1_4 Chubbicorn80: Intergenerational Trauma, Pivoting the Self, and The New Internet

RS: [00:00:00] Hello friends. Welcome to minority trip report. MTR is a podcast for underrepresented views and life journeys with mental health, psychedelics and consciousness. I'm your host Raad Seraj. 

RS: Today my guest is a wonderful human who goes by the persona, Chubbicorn80 on Twitter. Chubbicorn80 works at the intersection of mental health and web3. He's been working deeply on himself through talk therapy and a number of trauma therapy practices over the last couple of years. He hopes to go deep into web3 one day and bring healing practices to this space. Chubbicorn,, thank you so much for being here. 

Chubbicorn: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you today.

RS: I read your bio out. But you're a man of many talents and many hats. You've obviously, you've been a strategy consultant. You're now with a startup who's in the COVID tech space. You are in web3, you've supported NFT projects. You are advocating for psychedelic use and you're part of the Vietnamese diaspora. So instead of me reading a bio, I'm curious, [00:01:00] how would you describe your journey so far? 

Chubbicorn: You started with just a, I have a good life and for what I found was it's a perception and I created Chubbicorn80 as a persona because this is a persona that it's my true self. The one that you find, if you find the doc's version of me, that's a just made up version, right? It's the old self of me, the one that needed to survive in this world. And the past two years I've been working at talk therapy, working through trauma, working through what it means to be an adult child of refugees.

Chubbicorn: And as I find my true self, this Chubbicorn is my persona is the person I want to be. It's my true self. And I think just part of my journey has been just figuring it out and for up to about 40 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I was born into a world that was just hostile.

RS: What about Chubbicorn, this persona you built and, for folks who haven't seen Chubbicorn yet, maybe start with describing what Chubbicorn as a character or persona [00:02:00] looks like, feels like. And then why does that resonate with you so strongly? 

Chubbicorn: So, first of all, just a visual description, Chubbicorn is a unicorn and he's fairly chubby. His face is quite you pudgy and cute. And I love the imagery because he's got a rainbow hair, right? He's wearing a red hoodie. He's got a little beanie on just just a chill vibe. And the story behind this is Chubbicorn80 is a, an NFT in the Web3 space. And there's a really cool story behind this. I reached out to string who is the founder of Chubbicorns. And she's Vietnamese as well. I met her on a discord one day and I said, Hey, I want to support you. How can I help you? You are a woman in Web3, right? So you're already a minority in this space and super minority. And I said, I just wanna be a good ally and support you. And so she said, come join my discord, hang out. And eventually I minted chubbicorn. No idea what I was doing, getting into the space. But I think for me, Chubbicorn has a [00:03:00] special meaning because it came from just a good intention. I wasn't trying to make a buck. I wasn't trying to make a flip in, in the NFT space. I simply was trying to help another fellow person. And in return, I got like a hundred times back. 

RS: That's amazing. So what was that process like? And you said the word Web3. Of course. I know what it is, but I would love for my audience to also understand Web3, cuz you know, one of the interesting things you just said. We are, as people of color are already minorities, but I think there's like some gate keeping happening where people intentionally use long words and big words to describe NFTs, crypto, Web3. How would you describe it, what is web3? And how did you and your friend fall into that space? 

Chubbicorn: Web3 is to be defined. It's the third iteration of what we call the web, right? So I remember web 1.0 was on the internet was simply just a simple static webpage we call web two is basically now we created platforms like Facebook where people could just jump on a [00:04:00] platform, contribute content. Web3 is the next iteration of taking away centralized power and distributing it to everyone.

Chubbicorn: And everyone is now an owner, right? So the difference between two and one, a three, is that in two. A few own all of it. So Facebook owns Facebook is the internet essentially, right? So they own control the content. They feed, whatever they want to feed to you. Web3 is decentralized. So as an owner, I can own an NFT, which is a token.

Chubbicorn: So think of it as a stock or a share, whatever you want to call it. I own a piece of it. And I contribute to this thing. That's all owned by us. And so right now, I, at least there's probably a technical answer, but in my opinion, it's more of a philosophical decision, right? I think as a minority, I really want the power to come back to us.

Chubbicorn: We, for so long have been just left out of the game. And so Web3 is the opportunity to redistribute things back and make sure that everyone has an equal say, everyone has a piece of this pie. 

RS: So well said, I think that's what [00:05:00] resonates with me so strongly, I think the part of web through which is about shifting the centers of power and having a new sense of community driven grassroots sort of form rising up.

RS: It's to be defined, obviously I don't think it'll be as easy as people think, but it is an ideological shift, which is amazing. I want you to hold that thought for a second, which is this idea of Web3 decentralization, and I will come back and ask you why this resonates with you as a person of color as a minority, but let's step back a little bit more.

RS: Let's go back a few decades. Tell me about how you grew up, and all the things that have happened. You said you're a child of Vietnamese refugees. How did you grow up? And then how did you go back to the understanding of being a child of Vietnamese refugees maybe later on? I don't know if you had a well defined understanding of that growing up in the us.

Chubbicorn: Let me start with just, as a Vietnamese American, I grew up white, I identified as white because that was our survival mechanism assimilation. So I, [00:06:00] we came here in 1980 and at that time there was very little support structure. So in order to survive, you assimilate, you blend in you don't, you throw away all of your heritage, right?

Chubbicorn: You change, literally change your name. So I have an American name and that is legally changed. So I was give a birth name and then it was legally changed to American name. And I think as I become more aware of who I am and what I've become and what I've been, I'm starting to realize, I, I am, I was a child of, of refugees.

