I’m beyond thrilled to share the latest episode of The Amberly Lago Show, featuring the incredible Paul Hutchinson! In this episode, we dive deep into the groundbreaking world of psilocybin therapy, healing trauma, and reshaping lives. Paul’s insights are powerful, and I know this conversation will leave you thinking about healing in an entirely new way.

Here are three key takeaways from our discussion that I believe everyone should reflect on:

The Power of Psilocybin in Healing Trauma
Paul takes us on a journey into the transformative power of psilocybin therapy, revealing how it’s helping people overcome deep trauma, anxiety, and addiction. Unlike traditional therapies that can take months or years, psilocybin has been shown to create significant breakthroughs in just a few days. This is a game-changer for anyone struggling with unresolved issues from the past.

Understanding Neuroplasticity
One of the most fascinating concepts we dive into in this episode is neuroplasticity. Paul explains how psilocybin can temporarily return our brains to a state where new neural pathways can form, reshaping our perceptions and healing past trauma. It’s a revolutionary approach that shows healing doesn’t just have to be possible, it can happen much faster than we ever thought.

The Importance of Trust in Healing
Trust is a critical element in any therapeutic journey, but it’s especially important when engaging in psychedelic therapy. Paul emphasizes the need for trained facilitators who genuinely care about the individual’s well-being. This trust creates a safe space for deep exploration and healing, making the entire process more profound and transformative.

I encourage you to listen to this episode with an open mind and heart. Whether you’ve experienced trauma yourself or know someone who has, the insights Paul shares could be the key to unlocking a new path toward healing and hope.

About Paul Hutchinson
Paul Hutchinson is a successful entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist committed to child liberation. In 2017, he founded the Child Liberation Foundation and has led over 70 rescue missions across 15 countries, freeing over 5,000 children. As the primary investor and Executive Producer of Sound of Freedom, Paul played a key role in one of the largest child rescue operations in history. After retiring in 2017, he became a sought-after keynote speaker on six continents, known for his professional success and impactful humanitarian work.

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Transcript:

Amberly Lago:
Welcome to the Amberly Lago Show, Stories of True Grit and Grace. Thank you so much for tuning into the show. This episode is so interesting. I did not expect it to go in this direction. And so I hope you can keep an open mind and get ready to grow, especially if you have dealt with any trauma, which I think most of us, or I think all of us have had some sort of trauma in our life. But today I have Paul Hutchinson with us. Oh my goodness, he’s amazing. He is a business owner, investor, philanthropist, and he’s dedicated his life to creating a world where every child can experience safety, freedom, and hope. And we are talking about some healing, some deep healing in a different kind of way that I’ve never experienced, and I wonder if you have, so I’m excited for you to tune in. He’s also founded the Child Liberation Foundation. and led, oh my gosh, he’s led 70 undercover rescue missions in 15 different countries. He’s also the executive producer of the film Sound of Freedom, and it highlights one of the largest child rescue missions in history. And so he’s helping so many in the world, children, people who’ve experienced trauma. And I’m so excited for you to hear this episode. So thank you for tuning in. And now on to the show.

Paul Hutchinson: I’m laughing because, you know, after all of these accolades, and they’re beautiful, and I’m incredibly grateful for the, you know, I’ve been knighted multiple times and received honorary doctorate. I, I tell people I have a, I have a business card that says Paul Hutchinson DMA. People are like, really, was that doctor of medical? No, DMA means doesn’t mean anything. Right? All of these, all of these other things, all these doctors, sir, whatever else, you know, this just, it’s just, it’s how you show up. It’s how you show up every day in your relationships with other people. It’s how you show up in, in how the good that you, you give to the world. All of these titles are just something that throws in credibility announced to your ego. And so I’m, I’m grateful for the, uh, the honors of, um, of all of these things. But the truth is. is how do we show up every day and all of that stuff really doesn’t mean anything.

Amberly Lago: Well, I just thank you for taking the time to be here. I mean, you are doing huge things in the world, talking to bigwigs in the world, and you’ve taken the time to be here and speak with me. And I was gonna, I have like, look, I have a whole two pages of questions to ask you. But then we started talking before we hit record, and I’m like, oh, no, no, no, I’m very interested in this. So I do wanna get to, Your film, Sound of Freedom, I do want to get to your book, but there’s something selfishly I want to ask you. And it’s all about this healing work that you do with medicine, which I got sober in 2016. And I was told that I can’t have anything that will affect me from the neck up, like, or I lose my sobriety. But you are doing what is called psilocytal medicine. Is that what you say? Is that how you say it?

