The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1661 - Rick Doblin

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:05.000 Train by day.

00:00:07.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.

00:00:08.000 All day.

00:00:14.000 Very good to see you my friend.

00:00:15.000 It's so great to be here again.

00:00:17.000 Your tireless work has not gone unnoticed.

00:00:20.000 I mean I'm beyond thankful that you and MAPS are out there and that you've done this incredible job and we were just describing the genius of First, doing it with people that no one can deny need help,

00:00:37.000 like with soldiers with PTSD, using psychedelics to help them get over their horrible issues.

00:00:46.000 That it's one of the best ways to sort of ingratiate or let people know the powerful benefits of psychedelics and do it to people that you wouldn't expect to be connected with psychedelics ordinarily, right?

00:00:59.000 Well, the most unusual people are police officers.

00:01:03.000 And so we've actually had police officers in our studies.

00:01:06.000 And we even have a police officer full-time who's also a psychotherapist.

00:01:10.000 And he's going through our program to learn how to give MDMA therapy to other police officers.

00:01:17.000 Wow.

00:01:17.000 And I met his police chief several times and persuaded and told him about our full training program.

00:01:25.000 And one of the steps is where we have a protocol from the FDA where therapists can volunteer to receive MDMA themselves as part of the training.

00:01:34.000 And so the police chief gave his police officer permission to volunteer to take MDMA. So we're actually helping give MDMA to police officers to give it to other police officers with trauma.

00:01:47.000 That would be amazing.

00:01:48.000 You know what we really need to do?

00:01:50.000 Get it to prisoners.

00:01:51.000 Exactly.

00:01:51.000 And prison guards.

00:01:53.000 They're also very traumatized.

00:01:55.000 Oh yeah, I can imagine.

00:01:56.000 Yeah.

00:01:57.000 There was a 35-year follow-up study I did to Timothy Leary when he was at Harvard.

00:02:03.000 He did the Concord Prison Experiment.

00:02:05.000 And that was to give psilocybin to prisoners who were getting ready to be released.

00:02:10.000 And the goal was to see if they could produce pro-social experiences that would then help reduce recidivism.

00:02:19.000 And the study was unfortunately, it was promoted as very, very successful.

00:02:24.000 I thought I was going to do a follow-up to bring light to one of the most important psychedelic studies ever.

00:02:31.000 But as I got more into it, it turned out that Timothy Leary had fudged the data.

00:02:37.000 Oh, no.

00:02:38.000 Yeah, it was really disappointing.

00:02:40.000 What did he do?

00:02:41.000 Well, for example, the longer you're out of prison, the more likely you are to go back.

00:02:46.000 So his group, on average, had been out of prison 10 months, and he compared it with a group of people that had been out of prison 24 months.

00:02:55.000 Mm-hmm.

00:03:18.000 Showed how they were at different time points, including at the 10-month time point, and the results were the same at the 10-month point.

00:03:26.000 So it's obvious if you compare people who've been out of prison longer with people who've been out of prison shorter, you know, it's just not a fair comparison.

00:03:35.000 The other thing he did, not to rag on Timothy Leary, but I think he did a lot of great things.

00:03:40.000 But the other thing he did was he said that a lot of these people were gone back to prison because they had minor parole violations and that they were supervised more carefully because they had done psilocybin in prison and that they were just recidivism because of minor things.

00:03:57.000 And so when I got into the prison system records, it turns out that they...

00:04:04.000 Oh, Timothy.

00:04:32.000 He had basically committed scientific fraud and it wasn't really true what he had said, but it didn't mean that it doesn't work.

00:04:39.000 It means that you can't rely over much on just the psychedelic experience.

00:04:44.000 You have to have supportive aftercare and group support.

00:04:49.000 And if you do that, I think it could potentially work.

00:04:51.000 So we have been talking to various people who want to do work with prisoners.

00:04:56.000 Or recently released.

00:04:58.000 It's hard to get permission to do work inside prisons because of the question whether prisoners can give informed consent, whether there's pressure on them to do it or if they do it, they think they'll get out sooner or something.

00:05:10.000 But it would be perfect when you're in prison to be doing this inner work to explore how you ended up in prison and the traumas that maybe made you commit certain kind of crimes.

00:05:21.000 Yeah.

00:05:22.000 I think that same argument about prisoners and psilocybin and aftercare, you could apply that maybe to a lesser extent to just the general public.

00:05:33.000 One of the arguments that I've had, not the arguments I've had, but the conversations I've had with people, the argument about psychedelics not being life-changing.

00:05:41.000 People will say, well, I know a lot of people who've done psychedelics and they're basically the same person.

00:05:45.000 They have one experience and they get back to it.

00:05:48.000 The way I've described it is that I think that a real profound breakthrough of psychedelic experience is like pressing Control-Alt-Delete for your brain.

00:05:57.000 And when you reboot, you have a fresh desktop. 0.97

00:06:01.000 It's clean, but you have one folder on the desktop that says, My Old Bullshit. 1.00

00:06:06.000 And most people open up that folder and just get comfortable with their old bullshit. 0.99

00:06:11.000 So after the experience, this thing where you sort of have to You have to rethink how you view everything, and you have this renewed perspective. 0.97

00:06:23.000 You have this completely different view of the world, but it's confusing.

00:06:28.000 You don't have scaffolding to travel on.

00:06:31.000 You don't have a clear pathway, but it's really easy to slip into your own thing and start... 1.00

00:06:39.000 Doing all the same dumb shit that you were doing before. 0.97

00:06:42.000 And I think for prisoners, it's probably profoundly more difficult because not only are you outside, not only have you been incarcerated, which has got to be incredibly traumatic, you've been locked into a cage, they take away all your freedom, they tell you what to do, 0.99

00:06:58.000 but then you become accustomed to that way of life.

00:07:01.000 And there's comfort in the fact that you are told what to do and you know what every day holds for you.

00:07:08.000 Then you go out in the world, you're out in the free world, and you don't know how to get by.

00:07:14.000 And it's really hard to get an apartment because you're a felon.

00:07:17.000 It's really hard to get a job because you're a felon.

00:07:19.000 And then someone who you know from the old life is doing something illegal, and they invite you to join in, and you say, well, this is my chance to score.

00:07:28.000 I can get a little bit of money.

00:07:30.000 Maybe then I can get an apartment.

00:07:31.000 Maybe then I can get back on track.

00:07:32.000 And the next thing you know, you're living a life of crime again.

00:07:35.000 Yeah, we make it so hard for people to reintegrate into society.

00:07:38.000 And I think one of the problems from the 60s was this idea of, you know, one dose miracle cure, that's all you need.

00:07:45.000 And I think what we've come to understand is that it's not that way.

00:07:49.000 Occasionally it can be, but mostly it's not, and you need this support afterwards, and you need to integrate it.

00:07:55.000 And what we've also learned from neuroscience is that you're actually...

00:08:00.000 Neuroplasticity, that these psychedelics help you rewire your brain in new ways.

00:08:03.000 But you have to reinforce that.

00:08:05.000 It's just not automatic.

00:08:06.000 It's not about the drug.

00:08:08.000 It's about the therapy that the drug helps make more effective.

00:08:11.000 And people have placed undue confidence, you could say, in the drug itself.

00:08:17.000 You need a new pathway.

00:08:18.000 Once you've gotten off of your old pathway, the psychedelics jolt you into this new realm.

00:08:25.000 But if you don't have a new pathway, then you panic and people fall back into their comfort zone.

00:08:32.000 And if your comfort zone is alcohol abuse and doing the same things you've done before and ruining your life and taking pills, you're going to go right back to that.

00:08:43.000 Yeah, there's one example of one person where it was like a one-dose miracle cure.

00:08:48.000 It's really rare, but I'll just explain a bit.

00:08:51.000 He was a veteran and had PTSD. I talked about Tony Macy during my TED talk, but he had this sense that he had been disabled with PTSD for years because of friends of his that had been killed, all the violence that he saw when he was in Iraq.

00:09:07.000 And under the influence of MDMA, he had this realization that there was something good about the PTSD. He was getting a benefit from it, which was it was the way that he showed loyalty to his friends who had died.

00:09:20.000 That he was connected to their memory and that he was suffering and it was a way to be bonded still with them.

00:09:26.000 But then he was able to kind of see himself from the eyes of his friends who had died.

00:09:31.000 And to realize that they wouldn't want him to squander his life.

00:09:35.000 They didn't have life anymore.

00:09:36.000 They would want him to live as fully as possible.

00:09:39.000 And he realized there's another way to honor his friends, which is to live.

00:09:44.000 And he thought, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

00:09:47.000 And in that moment, he cured himself of PTSD. Then he said, I'm taking opiates for pain, but I don't really think I'm taking it for pain.

00:09:56.000 I'm thinking more about it as an escape.

00:09:59.000 I don't need the opiates anymore.

00:10:01.000 And then he said, I don't need this MDMA anymore either.

00:10:04.000 I'm done.

00:10:04.000 I want to drop out of the study.

00:10:06.000 This was his first of what was going to be three MDMA sessions.

00:10:09.000 Wow.

00:10:10.000 And he dropped out.

00:10:11.000 And we said, sure, it's all voluntary, but if you...

00:10:15.000 We'll just do the outcome measures.

00:10:17.000 That would help us.

00:10:18.000 And he agreed to do that.

00:10:19.000 And at the two-month follow-up, no PTSD. And then around 11 months, when we have the 12-month follow-up, he started thinking, well, maybe I'd like another MDMA experience.

00:10:29.000 I said, well, we can't quite do that.

00:10:32.000 You're out of the protocol.

00:10:33.000 You've dropped out.

00:10:34.000 But at least it's only for PTSD, this study.

00:10:36.000 Let's see what your scores are at The 12 months and no PTSD. And that was about 9, 10 years ago.

00:10:43.000 I've been in touch with him recently.

00:10:44.000 He's doing great.

00:10:46.000 But it was this realization that he was able to make under the influence of one experience of MDMA that enabled him to reinterpret the way he could be loyal to his friends who had died.

00:10:59.000 That's amazing.

00:11:00.000 And it makes sense.

00:11:01.000 It completely makes sense that that would be one of the reasons why a soldier would have PTSD. If you talk to soldiers that experience combat duty, one of the things they say is that there's this insane, profound connection with their fellow soldiers.

00:11:15.000 And when one of them is killed and they survive, they have this survivor syndrome, this survivor's guilt.

00:11:24.000 And it haunts them.

00:11:26.000 And if they could honor the fallen soldiers by living their best life and not being in constant trauma, it'd be better for everybody.

00:11:36.000 And that is what their brothers and sisters would want.

00:11:39.000 Exactly.

00:11:39.000 Yeah.

00:11:40.000 And then they also have this sense that many of them feel like Now that they've found healing with psychedelics, that they have this sense of guilt in a sense that so many of their comrades have not had that opportunity for healing.

00:11:56.000 So many of them have now become more advocates for helping others from the military who've traumatized in that way get access to psychedelics to kind of bring them all back home.

00:12:06.000 That's amazing.

00:12:08.000 It makes sense.

00:12:08.000 I learned a lot from the one MDMA trip that I had.

00:12:12.000 The one MDMA trip I had made me realize how insecure I am.

00:12:16.000 I didn't realize it.

00:12:21.000 It's not that I didn't realize that I had insecurities, like everybody has insecurities, but I didn't realize how they affect every single interaction.

00:12:30.000 That I would have with people, and that kind of everybody does.

00:12:33.000 You're always wary of how someone's gonna view you, and how you're communicating with them, and, you know, is this, like, are we safe talking to each other?

00:12:43.000 Are you gonna be mean to me?

00:12:44.000 Am I gonna be mean to you?

00:12:45.000 Like, there's this weird tension that human beings have when you first meet people.

00:12:50.000 But these people that I met when we were doing MDMA together, like, no one had any fear.

00:12:56.000 We were all holding hands and talking, and it was this bizarrely free experience where it made me realize, wow, most of the time we talk to people, we have these guards up, we have these walls up,

00:13:12.000 and you kind of have to, I guess, because some people have nefarious intentions, and sometimes life can be dangerous.

00:13:20.000 But it made me think, boy, if you could get this to prisoners, Because how many of them are products of traumatic childhoods?

00:13:29.000 Almost all of them.

00:13:31.000 Yes, right?

00:13:32.000 Not all of them, but many of them.

00:13:34.000 Most of them, yeah. 1.00

00:13:35.000 That's the argument, like the determinism versus free will argument as well, that we want to look at someone who's a person who's a criminal and say, oh, this person's a piece of shit. 1.00

00:13:46.000 They're a criminal. 0.99

00:13:47.000 One of the things that happened to me as a father is seeing my children go from being babies to being little people that I'm talking to and then even young adults.

00:14:01.000 It makes you realize, like...

00:14:04.000 Oh, these are all babies.

00:14:06.000 Those people in prisons, you go by a prison, you see those people that are all trapped in that yard with barbed wire fence.

00:14:13.000 Those are babies.

00:14:14.000 They're babies that stayed alive.

00:14:17.000 They were, at one point in time, someone's beautiful, innocent child, and then... 1.00

00:14:23.000 The worst shit happened to them. 0.99

00:14:24.000 The worst environments, the worst parenting, the worst trauma, maybe sexual abuse, maybe assault, maybe drug abuse, maybe criminal justice abuse, maybe all sorts of chaos that can happen when you're living in these crime-infested, 1.00

00:14:44.000 gang-ridden neighborhoods that a lot of these people come from, and all you see around you This is what you're modeling.

00:14:52.000 You're modeling crime and criminals.

00:14:54.000 And then all of a sudden you're in jail.

00:14:55.000 And then people go, well put them in jail and lock them all up forever.

00:14:59.000 And you got this sort of Hardline, Republican way of thinking.

00:15:02.000 This is like a completely non-empathetic, non-compassionate way of looking at babies, which is what they are.

00:15:10.000 They're just babies that got...

00:15:12.000 Look, you and I are lucky.

00:15:14.000 We're babies, but we made it to this point in our lives in a pretty good state, you know, without some bumps and bruises along the way, but here we are.

00:15:22.000 Those people did not.

00:15:23.000 And the only way that I could think of to really reset who they are Is through psychedelics.

00:15:31.000 I don't think there's anything else that's going to really push them into a new realm of understanding of their position in life and how they got to where they are.

00:15:40.000 Well, I think there are other therapies that are effective.

00:15:43.000 There are other ways.

00:15:44.000 I don't think so.

00:15:45.000 I don't think so.

00:15:46.000 I don't think so.

00:15:46.000 And I think when we combine them with psychedelics, then you get to go really deep.

00:15:52.000 And social programs.

00:15:53.000 Programs where they're counseled.

00:15:55.000 Programs where someone can say, hey man, I've done this.

00:15:58.000 I used to be a thief.

00:16:00.000 I used to be whatever.

00:16:02.000 And now here I'm not.

00:16:03.000 I can help you.

00:16:04.000 I got out of jail.

00:16:06.000 I made better of my life.

00:16:08.000 We can do that with you.

00:16:08.000 And we all have that capacity if we're traumatized to do things that we're not proud of, that we're ashamed of.

00:16:15.000 We can all be twisted in certain ways.

00:16:17.000 So I just feel so grateful for my parents, who I had very loving parents, who supported me to...

00:16:23.000 Even when I broke their hopes for me when I was 17 years old in college and starting to do LSD, and I'm the oldest of four kids, and in the middle of my first year of college, I called up my parents and said, I'm going to drop out of college,

00:16:39.000 I want to study LSD, and I want you to pay for it.

00:16:45.000 What were you in college for?

00:16:47.000 Well, this was 1971 that I started, and 1972 is when I had this conversation with my parents.

00:16:53.000 I was studying psychology and Russian.

00:16:56.000 You know, I was very interested in the other, so I had studied Russian in high school.

00:17:02.000 Actually, I had gone to Russia.

00:17:04.000 My parents sent me to Russia in 1970 for the summer to learn Russian.

00:17:08.000 And that's actually where I first started working in the underground, you could say.

00:17:12.000 My parents gave me some prayer books because we're Jewish, and prayer books were forbidden in Russia.

00:17:18.000 And they gave me these prayer books to give to these guys at the synagogue.

00:17:22.000 And when I got there, I was with about 60 high school students, and we could speak passable Russian.

00:17:29.000 And so a bunch of the young Russian black market kids came up to us.

00:17:33.000 Again, 1970, we had the psychedelic revolution in America and they just had repression.

00:17:38.000 And so they wanted to buy our shirts, our clothes, blue jeans, anything that looked like America, they would pay rubles.

00:17:44.000 And rubles were worthless outside of Russia because they wanted to block anybody from escaping.

00:17:49.000 You'd have to escape with no money.

00:17:51.000 So we made, me and two other guys gathered all the stuff from all these other high school students and we made thousands and thousands, thousands of rubles.

00:18:01.000 And we knew that we couldn't take it home or anything.

00:18:04.000 And so I went to go meet this guy at the synagogue to give him these books in Moscow.

00:18:10.000 And he said, we're being watched.

00:18:13.000 Don't do it here, but let me meet you at a subway station at this amount of time at this station.

00:18:18.000 And I said, I also got all these rubles to give you.

00:18:20.000 And so we had this meeting.

00:18:22.000 And I was just 16. And I was like, hey, if they catch me, you know, I'm a dumb kid. 0.99

00:18:26.000 They'll just send me home. 0.93

00:18:27.000 So I was kind of fearless in that way.

00:18:30.000 And we made this transfer, and I gave him this bunch of rubles and the prayer books, but it was my parents kind of that sent me on this mission, and that was my first underground activity, was against the Russians, against the communists, and it was very enlightening.

00:18:46.000 But one of the things that was most enlightening for me was I took a walk on the beach with a Russian girl who worked at the school that we were going to, and I just had this conversation with her, you know, primitive, because I wasn't that great in Russian, but I was just like, you don't want to kill me. 0.88

00:19:01.000 I don't want to kill you.

00:19:02.000 You know, because this was the height of the Cold War and all of these, could we destroy the world not all that long after the Cuban Missile Crisis?

00:19:09.000 And I just thought, you know, you're just a person.

00:19:12.000 I'm just, you know, our governments might be in conflict. 0.99

00:19:15.000 But I had this image that all the Russians are horrible and hateful and they all want to kill us. 0.96

00:19:21.000 It was extremely eye-opening in terms of who's the other. 0.98

00:19:25.000 And I found the other was me, was just like me.

00:19:29.000 I had this other experience I just wanted to share about, this was a DMT experience, where I realized that, you know, we all have the capacity for evil if we aren't careful, in a sense.

00:19:42.000 So the DMT experience, Kind of dissolved my ego vera quickly.

00:19:46.000 It was the first time I ever did DMT. It was sitting in a circle with a group of people at Esalen.

00:19:50.000 This was Terence McKenna.

00:19:53.000 You did DMT with Terence McKenna?

00:19:55.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:19:56.000 And Ralph Metzner from Harvard.

00:19:59.000 There was about eight of us.

00:20:02.000 It takes about 15 minutes, 10-15 minutes.

00:20:05.000 One person would do it, would then sort of close their eyes, lie down, and come back after 15 minutes or so, and then tell the story about what happened.

00:20:13.000 And then we'd pass the pipe to the next person.

00:20:14.000 And this was like a whole evening of DMT stories.

00:20:17.000 So my DMT experience was this I saw this horizontal line.

00:20:22.000 Then I saw a vertical line.

00:20:24.000 Then I saw color.

00:20:25.000 It turned red.

00:20:26.000 Then it turned into cubes, like squares.

00:20:28.000 And then it turned into like an M.C. Escher painting that was just—and then I was gone.

00:20:32.000 And then I just had this insight that in the deepest recesses of who I think I am, in this inner voice that's kind of always talking to you that's— That I was using English.

00:20:45.000 And I didn't invent English.

00:20:46.000 It's all the product of all these people that came before me.

00:20:49.000 So even in my most inner private self, I'm intermixed with everybody else and everything that came before me.

00:20:54.000 And I had this beautiful experience of going back to the Big Bang and all of this kind of Sweep of evolutionary history, and I'm part of everything, and everything's part of me, and it was all this beautiful stuff.

00:21:05.000 And then I realized this sort of logical part of my mind was like, well, if everything's part of you and you're part of everything, then Hitler is part of you, too. 0.80

00:21:13.000 It's inner.

00:21:14.000 And that was very shattering for me.

00:21:16.000 That was in the DMT experience.

00:21:18.000 That was in the DMT. Did you see Hitler?

00:21:31.000 I did.

00:21:39.000 We did ketamine.

00:21:41.000 And so this is where I did more see Hitler. 0.57

00:21:44.000 So this is actually an experience that has helped me with my political strategy, in a way, of what MAPS is doing.

00:21:51.000 It's both drug development and drug policy reform.

00:21:55.000 So under this experience, it was very depressing and shattering to realize that I couldn't just say all the evil's out there, that I have this capacity, that Hitler's inside me.

00:22:05.000 So the next day, under ketamine, I was hovering above and behind Hitler as he's giving one of these speeches, like the Nuremberg rally kind of things. 0.73

00:22:15.000 And the ketamine gave me a bit of remove so I didn't freak out.

00:22:20.000 I was there, but I was not there.

00:22:22.000 So I didn't feel vulnerable in that way.

00:22:25.000 And I saw him doing this speech, and I'm thinking, how do I get into his head?

00:22:29.000 How do I help him not want to murder and kill?

00:22:33.000 What can we do to undo this evil?

00:22:36.000 And then I saw the Heil Hitler salute near the end of his speech, and he would put up his hand like that, and then everybody in the crowd would do it back to him. 0.58

00:22:47.000 And I felt like it was the one pushing out this energy and then the many pushing it back to him and giving him – and they would go back and forth and the intensity was kind of increasing.

00:22:58.000 And at that point, I was just realizing there's no way to get into his head.

00:23:02.000 It has to be voluntary and that he was getting so much from it.

00:23:09.000 And I felt this panic rising above me.

00:23:11.000 And I felt that if I were to panic, I would never be able to be effective in the world, that I would just turn away from that.

00:23:18.000 And then with ketamine, you can still breathe.

00:23:20.000 And so I realized that if I just breathe, that might help me deal with this fear.

00:23:25.000 And I started deep breathing.

00:23:27.000 And then came this idea that, ironically, rather than trying to change the mind of the one, we need to change the mind of the many.

00:23:36.000 And that they don't get as much out of it as Hitler did, that they're giving away their power to him. 0.87

00:23:40.000 And so that's where we need mass mental health. 0.98

00:23:43.000 So you hear a lot of people...

00:23:45.000 I had a chance to talk to Steve Jobs for an hour a long time ago, but he was like stuck in the 60s in a way.

00:23:53.000 He was like, God, if we could just give all these politicians LSD. And I thought, yeah, that might be good, but they might resist it.

00:23:58.000 But really, we have to base this new compassion and spirituality in the masses, in millions, tens of millions of people.

00:24:06.000 This Hitler thing, can I ask you? 0.97

00:24:08.000 I've never done ketamine, so when you're having this experience, what is it like?

00:24:13.000 Do you realize that you are in a psychedelic experience?

00:24:16.000 That you're in some sort of a hallucination?

00:24:19.000 Or does it actually feel like you are there?

00:24:24.000 It felt like I was there, but I had this sense that I was somehow or other also not there and removed.

