In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, Joe talks about the new movie "Brad Pitt's Big Little Lies" and how it's not so good. Also, he talks about his new book, "The Devil Next Door" and why he doesn't want to live in California. Also, we talk about Ting and why you should get an Android phone from them instead of a Sprint phone. And we discuss how much better it is to be a parent in California than you are in any other state and how you can protect your kids in court if you don't live there. Joe also talks about why he thinks it's a good idea to have a trust fund for your kids. And finally, he does a deep dive into how he thinks your parents should be able to do whatever they want with your kids' money and what they should do if they don't pay their fair share in taxes. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! We really appreciate the support we've gotten so far. Thank you so much for all the love, support, and support, we really appreciate it. See ya soon! -Jon and Alex Jon and Alex, - Alex and Alex: Joe Rogans: The Other Side of the Lawyer's Note: This episode is sponsored by Ting and LegalZoom. - This episode was written and produced by Audible, and this episode was produced by Rocha, so we hope you like it. Please rate, review, review and subscribe to the podcast, and tell a friend about it so we can spread the love everywhere you listen to it, and share it everywhere you see it. Thank you, and review it and tell your friends about it and spread it around the good vibes everywhere you can get it everywhere they do it and it's cool, it's awesome, and you can be a little bit of it's good, and we're cool like that's cool and it helps us all of that kind of stuff like that and more like that sort of thing. -- Thank you for being kind of thing like that, right? -- thank you, bye! -- thanks, bye, Freaks! -- -- JOE ROGAN Experience Podcast: --Jon: , & Anthony: -Josie & Anthony
00:03:44.000Legalzoom.com is a website that essentially, they lay the framework for legal issues that you would normally have to go to a lawyer for and pay a lot of money.
00:03:59.000What LegalZoom wants to emphasize very clearly is they're not a law firm.
00:04:04.000They provide self-help services at your specific direction and they can also connect you with an independent attorney if you need additional guidance.
00:04:14.000What they're there for is to make it much easier to do things like incorporate or form an LLC. You can do it at LegalZoom.com for just $99.
00:04:54.000I might be 100% wrong with you, but...
00:04:57.000No, but I guess there is a thing, if you don't have a will, you think it just automatically goes to your family, but that's not always the case.
00:05:05.000Yeah, but I would assume that it would be a pain in the ass to decide, especially if you're living with someone, like if you're living with a girl or something like that, or a girl has a key to your house and she knows you're dead and just comes over and takes your shit, that's how you know the little she cares about you.
00:06:08.000You get a special discount from listening to this podcast, so just enter the codename Rogan in the referral box and check out for more savings.
00:08:08.000I'm not talking about diseases, dummy.
00:08:09.000There's a retarded tranny somewhere going, Oh, no.
00:08:13.000Oh, I can't believe you did the voice.
00:08:15.000On it.com, the new Primal Bells are in.
00:08:18.000If you haven't seen them, we hired this awesome sculptor to draw these angry chimpanzee faces for kettlebells.
00:08:27.000Gives you a little bit of extra motivation when you're working out.
00:08:29.000I like to picture that chimp Clamping down on my scrotum with his teeth, that gets me through the last four or five reps.
00:08:36.000If you've never used kettlebells before, what they are is, in my opinion, one of the very best strength and conditioning exercise equipment, pieces of exercise equipment that you can buy.
00:08:46.000They're a Russian invention, and it's like a cannonball with a handle on it.
00:08:50.000And you swing them around, and you use your entire body in these movements.
00:08:55.000And I find that that's what really applies to not just physical sports, but just physical movement, all physical movement.
00:09:05.000Like picking things up, the ability to move stuff around your house.
00:09:11.000Whereas a lot of people, one of the problems with people who don't use a professional trainer or don't exactly know what you're doing, you can develop imbalances.
00:09:21.000with your body because maybe you use your arms too much, you don't use your legs enough, or vice-a-verse, and it can be a mess.
00:09:28.000One of the best things you can do if you're thinking about kettlebells or any kind of exercise thing is to hire someone who's really good who can show you what to do.
00:09:39.000You can learn a lot of stuff from YouTube, but you really should have someone sort of correcting subtle things in the way you're moving.
00:09:46.000Just to make sure that you have good form.
00:12:04.000It's like you're coming at it from a whole bunch of different angles.
00:12:07.000This isn't just doctors, it's not just chemists, it's a whole bunch of human beings.
00:12:13.000Yeah, and I had learned from a previous nonprofit that when you want to create a nonprofit, it's good to try to make it as broad as possible, the purpose, as you see different strategic ways to do things.
00:12:25.000So I made it multidisciplinary, which means we could look at psychedelics from virtually any perspective, association to mean that it's publicly supported, a nonprofit, and I had images of tens of thousands of people banding together to support research in different areas.
00:12:44.000Psychedelic was a big choice, actually, whether we should use the word, whether we should use a different word, whether we should use a euphemism.
00:12:55.000And so I felt like I wanted, in this kind of second coming of psychedelics into the culture, 40 years after the crackdown, that I wanted there to be a certain transparency.
00:13:05.000And so I wanted to use the word psychedelic so people knew what I was doing.
00:13:09.000And I was hoping that we can change the cultural connotations from What it was in the 60s of psychedelics, rebellion, dropping out, finding your own sort of private utopia somewhere, a certain kind of not integrated into the culture.
00:13:27.000And now that's, I think, the arc of the story is psychedelics came at a time when culture wasn't really ready and brought all sorts of things to the surface.
00:13:36.000And over the last 40 years, our culture has gotten ready with hospice centers, with birthing centers, with Yoga, meditation, all the things with flotation tanks, all the things that were too hard to integrate at the time, death and birth and just raw emotions,
00:13:53.000and also this globalization and growing sense of global spirituality.
00:13:58.000Now our culture is ready and I think we can, over the next 10-20 years, integrate psychedelics without the connotation of rebellion but to enhance what we're all doing together.
00:14:13.000It shouldn't be something that people are afraid of or afraid of adding to something because it will somehow or another make it silly or make it, oh, psychedelics.
00:14:23.000People want to dismiss it and they can much easier.
00:14:27.000Owning it, I think, is very important.
00:14:29.000Yeah, and there's no other word that's even better.
00:14:42.000And for folks who don't know anything about psychedelics, they imagine, like, literally, like, imagining someone in the room with you and that guy, it doesn't really exist.
00:14:52.000Yeah, and you can't even tell the difference.
00:14:53.000The word before that, in the 50s, was even worse.
00:17:39.000When he saw the crackdown come, I think he sort of took this superior position and just felt like he's not going to work on a political struggle or even a scientific struggle to get these tools back.
00:17:57.000He just had this somewhat self-destructive aspect, too.
00:18:03.000I read a lot about him and I met him and I actually ended up Trying to do MDMA therapy with him when it felt like he was really going downhill from the ketamine and from cocaine.
00:18:23.000He and Stan Groff, and I would contrast them that Stan is doing fantastically, is traveling the world, is totally together, and a major inspiration who is able to integrate into his life, whereas John Lilly was You could say arguably as brilliant,
00:18:54.000It's just a different view of reality.
00:18:57.000And I think that the grounding part, and what we emphasize in our psychedelic therapy, is that it's the integration work.
00:19:05.000More than the experience itself that produces long-term benefits.
00:19:08.000So then you can have these unusual experiences, but what do you bring back from them?
00:19:13.000And how do you integrate that into your daily practices so that it's anchored so that you can try to get there without the drug?
00:19:20.000It's like this evolution process where you learn something, And I've found, at least, that for me, the psychedelics are something that I can work with through a lifetime, through a lifespan.
00:19:32.000Some people say, when you get the message, hang up the phone.
00:19:35.000And I've felt that there's been different messages at different stages of my life, and that I'm more able, although it's still really hard, to hear those things, the self-critical stuff, like what you did in high school, or how you try to hear the message underneath the criticism.
00:19:55.000I learned that a lot during an Ibogaine experience.
00:19:58.000So I've seen that these experiences can have these lasting changes, but that they don't always and they don't have to.
00:20:06.000And particularly when you have these experiences that are unbalanced and the drug starts wearing off and you haven't come to a new balance.
00:20:13.000And during those periods the best solution at least is to continue therapy and do another Session, and that's where people often back off, and they kind of freeze something in place that's at such a deep level, it's hard to get to that deep level to move it forward.
00:20:30.000Yeah, it's a very personal thing, isn't it?
00:20:36.000You know, for some folks, it's like they already have issues with reality itself.
00:20:41.000They have issues with being grounded, with being calm, and I mean, it's...
00:20:47.000Some people, you could just get them high or they could have some sort of psychedelic experience and they would be able to assimilate it into their life and they would benefit from it almost immediately.
00:20:59.000Whereas other folks almost needed to be...
00:21:01.000I think education is one of the big ones that we're really lacking in this country when it comes to these things.
00:21:20.000Our holotherapeutic approach is based on the idea that there's an inner healer and it's the support that we provide to help people heal themselves.
00:21:28.000So there's a power dynamic often in shamanism where sometimes the shaman is even the only one that does the drug and then heals you.
00:21:36.000It's not teaching you how to heal yourself.
00:21:39.000So that we have this idea that like the body heals itself if you get a cut, that the psyche has these self-healing mechanisms and brings things kind of to the surface so that it's not so much reality and psychedelic state.
00:21:54.000It's almost like reality and more reality.
