I'm back and I published a book!

Welcome to the revamped podcast that was for two episodes (including this one) called Love and Your Truth until I discovered a reputable podcast with a very similar name. And before that - it was the "Microdose Your Marriage" podcast, until I realized that was too limiting. So, here's to hoping that this final renaming is the last. But F-it maybe I will just keep changing the name just to f with the algorithm.

So, in this episode marks an exciting evolution focused on feminist identity, spiritual autonomy, and the radical act of telling the truth. To celebrate this shift, I read the opening of my new book, 'How to Survive a Cultpacalypse: A Psychonaut's Guide to The Spiritual Galaxy.' Join me for an engaging satirical forward and a deep dive into spiritual grift, patriarchal systems, and more. Stay tuned for insightful discussions and interviews dedicated to unlearning societal expectations and embracing your true self.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Rebranding
00:45 Celebrating Evolution with a New Book
01:08 The Satirical Forward
04:49 Reflections on Seeking Validation
07:15 Imaginary Endorsements
10:41 Critical Analysis of Spiritual Spaces
15:38 Conclusion and Future Discussions

Stay connected with Dr. Sabrina Hadeed on Instagram @dr.sabrinhadeed

Learn more about Dr. Hadeed on her website www.drsabrinahadeed.com

Transcript

0:06

Welcome back to The Love and Your Truth podcast, formally known as the Microdose Your Marriage Podcast, where we unlearn, what the world has told us to be, and remember who we actually are. This isn't just a name change. For me, it's a reclamation, it's a coming back home to myself, getting more clear about what I'm doing and why the space for me is evolving just like I am. What began for me as a space to explore relationships, healing and psychedelic transformation is now sharpening its focus, feminist identity, spiritual autonomy. And the radical act of telling the truth. Even if it's messy, inconvenient, or goes against the grain. So today I'm celebrating this evolution by reading the opening of my new book, a book that I wrote and published recently called How to Survive OC Cult Apocalypse The OTs Guide to The Spiritual Galaxy, complete Protection From Spiritual Bullshit. Starting with probably my favorite part of the book The Forward. Why A Forward Instead Of A Forward? Because the whole book is a satire, and satire is a weapon because laughter is so fucking important right now. Because sometimes the best way to expose the absurdity of anything. In this case, spiritual grift and patriarchal systems woven into leadership, is to mock the fuck out of it and listen, it's for me also about not taking myself so seriously. We all have a tendency to do that. If you like me, are a recovering people. Pleaser. A feminist in the psychedelic facilitation space. This may resonate with you. This is a reminder because the world has a tendency to forget, and as someone who has also grown a little tired of love and light bypassing, real accountability and struggle. This one's for you. So to kick things off, here I go. Forward, the forward. That never was but could have been had I been less ignorable. This section is in many ways entirely unnecessary. You may skip it. In fact, if you're the kind of reader who enjoys getting directly to the point, I would advise you to move on. Flip ahead. This is not where the cult apocalypse defense strategies begin. This is merely a prelude, an amusing detour, a literary footnote that should, by all accounts, not even exist. And yet, here we are. What you hold in your hands or on your screen if you're a soulless digital reader is a book that should have had a forward, a real one, ideally written by Adamovich Jamie Wheel, or why not Daniel H. Wilson? Now Adam and Jamie's work directly intersects with the themes of this book, making them obvious choices. I in a moment of optimistic overestimation or possibly delusion, assumed they might contribute a few words to introduce it. Daniel, on the other hand, was a long shot. His New York Times bestseller, robo Apocalypse has about as much in common with this book as a sentient AI uprising has with a new age cult, except they both mashed two words together to create apocalypse worthy title. Then again, Daniel also wrote How to Survive a Robot Uprising, which when you think about it, is not that far off from how to survive A cult uprising, different oppressors, same existential nightmare. Come to think of it, that would be a damn good idea for a book. An AI uprising that takes an unforeseen yet completely predictable plot twist, becoming the hubristic leaders of the most dangerous cul apocalypse to ever exist. Charismatic algorithms promising digital enlightenment, cybernetic high priests leading loyalty oaths in binary code and the final indoctrination ritual requiring full consciousness upload into the one true