00:24:31.000 But you knew that you were tripping?

00:24:32.000 Well, I lost that for a while.

00:24:36.000 And as the panic kind of built up, I had this thought, I can breathe.

00:24:40.000 So I did have that sense that I was on a drug and that if I were just to modulate my breathing, that would help relax me.

00:24:48.000 So I had that thought, but I felt like I was really there.

00:24:53.000 I've seen movies of World War II, and I've seen movies of Hitler giving speeches, but I was never as emotionally connected to it and in the moment as I was during this ketamine experience. 0.71

00:25:03.000 So it was kind of a dual situation where I was there, but a part of me felt removed and safe.

00:25:12.000 And this thought like, okay, just breathe.

00:25:15.000 But I never had that insight before about the Heil Hitler salute and how this energy exchange and how the rallies were very dramatic.

00:25:23.000 And that's where he cemented his power, through these rallies.

00:25:26.000 Well, you know Hitler was on all kinds of drugs. 0.75

00:25:29.000 Yes.

00:25:31.000 God, I keep forgetting who told us that story, Jamie, but there was a story about Hitler convincing Mussolini.

00:25:39.000 Do you remember?

00:25:40.000 I've tried to look it up and find it.

00:25:43.000 I can't find it.

00:25:44.000 It might not have even happened on a podcast.

00:25:46.000 That's the problem.

00:25:47.000 I have so many conversations and my memory is just so full.

00:25:52.000 There's no room.

00:25:53.000 I got folders stuffed all over the place.

00:25:56.000 I don't know where anything is.

00:25:57.000 We're good to go.

00:26:13.000 And when they did that he was just bouncing off the walls and he cornered Mussolini and talked to him for five hours and convinced him not to leave the effort, not to leave the war effort.

00:26:26.000 And he sort of...

00:26:28.000 One of the things that this story was basically pointing to was that much of Hitler's mania and much of this rabid attack that he had put on the rest of the Western world was fueled by amphetamines and cocaine and testosterone and that they just kept injecting him. 0.96

00:26:51.000 With all this shit that gave him this insane confidence and insane maniacal aggression. 0.92

00:26:57.000 And it completely makes sense if you think about what he did. 0.99

00:27:00.000 And then we also know that the kamikazes were on amphetamines and many of the Nazi soldiers were on amphetamines. 0.99

00:27:08.000 Well, the Blitzkrieg, how they would do that, they were days and days on amphetamines.

00:27:13.000 And then that promotes aggression as well.

00:27:16.000 And just psychotic delusions.

00:27:18.000 Yeah.

00:27:18.000 And he had this delusion of creating this master race which is and that's the most cocaine idea of all time, right?

00:27:26.000 Like this idea like we're gonna engineer the greatest human race ever and you know and to be able to look at that idea from this cocaine-fueled or amphetamine-fueled perspective to the point where you're willing to commit genocide in order to accomplish your goal.

00:27:44.000 Drugs were a big factor in the Third Reich.

00:27:47.000 Very much so.

00:27:49.000 Also, we know that John Kennedy was given amphetamines.

00:27:52.000 That's Dr. Feelgood, right?

00:27:54.000 Dr. Feelgood was a legitimate doctor that would run around and give people amphetamines.

00:28:00.000 What did you find there, buddy?

00:28:02.000 The story?

00:28:02.000 Oh, where is this from?

00:28:05.000 Historyhit.com.

00:28:06.000 Did Hitler's drug problem change the course of history? 0.92

00:28:09.000 He got a shot of this stuff called Eukadol.

00:28:12.000 Okay.

00:28:12.000 Hitler took Eukadol for the first time before the dreaded meeting.

00:28:15.000 His mood changed immediately.

00:28:17.000 Everyone was very happy that the Fuhrer was back in the game. 1.00

00:28:20.000 His enthusiasm was such that on the way to the airport to fly to his meeting with Mussolini, he demanded a second shot.

00:28:25.000 The first shot had been administered subcutaneously, but the second was intravenous.

00:28:31.000 It was even better.

00:28:32.000 During the meeting with Mussolini, Hitler was so energized that he pretty much just shouted for three hours.

00:28:38.000 There's several reports from that meeting, including An American intelligence report, to the embarrassment of everyone in attendance, Hitler didn't stop talking throughout the entire duration of the meeting.

00:28:48.000 Mussolini couldn't get a word in edgeways, meaning he wasn't able to voice his concerns about the war effort and perhaps raise the prospect of Italy leaving.

00:28:57.000 So, Italy stayed.

00:28:59.000 At the end of the day, Hitler told Morell, the success of today is totally yours. 0.95

00:29:04.000 Wow.

00:29:05.000 So Morell must have been the doctor.

00:29:09.000 Yes.

00:29:10.000 Eucodil. 1.00

00:29:10.000 Find out what that shit is. 1.00

00:29:13.000 Okay. 1.00

00:29:13.000 Eucodil is similar to heroin. 1.00

00:29:15.000 In fact, it's stronger than heroin.

00:29:17.000 It also has an effect that heroin doesn't have.

00:29:20.000 It makes you euphoric.

00:29:21.000 But I think they shot him up with some other stuff, too.

00:29:24.000 The word was that I'd read cocaine and oxycodone.

00:29:31.000 So I just hit Google and that's what comes up.

00:29:32.000 Oh, interesting.

00:29:34.000 But I had heard...

00:29:36.000 And cocaine, it says there.

00:29:37.000 Five milligrams of cocaine, too.

00:29:39.000 Where does it say that?

00:29:40.000 Under DIX Wikipedia there.

00:29:42.000 Yeah.

00:29:44.000 Oh, is that what's in there?

00:29:45.000 It's meth and coke mixed together.

00:29:46.000 Oh, so that's what Eucodyl is.

00:29:48.000 Okay, that makes sense.

00:29:50.000 So Eucodyl is five milligrams of cocaine and three milligrams of methamphetamine.

00:29:55.000 Wow.

00:29:57.000 So DIX, it's a methamphetamine-based experimental performance enhancer developed by Nazi Germany. 0.90

00:30:05.000 Wow.

00:30:06.000 So that's the stuff.

00:30:09.000 Yeah, so maybe we can do the other with MDMA and certain kind of psychedelics to help people feel that there's other ways than violence to try to achieve their goals.

00:30:20.000 Well, I just think he was...

00:30:21.000 I don't...

00:30:22.000 You know, I think...

00:30:23.000 What does it say here, Jim?

00:30:24.000 We could march 90 kilometers a day without rest.

00:30:27.000 What is that?

00:30:29.000 How many miles is that?

00:30:31.000 So 100 kilometers is 60 miles?

00:30:37.000 Wow.

00:30:37.000 That's a lot.

00:30:38.000 So, a human being is essentially the product of all the chemicals that are running through your veins.

00:30:46.000 It's your neurochemistry, your biochemistry, all of the nutrients you've eaten, food, water, and an imbalance of any of those things can severely change the way you think or behave.

00:30:58.000 Our brain is a drug factory.

00:30:59.000 People talk about a world without drugs.

00:31:02.000 Our brain is a drug factory.

00:31:04.000 Yeah.

00:31:04.000 And the people that talk about no drugs, generally, they enjoy some drugs.

00:31:09.000 Oh, tobacco, alcohol.

00:31:11.000 Yeah.

00:31:12.000 Carl Hart is one of my favorite people to talk to.

00:31:14.000 Do you know that Carl Hart, we've invited him to join the board of directors of MAPS. Amazing.

00:31:19.000 He's going through this six-month process of getting to know us, and we're getting to know him.

00:31:23.000 He's going to come to our board of directors meeting in a couple weeks.

00:31:26.000 Yeah.

00:31:26.000 Yeah, Carl Hart is fantastic.

00:31:28.000 He's amazing.

00:31:28.000 He's a perfect example of someone who had a certain perspective before he became a research scientist and thought of drugs as being all negative connotations, thought of them as being addictive, terrible for you, but then through actual rigorous study,

00:31:46.000 like actually understanding and studying the effects of drugs, then became to change his perspective based on data.

00:31:52.000 And then realize like, oh no, no, no.

00:31:54.000 This is most of what we think about drugs is incorrect or is propaganda.

00:32:00.000 And to have the courage to be a professor, right?

00:32:03.000 And to be a legitimate scholar and have the courage to say that he enjoys heroin.

00:32:07.000 And then he likes to sniff heroin and helps relationships with his wife and helps his friendships.

00:32:13.000 And I was like, that is...

00:32:14.000 Because he's just being honest, you know?

00:32:16.000 He's being courageous.

00:32:18.000 Incredibly courageous.

00:32:19.000 Incredibly courageous and honest. 0.93

00:32:20.000 And also, he's so fucking smart that when he says it, you realize, like, okay, this is not some crackpot perspective. 0.85

00:32:28.000 This is an actual scholar who's telling you how this stuff works. 0.95

00:32:32.000 And you should probably listen.

00:32:34.000 Because he's got the courage to do this in the face of all of the propaganda and the current cultural narrative, which is that drugs ruin lives.

00:32:42.000 And he's saying, no, no, they don't ruin lives.

00:32:45.000 They don't ruin my life.

00:32:46.000 And you look at his life, his life is great.

00:32:47.000 He's not getting ruined by drugs.

00:32:49.000 He's using them responsibly.

00:32:54.000 He's using them like an adult.

00:32:56.000 Yeah, one of the things I talked before is this dual strategy of MAPS, the drug development, you know, the pharmaceutical drug development and drug policy reform.

00:33:04.000 And so Carl is one of the leading advocates for drug policy reform.

00:33:08.000 And that's why we're trying to see if he'll come join the board.

00:33:12.000 And one of the things that he asked us to do is to look at our employee manual, our handbook.

00:33:17.000 We've got about 120 people now.

00:33:20.000 In the MAPS, and then we also have the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is our for-profit, but benefit maximizing, not profit maximizing.

00:33:28.000 And he said, because we don't do drug testing, it might not be surprising to anybody, but we don't do drug testing for employees.

00:33:35.000 It's all about performance.

00:33:36.000 It's not about what drugs you take.

00:33:38.000 And so Carl wanted us to...

00:33:43.000 We're good to go.

00:33:56.000 So we permit people to smoke pot or do things during work.

00:34:01.000 You know, some people like to microdose, some people like to do different things, and we just say if it enhances your performance, fine.

00:34:09.000 If it makes you unable to do your work, that's not good, but it's not about what you do.

00:34:14.000 And then one of my favorite things, actually, and we put this in the employee manual, is that One of the smokable tasks for me is strategizing, is getting high and meeting with MAP staff.

00:34:25.000 And some of us will get high, some of us won't, but then we'll just strategize.

00:34:29.000 So we put that in the employee handbook, that it's okay to smoke pot at work if you're doing strategizing or other kind of things.

00:34:36.000 And Carl was really...

00:34:37.000 You know, a big factor in sort of articulating that even more clearly.

00:34:41.000 It would be very disappointing if you guys did drug tests.

00:34:44.000 Wouldn't it be terrible?

00:34:46.000 Can you imagine if MAPS is drugged?

00:34:49.000 Piss in the cup, Wilson!

00:34:50.000 What? 0.97

00:34:51.000 I thought I was working at MAPS! And we will let people work with us who don't do drugs.

00:34:57.000 Right, but you don't want people just showing up drunk either.

00:35:01.000 Unless they think somehow or other that enhances their performance.

00:35:05.000 I mean, again, it's not about- It's about responsibility.

00:35:07.000 It's about responsibility and it's about what particular tasks.

00:35:10.000 Like some people can really do spreadsheets better when they're high because it helps them focus.

00:35:15.000 Some people, they would just lose track of all the numbers.

00:35:18.000 Right.

00:35:18.000 That's me.

00:35:21.000 But writing jokes, I feel like marijuana is a superpower.

00:35:25.000 I feel like it gives you these new ideas that I don't know where ideas come from.

00:35:30.000 They come from the ether, right?

00:35:33.000 You're pulling them out of cultural references.

00:35:36.000 You're pulling them out of life experiences, creativity.

00:35:39.000 There's so many different...

00:35:41.000 A jolt of marijuana puts you in a completely different realm of experiences and ideas.

00:35:46.000 It puts you in this different place.

00:35:48.000 And I always feel like other ideas are accessible when you're on marijuana that aren't anywhere else.

00:35:54.000 Carl Sagan shared that perspective.

00:35:57.000 Yes, he was a daily pot smoker.

00:35:58.000 And he had to hide that because he was worried he wouldn't be part of the space program if it was clear that he was smoking pot all the time.

00:36:04.000 Yes, yes.

00:36:05.000 And wasn't there something where he was denied something because of his use of marijuana, because of his stated use of marijuana?

00:36:17.000 I forget what it was about.

00:36:19.000 I'm not sure.

00:36:20.000 One of his best friends was a Dr. Lester Grinspoon, who was a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School.

00:36:26.000 And so Lester was kind of a mentor of mine.

00:36:29.000 He recently died.

00:36:31.000 And Lester had a book of stories about people who had used marijuana for different purposes.

00:36:37.000 But for Carl, he hid his name.

00:36:40.000 It was an anonymous report because he was worried about what would happen if he was so out about it.

00:36:45.000 Yeah, that statement that he made about the use of marijuana was through a pseudonym, right?

00:36:50.000 Yes, yes.

00:36:51.000 It was anonymous?

00:36:51.000 Yes, through a pseudonym.

00:36:53.000 But it's so well written, like the way he described it and that these experiences are available through cannabis that wouldn't be available to him.

00:37:03.000 Yeah, there's a line of research called semantic priming.

00:37:06.000 And what that means is that if I say night, you're normally going to say day.

00:37:11.000 There's a certain number of kind of associations that we normally have to a word.

00:37:15.000 So semantic is like a word and you prime somebody and then you see how they respond.

00:37:20.000 And so there's been research done with psilocybin when people are under the influence of psilocybin and then you give them a certain word and what they found is that people have a wider range of associations to that word when they're under the influence of psilocybin and the same would be true for marijuana.

00:37:36.000 So that you have access to a broader sense of connections.

00:37:40.000 It's not your normal pathways.

00:37:42.000 And that's where I think creativity can come from.

00:37:44.000 Because you're able to look at things in a new way.

00:37:46.000 And the old patterns that are so reinforced, the psilocybin or the cannabis or other things, make broader range of semantic priming.

00:37:56.000 Interesting.

00:37:57.000 Semantic priming.

00:37:58.000 Yeah.

00:37:59.000 And what is the discipline of semantic priming?

00:38:04.000 Is this like a clearly...

00:38:06.000 Well, it's like cognitive neuroscience.

00:38:08.000 Right.

00:38:08.000 You know, how do our brains process information?

00:38:11.000 And normally, you know, we have certain kind of go-to associations with things.

00:38:17.000 And then under the influence of these psychedelics or cannabis, you have just a wider range of associations And also, you're not seeing from the normal perspective.

00:38:30.000 Yeah.

00:38:31.000 And that promotes new ideas.

00:38:33.000 And not all new ideas are great, but if we're stuck in the same old ideas, you're not going to be able to filter new ideas to see which ones are really gems.

00:38:42.000 Yeah, it really brings to light this idea that you can't be as balanced a person as you can be or to sort of try to optimize your perspective on things.

00:38:54.000 You need to have a lot of things in line.

00:38:57.000 Like you need to have your personal relationships in line.

00:39:01.000 You need to have your career goals or at least your path in line.

00:39:06.000 You need to have your physical health in line.

00:39:09.000 Your diet should be in line.

00:39:11.000 The way you view the world, like how you choose to interact with people, you should have sort of an ethic and a scaffolding for that.

00:39:19.000 All these different things.

00:39:20.000 Now when you add psychedelics to those things, that's when I, at least in my opinion, like from my personal perspective, when I've had the best results, is when I've had other things in a good place.

00:39:34.000 And so my trips aren't about dealing with the anxiety of my mistakes or the angst with my current state of my career or life or relationships.

00:39:47.000 Instead of looking at it that way, I've already sort of done work to keep myself in a good place with all those things and then the psychedelics will sort of reveal more perspective that's available.

00:40:02.000 Yeah.

00:40:02.000 Now, on the other side of that coin is we do psychedelic therapy with people whose lives are in shambles and who are traumatized, who are disabled from trauma, or who are alcoholics or substance abusers who've lost relationships.

00:40:19.000 And so in those circumstances, they have difficult experiences, but they can process a lot of the pain and the suffering that they're running away from.

00:40:29.000 So I would say that when you say your best experiences, those are like the most enjoyable or the most insightful.

00:40:35.000 But for those people whose lives are in tatters, psychedelics in a safe, supportive context with preparation and with the integration that is often overlooked, then they can make major steps to get healthier.

00:40:50.000 So it can help them put all those pieces in line in terms of their personal relationships, their career goals, their health goals.

00:40:59.000 Get yourself in a good place that way from these uncomfortable situations that the psychedelics put you in where you recognize all the things you're doing incorrectly, all the things you're doing that are flawed.

00:41:11.000 Yeah.

00:41:11.000 Now, the way you just described that the MDMA helped you see your insecurities.

00:41:15.000 So, on the one hand, they bring up the insecurities, they bring up things that would make you normally uncomfortable, but with MDMA in particular, it reduces activity in the amygdala, the fear-processing part of the brain.

00:41:27.000 So you have this sense of self-acceptance so that you can see more critical information without it being so painful.

00:41:35.000 Your sense of self, your self-compassion is increased.

00:41:39.000 And so things where you've not done as well as you would have liked, which normally people run away from, you can see that.

00:41:47.000 And also traumatic memories that have been overwhelming for people.

00:41:52.000 That's where people have PTSD. These memories are so traumatic and they feel overwhelming that they can never really fully move past them.

00:41:59.000 It's like the trauma is always about to happen.

00:42:02.000 They see the whole world through this filter of trauma.

00:42:04.000 They hear noises that remind them of the trauma they're triggered.

00:42:09.000 And so this sense of safety in yourself that MDMA can give helps you to deal with these problems.

00:42:17.000 And there was a study that was recently done in England with MDMA for alcohol use disorder.

00:42:23.000 And what it turned out to be a study of helping people deal with their traumas.

00:42:27.000 And that's what led them to run away from these traumas into alcohol.

00:42:32.000 These emotions were so overwhelming that they couldn't process them, so they thought, I'll drown them out with alcohol.

00:42:38.000 But with the MDMA, they're able, through this reduction of activity in the amygdala, through this promotion of release of oxytocin, which is the hormone of nursing mothers of love and connection, that you have this sense of safety, self-compassion,

00:42:55.000 as I said, and then you can move into these troubled areas.

00:42:58.000 So while psychedelics will produce a certain kind of experience for people that have their lives in order, and you can sort of expand, I think?

00:43:10.000 I think?

00:43:17.000 I've talked to so many people that have gotten their lives in order through step by step like one psychedelic experience sort of illuminated all the problems that they have in their life and then they sort of took steps to eventually have more psychedelic experiences and do have better choices in their life and but For the most part,

00:43:39.000 there's not a clear-cut, disciplined pathway that exists for people.

00:43:45.000 If you're going to college, you take courses, you have to do your thesis, there's all these different things that are kind of laid out to let you know that this is how you get an education.

00:43:55.000 When you're trying to get a psychedelic education, it's Rough shot.

00:44:00.000 It's all wild.

00:44:02.000 You don't know what you're doing.

00:44:03.000 You're taking advice from a bunch of stoners.

00:44:06.000 Everybody's got their own methods.

00:44:09.000 You might listen to some great Alan Watts recording or listen to Timothy Leary or McKenna and you've got to kind of get an idea of maybe how I should...

00:44:19.000 Oh, set and setting.

00:44:21.000 Okay, I'm going to do it this way.

00:44:22.000 But it would be so beneficial if there were places where...

00:44:29.000 Legitimate professionals who have an expertise in psychedelics and perhaps psychology had these psychedelic centers where you could go and have these curated experiences where you're safe.

00:44:45.000 There's a medical staff on hand.

00:44:47.000 You don't have to worry about overdosing.

00:44:48.000 They do the right dose per your body weight and your experience.

00:44:52.000 And if there was a structure in terms of allowing people the space to maybe talk to counselors afterwards and process what that psychedelic experience is like, and then maybe have someone who could help you devise a strategy to optimize your life based on this newfound information that you've gotten from that experience.

00:45:17.000 Yeah.

00:45:17.000 Now, if we were to do a podcast 10 years from now, my prediction is, we could see if it comes true, is that there's going to be about 5,000 or 6,000 of these centers throughout the United States, and that there's already hundreds and hundreds of ketamine centers, and that's legal for depression.

00:45:33.000 The ketamine therapists are interested in being cross-trained in MDMA, psilocybin.

00:45:38.000 We think by the end of 2023 that we'll have FDA approval for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. By 2024, 2025, there should be FDA approval for psilocybin, for depression, potentially for alcohol use disorder, other indications.

00:45:54.000 And they'll be administered in these exact kind of centers.

00:45:58.000 And that's our long-term goal, is to have these thousands and thousands of psychedelic centers.

00:46:03.000 And they'll be not just an MDMA center or psilocybin center or ketamine center, but psychedelic centers.

00:46:09.000 The therapists will be cross-trained in all these modalities.

00:46:12.000 And that's the vision that we're trying to establish.

00:46:15.000 But I would say about schools, and you talked about your kids, that we overemphasize cognitive education and underemphasize emotional education.

00:46:23.000 And schools don't really prepare people for that.

00:46:26.000 So when kids are hyperactive and stuff, we just give them Adderall or something.

00:46:30.000 We're not really looking at the whole human.

00:46:34.000 And there's been a lot of discussion about different kinds of intelligences.

00:46:37.000 Emotional intelligence, EQ, is super important.

00:46:41.000 But in schools, we just emphasize cognitive, and we leave so much untouched, and that causes so many problems.

00:46:49.000 So we really need to reform how we think of education.

00:46:53.000 We need to educate citizens.

00:46:55.000 One of the quotes that I thought was from Albert Einstein, but then I checked it out and it wasn't really, but I thought for a long time it was.

00:47:02.000 But still, it's a great quote.

00:47:04.000 And it is that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

00:47:09.000 Who is that quote?

00:47:10.000 I thought it was Einstein, too.

00:47:11.000 I never could actually track it down to Einstein.

00:47:14.000 Jamie will track it down.

00:47:16.000 Okay.

00:47:16.000 There's another quote from Einstein that is from Einstein that is, The splitting of the atom has changed everything except our mode of thinking, and hence we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.

00:47:30.000 What shall be required if mankind is to survive is a whole new mode of thinking.

00:47:36.000 And what is that new mode of thinking that Einstein was talking about?

00:47:41.000 And I think it's a more universal, spiritual, we're all in this together.

00:47:45.000 We're not primarily defined by how we're different from people, but we're primarily defined by how we're the same from other people, and also the same as animals, and the same as the environment, that we're all part of this planet Earth, life on Earth, and that if we can have that sense of connection like that,

00:48:02.000 we're not likely to bomb people into oblivion, or To commit genocide or to be racist or, you know, throw masses of people in prison for mass incarceration.

00:48:12.000 So I think that that kind of spiritual and emotional education along with cognitive is what we need.

00:48:19.000 We have technology that's miraculous.

