James Fadiman is a psychologist who has degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and has taught at four different universities. He is one of the early researchers on psychedelics, and is probably more responsible than anyone for the phenomenon of microdosing. In this conversation, we cover the terrain in his books: how to think about taking them, who should take them, and who shouldn t take them. And then we move on to a discussion about the nature of the self, and the fiction of there being a unified self. And how this might relate to compassion and an understanding of what we are as people. This was one of those conversations during COVID where the local recording failed, so all we had in the end was the backup recording of the actual conversation. So I think your ear will get used to it. And I think you'll agree that the audio is less than ideal, but that's what makes it worth listening to. -Sam Harris If you can t afford a subscription, there's an option at Samharris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those requests without any questions asked. No questions asked, no questions asked! -The Making Sense Podcast Team Sam Harris (Samharris) and the way to submit questions by sending an email to asksam at samharris@thedreams.org And we'll only be selecting AMA on those topics from actual listeners, and we'll be responding to those questions in the podcast by responding to them on the podcast! Thank you for the questions asked by you, by becoming one of you, the making sense podcast? by Sam Harris, the podcast is made possible entirely by the podcast, by The Making Sense Pod? - & the podcast's made possible by Sam Harris , by the Making Sense Poddy, is in a podcast by ? . , ) "No questions asked asked, by the Podcast, by , and the podcast ... # @ + This is a great pleasure. "A great pleasure, " AND : etc. - Thank you, Mr. ) -A very good friend, ? & ; ! ~ & ?? # 'A very bad novel? )
00:05:59.860And closed us down in the midst of a research project where people were using psychedelics to solve absolutely linear, rational, physical, scientific problems.
00:06:15.100And then I had another few careers outside of psychedelics, since the government didn't want us to know much.
00:06:22.280And a number of years ago, got back involved in psychedelic research, particularly in microdosing.
00:06:27.960And in between, I've worked with and taught a number of psychology systems or life-changing systems like affirmations, psychosynthesis.
00:06:41.780And I recently just completed a book on internal healthy multiplicity, which was apparently from the outside, like, where did that come from, given what I just told you?
00:06:56.060And I've been working on that quietly for 25 years and finally got it out.
00:07:01.520So I'm at a place of feeling a lot of life ambitions, perhaps, or inclinations or directions are in a completed state.
00:07:13.660So I have a couple of turns left and a lot of things I'm intending to do.
00:07:34.920I found your books very useful and illuminating.
00:07:40.320And I want to cover them somewhat systematically here.
00:07:43.620I think that the focus will be on this first book that—not your first book, but this first book I want to touch, the Psychedelic Explorer's Guide.
00:07:53.960And I want to have a fairly structured conversation that can be useful to people who are thinking about taking psychedelics, that they are taking them, and how that can be done safely, you know, who should do it, who shouldn't do it, you know, all the related questions here.
00:08:14.940Yeah, and then we can touch your latest book, which is titled Your Symphony of Selves, which you wrote with co-author Jordan Gruber, and talking about, you know, just how you think about the self or selves, plural, and that could be interesting.
00:08:31.860But just to get a little more of your backstory, so when were you—you were—you did your graduate work at Stanford, correct?
00:08:46.680No, I—I—I was just before that, and they—Richard—Richard—Richard—Dick Alpert and I had become friends.
00:08:53.200I was an undergraduate, and I worked for a summer for him in a research project in California, so—and we actually shared a house.
00:09:00.660So we were really genuine friends, and I was living in Paris, truly writing a novel, and he showed up on his way to Copenhagen, where he was to present with Aldous Huxley and Tim Leary the first major presentation about psychedelics to the World Council of Psychologists.
00:09:22.580We met, and I took him to a little cafe on the—Richard Alpert and I are sitting there, and he's—he's really looking and feeling a lot—a lot less neurotic than I knew him to be.
00:09:37.900He was brilliant, neurotic, ambitious, charming, a lot of wonderful things.
