Sam Believes Drank Ayahuasca and His Life Changed Forever | Ep. 60

Introduction to Ayahuasca and Sam Belief 0:00

My dream is to rebrand Colombia from cocaine to ayahuasca. If you mention Colombia, they think about Narcos, Pablo Escobar, and it's unfair. Ayahuaska is a multi-tool. You can use it for healing, you can it use for growth. Once again, if you don't do it right, it can hurt yourself. Sam, is it safe to say that ayhuaska's not going to give you what you want, It's going give what it needs? Absolutely every time. Meet Sam Belief, founder of Lawyra Ayahuasca Retreats in Columbia and host of the Ayahusca podcast.

He's a leading voice in plant medicine, helping thousands find healing through ancient wisdom and modern integration. Stay tuned as we explore his journey and the power of psychedelic transformation. When people do ayahuasca so frequently, does their body get used to it? Yeah, it's actually the opposite. So the more you drink it, the less you need. It doesn't matter what religious belief you're coming from. Ayahuaska can be good for you. Its a topic I can talk about a lot, but ayahuska is not religion.

But all religions, lots of Christians, Buddhists and all of them report a better connection to their version of God. to go to the ayahuasca retreat what type of people do you see that typically make that commitment what we do get is a lot of desperate people sometimes you get couples that come we're going to divorce this is their last resort we get people buying one-way tickets because they're so suicidal we've given medicine to more than 2 000 people now and we don't have anyone who was hurt or left worse than when they came are there different strains and different type Welcome to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast.

I'm your host, Sam Tahata. And as usual, we're bringing experts from all over the world, talking about how we can take control of our health, wellness, beauty, all of that good stuff so we could live a better life. Today, this is one that I am extremely excited for. It's things that have been talking with many people in the World of Functional Medicine, energy medicine, the biohacking world. And it's all about ayahuasca.

How Sam Discovered Ayahuasca 2:00

And I know a lot of you guys have heard about Ayahuaska and you hear some of these stories where sometimes it gets you thinking, is this okay? Is it safe? is it okay with my religion in Today we have an expert who's been doing it for many years. He's the founder of La Huayra Ayahuasca Retreat in Colombia. They have some of the top reviews when it comes to ayahuaca. You can Google them. And today we. Have Sam believe Sam pleasure to have you here on the podcast, brother. Thank you for having me on, Sam.

Yeah. Sam and Sam, right. Or simplicity. Can call me Samir. Sometimes I go with Sammy. But my full name is Samuel. Amazing. So, Sam, ayahuasca, right? It's, you know, I've had the opportunity to talk with you, prior to this podcast, because I have a, internally, a love for what you're doing. My mentor, Dr. Robert Willis was a heart surgeon who left heart surgery because he got sick and tired of dealing with patients going on the surgical table. He actually went to Peru and studied with the natives there and became a shaman.

And he was big into ayahuasca. Unfortunately, Dr Willix passed away right before COVID at the age of 80. But I heard a lot of positive things about it. And I've had my business mentor, Yadik Tadla, he's done ayahuasca multiple times and it's helped them get through depression, suicide and all kinds of other stuff. So I have always wanted to learn more. Today in this podcast, I'm not just a host who's going to interview you. I am a student. What made you even get into this? So, Sam, you have to be careful because out of three people that interview me, one comes to the wire and then drinks Ayahuasca, so it's a pretty good track record.

What got me into Ayhuasco was, as I like to say, a mix of curiosity and quiet desperation. Curiosity is because when ayahuasca is calling you, you get into this echo echo chamber and all you hear around is ayahua ska. Your friends are drinking ayahauska. You see ayawa ska on TV, on YouTube. It just starts to, like when you Google shoes and algorithms start feeding you. But like this, but in real life. So it was it, was a lot of curiosity. I was really against drugs. And back then I thought it. Was a drug I, I didn't know better.

But still the curiosity was strong, so eventually I did it. And the quiet desperation part was I always felt that I'm not as happy as other people around me. I didn't really know why. Now I know, but back then I felt this was maybe that thing that could help me, this strong tool that can actually show me what's causing me to be depressed. not as happy and not being able to enjoy life to the full extent. So at first I would drink ayahuasca rarely, maybe once every six months or so it would help me lift my depression.

And eventually I ended up going to The Jungle, it was also a very strong calling. Synchronicity started happening. We can talk about what it means and how, but it guided me to the jungle where I had more ceremonies. And in my seventh ever ceremony, the medicine just showed me this whole lifestyle. It showed about medicine, about healing, which then led me starting my own retreat.

What Ayahuasca Is and How Itu2019s Prepared 6:00

So I want to be clear that when you say drink ayahuasca, this is that, you know, I got this cup of tea here and I'm just drinking it. This is not something that you just drink. You go through a ceremony. There's a whole I would assume a ritual. But there's Yeah, so if I could get you a cup of ayahuasca and you can sip it like you would rum, I would be extremely impressed with you because it doesn't really taste that well. It's not foul, there's nothing wrong with it, but it is a very specific taste and the more you drink it the less you like it.

Normally the way we take it, of course, it's in the ceremony. There is this long preparation and then when you come to the altar, the shaman looks at you, looks you in your eyes and he pours you a certain amount of the medicine depending on what he sees and gives you the cup and you drink it all at once. You don't want to savor it because it will make you puke faster. Okay, so before we get into all of that, I want to break it down for the listeners and the viewers, right? So ayahuasca, it's plant-based medicine, correct?

Yeah. Ayahuaska is a brew. It's a plant medicine made from two different plants. Okay. The ayhuaska vine itself and DMT shrub. And where do these grow? In the jungle? They grow in Northwestern Amazon. They mostly grow mostly in the jungles, but you can grow them in a warm climate, you could grow it. But their optimal environment is the Jungle. Okay. So they mix those two plants together, they take the vine and they break it up with sticks to loosen it, and then they pick the leaves in certain proportions.

Different tribes have different proportions, then the boil it for days. Sometimes, yeah, it's a ceremony in itself. They put it all together in this big, big jugs and they boil them on the wood fires and the shaman is there present and he's sampling it and there's prayer and ceremony involved in the process from planting it to taking care of it, to cooking it. And then obviously serving it It has to be done with right mindset, right intentions, the right times of the month. So there is this thousand year old tradition of how they've been doing it and all we do is basically plug into this tradition and do it the way they do.

I would assume that depending where you go to do ayahuasca around the world, everyone has a little bit of a different tradition. So they do ayahuasca now in Costa Rica, there's ayhuasco in Mexico, There's even ayuasque in US and other places, but traditionally it comes from Northwest Amazon. So that would be Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. Everything else, if you do it somewhere else it means it's been brought there from another part. And in Colombia alone there's like nine tribes, in Peru there is many other tribes in Brazil as well, and all of them have their own touch on how to do.

