The Goop Lab (2020) s01e01 Episode Script
The Healing Trip
When I started goop in 2008, I was like, "My calling is something else besides, you know, making out with Matt Damon on screen or whatever.
" [laughs.]
And now, it's this modern lifestyle brand.
To me, it's all laddering up to one thing, which is the optimization of self.
Like, we're here one time, one life Like, how can we really, like, milk the shit out of this? [laughing.]
You have a hundred needles in your face, Elise.
Just another day at the office.
The opportunity that we have with the goop lab is that, as a company, we can go out in different groups and go on a much deeper dive into some of these topics that our readers are curious about.
- [laughing.]
- This is gonna be my first experience - with mushrooms.
- [Gillian.]
Oh! - [Kevin sighs.]
- [woman.]
You have to let go of your ego.
[Gwyneth.]
So what happens in a workshop? - Everyone gets off.
- [woman moaning.]
What the fuck are you doing to people? [man vocalizes.]
We get to explore, like, is this real? Do we feel better? And grapple with some topics that are hard and embarrassing or shameful.
Isn't that beautiful? - [sighs.]
- [woman 2.]
Relax.
That was, like, next level shit.
So, are you guys ready to go out in the field and make a ruckus? - [woman 3.]
Yeah.
- You can handle it, right? [laughing.]
You can cry, you can scream, you can pound the ground.
The only thing we don't do is get sexual with each other.
And we don't take our clothes off.
But other than that, like, literally anything goes.
Just let it rip.
But once you take a psychedelic, - you're in on the ride.
- You're fucked, basically.
[laughing.]
- Down the hatch.
- [Elise.]
No turning back.
We know at goop, obviously, that psychedelics are controversial.
But what we try to do at goop is to be open-minded and explore ideas that may seem out there or too scary, so that people can have access to the information and make up their own minds.
Yeah, a little bit of anxiety doing this on camera, but whatever.
[woman 4.]
You know what's on the other side is just total freedom.
Oh, fuck.
Very intense, full body experience.
[Elise.]
I was melting into the floor.
Time and space around me had just dissipated.
I think it was the most important experience of my life.
I feel like a different person.
[Elise.]
What have I gotten myself into? [both laughing.]
[indistinct chatter.]
Okay.
Welcome.
It's such an honor to have you both here.
What a pleasure.
Thank you.
[Gwyneth.]
Can you explain to us what MAPS is? MAPS is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
And it's an organization that supports and does and fundraises for psychedelic research.
I would personally love to know a little bit about the trajectory of using psychedelics as a healing modality.
Psychedelics have been part of the human history for thousands of years in the context of spiritually, healing, and celebration of transitions.
In the '60s, we had a battle between the young folks, the hippies, the baby boomers and we had the drug warriors.
Psychedelics were then criminalized.
Well, psychedelics are back, and they're being used in the context of treatment.
[Gwyneth.]
Why do you think it's coming into the mainstream now? You know, depression, anxiety, suicide is all increasing, despite what we thought in the '90s was this renaissance of psycho-pharmacology, you know, Prozac, Celexa, Zoloft.
Psychiatry left psychotherapy behind and we embraced these drugs that we all know give terrible side effects.
And really, as a culture, we're hungry for something else and for something to help us heal.
Right.
So we wanted to explore psychedelics in a therapeutic setting.
Um, we decided to try psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, in Jamaica, where their use isn't regulated.
How did you choose who went on the trip? So, the goop staff sort of nominated themselves and raised their hands.
I'd say almost everyone at goop wanted to go to Jamaica.
And we wanted to sort of explore different experiences.
Renee, who just wanted to feel more creative and more like her authentic self.
I wanted to have a sort of psycho-spiritual experience.
And lastly, two people who wanted to work on processing some personal trauma.
So, we brought Jenny, one of our photo editors, and Kevin, who's worked with Gwyneth for about ten years.
I know Kevin is your family at this point.
He is one of the most special, loyal, loving people in the world.
- I know.
It makes me cry.
- Me too.
- Here we are at LAX eating almonds.
- Good morning.
[Elise.]
There's Jenny.
- Renee, are you gonna sleep on the plane? - I have an eye mask.
I have a pillow.
I'm ready to sleep.
- Here we go, Jamaica, baby! - [woman laughs.]
[Kevin.]
Oh, Elise upgraded to first class.
How do you feel about that? Good for her, I feel very happy for her.
[laughs.]
[birds squawk.]
[Elise.]
So, unlike the clinical trials, we're doing this in a more ceremonial setting.
But our amazing facilitator, Gillian, is affiliated with MAPS.
And Richard and Sasha who work with her are also very experienced therapists.
They're like psychedelic elders.
[Sasha.]
So, welcome to the opening circle.
I just want to tell you just a little bit of context.
So, the indigenous people who have used these medicines for years have really traditionally used them curing illnesses, like physical illnesses.
And they're rather perplexed by us Westerners that show up and want to connect with the divine.
They think we're a little odd and what is missing is, in their context, is that is our illness, is that we do not have any connection with anything other than ourselves and the material world.
So this is the medicine.
I really appreciate that you're joining us on this journey together and we'll see you on the other side.
[birds chirping.]
There must be something that made you go, "I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this in a therapeutic setting rather than a party setting.
" And so, we're really curious about what that is for you, so we can help you with that.
I would like to understand myself in the context of a bigger universe, beyond how I intellectualize it in my brain.
I want to surrender to the experience, - let it happen.
- Yeah.
Try not to mentally override, which is my inclination.
Anything that happens is perfect.
You can't do it wrong, so you can simply relax.
Oh, that's so much easier said than done.
[laughing.]
This is gonna be my first experience - with mushrooms.
- Oh! I've been feeling a little trapped and confined, and so, to find that freedom, to spread my wings.
So, I'm here to just let go more and do a lot of healing and get over a lot of trauma that I've experienced when my dad died.
So, I always associated myself with him.
I always felt more close to him.
And when he killed himself five years ago, it really just I mean, the doors swung open, and I've realized that he spent much of his life depressed.
And we as a family just didn't have the knowledge of recognizing that.
It was just like, "That's how he is.
" So, I assumed when I had those feelings, that was just how I was.
I didn't really process it for a while.
It was five years ago, and I just started going to therapy this year.
[Richard.]
