Herbal Ecstasy & The Billion Dollar Smart Drug Boom

Podcast Highlights

• Creating Herbal Ecstasy at age fifteen
• The MDMA shortage that created opportunity
• Rave culture and the 1990s club scene
• Natural supplements as legal alternatives
• Freedom, regulation, and drug policy debates
• Health and wellness entrepreneurship
• Building product brands in emerging markets
• Podcasting and YouTube as influence platforms

Show Links

1. Shaahin’s website
2. PodcastCola
3. Shaahin on Instagram
4. Billion: How I Became King of the Thrill Pill Cult – Shaahin Cheyene

The Microdosing Practitioner Certification empowers you to launch a sustainable practice built on integrity, science, and results. Learn Paul F. Austin’s signature San Pedro Microdosing Protocol, master somatic coaching skills, and confidently guide clients toward lasting transformation. Click here to learn more and apply.

This episode is brought to you by The Practitioner Certification Program by Third Wave’s Psychedelic Coaching Institute. To learn more about our flagship 6-month training program for coaches who want to integrate psychedelic modalities into their practice, click here.

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Shaahin: [00:00:30] [00:01:00] [00:01:30] Of them, um, like some introduction, like, who [00:02:00] is this guy? Why do you, why are you having him on? Right, right. Because what's the podcast called?

[00:02:03] Paul F. Austin: The Psychedelic

[00:02:04] Shaahin: The Psychedelic Podcast? The Psychedelic Podcast.

[00:02:05] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. Third Waves podcast. But The

[00:02:06] Shaahin: people, people are listening to it are tuned into that frequency. So we should probably talk about that and then, you know, see where the conversation goes from there.

[00:02:19] Shaahin: Maybe I don't, it's, yeah, it's up to you, but it, it's, if it's The Psychedelic Podcast, then, you know, we can talk about that, um, and kind of follow those [00:02:30] threads. I mean, my story kind of feeds into that, so I'm happy to, we can, we can, we can go over that. And then

[00:02:35] Paul F. Austin: one, it's, it feels like something that, not a lot like, it, it feels like a little bit of a, a hidden gem, if you will.

[00:02:43] Paul F. Austin: Like, there's a lot of people who make the rounds on psychedelic podcasts. You can, they know, you know, the typical figures and the typical stories, but I feel like this is a story that hasn't really been.

[00:02:52] Shaahin: Yeah.

[00:02:53] Paul F. Austin: Told or not, it's not really known. And I think it's really interesting. I mean, the age that you were, what you were selling, who you were hanging out [00:03:00] with.

[00:03:00] Paul F. Austin: Right. The fact that it was legal.

[00:03:02] Shaahin: Yeah.

[00:03:03] Paul F. Austin: You know, until, until it wasn't. Or it wasn't exactly right. Exactly. Yeah. So came

[00:03:08] Shaahin: after you. Yeah. I think that's interesting. And I think I'm, I probably have a different, maybe like a different flavor, a different viewpoint on hallucinogen and psychedelics when someone's taken 'em all.

[00:03:19] Shaahin: I'm not particularly pro psychedelics, which I think might be interesting for people to, it is just another, I'm, I'm not against them, but I'm also not, uh, you know, like a big advocate of them.

[00:03:30] I, I know that, that you are. So I think we have, you know, differing viewpoints and that might make for a very interesting conversation

[00:03:38] Shaahin: Yeah.

[00:03:38] Shaahin: On that, right? Yeah. So,

[00:03:40] Paul F. Austin: totally. That's cool. So we'll explore

[00:03:43] Shaahin: We can explore that.

[00:03:44] Paul F. Austin: have you met, um. I know another Shaahin, he has this company called Ancestral Magi. Have you, have you heard of this company? Okay. I

[00:03:53] Shaahin: What is that? I, I love the name 'cause I love Occult science. I love reading about all that stuff.

[00:03:58] Paul F. Austin: They're like selling low doses of [00:04:00] Oma basically. You know what Oma is?

[00:04:02] Shaahin: I didn't know that somebody knew

[00:04:04] Paul F. Austin: Syrian

[00:04:05] Shaahin: is. Okay. Yeah.

[00:04:07] Shaahin: And

[00:04:07] Paul F. Austin: he's, he's Persian, you know, he, he, his family's still in Iran. I think he, he, he got his PhD in Vancouver, so he splits time between Canada and what's the and Iran. Um, it, but there's no, it's just the MOI Yeah, it's just the, the, the Syrian Roux or the, you know, because legally they can't put the tryptamine in or else,

[00:04:30] but it, it, it's provided a platform and we've done a couple podcasts and education around like what that means.

[00:04:36] Paul F. Austin: And, and then I was just talking with a friend of mine a couple nights ago and she said a lot of people are now doing this.

[00:04:42] Shaahin: Hama,

[00:04:43] Paul F. Austin: Hama Haca, they're, they're basically trying to combine Hama with like ayahuasca or like a Una Right. And drinking that together. And I've heard someone refer to it as Samati, right?

[00:04:53] Paul F. Austin: So there's

[00:04:53] Shaahin: Oh, good marketing.

[00:04:55] Paul F. Austin: good marketing. Good marketing, right? Yeah. There's this sort of reclamation of

[00:04:59] Shaahin: take [00:05:00] DMT

[00:05:00] Paul F. Austin: exactly.

[00:05:00] Shaahin: it save some, saves some time in my,

[00:05:02] Paul F. Austin: Yeah.

[00:05:03] Shaahin: it's pretty freaking effective DM t it'll, it'll get you there.

[00:05:06] Shaahin: Five minutes. You're done.

[00:05:08] Shaahin: Totally.

[00:05:08] Shaahin: That's a big,

[00:05:09] Paul F. Austin: I mean, how connected were you, were you to all the recent stuff that's going on in, in Iran?

[00:05:13] Paul F. Austin: Like, is, is, is there relevance there for you still? Or emotional tie, or is it like, that's a,

[00:05:19] Shaahin: yeah, so we left Iran, are we starting,

[00:05:21] Paul F. Austin: Can we start?

[00:05:23] Shaahin: We're

[00:05:23] Shaahin: we're rolling? We're Oh, we're rolling.

[00:05:24] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. We could cut it as we

[00:05:26] Shaahin: Whatever. However you want. Start,

[00:05:28] Paul F. Austin: do a whole bio at the out, you

[00:05:30] know, but we're here, right?

[00:05:31] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. I mean, what do you, are there things you don't want to talk on about, on air or you pretty

[00:05:35] Shaahin: I can talk about anything you

[00:05:37] Paul F. Austin: what I figured. Okay.

[00:05:38] Shaahin: very easy. Yeah.

[00:05:39] Paul F. Austin: Good.

[00:05:40] Shaahin: so, and then I'm, I'm looking that way.

[00:05:43] Shaahin: So you, you

[00:05:45] Noise: look at each other, unless

[00:05:46] Shaahin: you're

[00:05:47] Noise: you're doing like, you know, at the very end you have like, something you wanna promote, social media,

[00:05:51] Paul F. Austin: that like a CT

[00:05:52] Shaahin: Okay. Something like that. Yeah, yeah, no worries. Let's do it.

[00:05:56] Paul F. Austin: do it. Uh, uh, so I mean, yeah, like, I'm just kind of

[00:06:00] curious as an opener, like how connected or have you been connected to Iran at all? Turkey is a place I lived for a year. Oh wow. I haven't visited Iran, but I've always, you know, I've had Persian girlfriends and, uh, last year this whole sort of Persian ensemble came to perform in San Diego and I went with my girlfriend.

[00:06:16] Paul F. Austin: So I'm like really fascinated by Persian culture and Persian music and the, and, you know, Persian history. So I'm curious, like what's your relationship there? Uh, you know, as it

[00:06:25] Shaahin: stands.

[00:06:25] Shaahin: Yeah. So I was born in Iran, um, in the

[00:06:30] seventies. And I was there, things were going great. My folks, uh, saw that there was a revolution happening, happened in 79. So we moved, went to Europe and then to the United States. The goal was ultimately to come here and we never went back.

[00:06:45] Shaahin: There was never an opportunity to go back because, uh, you know, my parents, um, felt persecuted there for whatever reasons. And I'm not a political guy. I am more a business guy, but the politics were [00:07:00] not really agreeable, so we never went back. And right now, I mean, look, I see the struggle of people and tyranny, dictatorship, kind of, you know, ruling with an iron fist historically works.

[00:07:18] Shaahin: But only for brief periods of time. Right. So we learned that from, from Rome. We learned that from ancient Persia. So through the timeline of history, you can rule with an iron fist, you can rule with [00:07:30] fear, but that's not the way forward for longevity if you want your society to grow. The way to do it is to invite people in, invite these democratic processes in and to, to empower people to create a better society.

[00:07:47] Shaahin: You can scare people with violence. And violence is always the most expensive way to get somebody to do something because violence carries with it a reaction. And that reaction, which most people [00:08:00] don't calculate because violence happens in the heat of the moment, uh, can cost you a lot more than the initial instigation.

[00:08:08] Paul F. Austin: Right. Well, and this is like, this is there, there's, there's a threat here. Like trade, global trade has been sort of the, the biggest bulwark against another world war, if you will, that the fact that the world is so globalized and, you know, we're, a lot of the conversation right now is around tariffs and we're not gonna spend mu much more time on politics, but just this notion of like how we relate to each other and the fact that when

[00:08:30] we, when we can find something mutually beneficial, then all of a sudden Okay.

[00:08:33] Paul F. Austin: And, and business has been the way to do that. Yeah. You know, um, for a long time, but especially in the last a hundred years. And I think what's so interesting about your story is you took business to a particular level at a very young age, and you did it in a way that was, uh, I would say in its own way, very counterculture or rebellious.

[00:08:54] Paul F. Austin: And I'd love if you could just bring us a little bit into, okay, so you, you, you left [00:09:00] Iran and you went to Europe, and then you moved, moved to the states like you're 14, 15, 16, and starting to get a sense of the world. Like what brings you into business initially?

