59 - Charles Shaw (Trauma, Addiction, and Healing)

FUTURE FOSSILS

Radical documentarian, activist, and raconteur Charles Shaw joins Future Fossils Podcast this week for part one of an epic double (possibly triple) episode. https://vimeo.com/nomadcinema Subscribe to this show: Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify Join our Facebook Discussion Group We Discuss: • The plight of the despised underclasses and the dark constellation of the Drug War, addiction, deportation, homelessness, and the prison industrial complex • The (largely broken) promise of visionary culture and the global festival circuit • Psychedelic healing for PTSD and addiction with ibogaine and ayahuasca, and the urgent need for trauma recovery in our traumatic age • Similarities between the Great Depression and life since the 2008 mortgage crisis – namely, suspicion of institutions like banks and the government • The untold stories and hidden trauma of the Greatest Generation • The cascading effects of war, emotional trauma, and social-scale health problems • Trauma and consumerism, trauma and hoarding • Messiah complexes and the pressure of being told you’ll save the world • His work as an intake facilitator for the Ibogaine Institute • The history of addiction being treated as an illness • Addiction & Psychedelic Healing • Intoxication as “the fourth primal drive” • How Rogue One conveys the tension between institutions and individuals, and how war twists and manipulates us – Rogue One as a metaphor for PTSD • Borderline Personality Disorder • How the 20th Century’s industrial civilization trauma has become the 21st Century’s information overload trauma • A critique of Portugal’s drug decriminalization policy • Technological addiction and the bombardment of brains • Psychedelic therapy as a treatment for modern life Charles Shaw Quotes: “The dictum that you really only care about issues when they strike home – definitely plays into the trauma discussion. So I didn’t care about trauma or PTSD until I realized I HAD it.” (On War:) “It’s all about trade and it’s all about territory.” “By the same standards that we executed Nazis…we did the same shit. The thing is, now that that generation is gone, these stories are STARTING to come out, but unfortunately they’re being seized on by the alt-right to rewrite the story of Hitler…come on, nothing takes away from what the Third Reich did.” “Every Boomer that didn’t become a rockstar, their kid was going to become a rockstar.” “There was a paper trail. They conclusively proved that Florida stole the 2000 election. We conclusively proved that Ohio stole the 2004 election. Didn’t matter. No one in the Baby Boom generation…would actually believe it. Because it called the whole system into question. And when you call the whole system into question, that’s a much larger conversation than, ‘No, your other party is the problem. It’s just those people.’” “Addiction science is progressing at light speed, but addiction understanding and comprehension is progressing like Yertle the Turtle. And what we know now is that it ISN’T a disease. It is neither chronic nor progressive. Addiction is a learned behavior more than anything else.” “Animals don’t need to hit the bottle because animals don’t suffer guilt. But humans do.” “We come out of this lineage, and we don’t even realize it’s there…” Referenced Media: • The Thin Red Line • Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky • The Body Knows The Score by Bessel van der Kolk • The Biology of Desire by Mark Levin • Living Light (Eartha Harris’ electronic music production project) • The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr

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