I invite you to take a step back and clear your mind of decades of false propaganda.

Governments worldwide lied to us about the medicinal benefits of marijuana. The public
has also been misled about psychedelics.
These non-addictive substances- MDMA, ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin mushrooms,
peyote, and many more- are proven to rapidly and effectively help people heal from trauma,
PTSD, anxiety, addiction and depression.
Psychedelics saved my life.
My Experience with Anxiety and PTSD Symptoms
I was drawn to journalism at a young age by the desire to provide a voice for the little
guy. For nearly a decade working as a CNN investigative correspondent and independent
journalist, I became a mouthpiece for the oppressed, victimized andmarginalized. My path
of submersion journalism brought me closest to the plight of my sources, by living the story
to get a true understanding of what was happening.

After several years of reporting, I realized an unfortunate consequence of my style- I had
immersed myself too deeply in the trauma and suffering of the people Id interviewed. I
began to have trouble sleeping as their faces appeared in my darkest dreams. I spent too
long absorbed in a world of despair and my inability to deflect it allowed the trauma of
others to settle inside my mind and being. Combine that with several violent
experiences while working in the field and I was at my worst. A life reporting on the edge
had led me to the brink of my own sanity.
Because I could not find a way to process my anguish, it grew into a monster, manifesting
itself into a constant state of anxiety, short-term memory loss, sleeplessness, and hyper
arousal. The heart palpitations made me feel like I was knocking on deaths door.
Why I Chose Psychedelic Drugs Medicines

Prescription medications and antidepressants serve a purpose, but I knew they were not on
my path to healing after my investigations exposed their sinister side
effects including infants being born dependent on the medicines after their mothers couldnt
kick their addictions. Masking the symptoms of a deeper condition with a pill felt like
putting a Band-Aid on bullet wound.
I was made aware of the potential healing powers of psychedelics as a guest on the Joe
Rogan Experience podcast in October 2012. Joe told me psychedelic mushrooms
transformed his life and had the potential to change the course of humanity for the better.
My initial reaction was one of amusement and somewhat disbelief, but the seed was
planted.
Psychedelics were an odd choice for someone like me. I grew up in the Midwest and was
fed 30 years of propaganda explaining how horrible these substances were for my health.
You can imagine my jaw-dropping surprise when, after the Rogan podcast, I found articles
on the prodigious effects of these substances that behave more like medicines than drugs.
Articles like this one, this, this , this, and this. And studies such as this,
this, this, this, this and this all gut-wrenching examples of how weve been misled by
authorities who classify psychedelics as schedule 1 narcotics that have no medicinal value
despite dozens of scientific studies proving otherwise.
Tripping Around the World
Having only ever smoked the odd marijuana joint in college, in March 2013 I found myself
boarding a plane to Iquitos, Peru to try one of the most powerful psychedelics on earth. I
ditched my car at the airport, hastily packed my belongings in a backpack and headed down
to the Amazon jungle placing my blind faith in a substance that a week ago I could hardly
pronounce: ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is a medicinal tea that contains the psychedelic compound dimethyltryptamine,
or DMT. The brew is rapidly spreading around the world after numerous anecdotes have
shown the brew has the power to cure anxiety, PTSD, depression, unexplained pain,
and numerous physical and mental health ailments. Studies of long-term ayahuasca
drinkers show they are less likely to face addictions and have elevated levels of serotonin,
the neurotransmitter responsible for happiness.
If I had any reservations, doubts, or disbeliefs, they were quickly expelled shortly after my
first ayahuasca experience. The foul-tasting tea vibrated through my veins and into my
brain as the medicine scanned my body. My field of vision became engulfed with
fierce colors and geometric patterns. Almost instantly, I saw a vision of a brick wall. The
word anxiety was spray painted in large letters on the wall. You must heal your
anxiety, the medicine whispered. I entered a dream-like state where traumatic memories
were finally dislodged from my subconscious.
It was as if I was viewing a film of my entire life, not as the emotional me, but as an
objective observer. The vividly introspective movie played in my mind as I relived my
most painful scenes- my parents divorce when I was just 4 years-old, past
relationships, being shot at by police while photographing a protest in Anaheim andcrushed
underneath a crowd while photographing a protest in Chicago. The ayahuasca enabled me
to reprocess these events, detaching the fear and emotion from the memories.
The experience was akin to ten years of therapy in one eight-hour ayahuasca session.

But the experience, and many psychedelic experiences for that matter, was terrifying at
times. Ayahuasca is not for everyone- you have to be willing to revisit some very dark
places and surrender to the uncontrollable, fierce flow of the medicine. Ayahuasca also
causes violent vomiting and diarrhea, which shamans call getting well because you are
purging trauma from your body.
After seven ayahuasca sessions in the jungles of Peru, the fog that engulfed my mind lifted.
I was able to sleep again and noticed improvements in my memory and less anxiety. I
yearned to absorb as much knowledge as possible about these medicines and spent the next
year travelling the world in search of more healers, teachers and experiences through
submersion journalism.
I was drawn to try psilocybin mushrooms after reading how they reduced anxiety in
terminal cancer patients. The ayahuasca showed me my main ailment was anxiety, and I
knew I still had work to do to fix it. Psilocybin mushrooms are not neurotoxic,
nonaddictive, and studies show they reduce anxiety, depression, and even lead to
neurogenesis, or the regrowth of brain cells. Why would governments worldwide keep
such a profound fungi out of the reach of their people?