Paul Hutchinson: I’ll explain it. I’ll kind of take the audience down this road. As you mentioned earlier, I’ve led or played a key part in over 70 undercover child rescue missions in 15 countries. I’ve seen the darkest that humanity has to offer with the selling of children. Now, back up even before that, my first successful company that I sold in my early 20s, or I built my early 20s, I sold when I was 29 years old, was a company that helped people overcome anxiety, depression, PTSD, addictions, childhood trauma. All of us deal with all of these things in some way. And the challenge is that trying to fix those behaviors. Addictions, not just addictions to things like alcohol and hardcore drugs or pornography, addictions to things like negative self-talk and worry and what-if thinking or negative expectations or the perceptions we have of ourselves, all of these things are super ingrained. And our company had a cognitive restructuring program that helped people overcome those challenges, but it took us about 12 weeks, one to two hours a day, a personal coach, and thousands of dollars to help people really create permanent change in debility, anxiety, depression, et cetera. Well, moving forward, about eight years ago, I was doing undercover work. I had done 10 years of undercover child rescue missions over the last 11, 12 years, and about three years into it, We were blowing through undercover operators. I had Navy SEALs and Green Berets with 300 missions in Afghanistan, and one time undercover helping to save children, seeing a menu with children being sold, and they were done. Their PTSD was tapped out, right? And so these guys would go on one undercover mission with me, and they’re like, I’m done, I’m done, I can’t do that again. Well, I had two guys that were pretty consistent. One of them, Andy, had done 22 missions undercover. Another one, Jimmy, had done, I believe, 13 or 14 at the time. And they called me on the phone together, and they said, Paul, do you trust us? And I said, yeah, I trust you literally with my life. Undercover, I’m in charge of talking, they’re in charge of making sure I don’t die. I trust you with my life. They said, you need to come to this transformational retreat. It will be the most transformational experience of your life. Now, that’s saying something. I know Tony Robbins personally, right? I’ve walked across coals literally with him right next to me. I’ve broken boards. I’ve done transformational stuff. And so for them to say this would be the most transformational experience of my life, that was saying, that was big, right? And I’m pushing back. And they said, you know, this doctor has studied all around the world and identified different tools, holistic tools, to help people overcome anxiety, depression, PTSD, addictions. And I’m like, well, you guys know that that was my company in my 20s. I sold a company for $20 million that helped people do that. That’s what I did. I know this space really well. And they said, yeah, she can help people overcome these things in three to four days. And then I said, that’s bullshit. It really is. It took us 12 weeks and one to two hours. You can’t make changes like that. Then they explained what she was using. Now, let me take you down this road. When we were children, all of us, between the time we were born until eight or nine years old, our brain is in a state of what you call neuroplasticity, right? So what it means is we’re very, very impressionable. If you can learn three languages at the same time that you’re learning to walk and learning how to ride a bike and all of these things, because as children, that neuroplasticity is just beautiful in the amount of information that it can absorb. The downside is, if something happens when you’re four years old, something simple like your dad calling you fat or something really harmful like your uncle touching you inappropriately. Those things can be buried and 95% of our life is literally run by our subconscious mind. When we’re driving down the road, we’re not thinking, hit the brake, hit the gas, our subconscious is running that. And any new habits, in that case, driving a car, those habits take consistency every single day of implementing these new habits until finally they form in our subconscious mind and they’re driving us. So the reason I bring that all up is that what this doctor had been working with is different forms of psychedelics when it comes to trauma therapy, to childhood sexual challenges, to therapy when it comes to breaking free of addictions, et cetera. These are all things that she was working with. And so I trusted these guys enough to go in. I said, this is a healing retreat. Now, let me set the stage here. If you guys saw the movie Sound of Freedom, my character was Pablo Delgado, right? He was the billion dollar fund manager who decided to quit his job to go rescue kids. That was my first rescue mission in Cartagena, Colombia. I was the founder of a multi-billion dollar real estate investment fund. And when my friends said, hey, this is a healing retreat. And I said, I don’t need to heal. I’m Paul F. Hutchinson. Everybody wants to be me. They said, no, you do need to heal because you’re on your second marriage headed for a divorce. Your children don’t even talk to you. You’re having parties at your house every other weekend with NBA players and half-dressed girls. And this isn’t in line with the you that I know you want to be. Wow. And so for me, in that first experience, and the reason I went into it is because these guys had said this helped them overcome some of the darkness, some of the difficulty of going undercover and helping with these kids. And so I, Eberle, I went into this first retreat completely blind faith, and I was somewhat skeptical. I had grown up in a religion where it was against the rules to do anything that was mind altering. No tobacco, no tea, no alcohol, no coffee, I mean, any of these things. And so for me, and I told him, listen, I said, I thought these things were dangerous, like cocaine, right? Because psilocybin, magic mushrooms, right? Was something that was classified as a schedule one drug. So I thought it was as dangerous as cocaine. The truth is, Psilocybin is safer than table sugar. There’s never been a case of addiction, not one, ever. There’s never been a case of overdose, not one. And when used properly with a trained facilitator, you can create massive 20 years worth of therapy within four or five days. And so what I would encourage is for, and I’ll let you ask some questions and stuff, but I would encourage the readers or the listeners to do your own research. And the reason why it’s important that we all get educated on this is because RFK and others have determined that they’re going to decriminalize the use of these in the US in the near future. And it’s incredibly important. that we don’t have people going to rave parties and getting high on mushrooms. That is not what this is about. When used with the trained facilitator, I’ve never found anything that was more effective at helping people break free of childhood trauma, overcome anxiety, overcome addictions, overcome depression, overcome PTSD. And so we began using those in helping our undercover operators break free of that PTSD. And then we started using it with women who had been abused as children. And literally within four or five days, we’re able to have more personal progress towards a release of that pain than 10 and 20 years worth of therapy had done for them.