Well, I want to acknowledge you're doing great, so Thank you.
And doing things the right way, you know.
You're here.
You're asking questions.
You're expressing yourself.
It's really beautiful.
I commend you for that.
Thank you.
How are you doing? Um, it's a little nerve-racking, for sure.
Absolutely.
If you know, I've gone to Peru and done ayahuasca, and you're in this ceremony house with all these strangers, and you're shown something from the medicine.
Then you're just sort of set off on your own, and it's like, "I saw something and, like, what does that mean? - And who can I talk to - Yeah.
- about something I saw?" - [Gillian.]
Yeah, it's so important.
How do you work through that? And then you kind of bury it back down.
- This is why we're doing this work.
- Yeah.
What is it you want to shift? What are you up to? Well, you know, I sort of grew up with an absent dad and, uh - so I think it's like - Mmm.
it's definitely caused issues just getting close to people, letting people in, you know.
- [Gillian.]
Because you can't trust them? - [Kevin.]
Yeah.
And just it's been a struggle through most of my life.
Have you found other men that you connect with, that Uh, I mean, I have some friends.
Yes, I've had a few boyfriends here and there.
But, you know, it's just sort of, you get too close, and I just sort of shut the door and pull back.
You know, we have questions that we can't answer - Mm-hmm.
- questions from our childhood.
And so the medicine is there as a tool, so we can use it as a tool to get some insight.
It's interesting, one thing that you said that was very resonant about Kevin, is that you said he's a seeker and he's on this path.
[Gwyneth.]
All I want for him is that he would have a kind of catharsis that he could come home and bring back to his life.
For him to find love and love himself.
[Elise.]
Because he had tried so many things and his experience in Peru, where he went to do ayahuasca, and essentially he had no idea really - what he was experiencing.
- It's actually very scary.
Psychedelics amplify painful memories.
They amplify painful emotions.
They bring them to the surface so that we can deal with them.
You've got these people who are now flying down to Peru or taking ayahuasca in a warehouse in Brooklyn without the proper support, thinking, "Oh, I'm just going to take this and I'm gonna be much better the next day.
" But it can actually be incredibly destabilizing.
And you can actually feel worse in the short term.
Is that why you hear of people who took LSD and had psychic breaks? - Like, they took it recreationally and - [Siu.]
Yeah.
The bad experience with psychedelics, and there are many of them, all come down to three things.
It's inappropriate dosage, inappropriate set, which is the expectation going into the experience, or inappropriate setting, and the setting is the environment that it was taken in.
If set, setting and dosage are carefully managed, - we see intense experiences - Right.
and we see periodically distressing experiences.
But that does not mean - they are bad experiences.
- Right.
I had taken psychedelics in my 20s when it was still legal.
So, I sort of had an idea of what it might be like, but this turned out to be absolutely nothing like that.
I went to places I had never gone to.
I was in a phase where I was very anxious about, uh, the disease coming back.
I was just obsessing about the future, "What if it comes back? What if it comes back? What if it comes back?" Yeah, it's not a good way to live.
One day online, I saw an advertisement for the NYU Cancer Anxiety Study.
I realized that's me.
I'm a person that should be in that study.
It was using psychotherapy and the drug psilocybin.
I experienced this realization, you know, they talk about the mind, body and the connection.
I experienced that there's no connection at all.
It's the same thing.
I experienced my body as my mind.
And then the last part of the day, I spent, um uh, having a very mystical, spiritual experience, which has sat with me, and that's been seven years.
I've seen a profound change in my life and a much greater openness.
This experience gave me the life I have now, which I love.
[Richard.]
Set and setting's really important, the dosage you take, the environment that you're in, the people that you choose to be with.
And that's what we set up.
We're going to give three grams, we're going to make it into a tea.
About 45, 50 minutes to an hour you'd start to feel the effects.
You'll have about an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half of going into more of a peak experience.
I'll be imbibing with you.
Gillian and Sasha will take a tiny microdose.
This is a sacrament.
So we can be with the spirit of the mushroom.
So blessings to everyone.
[laughing nervously.]
- Cheers, dears.
- [Renee.]
Do we cheers? [laughter.]
[Richard.]
Cheers.
- [Elise.]
Cheers.
- [Jenny.]
Wow.
Okay.
[Kevin.]
Mossy.
- [Jenny.]
Earthy.
- [exhales.]
[Jenny.]
It's so funny when you start something and you're like, "No regrets.
" Too late, buckle up.
[Sasha.]
I'd love to explore letting go of all the things that we tend to identify with.
So you can start by letting go of your name, and then your job title.
You know, that's just the work you do.
That doesn't really tell you what you actually are.
Letting go of time, no past, no future.
You can let go of your gender.
What happens if you kind of get out of the driver's seat and let life take care of itself without you, even just for a few minutes.
- [Elise.]
I'm already crying.
- [laughing.]
- [Elise.]
I feel so uncomfortable.
- [Sasha.]
Are you feeling the effects? [Elise.]
Yes.
Oh, my God.
What have I gotten myself into? [laughing.]
So how does it work? So, traditional talk therapy is a back and forth engagement.
- Oh, I know.
- [laughing.]
And often a discussion about the issues and maybe some suggested ways of thinking about it.
Psychedelic psychotherapy's completely different.
You get access to somebody's unconscious material.
If I think about what the unconscious mind is, when we're driving a car, we tend to think about lunch and the meeting we're about to have.
All of our footwork and handwork is unconscious.
- Right.
- So, when we have a tape loop in our unconscious mind, that's a trauma tape loop, it's replaying itself.
We don't access it because it's in our unconscious mind.
Psychedelics can rework it, we can expose it.
We can then shift how that tape loop functions, because we have access to it.
So what the mind tends to do when we have a traumatic experience, is that it splits.
It splits the memory from the emotion.
And what we want to do with the healing is to have the memory of what happened with the emotion combined and then have the empathic experience.
I honestly didn't think it would work, but I figured, "Everybody says MDMA is cool, might as well try it.
" In 2005, I spent 12 months in Iraq.
Got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, went into a porta john and that's when the bad guys decided to attack.
So, I got blown up in a porta john in Iraq.
Um, crappiest place to get blown up, but, hey.
PTSD is a natural reaction.
When you're in a fight or flight situation, that's when it kicks in, that's when the hypervigilance and all these things happen.