After Peru, I visited curanderas, or healers, in Oaxaca, Mexico. The Mazatecs have used
psilocybin mushrooms as a sacrament and medicinally for hundreds of years. Curandera
Dona Augustine served me a leaf full of mushrooms during a beautiful ceremony before a
Catholic alter. As she sang thousand year-old songs, I watched the sunset over the
mountainous landscape in Oaxaca and a deep sense of connectivity washed over my whole
being. The innate beauty had me at a loss for words; a sudden outpouring of emotion had
me in tears. I cried through the night and with each tear a small part of my trauma trickled
down my cheek and dissolved onto the forest floor, freeing me from its toxic energy.

Perhaps most astounding, the mushrooms silenced the self-critical part of my mind long
enough for me to reprocess memories without fear or emotion. The mushrooms enabled
me to remember one of the most terrifying moments of my career: when I was detained at
gunpoint in Bahrain while filming a documentary for CNN. I had lost any
detailed recollection of that day when masked men pointed guns at our heads and forced
my crew and I onto the ground. For a good half an hour, I did not know whether we were
going to survive.
I spent many sleepless nights desperately searching for memories of that day, but they were
locked in my subconscious. I knew the memories still haunted me because anytime I
would see PTSD triggers, such as loud noises, helicopters, soldiers, or guns, a rush of
anxiety and panic would flood my body.
The psilocybin was the key to unlock the trauma, enabling me to relive the
detainment moment to moment, from outside of my body, as an emotionless, objective
observer. I peered into the CNN van and saw my former self sitting in the backseat, loud
helicopters overhead. My producer Taryn was sitting to the right of me frantically trying
to close the van door as we tried to make an escape. I heard Taryn scream guns! as
armed masked men jumped out of the security vehicles surrounding the van. I watched as
I frantically dug through a backpack on the floor, grabbing my CNN ID card and
jumping out of the van. I saw myself land on the ground in childs pose, dust covering
my body and face. I watched as I threw my hand with the CNN badge in the air above
my head yelling CNN, CNN, dont shoot!!
I saw the pain in my face as the security forces threw human rights activist and dear friend
Nabeel Rajab against a security car and began to harass him. I saw the terror in my face as
I glanced down at my shirt, arms in the air, praying the video cards concealed on my body
wouldnt fall onto the ground.

As I relived each moment of the detainment, I reprocessed each memory moving it from the
fear folder to its new permanent home in the safe folder in my brains hard drive.
Five ceremonies with psilocybin mushrooms cured my anxiety and PTSD symptoms. The
butterflies that had a constant home in my stomach have flown away.
Psychedelics are not the be-all and end-all. For me, they were the key that opened the door
to healing. I still have to work to maintain the healing with the use of floatation tanks,
meditation, and yoga. For psychedelics to be effective, its essential they are taken with the
right mindset in a quiet, relaxed setting conducive to healing, and that all potential
prescription drug interactions are carefully researched. It can be fatal if Ayahuasca is
mixed with prescription antidepressants.
I was blessed with an inquisitive nature and a stubbornness to always question authority.
Had I opted for a doctors script and resigned myself in the hope that things would just get
better, I never would have discovered the outer reaches of my mind and heart. Had I drunk
the Kool-Aid and believed that all drugs are evil and have no healing value, I may still be
in the midst of a battle with PTSD.
The Creation of Reset.me
This very world that glamorizes war, violence, commercialism, environmental destruction,
and suffering has outlawed some of the most profound keys to inner peace. The War on
Drugs is not based on science. If it was, two of the most deadly drugs on earth-alcohol and
tobacco- would be illegal. Those suffering from trauma have become victims of this failed
war and have lost one of the most effective ways to heal.
Humanity has gone mad as a result.
I spent ten years witnessing the collective insanity as a journalist on the frontlines- wars,
bloodshed, environmental destruction, sex slavery, lies, addiction, anger, fear.
But I had it all wrong journalistically. I had been focusing on the symptoms of an ill
society, rather than attacking the root cause: unprocessed trauma.
We all have trauma. Trauma rests in the violent criminal, the cheating spouse, the corrupt
politician, those suffering from mental illness, addictions, inside those too fearful to take
risks and reach their full potential.
If its not adequately processed and purged, trauma becomes cemented onto the hard drive
of the mind, growing into a dark parasite that rears its ugly head throughout a persons
entire life. The wounds keep us locked in a grid of fear, trapped behind a personality not
true to the soul, working a mundane job rather than following a passion, repeating a cycle
of abuse, destroying the environment, harming one another. The most common and severe
suffering is inflicted during childhood and hijacks the drivers seat into adulthood, steering
an individual down a road deprived of happiness. Renowned addiction expert Gabor Mate
says, The major cause of severe substance addiction is always childhood trauma.
We live in a world full of wounds and when left untreated, theyre unceremoniously handed
from one generation to the next, so the cycle of trauma continues in all its destructive
brutality.
But theres hope. We can transform the course of humanity by collectively purging our
grief and healing at the individual level, with the help of psychedelic medicines. Once we
collectively heal at the individual level, we will see dramatic positive transformation in
society as a whole.
I founded the website reset.me, to produce and aggregate journalism on consciousness,
natural medicines, and therapies. Psychedelic explorer Terrence McKenna compared
taking psychedelics to hitting the reset button on your internal hard drive, clearing out the
junk, and starting over. I created reset.me to help connect those who need to hit the reset
button in life with journalism covering the tools that enable us to heal.
Its a human rights crisis psychedelics are not accessible to the general population. Its
insane that governments worldwide have outlawed the very medicines that can emancipate
our souls from suffering.
Its time we stop the madness.