[00:09:07] Shaahin: Yeah, so most people don't know about this, about me and I, I've written a book on it called Billion How I Became King and Throw Apul Cult.

[00:09:13] Shaahin: It's gonna be made into a feature film. Paris Hilton's Company is Oh cool. Is producing it.

[00:09:16] Shaahin: Is producing it.

[00:09:17] Shaahin: So that's gonna be happening in the next couple years. Uh, I left home at a very young age, right? So we moved here when I was really young. Uh, went to an enclave of Los Angeles called

[00:09:30] Pacific Palisades, which people might know 'cause it burnt down, but it was still up then and it wasn't a fancy part of town and it started getting really fancy and we were poor, uh, immigrants.

[00:09:41] Shaahin: My dad works at dry cleaners, pizza shops, that kind of thing. And we're just working class people. And I saw this wealth growing up around me, and I thought to myself, man, I, I want that, I want access to the Porsche and the hot girls and the eating out and all those things.

[00:10:00] But we didn't have any of that.

[00:10:02] Shaahin: You know, the clothes that I wore came, you know, clothes that people left at the dry cleaners two seasons ago I'd be donated and that's what we would wear to school. We went to public school, we ate the school lunches. It was, it was the eighties. So coming out of that, I was like, man, I, I want opportunity, uh, but I don't want to go to school.

[00:10:20] Shaahin: I, I didn't like the education system here. So I left home at 15 and got involved in, what was the burgeoning electronic music [00:10:30] scene. Oh, cool. So the rave scene, the dance scene. And I thought it was so cool, but I didn't do drugs. And I thought, wow, who are the people making money here? And I looked around me.

[00:10:42] Shaahin: And I was like, wow, it's, it's not the musicians. They're broke. It's, you know, the DJ's definitely broke. It's not the club promoters. They're always trying to run away because they don't wanna pay people who's making the money. But there was these guys hanging around. Turns out was the drug dealers.

[00:10:59] Shaahin: [00:11:00] Looking back at my adolescence, I thought to myself, dude, like, just don't do crime. Like a lot of things you can do shaheen, don't do crime. You're really bad. Because in my adolescence, I did a lot of stuff in elementary school and there were great crimes, terrible execution. I would always get busted. Uh, I, we just couldn't do it.

[00:11:19] Shaahin: I spent so much time in trouble and detention and all that stuff. So I decided I wasn't gonna do crime. But I decided, hey, what's the biggest, uh, party drug going right [00:11:30] now? And it was ecstasy, MDMAA. Yeah.

[00:11:31] Paul F. Austin: Yeah.

[00:11:32] Shaahin: So I thought to myself, well

[00:11:34] Paul F. Austin: this is the mid eighties or late eighties now. This is the, okay, now we're, now we're in the nineties,

[00:11:38] Shaahin: the nineties. I'm, you know, 15, 16, and I thought to myself, man, I, I'm gonna make a version of this that's legal using herbs. 'cause I know herbs pretty well. My, a lot of people in my family were herbalists and, and I've studied. You know, herbal medicine, I'm gonna do this. And nobody told me I couldn't, I didn't have a dollar to my name.

[00:11:58] Shaahin: I was sleeping on the beach, you [00:12:00] know, and abandoned cars, abandoned buildings, whatever.

[00:12:03] Paul F. Austin: Like around Venice

[00:12:04] Shaahin: Yeah, around Venice. Wherever I could, you know, if I found a couch, I'd sleep on it. Um, but I was free. Right? Which, to your point, to our earlier conversation, people just want to be free man. And it goes to the work that you're doing, right?

[00:12:16] Shaahin: You just want your mind to be free. You just want to be free. You want to be free to have the highest expression of yourself. It's the ultimate in human civilization is just give people freedom. People will figure it [00:12:30] out. And we're not gonna mess everything up. Everyone's not gonna go out there and kill and murder, and rape and pillage and do all this.

[00:12:36] Shaahin: If you just give people freedom with some structure and access to resources, people, we tend to do pretty well. We've gotten this foreign in society. So, okay, so I get involved in the electronic music scene. I figure out how to make some. Herbal supplements, the mimic ecstasy. I sell it in a very unique way.

[00:12:57] Shaahin: At that time, the [00:13:00] supply of MDMAA, uh, which was called Ecstasy at the time, I dunno what they call it now, uh, had completely dried up. Most of it was coming from Europe and with the just Say No campaigns and, and the new, uh, whoever drugs are that they had in power, uh, they'd done a fairly effective job of stopping it from coming into the United States through Europe, and there were very few people producing it here.

[00:13:22] Shaahin: It's a very complicated process to produce it, I'm told. So there was just no supply, and that was my [00:13:30] opportunity when I came in. The supply had dried out the drug dealers, the people who were selling it throughout the electronic music scene, the clubs, the raves didn't have anything to sell. They

[00:13:40] Shaahin: Ah. They were selling

[00:13:41] Shaahin: other things, crazy stuff like speed or, you know, just

[00:13:46] Paul F. Austin: probably stimulants

[00:13:47] Shaahin: Stimulants even. You know, we heard them selling heroin, inhaling, all selling all kinds of terrible drugs.

[00:13:52] Paul F. Austin: nineties was heroin,

[00:13:54] Shaahin: yeah, that's right. Yeah. With all the grunge rock. Yeah. Instead of ecstasy. Right. So I really saw [00:14:00] it as providing a service. We had a natural product. It was legal. It was using natural ingredients that were what, what they call grass in the supplement business, generally recognized as safe.

[00:14:12] Shaahin: And we started selling it through the drug dealers at the clubs. But we did it in a clandestine way. We didn't differentiate it from illegal drugs. We just said, this is herbal ecstasy and you've got ecstasy. Sorry, we don't have ecstasy. You guys can take herbal ecstasy. And so it went from one to a hundred to a [00:14:30] thousand to thousand.

[00:14:31] Paul F. Austin: that good.

[00:14:31] Shaahin: Oh yeah.

[00:14:32] Paul F. Austin: Because you can invent anything and call it herbal ecstasy, right?

[00:14:35] Paul F. Austin: Yeah.

[00:14:35] Shaahin: So

[00:14:35] Shaahin: methyl diox, 'cause this is a psychedelics podcast, right? Uh, ecstasy is part, uh, amphetamine, right methyl dioxide, methamphetamine, the amphetamine component of it. Uh, and then you have other components of it that lead to these like, uh, uh, empathetic, uh, kind of like entheogenic, heart melt kinds of feelings that's much harder to duplicate.

[00:14:55] Shaahin: But the amphetamine part of it, the part that like gets you up and makes you [00:15:00] wanna party, um, that you can get from a mixture of ephedrine, which comes from a plant called Ephedra, which now is illegal. Unfortunately, I think it's one of the, the best smart drugs out there. And I believe that it was safe. I don't recommend anybody taking it.

[00:15:16] Shaahin: I'm not making any medical claims, but, um, I thought it was fantastic.

[00:15:20] Paul F. Austin: And it also goes back, I'll just make a note here. Ephedra use goes back thousands of years. In fact, when you look at the ancient Vedic scriptures, they talk about something called Soma. There's some people think that [00:15:30] Ephedra was part of what they were serving in ancient India.

[00:15:33] Paul F. Austin: And these other

[00:15:34] Shaahin: the oldest known plant to man, in fact, there's some fricking dude somewhere, like one of those mummies, he's like, frozen like this, he's got a bag and they open up the bag and it's like, oh shit.

[00:15:43] Shaahin: He's got like a little tab tobacco, and then he's got ephedra. Right. So, and they're everywhere. Yeah. Right. But so in, in all the wisdom of our government, they, they, uh, restricted it shortly after, um, they, they banned our product back in the nineties. So, or early two [00:16:00] thousands, right? I think it was the nineties, the late nineties.

[00:16:02] Shaahin: So, you know, we start selling this through, uh, the RA scene, the club scene, and it starts going really well. And the government wakes up. Once we get past a hundred million dollars. People start, you know, I tell people this all the time. You can be under the radar, right? And you're cool, right? The second you go above a certain level.

[00:16:23] Shaahin: All the vultures come out, right? Everybody wants a piece. So

[00:16:27] Paul F. Austin: So

[00:16:28] Shaahin: what happened was the [00:16:30] government started coming after us, right? They, they, uh, the head of the FDA at the time, this guy David Kessler, uh, appointed by the president's, like, go get this longhaired kid. I had long

[00:16:39] Shaahin: hair,

[00:16:40] Shaahin: So he said, go, go get this longhaired kid who, uh, you know, selling, selling legal drugs.

[00:16:46] Shaahin: And so they all came at once. It did two things. One, uh, it cost me a lot of money in lawyers, but two had me on TV every day. Oh. And when I was on tv, they [00:17:00] had the FDA, the DEA, every agency there on TV with me. And they were all saying, this is dangerous. You shouldn't take it. But what do you think the people on TV were hearing?

[00:17:10] Paul F. Austin: They were hearing, oh, the government's telling me I shouldn't do something, there's gotta be something good about this then.

[00:17:16] Shaahin: Correct. They were thinking the shit works.

[00:17:18] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:20] Shaahin: was their

[00:17:20] Paul F. Austin: Totally right.

[00:17:22] Shaahin: So we did over a very short course of time, Paul, over a billion dollars in revenue. [00:17:30] It was, uh, a lot of it cash, one of the biggest supplement companies of all time unregulated by the federal government.

[00:17:38] Shaahin: And that raised a lot of eyebrows leading to the eventual demise of the company back in the, back in the nineties.

[00:17:45] Paul F. Austin: Well, and what's what the, the other interesting, and I want to kind of hear about what came after that, right. And sort of how do you follow an, an opening act that's. You know, selling herbal ecstasy. But this, the, what was also going on at that time in the nineties is important [00:18:00] context for our listeners is the supplement industry was also starting to come into being, right?

[00:18:04] Paul F. Austin: So, uh, in the, in the eighties is when the FDA started to approve a lot of psychiatric medications like Prozac and Lexapro and Zoloft, but then in the nineties, they sort of deregulated everything so that anyone could, you know, say, okay, this doesn't have medical value, but it might help you get better sleep, or it might help improve your mood.