00:21:58.000And we know that from fMRI brain scan studies that were recently done In England with psilocybin, that what it does in the brain is different than what we had been thinking.
00:22:09.000And we had been thinking that it makes the brain speed up, that some things work even faster, that your perceptions are going...
00:22:17.000And actually what it does is it makes parts of the brain slow down, but it's the filtering parts of the brain, so that we have enormous volume of perceptions coming to us at any one time.
00:22:30.000And that's kind of what you can see in the tank, too, that When you start quieting everything down, you can really, you know, think in different ways.
00:22:37.000But we have this enormous amount of information, and we only narrow and look at some of it, what we need to do, either for survival or for, we focus.
00:22:46.000And the controlling, the filtering parts of the brain are what psilocybin slows down, so that they work less well, so you get more of a flood of what's already there.
00:22:58.000What is the mechanism, the filtering parts of the brain?
00:23:01.000When you say the filtering parts of the brain, what are those?
00:23:03.000Well, they're generally linked in what's called the default network, the default mode network.
00:23:12.000And here becomes kind of a practical side of the work that I do, which is basically trying to develop psychedelic drugs into prescription medicines and marijuana.
00:23:25.000So from the FDA's point of view, uh...
00:23:28.000you have to show something safe and efficacious but you don't have to explain how it works so therefore i haven't really focused on that so i don't know the answer your question because uh...
00:23:39.000it's neuroscience and i don't need neuroscience to know the exact You know, the quadrants of the brain.
00:23:45.000So I've kind of got people I work with and other people I rely on and other scientists to do that part.
00:23:53.000It helps if you have an explanatory mechanism, but at the same time it's not necessary.
00:23:58.000So what I've done is try to be strategic and try to focus on the stuff that's essential to move the culture forward, to create legal context, For psychedelics to show that they can be used responsibly.
00:24:08.000Well, I was asking more for my own edification.
00:26:19.000It's very different than just exercising.
00:26:23.000But I think that this idea of creating a space, like in the tank or like a therapeutic setting, where you're not paying attention to all those daily things, where you can sink deeper to other questions of life, that is really important.
00:26:38.000You have to kind of consciously create a space for that.
00:27:09.000And every trip that I've had where that's happened, there have only been a few of them that are really super uncomfortable, just really bad.
00:27:17.000But those always, I benefited from those.
00:27:25.000Like, especially with the eating marijuana.
00:27:28.000The eating marijuana thing, a lot of folks do not give that the proper respect.
00:27:34.000And that's why they freak out and call the cops.
00:27:36.000I'm sure you've heard the great video of the police officers who stole marijuana from someone they pulled over and then made pot brownies and then got so high they panicked and called the police.
00:27:56.000Oh sure, play it just for a goof because it's fucking ridiculous.
00:27:59.000These poor people, what they didn't know, these dirty cops, is that marijuana, when it's processed by your liver, when you eat it, produces something called 11-hydroxymetabolite, an incredibly psychoactive material.
00:28:32.000So at Burning Man Boom, other festivals where we provide and organize teams of therapists and others that work with people that have difficult trips.
00:28:42.000And the most people come sometimes is for eating too much marijuana.
00:28:45.000Yeah, people don't realize, oh, this easily can be as strong as any psychedelic you take.
00:31:57.000That's interesting, but I mean, don't you think also he's just fucking panicking and thinking that he overdosed on a drug and just shitting his pants?
00:32:04.000I mean, not even an ego death, just an absolute fear of the fact that you don't know what the hell was in there.
00:34:08.000I don't think it's a competition or a race.
00:34:10.000I think they all have their own little impact.
00:34:12.000Yeah, we're talking about psychedelic medicine, psychedelic spirituality, and it's the whole range of drugs at different times at different places, but we do have to narrow it.
00:34:21.000The other thing about psychedelics is there's a lot of states that can be achieved naturally.
00:34:26.000I think in the pursuit of psychedelics as a discipline, as something to truly, legitimately study, I think one of the things that they're going to open up is what yoga does to the body.
00:34:53.000And I'm aware of friends, long-term yoga practitioners, long-term meditators, who have found that it's not either-or.
00:35:03.000That you can, when you're practiced in these ways, too, that you can have a psychedelic experience, you can go to a deeper place, and then you can work You have a better sense of where you want to be and you can work sometimes for years to ground it and integrate it.
00:35:19.000So I think the over-reliance on psychedelics can prove to be harmful because you're not doing the integration or with John Lilly, you're escaping.
00:35:28.000But the idea that you'll stay somehow or other pure and do things all on your own, there's a certain kind of Slowness or egotism about that.
00:35:40.000It's not inappropriate to admit sometimes that we need physical catalysts.
00:36:14.000No, you could definitely look at it that way.
00:36:16.000I just think the idea is very strange when we know that Look, our bodies are these weird biological machines that we're constantly feeding different things to.
00:36:29.000We're constantly giving it different kinds of nutrients.
00:36:34.000We experiment with our carbohydrate balance and our protein balance.
00:36:37.000We experiment with all these different things.
00:36:39.000But when it comes to taking a plant, especially something like mushrooms, we've documented many thousands of years of use, and to decide all of a sudden that this is a weakness and that this is just unnecessary in society, as if our society is perfect in every way,
00:36:57.000and no need for self-examination here at all.
00:37:01.000Yeah, well, we're actually an anomaly as far as society goes, because most of them have The use of drugs, the use of altered states in some kind of sanctioned manner.
00:37:14.000It's repressed and prohibited throughout our lifetimes.
00:37:18.000We kind of have a sense that maybe that's the way it's been large parts of human history, but it's not been that way.
00:37:24.000They're encased in religious rituals or different kind of cultural contexts, but they're not prohibited and they're respected.
00:37:31.000And I think that's where I think it's definitely changing.
00:37:46.000What's really crazy is that the people who are suppressing psychedelics, the people who seek to suppress it, are the ones who need them more than anybody.
00:39:35.000When you stop and think about the effectiveness of marijuana, not just for people, like as far as a drug, and not just for its psychoactive properties, but just the plant hemp itself, just all the amazing benefits it has as far as nutrition,
00:39:52.000construction methods, making paper and clothes, and all these different things.
00:39:55.000The fact that somehow or another they kept that from the public, and kept it into wraps, and kept it really from the average person's database.
00:40:03.000Most people just Ask him about marijuana being illegal.
00:40:10.000People don't even know what the fuck hemp is.
00:40:12.000Well, what they should know is that the largest hemp-importing country in the world is the United States, and the largest hemp-exporting country in the world is China.
00:40:36.000And that's really what it boils down to.
00:40:38.000Pharmaceutical drugs, without a doubt, don't want marijuana to become legal.
00:40:42.000And one of the doorways for marijuana to become legal is people figuring out how incredibly effective hemp is for so many things that we use other stuff for, besides the psychoactive properties.
00:40:58.000The company that I'm involved with on it, my friend Aubrey and I, when we first started talking about hemp, we thought, well, Maybe we could get a farm in this country and grow this hemp seed and then use it for the protein powder.
00:42:17.000What they do is social justice activism.
00:42:21.000They focus on fair trade, on other things.
00:42:24.000But what David did about four months ago or five months ago is he constructed a cage, a metal cage.
00:42:31.000And he had someone drop it off with him inside it in front of the White House right across the street and he was processing hemp plants he had gotten real hemp seeds he had grown it in the United States and he was processing it into hemp oil and he did this as a protest and the cage was to prevent the police to slow them down while they tried to stop him from doing it and he actually got convicted and had to do public service but what he was trying to show
00:43:01.000is that hemp which can be a food which can be any number of different things and can be grown in the United States was a crime and just making it into hemp oil to put on his bread was enough to put him in jail and to give him a It doesn't make any sense,
00:43:19.000and it's insane that it continues to go on.
00:43:21.000It's one of those weird aspects of our society where you look at it and you go, well, there's got to be a reason.
00:43:30.000And you look for a reason, and it literally doesn't exist.
00:43:33.000Well, I think there are real strong reasons that go really deep that make it easier to miss them.
00:43:38.000But I think the natural fear that each of us has for when our social controls are relaxed...
00:43:44.000That will become whatever we will become.
00:43:47.000You talk about even in the tent one, the flotation tank, when things come up.
00:43:52.000You know, it's just people are scared of the compromises they've had to make to live in society and of their basic urges and what happens when they're not in control.
00:44:01.000And that's what these drugs represent.
00:44:03.000And the 60s also represented not only these people that let themselves get out of control, then they want to leave and drop out, and then they want to change things.
00:45:04.000And I think the other part of it is that...
00:45:07.000The drug laws have been used for social repression against minorities, and either Mexicans or blacks or hippies, and letting loose of that avenue of control in the power system.
00:45:21.000And I think what we're needing to do to integrate these things, to legalize marijuana, to legalize gay marriage, these kind of things where people see it's not going to tear apart the fabrics of society.
00:45:30.000That people can make contributions and that people can also learn to deal with their, you know, deep desires so that they're not so scared of them.
00:45:38.000Yeah, we've made some massive headway as a culture because of that.
00:45:42.000The gay marriage thing, the fact that Idaho got it before California, that hurt.
00:46:22.000It's a legal contract that you sign with another human being and then you're going to bring in a bunch of other people if it doesn't work out and they get to dictate where your money and property goes.
