Bling:
Bumper Promo:
Ohh yer gonna enjoy this next woman of consequence… she was quite a surprise… I didn’t expect to find such traumatic depth in this delicate woman but was enthralled in her experiences… but it was her success that tickled me.

Emma Beckerle bucked the medical system that addicted her to begin with… and all with the help of Cannabis. You’re going to love the energy of today’s guest Miss Emma Beckerle…

       right after the intro…

Intro

Honey Smith Walls 0:00
Welcome to season four of the Cannaba Verum podcast, the cannabis truth podcast.
I speak the language of cannabis freely and uncensored while educating my audience on safe use of this live plant therapy. You should know what’s in your cannabis…what’s good and what’s not.

It does not come with an FDA stamp of approval yet. Using cannabis mindfully as medication is a different concept in Western healthcare philosophy, specifically of the past 100 years. There’s a lot to learn and reconsider.

The information you’ll find here comes straight from scientists and clinicians doing the work and reporting their findings in real time through various live online outlets.
The scientific truth of cannabis is finally getting out and is wide open for all to see at respected medical sites like pubmed.gov and JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association… and I’m right there in the thick of it with all those titans of medicine… as a fly on the wall.

Because I’m not a doctor, nor did I go to med school. But I did take dozens of private cannabis courses and still engage in continuing education offered by cannabis expert scientists over the past few years and slowly began to see and understand the bigger picture.

Now I talk to people all day long about cannabis and hopefully inspire them to research the facts as we know them today. Cannabis is an amazing alternative in health remedies. It can reportedly alleviate typical disease problems and troubling side effects, even those caused by synthetic prescriptions.

This is Honey Smith Walls, a 21st century cannabis shaman, not a doctor, not a scientist, raised by nuns and wolves in the verdant cattle pastures of the Oklahoma oil fields. I’m here to amplify the truth of this great big story of cannabis in historical, political, scientific and spiritual terms, so you can make educated decisions about the medicine you choose to ingest.

Seg 1

Honey Smith Walls 0:07
Sounds like I have Emma…

Emma Beckerle 1:06
How are you? Good afternoon, Honey.

Honey Smith Walls 1:07
It’s so nice to hear your voice. Thank you for meeting us today and helping us understand a little bit about your world. Did we meet at Cannadelic Conference in Miami?

Emma Beckerle 1:20
We did… we met during…. there was a fantastic nurses’ panel.

Honey Smith Walls 1:27
Yeah, that was so amazing.

Emma Beckerle 1:29
That was one of my favorites. One of my favorites and cannabis nurses are near and dear to my heart. So I loved it. That was a great conference.

Honey Smith Walls 1:38
It was… I had so much fun. I felt like I was in the lap of love of about a 1000 really close friends…

Emma Beckerle 1:46
Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s such a warm space. I always feel like that when I’m in particularly the psychedelic and cannabis focused conferences. It always seems very welcoming. And we’re all sort of here for a reason it feels like.

Honey Smith Walls 2:01
Well, we all have a beginning to it and there’s some thing that draws us all to this space. And then it’s the compassion that keeps us here. Because we understand how how helpful it is.

Emma Beckerle 2:15
Exactly. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me today.

Honey Smith Walls 2:19
I’m just tickled that you could come Emma… listen I want you know to know that I listened to the whole episode on Explorers Academy Podcast that you did with what’s his name?

Emma Beckerle 2:33
That was funny because that was my first time doing like a Twitter space. And so they moved it over to Spotify, but it was like we did a Twitter live space but I will admit I’m not the most social media savvy.

Honey Smith Walls 2:48
Nor I but you know you did well for yourself. And that particular episode brought me to tears when you were hugging yourself.

Emma Beckerle 2:59
Oh, wow. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Honey Smith Walls 3:03
It was lovely. And for anybody else who has an opportunity. The podcast is called Explorers Academy podcast. And so you can find it on Spotify. It was really good.

Emma Beckerle 3:16
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Honey Smith Walls 3:19
Well introduce yourself to the audience, would you please and let them know why we’re excited to be here talking about what we’re talking about.

Emma Beckerle 3:28
Yeah, so my name is Emma Beckerle. I work professionally I have been working professionally in cannabis for the last five years in the legal spaces. And in the last two years I actually pivoted into psychedelics as well.

So adding that to my focus so I’m living in both spaces and my my world has really been on the business strategy side.

So I currently have my own management consulting and business strategy agency that I run out of New York working with small businesses in cannabis and in psychedelics… and that’s what I’m really helping… these small businesses grow and navigate these very challenging nascent yet growing and highly regulated industries that are missing psychedelics.

Honey Smith Walls 4:17
Sounds like a perfect pairing because you absolutely could not do this without a lawyer.

Emma Beckerle 4:23
You couldn’t, you really couldn’t. And the thing I want to be clear to you… I’m not a lawyer, but I surround myself with many.

Honey Smith Walls 4:29
I’m not a scientist, but I hang out with that tribe on LinkedIn. And I have to tell you, it’s nice rubbing shoulders with somebody smarter than you about stuff like that. Yeah, that’s the game. Absolutely. That’s the game. And I adore that tribe and I would do anything for any one of them, those doctors, leading in science and all of that jazz. I’m just so proud of their leadership and courage and you too, I often try to spotlight women in weed… you know how that goes. You know, it’s it’s such a courageous move for a woman because, well, hello history.

Emma Beckerle 5:11
Yeah, we historically have been probably a little bit less open to risk because the opportunities have been been more limited for us. So I think women historically in the workplace have been more risk averse. So diving into the cannabis industry, I dove in and 2018 and the reason why I did is because I discovered the plant late in my life… in my late 20s.

After having battled a lot of addiction in my early 20s and teens with other other more legal substances, exactly and so for me the risk was worth it because I believe so deeply in the powerful medicine that it is for so many people. And I felt that because I come from a very typical corporate background and have had success in my traditional corporate career. I felt that it was a responsibility to use my skills to help build an industry that I know can actually help people. And that was really the catalyst in 2018 to pivot.

Honey Smith Walls 6:25
I feel that same tug of responsibility to the public. Yeah, I feel like I’m just compelled to let everybody know everything I’m finding out about it.

Emma Beckerle 6:35
I think it’s important. I love mushrooms and I love plant medicine. And so I am a nerd about all that stuff. But I think of it as like mycelium, right? Like a mycelial network and if you’re benefiting from these things, there is some level of responsibility to just share that experience because I think so much of this has been kept under wraps because of this stigma. So I think the more people like you and me that may not look like what the typical cannabis user from people that are highly stuck in this stigmatized version of it. I think it’s important to hear these different voices in different faces and really normalize it.

Honey Smith Walls 7:18
My eyes were opened… my eyes were opened at Cannadelic… that was my first crossover conference. I’ve just been in a single lane of cannabis. You know, which is actually multiple lanes…

Emma Beckerle 7:32
That’s a very wide a wide lane…

Honey Smith Walls 7:36
No kidding. So but then I started growing my own mushrooms and was introduced to a few Paul Stamets books and Oh, Holy Mother of Goddesses. You know, I’m just like, Jesus, this whole world just opened up for me. It’s incredible. It is wonderful. So I’ve got some very close friends who are licensed clinicians and practitioners. And they’re wondering how to stand out in this new medical, psycho field, trying to raise a clinic when the legislation is still rolling under your feet.