[00:18:22] Paul F. Austin: Or you're gonna have, you know, a better, you know, hard on, or whatever else it might be. Right? There's, there's, there, there were certain claims that they can make. And so this, [00:18:30] this, this story that you're telling about the herbal ecstasy, it sort of falls in that, in that domain.

[00:18:36] Shaahin: Yeah. You, you're absolutely right. And I, I'm, I'm very impressed that you know that.

[00:18:40] Shaahin: So what most people don't know is in the eighties, uh, they were really big on these SSRIs. Right. And everybody was on them. It's not like now, like everybody was taking these antide, they were like, we're all gonna be happy. Here you go. Right? But what they forgot is that [00:19:00] these SSRIs, for people who don't know selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, were these, well, I'm not gonna go into the technicality.

[00:19:06] Shaahin: You guys can GPT, that stuff, but they had one big side effect and that was sexual dysfunction,

[00:19:14] Shaahin: Right,

[00:19:14] Paul F. Austin: right, right.

[00:19:15] Shaahin: But don't worry, because the same companies who are lobbying the government to sell that stuff and get their clinicals approved and, and, and blah, blah blah, have this magic blue pill that's coming out.

[00:19:28] Shaahin: And this blue pill, [00:19:30] as you say, is gonna give you a hard on for weeks, and it's gonna be an answer to all of this. So you don't have to worry that drug number one caused side effect of drug number two. Um, so we

[00:19:40] Paul F. Austin: have a solution for you, you

[00:19:41] Shaahin: they, they had the solution that they had spent. Millions and millions of dollars on.

[00:19:46] Shaahin: But then there's this little Iranian kid who, uh, long care has zero government regulation, who's selling a billion dollars of this stuff without any regulation. You don't need a prescription, you don't need a doctor's. And a lot of people were using [00:20:00] Herbal ecstasy for exactly that. And for a lot of people it was very effective.

[00:20:06] Shaahin: And so they came out and lobbied the government, you gotta do something about this. And that's when the heat was turned up on us. And it, it's, it's very exciting. I have, I have a, um, again, you know, the book, you guys can check out the audio book. It's on Audible. It's called Billion. How He Became King of the Throw Pill Cult movie will come out in a couple years.

[00:20:23] Shaahin: But that kind of talks about that. Um, so I think that's really interesting. But yeah, you know, like back in Iran, you, [00:20:30] you, you remind me of that and you know, 'cause we're talking about the Psychedelics podcast and you were telling me about Oma, which. Um, I think it's like, and it's another word for Soma, right?

[00:20:39] Shaahin: Which is this like, for, for, I mean, most of your listeners probably know, but it's written in a lot of these ancient books. It's this thing, you know, people said that, you know, it, it came down from heaven and it's this, it's got all the characteristics of a psychedelic in the ancient books, right? And I think back in the day, uh, they, [00:21:00] they kind of deduced that maybe it's, uh, fly Garrick mushrooms.

[00:21:03] Shaahin: And then people from, uh, the Middle East said, well, no, it could be, uh, al, which, um, is, is a monoamine, uh, oxidase inhibitor. And they say that that's, uh, one of the reasons, you know, for like the Islamic geometry and the, and the, and the Persian rugs. Um, you know what, what makes the Persian rugs red right? Is the,

[00:21:23] Paul F. Austin: Is the alala

[00:21:24] Shaahin: Jamala is the die that dies the Persian rugs. So hence the, [00:21:30] uh, vision of, uh, somebody flying on a carpet

[00:21:34] Paul F. Austin: ah,

[00:21:34] Shaahin: is a nod towards this hallucinogenic effect. Right? So you mix the harm with a tryptamine and you have your,

[00:21:44] Paul F. Austin: which could have been acacia in the, in the, in the Middle East, in a place like Iran, right. Mushroom,

[00:21:48] Shaahin: Right? Or

[00:21:48] Paul F. Austin: of mushroom. Mushroom or mushrooms even. Yeah, that's true.

[00:21:50] Shaahin: It grows everyone. Everyone's got D right? And it grows everywhere. So. We don't know exactly what was, what was in it, but we [00:22:00] can, we can postulate, we can kind of like assume what it might have been. And probably was something like that. It could have even been simpler. It could have been, you know, like, uh, an intoxicate like involving some kind of brewing of alcohol.

[00:22:14] Shaahin: Like, you know, the Vikings had mead and you know, we wonder, like you look at um, you know, like the Greek writings and the Roman writings and you see them having these parties, right? Where like everybody's naked and they're these crazy rooms and they're laying back and peacock [00:22:30] feas and you're like, man, I've been to parties where people drink a lot of wine.

[00:22:34] Shaahin: Right? And that doesn't happen. Right? That's not happening. Right. And these are ancient wise people. Yeah. Like WTF happened, right? And then you realize, you know, uh, I think recently there's been, uh, several universities that have actually tested some, some, uh, remnants of resid. And they have found hallucinogenic.

[00:22:54] Paul F. Austin: Well, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's interesting that you bring this up because just yesterday, uh, a research [00:23:00] paper was published, um, that essentially proved this

[00:23:04] Shaahin: Ian or Kon

[00:23:06] Paul F. Austin: Kon hypothesis. So you, so Brian Muir Rescue was this author who wrote the Immortality Key. He made the case that. The ancient Greeks drank this potion or beverage called Ian, that it had a psychedelic component, but they hadn't, and they've been researching this since the sixties.

[00:23:20] Paul F. Austin: So Albert Hoffman was also a big fan of this hypothesis. Uh, there's a, there's a really sort of eccentric professor, Carl Rucker, who was at, who's at Boston University. So he is in his [00:23:30] eighties now, who continues, but they had never proven it scientifically that you could actually take the air got, which was a fungus that grows in r actually get a psychedelic.

[00:23:38] Paul F. Austin: And this research paper that was published yesterday proved it scientifically that you, you can for sure do this right? Like it is possible. Yeah. And, and so it's just, 'cause a lot of people, you know, it's like naturally what happened two, three, 4,000, 5,000, 10,000 years ago. It's like scant evidence exists, but you gotta put two and two together, you know, and you have a little bit of fun with the speculation.

[00:23:59] Paul F. Austin: It's like, it's [00:24:00] pretty clear that we've been, you know, on flying carpets for a long time. That's, you know, true.

[00:24:06] Shaahin: It's fascinating to me, you know, look, like you and me were talking earlier, I'm not an advocate for psychedelics and hallucinogens, even though I've had my share of them with the best.

[00:24:15] Shaahin: Um, but it's, it's fascinating to me. Like I was thinking about like alchemy, right? And, um, I collect, uh, ancient books and manuscripts. I've, I've. Been doing that for years. And one of the most, the, the rarest, most expensive books that you can [00:24:30] get are alchemical books, because those were banned, particularly in times of, uh, you know, where Christianity was, was at its height.

[00:24:38] Shaahin: And I thought about this, that like, okay, so the basis of alchemy, a lot of these alchemical things is that, hey, we're gonna create gold from mercury or gold from these other things. But I thought, you know, man, you know what, man, what if they were just taking something that made them believe that that thing was gold?

[00:24:57] Shaahin: Like, if you could just shift your [00:25:00] belief that like, hey, now I'm looking at a rock, but I'm gonna take something and now it's gold. Like we have no idea what these people did. We have such little. Information and the stuff that we can glean from what you know. I mean, maybe, maybe something from, you know, like medieval times.

[00:25:17] Shaahin: But if you go back far enough, like the Sumerians, you go back before them. Like I was reading about the Sumerians, like there are thousands of years ago, right? Where we're just going, oh, this was the first [00:25:30] civilization. And then you see they have this king's list. Have you heard of this? Mm-hmm. So they had the Sumerians, which were one of the first, the first known cultures,

[00:25:38] Shaahin: right?

[00:25:38] Shaahin: Oh

[00:25:38] Paul F. Austin: yeah,

[00:25:38] Shaahin: they had writing, they had, you know, all these things. They had a list of kings, and if you followed that list, that lineage, it goes back like thousands of years before their civilization. But how could that be if they were the first civilization? I find this stuff fascinating.

[00:25:55] Paul F. Austin: I feel like we're veering into Graham Hancock territory. Right.

[00:25:59] Shaahin: Yeah. All right, [00:26:00] let's, let's bring it

[00:26:00] Paul F. Austin: it back. Which I think is an interesting thread to open up. I'm just not sure that's the. Direction we want. But I, I, I love this notion that there's, there's historically, there's a, there's a lot of things that we know, most of most things we still don't know, and I don't think there's enough humility in that process, is sort of what I hear you

[00:26:18] Shaahin: Yeah. And, and look, I spent a lot of time with, uh, indigenous people, with tribal people since the nineties. You know, I've, I've met uncontacted tribes in the Amazon. I've done all that. I've done [00:26:30] ayahuasca in the Amazon. I've done the YoPo where they blow the thing into your nose and your brain feels like it's about to explode for two minutes.

[00:26:37] Shaahin: I've done

[00:26:37] Paul F. Austin: is like a five M-E-O-D-M-T snuff that

[00:26:39] Shaahin: Yeah, I've been, I've been to Mexico with Maria Sabina's family. Maria Sabino was so, uh, for everybody who knows, right? It's, it's, uh, Gordon Watson, um, who was a banker who introduced mushrooms to the west during the whole nineties process. He introduced, uh, it, and he, him and Albert Hoffman, the, [00:27:00] uh, guy who discovered LSD went to Mexico.

[00:27:04] Shaahin: They nobody wanted to give him anything. And then they met this family of, uh, indigenous people, uh, who the grandmom Mar Sabina. Uh, initiated them into a mushroom ceremony. So I, I've been there, I've been with those people. I was one of the first people to bring, uh, a plant called Salvia Divinorum. Oh,

[00:27:21] Paul F. Austin: Oh, you brought Salvia?

[00:27:22] Shaahin: We

[00:27:23] Shaahin: Salvia?

