The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #629 - Andrew Hill, PhD

00:00:00.000 It's not that tight.

00:00:03.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:05.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:07.000 Showing my day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

00:00:12.000 I'm not sure if playing that before you talk to somebody is a good idea.

00:00:15.000 It seems jarring.

00:00:16.000 It seems like, all of a sudden, like you have to like, talk it down.

00:00:20.000 So it becomes like a conversation again. 0.99

00:00:22.000 Because otherwise it's like, oh, what the fuck just... 0.99

00:00:24.000 Right? 0.99

00:00:24.000 You are a neuroscientist, correct, Dr. Hill? 0.99

00:00:27.000 I am, yeah, a cognitive neuroscientist.

00:00:28.000 Would that not affect the way your brain...

00:00:31.000 Absolutely.

00:00:32.000 Hearing sort of, you know, call to actions will change how you then react to things. 0.99

00:00:36.000 Fucks with you, right? 0.99

00:00:36.000 Yeah, absolutely. 0.99

00:00:37.000 Does something.

00:00:38.000 Yep.

00:00:39.000 We were talking, Dr. Andrew Hill is on the podcast today, and we were talking before the podcast started.

00:00:45.000 I didn't want to talk to you anymore.

00:00:46.000 I wanted to get you in here and sit you down.

00:00:48.000 Because you said something really fascinating.

00:00:51.000 That you take people who may have problems with substances, and instead of getting them to abstain, you get them to use them responsibly, which is an alien concept in this day and age.

00:01:05.000 Yeah, I mean, this is not terribly common in substance abuse, you know, sort of treatment world.

00:01:09.000 There's a few companies that do it, and one of them is here in Los Angeles, Alternatives.

00:01:13.000 And we...

00:01:14.000 We'll take people that, you know, might have an issue with alcohol, let's say, and the only option is not abstinence for our program.

00:01:23.000 We have moderation options, controlled use options, harm reduction.

00:01:26.000 So someone might come in and say, you know, look, I consider myself an alcoholic, but I want to start drinking again.

00:01:33.000 Or, you know, I'm someone who has been abstinent for a long time and struggles with craving, struggles with, you know, choice, and whenever I slip, I slip big.

00:01:41.000 Yeah.

00:01:42.000 Help me figure out how to not be that guy, how to use responsibly or to not use.

00:01:46.000 So we don't necessarily say you must be a moderate user or you must abstain.

00:01:50.000 We ask clients what they want to do and then help them figure out how to get there.

00:01:53.000 And for many of them, they come to us because we do offer a moderation, moderate alcohol use approach.

00:01:58.000 That seems pretty novel.

00:02:01.000 Is it?

00:02:02.000 It is pretty novel, yeah.

00:02:03.000 One of our principals, Dr. Mark Kern, has been doing addiction work with Moderation Focus for about 30 years in LA, and so it's not the newest thing ever, but it's newer than AA, of course, which has been around for pushing 100 years now.

00:02:15.000 Yeah, AA people seem to think that that's the only way to go.

00:02:19.000 You have to do the 12-step program, you have to call everybody you ever wronged, you have to pray to Jesus, you have to...

00:02:27.000 Drink a lot of coffee and smoke cigarettes.

00:02:29.000 Yeah, it must be.

00:02:30.000 It must be, yeah.

00:02:31.000 I mean, you know, the biggest difference for an alternatives approach or a harm reduction or moderation approach compared to AA, in my perspective, is that a lot of the AA approach is disempowering.

00:02:42.000 You must give up control, you know, surrender.

00:02:46.000 And I think that there's another option out there, and that's We're architecting more control, more power.

00:02:51.000 Let's figure out your cues for over-drinking.

00:02:53.000 Let's figure out what happens, you know, why do you get to five or six or seven drinks?

00:02:57.000 Like, what happens on drink two?

00:02:59.000 You know, what are the triggers for, like going home and, you know, automatically driving into that liquor store parking lot you always pass by?

00:03:06.000 So we help people figure out all the different triggers and cues that are driving their out-of-control use and what control use might look like for them, you know, what sort of appropriate mindful drinking might look like for them.

00:03:18.000 And if it's alcohol, people spend the first month with us abstaining anyways, just to reset tolerance.

00:03:24.000 Because to be good at moderation, you have to be good at abstinence.

00:03:28.000 So the goals may not be abstinence always in our alcohol program, but everyone takes a month off, resets their tolerance, gets some sort of clear head, gets their sleep fixed.

00:03:39.000 And we're doing other things besides the alcohol interventions and therapy and biofeedback and mindfulness and another sort of whole team approach.

00:03:47.000 But then at the end of that month, if folks decide they want to, we go to a bar with them.

00:03:51.000 Whoa.

00:03:52.000 Sit down, they order a drink, we give them a breathalyzer, and they have their first drink, and we, you know, they get breathalyzed every...

00:03:58.000 Do you drink with them?

00:04:00.000 Not at this, no, no.

00:04:01.000 Later?

00:04:03.000 You know, I don't typically go to the bars with our clients.

00:04:06.000 There's some legal issues with drinking with them.

00:04:08.000 Like, when we go to a bar with them, we buy lunch, and they buy the alcohol.

00:04:12.000 Oh, so you can't even buy it.

00:04:14.000 We don't provide the drugs and alcohol, yeah, of course.

00:04:17.000 So, do they drink by themselves?

00:04:19.000 Sometimes.

00:04:20.000 A lot of the clients that we work with carry around little breathalyzers in their pocket that, several times a day, ping them and ask them to blow and get a little camera snapshot.

00:04:30.000 It is them.

00:04:31.000 And a GPS location.

00:04:33.000 And so we determine where they are, who they are, and what their blood alcohol is.

00:04:36.000 And, you know, unlike most other treatment programs, if you blow dirty on a breathalyzer, it's usually like, you're out of here.

00:04:42.000 With lots, it's like, oh, great, so you drank.

00:04:44.000 What was that like?

00:04:45.000 I see you got this blood alcohol level.

00:04:47.000 How many drinks was that?

00:04:48.000 Was that two?

00:04:48.000 Okay, interesting.

00:04:49.000 Over what time frame?

00:04:50.000 How did that feel?

00:04:51.000 And we get people to, in a very structured way, analyze what alcohol is instead of it being sort of momentum-based behavior.

00:05:01.000 There's a certain amount of pull that something has, a draw, an attract, an energy to something that's forbidden.

00:05:12.000 And that is very problematic for people that are addicts.

00:05:16.000 I've seen it firsthand many times where people just have this...

00:05:22.000 Yeah.

00:05:28.000 Yeah.

00:05:30.000 Yeah.

00:05:43.000 Dangerous and forbidden.

00:05:44.000 Right.

00:05:45.000 So it's hard to talk about, you know, problematic alcohol use if any alcohol use is considered problematic.

00:05:51.000 Yeah, it becomes one of those things where everyone has this very rigid idea of what an alcoholic is supposed to do.

00:06:01.000 And if you bring up something like what you're proposing or what you actually, not just propose, but you enact in treatment, That's got to receive a lot of criticism.

00:06:11.000 It does.

00:06:12.000 And, you know, we get long-term sort of 12-step type saying, you're going to kill people, people are going to, you know, have problems.

00:06:18.000 The thing is, you know, we've done some research in our center and folks self-select abstinent track or moderation track.

00:06:23.000 And the self-selection appears to be what drives success, not which track you're on.

00:06:30.000 So if people identify their goals, we help them reach those goals.

00:06:33.000 But if your only goals are, or if your only allowable path is you must be abstinent, then you aren't taught any skills about how to drink a little bit.

00:06:42.000 You know, so when people who are on an abstinent-only sort of treatment programs have slips, they have big slips.

00:06:48.000 They just say, okay, I'm off the track.

00:06:50.000 Yeah.

00:06:50.000 Ooh, let's just pound it back.

00:06:52.000 There's that.

00:06:53.000 There's that discounting.

00:06:54.000 Oh, you know, I've screwed up once.

00:06:55.000 Might as well just go for it.

00:06:56.000 And there's also the piece about skills.

00:06:58.000 They don't know how to drink two or three or four drinks if all they do is abstain.

00:07:03.000 Now, the common thought on genetics and addiction is that certain people have just a predisposition for alcoholism, for drug addiction.

00:07:13.000 Is that a fact?

00:07:14.000 Yeah, there's an opioid receptor in the brain.

00:07:17.000 I forget if it's the mu or the kappa, but one of the opioid receptors in the brain, there's one genetic sort of flavor you can have where alcohol is extra rewarding.

00:07:27.000 Where it just, you know, you love that sensation, you love the feeling a little more than the average person might.

00:07:33.000 But is it just that?

00:07:34.000 Is it just they love it more?

00:07:36.000 Well, it's more rewarding and therefore learning is reinforced.

00:07:39.000 I mean, rewarding meaning what you find appetitive or interesting or yummy.

00:07:43.000 If you find things extra yummy, then your behavior is modified to get more of that thing, you know.

00:07:50.000 Right.

00:07:51.000 But the way I've always thought of it, I don't have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.

00:07:57.000 And I've had friends who do.

00:07:58.000 And there's this weird thing that happens to them when you see them drink where they go gerbilize.

00:08:03.000 You know, where they're like, no one's there.

00:08:05.000 They have shark eyes.

00:08:06.000 You know what I mean?

00:08:07.000 When you're looking at them, you're like, where are you, man?

00:08:09.000 Are you in there?

00:08:10.000 Like, you literally don't see them anymore.

00:08:12.000 Well, these folks are probably, you know, thoroughly into a hardcore drinking, you know, lifestyle, right?

00:08:17.000 This is not their first big slip in a long time.

00:08:20.000 This is sort of a, you know, go to the bar after work every day or go to the liquor store and grab a half bottle of wine every day.

00:08:26.000 This is, you know, reinforced behavior.

00:08:29.000 I don't think even someone with those genes would have sort of a checkout or some, you know, lack of sudden self-control.

00:08:38.000 It's the behavioral sort of slippery slope that we get on that causes the problem.

00:08:44.000 Folks that have this extra rewarding effect from alcohol, you know, get pulled down that slope faster, but it's still not, you know...

00:08:53.000 You're not going to become an alcoholic just because you have a more rewarding effect from alcohol or something else.

00:09:00.000 See, I was always confused.

00:09:01.000 I didn't think that it was a reward issue.

00:09:03.000 I thought, and this is based entirely on, you know, just talking to people.