Amberly Lago: Oh, well, that’s amazing. This is something I’ve heard of. Um, I have a good friend of mine. So I got sober in 2016 and I had a good friend of mine who had like two years more of sobriety than I did. And she did, uh, a retreat where she did this type of healing and she lost her sobriety. Like her sponsor was like, you are no longer sober.

Paul Hutchinson: Like, That’s it. That’s a perception I think we need to change because some people will throw these in the same bucket as any kind of drugs and they’re actually the exact opposite. We have over an 85% success rate in helping people break free of alcohol addictions without any relapses and any side effects within less than a week. So it’s incredibly nice.

Amberly Lago: Huge like that. It’s massive because you know, the only thing that keeps me sober is a 12 step program and my God squad. So this makes me even more curious because addiction. Doesn’t discriminate. It is there. And I feel like it’s doing pushups in the background, just waiting for you to, but any chance to sneak back in. And so I’m very curious with, you talked about sexual abuse and, or trauma from age, you know, eight years up to eight years old, those being very important years. And I was sexually abused starting at age eight. And I’ve done so much work and so much healing work. And then every once in a while, I still will get triggered. And I’m like, dang it. How did I just get triggered? I thought I healed that. I thought I got over that. How does something like a psilocybin medicine, what is it called?

Paul Hutchinson: Psilocybin.

Amberly Lago: Psilocybin. Psilocybin.

Paul Hutchinson: Yeah. It’s the active ingredient in.

Amberly Lago: I wrote it down wrong. I tried to write it down as you were telling me.

Paul Hutchinson: Psilocybin.

Amberly Lago: How does that work?

Paul Hutchinson: Well, so psilocybin together with other different types of psychedelics all have their own individual properties. In fact, some people may have heard of like ayahuasca, ayahuasca.

Amberly Lago: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard of that.

Paul Hutchinson: Okay. So ayahuasca is, these are all different types of psychedelics, right? All of them, the ayahuasca, the ayaboga, the San Pedro, the psilocybin, all of them, have their own individual properties that can help with very specific things. And if somebody has a cocaine addiction or heroin addiction, super hardcore drugs, then I encourage them to do an ayahuasca experience rather than a psilocybin experience because it’s more effective with some of those hardcore addictions. In fact, you can also look this up. There’s a couple doctors in Peru with published results of between 85 and 90% success rate in helping cocaine, heroin, and meth addicts completely break free from those addictions without the relapses and without the withdrawals.

Amberly Lago: So- Without the withdrawal?

Paul Hutchinson: Yes. Okay.

Amberly Lago: Well, I have to say, I’ve heard of people getting really sick from doing ayahuasca, like they are throwing up in buckets.

Paul Hutchinson: That’s what it is. You are throwing up in buckets. Here’s what happens.

Amberly Lago: Oh my God, I don’t want to do that.

Paul Hutchinson: Of course you don’t. Nobody does. But let me explain what happens. This is why we use psilocybin with most of our retreats. We have facilitated now 67 guided meditation plant medicine healing experiences over the last eight years. The majority of them are using psilocybin because it’s a lot easier to work with the majority of challenges that people have. If it’s anxiety or depression or PTSD or childhood trauma, those are things we can work with very, very effectively without you having to have a throw up bucket the whole night, right? However, if somebody is really, really hard-headed or if their addictions are incredibly restricting. Let’s say that somebody’s got just a hardcore pornography addiction or a hardcore cocaine addiction or heroin addiction, or they just can’t break free from what they need to. The psilocybin is something where It’s almost a dance where me as a facilitator, you as a participant, my wife as a facilitator and others, we get really clear on what it is you want to release. and then really clear on what it is you want to embrace. So clear on, okay, this happened to me when I was eight, and this was a difficult situation with my ex, and this is something that happened in my whatever it was in the past that you want to just stop from holding on to your future, including addictions, etc. Then within that psilocybin experience, your brain turns back to that state of neuroplasticity. Remember how we talked about when you were a child and you could learn three languages at the same time? In that temporary state of neuroplasticity, now I can put you in front of a mirror and have you speak your positive affirmations and boom, they stick. because you’re not having to go 21 days of repetition. Your brain is in this state of very impressionable. And we can also go in and identify those things that are creating those hooks, that are creating those addictions, and anything that is tied to trauma of our childhood that is creating behaviors today, and help change the perceptions of them in a way where they are not creating the same challenges moving forward. So it literally creates new neural pathways. So in the case of an addiction, let’s say a pornography addiction or an alcohol addiction or anything else, you have this super freeway in your brain, this neural pathway in your brain that’s zero to dopamine, boom, I want that hit right now. Well, under a microscope, You can put brain cells together with psilocybin, and that literally starts regrowing dendrites right it creates new neural pathways in your brain in this experience. So this is why it’s incredibly dangerous to go. do mushrooms with friends at a rave party. You’ve got rap music going on over here and orgy going on over here and somebody yelling at their girlfriend over here. And that negative energy in that state of neuroplasticity is very dangerous for your health, mental health moving forward. However, if you’re in a safe, loving environment, the facilitators understand your goals moving forward, they can literally help create that experience.