There's many different traditions. As I like to say, the good analogy, which is not so good, some people might get offended, but it's like you have red wine, you like tens and tens of different types of grape, nevertheless it is still the grape. So the vine is the same, in some parts they add more stuff into it, like tobacco or other plants. But do I ask if we work with, my Chamonix comes from Inga tribe? and they work with the very pure version of ayahuasca, which is just the leaves and the vine, nothing else.

So when I go to the grocery store and I want to buy apples, there's a selection of 20 different types of apples. There's the green apple, the red apple. The grape apple they call it. All kinds of different apples are there different strains and different type of Ayahuaska? Absolutely. So first of all, there's different kinds of the vine. There's Tigre Waska, Cielo Wasca, Kuri Wasco. For us, it looks the same. They say, well, if you cut it, the color is different. Look at this. It looks kind of like a paw of a tiger and many, many types.

That's just one side of it. The other side is the DMT shrub. There is Chagrapanga, there is chakruna, different types of those species of plants. Then there's the proportion in which they're used. And then there are other plants that sometimes they add into it. So the variety is huge. Nevertheless, what I believe is there's many ways to skin a cat. If you do it traditionally, they know what they're doing and it tends to be a good experience. So as long as they've been doing it for hundreds, thousands of years.

Interesting. So, you know, I would say that based on having conversation with you, there's a right way to do ayahuasca and there is a wrong way that is probably not recommended going that route. Let's talk about the right way, which is what you guys do at La Baena, right? There's a process, there's preparation process. There is a ceremony involved. You have experts that are leading the way. The shamans that there that're educating people throughout the process as well too. So I want to break it down to those details for the listeners and viewers to really understand everything that goes into going through the retreat.

Yeah. So ayahuasca is not a joke. It's a very, very powerful tool. And as I like to say with the tool, let's say you have a hammer. You can take a Hammer and you can build a house. So it's not about the tool, it is about intention or how you use it. So an ayahuasca is a very powerful tool. It is not a hammer, its a chainsaw, an atomic bomb for your mental health. In a traditional setting they live in the jungle, they drink ayhuascas in a jungle. they're with their community before, during and after.

But that's not how we do it as Westerners, you know, people come from busy New York lifestyle and they come to the jungle and the drink ayahuasca and then they have to go back. So we need to understand that and we to guide them through the process, both preparing them physically with a diet, mentally just explaining what can happen because it's part of your culture, it is not part your tradition. So you don't even know what to expect.

Diet, Mental Prep, and Spiritual Readiness 13:00

So and then the same thing. It's like taking off and landing integration. How do you take those lessons? How Do you remember those Lessons? how do You take them with you in your day to day life? you know, completely quit your lifestyle and quit the relationship and your job because of some revelation, right? So what we do, and I really appreciate that you say that we're doing it right, because I would like to believe so. Maybe there's always something we can improve on. But we start a few weeks in advance, a month in advanced when we can.

We give people instruction on how to properly do the diet, how prepare mentally. we give them a course, they watch a four hour course on everything in detail. What does that look like? When you talk about preparing with a diet and preparing mentally, what does it consist of? So ayahuasca process is physical. mental and spiritual process all at once. The beauty of this medicine is it's a very complex, very, complex multi-tool medicine and kind of, you know, it is like a shotgun approach. It works on many different things.

So you need to prepare the body. There are certain things in our food, for example, junk food or fermented food that can interact with the medicine. And if let's say you eat a lot of cheese or you ate a other fermented foods or you eat a lot of salt, then you come to the ceremony and interact with medicine. Maybe you'll get a headache or maybe you will purge a whole lot. So we basically give you instructions on what to eat and what not to Yeah, normally to simplify it, fermented food, overly ripe fruits, milk products, too much salt, to much sugar, junk food alcohol, then you have to stop smoking weed, stop drinking alcohol.

In some places they go to the extreme and they say like, oh, two months, no sex, not salt. What we try to do at Lowire is lower the barriers of entry so that people It's already a difficult experience. It is already something where you need to travel to another country and spend money. What we try to do is make it accessible. So I spoke with experts like pharmacists and people who know the pharmacogenomics of all those compounds and interactions and also experimented on myself and we found a way that you can adjust your diet maybe a week before.

So it's not as extreme and it is not difficult, but those things that are listed generally are the common culprits in the ayahuasca diet. So when you talk about a gestured diet, is it more of an elimination of certain things or are you adding specific, let's say, vegetables or something to help that process? Well, it depends on what your diet is to begin with. Uh, but mostly given, you know, sad, the standard American diet, um, most of people that come to my retreat, they come from North America.

So it's elimination. They probably have to adjust the diet just period. Even if they don't go to the ayahuasca retreat. Absolutely. And it's one of those side effects, as I was joking earlier, a lot of people come and they realize they lose weight because they just stop eating junk. But so yeah, the diet if you already eating clean, if eating real food, there's not much you need to change. Okay. Most of the time. Except for the milk products. I've heard stuff about onions. Is onions something? Yeah, onions, garlic, spices.

The list is big. Right now on the spot I'll probably miss something. It's kind of like listing all 51 states. You always forget one or two. Spices also need to be eliminated. Not all of them, but it's a pretty big list. Pepper. Wow, wow, okay. All right, so you got the preparation and you're going through coaching or mentorship before I even get on the airplane to go to Colombia, right? So you need to prepare physically, right? That's very clear. If you're on antidepressants, you have to quit them.

That takes a long time, at least four weeks. You have prepare with the diet, but then you also have prepared mentally. Because you detox and you are cleaning your body physically. But also you need to clean your mind mentally like look at look, at the environment in which we live these days, you know, social media news, it's bad news bad, news everything negativity everywhere. So you, need, to start cleaning that as well you do like a digital detox where you get off social, media for a while and see.

In a perfect world, yes, but if we can just ask you not to watch news, for example, or because if you, a lot of times you will come to an ayahuasca retreat to purge your own thoughts, to push your traumas, and then you come there and you're worried about I don't know, a tsunami in Indonesia or something like that. If there's nothing you can do about it, why should you know about? Our brains are not designed to worry about 8 billion people. Our brain are designed about 80 people in our tribe. So that's why everything hits us so strongly.

So we just say, you know, avoid toxic people for a while. Avoid social media. You know if you can do a week that's good enough. And start preparing yourself as well. Set an intention. What it is you're coming to heal. Because a lot of times people even report, they start to feel things and they started to change before they even come. The moment they made a decision to come, the start the form this connection with the spirit, which I know sounds ludicrous and bizarre. And I myself come from one of the least religious countries in the world.

I was an engineer by trade and I used to be zero spiritual. What country? Latvia was part of Soviet Union before, so religion was basically prohibited by law. But slowly now I'm kind of opening up to those things and I tried to, in my attempt to make it accessible, I try to keep my language accessible as well, but there's no denying it. It's definitely also a spiritual process. So we spoke about physical, we talked about mental, now we come to the spiritual part. And there's something that happens to you through the ceremonies and through retreat.