Emma Beckerle 8:23
Yes, it’s challenging.

Honey Smith Walls 8:25
So how do you stand out doing that while still protecting your license?

Emma Beckerle 8:31
Absolutely. It’s a challenge and it’s interesting… I’m connected with a lot of really incredible work being done underground with a licensed therapists and psychiatrists out there across the country across the world that they see they see the research all the science behind psychedelics, but also they’re connected to cannabis as a medicine as well.

And while I think the markets are going to look very different when you compare psychedelics and cannabis… there’s so much healing benefit and so much less damage that could potentially be done versus what’s available now.

So these doctors and clinicians see that and they see the benefits of it and there’s bravery happening where people are sourcing safe products and trying to help people and there’s a ton of that happening on the underground right now.

But you’re right, people are being put into these situations where they are taking some level of risk and they’re doing so because they believe so deeply in the healing powers of these medicines. And in a lot of cases that it’s a last stop effort, Right? Yeah. And so what I’m seeing though, is that there’s now at least some pathways into starting to get your feet wet in psychedelics without necessarily putting yourself in major risk. You’re seeing these ketamine clinics all over right and for better it is. Yep. So there’s ketamine clinics that are all over the country now. So people are now well, ketamine is not a classic psychedelic… there are psychedelic experiences that can happen while you’re at certain dosages. And there is there is some neuroplasticity that comes from ketamine but they are very different because it’s technically an anesthetic as you know… I’m seeing clinicians starting to open up ketamine clinics with the intention and essentially building these facilities with the intention that they will expand into other psychedelics…

Honey Smith Walls 10:32
For the sake of my audience who may not understand the difference between using cannabis for psychotherapy and using some of these other psychedelics like MMDA and magic mushrooms, psilocybin and other other compounds, there is a huge difference in the therapy that happens. Maybe you can explain it better than I can because I’ve only been in the mushrooms for a very, very short time, but I’m here to tell you, you need to know which mushroom you’re going to be taking. You need to journal that shit down. And you need to have somebody there to hold your hand through that process because you may or may not have a good time on that product. And you won’t know until you use it.

Emma Beckerle 11:31
Well yes, yes, they’re super different. And you nailed it, which is they’re two different and there’s still so much research to be done around cannabis too… I get, there’s so much science and that’s the thing that’s interesting… psychedelics is moving. It’s going to move faster in terms of de-scheduling than cannabis, which is completely insane to think about but it’s just true because there is so much research and science behind it. That hasn’t happened as much in cannabis, but I believe will start to ramp up because there’s just so many incredible compounds within the plant.

Honey Smith Walls 12:09
Terpenes and all of that, but that’s the same for these other natural plant products, isn’t it?

Emma Beckerle 12:14
It’s true, and it’s like we’ve just started to scratch the surface. There you go with mushrooms. So psilocybin mushrooms, which are a class of mushrooms that have the psychedelic psilocybin, which is essentially what gives you that psychedelic experience that people seek out that essentially though those mushrooms are just one piece of it… if you think about cannabis, we’ve got CBD a we’ve got CBG we’ve got THC… Yeah

Emma Beckerle 12:45
1000s of compounds.

Emma Beckerle 12:50
Right so with fungi it’s the same kind of deal where there’s so many different parts of the fungi that still needs to be studied. So it’s just very exciting to think about how much more there is to learn across all of these different classes.

Honey Smith Walls 13:08
Did you hear that Paul Stamets got is his own mushroom named after him? Stametsi or something like that. It’s about time. Yeah. And that though, yeah, it really is. And so I just saw that yesterday.

Emma Beckerle 13:18
I’m glad because that meant great work for mushrooms and humanity.

Honey Smith Walls 13:23
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I’ve even got my dog is on Paul Stamets seven blend. I kid you not.

Emma Beckerle 13:33
You are taking care of your dog that is good.

Honey Smith Walls 13:37
Well she’s got Cushing’s disease which is an enlargement of the organs. And so you know, all that stuff and all that seven blend of mushrooms in a little powdered capsule and I break that open and mush it into a little bratworst. And then give half of it to her in the morning and half at night. And she’s doing so well.

Emma Beckerle 14:01
Oh my gosh. Oh, well, that is wonderful.

Honey Smith Walls 14:04
I know. I make sure my veterinarian knows that too. And I’ve got her on cannabis. She’s on. Dr.Sulak’s CBDa product twice a day.

Emma Beckerle 14:18
Your dog is healthier than most people!

Honey Smith Walls 14:20
Well, you know, it’s been a big help. And that’s the whole point of these drugs, I’m sorry compounds and plant compounds. And I want to get this across if I can. I’m not sure that I was able to say it very well a moment ago. But there is a huge difference in the effects of cannabis and the effects of magic mushrooms for instance, or MMDA. And what I am hearing in the clinical world is that cannabis is wonderful for helping people lift their spirit, but for serious PTSD and negative looping thoughts and flashbacks and all of that. Mushrooms have really been able to stop that stuff. Whereas you continue taking cannabis to ease the issue but the mushrooms stop it or the MMDA stops it, you know after one or two sessions.

Emma Beckerle 15:36
Yeah. So and you nailed it. Right. And so the difference, so the way that I think about it is sort of twofold. Right? So just to sort of share with the audience my own personal practice. Yeah, so just to sort of like anchor like what I do on a daily basis, and I’m not I’m not a doctor, I’m not recommending this, but I think it’s helpful to for people to understand just what we are doing to manage mental health and wellness in general.

So for me, I use cannabis in the evenings. I smoke flower so I am a joint girl. So I use cannabis medicinally for sleep and anxiety really, it’s just a way for me to turn turn down the dial as the day winds down. I have a very active brain… I’m diagnosed with ADHD among other things, so cannabis has been something that has helped sort of give me a bit of ease at the end of the day and ease into the evening. And it has been a game changer for my sleep health. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t take any prescribed drugs. And so cannabis for me is a symptom manager too.

Honey Smith Walls 16:49
Oh yes, of course. Yeah.

Emma Beckerle 16:52
So and I think of cannabis is incredibly helpful physically too because it’s anti inflammatory. There’s all these really wonderful benefits of consuming cannabis in various forms, physically, and so pain management and things like that, right. So that’s all wonderful, but I do think of cannabis more as a symptom manager.

Honey Smith Walls 17:17
Yeah, I agree. I think it’s a perfect term for it. Because it doesn’t really then get rid of it.

Emma Beckerle 17:27
Right. But yes, exactly. And, and so the way that I think and this is just based on the science based on the studies, with psychedelics, and there’s classic psychedelics… when people say psychedelics, for the most part, they’re talking about mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, they’re talking about LSD. Then there’s some some other ones like DMT… 5MEO and there’s these classic psychedelics that are sort of grouped together.
Then you have MDMA, which is also bucketed within the psychedelics realm, but MDMA is an empathogen so I can chat about that a little bit more directly as it relates to like, why that works in therapy and a specific kind of way. It’s a little bit different than taking psilocybin for example, and ketamine is not empathogenic or a classic psychedelic, it’s actually an anesthetic that at certain doses, gives you a psychedelic experience.