00:47:48.000I've heard women being completely outside of them, eavesdropping in on a conversation.
00:47:53.000And women were talking about, you know, I felt like much more secure in the marriage or in the relationship.
00:47:59.000Once we were married, it doesn't make any sense, but we were together for 10 years, but once we got married, then I felt like it was real, and then I could relax.
00:48:42.000I've seen people that got along great and then one person took a left, the other person took a right and they're stuck in the same house together and they don't like each other anymore.
00:49:27.000What I'm not for is this gross system where the lawyers play off of each other and try to stretch things out because that's how they make the most money.
00:49:36.000Where they ask for outrageous amounts so that you come back with like a little bit less.
00:50:28.000Well, it's like when you described that somebody takes the left, the other person takes the right.
00:50:31.000I think that when we started trying to think about MDMA for couples therapy, because that's one of the main reasons people use it, is for relationships.
00:50:42.000But not all relationships should stay together.
00:50:45.000So trying to do a study, a scientific study of MDMA with couples, if you decide that your success is how many of them stay married, that's not necessarily the smartest thing to do.
00:50:57.000So what we felt was that it would be if they make a mutual decision.
00:51:03.000and whatever that decision happens to be if it can be they stay together they split up if there's some kind of mutuality about it the MDMA helps them to listen to each other and to communicate and they can make a mutual decision that would be considered a success but we haven't gone forward with that research because politically Having a difficult relationship is not a disease.
00:51:24.000We need to work in a disease context so that we can get prescription approval to have legal access in a medical context.
00:51:58.000He didn't even put it in the four-hour, whatever, four-hour body, because he was worried that people would just start chewing him like candy.
00:52:04.000Well, I happen to know somebody that uses it for narcolepsy.
00:52:07.000He uses it twice a day for about, you know, 15 years.
00:54:36.000I guess I just never tried to go get prescription medicine ever.
00:54:40.000Well, I... I think there's a time when, if it's possibly helpful, that it can be okay to do it.
00:54:49.000I think I prefer trying to do things on my own without it, and then only if it's beyond my capabilities or something that I think enhances it.
00:54:59.000So I think the idea of jet lag, if doctors do want you to have a It's a relationship to what it was approved for.
00:55:10.000But around 40% of the prescriptions in America are called off-label, where doctors prescribe it for things that it's not been approved for.
00:56:18.000Listen, I've gone in for operations before, and they gave me all kinds of shit that I didn't take, but they'll give you whatever you need for pain, even if you tell them it's nothing.
00:56:32.000I went in to get a deviated septum, and it's kind of an uncomfortable thing.
00:56:38.000They stuff your nose, and they crack it, and break it, and widen it.
00:57:00.000I had this stuff stuffed up my nose, but there was no pain.
00:57:04.000But meanwhile, if you're a person who's easily addictive, and you take one of those, and you go, God damn it, I can't sleep, and then you take two more of those, and the next thing you know, you go into another doctor and tell them you're in pain, you get a second prescription, and you're off to the races.
00:57:18.000Yeah, we had one of the veterans in our PTSD study...
00:57:23.000Took one dose, dropped out of the study.
00:57:26.000And under the influence of this medium dose of MDMA, he started feeling that he was taking pain meds, not just for the pain, but he was kind of getting addicted, dependent on them.
00:57:38.000And he didn't want to do that anymore.
00:57:42.000And so he decided that he didn't need the pain meds anymore.
00:57:45.000And he also felt like he had come to terms with the Issues that had caused him to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, that he accepted these things, and that he could go forward without PTSD. And so he dropped out of the study, but we said, we want to ask you at 2 months and 12 months,
00:58:08.000The PTSD use, the use of MDMA for PTSD, is one of the ones that was discussed recently by this soldier who wrote this very eloquent letter and then committed suicide.
00:58:21.000But he was talking about the DEA keeping treatments.
00:58:24.000I just read that letter on the airplane here.
00:58:26.000Yeah, I assumed that was what he was talking about because it's a big issue with veterans.
00:58:30.000I assumed he was talking about marijuana.
00:58:33.000Well, it could be that as well, but I thought it was MDMA. Probably both, but the MDMA one has been discussed a lot by friends that I have that have been in the military.
00:58:41.000They know it helps, and they want to know about it.
00:58:57.000We had a meeting in the Pentagon where we were trying to get formal cooperation.
00:59:02.000And they expressed that their biggest fear was that if they were to cooperate on an MDMA study, that the word would get out more so than before, and that a lot of people who were in the military, who only a small number of them will get into clinical studies, that they would go out on their own and get stuff that was impure or pure but not in a safe place,
00:59:44.000And I think that if they wanted to start a Kickstarter to have MDMA clinics pop up with legitimate stuff, government approved and tested all throughout the country, it could be user funded.
00:59:54.000We are going to do that with the Indiegogo.
00:59:56.000Kickstarter doesn't take medical issues, but Indiegogo does.
01:00:07.000The thing about the psychedelics, so that people understand what we're really talking about with the psychedelic medicine, is it's only used a few times.
01:00:14.000It's not like the drugs that we were talking about that people get prescribed every day or several times a day.
01:00:20.000It's only part of a psychotherapeutic process with more non-drug psychotherapy sessions and what they can integrate from it.
01:00:29.000So our three-and-a-half-month program for PTSD treatment includes only three days of MDMA. Right.
01:00:36.000I think people need to understand that all these things are tools that have been denied us.
01:00:43.000I used to do a joke about it that marijuana is like a hammer.
01:00:47.000You could hammer nails with it or you could just hit yourself in the dick if you're fucking crazy.
01:00:52.000Just because you have a tool doesn't mean you're going to use it properly.
01:00:55.000And when you smoke too much pot and freak out, and when you take acid and jump off a roof, yes, you've done it improperly.
01:01:02.000But you're dealing with this incredibly complex thing that is really not being explained to the general public.
01:01:09.000The dabbling in psychedelics is all sort of done with...
01:01:13.000anecdotal evidence passed on by friends or books that you've read or all these, you know, and it's unnecessary.
01:01:20.000At this point, we have enough information, there's enough data, there's enough online at maps.org, right?
01:01:26.000We are doing drug development in the open.
01:01:28.000We publish our protocols, we publish our data, we publish all of our timelines of our relationships with regulatory, we publish our review of the literature, we have a treatment manual that describes What the therapy component is that's there with our adherence criteria.
01:01:46.000We're trying to make all of it publicly available.
01:01:49.000And at the same time, that's the pressure that's coming on the pharmaceutical companies actually to release more of their data.
01:01:55.000But the important thing is that the DEA is not stopping MDMA research.
01:02:00.000We are able to do psychedelic research in the United States and most countries of the world where we want to.
01:02:07.000We have studies right now in Israel, Switzerland, Canada, And we've done Ibogaine research in Mexico and New Zealand, Ayahuasca research in Canada, so that the only thing that's really politically blocked right now is marijuana research.
01:02:52.000And it turns out that in the late 1980s, there was a lot of, particularly Reagan had been before, pro-business, there was a lot of concern that the FDA was too slow evaluating drugs, that they were mostly trying to block risks and they didn't care that much about treating illness.
01:03:08.000And so the FDA set up this group called the Pilot Drug Evaluation Staff.
01:03:13.000Which was that they would pilot drug evaluation methods to try to speed up the drug review process.
01:03:20.000And this group needed drugs to actually work with.
01:03:24.000And so they looked around the other parts of the FDA and they kind of cobbled together different kind of drugs and they looked at the people that had control over scheduled drugs and marijuana, all the psychedelics, and they had been suppressing things for decades.
01:03:38.000And they said, sure, we'll give this up.
01:03:40.000And so this new branch came, but they also were more science over politics.
01:03:47.000So starting in 1990, the first study was approved with DMT by Rick Strassman.
01:03:53.000And we had tried for five studies before, for years before with MDMA, all rejected.
01:03:59.000But once this new team got into place, then they had to review our study MDMA for cancer patients with anxiety.
01:04:06.000And there was a 1992 Advisory Committee meeting to determine whether the FDA would go forward with psychedelic research.
01:04:14.000And they did it bureaucratically in a brilliant way.
01:04:28.000And their idea was that the regulations that they put on the major drugs for the pharmaceutical industries, The risks of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana were no different.
01:04:39.000And so they would treat these drugs as if they were drugs being developed by the pharmaceutical industry and the same procedures would be fine.
01:04:47.000And the DEA, NIDA, the drug czar's office, they all thought, man, you put it in there, it'll never get out again because who can act like the pharmaceutical companies?
01:04:57.000And so they all signed off, and FDA got this policy in 1992, and then they approved our first study with MDMA, which was a safety study.
01:05:05.000And then they started approving studies with psilocybin, and then expanding our MDMA studies into patient populations.
01:05:12.000So there's a 20-year history now and a lot of track record and data, and now we have data on the benefit side, not just on the risk side.
01:05:24.000Before people could say there are no benefits, there's these risks, therefore nothing's permitted.
01:05:29.000So the dynamics have completely changed and we've demonstrated so far over 800 people have taken MDMA in clinical research all over the world.
01:05:39.000And nobody's had a serious adverse event that left them harmful.
01:05:47.000Nobody has become addict as far as we know to MDMA. Nobody went crazy.
01:05:51.000So we've demonstrated there are safe places.
01:05:53.000Our study with LSD in Switzerland for people who are dying was 12 people, and 11 of them had never done LSD before.