The PTSD keeps you alive in Iraq.
It doesn't become a problem until you come home.
And within 60 days of returning back from Iraq, I had my first suicide attempt.
Every day was a struggle just to live.
I had five suicide attempts that should have been successful.
I put a gun to my head twice and pulled the trigger.
In one case, the ammunition was faulty from the manufacturer, and in the second case, a spring broke.
Every second of every day, my brain told me to kill myself.
I started seeking counseling, and I found MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic studies.
And they were doing a clinical trial of psychotherapy under the influence of MDMA.
And it's the greatest therapeutic experience I've ever been in my life.
I'd be in therapy before, and I wouldn't get near the trauma.
I'd specifically avoid talking about the trauma and talk about my day-to-day life and what was causing me problems.
But MDMA mutes the amygdala, which is the fear response.
That fight or flight.
I could actually get close to the trauma and talk about it without my body betraying me and causing panic attacks.
It was one of my guys and part of him getting hurt was my fault.
It was the first time I could actually open up and deal with it.
It eliminated the suicidal ideation.
It's allowed me to live my life rather than just merely exist.
This therapy has ensured that my stepson has a father instead of a folded flag.
Since you participated in a legal MDMA study, can you share your experience? Sure.
I took MDMA as part of a legal MAPS trial that was for therapists who were in training.
So it's important for us to have our own experience so that we can be there for our patients.
Um, we face sadness, there's tears, there's re-engaging with fear.
You know, it's such a beautiful experience that can happen and the healing that results.
You can have three, four cathartic experiences in one session.
I think I'd better take some MDMA with you.
Yeah.
Haven't you tried it once? Yeah, I did try it once in Mexico.
I never thought of MDMA as a psychedelic.
and, um, when I took it, I didn't hallucinate.
Like, it wasn't a rave.
You know, it was actually very, very emotional.
And, um, I was with my then boyfriend, who's now my husband, and he's a very empathetic, very profoundly wise person.
And he was able to sort of help me through it.
But it does make me think, like, there's so much to unearth if I did it, - you know, like - Mm-hmm.
In a therapeutic setting.
[indistinct distorted voices.]
[Jenny.]
The walls are coming down a little bit.
And I feel like that's why I get talkative because I was not talk Like I remember being a kid and everyone would compliment my parents, like, "Oh, she's so quiet," and I was, like, respectful as a child.
Like, yeah, 'cause I was, like, scared to talk.
[laughing.]
[Renee.]
Someone's got the giggles.
[Elise laughing.]
I feel like such a cliche.
Stop.
- I'm just an amateur.
- [Sasha.]
I'm glad they're working, though.
[Elise.]
I'm going to pee my pants.
[all laughing.]
I thought I was inside a tree, then I realized it was, like, in an organ, and that was scary.
- Or a canal, a birth canal.
- Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
- I don't know what's happening.
- [laughing.]
[Elise.]
Clouds have a really weird quality, but things in here have a normal quality I think.
Is the sky crazy? The sky right now is crazy.
Right? [voice echoing.]
I feel like you I did this as a kid, right? Like, you just lie on your back and watch the sky.
I don't remember the last time I did that.
[Jenny laughs.]
I've been through some emotions.
[sighs.]
Just memories of, like, being a kid.
[sniffling.]
Spending time with my dad.
Like, thinking of memories of him.
[sobbing.]
[continues sobbing.]
- [Jenny.]
It's like the energy of my dad.
- Support whatever is happening.
I just can feel, it was, like, him.
[mumbles.]
[continues sobbing.]
And I feel like he wouldn't be happy that I'm doing this.
And, like, me resisting because of that, - and then this - [Sasha.]
Mm-hmm.
release came of just, like, "You need to let go of that, and" [Sasha.]
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It felt, like, very physical - and just, like, that release happened.
- Great.
[blowing nose.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! - [Sasha.]
I got another one here, too.
[Jenny coughs.]
- [sniffles.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! [Jenny exhales, laughs.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! - [Sasha laughs.]
[Jenny laughing.]
Now the tears have turned to laughter.
[Sasha.]
Good, good, let it.
They're both good.
They're both good.
[Jenny groans.]
- [Sasha.]
Do you need help with that? - [sighs.]
I'm gonna take it off.
So, a microdose of mushrooms is a very, very small amount that is likely not to make you feel the very intense psychoactive effects of mushrooms.
I'd get, like, a very large quantity, put it in my freezer and, you know grind 'em up in smoothies and really slowly dose over the time.
And so I've probably been doing that for about [laughs.]
Oh, my God.
It's, like, six years now.
It's a long time.
I was personally going through a lot of depression and trauma and anxiety.
I progressed towards feeling really, really suicidal.
My mind became my worst enemy.
I think for people of color, um, specifically, we have, like, a culture of being hard and not really facing things like mental illness, or even just, like, emotional pain.
Um But I had been going to therapy.
I'd been giving it the old college try.
But that could only take me so far, Um, I needed something else.
And mushrooms were sort of the gateway towards a better sense of healing for me that I really wasn't able to find on my own, you know.
Over this time, I've witnessed a transformation in myself that I really didn't think was possible.
I know that this is illegal, but I feel like people can say what they wanna say about it, but until they're in a position where they're about to take their life, I don't feel like they can judge me, if that makes any sense.
What we do in the context of research is completely different - from what happens on the street.
- Right.
So at no point are we advocating that people start taking MDMA or LSD or anything else.
And really, it's this turbulent process that the therapist really has to ride.
And it's complicated and difficult.
Do you believe that our bodies store the trauma somewhere, or is it entirely locked in the subconscious? Because what we observed in Jamaica through our experience was that it was releasing from people in all different ways.
Yes, I absolutely think that emotions and memory are stored in our body, and we're seeing that in the patients that work with psilocybin and MDMA.
You know, in psychology and psychiatry we're taught, "Don't put your hands on patients.
Oh, my God, you're gonna get in trouble.
" But I think if we don't learn to do that better, we're gonna actually lose some of the opportunity for healing.
[Richard.]
You're doing great.
- Yeah, go on.
- [exhales.]
Where's Sasha? - [Richard.]
Sasha.
- [Sasha.]
I'm right here.
Okay.
Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, your energy's pretty good.