Honey Smith Walls 18:34
Generally, veterinarians used it historically.

Emma Beckerle 18:37
Yeah, absolutely. A very safe anesthetic. They use it. Like war, medics will use it because it’s one of the safest anesthetics that’s out there. So the safety profile of it is high and then when you have…. and I have spoken to countless veterans and groups, like people that their lives have been saved because of ketamine, as well as MDMA and the other psychedelics like the stories that I have heard from people with direct experiences from going from a crisis situation to genuinely feeling normal again, truly, truly astonishing.

But like you said, the thing with psychedelics is what it’s doing… it is disrupting, to some extent, rigid thought patterns and what it does and what these psychedelics across the classes do, to some extent, MDMA is a little bit different, and I’ll explain that in a minute.

But what they do is actually build new neural connections. So it’s opening up neural pathways and increasing connectivity within your brain. And there’s really cool images online where you can actually see somebody who has had a brain scan before psilocybin experience and after and how it’s connecting all of these different pieces and parts of your brain and really opening up these new pathways.

What that does and why psilocybin and these classic psychedelics in general, is so effective for things like OCD, eating disorders, alcohol use disorder, depression, anxiety, all of that, is that because we tend to get into… and it’s just our brains are using up so much energy so they’re constantly trying to preserve energy and how do we do that? We create habits and thought patterns, thought loops, and that’s just a way for our brain to be like, Okay, we are using up so much energy, how do we keep ourselves sort of energy positive and these rigid thought patterns develop to preserve energy.

But we have to consider the world that we exist in… we have really domesticated ourselves and the world that we exist in is so far beyond what our natural bodies and reactions like our bodies evolved. Over 1000s of years. So we’re responding to the world in this way that our bodies were doing 1000 years ago to some extent, so things aren’t necessarily connecting.

And what happens in this hyper-stimulated world is that these thought patterns really, really get stuck and what personally… I can share my experiences with psilocybin, even with micro dosing, but opening up these neural pathways is what it does… it sort of shines a lens on things and shows you that there’s a different way to think about things and it literally is the way that like the analogy that I use is that it clears the windshield… it’s not going to nest, it’s not going to change your personality. It’s not going to change you as a person.

But what it does… is it sort of shakes out some of the fog or dirt or grime that has kind of built up over the windshield and then it allows you to see things more clearly. So when we think about psychedelics, the reason why it’s so unbelievably powerful and genuinely mind blowing to think about all of the benefits is because when we look at the class of drugs that exists today that are available for psychiatric disorders, we’re talking about benzodiazepines, we’re talking about some of these anti-psychotics, these things aren’t making your brain better. They’re not helping you function better.

I mean, they’re helping you function better but they’re not helping your brain actually heal. And that’s the difference. When I think about cannabis versus psychedelics… cannabis for me, I still use it on a daily basis, but I also recognize that it’s not necessarily making my brain better. It’s helping but it’s better…. it’s a tough world… because if you’re in a high stress situation all the time, that’s horrible for your health. If you’re not sleeping at night, that’s horrible for your health. So it’s always a cost/benefit analysis.

So, for me, cannabis smoking in general isn’t the most healthy form factor, regardless of the substance, but for me, I know that if I’m not using cannabis in the evening, I’m going to have a much harder time falling asleep. I’m going to probably be a little bit more anxious. And for me, cannabis has made my life substantially better. But it’s not necessarily why I’m taking mushrooms. And I know that my brain is genuinely stronger because of it and I’m seeing things more clearly. And I am more present and tuned in and it’s truly like magical when you actually experience it for yourself.

Honey Smith Walls 23:40
I gotta tell you that is the honest truth. My happy one was golden teacher. One afternoon with a bunch of friends at a big thing and we just had a ball. I heard you describe it as this amazing love. Yeah, feeling of love just comes over you and it’s the same kind of feeling like when you see your first baby or you fall in love, you know or something like that. It’s really that kind of feeling of love… so elevated.

Emma Beckerle 24:20
It’s so elevated! You nailed it. It’s perfect. And for me personally like my psilocybin journey… I really started in college… it’s typical… like I’d messed around recreationally, but I didn’t really start my psychedelic healing journey until the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

So…just a little bit of background about me. I grew up north of New York City, in a bit of a blue collar town. I’m half Irish, my mom’s Irish dual citizens. So she moved here when she was in her 20s and I grew up in a town that was super conservative. I was raised Catholic, we went through the DARE program, so very much indoctrinated by Nancy Reagan.

Honey Smith Walls 25:06
Nancy Reagan. Couldn’t get rid of her.

Emma Beckerle 25:10
Yeah. So so like I grew up in a very alcohol heavy society… so alcohol was always a part of our lives. Cigarettes at that point in time people were smoking cigarettes all the time. So I grew up with it when I was in school. That’s when people’s ADHD thing started to crop up.

Honey Smith Walls 25:33
You know what Ethan Russo says about that? Dr. Ethan Russo, MD and leading cannabinoidologist in the world says that people started coming up with ADHD and stuff because of a lack of cannabis to feed their endocannabinoid system of receptors that was about that time… about 80 years ago. They stopped letting our our cows and chickens have feed and so about that time then all these quirky little new ugly shitty symptoms kept happening to all of our society.

Emma Beckerle 26:15
Oh my gosh, that’s fascinating. That’s really interesting. I hadn’t made that connection to the farming industry and right. Wow, that’s so interesting. Yes. Okay,

Emma Beckerle 26:30
That makes sense, though. So yeah, it was interesting. So, I grew up in this. It was anti drug, right. Yeah. And so my journey with with drugs started with DARE. I was a bit of a contrarian. So I was always questioning things, but what DARE did is it built this fascination in my head about…. I was like, okay, they’re saying these drugs are horrible… I was a kid too… as a young kid. And so I started to go to the library and actually get books on cocaine and heroin…

Honey Smith Walls 27:11
Why didn’t you believe what they were saying? I mean, why didn’t we believe it? It was too mamby pamby? Too goody two shoes? We just knew it was bullshit.

Emma Beckerle 27:23
Yeah, we weren’t very Catholic so there was all these things that seemed very contradictory in the world that I was sort of existing in… and then I wasn’t into drugs or anything like that, but then when I got into high school, my sophomore year, I was diagnosed with a pretty substantial heart issue.

And at that point in time, I was doing a lot of athletics and had to immediately stop because of the heart issue. And what that did was it opened up a lot of open space in my life. And I quickly got involved in a party crowd… In retrospect, I absolutely didn’t handle the diagnosis while I was a kid.

So I don’t think I knew how to process it. So I just started really acting up and it was almost immediate. I started getting into drugs, alcohol dating older guys like all this stuff. By the time I was 18, I was a full blown alcoholic like, full blown and I didn’t know it… to be honest, I didn’t know it because I was in such a container in the town that I was growing up in and all my friends were in a very similar boat.

It was only until I went away to college, that I realized that the way that I was interacting with this was not normal. Yeah, like literally, like month two… freshman year, there was an intervention by all these new friends that I had made with me.