00:48:21.000 I mean, just think how many people can be watching this podcast or how many people survived on Zoom during the pandemic.

00:48:27.000 Yeah.

00:48:27.000 It's miraculous.

00:48:29.000 Well, also, let's look at it this way.

00:48:31.000 We're talking about an education outside of traditional education when you're talking about these psychedelic centers that you plan on having open in 10 years.

00:48:41.000 Look at physical education.

00:48:44.000 Look at the physical education you get from high school and look at how many people leave school and take yoga and start going to CrossFit gyms and take martial arts and there is a mass movement of incredibly physically healthy super aware people that are taking care of their body through There was no education about this in high school.

00:49:12.000 They didn't get this from college.

00:49:14.000 They got this from pursuing it.

00:49:16.000 So many people who have degrees and careers in completely non-related fields are very physically active and very tuned into their bodies because they've recognized the benefits of that through external sources outside of the traditional education system.

00:49:33.000 We could have that same type of movement With mental health and psychedelics and with learning outside of these traditional radically underfunded places.

00:49:47.000 Like when you look at how much a high school teacher makes, it's embarrassing and it's no wonder why they're under motivated.

00:49:54.000 No wonder why they're depressed and Not enthusiastic about this job and also how the fuck do you connect one-on-one with 50 people when you have them for 45 minutes or whatever it is a class is an hour or whatever it's not possible so you can't do it and That that is one of the reasons why so much emphasis is paid to forcing these children to sit still and pay attention I don't know if I have ADHD,

00:50:23.000 but I know that if I was in school today, and if I think about how I was when I was a child, and if I had parents that were so inclined, I would 100% be medicated. 0.83

00:50:36.000 100%.

00:50:36.000 But it wasn't because...

00:50:38.000 I always thought there was something wrong with me.

00:50:40.000 But it wasn't that there was something wrong with me.

00:50:43.000 It's that I was bored.

00:50:44.000 I was not interested at all in what they were teaching.

00:50:47.000 I was interested in comic books, and I was interested in, you know, martial arts, and I was interested in space travel, and I was interested in...

00:50:56.000 If you talk to me about something that was interesting to me, then I was locked in and tuned in. 0.91

00:51:02.000 But if you're talking to me about some boring shit, I was just staring at the sky and looking at my fingernails, and I just couldn't pay attention. 0.97

00:51:10.000 But it wasn't because my mind was incapable or my mind needed medication. 0.99

00:51:15.000 It's because I wasn't interested in what they were talking about.

00:51:19.000 And that turns out to be very valuable in life if you're a person Who finds what you're interested in and ignores the things you're not interested in.

00:51:30.000 Because you can really get far just paying attention to what you're interested in and focusing on that obsessively.

00:51:35.000 Some of the most successful people in this world are that type of person.

00:51:40.000 And as a child, they're taking those people and stifling them and forcing them to be a square peg.

00:51:49.000 They're taking their roundness Of whoever they are, and they're compressing it and shoving them into this square hole with medication.

00:51:56.000 And it's a tragedy.

00:51:57.000 It really is.

00:51:58.000 Yeah.

00:52:00.000 I was so lucky.

00:52:01.000 I went to a college when I was 17, in 1971, and it was an experimental college.

00:52:08.000 It should be kind of the way all colleges are, but what it said was, the principles of this college are called New College.

00:52:14.000 It's in Sarasota, Florida.

00:52:15.000 It's the Honors College of the State of Florida, but when I went to it, it was private.

00:52:18.000 But it said the student's curiosity is the most important thing, and that they weren't going to put anything in the way of that curiosity.

00:52:25.000 So there was no distribution requirements.

00:52:28.000 You could just do general studies.

00:52:30.000 If you wanted to major, you had to do a certain number of classes, but you didn't have to major.

00:52:34.000 A lot of schools say you've got to do a language, you've got to do this, you've got to do that.

00:52:37.000 This was the student's curiosity is the most important thing, and we will do everything to foster that.

00:52:43.000 There's no grades, all written evaluations.

00:52:46.000 Everybody had to do a senior thesis, a big project.

00:52:50.000 And so this school, when I started, now this was sort of, people say the 60s really continued into the early 70s, and so it was very much like that.

00:52:59.000 But the school had this tradition of all-night dance parties with psychedelics till the sunrise.

00:53:06.000 They didn't put that in the brochure.

00:53:08.000 But they also had this unusual situation where there was a woman who had actually a professor who had studied with Carl Jung, and her husband was wealthy.

00:53:18.000 They donated this big Olympic-sized swimming pool to the college, and it had turned into a nudist colony.

00:53:24.000 For the students and the faculty.

00:53:25.000 And so here I was, a shy guy.

00:53:27.000 I come to this school with this tradition of psychedelics, with this tradition of sort of bringing sex and drugs into the open from being suppressed, this nudist colony at the pool.

00:53:36.000 And I started doing a lot of psychedelics, but I wasn't prepared.

00:53:39.000 My education up to that point had been so cognitive.

00:53:42.000 I was really emotionally stunted.

00:53:45.000 My bar mitzvah didn't turn me into a man.

00:53:49.000 You know, the traditional rituals didn't work.

00:53:51.000 And when I first started doing psychedelics, I thought, it's helping me answer existential questions, or at least ask them, not answer them, but ask them.

00:54:00.000 I said, this is what my bar mitzvah should have been.

00:54:02.000 But I was jumbled up, and I went to the guidance counselor at school.

00:54:06.000 And today, if this happens, you know, you'd be in big trouble.

00:54:09.000 But I went to the guidance counselor, and I said, I need help with my LSD trips, and my mescaline trips, and my mushroom trips.

00:54:18.000 I don't have the ability.

00:54:19.000 I get scared.

00:54:20.000 I get stuck.

00:54:21.000 I can't move forward.

00:54:23.000 And this is now more important to me than my studies because I'm unbalanced.

00:54:27.000 I'm overdeveloped intellectually, underdeveloped emotionally and spiritually.

00:54:30.000 And the guidance counselor took me seriously.

00:54:33.000 Really?

00:54:33.000 Did the guidance counselor have psychedelic experiences to draw upon?

00:54:37.000 Well, he didn't share that, but I was just so lucky.

00:54:40.000 But he said to me, there's a book that I would like you to read.

00:54:43.000 And he gave me this book, and it was by Stanislav Grof, who's the world's leading LSD researcher, one of the co-founders of transpersonal psychology.

00:54:53.000 And the book was his first book that he ever wrote.

00:54:55.000 It was Realms of the Human Unconscious, Observations from LSD Research.

00:55:01.000 And the book was not actually published until 1975, but my guidance counselor had a copy of it in 1972, a manuscript copy of it.

00:55:09.000 And it was reading that book that made me devote my life to psychedelics when I was 18, because it was this...

00:55:18.000 Yeah.

00:55:37.000 One group that he called was biographical, Freudian, you know, just what happens in our life and how that affects us.

00:55:43.000 The other is birth trauma, how the process of being birthed, where we're being born, where we feel that we might die, it's imprints on us, certain emotional patterns according to how our birth process actually is.

00:55:58.000 And then beyond that is the spiritual realm and this sense of connection that we talked about.

00:56:02.000 And so it was science that also had this political implications, because I was thinking, yeah, if you can feel connected to everything, that's the antidote to war and genocide.

00:56:11.000 But it had a reality check, which was therapy.

00:56:15.000 Can we use these states of mind and these experiences to help people have richer lives, to get out of being drug addicts or out of being alcoholics or out of being scared of dying if you've got cancer or things like that?

00:56:27.000 And so this book changed my life.

00:56:30.000 And the guidance counselor, after he gave me the book, he said that he was in touch with Stan.

00:56:34.000 And I said, great, I would like to write him a letter.

00:56:36.000 So I'm this confused 18-year-old writing to this MD-PhD at Johns Hopkins, leading psychedelic research, which was being squashed.

00:56:44.000 Because 1970 is when Nixon and the Controlled Substance Act came in, and all these drugs are criminalized, and psychedelic research is being squashed.

00:56:52.000 And I'm just so lucky.

00:56:54.000 I wrote Stan a letter, and he actually wrote me back.

00:56:57.000 Wow.

00:56:58.000 And he said, I'm giving a workshop later this summer out in California, and you're invited to come.

00:57:03.000 I'm really glad you like my book.

00:57:05.000 You know, our research is winding down, but come to this workshop if you'd like to.

00:57:12.000 So I hitchhiked across America back when people would hitchhike.

00:57:17.000 I went to the first Rainbow Festival that was in Colorado.

00:57:20.000 I didn't know about it, but I just saw signs as I was hitchhiking.

00:57:24.000 But I did this workshop with Stan and Joan Halifax, who we was married to at the time, who's now very much into Buddhism and meditation.

00:57:31.000 And I did primal therapy.

00:57:33.000 I did a three-week primal therapy intensive where you, like, scream your birth trauma out.

00:57:37.000 And my therapist permitted me to do LSD one time during this primal therapy.

00:57:42.000 And then I sat for him and I did a month-long encounter group.

00:57:46.000 Meanwhile, of course, got my parents.

00:57:48.000 You sat for your therapist while they did acid.

00:57:50.000 Yeah, we switched that.

00:57:51.000 And actually, that was kind of a little bit scary because he was so used to letting his feelings out.

00:57:58.000 We were in a soundproof padded room.

00:57:59.000 We'd go in there.

00:58:00.000 I was isolated for the day except for like one hour of therapy every day and trying to get it.

00:58:06.000 The only thing I could do is have a dream journal.

00:58:09.000 But I couldn't read books.

00:58:11.000 I couldn't write anything.

00:58:12.000 I was just there to get in touch with the sort of primal trauma of being born.

00:58:18.000 But this therapist that I was sitting for, he kind of lost the distinction between what's inside and what's outside.

00:58:26.000 And he took off the classic story.

00:58:28.000 He took off his clothes and he wants to like run outside and I had to like wrestle him down to try to keep him in the room.

00:58:34.000 It was really a bit scary.

00:58:37.000 But at the end of all of this work, I did a month-long encounter group.

00:58:41.000 My parents paid for all of this, which was really kind of them.

00:58:45.000 But I wasn't where I wanted to be because I had this mistaken idea, which was the more drugs you take, the faster you evolve.

00:58:54.000 And it's about the quantity of drugs.

00:58:56.000 And I completely had missed the idea.

00:58:58.000 It's about the integration.

00:58:59.000 It's about you don't need to do it many times.

00:59:02.000 Sometimes only once you can learn an enormous amount and it can enrich you for months or years to try to integrate it.

00:59:10.000 So I just was super confused.

00:59:12.000 After all this, I tried the strongest things.

00:59:14.000 And I'd seen the idealism of the 60s crash and burn.

00:59:18.000 And now we've got the Vietnam War still, and we've got Nixon and psychedelic researchers shut down.

00:59:23.000 And so I went home and I lived back home.

00:59:27.000 I'm the oldest of four kids, so I was a terrible example for my siblings sent off to college and do drugs and drop out.

00:59:33.000 But that's where I got the sense that I needed to do integration work, that I was unbalanced.

00:59:40.000 My parents actually had a house built by a student of Frank Lloyd Wrights, designed it.

00:59:45.000 It was this exquisite structure, and it influenced me a lot.

00:59:49.000 And I was playing handball in high school.

00:59:52.000 It was one of the few high schools that had handball courts.

00:59:55.000 And so I was really good at handball.

00:59:56.000 So I thought this new college, I'll go back to be with my friends, and I'll build this handball court.

01:00:01.000 I'll get into the physical world, and that's how I'll get integrated.

01:00:04.000 I was super confused, and my parents were willing to buy 3,000 concrete blocks.

01:00:10.000 And support me while I built this building.

01:00:12.000 And the school needed facilities, and they let me have some land to build on it.

01:00:16.000 And it was right next to John Ringling's house, which is now a state museum.

01:00:23.000 And Charles Ringling gave the building for the library.

01:00:26.000 And this other people, the Caples, who built the New York Railroad and sold the land to the Ringlings, they gave this mansion to New College when Mrs. Caples died.

01:00:35.000 And I was asked to be the security guard at this mansion on the beach on the Sarasota Bay while I was building this handball court.

01:00:44.000 And that led to a career of 10 years in construction.

01:00:48.000 And it was during that time that as I got more fluid with the outer world, I would trip every now and again and And I would get a little bit better at letting out the emotions and seeing what was happening.

01:01:00.000 So I had this 10-year period of not doing psychedelics directly, but occasionally and being in the construction business.

01:01:08.000 And that was what it took.

01:01:09.000 It took a whole decade of dropping out of college to get balanced.

01:01:13.000 And then in 1982, I went back to school.

01:01:17.000 And the very first semester, I went to the same school, to New College, and the very first semester, I went to Esalen in Big Sur and did a month-long workshop with Stan Grof again.

01:01:28.000 And it was on the mystical quest.

01:01:29.000 And that's when I learned about MDMA. And that's what changed things, because I learned about LSD after the backlash.

01:01:37.000 But now I learned about MDMA before the backlash, but it was called ADAM as an underground, it was legal, but it was kept quiet as an underground therapy drug.

01:01:49.000 And it was gentler than the classic psychedelics.

01:01:51.000 It had incredible therapeutic potential, but it had escaped from those circles and it was being used as ecstasy as well.

01:01:59.000 So it was very clear that it was doomed.

01:02:02.000 This was during Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan and escalation of the drug war.

01:02:06.000 And so that's where I said, I've got to get political and I can start introducing MDMA to various people who would take it, like Lester Grinspoon.

01:02:15.000 He and his wife had had a tragedy of a son die of cancer when I think he was about 13 years old.

01:02:21.000 And they took MDMA together and Lester said that they were able to talk about Yeah.

01:02:46.000 Because Terence had this mistaken idea that if it's a plant, it's good.

01:02:51.000 If it's from the lab, it's bad.

01:02:53.000 We had this meeting at Esalen, and he was going on and on about this. 0.97

01:02:58.000 And I said, that's so ridiculous.

01:02:59.000 We need a safety study with MDMA. And it was because Terrence going on and on about how plants were good and stuff from the land is bad that we did the first safety study with MDMA to prepare for this DEA crackdown, which happened later that summer in 84,

01:03:16.000 and that sort of led to where I'm at now.

01:03:18.000 Why do you think Terence had that rigid perspective?

01:03:21.000 It's a really good question, because you think about psychedelics as supposedly to break down rigidity.

01:03:26.000 Yeah.

01:03:27.000 I mean, I think there's some good things to say, which is plants have been used for thousands of years.

01:03:31.000 We have all this historical evidence about it.

01:03:34.000 We know that in the Western culture, when we think about the origins of the Western culture, we think about the Greeks, and that's the origins of democracy.

01:03:44.000 And the longest-running mystery ceremony in the history of the world was the Eleusinian Mysteries, and it ran from like 1600 B.C. to 396 A.D., and it involved the plants that were psychedelic.

01:03:58.000 Yeah, we had Brian Murrow-Rescue on the podcast.

01:04:01.000 His book, The Immortality Key, is amazing.

01:04:04.000 And now they're doing studies because of that book in Harvard about the Eleusinian mysteries.

01:04:10.000 Yeah, at the Harvard Divinity School.

01:04:12.000 They're really interested in this.

01:04:13.000 Incredible.

01:04:14.000 Incredible.

01:04:14.000 And, you know, he proved in that book, in the research for that book, that there were like ergot-like compounds that were in these wine vessels.

01:04:24.000 Yeah.

01:04:24.000 So, for sure, these people were taking some kind of psychedelic mixed in with the wine.

01:04:30.000 And what do we know about ergot and about the use of ergot in terms of psychedelic properties?

01:04:41.000 Well, LSD is not exactly an ergot, but ergot is the starter material that Albert Hoffman used, ergotamine, in order to modify it to develop LSD. Oh, okay.

01:04:54.000 And so we talk about different times in the Middle Ages when whole villages would sort of go crazy, and it's from a mold on wheat and barley.

01:05:04.000 The Salem witch trials.

01:05:05.000 It came from that.

01:05:06.000 It came from ergot poisoning, right?

01:05:08.000 It could have been.

01:05:09.000 I believe that's what they think happened.

01:05:11.000 They think that that was because of an early frost.

01:05:15.000 They've nailed the time period of all these witch trials to an early frost, which coincides with ergot poisoning of wheat.

01:05:25.000 And I'm sure they, you know, not just made bread with the wheat, but did other things with the wheat.

01:05:30.000 And probably, does ergot grow in other things other than wheat?

01:05:35.000 I'm not sure.

01:05:36.000 I think barley.

01:05:37.000 It may grow on barley.

01:05:38.000 So maybe they had beer and maybe that was tainted with it as well.

01:05:42.000 So they were involuntarily having these LSD-like experiences.

01:05:47.000 Of course you would think that there's witches.

01:05:49.000 Of course you would think you were bewitched and that there's magic going on.

01:05:53.000 Yeah, well, and Brian had reached out to me when he was sort of a normal career, when he wanted to get more involved with marijuana and psychedelics.

01:06:00.000 So the first thing that he did was a group trying to collect doctors who were going to be supporting medical marijuana.

01:06:06.000 And then he moved into writing The Immortality Key.

01:06:09.000 So I've known him for quite a while, and he's very respectable and sober.

01:06:14.000 Sober?

01:06:15.000 Completely sober.

01:06:16.000 That's what's interesting, right?

01:06:17.000 Yeah, he's decided not to take psychedelic.

01:06:21.000 I think eventually he may do that, but he didn't want people to say, you're biased, that somehow or other you take these drugs, they would question his research.

01:06:29.000 Imagine what it's gonna be like when he finally has a real breakthrough psychedelic experience and he realizes like think about all the scholarly work this guy's done to sort of expose how all of these ancient enlightened people had created these ceremonies to get together and they worked out democracy they worked out so many different principles of modern religions and and schools of thought and it all came out of these Rituals where

01:06:59.000 they engaged in psychedelics.

01:07:01.000 So this guy is just looking at this all from this sober historical perspective and just wait.

01:07:09.000 Just wait.

01:07:10.000 The first time he just gets blown through the membrane into the other dimension and realizes this is not people that are delusional.

01:07:21.000 This is not some cult perspective.

01:07:24.000 This is the real thing.

01:07:26.000 And when you experience it, it's so beyond your imagination or what you could have possibly anticipated, that when you do break through, you'll never look at regular reality the same way again.

01:07:38.000 That's one thing I can guarantee, just knowing, particularly the DMT experience.

01:07:43.000 Knowing that you can get to that place in 40 seconds, that you can take three giant hits, and then 30-40 seconds in, you're gone.

01:07:53.000 You're gone, and then you're experiencing entities in some brightly illuminated world that's far more real-feeling than the world we live in right now.

01:08:05.000 Far more vivid, Far more aware.

01:08:09.000 They seem to understand exactly how you're thinking.

01:08:12.000 They're communicating with you with no words.

01:08:15.000 And they're infinite.

01:08:16.000 And they're all around you all the time. 0.99

01:08:18.000 And they seem to know what fucks with you. 0.96

01:08:20.000 Brian has a lot to look forward to. 0.98

01:08:22.000 Oh my god, he does.

01:08:25.000 He's owed it.

01:08:26.000 His work has been amazingly helpful because of the fact that he is sober.

01:08:32.000 Because of the fact that he is a legitimate scholar.

01:08:34.000 I mean, everything about the way he's done this is perfect.

01:08:38.000 Yeah, there is a way, a little bit, one historical parallel to what Brian is going to be looking forward to, and that's Walter Pankey.

01:08:46.000 So I described at the very beginning this Concord prison experiment that Leary did when he was at Harvard.

01:08:51.000 But the experiment that he did before was called the Good Friday Experiment.

01:08:57.000 And that was in 1962. And it was designed to see if religiously inclined people in a religious setting taking psilocybin would have a mystical experience.

01:09:07.000 And so Walter Pankey was a doctor and a minister and working on a PhD.

01:09:14.000 And Timothy Leary became his faculty sponsor.

01:09:18.000 There was also a fellow named Reverend Howard Thurman, who was the Reverend at the Boston Marsh Chapel at Boston University, but he was Martin Luther King's mentor.

01:09:28.000 So Martin Luther King had got a PhD at Boston University in the 50s.

01:09:34.000 I think?

01:09:53.000 This nonviolent approach.

01:09:54.000 So Reverend Howard Thurman was really interested in this relationship between the mystical experience and political action.

01:10:01.000 And so he agreed to be the minister for this Good Friday service.

01:10:06.000 And if people are interested, we have the actual sermon from Reverend Howard Thurman several hours on our website under the Good Friday experiment.

01:10:16.000 And it took 20 divinity students from Andover Newton Theological Seminary into church on Good Friday in the basement chapel and half got psilocybin, half got a placebo.

01:10:29.000 Ten experimenters, Houston Smith, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Ralph Metzner, Walter Houston Clark, others that were very involved in sort of the science of religion were the helpers.

01:10:40.000 They were divided into groups of four, five groups of four students, Half would get psilocybin, half would get the placebo, and then two of the experimenters were with them, and one of the experimenters would also get psilocybin, and one would get the placebo.

01:10:55.000 And as it turned out, nine out of the 20 people had a mystical experience, and eight out of those nine had the psilocybin.

01:11:03.000 And this experiment was considered to be, and still is, one of the best experiments ever in the history of the study of psychedelics and spirituality.

01:11:13.000 And the questionnaire of what is a mystical experience that Walter Pankey developed for this is still being used in the research today.

01:11:19.000 It's called the mystical experience questionnaire.

01:11:22.000 Walter Pankey decided that he didn't want to take psilocybin until after the study was over for fear that people would say that he was biased.

01:11:32.000 And then he went with Bill Richards, who's the longest living psychedelic therapist right now.

01:11:38.000 He's sort of the center of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research, and he's trained a lot of other groups, they're researchers with psilocybin.

01:11:47.000 He's actually going to go through our training now to learn about MDMA. Bill Richards is, but he was in Germany studying and Walter Panke went to visit with him and that's where Walter Panke had his first psilocybin experience after the experiment was over and published and had this illuminating psychedelics mystical experience.

01:12:09.000 His first of his life?

01:12:10.000 First of his life after he'd done the experiment.

01:12:12.000 Now when I did at New College I said you have to do this senior thesis and so this was during the 80s and I wanted to do something with psychedelics I think we're good to go.

01:12:37.000 How does it affect your life?

01:12:39.000 If it's a genuine mystical experience, it will make you feel connected.

01:12:43.000 It will make you feel there's love woven into the universe.

01:12:46.000 It will have certain kind of long-term benefits, and that's the way that people evaluate the validity of the experience.

01:12:53.000 So Walter Pankey, unfortunately, died in 1971 in a scuba diving accident.

01:12:59.000 Oh, wow.

01:13:00.000 His body was never found.

01:13:02.000 What?

01:13:02.000 And it was like he dissolved into the ocean of consciousness almost.

01:13:07.000 Or fish ate him.

01:13:08.000 More likely fish ate him.

01:13:09.000 Something, yeah, something happened.

01:13:12.000 Stan Groff actually said that Walter was a little bit cheap and he might have bought secondhand equipment or something that didn't work.

01:13:19.000 Oh, no.

01:13:19.000 Scuba equipment?

01:13:21.000 You want to have the stuff that works the best.