Oh, my God, I don't know what it is.
[Richard.]
Hey, take him on.
Yeah.
- Yeah, we got you.
We got you.
- Oh, shit.
- [inhales, exhales.]
- [Richard.]
There you go.
I was on my way there again to the light source.
[Sasha.]
Yeah.
Oh, fuck.
[Sasha.]
Yeah.
- [Kevin whimpers.]
- [Sasha.]
Can we just - [Richard.]
Yeah.
- [Sasha.]
Got it.
[Kevin sobbing.]
[Richard gently humming.]
[Kevin gasps, continues sobbing.]
[exhaling.]
[sighs.]
[Kevin.]
I feel like I'm the light of the center - the center of the circle right now.
- Yeah.
[exhales happily.]
[Richard.]
Good work.
Yes, we are.
- Someone get a heart rate monitor on me.
- [laughing.]
- [Sasha.]
Keep going, keep going.
- [Kevin.]
That's a real psychedelic.
- [Richard.]
Ready? - Oh, my whole body's vibrating.
[Sasha.]
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
[Elise.]
It was very beautiful, very profound to lie there next to Kevin and watch him be held by these two men who were embracing him in a way that he hadn't been embraced as a child by his own father, and, I mean, besides what was happening, you don't even see those sorts of expressions - from adult men to adult men.
- Mm-hmm.
Um, so, that was very powerful.
That's an angle that in Western culture we don't really have.
There's kind of no rubric for how we deal with discomfort and how we deal with trauma, how we deal with conflict, and suppression seems to have become the main way.
Suppression and distraction and avoidance and "I'm a tough guy" are all the norms of our society today.
And psychedelics are the opposite.
We need to find ways of connecting people.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
These medicines are medicines of connection.
You look at the team at goop, everyone here, at some level, is a deeply successful person, right? And yet, they are all carrying a tremendous amount of pain and loss.
And I think so many of us are taught, like, "You're thriving, you're good.
Like, how dare you!" You know, you, for example, what could possibly be wrong with you? You have everything.
You're beautiful.
You're wealthy.
You're famous.
- Like, shut up.
You know? - [laughing.]
But I think that that is the perfect example of how our lack of understanding - [Mark.]
Yes.
- And also, you know, to the larger point, this is where this systemic cultural lack of connection comes in.
If everybody felt connected, they would understand that I, as well, have had incredibly painful and traumatic experiences.
And I had a lot of trauma in my childhood, and being the person that people perceive me to be is inherently traumatic.
Like you know? So, I think that lack of connection that you describe that is really so pervasive right now is kind of part of that.
Yeah, I have a private practice where I see wealthy clients, poor clients, famous people, and just average Joe.
But within two or three sessions, everyone is talking about relationships and disconnection.
I've been in mental health, I think, seven years, and I've been on this earth 39 years, and I don't think I've ever met a healthy person yet.
Aside from, like, maybe the few masters that are on this Earth, I really think we're all suffering to some extent, and we're on this journey of healing.
[Elise.]
This is not a typical workplace experience.
Although, I kind of wonder if it wouldn't be incredibly therapeutic for workplace teams if you felt really safe and wanted to become even more intimate and connected with the people that you spend the majority of your day with.
At the end of the day, this idea that this work needs to be done in secret, that it's shameful, that it is not appropriate to be vulnerable in front of other people, I think is one of the paralyzing things going on in our society.
So, I would like to talk about integration so that you keep what you got.
When you feel yourself sliding, because you will.
You will because of the chaos.
It isn't always like this.
We're in the Garden of Eden right now and then we go back into all that other stuff.
Right.
The place you want to stay in and want to be in isn't linked to Jamaica or Los Angeles or anywhere.
It's in you.
So, you can actually create that for yourselves in the middle of a war zone.
In all honesty, I have never felt the way I did last night, ever in my life.
[Richard.]
We've all gone through this process together, and you have each other.
- [Kevin.]
Mm-hmm, yes.
- Right? So that's a resource.
[Jenny.]
I still feel like I'm processing a lot.
Like, I'm really drained physically and emotionally.
And I feel like I went through about, like, five years of therapy in about five hours.
[Sasha.]
Thank you guys for just putting your hearts into it - and your souls and yeah.
- [Kevin.]
Mm-hmm.
- Sorry.
- [Sasha chuckles.]
I think it's so admirable what you both are doing.
We've just scratched the surface of where we're going to go - with psychedelic psychotherapy.
- Right.
Hopefully what will happen is therapists, healers, psychologists and psychiatrists will observe the benefits across our country.
And then more and more psychedelics will become on stream, and the wider window of indications they will be used for will essentially bring psychedelics back into mainstream psychiatry and mainstream psychology.
And it will be a tool for healing that will be used widely.
MAPS has actually already applied to the government to get special access before it's fully rescheduled.
So, that application process is in.
I think MAPS is training about 250 or 300 therapists this year to prepare for that wave.
And so, maybe we can do a goop MDMA-assisted therapy clinic.
Yeah, it's happening.
- Sounds like a Christmas party.
- I know.
[all laughing.]
Thank you for allowing me to leave your very busy life.
- [chuckling.]
- That was really hard.
- I had four panic attacks without you.
- Oh.
Since going through it, what's been your experience of, like, being in your body? - I've definitely like more of an openness - Uh-huh.
- and hopefully letting people in.
- Yes! [Kevin laughing.]
So, I mean, it's still very fresh to me.
As I was laying there, sort of all of my ego and things that sort of hold me back from who I am, I just let go of all of that.
Like, I wasn't in the room with a camera crew.
I wasn't Kevin being shy or nervous or whatever it was, I just kind of let it go.
I felt like a young, little boy, and all I wanted to do was, like, be held, and I've sort of never felt that way before.
Did you think having the therapist there guiding you through it was essential? Yes.
Someone to talk to and be like, "Hey, why did this happen, and how did this come up, and what does this all mean actually?" You know? It's amazing.
It's like that incredible intense bravery around healing yourself.
And I just think you're really brave - and really amazing.
- Thank you.
I've been carrying this sort of emptiness and loneliness around for 36 years now.
I've been carrying this emptiness and loneliness around for 39 years.
[laughing.]
And thank you for letting me do all of this fun stuff.
- Shut up.
- No, thank you.
- [Gwyneth.]