Wow. Yeah. And so that was like, I was so confused. I genuinely I gotta tell you I was so confused… because even in my family going back to Ireland like just blatant abuse of alcohol was just such a normal space that I had existed in.

Honey Smith Walls 29:11
Catholicism.

Emma Beckerle 29:14
I was drinking wine since I could walk like Yes. So it was such a culture shock. I was so confused. But then when in 2006, I was 18… that at the end of my freshman year, I ended up having open heart surgery.

Bling
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Seg 2

Emma Beckerle 30:12
So I had open heart surgery after my freshman year but I was still drinking alcohol. I was also smoking cigarettes too, like I was oh my god, I was in full denial. Yeah,

Honey Smith Walls 30:20
I guess you were in denial.

Emma Beckerle 30:22
I was…. I was not accepting… no kind of the right reaction in retrospect. The reaction when I got the heart diagnosis because they said they were like if we hadn’t found this, you wouldn’t have made it to 21… You’re super lucky.

I didn’t feel lucky because I was a kid and I couldn’t really understand it. So yeah, my reaction in retro… I didn’t have the capacity to really identify it at the time. But I just started shoplifting. I started like doing all this bad stuff. It was a total rebellious “screw you universe”. YOLO. I’m just going to do me. And so I reacted. I just didn’t have the skills or the coping mechanisms to reprocess it or appreciate it. And so the interesting thing, though, was so I was already deep in alcohol. I was smoking. I started smoking cigarettes when I was about 14 and then like I just was fully addicted to it. I thought it was cool. Like I went into it trying to get addicted to cigarettes. If I’m being real like… my mom was a smoker. She’s younger. I don’t know Yeah. Catholic.

Honey Smith Walls 31:25
Catholic/Irish drinker.

Emma Beckerle 31:29
And I remember as a kid, my mom, she smokes Benson… and she smoked… she doesn’t smoke anymore.

Honey Smith Walls 31:35
Did you start to say Benson & Hedges. Yes. My mother smoked those…

Emma Beckerle 31:40
So my mom smoked. And I remember when she’d come home from work. She commuted into the city. She would sit on our porch and she’d smoke a cigarette. It always seemed like such a nice routine, you know, and I was like, yeah, I’m cool like that. And so after that first heart surgery, though, that was in 2006, they gave me a ton of painkillers to go home with… and they weren’t capping the opiates the way that they are now. Oh, boy, the Oxy stuff hadn’t escalated as much as it had at this point. So I went home with a lot.

Honey Smith Walls 32:15
Oh, Percocet. Woohoo.

Emma Beckerle 32:17
Yeah. And so the interesting thing was is that that summer, that was the first summer back from college. So my friends who had all gone away, they came back and I had all these pills on me. And then all of a sudden it sort of opened up this world where I’m like, Oh, this is another tool that I can add to this toolkit. And they kept refilling my prescriptions and by the end of the summer, I was like, very, my taste for painkillers was there now it was combined with alcohol and then there was cigarettes. I actually quit cigarettes after the surgery. Oh, good, because I was in the hospital for 10 days and then that summer I couldn’t move so I couldn’t actually do the cigarette smoking.

Honey Smith Walls 33:00
Ah…

Emma Beckerle 33:02
Got that vise out and then added painkillers in… soooo special. Yeah. And so the rest of my college career was a bit of a blur. It was drugs, alcohol…

Honey Smith Walls 33:17
That’s how half the women in the United States feel today… that their lives are a bit of a blur because of all the prescription meds they’re on.

Emma Beckerle 33:26
You got it. Yeah. Completely. And so the thing that I feel blessed about is that I never messed with cocaine. I actually never messed with any other stimulants outside of coffee, like energy drinks, because while I was reckless, I knew my heart was a risk and I wasn’t trying to die. Yeah, I avoided the stimulant class of drugs and really started towards painkillers, alcohol and benzos. Towards the end of my college career I got introduced and that changed everything. Honestly, I think benzodiazepines of all the drugs that I’ve been involved in was the scariest because they were so wonderful. In terms of feelings.

Honey Smith Walls 34:12
Oh my gosh, yeah.

Emma Beckerle 34:14
So but the thing that was interesting about it is that I graduated in 2009. If you recall, 2009 wasn’t the best time to graduate, because the financial crisis and the housing market collapse that Fall. So there was no work. I graduated and basically couldn’t find work… moved back home.

I was working at my dad’s lumberyard. I was waitressing and I was just desperately trying to find work. I was a business major in finance, etc. And so that summer is when the drug use really started to escalate because I was feeling kind of depressed about my status. And then really, there was this moment where I had the pills but I was spending my money on stuff and I was starting to like, lift pills. I’d go to people’s houses and check their medicine cabinets. And everybody had them… that was the thing.

Honey Smith Walls 35:19
Oh my god, Emma,

Emma Beckerle 35:22
Everyone had them. And so you just take a couple here and there. And then it got to this point where I realized like, I can’t do this anymore. I also can’t afford this and it’s that scary fork in the road. When you’ve gotten into this sort of cycle of the pill taking over, I can’t afford this. What do I do? And then the only next step is like going to the street and that’s when it starts getting scary.

And it was this moment where I looked in the mirror. And I was like, I know somebody I can call. And then I looked in the mirror and I just was like, This can’t be your life. Like this can’t be your life….what it is…

And so it was that moment… and it genuinely felt like divine intervention. Yeah. Because I was sick. I was feeling sick. I was in withdrawal. And I was desperate. And I looked in the mirror and I said, Okay, you just have to stop everything. Quit the alcohol, quit the pills. You can’t do shit. You need to move forward. And…

Honey Smith Walls 36:22
You had an epiphany.

Emma Beckerle 36:25
Yeah. And I wasn’t religious, but I did I, you know, I’m spiritual. But at that time, I literally like talked to God. And I was like, if I quit everything forever, like if I never touched this stuff again. Like, please help me take healthcare through my life. And so that was the last day… I entered into Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous the following day. And then the following week. I got a call about this. It’s not a great job. But it was a it was a step in. It was a marketing coordinator at a travel business in New York. And it was two days a week they were paying nothing, but it was like, at least this is a step forward versus like… no disrespect to waitressing or working at small retail businesses… But the context there is that I just spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars in school for a stupid degree. Exactly. You know, so it’s just I have…

Honey Smith Walls 37:22
So much more to offer than Yeah, that way. Yeah.

Emma Beckerle 37:28
I was young… so now in retrospect… I wish I could go back and say hey, you know, the whole world was collapsing. Like, it wasn’t you being a loser… but I couldn’t see it at that time. And, and so I never looked back, right.

So I never looked back to the pills at that point. And I was full sober for like five years. I was 22 at that point. That was 2009. I was sober until my late 20s. Full full nothing like no alcohol, no pills, no cannabis, nothing. And then in my late 20s, I had skyrocketed up in my career because I had replaced my addiction. My substance addiction with workaholism, which Yeah, you know, yes. What was good for my career? Maybe not for my mental health?

Honey Smith Walls 38:15
Yeah. Hello, 16 hours… familiar with it!

