Speaker 1: I've been bragging to you about Cobblestone on Main and
one on nine West Main Street in the village of
Webster for as long as I've been doing the podcast,
and the reason is it's got an upscale bar, a warm,
inviting atmosphere. It's just fun. When you walk in there,
your mood could go from really lousy to great, or
from great to over the top. I'm just saying, it's
just always a happy vibe, and that's because the food
is fantastic. The shareables are so delicious. I love going there.
It's great for intimate dining, it's great for hanging out
with friends and family. But don't take my word for it.
Listen to Ashley. Ashley writes, we went last night and
I haven't stopped thinking about the food ever since. Everything,
including appetizers and entrees, was all delicious and could tell
was fresh. High quality drinks were also awesome with choices,
I wasn't expecting to have his options.
Speaker 2: That's what Ashley writes.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's much more I need to say
other than Cobblestone on Maine one on nine West Main
Street in the village of Webster. When a family legal
issue disrupts your life, whole world can stand still. At
Circu Law, they understand that family matters require more than
just legal expertise. They demand compassion, understanding, and dedication. Their
highly experienced family law attorneys in Pittsford have guided countless
families through their most challenging moments, divorce proceedings, child custody arrangements,
asset division, all aspects of family law. Think of navigating
family legal matters like walking a tightrope. You need steady,
experienced guidance to reach the other side, and that's exactly
what you're going to find at circul Law. Their compassionate
attorneys work tirelessly each day for one purpose, the betterment
of you and your family. You don't have to face
these emotional challenges alone. Take a breath, and then take
the first step toward resolution. Contact circul Law today to
discover how they can help your family get back to
what matters most. Call them at five eight five three
eight five twenty five ten, or reach out confidentially through
their website site at circulaw dot com. Circu Law helping
families get back to what matters most.
Speaker 2: Welme suis no sign said, we will want you.
Speaker 3: Let welcome to another episode of Bill Lighten.
Speaker 2: Mint.
Speaker 1: I I think that song.
Speaker 2: To me, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Doctor Scott McGinnis will agree or not, defines the eighties
in a way.
Speaker 2: I absolutely think so, don't you. I really do.
Speaker 1: I think that's like the like if you were to say,
what was the eighties musically, attitude everything? When we had
yuppies like right young? What was the young professionals no
kids or something like that, or that was something else
I don't even remember. But there were all these these
different terms and acronyms that came out, and it was
about power and even at the world level we had
the Cold War going on, and you know all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Doctor Scott McGinnis is the guest on this episode of
The Lightment. He was on the last one with the right.
They are from the Mental Health Counseling Department at Saint
John Fisher University. But there are so many layers to
you and different things.
Speaker 2: That you know.
Speaker 1: But you asked for this song in particular, and I
don't know why.
Speaker 2: So we were talking about Sirius XM Eighties channel last time,
and I didn't think the Billina Carlisle Heaven as a
place on her song was going to fit. And we
were also talking about the Last Dance. So the Alan
Parsons Project Serious was another one that I was like, Ah,
that would be a good intro, but maybe that's something
when you get the entire wise council on.
Speaker 1: Yes, Oh, that would be a really great thing, you know.
Speaker 2: But we were talking about the eighties and that's the
song that I think of when I think of the eighties,
and it's my mom's favorite song too. Oh this is
your mom's favorite song?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, there's nothing about Tears from Fears because they
had a couple They had another.
Speaker 2: Song head over Hughes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Shout Shout and I Go Shout was like the
simplest song to write.
Speaker 2: Mind There were just like no lyrics to it.
Speaker 1: It was just shout, shout, let it all out. But
again it was you know, there are sometimes where I
listen to music differently today than I ever did, and
I hear songs and I'll go, well, have they been
trying to tell us? Because you'll talk to artists, or
you'll hear artists or read an article and they'll say
I wrote that song in five minutes, and you go,
how is that possible? I wrote that song five minutes,
and I will say I believe that there's something else.
You're tapped in to the source that is of all things,
and it just flows through you.
Speaker 2: And when you're.
Speaker 1: Open like a channel like that, you create beautiful things.
But you have to be the vessel by which it comes.
And if music is your thing, then it comes. And
I listen to the music sometimes and I go, there's
a message. I don't know that it's the artist trying
to tell us the message. I think it's something greater
than that. I agree completely. And you think about somebody
like Dolly Parton who wrote I Will Always Love You
and Joelene in the same day, and two of the
great I didn't know that, yeah, and two of the
greatest songs I think have have you been written and
covered and performed.
Speaker 2: But I think you're absolutely right. There's this flow state
that people get into where you're just in the zone,
or maybe it's coming from some divine inspiration there as well.
Speaker 1: Right, And we hear things like writer's block and that
sort of thing, and I always wonder like those are
the things that we need to move past and through
and maybe we'll get to this to a little later,
but I think everybody knows that. Or you get going
on something and then you're afraid to take the next step,
or you don't know what it is, what the next
move would be, so instead of just being calm and
waiting and finding the inspiring thing or what the best
feeling in that moment would be to do, I don't
know how to describe that, but a little chaotic in
her head. And I see it with even my own sons.
I think I've learned more about myself by watching them,
which is an odd thing, but I've learned about Oh boy,
that's not how you want to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's it's so hard to wait for
that flow state or that inspiration, and I think that
there's a lot of merit in just putting something on
your calendar and showing up. It's that old adages. If
you hang around in a barber shop and long enough,
you're you're gonna end up getting a haircut. So if
you're writing something soon enough, that crappy paragraph is going
to turn into perhaps a better page or a crappy page,
and so on and so forth. Or at least that
was the approach that I took when I was writing
my dissertation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and articles and things that you have to write
even now. Yeah, I know that you. You had sent
me some audio and things, and some of it was
about the dark web. And the dark web is an
interesting piece to me because I I really don't know
much about it at all. I brought it up once
on the podcast and my son who's fourteen, was in
here and he goes, oh yeah, and starts spouting it out.
But there's a whole the even it has its own mascot.
It's like the purple onion or something.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: But everything that you could possibly want. I always thought
in America you could get anything you wanted, But I
wonder if that's even.
Speaker 2: The world now.
Speaker 1: But whatever you want you can find. If you needed
a kidney and you can't get a kidney and you
went to the dark web or the black market or whatever,
you'll find whatever you need.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Some of one of the audio clips that I
sent you is of a gentleman named Ross Olbrick who's
currently in federal prison right now serving a double life
sentence plus forty years because he created the first, we'll say,
the first and well known dark web market called silk road.
But you mentioned the kidney on the dark Web, and
in addition to goods and services and substances, there was
at one point some things that were sale body part
wise as well. Really, so if I don't know the
extent to which something like that you would be able
to do via the dark web at this point, but
at least ten years ago that would be something that
would be a reality.
Speaker 1: How did it become the dark web? And why is
there always? I guess the bigger question was b is
why is there always a darker side?
Speaker 2: I mean, is that too big of a question? No,
it's a wonderful question, and I'm wondering. I think if
you played that dark Web opener audio, I think that
we would be able to get into that. The dark
web is known as the Internet's evil twin the dark Web,
it's a large chunk of the Internet.
Speaker 4: People selling illegal goods on the dark Web.
Speaker 3: They are cracking the underground world of drugs smuggling found
on what's called the dark web.
Speaker 1: It's the message law enforcement officials are sending to vendors
on the dark web.
Speaker 5: And today some of the most prolific drug suppliers use
what's called the dark web, which is a collection of
hidden websites that you can only access if you mask
your identity and your location.
Speaker 2: So it's dnt that I get from the dark web heroin, opium, cannabis, ecstasy,
psychedelic stimulants, opioids, and here they are subpoxycode in all
of those codeine, black.
Speaker 1: Tar, heroin, Chuck Shulaven, they have her.
Speaker 2: They're all listed in the light of death. Unbelievable.
Speaker 6: Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions targeting dark web drug purveyors
with a new federal law enforcement initiative called j CODE,
the Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement Team j CODE.
Speaker 1: I kind of like it, dude.
Speaker 3: This is dark web.
Speaker 1: Students can actually purchase attacks to be launched against their
school network to prevent them from having to take a
test wow.
Speaker 7: Where they can actually purchase a hacker to change their grades.
Speaker 3: The Obscurian city.
Speaker 1: Underbilly of the Internet, we.
Speaker 7: Hit the jackpot in the dark web.
Speaker 6: We would pretend to be one of the true believers.
Speaker 5: The Internet has a little known and mysterious twin known
as the dark web.
Speaker 3: It's a place where online service is offering illicit drugs
and hitmen are just one click away. The Darknet is
mostly not.
Speaker 2: The bad guys.