01:06:01.000So we're trying to show that it can be brought to people who are not from this culture, not used to this, but it can be helpful to them in a controlled setting with supportive therapists and with a lot of integration and preparation work.
01:06:17.000And people are aware of other studies like the Johns Hopkins study on psilocybin now that's gotten a lot of steam because these people many years later experienced great personality benefits that stuck with them.
01:06:29.000Yeah, that was the study of psilocybin in people who were spiritually inclined to see if they could have a spiritual experience.
01:06:38.000That actually, there was the classic study that that's modeled on, was called the Good Friday Experiment.
01:06:44.000And it was done in 1962. And it was one of the best things that Timothy Leary ever did.
01:06:50.000And I ended up doing a 25-year follow-up to it, tracking these people down.
01:06:56.000Lots of people thought that psychedelics had some genuine spiritual potential.
01:07:02.000And Martin Luther King was getting a PhD at Boston University, and his mentor there was Reverend Howard Thurman, this dynamic black minister who's just fantastic.
01:07:12.000And he agreed to have Timothy Leary and Ram Dass and others, 20 people and 10 guides, come into their church on Good Friday and do an experiment.
01:07:21.000And these were all students from Andover Newton Theological Seminary.
01:07:27.000Half were psilocybin, 30 milligrams, which is pretty strong, and the other half was nicotinic acid, which gives you this hot flush, and it acts quicker, so that was going to be their double blind.
01:07:38.000And then they went through the Good Friday service, and Walter Pankey, who did this study, was a doctor, a minister, and getting a PhD at Harvard, and he had spent a year going through the world's mystical literature to develop a questionnaire for what the mystical experience was.
01:07:55.000He extracted all specific mentions of, you know, Jesus or Moses, or it's just more of this abstract, what is a mystical experience, and administered this questionnaire, and nine out of the 20 people had either a partial or a full mystical experience,
01:08:12.000and eight out of those nine had the psilocybin.
01:08:15.000And so the conclusion was that for people who are religiously inclined in a religious setting, you can have psychedelic drugs, psilocybin, does precipitate what seems to be a genuine mystical experience, not a hallucination.
01:08:29.000But in the mystical literature, the real test is called the fruits test, is what does you bring back?
01:08:34.000What are the fruits of this experience?
01:08:39.000And Walter Panke, who did the study, died from a scuba diving accident in 1971, and so he would have done this.
01:08:46.000But in the middle 80s, when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I decided to track these people down for my senior thesis at New College of Florida, which is this experimental school.
01:08:56.000And my father was really helpful, my mother was too.
01:08:59.000I identified 19 out of the 20. And was able to interview 16 of them.
01:09:04.000And what I found was that the people who had the placebo, most of them didn't remember it that vividly, but the people who had the psilocybin had very vivid memories of parts of it.
01:09:15.000And at the same time, they said that they considered it to be a genuine experience.
01:09:20.000They'd had non-drug mystical experiences since.
01:09:22.000They preferred the non-drug mystical experiences because they were more uniformly positive.
01:09:27.000They lost their fear of death, and they felt more focused on the here and now and on social justice because they had this unit of experience that helped them identify with the planet, with the people, with not so much all the divisions that divide us.
01:09:43.000They saw a deeper unity, and so they were more social justice-minded and activists.
01:09:48.000And I think that's a little bit of a key to the 60s.
01:09:54.000They inspire people to try to make a better world.
01:09:57.000And we can do that not in an oppositional way, but we can do it within the heart of the culture.
01:10:02.000And that's the challenge that we face.
01:10:04.000It's really interesting you said that what they had was a real religious experience or a real mystical experience.
01:10:11.000One of the things has been on my mind over the last few months when it comes to psychedelic experiences is that when people want to tell you, oh, you're just, something is going on, your imagination, your visual cortex is getting stimulated by this drug and it's creating a bunch of hallucinations.
01:10:32.000It could be you are experiencing some divine state of consciousness.
01:10:38.000You are in contact with some other form of intelligence.
01:10:42.000And either it's a hallucination or it's this other real experience.
01:10:48.000But either way, you have the exact same...
01:10:51.000Whether you really went to a place and talked to super spiritual, highly intelligent beings or you imagined you did, you're still having the exact same experience and it's incredibly vivid.
01:11:04.000That's one of the weirdest aspects about any sort of psychedelic experience is that they're almost more real than reality itself.
01:11:11.000And I think because of that it's even more important that we keep our critical faculties in a way because we are always a filter.
01:11:20.000And our culture, so I don't think we're ever seeing absolute reality or the truth, and I think that's where you get in danger, where people think, you know, God spoke to me, God said this, or I know this for sure, because there is our filter that we're seeing it through,
01:11:36.000but you try to see as much as you can, but I think we have to...
01:11:41.000Be aware and be cautious and see how it works in life.
01:11:45.000So under LSD therapy and MDMA therapy, we would tell people, don't make decisions while you're doing the therapy.
01:11:52.000Wait for a couple weeks after or at least under the influence.
01:12:03.000Sometimes you have a really obvious reaction where you know, you're very aware that, okay, this is what needs to be done and I need to do this right away.
01:12:33.000And we're like, it's not permanent, and it's psychosomatic.
01:12:37.000You don't really need to, you know, we don't need to take you to the hospital.
01:12:40.000And he was a doctor, but his arm was paralyzed.
01:12:43.000And over time, he told this story that lasted a couple hours, but the story was that he was with his mother and his siblings at the bedside of their father, who was dying in all this life support, and they had this discussion about We're good to go.
01:13:19.000Emotionally complex issue and realize he really didn't kill his dad.
01:13:23.000He did what his mother and his siblings were saying.
01:15:10.000Unfortunately, it's not you and it's not me, but we both know people who we say, you know what, if you had, like, if there was a show, like one of those Fix Me Up shows, you know, they have those, like, home improvement shows or weight loss shows, if you had a guy who's just a complete fucking mess...
01:15:25.000And they said, just, Rick Doblin, this is your assignment for this show.
01:15:29.000You're going to take this guy and elevate his consciousness and just make him a much better person.
01:16:45.000And I just kept thinking, if he could have had an MDMA experience, would he still have been able to find some hope and a reason to live, or would he still have committed suicide?
01:17:00.00022 veterans a day are committing suicide.
01:17:02.000Seems like he was dealing with physical pain as well.
01:17:04.000I think there was a bunch of different things going on with him.
01:17:07.000And that's where he was upset at the DEA, I think, also, at pain meds and how they regulated pain meds.
01:17:12.000So I think MDMA actually, in combination with morphine, it's been used in dying people, enhances the pain control.
01:17:21.000So MDMA has pain relieving qualities and when you combine it with morphine when people are You know, in hospice settings, things like that, that you have better pain control and you don't need as much morphine and you start waking people up so that they're not tranquilized out and you open their hearts so that people can have these beautiful,
01:17:43.000There's a woman that wrote a book, Honor Thy Daughter, about her daughter who died in the early 30s from cancer and how she had gone through a series of psychedelic therapy sessions as she was dying with MDMA and mushrooms, LSD-MDMA combination, but that it really enriched her daughter's life,
01:18:01.000and she felt she needed to write a book about it to let people know.
01:18:06.000So I think that the use of these drugs when people are in pain, it's not just mental pain.
01:18:11.000There's a whole link between mental pain and physical pain, and MDMA actually does help in this kind of...
01:18:18.000I see psychedelic medicine, psychedelic hospice will be Pretty common, I think, 20, 30 years from now.
01:18:25.000And we'll look back and think that, you know, it made sense 50 years ago.
01:18:30.000I mean, I think that's one of the best uses for them, to give people, like, I remember Larry Hagman, who died, was on CNN and died recently.
01:19:11.000Yeah, I spent years trying to meet him.
01:19:13.000Because I knew that he had done LSD therapy in the 60s and he wrote about it in his autobiography.
01:19:18.000And my mother-in-law actually sent me this message saying, Larry Hagman has done LSD. So then I started trying to find him and eventually I did meet him and we got to be friends and he was a donor to MAPS and he...
01:19:31.000He helped us in a lot of different ways.
01:19:34.000And he was so human that he would be from JR and known all over the world.
01:19:38.000But when you were with him, he just was present.
01:19:47.000I felt that he had this idealism and this joy from his whole life, but he also really valued his psychedelic experiences, his experiences with MDMA, his experiences with marijuana.
01:20:02.000It was kind of ironic that someone who was so valued by the culture couldn't be open about that, that he had to keep that hidden.
01:20:16.000But I think also it's like the atmosphere for an actor...
01:20:21.000Actors get picked for things, and if you're very controversial, I mean, for every Charlie Sheen, and of course we're dealing with 2013, where Charlie Sheen can get away with being this crazy coaxed Norton, whoremonger, and, like, he just wears it and owns it.
01:20:36.000For that to be a thing 20 years ago for an actor, it could be a career killer.
01:20:42.000And when he was doing Dallas, I mean, the consciousness...
01:20:46.000The public's opinion on psychedelics was very much different than it is today.
01:20:52.000Yeah, well, he was in Dallas when MDMA first became a party drug, and it was used at the Stark Club.
01:24:23.000And we ended up, just a few months before he died, going up in seaplanes and stuff onto this island where Andy Weil lives and having this really wonderful experience.
