communitybuilder

I definitely see the temptation(s). I expect that I'll be able to raise my own consciousness enough along the way, and that will I grow into the person that I need to be. But if not, I'm happy to pass the baton off to someone else who is a better leader (should it come to that). I believe that I'm more dedicated to the cause of helping people level-up their consciousness than I am to the pursuit of 'delivery' (sex, fame, power, money, etc). Hopefully we'll get to find out soon!

FWIW, one of my greatest strengths is resolving interpersonal conflicts. I've had pretty much every kind of disaster scenario you can imagine with many thousands of tenants - most of whom I've lived with - and have navigated basically all of them successfully. So I'm sure this skill will come in handy lol.

@Leo Gura Damn, lol. I appreciate the honesty! I do think that it's possible to mitigate a lot of these risks via thorough legal protection, and also by ramping things up very slowly/carefully (and stopping if things start to get out of and). But yeah, I definitely am not downplaying that there are many big risks and failure modes with this. I do think the angle of starting off as a tightly-controlled research group that better understands how to help people use 5meo, and broadcasts its findings to the world, is probably a better launching pad than going straight into retreats. This approach would avoid most or all of the risks you highlighted. The coliving/hospitality site for people deep into enlightenment (no administering psychedelics), is also potentially more viable too. Having a very good vetting process (and more importantly, a mechanism for kicking out bad apples, which is unavoidable) are key for this approach (which I've learned with my coliving company with 3,000+ tenants). This approach completely absolves you from Risk A and partly Risk C, although Risk B is still a challenge.

@outlandish Yeah, good call on Mexico. Forgot about that one. Not sure about Peru tbh.

@Girzo You are probably correct. I'll need to check with Canadian lawyers. Even if you could do a research group though, that's still a huge win IMO. Imagine if a research group was established in Canada specifically for 5meo dmt. They could be a global leader for figuring out what the best ways to onboard people with 5meo are (all of the different ways of intaking it, different schedules/methods for gradually ramping up dosages over time, possibly combining 5meo with other drugs that allow for a smoother experience, integrating different types of psychotherapy into all of the above, etc). Just being able to document well-researched best practices for the aforementioned things, and publishings/showcasing/broadcasting the effects of that to society in a very legitimate/professional way, could be such a huge win for 5meo and the world at large. And then from there, perhaps you could leverage that brand and research to do even bigger things (like a permanent 5meo retreat center in Jamaica). There are so many exciting possibilities!!!

Good to know! Thanks for your feedback Leo. Yeah, definitely going to lawyer-up to the max on this one lol. I'm an entrepreneur through-and-through, and will go to extreme lengths to make this happen (for example, I lived in a car for 6 months just for fun, and I raised almost half a million dollars purely by cold-emailing). For the research group angle, I think that *maybe* a research group in Canada (or somewhere else where research is allowed) could be a good start if nothing else. In the US, the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research is interesting (although I'm generally opposed to anything that's overly academic/bureaucratic, due to their propensity for over-the-top risk aversion). I know a few independent research groups that could have almost as much legitimacy as academia, and would have the advantage of a much higher tolerance for risk/unconventionalism. For the retreats angle, I think that Jamaica is a really interesting place for clinics/retreats - these guys (https://atmanretreat.com/) are already doing mushroom retreats (spoke with their co-founder last week) in Jamaica. I also have a bunch of friends in silicon valley who are experimenting with autonomous zones over international waters (they call it 'seasteading'), so maybe something like that or your version of this idea could work. There's a lot of wealthy people out here (burners / SV executives) who on board with psychedelics and are eager to fund something like this. There's also a large gathering of spiritual/enlightened people in Bali, and a lot of co-living/hospitality projects that are being built for that scene right now (I'm going to visit this in October hopefully). I don't know what Bali's laws and culture around psychedelics are like though. In a worst case scenario, maybe there is value in just having a permanent hub for people who are deep into enlightenment (like what appears to be underway in Bali), and members can just figure out the 5meo part on their own. Basically, from having been an entrepreneur, I fully understand that the details are going to change a lot here as I test out things / learn more / iterate. I'm willing to do anything in any part of the world that's legally sound, tractionable in the near-term, and directionally correct for the long-term. And hopefully the rest of the gameplan will unfold nicely from there.