Speaker 8: The darkness is no longer a den for dealers and
a hideout for whistleblowers.
Speaker 7: It's already going mainstream.
Speaker 1: Anyone who is searching the dark web from say a
tour browser is probably being watched. So what exactly is
this dark side of the Internet?
Speaker 2: As I heard in.
Speaker 1: There just reminded me going back to the eighties.
Speaker 2: There was the.
Speaker 1: Movie War Games with the Matthew Broderick and Isaac Kid.
They were teaching us how to program simple, really simple
on the Apple two or whatever, and I used to
always want to try to break in and change my grades.
And it was years later Matthew Broderick had another movie
where he actually got to tap in and change his
grades in Ferris Bueller, and I was like, man, how
is that? But if I knew you could hire a hacker,
I would have been so tempted to do that.
Speaker 2: I would never know.
Speaker 1: But there's that dark side, and they're saying now that
it's going a little more mainstream, talk to me about
what you know on the dark west.
Speaker 2: Sure, So let's back up a little bit. My background
is in clinical work, so I'm a mental health counselor.
But I've worked with folks who struggle with substance use
disorders and co occurring mental health disorders. So in the past,
when I was in a community agency, it wouldn't be
uncommon for somebody who has let's say, a really bad
cocaine use disorder and a psychotic disorder to come and
see counseling services from where I was. So my interest
in the dark Web when I was going down the
path of academia, came from the substances that were being
sourced there and just the way that drug sourcing was
being changed. And also in that clip you heard Chuck Schumer,
New York so own Chuck Schumer. You heard from former
Attorney General Jeff Sessions in there, and he was talking
about the formation of j CODE and trying to crack
down on opioids. And when I was doing my dissertation
many years ago, at this point, there were probably less
than thirty or forty academic articles written on the dark Web.
And what Jeff Sessions was saying at the time is, Hey,
we've got this really bad opioid epidemic going on, and
what we think is happening is these dark web markets
are influencing the sourcing and contributing in a really negative
way to opioid use that is going on illegally. But
there wasn't any data, at least any data that I
that I was able to find at that point. So
I wanted to go investigate some of the experiences people
had sourcing their opioids from the dark Web and what
that really entailed. So I was the first mental health
counselor to do that, really. Yeah, Usually it was reserved
for criminologists who were interested in.
Speaker 1: So you got when you say reserved, did you have
special access? Like here, illicit things are happening on the
dark Web. You don't want to get caught over there.
I think even if someone knew you were browsing it,
they're gonna think you're uh, suspicious of some kind of
or you will be suspected of some kind of nefarious act.
So did you have some kind of clearance to go
and search this out for academia?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, whenever you're doing any kind of research, you
have to go through a human subjects review board to
make sure that your research is ethical and that you're
not harming anybody in the process. And when I was
doing my PhD at the University of Rochester. I was
the first student to do any kind of dark web research,
So I kind of gave the good people over there
in it a little bit of a heart attack. Yes,
that's sure, I wanted to pursue and investigate a little bit.
So what we heard in that clip, and you had
mentioned the purple onion earlier in the mascot. There are
so many misconceptions when it comes to the dark web
and the terms that are used to describe it. It's
often used interchangeably with deep web, which is also something
that is a different phrase as well. So that was
a smattering of news clips, and we'll start from the beginning.
The quote unquote dark web is actually kind of a
really boring place, And if you remember using the Internet
back in the late nineties where there were create your
own web pages from GeoCities and angel fire, that's what
it just kind of reminds me of, honestly. And some
of the uses for it, say, the majority of the
uses for it are for folks who are in an
area where there's an oppressive government regime. So if you
don't have freedom of speech, you're able to log on,
communicate and share different news via the dark Web because
it's all encrypted, which is also why it becomes a
really good place to conduct business that is illegal because
of that encryption. But that is really what that was
intended for. Initially, it was actually a project by the
US Navy that they abandoned and then got picked up
by other folks who are interested in that kind of technology.
And then.
Speaker 1: So the idea, even with the Navy was to help people.
So the intention was pure, like many things or positive,
we are trying to help those that are oppressed have
a voice.
Speaker 2: I think the intention initially.
Speaker 1: Was for the US Navy well to find out what's
going on to So maybe it wasn't as pure as
I'm saying. Maybe it was like a little bit of
a spy. Hey tell us what's happening in your country,
so we kind of have a heads up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I think that it was the folks who
picked it up post Navy really had good intentions with
it and wanted to develop that technology for the betterment
of communication for folks.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then who picks it up after do you
have to get permission from the Navy to continue on
with this? If they abandoned the project. How do you
find that's even happening?
Speaker 2: That piece of it I'm too aware of, but I
know that many years later it Like you mentioned the
purple onion, it is the mascot for the tor browsers, right,
and it's called onion rousing onion routing, So tour stands
for the onion router and the I didn't know that. Yeah,
so that's so.
Speaker 1: The intention though, again wasn't to sell body parts or
drugs or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, initially that was not the intention of that.
Speaker 1: So here's more of a I don't know what you
would classify this question as, but what what is it
that attracts when something like that's created?
Speaker 2: And I believe that all of life.
Speaker 1: Is attraction attraction, attraction, we're vibration. And if you don't
believe we're vibration, go study the bumblebee. Bumblebee's wings should
not lift the bumblebee, It's absolutely it should not. The
bumblebee vibrates and it has like a hollow chamber and
it's all vibration. And they can withstand strong winds and
flying a straight line and it's all vibration. And so
the whole world is energy. So what is attracting? How
do these people all of a sudden go It's like
a bat signal went out and all the bad guys go, Hey,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: That's what it sort of feels like. It's I think
it's really hard to especially in the case of Ross Oldbrick,
to say that somebody like him was a like a
quote unquote a bad guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this was my question about, Hey, why is
he getting a life sentence for creating a market where
people used He didn't say to you, he just created
a marketplace.
Speaker 2: He just created the marketplace. So in twenty eleven, he
used the tour browser service Hidden Services, and he coupled
it with Bitcoin's payment system, which was the first of
its kind ever. And Bitcoin itself is not anonymous. It
can be really it can be difficult to track, but
it is not inherently anonymous. But you put those two
services together and it becomes really difficult to understand where
people are shipping goods and where they're ending up and spent.
There's a whole nother piece of this where mail from
other countries don't always have electronic tracking bars on it,
so we're getting tons of packages into our country that
we're not exactly sure where they're coming from either. Oh,
which is you know another piece that plays out the
physical address piece of receiving something in the mail. So
Ross was somebody was really influenced by libertarian politics, and
he felt that anybody out there should have say over
what they decided to do with their body and how
they treat their body and what they put into their body.
And that was the catalyst. How is this kind of thinking?
I don't So that was that was the catalyst for
the so Road and he was very influenced.
Speaker 1: An interesting name because I think that was the trade
path to China.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So he was really interested in the drug
war as well, in the way that that has been
handled in the United States. Push against it, You're only
going to get more. And that's I mean, that's what
he found essentially when he after he was caught. So
he created the space where vendors could go and say, hey,
I'm selling this brand of opioid or I'm selling this
brand of psychoactive substance, and just tell me the amount
that you want. I'll tell you all about the chemical
properties of it. So this was something he was doing.
No no, No, he provided the space he just made
and said I made this space. Who do you here?
Speaker 1: Would be the question, how do you market that?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: He must have known people then that because as you're
talking about this, and I'm sorry I keep interrupting you,
but as you're talking about this, we hear illicit we
talk about illicit drugs. Some of those drugs, used in
a controlled way have greatly improved people's human experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's absolutely true. And in some of the
early academic literature looking at just studying dark red marketplaces
or the Silk Road in particular, there was a contingency
of folks who were just looking to get psychoactive substances
like psilocybin md m A.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well mdls, right, analyst, And again some of those
are used in psychotherapy, I believe, or some am I
saying that wrong?
Speaker 2: No, you're you're correct.
Speaker 1: The the mdm A I thought was more of a
a rave drug.
Speaker 2: There there were there's research out there or to suggest
that it works really well in couples therapy. Really. Yes, However,
what makes men listen is that what it does, the
the oxytocin that is released the bonding chemical is what
they were getting after I believe that, But the FDA
actually just came out with a summer and said, hey,
there's no therapeutic therapeutic use for this, which I think
is going to get a lot of pushback from researchers
who are interested in in that particular line of psycho
active substance. But initially researchers thought that people were really
interested in dark word marketplaces because they could get more
recreational party drugs. And then it wasn't something related to dependency,
and then it was just a novel way of sourcing
that you didn't have to go to the street corner,
you didn't have to necessarily have a hook up. You
could just go into your computer, log on, get what
you needed, and then wait for it to come in
the mail. And the vendors would disguise their shipments very cleverly,
so if you ordered like one tablet of M D
M A, it might be shipped in a greeting card
on the back of a photo that is in the
that is in the greening card. Wow. Yeah, yeah, So
I want I just want to also say sidebar here.