00:09:08.000 No research, obviously.

00:09:09.000 But I always thought it was just something happens to them where they cannot help themselves.

00:09:14.000 Okay.

00:09:15.000 Is that just the common way of discussing it because of the 12-step treatment program ideal?

00:09:23.000 Yeah, I think partially there's this idea of, well, you're powerless over alcohol, therefore accept that you're powerless.

00:09:28.000 But a lot of that powerlessness, or I can't control my behavior, is because of the sort of over-learning that comes where behavior is no longer choice.

00:09:36.000 It's almost automatic because you've gotten so rewarded so many times from that behavior that then the behavior becomes reinforced.

00:09:43.000 I mean, you know, all addiction is this way, but all addiction is just learning.

00:09:47.000 It's not some special form of learning.

00:09:49.000 It's just learning.

00:09:50.000 So what you're talking about is people that have learned to lose control.

00:09:54.000 So, does that, like, there's the common thought about Native Americans, the common discussion when people talk about Native Americans and alcohol is that they didn't have alcohol in their diet, We introduced it to them with the Europeans,

00:10:10.000 rather than introduced it to them, and then they became almost instantly addicted because they did not have the genetic predisposition to process it.

00:10:16.000 Is that BS? I think it's partially BS. I think it's more about, you know, if you lock a bunch of people on a small plot of non-farmable land and don't give them any mechanisms for advancement and take away all their power and then give them a drug to abuse.

00:10:31.000 They abuse it.

00:10:32.000 You know, there's always these studies showing that if you give a rat unfettered access to drugs and alcohol, it sits there and, you know, hits the lever until it dies, right?

00:10:41.000 That's actually not true.

00:10:42.000 If you give a rat access to cocaine or alcohol, well, probably not alcohol, but something really rewarding, it will only self-administer the drug and, you know, and sort of starve to death for the reward when the environment isn't interesting.

00:10:56.000 When the environment's impoverished, if there's lots of, you know, rat toys and lots of other cute rats hanging out, they're much less interested in becoming cocaine addicts or whatever it is.

00:11:05.000 It's only in the absence of stimulating enriched environments do these sort of automatic behaviors take over.

00:11:11.000 So I would argue, at least partially, the Native American alcohol connection is because these are people who are disenfranchised systematically and then given an escape.

00:11:21.000 I had that discussion recently with Dr. Chris Ryan, and he's the author of Sex at Dawn, a very interesting book.

00:11:28.000 But one of the things that he brought up is the environment itself, that they do these studies on rats, they're in a cage.

00:11:34.000 They're in a cage with fluorescent lights, and there's people in lab coats that are hovering over them.

00:11:39.000 It's about as unnatural as you can get.

00:11:41.000 And any escape that they could probably seek to try to mitigate the stress that they're under, I mean, it's a completely unnatural environment.

00:11:50.000 It's not like you're giving them cocaine.

00:11:51.000 Out in the wild.

00:11:52.000 And if you did do that, they probably wouldn't go after it.

00:11:55.000 Yeah, I mean, if you put some toys in their cage, they stop self-administering to the same degree.

00:12:01.000 They're just not as interested in...

00:12:02.000 I mean, addiction's not the goal.

00:12:03.000 The reward is not necessarily the goal when things are interesting, novel, when you can explore your environments.

00:12:09.000 Right.

00:12:09.000 So their brains are programmed to seek out food, to seek out sex, and to seek out shelter.

00:12:15.000 And when all those things are screwed up because they're in this completely unnatural environment, they don't know what to do.

00:12:20.000 Exactly.

00:12:21.000 I mean, and this is not just rats.

00:12:23.000 I mean, humans are given this, well, if you're an alcoholic, if you're a drinker, a problem drinker, you're always going to be a problem drinker is the prevailing wisdom, which also isn't true.

00:12:31.000 Something like 90, 95% of people that are problem drinkers Learn to not be problem drinkers with no programs, with no intervention, no therapy.

00:12:40.000 They just learn to get control over their drinking.

00:12:44.000 That's a really interesting point.

00:12:46.000 It's a really interesting point when you think about people that look forward to happy hour.

00:12:52.000 They look forward to that drink after work.

00:12:54.000 How many boring jobs have turned people into alcoholics?

00:12:57.000 Because while they're at work all day, they're just constantly itching away at their natural reward systems just constantly.

00:13:05.000 God, something.

00:13:06.000 I've got to get something in here.

00:13:08.000 Exactly.

00:13:08.000 And boredom and lack of ability to tolerate boredom or tolerate uncomfortable emotions, of which boredom can be one, is often the biggest driver for problematic substance use.

00:13:19.000 Boredom.

00:13:20.000 Boredom or...

00:13:21.000 Marriage.

00:13:22.000 That's why dudes get drunk when they're married. 1.00

00:13:24.000 Well, it's probably one of the reasons.

00:13:26.000 It's a big one, right?

00:13:26.000 Yeah.

00:13:27.000 That is amazing.

00:13:29.000 That story has always been that story of the tests with the rats and the cocaine.

00:13:35.000 Yeah.

00:13:36.000 It's been just sort of repeated ad nauseum.

00:13:38.000 Sure.

00:13:38.000 To the point where everybody repeats it.

00:13:40.000 And until Chris Ryan brought it up that way, I never really thought about it.

00:13:44.000 I just thought, wow, cocaine's just super addictive.

00:13:46.000 And then he brought it up that way.

00:13:47.000 I'm like, oh yeah, of course. 1.00

00:13:50.000 They're in a fucking cage. 1.00

00:13:51.000 Right. 1.00

00:13:52.000 You know, they're all stressed out, freaked out.

00:13:54.000 No wonder why they're doing blow. 0.73

00:13:55.000 Yeah, exactly, right.

00:13:56.000 And things like cocaine, meth, the psychostimulant class of drugs, they affect a neurotransmitter primarily called dopamine.

00:14:03.000 And dopamine is the reward signal.

00:14:06.000 It's the interest, salience, appetitive.

00:14:08.000 You know, when you see a hot girl, you get a dopamine bump. 1.00

00:14:10.000 When you eat an ice cream sandwich, you get a dopamine bump.

00:14:13.000 When you do a line of blow, you get a dopamine bump.

00:14:15.000 And a second one from the direct, you know, cocaine affecting the dopamine system.

00:14:20.000 So the stimulant class is sort of so addictive because it's pleasurable and because it directly modifies the dopamine sort of system.

00:14:27.000 So you get a one-two, almost a double reward, if you will.

00:14:31.000 And do you apply the same sort of treatment protocol with cocaine that you do with alcohol?

00:14:36.000 We don't, no.

00:14:38.000 You know, there's a bunch of reasons why.

00:14:39.000 For things that are sort of drugs of abuse like cocaine, meth, you know, we would probably ask folks to abstain.

00:14:46.000 Or encourage them to.

00:14:47.000 But there's some other drugs you can't abstain from.

00:14:50.000 Someone's on drugs for pain management or psychiatric drugs they need to take for whatever reason.

00:14:57.000 We would do a more harm reduction approach for prescribed drugs that have become drugs of abuse.

00:15:03.000 But for recreational drugs of abuse like cocaine, there's legal and ethical issues with offering moderate cocaine use.

00:15:12.000 Well, what if cocaine was legal?

00:15:14.000 Then we would.

00:15:15.000 Then you would.

00:15:16.000 Like cannabis, for instance, is sort of right on that edge of being legal or not.

00:15:20.000 And we would offer cannabis moderation if someone was legally using cannabis.

00:15:27.000 And if we were in Colorado or Washington State, we'd be offering cannabis as an equal moderate player, so to speak, with our alcohol program.

00:15:34.000 Well, does that concern you, that the only reason why you don't use cocaine in that way is that it's illegal?

00:15:41.000 Well, I mean, I think a lot of people can get in trouble with cocaine.

00:15:47.000 In a way they aren't going to get in trouble with weed.

00:15:50.000 So I think the bar for risk versus harm versus potentially the cost of failure is much higher for some of these heavier drugs.

00:16:00.000 So we're never going to offer a heroin moderation program.

00:16:03.000 But isn't alcohol equally bad for you?

00:16:07.000 I mean, when you look at statistics of abuse and the health consequences, alcohol seems to rank right up there with heroin.

00:16:14.000 There are more alcohol abusers.

00:16:16.000 Is that what it is?

00:16:17.000 Then there are heroin abusers.

00:16:18.000 And people don't abuse heroin from like age 12 to age 80. Right.

00:16:22.000 At high levels.

00:16:23.000 I mean, people can abuse alcohol their whole lives at high level.

00:16:26.000 And survive.

00:16:28.000 And survive somehow.

00:16:29.000 Or, you know, manage.

00:16:29.000 That's not going to be the case with cocaine or heroin or, you know, major opiates or stimulants.

00:16:34.000 Now, when you talk about opiates, of course, in this country today, you consider pills.

00:16:39.000 Yeah.

00:16:39.000 Because this is the new form of...

00:16:42.000 Have you ever seen the documentary, the OxyContin Express?

00:16:48.000 I have not.

00:16:49.000 It is a really fascinating piece that they did, and it actually helped alter the law in Florida.

00:16:57.000 You're aware of the whole situation in Florida.

00:16:59.000 They had pain management centers, for folks who don't know.

00:17:02.000 And these pain management centers were essentially one-stop heroin shops.

00:17:06.000 They'd give it to you in pill form, but you would go there.

00:17:08.000 There would be a doctor right there. 0.99

00:17:10.000 And you'd say, hey, doctor, my back's all fucked up. 0.98

00:17:13.000 All right, well, you need pain pills. 0.97

00:17:14.000 And then you would go, literally, you would exit his door and go to the next door, and that was run by the same company, and it was a pain management facility pharmacy.

00:17:23.000 And you'd go in there, and all they had was pills.

00:17:25.000 And you would just go and buy OxyContin.

00:17:28.000 And there was all these people waiting outside.

00:17:30.000 Vanguard did the show.

00:17:31.000 On it and it was amazing.

00:17:33.000 It was amazing because they they followed people who were hooked on it They followed people that were going hopping from clinic to clinic and it was just rampant Florida had some ungodly percentage of people that were prescribed Now,

00:17:49.000 of course, elders are also, I mean, Florida, half the state is elders.

00:17:53.000 And pain management is much, you know, more common.

00:17:57.000 Pain management in the medical sort of space is much more common when you're, you know, 70, 80 years old than it is when you're 30 or 40. It's very important when you say elders that you say age and not Mormons.