Emma Beckerle 38:19
You know I just filled my field every minute of my time up with work and I continue that motion, honestly, right up until the pandemic, but I discovered cannabis when I was working in Massachusetts for this tech startup that ultimately got acquired by GrubHub for half $1,000,000,000.20.

So it was a successful run, but very stressful. And so cannabis was legal for medical at that point in time. I got my med card and then started to explore cannabis and CBD just for anxiety and like sleep health. And yeah, that opened up my world and when I started interacting with cannabis, it was the first time I had…. but it was the first time I had in a sort of a medicinal, intentional way. And I realized, holy crap. I am not having these same demon voices, begging for me to be like, like messed up all the time. It’s a totally different interaction.

Honey Smith Walls 39:15
Voices vying for your attention… screaming at you constantly… telling you what to do. Yeah,

Emma Beckerle 39:21
Yeah. And Honey for me… I was like, Whoa, we’ve been lied to, like, whoa, I’ve been told that the things that almost destroyed my life were okay. Because like I entered into painkillers via a prescription. Alcohol was something that I grew up around… benzodiazepines while I didn’t have a prescription, my friend did and like that’s how I got it.

Yeah. And so for me, that’s when I was like, I need to just go hard on educating myself on everything there is to know about cannabis, CBD, plant plants, drugs, the drug laws, and I just started educating myself. And that was in 2016. And honestly, from that point on, I knew I wouldn’t look back and then in 2018, when GrubHub acquired our company, I knew that I wanted to pivot into cannabis. I exited with my equity. It gave me some space. And that’s really why I launched myself into the cannabis industry and moved back to New York in 20, end of 2018 to do so… and like that was sort of the journey to get me here.

The interesting thing is that I had to get another open heart surgery in 2019. And that was an interesting experience because the last time I’d gotten a open heart surgery, I was drinking… I was addicted to cigarettes… I was 18… I was a hot mess.

And this time I was meditating and doing yoga. Oh, good for you girl. And like I had this like whole wellness routine, but I was like, What am I gonna do? I know they’re gonna give me painkillers to manage the pain when I leave the hospital. How? What am I going to do? And so that was the catalyst for me to get my CBD and cannabis health coach certification. So I can’t ask a doctor about this. So I’m going to train myself.

Honey Smith Walls 41:21
Isn’t that the damnedest? I can’t ask a doctor about this. Yep. Yeah, that is just so freaking frustrating to me. Yeah. And it’s still true. It’s still a true statement. And to most people, I would say absolutely.

Emma Beckerle 41:39
And so then the catalyst for that is because when I knew I’d have to get another one, I had a valve that needs to get replaced every 10 to 12 years. So I knew it was coming. But when I talked to the doctors the last time I went through this kind of set me on a different path.

I can’t really have pills on hand like what like, Can I look at CBD? Can I look at cannabis and there was just… and not to knock the cardiologists… It’s outside their purview. But it was Basically the response in 2006 versus 2019. The amount of opiates that we’re going to send you home with is much more limited.

So yeah, they’re not wrong about that. It was more limited like it was carved, launched back in 2006. It was like you could get refills like every two weeks was crazy. Well, but this time around, I was like that’s not good enough for me… I just don’t necessarily trust myself. So that’s why I did the CBD cannabis thing. And so what happened was that I went in for the surgery… came out, and then when I went home, they wouldn’t send us home without painkillers. So I got my husband to hold them. I don’t think I’ll need it.

And so I came up and I was basically doing a CBD, low dose THC pain management regime. And I didn’t take painkillers when I got out of the hospital at all. When I was home I was on them obviously in the hospital because they have you on morphine drips and stuff like that, but less worried about that more about just like actual self administering. Right right. And I gotta tell you… the pain isn’t knocked out the way it is on opiates. It’s not unbearable.

And I was more clear because the the painkillers require other medications to keep your body stable while you’re on the painkillers. So I was on substantially less medications just to manage the medications I was on and the thing that was really interesting for me is that my my recovery was probably about 50% faster. It was the exact same surgery, exact same surgeon actually that no change at the exact same hospital. And my recovery was substantially faster.

I really believe it’s because if you think about CBD and cannabis, the anti inflammatory and the healing benefits of it. Yeah, it’s doing so much good for your body, whereas the painkillers, it’s just focusing on this one thing. That’s right. And that to me was like the mind blowing piece of it. Like you know what, holy cow. This is next level. And again, I’m not recommending people do this, but I am saying that it’s important for everyone to have agency over their own health and healing.

Honey Smith Walls 44:39
Oh, I’m so glad you said that out loud. I’ve been on this whole autonomy for women kick thing Oh my. And you know, that whole thing… that whole doctor patient relationship thing of the past has been completely authoritarian.

Emma Beckerle 44:58
Totally. You got it.

Honey Smith Walls 45:01
And so for us to even consider learning how to become our own alchemists… It’s hard but we can and should.

Emma Beckerle 45:11
Yeah, and so for me, I haven’t had a choice because the meds and I’ve always felt like a weirdo Honey like, because I quit alcohol. I quit alcohol in 2009 like everyone’s on like the Cali sober. Everyone’s giving up alcohol.

Now, back in 2009. My grandmother thought I was a weirdo. She was like, What do you mean you don’t drink? Like it was so back then… I felt like, what is wrong with me? Like, why can’t I just have a glass of wine like, because for me, I have a sip of alcohol. It’s a wrap. Like I’ve tried every possible way to interact with that drug in a healthy manner. And just as soon as it touches my lip, it’s like a switch and I turn into a gremlin. Wow, so I felt like a freak like I felt like I was broken and it’s crazy to look back on it and think holy cow. Alcohol is actually a kamikaze to the brain. I’m not anti alcohol. I think that people need to be educated on what it’s actually doing to your body.

Honey Smith Walls 46:13
Oh, education about alcohol. Who would ever think to do that?

Emma Beckerle 46:18
It’s like look like even if you’re drinking in moderation, even two cocktails is going to totally screw up your sleep that evening. Like it’s just totally will for me, but at the time if I was the broken one, I’m like, it wasn’t a drug. That was the problem. I was the problem. So we’re going back to the beginning of our conversation, where I feel an obligation to share my experiences is because I don’t want anyone to feel like I did. I felt so alone. I felt like I had to figure it out all by myself.

Honey Smith Walls 46:54
Oh, well hang on a second. (5 dogs barking.) Hang on. I can’t stop them once that happens. Maybe daddy just came home…

Emma Beckerle 47:02
I’ve got two so don’t worry.

Honey Smith Walls 47:04
I’m so sorry. Anyway, I love hearing your story. And it’s well of course because it’s such a success story and it will help so many people have the courage to try something new. You know, and to put the Western sick care philosophy that we’ve all been conditioned in all our lives. We’ve been told, you know, if we have a sniffle or whatever, we go to the doctor and he tells us what is the matter with us and what we have to take for it.

Emma Beckerle 47:41
Exactly. It’s interesting because the internet right like the rise, the access that we have to information now like that, that positions us in a in a different way. Whereas historically, the doctors went to school for years and they had the information and for you to get that information. You’d have to go to the library and check out medical books and stuff like that. But often you find that doctors are also googling.