You cleanse physically, you cleanse mentally, but you also cleanse spiritually, and that's where the shamans come in. A lot of people when they come to Loire or they see me on the podcasts, they assume I'm the shaman. I am not a shman, even though I've been working with this medicine for five years now. And definitely learning a few things here and there, but I think it takes a very long time. So we have an indigenous shamen, someone whose father was a Shaman, whose fathers father, was the Shamen lineage.

so I completely entrust that part to him because I have seen it myself and I It's an art. So you're talking about the spiritual component of this process. And I wanna touch up on something because I've talked to people here in the US that are very spiritual in their own religion, right? Christians, which I'm a Christian myself, that when you talk about plant-based medicine, they put this huge stop sign in front of this. Ah, no, now that's not godly. You're opening up your floodgates to the devil and this, so I want to, hear your professional opinion on that so we can address that and people can really hear what it is.

Because based off a conversation that you and I had before, it doesn't matter what religious belief you're coming from, ayahuasca can be good for you. Yeah, so first of all, we had everything from Sikhs from India to Hasidic Jews to Muslims. Actually, last week we have a girl from this area and she said that my Maloka is pointing to Hajj. Basically, I've never planned it, but she says it's perfect for their spiritual reasons. That's a very interesting, synchronistic thing. But all religions, lots of Christians, Buddhists, and all of them report a better connection to their version of God.

It's a topic I can talk about a lot, but ayahuasca is not religion.

Religion, Age, and Reverse Tolerance 22:00

If God is internet, ayhuasco is a computer or a tablet. It is just connecting you. it's the means of connecting. You know, if ayahusca, If god is radio waves, Ayahuaska is the radio set, headphones. That's how I see it and that's I've observed it with many people. My previous shaman, which is the uncle of my current shman, was a devout Christian. He would have like saints on his altar. He just believes in Mother Earth. So there's a large variety. And interestingly enough, I've personally had experiences with Christian angels, with Egyptian gods.

I was asking, how is it possible that you see those sort of conflicting views And what I realized or what the medicine showed me is that everything we people believe in, we make a reality. If you believe Jesus, and I was baptized as well, collectively we create that Jesus consciousness that starts to exist. And if you go through those spiritual realms, you can connect to it. You can to other gods that we have made a reality. So that's my worldview right now. I'm hoping I am not offending anyone, but ayahuasca or other psychedelics, they're not a barrier to your version of God.

Even more so, if you go into this rabbit hole of how a lot of religions were created, you always have the sacrament And there's a lot of reasons to believe that the early Christians came from cult of Dionysus, which in itself was a psychedelic cult. So, you know, burning the empty bush in the Bible and the different version of wine, and which was not an alcoholic wine. It's another rabbit hole. There's there are people that wrote books about it. But it does seem to point that all the ancient religions had their start from either a psychedelic induced spiritual states or naturally induced to spiritual States.

Like some people just have higher level of DMT in their brain and they can get high on their own supply, so to speak. They can see visions without even taking ayahuasca because ayhuascas active component is DMD. So, what happens with ayahuasca in that context is, in religion, let's say in Christianity, there were a line of people that had visions, they had connections and they collected it, put it in the book, so they have their own direct experience and then they put to you and you have faith in it.

So they've had their sacraments. as opposed to psychedelics, where you kind of have your sacrament by yourself and then you can choose the methodology. In that case, religion becomes as as a guide, as an app to navigate those spaces, because it is complex. It is it. Is really hard to to. Navigate. Right. Well, what ages have you seen people from how you're young to how old have seen? People do ayahuasca. So when I first went to the jungle, I met kids of shamans, and they can be two, three years old.

They're already drinking the medicine. Two, or three, years? Yeah. And sometimes they drink medicine before they take mother's milk. So the baby's born. The take some ayahuasca, put it on a nipple, then put the babies to it. Yeah, so there is no limit. The oldest person we had at my retreat was, I believe, 76. But we have 10 plus people that are 70 plus. If you're healthy, there's no reason why you shouldn't do it. Regarding kids, what I've observed is they seem to be very a week, they had like good eye contact and they were really cheerful.

So I think I asked the mothers, like, why would you give ayahuasca to your kids? And they say, well, sometimes kids go a little crazy and then you gave them ayahusca and day they get better. Wow. They get connected. Yeah, the get connective. Once again, we're not talking about some fad. they've been doing it for thousands of years. so they probably have a formula that works. When people do ayahuasca so frequently, for years, does their body get used to it? Yeah, it's actually the opposite. So normally you get tolerance without asking you, get something that's called reverse tolerance.

The more you drink it, the less you need. You might need two cups to get connected and then later on you'll need a cup. Sometimes I get half a cap and I go very deep. I think eventually you just smell it. If you do like the same amount as before, you can even go in a deeper Yeah. For example, if you come for an 11 day retreat and you want to do six ceremonies. If I give you the same cup every ceremony, each night you'll go a little deeper and deeper as opposed to for example mushrooms. The first night I gave you three grams, next night all you have to give is six grams for you to feel the And that's the beauty of this medicine because you can really adjust the amount.

It's called titration. You can titrate the mount and find exactly where you want to put the person, how deep. Now you keep us saying deep. Explain to us what deep is. And I want the graphic deep of what is deep in your opinion. This is where we come to the nonverbal territory where it gets really hard to describe with words. But for example, let's say you go so deep, your ego dissolves, you stop existing, and you become that cactus or you everyone around you. It's beyond language where you can't even speak.

You might be extremely connected. you might see yourself from above. The interesting thing about Ayahuasca is that you have had it more than 100 times now and I've never had the same experience twice. it's different every time. In a good way or interesting way I've had difficult experiences as well, but It it kind of tends to give you what you need right now and depending on how your life goes your your needs change but deep is when I hope I described it well enough because I don't know how else to describe it.

It's one day you'll come to the wire. You'll have the medicine and you can tell us when it's fresh in your mind. But I made it my first time. Anything that happens is deep. You know, but what is, because this is one of the things that, you know like I've seen people paint pictures. Or should I say I have seen pictures painted of someone's ayahuasca experience. And you look at the picture and sometimes, I mean initially when I saw, man I don't know if I really want to go there, So what people paint is the visions.

And visions is like 5% of it. Visions is something that people come and they focus on. It's something they really crave, but it's actually mostly almost a side effect. The stuff that happens is much deeper. Its more physical, its more soul-based. You can have zero visions and you'll spend the night and have a deep conversation with ayahuasca when it answers you all of your life questions. And you've never seen a vision but your lives change completely. Or you can go and relive your birth experience and not seen anything but you felt it.

Shamans are really frustrated with the fact that westerners come in search for visions. They've seen a movie about psychedelics, an LSD experience or a mushroom experience. Huesca is not about visions, it's more about all the other stuff that actually makes the difference. But yeah, of course we're filming a documentary now with my good friend Sam Liebman-Shtern. He's an Emmy-nominated documentary director and we are trying to figure out how are we going to show it so that people can understand it.