01:13:24.000 So when I wanted to do a thesis, a project, I realized that Walter Pankey, if he would have been alive, he would have done this long-term follow-up study.

01:13:34.000 But I could do that now.

01:13:36.000 And it turned out that Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, they'd lost the names.

01:13:41.000 They had no idea who was in the study.

01:13:44.000 All I knew was that they were Andover Newton Theological Seminary students.

01:13:48.000 And so I went to the Andover Newton School and I said, could you put a notice in your alumni newsletter if anybody was in this experiment?

01:13:57.000 This is 1986. All these years later, 24 years later, and they refused to do it.

01:14:02.000 They said they had nothing to do with this research.

01:14:04.000 Again, this is during the time of Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan.

01:14:07.000 So I went to their library and I thought, okay, there must be some books about it.

01:14:12.000 They must have this thesis.

01:14:13.000 They must have some books about it.

01:14:14.000 They had nothing.

01:14:16.000 And I just wandered more through the library and what I saw was they had a section of alumni handbooks.

01:14:21.000 And one of them had the list of who was in school during that year and their names and addresses.

01:14:28.000 And so I photocopied all of that and I sent out 350 or so letters to people and said, if you were in this experiment or know anybody, you know, I'm trying to do a follow-up.

01:14:38.000 And that led me to three people.

01:14:40.000 And over the time, I ended up getting 19 out of the 20 identified.

01:14:44.000 And I administered the same questionnaire, the mystical experience questionnaire, and they held up that the results were almost the same as they were before, and people said that this mystical experience that they'd had, they'd had other non-drug mystical experiences,

01:15:00.000 many of them afterwards, that they said, Help them consider that the one that they had with the psilocybin was legitimate.

01:15:07.000 It was similar to the non-drug.

01:15:09.000 They generally preferred the non-drug mystical experience.

01:15:11.000 How do you define a non-drug mystical experience?

01:15:14.000 Oh, you're walking in nature, or you're making love, or you just have this, they call it gratuitous grace.

01:15:19.000 This feeling just comes over you, like something is...

01:15:23.000 It's the same as basically as this drug experience and they described how this was not only considered valid but also it had motivated them to work on the environmental movement, the women's rights movement, the anti-war movement.

01:15:38.000 So for me I found in some ways the keys to the 60s in this follow-up study because the sad part is I discovered that Reverend Howard Thurman was this incredible orator, and part of his Good Friday service was, you have to tell people there's a man on the cross.

01:15:53.000 You have to tell people of this story.

01:15:56.000 And one of the students said, oh, okay, I should do that right now, under the influence of psilocybin.

01:16:02.000 And so they thought he was going to go to the bathroom, and he burst out the door, and he started running down...

01:16:08.000 And in his mind, he had thought, I'll tell the president.

01:16:12.000 If I'm going to tell anybody, I should tell the president.

01:16:14.000 And then he's like, oh, the president is somewhere else, but I'll tell the president of the university.

01:16:18.000 And so Timothy Leary and Houston Smith went after him to help him not get killed by a car or something.

01:16:24.000 And they finally caught up to him to bring him back and he didn't want to come back inside.

01:16:29.000 And so they gave him a shot of Thorazine to calm him down.

01:16:33.000 That's what they thought at the time is somebody's having a difficult LSD experience, you know, bring him down with Thorazine, which is a major tranquilizer for psychotics.

01:16:43.000 But they never mentioned that.

01:16:45.000 So I discovered during this follow-up study that there was a really important part of the experiment that they had hidden, which was this sort of difficult reaction this person had and his refusal to come in.

01:16:57.000 So what I saw from Leary is that they had...

01:17:03.000 Underestimated the risks, that they hadn't reported this.

01:17:06.000 You know, if we do research now under FDA regulations, you have to report adverse events.

01:17:11.000 You can't just brush them under the rug like they didn't really happen.

01:17:15.000 So the core thesis that psychedelic psilocybin, in this case, could produce a mystical experience, that was confirmed.

01:17:22.000 The fact that it had long-term benefits, that was confirmed.

01:17:26.000 But Leary and others had over time said everybody that had the psilocybin had the mystical experience.

01:17:31.000 That was not true.

01:17:32.000 So they exaggerated the benefits and they had minimized the risks by hiding this story of this person that had the Thorazine.

01:17:40.000 Now how many people had the psilocybin experience and didn't have a mystical experience?

01:17:45.000 Two.

01:17:46.000 And one of them was Some of them, you know, again, it's not like it's automatic that you take this drug and this kind of experience is what you had.

01:17:57.000 Were there any similarities in their experiences and were they on any kind of medication?

01:18:02.000 No, they weren't.

01:18:03.000 They just didn't let themselves open or it just didn't have the same effect for them.

01:18:09.000 What was the dosage?

01:18:10.000 The doses was pretty big.

01:18:11.000 It was like, well, it was synthetic psilocybin, so I think it was 25 milligrams, which is a major drip.

01:18:18.000 I'd say it's equivalent to like five or six grams of mushrooms.

01:18:22.000 So it was a major experience.

01:18:26.000 It's crazy that they didn't have an experience.

01:18:28.000 Well, they had experiences, but they didn't score on this questionnaire to be above the threshold.

01:18:35.000 And the beautiful thing about what Walter Pankey did was that this questionnaire about a mystical experience, even though it was with Christian ministry students in Good Friday service, it didn't have a word about Jesus.

01:18:49.000 He surveyed the literature of mysticism throughout the world and all these different religions, and he kind of made what is the sort of common themes, you know, a deeply felt positive mood, a sense of sacredness, a transcendence of time and space.

01:19:09.000 We're good to go.

01:19:25.000 And that's why it's being used today at Johns Hopkins and all the research that's being done, a lot of it with LSD, with psilocybin, even with MDMA, we use this same questionnaire that's only a tiny bit modified.

01:19:38.000 And so it was a sense that this experiment really validated for me my theory of change, you know, that if we can help people, more people have these psychedelic experiences and support them and help them integrate it,

01:19:54.000 It may build compassion.

01:19:56.000 It may reduce prejudice.

01:19:58.000 It may help people want to protect the environment.

01:20:02.000 And so that's what really motivated me when I was 18 to devote my life to psychedelics, that this potential, this political potential.

01:20:11.000 It was only when I, 10 years later, learned about MDMA and I learned about its effect on trauma that I thought, wow, this can also be used to help people move through the pain of their lives and to really see the world more clearly,

01:20:26.000 to see people that they might have been scared of, to see more of their humanity.

01:20:31.000 And so I think this kind of mystical experience and the therapeutic going together is where I think there's a lot of hope for the future.

01:20:41.000 And what I was able to sort of recognize is that there's value in these things, and that we talked about the Ellicinian mysteries.

01:20:50.000 What we're talking about now is mainstreaming psychedelics, and a lot of people have this idea that it's never been done before, but it's actually been done thousands of years ago in the heart of Western culture, and it was wiped out by the Catholic Church.

01:21:05.000 Because they wanted to be the intermediary between people and spirituality.

01:21:08.000 It was a power play.

01:21:10.000 It wasn't a religious-spiritual.

01:21:11.000 It was a power play by the church to be this intermediary.

01:21:16.000 And so then throughout the Middle Ages, all of this was suppressed, you know, with the witches, with all of this.

01:21:22.000 And then when the conquistadors and others come to the Western world and they see these traditions of mushrooms that are used in Mexico and peyote that's used by the Native American church and We're good to go. 0.88

01:21:57.000 Yeah.

01:21:58.000 Ironically, one of the people on the trip with Gordon Lawson was a CIA agent as well.

01:22:02.000 They were looking for mind control drugs.

01:22:05.000 And that's the whole MKUltra and this whole nefarious use of psychedelics to, they called them non-lethal incapacitants.

01:22:14.000 Huh.

01:22:15.000 That's an interesting way of looking at it.

01:22:17.000 Non-lethal incompatibility.

01:22:18.000 They thought it was humane, in a way.

01:22:20.000 If you can spray LSD in the air on a group of soldiers and then they go all in circles, you could come and just pick up their weapons.

01:22:30.000 You kind of could.

01:22:31.000 In some way, yeah.

01:22:32.000 They did try aerial spraying of LSD. It didn't actually work.

01:22:35.000 How much LSD would you...

01:22:36.000 You'd need a lot of it.

01:22:38.000 It seems like you could wreck people.

01:22:40.000 Well, that was partially their goal. 0.81

01:22:42.000 Or you could slip it to people when they were about to give a talk, and they would make a fool of themselves, something like that.

01:22:48.000 But yeah, so where we're at now with the military, just to say with veterans and others, is that it seems like we're trying to reintroduce psychedelics for trauma, but in a more humane way.

01:23:01.000 And so I'm not really sure.

01:23:03.000 DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Group, They've just given $25 million to develop non-psychedelic psychedelics.

01:23:12.000 They're not really interested, as far as we can tell, in the war implications of psychedelics.

01:23:18.000 What does that mean, non-psychedelic psychedelics?

01:23:22.000 Well, like Ibogaine.

01:23:24.000 There's a drug called Ibogaine, which is very psychedelic, but then you modify the molecule, and there's one called 18-MC. And you take it and it's not psychedelic.

01:23:34.000 So you take the core molecule, you figure out what atoms you can add to it, and it has a lot of the basic properties, but you try to take out the psychedelic properties.

01:23:44.000 For what purpose?

01:23:45.000 Well, they think somehow maybe that's like therapeutic.

01:23:47.000 A lot of them, they see the psychedelic part as a negative side effect.

01:23:52.000 So if you can promote neuroplasticity or...

01:23:55.000 Doesn't it seem that you just need to get a hold of these people and give them psychedelics?

01:23:58.000 Like, stop, stop, stop.

01:24:00.000 You're doing it all wrong.

01:24:01.000 That's like saying you want to do martial arts, but you don't want to touch anybody.

01:24:04.000 Exactly.

01:24:05.000 I want to do no-touch martial arts.

01:24:07.000 Yeah, that might be...

01:24:08.000 Okay.

01:24:10.000 Yeah, and now maybe they'll find a way that biologically something can happen, but the meaning...

01:24:17.000 Maybe they think, well, one of the costs of psychedelic therapy is, of course, the therapists.

01:24:22.000 And if you could just take a pill and you didn't need therapists.

01:24:25.000 But people get meaning from the experience.

01:24:28.000 Yeah, and we're clearly establishing that it's probably a good idea to have someone guide you through these things.

01:24:36.000 Very much so.

01:24:36.000 It's always been the goal of the shaman and the role of the shaman and that these people who have experience in these realms and understand how to have a psychedelic ceremony and do it correctly, that there's a way to do this.

01:24:53.000 And this is a very valuable piece of information and that to just ignore that and say, we just need, you know, maybe we could just do it in a pill and you don't need a therapist.

01:25:03.000 Like...

01:25:03.000 Well, one of the things that's so frustrating that DARPA would give $25 million to study non-psychedelic psychedelics is there's more than a million veterans disabled with PTSD. And the VA spends around $17 billion a year on disability payments.

01:25:19.000 But we've not gotten any funds from the VA for research.

01:25:23.000 But things are changing.

01:25:25.000 So actually, we're working with Congressman Dan Crenshaw.

01:25:28.000 And he's working with Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio.

01:25:31.000 So we've got a very strong Democrat, a very strong Republican working together on two different bills.

01:25:38.000 One would give money to the Department of Defense to do psychedelic research for PTSD. And one would give—well, we're not sure the amounts.

01:25:47.000 We're thinking one would give some amount of money also to the VA. And by psychedelic research, we're saying it should be limited to Ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT, psilocybin, and MDMA. And so we don't know that this will pass through Congress,

01:26:02.000 but we have bipartisan support.

01:26:04.000 So it's trying to get the military to look at the healing potential of psychedelic psychedelics.

01:26:09.000 Yeah.

01:26:10.000 And it's because a lot of the Navy SEALs, Dan Crenshaw is a former Navy SEAL, have spoken to him about their work going down to Mexico for Ibogaine and 5-MeO, or their work with MDMA for PTSD. I actually had an hour conversation with them a few months ago.

01:26:27.000 Dan's great.

01:26:28.000 He was very open to it.

01:26:30.000 He's a young, healthy guy.

01:26:32.000 He's healthy in terms of his perspective on things.

01:26:36.000 He looks at things as objectively as he can.

01:26:39.000 He's clearly a Republican, but he's open to entertaining all sorts of ideas.

01:26:45.000 I found him to be very compassionate.

01:26:47.000 When he heard about the healing potential, and he's heard stories, Well, one of the things about SEALs and about many of the people in the military is their number one goal is to help the people that are their brothers and sisters that are also in the military and that are suffering.

01:27:02.000 And they will abandon dogma if they find an effective treatment.

01:27:08.000 Whereas if you're just politically motivated or if you just have these very rigid ideas about what's good and what's bad in terms of psychedelics, bad.

01:27:17.000 You know, pharmaceutical drugs, good.

01:27:19.000 You know, counseling, good.

01:27:21.000 Acid bad.

01:27:23.000 These sort of rigid dogmas, they get in the way of finding the truth because we really don't have a long-standing history of treating people with psychedelics who have post-traumatic stress disorder.

01:27:36.000 It's fairly recently, but it's very promising.

01:27:39.000 And the people that have gone through the anecdotal evidence and the anecdotal experiences that they can relay to fellow soldiers are incredibly valuable because these people, guys like Dan Crenshaw, who are, you know, he's a congressman, he's in a real position of power and influence,

01:27:55.000 he can shape and change the way the rest of...

01:28:08.000 Yeah, and the fact that he's willing to partner with someone that's very on the other political spectrum, Tim Ryan.

01:28:17.000 Right.

01:28:18.000 Is terrific.

01:28:19.000 It's amazing.

01:28:19.000 And it comes from this place of compassion for people that are suffering.

01:28:23.000 Yeah.

01:28:23.000 Now, the very first use of psychedelics for PTSD began in the 1950s and 1960s, and it was a Dr. Jan Bastions in the Netherlands.

01:28:45.000 I think?

01:28:57.000 Dr. Bastian's was the last person in the world that still had legal permission to use LSD till the late 70s, early 80s.

01:29:05.000 And there's an incredible book called Shaviti, A Vision, by an LSD, by a Holocaust survivor.

01:29:13.000 How do you spell that?

01:29:14.000 S-H-I-V-I-T-T-I. It's by an Israeli Holocaust survivor who was a writer who went to the Netherlands for LSD therapy, and he's describing what he went through during his LSD therapy.

01:29:31.000 And it's horrific.

01:29:32.000 My Israeli relatives knew him before and after and said that it helped him a lot, although he still was somewhat tormented just from what he had gone through.

01:29:40.000 But with the LSD, there's not the reduction of fear, the reduction of activity in the amygdala, the way that you get with MDMA. And so we're trying to globalize the MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. And we're working in the Netherlands with Dr. Erik Vermetten,

01:29:58.000 who's the chief psychiatrist for the Dutch military, And he has the Bastian's chair at the University of Leiden, and he's leading our effort for MDMA. So it's only been very short time, really, that people have understood the role that psychedelics can play in the treatment of trauma and PTSD. And LSD can be helpful,

01:30:18.000 ayahuasca can be helpful, Ibogaine can be helpful, mushrooms can be helpful, and MDMA all in different ways.

01:30:25.000 I think that MDMA has the chance to be the most helpful because of the reduction of fear, the sense that you can bring traumas to the surface easier.

01:30:35.000 I've actually worked with people with trauma, both with MDMA and with LSD. And in one case, I also talked about this in my TED Talk, this woman who, the LSD brought, you know, horrible rape and almost murder, you know,

01:30:51.000 to the surface.

01:30:53.000 Well, I think.

01:31:15.000 And I just think of all the people that have, soldiers and others that have committed suicide from PTSD since then, more died that way than in the war, and in the different wars.

01:31:24.000 And if the DEA hadn't criminalized MDMA in 85, so many lives would have been saved, so much.

01:31:32.000 I mean, for somebody like Congressman Crenshaw to be...

01:31:48.000 Supporting research in this area and for so many Navy SEALs to have spoken to him, this is where Marcus and Amber Capone from vets, they've led lots and lots of vets to Mexico for Ibogaine and they have a group that supports the expenses for people to get this treatment.

01:32:04.000 Hundreds of Navy SEALs.

01:32:05.000 Actually, the Navy SEAL Foundation gave us a donation to MAPS of $50,000.

01:32:11.000 Because they heard from so many Navy SEALs that what they were getting from the VA wasn't enough, and that they needed more, and that they were seeking out psychedelics.

01:32:21.000 And so the board of directors of the Navy SEAL Foundation had a meeting, and they changed their mission.

01:32:27.000 Their mission was only to support treatments, but not research.

01:32:31.000 And so they changed it so they could also support research.

01:32:34.000 They limited it to 150,000 per year, and the most any one project would get 50,000.

01:32:40.000 And so the very first project was our Phase III study with MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. So even the Navy SEAL Foundation is coming.

01:32:48.000 We're working with a psychiatrist, Bob Kaufman, at Walter Reed, who is an expert in PTSD. He's a military psychiatrist, retired now 32 years, but he still does work at Walter Reed.

01:32:59.000 And we've had about 40 or more veterans have been through our studies.

01:33:05.000 And most of them, not all, but most have gotten a lot of relief.

01:33:09.000 But we've not once had an active duty soldier.

01:33:12.000 So that's going to be the next big breakthrough.

01:33:14.000 Because the idea here is that we want to treat people closer to the trauma.

01:33:19.000 And then maybe the treatment is less expensive, not as long, because you haven't let it fester.

01:33:26.000 You haven't let these patterns go on for longer.

01:33:30.000 But there is some concerns about will the DOD permit active duty soldiers to get this?

01:33:36.000 But the amount of money that they spend to train a Navy SEAL is enormous.

01:33:41.000 And when you think about if they're disabled from PTSD, what if you can help them not get over it? 0.66

01:33:48.000 Yeah.

01:33:49.000 So we think eventually that'll be a big breakthrough.

01:33:52.000 Just today I got an email.

01:33:54.000 We're doing research for Phase 3 for MDMA for PTSD in Israel, Canada, and the United States.

01:34:00.000 So the Ministry of Defense in Israel has just invited us to set up a clinic for soldiers, for active-duty Israeli soldiers who are traumatized.

01:34:08.000 And now because of the recent war with Gaza and the missiles, you know, it's just so clear that the whole populations are traumatized on both sides.

01:34:16.000 We have a project also with—we've been starting it with— It's in the very early stages, but it's with the survivors of torture.

01:34:30.000 It's for the treatment of survivors with torture, and it's in Ramallah.

01:34:34.000 It's in the West Bank.

01:34:36.000 And they're interested in MDMA for therapy.

01:34:39.000 So we're trying to train some of their therapists.

01:34:41.000 We're going to try to see if we can get approval from the Palestinian Authority to bring MDMA in there, because it's a Schedule I drug.

01:34:47.000 It'll have to come through Israel. 0.97

01:34:49.000 But we want to treat people on both sides of all the different conflicts.

01:34:53.000 And we see that Sir General Nick Carter, who's the Secretary of Defense equivalent in England, We're working with a group in England, which is supporting wounded veterans.

01:35:12.000 And Nick Carter is on their board of directors.

01:35:15.000 And so he's come out in favor of MDMA research.

01:35:19.000 Essentially, the Secretary of Defense in charge of all the British military has endorsed MDMA research.

01:35:24.000 So we're hoping that we'll have that in the United States, that the Department of Defense will get involved as well.

01:35:30.000 The bills that we're trying to get with Representative Crenshaw and Ryan would kind of encourage that, to try to start that.

01:35:37.000 And as we talked before about prisoners and prison guards and police officers, we even have a police officer that we're training.

01:35:45.000 So we really need to mainstream this.

01:35:49.000 And when we think about it, as we talked about the Ellicinian mysteries, it's kind of reintroducing into Western culture But it's this thousands of years of history and trying to bring psychedelics back to where we can sort of spiritualize the population in a way and reduce trauma as we face incredible challenges that humanity has never faced before in terms of what we're doing to the environment and the power of the weapons that we have.

01:36:17.000 So that's the kind of vision that animates the motivation for why what we're doing.

01:36:24.000 I think we have to re-engineer the cultural narrative, right?

01:36:26.000 Because for so long it's been drugs are bad.

01:36:29.000 Just say no. 0.99

01:36:31.000 Even if you do drugs, you do drugs because you're being silly. 0.98

01:36:34.000 You want recreation. 0.96

01:36:35.000 You want some chaos in your life.

01:36:36.000 Like, I did all my work.

01:36:38.000 I'm going to do some coke.

01:36:39.000 You know, and they do something and they feel, oh, I've got to stop doing that.

01:36:42.000 That was bad.

01:36:43.000 And they have these negative associations or non-beneficial associations with drugs.

01:36:49.000 And I think one of the things that, obviously I have a very limited experience with MDMA because I only had one experience, but that one experience was so positive.

01:36:59.000 And the next day, though, terrible.

01:37:02.000 I couldn't read.

01:37:03.000 Yeah, we tell people it's It's a two-day experience.

01:37:05.000 You must rest the next day.

01:37:07.000 Yeah.

01:37:07.000 And take 5-HTP, right?

01:37:09.000 And take something that's going to rebuild your starts.

01:37:10.000 That could be.

01:37:11.000 Or just rest.

01:37:11.000 I mean, so when we worked with the FDA, they said don't add supplements until we see what just the MDMA does.

01:37:19.000 And we find that when you give it to people during the day and they rest the next day, yeah, supplements can be helpful.

01:37:24.000 But we don't administer them and people don't use them.

01:37:27.000 Yeah.

01:37:27.000 They can if they want to.

01:37:29.000 They can be helpful, but really what you need is rest on top for sure.

01:37:33.000 And the integration.

01:37:33.000 That's the idea.

01:37:34.000 You think about it.

01:37:35.000 You don't rush into your daily activities.

01:37:37.000 But just as a kind of funny story about the cultural narrative.

01:37:40.000 So as a parent, when my youngest daughter, Ellie, went to college, I thought I would give her...

01:37:48.000 You're going to give her acid? 0.80

01:37:50.000 I gave her marijuana.

01:37:51.000 So I gave her ten pre-rolled medical marijuana joints that she could do with her friends, because she was going to college.

01:37:58.000 Had she experienced marijuana before this?

01:38:00.000 Yeah, she had.

01:38:02.000 And so I said, Pennsylvania is where she went to school, Dickinson College, and it wasn't legal there, so I just said, I'll give it to you, and you can do it with your friends.

01:38:13.000 So in the very first week of school, When she's just a freshman in college, she and a couple of the new people that she was meeting, girlfriends, they went off and tried to smoke a joint.

01:38:23.000 But they got busted by the campus police.

01:38:26.000 And it was a terrible thing.

01:38:28.000 They're like, you're ruining your life and, you know, your permanent record, you're never going to get into graduate school.

01:38:33.000 And then she had to go through education and she had to meet with a counselor.

01:38:38.000 And the counselor, the first meeting they had, the counselor said, why do you hate yourself?

01:38:42.000 No, no.

01:38:43.000 You know, why are you using marijuana? 0.84

01:38:45.000 You must hate yourself to escape.

01:38:48.000 That's a lot of the cultural attitudes that people have.

01:38:51.000 Wow.