I love you so much.
- I love you.
[theme music playing.]
" [laughs.]
And now, it's this modern lifestyle brand.
To me, it's all laddering up to one thing, which is the optimization of self.
Like, we're here one time, one life Like, how can we really, like, milk the shit out of this? [laughing.]
You have a hundred needles in your face, Elise.
Just another day at the office.
The opportunity that we have with the goop lab is that, as a company, we can go out in different groups and go on a much deeper dive into some of these topics that our readers are curious about.
- [laughing.]
- This is gonna be my first experience - with mushrooms.
- [Gillian.]
Oh! - [Kevin sighs.]
- [woman.]
You have to let go of your ego.
[Gwyneth.]
So what happens in a workshop? - Everyone gets off.
- [woman moaning.]
What the fuck are you doing to people? [man vocalizes.]
We get to explore, like, is this real? Do we feel better? And grapple with some topics that are hard and embarrassing or shameful.
Isn't that beautiful? - [sighs.]
- [woman 2.]
Relax.
That was, like, next level shit.
So, are you guys ready to go out in the field and make a ruckus? - [woman 3.]
Yeah.
- You can handle it, right? [laughing.]
You can cry, you can scream, you can pound the ground.
The only thing we don't do is get sexual with each other.
And we don't take our clothes off.
But other than that, like, literally anything goes.
Just let it rip.
But once you take a psychedelic, - you're in on the ride.
- You're fucked, basically.
[laughing.]
- Down the hatch.
- [Elise.]
No turning back.
We know at goop, obviously, that psychedelics are controversial.
But what we try to do at goop is to be open-minded and explore ideas that may seem out there or too scary, so that people can have access to the information and make up their own minds.
Yeah, a little bit of anxiety doing this on camera, but whatever.
[woman 4.]
You know what's on the other side is just total freedom.
Oh, fuck.
Very intense, full body experience.
[Elise.]
I was melting into the floor.
Time and space around me had just dissipated.
I think it was the most important experience of my life.
I feel like a different person.
[Elise.]
What have I gotten myself into? [both laughing.]
[indistinct chatter.]
Okay.
Welcome.
It's such an honor to have you both here.
What a pleasure.
Thank you.
[Gwyneth.]
Can you explain to us what MAPS is? MAPS is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
And it's an organization that supports and does and fundraises for psychedelic research.
I would personally love to know a little bit about the trajectory of using psychedelics as a healing modality.
Psychedelics have been part of the human history for thousands of years in the context of spiritually, healing, and celebration of transitions.
In the '60s, we had a battle between the young folks, the hippies, the baby boomers and we had the drug warriors.
Psychedelics were then criminalized.
Well, psychedelics are back, and they're being used in the context of treatment.
[Gwyneth.]
Why do you think it's coming into the mainstream now? You know, depression, anxiety, suicide is all increasing, despite what we thought in the '90s was this renaissance of psycho-pharmacology, you know, Prozac, Celexa, Zoloft.
Psychiatry left psychotherapy behind and we embraced these drugs that we all know give terrible side effects.
And really, as a culture, we're hungry for something else and for something to help us heal.
Right.
So we wanted to explore psychedelics in a therapeutic setting.
Um, we decided to try psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, in Jamaica, where their use isn't regulated.
How did you choose who went on the trip? So, the goop staff sort of nominated themselves and raised their hands.
I'd say almost everyone at goop wanted to go to Jamaica.
And we wanted to sort of explore different experiences.
Renee, who just wanted to feel more creative and more like her authentic self.
I wanted to have a sort of psycho-spiritual experience.
And lastly, two people who wanted to work on processing some personal trauma.
So, we brought Jenny, one of our photo editors, and Kevin, who's worked with Gwyneth for about ten years.
I know Kevin is your family at this point.
He is one of the most special, loyal, loving people in the world.
- I know.
It makes me cry.
- Me too.
- Here we are at LAX eating almonds.
- Good morning.
[Elise.]
There's Jenny.
- Renee, are you gonna sleep on the plane? - I have an eye mask.
I have a pillow.
I'm ready to sleep.
- Here we go, Jamaica, baby! - [woman laughs.]
[Kevin.]
Oh, Elise upgraded to first class.
How do you feel about that? Good for her, I feel very happy for her.
[laughs.]
[birds squawk.]
[Elise.]
So, unlike the clinical trials, we're doing this in a more ceremonial setting.
But our amazing facilitator, Gillian, is affiliated with MAPS.
And Richard and Sasha who work with her are also very experienced therapists.
They're like psychedelic elders.
[Sasha.]
So, welcome to the opening circle.
I just want to tell you just a little bit of context.
So, the indigenous people who have used these medicines for years have really traditionally used them curing illnesses, like physical illnesses.
And they're rather perplexed by us Westerners that show up and want to connect with the divine.
They think we're a little odd and what is missing is, in their context, is that is our illness, is that we do not have any connection with anything other than ourselves and the material world.
So this is the medicine.
I really appreciate that you're joining us on this journey together and we'll see you on the other side.
[birds chirping.]
There must be something that made you go, "I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this in a therapeutic setting rather than a party setting.
" And so, we're really curious about what that is for you, so we can help you with that.
I would like to understand myself in the context of a bigger universe, beyond how I intellectualize it in my brain.
I want to surrender to the experience, - let it happen.
- Yeah.
Try not to mentally override, which is my inclination.
Anything that happens is perfect.
You can't do it wrong, so you can simply relax.
Oh, that's so much easier said than done.
[laughing.]
This is gonna be my first experience - with mushrooms.
- Oh! I've been feeling a little trapped and confined, and so, to find that freedom, to spread my wings.
So, I'm here to just let go more and do a lot of healing and get over a lot of trauma that I've experienced when my dad died.
So, I always associated myself with him.
I always felt more close to him.
And when he killed himself five years ago, it really just I mean, the doors swung open, and I've realized that he spent much of his life depressed.
And we as a family just didn't have the knowledge of recognizing that.
It was just like, "That's how he is.
" So, I assumed when I had those feelings, that was just how I was.
I didn't really process it for a while.
It was five years ago, and I just started going to therapy this year.
[Richard.]
Well, I want to acknowledge you're doing great, so Thank you.
And doing things the right way, you know.
You're here.
You're asking questions.
