Welcome back to another episode of Can You Survive This Podcast?

My guest today is named Austin Mao.

Welcome to the podcast, Austin.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thanks for coming on.

So you are the founder or co-founder of an entheogenic church. Tell us about that and

tell us what does that mean. What is an entheogenic church? So we're a non-profit and legal

psychedelic church based near Denver, Colorado. And what it means is that we serve a sacrament of

psilocybin or ayahuasca, much like the Catholic Church would serve wine, right? And this sacrament is

what we consider an accelerant that allows us a greater ease and access for a connection with

the divine. And within our church, the divine means

the connection with the divinity within ourselves and the divinity in all things.

Gotcha. And sorry, did you say what sacraments? Silocybin mushrooms and ayahuasca.

Got you, got you.

And how did you get into that world?

How did you come to be the founder of an anthogenic church?

That's quite the story.

So years ago, I was invited to an ayahuasca ceremony or ayahuasca retreat for founders by a dear friend of mine named Keith Farazi.

And when he gave me the invitation, he just said, you should come to this, you'd be great at it.

By that time, I had already used

psychedelics more than 100 times recreationally. And so I went in with a chip on my shoulder, right?

I was a multi-time founder living a four-hour work week, traveling the world, making high six-figure

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