branched out from MAPS or the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and some of the guys at The Third Wave to basically create this sort of self optimization and health and fitness optimization program, because nobody also has really studied the effects of these things on strength and conditioning and athletic performance, even though there's a ton of empirical evidence that these things really, really do make a dent in those areas. So basically, you can take things like this in a micro dose where you don't feel them, but you take a little bit. There's various protocols like once every four days is the most popular.

For example, people take like psilocybin mushrooms, maybe zero point three to zero point five grams once every four days. That's the most common protocol for like twelve weeks, give or take. And then even though you don't feel it and so you don't feel the effects of shrooms like you would if you took a full macro dose, you notice that you're more in a flow state. Your social interactions are more clear and better. You're really more talking to people instead of talking at them.

You're acting less out of fear. The effects of fear, anxiety, stress on the body tend to be mitigated and marginalized. You're able to get more present and be in your body. These are some of the effects that you'll notice when you take the micro doses. And so when you take a macro dose, that's something more like Ayahuasca or a traditional shroom or DMT journey.

And that's where you're taking enough to trip out. Here's where I do and don't have a problem with anything we've talked about today. Your relationship to the drug itself is ultimately what's going to decide whether it's therapeutic or irresponsible. If you're using it for a particular outcome and you're able to discontinue from it and carry on living your life without relying on it, then I think you're doing it right. But if you're doing it as a crutch to not deal with things, then that's where I have a problem with it.

You know, I have done Ayahuasca before, I've done the retreat, but where I really think there's benefit in here is after you do that, it's almost like a substitute for a rite of passage in a society where we do not have them. Our rites of passage are bullshit like getting your car keys. And part of why we're depressed is because we ultimately have these rights of passage in the hero's journey. But if you want to look up Joseph Campbell monomyths, the hero's journey, we all kind of need to live that out in our life. And so in society now, we're getting people who aren't always living out a true hero's journey, and it's very stifle.

And then we're also constantly reminded in movies and books of the hero's journey and these rites of passage that we then don't get to have, which is also depressing. So what plant medicine can be is a substitute for rites of passage in a society that is absent of them. And so when you think of a rite of passage, you think of the previous generation interacting with the current upcoming generation and the upcoming generation is doing their work or trials and tribulations and interacting and learning from the previous generation, and then it's almost like a gateway, you know? And it might be tough, but you're ultimately better for it. In fact, the name of your company, Agoge, that is a rite of passage. And this is also why a lot of people move away for college, live outside the nest. I mean, this doesn't have to be some crazy weird pilgrimage, but really what Ayahuasca was for me and what it's meant to be, I think, my personal opinion, is a substitute for a rite of passage by which people, you're interacting with people and they're seeing you go through these things. And ideally, you're sharing what you're going through with them and just truly owning your shit. And then when you're done, the onus is on you to integrate these things into your life and to really create real change from these things. And if you need it in the future to, you know, as a consultant, you can go back to Ayahuasca or macro shrimp trips or whatever.

But if you're relying on it over and over as an escape safety valve, like, I don't think that's cool. So that's my big time caveat. I mean, I'm an advocate for these things when used right. And so I wanna cut that part right there just to see what you think before I go into maybe some of the cool, like athletic performance elements with this.

Chris Albert 00:52:39 (link to this point)

Yeah. There's there's a few things here. I mean, number one, I think that proper guidance is absolutely necessary. You if you have not been exposed to these things before and you do not know their power, you do not wanna take a heroic dose of mushrooms to have a fun Saturday night. Like, it's not gonna be fun and you're not gonna be in a good place.

Right? And similarly for Ayahuasca or DMT. MDMA, of course, is something that's a little bit more social, right? It's also, you know, you also a lot of times don't know what you're getting if you're getting it from a drug dealer or somebody, something like that. So, you know, again, I I wanna emphasize safety here.

I wanna emphasize that the drugs are tools. They're not they're not therapy. They're not the the work that you need to do. Right? They're they're tools to get there.

And so I think that anybody going about this, and if you're serious about it, you should be going about it the proper way. And I will tell you that if you do make the mistake of trying to take a heroic dose of mushrooms or doing Ayahuasca in a social setting or doing DMT even in a social setting, you will never make that mistake again and you'll probably have a much different idea of what drugs are and what they should be, right?

Matt Cooper 00:54:17 (link to this point)

Yeah, and that's partially because for those of you who haven't done these things, they were originally like meant like this and there's even evidence dating back to the ancient Greeks of how they were used. And also, you know, the Native Americans are pretty famous as well for having these sort of spiritual experiences using plant medicine as a desired modality.

Chris Albert 00:54:39 (link to this point)

Well, Christianity, they say that the burning bush was there's a theory that it was an acacia bush, which is loaded with dimethyltryptamine. And there's a theory that Moses was inhaling the acacia bush and then talking to God through DMT.

Matt Cooper 00:54:59 (link to this point)

Yeah, I haven't read that anecdotally, but I mean, I believe it. I mean, there are stories of this in many a culture. And so you're gonna experience if you do these things is every limiting belief, every element of your shadow self gets thrown and just like Emeril putting a fucking ingredient, just like bam, right in the recipe. Like, instead of that you just sort of like ostrich yourself from during the day, it gets thrown right in your face. And that's fucking scary for a lot of people.