You're expressing yourself.
It's really beautiful.
I commend you for that.
Thank you.
How are you doing? Um, it's a little nerve-racking, for sure.
Absolutely.
If you know, I've gone to Peru and done ayahuasca, and you're in this ceremony house with all these strangers, and you're shown something from the medicine.
Then you're just sort of set off on your own, and it's like, "I saw something and, like, what does that mean? - And who can I talk to - Yeah.
- about something I saw?" - [Gillian.]
Yeah, it's so important.
How do you work through that? And then you kind of bury it back down.
- This is why we're doing this work.
- Yeah.
What is it you want to shift? What are you up to? Well, you know, I sort of grew up with an absent dad and, uh - so I think it's like - Mmm.
it's definitely caused issues just getting close to people, letting people in, you know.
- [Gillian.]
Because you can't trust them? - [Kevin.]
Yeah.
And just it's been a struggle through most of my life.
Have you found other men that you connect with, that Uh, I mean, I have some friends.
Yes, I've had a few boyfriends here and there.
But, you know, it's just sort of, you get too close, and I just sort of shut the door and pull back.
You know, we have questions that we can't answer - Mm-hmm.
- questions from our childhood.
And so the medicine is there as a tool, so we can use it as a tool to get some insight.
It's interesting, one thing that you said that was very resonant about Kevin, is that you said he's a seeker and he's on this path.
[Gwyneth.]
All I want for him is that he would have a kind of catharsis that he could come home and bring back to his life.
For him to find love and love himself.
[Elise.]
Because he had tried so many things and his experience in Peru, where he went to do ayahuasca, and essentially he had no idea really - what he was experiencing.
- It's actually very scary.
Psychedelics amplify painful memories.
They amplify painful emotions.
They bring them to the surface so that we can deal with them.
You've got these people who are now flying down to Peru or taking ayahuasca in a warehouse in Brooklyn without the proper support, thinking, "Oh, I'm just going to take this and I'm gonna be much better the next day.
" But it can actually be incredibly destabilizing.
And you can actually feel worse in the short term.
Is that why you hear of people who took LSD and had psychic breaks? - Like, they took it recreationally and - [Siu.]
Yeah.
The bad experience with psychedelics, and there are many of them, all come down to three things.
It's inappropriate dosage, inappropriate set, which is the expectation going into the experience, or inappropriate setting, and the setting is the environment that it was taken in.
If set, setting and dosage are carefully managed, - we see intense experiences - Right.
and we see periodically distressing experiences.
But that does not mean - they are bad experiences.
- Right.
I had taken psychedelics in my 20s when it was still legal.
So, I sort of had an idea of what it might be like, but this turned out to be absolutely nothing like that.
I went to places I had never gone to.
I was in a phase where I was very anxious about, uh, the disease coming back.
I was just obsessing about the future, "What if it comes back? What if it comes back? What if it comes back?" Yeah, it's not a good way to live.
One day online, I saw an advertisement for the NYU Cancer Anxiety Study.
I realized that's me.
I'm a person that should be in that study.
It was using psychotherapy and the drug psilocybin.
I experienced this realization, you know, they talk about the mind, body and the connection.
I experienced that there's no connection at all.
It's the same thing.
I experienced my body as my mind.
And then the last part of the day, I spent, um uh, having a very mystical, spiritual experience, which has sat with me, and that's been seven years.
I've seen a profound change in my life and a much greater openness.
This experience gave me the life I have now, which I love.
[Richard.]
Set and setting's really important, the dosage you take, the environment that you're in, the people that you choose to be with.
And that's what we set up.
We're going to give three grams, we're going to make it into a tea.
About 45, 50 minutes to an hour you'd start to feel the effects.
You'll have about an hour and a quarter, an hour and a half of going into more of a peak experience.
I'll be imbibing with you.
Gillian and Sasha will take a tiny microdose.
This is a sacrament.
So we can be with the spirit of the mushroom.
So blessings to everyone.
[laughing nervously.]
- Cheers, dears.
- [Renee.]
Do we cheers? [laughter.]
[Richard.]
Cheers.
- [Elise.]
Cheers.
- [Jenny.]
Wow.
Okay.
[Kevin.]
Mossy.
- [Jenny.]
Earthy.
- [exhales.]
[Jenny.]
It's so funny when you start something and you're like, "No regrets.
" Too late, buckle up.
[Sasha.]
I'd love to explore letting go of all the things that we tend to identify with.
So you can start by letting go of your name, and then your job title.
You know, that's just the work you do.
That doesn't really tell you what you actually are.
Letting go of time, no past, no future.
You can let go of your gender.
What happens if you kind of get out of the driver's seat and let life take care of itself without you, even just for a few minutes.
- [Elise.]
I'm already crying.
- [laughing.]
- [Elise.]
I feel so uncomfortable.
- [Sasha.]
Are you feeling the effects? [Elise.]
Yes.
Oh, my God.
What have I gotten myself into? [laughing.]
So how does it work? So, traditional talk therapy is a back and forth engagement.
- Oh, I know.
- [laughing.]
And often a discussion about the issues and maybe some suggested ways of thinking about it.
Psychedelic psychotherapy's completely different.
You get access to somebody's unconscious material.
If I think about what the unconscious mind is, when we're driving a car, we tend to think about lunch and the meeting we're about to have.
All of our footwork and handwork is unconscious.
- Right.
- So, when we have a tape loop in our unconscious mind, that's a trauma tape loop, it's replaying itself.
We don't access it because it's in our unconscious mind.
Psychedelics can rework it, we can expose it.
We can then shift how that tape loop functions, because we have access to it.
So what the mind tends to do when we have a traumatic experience, is that it splits.
It splits the memory from the emotion.
And what we want to do with the healing is to have the memory of what happened with the emotion combined and then have the empathic experience.
I honestly didn't think it would work, but I figured, "Everybody says MDMA is cool, might as well try it.
" In 2005, I spent 12 months in Iraq.
Got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom, went into a porta john and that's when the bad guys decided to attack.
So, I got blown up in a porta john in Iraq.
Um, crappiest place to get blown up, but, hey.
PTSD is a natural reaction.
When you're in a fight or flight situation, that's when it kicks in, that's when the hypervigilance and all these things happen.
The PTSD keeps you alive in Iraq.