Deep Experiences, Ego Dissolution, and Purging 31:00

But with the ayahuasca it's about stories. We have a 25 people group and there's people describing their story of healing, their history of connection and it is different every time and its always unique and always very deep emotionally. It's not to offend anyone but it always entertaining in a way that it a full emotional spectrum from positive things to negative things. For example, you're a firefighter in your past life, and maybe you had a traumatic experience. Are you gonna go there, are you going to relieve a moment, maybe it'll purge this energy that's been stored in you body, connected to that moment.

And then afterwards, that traumatic memory will become just a memory. What is purges? So purging is a big part of healing with ayahuasca. Purging the part that people are afraid about the most, which is vomiting, diarrhea, and other forms of purge. It can be screaming, it can talking, shaking, shivering. So there's this amazing book called Body Keeps its Core. For anyone who has trauma, I highly recommend it. But we store our traumas and our negative experiences in our body, semantically. Ayahuasca is one of the easiest ways to release it.

Through the process it just comes up and somehow you can magically take an emotional thing, make it into something physical and then let go of it A lot of times people come to the wire a day then go back home and they work with mushrooms for example and the report that they really missed the purge because stuff comes up and then it settles down again. So you missed that part of releasing. Yeah, so we're going to go in a little bit more detail about that because, you know, the purge part of it is probably one of the things that people question and it probably holds a few people back from actually going through the ceremony because they're too scared or worried about the Purge, I don't think I've ever met anyone in my life who says, oh, I wanna diarrhea my pants, right?

But there's a reason and a purpose behind the purging that I want you to explain of why you purge and how that purgy process is actually a good thing, there is a positive side to it. So first of all, I understand everyone. When I first heard about Ayahuasca I was like, what do you mean? You go into the jungle and you drink this drug and it tastes bad and then you vomit? Like you crazy? Do you pay money for this? What are you talking about? So I understood it completely. I'm not judging anyone who says like I don't want to vomit.

Let me just smoke some DMT and get it directly, which is a totally different experience. Lemme just say it real quick because I came up with this analogy that I really like. DMT is to ayahuasca what cheese is, to pizza. It's a part of it, but it's not the complete thing. So very, very different. But we think about purging, let's say vomiting, the most common one. If you come for one week, a retreat, you will vomit at least once, sometimes a couple times. I rarely vomit now, I'm more of a bottom purger.

Interestingly enough, as an engineer I work with boilers and boilies you need to purge them. You do top purges and bottom perges, so this terminology now migrated into my ayahuasca work. That's how we describe it. So bottom-purge, diarrhea, that's my most common way of purging, but you vomit. Vomiting is the most commonly one. People, when they hear about drinking ayahuasca and vomiting, they think, well, it's just this nasty side effect of this ayuasco. Why don't they, like, synthesize it so you don' t need to vomit?

So not only vomiting is not a side-effect, It's a crucial part of your ayuausca process. It' s really hard to explain if you've never experienced it yourself. Like, what are you talking about? How can you purge out, how can vomit out emotions? We get people sitting there with their buckets and seeing the universe in it, or sometimes they see chunks of stuff come out which shouldn't be there. This is where we really cross that sort of woo-woo threshold and it starts to become a very spiritual process.

where somehow emotions, emotional, spiritual garbage comes up, becomes something in your stomach and then it comes through you and the next day people say, I feel 20 kilos lighter, 10 kilos The example I like to use is from my own. In one of the ceremonies, I'm deep with the medicine, and I really connected. I am seeing visions, feeling it in my body, hearing stuff, then I was thrown into a very traumatic childhood experience of which I haven't thought for years. It happened 20 years ago and completely didn't even remember about it.

I go through that experience and I relive it and feel the nausea building and the negative emotion becomes nauseam. And then I purge and it's actually not unpleasant. Purging in Alaska is actually amazing to such an extent that if you purged yesterday in the next ceremony you'll be People you know start putting fingers in their mouth just to purge just have this experience of release because normally after you Purge is when you guys start to get this beautiful vision and because you you removed something you feel lighter, so I purges and then I Went back to my experience, and I don't remember exactly what happened and The ceremony is over, next day in the word circle.

That's another thing we do at the retreat. We do sharing circles where people talk about their experience. It's a part of the integration process. And I am sharing about that experience and I'm trying to recount the story of this traumatic memory, but it no longer feels traumatic. It's just a memory now. So something was removed, some trigger or some stored pain, it was remove and now it's a just memory. That's very simplified way of trying explain it. But purging is also physical. For example, I remember before I started working with Ayahuasca, as I was telling you earlier, was a bit of a biohacker myself.

I wore an aura ring and I took lots of supplements. And tried different kinds of diets and fasting and listened to bio-hacking podcasts and learned about Ayahusca from them as well. But one of the reasons that brought me into this world of bio hacking was my gut health. I had issues, irritable bowel, diarrhea, constipation, back and forth. I'm gonna go on a tangent, but the way I found out about your podcast is because I interviewed Joe Catahandy for my podcast about gut health and ayahuasca. So then I saw her here and I messaged you, and this is how I am here now.

Oh, Jokrita. Yeah, okay. What I learned is, what happened to me, I started drinking ayahusca, And I didn't even notice, but the problem kind of went away and I just realized like, my God has been doing good. So it was, I came to Ayahuasca for mental health healing, for depression, But I left with other nice side effects and one of them was that. And what Joe Quita describes is, there are compounds in Ayhuascas that scientifically documented that prevent leaky gut. They somehow seal your gut, And also now we know that there's this brain-gut axis, which, you know, sometimes you get stressed and you have diarrhea.

Emotions affect your gut. So if you heal your traumas, all of a sudden your guts start to work better. And there's also serotonin that's being produced in your gut that then affects your mental health. So through purging you remove some of the, you know, bad microbiome. You get that leaky gut to seal a little bit and that that is another use for purge. But purgy is not always just this physical process. Sometimes it's laughing. You know, whatever is repressed comes out in an ayahuasca ceremony. So if you've been angry and you been suppressing it, it will come out.

If you have been sad and been supressing, you'll cry for the entire night. We suppress a lot of emotions and that's what makes you sick. They can't come and they go somewhere in your body, they choose an organ and then you end up with a sickness. So that release comes in many different forms, but of course, the most dreaded ones is the vomiting and diarrhea. Right, interesting, I appreciate you getting into those details about the purging because I think that is definitely something that people question.

Sam, when it comes to people making the commitment to go to the ayahuasca retreat, What type of people do you see that typically make that commitment? I've met people that have gone through a divorce, that go into ayahuasca. I have met that were military first responders that had a lot of PTSD, the post-traumatic stress syndrome. Give us some details for the listeners and the viewers that are listening in right now. Because maybe there's somebody out there that there is something that I haven't mentioned or you haven' talked about that ayahuasca can become a good tool for them to get past whatever they got going on.