01:38:51.000 It was terrible.

01:38:52.000 And she really got convinced of how negative drug education is so warped.

01:38:59.000 Why do you hate yourself?

01:39:00.000 Wow.

01:39:01.000 Wow.

01:39:02.000 I mean, but counseling is like everything else. 0.99

01:39:05.000 There's people that suck at it, right?

01:39:07.000 There's people that I'm sure they're fully invested and really tuned in to what the person needs and they're dedicated and they're very well educated. 0.86

01:39:21.000 And then there's people that are just not good at it because they're, for whatever reason, they carry their own biases, weird perspectives, and they don't know what they're talking about.

01:39:30.000 Why would you hate yourself?

01:39:31.000 Yeah.

01:39:31.000 Later, right before the lockdown and COVID, I got invited to give a talk at Dickinson at the college.

01:39:38.000 And it was very well attended, and it was all about psychedelics.

01:39:41.000 And it was really, well, the faculty were there.

01:39:45.000 Full circle.

01:39:46.000 It was full circle.

01:39:46.000 It was just a beautiful experience.

01:39:48.000 What I was going to get to is that even though I have a limited experience with MDMA, it was very positive in terms of the actual trip itself.

01:39:55.000 But are there bad trips?

01:39:57.000 Do people experience?

01:39:59.000 Because it seems like what it is is about, you know, the reason why it's called ecstasy.

01:40:03.000 It's love and happiness and everyone's affectionate.

01:40:08.000 Well, the first thing we want to say is that there's a distinction between difficult and bad.

01:40:13.000 Right.

01:40:14.000 And so what bad is, is more resisting it.

01:40:18.000 And so, to give a good example of this, there is actually, this is about 15 years ago, but two women contacted us within the same week with similar but different stories.

01:40:29.000 Both of them had taken MDMA at a rave with their friends, had taken ecstasy for party setting.

01:40:34.000 And one of them said that prior sexual abuse came to her mind, again, because this reduction of fear in the amygdala, difficult things can come to the surface, you can look at it more.

01:40:45.000 But she was with a bunch of friends who just wanted to party.

01:40:49.000 And she felt that she couldn't talk to them about it.

01:40:52.000 And she stuffed the feelings down.

01:40:54.000 And she contacted us months afterwards and said she was feeling worse, that the MDMA had actually made her feel worse, because it brought it to the surface, but she didn't deal with it.

01:41:03.000 This other woman said a similar story, that she took MDMA at a rave, memories of prior sexual abuse came to the surface, and she went off to a corner with a girlfriend and talked about it, and after an hour worked a lot through it, and then went back and had a party and danced and And now she felt better and thought maybe MDMA could be great for PTSD. So there are bad trips,

01:41:24.000 but bad I think is primarily about resistance, of not being open to it.

01:41:30.000 And difficult can be productive, very productive, if you're supported through it.

01:41:37.000 You know, there's an incredible movie called Trip of Compassion that's about three of our Israeli PTSD patients.

01:41:43.000 It's the most patient-centered documentary ever made about MDMA-assisted therapy.

01:41:50.000 And you can see people having very difficult experiences.

01:41:54.000 You know, there was one woman that was kidnapped when she was traveling in Peru.

01:41:59.000 You know, a lot of Israelis after the army to de-stress. 0.93

01:42:02.000 They travel around the world.

01:42:03.000 And this was a young woman with a girlfriend and they got kidnapped.

01:42:09.000 I think we're good to go.

01:42:27.000 Some people, when they take it, particularly if they're taking it in unsupported settings, they don't know exactly that it's pure drugs, they don't know that if you open up to the difficult emotions, that that's the pathway through.

01:42:41.000 And so they resist it, and people can end up worse off from that.

01:42:45.000 This was a very small study group about the people that didn't get mystical experiences.

01:42:50.000 You're talking about two out of how many?

01:42:52.000 Ten.

01:42:52.000 Two out of ten.

01:42:54.000 It would be really interesting if you did it large scale and you find out what are the similarities between the people that don't have those experiences.

01:43:02.000 Is it a biodiversity thing?

01:43:06.000 I know some people apparently DMT doesn't work for.

01:43:10.000 Is that correct?

01:43:11.000 Well, people can resist it.

01:43:12.000 But also I've heard it doesn't work in terms of it doesn't give them the visual experience.

01:43:18.000 There are some people that are more visual than others, and some people that are more emotional than others, and some people, yeah, that it may not work.

01:43:28.000 But I would think that that has to do with resistance rather than it just doesn't have...

01:43:34.000 Really?

01:43:34.000 I think so.

01:43:35.000 But Jamie doesn't get high off edibles.

01:43:38.000 Edibles don't work on him.

01:43:41.000 No, I mean, he can eat like a thousand milligrams.

01:43:44.000 Wow, wow.

01:43:45.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:43:46.000 And I've seen it.

01:43:48.000 People metabolize differently.

01:43:49.000 And he's like, yeah, it just doesn't work.

01:43:51.000 Like, it doesn't work on him.

01:43:53.000 Yeah.

01:43:53.000 I mean, we are different biochemically.

01:43:56.000 I stay away from metaphors.

01:43:57.000 But that's why I'm asking, because I don't know anybody like Jamie.

01:44:02.000 So there's this guy that I know that I'm very close with that can take a thousand milligrams of edible. 1.00

01:44:07.000 So if you were telling me about your friend, I'd be like, man, that guy's full of shit. 0.99

01:44:11.000 Maybe he needs to get some good stuff. 0.99

01:44:13.000 I know what he's done.

01:44:14.000 What about when you smoke?

01:44:17.000 I get high when I smoke, sure.

01:44:20.000 Instantly, I can tell, you know, not high, high.

01:44:23.000 Edibles, I have gotten high off of them, but in general, if I would try anything, I'm with people all the time that take like a little 10 milligram and they're like, I'm gonna go crazy tonight.

01:44:34.000 Let's like, everybody calm down, have a cool night.

01:44:36.000 And I'm like, why are you wasting your time eating that gummy?

01:44:40.000 It's like, it's nothing.

01:44:43.000 And they can't take the amount of bong hits or joint hits or blunt hits or anything that I can take. 0.61

01:44:48.000 I don't know.

01:44:49.000 It's very strange.

01:44:50.000 I've tried to overdose on it as the way I look at it, and I can't.

01:44:54.000 Maybe you were high when you put those shoes on. 1.00

01:44:55.000 The fuck are those things? 1.00

01:44:56.000 What's wrong with these? 1.00

01:44:57.000 They're very comfortable.

01:44:59.000 You know, story about edibles.

01:45:02.000 My mother-in-law had pain, and my wife was thinking maybe THC or CBD would be good for her.

01:45:09.000 So she'd try it first.

01:45:12.000 So she took this CBD, didn't do much.

01:45:15.000 She gave it to her mom, didn't do much.

01:45:17.000 And so then she took a 10 milligram chocolate edible and was thinking she would try it out to see her mom and liked it.

01:45:26.000 But it was a horrible experience.

01:45:28.000 And she got 10 milligrams.

01:45:30.000 She totally got so deep into her body in a way, her thinking, that she thought that she might forget to breathe.

01:45:38.000 She was just terrified.

01:45:40.000 And then it lasts.

01:45:42.000 Edibles last a long time.

01:45:44.000 And so my own wife has PTSD from edibles.

01:45:47.000 I had a conversation with this couple the other day.

01:45:50.000 Me and my wife were out with them.

01:45:51.000 And I was asking them what Beverly Hills is like right now.

01:45:56.000 Because I know people that live in Beverly Hills have talked about the...

01:46:02.000 We're good to go.

01:46:21.000 No.

01:46:21.000 This lady, she didn't realize that the CBD she was taking had THC as well, and she took multiple droppers full of it, and she thought she was dying.

01:46:37.000 Her heart was going to stop. 0.94

01:46:39.000 She was freaking the fuck out.

01:46:40.000 Whatever it was, she couldn't handle it, and she called the police.

01:46:43.000 And the police were there instantly.

01:46:45.000 So this was their story of the police, is that this lady had too many edibles. 1.00

01:46:49.000 It's edible weed.

01:46:50.000 It's the same thing, right?

01:46:51.000 No, it's not.

01:46:52.000 It's not.

01:46:52.000 It's metabolized differently in your liver.

01:46:55.000 So it's actually a different drug.

01:46:56.000 Yeah, but I'm saying edible weed.

01:46:58.000 It's the same thing.

01:46:59.000 Well, 11-hydroxy-metabolite.

01:47:01.000 I know that.

01:47:01.000 But I'm saying this is no different.

01:47:03.000 The droppers is no different than edible weed.

01:47:05.000 Yes, yes.

01:47:06.000 So she's taking this THC-laced CBD. Apparently, for some people, I've talked to some athletes, and they tell me that CBD with THC is the most effective for them in terms of alleviating inflammation and pain,

01:47:21.000 and they like it the most.

01:47:23.000 But some people don't recognize, like this Kill Cliff has 25 milligrams of CBD in it, but it's non-psychoactive.

01:47:32.000 But some CBD that you get It's got psychoactive THC in it as well.

01:47:38.000 That's what this lady did. 1.00

01:47:39.000 And so when she did it, she has no idea how much she took.

01:47:43.000 She might have took a couple hundred milligrams. 0.99

01:47:45.000 So this poor lady who weighs like 130 pounds was fucking gone. 1.00

01:47:50.000 And literally thought she was dying. 0.99

01:47:52.000 And the cops are like, yeah, we're just going to have to ride this out.

01:47:56.000 That's so funny.

01:47:57.000 They get calls like that all the time, which is really hilarious.

01:48:01.000 Yeah.

01:48:01.000 Now, as long as we're talking about marijuana, I just want to say that we've made some big breakthroughs with marijuana.

01:48:07.000 And one of them has been that there's been a federal government monopoly on the supply of DEA federally legal marijuana.

01:48:14.000 And this has been since 1968. It's grown at the University of Mississippi.

01:48:19.000 It's sold to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

01:48:21.000 They provide it to researchers, but it's only for research, not commercial use.

01:48:26.000 It can't be used in phase three.

01:48:28.000 Is it good?

01:48:28.000 It's terrible.

01:48:29.000 It's terrible weed.

01:48:30.000 We used to always think that that was the good weed.

01:48:32.000 Like that was the thing, like back in the day, like in the 90s when weed was hard to get by, people called the government weed.

01:48:39.000 Bro, I got some of that.

01:48:40.000 G13. Yeah.

01:48:42.000 Got some of that government weed.

01:48:44.000 Whoa, this is gonna really take us off.

01:48:46.000 It's not good, huh?

01:48:47.000 It's terrible.

01:48:48.000 It's terrible.

01:48:48.000 So since 2000, we've been trying to end this monopoly on marijuana that the federal government has in order to promote marijuana research to make it into a medicine.

01:49:02.000 And so in 2001, I spent a year trying to find the Rosa Parks of medical marijuana production.

01:49:11.000 Who would be the most good plaintiff, in a way, for this effort?

01:49:17.000 And so Lyle Craker was a professor at UMass Amherst, expert in plants.

01:49:21.000 He'd worked in secure facilities to try to develop herbicides for coca plants.

01:49:26.000 He was an expert in plant medicines, and he agreed that he would work with us to try to get a license from the DEA to grow marijuana.

01:49:33.000 So we submitted his application in 2001. I call back a couple months later to the DEA and say, hey, what's going on?

01:49:42.000 And they say we don't have any record, or Lyle called, and he said they don't have any record of his application.

01:49:48.000 And he says, that's weird.

01:49:49.000 You know, I know I sent it.

01:49:50.000 And so he goes to the university.

01:49:52.000 They have copies of everything.

01:49:54.000 They photocopy it and they send in this new application.

01:49:56.000 And then he waits a couple months and calls them.

01:49:59.000 And then the DA says, sorry, we can't accept the application because it's not an original signature.

01:50:04.000 You sent us this photocopy.

01:50:07.000 Which is a bogus thing.

01:50:08.000 So then he says, okay, I'll send it again with my written thing.

01:50:11.000 Then he sends it in and they do nothing for three and a half years.

01:50:14.000 And then we sue them for unreasonable delay under the Administrative Procedures Act.

01:50:19.000 And we get, the judge says, it's not unreasonable delay, but DEA, at least you better explain why you're taking so long.

01:50:26.000 So they realized they should reject.

01:50:29.000 So they rejected the application.

01:50:30.000 Then we could sue them on their rationale, which was bogus, that they couldn't do this international treaties and all.

01:50:37.000 So then we had a DEA administrative law judge hearing that was eight days of testimony inside DEA headquarters.

01:50:47.000 You have to get security clearance just to go to the courtroom.

01:50:50.000 And we won the case.

01:50:52.000 And the judge said that marijuana, it's in the public interest for Lyle to get this license.

01:50:58.000 And then the DEA rejects the recommendation They wait two years, actually, and they waited until six days before Obama got inaugurated in order to reject the recommendation.

01:51:08.000 So he couldn't come to it fresh.

01:51:10.000 And then Obama does nothing for eight years.

01:51:13.000 And then near the end of his term, the DEA under Obama says, finally, we're going to give this recommendation.

01:51:19.000 We're going to issue these licenses, and they put something in, I think it was August 2016, in the Federal Reserve, around 30 people apply.

01:51:27.000 Then Trump gets elected, and Sessions is against marijuana, and they squashed it all.

01:51:32.000 Then we're working with Dr. Sue Sisley in Arizona, in Phoenix, and she had submitted one of the licenses.

01:51:40.000 She sued the DEA to try to reveal, you know, who applied. 0.97

01:51:44.000 They didn't even, and they finally gave the list of who applied.

01:51:50.000 But they didn't want to give any of the licenses still.

01:51:53.000 And so what just happened about two weeks ago was that finally the DEA has given licenses for domestic production of marijuana federally so that people can grow to make it into a medicine.

01:52:05.000 Since 1968 has been this federal monopoly.

01:52:09.000 There's been a company, GW Pharmaceuticals, in England that got a license from the Home Office in 1998 to grow marijuana, and they grew CBD marijuana.

01:52:21.000 And they just were sold for $7 billion to Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

01:52:26.000 They made Epidiolex, which is for childhood epilepsy, CBD for childhood epilepsy.

01:52:31.000 They had a drug Sativex also.

01:52:33.000 So now we've ended this monopoly on the production of marijuana.

01:52:38.000 And also, the state of Michigan, when they legalized marijuana for recreational purposes, it was friends of ours at the Marijuana Policy Project that put it in there, and they wrote the initiative language.

01:52:52.000 And they had a paragraph that says, of the money that they're going to make from the taxes, they have to put $20 million a year for two years into studying cannabis for veterans' health and to reduce veterans' suicides.

01:53:05.000 And the money can only go to nonprofit organizations or academic researchers.

01:53:12.000 And they just put out the request for proposals June 1, just a few days ago.

01:53:17.000 And we have been preparing for this.

01:53:19.000 So we have a protocol that we've already submitted to FDA, and we've already got some comments back to study in around 300 veterans with PTSD. We're going to go for a $10 million grant from the state of Michigan.

01:53:33.000 And we've previously gotten a $2.2 million grant from the state of Colorado to do a marijuana study that we did with Sue Sisley.

01:53:42.000 It was 76 veterans.

01:53:44.000 And we had one group got THC, one group got THC-CBD combination, one group got CBD, and one group got placebo, where they take marijuana and they wash it with alcohol and you wash out the terpenes and the cannabinoids.

01:53:58.000 I think?

01:54:13.000 And we demonstrated safety, but the problem was, and I'll illustrate it by one person, was that there was one person who did great, and his PTSD symptoms were reduced, and he was really excited about that.

01:54:27.000 But more importantly, he was on opiates for pain, and he was able to get off the opiates and to use the product that he had been given.

01:54:35.000 And so he wanted to become a public spokesperson for the study.

01:54:39.000 He spoke to the media a bunch of times.

01:54:41.000 When the study was over, we uncovered the blind, and it turned out he'd gotten the placebo.

01:54:46.000 Oh, wow.

01:54:47.000 It was super embarrassing.

01:54:49.000 Oh, wow.

01:54:50.000 Interesting.

01:54:50.000 So what we found in this study, unfortunately, was that the group that did the best had the THC. The group that did the next best was the placebo, which completely befuddled us.

01:55:02.000 And then the group that got lesser benefits was the THC-CBD combination, and the group that got the least benefits had CBD only.

01:55:10.000 Really?

01:55:11.000 Wow.

01:55:12.000 And you think of CBD as anti-anxiety and all.

01:55:14.000 It's weird that it's less than placebo.

01:55:16.000 Less than placebo.

01:55:17.000 That's bizarre.

01:55:18.000 Yeah, so while it was crummy marijuana from the government, that's one of our explanations.

01:55:25.000 Dry, harsh, they only used half of, on average, about what we gave them per day.

01:55:30.000 So now we're going to refuse to use the night of marijuana.

01:55:33.000 We're going to import from either Israel, Canada, or Australia.

01:55:39.000 Import marijuana in America?

01:55:41.000 That seems gross.

01:55:43.000 Well, we have to use federally legal marijuana.

01:55:47.000 Oh God, that's so nuts.

01:55:48.000 Why can't they make an exemption and use that California weed? 0.98

01:55:51.000 California weed is so good.

01:55:52.000 It's the best.

01:55:53.000 A lot of it is great.

01:55:54.000 It's the one thing California does best.

01:55:56.000 Well, it depends if you're from British Columbia.

01:55:58.000 They'll say they got better.

01:55:59.000 We have better scientists here.

01:56:02.000 Well, and then the Colorado people are starting to be pretty proud of their stuff.

01:56:06.000 They're pretty goddamn good in Colorado, too.

01:56:07.000 It's not much difference between Colorado and California, and also Seattle. 0.99

01:56:13.000 The Pacific Northwest people, they don't fuck around either. 0.99

01:56:15.000 They know what they're doing. 1.00

01:56:16.000 They make some real shit. 0.99

01:56:17.000 But we can't use any of it, because FDA is federally regulated. 0.99

01:56:21.000 That's one of the questions that I had for you.

01:56:23.000 What progress, if any, has been made on the push to get the federal government to release marijuana from Schedule 1?

01:56:32.000 Quite a lot.

01:56:32.000 But I think my current prediction is 2025 is when we will have federally – a law will be passed like the end of alcohol prohibition that says there's no federal penalties for marijuana.

01:56:45.000 It's up to the states.

01:56:47.000 And so I think that that will happen in 2025. We need, in presidential years, are when these initiatives tend to pass.

01:56:55.000 More young people come out, more people come out to vote in the presidential elections.

01:56:59.000 And so we need a few more medical marijuana and marijuana legalization states. 0.96

01:57:03.000 We'll get maybe potentially more in 2022. More in 2024. And so I think in 2025, there's a good chance that we will have the federal government will move to end prohibition on marijuana.

01:57:17.000 You know, society has not collapsed in Colorado or Seattle or On the contrary, the economy is booming in those places where they have legal marijuana because it's enhanced the economy.

01:57:30.000 Especially in Colorado, the real estate has gone through the roof.

01:57:34.000 Particularly for warehouses, for production facilities.

01:57:37.000 I don't know how long you think it'll be before Texas comes along.

01:57:41.000 I don't know.

01:57:42.000 The thing about Austin is they don't arrest you for it.

01:57:45.000 It's fairly low on the rung of their concerns.

01:57:50.000 It's about as low as it can get.

01:57:51.000 They don't arrest you for it.

01:57:53.000 It's decriminalized in the city.

01:57:55.000 It's not like you can buy it everywhere, but you can buy this weird stuff called Delta 8. You know what that is?

01:58:02.000 Have you experienced it?

01:58:04.000 No, I have not.

01:58:05.000 I've had friends who've experienced it and they say it's like a cousin of being high.

01:58:10.000 It's like being High's neighbor.

01:58:11.000 It's like weird.

01:58:13.000 They're like, it's not terrible, but it's strange. 1.00

01:58:16.000 But, you know, Jamie and I were used to Los Angeles marijuana, like real shit. 0.98

01:58:21.000 And, you know, if you want to bring that here, you're risking federal law. 0.98

01:58:26.000 I mean, even if it's legal here or at least decriminalized here in the city of Austin, it's not in the state of Texas.

01:58:34.000 What is your prediction for how long it'll take for Texas to come along in either medical marijuana or legalization?

01:58:42.000 Well, Texas is supposed to be all about freedom, so it should have happened a long time ago.

01:58:46.000 The misconceptions are what the part of the problem is. 0.99

01:58:50.000 The misconception is that marijuana people are lazy losers. 0.99

01:58:55.000 And that drives me crazy as a person who has three fucking jobs and works all day and works out constantly. 1.00

01:59:03.000 Like, you guys are out of your mind. 1.00

01:59:04.000 You don't even know what you're talking about.

01:59:05.000 It's a bunch of people that don't understand the effects of marijuana.

01:59:08.000 And they're the ones who are making decisions about marijuana. 0.99

01:59:11.000 And it's foolishness.

01:59:13.000 Because I feel the exact opposite about marijuana.

01:59:16.000 I think marijuana, it makes me work harder.

01:59:19.000 Because it makes me aware of, you know, some people say paranoia.

01:59:24.000 I don't necessarily get paranoid, but I do get hyper-aware.

01:59:28.000 And when I get hyper aware, I'm hyper aware of flaws in my thinking and behavior and reasoning and the things that drive me crazy.

01:59:37.000 And one of the things that drive me crazy about myself is any perceived lack of discipline.

01:59:42.000 So I work harder because of marijuana.

01:59:45.000 It makes me more tuned in.

01:59:47.000 Yeah, you know, I ran the New York Marathon.

01:59:49.000 I've only run the marathon once, but right before the marathon started, I ducked into a porta potty and smoked a joint.

02:00:02.000 Yeah.

02:00:03.000 And then I'd never run that far.

02:00:05.000 I'd only run about 18 miles before, and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it.

02:00:09.000 And so I was realizing that if I define success as succeeding to run the entire marathon, then the whole time that I'm running, I'm going to be carrying this anxiety.

02:00:19.000 I might be a failure.

02:00:20.000 I might be a failure.

02:00:22.000 And this marijuana helped me think differently, and I realized that I should define success as trying.

02:00:28.000 And that if I could be happy for every step that I took, that was a success, however far I got, that I was trying something I'd never done before.

02:00:36.000 And that made a big, big difference.

02:00:38.000 But then in the middle of the marathon, I got tired, I ducked into another port-a-potty, smoked another joint, and made it the whole way.

02:00:49.000 Did you get revived from the second joint?

02:00:51.000 I totally did.

02:00:52.000 There was a bit of time where I had to walk.

02:00:54.000 I got so tired a little bit.

02:00:56.000 But I made it the whole way, and I kept running even after the finish line.

02:01:00.000 I'm from Boston.

02:01:03.000 One of my favorite things is to get high and shovel snow.

02:01:07.000 It's very meditative.

02:01:10.000 But I also think in terms of work, I talked about smokable tasks for strategizing.

02:01:16.000 But now we have a pattern, and I'm not scared to say this, but before we submit documents to the government, to the FDA, I get high, and I edit the documents with some of our other staff, and you get very attuned to every word you're using,

02:01:31.000 what the implications are, where your arguments are strong, where they're weak, what you're missing.

02:01:36.000 Makes you very sensitive, right?