Chubbicorn: My parents, I looked at the map, they left Vietnam in 1979 in a river boat, out into the open sea. And so. I heard these stories growing up, but it's really hard to understand what this really means. And so I looked it up in Google maps. It's a 20 hour flight, right? With a small plane or little trip.

Chubbicorn: It's like a 10 hour flight. Probably it's a very long journey. And they did that on a boat, on the open sea, in a river boat [00:07:00] that was not designed for the open sea. And so hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people died on that trip, right? They're now at the bottom of the sea because just it wasn't designed to do it.

Chubbicorn: And it's miraculously somehow they survived somehow they got here. But then that I realized that moment is an incredibly traumatic experience cuz not only did my parents leave the war, my dad was a prisoner of war for three years after the fall of Saigon. And so now my parents are traumatized.

Chubbicorn: They just got outta the war, incredible poverty and then made this impossible trip across the ocean. And during that trip, I, my mom pregnant with me. So I was a, I was an unborn child of that trip. And so part of my journey is just discovering, why am I having all this anxiety, all this trauma, like my life is good.

Chubbicorn: You started with this conversation. My life is good up until about two years ago. I thought my life was good until I realized, why am I carrying so much anxiety? Why does like a little knock on a door? Gave me so much fear [00:08:00] or that I can't leave my door unlocked. I can't leave my car unlocked.

Chubbicorn: I'm always trying to possess and hold everything together. And I'm on this rat race. And that led to unpacking this journey and figuring out why am I the way I am? And the more I unpack that it just created all these amazing rich stories and just this amazing experience. Did 

RS: you always feel this way or did it come into, it became like a dominating force later that you became very aware of inside yourself?

RS: Did you always feel anxious? Yes. There something a sense of reckoning 

Chubbicorn: or. The physical symptoms manifested itself around when I turned 32. And I think there's a book called body to keep score. And that book was all about just traumas held inside the body. And I lived most of my life up to that point.

Chubbicorn: Really just unaware. Like just, I was just unaware of it. And now in hindsight with the new lens, I'm looking on, as a child. Oh my gosh. I was probably carrying so much anxiety, like my classmate over here, like if the teacher says stop that, for them to like, okay, whatever.[00:09:00] 

Chubbicorn: And then for me it's as if someone pulled a gun and pointed right in my head. So as an eight year old child, how do you react to something that you don't even know? No one told me that I was carrying this. And so that was my life up until around 32, I manifested some physical symptoms and it wasn't until around 38 that I started figuring out the source of all this stuff.

RS: What was it like for your parents? So they left Vietnam. This extremely risky, dangerous sort of journey. They arrived to the us. What happened after? So your mom was pregnant with you at the time. 

Chubbicorn: And she gave birth to me in, in the refugee camp in Indonesia. So I was born there. 

RS: Is that where you got the name? 

Chubbicorn: That's right, I got the name there. I was born there and it's a miracle. I'm trying to imagine Castaway, you know, Tom Hanks is finally coming home and he comes home to a different space and it's just they were out in sea for seven days. I mean, they were robbed by sea pirates, left for dead. And somehow crash landed, came and got picked up and, and, and arrived at the refugee [00:10:00] camp in Indonesia. So I think my parents, I always have this, my inner child sees them and I put 'em on a pedestal. Like, cuz they're my parents. I just like all of us. Except now as a grown adult, I'm looking back and I realize my parents were traumatized, and they didn't have the emotion. They didn't have the emotional capacity to raise a child because of what they went through. And so as a grown adult, I'm always asking, I'm always wanting more from my parents. I realize that they just never had it to give. They never had their own physical security to give.

Chubbicorn: And so a lot of what I grew up perceiving that, we're safe, we're happy. We're good. We have all this money was just a facade to hide that trauma that was hidden in there. Part of the message just to simulate, be white. And then part of my parents is mourning and grieving their home.

Chubbicorn: And they, their culture and their heritage. And so to bring my friends over and man, the smell of fish sauce, I mean, that's just so much shame in that. Like friends be like, Ew, what's that gross smell. And of course now, now we're all hips are [00:11:00] just like official thing in the world.

Chubbicorn: Yeah. Let's do it. Let's go in Vietnamese. Is it right? I was I'm this child that's living in two worlds, like a world that was that they left through trauma. And then this other world that we're landing here and I'm somewhere in between. And I'm just trying to figure out who I am.

Chubbicorn: But I think the survival mechanism is to disregard the past, disregard who I am, where I came from and just try to latch on, get as close as I can. I think today we call it white adjacency, but we, we get as close as I can just to survive. Like I, I guess I realize now all my actions was really about just surviving. 

RS: So in what ways do you think you were trying to assimilate being white can mean lots of things and I, although I intuitively understand what you're. Let's unpack that. In what ways do you think you were trying to conform? Was it sports, behavior, clothing, all that stuff. 

Chubbicorn: Sports, behavior, clothing, food, and going to an Asian restaurant and using a fork cuz I'm American, I'm not gonna use chopstick and then coming into the workplace, I think [00:12:00] adopting white behaviors, right? Competitiveness, perfectionism just behaviors that today, we might call toxic white culture, but I embraced all of that.

Chubbicorn: I lived at and I was very competitive, was cutthroat, always trying to win because I realized it was my, again, that goes back to it's my survival mechanism, cuz I wanna be like everyone else. I don't wanna stand out. Standing out means you get shot and killed. 

RS: I could relate to a lot of that. Going back to parents going through their own traumas and having to build up walls and a facade for their kids or as a coping mechanism. I, so I'm originally from Bangladesh. I was born there when I was two. My father was a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia and my father has an incredible story actually.

