On May 10, 2014 the Free and Equal Debate Foundation held the historic United We Stand Festival at the Belasco Theater in LA . The event was packed full of awakened minds, activists, conscious musicians, journalists, political candidates and other great freedom fighters. The Conscious Resistance Network (TCRN) team traveled to LA to cover the event and take in some of the knowledge. TCRN reporters Derrick Broze and Tryp had the chance to catch up with journalist Amber Lyon. Lyon is the former CNN journalist who exposed the news corporation for suppressing her story on the revolution in Bahrain and took payments to run favorable stories on foreign governments.
Tryp: Amber you are an Emmy award-winning journalist who controversially spoke about censorship, tell us more about yourself.
Amber Lyon: I come from an investigative journalist background. I used to work for CNN, and I have seen that the mainstream media is definitely not a place you can go as an investigative journalist, for the most part, to tell an accurate picture of what’s happening in this country. So now I’m an independent journalist. I am focusing on medicines; natural medicines; psychedelics; marijuana; as a way to help people purge individual trauma that I think is the root of everything that’s happening in our society right now. It’s like there are way too many people are carrying around this trauma that they can’t purge and it’s manifesting itself in wars and fighting and all of this anger and this insanity. And so I want to, as a journalist now, with my new website reset.me, connect people to these medicines and to accurate journalism on the topics.
Derrick Broze: Healing is what our network is about, that’s what my personal life has been about. To me, the matrix – whatever you want to call it – is a reflection of self. So as long as we don’t work on our individual insecurities, doubts, fears, these things are gonna show up – as you said, war, violence. And it’s part of the human condition, but we can work through it. Has that always been a part of your life or is it something that’s recently developed?
AL: It’s something new. I went down to the Amazon to try Ayahuasca and I had such a profound experience that I just knew that this was something, a medicine that needs to be delivered to the masses as soon as possible. I see Ayahuasca as Mother Nature’s way of fighting back against all this insanity, and one person at a time. And once again, it goes back to so many of us, bottled up trauma, and the only way people are trying to get rid of it are prescription medications that aren’t attacking the core.
T: That’s absolutely right. So, was it Joe Rogan that actually convinced you to go down to the Amazon and try it?
AL: Yeah, I mean Joe’s an extremely intelligent, enlightened guy and he mentioned the power of psychedelics and it kind of planted a seed in my head and I started researching psilocybin. I realized that instead of it being a chemical that makes you go insane like we were told, psilocybin mushrooms, it actually leads to neurogenesis, which is a re-growth of brain cells. It’s a tremendous treatment for anxiety, depression, and so I started realizing that all the propaganda I’ve been feed was just wrong. And I knew, journalistically, that I wanted to start investigating medicines.
T: Actually what inspired me to get into journalism, was trying to get that information out to as many people as possible and kind of destroy that stigma that was institutionalized and carried out, programmed into our minds over generations.
AL: It’s so important that you guys are doing what you’re doing. And that’s what is giving the dinosaur media a run for its money, because you no longer need these traditional gatekeepers who have been telling us that these medicines are drugs and that they’re gonna’ ruin your brain, ruin your life, and they’re addictive – which they’re not. And so it’s beautiful that you guys are able to take your small camera here and spread the message, and I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing.
DB: Absolutely. We’re in this all together. You guys in the mainstream, or the formerly-known-as-mainstream, have been carrying that weight for so long. There’s more voices like yourself, Ben Swann, and others who have worked in those areas from the local to the national level, who are choosing to say, “You know, the future of our species is more important than this paycheck or just carrying the bucket for the mainstream establishment.” I think it’s beautiful to see a resurgence of awareness around psychedelic therapy. I’ve been interested for a long time, along with meditation, and we’re seeing a resurgence in, as you said, psilocybin research, the first studies of LSD and MDMA—
AL: MDMA is 83% effective in curing treatment-resistance PTSD. So that is lives saved every day, considering the fact that 22 soldiers a day commit suicide. That’s lives, that’s not just science, and that’s why the people need to get this message.
TT: Let’s not forget about marijuana; our good friend, marijuana. It’s still incredible how there are refugees, literally refugees, patients, trying to get this medicine.
DB: Some people say that right now we’re witnessing the end of the drug war with ideas like this. With the internet there are now Ayahuasca tours. I mean they have the ability to do that, which is a beautiful thing, you know, that we’ve taken teachings. For me, my personal path is of a student of Shamanism and I’ve tried Ayahuasca a couple of times and had those experiences. And I believe that they are experiences that need to be taken. You know now, with the modern day you have things like DMT or Salvia, these real quick Western methods to try to achieve these states of mind, which I personally believe are part of the problem.
AL: Yeah sure, and I think that the war on drugs is coming to an end because consciousness is evolving. Maybe 2012 wasn’t symbolic for the end of the world, but it was the end of these closed minds and people absorbing propaganda. And I think that now, with seeing the wave of medical marijuana and now psychedelics are medicine. Hopefully and eventually becoming legal.
DB: Thanks for catching up with us. Where can we find out more about your latest work?
AL: You can head to Reset.me and check out the site to get more accurate information on these substances.