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What happens when chaos is all you’ve ever known—and survival starts looking like self-destruction?

In this episode of Tribal Detox: Beyond the Ceremony, Jason sits down with Catelyn Rebecca Spensberger-Taylor for an honest conversation about generational trauma, childhood neglect, abusive relationships, addiction, incarceration, and rebuilding a life.

Catelyn describes becoming a caregiver before she had the chance to be a child, using substances in early adolescence, and carrying those patterns into adulthood. She shares why she believes prison saved her life, how stability helped her begin recognizing her trauma, and what it took to start over after her release.

We also explore her experiences with yoga, massage, psilocybin, Kambo, and ayahuasca—including a frightening ceremony that challenged her sense of safety and reinforced the importance of listening to her body and speaking up.

Today, Catelyn teaches yoga, practices massage therapy, studies herbalism, and is pursuing Kambo practitioner training. Her story includes painful setbacks, difficult realizations, and the daily work of learning to trust herself.

In this conversation:

• Growing up with instability, addiction, and the responsibility of caring for younger siblings.
• Childhood trauma, hypervigilance, and repeating familiar relationship patterns.
• Alcohol dependence, substance use, and the consequences that led to incarceration.
• Why Catelyn describes prison as the first consistent stability she experienced.
• Rebuilding through work, education, movement, and community.
• The difference she experienced between recreational psychedelic use and intentional settings.
• Her personal experiences with psychiatric medications and discontinuation.
• Kambo, ayahuasca, grief, and a deeply challenging altered state.
• Boundaries, self-worth, and learning to feel safe in her body.
• Finding purpose in helping others.

Connect with Catelyn

Email: cattbecca@icloud.com
Instagram: @catetayyy
Facebook: cate Tay

Content advisory

This episode includes explicit language and detailed discussion of childhood abuse, domestic and sexual violence, suicide attempts, suicide loss, overdose, abortion, addiction, incarceration, and distressing psychedelic experiences. Please consider your wellbeing when choosing whether and when to listen.

Important health, medication, and substance-use disclaimer

This podcast shares personal experiences and opinions for educational and informational purposes. It does not provide medical, psychiatric, psychological, or legal advice. Personal accounts and spiritual interpretations are not clinical evidence, established explanations, or guarantees of safety or results.

Tribal Detox, this podcast, and its hosts do not condone or encourage the illegal possession, purchase, distribution, or use of controlled substances. Discussing a substance or experience does not endorse its use or the practices described.

We do not recommend stopping psychiatric medications cold turkey, rapidly tapering them, or changing treatment to participate in a ceremony. Abrupt discontinuation can cause withdrawal and worsening mental health; benzodiazepine withdrawal can cause life-threatening seizures. Any medication change requires an individualized plan with your prescribing clinician. A facilitator’s advice, an online search, or a medication’s half-life alone cannot establish a safe taper or clearance for substance use.

“Natural” does not mean safe. Herbs and supplements—including St. John’s wort and 5-HTP—can interact with medications and other substances. The combinations and timelines described in this episode should not be copied. Kambo and psychedelics are not established substitutes for psychiatric treatment or medically supervised withdrawal care.

Each listener is responsible for their own research, investigation, and decisions, including checking applicable laws, evaluating evidence, verifying provider qualifications, and discussing individual risks with qualified healthcare professionals. Independent research does not replace medical assessment. Do not delay or disregard professional care because of anything heard here.

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Chris Diamond grew up in New York with a bookie for a father and an early education in keeping his mouth shut. At 16, an organized crime raid on his family’s home helped set off a spiral of anger, violence, drug dealing, and eventually state and federal incarceration.

In Episode 13 of Tribal Detox Podcast — Beyond the Ceremony, Chris joins Jason Fellows for a raw conversation about leaving that life behind, confronting addiction, and learning to become someone his family could count on.

Chris shares his move from New York to Arizona, his introduction to Bufo, and his experiences with ayahuasca and Kambo. He reflects on how those experiences challenged his identity, brought him face to face with his own behavior, and helped him find a sense of gratitude he hadn’t known before.

We also talk about the work that happens after ceremony: taking responsibility, repairing relationships, raising children, and putting what you’ve learned into practice when everyday life tests you.

In this episode:

• Growing up around illegal gambling, secrecy, and survival.
• A family home raid, displaced anger, and his first felony at 16.
• Life inside state prison and federal detention.
• Finding meditation through a cellmate he called “Felonious Monk.”
• Addiction, withdrawal, and the challenges that continued afterward.
• Leaving New York and starting over in Arizona.
• His first Bufo experience and why he warns against his early approach.
• Accountability, fatherhood, and rebuilding his relationship.
• Training with Tribal Detox and beginning to serve Kambo.
• What he would tell a young person heading down the same road.

Connect with Chris Diamond:
Email: RibbitRx@gmail.com

Content note: Explicit language and discussions of violence, incarceration, addiction, and withdrawal. Chris shares personal experiences, not medical advice or instructions for using these substances.

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What happens when the life you imagined isn’t the life you get?

In this episode of Tribal Detox Podcast — Beyond the Ceremony, Jason sits down with close friend, Kambo practitioner, and Tribal Detox instructor Julie Vogel, founder of Kambo Coyote in Austin, Texas.

Recorded at the Grunt Style Integration event in Missouri, this conversation follows Julie’s unconventional path through teaching, backpacking, wilderness survival, infertility, and eventually amphibian medicine.

Julie opens up about the physical and emotional toll of three unsuccessful rounds of IVF, grieving the possibility of motherhood, and finding herself asking what to do with her life next. Choosing to say yes to new experiences led her to a powerful first Bufo ceremony and, later, Kambo.

She also shares the uncomfortable lesson that pushed her to seek proper practitioner training: loving a medicine doesn’t mean you know how to work with it safely.

With plenty of humor and the ease of a longtime friendship, Jason and Julie explore community, control, service, and finding purpose when your original plans fall apart.

In this episode:

• Growing up bullied and becoming an advocate for the underdog.
• Backpacking through Southeast Asia and volunteering in Thailand after the tsunami.
• Waldorf teaching, Naropa University, and finding different ways to learn.
• Wilderness survival training and learning to slow down in nature.
• Infertility, unsuccessful IVF, and grieving an imagined future.
• Julie’s first Bufo experience and her changing relationship with death and control.
• Discovering Kambo and recognizing the need for formal training.
• Building Kambo Coyote and creating the Coyote’s Den.
• Becoming a Tribal Detox instructor and helping students find their own approach.
• Meeting skeptical clients with practical conversation and compassion.
• Offering possibilities without promising outcomes.

Connect with Julie Vogel

Kambo Coyote — Austin, Texas
Website: https://kambocoyote.com
Email: julie@kambocoyote.com
Instagram: @kambocoyote

Subscribe so you don't miss future conversations as we explore plant medicines, integration, spirituality, science, psychology, and everything that happens beyond the ceremony.