RS: And both my mom and dad he left Bangladesh when he was super young around, I think he was 27 when he left. But in 1971, there was a war of independence where Bangladesh actually split up from what was at that time west Pakistan. So we were east Pakistan. What, as the British do, they went into a [00:13:00] place Collins that space.

RS: And as they left the fucked everything up, that's their legacy, right? The whole Indian subcontinent was this one territory then the partition happened. You had Muslims moved to one side, Hindus moved to the other side. And although we are not geographically connected to Pakistan, The British just took a pencil, drew a fucking line and said oh, if you're not connected by land, you're still Muslim.

RS: So you must belong to the same country. And of course, set it up for another violent revolution 20 years later, so my father was a guerilla fighter in that revolution. And then my dad somehow left Bangladesh, he worked as an air traffic controller at an airport, somehow manage to a marine engineer on a Singaporean ship. And so actually going back to your story, he would often share about refugees stranded in sea that they would pick up on this Marine vessel and rescue them. But the point I'm trying to make is that. My dad grew up super poor. My mom in that revolution, her father, my grandfather, who I never saw, cuz he was dead before I was born, was kidnapped, [00:14:00] tortured, brought back home and my mom had to leave, escape her home. She was 17 years old.

RS: And so going back to your thing about now, I talked to them and growing up, I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I wasn't trying to be white per se, but there was a lot of shame because if you grow up poor that's one level of shame, then you grow up from a, you come from a poor country with a crappy passport and you have immigration issues, no matter where you go, that's another level of shame.

RS: And then, like when my dad and mom would talk about Hey, just remember to be grateful. And I'm like, no, what are you talking about? You didn't have shoes, so why should, why can't I have fancy shoes? That kind of stuff. Because when you're 16 years old, the whole world revolves around you.

RS: So that's right. But going back to your story, I think, I look back now. To my family and I hear them like this, a whole different interpretation of the past in a way it's so interesting. We're always rewriting our stories. Okay. So I wanna go jump back to again, you have from at least what it seems to me, a very accomplished professional career so fast, and you're doing so many interesting things, but what was that [00:15:00] leap into the first being, your career and things like that, strategy consulting, whatever you wanna start.

Chubbicorn: Yeah. I guess I'm not as excited about it because part of my embracing this Chubbicorn persona is because all of those creds, what you call impressive. I've starting to shed that skin because it was impressive. So I have a degree in economics. I got a master's in public policy, went to Pepperdine and so highly educated and it went into a career into management consulting.

Chubbicorn: So for about 12 years or so, working with. Fortune 500 companies, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I have that spiel down for a long time, walking around is I, this shit, this is all the good stuff. But 

RS: I find it so amazing that so many strategy consultant, friends of mine have unplugged from the matrix completely... 

Chubbicorn: Ah, my gosh, just, just unplugged from it.

Chubbicorn: It's just, it's a machine, right? It is this artificial machine that, that, that keeps running and, and, and not to downplay it. I mean, it is impressive. 

RS: Why did you get into a strategy consulting? Was it because of you felt like that was the right thing to do?

Chubbicorn: I was ladder climbing, and part of that latter climbing [00:16:00] is just keep climbing as fast as you can. And the reason I kept climbing as fast as I can was because one, I was trying to pay off an UN a debt that cannot be paid off. And two, I think it just hides all that drama that's underneath.

Chubbicorn: Right? The faster I run, the more I keep busy, the more I don't have to pay attention to the slow noise. So eventually it does catch up on you, but until then, like I just kept going and going, how what's the fastest way I can get up this ladder, what's that next promotion level can I get, and how do I go up to the more prestigious groups?

RS: Okay. So you did strategy consulting and then what was the next 

Chubbicorn: leap? Yeah, so my next sleep, eventually, this was right around the time when I started experiencing my symptoms. I was trying to figure out I was having sleep issues and I was just trying to figure it out. And I said, I need to get off this rat race was the voice that kept going.

Chubbicorn: And the moment I said that it took me five years before I finally got off of it, because I just avoided it. Like it was yes, of course I should get off this rat race, but I'm gonna keep doing it. And one day I said, okay, this is [00:17:00] it. 2020, January 1st, 2020. I am gonna quit my job. I'm gonna go out my own.

Chubbicorn: I'm gonna figure it out. And I would give myself a year to figure it out and then the pandemic, so, combine those two together. I think I finally was able to get a lot of time off to just really figure it out. 

RS: Well, that feels like the right time to talk about psychedelics then. So when did psychedelic become part of your journey? Did you always know about psychedelics? What was your relationship to it before this pivotal year? 

Chubbicorn: I would say I, I spent two years in talk therapy. I did EMDR for the trauma related to my parents and I did another psychomotor.

Chubbicorn: It's like a trauma therapy guess in a group session. And then at one point I, I started he reading about psychedelics, mushrooms. And I was like, I was interested in it.

RS: Did you know that you wanted to get therapy? Because I think. Minorities. People in general are very reluctant to get therapy or talk about mental health.

RS: Nevermind people of color. But [00:18:00] yes. Yes. I'm curious before we talk about EMD and so on. Sure. Did you self diagnose go like, okay, alright, enough of this shit, I gotta do something drastic. I gotta do therapy. Cause I don't know about you. Like my dad, he, I think internally understands that therapy's important, but I, as men, especially minorities it's a completely different thing.

RS: They Don just don't wanna hear it. They don't wanna go near it. 

Chubbicorn: I think I'm not sure. He knows that I'm in therapy. so it's part of it's and every time I start with a new therapist, I have to read their documentation. It's how confidential are you keeping this? I don't want this to come out.

Chubbicorn: Cuz there's a lot of shame within our Asian culture right around mental health. You don't talk about it. You don't. No one has problems. You just 

RS: Man up talk just deal with it. 