My my background is psychology and mental health, so computing
is an interest of mine, but it's not my my
pure discipline. So if there are facts that I'm getting
wrong about just the computing piece of this, then that,
you know, I first to admit.
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, anybody who goes onto that it's the story.
Can we play the Ross audio?
Speaker 2: Yes? So can I Can I give a little bit of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, give me a little background because I'm I'm curious
about that. I'm not I was not familiar with.
Speaker 2: Him, So before he play the audio, I will say
that again, this is a polarizing issue, and it's a
political issue because we're talking about substance use and that
often divides people. But Ross is he's serving his divile
life sentence right now plus forty years. But Trump said
that he is going to commute his sentence on day one.
So Trump went to the Libertarian conference, he initially got
booed off the stage until he mentioned that, and then
he went to the Bitcoin conference two months later and
said I'm going to commute a sentence. So it'll be
interesting to see if he actually follows through with that
and Ross gets out. Oh, but this clip that we're
going to hear is was from an organization called Story
corps where they were trying to just capture people's narratives
about their lives. And this was captured when Ross was
running the Silk Road. Nobody knew he was running the
Silk Road, and he was hanging out with one of
his friends and they're in a museum one day and
they just happened to pop into one of these booths
and recorded some narratives. So he's talking about Ross is
going to talk about his hopes and dreams.
Speaker 1: So this is just a random thing that he did
in a museum. You know, step in here and tell
us something, and you just think that sounds fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with his with his best friend Renee. Okay, Oh,
not any more questions for that's Ross. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Future future out like, what are you going to do
over the next five years? One sentence? Na, I'm gonna
do a few things. Someone says, is enough, damn, But
I want to want to I'm pretty sure I want
to start a family in the next five years.
Speaker 2: That suck.
Speaker 7: And uh and just yeah, make make more friends and
close people I love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to focus on.
Speaker 7: Being more connected to people.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 7: And twenty years coinersh, I want to have had a
substantial positive impact on the future of humanity. About that time,
you think you're gonna live forever? I think it's possibility.
I honestly do. I think I might live further in
some form by that time. And technology is changing so fast. Yeah,
well I'll fack from there. Sweet.
Speaker 1: And we didn't know, or he didn't know then that
what is his his personal sense?
Speaker 2: Does he have a wife or anybody, or he's not married?
He was incarcerated. How old he is? I think he's
forty one?
Speaker 1: Okay, so a younger guy, I mean, I I depending
on what age of life you're at, forty one.
Speaker 2: Can be older, young, I guess.
Speaker 1: But the uh so, I'm surprised. We're always looking for
someone to pin something on, I feel like and it
sounds like he got pinned out for creating this opportunity
that was used incorrectly. Now I guess he too was
saying you should be able to get anything you want. Yeah,
I mean, I have often thought what would happen? What
happens in the countries? And this is an interesting discussion
I had as a kid with my father, who was,
you know, philosophical and a doctor and all that.
Speaker 2: But the.
Speaker 1: He would always say, look, at the countries that have
legalized drugs, they're not leading nations at the world world.
And I don't know if that's necessarily true or not
because at the time, but you know, you think of
Amsterdam and stuff, it's more of a party, they're not.
I haven't seen a whole lot, but I haven't done
any research either to say otherwise.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. Yeah, if you look at Portugal,
they had a really really awful opioid overdose opioid overdose
death issue that was going on. So what they did
is they took the opposite approach of many of the
things that we've tried to do here to curb the
effects of opioid use, and they decriminalized it. And instead
of going the road of using substances, we're going to
incarcerate you, they decided that they were going to connect
people to rehabilitation and then social programs. So if you
were a mechanic, for example, and you developed this really
bad habit, you can go to rehab, you'd be involved
in social programs. Then they would pay half of your
wages then to go and work as a mechanic again.
And they found that that approach has been much more
successful sure than the Hey, we're going to sentence you
to at least what the minimum is and then you're
kind of on your own after that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think that we have as a society, or
maybe as human beings, done things wrong when it comes
to substance abuse. So I I will say this. I
think it's a little bit of a controversial statement. I'm
not sure it's a disease these things. I think it's
an escape. I think that things are hard, and the
human experience gets difficult, and you look for an escape,
and we tell you to relax, relax, so you find
a way to relax, and then we yell at you
for having this problem, and then we punish you, and
then we tell you this is bad and we don't
want this, and we put you in jail. And it
seems to be a very very awkward way. Sometimes people
have to go through things. I don't understand it myself,
but I sometimes your journey needs to be that you
overcame this, or maybe this is your demise, it's your
ex I don't know, but I do think like each
person's journey here on the on on earth is different
in their own and as long as you're not bringing harm,
which I believe would be more of a libertarian philosophy
than anything who cares.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna reference psych psychiatrists, psychologist, and gay
or Mati and he wrote the best book that I
have ever read on addictions called In the Realm of
Hungry Ghosts, if anybody's interested out there, But he frames
substance use as just a coping coping mechanism for trauma.
And that's not only is framework for it, that's the
framework for the majority of folks who are working with
folks who have substance use problems. So if you are
somebody who has a trauma history, and the majority of
clients who I've seen who have struggled the substances to
have pretty severe trauma histories, then you are looking for
that quote unquote escape or that method of coping. In
what substance users are really good at is they found
something that effectively takes away all of the pain for them.
But underlying all of that is just an incredible amount
of trauma. And it doesn't have to be like when
we think of trauma, we're often describing it as big
T trauma, which are things like natural disasters or personal
where our personal safety is violated. So if somebody is
assaulted or in or really violently assaulted, attacked, or they've
just had something targeted at them, that's what we call
like a big T trauma. It doesn't have to be that.
It can be a small T trauma. It can be
these things that we encounter day to day that are
just the mild humiliations and getting through the day that
can lead somebody down this path of well, I need
to find another way to cope because this isn't doing it.
This isn't doing it for me. H.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that I'm not going to say
that it doesn't lead to compounding some problems for people.
You know, your behavior not as in control of yourself,
and so you make choices and you do things and
you know then and we seem to go down a
slippery slope. But I think that if maybe if everybody
started to look at addiction that way, it would be better.
Because I sometimes think that there has to be personal
responsibility to a certain degree. And I would say that
I and I'll ask you certainly haven't studied this stuff.
That the responsibility at times is even with mental illness
I don't have to.
Speaker 2: Put up with you being an asshole.
Speaker 1: I can have my boundaries and we can draw these lines,
and you have created you've compounded your problem. If we
can get to the root of whatever it is the
trauma is, and it could be anything, it could be
simply a domineering parent at some point that you could go, well,
it came from a great family, but you don't know
what it was like in there or how it affected
the person. You know that a little bit more open mindedness,
but also kind of boundaries are okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think having personal boundaries where you are protecting
your own space and your own well being are absolutely
You don't have to acquiesce to any demands related to right,
related to any of that. For somebody who is using
substances and pretty heavily often those boundaries have just been
violated repeatedly. Sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but but here what I was gonna say, and
I'll ask you, is the idea that it's a disease
giving you an excuse.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it's okay, and I wouldn't say it's
it's an excuse because you look at all of the
I have a disease.
Speaker 1: I can't help myself and and I always think, boy,
that's sort.
Speaker 2: Of a weak way out.
Speaker 1: You have all the control.
Speaker 2: I believe they're so or I don't know. I don't know.
I'm telling you that would be my belief. Am I
wrong in that? I sincerely you took. You take a
look at somebody who's got a really bad opioid habit,
or even just a mild opioid habit, and they want
to stop, but they can't because the withdrawal symptoms from
that are just horrific. Right, Yeah, so your your nose
is running and you've got terrible fever, flu like symptoms
that there's just really know a sign that that is
going to end, because opioid withdrawal can last. You look
at literature, some say that it's, oh, it's just like
mild flu like symptoms. I can tell you it's not
mild fool like symptoms. The majority of the time, you've
got somebody who up to six weeks just fever daily.
You can't keep anything down the way you want to method, Yeah,
you will. You'll certainly be inmciated. Is that why some people?
And the term would be chipping. Tell me what chipping means?
Speaker 1: So chipping is where I you know, I would ship
on the ocean starts to list one way, but when
I get if I move the barrels in the bottom
a little bit, I can even this out and get
myself to fly right or move across the ocean correctly
as in a boat. And I'm just thinking, like, is
that the same thing if someone chips a little bit.
I just need a little bit to get myself right again.
I don't need to get myself into some uphoric state.