00:09:41.540And he said, the greatest thing in the world has happened to me, and I want to share it with you.
00:09:46.220And I thought, well, how bad can that be?
00:09:49.520And then he took out of his breast pocket a little bottle of pills, and I—I didn't freak out, but I certainly withdrew emotionally.
00:09:57.740I was so straight, I was not drinking coffee.
00:10:57.780He said, this is my first night in Paris.
00:10:59.720So we both withdrew to my sixth-floor walk-up, and some of my cherished beliefs were disassembled about what was valuable and not valuable in my life.
00:11:12.500Nothing therapeutic breakthrough, but just an awareness that there was a more to the way the world was.
00:11:20.360But I was still me, and it was still my personality and my issues.
00:11:26.000And a week later, I had followed Dick to Copenhagen, and where I had another session with him, which was really about human closeness and connection and kindness and support of one another at a level that the words don't handle too well.
00:11:44.640If we had one more notch up in value of each of those words, that's what it was.
00:11:51.180Life went on, and a few weeks later, I was at Stanford, and I discovered in one little tiny corner of Stanford a professor who was working with psychedelics.
00:12:03.640And experience that has forever shifted my awareness, my belief system, and also shifted my career.
00:12:23.100Yeah, well, it's, yeah, so I'm sure that you and I met with Richard Alpert, who was then later known as Ram Dass, at some point in the late 80s, somewhere near Stanford.
00:12:41.840Before we dive into this, I just want to offer the obligatory disclaimer to our listeners that, you know, we're not giving medical advice.
00:12:49.600We're not recommending that you personally take psychedelics, and we, obviously, we don't know your personal situation, dear listener.
00:12:59.420So you just have to read the lines and between the lines in this conversation to extract anything that might be useful to you in your specific situation.
00:13:09.780I mean, obviously, we're not going to soft-pedal the underlying truth here, which is that psychedelics have been incredibly useful to each of us personally, and the resurgence of research on them holds great promise for everyone, really.
00:13:28.000And it's one of the happier developments in recent years in psychological science.
00:13:33.900But obviously, where most people are living, these drugs are likely to be illegal, and therefore you encourage some risk just taking them, however benign your experience on them might be.
00:13:47.060And, you know, some people can have bad experiences, which we'll get into.
00:13:51.820So with that caveat out of the way, let's start with general considerations here, Jim.
00:13:59.420Who should and shouldn't think about taking psychedelics?
00:14:05.080Well, one of, obviously, the questions I get a lot over the years is, I'm thinking of taking LSD, but, and I say, don't do it.
00:14:15.300And they say, but I haven't told you my reasons.
00:14:17.560I said, no, if you feel there's a reason you shouldn't take a psychedelic, you have to listen to that.
00:14:23.080So my caveat is much stronger than yours, Sam, in that way.
00:14:28.860And the question of who and who shouldn't take it is only one that can be answered by an individual.
00:14:35.920I can tell you that if you read the literature, there's a lot of discussion about not having a psychedelic.
00:14:43.960These are all high-dose discussions we're having right now.
00:14:46.900Yeah, we'll talk about microdosing later.
00:14:49.160But for high doses, the science world says, not if you've had a psychotic episode, not if you've been a schizophrenic, not if you're bipolar, and not if you've had a serious mental, you know, something like that.
00:15:03.600Now, I used to wonder about that, is where did we get that information?
00:15:08.160So I started searching around, and I asked some of the senior researchers who were friends, and the answer was, actually, there isn't any information like that out there.
00:15:19.100What there is is people doing research don't want those people in the research, because if they have a bad experience or six months later they have a bad experience that has nothing to do with psychedelics, they will blame it on psychedelics.
00:15:35.440Now, I follow this a little bit more with bipolar, because that's one of the groups that can never get in any research projects.
00:15:45.620And if you go online, of course, if you go to the web, of course, there's a group of people who are bipolar who talk to each other.