Chubbicorn: Just deal with it. I would say I got my sleep issue really started hitting me really hard. I tried every physical thing from drugs to sleep apnea.

Chubbicorn: Western medicine said I was fine. I physically am fine. There's no problem with you. [00:19:00] You're making it up. And at that point I said, okay, I've crossed off everything. So it has to be mental. So I started seeing therapists, to diagnose the the sleep issue. And I went through five therapists and I would say the reason I went through so many is because there are so little research in minorities, in, in mental health space, very little clinical research, almost no none in refugees like myself, intergenerational trauma, like how does this stuff impact you? There's very little clinical research. So it's always just about how do you feel, what's, what's challenging you? And none of the, like really pushing it hard. I think my journey was in January 1st, 2020, when I started my business, I also found another therapist and I said, I'm committing myself to finding the bottom of this hole. I'm gonna dig down until I hit rock bottom. And I want you to push as hard as you can. And that's when we really started doing the work.

RS: When you say dig deep, you mean going into your, not only your trauma, but also what is possibly your parents' journeys too? 

Chubbicorn: Yes. All of it. All the [00:20:00] above. And I was able to get to a point where I'm willing to explore all of it. And that's where the psychedelics came in. I, I gotta admit, like, when it first came up, I was like, no way, I'm not doing it. I'm not taking drugs. 

RS: Who mentioned it, your therapist or someone else, something else? 

Chubbicorn: A few I had a friend that was said, have you considered this? And then I brought it up to him and he, he did some of it as part of it. And I had just this very strong reaction.

Chubbicorn: Which was just like, don't do it. It's bad. that's my ego speaking. And in hindsight, that was also conditioning, 

Chubbicorn: right? It's like conditioning bone to drugs. It'll fry your brain and all that stuff. 

Chubbicorn: Absolutely. Absolutely. But I really got interested in just I'm looking at indigenous tribes.

Chubbicorn: People are using the stuff for the beginning of time and there's something that we know where I've been so far removed from earth, cuz I, I live in such a modern society now, like I say, figured I'm gonna go in the opposite direction. I'm gonna go in the spaces where I, it sounds a little wacky, but I'll give it a try.

RS: So, okay. Tell me about the first experience or how did you let's just say, find psychedelics? What was the [00:21:00] first substance? Yeah. What was that like? 

Chubbicorn: I'll keep it somewhat generic cuz I don't wanna disclose the details on it, but essentially I took a seven gram dose of psilocybin mushrooms. 

RS: That is a hero's dose, which that's a lot. 

Chubbicorn: Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know what it was like, I didn't know exactly like what the dosage should be or was and reading other people's experience. You know, one guy, like I read his book and he said, I did one milligram and it's, I did seven and I'm personally in a lightweight.

Chubbicorn: And so alcohol marijuana, anything that gets into my system is like incredibly potent. And so seven milligrams per me. I it hit me immediately, the minute I, it got in my system and I was out for six hours. But just in that experience, I think in that moment, there's three experiences in my life that felt exactly the same one was when I did EMDR.

Chubbicorn: And I really connected with that trauma. It was for me, that trauma is like a portal into. [00:22:00] Mysterious universe. Now I'm gonna start sounding a little crazier now go for crazy. Choose when I did that's what this for tantra meditation. So my neighbor's a tantra embodiment person. And so we did this meditation and we did this seven chakras and I got to this very deep level of mindfulness.

Chubbicorn: I experienced that that's number two. And with psychedelics the third one, when I did the dosage, I mean that one just took my ego completely away. It was all me going this ride. And all three of those experiences brought me back to the same infinite space. Like time and space are all one. We perceive it.

Chubbicorn: Normally. It's like a, before I just walked around, here's a linear time and tomorrow you do this. And tomorrow I do this in that moment in all three of those moments, I experienced like this thing where the past present in the future, all coexist all at once. And that I realize I have no control in anything like all this is.

Chubbicorn: It just is. That four weeks later after that event, my takeaway is it is, I don't like using it. It is what it is like for me, it is just this [00:23:00] very simplistic. The universe just is. And so when I was able to then just accept that I'm just part of this and all the horrible stuff that happens to me, all the stuff that I do to myself, it just doesn't matter because it just is.

Chubbicorn: And when I let go of that fact that I can't control anything, I actually have more control in a sense of I get to just ride this wave. I don't need to fight it. And for the first time I said, I felt safe and I broke down crying. When I said that for the first time, it was like, it took me 42 years of my life to finally get to a point where I could say I'm safe, like truly safe.

Chubbicorn: I'm happy. 

Chubbicorn: That's incredible. Did you do it by yourself? Did you have friends around you? Did you do it in the group setting? 

Chubbicorn: I had support. I had one person that supported me in that journey. And then today I'm on a microdose schedule. 

RS: Did you at any point [00:24:00] fight the experience? I mean seven grams it's I think it'll just push you straight through the wall. You just break through there's no reason to fight it. Cuz there's no other choice. 

Chubbicorn: I fought it big. I fought it pretty hard though. I mean like, I, I was scared getting into it cuz I didn't know what was, what was happening. So I told me, yeah, I'm feeling a little scared. I took it and then all of a sudden I was like, okay, it's hitting me.

Chubbicorn: And then I had just this ear, like this desire to just throw it up. And he's like just calm down. Like don't throw it up. Keep it in. And I did, I got into bed and we, my eyes were closed. I, I put on headphones for music and. I fought really hard, just like I was like, I don't wanna do this anymore.

