Your Body Makes Psychedelics: Plant Medicine Pitfalls & The Breathwork, Ancestral Trauma Healing Method Everyone Should Know About | Doyle Bramhall II

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I've had a lot of unusual conversations on this podcast. This one is in a category of its own.

Doyle Bramhall II is one of the most gifted guitarists alive — he's been Eric Clapton's right hand for 26 years, toured with Roger Waters, and grown up at the elbow of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Freddie King. He's also, quietly, one of the most rigorous and precise healing practitioners I've ever encountered. And this was his first podcast. Ever.

We met at a conference the night before we recorded, and he spent three hours with me in a session that I'm still processing. No plant medicine. Just breathwork, Reiki, somatic release, sound healing from a gong that sounds like Mongolian throat singers, and a North Magnetic Field Oscillator — a device built by a genius named Norm that sends rotating cylindrical magnets eight inches into the body, dispersing clustered dense energy in individual cells. I beat my chest like a gorilla. There's a scientific reason for that, which Doyle explains better than I could. The DMT stored in your lungs can be released directly into your brain by chest percussion. Gorillas do it in the wild and then sit quietly with a leaf in a state of calm. The more you know.

We also talked about what growing up looked like in the Austin music scene in the early 1970s — sleeping under stages at the Armadillo while Freddie King played until 2am, walking as a four-year-old into rooms of musicians passed out on couches, a drug tray hung from the ceiling on a rope because nobody wanted to get up and pass it. And then the conversation went wide: Timothy Leary's vision and why it went wrong, the integration trap of plant medicine (he's worked with people who couldn't leave the house for six months after a ceremony), the mycelia network as the model for the internet, and intergenerational trauma as literal stored information in your cellular DNA. The science around this is something I've covered in my own work and in Gut Feelings, but hearing it through Doyle's lens — as someone who witnesses it release in sessions every day — gives it a different weight.

And then there's the Eric Clapton story. A cold call from Japan, a Starbucks in Venice, an invitation to play on a BB King duet album because Clapton couldn't understand a single chord Doyle was playing. Doyle plays left-handed and upside down. It was, as Clapton apparently said: "That's enough of that. Just come play it yourself."

A few of my favorite things we cover in this episode: 

• Growing up sleeping under stages at the Armadillo in Austin — Stevie Ray Vaughn, Freddie King, and Muddy Waters as the soundtrack of early childhood
• The dark side of the flower power era: four years old, walking into rooms of passed-out musicians, a drug tray hung from the ceiling on a rope
• Timothy Leary's vision vs. what actually happened — why psychedelics went wrong in the '60s, and why the renaissance is different
• What goes wrong with plant medicine without set, setting, and facilitator — and why the facilitator is 80% of the medicine
• The "peep show" trap: chasing altered states rather than integrating them, and people spending six months unable to leave the house after a ceremony
• DMT: the God molecule your body produces naturally — why breathwork accesses the same states as plant medicine
• Why beating your chest like a gorilla releases DMT from the lungs directly into the brain — and why gorillas do it in the wild
• The mycelia network as the original internet — how the internet was modeled on mushroom communication systems
• Intergenerational trauma as stored information in DNA — not just your childhood ACE score but the lineage going back through genocides and wars
• The North Magnetic Field Oscillator: a device that goes 8 inches into the body and disperses clustered dense energy — healing cysts, scar tissue, endometriosis
• Dr. Cole's 3-hour session with Doyle — no plant medicine, just breathwork, Reiki, sound healing, energy work, and a gong from Greta Sonora
• AA as a spiritual practice, not a support group: the genius sponsor who said "start helping others now, before you've healed yourself"
• How Doyle met Eric Clapton: a cold call from Japan, a Starbucks in Venice, and a session where Clapton couldn't understand a single chord
• Playing guitar left-handed upside down — and the 26-year musical conversation with Eric Clapton without ever making eye contact
• Supplements: methylene blue (serotonin boost and thyroid regulator), magnesium, high-grade salt hydration
• High meat: the old-world fermented meat cured for three months that supposedly heals any illness

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Happy listening, and we hope you learned a little bit more on the art of being well!

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In Health,

Dr. Will Cole