01:24:35.000Yeah, I think guys like him that do those sort of interviews, that's a really, really important thing because the public's perception of people who do LSD is Almost entirely limited to fuck-ups and crazy people and wild people or they used to do acid.
01:25:13.000There's all these people who are more fearless because they're not worried about what they tell their kids or they're not worried about their jobs.
01:25:19.000They've made a reputation and they can Like Steve Jobs.
01:27:46.000Do you really think it could be sooner?
01:27:48.000I think it's possible now more than ever.
01:27:50.000Well, but there's a certain track of data that you have to produce, a certain set of requirements that we're on the track of doing, but it looks to me like it's eight to ten years.
01:28:02.000Well, I've always been wrong, and I've always underestimated how long it takes.
01:28:08.000What we were talking about earlier with gay rights, I think they equate because when I was a kid, I remember I was living in San Francisco from 7 to 11 and I was around a lot of gay people.
01:28:20.000And it was completely normal because that was just what I was around.
01:28:24.000And then when I moved to Florida when I was 11, my friend Candy, Candido, he's a Cuban kid, his dad was really pissed off with the newspaper, slams it down, and he was mad that the fags wanted to get married.
01:29:27.000If you honestly think it's either you're crazy with religion, And you honestly think that somehow or another it's possible to cure a person of being gay and if they believe in the scripture.
01:29:38.000That's, you know, I can't even talk to you.
01:29:43.000But if you're a rational person and you accept the fact that people are born gay and you have an issue with them marrying their lover, like you're a crazy person.
01:29:59.000I think there's a way that they're fearful of something that blocks their rational thinking and if you can somehow or other Help them.
01:30:08.000And I think a lot of people who are so anti-gay are scared of their own gay feelings.
01:30:12.000It's kind of a cliche, but I think that's often the case.
01:30:15.000But I think what drove me early on into an interest in psychedelics is that I was so terrified of World War II and the Holocaust and how people can be so blind or be willing to be so driven by irrational factors.
01:30:32.000I thought, what can we do to try to help get to heal that?
01:30:37.000Because some people, you know, they can be quite powerful, and they can, how do you respond?
01:30:47.000And I finally felt that growing up with the Vietnam War, that that was something that now I was being called to fight, and I decided to become a draft resistor.
01:30:57.000But I saw the nuclear standoff between the U.S. and Russia, and it just seemed like the irrational was so powerful, the demonization of the other and the making of the enemy, that I couldn't figure out how to contribute to breaking through that cycle.
01:31:16.000And it finally felt like this deep spiritual experience of connection and letting people's fears come up where they could look at them more, that that would be for an individual make us more grounded and less likely to be manipulated our irrational factors and if millions of people could have that experience which did happen during the 60s but if we can expand it that maybe there's a basis to go through the crises that we're facing over the next couple decades as a species and as
01:31:46.000globalization and people are bumping up against each other that it felt like somehow or other the irrational is based a lot on fear and how can we help people to counter that with love with hope or with looking with self-acceptance and I think that's where the MDMA is so useful that the fear of self-criticism or the fear that MDMA helps people to accept who they are and The LSD and the psilocybin,
01:32:13.000the ayahuasca, the mescal and the peyote, those drugs, they are challenging in a different way in that they do this dissolving of the control mechanisms and dissolving of the ego and hopefully people can let go and blend and be strengthened from that.
01:32:31.000And that's the support that we need to provide to help that to be happening.
01:32:36.000And I think, you know, Just the way that this religious fundamentalism against gay marriage.
01:32:41.000I mean, right now we have a crisis of fundamentalism around the world.
01:33:07.000It's like the government has decided, look, it'd probably be beneficial if you guys did a good job.
01:33:11.000You know, culted up the shit out of some people and get them all whacked out on your ideas to the point where they're complete fundamentalists on your ideas.
01:34:05.000And that's where our strategy is built, that the FDA is putting science over politics while the other forces...
01:34:11.000Are trying to either slow down or block research.
01:34:14.000And where it comes with marijuana is that there's a government monopoly on the supply of marijuana that can be used in federal research.
01:34:22.000So even though there's no monopoly on the supply of marijuana, the only kind that's been grown under DEA license is controlled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
01:34:34.000To do research to make marijuana into a medicine, the FDA will give you permission.
01:34:39.000We have permission to do a study with marijuana in 50 veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder.
01:34:45.000And our distinction is that the marijuana is more about treating symptoms and the MDMA is more about curing.
01:34:52.000And then you only need MDMA a few times.
01:34:55.000The marijuana people sort of need it every day.
01:34:57.000But we have FDA approval and NIDA and the Public Health Service rejected the protocol and refused to provide the marijuana for us.
01:35:05.000And they only can review protocols for marijuana because they've got sitting on this monopoly.
01:35:11.000And we were 12 years lawsuit and we won and won and then we lost.
01:35:15.000in the First Circuit Court of Appeals to break the monopoly but that's the core reason why we're not able to make progress with marijuana research and we are able to make progress with psychedelics.
01:35:26.000What are they afraid of with marijuana?
01:35:27.000I think they're afraid of the whole drug war collapsing that the marijuana is incredibly demonized it's widely used most there's a lot of people that know that it's not so And I think it's a symbol.
01:35:45.000And that's where it was embedded in certain people's minds.
01:35:49.000And even though it was made illegal in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, then it was illegal shortly after Prohibition ended.
01:35:57.000And it was illegal during the Depression, and mostly it was Mexicans and blacks that smoked pot.
01:36:02.000And so it was a way to repress people who were competing for low-wage jobs.
01:36:06.000It was a way to block the hemp industry, various things like that.
01:36:10.000But it largely was a minor threat in American history until the 60s and white suburban people, kids, started smoking pot.
01:36:18.000And you had this massive explosion of pot.
01:36:21.000And then pot and LSD got associated with cultural rebellion.
01:36:25.000And now, all these years later, there are many people that smoke pot that are at least out about that and have made a lot of contributions.
01:36:34.000So I think it's more now about fear of parents for their kids.
01:36:58.000Those of us who are interested in enhancing our lives with these drugs in positive, responsible ways need to do so, need to speak about it where possible, and need to demonstrate that it's not about tearing down the society.
01:37:10.000It's all of us coming together to face these incredible challenges, and we need all the inspiration, and we need all the creativity, and we need all the energy that we can get.
01:37:20.000Well, unfortunately for some people, they really can't speak out about it because they get drug tested at work.
01:37:27.000The idea that something that stays in your body as long as marijuana gets tested when it's psychoactive, the time in which your body brings it back to baseline is less than 24 hours, right?
01:38:45.000That under marijuana people know that sometimes their instincts, their reaction time might be slow.
01:38:51.000Take compensating action so people are more careful when they're driving and more aware.
01:38:56.000So in driving, not in simulators, but when they're out driving roads and cars, and in simulators too, that marijuana is very minimally affecting driving.
01:39:09.000And you become paranoid, so you drive a little slower.
01:40:36.000There's a lot of things that I don't like to do when I'm high.
01:40:38.000I don't mind it, but I don't want to get pulled over when I'm high and I've got to talk my way out of some cop being upset at me for being high.
01:40:45.000Like, dude, I'm telling you, I drive fine, I'm good.
01:40:47.000I don't want to be involved in that situation.
01:40:49.000And I think I would be kind of a hypocrite if...
01:40:55.000If I said that, or if I had a problem with some people getting high and driving, but I know some people are impaired.
01:41:58.000I'm going to get a ticket, but it's okay.
01:42:00.000And I thought, okay, as long as I'm just going to get this ticket, well, why don't I just think about what I could tell the police officer when...
01:43:10.000And then with John Lilly, you know, one of the isomers is more active than the other.
01:43:18.000And so, you know, that was interesting.
01:43:20.000But I also did get the sense that he was too much into the ketamine and too much into this other state.
01:43:28.000And I started trying to think about how possibly we could Help him, because he was such a major contributor and a hero of mine.
01:43:36.000And one of the people that was a dolphin trainer that worked with him with some of his dolphins had this sense, Roberta Goodman, had this sense that He was also going downhill.
01:43:48.000And so we arranged to get together with them to do MDMA therapy.
01:43:53.000And during that, he kind of became very much into his body, but he had abscesses from where he was shooting himself.
01:45:09.000I think when you get this deeper sense about how life is so precious, that you can have these other states of mind, but that It should be inculcating compassion, a sense that you have to contribute to making a better world,
01:45:34.000If this guy is feeling his body giving out on him, and he says, you know what, I'm just going to shoot ketamine until the boat hits the rocks...
01:45:43.000Well, I think giving makes people happy a lot of times.
01:45:46.000People are depressed, you know, if they serve or help others.
01:45:50.000I even thought about that, about the vet, that, you know, if there was some way...
01:45:54.000You know, he felt that he was a harm to his family and that he was doing them good by killing himself.
01:45:59.000And I think if only there would have been some soup kitchen or something that he could have felt that he was contributing, maybe that would have...
01:46:08.000He kind of addressed that, didn't he, though?
01:46:10.000He was talking about all the widows that he'd created and that he didn't feel like he had the right to exist.
01:46:16.000Right, but that's psychological stuff.
01:46:24.000That's a hard thing to say, but you're saying it coming from someone who's had MDMA experiences.
01:46:29.000And I think unless somebody has, they really would listen to this.
01:46:33.000Like a straight person, not gay, but I mean a square, a guy who's never done any drugs.