I just need a little bit. And there are rumors
that many authors, many writers Keith Richards, may chip to
keep that, you know.
Speaker 2: Just a little bit, just a little bit. Yeah, it
makes me think of microdosing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for exactly, I think that would be the Yeah,
that's an old school street term for microdosing.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what that is. I never thought of
that for well, using the example of opioids in particular,
there are medication assistant therapies out there, like a method
do maintenance program or a sybox owne program so that
you can that'll fill the receptors and you don't feel
the effects of any withdrawal symptoms. But then you become
dependent on that because if you stop taking that, then
you will feel the opioid withdrawal after that.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, and it's a hard let's not try to Yeah,
I will start it.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't wish any I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But these are the things that you could get on
the silk web or excuse me, the Silk Road and
the dark web. And this is why Ross Olbrich is
serving two life sentences plus forty years two life sentences?
Speaker 2: Why why that sentence? I don't, I'm not. I feel
so ignorant about this. Again. This is like I again
not trying to go down a political path. But you
take a look a look at the eighth Amendment and
it's the right to fair sentencing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems crazy to me.
Speaker 2: He's a non violent offender. There was speculation of whether
he hired people to protect the interests of the Silk
Road and put out a quote unquote hit on people,
but he was never charged with that and it was
not something that the government had pursued against him either.
So we've got this non violent offender given the sentence.
And when he was in court he made the argument
in front of judge Catherine Forrest, who I believe is
now retired and doing other things, that my website actually
reduced drug related harms, and there is literature to suggest
that there is data to suggest that really, And her
response was, no drug dealers ever made that argument, and
you're making an argument of the privileged. So she gave
him that double life sentence because she felt that his
philosophy was a threat to the way that things were
currently being handled in terms of drug use and drug regulation.
And she had a pretty lengthy quote during her sentencing
about that she felt there was a bigger threat.
Speaker 1: But we have a control problem as human beings that
that we need to control. We don't what you're told
all your life life look out for number one, look
out for number one. It's your journey, your path, your life,
follow your passion. They're talking bullshit. They don't want you
to do that. They don't because when you do what,
they lose control. And I'm seeing, at least as that's
the connections I'm making in my head as we're talking,
and I go, you know, you hear this from people
and we look at them and go, you conspiracy theory,
not weirdo whatever, right, And we ah they're not trying
to control you. And I often will joke that I
live in a bubble because I just move about and
do my own thing. Even during COVID, I had friends
that owned restaurants. We needed to get rid of the food.
We locked the doors and went aside and had blast
you know what I'm saying. Like, I still went to
work when I had the you know, the job that
I had at the time, and so I always go
I sort of live in a bubble. But boy, there's
an awful lot of control. And I get it in
the sense that we can't have of unlawlessness and wildness
and people harming themselves in a way, you know, to
some protections. But to give a guy a double life
sentence for creating an opportunity for people to have commerce
in a sense right, seems crazy to me. And yet
I'm sure there's some buddy who says, if that guy
wasn't there, my son or daughter or loved one would
still be here because they overdosed on drugs that they
got there. And so therefore, and now what we're doing
is they're going after the dealers and treating them as murderers.
You know, when someone overdoses.
Speaker 2: Boy, I go.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to the idea again that each
person's journey is their own and you can't control it.
Speaker 2: That people are whether it is regulated or not. Substances
have been here since the beginning of time. Sure, we've
been looking at the differnal. Yeah. Yeah, people, people are
going to get it, whether it's on a street corner
or if you order it off.
Speaker 1: People were licking toads to get high, folks. I mean,
you know what I'm saying, like, Okay, just we're looking
for a way to escape whatever the pain is. But
is there an easier way? Is there an easier way?
And that's where that's kind of my thinking is that
there is. You just have to go for the better
feeling thought which simple to say, really simple to say,
But think about you know, if you could just think
of something else, right, you think of something else. I
talked about this on my podcast that I had. I've
been pretty open about substitute teaching. It was something I
never thought I would do. When my son came to
live with me, he's six foot one and one hundred
and ninety pounds and he's fourteen years old, and he's
eating me out of house and home. Private coaches for
basketball are going to run me extra. This is running
me extra, and I thought, Okay, the podcast is taking
care of the podcast. I got to get a little
more in here. So while I continue to grow this,
I'm going to do that during the day. So that's
why I've been substitute teaching. I'm in a class I
think kids would probably be somewhere on the spectrum. It's
a history class. They're reading something, and one kid starts
saying to me. I said, hey, you know you're not
doing it. I can't think. I haven't slept in two days.
My therapist brought something up to me, and it's all
I can think about it. It's really been bothered me.
I'm really upset about it. And so I started talking
to him about his baseball cap and where it came
from and it's a Marlins cap, and have you been
to the game, And then he talked about going down
even to Tampa and to the Rays and seeing that
and all this stuff and baseball and who he likes
and all that, and then I stopped and I said,
we thought of something else. And that's how easy it
can be. But sometimes when we're in our own head.
Speaker 2: We can't.
Speaker 1: But if I grab that bottle, if I grab that needle,
it takes me to a place where I'm not thinking
about this.
Speaker 2: But what I think you hit on that example perfectly
is that you took the time to be with that student.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to talk that that that I'm sorry to interrupt again,
That's where I feel like as a as a human,
I can do that because I'm not a teacher. I
don't have to get you to pass the class. I
don't have to raise the scores by ten points, and
I don't have to get you ready for a regents.
But I can help you in the moment make life better.
And that's all I see my role as. That's all
I see as. That's all I And I like being me,
you know right. I like I get to be myself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you you valued the individual in that moment. Sure,
And there is a lot of isolation that comes along
with substance use, and there is a is often a
lack of somebody like you to sit down and say, hey,
tell me about this and what are you interested in?
And that is one of the things that Portugal was doing,
is that connection back to society where you could have
somebody just sit down with you, not bring a judgmental
frame of mind and just figure out what's going on.
You help them think of something else, and you gave
them a reason to move forward.
Speaker 1: What I think like sometimes is I believe we're all
teachers in some sense. And I don't mean teachers in
the traditional you know, I went and I got my
master's and I'll stand in front of the people because
some of those people shouldn't be teachers, you know what
I'm saying, I just shouldn't. But at the other end,
I think like we're all here on a journey and.
Speaker 2: We chose.
Speaker 1: I know this sounds far out from people, but I
believe we chose to come here. I believe we chose
to come here. I am I maybe we've been here before.
I'm not, you know, maybe have a past life. But
your energy and energy, we have proven scientific does not die.
So there's always energy, and there is energy in you,
and you are a vibrating being. And when you're vibrating
at a higher level. And if you don't, you know,
believe I'll just look at radio, just look at anything,
you know, go to your satellite. I can I can't.
I can't hear the John Mayer station when I'm listening
to Jimmy Buffett or Howard Stern, I can't you know
what I mean? So what frequency already on? And where
do you want to be? And if your goal every
day is to just feel good, you're going to have
a pretty good life. But if you let all this
other stuff bog you down, and we don't teach people that,
and that's where I think the escapism comes. And so
then we develop problems with people who have drugs, and
then you see you see families get ruined and things.
I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't have a real effect.
I don't mean to be glib and say that, well,
everybody's journey is separate, but it is and and but
at the same time, if you can just listen and
try to guide I I've become a big believer in
that one of our jobs as parents, as people is
to almost be a matador. Come over here, it's a
little better over here. But I want you to make
that choice. I'm gonna just sort of show you through
my example that this kind of thinking is better and
this is easier, and this is the easier way, and
that there you can't force anybody.
Speaker 2: There's no I don't know. I believe there's no assertion.
I think one of the stories that I've ever heard
was that there was a father who was in his
late forties and he wanted to set a good example
for his son because his son was out partying and
really not going down a great path. And the father
started getting up really early in the morning so that
when his son would come home from parting partying, he
would see his dad getting up and going to the gym.
And they would have always had this brief interaction in
the kitchen where just getting home, well, I'm off to
go to the gym. Now do you want to come? No,
I don't want to come. I want to go to bed.
And after a while, the sun started to join them
in the gym, and they started to get healthier and stronger,
and then that lifestyle choice that his son mad just
went away eventually, so modeling that behavior, showing them that
the right path goes a tremendously long one.
Speaker 1: You've got to go patient. But we were brought up
to be screamed at. Here's a phrase that was screamed
to me, do you need to have your head examined.
Speaker 2: Oh that is yeah, that is okay.
Speaker 1: So tell me that you want to talk about minor traumas.
That's a trauma. Right. So if I were the one
coming home and hey, you want to go to the
gym with me, No, you need to have your head examine,
you're out of it, that would be that would be
the thing that doesn't work. What does that do to anybody?