Honey Smith Walls 48:08
Yeah, no kidding. Well, thank you for technology and I’m so thrilled that we have the grace of all these compassionate cannabis doctors who are opening up their discoveries and their processes to the world. You know, it really it’s magical, and you don’t have to have a $60,000 education to understand it either. They’re being quite generous to help everybody understand and boy, it’s an amazing industry. I’m just really tickled to be in it.

Emma Beckerle 48:50
Yeah, me too. I agree and my so my focus with one of my clients is called Acute on Chronic and it’s run by this wonderful woman Rebecca Abraham and she’s an ICU nurse by practice by trade. I’m sure she’s out on the conference circuit. I’m sure you’ve run into her a bit. But the thing that they’re doing and why I feel really blessed about the work that I do is that I get to choose projects and businesses and organizations that are really doing things that speak to my soul. And so what they’re doing is they have this really incredible education program that’s run by nurses, right and so they park medical dispensaries and they basically you can pay for like three sessions with an actual nurse who is a trained cannabis nurse and they have full inventory of the your medical dispensary and they literally a very curated handheld consultation where they test. It’s really great and that’s the thing… the bud tenders are fantastic. But when you’re dealing with an actual medical dispensary… my mother is an example… she isn’t going to go into a dispensary and necessarily trust what the budtender is telling her but she’s talking to a nurse. That’s a different story. So I do think that we have to be cognizant of where people are entering into this space in their comfort levels, right where you and I may be more adventurous quote unquote, to try things out on ourselves and it’s trial and error.

Honey Smith Walls 50:35
But that’s only because we have more knowledge. You got it. What you’re doing is so important. We’ve just got to educate the people and get them to understand the fundamentals… just the fundamentals would be so helpful to them. You know, use clean weed… Where do you get clean weed? How do you know its clean weed? CoA? What’s the COA? I’ll tell you what a COA is… Exactly, you know,

Emma Beckerle 51:05
Exactly.

Honey Smith Walls 51:07
With this rolling legislation throughout the country it’s so hard to trust our legislators right now. And everybody really has to turn into their own advocate about the the medicine that they’re going to ingest. And all this CBD talk and THC talk and CBG talk and you know, all these different compounds being sold in different ways… may or may not be good for you, but you won’t know until you research.

Emma Beckerle 51:38
Exactly. And you know what, it’s a massive shift in the way that our population interacts with the medical system because that way, we are trained and going back to what you said about psychedelics and mushrooms where it’s like journaling, you have to participate… it’s not, here, take a pill, you’re good. It’s here’s a catalyst that is going to require effort and attention and mindfulness to really benefit from it. That is very different.

Our Western society is so impatient. So low attention… give me a thing to make me productive and feel good.

Honey Smith Walls 52:21
Yeah, make me efficient, and do it now. Dammit.

Emma Beckerle 52:28
Right now, exactly. It’s exactly what it’s ADHD stuff. Right. So it’s interesting because I went and got a brain scan the end of 2021.

Yeah, so it was coming off of a like a tragic thing that happened in my my personal circle and I fell off… and so I was curious, but I am…as I’ve said, kind of skeptical about everything. So I didn’t want to just… and again… not knocking talk therapy. It hasn’t been super effective for me… specifically… and I think we just all need to have different tools in our toolkit that are available.

Absolutely. I just want to see my brain and then I’ll go figure it out and hit up my scientist friends and do that. I paid out of pocket I went to actually the Amen Clinics, which I’ve got thoughts on it. I’m not recommending that necessarily. But I went and got a SPECT brain scan, and part of the output of that experience was I ended up getting diagnosed with ADHD because you could see and also I’ve educated myself on brain imaging since then, and neuroscience since then, so I actually have sort of a counter take a little bit on what they diagnosed me with.

Yeah. But um, they diagnosed me with ADHD because you can see the lack of blood flow to my prefrontal cortex and then that can be ADHD but also trauma presents that way, and I’ve just gone through this fairly traumatic experience. But they gave me an ADHD diagnosis. They gave me a prescription immediately. I said to them, and I was like, I have not tried.

I have not messed with ADHD meds like I told you earlier, just to avoid… I was hesitant about stimulants, but I also am a very productive person. And I’m like, I don’t know that this is what I need… I don’t know that I need more concentration… like I don’t know that I need more productivity.

I’m actually into turning the dial down… is what I actually struggle with. Right. And so they gave me this prescription that I didn’t take it. And I think that’s the other thing… just because a doctor gives you a prescription that doesn’t mean that you should take it… you should do your own research.

You shouldn’t just take what a doctor says who doesn’t know you as intimately as you know yourself. You should at least have some level of participation in it. And so for me, I have the prescription and then I went through a whole sort of self evaluation process.

I did a ton of research. I spoke to a lot of people. The thing is for you to be and have agency in your own health journey. It does require work. Lots but I argue that this is the one place that you should put the work in.

It’s your body, it’s your mind, it’s your life. It affects every single aspect of everything that you do. So if you’re gonna put a lot of energy into something, it’s ensuring that you understand what’s best for your own health and mental health.

I wrote an essay about this on my blog, but a friend of mine was like…before you fulfill the prescription, why don’t you just try to take a couple of Adderall over a couple of days. See how it goes. I’ll give you three and then you can decide from there.
And so I did. I was like, You know what, okay, at least we’re in a container. We can try this. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe it will help. Okay, and so the thing that I found is that yes, I was a productivity machine. I have so many unfinished essays. I’m a big writer. And I wrote a lot. I didn’t sleep though. I was up until three or four… I am writing like a maniac and so the first day I was like, wow, oh my gosh, like holy cow. This is a good drug. This is something that will make me beyond productive. And I liked it.

And then the next day, I did it again, but I paid attention. And I noticed I’m very empathetic. I pick up on people’s energy and what I noticed is there was an agitation when I got interrupted in my process in my work. It’s super subtle, but I pay attention to this stuff. And it was the super subtle nuance where I was way more focused on doing a thing and a task versus connecting with the person that I was talking to. And very very subtle, subtle change. Wow, I noticed it and then the last day when I was on my last one… I felt that voice comeback… that demon… so I haven’t had that with psychedelics. I haven’t had that with cannabis. But it was that little nagging, familiar voice that I haven’t felt in a long time. And I was like, Oh, hell no.

Honey Smith Walls 57:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, done with that shit. Yeah.

Emma Beckerle 57:49
And so I have issues with labels in general. I think our brains are all on various scales. I think the labels can be helpful to provide you some level of guidance, but I think you shouldn’t put as much stock into all of this stuff as people do. So for me, I’m like, Okay, I understand that.

I need to work out all the time. So I basically was like, alright, Adderall, ain’t it. I’m going to use lion’s mane on the functional mushroom side. I’m going to sleep better and be bullish about that. I’m going to work out aggressively every day to get my energy out. And I found that really focusing on the aspects that are just like natural health care, like maintenance on a daily basis. Yeah, that really has been like the thing that has saved my mental health in general… just making sure I’m prioritizing sleep and eating healthy and moving my body.

Honey Smith Walls 58:44
Prioritizing you… Yeah, yeah.