01:46:40.000You know, really not been into drugs and I've took some Percocets in college.
01:46:44.000If that person heard that, they would go, what is this guy talking about?
01:46:47.000Like, the guy had post-traumatic stress disorder from murdering people and, you know, committing war crimes.
01:46:53.000And he openly spoke about it in this letter.
01:46:55.000And then you're telling him he's going to take ecstasy and he's going to be able to work through that?
01:47:02.000Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:47:06.000In fact, people have accused us of, like, you're going to try to help people just forget what they did, and you can make mindless soldiers who will commit war crimes, and then they get a drug, and they feel better, and they go back.
01:47:16.000So I think that's a really good point you raise, because it's not that people say, that was good, that I can accept that that was good.
01:47:25.000They don't reframe what they did into something good, but they realize that it's done.
01:47:32.000If they accept it, It can give them the chance in the rest of their life to make up for it.
01:47:40.000Not that you can in any way, but it gives you a way to go forward in a positive way.
01:47:45.000And I think that if we do this in Marines, let's say, my guess is that it will make them more sensitive about those kind of Occasions where they might be reckless with their machine gun or something,
01:48:04.000I don't know, these are like unknown questions and it's really important, but the process of dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder is to more live in the present, to let The past inform you not to deny it, but not to be so oppressed by it,
01:48:23.000And I think once you accept that there is that evil in all of us, that we all have the capacity under certain circumstances, That you can accept that, and what we hope is that people then can move forward and recognize that they still have some life,
01:48:43.000and every day they can make choices, and every day they can try to be helpful to somebody or not.
01:48:48.000And I think that's what we're talking about, the healing.
01:48:51.000It doesn't make them look back and say, that was okay, what I did.
01:48:56.000I think we're in a very strange period of human history where we know that we have all these issues.
01:49:05.000We know we have massive government corruption.
01:49:08.000We know we have massive financial corruption.
01:49:11.000We know we have the great majority of people who don't agree with the war acts that are going on, whether it's drone attacks or what have you.
01:49:18.000And we wonder, like, why is our society so far behind?
01:49:22.000Why have we achieved such great technological and military heights, but yet socially we're so fucked up?
01:49:32.000And we have all the tools to fix that.
01:49:38.000It's like individuals have found their own unique situations that through yoga or through MDMA or through meditation or even some through religious chanting and learning how control of your breath Can change states of mind.
01:49:56.000People have gone that through jogging.
01:49:59.000You were talking about smoking pot and getting high.
01:50:01.000I know a lot of people who think things through when they're jogging and let things go when they're jogging too.
01:50:07.000I think there's many, many, many pieces that we can use to try to fix this problem.
01:51:11.000And we have capacities now to alter the planet with global warming, but we don't have the emotional and spiritual development to cope with the technological changes.
01:51:23.000And in a way that's been really productive, this kind of separating out the intellect from religion and morals.
01:51:51.000True science and true religion are not in opposition.
01:51:57.000And that the scientist is also, you know, in a state of wonder and spiritual appreciation.
01:52:02.000Yeah, because people that think that religion is ridiculous or that God is ridiculous or the concept of a higher power is ridiculous, you know what else is ridiculous?
01:52:22.000Oh, and without it, our world would not exist because our temperature would not be regulated enough that we could live in cold climates and hot climates.
01:52:41.000That's crazier than anything that religion's ever come up with ever.
01:52:44.000That the whole universe was smaller than the head of a pen and then exploded 13 point whatever billion years ago and created the skies above and everything you say.
01:53:09.000And I think that there can be, I don't want to use the word religion, but there can be a way of living the life with wonder and with sharing knowledge and with just Looking into what we have learned,
01:53:28.000rock solid, about the very universe we live in and respecting that and worshipping that.
01:53:34.000I mean, in a way, you know, not like, I'm not talking about like a deity, but about like a great wonder, like the great wonder that it really is.
01:53:45.000Yeah, and taking that into the pain, I think, is being able to take the loving energies into the places that need healing.
01:53:54.000So just having spiritual meditating on top of a mountaintop and trying to get off the wheel of suffering and stuff, that seems like a very egotistical way, actually.
01:54:05.000And having the sense that while some of us are privileged in all different ways to really be healthy and be wonderful and in wonder without being so threatened, that there's a lot of people that aren't and that we have to...
01:54:21.000Not only feel those moments, but then try to somehow, as Martin Luther King talked about, the arc of history, make some contribution of some way that helps it for others too.
01:54:31.000You know, it's also ironic, one of the weird things that's going on with society is that as our technological capabilities increase, we also fill our skies with light pollution and we can't see the stars.
01:54:45.000And one of the best psychedelic experiences I ever had outside of doing a drug was I went to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii on the Big Island.
01:55:03.000And I was like, damn, it looks like it's cloudy.
01:55:05.000But then we drove through the clouds, and you realize, oh, this thing is so high up there that you actually drive past where the clouds are.
01:55:21.000Because the Big Island is set up for the observatory, so all the lights that they use for street lights are a very special type of diffused lighting that doesn't give light pollution off.
01:55:30.000So you have this incredible view of the stars where you see the whole Milky Way like a movie, like those pictures of space.
01:55:40.000And somehow or another, it's just above us.
01:56:49.000And so these Muslims who were with guns to protect us Who are Jewish, we just stood under the stars in the middle of the desert with no light pollution and just had this shared moment of kind of awe at the majesty.
01:57:05.000Yeah, the view of, the actual view that we're supposed to see, I think is really what inspired people throughout history to create the idea of gods and to create this.
01:57:19.000I mean, the insane view that you get of that, just the images of those Magical lights in the sky.
01:58:23.000You know, when you take that view of the Earth from above and you look down, you see just the nature of the whole reality of a planet and a solar system and a galaxy and a universe.
01:58:58.000Right, and if you can somehow do both, it's not that...
01:59:00.000And that's where I think Lily got wrong.
01:59:03.000You know, he thought the spiritual part was the more important part, and it's the balance.
01:59:07.000My daughter, Ellie, is in 8th grade, and she had to do a project for National History Day, and with a couple of her girlfriends, they did a project on Apollo 11, which was...
01:59:18.000And it turned out that the girl that she did it with...
01:59:23.000He was the one that was, when Armstrong put his foot on Buzz Aldrich, that he was the one that stayed in the capsule.
01:59:31.000And so I actually got to interview him as part of this.
01:59:34.000And he did talk about, for him, what was so amazing, both being up there in space and seeing the Earth, but also when he got back, And they went around the world and people were, you know, cheering and talking about things.
01:59:46.000He said that he thought that people would say, you know, look what you Americans did.
01:59:53.000And wherever he went, people said, look what we did.
01:59:56.000Like it was the human race that we went to the moon.
02:00:07.000Americans did it, but he saw around the world that people said we all collectively did it.
02:00:12.000The idea of we all collectively are in this thing together, that we are a global community, That's really one of the last saving hopes of humanity.
02:00:23.000And I think the internet has sort of reinforced that idea in a way that never existed.
02:00:27.000I think nationalism, the idea of nationalism, seems so much more preposterous now.
02:00:31.000Especially nationalism in a war sense.
02:01:35.000Some of the Orthodox Christians and Muslims, all these fundamentalists.
02:01:39.000I think because of the forces of globalization, because it's harder to sustain that we're the one right religion, they're kind of having to circle their wagons and they become a bit more extreme.
02:01:51.000And so it might look on the surface that things are getting worse, but I think that's this defensive...
02:01:57.000Mechanism where they can barely hold it together.
02:02:00.000And I think it won't end up with homogenous, one world religion, one government.
02:02:04.000We'll appreciate those small things about the local town, where you are.
02:02:10.000You can appreciate the differences even more when you feel part of the commonality.
02:02:16.000You don't have to be scared of the differences because there's something deeper that connects us.
02:02:20.000I think there's also a problem that people have in that human beings, we share chimpanzee, alpha male DNA, and we are always looking for leaders.
02:02:31.000And the other problem is once someone becomes a leader, We see this with politicians and dictators.
02:02:36.000We saw it with the people that came in after Mubarak in Egypt, tried to pass all these crazy fucking laws that essentially made them dictators.
02:02:46.000And then the people were like, what are you talking about?
02:03:02.000And I think seeing that for the first time, you know, globally, even though right now it may be very frustrating for us, and it is frustrating for us, because we don't think change is coming quickly enough, change that corresponds with what we know about the world,
02:03:18.000I think it is, if you look at it historically, if they look back to this time, I think this will be a time of great turmoil and great change.
02:03:26.000It's just that we measure history in these 20, 30-year bursts You know, I think the 20-year burst that we're in right now is just bananas.
02:03:35.000Well, I think as I get older and as I watch my kids grow, that for me, 10 or 20 years is no longer such a long time.
02:03:52.000But we're not quite so scared, fortunately.
02:03:56.000And this idea of having a 20, 30-year plan, or even to recognize, as all the spiritual traditions talked about, is that these great things are not accomplishable in one generation or in one lifetime, so that we just start the process, or we not start it, but we continue,
02:04:12.000and then we try to pass it on to the next generation.
02:04:15.000But I think that there is this intensification and crisis, and in that, I think eventually the...
02:04:24.000The fundamentalists will need to find more genuine spirituality, not in this rigidity, and hopefully they'll be able to coexist.
02:04:35.000There's these demonstrations of millions of people in Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood.