It makes you retreat like a turtle into your shell.
You fuck these people, is the idea? Right, excuse my language.
And that does nothing, but the father who You've got
to be patient, and you've got to realize it's not
your life, absolutely, and you love this person, and you're
going to keep trying to do things and you're going
to try to get them to come over here, because
it's better. When we do hard things, we feel better,
we feel self esteem is the greatest drug, I think, right.
Speaker 2: I think people who are getting up and doing hard
things for themselves are setting them up for a really
good day, which turns into a really good week, which
turns into a great month, with turns into years and
years and years, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think having the optimism, then there are things
that I'll read and see where some of this stuff
are we in total control sometimes, you know, when we
go down to i'll call it lower frequency thinking or
lower stuff. Are there things that then can continue to
bring us down? Are there low frequency things that are
I don't know that they're necessarily, but their energies they're
almost like they would almost be like in Ghostbusters, one
of these things that's sort of attached to you in
a way.
Speaker 2: And I hear.
Speaker 1: These things and I I'm sort of fascinated by it,
to be honest with you, And I don't know what
you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you view that or believe that
or see that. Yeah, let's why don't we we can
transition and talk about that. I do have a question
for you, though, Yes, have you seen all of the
Ghostbusters movies? No?
Speaker 1: I think I saw one and two when they originally
came out, but then I didn't see the new the
one with I think they had an all female cast,
and then I think there's a new one even yep,
and I haven't seen them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw one in two and I haven't seen
any of the newer one. Yeah, mean either my understanding,
I can't remember the original Ghostbuster who passed away.
Speaker 1: Oh he was also a writer too.
Speaker 2: He did God, I'll come up with the name, but
I can see him in my head. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: And my director from Many I think he did. Did
he do Animal House?
Speaker 2: Maybe? I'm not sure. Yeah. One of my friends who
I know is going to listen to this is probably
going to be yelling, yelling at me through the speakers
right now, because he's incredible with move with actors. And yeah,
did you like Ghostbusters too?
Speaker 1: No, you didn't like Ghostbusters? I don't know if I
loved Ghostbusters. Did I like ghost I don't, I don't remember. Yes, Okay,
that was the one. I when I went back and
watched Ghostbusters one, I wondered what all the hype was about.
Sometimes when I saw it again, But I thought, I
thought a lot of the improv stuff that Bill Murray
did was pretty entertaining, and and I did like the way,
you know, people were possessed and how it came out,
And I go, is there some again going back to
the idea that there's a message coming through art, right,
the lyrics and music movies, these kinds of things we've
heard for since I don't know, go back that there.
Speaker 2: Was always these evil spirits and things.
Speaker 1: You think of the Salem witch trials, right, which it
could have been hysterical teenage girls just playing a claiming
bs things about people, or maybe there was I don't know,
But are there things like we've had exorcisms and movies
about it, right, that are based on these real experiences
that people have? And I just wonder sometimes when you're
at that low frequency, let's say, it become dependent on
is there something that's helping keep you there?
Speaker 2: That's what I wonder. Yeah, so let's don't we where
are we go in and talk about this a little bit? Okay,
how much time do we have?
Speaker 1: We have as much time as you as you need
or want.
Speaker 2: So I'll I'll preface this by saying, so, as I've
said a couple of times, my background is mental health counseling,
and I have a doctor in counseling. I'm a licensed
mental health counselor. And the things that I'll bring up
very shortly don't fall within the purview of that. These
are extra things that I've become interested in and that
I think can have a therapeutic benefit for people. Though
I'm still very much skeptical of some of the things
and the mechanics of the way things work, and that
keeps me kind of one foot in, one foot out
all the time. And I'll tell you a little bit
about my journey with this idea of this lower frequency
in having these having attachments, and this idea because of
the population who I used to work with every day
in a community setting. I would go in, I would
work with people, and by the end of the day
every day, I'm just exhausted and I am drained, just
absolutely drained, and I would do the standard therapies that
were recommended to us, that were trained in. So for
folks out there listening, if you're familiar with harm reduction
as a psychotherapy, or if you're familiar with more popular
approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, they're wonderful and they work.
But there are some folks who it just becomes really,
really difficult to reach or notice any kind of change.
I think.
Speaker 1: That's such a relatable thing across doing what you do,
for sure, but everybody can think of that person that
just drains you, and it's an energy thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And so i I'm wondering
to myself, like, is there something else that is that
I'm missing as a healthcare professional that they're not being
addressed because we're trained in Western medicine and psychotherapy, and
we've got a pretty decent training in things like pharmaceuticals
and what people need to take to have behavior modification
and high level functioning and all of those things. So
as I am going down the road of my PhD,
I hear a podcast and sidebar, I have watched so
many hours of professional wrestling it's it's very embarrassing at
this point. But the podcast that I was listening to
was Chris Jericho. If if you're familiar, yeah, I do well.
He had a band, Yeahzzy Fazzy.
Speaker 1: I think I interviewed Chris Jericho a few times for
Fozzy over the.
Speaker 2: Phone, over the phone, not in person. Very cool, very cool.
So Chris Jericho would occasionally dip his toe into paranoral
things and on his podcast. And I grew up a
fan of scary movies, horror movies. My wife got me
this scratch off board of like one hundred scary movies
that you need to see. So we're working through that
and scratching off the ones that we've seen. So he
hosted the podcast with somebody named Rachel Stavis, who identifies
herself as a non denominational exorcist, and she came up
with a book that described her work and sidebar one
of the sweetest, nicest, most compassionate human beings I've ever met.
In the conversations that I have been able to have
with her, I can't say you've person yeah oh wow. Yeah,
So I can't say enough good things about her just
as a human being and the way that she really
cares for people as well.
Speaker 1: So let me just understand this. Sure, because you're a
fan of wrestling, because I'm you got interests in a
little bit of the paranorm just sort of a curiosity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Isn't that cool? I know, I'm telling you, like, isn't
that a cool thing? Like Chris Jericho had this person on.
You're a fan, you met, right, was wrestling him the
band Fozzy. He gets a podcast, you enjoy it. He
has this person on and it piques your curiosity. And
you're a smart, curious person, so why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And and even before that, I was I
was really interested in just scary movies and yeah, I've
seen The Exorcist and and all of those. I can't
see that. That's scared.
Speaker 1: I never got into scary movies at all.
Speaker 2: I'll plug one for you. I'll say Late Night with
the Devil is one of the best ones that I've
seen recently. Really, so if you're if you want to
go down that path, and yeah, it was. I thought
it was really really well done. But you're right. So,
because I was a fan, I encounter rachel Or. I
listened to her and she is describing all of these
attachments that people can have because her story is that
she was born with an ability she's able to see
them with her own two eyes, and like many healers,
she was told, no, this isn't something you talk about.
You're crazy, This isn't really happening, this is control, this
is nonsense. So she pushed it away until she couldn't anymore.
And she makes her living as a writer. She wrote
the backstory for tomb Raider, which is really cool, and
tomb Raider just made it into a couple of years
ago the Museum of Play that we have here in Rochester,
which is also very cool. So she described all of
these entities that people can have in the effects that
they have. So I listen to that. I get her book.
I read her book, and I'm thinking to myself, if
there is some truth to this, then there has got
to be some really great therapeutic effects that happen for people,
and she's talking about that in her book. So for me,
I'm curious if there is a way for some as
a healthcare provider of somebody who wants to help people,
is there a way that I can understand this a
little bit more if this is actually a real phenomena.
I gave you some audio from Rachel and this is
from the Maximum Zach podcast where she's talking about some
of these entities, which is also in her book Sister
of Darkness.
Speaker 8: But yeah, so if you want to hear all of them,
like the most common ones, I should say begin at
like the smallest, which is what I call a clive.
It's really scientific. It looks like a climb Barker drawing
to me, super scientific. That's the you that yourself yes, y,
I mean because I okay, So I obviously wrote a
book about this, but I didn't have a book about this,
so that's kind of where it all came from. So
I started kind of writing down what I saw when
when people came, you know, especially if I saw the
same type over and over again. So clives are very common.
They're amplifiers. So if you're sad, you're depressed, you know,
if you're angry, rage, it kind of does that. But
it's actually very very small, like kind of the leech
of the community, if you will, and the least malevolent,
and people pick that up all the time, don't even
know they're carrying it. That's what most of the population has.