[00:27:23] Shaahin: We brought Salvia back to the United States and commercialized it when it was legal. Spencer.

[00:27:26] Paul F. Austin: That's why I found it in Spencers when I was 12 years

[00:27:28] Shaahin: Oh, did you? Oh, [00:27:30] yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, you know, I, I, I wanna say for your

[00:27:33] Paul F. Austin: I'm not saying I bought it then. I just, I just knew it was a thing in high school, you know?

[00:27:37] Paul F. Austin: Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:38] Shaahin: I, I strongly recommend to people to not do that. Like, legitimately not do it. It is probably the least pleasant. Like, I, you know, when, when I tried it, at first I was like. Nobody will ever do this. This is the worst drug ever. Like, who would ever want to do this? And Terrence McKenna introduced me to it.

[00:27:56] Shaahin: Oh, uh, I, I, and, and he, he, you [00:28:00] know, and it was weird. He's like, you should try this. And I was like, all right, sure, let's give it a go. And I was like, holy shit, this stuff is insane. Nobody will ever want to do this. And, you know, we commercialized it, we were selling it on Melrose. It was in, it was in all the stores on Melrose.

[00:28:15] Shaahin: It was all throughout the United States. Um, and people just kept doing it. And that was the craziest thing. I never understood about that stuff.

[00:28:23] Paul F. Austin: Well, it's interesting with, I just interviewed someone about this 'cause I've had this lens of svia, like, I mean, like your experience. I've [00:28:30] never smoked salvia, but I've heard all of the horror stories and how intense it is.

[00:28:34] Paul F. Austin: And, and so I interviewed someone just a couple weeks ago about this. He says, the problem is people are doing way too much of it. And some of these, uh, sort of legal options are extracts of Sylvia rather than being the, the plant itself. So if you smoke it at a very low dose, yeah, it's actually, you can get into sort of a deep meditative state.

[00:28:52] Paul F. Austin: But the, the tricky part is most people. They just go for the higher dose and then, and then it becomes [00:29:00] horrifying, you know? And very, in most cases. So, and Sylvia Divinorum was also from Oaxaca, which is what you're speaking to. Right? That's where, which is also where we found out about the magic mushroom.

[00:29:10] Shaahin: They

[00:29:10] Shaahin: never smoked it though. They chewed it.

[00:29:12] Paul F. Austin: They chewed it. Right. So they would've quids. Right. And so the, the quids, it's a lot different than if you're smoking an extract or smoking a really high dose of

[00:29:20] Shaahin: Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, when was went there, he noticed some young Indians kind of like putting it in something and smoking it with some tobacco.

[00:29:29] Shaahin: But it wasn't a [00:29:30] traditional use, it was just something that. They were doing, and it went for years unnoticed. People were like, and it's a weird plant. It like only grows in one place on the planet. Like that ingredient, that chemical that's in there hasn't been discovered anywhere. It's like an alien plant.

[00:29:45] Shaahin: Yeah. That's like, that just showed up in one part of the planet. And it's, it's, it's always fascinating to me, like this is the thing I've, I've always thought about holo, syngen and psychedelics, is that I, I truly believe that there's some doors that [00:30:00] you, you can open that you might not be able to close.

[00:30:03] Shaahin: Right. Um, is my first thing with psychedelics. The second thing is I, and you're gonna argue with this, uh, I know you are, but I am not sure that the majority, I'm gonna say the majority. Of what you get in that world can be brought back to this world in a useful way

[00:30:22] Shaahin: right

[00:30:23] Shaahin: now, I know a lot of people do. I, I believe that it can, it can cure, uh, uh, PTSD.

[00:30:29] Shaahin: I believe that [00:30:30] for people who have severe drug addiction, uh, opiate addiction, uh, you know, traumas, uh, end of life stuff, stuff like Charles Grob has, has researched over at UCLA using, uh, mushrooms for, uh, terminally ill cancer patients, like that kind of stuff. Incredibly valuable. Like, I think those values are there.

[00:30:51] Shaahin: But I mean, dude, I've been to, I've been to Ireland and done mushrooms with Druids, uh, or the [00:31:00] descendants of Druids, modern Druids, um, like in a bog. And the stuff that I experienced, I wish I could bring back 1% of it, right?

[00:31:12] Paul F. Austin: Right.

[00:31:12] Shaahin: But. It lives somewhere in my mind in between like genius and anxiety. And I've never found a way to utilize the learnings from psychedelics, although fun and you know, like a great [00:31:30] experience.

[00:31:30] Shaahin: Um, I'm not sure that they're useful. If you are on a path to make money, you, you're a different animal. You've, you've done it in a way that I think very few people have. And I think there's something about you and like your journey and like your path in life that has resonated with that and you've managed to do it.

[00:31:52] Shaahin: And I, I think that's amazing. I'm so proud of you for doing that. Um, but I think for, like if we're talking about you, I think it's a different [00:32:00] story. If we're talking about 99 per 0.9% of people, I don't see the benefit outside of possibly having some extra level of like self-reflection.

[00:32:12] Paul F. Austin: Well, and I, so this, I mean, it, it brings up a good question because a lot of folks who even listen to this podcast are medical doctors. They're clinical therapists, they're practitioners of some sort who are preparing themselves to help other people heal their shit, right?

[00:32:28] Paul F. Austin: Mm-hmm. So as we look [00:32:30] at, yeah, you know, psilocybin being approved for treatment resistant depression, or we look at it being approved for PTSD, right? I think there's a, there's a, there's a very important need to actually train the practitioners and, okay, how do you hold this and what might come up? And, and, and, you know, like, how are you healing your, because a lot of times, you know, you have these wounded healers who come back into these spaces, and so it's like, if you've done.

[00:32:51] Paul F. Austin: Shit and healed your work because if you haven't healed the stuff within you, how are you gonna help someone else heal? Whatever's caused that PTSD or that depression [00:33:00] or, you know, the addiction or whatever that might be. So I think I, I'm, I'm very enthusiastic about that. And as you know, that's kind of been my focus

[00:33:07] Shaahin: Yeah.

[00:33:07] Paul F. Austin: less.

[00:33:08] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. And then we, and then I've also seen, you know, I know there are a lot of skilled executive coaches Yeah. And we've trained some who are now doing this with people in CEO and leadership roles. But it's a lot of it in my, from what I've seen, is it's helping them to be a little less stressed and to hold things with a little bit more grace.

[00:33:27] Paul F. Austin: Right. Yeah. You, you know, Tim Ferriss has [00:33:30] said maybe it helps with some creative breakthrough, so if someone's really stuck, I find it can be a good unlock. Sure. But the challenge is people, they keep dipping back into the well thinking, okay, it's gonna be on this next one. It's gonna be like, I'm finally gonna get to it.

[00:33:42] Paul F. Austin: I'm finally gonna get to it. And I've seen also that turn into, and this. Is across the spectrum. This is with doctors, this is with CEOs, this is with practitioners. This is with definitely people who are just going to raves. It's like there's, and, and it's just a grasping thing. You, you people just kind of keep grasping for the thing that's not quite [00:34:00] there, that they think, okay, if I drink, you know, ayahuasca once more.

[00:34:03] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. I'll get there. Right. And so I, I think it's also how, how do we hold and, and train people to know, you know, I love microdosing. I love taking low doses, but I'm also real about it. I'm like, to me, microdosing is kind of like taking creatine or it's like I'm, I'm checking out peptides or like, I think it's gonna be help helpful physiologically, but I'm not, I'm not giving up my power to it.

[00:34:23] Paul F. Austin: Like, okay, this is gonna be the thing that finally fixes me, or this is gonna be the thing finally like, makes me feel good about myself or [00:34:30] whatever that might be, you know? Yeah. That, that gets risky.

[00:34:32] Shaahin: You're right. You're right. And I think we agree there. I, you know, it's. Also in this country too, it's a big problem that nobody can do anything in moderation. Like I had a friend of mine, right? And we, we went out very successful individual and he's like, dude, I'm like, what are you, what are you taking?

[00:34:48] Shaahin: We're just going to a game. And he's like, no, no, it's, it's cool man. I'm microdosing, you know, this guy brings me these things, they come in these things. And I was like, okay, lemme see what you got. And I looked at the dosage of psilocybin that he was saying. [00:35:00] I'm like, bro, you're microdosing. This is not microdosing.

[00:35:03] Shaahin: He's like, no, no. I just take one of the pills. It's microdosing. I'm like, you are not microdosing. You are getting very high, sir. Very high. I will not be taking that and driving. Um, it's

[00:35:14] Paul F. Austin: it's probably like a half gram or a gram, something like that.

[00:35:17] Paul F. Austin: Right. And that's what I've seen a lot in the, the sort of microdosing realm. It is people like, oh yeah, it's a microdose and it's a half gram chocolate, or it's a full gram chocolate. And it's like, bro, this is not a microdose. Like yeah,

[00:35:28] Shaahin: not microdosing, man. You're just

[00:35:29] Paul F. Austin: [00:35:30] Yeah, you're just dosing. Which is which, if that's what it is, that's what it is.

[00:35:33] Paul F. Austin: Right. You know, I'm, I'm not a extremist either way. I drink wine. I like drinking wine. I like drinking mezcal, you know, I smoke tobacco here and there. Um, you know, I I, I do take probably a little too much acid, but I, I like to rationalize it that it's only very low doses, you know, again, in this, in this sort of microdosing form.

[00:35:51] Paul F. Austin: But I think we can also be real that like we as humans, we like to alter our consciousness. And alcohol has been the main way we've done that. [00:36:00] And I love alcohol, but if it's used too much, it can get toxic pretty quick as well. So I think some people are also looking to like, you know, mushrooms as a way to like, like a lot of people are like social dosing, you know, where they'll take a half gram and they'll go to a party rather than drinking alcohol.

[00:36:14] Paul F. Austin: It's sort of like the, her the, what you were doing with herbal Ecstasy in a way. Right. Um. But I think people should at least just, we should be able to choose that and have the, the, the freedom of choice. And even another big thing that's been coming up lately is like cannabis. Like a lot of people are like, there, there's [00:36:30] sort of this backlash happening against cannabis, which I understand because it's way more addictive than we were led to believe.