Emma Beckerle 58:47
And then supplementing with like things that I know are good for my brain like microdosing psilocybin and Lion’s Mane, and some of these other functional mushrooms, and it made me realize I’m like, okay, Adderall and ADHD class of medications has helped so many of my friends I don’t want to knock it right. But you have to evaluate yourself. And that, to me is the biggest thing within psychedelics and cannabis. Neither of those are panaceas. If you can get your mental health in order by meditation, or running or something that’s not narcotic or, like doesn’t require an external compound, great, but we need to be educated and have more tools in our toolkit.

When I look back on my journey, the issue is that I was only ever really presented with one way to go down. And that’s not how we are… we’re so different. We’re all so different. We need to have a variety of different spectrums.

Honey Smith Walls 59:49
Right? Spectrum of options… because we are a spectrum of humanity. Exactly.

Emma Beckerle 59:55
So that’s the way that I look at it. That’s why I get so excited about these spaces because cannabis is super helpful and if you love cannabis, maybe psychedelics isn’t exactly the path for you or vice versa… or neither of those and you do cold plunges.

Honey Smith Walls 1:00:15
Yeah, singing through the forest around the campfire. Yeah, whatever.

Emma Beckerle 1:00:20
Whatever it is that helps you be the best version of yourself and continue to try to strive for that. And the best version doesn’t mean you’re a biohacker that’s taking 18,000 nutropics on a daily basis. That’s the other thing is people are like on this. Well, it’s almost like toxic wellness, where it’s like if you’re not doing every single thing that the biohackers are doing, you’re basically dying. That’s not it either.

You just need to figure out what’s healthy for you, and if that’s just moving lightly on a daily basis and drinking water and just trying to decrease your sugar content, whatever, right? It’s just constantly thinking like that.

Honey Smith Walls 1:00:59
I go into the fridge, you know, into the kitchen to get something to drink and I’ve got a choice and I think oh, I’ll just have a seven up with cranberry and uh… oh hell you won’t either. You’re not going to drink all that sugar. Just go right over there to the faucet and get some water girl and that’s what I do.

Yeah, but it’s really prioritizing yourself because nobody gets younger. Nope. And the older we get the more prescriptions you’re gonna be on if you don’t take care of yourself right now. Absolutely.
It’s been so much fun to listen to your world. And to know that you’ve been such a success on the other end of all of that trauma and honey, you know, say what you will… I just think the conditioning of our lineages and how we were brought up had an awful lot to do with putting you in the position you were in to suffer.

My grandfather had me lighting his pipes before I was two years old. My mother kept me lighting her cigarettes while she drove… right. She made me fix her drinks while she was driving. Right? And you know, I was the darling little Shirley Temple type that served the bar when she’d have parties. Yeah, so yeah, I went through that whole process. The same with you and had a bit of a come uppins with some friends who really saved me.

Emma Beckerle 1:02:42
Wonderful to hear that. And the truth is like my experience because I’ve had a lot of reflection… when you’re going through recovery and some of it’s hard, you know, the trauma… every single person on the planet is traumatized to some extent. Yeah. And the truth is that what psychedelics have done for me… mushrooms specifically, I started big macro dosing. I do solo journeys. I have a whole process that I’ll admit, I spent years getting my own process together before I actually did my first solo journey. So it’s been a process.

Honey Smith Walls 1:03:23
That’s what you need to do because it’s so different than your reality.

Emma Beckerle 1:03:32
You just really want to have somebody help you with it unless you are a very advanced user like yourself.

Emma Beckerle 1:03:44
Yeah, and I had read probably every known psychedelic text that’s out there. There’s a book called The Psychedelic Explorers Guide that I’ve got.

Honey Smith Walls 1:03:56
Yeah.

Emma Beckerle 1:04:00
So a lot of research on myself and then when I went into and I ended tapering off right, so it’s like, my first one was just around two grams.

I have a tea ceremony that I do. And then basically my process starting January 1 2021, up until January 1 2023. So it was literally to the day two years. I was doing an intentional mushroom trip a deep macro trip every three to four months. So you know, it’s like, around once a quarter more like three times a year. And journaled, wrote everything… I record every single session because I work with a lot of scientists. So that was working through a lot of stuff and then microdosing in between so it was a very intentional two year process that I was working through a number of different things.

Honey Smith Walls 1:04:51
So let me ask you this is three or four grams for you? You called it a macro dose… is it what some would consider the God dose?

Emma Beckerle 1:05:01
So God knows. You’re probably talking more. I mean, it depends, right? Like it depends on what you mean. But so usually when you’re talking about a macro dose, like you’re talking about five to seven grams. That being said, I’m pretty small person so I’m a lightweight with literally everything. So the most I’ve done is four grams, but I have had that connectivity to the universe thing, right? Like I have had that on the four grams, but my recommendation for anyone is there’s no rush. Titrate up… start small. Yep, add on.

Honey Smith Walls 1:05:44
That’s how we like to do it in cannabis… to start small. Go slow. Use the tiniest amount. See if it’s effective.

Emma Beckerle 1:05:51
Precisely because if you overdo it, you’re gonna be uncomfortable. Another thing… there’s no amount of psilocybin mushrooms you can eat and die.

Like you’re gonna be really uncomfortable and just honestly… your stomach will feel like crap because you’re just testing all these mushrooms. But the reality is you’re not going to die. Yeah, you know you eat 100 milligram cannabis edible, you’re probably gonna feel not exactly the way you want it to feel maybe dependent on your dose and type… it just depends.

Honey Smith Walls 1:06:25
I once bought 1000 milligram THC chocolate edible in Colorado. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not believe… I mean… I just wanted to frame the whole thing and not ever eat it but…

Emma Beckerle 1:06:42
I’m a lightweight… like I have a 25 milligram edible. That’s good. I’m good but a 50 milligram… I’m on my butt… like I am done, right. So you got to titrate but then the interesting thing after my heart surgery is that I was like okay, I’m gonna have for me a five milligram edible does nothing. I can’t feel it necessarily from a psychoactive standpoint. So I was like, Yeah, I’ll have like a little five milligram edible after my surgery in combination with CBD and I don’t know what it is. But my tolerance had gone through the floor. I don’t know how that happens over a week or if there’s something with the anesthesia or something. But I took half of a five milligram edible… it was a such a small amount. And I was like, Ooh, and I wasn’t like, you know, I’m a experienced cannabis user, but yet this is a little more than I wanted.

Honey Smith Walls 1:07:40
For goodness sakes. I wonder what the terpene content was.

Emma Beckerle 1:07:44
I can’t remember what it was. But it’s interesting. The reason I brought that up as it relates to like the parental trauma and stuff is that is a big part of it and something that’s so beautiful about these experiences is that it really ends any resentment that I’ve had towards my family or my parents about my upbringing. It’s gone, right? It’s because you look inside.

Honey Smith Walls 1:08:10
Yeah.

Emma Beckerle 1:08:13
And you’re like, you have such empathy and compassion for the human beings and you realize we’re just literally the the tip of the spear of a long line of trauma.

Honey Smith Walls 1:08:25
Yeah, we just all need so much love.

Emma Beckerle 1:08:31
So we’re just people, we’re just trying to do our best and even when it goes poorly.