And I feel like you can tell when someone has one,
even if you're not me, because you're like, you know,
that's the person who's walking in and you're like, oh god, yeah,
what is happening that? Yeah, they're like everyone's like, I'm tense,
like I don't want to deal with this person. And
so people they pick them up and they actually remove
them themselves by just working on themselves and you know,
getting better all the time. And then it goes to rates,
which are the entities that attach unfortunately through sexual trauma,
you know, being exposed to things too early, and unfortunately
that is very common. And then it goes to tricksters
are the next common one, which is exactly what it
sounds like. It will show itself. It'll form a symbiotic
relationship with the hosts, so it'll show itself as something
you want. So I see in people with imaginary friends
who are like fifty five arc angels attached to them,
like the loved ones. Unfortunately they think that are around
and aren't that So yeah, you know, it's kind of whatever.
And then we go all the way up to like
realm walker, which is that movie style entity, which is
the scariest of you all thought of all of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so she's saying there's entities, let's go to the
leech one that she called sure only because I think
everybody's encountered that person who always right? But is it
would it be if there's these and their entities or energy?
Would you say?
Speaker 2: I think you can call them either. Okay, you can
call them either. So it's like energy.
Speaker 1: Let's just call it like an energy pocket that all
of a sudden you attract it in some way and
when you're down on that frequency, it comes along and
it kind of holds you in that frequency and then
does that thing that I'll say, like climbing the emotional scale,
that anger is better than despair.
Speaker 2: Right, then we could kind.
Speaker 1: Of go up, up up, Does that help almost slough
it off.
Speaker 2: What she talks about is in terms of the quote
unquote Clive is that she says that most people are
walking around have something like that, yest and in the West,
because we don't, we haven't invested a ton into spiritual
practices to cleanse ourselves to that for the average person
walking down the street. And she talks about it being
an amplifier as well, so in her book and if
you listen to her on other podcasts, she talks about
how you can gradually shed yourself of that if you
are if you engage with what she calls connecting with
source or spirit yep, and you do it that kind
of a practice and ask for higher energies to enter
your body and remove whatever maybe on you that's negative.
And then after thirty forty five days, something as small
as that would then just go away, just go away.
Speaker 1: And then there's she talked to, like all of these
different levels, like ah, most like that Clive graduates and
becomes something else right now, just to give an example,
but all these where where would does.
Speaker 2: It come from? Here?
Speaker 1: Here's my thinking is like if everything from source comes
from from one thing love. Then the very simple philosophical
premise would be that anything that is considered bad or
evil is a privation of good and there had to
be some good in it at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's fair. What she talks about in
her book is she says that everything that is either
good or bad comes from source. Yeah, which is this
idea that was reflected in Zoroastrianism, if which is one
of the oldest religions ever were just just describes I
don't think I've ever even heard of that describes how
you have to have polarity in existence.
Speaker 1: So yeah, sure, right, well I would call it even contrast,
I don't want this that's bad, I want this that's
good exactly.
Speaker 2: So she thinks that everything is coming from this one source,
and she and have an understanding of why there is
that dual creation that happens.
Speaker 1: Would it be that the energy kind of has its
own I mean, there are many people that would say
that you are of source, So you yourself have all
the powers that you could create mountains if you want it,
if you tapped into the right frequency. Could it also
be you.
Speaker 2: Could I don't know, make these Perhaps there there is
there's a practice in Buddhism where you put a lot
of thought and energy into a particular the formation of
a particular thing. So for let's just use an example,
if I really wanted a glass of water in front
of me, I would concentrate all this cognitive energy that
I have, and supposedly in another dimension that is on
our plane, that this thing would actually exist, and then
it would take on a life of its own after that.
So eskeeping the the name of what that is.
Speaker 1: And that's a Buddhism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's something related to that within Buddhism. But
then the name of that is escape. Okay, right now,
that's interesting. Yeah, I I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I often look around and I think that what
is what is really happening here?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I think I saw something the other day that the
Moon is older than the Earth, and that the moon
was actually a moon in another galaxy and it moved
itself here to be with Earth, and I go.
Speaker 2: This sounds crazy. But then I thought, I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, man, I've been blown away by the eclipse
only because it all happened without us doing anything, and
that's sort of the purpose. Like I think most people
are going to the eclipse was cloudy. I couldn't see. Yeah,
but all of this happened without us. We're not I
don't get up in the morning and you know, pull
the planet to make sure it's still.
Speaker 2: Spinning in its orbit.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying or tilting on the taxis
there's something much greater than us, and we are.
Speaker 2: Of that. We are of that. I would yea one
hundred percent agree. The word I was looking for is tulpa. Tulpa.
Creation was that that idea that you could create something
in another dimension, put all this energy, and then it
would start to have take on its own life and
effect the physical world around us.
Speaker 1: And then what we say is if that all of
a sudden, let's say, somebody just came in and said, hey, man,
are you thirsty? And gave you that, we would say,
at least here I manifested that, which has become somewhat
of a buzz term. But I would think that most
of our reality is a mirror of our thoughts, and
life is sort of lived in our head. Yeah, I
or am I I think? I mean, yeah, I think
your perception of the way I kind of see it sometimes,
you know, think about and I'll even say it's momentum.
You get up in the morning and you stub your
toe and then you spill your coffee and now you're
pissed off and you're running late and you got you know,
just stain on you and you're all mad, and then
you rear end somebody.
Speaker 2: Right, you know what I mean. And it's like this momentum.
Speaker 1: But it's like you brought that all on and if
you stopped in a minute and went home on what
am I doing here?
Speaker 2: I think you can change it? Yeah, I think you
can too. I absolutely think you can. It's just just
trying to tap into that other frequency that you were
talking about.
Speaker 1: But let's but what happens with like the attachments then
do I lose that control or do they become in control?
Speaker 2: Like what she's saying. I think I think she would
say that it's harder, harder to have that better feeling
thought or let's yeah, to pursue that better feeling thought.
It's just like imagine having like a weight, wearing a weight.
Speaker 1: Vest Okay, yeah, yep, So then how how do we
shed that or do we need help doing that?
Speaker 2: How do we so? There? There? What would she say?
She would say that you can. There are ways that
you can raise your frequency, from meditation to the things
you can do yourself. Things you can do yourself meditation
she describes singing, and also really there are different Yeah,
there are different also like blends. You can have an
incense and be around because those are supposedly higher frequencies
like frankinsense and murr, things like things of that nature.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Yeah, so when we yeah, well the franken sense
and murr have very religious overtones, and we're supposedly the
gifts that the wise men brought when Jesus was born.
So which is another concept. And I, as I get older,
I feel like we have ruined or I should say misinterpreted,
may be misinterpreted, I don't know, maybe misinterpreted what his
purpose was and what he was trying to tell you
and tell us or tell us as humans. But the
idea of the attachment that I think that would scare people.
But let's say, you know, if what I said earlier
was you choose to come here, and you make some
deal with source, and I am starting to believe that
there's even an exit point that you've agreed upon already
before you came here. The journey is going to go
like this that sometimes when something tragic happens. Uh, but
do we we don't remember the contract. This sounds so muddled,
forgive me, but I'll say, like Kobe Bryant, yeah, right
in his prime of after basketball life. I'm not saying
prime athlete, but after basketball life, still taking that same
energy that he brought to basketball and bringing it now
to production, winning an Oscar for a short film I think,
for his production company, writing books, doing some other things
really positive and telling you sort of how to do it.
I'm not so sure that you have to grind as
hard as he did, but it sure helps you think
better because I did this. So therefore I feel like
I can now and once you can. I mean, I
think the greatest example of mind over matter is the
four minute mile.
Speaker 2: Nobody did it. It was the elusive thing.
Speaker 1: Roger Banister does it, and about two weeks later you
got thirty guys who broke the four minute mile. Look
at that and tell me that your mind doesn't control things.
Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
Speaker 1: But when Kobe dies suddenly in a helicopter accident, along
with there's several other people, do you think that at
some point even your soul or your spirit or whatever
doesn't know you're you're dead because it happened so quickly
that you that that then you stick around in some
way because I've gone ghosts. I know it's not silly,
but we'll call it paranormal. And you see the orbs
and things and it's there, man, my hair was standing
up on every part of my body.
Speaker 2: That I'll go back and I'll comment about the well
you talked about, like, hey, there's a there's an endpoint,
and then we'll go on and talk about that idea
of maybe somebody's existing beyond that. So if you look
at Raymond Raymond Moody's work, which who I mentioned last
time we were chatting, and you look at Brian Weiss
as well, with Life Between Lives, there's this idea when
you're in a hypnotic state, you can regress between. You
can go back, you can explore your past lives, but
you can also go to the state where you were
planning your life with other beings. That's fascinating. Yeah, he's
got some I think his book is called Life Between
Lives where he talks about that and you agree on
everything that you are going to accomplish or try to
accomplish in this lifetime. And then when you when it's
your numbers called and it's your time to go, you
go and have the review of hey, what didn't Scott?
What did you do this lifetime? Oh? You got this?