Chubbicorn: I don't wanna do this anymore. Like undo, get off the ride and, colors were everywhere. The music was just pumping and it was all sudden, it was just like, I was like, my body felt like I was convulsing. And then all of a sudden, just ah and there was like, at this moment, I could remember where things, everything just got silent.

Chubbicorn: I forgot what was happening. And that was when my ego let go. And that was when I just went for [00:25:00] it. 

RS: It's so funny. I think, putting aside how each of us grow up differently, different life experiences, the ego is see, I used to think the ego, in, in the sort of like colloquial sense, all ego is bad, but I think ego is, it's not about bad or good.

RS: It's about whether the ego's useful. We have too many too much stimuli around us and ego gives you a sense. How to maintain your senses with otherwise go nuts. There's too much going on. So it gives you some form to navigate the world but ego is a muscle that you have to exercise.

RS: I think having two restricted a sense of who you are is the problem. And I think with trauma, it gives you an over, over, too strong of a structure, a form within which you have to live. The confines are very limiting, cuz like once you try to unplug, you're like, oh, ego's no, don't fucking let go of me.

RS: I'll kill you. So you have to destroy it in some way. So in that perspective the pushback that you sense the fight that you were fighting, what do you think that was? What was that previous sense of view that you were fighting? [00:26:00] You think this control, you said you always wanted control, right?

Chubbicorn: Yeah. It's my, I don't want. It is my ego slash my protector. I don't know what you wanna call it. It's my old persona, right? That was just designed to control, designed to conform and create protection. And I think part of this journey for me is just to appreciate it, right? I don't hate it.

Chubbicorn: This thing got me to where I am. This thing got me to survive and I'm alive. I'm successful. All these things I'm grateful for because that protector, that ego kept me safe during this journey. But now I'm old enough right now. I am evolved enough. Now I have all my basic needs met. I can tell that ego to you can take a backseat.

Chubbicorn: Now you can just sit back with psychedelic you that just forced the ego to completely go away. I had no choice. You had no control under that. But in the absence of, always being on psychedelics, I think is now I can just be my true self when I want. Eagle can come [00:27:00] in and protect me throughout the random days.

Chubbicorn: So when someone gives me at the finger in the middle of the road, yeah. Keeps me in check. Yeah. But also then I'm like, okay, that's good enough. I got this. I'm in control. I'm driving now.

RS: I think that's such a good point. I think if you are, those of us who are in, have experienced with psychedelics for quite a while, I think you go through this journey, right? Where in the beginning, you're like all ego is bad. Then after you experience enough and life continues and you go through your experiences. I think ultimately it's not about bad or good.

RS: Like I was saying, it's about having the volume knob. It's oh, okay. My ego's trying to take over too much, dial it back down. Self-awareness like, being humble humility is as, just as important as having a ego and being able to use that as an instrument when you need, but it's not the default, and I find the volume knob is what we want as you grow older, both in age, but hopefully spiritually more [00:28:00] wise, it's always a journey. Of course. I think in the Western sort of like wellness culture, we glamorize growth. Going back to your point where we're like, I think even wellbeing is now commercialized, right?

RS: It's capitalized on. It's oh, level up, grow, elevate rise a sand in a lot of ways like Eastern cultures, it's not about rising. It's about it's about a spiral, right? You like you grow, you break, you die and you come back. This is what I think this sense of rebirth is. 

Chubbicorn: I wanna interrupt you in that piece, cuz I, I do, for your audience and this audience, we're talking about minorities. We all come from some background of trauma, right? Because we've had horrific experiences. I have come to appreciate the gift that I've been given. I used to have so much shame around it, right? Like I wanna just be a white person that has all these easy, paths. And I go, why did I get this dealt with this shitty card?

Chubbicorn: I now I've been dealt this gift, right? This trauma, like all the work I've done so far, [00:29:00] it is a gift because my volume level is so high. Let's so let's say a standard person has zero to 10. For me, it's like zero to 90 right. 90 is like death, right? Like the death and on a day to day basis, no, I don't need the volume that high.

Chubbicorn: So I had the tools to keep it at a two or three right day to day. There's no line in the room. But the beauty is when I'm creating, when I'm making stuff, when I'm meditating, I can dial that volume up and I'm not just channeling the trauma, but I can channel happiness. I can channel other emotions.

Chubbicorn: I can create stuff at a greater volume. There's something about you. Why is African art so colorful and beautiful, right? Why is like certain art created by our people so, so vibrant? Its because our volume is so high. We can tap into that as a creative. I'm finally appreciating the fact that my volume button can go all the way up and it doesn't always have to be the bad stuff.

Chubbicorn: It's if you can get the bad stuff to turn down, if you can turn down the volume of the bad stuff, you can also turn the volume up on the good stuff. And for me like [00:30:00] that spectrum is bigger than for me, because of my experiences. 

RS: I love that so much, as a creative, as a musician, I think music is the one constant force in my life.

RS: I, I know you have guitars, so this, you could probably relate to this. In my darkest deepest like loneliest times it was music that sort of allowed me to go on and have some semblance of being okay with isolation and loneliness because music was my friend, but there was a time like I'd grown up.

RS: Like for me, the grunge era is still my favorite time of music. I you're in Seattle. So you know exactly what I'm saying. Absolutely. Nirvana, Pearl jam, Allison chains, all these guys and Nirvana, especially, it's, I find it very hard to listen to Nirvana now. Cause like I get overwhelmed with emotion that his music is so fucking powerful still mm-hmm

RS: And I used to think there was a time in when 16, 17, I used to, red, Kurt convinces biography and his journals and I to idolize him back then. But I think, and I started to realize that I [00:31:00] embrace this thing, you have to die for your art. You have to suffer. And now going back to what you're saying. I think pain does give birth to this beautiful expression, but you don't have to succumb to it. No, I think that's what I know now that I didn't know before. I'm like, you have to die. If you're gonna create something, if you're genius, you have to suffer and you have to vanish. 