02:04:40.000This is the first government in Israel that doesn't have the religious orthodox as part of the governing body, which is a really healthy thing.
02:06:08.000I grew up in Chicago in Winnetka and Lake Michigan and some friends and I would go in there and we'd play the greatest catch game and each of us Guys, we'd throw football to somebody else.
02:06:47.000If you train with really good people, you become really good.
02:06:50.000And you elevate to the level of the competition in the training room.
02:06:55.000It's also the same a lot with stand-up comedians.
02:06:58.000We're inspired by other really funny stand-up comedians and when you find a particular group, a group of talented people in a town or an area, oftentimes they'll develop a lot of very talented people around them who imitate the fact that, you know,
02:07:13.000that there's a high level of the art form in that area.
02:07:16.000So like Austin, Texas is a good example.
02:07:18.000It's like there's always a lot of really good guys there.
02:07:20.000And because there's always a lot of really good guys there, there's always a lot of really good guys there.
02:07:25.000New York City is another one, but obviously there's much more money involved in places like New York or L.A. in being good.
02:07:32.000So that becomes sort of a factor as well.
02:08:38.000The idea that there's plenty for everybody and that working together can be much more satisfying and you're much happier if your friends are doing well as much as you are.
02:11:15.000Someone should realize what's going on and start locking people up and go, let's play your game.
02:11:20.000Because what you're doing is ridiculous.
02:11:21.000You're ruining people's lives for something that really should not be your choice.
02:11:25.000It should not be another person's choice whether or not they masturbate, and it should not be another person's choice whether or not they smoke pot.
02:11:35.000Well, I'm not so sympathetic with putting them in jail, but I would like to take the source of their power, which is people's fear that they've generated, I agree,
02:11:56.000but I think the people that have done things, that have put people in jail for things along those lines, for selling pot or for growing pot or for owning pot, they're criminals.
02:12:14.000And they have done so with full cultural support.
02:12:17.000And I think the way to move forward is not to be so punitive for those that did it, although for some.
02:12:23.000I mean, but to talk about evolution and to talk about how a different approach is necessary.
02:12:30.000And, you know, whenever in Alaska, when there was a medical...
02:12:33.000Marijuana legalization bill, one of the first years ago, there was this whole idea of reparations to pay people that were in jail.
02:12:41.000And the polling that was done by the people trying to pass this initiative showed that that was a really weak part.
02:12:48.000So where you try to impose these penalties on people for past behavior that at a time was sort of socially sanctioned.
02:12:55.000What I meant by that was the people that are actively working for Privatized prison unions, things along those lines, working to keep these drugs illegal so that they profit.
02:13:29.000Capitalistic approach that we have does permit that kind of stuff, and it permits lobbying Congress, and it permits this process where people try to get their own interests advanced sometimes over the interests of others.
02:13:41.000And isn't it fascinating that, I don't know if you feel like this, but that the thing that would fix the woes that society has more than anything is the thing that these people are trying to keep from becoming legal.
02:14:04.000And I think that idea of thinking about them as tools is really the crucial distinction because they're not good or bad in and of themselves.
02:14:24.000But it's all about good and bad when it's actually how you use it.
02:14:30.000And even the drug that was demonized the most in a way in the 60s was thalidomide, the drug that was the medical drug that caused birth defects in babies.
02:14:40.000And the FDA stopped that in the U.S., but it was prevalent throughout Europe.
02:14:45.000And now thalidomide has become a medicine and the same kind of shrinking of blood vessels and things, it's used in leprosy and it's used in cancer treatment.
02:14:55.000So a drug that was among the most demonized of all has now been approved by the FDA with certain kind of safety procedures to make sure pregnant women don't get it.
02:15:03.000But it's the idea that these are tools, and we have the ability to approach these tools in an intelligent way, in a respectful way, or in a reckless way.
02:15:13.000And what we want to do is try to change these value judgments, end prohibition, support people's human rights to explore their own consciousness, to have freedom of thought, To find a way to integrate it into a society that's moving forward.
02:15:29.000How do you do that by getting through the corruption?
02:15:32.000Because that's the only thing that's holding it back.
02:15:34.000Really, the only thing holding it back is corruption.
02:15:37.000At this point, with the amount of data that's been accumulated on medical marijuana...
02:15:41.000Well, okay, the amount of data that's been accumulated, the government has been effective, the DEA parts of the government, NIDA, In preventing what's called the Phase III studies, the large-scale definitive studies that by law Congress has created FDA must have to prove safety and efficacy.
02:15:59.000So at this moment, there is not enough data of the kind that the FDA uses for any other drug.
02:16:05.000And if we accept the idea that the FDA should regulate marijuana and psychedelics like they do any other drug, Then we have to acknowledge that there's not enough research for the FDA to approve it.
02:16:16.000People twist it and say the FDA has rejected marijuana as a medicine, which they have not.
02:16:21.000We just don't have enough research that way.
02:16:24.000And they won't allow you to do phase three research.
02:16:26.000And so that's why the states, I think, have enough evidence to make it legal.
02:16:32.000And patients and doctors have enough evidence to decide to try it.
02:16:36.000It's just that in our I think it's a system that we've created to try to make it so that through science we don't just see what we want to see but we kind of have a closer view of what's there.
02:16:47.000There are these procedures that still need to be undertaken for marijuana and also for MDMA. So that's why I say we're probably 10 years away from making MDMA into medicine and I think we'd be Five, six years away from making marijuana into an FDA-approved medicine if the repression would be lifted right today.
02:17:03.000Now, what is the difference between the stage that the FDA requires and the data that has been accumulated?
02:17:14.000So what that means is, preclinical means humans.
02:17:17.000So there's a whole series of animal studies looking at toxicity that are required by the FDA before you can get a drug into humans.
02:17:27.000Once you've done that, then there's phase one, two, three, and four.
02:17:31.000And phase one is working with people who are not patients, who are healthy volunteers, to try to categorize what the drug does and what it does at different doses.
02:17:42.000And for certain drugs that are especially toxic, like cancer drugs, They have, like, Phase 1a, Phase 2, where it's a combination where the drug is so dangerous that it only can be used in patients.
02:17:55.000And so you do these dose-finding studies, looking at the side effects, and in general, that's what Phase 1 is.
02:18:02.000Phase 2 is where you start working with patients, and you start seeing...
02:18:35.000Yeah, starting in 2004 is when we got the first permit.
02:18:40.000We actually had permission in 2000 from 2000 to 2001 in Spain for MDMA for PTSD and we had some media attention that was very positive on the radio and the main TV and newspapers and radio and it motivated the anti-drug authority,
02:18:55.000the forces of repression, to shut the study down and we weren't powerful enough to overcome it in Spain and that's where it was First started, though, with a study that we were working with women survivors of rape.
02:19:10.000So then, once you have figured out your designs and the magnitude and the variance of the effect, how strong is it and how common is it?
02:19:19.000Is there a large number of people that don't respond at all, or do most people respond?
02:19:24.000Then you can size your Phase III studies.
02:19:26.000So with marijuana, we have enormous amount of information up to the Phase II level.
02:19:33.000And the FDA will have more information about marijuana, MDMA, LSD, than about any other drug that they've ever approved in their entire history.
02:19:43.000And the reason is because the research is usually done with hundreds or thousands of people.
02:19:49.000Ten thousand is about as high as you go.
02:19:51.000But we've had LSD used by tens of millions of people and marijuana by hundreds of millions of people.
02:19:55.000And we know the one in a million side effect or the one in five million side effect that we only discover from pharmaceutical drugs once they're approved.
02:20:08.000We already know that we would work with marijuana with nausea control for cancer chemotherapy, marijuana for pain, particularly for people on opiates, because we've already shown in Phase II studies funded by the State of California that when you combine marijuana with opiates that people get better pain control and they don't need as much of the opiates.
02:20:29.000Because of OxyContin and all these big concerns.
02:20:32.000So we know the areas that we would study with marijuana, and we know the safety profile.
02:20:38.000So we mainly need to just do studies in 250, 500 people to look at the particular patient groups that we want to approve.
02:20:47.000High-quality, standardized, medical-grade marijuana to do it in.
02:20:52.000And so maybe we're five years away if the political barriers were removed right today, which they're not.
02:20:57.000What happens to someone that takes LSD and goes crazy?
02:21:02.000Because I've had many people tell me stories.
02:21:06.000I know the Sid Barrett story from Pink Floyd is a famous one.
02:21:11.000I don't know if it's true, but the word was that he had taken too much acid and lost his mind.
02:21:17.000I think it's possible, but it depends on the supportive context.
02:21:23.000And before you asked about the candy flipping, about MDMA LSD, so in the future, when people are having this very difficult LSD experience, maybe they go to the emergency room or something, adding MDMA,
02:21:39.000It takes it from this terrifying sense of dying ego destruction and grounds it so that people can work through it.
02:21:46.000So I think that LSD has that potential to destabilize people, but in a supportive environment, that can be Helpful and handled and supported.
02:21:59.000So the candy-flipping aspect over the adding NVMA might mitigate some of the negative effects of the stress that you could get from the acid experience.
02:22:15.000The thing we would like to study one day would be to take people who are dying and start them, like we did in Switzerland, start them with LSD and four hours later administer MDMA. So that way LSD peaks in around three and a half hours, three, three and a half hours, so they go through the whole challenging LSD of letting go.