You got this? You know you didn't get this one.
Maybe we'll try that on the next one. And you
go through a life review with these just benevolent beings supposedly. Wow.
So that that idea and that that idea of contracts
of like, hey, you signed up for it, We've got
to enforce it. It's something that resonates with me. But going
down the path here with Rachel Stavis, so I read
her book and I'm thinking to myself, is there a
way that other? Is there a way to do this
with the training that I have already had, or are
there other people out there who know how to do
this that don't have any of these other abilities? And
I encountered a book by Edith Fiora and Edith Fiora
with somebody who's using hypnotism to work with clients, and
she would also encounter some attachments as well. And I
sent you some audio.
Speaker 4: I just say this, first of all, I'm talking about
a person who has lived and died. I'm not talking
about some kind of entity that is of a different dimension,
for instance, a demonic or satanic entity. I'm not involved
with that at all. There's no way that I can
deal with that or can help someone with that problem.
So these are people like a grandparent or a stranger,
somebody who has lived and died, just regular folk, and
for some reason, their personality or in some way their
personality continues exactly as they were at the moment of
their death as long as the earth bound. The usual
progression is for them, of course to go into the life,
and we can talk about that if you wish, but
they don't do this. They stay earth bound for a
multitude of reasons, and they hover around very much as
they were, exactly as they were before, but lacking the
physical body.
Speaker 1: Okay, I find this really really fascinating and interesting because
how many times do we have people say.
Speaker 2: Or not let me rephrase that.
Speaker 1: I have heard people say that they can walk down
a grocery aisle and see who is with the other person,
and the idea that you're never really alone here, that
you have guides and you have people that are trying
to whisper in your ear, so to speak. Come over here,
come over here, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she describes it not as something that's helpful,
and that's something that is harmful. If you've got somebody
who passed away and then they're hanging out with you,
she would say that they're bringing whatever symptoms they had
in their life to you by sticking with you. And
so she would get people into a hypnotic situation and
just start having conversations with these other attachments who are there,
and then she would call in other beings to help
remove them, and then they would go. And some of
the case studies in her book The Unquiet Dead suggests
that people are having some really great therapeutic effects from it.
And we'll say, quote unquote reconnecting with themselves and feeling
just much better, like this a weight had been lifted
off of them.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We use the analogy of the weight vest West
for weight vest for Rachel, but it's also another a
similar phenomena that she describes.
Speaker 1: So she's saying, basically, some people stick around and don't
realize that they're dead. Would that be a very layman's
way of saying what she said?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be a very layman's way to say that.
And she's got in her book a list of signs
and symptoms that if you're feeling this way, then hey,
maybe you have this attachment. There's an African shaman whose
name is Malidomo Some who's written a bunch of books,
And there was a training I went to and the
leader had referenced in Malidomo Some and said that, no,
wonder why there's so much madness in the West, it's
because you have three or four everybody in this room
has three or four ghosts hanging off of you.
Speaker 1: Really, just people who don't because we don't tend to.
Speaker 2: The spirit because we're we're not tending to that aspect
of it. If if you read Edith's book, she talks
about people who are in hospital care and they pass away.
They're their end of the life, and they are subdued,
they're on really great pain meds, and they just they
don't know that they've died a lot of the time.
Really really, that's that's what she would say.
Speaker 1: So then they hang around, So they hang around, do
they need to attach to something then to have Yeah,
you're not in human form, but you have human.
Speaker 2: Mind. And spirit. You still apparently have your own consciousness
that you had when you were alive. But she would
say that they would have to attach or jump into
somebody's energy field and able to stay with that person.
And she talks about older relatives to grandparents who see
that their children or grandchildren are upset, so instead of
going on to wherever they're supposed to go after that,
they just decide that I'm going to hang out with
my grandchild for however long before it's her time to go,
and then we'll go together. And Edith talks about how
that's a really negative thing because it's weighing people down
and if that grandparent had a disease, illness, whatever it
may be, then they could start manifesting in the person
who they are hanging out with.
Speaker 1: See, so this is where my head goes. Ready, we
talk about people on it and it does your family
have a history of name it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Could be that everybody comes here and doesn't. Just because
grandpa had it doesn't mean you have. I have heart
disease runs in my family? Does it?
Speaker 2: Does it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It almost sounds like do they hang
around and give it to you?
Speaker 2: It sounds like that doesn't it. It absolutely sounds.
Speaker 1: Like because if everything that we come from is pure positive, now,
look you're gonna croak, right, You're gonna leave this form.
But I so maybe that that's how it goes. But boy,
this is fascinating to me, like really really.
Speaker 2: Like I love it. Yeah, so I have to. I
want to read Edith's book now. I gotta get It's
a ya very quick read. I can give you a
copy of it. Well, I'm reading.
Speaker 1: I have so many but I'm behind and everything, and
I gotta get caught up here. But it would be
my twenty twenty five reading list. But it's fascinating that then,
and you can see where some days you just feel
like and maybe it is this other thing and shed
that off is Let's say, let's go with the idea
that this is true, okay, if we come from that
premise that there are things otherworldly. Now again, there are
those that believe our human form is two percent of
what we really are, or some low percentage.
Speaker 2: Of what we really are.
Speaker 1: I think it was doctor Deep said to me, isn't
it amazing how all this gets into two percent.
Speaker 2: Of what you really are?
Speaker 1: So you are greater and capable of more things, and
then if things then get it attached to you. Is
there a way for people well then to try to
get rid of it on their own, let's say almost
like I'll call it a home remedy. How do I
you know, how do I not get the flu? I
usually garlic and lemon and honey and cayenne pepper. That's
my thing every night. It's weird, but it works, or
at least I think it does. I believe it does,
so therefore it will.
Speaker 2: And again in her book she outlines at the end
of it, if there's a method, if you want to
try and go and release something like this by yourself,
where you just get into a really relaxed, comfortable state
and you talk to yourself, essentially saying like, hey, I
know that I'm not the only one here. I know
that I've been feeling this certain way. I know that
you see that you're not in your own body anymore,
and it's it's time for you to move on and
go elsewhere. And there are people who I have mentioned
that too, who report feeling better from doing that. Really yeah,
and I again, I have no it's a subjective experience.
So if it makes you feel better, then absolutely well.
Speaker 1: We live in such a see it, touch it, feel
it world right, and Western medicine is I give you
this pill and you will feel better. And I think
maybe there's a combination of of of the two. I
don't certainly go see the man and okay, but at
the same time, you can heal yourself. And they found
things with people who were going through cancer treatments, which
is really poison, that that when they laugh and they
focused on comedy, their healing was better and quicker and
all that, and which which, okay, who made? So what
are we doing here? What do we what are we
messing up?
Speaker 2: What are we messing up? What do we not know?
Speaker 1: And I have a funny feeling, And I don't know
if this is true, but I've been told by people
that a lot of information is going to come out
that is going to reveal a lot more about all
of this stuff that may make believers out of people,
and maybe things get better for everybody.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would love that. Yeah, that would be amazing,
It would be amazing. So I encountered Edith's book and
I was thinking to myself, are there are there any
other practitioners out there who've encountered this, and doctor Shakuntula Modi,
who is a psychiatrist also using hypnotism, encountered very similar
things to what Rachel described and what also Edith described,
and just in hypnosis having conversations with people and noticing
that changes in voice and different things in the room
changing like temperature of the room, things like that, and
encourage will say that these different personalities that are coming
up to that, hey, this isn't the best thing for
my patient, my client, that it'd be best if you
go elsewhere so that you can heal and my patient
can heal as well. And from there I'm thinking to myself,
is there really anything to this, because it sounds unbelievable. Yes, right,
it sounds unbelievable. And I go off and I try
to find a training and I do to see if
it is possible for a mental health professional to do this.
And during the training is run by a psychiatrist called
named Robert Alcorn, a psychiatrist forever in Ohio working in
the Ohio State Hospital systems, and his wife, Barbara Stone,
who is a clinical psychologist, and they've got this whole
proto call on how to release things, and throughout the
entire training. I'm sitting there and I'm like, there is
no way that this is going to do anything for
any of us, and I'm kind of upset that I've
spent money on it at this point. And as part
of it, we're working on each other and it was
my turn to be a receiver of things. And much
like when I went and had conversations with Rachel and
she worked her magic on me, as part of this trainings,
I felt amazing, really absolutely felt amazing. It was like
I dropped a bag of rocks that I had been
carrying with me for I don't even know how long,
like I was a kid in third grade on summer
vacation with no sight of it ending. I just felt wonderful. Yeah,
So at that point, I'm starting to think, all right,
maybe there maybe there is something to this, Maybe there's
something that we can you can glean from this and
use with other people. And since then, I've worked with
some other folks who have reported similar things. Again, I
still don't understand all of the mechanisms of why this
and oftentimes when people come to see me to have
that service provided, it's hard. It's still hard for me
to believe that something therapeutic is happening. But their subjective
responses again, the phenomenology of what they're experiencing, they just
sometimes they just look brighter. Look sure, they look happier
after that. And I'll tell you one story from when
I was I was asked to do this for somebody,
and I call on a Sunday and I was, you know,
with my family. I just excuse myself for a second,
and I got a referral from a psychologist who knows
that I have an interest in this or I have
some sort of training in it, and that I would
be able to at least evaluate to see if there's
something else going on with a person. Again, just wondering
what this person is experiencing from a mental health perspective.