RS: And like with Anthony Bourdain's documentary, roadrunner, it was really interesting, the end and spoil alert, his friends would say he was always going to go. It's just was gonna happen. But coming back to what you just said, I think is really incredible. Like one of the most powerful aspects of self-awareness and growth is that you can choose what part of yourself would want to feed.

Chubbicorn: And up until up till the usage of psychedelics, I would, the only way for me to access that, that amazing part was to go through the painful portal. And I could see why you go down a dark road, because if that's the only way you access it, you are always going through this painful portal. And [00:32:00] when I went through the psychedelic trip, I realized there's infinite number of portals.

Chubbicorn: And you don't have to always go back to this painful point in time. It's simply just, all it did was just, it would've woken a part of my brain. Now I can access other parts of it. I can. And part of my journey now is to use meditation, use other techniques to access different parts without always going through the painful part.

Chubbicorn: Cuz I don't want, I want to go through the, some of the good things. 

RS: Pains gonna be there, whether you like it or not. You said, the word channel, I think that's the perfect word for it. It's like, yes, come in, inspire me, push me to do something, but also don't take over, have a seat. 

RS: I wanna switch gears a little bit and I wanna ask first. You've had this experience and obviously the work continues in your experiment with microdosing, working with micro doses and stuff like that. How has that, like, how do your friends and family see you now?

RS: Like what did they notice since January, 2020? And then I think, [00:33:00] because this is the way I found you, I would also love people to experience what Chubbicorn is online. That persona. I would love to talk about how your experiences and your sense of self, how does that inform the work that you do? And I do want spend some time with Web3, cuz it's really important. I think for me, for you. And I think our audience, like I think if you're doing psychedelics, Web3 is a natural inclination. But yeah, let's start since January, 2020, how did your family, friends experience who Chubbicorn is?

Chubbicorn: Let me pick just one individual and go really deep on that one. So my stepdaughter, she's non-binary so they, they're 13. So at the time, probably 11, when I started my journey and they actually triggered my journey because there was a day where they had gotten another fight with my youngest son. And I had a complete meltdown. I mean, like I went to volume 90, like this was war, death, it was gonna happen. And I had an outsized reaction and I talked to my therapist and he [00:34:00] said, that was a very oversized reaction. There's something deeper. So that led me to go down my deep journey. And we talked about, trauma and all that stuff .Today they're, they're a handful, right? So they're a teenager now, 13, just lots of emotions. Very similar to me just has this very anxious mindset. And I would say just now as a new parent, I can parent this child without saying anything like just my mirror, the fact that my central nervous system is calm.

Chubbicorn: Like it just resonates, right? It's just energy. Like if they're anxious and they're nervous, I don't need to yell at them. I need don't need to say anything. I just simply need to be in their presence and you could see heart rate, go down. You could see them calming down. You could see all those walls melting down because they themselves, have this protector, this ego that's coming in and keeping them safe for whatever reason. And rather than trying to solve it verbally, I simply just be in their presence and I [00:35:00] can see my own inner child just I'm soothing myself right. While I'm soothing them. And so I think just I'm carrying myself differently and on the online space.

Chubbicorn: And I think just meeting you and meeting other people, I'm starting to meet meeting the other people. Apparently I'm just putting out this vibe in the universe and. Maybe it's always been there and I never saw it. And maybe now I have a different lens or maybe I'm putting a different energy on the world.

Chubbicorn: I don't know exactly, but I'm attracting people like you I'm attracting other people that are similar to me. And all of a sudden, just I'm surrounded by amazing people.

Chubbicorn: That's incredible. Vibe is such an interesting word. I think we generally use the word vibe. I think people get it like vibe of a party. You go, what's the vibe, you know, what's this event like what, but I think there's a certain charisma.

RS: I think that shines through for people who are. Could carry a lot of burden. Yes. But it's not everything that they are. There's this like looseness about them. And these are all cliched words now cuz they get fucking used all the time, but it's really [00:36:00] true. 

Chubbicorn: Chubbicorn is just someone that helps everyone else let down their guard. It just be themselves. Chubbicorn runs around and says, I love you. And in my real world, in my work, in my corporate life, if I walked up and said, I love you, either HR will come in and arrest me or I'll get some sort of violation.

Chubbicorn: But in Web3, I'm just putting out that vibe. It's just like two other dudes. And I'm like, I love you. And you could just, people respond back and they're just excited about it because I think we all wanna be loved, right? Like we all carry such a big shell around us to, to go through life.

Chubbicorn: And in, in Web3 and Chubbicorn, I get to just vibe. And I get to just bring that energy and in web3 there's, I really dislike the term positive vibes and positive things only just it's way too much about positivity. It's not about positivity.

Chubbicorn: It's just about a, an energy. And how do you bring that authentic energy in a digital space, right? Like where we can't meet physically in person but I think I'm bringing I'm sending that energy through the keyboard, [00:37:00] into Twitter, into discords and it's working. I'm attracting some really amazing people.

RS: I agree with you. People may or may not understand Web3 yet. I don't think we completely recognize what it is, and whether you are in the crypto part of Web3, NFT part of Web3, there's lots, so much hype and bullshit around all of these. And every day we hear something else, but it's about conviction at the end of the day.

RS: I think like this idea about not being positive, not having to be positive, it's not about that. I'm gonna pull up a Cobain quote really quick, because we talked about that. He basically said in his journal, something like that, and I'm sure if he was alive and he thought that his wife sold his journals to the public, like me.

