Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

Cool. All right. Well, Ryan, thanks for joining today and letting me ask you a few questions about psilocybin.

 

Ryan Dutra

to get started, you might just give folks a little bit of background about yourself. Sir, so my name is Ryan Dutra, and I live in Salem, Oregon.

I have five kids that I live with. My oldest was 13, my youngest as four. So I’m a dad and a family man first is kind of my primary responsibility in life right now.

And I own a couple of businesses. I do consulting. I also do psilocybin facilitation. Facilitation is really my passion.

It’s something that has meant a lot to me because the psilocybin itself has been such an incredible tool in my life for

purpose and and overcoming a lot of mental health struggles that I dealt with four or five years ago. And yeah, so I have a lot of plates that I’m spinning in my life, but I think that the facilitation is something that really keeps me grounded and centered in something that is doing good for people and I get to interact with people on their daily journeys a lot, which I find really rewarding.

I’m a musician and so I like to write poetry and write music and sing songs and I bring a lot of that into my facilitation practice as well.

So yeah, there’s a few things about me.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

Cool, that’s awesome. How did you get into this work? When did you get into it and kind of what brought you into doing facilitation?

 

Ryan Dutra

Yeah, so I was in 2022, I was running my marketing business and starting to feel like there was a shift.

coming in my career and I eventually through some friends heard that there was this thing called a psilocybin facilitation training for people who wanted to be facilitators and it really spoke to me that role and it started to awaken something in me because the mushrooms had been important part of my journey and my life and so I became really close friends with this person who was going through the training and yeah just every time she talked about the training and what the role of a facilitator was my heart just started to kind of grow a little more and I was like I think this is what I’m supposed to do I think this is my next phase so I did my training with the synaptic institute in Portland it was one of the first cohorts to graduate in 2023 and

my license started practicing almost immediately in June of 2023 and yeah, the rest is kind of history. I’ve been doing it now for almost two years and I’ve facilitated I think close to 60 journeys now over the last couple of years.

And I can say firsthand it’s I am so thankful for this work and for this opportunity to do this work above ground and to be able to serve people from all over the country.

So yeah, it’s an honor and a joy for me.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

That’s awesome. Yeah, 60. That’s a good amount of experience too. You mentioned you’ve used mushrooms to help find purpose in your life.

Obviously it was something you were drawn to become a facilitator. Tell me a little bit about that. What had been your personal experience with mushrooms or how have you used it to find purpose in your life?

 

Ryan Dutra

Yeah, this is such a great question. Because the answer to this question spans over the course of maybe four years of really getting to understand what the mushrooms were trying to show me and the different chapters of my life, what I was working through at the time.

But initially, first introduction to psilocybin was in the middle of a really sad sort of depressive episode in my life.

was walking away from or deconstructing my religious beliefs that I had grown up with, which was caught in a lot of internal angst and was dealing with a lot of religious trauma.

And on top of that, my dad passed away suddenly in 2020 from a heart attack. And so it was kind of all these things culminating into just what is going on?

is my purpose? How do I find meaning in my life? And a friend of mine saw that I was really struggling.

and introduced me to the mushrooms and my very first experience with them was so incredibly powerful where I, for the first time in my life, I experienced real self-love, self-acceptance.

felt safe inside of myself for the very first time and while it didn’t magically cure me of anything, it showed me a state of being that was possible for myself and that was about five years ago.

So that sparked a journey in me of realizing kind of a goal for myself of, I want to be able to achieve that level of safety and peace within myself without the use of substances.

what do I need to do to get there? So the mushrooms were already starting to teach me and show me this new path for myself and there were a lot of bumps along the way and I

a lot more journeys along the way with mushrooms and with friends and counseling and all of that. But yeah, I think in a lot of ways, I view my life as before and after my first psychedelic experience.

So I’m very, very thankful for that first experience and then obviously the many ones that have come after that and getting to sit with people and see their breakthroughs and celebrate them and hold them too as they’re going through the challenging parts as well.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

So that’s they mean everything to me. That’s awesome. Yeah, that sounds really powerful and transformative and thank you for sharing and one of the things that stood out to me and that is, you mentioned, it’s not a cure, right?

 

Ryan Dutra

it kind of like should you adore or path or what’s possible.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

I feel like that’s something I hear a lot is, know, I feel like, you know, at one time when I did it with a friend afterwards, he was like, cool, now the journey starts now.

we kind of have to put in the work. I’m wondering, you know, that kind of integration, right, can kind of be shown certain things.