Amberly Lago: Now, you talked about- Well, that takes a lot of trust.

Paul Hutchinson: Of course, of course. I mean, who are you going to trust? That’s why it’s so important to know your facilitators. You can’t be in that environment with somebody who does not have your best interest in mind. And this is another reason why, if it becomes decriminalized in the US, there’s some facilitators out there that have a history of manipulation. Yeah, I was going to say that. In some pretty negative ways. And so you can’t put yourself in that environment with a facilitator that could, I mean, there’s even been some cases of people who have sexually abused people in that state. So this is why it’s important to set the right ground rules in place.

Amberly Lago: Okay, let me ask you though. So somebody like me who is an alcoholic I mean recovering I go to meetings, but Would I need? Which one would I need? Would I need ayahuasca or what?

Paul Hutchinson: No, I You’ve already see we’ve had alcoholics that have come through that have been very very effective at cutting free all of that the extra desires that keep hitting them etc by just using psilocybin. We’ve had a couple of them that fell back off the wagon but they were already off the wagon when they came and they needed something stronger. Now the ayahuasca is stronger. If you imagine that with psilocybin with the mushrooms You and the facilitator, you and my wife are driving, right? You guys are driving the experience saying, okay, now we’re going to work on this memory at eight years old. Now we’re going to work on this. Now we’re going to work on this. The ayahuasca, your grandmother is driving. We call her grandmother ayahuasca. She’s a dang good driver, but she’s got a whip. She’s got a belt. She’s not going to take any crap from you, right? And so what happens in that experience, and this is why the throw up happens. You literally, you go into this psychedelic experience and the medicine takes you through emotionally and you literally start looping some of the things that you need to release. Maybe it’s a pornography addiction, maybe it’s an alcohol addiction, whatever it is, it’s looping this thing you need to release. And grandmother Aya says, okay, are you ready to let go of this for good? And you’re like, I don’t know. We’re going to let go of it for good. And literally your whole body, just the thought of drinking another drink of alcohol, boom, upsets your stomach to the point where she says, we’re going to release that. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, we’re going to release it all right now. Boom. You throw it all up in your bucket. And then she says, are we good? Are we, are we good? Are you, are you still have a time to that whatsoever?

Amberly Lago: That kind of scares the crap out of me, to be honest with you.

Paul Hutchinson: It scares a lot of people.

Amberly Lago: This is why most people- It scares the crap out of me.

Paul Hutchinson: I don’t encourage anybody to do AYA their very first experience. But is it better than being addicted to cocaine for the rest of your life? It’s literally eight hours to break free from an addiction that’s lasted for 10, 20 years.

Amberly Lago: Well, I’m wondering if it can help with complex regional pain syndrome, but the reason it scares the crap out of me is The pain that I have from CRPS can get to be so severe that it makes me nauseated and I throw up. And I get to this place where actually this past year has been crazy. The week that I was launching my new book, I had a major flare up and I was throwing up nonstop. And once I start throwing up, I can’t stop. I have Zofran, it’s a prescription medication that helps with nausea. That wasn’t even working. So the thought of throwing up after being so sick from pain, I’m just like, gosh, I know you have to do the hard things first to get, so life gets easier rather than doing what’s easy. And then life continues to get hard.

Paul Hutchinson: That’s why we tell people that to not have ayahuasca as your first experience. Don’t do that.

Amberly Lago: Like, I don’t think I could, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop throwing up. So do you think the Psilocybin. Did I say it right?

Paul Hutchinson: Psilocybin. Psilocybin.

Amberly Lago: Psilocybin. Psilocybin? Okay.

Paul Hutchinson: Psilocybin.

Amberly Lago: Okay. Do you like how real I keep it here? I know nothing about this. I love it. I’m just very curious about this. Now, Do you think if I go ask my sponsor, she’s going to say, yes, go do it, Amberly? What do you think?