00:18:06.000 Yes, yes.

00:18:08.000 Not the quorum of 12 or whatever.

00:18:11.000 No, like people 60, 65 and up is what I consider elders.

00:18:14.000 I have some friends that are Mormon and we were over their house and some elders came over and they were in their 20s.

00:18:20.000 Yeah.

00:18:21.000 This is Elder John, this is Elder Wilson. 0.96

00:18:24.000 Like, get the fuck out of here. 0.98

00:18:25.000 I'm not calling you Elder. 0.99

00:18:26.000 Yeah, I have a buddy who's a Jack Mormon, you know, a lapsed Mormon, and he's this, you know, 55-year-old guy with dreadlocks down to his ankles and, you know, musician, and he left the Mormon church, but he was an elder in his, like, early 20s before he sort of decided it wasn't for him. 0.70

00:18:42.000 Yeah, he could have used some heroin.

00:18:44.000 Got him off that early, maybe.

00:18:46.000 So, you think that if more people had heroin, you would see health consequences far worse than what they are of alcohol?

00:18:54.000 I do, yeah.

00:18:56.000 I think it'd be hard for people to abuse high levels of opiates without their life falling apart very quickly.

00:19:02.000 And this is true.

00:19:03.000 Some people get into alcohol and go downhill very fast.

00:19:06.000 Other people get into alcohol and never have a problem with it, even drinking high levels.

00:19:10.000 Well, what concerns me about those pills more than anything else is I've had friends that don't have problems with anything else.

00:19:16.000 Yeah.

00:19:17.000 And they got on pain pills and then boom.

00:19:19.000 Including, there's a family member that I have who just got injured at work, got on pills for his back, and then gone.

00:19:27.000 Really common story.

00:19:28.000 It's bizarre.

00:19:29.000 It's like something steals who they are.

00:19:32.000 Yeah, once you're addicted to, you know, pain medication, you know, the doctors won't give it to you forever, so at some point you're getting off the pain medication prescriptions, but you might still be addicted, so you seek, you know, street opiates, and that's sort of the standard story there.

00:19:44.000 So there's an itch that they can't scratch anymore, and it just becomes overwhelming after a while.

00:19:49.000 Yeah.

00:19:50.000 And is a lot of that the same thing, sort of the psychological pull of something that's forbidden or something that you're not supposed to do?

00:19:57.000 Or is there a physical component to the heroin addiction?

00:20:00.000 There's definitely a physical component to addictions.

00:20:03.000 But, you know, the withdrawal symptoms and the, I mean, addiction is really two things.

00:20:07.000 It's dependence and tolerance.

00:20:09.000 And the tolerance you can get for some drugs very quickly.

00:20:13.000 The dependence might not show up the same way for everybody.

00:20:17.000 But other folks may have dependence, meaning withdrawal symptoms, from low amounts.

00:20:23.000 Heroin is fairly addicting.

00:20:25.000 The withdrawal from heroin is brutal.

00:20:27.000 I believe the physiological addiction of nicotine might be greater than heroin.

00:20:33.000 But the withdrawal is not as bad.

00:20:35.000 So the physical withdrawal, the actual aches of your body.

00:20:39.000 Carl Hart described, Dr. Carl Hart, I forget the name of his book, but he's been on the podcast before.

00:20:46.000 Remember his book, Jamie?

00:20:47.000 Doesn't matter.

00:20:48.000 It's not important.

00:20:50.000 He said it was like having a bad flu. 0.58

00:20:53.000 Yeah, dope sick.

00:20:54.000 He said it's very overrated as far as the amount of pain you go through. 0.99

00:20:59.000 I mean, the flu kind of sucks. 0.97

00:21:01.000 It does kind of suck, but... 0.98

00:21:03.000 Everyone looks at it as if it's this horrible, bone-aching... 0.90

00:21:07.000 Like, I've never done OxyContin, so I don't know.

00:21:10.000 I've never done heroin.

00:21:11.000 So I'm just guessing.

00:21:13.000 Well, think about what the opiate system does endogenously and naturally in your body.

00:21:17.000 It helps you not feel pain.

00:21:20.000 It helps reduce pain and inflammation.

00:21:22.000 So if you've been abusing with supra-physiological levels massive opiates, and then you withdraw them, your pain-reduction system is overly...

00:21:32.000 Sort of, you know, sensitized, and then you feel things as painful that were not considered painful before.

00:21:38.000 So I think that a lot of the withdrawal is sort of resetting the endogenous pain management system.

00:21:44.000 Interesting.

00:21:45.000 So there's probably all sorts of weird little aches and pains that you already have that you're just completely unaware of.

00:21:51.000 And then they glaringly become obvious. 0.94

00:21:54.000 Which is what happens when you get the flu and if you worked out the day before, you feel like crap. 0.72

00:21:58.000 Muscles are extra achy because now there's inflammation and spasms.

00:22:02.000 And I think all that probably happens too when you're withdrawing from massive opiates.

00:22:06.000 Now, when you get a guy like Rush Limbaugh who famously was taking something like 90 pills a day, something insane.

00:22:14.000 I don't remember what the number was, but it was off the charts where he had his housekeeper would go out and buy him the stuff.

00:22:22.000 How does that happen?

00:22:23.000 Like, how does one keep ramping it up?

00:22:25.000 Well, I mean, I think you have to be resourceful.

00:22:27.000 And I think you mentioned earlier people, you know, clinic hopping or doctor hopping.

00:22:30.000 I mean, that's a really common sort of way people abuse pain meds is they get multiple people to prescribe.

00:22:37.000 It sounds like, you know, Rush may have had his friends and family, you know, helping to develop his habit.

00:22:44.000 When you're taking lots of different things, though, there's an added risk, and that's what's called polypharmacy, or interactions between your drugs.

00:22:52.000 And a lot of painkillers, a lot of major tranquilizers are very significant drugs that suppress The cardiovascular system, the respiratory system.

00:23:00.000 And so if you combine different types of drugs being given from different doctors who aren't aware of the different drugs that you're being given, then you can get into life-threatening side effects very quickly for some people.

00:23:11.000 That was the big issue in Florida was that they didn't have a database up until recently.

00:23:16.000 So you could go to one doctor, get your prescription, then go right down the street to another doctor and they couldn't share information.

00:23:22.000 So you'd never know.

00:23:23.000 Hey, this guy already has a prescription.

00:23:25.000 He's going crazy and he's getting pills all over town.

00:23:27.000 Yeah.

00:23:28.000 And, you know, to some extent, those little pharmacy slash prescription shops, they remind me of, you know, the cannabis culture we have in most states now where, you know, you can walk into a little mom and pop sort of prescription center where maybe you see a doctor, maybe you see their nurse practitioner.

00:23:44.000 You pay your 40 bucks, you walk out with a card, you go next door and you put your card down and walk out with your weed.

00:23:50.000 You know, nowadays you go online and you say, I'd like this strain delivered at my door at this time, and it shows up at your door with a smile and, you know, a little mint.

00:23:58.000 It's a very different sort of way to deal with drugs than the gatekeeper of the physician who's carefully paying attention to your full use spectrum and managing your life, managing your health with some, you know, good perspective on you.

00:24:14.000 When we have these, you know, as you mentioned, the short time, we have 10 minutes with a doctor or something, and it's a prescription out the door.

00:24:20.000 Yeah, well, the cannabis one is kind of a joke, because although there are people, I mean, I know people that use it for health reasons, the vast majority are juke in the system.

00:24:29.000 They're just like, hey, I've got a headache, you know?

00:24:33.000 Sure, well, you know, stress is one of the biggest detriments to health.

00:24:38.000 You know, cortisol rises, your hippocampus dies, and cells fall apart, and your body heals less fast, and you learn less well, your frontal lobe shuts down.

00:24:47.000 Stress is a big problem.

00:24:48.000 So, you know, I would argue that even the recreational cannabis users who sort of gamed the system are getting the stress reduction benefits from it, typically.

00:24:56.000 Oh no, I would agree with you, most certainly.

00:24:58.000 I also think that life itself is a disease, and that you need a drug to treat life itself.

00:25:04.000 Yeah, maybe a desirable difficulty. 0.92

00:25:06.000 It's just ridiculous.

00:25:07.000 Well, the pressures of the average 9 to 5 existence, plus traffic, commute, bills, family, is overwhelming.

00:25:15.000 I don't believe that our bodies are designed for this.

00:25:18.000 And I think that any means that you can without completely destroying your body and mitigating whatever pressures and stresses you're under, I'm all for it.

00:25:27.000 I mean, I think aspirin should be legal.

00:25:29.000 I'm a big fan of almost everything being legal.

00:25:32.000 Sure.

00:25:33.000 I think that some folks are going to have a much harder time with certain substances than others.

00:25:39.000 Yeah, and that's individual variability as part of it, you know, the genetics you show up with.

00:25:43.000 It's also things like your environment, you know, what you see used, how you use, why you use.

00:25:49.000 You know, are you using because you want to feel comfortable or euphoric or have some good time or watch a movie and find it extra interesting?

00:25:54.000 Or are you using to shut down the pain and boredom of your life?

00:25:57.000 Right.

00:25:57.000 Those are very dramatically different ways of using substances.

00:26:00.000 And are you using it to mitigate the effects of trauma, especially trauma from your childhood, which is one of the things that people don't consider when they talk in disparaging ways about people being addicts.

00:26:14.000 Yeah.

00:26:15.000 They don't consider the fact that this person might have been wired in a certain way because of traumatic experiences that they had while they're developing, where their mind was developing.

00:26:24.000 I see that all the time.

00:26:25.000 Their genes represent that.

00:26:25.000 Yeah, I mean, I do brain mapping, QEEG, and we look at sort of functional patterns in brains and try to tie it together to people's, you know, behavior and the things they're struggling with.

00:26:33.000 And I often see in people that are struggling with alcohol, sort of a sensitization, a hot spot on the back of the brain in an area called the posterior cingulate cortex, Which is to some extent involved with sensitization to threat, noticing danger.

00:26:46.000 And that spot shows up, that overactivity shows up when people have experienced fairly significant trauma.

00:26:54.000 So it's a pretty common reason people are using drugs and alcohol.

00:26:58.000 Is there a way to mitigate that?

00:26:59.000 Is there a way to diminish the effects of...

00:27:01.000 Oh, sure.

00:27:02.000 Yeah, there's multiple ways is the short answer.