So it says that I don't know what's going on
with I cannot classify this as something like a psychotic disorder,
and would you just have a conversation with the Sure,
I'll have a conversation. And I'm talking to this person
and I'm going to try to just use the day
pronouns because I'm trying to protect identities. So I call
this person and they say that I've experienced I was
in the hospital, and I've experienced what I thought was
a levitation experience where they felt a sensation of floating
above bud. And in psychiatry mental health, there's this thing
that can happen depersonalization and derealization, where you feel like
you're outside of your body and you're watching it. So
I'm like, okay, we can call that a traditional mental
health symptom. They are walking around their house and there
they're being afflicted by something and they are getting scratches
on their body and there is growling that is going
on in their house, and they have this has been
going on for a couple of weeks now and they're
not really sure why this has started or how, and
they've been working with a diocese and the Vatican was
trying to get approval for a traditional exorcism for this
to happen. So they had preests over to their house
to say Mass in the house and there would be
a lot of loud noises that happened in it, and yeah, yeah,
And I said to them, you know, this is probably
a little beyond my wheelhouse. And I want to I
want to be able to help, but let's see if
we can get Rachel involved, and at that point I
had had a number of conversations with Rachel and her assistant.
Not to say that I'm like buddy buddy with Rachel
or anything like that, but the Rachel's assistant knew who
I was at that point and her email there, and
I said, hey, this is what's going on. Is there
any way that Rachel would be able to see her
because this is way beyond my scope of what I
am prepared to deal with. And Rachel's assistant was able
to do very soon, but that first appointment that was
in form four months. So I said, let me come
down and see if there's anything I can do, and
we'll just give it a shot. And this person was
just a twenty something year old who is just super kind,
super nice. You would never know that anything was going
on if they hadn't reached out and called me. So
I do an assessment. I'm really curious to see if
there's anything like domestic violence going on or if there is,
what is the history of psychopathology that has and they
are sitting at a table with me and perfectly normal.
There are very few things that I can point out
there there is a trauma history, so we were talking
about frequency and energy earlier and maybe that was a
potential attraction. And as we were sitting there, there's this
thing that whizzed by my head that it's like you
ever get that sensation of a baseball going yes by
or yes yes? And I was just like I was
looking around and asked, did you feel that? Did you
notice that? Yeah? I noticed that, but that's a really
common occurrence to happen. So we went upstairs in a
room that was that had a lot of religious iconography
in it that I got to a hypnotic state and
just trying to see if I could have a conversation,
much like Edith would or doctor Shakuntala Modi would, just
to see if there's anything that comes up. And as
they were in that hypnotic state there and the upper
torso just kept rotating in a circular motion. And they
said that every time you try to have a conversation
with this, whatever this is, it just I can feel
it moving throughout my body. So at the end of
the day, what I felt like said was I feel
a lot lighter, I feel a lot better, but I
think this is resolved. And ended up seeing Rachel and
Rachel was able to do what Rachel does and for
a couple of days he felt a lot better, but
it ended up coming back unfortunately, And from there I
felt like focusing on Catholicism was going to be the
best approach looking forward. Yeah, it's it's it was.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating and scary, like it.
Speaker 2: Is a little bit, No, it is a little bit.
It is. It is fascinating to think about that idea,
to witness the behavior that I witnessed, to have an
experience where it really makes me question if we got
it all when we were doing our mental health training
and focusing on things that are just observable and only
reportable from what the client is experiencing. And honestly, I
I have no explanation as to much of what occurred. Wow, time,
that is that is amazing.
Speaker 1: It has been fascinating, really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's it's something that I think about
and I try to sharpen my tools, use a rob
rise atage there or uh to get better at or understand.
But whenever I see somebody now just kind of in
the back of my mind, I'm like, mmm, is there
is there something else that is is really going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fascinating. This has been really really interesting. I
appreciate you coming in and spending some time here. How
would you don't do private practice mental health?
Speaker 2: Do you as well? I A lot of a lot
of everything that I do is just word of mouth,
So okay, keep it that way. Yeah, that's that's the
way I'm going to keep it. But if you don't mind,
I do want to plug something sure, absolutely. First off,
I want to just give a shout out to doctor
rob Rice because so many times in my professional life
within the last eighteen months, I've sat down and said,
are we really doing this? Is this really happening? Yeah?
And that would not have been possible without you. And
I just appreciate being able to be a part of
the Wise Council get their mentorship. And I was having
a conversation with doctor Rice after the last podcast and
I said to him, and I think you were the
one who actually came up with the idea with for
that elective course, because you want to talk about knotty
water and some of the interviews that you're doing. And
so I think he was the original originator of that idea.
And then he let me run and take it and
develop some of the other parts of it. So I
just want to give all the in the world to him.
You're a legend. I appreciate you tremendously, thank you for everything.
And also I want to just plug a couple of
healers who I think are just fantastic. And first is
Gina Pietropoli who is over here in Pittsford. She has
done she does great things with reiki in a quantum
touch and she's been helping me put my body back
together this past winter when I've finish had some random
energy injuries come up in ailments and she's available at
MBS Reiki Wellness. Reiki is spelled r E I K I.
I also want to give acknowledge a good friend of
mine his name. His name is Kyle Sullivan and he
is a psychedelic practitioner who is out in Lavonia and
just an incredible educator as well. And Kyle is available
at Kyle Sullivan CEO at gmail dot com. The traditional
spellings of Kyle and Sullivan for that one. And also
my man Eric Bates, who is out in Tennessee easily
top three or four banks and healer in the on
the planet, and He is available at Eric Bates l
mt dot com and he's somebody who's been studied for
his effect on cancer cells. So if you're looking for
energy or help, I can't say enough about those three
practitioners who I just mentioned. Wow, that is that is fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I tell you that the reiki is uh, it's really there.
You know, it's something absolutely there is and we're all energy. Yeah.
Sometimes it gets stuck, the pipes are clogged. You know,
there are those that can help you through that stuff
and you you have.
Speaker 2: Some power yourself. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. I've loved this.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, doctor Scott McGinnis, Mental Health Counseling
over at Saint John Fisher University.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Bell. I really appreciate.
Speaker 1: It, and I too, love being part of the wise counsel.
I wouldn't say I'm not the wise man part of that.
I just like them, you know what I mean. This
has been another episode of Bill Lighten min which will
soon in twenty twenty five be its own standalone podcast,
Ready to Transform Your Life In twenty twenty five, Well,
then I want you to go see my friend Shila Tillick.
She's western new York's renowned expert in quantum healing and
energy work. Whether you're feeling stuck or maybe you're seeking
deeper personal growth, Sheila partners with you every step of
the way through her specialized services including Reiki, chakra healing,
and quantum DNA therapy. Sheila helps you on block energy
pathways and embrace new opportunities. Her gentle guidance opens doors
to healing, connection, and profound personal transformation. Make twenty twenty
five your breakthrough year. Visit Shila Tillic dot com and
discover how Sheila's expertise can help you create the positive
changes you've been seeking. Your journey to wellness and renewal
begins with my friend, Sheila Tillic. Leo's Bakery and Deli.
Speaker 2: Get over there.
Speaker 1: Before the next Bill's game and be the hero that
walks in with the Buffalo Bill's cookies. They make great
cookies over there. Yeah, the Buffalo Bill's cookies. Yeah. Patrick
Bernuncio is a big Buffalo Bills fan. He's the man
behind Leo's. You're gonna just love those Buffalo Bill's cookies,
That's all I'm saying. You might want to get one
that says number seventeen, right, isn't Josh Allen just impressive?
Everything at Leo's is impressive. Yeah, oh gosh. You know
what you can get there, pre made meals. I'm just
saying this time of year gets very busy, right, and
sometimes I just don't feel like cooking, So you have
something that you can just pop in the oven and
it's easy. Everything from chicken palm, chicken pop pie, big salads.
If you're trying to stick to your goals of losing
some weight, Leo's has everything you need. What's the best
thing about Leo's I just said it. Everything on Deskbats
Drive in East Rochester open every day.