RS: He would've probably shot himself all over again. But anyway, , he said this to be optimistic all the time is is to not care about anything, to be pessimistic all the time is to be threatened by everything. So I think really the idea is choosing to be [00:38:00] hopeful, not being that by default. And I think there's a lot of performative toxicity about being optimistic.

RS: It's just not the point. It's just saying we don't know, but we have to believe we have to hope. And so how do we actually spread hope without being cringe about it? You know what I mean? So coming back to Web3, what is the work that you're doing in Web3? And let's talk about Web3 as a technology. What are you doing right now? And as a person of color and a minority, a child of refugees, why do you think this is important to understand? For many of our viewers are gonna be people of color and minorities and people who are not in tech even. So I would love to hear that from you. 

Chubbicorn: I don't know what Web3 will be. All I know is it's the future, right? We're building the infrastructure for the next version of the internet. And for so long, that has always been built by a small group of people, [00:39:00] people with access, people that are calling on their friends to say, hey, come in this space. And so no shame or no offense to what's happening today, in Web3, it's just, but it's a, it's a very micro niche group of people, right? People with access, people that have the resources to participate, people that have the mental fortitude to participate. And if you're a minority, if you're traumatized, if you are not safe physically you're not gonna be, you don't have time to participate in this stuff.

Chubbicorn: And so the absence of participating early means we miss out on the opportunity for that creation. So half of wealth that's being created is just simply showing up, right? The people that show up today, the people that are in this space today are gonna succeed just by being here, right? You don't even need to put money in today, just, just be here.

Chubbicorn: And so I have shared this message with my other minority counterparts. The space, you read the headlines, it [00:40:00] sounds horrible. It is horrible, but I want you to just show up and I can't promise that the space will be safe because there is no safe space, but all I know is our people need to be here.

RS: So hype in the sort of social media Web2 world, everybody uses hype, no matter what spectrum you're on, what extreme you're on, hype is a weapon, right? It not only attracts scammers, but actually pushes away people. Because it tells you, this is what this is. This is what Web3 is, it's bullshit. This is what NFTs are, bullshit. Don't go there, don't go there, all this stuff. And I think it's really damaging. So I think to your point, it's really important for people of our backgrounds and our, our communities to have a more realistic agnostic approach to it. Yes, there's a lot of bad, but to your point, it's so important to participate [00:41:00] and shape it.

RS: Cuz the cool thing is it's so new. You can shape it. If you don't participate, you leave this space that can be colonized by others, bad actors or naive actors or people who are simply ignorant. And we missed that. We missed that sort of like wave. I missed it. Fuck. I grew up in Saudi Arabia, man. If I was like, if I had proper.

RS: And some mentorship in the nineties. I would've been a different place, but I found pornography and I'm like, okay, cool. In Saudi Arabia pornography. Great. But I think it's so important in what you just said. I really believe in that. 

Chubbicorn: And the reason I say, I always do say Web3 at the intersection of mental health is for our people, for minorities, our mental health is the number one thing that we need to work on first. Coming into Web3 is you're gonna instantly be damaged and it's just horrific. And you're gonna just get tossed out. If you come into the space in a mentally healthy space, your trauma, your suffering, your missing out all these [00:42:00] things can be the greatest asset, right? For me, big of the space.

Chubbicorn: I'm bringing what I used to perceive as a negativity. And it's now my greatest asset. It's my power. I've reclaimed my power. And so I, I think I want to spread the message that. We all need to heal ourselves physically, mentally, and then we can participate in this. Web3 is a technology, that's all it is. It's it's just a piece of tech. So think of it, nothing more than just a, a server or a computer or a chip or whatnot. At the end of the day, what really matters is the human component. Yes. And let's make sure we bring the good human component. 

RS: I mean, absolutely. You know, we are talking about infrastructure, but people are not infrastructure. You know, you can't optimize humanity. We have a better foundation to amplify, but as with anything human, you can amplify bad or good. So let's choose the good, that's right. Okay. So what does that look like? And in the last sort of 10 minutes we got left I think this is a really [00:43:00] important point, choppy corn.

RS: And I think about this a lot, not only how do I show up, but we have this complete paradigm shift in how we build things. So what does Web3 and mental health? So like Web3 when I say it. So let's just say decentralized ownership of technological foundations, decentralized ownership, and who gets to show up, who gets to participate, who gets to own things who gets to build wealth, less gate keeping, what does that and mental health look like?

RS: So when you say people from our communities showing up in that intersection, what is that conceptually theoretically, like what are you working on? 

Chubbicorn: What are you building? When I first got into the space, I got caught in the NFT world and a week in NFT is the equivalent of six months in the real world. It runs 24 7 and it's 1,000 times faster than the real world. Yeah. And so it's like this artificial world [00:44:00] and just so much dopamine gets pumped into you and you're like, just, this is like the matrix and ah, it's the greatest thing in the world. Yeah. And I've seen so many amazing people, so many wealthy people completely just get ground up and they come out and just I'm done.

Chubbicorn: I'm just like mentally destroyed. The reason I promote this is we are not machines. Web3 is a technology and is a machine. It goes fast. And so in order to go fast, we have to go slow as humans. We have to find our centering. We have to find our grounding. We have to find our energy. And then we can express ourselves in creative ways, not in technological ways, because that's what machines do.

Chubbicorn: Let the machines do their machine stuff and let us do our creative expressions. And specifically for the minority C. We come from such rich, colorful, vibrant backgrounds. Let's bring that. Let's not worry too much about creating more technology, let's just bring ourselves. But in order to bring ourselves, we [00:45:00] have to be able to let go of, or let down our guards and bring our true, authentic self into this space.