Paul Hutchinson: Here’s what she should do. Here’s the problem. The majority of Americans, because psychedelics were categorized as a schedule one drugs in the late sixties, if you’re under 55 years old right now, then literally your entire life, you have been told that those things are in the same category as cocaine and heroin and the really bad stuff.

Amberly Lago: Oh, heck yeah. Like, I’ve always been scared my whole life to do… I’ve never done any hardcore drugs, ever.

Paul Hutchinson: When we were kids, we have these advertisements with the egg. This is your brain, and this is your brain on drugs, and it’s all frying. And so we’ve been conditioned to think these are incredibly dangerous. And so the answer is, chances are, your sponsor, is going to think like the majority of Americans, classify this as the same way that we all have all these years. And it’s not going to be until more people like Joe Rogan, who’s been talking about this a lot, and Jordan Peterson, myself, others who are actively talking about how these things need to have a changed perception. And again, like I said earlier, do some research on it, John Hopkins University Studies, 76% of people who experienced, I’m talking now about psilocybin, not the throwing up stuff with the ayahuasca. I’m talking about a very facilitated psilocybin experience. John Hopkins University study says that 76% of them said it was the number one most impactful transformational night of their life or day of their life, experience of their life. Number one, that’s two thirds of them. That’s incredibly high. Now, here’s something from, I’m gonna just take this to a spiritual thing just for a second. This is not religious, but let me just throw this out. One of the things in the 12 steps in the AA program is an acknowledgement of a higher power, of acknowledging that we can’t fight this on our own and that we need God’s help to do so. One of the other studies by John Hopkins University using psilocybin as an experience, they have 850 self-proclaimed atheists. Not agnostic, I don’t know if there’s a God. These are atheists, there is no God, right? 850 plus self-proclaimed atheists. over two-thirds of them, after one single experience, one six-hour experience with a guided, facilitated plant medicine experience using psilocybin, two-thirds of them said, I am no longer an atheist. I believe there’s a God. Now, that poses a whole bunch of other questions.

Amberly Lago: It does, because I’m like, okay, what kind of God?

Paul Hutchinson: Well, and see what’s funny is, you know, I told my mom, I said, I feel closer to God than I’ve ever felt my entire life. And she’s like, she’s like, and she was anti this because she grew up, you know, in a church that we can’t even drink alcohol there. Right? Yeah. Oh, you only feel you only feel close to God when you’re on drugs. I said, Mom, that’s the misperception. Now, there’s a book called the immortality key. The Immortality Key, he scientifically shows how the early Christian church used psilocybin. No way! In their sacrament. In their sacrament.

Amberly Lago: No!

Paul Hutchinson: Yes, yes. Read the Immortality Key and he goes through all of the history of it. Why? Not so that you can, you know, see rainbows and fairies and whatever else. Here’s what I believe happens. When we’re born, we have this veil of forgetfulness, right? We don’t remember. We don’t remember being with God. We don’t remember being brother and sister. We don’t remember any of these things. There are certain things, and we have to literally rely on our five senses to get us through this life. There are certain things we can do to thin that veil, you know, church, prayer, meditation. These are all things that can thin that veil. and help us really tune in to that still small voice of truth, the spiritual world that is beyond this one. For me, and for so many other people, the experience in the psychedelic world does a temporary thinning of that veil, and you’re able to feel things that you have never felt before energetically. In fact, my very first one was the most beautiful, horrific experience of my life. And it was the most transformational experience.

Amberly Lago: Now horrific- Wait, wait, wait, back up here. The most beautiful, horrific? I’ve never heard those two adjectives used together.

Paul Hutchinson: Here’s what happened to me. The medicine showed me pure empathy that could have never been showed to me in any other way. Everly, I felt in every cell of my body, I felt the pain that my children felt when I cheated on their mom. As if I was them and it hurt. And then I felt the joy of the kids that were there as part of our rescue missions. And then I felt the pain of the families that broke apart because some guy was at my party and had sex with a cheerleader and now he cheated on his wife and now she broke up with him. And I realized the ripple effect of everything that I do in my life and every word that I said unkindly to an employee, I felt as if I was them. That feeling that I had blocked with all of this ego and this pride and all this crap broke that ego down and put me into a place where I could feel the ripple effects of everything that I did in my life. And that changed everything for me. It created this beautiful new vision of what I could do to create a positive impact in the world rather than the road that I was going down.

Amberly Lago: Well, what would you say to somebody that is an addict, alcoholic, or just trying to numb out the feelings and they don’t want to feel and they’re using because they feel so much and they don’t want to feel. And now they’re going to go do some medicine that’s going to make them feel even more.