That for me has been probably the most valuable piece of my entire experience… that any resentment I had about anything is, is gone. It’s replaced with compassion for my mother and my father and understanding human beings and I had an amazing upbringing in so many ways. And like, I’m really proud of where I’m at right now and the trauma and the stuff I’ve overcome is 100%. That’s part of it.

So I wouldn’t be me if it weren’t for that. I can’t imagine who I’d be if I hadn’t gone through that. And the empathy I have for others that are experiencing addiction and challenges. I don’t know I would be the same if I hadn’t directly experienced it myself. So in a way, I’m like, just deeply grateful that I’ve had these experiences and I feel lucky that I’ve overcome it because so many people don’t,

Honey Smith Walls 1:09:28
Indeed. Well, like I said, it’s lovely to see a success story, you know, coming through traumatic experiences that you’ve had, so beyond your control, hello, heart thing.

Emma Beckerle 1:09:47
The best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Honey Smith Walls 1:09:48
Tell the audience how they can get in touch with you Emma.

Emma Beckerle 1:09:55
Yes, of course. So I have my agency website is called aboperformance.com You can reach out to me there via email but then also I’m on all of the social channels. Except for Tik Tok and Facebook. On all the social channels. I’m on Instagram, I’m on LinkedIn and I’m on Twitter and you can find me under my name.

Honey Smith Walls 1:10:24
That’s great. Well, I hope the next time you get to come down to Florida that you’ll swing into Melbourne and hang out with me for a little bit and we’ll conjure up some real fun together.

Emma Beckerle 1:10:35
Yes…I will be there in April for the BenZinga conference.

Honey Smith Walls 1:10:39
Okay, great. Yeah, all right, good. Well, CanMed is coming up here pretty soon also in April and there’s a bunch of friends coming in from all over the world probably for that. So yeah, that’s gonna be wonderful, too. Well, I’ll see you down here sometime then honey. It’s just been lovely chatting with you and seeing your world…thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Emma Beckerle 1:11:03
Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Honey Smith Walls 1:11:06
Take care darling bye bye and bye bye.

FINI:
You’ve been listening to another Cannaba Verum podcast with 21st century cannabis shaman Honey Smith Walls about the importance of using verifiably safe products. The process of getting a diagnosis from your family doctor and taking your records to a cannabis specialist can lead you to the correct cannabinoid therapy for those issues. Otherwise, you’re just your own guinea pig looking for answers without any foundational knowledge or ability to determine the best choices or strategies.

To find a qualified cannabis expert in your area… visit www.cannabisclinicians.org.
It is a national society of cannabis experts and you’ll see that link down in my show notes.

Unless otherwise proven by a reputable third party lab test, please be advised that all street weed is contaminated. It may do grave harm to a patient with a delicate immune system who already has inflammatory issues like arthritis, IBS, fibromyalgia or worse.

Subscribe to the Cannaba Verum podcast and become part of a project to understand the effects of cannabis on the public. Your anecdotal testimony is priceless to me. Medical citations are posted on my podcast blog when you visit CannabaVerum.com. That’s CannabaVerum.com. Hey, and one last thing… Would you take an extra second to give my podcast a Like and Review? It’s like Bitcoin crack for the algorithms. Thanks so much. Hey, I hear the cows calling.

MOOOOOOO!!

Sources
Cannaba Verum is Latin for Cannabis Truth. Sourcing factual information about cannabis hasn’t always been easy for a variety of reasons. However now because of modern innovations, it is. My sources are from leaders in cannabis science like:

Roger Adams, U.S. Organic Chemist who isolated the structure of CBD,

Raphael Mechoulam, Israeli Organic Chemist who isolated the structure of THC,

Ethan Russo, Dir R&D International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute

Dustin Sulak, DO – my favorite doctor at healer.com, teaching the art of Cannabis Healing to the world, and other industry greats like:

Rev. Dr. Kymron DeCesare, Ed Rosenthal, Jack Herer, Michael Backes, and Michael Pollen and so many more… plus I use classical sites like: PubMed.gov, JAMAnetwork.com, ResearchGate.com. I listen to several daily podcasts to keep up with the latest cannabis news across the nation and throughout the world like: Dr. Codi Peterson et al on The Cannigma Podcast, MJTodayDaily.com and MarijuanaMoment.net. I trust the CBDProject.org and CannabisScienceTech.com. I watch the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) at: thecannabisindustry.org and many more like: NCIA’s Cannabis Industry VOICE (CannabisRadio.com)

Over past episodes of Cannaba Verum, we’ve listened to some amazing scientists and medical professionals talk about their discoveries and patient successes as hundreds of questionable compounds rise to the public grasp. I am especially interested in the pharmacists movement becoming an integral part of this new medicinal choice.

Watch this machine roll into action through conversations with pharmacy doctors all over the nation like Dr. Leah Johnson and Dr. Codi Peterson out West and Dr. Alan Ao up North. There are so many more getting involved now… these are just a few who have come on my show to explain the situation and it’s fascinating.

You’ll find citations available on my podcast blog at cannabaverum.com

PS: Helping society get past the fear of using cannabis will be a lifelong journey for me. This industry is just opening up and most patients and doctors are seriously cannabis naive and need help understanding where to turn for trustworthy information.

If you need help opening that cannabis discussion with your family doctor, please reach out and grab the Dear Doctor Letter I wrote for this exact purpose. It will explain your decision to try cannabis and ask for their help in monitoring your labs and progress. It will also show them where they can find medical research on the subject of your diagnosis and the effects of cannabis.

You’ll find that letter at cannabaverum.com

My specialist in hormonal help: Dr. Genester Wilson-King, M.D. and Founder
Victory Rejuvenation Center – Orlando, Florida
VictoryRejuvenationCenter.com

My Neurologist and Cannabis Expert Medical Marijuana Doctor in Melbourne, FL:

Anthony Mazo, M.D.
Brevard Neuro Center
(321) 733-2711
315 E. Nasa Blvd.
Melbourne, FL 32901.
All opinions are my own and should not be mistaken as medical advice.

Here are some other helpful links as well:
(1) Microdosing – https://healer.com/cbd-cannabis-dosage-guide-project-cbd-interview-with-dr-sulak/
(2) Concentrates – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29307505/
(3) Cannabis Helps Dementia Podcast – Anchor.FM/cannabishelpsdementia
(4) Society of Cannabis Clinicians – https://www.cannabisclinicians.org/
(5) Take the Pledge – GreenTakeover.com
(6) Handbook for Clinicians – Principles and Practice – https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393714180
(7) Dr. Angie Krause, DVM – BoulderHolisticVet.com
(8) The Cannigma Podcast = https://cannigma.com/podcast/behind-the-scenes-on-cannabis-normalization-with-jm-pedini/
(9) Curious About Cannabis Podcast = https://cacpodcast.com/
(10) The Big Book of Terps by Russ Hudson = thebigbookofterps.com
(11) Learn Sativa University = SativaUniversity.com

Show Notes:
ExplorersAcademyPodcast:
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/explorersacademy/episodes/Exploring-Psychedelic-Spaceholding-with-Tara-Portelli-e22123v/a-a9ksfaa

The Psychedelic Explorers Guide

Find Emma here: aboperformance.com