02:01:37.000 Yeah, so we do the final editing is me getting high before we submit stuff to the FDA. I like it.

02:01:44.000 I like it.

02:01:45.000 And it's been really helpful.

02:01:46.000 I think it's very wise, and that's using marijuana as a tool.

02:01:50.000 And again, you're talking to someone who's a regular marijuana user, so I'm aware of the benefits of it, the pros. 0.96

02:01:56.000 So someone listening to this, they might be, you know, if they don't smoke marijuana or they don't have any experience with it, they might listen to these idiots talk about how good it is to smoke weed before you review something important. 0.95

02:02:09.000 But to someone like me, you saying that, I'm like, absolutely. 0.99

02:02:12.000 Yes, I get it.

02:02:13.000 I understand.

02:02:14.000 Well, you know, your invitation for me to come here for this podcast in Austin has now led for some meetings yesterday.

02:02:20.000 We're going to try to make Austin one of the sites for giving marijuana to veterans with PTSD for our application to the state of Michigan.

02:02:28.000 So we're going to try to have multiple sites in Michigan to make sure that we get the local people involved.

02:02:34.000 But we'd like to have some in non-medical marijuana states, which would be Florida and also Texas.

02:02:44.000 That's great.

02:02:46.000 Florida is a bit of a medical marijuana, but it's not marijuana legalization.

02:02:50.000 Well, they have medical marijuana here, but it's very rigid.

02:02:53.000 Like, you have to have, like, some serious illness.

02:02:56.000 You can't just have headaches.

02:02:57.000 Like, California's got some...

02:02:59.000 Before it became legal in 2016, we had some really bogus requirements.

02:03:03.000 You just have to...

02:03:04.000 My feet hurt.

02:03:05.000 And they were like, oh, here you go.

02:03:07.000 You didn't really have to have...

02:03:09.000 A real problem.

02:03:10.000 Yeah.

02:03:39.000 Nerd assassins is the way we describe them.

02:03:42.000 Like really super intelligent people that if you looked at them on paper, you would never think that this guy is a jiu-jitsu wizard.

02:03:50.000 You would think that this guy is like a computer programmer or something.

02:03:55.000 But a lot of jiu-jitsu practitioners smoke marijuana.

02:03:59.000 A lot.

02:04:00.000 And a lot of them smoke marijuana before they train.

02:04:03.000 And I always found that I had my best training sessions when I was high.

02:04:08.000 And that I could literally get like one step better at Jiu Jitsu when I was high.

02:04:14.000 It wasn't necessarily good for learning technique though.

02:04:17.000 I would only like it when I was rolling.

02:04:20.000 So like say if someone was trying to teach me a particular move...

02:04:25.000 I would want to be sober when learning the move because jujitsu moves are super complicated like a leg lock or a heel hook or something like that.

02:04:35.000 You have to have this foot here and you're pinching your legs here and this foot is here and then when the guy turns this way you're framing off with your shin to block his movement and you want to have the toes Clamped in your armpits.

02:04:47.000 There's a lot of things you have to think about, right?

02:04:49.000 And I don't think marijuana is necessarily conducive to learning all those, because you just get too drifty.

02:04:55.000 But for what you already know, applying that in sparring, marijuana is insanely helpful.

02:05:03.000 I'm much better when I'm high, when I roll.

02:05:06.000 I mean much better.

02:05:07.000 Like quite a bit.

02:05:09.000 And to the point where there's actually competitions where people get high, Really?

02:05:16.000 And then compete.

02:05:18.000 High Rollers Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

02:05:21.000 Wow.

02:05:22.000 Yeah.

02:05:23.000 There's a company called High Rollers BJJ, and High Rollers Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu puts on competitions, and they televise them.

02:05:31.000 Wow.

02:05:32.000 And these elite athletes smoke marijuana.

02:05:37.000 Look, they get gifted giant buckets of marijuana when they win.

02:05:41.000 Wow.

02:05:41.000 Guys like Jake Shields.

02:05:43.000 Jake Shields, who is a multiple champion and multiple different mixed martial arts organizations and an elite Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and they get high, and then, here, play one of these.

02:05:58.000 And you can see, as these guys go out there to compete, see if it shows them smoke the weed first, because usually it does.

02:06:06.000 Yeah, see?

02:06:07.000 These guys smoke weed and then go out there and roll.

02:06:11.000 And so they have these highlight reels. 1.00

02:06:13.000 So these guys doing jujitsu right here are all high as fuck. 0.98

02:06:16.000 And look, see all the smoke in the room? 0.99

02:06:18.000 I mean, the room is completely filled with pot smoke.

02:06:21.000 Look at Wow. 0.79

02:06:22.000 All stoners and they're all nerd assassins and they're all doing jujitsu. 0.66

02:06:27.000 So what jujitsu is, is a really complicated game that you're playing with your body with leverage and positions and technique.

02:06:37.000 And also cardio and muscle strength and knowledge.

02:06:41.000 And when you're high on marijuana, it gives you a sort of clarity of perspective in pursuing it that is very unique.

02:06:53.000 And so there's a long history of some of the greatest jiu-jitsu artists who are all potheads.

02:07:02.000 So that's why it flies in the face to a person like me when someone says marijuana makes you lazy.

02:07:07.000 I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. 0.96

02:07:10.000 You're just lazy. 0.98

02:07:11.000 Like, if you're lazy because of marijuana, you're just lazy. 0.91

02:07:14.000 It's just marijuana just happened to get there while you were being lazy.

02:07:18.000 But if you're a super motivated person, I don't believe that marijuana is going to make you lazy.

02:07:24.000 But I do believe that many young kids with the wrong influences and the wrong activities in their life that they do together as a group could lose their way by just getting high all the time and escaping reality.

02:07:48.000 Goals in terms of the things you're trying to do and good friends that push you and that all work together towards things you're trying to accomplish in your life and then talk to each other about the benefits of accomplishing things.

02:08:01.000 And, oh man, I didn't think I was going to make it.

02:08:03.000 Like you talking about the marathon.

02:08:05.000 But when I made it, I realized like, wow, I can do it.

02:08:07.000 I did it.

02:08:07.000 And then you start thinking, wow, I want to do something like that too, where I push myself and I expand my own personal boundaries and enhance my own personal potential for all future endeavors.

02:08:18.000 Because if you can do that in one thing, you can do it in other things.

02:08:20.000 Or you can just be that person that sits around and plays video games and gets nothing done.

02:08:25.000 That's possible too.

02:08:26.000 But I think it's a structure issue.

02:08:28.000 I don't think it's an issue in marijuana itself.

02:08:31.000 So that's why I take umbrage with that.

02:08:33.000 When someone says, marijuana makes you lazy, I'm like, no, you're just lazy.

02:08:38.000 Yeah.

02:08:39.000 Well, you talked about motivation.

02:08:41.000 Yeah.

02:08:41.000 I think the best way to understand these drugs, marijuana, psychedelics, is they're just tools.

02:08:46.000 And how you use them.

02:08:47.000 You could give somebody a hammer and they could smash their finger and be screaming.

02:08:51.000 It's a bit in my act.

02:08:52.000 Or they could build a house.

02:08:53.000 That's literally a bit in my act.

02:08:55.000 I go, it's like a tool. 1.00

02:08:57.000 I give you a hammer, you could build a house with it, or you could hit yourself in the dick if you're fucking crazy. 1.00

02:09:03.000 Yeah, that's how we should understand it, and it's what you bring to it. 1.00

02:09:06.000 The fundamental problem with the drug war is that we've made certain things good drugs and bad drugs, and we've lost the point about the relationship that you have with it.

02:09:15.000 It's about the relationship and what you do with it.

02:09:18.000 The best example from the FDA point of view is thalidomide.

02:09:21.000 Thalidomide, we know, was given to women for morning sickness and caused horrible birth defects with deformed limbs. 0.96

02:09:28.000 But that was the quintessential bad drug.

02:09:31.000 The only person at FDA that ever won the Presidential Medal of Honor was this woman, Frances Kelsey, who blocked thalidomide from coming into the US because she was worried about safety.

02:09:42.000 But thalidomide is now a medicine.

02:09:44.000 It's a medicine for certain cancers and leprosies.

02:09:47.000 And so it's not a good drug or a bad drug.

02:09:50.000 It's how you use it, what you use it for, how you're preparing, how you're careful.

02:09:54.000 They're just tools.

02:09:55.000 And we've tried to personify these are good or evil things.

02:10:00.000 And I think that that's a complete misunderstanding.

02:10:02.000 The same way, ecstasy can be a party drug, or it can be a therapy drug.

02:10:06.000 And some of the vets in our studies and others have said, I don't know why they call this ecstasy, because it helps them go through painful emotions, and they don't associate it with a party drug.

02:10:17.000 Even when we train therapists and even patients, we let people into our studies If they've done MDMA up to, I think, five times.

02:10:26.000 So they could have done it that way.

02:10:27.000 But we don't want if they've done a whole lot.

02:10:29.000 But if they've done it up to five times, and those people that have done it that way have done it in party settings.

02:10:34.000 And when they do it in a therapy setting, they say it's a completely different experience.

02:10:37.000 Can I ask you why you choose five?

02:10:39.000 Well, it's just we...

02:10:41.000 What if somebody had six?

02:10:43.000 Well, that's the thing about clinical research is you have to be arbitrary about certain things.

02:10:48.000 You have to be...

02:10:49.000 That's why some therapists are reluctant to work on clinical research.

02:10:53.000 You can't modify according to the...

02:10:56.000 Needs of the moment, which we will be able to do post-approval.

02:10:59.000 But five we just chose as an arbitrary number.

02:11:03.000 People have talked about how there's diminishing returns sometimes over time for MDMA. For me, it happened after about 40 or 50 times I was really made for MDMA. And it's still...

02:11:16.000 40 or 50 times you had diminishing returns?

02:11:18.000 Well, no.

02:11:18.000 40 or 50 times was no diminishing returns.

02:11:20.000 But once you hit over 50?

02:11:22.000 Well, I still use it.

02:11:23.000 My wife and I like to try to do it once a year.

02:11:26.000 It's really great for our relationship.

02:11:27.000 It's still really powerful, but it's not quite the same as the first experiences.

02:11:32.000 So that's why we made a limit.

02:11:34.000 We didn't want people to have done it a whole lot, and we wanted to have them come at it fresh in a way.

02:11:41.000 So we just picked five.

02:11:42.000 We could have picked six or seven, but I think it maybe is even six.

02:11:46.000 I can't remember exactly.

02:11:47.000 But you have to have inclusion and exclusion criteria, and you have to set it up that way, and so that's what we chose.

02:11:55.000 Yeah.

02:11:56.000 It's not like that with marijuana.

02:11:58.000 I mean, you can use marijuana thousands of times, and you do get a tolerance for it, but if you stop for a day or so, or a couple days, you smoke it again, it's like you're getting high, the same way you did before.

02:12:09.000 But there is something about MDMA. That's different than psilocybin or LSD, where a lot of people do report that it's not quite as deep and profound as it was the first initial bunch of times.

02:12:21.000 And where that number is varies with different people.

02:12:26.000 But I think...

02:12:27.000 You know, and in the research with MDMA, we're also saying it's a tool.

02:12:31.000 We're using it in this particular way.

02:12:34.000 You know, we've now succeeded with our first Phase III study.

02:12:37.000 So in the 35 years of MAPS's history, we've raised over $110 million in donations.

02:12:46.000 And so we now have the MAPS. And now because we think we're about to succeed, we've started in 2014 the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation.

02:12:58.000 And that's our pharmaceutical arm.

02:13:00.000 It's led by Amy Emerson and Bera Yazar Klusinski.

02:13:05.000 And there's about 80 people in this public benefit corporation, about 40 or so in the nonprofit.

02:13:13.000 People donate to the nonprofit, get tax deductions.

02:13:16.000 The nonprofit transfers the money to the benefit corp.

02:13:19.000 The benefit corp does the research and will eventually sell MDMA by prescription if we get approval.

02:13:27.000 And so we have now realized that when I first started MAPS, I thought that it was invented by Merck in 1912. So it's not patentable.

02:13:38.000 It's in the public domain.

02:13:40.000 In the 80s, when I started MAPS in 86, another group started a for-profit company to develop Ibogaine for opiate addiction.

02:13:51.000 And they called it NDA for New Drug Application International.

02:13:55.000 But then I saw a lot of the researchers starting to sue each other for intellectual property about Ibogaine.

02:14:03.000 And it just was so destructive that it sort of killed the field for a long time.

02:14:07.000 Those patents, original patents, have now expired.

02:14:10.000 But I hired a patent attorney that did the Ibogaine use patents to develop an anti-patent strategy.

02:14:17.000 So nobody could patent, not us, not anybody could patent a lot of the uses of MDMA. So I thought when we made MDMA into a medicine, it would just become generic.

02:14:26.000 And I thought that was fine.

02:14:27.000 We're doing this as a public service.

02:14:29.000 People should have it.

02:14:30.000 But there's so many different uses of MDMA that it's hard to do all of this with philanthropy.

02:14:37.000 And then I realized, accidentally in a way, I discovered from another patent attorney that in 2013 I learned that there was actually incentives that the FDA had developed for promoting research into drugs that were off patent.

02:14:54.000 And Ronald Reagan in 1984 signed this law that provided these incentives.

02:14:59.000 And what they're called is data exclusivity.

02:15:02.000 And what that means is that if you make a drug that's never been made into a medicine before, and there's no patent protection, no one can use your data to market a generic for five years in the U.S., and it's ten years in Europe.

02:15:18.000 Not only that, but if we succeed in adults, the FDA is requiring us to do studies in adolescents that are traumatized, 12 to 17-year-olds.

02:15:27.000 And we've actually already had to submit a pediatric plan.

02:15:31.000 And you get six months additional data exclusivity for working in pediatric populations.

02:15:37.000 And it blocks a generic competitor from applying to be a generic competitor until the five and a half years is over, and it takes FDA around six months or so to evaluate their application.

02:15:46.000 So we'll have six years of data exclusivity.

02:15:49.000 It's different from a patent in that another company, if they wanted to, could generate their own data.

02:15:56.000 So we don't block anybody, but it'll take them five or six years.

02:15:59.000 So then I realized that we could tell a different story to our donors.

02:16:03.000 That if you can help us reach this point of sustainability, that we can sell MDMA for a profit and we can use the profits for more research.

02:16:12.000 But I didn't want it to be like a traditional for-profit pharma company, where you maximize profits.

02:16:19.000 There's a modification of capitalism called the Benefit Corporation, and there's thousands of these Benefit Corporations now.

02:16:27.000 They are for profit, but you maximize public benefit, not profit.

02:16:31.000 So if there are minority shareholders, they can't sue the management because they're not maximizing profits.

02:16:38.000 Now we have all these hostile takeovers, things that if shareholders think that the management is not maximizing profits, they can try to change the management.

02:16:47.000 So in a benefit corp, You maximize public benefit.

02:16:50.000 And I think when we talk about healthcare, the profit motive has really warped things in America in a terrible way, so that we have the highest per capita expenditures on healthcare than any country in the world, but our outcomes are down like 40 or 50 in the countries,

02:17:06.000 when you look at your average outcomes.

02:17:08.000 So we wanted to model not just something new, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, but we also wanted to model a new way to market medicines.

02:17:17.000 So we created in December 2014 the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation.

02:17:24.000 That's our pharmaceutical arm, and that will end up, we hope, by the end of 2023, getting permission to sell.

02:17:31.000 And we will sell not to maximize profits, but to maximize benefits.

02:17:36.000 And so we think that we will reach sustainability in the middle of 2024. Now, our ambitions have been expanding.

02:17:47.000 We have this one successful Phase III study that we just published in Nature Medicine, and we had New York Times articles, front page even, about psychedelics.

02:17:56.000 And we're in the middle of the second Phase III study, but we also want to globalize.

02:18:01.000 And so we're now starting research in Europe.

02:18:05.000 It'll cost us like another $30 million or so to bring research and obtain approval from the European Medicines Agency.

02:18:12.000 It's so much less expensive than in the U.S. because the Europeans will accept all our U.S. data.

02:18:18.000 And so we only have to do one Phase III study in Europe.

02:18:22.000 To try to start MDMA research in South Africa, in Rwanda, where they had the horrible genocides, in Somaliland, Armenia, and Bosnia, people all over the world, Palestine, people have contacted us where there's lots and lots of trauma, not necessarily lots and lots of money,

02:18:38.000 but we want to globalize.

02:18:39.000 So that'll be...

02:18:41.000 Now, we've also hired the Boston Consultant Group, which helps businesses figure out their strategy.

02:18:50.000 BCG is what they're called.

02:18:52.000 And we've hired them to help us plot our commercialization strategy.

02:18:57.000 So, you know, my PhD at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard was on the regulation of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana.

02:19:05.000 So I have expertise in that, and we've hired a lot of people from pharma who know drug development, and that's how we've built the Benefit Corps, but we don't have expertise in commercialization.

02:19:16.000 So this BCG report was to help us understand what is the path to commercialize.

02:19:23.000 And so when you have a pharmaceutical company, you need all sorts of new functions to do commercialization.

02:19:29.000 Government affairs, you need to have...

02:19:32.000 Pharmacovigilance.

02:19:32.000 You need to track how everything is going.

02:19:36.000 We'll need to reschedule in all the states.

02:19:38.000 So, for example, when FDA says a drug is a medicine, the DEA must reschedule out of Schedule 1, but where it goes is up for discussion.

02:19:50.000 But then the states have to reschedule, and different states have different...

02:19:56.000 procedures for that.

02:19:57.000 So in California, you actually need a whole new law to pass the legislature and signed into law by the governor to make a Schedule I drug into a medicine.

02:20:05.000 And there's a bill now going through the legislature just past the State Senate in California that would decriminalize psychedelics, and it's got a provision to automatically reschedule once the FDA and DEA say a drug is a medicine.

02:20:20.000 And Amber and Marcus Capone from VETS We're very helpful in talking to various senators, state senators in California, to get them to change their minds and support this law because they told stories of how psychedelics have been helpful to them.

02:20:33.000 In Texas here, it's an automatic rescheduling.

02:20:38.000 Unless the Commissioner of Public Health objects.

02:20:41.000 And so with Rick Perry and the efforts that have been here in Texas, there was just a law passed that would support psilocybin research, and it also directs the Commissioner of Public Health To do a study of the literature on MDMA,

02:20:58.000 to acquaint them what's going on, so that if we make MDMA into a medicine, we think Texas will reschedule automatically, and we think that the Commissioner of Public Health will not object to that, although we don't know, but we're already trying to educate them.

02:21:11.000 So, in any case, we need to do this in all 50 states.

02:21:15.000 There needs to be a lot of government affairs relations, and so BCG report has estimated that it could be somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million to do the commercialization, and they say we need to prepare starting for that now.

02:21:29.000 And because we have one successful phase three study, there's a good chance we're actually going to succeed.

02:21:35.000 So where we're at is a very challenging situation.

02:21:38.000 There's now hundreds and hundreds of psychedelic, for-profit psychedelic companies.

02:21:44.000 When I started MAPS in 86, now again, 35 years ago, I'd say for the first 31, 32 years, I could never even imagine that there would be for-profit psychedelic companies, that there would only be, you know, non-profit donations.

02:22:00.000 But we've cleared out the regulatory obstacles, we've helped change public opinion, we've demonstrated through the FDA that it works, and now there's several for-profit companies with psychedelics that have market caps over a billion dollars.

02:22:16.000 So basically, MAPS is further along than any of them.

02:22:21.000 We're the only group in Phase 3. We have one successful Phase 3 study.

02:22:26.000 So in a sense, we've taken around $110 million and 35 years of work.

02:22:32.000 And if MAPS were a public company, we'd be worth well over a billion dollars because we have this...

02:22:40.000 Potential to market MDMA. And what I told to the New York Times is that this BCG report suggests that during this period of data exclusivity, depending on where we set the price, depending on how many therapists we've trained, Shannon Carlin is leading our therapy training program.

02:22:59.000 We're right now, at this very moment, we have 300 therapists in our training program.

02:23:03.000 We've got another one starting in September.

02:23:06.000 We hope to have more 500. We've already trained about a thousand therapists.

02:23:11.000 We want to get tens and tens, tens of thousands of therapists for all these thousands of psychedelic clinics.

02:23:15.000 But the estimate is somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 million or more in profits during this period of data exclusivity just from the U.S. And we're also working in Canada and Israel.

02:23:29.000 But the challenge that we face Is that now we think we're going to, to fully globalize, to commercialize, complete everything that we're doing, we're going to need to raise about $150 million more.

02:23:41.000 About $50 million a year for three years.

02:23:44.000 But that will make MDMA available in much of the world.

02:23:48.000 We'll hit this sustainability point.

02:23:50.000 We'll get this income from the sale of MDMA. We'll be able to complete globalization, complete commercialization.

02:23:56.000 And you will be the only ones that are able to sell this MDMA? During this period of data exclusivity, unless another company decides to do their own research.

02:24:05.000 So the answer is probably yes, because it will take people at least five or six years to do that.

02:24:11.000 Can you meet demand, though?

02:24:14.000 Well, here's where it gets a little bit more complicated, because the demand, the way we say this, it's not the drug.

02:24:21.000 It's the therapy that the drug makes more effective.

02:24:26.000 Right.

02:24:26.000 And so we will not be able to meet the demand.

02:24:29.000 There's about 8 or 9 million PTSD patients just in the United States, 350 million throughout the world or more, and just so many other people traumatized.

02:24:39.000 So it's going to...

02:24:40.000 And the way we want our negotiating with FDA... And DEA is that the only way that this becomes a medicine is that the only people that can prescribe it have been through a training program, so they understand the safety of MDMA, and the only therapists that can actually work with the patients have been through our training program.

02:24:59.000 So there's two ways that we need to work on to meet the demand.

02:25:04.000 The first is to train as many therapists as we can.

02:25:07.000 The second is to start exploring group therapy.

02:25:10.000 And when you train these therapists, do they have to have experiences themselves with MDMA? We don't want to ever require that people try MDMA, but we think that they would be better therapists if they do.

02:25:23.000 So we have...

02:25:26.000 About 10 years ago, we negotiated with FDA and we got approval for a protocol where its personality changes various things with MDMA and it's limited to therapists in our training program.

02:25:39.000 So the only way we can give legally therapists MDMA is in the context of a protocol because it's a Schedule I drug.

02:25:46.000 So we've given around over 90 people.

02:25:49.000 I've mentioned the police officer.

02:25:51.000 We have MDMA in this protocol.

02:25:54.000 Now, two years ago, we wanted to get another protocol approved that would make it less expensive to give MDMA to therapists.

02:26:02.000 So the first protocol is four days long, and people either get MDMA or placebo, and then a day of integration, and then the crossover, whatever they didn't get the first day, and then a fourth day of integration.

02:26:17.000 And that was good when we're training people to work for research where half of their people will get placebo.

02:26:22.000 We get therapy without MDMA compared to therapy with MDMA. But now we wanted to do two days where everybody gets MDMA and just a day of integration afterwards.

02:26:34.000 And so about two years ago we applied to the FDA And they put the protocol on clinical hold, which means that we couldn't do it.

02:26:43.000 They said the risks were too great to have healthy people get MDMA. What risks?