Paul Hutchinson: Have you ever had that question pop up? Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, the problem is that we are numbing things because we’re not effectively dealing with those things. And so even if somebody is on an SSRI, let’s say they’re on anxiety, depression medication, we And this is the hardest part for people with our experiences is we mandate that they are off of those medications for a few days, depending on which one they’re on. Why? Because all they are is masking. They’re just masking the underlying problems. And we need to pull off that bandage so that we can get down to the infection and we can figure out where that pain is coming from and help people have a new perception of it, help them in a very healthy way heal Those pains heal that energy, heal that stuff that they’re just numbing with the anxiety and depression medications. This is what happens with cocaine and other hardcore drugs. That’s what happens with alcohol. So many people are simply numbing things rather than getting down to the roots of the problem. fixing it and that’s that’s what we did back when I had my anxiety and depression company in my early 20s as we were getting down to the roots of the problem but it took us 12 weeks a personal coach almost every day to create those those changes within this state of neuroplasticity you can do so within a few days well how did you even get into having a company in your early 20s and

Amberly Lago: with dealing with anxiety and depression and sadness and all these things. My oldest daughter is almost 30. My youngest daughter is going to be 17 next month. I don’t really see either one of them walking around going, you know, I’m going to start something that deals with anxiety and depression. How did you even come up with that?

Paul Hutchinson: I talk about it in my book, In the Sound of Freedom. In the beginning part of the book, there’s four sections. The beginning is the making of an undercover operator, and I talk about the training. I teach situational awareness, things that parents can do to keep their kids safe, etc. But then I talk about my teenage years and being brought into being the president of the peer leadership team. Because children in junior high and high school, if they went and talked to a teacher about domestic abuse at home, legally that teacher has to go to the authorities immediately. And so kids very seldom will talk to them. But I went through a bunch of training as a teenager to learn how to be a peer counselor. And in doing so, I came to understand that literally, One in every four women that you know has been a victim of sexual abuse as a child, as a child. With men, it’s a little bit less. It’s one in every five. Forty percent of women at some time in their life. The majority of us at some time in our life have anxiety and depression to the point where they are debilitating. And most of it comes from unresolved childhood trauma. Most of it comes from, and it may not be sexual trauma, it may be physical or verbal, but we hold onto this and it comes out. with some people that comes out in the form of low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, some people anger, some people, especially men, it comes out in promiscuity and sexual behaviors, even women as well. And so understanding the root of the problem is the only way that we’re going to help heal humanity.

Amberly Lago: Mm. I love that. Well, I want to go back to this medicine. Okay. I got questions.

Paul Hutchinson: That’s all right. I know it.

Amberly Lago: Well, let, let’s say I, you know, talk to my sponsor and she’s like, Amberly, you know what, if that’s going to heal you, cause I have heard that a lot of people that have been diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome. So that’s the nerve disease I was diagnosed with. Most of them are women. And I think it’s a high, high number. Like 80% of the time, they were sexually abused as a child. It’s like, I don’t know the exact numbers. So write in to me, email me if I have those statistics wrong. But I’m just thinking, I’m wondering if this would help with the, you know, this is supposedly an incurable disease. I’m wondering if it would help with the pain of the nerve disease. And I mean, I have tried every kind of treatment you could ever imagine. I’ve had somebody drip oil over my head, chant over me, uh, Eastern Western medicine. At one point I was on 73 homeopathic pills and 11 different prescription medications. I mean, seriously, I’ve flown out of the country for treatments, radical, radical treatments. Nothing has worked. I am down to one medication and I’m only sharing this with y’all because you know, I keep it real with you. I’m not saying this is the treatment for CRPS because everybody’s different. I’m just telling you what has helping me is I’m on Lyrica. And I fought that. I did not want to have to take a medication at all. But it does seem to help with the burning of the nerves. It allows me to be able to walk. It’s a non-narcotic. Um, I went off of everything cold turkey at one point and I went into my doctor and I was like, Hey, just so you know, I just quit taking everything. And he was like, are you crazy? You can’t just stop taking Lyrica. You could have seizures. You’re lucky you didn’t have a seizure while you were driving down the road with your daughter because it’s in the anti-seizure family medication and once you start taking it, your body stops producing whatever it needs to produce so you don’t have seizures. So yes, I am lucky I didn’t have a seizure. So I’m back on the Lyrica after being very stubborn. For somebody like me who is on Lyrica, I know you said you have to get off antidepressants. I was never on antidepressants. But for somebody that is on medication, would they have to stop medication before they would go to this?