Chubbicorn: And for so long, for so many people, they're unable to do that. You see so much oppression out in the world, you see so much racism and all this horrible stuff. It's just that people can't show up as who they are. And part of it, the reason why I adopted Chubbicorn is cuz I, I wanna just be agnostic.

Chubbicorn: Chubbicorn has no gender has no race. It's just agnostic to anything. It's not like I don't care about it, but it's just, I want to bring my true self for a brief moment and not have to carry that weight of racism and the weight of sexism and gender and all these intersectionality. It's too complicated.

Chubbicorn: Yeah. This is where I think art is so powerful, right? I Art well done is actually inherently political, but not overtly. Mm-hmm it. Doesn't tell you what to think, what boxes to put people in, what, what to think, where does art fit in to, in your life, in your [00:46:00] thesis, in the work you wanna do?

Chubbicorn: Moving forward. 

Chubbicorn: Art is everything for me, and I'll count music as part of it. And, and all expressions of creativity, because as I was climbing up that rat race, as I was running up those ladder and accumulating wealth and part of my own psychedelic journey is just what is the point of all this?

Chubbicorn: I left that experience almost. There's no point to any of this. That was my initial impression, right? It's like might as well just end it. It's all over. There's no be point in this. And as I came down and as I, I found more grounding, I was like, the point of all, this is just to just be and be in the present and be more human.

Chubbicorn: The whole point of what three is, we should be able to use this technology so that we can be more human. That the path that we're heading today is we're trying to be more like machines. We're trying to do things faster. We're trying to work faster, trying to output more things quicker. And in that journey and that seeking of that dopamine, [00:47:00] seeking of those metrics and trying to hit all these goals, objectives and valuations and all this stuff like that's, those are just numbers.

Chubbicorn: And I think at the end of the day, that all comes back to just us being human and just being in the. 

RS: Very well said, last question for you. Like I mentioned, my hope is that this podcast goes very wide and, very deep in many different communities, regardless of color, gender, creed backgrounds, it's ultimately about being human, having more stories be shared.

RS: So what people who've never done psychedelics, particularly again, maybe people from our communities, marginalized minorities, people who may have heard about psychedelics, but are scared, afraid, apprehensive, and take a moment. If you need to think about it, what would you like them to know?[00:48:00] 

Chubbicorn: I think our, our cultures, if you go back far enough to the indigenous components of our cultures, you know, before your people were colonized, before my people were colonizing and war happened, you go back to the people that were closest to the land. And I think this holds true, regardless of whether you're a person of color, whether you're white or, and whatnot, go back far enough when the person, the indigenous people that were closest to land, they were part of it.

Chubbicorn: Psychedelics was just part of it. I think there's a Netflix documentary about psychedelics, right? And then with the first human kind, like the first time they picked it off of off a piece of poop or something, and there's a little mushroom, we took it and it helped them connect. And it's just, it's magical, right?

Chubbicorn: The, everything we need, all the healing that we need exists within ourselves and exists within the ground. I'm saying this as if I'm so sorry, hippie, then I understand all this because I've lived my entire life in packaged goods, I live myself with craft singles [00:49:00] and in homogenized milk and everything's all processed.

Chubbicorn: My entire life has been processed. And when I did the psychedelics, it was interesting. Cuz I, I, on my drive home, I drove by the Jack in a box that I always go by that. And I normally just it's my, my, my sinful little thing I love. I went by, I got a bunch of chicken nuggets. I took a bite into it and I just I tossed it and I was like, I'm done.

Chubbicorn: Not because I don't like it. It's just all sudden my body was like, oh my gosh, for this little experience, my body got so connected back into the earth. My body was like rejecting all this process stuff. And now that I'm down, I'm back to eating some junk food again, and it's part of it.

Chubbicorn: But I think the closer you get back into the earth, there really is answers. It's so wacky and so weird, but I think the more I research into my own family history, you dig back and my dad's telling me that my grandmother, does this medicine, I don't even know what it is. And then you research it and you're like, [00:50:00] oh, interesting.

Chubbicorn: It's the same stuff that we're tapping now. They know all this stuff. everything it's already been invented. It's just sitting there. It's just, we forgot about it. We got so far removed from it. 

RS: Amazing, amazing way to come full circle, which is, we already know this. We just dont remember. I'll say this again, you've lived a good life. You do have a good life. And I think that's what it is about. We're just coming back and remembering. And we have to remind ourself of the things that are inherent, innate available around us. And it's always work, but it is there. It is there, if you wanna tap into it, if you can't tap into it 

Chubbicorn: And then if you don't mind, I'll end it just, I have a good life, but what it really should be is we have a good life, like you and I are interconnected. We've always been. All of us have always been interconnected and somewhere in history, we started segregating.

Chubbicorn: We started becoming individuals. We started using words like I, we are all one. [00:51:00] And the deeper I have dug into the space, the more I realize that we are also interconnected and that my happiness is dependent on your happiness, that we're all dependent on one another. It's not a journey that can take by myself anymore. I've hit the end of the road as an independent working on myself. At this point, all I'm interested is doing it in the community. 

RS: Very well said, Chubbicorn. This was an incredibly inspiring, thoughtful episode. I really enjoyed speaking with you. I admire your ambition and I wish you all the best in the work that is coming. We're part of the Web3 world, and I really hope we're building something special. 

RS: Thank you for having me.

RS: This podcast was brought to life with the help of Carolyn Tripp on art and design, Misha Ras on sound design and Wilson Lin on editing. Thanks so much for listening to minority trip report. I'm your host Raad [00:52:00] Seraj.