It doesn't become a problem until you come home.
And within 60 days of returning back from Iraq, I had my first suicide attempt.
Every day was a struggle just to live.
I had five suicide attempts that should have been successful.
I put a gun to my head twice and pulled the trigger.
In one case, the ammunition was faulty from the manufacturer, and in the second case, a spring broke.
Every second of every day, my brain told me to kill myself.
I started seeking counseling, and I found MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic studies.
And they were doing a clinical trial of psychotherapy under the influence of MDMA.
And it's the greatest therapeutic experience I've ever been in my life.
I'd be in therapy before, and I wouldn't get near the trauma.
I'd specifically avoid talking about the trauma and talk about my day-to-day life and what was causing me problems.
But MDMA mutes the amygdala, which is the fear response.
That fight or flight.
I could actually get close to the trauma and talk about it without my body betraying me and causing panic attacks.
It was one of my guys and part of him getting hurt was my fault.
It was the first time I could actually open up and deal with it.
It eliminated the suicidal ideation.
It's allowed me to live my life rather than just merely exist.
This therapy has ensured that my stepson has a father instead of a folded flag.
Since you participated in a legal MDMA study, can you share your experience? Sure.
I took MDMA as part of a legal MAPS trial that was for therapists who were in training.
So it's important for us to have our own experience so that we can be there for our patients.
Um, we face sadness, there's tears, there's re-engaging with fear.
You know, it's such a beautiful experience that can happen and the healing that results.
You can have three, four cathartic experiences in one session.
I think I'd better take some MDMA with you.
Yeah.
Haven't you tried it once? Yeah, I did try it once in Mexico.
I never thought of MDMA as a psychedelic.
and, um, when I took it, I didn't hallucinate.
Like, it wasn't a rave.
You know, it was actually very, very emotional.
And, um, I was with my then boyfriend, who's now my husband, and he's a very empathetic, very profoundly wise person.
And he was able to sort of help me through it.
But it does make me think, like, there's so much to unearth if I did it, - you know, like - Mm-hmm.
In a therapeutic setting.
[indistinct distorted voices.]
[Jenny.]
The walls are coming down a little bit.
And I feel like that's why I get talkative because I was not talk Like I remember being a kid and everyone would compliment my parents, like, "Oh, she's so quiet," and I was, like, respectful as a child.
Like, yeah, 'cause I was, like, scared to talk.
[laughing.]
[Renee.]
Someone's got the giggles.
[Elise laughing.]
I feel like such a cliche.
Stop.
- I'm just an amateur.
- [Sasha.]
I'm glad they're working, though.
[Elise.]
I'm going to pee my pants.
[all laughing.]
I thought I was inside a tree, then I realized it was, like, in an organ, and that was scary.
- Or a canal, a birth canal.
- Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
- I don't know what's happening.
- [laughing.]
[Elise.]
Clouds have a really weird quality, but things in here have a normal quality I think.
Is the sky crazy? The sky right now is crazy.
Right? [voice echoing.]
I feel like you I did this as a kid, right? Like, you just lie on your back and watch the sky.
I don't remember the last time I did that.
[Jenny laughs.]
I've been through some emotions.
[sighs.]
Just memories of, like, being a kid.
[sniffling.]
Spending time with my dad.
Like, thinking of memories of him.
[sobbing.]
[continues sobbing.]
- [Jenny.]
It's like the energy of my dad.
- Support whatever is happening.
I just can feel, it was, like, him.
[mumbles.]
[continues sobbing.]
And I feel like he wouldn't be happy that I'm doing this.
And, like, me resisting because of that, - and then this - [Sasha.]
Mm-hmm.
release came of just, like, "You need to let go of that, and" [Sasha.]
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It felt, like, very physical - and just, like, that release happened.
- Great.
[blowing nose.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! - [Sasha.]
I got another one here, too.
[Jenny coughs.]
- [sniffles.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! [Jenny exhales, laughs.]
- [woman.]
Ahh! - [Sasha laughs.]
[Jenny laughing.]
Now the tears have turned to laughter.
[Sasha.]
Good, good, let it.
They're both good.
They're both good.
[Jenny groans.]
- [Sasha.]
Do you need help with that? - [sighs.]
I'm gonna take it off.
So, a microdose of mushrooms is a very, very small amount that is likely not to make you feel the very intense psychoactive effects of mushrooms.
I'd get, like, a very large quantity, put it in my freezer and, you know grind 'em up in smoothies and really slowly dose over the time.
And so I've probably been doing that for about [laughs.]
Oh, my God.
It's, like, six years now.
It's a long time.
I was personally going through a lot of depression and trauma and anxiety.
I progressed towards feeling really, really suicidal.
My mind became my worst enemy.
I think for people of color, um, specifically, we have, like, a culture of being hard and not really facing things like mental illness, or even just, like, emotional pain.
Um But I had been going to therapy.
I'd been giving it the old college try.
But that could only take me so far, Um, I needed something else.
And mushrooms were sort of the gateway towards a better sense of healing for me that I really wasn't able to find on my own, you know.
Over this time, I've witnessed a transformation in myself that I really didn't think was possible.
I know that this is illegal, but I feel like people can say what they wanna say about it, but until they're in a position where they're about to take their life, I don't feel like they can judge me, if that makes any sense.
What we do in the context of research is completely different - from what happens on the street.
- Right.
So at no point are we advocating that people start taking MDMA or LSD or anything else.
And really, it's this turbulent process that the therapist really has to ride.
And it's complicated and difficult.
Do you believe that our bodies store the trauma somewhere, or is it entirely locked in the subconscious? Because what we observed in Jamaica through our experience was that it was releasing from people in all different ways.
Yes, I absolutely think that emotions and memory are stored in our body, and we're seeing that in the patients that work with psilocybin and MDMA.
You know, in psychology and psychiatry we're taught, "Don't put your hands on patients.
Oh, my God, you're gonna get in trouble.
" But I think if we don't learn to do that better, we're gonna actually lose some of the opportunity for healing.
[Richard.]
You're doing great.
- Yeah, go on.
- [exhales.]
Where's Sasha? - [Richard.]
Sasha.
- [Sasha.]
I'm right here.
Okay.
Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, your energy's pretty good.
Oh, my God, I don't know what it is.
[Richard.]
Hey, take him on.