Paul Hutchinson: No, as long as it’s not an SSRI, then you’re fine on those. And here’s what I will say regarding that. And I learned this back 30 years ago when we were building the Anxiety Depression Company. I believe that 90% or more of the things, the physical things that people go to the doctor for have an emotional core. Now, I’m talking about even things like cancer, right? Our bodies are incredibly responsive to the things that are going through our mind. People are saying, wait, you’re saying this is all in my head. I went to the doctor and the doctor did a test and he says that my hormones are off and this is why I need my depression medication, whatever else. Well, Understand this. If I had a bunch of teenage boys in the room, and I brought in some beautiful girls and they started taking their clothes off, these boys, their brains would release a chemical measurable in their bloodstream that would change how their body felt and made up, et cetera, right? Our brains are incredibly powerful. And when we deal with severe trauma as a child, especially especially physical or sexual trauma. The impact on our physical body throughout our life is real. It is real, and it shows up in so many ways. Even though every single cell of our body is renewed after a few years, there’s not one cell in your body that’s the same physical cell that was there when you were abused, not one. However, the memories, the stuff that’s going in our subconscious, our emotions are literally controlling everything. And so the fact that there’s such a high percentage of women who have that, who were abused, went through that same kind of trauma as a child, tells me that there’s a very real connection between that emotional trauma and that physical manifestation within your body. And that if we can do things, and I’ve seen this over and over again, miracles physically, and people recovering from everything from dementia to cancer to all kinds of physical things, emotional things, et cetera, if we can get down to the root, and create real long-term change, real healing, then yes, I believe that you will see miraculous changes in your physical body. And so this is why I’m such a proponent of talking about this, because there’s such a stigma out there, because for 50 years, we haven’t even been able to talk about it. This is the first time that we can actually have these conversations without being shut down by YouTube, because we’re having a conversation about these things, because the mindset is changing, people are becoming open, and all you need to do is take a look at their research. and you come to an understanding that, wow, number one, it absolutely cannot hurt. I’ve never found somebody that has gone back to an addiction because of their experience with psilocybin or any other psychedelic. On the contrary, they have a very, very high success rate in breaking those final cords that are those hooks that are keeping people in this state of this fight syndrome throughout their life, trying to fight against these addictions. Why? Because we go down to the root of where they’re coming from. Where’s those holes that need to be filled? Where’s that emotional thing? We can actually physically take you back in a very real sense. Take you back with your adult version of yourself today. and have a very real conversation with your eight-year-old self. I believe that time is not a linear. Time is an internal round. And we can go back in time in this neuroplasticity state. And you can say, I can say to you as a facilitator, or my wife can, or other facilitators, OK, what does your eight-year-old need right now? What does she need to hear? What does she need to hug? Does she need to feel safe? Can you, as the adult right now, give her that safety, give her that healing that she needs? And in a very real sense, start to sew back those torn pieces of your childhood and help you move forward in a place where it’s not affecting you the way that it was.

Amberly Lago: Well, how do you go about finding a facilitator somewhere where you could go to explore this.

Paul Hutchinson: Right now, there’s a lot that are illegally doing it underground here in the US because it is still illegal. There’s places in- Is this going to be shut down off of YouTube or are we going to get banned? Nope, because they’ve opened up a lot of stuff. In fact, there was just some stuff that came out yesterday where Colorado. Colorado, because they’ve already decriminalized the use of these tools in trauma therapy, Colorado now has certified facilitators that people can go in and spend some time there and work through some things using psilocybin and some other tools. And so Oregon will be next. Oregon is already decriminalized as well. We almost- What about California? California, parts of California in certain regions, they’re not going after people, but they don’t have anything that is like you find in Colorado where they’re actively promoting, hey, come to these retreats. We have trained facilitators that are here that understand how to use it. Right now, we have people come down to Latin America because I was trying to change the laws in Utah. We had a beautiful ranch that was halfway between Salt Lake and Denver. This was so effective at helping people overcome addictions and PTSD and anxiety depression that I went into the attorney general and I said, brother, this is so powerful, so effective. I’m going to bring it to Utah. And I joked with him. I said, you can either arrest me or tell me how to make it legal. And he laughed. He said, well, let’s do the latter. And so we took some church leaders, some political leaders, and some doctors to Jamaica to experience their very first experience. In a legal setting, every one of them said, we want to help change the laws in Utah. Utah almost became the state to not only decriminalize, like Colorado, it almost became the first state to fully legalize the use of these psychedelics when it comes to trauma therapy. So what happened?

Amberly Lago: It didn’t work out?

Paul Hutchinson: No, our governor decided he was going to be to our bill. And so he said, as soon as it’s approved with the FDA, then you’re good to go. And so that’s why we’re working on things on a federal level. And so we’ve moved to Latin America. People can go to liberatinghumanity.com and learn lots of information, lots of videos on the experiences of retreat. And then I would encourage you to find somebody that you trust. Because trust is so important in this space. You can’t just go in to put yourself in this vulnerable position to be able to heal through things in that state of neuroplasticity if you don’t have somebody who brutally has the right heart who can help you heal through that.

Amberly Lago: Yeah, for sure. Well, oh my goodness. Look, I had two pages of questions on a whole different topic, but we started talking and I was like, no, I selfishly need to learn more about this. It’s something that I’ve wanted to learn more about, and I just appreciate you explaining it more. And you know, sometimes when you’re scared of something, it’s just because you don’t have enough information about it. Now, with that being said, I’m not gonna sit here and say, oh, sign me up, I’m ready to go. Grow up in a bucket or do something a little lighter and just, I don’t know. I’m going to think about it. I’m actually going to do some research.