00:27:04.000 I do a lot of neurofeedback or biofeedback on brainwaves.

00:27:07.000 So you might measure that excess beta, excess fast activity back there.

00:27:11.000 It's not a stuck level.

00:27:13.000 It's always fluctuating moment to moment.

00:27:14.000 And so whenever it trends in the right direction, goes down, you make something happen.

00:27:18.000 Make a chime play or a spaceship fly or a Pac-Man eat some dots.

00:27:22.000 But it fluctuates in the wrong direction a minute later, and the Pac-Man stops.

00:27:26.000 And then the brain fluctuates in the right direction, the Pac-Man continues.

00:27:29.000 The brain starts to go, oh cool, input whenever I'm doing one thing, and so it does more of that one thing.

00:27:34.000 And this trains down or trains up certain patterns in the brain to change regulatory modes.

00:27:40.000 Wow.

00:27:40.000 So, what's the mechanism of this?

00:27:43.000 Like, what's causing this?

00:27:45.000 Yeah, well, it's basic learning.

00:27:47.000 I mean, when you were a baby flopping around trying to learn how to walk, there was a lot of random activity making your limbs move.

00:27:53.000 Or semi-random.

00:27:54.000 You know, just trying random.

00:27:55.000 Your brain was just sending out random pulses to see what happened.

00:27:58.000 And suddenly, you put your arms down on the ground, you push yourself up, and you could see more.

00:28:03.000 You could see, you know, further in the distance.

00:28:04.000 Your brain went, oh, cool!

00:28:07.000 Remember this pattern of muscle activity because this one gets me to see more stuff and explore the environment.

00:28:13.000 And it wasn't like some magical, your brain went, okay, contract the left bicep and then the left forearm.

00:28:19.000 It just kind of happens randomly until it produces the desired effect, which is, oh, I'm sort of crawling now.

00:28:25.000 And then the brain does more of the thing.

00:28:27.000 That let it get more input, avoid danger, get pleasure, whatever the learning reinforcers are.

00:28:33.000 The same thing happens when you're sitting in front of a biofeedback machine trying to make a spaceship fly or a car race around a track with your brain.

00:28:40.000 You want it to happen.

00:28:42.000 And so whenever the car slows down and peters out next to the race course because your brain got distracted or tense, the brain doesn't like the lack of input.

00:28:50.000 And it starts to go, hey, wait, where's my input?

00:28:53.000 And it tries to figure out, oh, I'm controlling this environment out in the world, therefore I should do more of X, less of Y. It's actually a non-cognitive process, believe it or not.

00:29:03.000 You aren't trying, you're more sort of letting it happen.

00:29:06.000 We're instrumentally are shaping, conditioning the brain in certain directions.

00:29:10.000 And are there certain triggers that could potentially bring you back to the negative state that you were in because of the trauma?

00:29:16.000 Like, are there things that people have to avoid once they go through this process to keep from...

00:29:21.000 For biofeedback, not generally.

00:29:23.000 The neurofeedback or biofeedback process is typically changing the brain and changing it permanently.

00:29:27.000 Permanently?

00:29:27.000 It's kind of like if you were limping because your left knee was off and you went to do six months of physical therapy, from then on you're walking with appropriate gait and you're always practicing the new muscles and coordination and things.

00:29:41.000 Neurofeedback isn't permanent for everything.

00:29:43.000 If there's an active disease process going on, like schizophrenia or HIV or something, then the problems you're able to reduce can reemerge.

00:29:51.000 But if you've got ADHD or migraines or sleep issues or anxiety or trauma or OCD or PTSD, these things all do appear to change and change in a largely permanent way for most people.

00:30:03.000 Wow, that's amazing.

00:30:05.000 That's incredible.

00:30:06.000 And how long is this process?

00:30:08.000 Like, say, if you take someone who's had a traumatic childhood and issues with abuse and substance abuse because of that, and then they enter into some sort of a treatment like this, how long of a process?

00:30:18.000 Yeah, most of my clients start off with sort of a training program.

00:30:22.000 It's like going to the gym.

00:30:23.000 If you go to the gym once every so often, it doesn't do much.

00:30:25.000 So I ask my clients to come in two or three times a week.

00:30:28.000 For about 30 sessions total.

00:30:30.000 And that's enough.

00:30:31.000 30 sessions is enough typically to make one and a half to two standard deviations of change.

00:30:36.000 Pretty big change.

00:30:37.000 So it can take a dramatically ADHD person and give them control over their attention management.

00:30:42.000 It can re-regulate sleep, eliminate migraines.

00:30:45.000 So 30 sessions is my answer to that question of, well, how long does it take?

00:30:48.000 30 sessions?

00:30:49.000 That seems really small.

00:30:50.000 You know, three, four times a week you might get it done in, you know, six, seven, eight weeks.

00:30:56.000 To eliminate your ADHD, your anxiety, your trauma.

00:30:59.000 That's incredible.

00:31:00.000 Now, what is ADHD? What exactly is it?

00:31:03.000 Because you hear people saying that it doesn't exist.

00:31:06.000 You hear people saying that it's just some way that they diagnose children so they can give them medication.

00:31:12.000 There's some truth to that.

00:31:13.000 And there's some truth to the people saying it doesn't exist.

00:31:17.000 I think that as a pathology, as a strictly a mental illness, it doesn't really exist.

00:31:22.000 I think what we have is a natural spectrum, continuum of attention management resources.

00:31:30.000 And some of us can notice everything in the environment and turn our attention and just be wide focused and be pulled off by all novelty.

00:31:36.000 And other folks are good at being heads down and sustained attention.

00:31:40.000 You know, 10,000 years ago, we needed hunters who could, like, you know, see the little tiger hiding in the corner or the hard, you know, red berry, hard-to-spot piece of fruit hiding under the leaf, who could notice all the little environmental cues.

00:31:53.000 And we also needed folks who could sit behind the village and, like, weed the plants all day long.

00:31:57.000 So I think that there's a natural sort of reinforcer of human, you know, a range of human attention regulation where some folks have more novelty-seeking, more wide focus, and other folks have more narrow or sustained attention.

00:32:09.000 So when we say ADHD, you know, the diagnostic criteria in general in mental health isn't really about what's going on.

00:32:20.000 It's about what's going on and does it interfere with your life?

00:32:23.000 So you can be really hyperactive, really spacey, really checked out, really, you know, hard to talk to, but if you're successful, I wouldn't call it a pathology.

00:32:32.000 I wouldn't even call it ADHD. And to call it ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the deficit implies you have less attention than average.

00:32:43.000 But, you know, we all know ADHD people that can sit and play video games without stopping for 20 hours straight.

00:32:49.000 That's not a deficit of attention.

00:32:50.000 That's an excess of typical attention to some extent.

00:32:53.000 So it's really about managing your attention in ways that are appropriate to the demands of the environment.

00:32:59.000 If your classroom teacher wants you to sit still for 45 minutes and you can't, then it's a problem.

00:33:04.000 It becomes a problem because of the classroom, though, doesn't it?

00:33:08.000 Maybe.

00:33:10.000 Who has this issue with attention when it comes to things that they're not into, but yet they can focus extremely well on something that they're fascinated by, and then that benefits them and they become successful at that.

00:33:22.000 If you are in a negative environment as far as teaching or school, and they try to get you to become this person who's just like everybody else, then it becomes something they want to medicate you with.

00:33:34.000 Right.

00:33:34.000 But they could be medicating away something that makes you unique and could actually benefit you in your life.

00:33:40.000 Absolutely.

00:33:41.000 And there are benefits for having, you know, more abstract thought and more novelty seeking and be able to integrate, you know, abstract concepts.

00:33:48.000 Especially for artists.

00:33:49.000 Especially for artists, especially people that aren't, you know, like, I'm, for instance, horrible at math.

00:33:53.000 I cannot do math in my head.

00:33:55.000 I'm dyscalculic.

00:33:56.000 But I'm verbally about as, you know, good as it gets.

00:33:59.000 And so, you know, I was always sort of not rewarded by being in math classes and really rewarded being in, you know, language or, you know, whatever, English class.

00:34:08.000 The artist ADHD kid thrives in, you know, one-tenth of their high school classes.

00:34:15.000 Potentially, if it's dramatic ADHD. But I would say that most people don't have dramatic attention regulation issues.

00:34:23.000 They have minor attention regulation issues that can be changed.

00:34:27.000 You mentioned that ADHD people can be...

00:34:32.000 I'm fascinated by things and really, you know, pay attention.

00:34:36.000 The prefrontal cortex, the most frontal, most anterior part of the brain, the most human part, the part that developed the latest, is really the executive of the brain, the CEO. And a lot of how it does its job is by telling the rest of the brain, no.

00:34:50.000 You know, don't turn your head and look at this other thing.

00:34:52.000 Don't, you know, grab that woman. 0.98

00:34:55.000 Don't eat that food.

00:34:56.000 Don't, you know, it's no, no, no, no, no.

00:34:58.000 It's a lot of what the PFC does.

00:35:00.000 In ADHD, the PFC is often underactive.

00:35:03.000 It's called the CEO is asleep at the wheel.

00:35:05.000 And so other parts of the brain kind of take over.

00:35:08.000 It's like the sensory system sees a pretty bird fly by and turns your head before you know it, because the CEO is not telling you not to.

00:35:16.000 This is why ADHD folks tend to really pursue activities that are dangerous.

00:35:24.000 Wow.

00:35:45.000 That then produces a more active prefrontal cortex.

00:35:49.000 They train parents to yell at them.

00:35:51.000 Yeah, without even knowing it.

00:35:52.000 They train people around them to create conflict with them because being yelled at, being punished, being engaged aggressively lights up the prefrontal cortex.

00:36:02.000 So they do behavior or they engage in behavior that will cause people to yell at them subconsciously.

00:36:08.000 To get the reward of having a feeling alive, a feeling on.

00:36:11.000 Whoa.

00:36:12.000 Whoa, that's freaky.

00:36:15.000 Now, when you're dealing with people that have such an incredible amount of variation, the variation between human beings and personalities, you're sticking them in a classroom, and you're forcing them to adhere to...

00:36:32.000 Some sort of program that was designed by someone who's never going to meet them.

00:36:37.000 And it's the same for everyone across the state.

00:36:40.000 Like Common Core or something?

00:36:41.000 Something along those lines.

00:36:42.000 How damaging is that for someone's education?

00:36:47.000 I mean, it seems to me that, like...

