148 Amanita Dreamer === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the tra of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. Today we're talking about a subject that plagues so many people, especially women, and it's the subject of anxiety, the deep ese that lives in our bodies that can tell us a lot about the world and the way that we're living in it, and what. Is wanting to reveal more. It's a feeling that I also had, I believe it started for me chronically around the age of 12. It's when I began getting chronic hives and having something called chronic angio edema, which was where my face would swell. I would look like I just get out of a boxing match With Rocky Balboa, it was so disabling, it was. So hard for me at that age in particular, to cope with this disfiguration that would happen on a very, very regular basis. In fact, it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I began to get the hives and the angio edema under control. And when I found out actually, or I was diagnosed with Attention deficit Disorder, I started to look more deeply into trauma and its impact on children. I came from a family that I would say suffered from a lot of, well, what most am American families suffer from, which is like, deep disconnection. My dad was someone who worked every day. I mean, it was very common to get up and he was already gone to work, and sometimes I would never see him even for dinner at night because as a vascular surgeon, he was always on call. Worked very, very hard and I know that it took a very big toll on my mother and on the parenting dynamics in the house. In addition to that, you know, there was alcoholism. Other relational situations that really kept us from being able to see each other clearly and to find harmony in our homes. When you don't have harmony in your home, you don't have harmony. In the world and the world at large can already be a very disorienting place. And so is it any wonder with everything that goes on in our world that so many people suffer from anxiety? And instead of looking at what's wrong with the culture, we tend to internalize it and ask ourselves, What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? And. Most of you know who listen to this podcast regularly. I talk about the fact that we live in the upside down, and as we begin the unbecoming process, only then is when we start revealing feeling and healing our way back to wholeness. Because these fragmented parts of ourselves are always trying to get us to remember the truth of who we are. And all of these ailments and diseases and chronic situations are an invitation to lean in. Instead of continuing to seek outside of ourselves, I also think that part of the upside down is being convinced or conditioned to believe that there are certain things that are bad and that we should stay away from, and other things that are good and are perfectly acceptable, such as alcohol, pills, prescription drugs, steroids, you name it. And yet all of these prescription drugs hold a component of the natural world that has been then been co-opted, patented, um, and provided to the general public. And don't even get me into insurance and healthcare in our very, very broken system. But I also recognize. As the daughter of a vascular surgeon, there are so many necessary life saving, good features about our medical system. I think the problem is that when we don't understand that we have additional alternatives, options, and healing modalities available to us. So this brings me to our conversation today, which is, Healing from anxiety and some of the natural remedies that are available to us in order to address that. So today, I'm so pleased to introduce you to Amanita dreamer, who's working to educate others about the power of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom, which can help many and does help thousands of people with panic and anxiety. She says that this mushroom saved her life after withdrawing from prescribed benzodiazepines, and she went on to learn the deeper power. In what the mushroom holds. She learned about time, stress, and our detachment from land and our ancestors, which she believes has caused a massive crisis of anxiety and a prevalence of mental illness that runs rampant in our society and beyond. She says that this mushroom taught her about the power of ceremony, ritual, and listening to our inner sense of time, rhythm, and power. Today, she travels, speaks, holds drum ceremony, experiences with the mushroom, and is filming a documentary about it. I too have benefited after years and years of taking antihistamines and other. Well, various remedies to try to heal my chronic anxiety. I started to learn about alternatives that could help me. And I just want a disclaimer here that I am not a medical professional and nor is Amanita Dreamer. We are here today to create a conversation that can offer revelations to those who listen. And as always, I encourage you to deeply listen to your body and what resonates for you, and to do what feels right for you, because this is your Revelation project. But this is a fascinating conversation and I am so, so, so honored to have it with am Anita and bring it to you. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming am Amanita Dreamer. Hi, Amanita. Amanita: Hi. Thank you for having me on today. Monica: I'm so pleased to have you. And I'm so curious about this mushroom because as I mentioned to you, I heard your name. It was literally like, I heard your name, and I thought, Wait, I think I know that name, like as a mushroom. But it was also said in reference, or a woman who was talking about, it was referencing actually chronic anxiety that she suffered from. And so the person that mentioned your name and said to check out your work was kind of talking about the mushroom as if it helped and could help this woman with her anxiety. Amanita: It's something beautiful and at the same time, kind of shocking to me that I've had anxiety my whole life and I'm science based and you know, intelligent and I know how to research and I've literally tried everything. You name it, I've tried it. And when I exhausted all of the obvious things, then I started going into sort of fringe stuff. Like, and at some point I was so desperate that I would try anything, no matter how crazy it was. And no matter how hard I tried and no matter how I looked, not once did this mushroom ever show up in my work Monica: mm-hmm. Amanita: There was nothing about it out there anywhere. And even naturopaths and, and holistic healers, nobody had heard of it. No one mentioned it. And when I found myself in crisis, You know, to the point where I just couldn't, couldn't stay alive anymore. I had out of desperation, you know, the doctor put me on benzodiazepines and, and I was a good candidate for it because I was completely nonfunctional. It was a good decision. I don't, I don't fault him for that. It saved my life. It made it to where I could function again and take care of my kids. And, but like five years in on that drug, I could almost not function anymore without always having to write everything down and take notes about everything and missing appointments all the time. Couldn't find a word that I needed. And I really started worrying about like I was getting dementia or something doesn't run in my family. And it was shortly after that that a new study came out that said, long term use of these will cause early onset dementia. And I'm like, That's it. I gotta get off of them. And another five years of withdrawal, hell trying to get off of these. and it is a suffering that no one that I've met that's had to go through it can even find the words to describe. Mm-hmm. , It's so awful. And I'm a pretty strong person. I can tolerate a lot and I would get down to just the most minimal dose and be in so much pain. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: that even the smallest life event, like maybe a payment didn't get there and so now you've got a late fee. Like something like that would send me into panic and I was already not sleeping and having so much pain because the issues that you were treating with that medication didn't get fixed or resolved. So those issues come back plus normal life. Plus now all of the broken neuro transmit. Receptors in your brain and the nerve damage. So it's just like this. I was triply worse off for having been on them. And I, I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't function, I couldn't live with them. I couldn't live without them, and this was no way to live. And they don't, they weren't tested for long term use and they're not listed as long for long term use. Monica: Yeah, I was just gonna say like, how many people do you meet that have no idea that benzodiazepines do this? It's, Amanita: I don't, I think somehow, somewhere along the way, the information has gotten out there and people talk about it's a dangerous thing now. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And I think it's because of the opioid crisis. Monica: Okay. Amanita: And the fentanyl crisis that it sort of has gotten people to be aware of what they're taking. People like me with the internet and social media and the ability to say, Hey look, this is not cool, this is bad. Yeah. So I think there's sort of like this coalescence right now of information about drugs that have been prescribed and all of us going, Wait a minute, Okay, now you're going overboard and you're not giving the pain medication to the people that need it and you're vilifying people that need that help. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And it's mostly women that are seeking the pain meds that aren't getting it, that actually really, truly need it for fibromyalgia or women's procedures and gynecological procedures. Don't even get me started on that. And the gas lighting and the withholding of, of that pain medication and you know, people that are post women that are post surgery or post C-section, but then there's that, the other side of it where they're throwing benzodiazepines at women. Who are living with an incredible amount of anxiety because they're not getting their needs met either in the home or medically getting their needs met. And this place that we're in, where the women's movement that started in the seventies of we can have it all, has now proven destructive because yeah, we went out, we got what we wanted, but now also no one took up the slack in the home. So we're naturally overstressed, overworked, out of touch with our femininity, our flow, our peace, our safety, and we're just, we're running nonstop. We're not in touch anymore. Monica: Yeah. Amanita: So of course we're anxiety ridden. And then when you add to that, the toxicity in our environment and that overloading of our system and the burden for navigating this world, and financially what's happening all over the world, like this is unnatural. The amount of stress that we are under, men won't seek help for it, generally. Generally. Right. Women tend to and then get dismissed and here's a drug, take it. And a lot of women get on benzodiazepines. Monica: Yeah. And so as a result, there's a long term consequence for women and a whole lot of suffering. So it's like this short term gain, I'll, I'm kind of doing air quotes, but really in the long run it's just whether you're gonna try to get off of it. It causes a tremendous amount of issues. And then of course, if you continue to stay on, you are also compromising your health with the fact that it's more likely that you would get dementia. So, Wow. Talk about a rock in a hard place. And so, . I'm so curious. How did you find the Amanita Muscaria mushroom? Amanita: It's a sad story and a beautiful story, but I had planned to leave the planet. I mean, I did everything legally and I said goodbye to people. They didn't know that that's what I was doing. I got all of my affairs in order, and I made absolutely certain that when I did. , I knew exactly who would find me and, you know, personnel that were trained for that so that it wouldn't be traumatizing for the people I was leaving behind. It wasn't a rage quit, you know, it was a, I can't do this anymore. I am so, so sorry. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: quit. Yeah. So I didn't wanna traumatize anyone to hurt anybody. And I sat down the day before that, I had set it out on the calendar. I had a, a schedule, and it was the day before, and I just sat down on my back deck to breathe and just say goodbye peacefully, quietly inside. And I'm looking out in the woods, and this voice very, very loud and clear voice said, Well, you know, if you're gonna leave the planet, you should go take a walk and say goodbye to the planet. You're leaving. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And I was like, Okay. And it was one of those voices, like I, it was a compulsion in me that I couldn't say no to. And I got up, walked down the back stairs and walked right out into the woods and looked down and there's this brightly colored mushroom. And I was like, What? What is that you picked? It came inside and, you know, Googled it and found out what it was called, and immediately started looking up the science on it and found out it was a Gaba agonist, and was like, You have got to be kidding. And I got that tingly feeling in my body, like when you, you know, we have lost cabin pressure. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: I knew this moment was life changing and that if this was real, I wasn't leaving the planet. And this may be what I've been looking for my whole life, but I was afraid because it was so much bad information. Everything said it was toxic and deadly. Monica: Right. Amanita: But it was a Gaba agonist. And I'm like, But this is what I need. And it's in a natural package. And when I realize that it's, it has this long, rich cultural history all over the planet going back thousands of years, I'm like, you know what? That's not how we treat highly toxic, poisonous things. Something's not right here. So I went out looking and to see if there were more. And sure enough, they just happened to be fruiting. And I learned they fruit here out of the year, a total of about two weeks. And I caught the very beginning of the fruiting season and they were everywhere. And I went collecting and gathering and I dried them. And I'm like, Okay, I'm suffering. I'm miserable. You know, my day to leave came and went. And I'm out there gathering mushrooms and bought a dehydrator. And I'm dehydrating these things and I'm still watching all these different ways to make it. And I finally just said, You know what? If this mushroom called out to me and it saved my life, I wonder if it would actually tell me how to take it. If we have thousands of years of history, it's got to be in the collective consciousness somewhere. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: There's gotta be a way I can tap into this. And I laid them out on the counter and I said, Tell me what to do. and the number 15 came up, I'm like, 15 grams. Got it. Got a scale, put 15 grams in. They said, One cup of water. I was like, Got it. And I started boiling them, simmering them, and they were like, That'll do. After 20 minutes, I was like, Cool, I'll take it off. And I realized it was intuitive when I had them in front of me. It was intuitive and that made me cry. I'm like, Oh my gosh, what else is intuitive? What is this gonna teach me? And I, I'm like, with this liquid, like, okay, how much do I take? And I started small, didn't feel anything, waited about 20 minutes. That's about how long it takes for the body to start to feel it, to get through your digestion and took more, didn't really feel much of anything. So then I just took a lot and I wound up like taking a heroic dose and we were off to the races and I had the most beautiful trip experience and I was, I was there for it. I had read enough to know that this could be really rough. It could, it could get really rough. , but I was so miserable. I was like, I don't care. Right? If it kills me, it did me a favor, but at this point I'll tolerate anything. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: Any rough ride. If it's gonna help me come out the other side and not suffer anymore. And it turned out not to be rough. It turned out to be the most beautiful experience. Every bit of it. I'm like, Okay, this is weird. Okay, this is cool. Okay, this is cool. I had never tripped in my life. I had believed that everything that I was taught, you know, about, uh, natural medicine, bad pharmaceuticals, good. Only take what people who have gone to school tell you to take, uh, tripping, bad drug use, bad recreational, bad alcohol. Good, Monica: Right? Isn't it crazy? Amanita: Know all that. And. I was like, How can this, this is so amazing. It's so on, so many levels of information coming in, in a way that no drug I had ever taken worked. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And when I woke up, my eyes opened the next morning. It's so hard to talk. I had never felt that alive with that many voices singing through my soul. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: Connected to so many parts of the universe simultaneously. I didn't know what any of this, It was so bizarre and beautiful and huge and real and right that I sat up and took this deep breath in and just said out loud, my God. And I stood up and realized for the first time in my life I wasn't feeling anxiety. And I didn't know. I had never felt that before. Monica: Yeah. It's, it's like, Oh, I'm, I'm so relating to your experience and it's actually like making me emotional as well to hear you because it is so true. Right? It's like the minute that feeling is absent, like I never would've called it anxiety. Like I didn't know what it was. I just knew that something at some point shifted and I didn't have that awful crawling sensation anymore or whatever had been kind of plaguing me for so long. Like, I can't even remember the last time I didn't have it until this. You know, occurrence happened for me, which was a little bit of a different experience, but again, you know, it's so interesting. I wanna go back to what you said about being taught. Pharmaceuticals are good, plant medicine is bad, psychedelics are bad, pills are good, alcohol is fine, but God forbid you should do something that's natural. Like it's just, it's so upside down. It's, I always say that we live in the upside down and so in part of our unbecoming process is to actually start to. See the lies, you know, all around us, the lies. And to start to recognize that we've been set up. You know, like we have been programmed to believe certain things and it's a huge setup. And so the unraveling of all of it and the coming, you know, revealing the truth, you know, and discovering the truth and embodying the truth, and beginning to embody, you know, and experience what nature has actually always provided to us. It's like when you think about the benevolence and the love and the support that is right there in nature for anything that ails us, it boggles the mind Amanita: In that moment. It was this caving in of all of that, the construct, my brainwashing, the most amazing joy. that I've ever felt in my life, the most amazing lightness of being in freedom and the deepest grieving mm, for all that loss and what my society did to me all simultaneously. And I dropped to the floor because my whole meat sack body human could no longer contain the energy of all of that knowing. And I just fell like I went to the floor and I, I cried this deep moaning cry. Monica: It's primal. Amanita: It was that. And I just sobbed and cried and my God was moaning and crying with this crashing together of both of those opposing huge feelings. And when I stood up, I said out loud. Holy shit. It's what do I do now? Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And the mushroom just sort of like washed over me and said, Breathe. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: I was like, Oh my God. And I barely even remembered that day because so was processing so much joy and energy. I just, What do you do with that? What do you do with what you've just been through knowing that there are no words mm-hmm. in the English language to describe the layers of what you've just seen. Monica: I love how you're taking us back to these moments because it's making me, I'm, I'm so relating in different ways to, you know, you talk about all the constructs come crashing down and kind of that moment, and I too share that moment where kind of like was brought to my knees and just like in the grief and in the joy and in the ecstasy of being met with the truth in that way, it was like suddenly, like nothing made sense anymore and everything made sense. Amanita: Right. Oh my God. Monica: It was like, what just happened? And then, you know, There's also something else that happens that I wanna point to, which is it can be an incredibly welcoming experience into a community of beings that you never, ever saw or knew before. And then you flip it over and it's incredibly lonely because now you have this, no, this knowledge, this wisdom, and this understanding that suddenly you try to talk to people ]about, and they're still in the trance. So you're. Shit. I like, This is awesome, . And I have no idea, right? , like, What am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to live in the world knowing what I know? And until you find your people, you're