Yeah. So, unfortunately, the reality in the industry right now is because it is a big industry that's growing, is that rich people drink ayahuasca. Why is it that? Because most of the places are prohibitively priced. That's kind of where... How much does it cost? What is the price? I mean, The average ayahuska retreat starts from three and a half thousand dollars and up. It is kind expensive. At the moment our retreats are below $1000 and it's not because we would not like to charge more but that's one of the things that I try and do as I described by lowering the barrier to entry and the cost is one That's without the flight and all that other travel expenses.

That includes the medicine, the pickup from the city, accommodation and food. But that's the biggest misconception. So people think that to drink ayahuasca you need to be number one spiritual, you to need be rich, to have cotton pants and copper glass and crystals and stuff like that. What we try to do and what we see right now at Loire is that we have your average Joe, the carpenter, Uber driver, doctor, lawyer, every walks of life. We have veterans, Royal Marines, police people, firefighters, first responders.

And what we're seeing is we get Republicans and Democrats and people from all over the world. I saw you have this nice map of US with pins.

Who Comes to Retreats and Relationship Healing 43:00

Have a map over world and it's really surprising. We get people form places like Afghanistan or Korea, you know, like very diverse. So what I would like to see and what would I want the World to understand that It's like saying penicillin is only for white people. You know, it's, like, this is medicine. It is for everyone. And we need to figure out how to make it accessible and how do it properly. Because it is this amazing tool that just jumpstarts healing process for a lot of people But yeah, what we definitely see is right now, it's not really there yet.

Less than half percent of the world has actually tried ayahuasca. So what do we get is a lot of desperate people. We get people with depression. Sometimes you get couples that come that are going to divorce and this is their last resort. You get the people buying a one-way ticket because they're so suicidal. They say, if this doesn't work, I'm just going end it. And they go back happy. So is that a common thing, like couples doing it together, or is it recommended for you to do it on your own? So I've seen both couples doing it separately.

First the husband comes, then he sends the wife or vice versa. Sometimes a wife sends her husband first to test the grounds and then she comes later. Let him try first. Yeah, sometimes they come together whichever way it seems to work. Most of the time it results in them talking it out and actually getting deeper and deeper connection. And then the couple heals. Sometimes, I'm not going to lie, they realize that it's just not working and they need to move on, but it is a right decision and it better for them long term.

So, what I would say in a perfect world, do it together and do separately, in whichever order, because if your main issue is the relationship, it will be hard for you to be able to share, for example, next to your partner about your relationship. So for that you come alone and then you can come together in the perfect world. But what I like to say is the couples that drink Ayahuasca together stay together. Because if you for example start drinking Ayhuasco once a year and you start this amazing spiritual healing and growth journey and your wife doesn't, eventually you will grow away from her.

because you will just become this next version of you and all of a sudden you'll feel like you're not in the same level anymore. So it is important that you grow together. That brings me to the next topic. I have a business colleague that we were in Dallas having breakfast together, he's a big player in that same industry that I'm in, and we're talking about Ayahuasca. And I actually brought up, I said, you know what? I'm gonna be interviewing Sam, who has the ayahuasca retreat in Colombia. And he's tried the DMT, he has done a bunch of different things.

He's into biohacking. You know, it tells me, Sam. I am too scared to try the Ayahuaska. The reason why I was scared is that I had a friend of mine, this is him telling me. A friend who had this unbelievable business drive And he went and did the ayahuasca ceremony and he came back and no longer had that drive. For him it wasn't about business anymore, it was just about his family. And it actually created some other issues with some investors and stuff that put money into his business. BC no long had had business drive, so comment on that.

If someone is scared because they might lose their drive You know, that could be an issue, right? So if you are in the business because of the drive and let's say you've been a little boy and you have been traumatized and feel like you're not enough and that's your shadow. now you're trying to as you grow up you try to recompensate and you are so driven you driving yourself into the ground because you need to prove to everyone that you the best and if I'm not saying that's the case with every person but if let's say that is the cases of his drive that it's been based on something dark and suppressed within him Ayahuasca will show him like you don't need be it you can just love yourself and then most likely he will lower the revs.

If he was in the business and he is driven because he wants to make the world a better place, it's going to give him even more drive. So if the intentions are right, if drive comes from the right place it is not going away. But a lot of people, there is this common joke now that board of directors they don't want to send their CEOs to drink ayahuasca, they prevent them from doing it. because they're afraid they are going to lose the drive, they gonna quit. But then most likely it's because the businesses don't have purpose.

They don´t fulfill those CEOs, otherwise why would they quit? So it´s same with relationships, right? If the relationship has potential and if it can work and it comes from the right place, I was going show you how to heal that relationship. But if it's not going to work, it is going show you that it stands for a trend. And same thing with the career. But we have to be careful to understand what is. Let's say somebody went to South America and they drink ayahuasca and the quit their job and lost their drive.

What is the other option? Maybe they would keep going at it for another year and then they will get burned out, maybe they'll kill themselves. Right. So what is what? Is the alternative? But I say if you're if your business is conscious, if it's grounded in something else, that's not just ego. It's not going to get worse, it's only going get better. The ayahuasca will give you creativity on how to solve that. Ayahuaskas will gives you patience, ayhuasquas give mental strength, positivity and it will also give more strength to run your business.

Running an ayuasque retreat and a podcast and having three young children like I am is actually a very difficult task and I believe I would have burnt out from now if I wasn't going back to the medicine and just getting that boost. Yeah, Sam, is it safe to say that ayahuasca is not going to give you what you want. It's going Absolutely every time. That's something we tell people. You know, we say, don't allow your intention to become your expectation. Whatever it is you expect, you're not going to get it, but you are going get so much more.

Somehow, I don´t know whether it's your subconscious or plant spirit. I do not know how it works, somehow it will go into you and find what's the most pending issue for you right now. And that's what it´s going focus on. But we get people coming with a variety of issues and they all seem to get the outcome that's the most favorable. Yeah, so I just want to, you know, right now it sounds like, oh, this is this magic bullet, Right? You come to the wire, your drink, I'll ask all your problems go away.

I also want be completely frank and it's not easy. Not only you have to do the diet and come and do medicine, it is a difficult process. Sometimes difficult things come up. The healing process is not easy. It's not up up, up it's 10 steps forward, 5 steps back. 99 steps forward, 98 steps back. It is a lot of work that you have to do. Ayahuasca will absolutely open doors for you to a do a lotta healing, but you are the one that will have walk the walk and do the work. How many days is the retreat?

So we have 4 day retreats, 1 week retreat, 11 day and 18 day. Are you doing ayahuasca every day? No. 4-day retreat is a long weekend retreat. There's 2 ceremonies. 1-week retreat has 4 ceremonies, that's the one that is $900 right now. And 11- day is 6 ceremonies and the 18- is 10 ceremonies So for all the first timers I recommend do one week minimum because the 1st few ceremonies ayahuasca will just kind of scan your body and there will be a lot of purging because you know there's a big accumulation and after that you start getting these mind blowing experiences.