And then there’s certain things that you need to do afterwards. You have tips or practices or thoughts on things that maybe helped you integrate or like take steps down that path after that first experience or things that you would recommend others who are getting started in this type of work.

 

Ryan Dutra

Yeah, I have a lot to say on that. But first, I want to say that the mushroom shows exactly what we need to see every time.

And whether you’re doing them in a therapeutic setting or it’s a recreational experience with friends and a campfire or whatever it is that you’re using them for, maybe a ceremonial thing, they tend to just kind of open you up a lot.

And in that open state when you’re if you’re with the psilocybin and you know there’s a lot of chemical things that are happening in your body or nervous system is sort of pulsing a lot.

There’s the subconscious mind is beginning to open and maybe some hidden or protected thoughts are starting to come forth.

You get into this state of mind with psychedelics where the way I like to describe it is they show you what’s possible.

They show you a state of mind and a state of being that’s possible for you. And so if that is in a therapeutic setting then it’s usually a really contemplative and quiet space where the goal of the experience is to go inward and in that space of realizing what’s possible for yourself you begin to explore what’s already in there.

And there are lots of schools of thought on this. it a download from another entity that is giving me this new wisdom or understanding or is it just my mind it’s already in there.

just revealing to me what I already know, this inner wisdom, and I think regardless of like what the source of the transformation is, in general, the idea is coming in with open hands, surrendering to the experience, and allowing whatever needs to come up to come up.

And that takes a lot of preparation to be ready for something like that. And I’ve personally journeyed with mushrooms, dozens of times, and I’m still faced with challenging things that are constantly getting me to the edge of where I’m comfortable and pushing me to new places to lean into for more growth.

And so I think maybe the work is never really truly done, but certainly if it’s your first time doing psychedelics or doing mushrooms in a therapeutic setting, I say the preparation phase is really important to get the wheels turning a little bit of what are the things in my life that I want to…

I want to present in this contemplative space. What are the patterns or maybe even some traumatic experiences that you may want to start dealing with?

Maybe you want to just reclaim a little bit of joy in your life. When you start to prepare yourself for weeks or even months leading up to the journey, it allows you to step into a space that has some momentum already.

The mushrooms may not show you anything related to what you’re wanting to get from them, so to speak, because they always show you what you need to see.

But there’s just a lot of value, I think, in sitting with yourself in the time leading up to it and learning how to really sit in that space and look inward and just get comfortable with that process.

Because once you take the psilocybin, it’s going to put you into that state of deep introspection, of deep contemplation.

Many of the things in the lessons that you experience while you’re doing, while you’re on psilocybin, feel like they’re the most true things you’ve ever seen or experienced before.

And you may see parts of your own story that were previously hidden to you. So if you can flex that muscle a little bit, it’s kind of good at the intro spectrum without mushrooms.

And when it becomes amplified, you have more tools, have more experience to be able to actually sit in it, sift through it, thank them for what they’re showing you instead of resisting.

And so that’s one thing is the preparation to get you ready for it. But then yes, integration afterwards looks different for everyone really depends on what your journey is about and what comes up for you.

Oftentimes, you know, I see, well, at least what I would do with my clients, what I work with them is during the preparation phase, there are these distinct parts of their life that they’re wanting to address.

They have this experience. their journey, and then afterwards I encourage them to go back to what were they journaling about?

What were they contemplating and thinking about? And how do the new lessons or the new experience that they have within them from the mushrooms relate to that?

So you’re building on the momentum that you’re coming into the journey with and you’re continuing that process. So in general, I say just zoom out, don’t view this as a one day experience, view this as at least a one month, two month, three month, or even a one year experience where you’re embarking on an inner healing journey, and the psilocybin is just one day of that.

It may be a pivotal day, a really important day, but yet it’s really not a quick fix. is by no means a miracle drug.

It takes a lot of work to change behavioral patterns and thought patterns.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

The mushrooms are just a appreciate those insights. I can relate to Having experiences where I kind of go in with a particular mindset, and then the mushrooms decide to show me something different Expecting right and it’s like almost inevitably.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Here’s something else to be thinking about that You know, know, known unknown that it’s able to show you of things to work on and try to process and definitely had it Times where it’s like, oh, I don’t know that I need to do that for a little while because there’s still so much I’d feel like I need to process for my last experience.