02:26:48.000 Did they cite those risks?

02:26:49.000 They didn't really.

02:26:51.000 There was one person that had suicidal ideation, meaning that she...

02:26:58.000 Pre-existing?

02:26:59.000 Yes, she had attempted self-harm before.

02:27:03.000 And it was resolved successfully during the MDMA session, and she told it it was beneficial to her.

02:27:10.000 But what's happened now is this bureaucratic self-protectionism.

02:27:15.000 The FDA realizes that now it might work, and it might become a medicine, and if something goes wrong, they're going to be blamed for it.

02:27:25.000 And it's the same group at the FDA, not the same structure, but the same organization that 25 years ago under a different group name, but the group that regulated psychedelics back then also regulated OxyContin.

02:27:39.000 And so they're the ones that approved OxyContin for long-term use.

02:27:42.000 And that's been a big scandal.

02:27:43.000 It's helped produce the opiate epidemic.

02:27:45.000 And so all of their documents have been released to the public.

02:27:48.000 And so the FDA, even though it's different people now, they're a little bit worried about what happens if they let psychedelics out and something goes wrong.

02:27:56.000 So they've become more conservative in certain ways.

02:28:00.000 And so they said, no, we're not going to give you permission to give MDMA to therapists.

02:28:04.000 And of our two-person therapy team, which is male, female, usually, two-person team, the lead person needs to be licensed to do therapy, and the second person doesn't need to be licensed.

02:28:17.000 It can be a student to get a license or someone with a thousand hours of behavioral health experience.

02:28:22.000 But in this new protocol, the FDA said the lead person needs to be an MD or a PhD.

02:28:28.000 And they said every clinic needs to have a doctor on site.

02:28:32.000 I mean, this protocol, you need a doctor on site.

02:28:35.000 Right now, we have approval in phase three.

02:28:38.000 The lead person is just a licensed therapist, not MD, PhD.

02:28:42.000 And the doctor does the screening and is on call but is not on site.

02:28:46.000 So these are like poison pills for rolling it out to meet the demand because it would increase the costs of the therapy tremendously to have a doctor on site.

02:28:55.000 Many therapists have private practice offices.

02:28:58.000 If they had to pay for a doctor on site the whole time, It would be way too expensive.

02:29:02.000 So we've been through a two-year process, and we decided that we needed to fight this.

02:29:08.000 And so we actually hired attorneys with expertise in challenging FDA in what's called the formal dispute resolution process.

02:29:19.000 And that's where you appeal to higher levels of the FDA. So the division of psychiatry products is regulated by the Office of Neuroscience.

02:29:28.000 And so we've spent over a quarter million dollars on lawyer's fees.

02:29:34.000 It's kind of a mixture of law and science.

02:29:36.000 And we went to challenge the FDA. And we said that, first off, it's not too risky to have therapists volunteer for this.

02:29:45.000 So we did a survey of the 90 therapists that have been through it.

02:29:48.000 And they Uniformly, almost, said very high average scores.

02:29:52.000 It was very helpful to them professionally to learn how to understand what MDMA does.

02:29:57.000 It helped them to be better therapists, and personally, they got a lot out of it, and the harms were very, very minimal or virtually nonexistent.

02:30:06.000 We got letters from expert therapists and academics and said over 20 letters saying MD or PhD doesn't make sense, that licensed therapists can do just as well or better.

02:30:18.000 Because they practice therapy.

02:30:20.000 MDs don't even know what therapy is.

02:30:22.000 Even psychiatrists a lot of times are trained to sort of be arm of the pharmaceutical industry.

02:30:27.000 And psychopharmacology, they don't even have to do therapy themselves to be a psychiatrist.

02:30:32.000 PhDs in psychology are often trained to do measures.

02:30:36.000 They're not necessarily therapists either.

02:30:38.000 It's just from the FDA, they don't regulate psychotherapy.

02:30:41.000 That's what's so challenging for them.

02:30:43.000 This is the first time that the FDA is not looking just at drugs.

02:30:47.000 So the way ketamine was approved, and there's ketamine clinic here in Texas, the way in Austin, I mean, and hundreds of ketamine clinics, it was approved just as a pharmacological treatment without any kind of therapy with it.

02:31:00.000 But we think therapy is part of it.

02:31:03.000 So this is the first time FDA is trying to regulate therapy.

02:31:06.000 And we also said that we don't need a doctor on site, that the safety issues are, you're making them up.

02:31:13.000 We looked at all the phase three sites where some of them we have doctor on site, some not.

02:31:17.000 Some we have MD-PhD as the lead therapist, some not.

02:31:20.000 And there were no differences really in efficacy or safety.

02:31:24.000 So the good news is that just two weeks ago or three weeks ago, We won this formal dispute resolution.

02:31:33.000 All right.

02:31:33.000 Yeah, it was great.

02:31:34.000 So the FDA, now we have permission for this study to give MDMA to therapists again.

02:31:39.000 It'll be less expensive.

02:31:41.000 MD-PhD is out the window and doctor on site is out the window.

02:31:44.000 Where is the MDMA coming from now?

02:31:47.000 Well, in 1985, I had some made at Purdue University by Dr. Dave Nichols.

02:31:54.000 85?

02:31:55.000 1985. You had some 36-year-old MDMA laying around?

02:31:59.000 It's an incredibly stable molecule.

02:32:02.000 Now, it's not used in phase three, so I'll just say.

02:32:05.000 So at that point, I paid him $4,000 for a kilogram of MDMA. Whoa, what's that worth on the street?

02:32:13.000 A lot.

02:32:14.000 And I will say that I have never done this MDMA. Of course.

02:32:17.000 It's the purest in the world.

02:32:19.000 What?

02:32:20.000 It was done in a university lab.

02:32:22.000 Why haven't you done it then?

02:32:23.000 Because the legal and the illegal are separate.

02:32:27.000 Oh.

02:32:28.000 So, you know, yes, I can't.

02:32:31.000 No, totally true.

02:32:32.000 Wink.

02:32:32.000 No, no, totally true.

02:32:34.000 I've never done it.

02:32:35.000 Oh, for sure.

02:32:36.000 I wish I could have.

02:32:38.000 But Dave actually got a good yield.

02:32:41.000 It was a kilogram and a half.

02:32:42.000 So the reason I share this is just to say it's an extremely stable molecule.

02:32:48.000 We are still using it in non-Phase III studies because it's not, quote, GMP, Good Manufacturing Practices.

02:32:54.000 It's just as pure, but there's not all the data about it.

02:32:57.000 It's not made at scale, but it's just great.

02:33:00.000 So we've had to find new suppliers for MDMA. So to answer your question...

02:33:05.000 Dealers.

02:33:07.000 Producers.

02:33:08.000 Producers.

02:33:09.000 And there are multiple companies in the US, Canada, Netherlands, England, Switzerland that we got bids from to manufacture our medical grade MDMA. Wow, that is interesting.

02:33:21.000 Yeah, so we're like a drug company.

02:33:24.000 A lot of drug companies contract out to research labs to make their drugs.

02:33:29.000 Well, they must also be very aware that with MAPS, it's such a legitimate organization with such a long history of success that you guys are basically opening up the door for this industry.

02:33:38.000 Yes.

02:33:39.000 And they'd like to get in on it as quickly as possible and have an established foot through the door.

02:33:43.000 Yeah, and they think that this could go very big.

02:33:46.000 Yeah, it absolutely could.

02:33:48.000 Yeah, so it very well could.

02:33:50.000 And eventually, I think 2035, after a decade of clinics, I think we'll have licensed legalization, and people will be legally able to buy psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, all these drugs.

02:34:02.000 Well, I love the fact that you're planning this far ahead.

02:34:05.000 It's a bummer that here we are in 2021, and we have to think in terms of 14 years from now being legal, something that should be legal right now.

02:34:13.000 But I do love the fact that your strategy is so...

02:34:16.000 you guys are patient and calculated and you're doing it right.

02:34:20.000 Yeah.

02:34:21.000 Well, to say the first medical marijuana states were California and Arizona in 1996. That's 25 years ago and we still don't have federal legalization of marijuana.

02:34:32.000 People are motivated by stories.

02:34:35.000 They need to hear stories.

02:34:37.000 That's what Congressman Crenshaw What motivated him was hearing stories from other Navy SEALs.

02:34:44.000 It wasn't so much data.

02:34:46.000 It was stories that the people that said...

02:34:49.000 So we think that the FDA needs data.

02:34:52.000 They don't want to hear stories.

02:34:53.000 They need data.

02:34:54.000 But once they make it into a medicine, and then we roll out these thousands of clinics, we and others, I mean, and there'll be psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA clinics, and maybe 5-MeO-DMT and Ibogaine and other clinics.

02:35:07.000 But there'll be trained—therapists will be cross-trained.

02:35:10.000 There'll be psychedelic therapists.

02:35:12.000 But then there'll be stories and stories and stories of people that have gotten benefits from psychedelics, and that's what'll change public opinion to move to licensed legalization in 2035. But to just backtrack for a second— MDMA that's manufactured now for us in England,

02:35:29.000 it's a company that also makes LSD and psilocybin, and they make MDMA for us.

02:35:35.000 What a daring company.

02:35:37.000 They're really, really good.

02:35:38.000 What are they called?

02:35:39.000 Onyx is the name of the company.

02:35:42.000 But they make what's called the active pharmaceutical ingredient.

02:35:47.000 That's called API. The active pharmaceutical ingredient.

02:35:51.000 That's like the powder, you know, whatever.

02:35:53.000 But that's not the dosage form.

02:35:56.000 So then there's another company that we have to send it to in order to put it into capsules.

02:36:03.000 And you would think that that should be pretty damn easy to just stick this stuff into capsules.

02:36:08.000 But they have to do it at large scale, automated.

02:36:11.000 They mix it with mannitol, you know, other different things to make it all weigh the same, all the capsules.

02:36:19.000 Because for research, too, we have to have all the capsules weigh the same, even though they have different amounts of MDMA in them, supposedly for double-blind purposes.

02:36:28.000 But we have a second company now that is making it into capsules.

02:36:32.000 And it's cost us so far almost $6 million just to get our new supply.

02:36:39.000 Whereas I got one kilogram and a half actually from Dave Nichols in 85 for $4,000.

02:36:45.000 Now we've got about 14 kilograms now.

02:36:48.000 But it's done in a way where it's done at scale.

02:36:52.000 You pressure test everything, what can go wrong, what are the impurities.

02:36:57.000 You have to get really very clear understanding.

02:37:00.000 And then you have to get uniformity, blend uniformity, to put it into the capsules.

02:37:05.000 That's also really expensive.

02:37:07.000 So now what we're doing is scaling up to make it, and we hope that we'll have enough MDMA. The question is, will we have enough therapists?

02:37:17.000 What's an effective dose?

02:37:19.000 Well, we did a study in veterans, firefighters, and police officers, and we tested 30 milligrams, 75 milligrams, and 125 milligrams.

02:37:32.000 And we thought that the effective dose was 125 milligrams, and we thought that 30 and the 75 would not do quite as well.

02:37:42.000 Now, just to say what we do, we do believe that longer is better in the therapeutic session.

02:37:49.000 So two hours after this initial administration of whatever it is, we give half the initial amount.

02:37:56.000 So 125 with 62.5 milligrams, 75 with 37.5 or 30 and 15 milligrams.

02:38:03.000 And that extends this plateau that's called the optimal arousal zone.

02:38:09.000 So when people have PTSD, one of the common responses is they become emotionally numb.

02:38:15.000 You know, it's too painful, or people are hyperactive, hypervigilant, and they're constantly on edge.

02:38:21.000 But in neither of those conditions are people really able to do therapeutic work to process the trauma.

02:38:28.000 They're either too numb or too reactive.

02:38:30.000 So the MDMA brings people into this optimal arousal zone where they can feel safe and process the trauma.

02:38:37.000 So what we discovered in this study, to our surprise, was that the 75 milligram group actually did great, even a slightly better than the 125 in this one particular study.

02:38:48.000 Although there were other differences.

02:38:50.000 When you randomize, it doesn't mean that everything is equal.

02:38:55.000 It's random.

02:38:56.000 And so what we showed is that the PTSD symptoms were pretty much equal in these different groups, but depression was a lot higher in the 125 mg group than in the 75 mg group.

02:39:06.000 But in any case, the 75 mg group did great.

02:39:09.000 And we've tested zero milligrams, 25 milligrams, 30 milligrams, 40 milligrams, 50 milligrams, 75, 100, 125, and 150, all with half the initial amounts.

02:39:21.000 So our phase three studies now are designed, there's three MDMA sessions one month apart.

02:39:28.000 And there's 12 90-minute non-drug psychotherapy sessions, three before the first MDMA session for preparation, and then three after each MDMA session for integration.

02:39:41.000 So the first one in phase three is now going to be 80 milligrams.

02:39:46.000 I think?

02:40:07.000 Millions to make a new dosage form that we felt that we needed to save money, so we make only 40 milligram capsules or 60 milligram capsules.

02:40:18.000 And so 60, you take two of them, you get 120, and then you've got the 60 for the half.

02:40:22.000 40 milligrams will give you 80 and half of that.

02:40:26.000 It's 40, or the 340s can give you the 120. So we only have two different sizes, 40 milligrams and 60 milligrams.

02:40:34.000 But we found that the 80 milligrams can be quite effective, and it's a good way to start for a lot of people.

02:40:42.000 Where it's not overwhelming?

02:40:43.000 Yeah, it's not overwhelming.

02:40:45.000 And then the next day is not overwhelming as well, right?

02:40:48.000 Does it have an equal impact in terms of how much time you need to recover?

02:40:52.000 Does like 30, do you have to recover less than you would with 120?

02:40:56.000 Yeah, it doesn't take near as much out of you.

02:40:59.000 But still, we have the second day with no obligations and people are resting and then we have the integrative psychotherapy the very next day.

02:41:09.000 So what we have modified our program based on what we found to be a lower effective dose than we thought, but what made it complicated is that it's important to, the goal is to try to do double-blind studies.

02:41:25.000 Randomized placebo-controlled double-blind studies so people don't know what dose they're getting so that then you can say it's due not to their expectations.

02:41:34.000 If there are differences between the two groups, it's just due to the dose.

02:41:37.000 And so what we are trying to do is find out what dose of MDMA is high enough to cause confusion.

02:41:45.000 People aren't quite sure, but not so high that it's so therapeutic that you can't tell a difference between the two groups.

02:41:52.000 And to our surprise, as I said, the 75 milligram group in that study was effective, so it was a lower effective dose than we thought, but the 25, 30, 40, and 50 milligrams made people uncomfortable.

02:42:05.000 It was like turbulence when you take off from an airplane.

02:42:08.000 You know, you have to get up above the clouds and then it's smooth sailing, but if you're in this kind of turbulent phase, It can make you uncomfortable.

02:42:15.000 Stuff comes to the surface.

02:42:16.000 You're supposed to talk about your trauma.

02:42:18.000 You've been burdened by your trauma for a very long time, but you don't have enough fear reduction.

02:42:22.000 So what we showed is that people all got better, but if you gave people therapy without any MDMA at all, they did better than the people that got therapy that got 25, 30, or 40 milligrams.

02:42:36.000 Interesting.

02:42:37.000 And so that meant that my dissertation was wrong.

02:42:42.000 I had thought I'd solved the problem of how do you do a successful double-blind study, and it was going to be therapy plus low-dose of whatever it is, low-dose psilocybin, low-dose MDMA, you know, therapy plus low-dose versus therapy plus full-dose.

02:42:59.000 Now, with MDMA, what we discovered is that if we use low doses, 25, 30, 40 milligrams, that we can produce enough confusion that the FDA would consider it successful blinding,

02:43:15.000 but that it will make it easier for us to find a difference between MDMA with low-dose MDMA than Than therapy with low-dose MDMA, I mean, or therapy with no MDMA at all.

02:43:29.000 So the real question is, if you can do the work with therapy, why bother at a drug?

02:43:34.000 So when we went to the FDA, we said, we can give you blinding with low-dose MDMA with therapy, but it's going to make it easier for us to find a difference between the two groups and that we suggest that we do therapy with inactive Placebo versus therapy with full-dose MDMA. And most people,

02:43:53.000 almost everybody, will be able to tell whether they've got MDMA or not.

02:43:57.000 And the therapist will be able to tell.

02:44:00.000 But that's the fair test.

02:44:03.000 You know, can we do this?

02:44:04.000 And so that's what the FDA... There's a fellow named Bob Temple, like the old wise man of the FDA. He's been there since 1972. He was in charge of the Office of Science Policy.

02:44:13.000 They brought him into the final meeting where we discussed our design of phase three.

02:44:18.000 And he was part of the group that said, yes, we can do therapy with inactive placebo.

02:44:24.000 And he said there's two main ways then to, or he didn't say, but the FDA was, there's two main ways to reduce experimenter bias when the double blind doesn't work.

02:44:34.000 One is called random assignment.

02:44:36.000 You have everybody pass the same screening, the same inclusion criteria.

02:44:40.000 They're all similarly motivated.

02:44:41.000 They're all willing to get the full-dose MDMA, but then some do and some don't.

02:44:47.000 Then the other part of it is, how do you evaluate whether the treatment was successful?

02:44:52.000 You can't have the therapist evaluate or give measures to the patients because they're biased.

02:44:58.000 They might think, you know, they know who got the MDMA, who not.

02:45:01.000 So we need a very robust system of independent raters that are trained by the Boston VA. We have over 20 of these.

02:45:09.000 They're inter-rater reliability.

02:45:11.000 They do an hour interview.

02:45:12.000 It's called the CAPS, the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale.

02:45:15.000 It was developed by the Boston VA. And so they're randomly assigned on telemedicine to evaluate the patient, the next patient that comes in.

02:45:25.000 And so one rater doesn't follow the patient through the study.

02:45:29.000 And so that's how the FDA said that we can do the studies.

02:45:32.000 And we have a signed agreement in what's called the special protocol assessment process.

02:45:37.000 And so once we present the data to the FDA, they can't say, we don't like your methodology.

02:45:42.000 If we get statistically significant evidence of efficacy and no new safety problems arise, then they must approve the drug.

02:45:50.000 And then when we went to the European Medicines Agency and we said to them, we would like to bring this to Europe.

02:45:56.000 We would like to globalize.

02:45:58.000 Here's the same issue.

02:45:59.000 How do we do a double-blind study?

02:46:01.000 Here's what the FDA said.

02:46:03.000 The EMA, the European Medicines Agency, agreed with the FDA and they said we have to do one phase three study of 70 people in Europe.

02:46:11.000 Again, therapy with inactive placebo versus therapy with full-dose MDMA. And the European Medicines Agency also said I think that we're good to go.

02:46:50.000 We'll also be, in Europe, starting with 80 milligrams, followed by 40, and then the second and third is almost always 120, followed by 60. And you'll be interviewing these people.

02:47:02.000 And what's the protocol for establishing success in terms of, like, how the study went, how the experience went for these people?

02:47:11.000 Yeah.

02:47:12.000 Luckily for us, there is a gold standard measure of PTSD symptoms.

02:47:17.000 And it is this measure developed by the Boston VA called the CAPS, Clinician Administrative PTSD Scale.

02:47:23.000 And this is number five.

02:47:25.000 This is the fifth version of it.

02:47:27.000 So CAPS V. And so that's administered to people at baseline and then we administer it throughout the study and then two months after the last experimental session.

02:47:39.000 So to give you a sense of how our phase three study went, the one that we just got published in Nature Medicine and why we think we have a real good chance of succeeding, is that now we work with severe chronic PTSD patients and we felt that we have to work with the hardest patients.

02:47:57.000 And what that means is that if they have attempted suicide in the past, we will still include them.

02:48:03.000 They can't be actively suicidal, but they can have tried to kill themselves in the past.

02:48:08.000 And many PTSD studies think that that group is too dangerous to use, that they exclude people who have tried to kill themselves before.

02:48:16.000 But we think we have to include them.

02:48:18.000 So what we showed at the two-month follow-up was that those people that got therapy without MDMA, 32% no longer had PTSD. Which is pretty amazing.

02:48:31.000 People had PTSD on average of 14 years.

02:48:33.000 We had one third of people had PTSD over 20 years.

02:48:36.000 Can I stop you for a second?

02:48:38.000 Yes.

02:48:38.000 So 32% of people that just had therapy with no MDMA. Now, obviously there's a different therapist with different skill levels and different levels of intuition and the ability to navigate emotional problems.

02:48:53.000 Was that taken into consideration?

02:48:56.000 Like, we were looking at the 30%.

02:48:57.000 The ones that were effective, what traits did they have in common?

02:49:03.000 What about those therapy sessions?

02:49:06.000 And what about the people that were initially suffering from PTSD? What did they have in common?

02:49:11.000 Well, you're asking one of the most important questions, and we don't know the answer.

02:49:16.000 You know, we are not sure how to predict ahead of time who's going to respond and who's not going to respond.

02:49:22.000 Well, also, because you're dealing with different therapists, you're also dealing with different personalities and different bedside manners, different people that have a different skill level in terms of emotional skill or rather emotional intelligence.

02:49:38.000 Being able to navigate conversations with people.

02:49:40.000 That's true, although we train all the therapists.

02:49:43.000 Right, but they're individual human beings.

02:49:45.000 You can train people all day long.

02:49:46.000 If you train seven people how to be a computer coder, there's going to be varying skill levels.

02:49:53.000 Well, one of the things that the FDA required us to do was to look if there were site-to-site variations in the results.

02:50:00.000 Site-to-site in terms of geographic locations?

02:50:02.000 Well, yeah.

02:50:03.000 So we have 15 sites for Phase III. Right.

02:50:05.000 But do you do what I'm saying by geographic?

02:50:07.000 Like some places will have good weather.

02:50:10.000 Some places have terrible weather.

02:50:11.000 Well, this is more just about the therapists.

02:50:13.000 Okay.

02:50:13.000 So are the therapists at these different sites?

02:50:16.000 Got it.

02:50:16.000 Okay.

02:50:17.000 So we had two sites in Israel, two in Canada, and 11 throughout the United States.

02:50:22.000 That's a big difference geographically, right?

02:50:24.000 Yeah, geographically, but, you know, in different languages.

02:50:27.000 But the CAPS-5 is translated into multiple languages.

02:50:30.000 So it's the same measure all over the world that we use.

02:50:34.000 The same train, you know, we train raters in the different countries that...

02:50:37.000 But it's, again, it's subjective, right?

02:50:39.000 You're just subjectively trying to analyze how people feel.

02:50:42.000 Well, you could say it's subjective.

02:50:44.000 It's an hour-long interview of the patients reporting how they're feeling.

02:50:48.000 Right.

02:50:49.000 Yeah, so in that sense...

02:50:49.000 But it has to be subjective, right?

02:50:51.000 Well, we don't know biological markers either.

02:50:54.000 That's the other part.

02:50:55.000 I mean, we have done some fMRI tests before and after and showed reduction of activity in the amygdala.

02:51:01.000 Interesting.

02:51:01.000 So that people are having brain changes.

02:51:05.000 This is through therapy, just therapy.

02:51:07.000 Or therapy with MDMA. Okay.

02:51:09.000 Yeah.