If you're coming for a serious issue like addiction I say go for longer, 11 days, 18 days. if you've done ayahuausca before and you just want a refresher a couple times a year and want to come for long weekend then do the 4 day retreat. Interesting, interesting. So for example, in your case, you're the first timer, I would say come for one week. We do the whole thing to the preparation. Because sometimes I will say, if I were to which camera look into this one. If I want to describe, like the connection as a graph.

This is first ceremony. There's a second ceremony, this is third ceremony and this fourth ceremony Because it builds up and kind of accumulates, you get deeper and deeper. So sometimes after a weekend retreat, if it's all first timers, we have few people that are maybe they want to stay a little longer because they feel like they scratched the surface, but it didn't entirely go there with one week. It's like 99.9% of people are really satisfied. Wow. Sam. I've heard people, when they've done ayahuasca, they say, I had an out-of-body experience.

Business Drive, Expectations, and Retreat Lengths 53:00

In your professional experience, doing what you do, define what an outer body experience is. I've personally never had one. I have interviewed people who had the one I actually my Shaman have a podcast episode where I went where we interviewed my shaman and he says one time he was stuck out of his body and had to be brought brought back. There's many different ways of when I was outside of his body. Yeah, like he so left his buddy and he was just looking at himself. Oh my god. And then another shaman brought him back.

That's why you need a shman. So that's what you don't drink ayahuasca in your background. Once again, it's an extremely powerful tool. If you done do it right, you can hurt yourself. And one of the ways is, you know, your soul left your body and it stayed there and then you die. That's, I mean, most of sort of horror stories with ayahuasca where people die generally tend to mixing it with antidepressants, but there are risks. It has to be done. You work in the medical field. you wouldn't do a medical procedure without a doctor.

it's the same thing. But going back to our out of body experiences. Yeah, people describe it when they just zoom out and they see stuff or sometimes their soul goes flying and goes to different places, places where they used to live or meeting people. Um, I mean, it sounds extremely interesting. I'm very grounded in my body. My soul never left it, but you know, if it would happen, i'm completely convinced that my Shaman would know it and he would make sure it's all good and safe. So this was just a few days ago.

I was, who was I talking? A buddy of mine, he sent me a video on Instagram, and it was related to Ayahuasca. And it talking about the out of body experience, but it related connecting to the universe, where it's just like, the way they explained it, was it, the guy was saying that allowed him to really connect to consciousness because what ended up happening when, when he had that experience where it's just like, like there was nothing to worry about. It was like nothing there. The only thing that you could connect too is that consciousness connected to the universe.

When he came back, supposedly the connection to the universe was greater, that his connection, to consciousness was great and that he was able to receive more downloads from the Universe. Have you heard of anything like that? Yeah, so I see what you're talking about now. So we have a different terminology. That's what I would call an ego dissolution. It's, for example, one of the very common realizations with ayahuasca is that we're all connected. Like, somehow or other, you know, we just met, but we are basically the same thing.

You, me, that cactus. I know this is not a real cactus, if it was a really one, then we were all connect. If you look at life on Earth, and if you really zoom out, We're just like a thin layer of slime around this rock flying through the space. It's all life. it all comes from the same root. You know, we eat plants and then we grow and we die. Plants eat us. We are literally one. So it's not even that crazy to assume. But we have this ego that tells you that you are you and I'm me and we're separate things.

And ego is not always a bad thing. A lot of times it allows us to be us and do what we need to do. When ego dissolves, all of a sudden you stop feeling that separation and you feel connected with the source. That brings us deeper topics which I am not too knowledgeable about. You know, what happens when we die? Why are we here for? And the only thing I can tell you is I have, you know anywhere between 50 and 100 people coming to me every month having their ayahuasca experiences. Sometimes they go to those places And they come and tell me in the word circle that like, yeah, I just realized that we're just souls having this human experience.

We're part of the infinite consciousness and we break away to have that experiences and to learn. And then we go back. Sometimes people describe it as there's an alien ship and then come here and would do something. Then we come back in many different versions and many words. They seem to describe this paradigm where we were just the souls that are part So it's like, if God is a tree, we could be leaves on the tree. So we're God ourselves. We're part of it. And I'm still questioning all those assumptions.

I am still learning. My worldview is still forming. Maybe five years from now I'll tell you a different thing, but that's what I believe now. And I think what happens is when your ego dissolves, all of a sudden you're like, I'm not just a leaf, i'm actually the full tree. And maybe even the ground on which the tree grows and maybe the mycelium that connects the other trees. So, that's another deep rabbit hole. Ayahuasca is a multi-tool. You can use it for healing, you can also use for growth, for spiritual exploration.

At Lowire we focus on healing. Like you come here, let's heal first. Let's not be depressed. let us not have physical health issues. Then we start looking into growth and spiritual exploration because honestly I tend to lose interest in topics in about three years. I started a business three years later. I'm like not ready for the next one. This one, I think there is no limit. Like literally you can just keep going deeper and deeper. So there's so many revitals we can go on and things that you could learn from Ayahuasca.

But I would say main use that I see, so I say Ayahusca is almost for everyone. It's not for every one but it's like for 95% of people they could eventually engage with this medicine. They can heal the world needs healing. We have mental health crisis happening now 25% of Americans are depressed and other 10% anxious this medicine can help you with that Let's start with healing once everyone starts healing and maybe we have a functioning society that we can go back to those medicines and now we Can do spiritual exploration we could go deeper and start asking questions.

Why are we here? But first we need to You know be sane Right. Right, Sam. You earlier you mentioned you wouldn't do a medical procedure without having a doctor. Yeah, right. I wouldn' go skydiving for the first time without someone jumping out that airplane with me. But part of that I know if I do go skydiving, I'm signing a waiver that basically says that I could potentially die, right? Let's talk about some of the side effects that can happen, some the negative outcomes that people have to take in consideration, and why is it so important to be with that, you know, if you do a medical procedure with a doctor, or if we're jumping out of an airplane with the person connected to the parachute with you, in this sense, the shaman.

Like, let's talk about what can happen. And you mentioned earlier, like, you can leave your body and never come back, right? So let' s talk abut that. So first of all, there are risks for sure, especially contraindications with different medications. And that's that why we need to instruct you and you need follow the instructions. We can tell people anything, but they can rely on their update form. So we do get people to sign the waiver, which says so there's certain people that should not do Iowa.

Yeah. They're not candidates. If you have schizophrenia or if you're having schizophrenia in your family, not recommended. The best way to explain it from the mental health point of view, there are mental issues that are described by too much order. Like depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, it's like repeating cycles. Then ayahuasca comes in and breaks that cycle and you can heal. And there are mental health conditions that are characterized by too much chaos, like schizophrenia, bipolar.