 

Ryan Dutra

haven’t completed that Creation to be ready to dive into kind of whatever that next lesson might be Yeah, there’s there are different stages in people’s lives that draw them to this work, too I mean, there are a lot of people who feel stuck like they’ve plateaued in some way and they need they need to shake things up a Little bit they need they’re like man.

I just I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with my life Or I’m just I can’t get past this Particular issue that I’m working on and mushrooms are a great way to to address those things and to

give you this new perspective to kind of move forward. But there’s this whole other side, too, where you can have a lot of fun in there.

And psilocybin is an amazing way to celebrate as well. So I’ve done plenty of journeys where I’ve experienced a lot of breakthroughs in my life.

And I want to be able to sit in the growth that I’ve already experienced and see my growth as well from a new perspective.

So I think in the therapeutic setting, I think a lot of people are going to be attracted to it because they want to overcome something.

But there is a really dynamic substance that kind of takes on the general sort of energy that’s already in your body.

So you can also come to it with just this exploration mindset. I want to have joy and see the colors and listen to music and just have fun.

Yeah, and I don’t want that to get lost. I think a lot of times in that therapeutic psilocybin. Asian world, it gets really serious and really owned in on what do you want to fix about yourself or what do you want to heal from?

And that’s powerful. But sometimes the medicine is laughter. And I don’t want that to get lost in this work that we’re doing.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s a really good refreshing reminder about what this can be like. And often people will enter into child-like states which are full of wonder and joy and play.

And so that makes a lot of sense to me. It sounds like you’ve done that before. You weren’t going into fix anything or address a certain issue.

Maybe you’ve had some successes or some good times and you wanted to use this as a way to celebrate.

 

Ryan Dutra

Is that right? Yes, very much so. I’m on vacation and I want to have, I just want to, I want to feel really good for a little bit, you know.

see the world again through New Lens and hold a rock for a little bit, stare at a leaf, and just become enraptured again with this beautiful world that’s around me.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of ways to enjoy it.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

That’s amazing. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people have had that experience where it’s helped them fall back in love with life again a little bit.

Yes, stories of people who, you know, had been, they’ve really loved art and they hadn’t drawn in a long time and then they haven’t been.

So, they just started drawing again and then they cultivated that habit again, which helped them find more joy in life moving forward.

 

Ryan Dutra

Yes, absolutely. have some of my best music that I’ve written or poems that I’ve written have been a result of a just amazing journey.

know, the inspiration is flowing and I’m seeing things from a completely new perspective. And yeah, it’s great for artists.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

Yeah, that’s amazing. I wanted to ask you one more question.

 

Ryan Dutra 

You mentioned early on you have five kids. And I wanted if you think there’s any correlation or crossover between parenting and psilocybin journeys or anything that you’ve learned from one that helps with the other back and forth any similarities that you found.

Oh my God, that’s such a good question. I mean, I think just in general, I think that kids deserve to have parents that really love their lives and they deserve to be raised by parents who are fully alive and enjoying and healing and moving forward and growing and breaking generational trauma too.

As a parent, there are so many lessons that I’ve learned during my journeys that directly relate to how I was parented and have shown me in really powerful ways.

The opportunities I have to change the trajectory if my bloodline essentially and kind of fix old patterns, I’ve become so much more present and patient with my kids.

It’s been a long time. mean, it’s been four or five years of really working through that. And there’s also a lot to say about as a father, I used to view myself as just a guy with kids.

Like that was kind of my thing. I didn’t really understand what it meant to be a father and to embody that, to embody the wisdom and the patience and the love of a father because I didn’t really know that from my own dad.

And in a lot of ways, not just from mushrooms, but just from a lot of counseling as well and introspection, I feel like I’ve been able to embrace my role as a loving father in so many ways.

And my kids have even said to me multiple times over the years, dad, you seem a lot happier. You seem more patient and kind.

especially my older kids have noticed some drastic changes in the way that I parent. So I don’t want to give all of the credit to mushrooms.

I think they’ve been a really helpful tool to show me some things. yeah, I think it’s amazing for parents to be able to do this and to have a safe space to do it.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s so cool that you’ve had that journey and and that your kids can notice that as well.

Yeah.

 

Ryan Dutra

Well, this kids are curious about it too. And I’m like, well, you’re gonna have to wait a little bit.

 

Andrew Conley (Althea PBC)

Cool. Well, Ryan, thanks for taking the time today. Thanks for sharing with us a little bit about yourself and about your facilitation work.

 

Ryan Dutra

Yeah, absolutely.