00:36:50.000 It just seems that that sort of pressure to conform is going to be met with resistance.

00:36:55.000 Yeah, of course it will.

00:36:56.000 And the more unusual you are, the harder it will be to conform.

00:36:59.000 But I would say for most people, you're still getting basic skills, even in these sort of homogenized programs.

00:37:05.000 And is there some benefit from just dealing with this homogenization, dealing with the boarding, The curriculum, you know, they're forcing upon you, just some sort of stress management benefits?

00:37:22.000 I mean, you know, it's certainly people management.

00:37:24.000 You can't teach every individual kid one-on-one.

00:37:28.000 And so there has to be an accommodation or a compromise somewhere for doing classroom, public school, broad teaching.

00:37:35.000 I think technology is changing that.

00:37:37.000 I think the massively online, you know, courses that are mostly free these days, that's mostly adults taking those, you know, taking advantage of those, but I think that will change how we teach children long term.

00:37:48.000 It will allow more individualized.

00:37:50.000 You know, if you take the traditional public school common core system on one end of the spectrum, and you look at something completely opposite like Montessori schools, Montessori is all about finding the thing the kid is interested in.

00:38:03.000 And then funneling all their learning down that one avenue of interest.

00:38:07.000 I love the idea behind that, but Montessori also lumps all these ages together.

00:38:12.000 It's true. 0.97

00:38:12.000 And a lot of weird social shit goes on when you have a 12-year-old with a six-year-old. 0.97

00:38:16.000 Yeah, yeah, you know, but that's also a little bit more, I mean... 0.96

00:38:20.000 I'm not sure that we need to segregate ages.

00:38:24.000 We create cohort effects.

00:38:25.000 People experience specific things because of the groups they're lumped in with.

00:38:29.000 That's a little artificial.

00:38:31.000 A couple hundred years ago, we had a six-year-old and a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old in the same classroom, and they probably all learned from each other, even if they didn't know it.

00:38:40.000 Right, but aren't they all on different levels?

00:38:42.000 A six-year-old and a 12-year-old are going to be learning completely different things.

00:38:45.000 Maybe, but at six years old, I was learning like most 16-year-olds.

00:38:48.000 Well, you're a super genius, dude.

00:38:49.000 Well, you know, hey, thanks.

00:38:51.000 But the point is that even within all a bunch of six-year-olds, you know, class of, what is that, like three?

00:38:56.000 You know, you've got some that are functioning several years below their level, and some that are functioning many years above their level.

00:39:04.000 The first intelligence tests were really age norm tests.

00:39:08.000 They said, you know, here you're functioning compared to your chronological age, where's your mental age?

00:39:14.000 That was the first sort of round of intelligence tests that were created.

00:39:16.000 It was all about age, you know, developmental age versus chronological age.

00:39:21.000 But it would seem to me that it would be incredibly different.

00:39:23.000 I'm not that aware of the monetary system other than friends that have kids in it that have complaints.

00:39:27.000 But I would think that The variability would be so large that if you have a classroom of 20, 30 kids, how are you going to pay attention to each kid's needs?

00:39:37.000 You're going to have to have multiple teachers.

00:39:39.000 You do.

00:39:40.000 And in Montessori, you tend to have smaller classroom sizes with more teachers, teacher's aides, Montessori assistants.

00:39:46.000 You know, in a public school, you might have one teacher for 35 kids, if you're lucky.

00:39:51.000 If you're lucky.

00:39:52.000 And in a Montessori program with 25 or 30 kids, you probably have four or five adults in the room.

00:39:57.000 Knowing what you know about the mind and the development of the mind, is the current state of education, public education in this country, is that one of the more frustrating things that you have to consider?

00:40:08.000 Not really.

00:40:09.000 I mean, people learn so many different ways, and I also don't think that learning stops when you're out of school.

00:40:15.000 I think that the role of public education should be to do as much as possible for as many people as possible.

00:40:22.000 But, you know, the people at either of the extremes are never going to be well served.

00:40:26.000 People that are struggling or people that are advanced are never going to be well served by You know, general public education, while it's this sort of 1 to 35, 1 to 40 ratio.

00:40:36.000 But that was the point.

00:40:37.000 Why is it 1 to 35, 1 to 40?

00:40:39.000 And why does it receive such poor funding?

00:40:41.000 And why do teachers receive such little respect?

00:40:44.000 I mean, I'm a teacher.

00:40:44.000 I teach at UCLA. And, you know, we get people Yeah, it should be a huge honor.

00:41:05.000 Yeah, we don't have that.

00:41:07.000 We don't tend to have a lot of traditional mechanisms left in our sort of modern Western culture.

00:41:12.000 We don't look at, you know, coming of age or differences.

00:41:16.000 I mean, women have an obvious coming of age thing that happens between like 9 and 13. There's a physiologic change, so it's obvious. 0.99

00:41:22.000 Boys don't have that.

00:41:24.000 And so, you know, a thousand years ago, when we hit 13 years old, we were, you know, made men.

00:41:29.000 There was some ritual.

00:41:30.000 We hunted a boar.

00:41:31.000 Who knows?

00:41:32.000 Got a tattoo.

00:41:33.000 But nowadays, people go from, you know, being children to adults without any clear stages, without the sort of social reinforcers of where you are and what your life means in terms of the community, in terms of your family.

00:41:46.000 So I think that's unfortunately, you know, it's a function of living on a planet with seven billion people.

00:41:50.000 That's a topic that's been brought up on this show many, many times because I'm a big fan of and a big proponent of engaging in difficult activities to understand yourself.

00:42:02.000 And I think that coming-of-age rituals They, at the very least, signify to a child, like, now I am this.

00:42:12.000 In martial arts, you get belts.

00:42:14.000 And when you achieve your blue belt, there's this moment where you get that belt, you go, wow, I am a blue belt now.

00:42:21.000 And it doesn't seem like it should be much, but I remember when I was doing jujitsu and I went from a white belt to a blue belt, I was like, wow.

00:42:29.000 Blue Bellman.

00:42:30.000 But meanwhile, it was the exact same person.

00:42:32.000 Nothing had changed.

00:42:32.000 But you were recognized as different.

00:42:34.000 And in historical, cultural, sort of coming-of-age rituals, the young person is given advice by all the men in the village, all the women in the village.

00:42:43.000 They pick a new name sometimes.

00:42:46.000 They go through like an ordeal.

00:42:47.000 I mean, the ordeal, I think, is what you're talking about, too.

00:42:50.000 The ordeal should not be underestimated.

00:42:52.000 I don't know if we haven't met before, so I have a history as an ecstatic shaman.

00:42:56.000 I've done a lot of ecstatic work around...

00:42:58.000 What does that mean, an ecstatic shaman?

00:43:00.000 ...pushing yourself hard until your reality changes.

00:43:07.000 Define shamanism, define it as, you know, ordinary reality is what we all have.

00:43:12.000 And if you push yourself hard enough through any mechanism you can think of, eventually your reality breaks and you have other insight, other knowledge, other ways of, you know, understanding the world.

00:43:23.000 And so for me, it's been things like, you know, dance all night long or drumming or, you know, other things as well.

00:43:29.000 But the idea is to push yourself until you get out of your own way.

00:43:34.000 Until your monkey mind breaks down, until you leave that behind.

00:43:39.000 So as a shaman, you would lead people in these dance marathons? 0.89

00:43:44.000 Sure, or just do it myself.

00:43:45.000 I mean, I'm a West African drummer as well, so I'm often like...

00:43:48.000 What does that mean?

00:43:48.000 It means I drum for dance classes.

00:43:50.000 I drum for, you know, people dancing all night long around a fire until they flop on the ground speaking in tongues.

00:43:57.000 The idea is to give yourself a chance so you can change your reality.

00:44:02.000 So you're looking at this, though, from the point of view of a neuroscientist instead of a crazy hippie.

00:44:09.000 Well, I was a crazy hippie before I was a neuroscientist. 0.64

00:44:12.000 You can't tell, but I have about as much ink as you do.

00:44:16.000 How could that be possible when I see your forearms?

00:44:18.000 Well, you know, it's all over your back and chest.

00:44:21.000 Exactly.

00:44:21.000 What do you got, like flowers and...

00:44:23.000 No, it's all Celtic.

00:44:24.000 Keep on trucking.

00:44:24.000 It's all Celtic.

00:44:25.000 Really?

00:44:25.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:44:26.000 But, you know, I grew up on the East Coast as a hard-nosed East Coaster, and I found this world of being a sort of shaman, if you will.

00:44:36.000 I'm also a motorcyclist, so I ride cross-country and do a lot of long road trips.

00:44:41.000 But, yeah, I also put a nice dress shirt on and go and do science, too.

00:44:44.000 So you walk in and out of many worlds.

00:44:47.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:44:47.000 I think it's important to do that, to not hold any identity to rigorously.

00:44:51.000 What is your opinion of ibogaine?

00:44:54.000 I don't know enough about it, is the short answer.

00:44:56.000 I think it's interesting.

00:44:58.000 I'm intrigued by it, and I think for folks that are struggling with certain types of drug addiction, I have some clients who've gone through that particular thing and say that they were impressed by it or they got something out of it.

00:45:10.000 I just don't have enough You know, a real clear first-hand experience to talk about.

00:45:14.000 The amount of people that have done it, I've never done it either, but the amount of people that have done it that have had addiction issues and gone through it and it's wiped out their addiction issues, it's pretty staggering.

00:45:24.000 But you know, that isn't only true of ibogaine.

00:45:27.000 That's true of things like ayahuasca, mushrooms, ketamine, electro-convulsive shock therapy.

00:45:34.000 Really?

00:45:34.000 These things, and this is a hypothesis, this is a theory I have, that all of these things act in a similar way on the brain to reset, to cause a systemic, wide, sort of flip the switch.

00:45:46.000 You know, ECT is still used for medication-resistant depression.

00:45:50.000 It's one of the few things that works.

00:45:52.000 If drugs don't work for your depression, ECT will lift your depression.

00:45:56.000 So will ketamine.

00:45:59.000 You know, one is zapping you, one is sedating you, but I think they're really going after sort of a reset deep in the brain in some way.

00:46:05.000 So this transformative experience being so completely alien to normal states of consciousness is enough to give you this new blank slate, or at least a new starting point.

00:46:18.000 Yeah, or at least, you know, maybe it could be sort of hormetic.

00:46:20.000 It could be a stressor your body reacts to with healing.