Safety, Shamans, and Contraindications 1:02:00

There is more, but your brain is already like all over the place. So you don't want to introduce psychedelics to make it even more chaotic. If you're schizophrenic, if you are bipolar, stay away. But if your depressed, anxious, then it can work for you. If you're taking antidepressants, you need to quit four weeks in advance because there are interactions and you can get serotonin syndrome. If your blood pressure is high, I ask you to raise your pressure a little bit more and also get hurt. The reality is if I thought ayahuasca was not safe, I wouldn't be running a retreat and sort of placing all my bets on it.

I know it is safe because I have been working with it for many years now and there are traditions that have worked with for thousands of years. There are dangers. So we just have to be careful. But I believe if done right, it's very, very safe. I drink it myself, my wife drinks the medicine. And we've given medicine to more than 2,000 people now. We don't have anyone who was hurt or left worse than when they came. However, yeah, I've heard the stories of people dying somewhere in the jungle. I have heard stories about people going crazy.

There is at least one or two on the news every year. The reality though is if somebody dies on Ayahuasca, it's on news the next day. But there's like 10,000 people dying in the hospital every day and that's fine. Like there was a lady that died in Colombia actually last year. Everyone sent me that post, like lady died and some other retreat. And I was like, well, she was 70 plus she could just you can die eating McDonald's as well. So it's, there is also we need to be realistic where there are also a bit of let's say push against that medicine becoming the mainstream because there's a very big pharmaceutical industry that there are trillions of dollars in it and instead of paying hundred dollars a month for antidepressants you take ayahuasca once and all of a sudden you don't need them anymore.

It goes against the grain. So I can also understand that there is this side of it. But yeah, we do have to be careful. We do to have a shaman. we have be a part of the tradition. There is these main three things that you need to focus on. For example, if you come to Loire, I have it covered. But number one, your shaman has to be a real shman because somebody can wear nice crown of feathers like in this statue, wear lots of beads. They might even be indigenous, but they're not a sheman. It's like if you wear a stethoscope and you were white coat doesn't make you a doctor.

And I want to put emphasis on that. We're going to get the other two in a second because since the biohacking world has grown tremendously, Now all of a sudden you see a lot of people that are these. biohackers, they're shamans, their healers their guiders. And you know, I go to some of these conferences and people put on the costume is what I call it. You know exactly how you said the beads, the flowy pants and all of this stuff. In all a sudden you really start engaging and having conversations with those like, does this person even know what the heck they are even talking about?

You now? So how do you figure out if they a real shaman? Is there like a certification, diploma? How do figure that out? When there is a profit, people will jump through all kinds of hoops to make the money. So there's a lot of people pretending they're shamans. How do you know? Well, the best way is referrals. Somebody told you or you known them or their family. In case of Loire, I did the work. I went to the jungle, found a good shaman, tested many, and found the one that works for me. vetted, now I can trust him to give medicine to my people.

But apart from that, it's always a risk. In Colombia specifically, they're very good at it because ayahuasca is legal, but it is only legal if a shaman gives it to you and a Shaman that comes from an indigenous community that has a paper from another shman and permit from his indigenous council. So it's like, Oh, by the way, he has this, is a real one. And even that, I mean, there's, you know, corruption and somebody might buy something. The best way is to, to test them in action. But it does involve some risk.

So your shaman has to be a rule shamen gold standard. If it comes, if it says indigenous person comes from a lineage. Next thing is your ayahuasca needs to be real ayuasco. Did he buy it on eBay or did he actually grow it and cook it himself? Does he know everything that's been added to it? Because there's a lot of danger with Westerners come for visions, ayahuasca is not about visions. Shamans get frustrated when a westerner says, well, your medicine doesn't work because they just don't see what the real ayahusca should do.

So they start adding other plants like the one they make scapolamine from, the borrachero, so that you get visions 100% of the time. But it's no longer ayahuasca and if you don't know that it was added there This is where it starts to become dangerous because this is a much more dangerous plant medicine even though it has its own uses and the third thing is the preparation We will make sure we'll give you the instructions, but you have to follow the instruction. What if somebody says like, either they don't know what they're talking about, I'm going to still take my antidepressants because I don' want to feel bad.

They can't drink ayahuasca and then they get a heart attack. It is a possibility. Thanks God never happened to us, But this is why we do have a waiver, as you mentioned, when somebody said like well, make Sure that I Don't take antedepressants. So if something does happen to them, we can at least test them and find out. But I hope that never happens. We do have a doctor on staff, we do first aid training and everything we can do and there's a hospital eight minutes away, but there are risks to everything.

Of course. Do you ever see ayahuasca becoming legal here in the United States? I think so you know there's um right now there is uh rfk jr like when when trump was elected and i don't want to make it a political i have no opinion i'm not even actually that's one of my questions what do you think about the make america healthy again movement So I don't care which party he belongs to, but I really appreciate this guy. I think he's really cool. So when he knew he was going to become this health, whatever the title was, he made a post on Twitter and it was like, we're going unlawful persuasion of following things and the first thing on his list was psychedelics because his son had an amazing experience with ayahuasca I believe it helped him overcome depression so he believes in psychedelic so I do believe that it is a possibility it will become legal However, I'm really afraid of it for the same reason as you say.

Where are you going to get 10,000 Shamans? Where you gonna get all this Ayahuasca with this sudden influx and demand? So I think there will be a lot of, you know, bad actors if it were to happen. And that's like anything, it starts growing. I would like to say if ayahuasca ever becomes legal in the US and it's readily available, I just really hope, hope hope that they will not try and do what they always try to do, which is separate the tree from its roots and be like, Oh, let's take this ayahuasca, put it in a pill, make this profitable and very easy, smooth going.

It has to stay connected to its root. Ayahuaska without the tradition and without shamanism, that's no longer ayhuaska. That's some weird Frankenstein monster. So that is why you need to ground yourself in traditions. Why do we always, as westerners, we did it to coca, to cacao, tobacco, everywhere we come we take those amazing plant medicines and we pervert them and make them from healing to killing. You know, tobacco was used traditionally for thousands of years. It's an amazing medicine connects you to your ancestors.

Even the marijuana, same thing. Yeah, we got some weird hybrid, We added some stuff to it, to put it in a cigarette. Now instead of healing you, it gives you lung cancer. We did it with cacao. Cacao, amazing medicine. I'm actually now learning how to work with it. Opens your heart, gets you deeper into meditation, super healthy. We did it with coca. Coca, amazing medicine once again, gives you energy, it's super food. It's a very mild stimulant. You know, people that built Machu Picchu were powered by this medicine.

Now we made cocaine out of it, now it is killing people. My dream is to rebrand Columbia from cocaine to ayahuasca. It's been demonized. Coca and ayhuasco actually grow in the same jungle. Coco is an amazing plant. I think eventually we'll learn how to use it properly instead of making cocaine out of it. tragedy, historical tragedy that this beautiful country of Colombia, because of the cocaine, which the demand was driven from the West,

Colombia, Tradition, and Loire Retreats 1:12:00

it got perverted and pushed into this. Now people, if you mentioned Colombia they think about Narcos, Pablo Escobar, and it's unfair. It's a beautiful country, super diverse, it has all those medicines, all these traditions, and they kept those traditions alive. And we are now invited and welcomed to be part of the tradition and heal from it. They went through persecution trying to keep those tradition alive, like they've been killed and imprisoned for it, Now the times have changed and they don't hold a grudge.

