Zappy: I spent most of my life doing what society told me to do if I wanted to be fulfilled. But sometime in 2011, I found myself in a spiritual midlife crisis. I was trying to find something that could fulfil me, when I thought back to my psychedelic experience of trying mescaline (a natural hallucinogen found in cacti) as a teenager. My first experience wasn’t a positive one, but I decided to try it again, this time with the intent of expanding my consciousness. I wanted to go into the jungles of Peru and try out ayahuasca, so I told a friend who knew Michelle Rodriguez, and we decided to invite her along. She agreed to come and let us film it, which we later turned into a documentary called The Reality of Truth.So we got a doctor on board, took a trip to Peru, and first did San Pedro, which is a hallucinogenic cactus, and ayahuasca with a shaman a few days later. The experience was life transforming, especially for Michelle. It helped her sort through all the overwhelming emotions she’d felt after her co-star Paul Walker died, and seeing her evolve was beautiful. I went back and told all my friends who had mental health and addiction issues that they had to try it, but they were hesitant.
Like when you go to a hotel and ask the concierge, and they make recommendations based on whether you want dinner, or wine or good music. I talk to people about what their intent is, what their trauma is, and what they’re trying to accomplish, and then I can recommend what psychedelic would work for them.So what does this job entail? How do you do these psychedelic treatments?Soon I realised that because of all my reading, research, and personal experiences doing these psychedelics, I could pinpoint whether someone needed ketamine or plant medicine like ayahuasca or psilocybin mushrooms or ibogaine, a powerful African root. And I realised at that point, that I was kind of like a psychedelic concierge.
To train to become a psychedelic concierge, I had to apprentice with a lot of shamans, learn the full effects of the plant medicine or ketamine by experiencing it, go to indigenous places and try everything from ayahuasca to ibogaine. Essentially, what I do is act as a procurer as well as a trip sitter, along with the shaman. It’s important to have that shaman, who has had a multigenerational experience with plant medicine. They have a reverence for it, which makes the experience transcendental. If you just order psychedelics online and think you’re gonna listen to cool music and trip, you’re missing out on the lineage and oral tradition that comes with them, and are probably not going to get what you seek out of a psychedelic.
We’ve done this even with Silicon Valley executives, and seen it do wonders for productivity. We’re kind of creating this modern day shaman with a network of medical professionals who are also trip guides.Some corporate companies organise nature retreats for a week as a team building exercise. With ketatation, you can develop a deeper connection with your co-workers in an hour.
If I feel someone has grown out of touch with nature, and needs it to learn to resist the things they can’t in life, I recommend San Pedro. It instantly brings you closer to nature and helps you break out of debilitating patterns.When a celebrity who had issues with her mother came to me, I realised what she needed was this comforting hug. For her, I recommended ayahuasca, because it’s a plant that has this feminine energy, the energy of creation. It made her understand herself as well as what her mother was going through, and allowed her to find a sense of forgiveness.In another case, I treated a top rapper who had anxiety. They had a constant stream of consciousness flowing through them, and needed something to cut out the noise. So I started them off with ketamine.
Often people can’t meditate because they’re ruminating in their trauma. Ketamine has the ability to take the weight off of that trauma, and give you this transcendental experience. You look at yourself with a third person perspective, and realise you don’t need to be carrying so much of the trauma. Once this rapper was done with their ketamine treatment, I recommended they microdose on psilocybin mushrooms. By microdosing, they were able to carry on with their life, but with this bubbling joy inside them. It has the potential to wipe out all antidepressants. Once they did these therapies, they could still go to work, be creative and not hold on to the raw trauma and noise they had in their brain.When you take ketamine, about five minutes into your session, all the chatter in your brain fades away, and you’re sitting there in this present moment awareness with no future or past.
For Lamar Odom, who had a substance abuse issue, I created a formula of ketamine, plant medicine with a daily practice for a conscious transformation. I started him off with ketamine because he had never taken psychedelics. He had been told that he would be shot or arrested if he did psychedelics as a Black American. But based on his addiction profile and African American background, I asked him to try ibogaine, and we went down to Mexico with a team of medical professionals and a shaman. 36 hours after he did it, he was transformed. He lost his fear of death and was ready to return to playing pro basketball. He reconnected with his ex-wife and kids, and even brought his father who was a methadone addict, to try ketamine therapy.Ayahuasca is the mother who will hold you and hug you, San Pedro is the stern father who shows you what to do, but ibogaine is the angry grandfather who’ll shake you up and show you why you’re messed up.
When I did ayahuasca in the jungles of Peru, I dropped into this complete present moment awareness, and felt like God was sitting with me. God asked me, “Do you know how you’re breathing? Do you know how your hair grows?” I said no. Then God replied, “Well if you don’t know how you’re doing these things, but need to do so to live, why do you think you always need to be in control of things?” It was the most freeing moment of my life. I realised that I had to treat life like a movie I was watching. I burst out laughing because I finally understood the cosmic joke of the universe.Follow Shamani on Instagram.