00:46:25.000 Almost anything that affects depression, that lifts depression, does so by raising a neurotrophic factor in the hippocampus.

00:46:34.000 The hippocampus is involved with memory formation, also exploring the environments.

00:46:38.000 And there's a compound called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

00:46:42.000 It's a growth hormone or growth factor in the brain.

00:46:45.000 Anything that lifts depression raises BDNF. BDNF is the final common pathway, if you will, of antidepressants.

00:46:53.000 It's not serotonin, not dopamine, norepinephrine, it's not exercise.

00:46:58.000 It doesn't matter what you say your antidepressant drug or mechanism is, how it actually works downstream is BDNF. Wow, that's fascinating.

00:47:06.000 I'm really glad you brought up the expression depression.

00:47:11.000 Yeah.

00:47:13.000 I don't suffer from depression.

00:47:15.000 I've had many close friends who do, and I've always been concerned or confused or curious as to what causes it.

00:47:24.000 Is it an environmental issue?

00:47:26.000 Is it a biological issue?

00:47:28.000 Is it a combination of the two?

00:47:29.000 Because I've had friends whose lives were not going well.

00:47:33.000 Their career wasn't going well, their romantic life wasn't going well, and they were quote-unquote depressed.

00:47:38.000 Right.

00:47:40.000 Their career turned around, their romantic life turned around, and they were no longer depressed.

00:47:44.000 And so I've always wondered how much of this idea that we have of someone being sick is just based on the input that you're getting from your environment, whether or not you're getting positive feedback.

00:47:53.000 If you're in love, you'll feel great.

00:47:55.000 You know, you're with someone you care to be with.

00:47:56.000 If you have a job that's awesome, you get excited to go to work.

00:47:59.000 All these things are good.

00:48:01.000 You're doing well.

00:48:02.000 You don't have to worry about your bills.

00:48:04.000 You're in a rewarding relationship where you feel supported and loved.

00:48:08.000 You don't have this feeling all the time of being lonely or being left out.

00:48:14.000 How much of that is an environmental issue?

00:48:17.000 How much of that is just your brain is lacking a certain amount of pills? 0.62

00:48:21.000 And how many people are medicated because their environment is shitty?

00:48:26.000 And so instead of giving you the impetus to change and alter your environment to benefit you, You're instead given a pill that makes your environment tolerable.

00:48:36.000 Yeah, it's a really complex question.

00:48:38.000 There's a few things to think about.

00:48:40.000 One is things like depression or anxiety aren't always bad.

00:48:46.000 There's often a good reason to be sad or a good reason to be tense.

00:48:50.000 If your spouse dies, you're going to be depressed.

00:48:53.000 You have an exogenous, an outside cause for your depression.

00:48:56.000 You lose your job.

00:48:58.000 Your bank account's empty.

00:49:00.000 There's lots of good reasons to be stressed and to have negative emotional reactions to those things.

00:49:05.000 Anxiety is the same way.

00:49:06.000 If you're being chased by a tiger, you better be anxious.

00:49:08.000 You better run.

00:49:11.000 When someone's life becomes less stressful, you're right, some people become not depressed anymore.

00:49:16.000 And I would consider that a low-key form of depression, if they just get a little bit depressed or depressed because of exogenous life things.

00:49:26.000 All the diagnostic criteria for depression suggest that you need to have all these symptoms for many weeks.

00:49:34.000 I think it's two or three weeks minimum across more than one domain of your life.

00:49:39.000 So it's not simply being sad for a few weeks because of a bad thing that happened to you.

00:49:47.000 It's what happens with how your emotional regulation gets changed by that or turns into a problem.

00:49:53.000 So there are many people, their lives get better, they get a new job, they have things perk up.

00:49:58.000 And they don't become non-depressed.

00:50:00.000 They stay depressed.

00:50:01.000 They stay maybe just anhedonic.

00:50:03.000 They can't experience joy for something from their life.

00:50:06.000 Or they experience, you know, more subtle swings of mood than full-blown depression.

00:50:11.000 But depression can last even in the face of your life being awesome.

00:50:16.000 How long has it been that we've diagnosed this idea of depression?

00:50:22.000 I mean, for the longest time.

00:50:24.000 How long?

00:50:25.000 How many decades?

00:50:26.000 Several, certainly.

00:50:27.000 Two or three?

00:50:28.000 More than that.

00:50:29.000 I would say that major depression, I mean, I'm not actually sure when it crept into the DSM. The whole issue of diagnosis is a very thorny issue anyways.

00:50:37.000 The DSM... Was not really developed, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is what psychologists and psychiatrists use for diagnoses, was not really developed to help with diagnoses.

00:50:48.000 It was developed to help with insurance companies.

00:50:51.000 It's kind of like the BMI. You know, the BMI, for you and me, would say we're overweight, if not obese.

00:50:57.000 Right.

00:50:57.000 Because we're, you know, pretty beefy guys.

00:51:00.000 But I'm not obese at 180 pounds.

00:51:03.000 Right.

00:51:03.000 You know?

00:51:04.000 But if I was, if my body fat was higher and muscle mass was lower, I would be.

00:51:08.000 And the same thing's true with diagnoses.

00:51:10.000 It was really a tool used to figure out what to pay on insurance to some extent.

00:51:14.000 And so at a population level, if I took a thousand people, the BMI would work pretty well for most of them.

00:51:21.000 And the same is true of the DSM. It works pretty well at a population level.

00:51:26.000 But when you drill down to the individual, sometimes their symptoms don't fit the DSM, or how long they've had symptoms for, or the course of their disease doesn't really totally fit.

00:51:35.000 And does a psychologist say, oh, you don't fit all the criteria, therefore I can't give you a diagnosis?

00:51:39.000 No, they pick whatever's closest.

00:51:42.000 So that your insurance company can pay for their therapy, and so that you can maybe get the drugs that they want to give you.

00:51:49.000 So it's a pretty vague...

00:51:50.000 I mean, the diagnosis is not as precise a field as a non-psychologist might think.

00:51:57.000 I love that you use that term, disease, because that's what I wanted to bring up, because that's what it's referred to as a disease.

00:52:03.000 Depression?

00:52:03.000 Yeah, depression is a disease, and you hear it all the time, and you hear it oftentimes in commercials that are selling drugs, and that really concerns me, because I'm like, well, you might be giving someone the green light to take a pill, and it takes away the power,

00:52:19.000 From them takes away the power to change your life to alter your life for the better because you've got this horrible scenario in your life horrible situation Circumstances whatever they're leading you to feel like shit all the time and someone's coming along and saying hey, man You don't need to get a better job.

00:52:34.000 You know you're depressed, right? 0.98

00:52:37.000 Is it a disease?

00:52:38.000 I mean, I think it is a disease.

00:52:40.000 Because you're not at ease?

00:52:41.000 Is it dis-ease?

00:52:43.000 You're not at ease?

00:52:44.000 Sure, sure.

00:52:45.000 I think it can become a disease.

00:52:47.000 It can become entrenched and become stuck in that mode.

00:52:50.000 And that's when it's a big problem.

00:52:52.000 You know, from the point of view of brain activity, if you look at depressed brains, if I brought in 100 depressed brains into my clinic and did brain mapping or QEEG on them, what I would find in most of them is is an asymmetry in the frontal lobes.

00:53:07.000 Many people who are depressed have an overactive right frontal lobe and an underactive left.

00:53:13.000 This bias of left side being more active than right is typical.

00:53:16.000 Glass half empty, approach the world, explore environments.

00:53:19.000 When the right is more active than the left, You withdraw, you shut down, you don't want to do anything.

00:53:25.000 And so there is a brain signature often present in major depression of a left-right bias that goes in the opposite direction.

00:53:32.000 You know, if you measure the Dalai Lama, he'd be really strong left biased. 0.99

00:53:36.000 What about bullshit? 1.00

00:53:37.000 Is there a part that says bullshit? 0.99

00:53:39.000 Can you find out what that is on him? 1.00

00:53:41.000 Do you think he's full of shit? 1.00

00:53:43.000 I don't think. 1.00

00:53:44.000 I'm not buying the robes.

00:53:45.000 Uh-huh.

00:53:46.000 No?

00:53:47.000 Okay.

00:53:47.000 All right.

00:53:48.000 All right.

00:53:48.000 What came first, the chicken or the egg, though, when it comes to this right-left brain thing?

00:53:53.000 Really good point.

00:53:53.000 Yeah, I have no idea.

00:53:54.000 I mean, I've never, you know, tracked someone through being non-depressed into depressed because they all come and see me once they're depressed.

00:54:00.000 So it could be a predisposition.

00:54:02.000 Your brain is a little bit like this, and you're a little bit, you know, oriented towards becoming a little bit depressed, and then stressors mount.

00:54:09.000 I mean, genes are the same way.

00:54:11.000 Genes only account for about 30% of our experience.

00:54:14.000 And 70% of our experience is how the environment interacts with us.

00:54:18.000 And the same is true of anything else that's cognitive or psychological.

00:54:21.000 You may have a slight tendency towards a depressed brain, you know, right-front dominance.

00:54:26.000 But unless your life becomes sucky, or things really build up, or you feel unsafe, or unmet, or unfed, or something else, you might not ever develop the depression patterns that really you get stuck in.

00:54:38.000 Have you ever monitored people pre- and post-depression, like someone who has recovered from it?

00:54:43.000 What are the changes that you observe?

00:54:45.000 I mean, all the time you see the asymmetry reverse, go back to the sort of normal or typical brain patterns.

00:54:51.000 Yeah, it happens all the time.

00:54:52.000 I mean, not every person with depression has frontal asymmetries, but it happens often enough that I believe it when I see it in the brain maps as a sign.

00:55:01.000 I mean, I often do brain maps without doing clinical histories first, because I don't want to be biased.

00:55:05.000 So I'll sit you down and, you know, record some baselines, and then after I have the data, I'll say, okay, I'm seeing this pattern.

00:55:11.000 I'm seeing some frontal asymmetries.

00:55:13.000 You know, this thing here, the literature suggests, and many people that come into my clinic have some depression when they see this pattern.

00:55:20.000 Is that true for you?

00:55:21.000 And I usually get a, yeah, how'd you know?

00:55:23.000 Or anxiety there's patterns for.

00:55:25.000 There's patterns for ADHD or trauma, you know, OCD or PTSD. And so I tend to unpack what I'm looking at based on their symptoms and then confirm, get them to confirm what I'm guessing.