The medicines are coming out of the jungles, out the forests, the mountains, and are going back to the cities to heal the world that is becoming increasingly more sick. Do you know if the Native Americans here do ayahuasca? I've heard about Native Americans actually traveling to Colombia. There was the first Shaman with whom I ever drank medicine. He told us that he had some Lakota people that came and drank ayahuasca because they lost their own medicines. But Native American have their medicines, you know, the cacti.

Interestingly enough, your studio full of ccti, maybe a synchronicity. But, you know, peyote, San Pedro, tobacco is also their medicine. So they lost some of it, but I think they're recovering it now. There are beautiful medicines in the north. They're beautiful medicine in south. Their ayahuasca is just tip of the iceberg. In Colombia alone, there's like 10 different amazing psychedelics. Still have their own traditions. um and uh but i believe that once the the bird leaves the nest it will the message will spread and people will hopefully use use the plant medicines as intended and maybe we'll heal as a society and Maybe we will see another way of living life where we are driven by the by, the right things and not by Just profit motives Yeah, yeah sam there's um If not hundreds of Ayahuasca retreat centers, probably even more, what sets you guys apart from everybody else?

I think there is thousands of ayahuasca centers now, especially in Peru and Costa Rica. What sets us apart is I've never been to an ayuasco retreat myself. So the way we created Loire was grounding myself in the tradition of the tribe that I always work with, with my shaman, and just creating an experience that i myself would want to experience. And as I say, lowering barriers of entry. So we're in Colombian countryside. We're surrounded by nature. But we would not. And we are not in the jungle.

You're not going to have to be going deep in jungle and being bitten by mosquitoes and getting malaria and all that stuff. Our price is reasonable. I mean, we not a nonprofit. we need money. It is a business. Have 35 employees. They all need to paid. but for that in return you get an amazing experience. But yeah, we keep the prices low, keep it accessible from the point of view of how we explain things, how don't push people away because we require everyone to be a certain kind of person. Um, and, uh, we really focus on, on the group, under group dynamic, there's this beautiful dynamic in which.

People come and they share and the bond and there all vulnerable together. They form friendships, as I like to say, the best way to make friends as an adult is to come to an iOS retreat. There's something magical about it. When it unlocks something in you and you get this, you access this vulnerability that makes people bond. So it's those things. It's just a beautiful place. And of course, I'm biased. But what is not biased is reviews. Like we're approaching six hundred five star reviews on Google.

Amazing. So yeah, the good work speaks for itself. I have nothing against the other retreats. There are many, many good ones. Do you ever collaborate with some of the other founders? There are some founders in Colombia that I know personally and we talk a lot about the medicine, we solve issues together. Sometimes I invite them to my podcast. We shouldn't fight, We should stay together because there's much more bad things than let's say fighting on like whose tradition is better. It is still red wine as the analogy I gave you.

Even maybe not 100% optimal Ayahuasca experience, but an 80% Ayahua experience will still be life-changing. Right. Sam, just one. What is the most compelling success story that you have seen since you've been doing what you been doin' at your retreat? What's that success? It's so hard to choose one because I'm telling you, it's couples going to divorce and not divorcing, still being together. More than 10 people going, buying a one-way ticket and then buying your return ticket. But like a very vanilla, but still a repetitive story is somebody comes out of curiosity or whatever reason, then they leave and they message me a year later.

All of a sudden. their work life improved, their mental health improved their relationship improved. They ran a marathon, they wrote a book, something shifted in them and their life just went uphill. Those are people that generally are the ones that took the process seriously and did the homework. There's many crazy healing stories I can tell you about but those are the ones I want to focus on. An average person that is maybe a little bit stuck in their life and they just need something stronger to break loose and then start building and growing.

That's gotta be extremely rewarding to be able to witness that and be a part of it. It absolutely is, it is also uncomfortable sometimes. I don't know, I take criticism very easily but sometimes if somebody comes back to the wire and they tell me how it changed their life or how to change their wife or help them, they hold me by the hands, look me in the eyes and say thank you so much. It just feels so uncomfortable. But you know what man, one thing I've learned is that growth comes with being uncomfortable So there's just more growth for you, and with what you're doing and healing people and helping people.

Sam, as we wrap up here, I know for a fact that there is someone listening to the podcast. And they're almost ready to take that leap to go visit you there in Columbia. You know, there might be one thing holding them back, but they resonate with the message on today's podcast. What is that one? Thing you can leave that person with? So. Ayahuasca is not end all, be all. It's when you're ready for it, you ready, for if you are struggling mentally, if your stuck, If you tried everything and nothing worked.

Yeah, just make a leap. Come over, give it a try. I've never seen anyone regret coming to drink ayahuaska. Amazing. And just one more thing. If you can't come or, you know, your in a different stage of your life, just seek help. Definitely if you're really in the bad place. I'm only now learning this lesson myself that you could actually ask for help and a lot of times you'll be surprised that people respond, family members, friends. Yeah, Just ask help Awesome. Sam, where do people find you? The easiest way is to...

I'll say it this way. If you are not sure about Ayahuasca yet and you want to learn more about it and like podcasts because you're listening to this one, the easiest ways to find me is ayahuascapodcast.com There are interviews with experts so you can learn everything about Ayahuasca. If you listen to all the episodes, you'll know more about ayahuascar than me. Because you know, there's just so much wisdom there. if you're ready to come, if Google Ayahusca in Colombia, our website is still Ayawascan Colombia or go to lawire.com which is L.A.

W. A. Y. R. a. Dot com. And just find us as Loira on Instagram Loir retreat. Loire ayahuasca YouTube Facebook everywhere Loiro. Amazing. Brother it was a pleasure having you on the podcast. I appreciate it. This was the conversation that was much needed. Very healthy point of view. Thank you so much Sam for having me. It's been a pressure. Really love your your space and your team and I. Appreciate the work you're doing. Guys, as you guys heard Sam say here, if you need help and you can't make it out to the ayahuasca retreat, you're not alone.

There's people out there to be able to help you. You just have to reach out. you have ask. But there's a lot of help out here. Again, You're Not Alone. This is something that is a healing process. Ayahuaska is tool. It's not a toy. it's no a joke. But what Sam is doing over there in Columbia, it's real, right? I've met people myself, people that are very close to me that have gone through these processes and they've healed tremendously from some very bad trauma, from childhood trauma. This is something that if you feel you need it, seek the next step.

I'm putting all the links down here below so you can follow. You can learn more. Make sure you share this podcast. do all the good stuff, subscribe, like, share, all that stuff. And we'll see you for the next one.