Paul Hutchinson: I don’t think that anybody listening today is convinced just listening to me, but my hope is, is that you’ll take some time and just type, type John Hopkins University studies, psilocybin, you know, and psilocybin is, that’s a hard one to spell. You have to spell it a few times.

Amberly Lago: Oh, I couldn’t even pronounce it. Are you kidding me? We’ll put it in the show notes though.

Paul Hutchinson: Here’s something else that this is a really good one to look up online. Once you have the right spelling of it, type how dangerous is psilocybin versus alcohol, right? Or put danger of psilocybin versus danger of alcohol. And what you’ll find, you’ll find a chart, okay? This chart at the very, very top, of all the mind, it’ll have a whole bunch of mind altering things, everything with cannabis and cocaine and methamphetamine and alcohol, everything else. And it’ll have danger to self and danger to others. The top of the list, higher than cocaine, higher than meth, higher than anything, danger to self, danger to others, top of the list is alcohol. Second, second is crack cocaine. Third is heroin. Fourth is regular cocaine. Next is methamphetamine, all the way down, about 20 or 30 down. Then you’ll find things like cannabis, way at the very bottom of the list with almost zero Zero harm to self. Actually, there is zero harm to self, what you can find on there. And only thing that would be harm for others, if you decided to drive a car while you’re on mushrooms or whatever, the very bottom of every single thing on the list is psilocybin from a safety standpoint, compared to alcohol is the most dangerous at the top. So look that up online and it will open your mind and understanding to starting to do some research and ask yourself, wow, if that is so safe, Why, why haven’t we been able to use it over the last 50 years? And this is what those laws are changing so that we can use them properly in a way that’s really going to help people heal.

Amberly Lago: Yeah. And you know, it just, it, it, it’s crazy to me that like when COVID happened. Everything. So I was in L.A. for 31 years and in L.A., everything was shut down except, I mean, churches. I couldn’t go to my recovery meetings. I mean, everything. They even shut down the hiking trails at one point. Like, you couldn’t even go to the park. The only thing that was open? the pot shops and the liquor stores. And that was it. And I remember driving down the road and seeing a line of people waiting in line just to get in to go buy some, you know, go buy some pot or weed or marijuana or whatever you want to say. I probably not even saying the cool thing to say, but I was just like, that is crazy that That’s what you could get, alcohol and weed. But then there’s other things that are actually helping people have breakthroughs and that’s not legal. That just blows me away. So this has been mind opening. And like I said, I was prepared to ask you a whole bunch of different questions, but you guys can check out his book. You can check out his movie, his film. And would you please let us know the best way for people to find out more information on how to get your new book, how to get to watch your film, get involved with what you’re doing, or even to do medicine with you, do a retreat, whatever?

Paul Hutchinson: All of those, super easy. There’s links to everything. on liberating humanity, just liberatinghumanity.com. You can go directly to the Child Liberation Foundation by going to childliberation.org, but there’s a link to the Child Liberation Foundation on liberating humanity as well, and even a place where you can pre-order the Sound of Freedom book. Now, if you don’t remember the Liberating Humanity, but you remember the movie Sound of Freedom, you can go to soundoffreedombook.com and it will link you right into Liberating Humanity. And on that site, you’ll get information on how to keep you and your children safe in dangerous situations, situational awareness. You’ll get information on the Sound of Freedom book. You’ll get information on the Child Liberation Foundation. And most importantly for this episode, you’ll get lots of information on the healing retreats, and how you can sign up for those or links to some of these things that we’ve been talking about, these studies by John Hopkins, by others. The most important thing I think you should look up is danger of alcohol versus danger of mushroom psilocybin. And that chart will open up your mind to, wow, okay, now I see there’s something I need to study more on this. If indeed that is the safest of any of them. And people are saying that they, and that 76% of people say it was the most transformational experience of their life. That’s right up there with your marriage and the birth of your first kid type thing, right? That’s powerful numbers. So I appreciate, I’m super grateful that you, Let me talk about some of this. This is something that has been somewhat taboo for the last eight years because people haven’t known about it, but we’ve been studying it in depth. Again, like I said, in the last eight years, we have facilitated and hosted now 67 guided meditation medicine healing transformational experiences.

Amberly Lago: Well, thank you for being on and thank you for explaining it. As I said, I was like, okay, selfishly, I want to get to, I got some questions for you. But I’ve always been curious, you know, I’ve always been, you know, curious and I’ve tried so many different kinds of treatments. And so, Thank you for explaining it in a way that I can understand. Thank you for taking the time in your eventful, eventful life to be on the show. I know you’re doing big things out there, and I just appreciate you so much. And you guys, thank you for listening in. All those links will be in the show notes. And you know what? Thank you for making this a top 1% podcast. It’s because of you listening and downloading episodes that we’re here today and have this podcast. So thank you so much for tuning in and until next week, we’ll see you soon.