00:55:38.000 So now I want to do a brain scan.

00:55:40.000 Before I was really not interested. 0.99

00:55:41.000 I want to find out what the fuck is wrong with me. 0.99

00:55:43.000 There you go. 1.00

00:55:44.000 I want to get in there.

00:55:44.000 Yeah, come down to Beverly Hills and we'll hook you up.

00:55:47.000 How long does it take?

00:55:47.000 It takes under an hour.

00:55:49.000 And we can do a pre and post, a two condition map for you if you wanted.

00:55:53.000 Like a totally clean off of caffeine or, you know, something else.

00:55:56.000 Marijuana.

00:55:57.000 Marijuana.

00:55:57.000 You don't have to beat around the bush, man.

00:55:59.000 I saw the look on your face.

00:56:00.000 No problem.

00:56:00.000 You had like a little half smile.

00:56:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:02.000 How dare you.

00:56:03.000 So if you want to, you know, come in one day without having smoked up, get a brain map.

00:56:07.000 That's going to be tough.

00:56:08.000 And then smoke up.

00:56:09.000 We'll do another brain map and I'll show you how your brain changes.

00:56:13.000 And here's something interesting.

00:56:15.000 The brain mapping is the assessment process.

00:56:17.000 We often do the neurofeedback or the training process.

00:56:20.000 Neurofeedback seems to reset tolerance to cannabis in a few days.

00:56:25.000 Neurofeedback meaning?

00:56:27.000 Biofeedback on brainwaves.

00:56:29.000 Biofeedback on brainwaves meaning?

00:56:30.000 What does that mean?

00:56:31.000 Meaning a training up or down specifically, like making your brain make more beta and less theta, which is an attentive, focused, calm state.

00:56:40.000 And how would you do that?

00:56:41.000 So I would stick an electrode to the top of your head and measure the amount of, let's say, theta.

00:56:44.000 And theta is a brainwave that when it goes up, you're distracted, impulsive, checked out.

00:56:48.000 When it goes down, you're focused.

00:56:50.000 And it's going to fluctuate moment to moment because you aren't making a static amount of this brainwave.

00:56:54.000 You're making, you know, the amount your environment and your internal environment demands.

00:56:58.000 And so whenever it tends to trend down, Maybe I'll have you play one of your podcasts, and the volume of your podcasts will go up whenever your theta goes down.

00:57:08.000 Whenever your theta goes back up, the volume drops.

00:57:10.000 And so your brain goes, hey, wait, I was listening to that interesting guy.

00:57:14.000 And over half an hour, you might have several hundred of these resuming of feedback, of rewards.

00:57:22.000 And that can be something like an audio or a video.

00:57:24.000 It can be a spaceship flying.

00:57:26.000 It doesn't seem to matter how we reward the brain when training.

00:57:30.000 Just when we yoke the rewards to some parameter that's changing in your brain.

00:57:35.000 And by just stimulating various areas on the scalp.

00:57:40.000 Just measuring areas.

00:57:42.000 Just measuring areas changes.

00:57:43.000 The stimulus, the feedback is actually coming in your eyes and ears.

00:57:48.000 Music, video, animations.

00:57:50.000 But then, you know, when your brain trends or drifts in the wrong direction, the game stops.

00:57:55.000 The music stops.

00:57:56.000 The podcast audio drops.

00:57:57.000 Whatever it is you're playing with on the computers.

00:57:59.000 Yeah.

00:57:59.000 And it causes your mind to want to get it back.

00:58:02.000 Your brain.

00:58:03.000 It's lower level in your mind.

00:58:05.000 Okay, well, define the difference.

00:58:07.000 What's the difference?

00:58:07.000 The mind is what you're aware of, I would say.

00:58:09.000 And this is a more core, low-level...

00:58:11.000 I mean, this process of biofeedback was discovered in the late 60s on cats.

00:58:16.000 Cats are notoriously bad instruction followers, right? 1.00

00:58:19.000 Those fuckers. 1.00

00:58:19.000 Right. 1.00

00:58:20.000 So you're never going to...

00:58:21.000 This is not a cognitive process.

00:58:22.000 Cats didn't try to make... 1.00

00:58:24.000 In this case, cats got a dropper of milk.

00:58:26.000 Whenever their brain waves went up in one direction, milk came out of a dropper.

00:58:29.000 And they learned over time to produce more of this brain wave that gave them a milk dropper.

00:58:34.000 Oh, fascinating.

00:58:35.000 And then six months of this one experiment that Dr. Barry Sturman did in the late 60s, six months later he pulled a bunch of cats out of his subject pool to do a rocket fuel exposure experiment.

00:58:46.000 NASA had said, hey, look, our astronauts are getting really sick.

00:58:49.000 They're getting nauseous.

00:58:50.000 How dangerous is this, you know, hydrazine stuff we're using as rocket fuel? 0.95

00:58:54.000 Could you please expose a bunch of animals to it and see, you know, how much it takes to kill them?

00:58:59.000 Or what the dose-response curve is.

00:59:01.000 And so Dr. Sturman at UCLA in the late 60s was exposing cats to increasing levels of rocket fuel vapors and found that a little bit, you know, they panted, a little more they stumbled, a little more they cried, and then, like, seizure, coma, death.

00:59:16.000 This nice linear, you know, with increasing dose.

00:59:19.000 Except of the cats he was using, a certain subset, like 6 of 30 or something, Refused to have seizures, and the whole curve of unstable brain was pushed to the right.

00:59:29.000 Couldn't figure out why until he realized, oh wait a minute, I used these same six cats in a previous experiment to increase their brain waves.

00:59:36.000 In this one brainwave that I thought was a nice target to go after, it turns out that brainwave is the anti-seizure brainwave.

00:59:43.000 When you train it up, you have decreased, dramatically decreased seizure activity in the brain.

00:59:48.000 And so he found this, you know, this brainwave was sort of metastable in encouraging brain activity.

00:59:54.000 And his lab manager at the time was a medication uncontrolled epileptic.

00:59:59.000 Having, like, tens of seizures a month, which is basically a death sentence.

01:00:04.000 Your brain will, you know, Swiss cheese over time, and you'll have major, major long-term problems.

01:00:09.000 And she demanded he build her a biofeedback machine to train up this brainwave. 0.94

01:00:13.000 And over the next year or two, they did some training, and after a couple of years, she went off all meds and was seizure-free.

01:00:18.000 Whoa, that's crazy!

01:00:20.000 And about that time, Barry Sturman's funding was all pulled.

01:00:24.000 Really?

01:00:25.000 He submitted a paper to Epilepsia, the journal, and suddenly his government funding all vanished.

01:00:33.000 So, the conspiracy theorist ideas start to mount when you think about the late 60s and big drug companies not wanting a non-drug intervention for epilepsy out there.

01:00:43.000 Now, what is the current protocol on this stuff today?

01:00:46.000 I mean, how many people are using this kind of treatment to deal with epilepsy?

01:00:50.000 I'm not sure, actually.

01:00:50.000 I'm not an epileptologist.

01:00:52.000 I've had a few folks come through my center who do have seizures, and I've reduced them.

01:00:56.000 But I'm not sure of the numbers of epileptologists out there using it.

01:00:59.000 The numbers of neurofeedback providers, just as a hand-waving guess, let's say there's 10,000 in the U.S., And there's many more, of course, throughout the world.

01:01:08.000 When I go to big conferences, there's, you know, 1,000 to 1,500 people at the professional trade shows for this stuff.

01:01:14.000 And there's two of them.

01:01:15.000 So you figure, extrapolating, there's at least 10,000 practitioners in the U.S. In fact, just down the street here in Woodland Hills, some of the giants in the field, the Othmers, they sort of founded the field.

01:01:26.000 Soon after Sturman made these discoveries, the Othmers... 1.00

01:01:31.000 At EEG Info launched sort of the field of neurofeedback for clinicians.

01:01:35.000 They built software and hardware for many years for clinicians to use.

01:01:39.000 Well, that is unbelievable.

01:01:41.000 The idea that they would pull funding just because he's come up with something that takes away from the money...

01:01:48.000 And who knows if that's actually what happened, but it's a good story that there's this potential, you know, sort of big brother, big pharma...

01:01:56.000 And this is not beyond the pale.

01:01:58.000 This is very possible.

01:02:01.000 When neurofeedback started getting really big, a lot of what it was first used for is ADHD. It's sort of the magic bullet for ADHD. It's called the 20-hour solution for ADHD. This is starting to really be used maybe 15,

01:02:17.000 20 years ago.

01:02:19.000 A couple of the big drug companies were paying scientists to go to CHAD meetings, the ADHD support group meetings, and say, nope, neurofeedback doesn't work.

01:02:28.000 They were being paid by the drug companies to go and anti-shill for anti-neurofeedback.

01:02:34.000 Well, we find that today with marijuana.

01:02:37.000 We find that today with pharmaceutical companies paying people to talk badly and not just that, but testify about the negative aspects of cannabis.

01:02:46.000 And then you find out they're being paid by pharmaceutical companies hundreds of thousands of dollars.

01:02:49.000 Yeah, I mean, when did money get in so deep into not only medicine, but politics?

01:02:54.000 I mean, when you and I were kids, this wasn't like this, was it?

01:02:56.000 I don't know.

01:02:58.000 I mean, I wasn't paying attention as a 10-year-old.

01:03:00.000 Yeah.

01:03:00.000 I don't think we're as aware, or maybe it just wasn't as transparent.

01:03:03.000 Just now we're aware of it.

01:03:04.000 Information, you know, being everywhere wasn't really there in the 70s the way it is now, right?

01:03:09.000 Right.

01:03:10.000 Well, all the Nixon studies.

01:03:12.000 Nixon funded a bunch.

01:03:14.000 The Nixon administration funded a bunch of studies trying to find the negative aspects of cannabis.

01:03:18.000 And they found so many positives.

01:03:20.000 Yeah.

01:03:20.000 Not just failed, found so many positive things they had to bury.

01:03:23.000 And we're dealing with that today.

01:03:25.000 I mean, today you still have, there was this horrible story, a horrible video of the head of the DEA having a conversation with someone in Congress where the guy is breaking it down to her, saying, what is worse?

01:03:39.000 Is cannabis as bad as meth?

01:03:42.000 And she's like, well, they're both bad, and they're both bad.

01:03:45.000 Okay, what has a more negative health effect?

01:03:50.000 Is it cannabis or is it meth?