00:15:52.400And so I asked them, would you comment, if any of you have had any psychedelic experience, do you have any advice for the other people on this group?
00:16:05.040And the general advice was from people who had used psychedelics, and I don't know how and under what conditions, but they said, on the manic phase of being bipolar, don't take anything.
00:16:20.020And on the depressive phase of bipolar, a number of them said that psychedelics had been very helpful.
00:16:27.240So that's not published, and that's not science, but that's what I call citizen science, which is what's actually happening out there.
00:16:35.640And it's important to keep, there are a lot of research studies, and most of them are very favorable and exciting.
00:16:40.760But behind that, since psychedelics were made illegal in the late 60s, early 70s, in the United States, and just the United States, 30 million people have tried high-dose psychedelics, or just LSD, not all psychedelics.
00:16:59.360And as of yet, we have no deaths, and we have a lot of people who had very unhappy and difficult experiences.
00:17:09.320But in some senses, it's a very safe, these are safe substances physiologically, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can have a terrible experience, even on a moderate dose.
00:17:21.540So the variable is having some understanding of what you're doing and what you're learning.
00:17:29.580And so recommending or not recommending is not something I do except to not recommend unless you know what you're doing.
00:17:36.000Yeah, this is a bit of a conundrum, however, because even very experienced psychonauts, as you know, can feel significant trepidation when thinking about taking a high dose of anything.
00:17:52.340I mean, it's just that even knowing what you're in for, even having experiences under your belt that you consider to be not only benign, but incredibly transformative, you still approach this howling abyss with the appropriate awe and concern, you know, often.
00:18:12.120And even someone as seasoned as Terrence McKenna would talk about the feeling of fear he would live with around this consideration of whether he should trip again.
00:18:25.380And so if your prescription or non-prescription is, if you feel any hesitation about doing this, don't do it, it's a little hard to apply.
00:18:36.400Well, that's probably why I put it out there, because it gives people a hesitation.
00:18:40.780And the image that came to mind, as you were saying it, is skydiving.
00:18:45.120No matter how many times you skydive and how carefully you check your gear, you know that sometimes people fall out of the sky and the chute doesn't open.
00:18:58.640And it's not a matter of skill or experience.
00:19:02.340It's a matter of the facts are that these substances will take you places you do not intend.
00:19:09.460And I think that's part of the reason why I've backed off from high-dose work and high-dose research, because it can be, it can always be not only a scary experience, which is fine.
00:19:25.620People, you know, pay a lot of money to be frightened if you've ever been to what's called an amusement park.
00:19:31.480But the question of benefit is really where I'm looking at.
00:19:37.420I'm not really that interested in people who kind of are tripping because their streaming service is down.
00:19:46.740I'm very interested in people who are saying,
00:19:50.420I really want to learn something important that will perhaps change my life, and therefore I'm preparing appropriately.
00:19:59.860Yeah, I should say, I've said before, that I didn't take any psychedelics for at least 25 years based on the kinds of concerns we've just sketched here.
00:20:11.060I mean, just a growing awareness of what a colossal spin of the psychological roulette wheel it was.
00:20:20.340And having had some scary experiences, I decided, you know, meditation was a much more governable game.
00:20:28.960And so, you know, it wasn't until very recently, about a little over a year ago, that I had my first in several decade significant trip, which I found incredibly useful.
00:20:41.740But the seriousness of intent that should frame this project is worth emphasizing, because there really is a distinction between a recreational approach to these things.
00:20:54.020I mean, you're just bored and you want to have fun, and you might do this at a party or do it at a concert or, you know, under conditions where those things exist.
00:21:04.340Obviously, we're having this conversation during the COVID pandemic, and there's not a lot of either of those things.
00:21:09.360But people tend to approach this frivolously, and it's not that, you know, that doesn't, certainly doesn't guarantee a bad experience.
00:21:18.800You can have a great experience doing that, but it's not really the appropriate orientation, in my view.