just kind of alone with it. I mean, you're not alone, but you are. You know what I'm saying? the human world, you're alone. Amanita: And it's a good thing because I had so much to process. But over those nine months of processing it and thinking, okay, that experience I need to process. But what wound up happening is I continued to use the medicine in microdosing and there was nothing on the internet about microdosing, but I was like, Well, if it's a Gaba agonist, I should take it like a medicine. I wanna say I never took another benzodiazepine after that experience, and I had no more withdrawal symptoms and no more pain, and it felt like this mushroom was healing what that medication broke. And I was enjoying the healing, but also it was starting to show me things in multiple layers that I could not unlearn and unsee and unknown, and it forced permanent decisions in my life. That is what I now know. Shadow work, that eight years of therapy and all of these other ways that I had tried to heal my anxiety were never going to touch because what this mushroom had to show and teach me was something that I no one else was even talking about. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: Because no one else was using this mushroom and talking about it. Right. So, After nine months of clarity and, and learning all of the ways that we are living with anxiety that this mushroom was showing me and teaching me, it was telling me, You at least have to tell the others that are suffering with panic or anxiety or benzo, daine. You've gotta tell 'em that what this mushroom does, you've gotta tell 'em how to, how to at least make it correctly. Because even that wasn't right on the internet. And I'm learning the science about it, and I'm learning why that sci, that those ways of either drying it aren't correct or storing it, and you're losing your actives and the ways of preparing it weren't correct. And so just bringing my science to bear, plus my experiences of healing to bear, I'm like, All right. I'm autistic, so what I'm not gonna do is be public and have to deal with people. And then I saw there was a lot of nastiness around this mushroom, some gatekeeping stuff and a lot of fighting, and then a lot of just weirdness in that community of psychedelic users. And they're getting off into this really weird shit like that. Mushrooms or sentient beings and so are trees. And they got like woo woo weird, like falling off cliff weird. And I'm like, Yeah, well I don't wanna be a part of any of that, so I'll just make a couple of videos and leave them. And so I made one video on how to prepare it, and then I just left it because it freaked me out so bad. And I'm like, whatever. I came. . Six weeks later, I had over 600 subs to a channel that had one video and all these questions. And I was like, Wow, okay. How do I answer these and in what order? And I just started making videos as quickly as I could. And meanwhile, the mushroom is sort of just giving me what to say with every video. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: Like I would have what I wanted to say, but then I would hit record and a whole different set of words would come outta my body that, that were perfect and that it just needed very little, if any, editing. And I'm like, What is this? One afternoon, I couldn't make 'em fast enough. And every time I sat down and turned the camera on, the words flowed through me. Monica: Yes. Amanita: And then I uploaded it. And then more questions. More questions. That was three and a half years ago. and I have officially fallen off the cliff. I am officially, uh, completely 100% in agreement that mushrooms are sentient and trees are sentient. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And the things that I say on my channel, which got censored. And so I made amne a dreamer.net and now I paid to host the bandwidth of all of my videos is probably over a hundred or whatever, maybe even more than that videos now. Yeah. I'm officially crazy, like I'm nuts. And I am so fine with that. Monica: Yeah. Welcome to the party. Amanita: Cause if this is crazy, I've never been happier. Monica: I know. It's, it's like I say that all the time, I'm like, Yep. You know, welcome to the party because it is so, I love too what you just shared. It's like you, you do have this experience and then there's still kind of this like, that's too woo woo. And so it just kind of like slowly kind of like allowing, releasing deprogramming, unconditioning, unbecoming where it just starts to all make sense. Eventually it starts to all kind of come together and it's, I think what I love about what you experienced as well is that you become the conduit for the medicine and it's almost like you become a, a channel for the communication to be able to meet people where they are. And because you are so relatable, because you came to the experience. At such a dark, down, vulnerable, I have nothing to lose. Place that you can actually meet people there who are in the depths of their despair and say, I see you. You know, I've been there. And yes, it's true. It is dark here, and there's this portal. where if you come through there is so much more on the other side, there is so much available that, that you cannot see from over here, that you cannot know from over here. And so I know it's not everybody's way, but what I'm pointing to is that it's a way and it is a path. And as I say all the time on this podcast, there are many paths and there are many portals and there are many ways. And it's all about each person finding your way, not her way and his way. What's your way? You know, what's your way and what speaks to you and what resonates for you in your body? And how I know truth is that my body gets full chills. How, you know, truth might be different, but for me that's a sign. Go that way. Go that way. Learn more, get curious. Kind of like just, it's like those voices, if we can. Get quiet and listen and learn to listen to those voices. And then there are other times where the voice is so loud as you're talking to, it's just like right there. Like when you were sitting on those back steps and suddenly the voice came and said, Well, if you're gonna say goodbye, you might as well go and say goodbye to the world you're about to leave. Right? And then there, there it was. You've listened to the voice, you were led right to the mushroom. The mushroom started speaking to you and then through you. So beautiful, So amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Amanita: Very welcome. And what's really interesting, you know, I had to start my own private patron community because of censorship on Patreon and everything that I do is free. I don't gate keep any of the information. So the way I support myself is I make products that have this in it, the mushroom in it. So if you want to pay me for those items, you know, then that supports my work and helps me pay all these bills for all these websites and everything. And then I have my, the private patron community, and so membership. So those are my two ways that I earn money. And it's called the mushroom voice, like mushroom voice.com. I love that because the one thing that I hear probably more than anything else is, am I crazy Because, And then whatever follows is some story about hearing a voice, call them to this mushroom, and then having it on board. Forever after they take it. It is the one thing I hear the most. Yeah. Monica: What did it teach you about your inner voice? Like, tell me more. Amanita: It was our birthright. It is how we connect to ancestors, which I didn't even know was a thing. And now I hold ceremony and, and we get in touch with ours and the mushrooms, ancestors. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And that gods are real. Never understood that. And when I take this mushroom, I met, I meet Loki and Thor, and I understand now where the lore of Gods comes from. Monica: Yes. Amanita: And the experiencing of them when you're tripping on it. And then when you're in ceremony with drums and we're shaking it all out and going to the underworld and meeting all these ancestors of a mushroom, but also the gods, but also our ancestors of which we will become. One day. Monica: Yes. Amanita: That's cool to think about. So it's all of that is the mushroom voice, but also that they have, we believe a history that goes back over 30,000 years with humans. That's the current thinking that this may be one of the first in Theos that we spiritually worked with, but when you look at all of the things that it does, it makes sense because it affects the glutamate, korg, and Gaba pathways. And those three things work together to balance energy, fear, focus, learning, attention, peace, clarity, time keeping, like this is all a very complex system that we would need to navigate because the world could be such a scary place when our structures can easily be torn through by a bear. We could easily be taken down in the wild by wildlife, by famine, by lack of rain, by an early thaw, and losing all our meat by not having the medicines that we need blooming at the time that we need them. And there's so many things to be afraid of that we today think that trauma is just a normal part of being alive. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: Just a, a matter of where you born into a good, healthy family or not. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And then, you know, trauma just happens. You get in a car accident, boom, trauma, and then what are you supposed to do with that? Go to therapy for years and years and years and you'll always have the trigger, blah, blah, blah. Like we think this is a normal part of life. If this mushroom were a regular part of our existence, that wouldn't be a thing. And our ancestors were able to grow and survive and thrive. because they weren't locked down by fear and PTSD all the time, Monica: Right? Amanita: Because they had this mushroom, they journeyed with it every solstice in every Equinox. That's four times a year. Plus they had it as medicine to microdose. There's two sides of medicines of the mushroom. What's in it? Raw Ibotenic acid. And then that converts to Muscimol either in the body or you can do it with the mushroom and convert it before you drink it. Both have. jobs that they perform and one is the treatment of a adhd so that if you really need to focus and work and maybe flint nap or, or work with something tedious with your hands and you're of that neurotype where you have a d d, you take a bite of this mushroom and you can go. If you've been walking for days for a hunt and you're exhausted and you've gotta bring it all back, taking a, a bite of one of those mushrooms dried and you've got energy focus and you can go for hours, there are times for working and then there's times for rest. And so this mushroom deals with all of that. It's such an amazing broad medicine that it's no wonder humans have been able to do what we have been able to do with this and psilocybin growing those connections between the two sides of our brain. I don't doubt for a moment that the reason we're crippled today. Was the taking away of all these mushrooms several thousand years ago in the rise of Christianity and the removal of wisdom, uh, and, and natural medicine and sorcery, and women's knowing and intuition and wizardry and ceremony and sacredness, and all of these things are what our bodies have known for thousands of years. We have evolved with these things. You can't separate our mental health piece and goodness from those tools and those rights. And once we were separated from them, we began to break and it's, it's no reason we are all hurting like we are today without these tools. And one of the issues that I'm running into right now, Because I've always been very spiritual. I've always had like this, this inner knowing wisdom, guidance turn here, don't turn there. Today's a bad day to go. You should stay home. I been able to listen to that, that wisdom and inner knowing and feeling a sense of oneness with the universe when I wasn't locked down with fear. But I look at the spiritual communities today and the amount of spirituality that I have been able to reach be between this mushroom and high dose psilocybin, that that will never go away. Because once you experience it and see it, and know, you know, has moved so deeply into my soul by body knowing beingness and is just a permanent part of me now without effort, that it's so easy and so beautiful. So when I go to the spiritual community and they are shaming the use of in thes or substances, and they say if, if it, if you use a drug, it's not real. So number one, if you've never used it, and then you're gonna tell somebody that what they're experiencing, which is the most enlightening, beautiful, connected, spiritual way that they've ever lived, isn't real. Number one, that's gaslighting. What kind of spiritual person is gonna gaslight someone else like that, Especially when they've never even used it. But number two, it reeks of the Christian. Number one, you're not worthy. Number two, to get worthy, you've gotta work and earn it the hard way. You must be productive and you must work, and life is work. Number three, the only reason you get anywhere is because the Christian God allows it, even though you still worked your ass off to earn it. You'll never earn it and you're not worthy. And then this piety and this purity culture that originated with that in that if you enhance. Yourself in any way. It's wrong. Chocolate, you know, was vilified at one time and, and we now know chocolate can be very spiritual. Coco is a very spiritual plant. But anything that you do that enhances who you are, any tools like drums and, and movement, I know the cult I was raised in said that movement was vulgar. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And we weren't allowed to dance. And anything that is, that is actually very spiritually enhancing and taps into all that has somehow, conveniently enough become part of purity culture and you can't engage in those things and it's labeled witchcraft when you're just being intuitive and working with natural medicine. So it just, it's sad. Monica: What I wanna point to from my listeners too, because what I hear in everything you're saying is, one, the trance takes many forms. Two, all of what you're pointing to are. Elements of the feminine. Even when we talk about God the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, like first of all, we're talking about white male, God, we're talking about one true God. We're talking about the way we're talking about anything outside the way is wrong and sinful. We're talking about anything in the unknown is witchery, is sinful, is dark, is, and you might as well say feminine. Amanita: Mm. Monica: Yeah. So again, I just wanna point this out because it's all back in like what you're pointing to and we're, we're kind of going through a portal into another conversation, which has so many nuances, so many layers, but it basically comes back to this, what I call, you know, like. The illusion. And when you take something or you experience something that disrupts the illusion, it also disrupts the trance. . . Amanita: Yep. Monica: And then you can't unsee it. Amanita: You can't ever go back. And that, and if you try it will, it will mess you up deeply. Like you can't fit back in anymore. Monica: No, and that's where I think a lot of people do turn to addiction because they, it's the, There's a certain amount of endurance that I think you have to go through when you kind of come through the other side of the needle. When you come through that eye of the needle where it's kind of like, Part that I was talking about where you turn around and suddenly you feel connected to everyone and everything in one world, but then you turn around and in the other and you're surrounded by people that can't see what you see, that don't know what you know, that haven't experienced what you've experienced. So you kind of have to almost like send out the beacons that kind of call your people toward you, You know, because then you're really on your revelation project. Now you're really starting to reveal, feel, and heal your way back to remembering all of your fractured parts, you know, and come back into wholeness not only with yourself, but with the universe, with the mushrooms, with the mycillum with the trees, with all of nature. And you start to get what is truly the universal one, which is. A God of multiplicities, which is God everywhere. And I talk about God as like, love, as truth, as unity, as nothing separating. Everything gets to belong to me. That's God. The Gods get to belong in Amanita: This mushroom. I'm so happy you said that because this mushroom, and I've taken a lot of different entheogens now and I do them on camera and they're on my website, uh, amanita dreamer.net site. But what I've learned is this mushroom specifically, Is the self mushroom. Whereas psilocybins more about your interconnectedness with all the other living things and DMT and some of like I was, those things are more like global galactic, universal kind of troops. This mushroom deals with your relationship to you, why you wanna be here, owning your meat sack, owning your divinity, owning the fact that you should be taking up space on the planet. Owning your ego. Your ego is not dirty or bad, and that makes me think of more Christian stuff about how parts of you are dirty and bad or whatever. But this whole ego death, get rid of your ego thing is sad because your ego is how you're here. It's how you're experiencing. It's where you get motivation, drive, ambition. It's through that ego that you get to your emotions to feel the joy. It's what makes you wanna live and be alive. And when your ego shrinks, you get depressed. You feel less worthy. Less have of a, of a right to be here, less right to speak. And it gets so small that you wanna disappear and not be here anymore. And once you're suicidal, that is a lack of ego and that's a normal part of death when it's your time to go. If you die slowly and not tragically, but if you live a long life and you die naturally, your ego shrinks until you go. And then when you're ready to go and you go, your ego leaves because that was your vehicle. It's the portal between the other side and your body. It's how you stay here and experience the aliveness of of the world. And so this mushroom is the worthiness. Self love, be here, go out, be you, be divinity connect. And enjoy mushroom. Monica: Mm-hmm Amanita: and because of that seems to me like this is where we should start. Like start here. Monica: Yeah. Amanita: And I feel like so many people doing spirituality the hard way are doing it because they're trying to avoid anxiety and fear and they're looking for answers. And I love Tara though. I actually love Tarrot cards and Rhunes. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: but in the right context. And if you're just living in fear and afraid to make decisions, because what if and what if? And what if? And what if? That's just terror, That's fear, that's anxiety. And if you can microdose something like this and it takes away all of that and then makes you so motivated that you don't care about the. and you learn to say yes. And then each time you say yes, it opens up a whole other world for you. What you've done is paved your way to your truth. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: And this is not a one size fits all thing. And I think that we want, we've been taught suffering is a normal part of life and now I know it absolutely isn't. And then we've taught there are one size fits all solutions. If it's spirituality, you have to meditate and do yoga. If it's your physical body, you've got to take pharmaceuticals. And if you wanna meet the God, you have to go to church. And if you wanna get into femininity, then you've got to get into witchcraft and like it. There's all these ifs and thens and it's a one size fits all solution. And what I am experiencing. That once you can get rid of that panic and anxiety. Once you tap in, however you first tap in, if it's yoga, if it's meditation, if you had a near death experience or if you micro-dose something or you met a woman that blew you away and and was mentoring you and showed you a path, what, however you enter, once you get in there is no one size fits all solution. And it gets difficult because people want easy answers. And the truth is, where are you standing right now? What are you most afraid of? Do that take the next right step. Do you think you need to leave this group? Leave that group. How does that feel? Are you scared? But did something beautiful now take its place? Mm. Okay. You can't eat that anymore. Leave that. Yeah. But now what do you like to eat? How does that feel? . And if you keep doing that, you will put together so much removing what's causing anxiety and bringing in so much truth and beauty and ease of existence, that you don't work to maintain anything anymore. You're just the embodiment of yes and peace and love, and that includes good suffering, which to me is facing something sad. Head on. Grieving is good. Suffering. That's right. Suffering. Not suffering to work, to stand still and get nowhere and stay in misery and pain and fear. That's bad Suffering. Good suffering is going my kid's setting a boundary. They want this space. I am terrified for them. I will let them go with love. Mm-hmm. . That's good Suffering. Monica: Mm