[00:36:37] Paul F. Austin: And, and there's potentially a lot more harm to the brain and the heart in particular cardiovascular Yeah. Cardiovascularly than, than, than what we've been led to believe. So,

[00:36:46] Shaahin: yeah, again, it's like there's nothing that people in this country can do in moderation. Like, it's like weed is legal. All of a sudden everybody's, I'm like, seriously? Like everywhere you go, like, everyone's got a vape, [00:37:00] everyone's smoking. It's like, man, you know, the, the way to do these things is in moderation, right?

[00:37:06] Shaahin: Like, if you very occasionally smoke some weed, no one's gonna harm you for that man. Does it, does it calm you down? Does it stretch you out? Does it keep you from like getting up and being mean to the dog? Like, cool, like do it. Like, that's fine. But especially now with cannabis, like some of these strains.

[00:37:24] Shaahin: Really are bordering on psychedelic, like they're, they're def like people are tripping balls on, [00:37:30] you know, with the new technology that they have for growing these strains. And I have seen no less than a dozen people that I know have gone like off the edge not to return, and all they did was was smoke weed.

[00:37:45] Shaahin: Yeah. Um, so,

[00:37:47] Paul F. Austin: and there is research that is now showing there is this link between early onset schizophrenia and early cannabis

[00:37:53] Shaahin: Is that

[00:37:54] Shaahin: right?

[00:37:54] Shaahin: Specifically

[00:37:55] Paul F. Austin: before the age of 25? Yeah. Because the brain is still developing by that [00:38:00] point in time.

[00:38:00] Paul F. Austin: And I mean, I had a really good friend in college who had a psychotic break, and we think it was a combination of Adderall, right. With cannabis, you know, that that was sort of the, the thing that really pushed him over the edge and he was able to recover. He had a great family. He was able to, you know, like come back into himself.

[00:38:16] Paul F. Austin: It took, but it took years.

[00:38:17] Shaahin: So I, I'll, I'll tell you a few things. So. One of the things that I learned being around, uh, indigenous people and, and tribal people, which I did for years.

[00:38:28] Shaahin: I was around, uh, the [00:38:30] Ika Aztec people in Mexico. I did a whole documentary on, on that, did two documentaries on that. I've been in the Amazon, I've been to, uh, Cambodia. I've been pretty much all over the world. Right? And the first thing that I learned from, and it's, it's universal across all shamans, uh, all medicine people, is that, and, and they understand plants.

[00:38:51] Shaahin: They're primitive in a lot of other ways, and a lot of things they do are not culturally acceptable by us. But as far as plants go, they understand 'em [00:39:00] better than we do. And one of the things is that. Every plant reacts differently to every person. And whereas, you know, like you can microdose whatever LSD mushrooms and be fine with it, that resonates with you.

[00:39:14] Shaahin: That doesn't mean that's gonna resonate with other people. And somebody might really re resonate with cannabis as a, as a plant. It might really work for them, but for a lot of other people it doesn't work. So plants kind of have this personality, uh, just like, just like [00:39:30] people do, which was, which was a big like, revelation for me when I learned this.

[00:39:33] Shaahin: 'cause I noticed that even within tribes, like where there's, you know, shaman and other apprentices and where not everybody does all the things. Like in the Amazon, you know, there's only, uh, in, in the tribes that we went to, there's only like one guy in the tribe, uh, that really is doing the ayahuasca and the other guy's doing a different kind of ayahuasca.

[00:39:52] Shaahin: He's doing just tobacco, right? Like there's, there's shamans that do just tobacco, right? And then there's people in the tribe that don't touch the [00:40:00] tobacco, and there's people that do just, uh, what do they call it? I think Boero is the Uhura. Right? Right. Which is, you know, I mean that's, you know, in a, in a seed that's schizophrenia, right?

[00:40:12] Shaahin: Like just one. One time, and you're never coming back from, from that, very possible, right? A lot of people in medieval times went crazy from that stuff, but they take it every day and they're seemingly fine.

[00:40:23] Paul F. Austin: Right.

[00:40:23] Shaahin: So the, the, those things that happen, that, that was the first thing I learned. And the second thing [00:40:30] is, is their approach to this stuff is very different than our approach to it.

[00:40:36] Shaahin: Like I think West as, as Westerners, we tend to mystify things that we don't understand. And I think for, for these cultures, you know, particularly tribal cultures that are, that are more in tune with nature, it's not as, as mystical. They're just like, yeah, this is what we are doing. Right? Like on, on Tuesday we do peyote or like, you know, on whatever the, the moon, you know, solstice thing we're doing, [00:41:00] you know, this, this type of thing.

[00:41:02] Shaahin: And I think that, you know, kind of demystification of it, that it's just like part of the culture is not something that can be readily. Duplicated in the way a lot of people duplicate. So I don't know if that makes sense,

[00:41:15] Paul F. Austin: Oh, no. I mean, it, it, it's, it's one of the big

[00:41:19] Shaahin: worries

[00:41:20] Paul F. Austin: or concerns about the sort of mainstreaming of ayahuasca.

[00:41:23] Paul F. Austin: You know, you have a lot of people who are coming and drinking this tea, this brew, where, first of all, for, for the majority of, [00:41:30] I don't know, the hundreds or thousands of years that ayahuasca has been present, it's been drank by the shamans or the leaders. This isn't in, in, in most cases, there are different contexts, but in most cases, this isn't like we're all gonna get together and s aya and drink ayahuasca.

[00:41:43] Paul F. Austin: That's a very recent phenomenon. Right? Usually it was like, I drink the ayahuasca, or I take the detour as a shaman so I can channel the spirit and heal the thing through you. And then all of a sudden it was like, but all these white people are suffering and we think this medicine could help. Right? And so all of a sudden now we have these group ceremonies, [00:42:00] right?

[00:42:00] Paul F. Austin: Where people are coming in, they're all drinking a bunch of ayahuasca, and

[00:42:03] Shaahin: and

[00:42:03] Paul F. Austin: they're introduced to a cosmology or a worldview, which as you've said, is.

[00:42:07] Shaahin: It's

[00:42:08] Paul F. Austin: very different than the West, you know, like it's very, very different. And so people get opened up and then, you know, they spend their week in, in the Amazon or two weeks in the Amazon and they come back and, you know, they're in suburban New York or LA and they're like, what the fuck?

[00:42:22] Paul F. Austin: You know, like I, it's kind of like what you were saying before, like what had happened with these druids when you took mushrooms. It's like, that was a part of your, [00:42:30] you, I almost like, it's not compartmentalized, but it's like, it's tucked away, you know? And a lot of people have these big experience with ayahuasca and they're just so raw and they come back and they, they don't have any ability to quote unquote tuck it away.

[00:42:43] Paul F. Austin: Mm. But they don't have the support really that they need to fully integrate it. And so it just becomes this weird sort of hook in them for a long

[00:42:49] Shaahin: Oh, interesting.

[00:42:50] Paul F. Austin: Um, and I think that's a big part of like, what we're attempting to solve. It's like the community aspect around it. Like how can people feel like they're supported once they come back, or, or if they're [00:43:00] gonna go and open themselves up like this.

[00:43:01] Paul F. Austin: How? 'cause it is. know, I was talking to Ben Greenfield about this, the, the other day, uh, and Ben was like, you know, I'm looking more and more at like, the use of ayahuasca or some of these intense psychedelics. It's like soul surgery or brain surgery, right? Mm-hmm. And people are just going, they're going to the Amazon and just getting random brain surgery from someone they'd never, never met before.

[00:43:20] Paul F. Austin: You wouldn't do that, right? Like, you'd want to do it under the guidance of someone who like, you know, is legit.

[00:43:26] Shaahin: Have you ever been to Ireland or Scotland [00:43:30] and like, have you done their ferry walks?

[00:43:31] Shaahin: Do you know about those? No. So, alright. So most people don't know that, um, in particularly Ireland, um, and part parts of England, parts of Scotland, um, they have all this ferry lore.

[00:43:43] Shaahin: Yeah.

[00:43:43] Shaahin: Right.

[00:43:44] Paul F. Austin: I, I learned about this from Grand Graham Hancock from his book Supernatural. So I like, oh, I have a little bit of

[00:43:50] Shaahin: Right.

[00:43:50] Shaahin: What did he say in there?

[00:43:51] Shaahin: He

[00:43:52] Paul F. Austin: they say in there? He just said that in Ireland in particular, they have this really deep relationship with these ferries where they'll, you know, they're like these little knowns.

[00:43:58] Paul F. Austin: They'll have these little homes and they'll be in the [00:44:00] countryside. You know, people will sometimes provide offerings to them, or there, there's a whole sort of mythology in, I mean, this is years ago that I read the book, but something like the, the, the little people stuff, you know, I

[00:44:11] Shaahin: to hang out with a guy who was a big meta physician, used to be an exorcist, you know, um, and became a, a big meta physician. He wrote a bunch of, uh, very famous books, popular books. Um, and he's since passed. So we went to Ireland. He's like, you gotta come mate.

[00:44:25] Shaahin: You gotta see the dreads, right? So we go there, I'm like, I don't know about any of this stuff. I'd never taken [00:44:30] anything before in my life. And so we walk around. First off, it's some of the most beautiful nature you ever seen. So this particular property was in Ireland and it was a castle from, I don't know, 16th century.

[00:44:40] Shaahin: 15th century. Um, and what those castles are known for is that they're very damp. Um, so in the lower areas it makes an ideal environment for growing fungus. And so a lot of these druids, um, had picked some of these ruin. Buildings as [00:45:00] sites for, uh, mushroom space, mushroom cultivation, right? So we're walking in someone's, uh, private estate and it's a large estate with a lake and you know, access to beautiful nature.

[00:45:12] Shaahin: And we're walking through here and you see them actually setting up, it's almost like shrines, right? So there's like a tree and there's like moss growing on it. And there's like a little door in the tree, like a little tiny person drawer. You like, oh, that's cute. But they're like everywhere and they have all these rules, like you cannot go [00:45:30] within a certain area of that because there's what they call fairy rings.