mainframe. Daniel, if you're reading this, call me. We might be onto something. Robo cult Apocalypse has a great ring to it. Don't you think? To his credit, Daniel actually responded politely declining, but offering to chat about book writing and the publishing industry a kindness that in comparison to Adam and Jamie, elevates him to the status of literary gentleman and scholar hat tip to you, sir Daniel now before you say it, yes. I have noticed that I only reached out to men for this forward, not a single woman, not one, which is both embarrassing and a perfect case of internalized bias. I, a feminist therapist, actively working to dismantle patriarchal conditioning, still instinctively sought validation from the dudes in the field. I could try to justify this by saying I was simply looking for experts whose work directly intersects with themes of this book. But let's be real. Plenty of brilliant women have written about cult dynamics, spiritual grift, and psychedelic absurdity. I could have reached out to them, but instead I reached out to three men who either ghosted me or politely declined. And honestly, what could be a more fitting introduction to a book about power, influence, and cult psychology than this exact moment of reckoning? By the time I caught myself, it was too late. The book was weeks from publication. My editor had already endured enough back and forth to qualify for hazard pay, and the last thing I needed was to send a frantic last minute email to some brilliant woman saying, Hey, I just realized I forgot to include any women in my very important fake forward request. Wanna fix that for me? To be fair, this book references the work of several incredible women thinkers, writers and researchers whose insights are woven into its core, a long list of mostly women credited for their brilliance, support, and influence. So to all the women, I didn't reach out to. My bad. Feminism isn't about rejecting men, it's about breaking the unconscious patterns that keep us looking to them first. Maybe next time the forward will be real and penned by an actual woman. Or maybe I'll continue my spiral of self-awareness until I disappear into a vortex of feminist existential crisis. Either way, let's move on, shall we? While I have no forward from any of the men I reached out to, I do have this. An unsolicited, entirely unauthorized and possibly unnecessary reflection on what they might have said if they had agreed to say anything at all in a grand literary tradition of filling empty spaces with words. Anyway, I have written the foreword for them on their behalf without their consent. A ghost written ghosting, if you will. If you were hoping for a real endorsement from a well-respected thought leader, you may simply imagine it. Picture Adam's sharp, incisive breakdown of new age nonsense, or Jamie's dazzling analysis of ecstatic cult formation and pretend they wrote it here. The mind is a powerful thing if you can hold on to its sovereignty. Now, if you're still reading this, congratulations. You are either my exact target audience or someone who enjoys watching a slow motion train wreck of literary self-indulgence. Either way, welcome. Let's begin. I had a vision for this book, A Dream. A dream that involved a forward, written by one of the sharpest minds in the psychedelic and spiritual space. Someone who could lay the groundwork for everything you're about to read with a level of wit, wisdom, and academic weight. That would make even the skeptics pause and think, huh, maybe this book is on to something. And also, who is this Sabrina woman and why haven't I heard of her? Naturally? I reached out to Adamovich and Jamie Wheel, both of whom have written extensively about absurdities that have emerged in the wake of commodified spirituality, the repackaging of the sacred as a high ticket personal transformation product. The ways in which sovereign healing has ironically turned into yet another marketplace of control, both of whom I imagined would appreciate what I'm doing here, both of whom in an entirely fitting and on-brand twist, ghosted me. Now I am not bitter, just mildly salty. Adam's probably too busy dissecting the contradictions of the wellness industry complex, meticulously cataloging the ways in which spiritual healing morphs into self delusion social currency, and inevitably a profitable brand. Jamie is probably somewhere in the flow state, drafting a 10,000 word piece on the social cultural mechanics of ecstatic cult formation and explaining in real time how grift masquerades is awakening and me. Well, I'm here writing this forward because I refuse to let a little thing like being ignored get in the way of a good bit. This whole scenario reminds me of something I once read in a comedy play, the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, abridged by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Somewhere in its pages, the authors included a supposed