Yeah.
- Yeah, we got you.
We got you.
- Oh, shit.
- [inhales, exhales.]
- [Richard.]
There you go.
I was on my way there again to the light source.
[Sasha.]
Yeah.
Oh, fuck.
[Sasha.]
Yeah.
- [Kevin whimpers.]
- [Sasha.]
Can we just - [Richard.]
Yeah.
- [Sasha.]
Got it.
[Kevin sobbing.]
[Richard gently humming.]
[Kevin gasps, continues sobbing.]
[exhaling.]
[sighs.]
[Kevin.]
I feel like I'm the light of the center - the center of the circle right now.
- Yeah.
[exhales happily.]
[Richard.]
Good work.
Yes, we are.
- Someone get a heart rate monitor on me.
- [laughing.]
- [Sasha.]
Keep going, keep going.
- [Kevin.]
That's a real psychedelic.
- [Richard.]
Ready? - Oh, my whole body's vibrating.
[Sasha.]
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
[Elise.]
It was very beautiful, very profound to lie there next to Kevin and watch him be held by these two men who were embracing him in a way that he hadn't been embraced as a child by his own father, and, I mean, besides what was happening, you don't even see those sorts of expressions - from adult men to adult men.
- Mm-hmm.
Um, so, that was very powerful.
That's an angle that in Western culture we don't really have.
There's kind of no rubric for how we deal with discomfort and how we deal with trauma, how we deal with conflict, and suppression seems to have become the main way.
Suppression and distraction and avoidance and "I'm a tough guy" are all the norms of our society today.
And psychedelics are the opposite.
We need to find ways of connecting people.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
These medicines are medicines of connection.
You look at the team at goop, everyone here, at some level, is a deeply successful person, right? And yet, they are all carrying a tremendous amount of pain and loss.
And I think so many of us are taught, like, "You're thriving, you're good.
Like, how dare you!" You know, you, for example, what could possibly be wrong with you? You have everything.
You're beautiful.
You're wealthy.
You're famous.
- Like, shut up.
You know? - [laughing.]
But I think that that is the perfect example of how our lack of understanding - [Mark.]
Yes.
- And also, you know, to the larger point, this is where this systemic cultural lack of connection comes in.
If everybody felt connected, they would understand that I, as well, have had incredibly painful and traumatic experiences.
And I had a lot of trauma in my childhood, and being the person that people perceive me to be is inherently traumatic.
Like you know? So, I think that lack of connection that you describe that is really so pervasive right now is kind of part of that.
Yeah, I have a private practice where I see wealthy clients, poor clients, famous people, and just average Joe.
But within two or three sessions, everyone is talking about relationships and disconnection.
I've been in mental health, I think, seven years, and I've been on this earth 39 years, and I don't think I've ever met a healthy person yet.
Aside from, like, maybe the few masters that are on this Earth, I really think we're all suffering to some extent, and we're on this journey of healing.
[Elise.]
This is not a typical workplace experience.
Although, I kind of wonder if it wouldn't be incredibly therapeutic for workplace teams if you felt really safe and wanted to become even more intimate and connected with the people that you spend the majority of your day with.
At the end of the day, this idea that this work needs to be done in secret, that it's shameful, that it is not appropriate to be vulnerable in front of other people, I think is one of the paralyzing things going on in our society.
So, I would like to talk about integration so that you keep what you got.
When you feel yourself sliding, because you will.
You will because of the chaos.
It isn't always like this.
We're in the Garden of Eden right now and then we go back into all that other stuff.
Right.
The place you want to stay in and want to be in isn't linked to Jamaica or Los Angeles or anywhere.
It's in you.
So, you can actually create that for yourselves in the middle of a war zone.
In all honesty, I have never felt the way I did last night, ever in my life.
[Richard.]
We've all gone through this process together, and you have each other.
- [Kevin.]
Mm-hmm, yes.
- Right? So that's a resource.
[Jenny.]
I still feel like I'm processing a lot.
Like, I'm really drained physically and emotionally.
And I feel like I went through about, like, five years of therapy in about five hours.
[Sasha.]
Thank you guys for just putting your hearts into it - and your souls and yeah.
- [Kevin.]
Mm-hmm.
- Sorry.
- [Sasha chuckles.]
I think it's so admirable what you both are doing.
We've just scratched the surface of where we're going to go - with psychedelic psychotherapy.
- Right.
Hopefully what will happen is therapists, healers, psychologists and psychiatrists will observe the benefits across our country.
And then more and more psychedelics will become on stream, and the wider window of indications they will be used for will essentially bring psychedelics back into mainstream psychiatry and mainstream psychology.
And it will be a tool for healing that will be used widely.
MAPS has actually already applied to the government to get special access before it's fully rescheduled.
So, that application process is in.
I think MAPS is training about 250 or 300 therapists this year to prepare for that wave.
And so, maybe we can do a goop MDMA-assisted therapy clinic.
Yeah, it's happening.
- Sounds like a Christmas party.
- I know.
[all laughing.]
Thank you for allowing me to leave your very busy life.
- [chuckling.]
- That was really hard.
- I had four panic attacks without you.
- Oh.
Since going through it, what's been your experience of, like, being in your body? - I've definitely like more of an openness - Uh-huh.
- and hopefully letting people in.
- Yes! [Kevin laughing.]
So, I mean, it's still very fresh to me.
As I was laying there, sort of all of my ego and things that sort of hold me back from who I am, I just let go of all of that.
Like, I wasn't in the room with a camera crew.
I wasn't Kevin being shy or nervous or whatever it was, I just kind of let it go.
I felt like a young, little boy, and all I wanted to do was, like, be held, and I've sort of never felt that way before.
Did you think having the therapist there guiding you through it was essential? Yes.
Someone to talk to and be like, "Hey, why did this happen, and how did this come up, and what does this all mean actually?" You know? It's amazing.
It's like that incredible intense bravery around healing yourself.
And I just think you're really brave - and really amazing.
- Thank you.
I've been carrying this sort of emptiness and loneliness around for 36 years now.
I've been carrying this emptiness and loneliness around for 39 years.
[laughing.]
And thank you for letting me do all of this fun stuff.
- Shut up.
- No, thank you.
- [Gwyneth.]
I love you so much.
- I love you.
[theme music playing.]