[00:45:32] Shaahin: They believe you can actually get pulled in and like, whatever. So they have, you know, somebody brings out the, you know, the mushrooms and we're like, okay. And I take a little sip and I see everyone looking at me and I'm like, screw it. I drink the whole, and they're like, that was for everybody. So I'm like, whatever.

[00:45:50] Shaahin: I'm not feeling anything. I keep walking down, I'm sitting on a tree, like on a tree. Everybody's like scattered around this massive estate. And I'm talking to [00:46:00] this girl, we're having this conversation, you know, it's kind of interesting. She's like this Irish girl, you know, having this conversation with her.

[00:46:07] Shaahin: It's kind of like interesting. And then I go back and the stuff's really starting to like kick in and I'm like, wow. And, and very different from any other, um, psilocybin I've ever taken. Like very different. Um, 'cause like the first hour of it is just cracking up laughing and everybody has that effect. And then the second hour is very intense.

[00:46:29] Shaahin: And they were [00:46:30] like, yeah, you know, we saw you, uh, hanging out on that tree, like, who are you talking to? And I was like, you know, I was talking to, you know, whatever, whatever the name was. And they were like, they all froze and looked at me and I'm like, what?

[00:46:42] Shaahin: And

[00:46:42] Shaahin: were like, you know, that's this guy's daughter who passed away and she's, you know, she is buried on, you know, the, the

[00:46:51] Paul_Mic: property.

[00:46:52] Paul F. Austin: Oh, wow.

[00:46:52] Shaahin: That's what they did. And I was like, I had no idea. Right. And that's how. That experience started.

[00:46:59] Paul F. Austin: Okay.

[00:46:59] Shaahin: Okay. [00:47:00] And I was just, you know, I, I actually was talking to someone and so it continues and I'm young. I'm, I'm like 16 0, 17, right? Never taken anything. I had fasted. The other part of it is I'd been fasting for a week.

[00:47:15] Shaahin: 'cause I was big into fasting, so I had nothing in my system except for, you know, 10 people's dosage of these things. And so then these guys come out wearing these, like, you know, uh, they've got like fox or wolf things on their head and you know, [00:47:30] they've got the things and the fire and you know, they're drumming and you really, like, I'm hearing the drumming and then I hear, I'm like, man, there's a lot of bugs around here.

[00:47:38] Shaahin: And I look and then I see somebody else look and I'm like, wow. It's like, you know, there's like things here and I look, I'm like, these are really big bugs. And as you as, as, as I turn my head, I'm seeing these like. I look and they're like almost like insects, right? But I'm not the only one seeing this, right?

[00:47:57] Shaahin: The other people in the group are saying the same things [00:48:00] as I do. And my friend who's a meta physician, he said, look, if you wanna see them, the way you see them is don't stare direct. You just stare in the direction. And then you close your eyes and you see 'em in your mind's eye. So you see these things buzzing by.

[00:48:15] Shaahin: I close my eyes and, and mind you, I'm heavily inebriated in, in this moment, and you can see these little like fairy like creatures. And then we start walking around and it was like the entire area [00:48:30] lit. You understood, like in that moment, I understood how this like world worked. Like I had a complete understanding of how this forest was alive.

[00:48:41] Shaahin: And you, you looked at the tree with the moss and you saw like a million different things in the tree, but you just understood, but not only that, everybody around you also understood what you understood. Now I don't know what that is because like I said, I don't think you can bring it back. Um, and the whole journey was like that.

[00:48:59] Shaahin: [00:49:00] And you really saw all these doors open up, like all these portals open up. And that lasted for days. For days, the effects of that. Um, and then coming back, it was a very weird experience. I, I don't think I'd wanna repeat it right, but there were, there were understandings. When in that psychedelic experience, in that like trance that like, I just wished I, I knew, you know, like, have you ever taken, have you taken ecstasy before?

[00:49:29] Shaahin: Oh, yeah. Right. Okay. [00:49:30] So, you know, when you take ecstasy, like, especially like the first few times you take it, you just feel like, oh my God, if everybody had this would

[00:49:35] Paul F. Austin: it would be,

[00:49:36] Shaahin: be no war. Right? Like, we

[00:49:38] Paul F. Austin: Yeah, yeah,

[00:49:38] Shaahin: each other. Like, we would need drones and bombs and Right. Like, everything would be okay.

[00:49:42] Shaahin: Right. And then it ends and it's a little bit of a fricking bummer, right? Yeah. You're like,

[00:49:46] Paul F. Austin: You're like, uh,

[00:49:46] Shaahin: oh, right.

[00:49:48] Paul F. Austin: you're, uh,

[00:49:49] Shaahin: And, and this was a little like that. It was like, for a moment in time, like you slip in time and, and you, you. [00:50:00] Really understand how it all works. Like I really, or you think you do and you're just being delusional, but you really like, your heart melts.

[00:50:08] Shaahin: You feel like, oh my God, I now I get it. I get like this tree. Like I fricking understand the moss. I understand that little door. I understand everything.

[00:50:17] Paul F. Austin: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:18] Shaahin: And then it's gone. Yeah.

[00:50:19] Paul F. Austin: Yeah. Yeah. The profound, the profundity sort of slips.

[00:50:23] Paul F. Austin: Right. And this is, this is like, uh, it's sort of like the. It's like the [00:50:30] paradox or the, the, you know, it's like we have these experiences, they are so meaningful. We remember them, but we also can't fully remember them. You know? But when we're in them it's like, oh wow, we're really remembering something.

[00:50:40] Paul F. Austin: Right. Like, this feels familiar. You know,

[00:50:43] Shaahin: something to these, I know you don't wanna talk too much about this, but there's something to these ancient sites.

[00:50:47] Shaahin: Yeah. And, and like the, the

[00:50:49] Paul F. Austin: what? Like go becke Or

[00:50:51] Shaahin: or I don't know what they were taking there, but No, no, just these like, just in Ireland for example. Like this stuff grows there, it's from there. Right. [00:51:00] Um, so back in, in the nineties when I started going on the news, people decided that I was some big like drug guru.

[00:51:07] Shaahin: Right, right. And I wasn't really, I really had done nothing. Not weed, nothing. Right. I was very clean 'cause I was focused on my business at the time. Herbal ecstasy.

[00:51:15] Paul F. Austin: Yeah.

[00:51:16] Shaahin: So people sent me stuff and I didn't know what to do with half of it. I didn't know how to throw away or like, do I send it to the police?

[00:51:21] Shaahin: What do I do? Like half of it wasn't legal. So I had a safe, and when somebody would send me a package, a lot of stuff would come. FedEx, I would just put it in the safe and I'd like,

[00:51:29] Paul F. Austin: this is kind [00:51:30] of what I do

[00:51:30] Shaahin: Really? Yeah. People just send you everything.

[00:51:32] Paul F. Austin: this is like, so it'd be very similar to my day to day at the moment. Yeah.

[00:51:36] Shaahin: So one day I'm saying, and so my office was on Melrose and it was right across the street from a music studio and uh, not across the street in the same building. There was a, a music studio and then there was my office. And so I was laying down in the office. It was like a Friday night. Everybody had gone and I like just, you know, had opened the safe to take something out and I was like staring at the stuff and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool.

[00:51:56] Shaahin: They had done like some African art on it. I was like, what would happen [00:52:00] if I tried this? I looked at it and it said, um, iboga. Oh

[00:52:03] Shaahin: Oh God.

[00:52:04] Shaahin: Right? And I was like, eh, all right. So I took a little bit and I'm just sitting and I'm hearing like. Drumming, right? I'm hearing this like tribal drumming, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[00:52:17] Shaahin: And the fans going on in the room. And it was one of the most amazing experiences. It was like six hours, seven hours. I was just laying on my back just listening to this like tribal wow. [00:52:30] Very drumming kind of thing, and just like solving things in my head. I had taken very little of it. I hadn't taken the full, like, it was like a, it was like a wafer, but I had taken like a little piece of it and it was extraordinary.

[00:52:44] Shaahin: 'cause I really like, felt the fabric of the, you know, of like where the stuff came from. I knew nothing about it. And that's actually one of the ones that I think is very promising as far as what we're

[00:52:55] Paul F. Austin: I began is for sure. Yeah.

[00:52:56] Shaahin: Um, for addiction, most people don't. This [00:53:00] could be a one pill solution to the Fentanyl crisis.

[00:53:03] Shaahin: This could be a, to, to, you know, opioid addiction in general. Uh, I know several people who. Otherwise had been successful in their lives but had fallen prey to, uh, addiction, which really is a disease. And I know that they've gone to places like Canada and Switzerland and, and taken

[00:53:19] Paul F. Austin: in Mexico now, there's quite a few in.

[00:53:21] Paul F. Austin: Yeah, I mean there's, there's been a, especially the last six months to a year, there's been a pretty massive and concerted [00:53:30] push in particular with people of influence in Iboga. So Brett Favre, who you may rec, Brett Fav. Does that name ring a bell?

[00:53:39] Shaahin: I know Rick, Rick Doblin was a

[00:53:41] Paul F. Austin: big, oh no, Brett's like a, Brett's like a, uh, he was an NFL quarterback.

[00:53:45] Paul F. Austin: He's like Hall, hall of Fame, NFL Quarterback play. Played for the Packers for a long time, won Super Bowls with the Packers and then Yeah, yeah. And then, and has early onset Parkinson's and went and got iboga treatment. Oh, for his early onset Parkinson's. Connor McGregor. Does that name ring a bell? [00:54:00] Really?

[00:54:00] Paul F. Austin: Connor McGregor just went and got Iboga treatment? No.

[00:54:03] Shaahin: For what?

[00:54:03] Paul F. Austin: Uh, because of all his head trauma and all of his anger issues.

[00:54:06] Shaahin: it help?

[00:54:07] Paul F. Austin: And he came out of Iboga treatment and he married his partner, who he is been with, and they have kids for 15 years, but he never felt the desire to get married to her.