02:22:35.000of opening up and it's it's you know hopefully they can make it through that and then at the four hours you give mdma and then everything softens and they can take it in more and then they integrate as they're coming down so you know you ride one wave into the next yeah or if they're flipping out if it's too painful or too difficult for them maybe at the one at the two hours you could administer mdma There,
02:23:00.000and you don't even have to administer a full dose of MDMA. It'd be like a half dose of MDMA softens it somewhat.
02:23:29.000You know, sometimes for spiritual purposes, let's say, where people are looking for this ego dissolution, You know, you start with LSD, you start with psilocybin, you know, sometimes the experiences last 10 hours or more sometimes.
02:23:44.000If you don't fully, if you open up to the energy flowing through you, then the psychedelic experience tends to take a shorter amount of time.
02:23:52.000And if you end into this resistance, because for whatever reasons it's really difficult, it prolongs the experience.
02:24:00.000And once you enter into those kind of places, if you were to add MDMA, then people can integrate it more helpfully.
02:24:08.000Have you done any studies like what the difference is between hippie flipping and candy flipping, using mushrooms instead of...
02:24:45.000How did you do it in terms of the timing?
02:24:47.000Because I'm talking about where, you know, did you take them both at the same time?
02:24:51.000These were actually designed together, where it was like a candy where it had both of the chemicals in it.
02:24:59.000That's the only way I've ever done it.
02:25:00.000Now, I've done it Since then, I've done it separately with mushrooms and then just taking, you know, yeah, I think it was, I took it, when I was peaking, I would dose myself with the molly, which would then take, whatever, an hour or so, 45 minutes later,
02:26:39.000Well, I think what you're doing is awesome because you guys are bringing legitimacy to this that would never be done by guys like Brian or myself or any of the other people that are out there enjoying the fruits of your labor and the fact that these doors have been It's broken down now or opened,
02:26:55.000I should say, and work is being done and evidence is being put forth that really can't be refuted anymore.
02:27:01.000It's slowly but slowly starting to accumulate.
02:27:04.000Yeah, I would say that this can't be refuted.
02:27:07.000Right now we're at this stage where we have to replicate our results because that's the key part of science.
02:27:12.000You may have done it once, but can you do it again and again and again?
02:27:40.000Like what you're doing is a big part of that.
02:27:43.000Getting that information, having it on the internet, allowing people to share links, allowing people to go to whether it's maps.org or any of the different websites.
02:28:28.000Dad, I said, I hope you're right, you know, even if you have to live another 20 years.
02:28:32.000I would have never thought in 2013 it would still be illegal.
02:28:35.000When I was a kid, I thought it was a matter of time.
02:28:38.000Well, I was on the board of Normal for a while, quite a while, and I was with people who started Normal in 1970 and 71 and thought it would be legal in a few years.
02:28:47.000So that sort of tempers my sense of time, to be with people who...
02:28:53.000You know, over 40 years ago, I thought it was only going to be a few years away that marijuana would be legal.
02:28:58.000And fortunately, they're still working to try to help bring that about.
02:29:01.000Do you lose enthusiasm sometimes when you see that it's still illegal after all this?
02:29:30.000That really must feel like you're spinning your wheels sometimes.
02:29:35.000Well, for years, we just spent four years with Health Canada trying to get an import-export permit to bring in eight grams of MDMA. And this is after Health Canada had approved The protocol, and our IRB had approved the protocol,
02:29:53.000And they went through all these ridiculous things about the pharmacy, had to have bulletproof glass, and had to have all these alarm systems.
02:30:01.000Was the people going to come in and steal your eight grams of acid or MDMA? Eight grams, yeah, that would be in a safe, and the safe had to be disguised in a wooden cabinet, and the safe had to be bolted to the floor.
02:30:13.000They were harder than the U.S. It was ridiculous.
02:30:38.000And there are parts that are exciting, that are connections that are just coming together.
02:30:45.000Like even for the National Institute of Mental Health.
02:30:49.000In the late 1980s, the fellow who's the current head of the National Institute of Mental Health was doing MDMA neurotoxicity research in animals, and I visited him.
02:30:59.000He was, you know, this sort of hidden away in the countryside animal research lab to, you know, not attract all these animal rights protesters and we had to go through all his guards and barbed wire and stuff.
02:31:10.000But he seemed like he was sincerely interested in the question and wasn't trying to twist the results to justify the drug war.
02:32:33.000We just had the incredible conference where Psychedelic Science 2013, largest psychedelic conference that we've ever had in the U.S., over 1,900 people.
02:32:44.000There's a whole ayahuasca track, the biggest ayahuasca conference ever, and clinical research.
02:32:51.000I was approached by AMARA, this group that helps groups crowdsource transcription and translation of these talks.
02:33:03.000Videos are not searchable on Google, but when you do a transcript or if you do a transcript of these shows, people can then search on the transcripts and that gets them to the video.
02:33:12.000So people, if they're interested, and it would be a tremendous thing for them to learn, to go to the MAPS website, maps.org, to our Psychedelic Science 2013 conference page, and you could sign up if you wanted to listen to some of these lectures,
02:33:29.000which are tremendous, And transcribe or translate them if you know other languages.
02:33:46.000We are going to do an Indiegogo campaign starting probably in a week or so to raise $10,000 for the Zendo project at Burning Man, our harm reduction program, so people could tell other people about that.
02:33:59.000And then we're going to go, as we said earlier, to probably a $250,000 request for the study with veterans, with MDMA. I think people can come out to their families.
02:34:11.000People can come out to people that they just talk about and not be so reticent, if psychedelics have been helpful, or even if they've not been helpful, to talk about what they learn, about what they think.
02:34:27.000But I think Look at the gay rights movement and think about this.
02:34:31.000Maybe they used the wrong tool for the wrong job, too, because they didn't have education about it.
02:34:35.000Yeah, and we're finding that people that sometimes use psychedelics at festivals for what I would say is the wrong reason, just to have a fun time.
02:34:59.000But I think the celebratory use is really important.
02:35:02.000And that's why for us, medicalization is not the...
02:35:05.000For MAPS, as a 501c3, not trying to change the laws, we're about medicalization.
02:35:11.000But I think as a society, we need spiritual use, we need personal growth, creativity, we need a broader drug policy, which would have adults have the right...
02:35:24.000I think it would be like the driver's license model where you would perhaps have a certain education you have to pass, a test, and maybe even to start out so we avoid a backlash.
02:35:35.000There would be psychedelic clinics where you would go have an experience under Supervision, and if you did it well, meaning you didn't totally flip out, then you would have the right to buy it on your own.
02:35:46.000And I think what we would do with children, I think drugs would be illegal for minors, legal for adults, but 23 states in the United States have a parental override for alcohol.
02:35:58.000That if you want to give your kid alcohol, in 23 states you can do that.
02:36:03.000And I think that that's how we handle underage, is that we leave it, not that the government prohibits it all, but that its families decide among themselves how they want to handle it.
02:36:14.000I'm going to have one more question, and then I'm going to let you go.
02:36:17.000Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory is a fascinating proposal that human beings evolved from lower hominids because we got in contact with psychedelic mushrooms.
02:36:30.000And his theory, I don't know if it's correct, but according to him and his brother, his brother, if you just Google search the Dennis McKenna podcast, I don't remember which number it is, You can find it pretty easily with a quick search.
02:36:45.000But he gave some really interesting scientific reasons for why he believes it's very possible that that's what happened.
02:36:52.000The doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years, all this attributed to psilocybin.
02:36:57.000Dennis was one of the speakers at the conference, and so people could actually translate and transcribe his talk if they wanted.
02:37:04.000But I think the deeper question is, Can the apes that we are today evolve further with mushrooms?
02:37:30.000He said some things that were pretty exaggerated, like this whole idea that the end of the Mayan calendar was going to be the end of the world.
02:38:30.000Yeah, so I think if, you know, Dennis McKenna just wrote a book, Brothers at the Screaming Abyss, and there's a good discussion about some of the criticism and the value of time wave zero.
02:38:42.000So I was, actually Terrence was the one that helped start MDMA research, because we were at a conference at Esalen, it was In 1983, and it was already clear because of Dallas and stuff that MDMA was being used in a public setting and that the crackdown would come.
02:39:00.000And so the underground therapists and the Shilgens chemists, you know, so we had this meeting to figure out what to do.
02:39:07.000And Terence was like, forget about MDMA. It's from the lab.
02:39:20.000And look at all these risks of MDMA and all this stuff.
02:39:23.000And I was like, well, I don't see these risks.
02:39:29.000And I also don't believe that drugs from plants are inherently better tools, that we're part of nature, that what comes from the human mind is out there.
02:39:40.000So I said, I'll put up $1,000 towards an MDMA study.
02:39:45.000And then Dick Price, who founded Esalen like 30 seconds, 10 seconds later, said, I'll put up $1,000.
02:39:49.000And so it was in response to Terrence going on about plant medicines being best and MDMA being super dangerous that we did this study and kept it quiet until the DEA moved to criminalize, and then we surfaced with the study.
02:40:07.000I've always wanted to hear different people's take on that theory, because I thought it was a fascinating theory, the idea that humans became us because of psychedelics.
02:40:16.000And the best culprit is mushrooms because they're sort of built in.
02:40:53.000I remember being in bed for the whole week, and I'm thinking, a lot of people must have had their bar mitzvahs that day, and God must be slow, and he'll come around to me eventually.