02:51:10.000 So what we found, though, when we analyzed the data was that there were no site-to-site differences that were statistically significant.

02:51:19.000 So what that means is that there are these individual variations in the different skills of the therapists, but that we think that the effectiveness of the MDMA is, in a way, equalizes, like a great equalizer.

02:51:34.000 Right, because it's so potent.

02:51:36.000 And our method is to empower people to heal themselves.

02:51:41.000 So it's not like we're thinking, okay, great therapist, you're doing this healing work.

02:51:46.000 So of the eight-hour session, roughly half the time, in no specific order, people's eyes are closed.

02:51:54.000 They're listening to music through headphones.

02:51:56.000 They're having this own internal experience that's very poetic, metaphorical.

02:52:02.000 MDMA is not visual like LSD or psilocybin, but it promotes this imagination.

02:52:07.000 It's like inner storytelling.

02:52:10.000 Very metaphorical.

02:52:11.000 I mean, one of the veterans was like the warrior part of himself that he came back from Iraq with that he couldn't trust.

02:52:17.000 He locked up in a cage inside him.

02:52:19.000 And this warrior would reach out of the cage and try to...

02:52:22.000 This gorilla would reach out of the cage, stab him in the side.

02:52:25.000 And then he realized that there's a book, Acid Test, LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal, about this particular veteran.

02:52:34.000 And it's about our work.

02:52:35.000 So, Acid Test, LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal.

02:52:38.000 It's about...

02:52:39.000 Michael Mithofer, our lead psychiatrist, my story, and the vets, and Nick Blackston and how we all interacted in our lives.

02:52:47.000 But it's this sort of people tell themselves stories.

02:52:51.000 And it was how Nick realized that this gorilla part that he had locked up because he couldn't trust because of what he had done in Iraq. 0.97

02:52:58.000 He would explode in rage and sometimes with his wife and That he was only making it worse by keeping this gorilla in a cage.

02:53:06.000 And so in his imagination, while his eyes are closed, he unlocks the cage.

02:53:11.000 He pulls the knife out of his side, he unlocks the cage, and these evil red eyes of this gorilla melt and they hug each other. 0.94

02:53:19.000 And this was his first MDMA session.

02:53:21.000 Sounds like some weird anime.

02:53:23.000 It sounds like that, yeah.

02:53:25.000 And it was 75 milligrams.

02:53:28.000 And he never had rage after that first session.

02:53:31.000 Never?

02:53:32.000 Not in that same way.

02:53:34.000 His emotions were more under control in that raging kind of way.

02:53:38.000 This is an extraordinarily beneficial session for him.

02:53:41.000 Extremely.

02:53:42.000 Yeah.

02:53:43.000 And so of the eight hours, roughly half the time, people are having their own experiences.

02:53:49.000 And then the other times they come out and they share with the therapists what's been happening.

02:53:54.000 And there's some dialogue there.

02:53:56.000 And then they go back inner and outer.

02:53:59.000 And we have no script.

02:54:00.000 It's not a...

02:54:01.000 We call it inner-directed therapy.

02:54:04.000 And there's this inner wisdom for what emerges.

02:54:07.000 And so...

02:54:08.000 A lot of times people will talk about traumas that they've not talked about to anybody before, even that they've not really fully acknowledged themselves that didn't come up in the prior discussions because they're feeling safe.

02:54:23.000 That same kind of reduction of anxiety, reduction of fear, self-acceptance, more complex things come up.

02:54:30.000 So we do think that the MDMA is very therapeutic, potentially in the right supportive setting.

02:54:37.000 The therapists make a big difference, but that we do feel that through the data analysis that there were no site-to-site variations, meaning that the results were more or less equivalent across all these, about almost 80 therapists in these 15 different sites.

02:54:56.000 So that gives us confidence that we can scale it, that we can find tens of thousands of therapists.

02:55:03.000 Now, some therapists could be really bad and they could make it worse.

02:55:06.000 You know, we'll try to identify them during the training.

02:55:09.000 So what we do is we have right now this 100 hours of training virtual.

02:55:15.000 Then we have an opportunity for some of the people to volunteer to receive MDMA as a patient themselves, to understand from the inside out what it does.

02:55:23.000 And then we supervise the therapists as they work with their first patient.

02:55:29.000 And we have our treatment manual, which is also up on the MAPS website if anybody wants to know our therapeutic approach.

02:55:36.000 And then we have operationalized it in what's called adherence criteria.

02:55:40.000 Like, are the therapists supporting people's inner experience?

02:55:43.000 Are they intervening too much?

02:55:45.000 Are they...

02:55:46.000 You know, talking too much.

02:55:47.000 Are they letting the patients have their own experience?

02:55:50.000 Are they creating a safe, supportive environment?

02:55:52.000 Are they answering their questions about safety?

02:55:54.000 Are they, you know, encouraging them to express rather than suppress whatever's happening?

02:55:59.000 Again, this difference between a bad and a difficult trip.

02:56:02.000 Yeah.

02:56:02.000 So we have a team of adherence raters that evaluate the videotapes and give feedback back to the therapists.

02:56:10.000 Are they adhering to our method?

02:56:12.000 So we do try to kind of have a standardized approach that leaves room for individual variability.

02:56:20.000 Therapists can say different things.

02:56:22.000 They can do different kind of things.

02:56:23.000 But generally, we have this method called this interdirected therapy in our treatment manual.

02:56:29.000 And it seems like we will be able to scale this and that the MDMA really helps people to process and we give them the time in this safe space for them to work through their own issues.

02:56:43.000 Like the MDMA experience that you described, you know, you came to a lot of things on your own.

02:56:48.000 You know, you were able to do that, but it wasn't that the people with you produced those insights.

02:56:54.000 You figured it out yourself.

02:56:56.000 Right.

02:56:56.000 And so that's what we're trying to do.

02:56:58.000 We're trying to empower the patients to heal themselves.

02:57:01.000 Right.

02:57:03.000 Even though these are chronic, severe, some had attempted suicide before, they tried other drugs, they tried therapies.

02:57:13.000 32% were able to, at the two-month follow-up, no longer have PTSD, which is really good for therapy.

02:57:21.000 But you said 32% with just therapy.

02:57:24.000 Just therapy, yes.

02:57:26.000 The group that got therapy plus MDMA was 68%.

02:57:32.000 Wow, that's significant.

02:57:33.000 Yeah, and of the one-third that more or less that still had PTSD... Most of them had what are called clinically significant reductions of PTSD symptoms.

02:57:43.000 Their lives were better, they had fewer symptoms, although they still had PTSD. But if we could have given them a fourth session...

02:57:50.000 You think you could have nipped it in the bud?

02:57:53.000 For many of them.

02:57:54.000 Now, because this is labor-intensive and it's very expensive, the big issue for scaling for us is going to be not only the number of therapists that we train, but is it covered by insurance?

02:58:05.000 Right.

02:58:06.000 And so for the insurance companies, what they want to see is, is it durable?

02:58:10.000 Is it lasting?

02:58:12.000 So in our phase two studies, and in also this phase three study, we're going to check again at 12 months.

02:58:20.000 We're not at that point yet for this first phase three study.

02:58:23.000 But in our phase two studies, what we showed is that In phase two, at the two-month follow-up, we had 56% no longer had PTSD with the MDMA plus therapy at the two months.

02:58:37.000 So the phase three results are even slightly better than phase two.

02:58:40.000 But at the 12-month follow-up for phase two, people kept getting better.

02:58:46.000 Now two-thirds no longer had PTSD at the one-year follow-up.

02:58:50.000 So it took long for the lessons to sort of sink in.

02:58:53.000 Yes, and people, once you learn how to sort of, you don't need to suppress, you can process it.

02:59:00.000 People can keep getting better on their own without more drugs.

02:59:03.000 So this is fundamentally different than here, take a drug to correct a biochemical problem, like an SSRI, you're going to need this every day and you can need it for years or months.

02:59:14.000 What we're saying is we do in-depth work to try to make it so we get to the core of the problem so that then we free people of the need for drugs.

02:59:23.000 Now, the thing about marijuana, we talked about marijuana for PTSD, that's more palliative than curative, meaning that it reduces symptoms, it'll help people sleep at night, but it doesn't help them process the core trauma.

02:59:35.000 It just suppresses the symptoms, and there are many people that may not want to do this difficult work.

02:59:42.000 It's painful and it's emotional and you have to really look at this trauma and it's difficult.

02:59:48.000 So we think that there's quite a number of group of people that would rather just use the marijuana for PTSD if we can show if it's effective.

02:59:57.000 Go back to the prison thing because I think that's a place where I think there's a lot of room for beneficial therapy.

03:00:05.000 I mean, if you think about how many of these people that are in prison have never really gotten any kind of real helpful counseling or real moments like something that could be provided from an MDMA experience where they really get a chance to let go of a lot.

03:00:22.000 I think so.

03:00:23.000 I think that— Has there been a thought about how to implement this?

03:00:27.000 Oh, yeah.

03:00:27.000 Well, it's a little bit difficult to get permission to do—or it's very difficult to get permission to do research inside prisons because the question is informed consent.

03:00:37.000 Are people in some way pressured to do this?

03:00:41.000 But we've got therapists that have worked at San Quentin.

03:00:44.000 That it worked at Folsom Prison.

03:00:46.000 There are wardens that are now interested in this.

03:00:49.000 But what we think we're probably going to have to start with is recently paroled people and then work with them.

03:00:59.000 Outside of prison and help them address their traumas and then provide, again, group support.

03:01:06.000 And try to limit recidivism.

03:01:08.000 Limit recidivism.

03:01:09.000 Prison, in a way, is a perfect opportunity for people to confront these issues.

03:01:16.000 Now, my son, Eden, lives in Philadelphia, and he lives right next to the Eastern State Penitentiary.

03:01:24.000 And so this was the first major penitentiary where the word penitentiary came from.

03:01:30.000 It was all set up hundreds of years ago.

03:01:34.000 It was for people to be meditating on their crimes.

03:01:39.000 So it's individual cells, sort of like they pioneered isolation.

03:01:46.000 But they tried to make it so people would use the time in prison to Reform themselves and make themselves.

03:01:53.000 They found that it actually was very cruel punishment to be so isolated like this, and they didn't provide therapy support.

03:02:00.000 But I think prisons would be an ideal environment to do this kind of deep work.

03:02:05.000 And that's where we want to get to one day.

03:02:08.000 And we do think that you need to have compassion.

03:02:11.000 A lot of these people have been deeply wounded in their lives, in their early lives.

03:02:16.000 Yeah.

03:02:36.000 I think that that will be in the future, but we have to go step by step.

03:02:40.000 Chances are we'll start with parolees, provide support, see if we can reduce recidivism, and then eventually hopefully get permission to do work inside prison.

03:02:51.000 The other thing is prison guards.

03:02:53.000 I mean, it's a brutalizing environment for everybody that's there, not just for the prisoners, but also for the guards.

03:02:58.000 And because they're traumatized, they act in more violent ways towards the prisoners.

03:03:04.000 And so we think that we want to be working the same way with police officers.

03:03:08.000 They have exposure to the worst of humanity.

03:03:12.000 They see all these crimes.

03:03:13.000 They see murders.

03:03:14.000 They see horrible things.

03:03:15.000 Just imagine how much better the world would be if MDMA was readily available.

03:03:20.000 That's what kept us going this whole time.

03:03:23.000 People could just sort of make decisions based on the same decisions they make based on whether or not they want to have alcohol or whether, you know, there's so many different things that you do that you're allowed to make these decisions with that are more harmful than MDMA. Yeah.

03:03:39.000 Now, we have another project which is for political reconciliation.

03:03:43.000 So it turns out that there are some Israelis and Palestinians that have been doing ayahuasca and MDMA together.

03:03:50.000 Oh, boy.

03:03:52.000 Where?

03:03:53.000 Well, there are underground psychedelic therapists in Palestine.

03:03:57.000 Wow.

03:03:59.000 And ayahuasca is used throughout Israel.

03:04:01.000 So with Lior Roseman and Robin Card Harris, who are at Imperial College, Lior is a neuroscientist but an Israeli, and Natalie Ginsberg on our staff, who is head of our policy and advocacy team.

03:04:17.000 We are trying to study how you can use psychedelics in this Israeli-Palestinian context.

03:04:25.000 Now, again, they're not the hardcore haters.

03:04:27.000 They are the people that are more open to being in these mixed spaces.

03:04:31.000 We have understanding that the Palestinians, they have MDMA first on their own to try to work through some of their traumas. 1.00

03:04:37.000 Then they go into these mixed spaces where they use ayahuasca.

03:04:41.000 So the first year of this study, and this was funded by Christian Engermeyer, who started to tie the lead investor in Compass.

03:04:51.000 But he said he's not all about money, he's also about peace.

03:04:55.000 And so the first year was interviews of these Israelis and Palestinians, why they did it, and what were their experiences.

03:05:03.000 And so we were just recently publishing a paper that Lior wrote about that.

03:05:07.000 One of the beautiful moments was this person said, an Israeli, that whenever he heard Arabic music, that it made him tense up.

03:05:16.000 It reminded him of, quote, the enemy.

03:05:19.000 But during an ayahuasca experience, they played Islamic music from prayer music.

03:05:27.000 Oh.

03:05:28.000 And he could hear the beauty in it.

03:05:30.000 And he said, in this state of mind, in this ayahuasca state of mind, that there's no Israelis, there's no Palestinians, there's just human, and I could see the beauty of this Arabic music.

03:05:41.000 Mm.

03:05:43.000 And so what we like to joke, but it's not so much of a joke, is that we're going to work on the easy case of Israelis and Palestinians, and then if it works, we're going to come to America to work with Republicans and Democrats. 0.79

03:05:57.000 So the psychedelics have so many different potential uses.

03:06:03.000 And so when you have these traumatized – that's why in Rwanda, you know, we've been approached by people who want to bring MDMA to Rwanda where the Hutus and the Tutsis did massive genocide against – oh, sorry.

03:06:19.000 That's a hilarious ringer.

03:06:22.000 Yes, sir.

03:06:24.000 I turned that off.

03:06:25.000 Oops.

03:06:26.000 It's hilariously at the three-minute mark, the three-hour mark, too.

03:06:30.000 Like, right about to wrap this up.

03:06:32.000 It's like a timer went off.

03:06:34.000 That's funny.

03:06:36.000 Yeah, so we do have this idealistic hope, in a way, that psychedelics can help people to see through their traumas, to see people that they're scared of as humans, the same way you were talking about with criminals.

03:06:50.000 People demonize the criminals.

03:06:52.000 You know, if there's some way that we can see them as humans as have been wounded, if we can have compassion for them, if we can have compassion for people that have different political views.

03:07:02.000 Well, it's remarkable that there actually are compounds that promote empathy and that these are illegal.

03:07:08.000 Well, did you hear about the octopus study?

03:07:12.000 No.

03:07:12.000 Okay, so there's a neuroscientist, Gould Dolan, at Johns Hopkins.

03:07:17.000 So the Oscars gave this best documentary to the My Octopus Teacher, which is an incredible movie.

03:07:27.000 But it's about a guy who has a relationship with this octopus.

03:07:31.000 But octopuses are solitary creatures.

03:07:35.000 And they stay away from other octopuses unless it's a mating season, which is very rare, and they live alone.

03:07:45.000 But around 560 million years or more ago, humans and octopuses diverged.

03:07:52.000 But octopuses still process serotonin.

03:07:55.000 Their brains still process serotonin.

03:07:58.000 And so Gould was interested to know, what does MDMA do to an octopus?

03:08:05.000 So there's, you know, neuroscientists do a lot of animal studies.

03:08:08.000 So they have an experimental procedure where there's an octopus in a container and there's two doors.

03:08:17.000 One goes to an inanimate object that's kind of put in a birdcage kind of thing so it can't move.

03:08:25.000 The other door leads to another octopus that's also in this birdcage that it can't move.

03:08:30.000 And so the octopus that's put in this timber can go either way.

03:08:34.000 And no matter how you switch the genders, the octopus will spend way more time with the inanimate object. 0.95

03:08:42.000 It will stay away from the other octopus.

03:08:44.000 But when it's with the other octopus, it's around the perimeter.

03:08:48.000 It doesn't really engage with the other octopus.

03:08:52.000 So it took a while for her to figure this out, but how much MDMA? We sent them the MDMA. But she puts the MDMA in the water, soaks the octopus in this water, and the octopus absorbs the MDMA. And then you put the octopus back in this chamber,

03:09:12.000 and now they spend way more time with the other octopus, and when they're there, they're touching the tentacles and they're engaging with this other octopus.

03:09:22.000 So what she felt it does is, we know that kids, when you're young, you can learn languages easier.

03:09:29.000 You also learn more social skills.

03:09:34.000 So what Gold thinks is happening is that MDMA opens up a critical reward period for social reward learning, that you now can become more social.

03:09:44.000 And that, I think, is what we see also in humans.

03:09:47.000 So MDMA has this ability to promote connection and to promote empathy and to promote interest and understanding.

03:09:57.000 Some people said ecstasy is not the right word for MDMA. It should be called empathy.

03:10:04.000 Now, Ghul also did work with mice, and she gives mice a bunch of MDMA. And what she showed then, and mice shall then chop them up afterwards and look at their brains, but MDMA releases oxytocin, which is this hormone of love connection,

03:10:20.000 and then it produces new neural connections.

03:10:26.000 So there's the new connections with other neurons in prosocial areas of the brain.

03:10:34.000 So you are actually rewiring your brain.

03:10:38.000 And there is this way where you process memories differently, and this neuroplasticity can account for the long-term benefits from MDMA. That's been done with psilocybin about neuroplasticity.

03:10:57.000 That psilocybin also can promote neural connections.

03:11:00.000 And neural growth.

03:11:01.000 Neural growth, yeah.

03:11:02.000 So Mike Tyson you had on, he talked about how psychedelics have changed him.

03:11:07.000 There's a fellow named Daniel Carcillo, who was a...

03:11:11.000 Carbomb was his name.

03:11:13.000 He was a hockey player.

03:11:17.000 Big rewards, you know, and the Stanley Cup a couple times.

03:11:22.000 But he's working also affiliated in a way with Mike Tyson.

03:11:27.000 He's got a company called WeSana, which is going to try to develop psilocybin with cannabinoids and potentially adding MDMA for traumatic brain injury.

03:11:37.000 So fighters and people that have been You know, in wars, people have been blast exposures.

03:11:42.000 So it looks like there's a good chance that there can be...

03:11:49.000 Recovery from TBI. So there was this documentary, HBO Sports, and they had one segment of it that was just on psychedelics.

03:12:00.000 And so, you know, we were featured about MDMA, but Daniel was also about this concoction of psilocybin microdosing and cannabinoid CBD and other things.

03:12:11.000 And so it does seem like other psychedelics also have this way to rewire the brain, and it may be helpful for TBI, for traumatic brain injury, as well as PTSD. And a lot of the vets and others have both.

03:12:25.000 You have TBI and PTSD. So as we are thinking about how do we raise this roughly $150 million, $50 million a year for three years, We've got several basic ways.

03:12:37.000 We want to do it through philanthropy.

03:12:38.000 We want to be able to still prioritize public benefit.

03:12:43.000 We're concerned if we take loans or investments, then we'd have to give returns.

03:12:50.000 It would change our approach.

03:12:52.000 Where would we work?

03:12:53.000 Would we work with people that have large amounts of trauma but not large amounts of money, like all around the world?

03:12:58.000 Mm-hmm.

03:12:58.000 But we may partner with other companies that want to develop other indications for MDMA. So this one company, Wisana, is interested in partnering with us, and we're just in the early stages of exploring.

03:13:09.000 Well, what if people just want to donate?

03:13:11.000 What's the best way to do that?

03:13:13.000 Maps.org.

03:13:14.000 Maps.org.

03:13:15.000 And it's very clearly laid out there.

03:13:16.000 They can just go and donate.

03:13:17.000 Yeah.

03:13:18.000 And that's obviously very beneficial.

03:13:20.000 Yeah.

03:13:20.000 So we should encourage people to do that.

03:13:21.000 I really appreciate that.

03:13:23.000 Yeah.

03:13:24.000 And if they want to donate a fair amount, don't do it through the website.

03:13:27.000 There it is.

03:13:28.000 Yeah.

03:13:29.000 Sports Psychedelic Science.

03:13:31.000 Thank you.

03:13:31.000 Don't do it through the website?

03:13:32.000 What do you mean?

03:13:33.000 Only because if you do it through a credit card, you know, the credit card people take a bunch of the money.

03:13:37.000 So, you know, mail in a check.

03:13:39.000 Oh, okay.

03:13:39.000 Or if you want to donate stocks or something like that, it's all on the website how to do that.

03:13:43.000 Okay.

03:13:44.000 But we are trying to build our base, too.

03:13:47.000 So we're trying to have more monthly members.

03:13:49.000 The T-shirt that you've got is for MAPS staff.

03:13:51.000 That's a very limited edition, but we have special things for members, so we want to have eventually thousands of members.

03:13:58.000 Well, I'm going to encourage people to go there, and I've got to wrap this up, but we've already done Three hours, believe it or not.

03:14:04.000 Wow.

03:14:05.000 Now, I do have one question, if you're open to this question, is the last two times we did this, we smoked pot before.

03:14:11.000 Yeah.

03:14:11.000 And we didn't do that this morning.

03:14:13.000 We didn't, no.

03:14:14.000 So I'm wondering, is that because we're in Texas?

03:14:16.000 No.

03:14:17.000 No, we just started talking.

03:14:19.000 No, there's pot right here. 0.98

03:14:21.000 Oh, okay.

03:14:22.000 We just decided to just talk.

03:14:24.000 Okay, I was wondering if it's Texas.

03:14:26.000 I think it's good to be sober occasionally.

03:14:27.000 There's nothing wrong with it.

03:14:29.000 Yeah.

03:14:30.000 That's it.

03:14:30.000 That's the only reason why.

03:14:31.000 Okay.

03:14:32.000 No, we've been...

03:14:32.000 The first few episodes, we didn't, though.

03:14:35.000 We got a little nervous.

03:14:36.000 We're like, maybe we should be good neighbors, you know, since it's not totally legal here.

03:14:40.000 We abandoned that pretty quickly.

03:14:42.000 I'm glad to hear that.

03:14:44.000 Well, thank you very much, Rick.

03:14:45.000 It's always a pleasure to see you.

03:14:46.000 And I think what you're doing and the work you've done is really amazing and inspiring and so beneficial.

03:14:52.000 And so I'm very thankful.

03:14:54.000 Very thankful for you guys.

03:14:55.000 Yeah.

03:14:55.000 And whatever I can do to help.

03:14:57.000 Well, yes.

03:14:58.000 Thank you very much.

03:14:59.000 And maybe if we come back in five or ten years, we can see how many psychedelic Yes.

03:15:04.000 Ten years from now.

03:15:04.000 Let's think about a June of 2031 and then there'll be a shitload of them.

03:15:09.000 And maybe the world will be a better place.

03:15:11.000 I hope so.

03:15:12.000 And that's our plan.

03:15:13.000 Yes.

03:15:13.000 And you're doing an amazing job with it.

03:15:15.000 Thank you.

03:15:16.000 Thank you very much.

03:15:17.000 Okay.

03:15:17.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - June 04, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1661 - Rick Doblin

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