[00:54:15] Paul F. Austin: And they now, as a result of his iboga treatment. Got married. I mean the, there, there's been clinical research published outta Stanford in, in particular, showing the impact that Iboga has on TBI and third, they, they did this, this, what was TBI? [00:54:30] Traumatic brain injury. Oh. So they did 30 trial or they did a trial with 30 people, all special ops, all of whom had really significant, uh, TBIs, traumatic brain injuries.

[00:54:39] Paul F. Austin: They all took Iboga. And I also think five Emyo, d mt. 'cause oftentimes these places in Mexico will do, they'll start with Ibogaine and then they'll end with five em. Really? Uh, because if you just stay in the Ibogaine experience, it can sometimes get a little depressing. Oh, interesting. So there's something that the five does to really bring this sort of lightness through and kind of openness.

[00:54:59] Paul F. Austin: But [00:55:00] all 30 of those special ops vets healed their brain injuries with a single dose of Ibogaine and five eo.

[00:55:07] Shaahin: I mean, like a lot of people said, I mean, you take something that grows in the ground and you say that it's illegal, um, is really kind of a silly thing. Right? Right.

[00:55:16] Shaahin: And I, I, I, you know, again, I'm a big believer in freedom. I think all this stuff should be legalized and, and regulated. I mean, that should be the government's job to make sure that it's produced correctly, that [00:55:30] people have the education on how to use it. And I, it, it's actually, you know, I think it's criminal that a lot of this stuff isn't studied more, you know, a lot of it came from like the, uh, 1960s, right?

[00:55:44] Shaahin: So they, um, asked, uh, a guy to write this book, right? And they're like, Hey, they were, they had this big panic, right? Coming out of the, the fifties, you know, white picket fences, you know, everything's perfect, you know, nuclear family. And going into that, you got into [00:56:00] the sixties, which was a reaction to the fifties and the sixties, where like, we're gonna drop acid, we're gonna, you know, get naked and run around and white planes New York and

[00:56:08] Paul F. Austin: Free love and communes and, you know, the whole.

[00:56:12] Shaahin: So the reaction to that, the governmental reaction was, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna regulate everything. So they hired a bunch of people to write these books on psychedelics, and these guys just, you know, they cataloged every, everything that had psychedelic under it and they banned it.

[00:56:28] Shaahin: Right. And the [00:56:30] unfortunate part of that is a lot of that stuff, right? Like, I could see how people can abuse things like LSD and whatever, but a lot of that stuff also had therapeutic uses. And I'm sure LSD also has therapeutic uses, but that kind of cut that completely, and maybe that causes a slowing in society.

[00:56:47] Shaahin: I don't know how you

[00:56:48] Paul F. Austin: it. Maybe

[00:56:48] Shaahin: it. Maybe it does.

[00:56:50] Paul F. Austin: I mean, it may, maybe it was all meant to be like the, the, you know, like we hadn't really taken psychedelics for a couple thousand years, so LSD came on the scene and like we were trying to get a sense for it. You know, the, the honest truth [00:57:00] is like, what? It, we're attempting now where like any adult can essentially access these really mind altering substances is, is an experiment that's never been done before.

[00:57:09] Paul F. Austin: Because even in places like Persia, or even in places like ancient Greece, or even in places like in the ancient India, this was really mostly available to the priestly cast or the elite cast. This wasn't like everyone and their mother is gonna be doing mushrooms. You know, this was very much sort of secured or reserved for people who were of elite status.

[00:57:29] Paul F. Austin: [00:57:30] And so that's, to me, the big experiment. It's like, can normal people hold their shit together, uh, when they gotta, you know, pay taxes and, you know, keep a house and I guess we'll see. You know, like, we'll see. Um, okay. All right, good. We're, we're sitting at good time here. Um, I, I still want to talk a little bit about like

[00:57:50] Shaahin: yeah.

[00:57:50] Paul F. Austin: what you're doing today and what you're up to today.

[00:57:52] Paul F. Austin: Because the way we met was not through, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't necessarily because of a. Sort of, um, [00:58:00] psychedelic relationship, right. Shaahin we met because you run something called PodcastCola. I was introduced to it. We worked together for, I don't know, the better part of three years. You probably booked your, you and your team helped me get booked on.

[00:58:13] Paul F. Austin: I mean, it's somewhere between 60 and 80 podcasts, which is pretty insane. And I had, it wasn't, this wasn't just like, book me on any podcast. This was like, there's a certain level that I want to go on and you killed it. And we've been taking a break. 'cause I'm working on a second book and I'm kind of giving the media time a little bit of space to breed, but we will [00:58:30] work again shortly.

[00:58:31] Paul F. Austin: And, and I think you also had a background with some of the Amazon FBA stuff in terms of drop shipping, but I'm just kind of curious like what's, what's, um, yeah, what's giving you inspiration today and uh, like what are you most excited about? 'cause you, you've. Two kids, right? I have one kid. Yeah, you have one kid.

[00:58:50] Paul F. Austin: All right. So daughter, son. Son. Okay. So you have a son, you know, you're married, you, you're responsible for a business. You're not doing the thrill pill cult, you know, anymore. I mean, you have a [00:59:00] book and a movie coming out about it, which is awesome. But like, you know, you've settled in now to, to to Life, right?

[00:59:05] Paul F. Austin: Like, how does that feel for you and, and what, what, what brings you joy and motivation and energy every day?

[00:59:11] Shaahin: Yeah, life is good. I, I feel like I live a pretty purposeful life, and I'm really grateful for that. I think, you know, my, my life has always been, uh, bifurcated in, in kind of different areas of life.

[00:59:24] Shaahin: But in, in general, I get very excited about health and wellness. [00:59:30] And productivity. Those are kind of like

[00:59:32] Shaahin: two things. Mm-hmm. So

[00:59:33] Shaahin: business and entrepreneurship has always been my, uh, my calling, uh, and mostly in the space of health and wellness. So I've always been launching products, particularly in health and wellness.

[00:59:46] Shaahin: We popularized matcha tea in the United States. There was, nobody was doing matcha tea. And I came out with a brand and we created one of the big brands. Um, and that brand, uh, recently was sold to private equity. [01:00:00] We've, um, grown a lot of products. I, I believe in natural products a lot, and I believe that we can optimize ourselves.

[01:00:09] Shaahin: Uh, quite a bit as far as health and wellness goes. And I think there's a lot of products that can empower us to do that. So it's kind of been my mission over the last 20 years, 30 years to do that and introduce those products. So that's something I get very excited about and I'm doing more of. I'm gonna be launching, I, uh, relaunching, I should say, another line of products under [01:00:30] the Ecstasy brand, which

[01:00:31] Shaahin: is

[01:00:31] Shaahin: very exciting.

[01:00:32] Shaahin: Okay. There are some alternatives to coffee and caffeine, which I think people are gonna be very excited about. Um, if people want to get on the list, you know, reach out to me,

[01:00:41] Paul F. Austin: What's it called?

[01:00:41] Shaahin: Include

[01:00:42] Shaahin: email. Well, right now there's no, there's no name for it, but they can reach out to me on the website and I'll add 'em to the list for when that drops.

[01:00:50] Shaahin: It'll probably drop mid-year, uh, of this year in 2026. Um, and then, you know, focused on the service business, which are really, you know, how do you get your message out [01:01:00] to the world, right? You've got something to say. You're a bright, dynamic guy doing amazing stuff. Not only that, you're a successful entrepreneur.

[01:01:06] Shaahin: And part of it is that you know how to tell a story. You're very good at that. And people who are good at that should be doing the most powerful medium we have now, which is podcasting. What you and me are on and our company PodcastCola, what we do is we take people like you and we connect them with great podcasts where they can tell their story and then get those shows aggregated, [01:01:30] um, throughout the web.

[01:01:31] Shaahin: So we do that. I have a YouTube agency now called Viral Mirage. People can look at that, uh, where we create, uh,

[01:01:38] Paul F. Austin: Can I get your take on YouTube while we're here? Because YouTube, we, we worked together for some time and, you know, 24 7 live stream. We've, we're now like reoc, like I'm shooting 3, 4, 5 videos today.

[01:01:49] Paul F. Austin: I'm probably gonna hang out after our interview today and record a few reels and whatnot. Um, but I'm, uh, I'm keen on YouTube as a growth platform. So I'm curious kind of if you put your YouTube [01:02:00] growth platform hat on, like what are you noticing and observing what's working, why YouTube in particular as a channel that people really should be serious about?

[01:02:08] Shaahin: Isn't this interesting though, if you think about it, like I listen to a lot of podcasts, right? I know you do too. We listen to a lot of stuff, but like the biggest podcast in the world, Joe Rogan, right? Yeah. The Joe Rogan experience. How much more do you get out of that when you just watch them? They're saying the same stuff.

[01:02:26] Shaahin: That's true, right? They might not even be showing anything, [01:02:30] but the difference between I went there. Then you look at their face and I went there. There's so many little points of data that you can pick from a video that YouTube now has surpassed Spotify and Apple Podcasts on where people consume really content.

[01:02:51] Shaahin: That's right. Most people now will watch the podcast on YouTube and just click their phone off the video, and then they might turn the video on [01:03:00] at some point or, and they're in the car. You've seen people put their phone up and it's just playing in the periphery. But YouTube is the number one place where people are consuming content.

[01:03:09] Shaahin: And I think that makes sense. I think most people are visual people and they learn visually. The majority of people are like that. So it, it makes sense, especially now that like me and you, I know we're both in personal development and you know, we like to grow, we like to expand and that's why you do what you do.

[01:03:26] Shaahin: And I do what I do. Uh, watching [01:03:30] content is so important. That's why it's so important for influencers like yourself and me to really be building out these channels. I think YouTube is, is very powerful and what we're doing right now, just having a conversation. Uh, AI isn't gonna be able to do that very well for a long time.