But there's freedom in acknowledging it and being able to let go. And it allows you to kind of just walk through life, always owning your truths. And ultimately when you do that, no one can touch you. And it might be the triggering mechanism where you realize like, I do need to have that difficult conversation with that person in my life who's holding me back, or it's your fault, the person you're letting hold you back. It might make you less afraid of what other people think when you do something like a lot of people don't want to start that business that they've always wanted to start or quit that job or even do bigger things like question the idea of the American dream and look at like, all right, well, this isn't my American dream.

Like, maybe I don't give a shit about the white picket fence aspect of the American dream. Maybe I'm not gonna go to Brad Pitt and Fight Club here, but maybe like I just want something different than that. Maybe I'm more fulfilled when I'm doing all of my own work helping people in whatever way I choose. And ultimately through that living out my passion, like that's my American dream. And then just trusting that things like the money, the freedom, the houses, whatever it is you want around that will come with that.

And I think that as a society, if we shift more towards that, there would be a lot less problems because there'd be a lot less repressed shadow selves. In fact, there's a story, a short story that my friend Ryan whom I referenced earlier turned me on to called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. And it talks about this idealistic, utopian futuristic society that's secretly a dystopian society in kind of a subterranean way. And there's essentially this entity, I think it's like a I forgot if it was like an animal or a person, think they refer to it more as an id, that's beneath the city and all of the city's shadow selves and sins and all the back of the mind stuff that we don't want to live with day to day, it ultimately gets shunned and passed on to this thing that then has to be the carrier of all of this for this society. And so the people in this society who realize this, they then start to like walk away from it, as in the ones who walk away from the Omelas.

They walk away from this science fiction, this like futuristic society that seems ideal because it's coming with consequence. And so you can pull a ton of things morally from the story. It's one of those types. But in context here, what I pulled from it for myself is, you know, you kind of have to own your own shadow. And Robert Johnson wrote a book actually, think it is called Own Your Own Shadow or something like that.

But basically, we do all have elements of our shadow self and instead of running from them, it's important to acknowledge them and maybe see why they're there. And maybe just be okay with them when they pop up and realize we don't need to change them because we all have these these things whether or not we publicly admit it, you know?

Chris Albert 00:58:44 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, it gets back to what you said earlier, owning your own shit. Right? And and it's funny that that short story you mentioned that that's actually where the word scapegoat came from. Well, a very similar story.

I mean, back in ancient Judaism, they would they would take a goat and they draw. They'd write out all their sins and and attach these notes of paper to this goat. And then they cast the goat out of society. Right? And that's how we got the word scapegoat.

And, you know, they send it off into the wild. I'm sure the goat was really happy and just pranced off into the distance, not knowing what the fuck was going on. But, you know, it's it's we we've gotta own our own shit. We can't just put it all onto a scapegoat, and we've got to to put the work in to solve our own issues. And if we don't do that, if we don't own our shortcomings, if we don't understand that just because we have shortcomings doesn't mean that we're we're beyond fixing, then then, you know, I think we're we're not doing the work we need to to get better, and we're not doing the work we need to to to be our best self in in today's world, at least.

Matt Cooper 01:00:10 (link to this point)

Yeah, and also your own human experience is going to be compromised. And, you know, we're ultimately just not here for that long of a time. So like, why would you want a muted experience? Why wouldn't you want to live fullest to yourself? And that doesn't mean you have to go skydiving and do all these things.

It just means showing up as yourself day to day for you and the people around you. You might lose some friends and you might have some people like, you know, do the whole you change routine, but ultimately it's more like you are who you think you are. And if you're doing this inner work, you have to realize that some people in your life are always going to try to pull out that same seat at the table for you. And the onus is on you to tell them like, no, you're not. I'm pulling out this new seat for myself at the table and that doesn't have to threaten or fucking compromise my relationship to you, because you might have stuff you want to work on ultimately and our friendship relationship can ultimately get heightened if we're both supporting each other's growth.

And you'll find pretty quick that there's going to be some people who do support that and maybe who knows, you positively influence somebody else by living as an example in kind of a Kobe Bryant style way, or there's gonna be some people that you turn off and it sucks, but you kind of have to ultimately be okay with that. And ironically, one of my, even though we're talking about life stuff, one of my biggest influences, mentors, the guy who I came up through and was certified by Nick Curson of Speed of Sport, he actually talks about, he jokes, you know why I still hang out with my high school friends? So I can be the nail in life because we're all just going out in life and we get to be the hammer at some level. When you hang around the people, what he's really saying is when you hang around the people who want to pull that old seat out for you at the table, who know you when you were that nerd in high school or who knew you when had this or that downfall happened before your evolution, you kind of still get reminded of that and they still treat you like the nail.

And I'm not telling everybody to abandon their high school friends. I love my high school friends. They're some of my closest friends. But just being able to acknowledge that, so that way you don't fall into these preconditioned patterns and roles