Amanita: I am so afraid. To honor myself right now and do this for myself. This is terrifying. And then you do it. And the guilt and the shame, but then also the beauty and the, Oh my God, I need to do that more often. That's good suffering. If we can find the good suffering, , If we can face the fear . That's what I'm about. . Monica: I love you so much. It's, This is so good. This is so good. It's just like, ugh. Yes, yes, yes. I love this conversation. It's so true. It's so good. I'm thinking about all of the ways that you are talking about suffering and knowing this contextually, like in terms of how I used to suffer in terms of my stuckness, in terms of my ego, in terms of my limiting beliefs. It was all trance based suffering. It was all. Working harder, making more, acquiring more everything, also at the same time felt pointless. I felt like a hamster on a wheel. It was like agony. Agony. And so I do think, you know, even though I wish it weren't, so I do think that there comes a time where you just hit your limit, you hit your intolerance, you hit your moment where you're like, I have nothing left to lose. I cannot tolerate feeling this for one second longer. And that sometimes takes some of us into the dark spiral of suicidal ideation. But I also want to normalize that as a bridge into a different kind of prayer. And when I say that, what I'm talking about is the prayer of the inner. True self that has desires, that wants to live, that knows in some deep part of herself or himself, that there is something more that they're just not seeing in this moment. And so it's that moment where we actually call out, we actually cry out, Show me, which is when I really think the revelation project begin. It's like, I don't know anymore, but just show me like I'm surrendering. And in that surrender it's like, okay, come take a walk. Like I feel like some, cuz that same experience happened to me. It's like this inner voice just started talking, or maybe it was always talking, but I just didn't know how to listen until I could, until I did, until I could identify the difference between that voice and the voice of the inner critic or the voices of the gang that used to take me into the dark neighborhood, ]you know, and beat the shit outta me and leave me on the curb. So it is just such a pleasure to have this conversation with you and I love how passionate you are about this work. It is just a beautiful thing to behold. So I wanna ask you a few technical questions, which I'm sure you get all the time. Amanita: Let's do it. Monica: All right. So first of all, is the mushroom legal Amanita: It's legal in the United States except for Louisiana. It's legal all over the world. Um, it's sort of contentious about the UK. The law is extremely unclear right now. It's illegal in Australia only because it's considered an invasive species. You can use it in Australia, but you just can't like import it or sell it out of the country. And the Netherlands, the place where most drugs are legal, This is one of the few drugs that's illegal. Monica: So interesting. Amanita: Oh, and you know, mushrooms, it's illegal. Monica: That is so interesting. Amanita: Yeah. But yeah, the United States, Canada, most of the free world and most of the developing world, it's completely legal. Monica: Okay, next question. Do I have to put a disclaimer on this episode? ? Amanita: No. Monica: I am not a medical professional. The do not take, you know, blah, blah, blah with blah, blah, blah. Or you might have erectile dysfunction and bleeding from the eyes and blah, blah, blah. You know, I'm just joking about like the commercials you hear about the pharmaceuticals, Amanita: But there are, you know, contraindications or whatever and everybody should always know what they are. But the only thing I would say is because psilocybin is grown, can be grown. And hand it out. People aren't usually out there picking it, but this mushroom can't be grown. It only grows with a tree and has this very complex mirial relationship. So there's only two ways to get it, and that's to go harvest it yourself or find someone selling it on the internet that harvested it that you've got to trust. And because of that, I would say don't pick mushrooms unless you know what you're picking. However, this is one of the easiest to identify. It's a beginner mushroom because it's so brightly colored and easy to identify. Having said that, still if you're wanting to harvest them and they're, they fruit in the fall and all over the world, they're fruiting. As of you and I sitting down and speaking right now it's an, it's October and they're fruiting all around the world. But I have vetted a couple of people now that have been vendors that I buy from and have for several years, and they're on amity dreamer.net and they pay me to have their. Spot there, and it supports my work and I fully stand behind them. So if anybody wants to get it. But other than that, the only disclaimer I would say is, you know, just don't go randomly picking wild mushrooms and shoving them in your mouth. Please don't do that. And then the only major thing is don't drink a lot of alcohol with this. They hit some of the same receptors and there are no deaths attributed to this mushroom. But when you mix the two high amounts of alcohol in this mushroom, that can push you over the edge. And there are a few, it's not common, but it happens. So don't do that. Mm-hmm. . And then obviously if you're on a benzodiazepine already or any, I think Lyrica hits the GAVA receptors. Any drug that's gonna hit your GAVA receptors and like Ambien, that's gonna help you with sleep. Any of those depressant drugs, don't double up and take 'em at the same time. Don't, don't do that. But what I'm not gonna do ever. ever, ever, ever is tell anyone how to get off a medication and use this instead and how to taper. Cuz that's practicing medicine without a license and that is illegal and I could go to prison for that. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: You're gonna have to find your own path through that if it's something that you're considering doing. And I'm not telling you to do that cuz I am not a doctor. Monica: Right. There's your disclaimer. . I am not a doctor. Amanita: Yep. I'm telling you what I did and it could have been really stupid. Yep. It wasn't lucky me. Yep. For many people in my private community, we have a lot of different zooms with different themes of people using this mushroom for different reasons. And that's at mushroom voice.com. So if you wanna talk about that and you wanna get some help from like-minded people that are also doing the same stuff. And we get into some pretty heady stuff too. We have some that are very high. You like LSD and you know, mushrooms and, and Theo trip stuff, like the nature of reality stuff. Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: But also very practical stuff. Like we have an ADD group so you can get some answers there if you'd like. Monica: That's awesome. That's so great to know cuz uh, A.D.D. Is certainly something that I have struggled with and you know, I could also describe that in so many other ways, right? Like highly sensitive, very distractable survivor of childhood trauma. Like there's just, it's just what I really know it to be is like a very, very sensitized nervous system that doesn't allow me to fully relax. That I've had to really find other modalities to help me, to help my body, to help my neuro pathways to just repair. And Amanita: This is a real good balancer too, because it's got the Ibotenic acid that's front loaded, right? Monica: Mm-hmm. Amanita: and then it's got the muscomol on the back end as you take it. And it converts in your body or you can do the conversion outside your body. If you're new to this, I would say start with a mix in between the two. And I have so many videos on amita dreamer.net. It says start here and how to make it and all that and why and how to find your dose. Just I encourage you to go watch all that. That's why I made it. It's perfectly free. You don't need an account. I don't collect your email address. If you wanna know when I open my store and sell my products, um, I announce that in a newsletter that only goes out once a month cuz I don't wanna bother you. I don't sell your email address, I don't collect your information on my website. I want you to get in and get out as easily as possible. And if you want to support the work, then you can. But even the stuff I make and sell in my store, I have videos to teach you how to make it yourself because this medicine belongs to everybody. Monica: Yeah, completely. And I don't know, are you familiar with that book, The Cosmic Serpent? No. Oh, it's so good. But what it talks about. Is, it's actually I think, an anthropologist who wrote the book, but in it, he is in relationship with many shamans, but one in particular, and of course I won't give away the whole book, but the bottom line is that, you know, he talks about the molecular biology that consists of like 97% of the DNA in our body is referred to as junk. And it's so interesting because what he talks about is that when we refer to our DNA in this way as junk, it not only kind of shows the degree of our ignorance, but also to the extent. That we belittle the unknown, right? Like, it's like we don't know what it is, so we call it junk. And yet so much of the recent hypotheses suggests that junk DNA actually have very important functions, but those functions are hidden from us until we do something like plant. medecine., Amanita: Even with this mushroom, uh, the Ibotenic acid has been vilified by the scientific community because when they were first studying it, they were looking for flavor enhancers, and they found this one first. They had learned through indigenous medicine peoples that they used this mushroom as a flavor enhancer, um, the iic acid side. And boy, is it ever like, it's fun to trip on this stuff and eat like, My God, it's fun Monica: Because your taste buds are so alive. Yes, Amanita: It's insane. But they tried it and instead of just using it orally, they isolated it and injected it into the brains of rats and it destroyed their brains. Like it, it killed brain cells because they were injecting into the brains. Anyway, they wound up settling on, uh, monosodium glutamate MSG as a flavor enhancer because it was a lot more stable and it didn't do that as much. And so what they did with ivy acid then is use it to destroy brains, to develop drugs, to treat brains, and so that's all that's out. There are these early studies done in the seventies, and Mycologist today will still call this thing neurotoxic and that it causes brain damage and it'll kill brain cells, but they're not explaining that. That was by injection into the brain of rats, not oral ingestion in humans. There was a subsequent study where Ibotenic acid, again isolated, injected into animals' bodies, and then when they checked their brains, there was no brain damage. Interesting. We know a lot already, we're learning more about oral ingestion and all the complex ways that it affects your gut flora, how it's metabolized in the gut, and how it actually does work on Gaba in the gut, which we're learning a lot about now about mental health in the. You can't tell me that oral ingestion is gonna be the same as injecting it into your brain. So even Ibotenic acid is vilified so far, but I'm very public and I have videos about Ibotenic acid and I catch a lot of heat for it. But I am going on record saying one day I will be vilified. One day the science will back up what I'm saying and they will find the. In Ibotenic acid as a, not only as a flavor enhancer, but also to help you learn to get in gamma flow states to treat A.D.D.. And also I believe it is psychoactive and it is a portal to our ancestors. Monica: My gosh. Well, oh gosh. I know we're just getting started, . I know we're just getting started. I would love to have you back on the show because I wanna go deeper, but one thing I do wanna mention, because I feel like, you know, I mentioned this anthropologist and this book. The indigenous people. And what I wanna point to is that the indigenous people, as you also shared with us, Amanita, have known all of this for centuries. And we have disregarded and dismissed indigenous people in this way for as long as you know, we've been denigrating the feminine. And it's, it's been tragic because actually the indigenous people hold this wisdom and we need to be. And one of the reasons that this anthropologist wrote this book was as an apology, as a formal apology to the indigenous people who have always known that the great serpent in this sky, you know, the the such a mama, all of the ways that we talk about the serpent, the goddess, that these are actually the strands of DNA that are informed. Within our body, and this is the way our body communicates, um, and integrates with the natural world through the dna. So again, more on that, more to be revealed on that, but Amanita: oh yeah, the whole thing about ceremony and indigenous use and cultural Monica: mm-hmm. Amanita: Use and all of the different ways that those cultures have been whitewashed today with all these, the lore about this mushroom, which is all very wrong and very whitewashed. Yeah. There's so much to even go down with that, with ceremony, spirituality, and cultural use. That's just such another whole. Another whole thing. Monica: I know. And we'll be sure. I mean am Amanita, if you're into it, I would love to do another episode with you sometime soon and we can like, dive back in. But I just wanna say thank you, thank you so much for this precious conversation. It's brought so much up in me and I'm sure it has for our listeners. I just really appreciate you and I'm so grateful that you agreed to be on the show today and to share your, not only your personal story, but all of your incredible wisdom. Thank you so much. Amanita: Thank you so much for, uh, having me and giving me this space and creating this. It's been beautiful. Monica: I couldn't agree more. And for our listeners, I will be sure to have all of am Anita's links in the show notes so that you can go explore and research and shop or whatever it is that you wanna do. And until next time, more to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more to be revealed.