[01:03:47] Shaahin: Not a genuine conversation. You've got like notebook that'll make kind of like this, like emulation of the human conversation, but the weird stuff, the, the quirkiness, the, the facial gestures, the, the energy that [01:04:00] you bring for however many years you've been doing what you're doing, right? The music of what we're doing really comes out in this, in this, in this art form, right?

[01:04:11] Shaahin: And so I think, you know, especially with you, I think doing YouTube and having that channel probably in time is gonna be one of the most impactful things that you're gonna be doing for your work.

[01:04:21] Paul F. Austin: Well, it's interesting that you mention it in the context of ai because the reason we've shifted to YouTube is 'cause AI killed us in Google.

[01:04:28] Paul F. Austin: So we've, we've, even if I'm to [01:04:30] bring people behind the scenes here a little bit, as an entrepreneur, we had a really strong top of funnel for a very long time through SEO.

[01:04:36] Shaahin: Yeah.

[01:04:36] Paul F. Austin: Uh, and then in 2023, right? Soon after Chachi BT came on the scene in, in November, 2022, it's just like SEO the game changed forever.

[01:04:45] Paul F. Austin: And a lot of these mid-tier publishers like ourselves got fucking hammered, you know, to the point where we lost 95% of that traffic. You know? Um, so you adapt. Right? We adapt. And YouTube, it feels like, you know, especially [01:05:00] staying outside of the, the meta universe, 'cause it just, the meta universe is feeling more and more icky.

[01:05:06] Paul F. Austin: Yeah, yeah. You know, and people are feeling like it's getting more expensive to advertise. And, you know, there's all these issues with censorship for psychedelics when, when posting on things like Instagram. You know, it just feels like it's a race to the bottom. I got off Facebook years ago, you know, it just feels like it's a race to the bottom.

[01:05:21] Paul F. Austin: And I was talking with another good friend of mine, this guy Daniel DiPiazza, and Daniel's a kind of a well-known thought leader, po. And he was saying, yeah, like, I just don't want to build on meta anymore. [01:05:30] Like, there's, something just feels off about it, you know?

[01:05:32] Shaahin: know?

[01:05:32] Shaahin: It is. And I'll tell you one of the initiatives that we just launched, this is probably the first place I'm talking about on the Psychedelics podcast.

[01:05:38] Paul F. Austin: Yeah, yeah.

[01:05:39] Shaahin: Our,

[01:05:39] Shaahin: our new initiative. So you've got podcast colo, we get people booked on podcasts podcast co.com. And then Viral Mirage is our YouTube influencing program where we also do Instagram. So it's YouTube and and Instagram. But we just launched a NLM, uh, SEO. So right now, to your point, [01:06:00] 70% of all search is going through chat, GPT, Gemini, and Claude, right?

[01:06:08] Shaahin: So through the the natural language models, the natural language models have to return. A result much faster than Google. Google Cash is information they know. If you're looking for, uh, the Nikes that Kanye was wearing, right, that 50 million people are looking for that. So by the time you search it, it [01:06:30] already knows.

[01:06:30] Shaahin: It predictably knows what you're gonna be searching for and returns a quick result. What it doesn't have the ability to do, uh, the natural language models, because when you're on chat GPT and you ask a question, how long do you wanna wait for an answer? A second,

[01:06:45] Paul F. Austin: right?

[01:06:45] Shaahin: Two.

[01:06:46] Shaahin: So it has to go through the entire web and the entire repository of information and pull just what you're asking for and deliver it to you in a fraction of a second.

[01:06:55] Shaahin: So the way the architecture of current websites is [01:07:00] not such that it's conducive to natural language model search. So what we've done is we figured out a whole algorithm and it's crazy. Of how to get your site within 90 days to rank for whatever keywords you want through the natural language models. I don't know if it'll, it'll be working a year from now, but right now it's very effective.

[01:07:22] Shaahin: And basically what we do, and this is it's, you're not gonna find it on the website for Viral Mirage because we're only offering this [01:07:30] to existing clients, but we'll probably open it up to the general public, is we build a mirror of your website. This lives on your host, but it's not visible to the human eye.

[01:07:44] Shaahin: So when you search, you will never see this version of your site. But when the search engines, the natural language model search. They see this and the information is formatted, no pictures, no videos, it's only what they see and they pull the [01:08:00] information and deliver it to people quickly. So right now it's the most effective way to rank in these natural language models and we found it insanely effective.

[01:08:11] Paul F. Austin: Oh, wow.

[01:08:11] Shaahin: And it's very inexpensive to do so. Any anyone that's interested in that, go to Viral Mirage.com or PodcastCola.com and, and reach out to us. 'cause right now it's working and it's pennies compared to all the other forms of advertising that

[01:08:25] Paul F. Austin: I, I saw like a tweet about this maybe 3, 4, 5 months ago.

[01:08:29] Paul F. Austin: On, [01:08:30] on, on x some, you know, something just generally how yeah, this is the next cutting edge. It's like, you know, how are these large language models gonna, and I even think of this for folks who are like interested in practitioner training programs. It's like, man, that would be killer. You know, because the amount of people who are going in Chacha PT now and saying, Hey, I wanna do this training in psychedelics.

[01:08:49] Paul F. Austin: Where do I go for this? Or who might the best person be? Or whatever that might be. You know, that's like a huge arbitrage and opportunity. I

[01:08:55] Shaahin: It's a huge opportunity. Right now, not a lot of people are doing it. We are [01:09:00] partnered with one of the biggest tech companies. They're Silicon Valley based, uh, venture capital funded.

[01:09:07] Shaahin: So they've got millions of dollars of capital, uh, to help with these algorithms, and we're one of their exclusive providers for this particular service. And we do some unique algorithms with our own service. So we've had crazy results. Like I've had people in, you know, three weeks, four weeks start ranking for number one on GPT.

[01:09:28] Shaahin: We can pretty much, [01:09:30] at this stage tell the GPTs what to say. It's gonna get harder and harder in time. But like, now's the opportunity if you're gonna, if you want to get in on the, on the N LMS and start ranking on there, like,

[01:09:42] Paul F. Austin: now's the time to do it. All right. All right. Yeah. I feel like you, you, you're, you're the type of guy who always knows what's at the cutting edge.

[01:09:50] Paul F. Austin: Like, I, like that's a, that's just a pattern that I'm noticing and seeing. Like even with the herbal ecstasy stuff, it's like, you know, when it's a good time for arbitrage. And, and it sounds like, I, I would [01:10:00] imagine, and this might be an assumption, but part of your maturity, I imagine over the last 30, 40 years has been also known when to get out.

[01:10:07] Paul F. Austin: You know? Yeah. And, and when, when it's time to move on to the next thing or, or, or whatever that might be. Right. That's probably, and that, that's for true for, for all of us who have been in business long enough, it's like you get, you get, you get burned or you get hurt, or you know, something goes off or wrong or, you know, you lose, you know, a nine figure revenue source overnight because of whatever.

[01:10:27] Paul F. Austin: Right. You've just gotta keep going and figure it [01:10:30] out and, and, uh, and you've continued to do that, you know, and, and it, it's indifferent, but, but unique ways.

[01:10:36] Shaahin: Yeah. I think what I'm hearing you say is that timing is everything. Timing.

[01:10:40] Paul F. Austin: is everything. Yeah.

[01:10:41] Shaahin: And it's the key. So I think that's a very astute observation,

[01:10:44] Shaahin: and

[01:10:44] Paul F. Austin: it's what I, what I appreciate about you or what resonates with you and why I've worked with you and even, you know, have felt drawn to you is because I, I, I see a similar.

[01:10:53] Paul F. Austin: Uh, way in myself. Mm-hmm. You know, like when I started doing all the psychedelic stuff in 2015, no one was really talking about [01:11:00] it. And now I think where, where I feel a little bit maybe blocked or a little frustrated in my own life is like, I'm like, okay, like people got it now. Right? Like, this isn't as cutting edge as it used to be.

[01:11:13] Paul F. Austin: What's, what's, what's the real cutting edge now of health and wellness or, you know, how we live or whatever, you know, leadership or, I'm always kinda like, what's the next, you know,

[01:11:22] Shaahin: what's

[01:11:23] Shaahin: the

[01:11:23] Paul F. Austin: the next thing?

[01:11:24] Shaahin: It's true.

[01:11:25] Paul F. Austin: It's fun that way.

[01:11:26] Shaahin: Yeah. You gotta always be ahead. You gotta always be looking forward.

[01:11:29] Shaahin: [01:11:30] Right? That's, that's what we do. That's

[01:11:31] Paul F. Austin: That's what we do. Yeah. All right. Uh, Shaahin, I, I, I don't think I even pronounce her last name. How do I pronounce her last name? Sha Shane? Mm-hmm. Sha. Okay. So Shaahin Shahan billion. How I became the king of the Thrill Pill Cult. This will be this. I mean, the book is out now.

[01:11:46] Paul F. Austin: You said the movie in a couple years of Folks, keep an eye out for that podcast. cola.com, bio mirage.com. Yeah. Um, any other kind of places or,

[01:11:57] Shaahin: Yeah, no, that's, that's pretty much it for us. You [01:12:00] know, you guys can reach out to me. Uh, I give my email on every show. It's DARK [email protected]. I answer every email personally. It might take me a little while to get back to you, but I do that.

[01:12:12] Shaahin: So please reach out. I, I love hearing from people and if there's a way we can support you, get your message out, or uh, you just wanna talk, reach out.

[01:12:22] Paul F. Austin: Great. Well thanks for, uh, doing this. It's been a long time coming and it was, uh, really great to have you on the second up

[01:12:27] Shaahin: today.

[01:12:28] Shaahin: Appreciate you having me on, bud.

[01:12:29] Shaahin: That was [01:12:30] fun.

[01:12:30] Paul F. Austin: Absolutely. It was fun. Good, good dude.

[01:12:32] Shaahin: Cool. Dude, I'm glad we did it in person. That's definitely a different

[01:12:35] Shaahin: energy.

[01:12:36] Paul F. Austin: Oh, it's a way different energy. Yeah. [01:13:00] [01:13:30] [01:14:00] [01:14:30] [01:15:00] And.