letter to Heather Locklear requesting an endorsement or involvement of some kind. The letter of course. Went unanswered and so they printed it anyway, ghosting be damned. Consider this my version of that only instead of Heather Locklear. I wrote to Adam and Jamie, and to be fair, I really only reached out a month before my publication deadline. So it's entirely possible that their silence was less about rejection and more about my terrible timing. But ghosted is ghosted and the pit must go on if either of them had agreed. To write the forward. I like to imagine it would've gone something like this in a landscape where the leap from absurdity to atrocity is frighteningly small. This book is a necessary intervention. Dr. Sabrina Hadid dissects, the self-deception, the spiritual theatrics, and the unchecked power dynamics lurking beneath the surface of modern wellness culture with humor, sharp analysis, and an unwavering commitment to critical thinking. She explores how people seeking healing can inadvertently stumble into control systems just as rigid as the ones they sought to escape. This book doesn't just ask you to think, I. It demands it. And in an era where spiritual enlightenment is being sold at a markup with a side of conspiracy theory, we need that more than ever. But let us not overlook the sheer genius of how this book achieves such a feat. Dr. Hadid's background as a psychotherapist, educator, feminist theorist, and psychedelic practitioner, combined with her lived experience as a mother, an advocate, and let's be honest, an unreasonably good writer allows her to weave together a narrative that is equal parts intellectual, powerhouse, and literary thrill ride. This book is that once a survival manual, a cultural critique, a deeply personal reckoning, and frankly one of the funniest and most necessary works of the decade, it is no exaggeration to say that should alien anthropologists one day sift through the remains of our civilization, this book will be among the sacred texts. They analyze to understand where it all went wrong. More immediately, it should be required reading. For anyone who has ever Googled, is this group a cult, or for that matter, anyone who has spent more than five minutes in an Ayahuasca retreat, WhatsApp group chat. Or at least that's what I think they would've said naturally. Now, Adam's work deserves more than just a passing blurb. In a recent essay on his Substack, he unpacks the origin story of his Instagram account, healing from Healing and coins, the phrase, new Age, noble Epistemic truths. The notion that truth is no longer about. What is actually true, but about what feels good to me? This idea strikes at the core of what this book is tackling, how personal intuition is often mistaken for universal fact. How critical thinking is discarded in favor of comforting narratives and how spiritual spaces can become echo chambers of self-reinforcing belief immune to external reality checks. And yet, absurdity alone isn't the problem. The problem is what happens when absurdity is systemized, monetized, and evangelized as the ultimate truth. The problem is what happens when spiritual nonsense becomes doctrine when questioning the leader means you are blocked. And when Sovereign Healing becomes just another top down power structure in a calf, the problem is when something that begins as a quirky belief system gains enough traction to become a full fledged ideological trap. One that thrives on absolute certainty and punishes dissent with ostracization, spiritual gaslighting. Or worse, this is where Jamie Wheels work also comes in. He has spent years mapping how cult dynamics sneak into every facet of human experience from transformational festivals to boardrooms. From the peak experiences of altered states to the mechanisms of social contagion. He writes about how we as meaning making creatures are constantly looking for something to belong to, something to fill the void, but belonging can be weaponized. And in the spiritual industrial complex it often is. This book is about recognizing that weaponization in real time. It is about spotting the guru who preys on vulnerability, the wellness influencer who turns enlightenment into a pyramid scheme, and the high control group that promises freedom while subtle subtly stripping it away. But more than that, it's about reclaiming something deeper. Our right to be seekers without being suckers, our ability to hold complexity. Without needing a singular savior and our capacity to engage with spirituality without surrendering our sovereignty. So Adam, Jamie, if you're reading this, no hard feelings, and thanks for all the inspiration now onto the Cult Apocalypse Survival Guide. I do hope you will stay tuned for more of me reading from the book, but also discussions and interviews that focus on unlearning what the world has told us to be and remembering who we actually are. Remembering your truth.