01:03:53.000 And she won't do it.

01:03:55.000 She won't do it because it's an ideology. 1.00

01:03:57.000 She's got a very specific pattern of thinking and speaking that she's supposed to engage in and she won't vary.

01:04:05.000 She won't deviate.

01:04:06.000 Yeah, and unfortunately there's not a lot of good research out there.

01:04:09.000 I mean, I'm putting together a cannabis study with my lead tech at Alternatives, and we're going through a literature review trying to figure out what the state of the literature is.

01:04:17.000 And I'm looking at brain activity, so my questions are things like, well, how long is it active in your brain, and what are the brain changes that cannabis produces?

01:04:25.000 And we're looking at studies from the 70s and some of them in the 80s, and little footnotes and methodologies say, okay, the THC concentration in this study is 2%.

01:04:34.000 2.5%, 2.1%, whatever.

01:04:37.000 And nowadays, you know, the stuff being delivered to your door from the collective is 20%, 23%, 25%.

01:04:44.000 So cannabis has gotten 10 times as strong since our parents were, you know...

01:04:50.000 Well, that's all just dirt weed, though.

01:04:52.000 There was a study that they did recently.

01:04:53.000 They said that they got a hold of some marijuana from the 1960s and 70s, and the variation was between 2% to 5% for shitty weed, but as high as 15% for what they called Acapulco Gold.

01:05:05.000 Right, sure, sure.

01:05:06.000 Or Sensimilian.

01:05:07.000 That's what the old-timers used to call the good weed.

01:05:09.000 Kind bud.

01:05:10.000 That's what they call it, yeah.

01:05:11.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:13.000 That means that the good weed of today and the great weed of then are pretty similar. 0.99

01:05:19.000 But the great weed of today is some next level shit. 0.93

01:05:23.000 And all the scientists and the average, you know, squares in the late 60s didn't have access to the acapulco gold. 0.99

01:05:29.000 How did they not?

01:05:30.000 The scientists?

01:05:31.000 Well, I mean, all the studies were done on low potency compared to today, low potency weed.

01:05:35.000 So I'm not sure why they didn't have access to it, but they were all using two, three percent.

01:05:39.000 They were probably worried about the man.

01:05:41.000 Everybody was scared of, you know, giving them the good weed.

01:05:45.000 Yeah, probably.

01:05:46.000 They didn't know anybody.

01:05:47.000 But today, you're dealing with these botanists that are going deep, and I've heard as many as the 35%.

01:05:54.000 I've never seen that.

01:05:55.000 I'm not sure I'd want that.

01:05:56.000 It's a little too much.

01:05:56.000 It's right here.

01:05:58.000 Wow.

01:05:58.000 35?

01:05:59.000 Wow.

01:05:59.000 That's it.

01:06:00.000 A little too much.

01:06:00.000 Is that oil?

01:06:01.000 Blow your fucking head off. 1.00

01:06:02.000 No, that's just some crazy weed that these guys have... 1.00

01:06:06.000 30% is a lot.

01:06:07.000 Well, I've given it to people that are from out of town, and they don't function well on it.

01:06:11.000 No.

01:06:12.000 It hits them in a very strange...

01:06:13.000 It's funny to watch.

01:06:14.000 Do you do it during your podcast?

01:06:16.000 It's kind of cruel.

01:06:16.000 I've done it.

01:06:17.000 Wow.

01:06:18.000 Not cruel.

01:06:19.000 They ask for it.

01:06:20.000 Okay.

01:06:20.000 They want to see what's up.

01:06:21.000 But the real issue is really that it's just, what are you used to?

01:06:27.000 Yeah.

01:06:27.000 I mean, if you're used to this 34% THC, you know you take one hit, and you're good.

01:06:32.000 Right.

01:06:32.000 It's like alcohol.

01:06:33.000 I mean, is alcohol, is stronger alcohol a problem?

01:06:37.000 No, not really.

01:06:38.000 We know that whiskey is stronger than wine.

01:06:41.000 You know, we know that.

01:06:42.000 So you drink a large glass of wine, you're fine.

01:06:44.000 You don't drink a large glass of whiskey.

01:06:46.000 Right.

01:06:46.000 But it's harder to, you know, it's easier to get into trouble with whiskey than beer.

01:06:52.000 Sure.

01:06:53.000 Because the momentum has, you know, faster consequences.

01:06:56.000 Yes, that's a very good point.

01:06:59.000 Marijuana is the same thing.

01:07:00.000 And I mentioned that I eliminate tolerance to marijuana.

01:07:03.000 In the first week of training, people's tolerance is gone.

01:07:06.000 Like, just gone.

01:07:07.000 And I work with people that are often like, yeah, man, I'm professional.

01:07:10.000 I know what I'm doing. 0.99

01:07:11.000 Shut up. 0.99

01:07:12.000 Okay, well, you know, just be really careful. 1.00

01:07:13.000 No, no, no, no.

01:07:14.000 I'm good.

01:07:14.000 I've been smoking for 25 years.

01:07:16.000 How does this tolerance get minimized?

01:07:18.000 I'm not sure what the mechanism is.

01:07:20.000 I just know that it's a real effect.

01:07:22.000 People come back the next day and like, yeah, man, I smoked up and I stared at the ceiling all night.

01:07:26.000 I couldn't get out of the couch.

01:07:27.000 I was drooling during dinner.

01:07:30.000 I couldn't talk to my wife.

01:07:31.000 What did you do to me?

01:07:33.000 It's like giving a giant blunt to a high school kid who's never seen weed.

01:07:36.000 Wow.

01:07:36.000 It's a multiple on the dose effect in some way.

01:07:39.000 Does it deal with the effects of it from eating it as well as smoking it, or is it only smoking it?

01:07:45.000 It must be both.

01:07:47.000 I haven't actually rigorously examined the differences, but it must be both.

01:07:52.000 I would wonder, because the difference in eating it is very dramatically different.

01:07:56.000 Because, you know, when it's processed by the liver, you know the whole...

01:07:59.000 Yeah, but it's still THC. I mean, eventually the brain is still getting a similar effect.

01:08:03.000 It's actually not.

01:08:04.000 It's 11-hydroxymetabolite.

01:08:06.000 When it's processed by the liver, it's producing this new substance that's five times more psychoactive than THC. I know it lasts a lot longer.

01:08:13.000 I don't really enjoy eating it.

01:08:15.000 It's not just last longer.

01:08:16.000 It's a totally different drug.

01:08:18.000 Your liver produces this metabolite, 11-hydroxymetabolite, and it's so much more potent, which is why when people eat cookies, they always think they're dying.

01:08:27.000 They always think, like, oh my god, somebody dosed it.

01:08:30.000 I'm sure you've...

01:08:31.000 Probably heard of this.

01:08:32.000 There's a hilarious 9-1-1 call where these cops had stolen weed from these kids and made brownies with it.

01:08:41.000 And then they eat the brownies and they call 9-1-1 and they're like, time's going by really slow.

01:08:46.000 I think we're dead.

01:08:47.000 You've never heard it?

01:08:48.000 No.

01:08:49.000 It's hilarious.

01:08:49.000 Oh my god, that's funny.

01:08:50.000 Pull it up, Jamie, because everyone should hear this because it's so fucking stupid. 1.00

01:08:54.000 It just shows you that cops are just people. 1.00

01:08:57.000 And the idea that you could give these people...

01:09:00.000 Is this?

01:09:15.000 Listen to this.

01:09:32.000 You know?

01:09:41.000 Yeah, not responsible use right there.

01:09:43.000 Yeah, I will listen to that till the day I die. 1.00

01:09:45.000 Fucking dummy. 1.00

01:09:47.000 Well, that's the problem with eating it. 1.00

01:09:50.000 Most people aren't aware.

01:09:51.000 I mean, even you are not aware that you're eating it.

01:09:53.000 It's a process called a one-pass when it goes through your liver.

01:09:55.000 Yeah, first-pass metabolism.

01:09:57.000 Yeah, and it blows your brain out the back of your head.

01:09:59.000 Now, you know one of the tricks to bring somebody down who's overindulged?

01:10:04.000 Caffeine.

01:10:06.000 Ibuprofen.

01:10:07.000 Really?

01:10:07.000 Yeah.

01:10:08.000 Ibuprofen seems to take the edge off of weed.

01:10:10.000 So do nootropics.

01:10:11.000 But ibuprofen specifically seems to reduce the memory impairments you get when you smoke.

01:10:17.000 That's fascinating.

01:10:18.000 The short-term memory impairment.

01:10:20.000 And potentially long-term learning memory as well.

01:10:22.000 What about the actual feeling of being high?

01:10:25.000 Does it mitigate that?

01:10:26.000 Just a tiny bit can take the edge off.

01:10:28.000 Like I've had friends that have, you know, oh my god, I'm dying.

01:10:30.000 I've done too much.

01:10:31.000 I've eaten three cookies, whatever.

01:10:32.000 And well, here's some ibuprofen.

01:10:33.000 And 20 minutes later, okay, thank you.

01:10:35.000 What do you give them, like 800 milligrams?

01:10:36.000 Like 400. 400. Yeah, and I hear there's a new trend in college students studying with 200 milligrams of ibuprofen and a bong hit.

01:10:44.000 Whoa, these fucking wacky kids. 0.99

01:10:46.000 Because they don't affect the memory formation. 1.00

01:10:48.000 I'm glad you brought that up, because a big problem in college today is Adderall.

01:10:52.000 Oh my god, huge problem.

01:10:54.000 Huge.

01:10:54.000 Now, what's going on with that?

01:10:55.000 Because that seems to me, I've never done Adderall, but from the people that I've talked to that have and understand it, it's a stimulant like very close to amphetamines.

01:11:05.000 Very close to meth.

01:11:06.000 Very close to meth.

01:11:06.000 Yeah, much lower dose and slightly different molecule, but very, very close to a, you know, strict class stimulant.

01:11:12.000 My good friend, the late, great Robert Schimmel, who's a hilarious stand-up comedian, a great guy, he had a bunch of health issues himself, and...

01:11:23.000 He accidentally took Adderall once.

01:11:25.000 And he had taken the wrong medication.

01:11:28.000 I don't know whose it was.

01:11:29.000 I don't remember the story.

01:11:31.000 But I remember he called his doctor up and he said, hey, I took this Adderall. 0.99

01:11:35.000 Am I fucked? 0.99

01:11:36.000 Because he had heart issues. 1.00

01:11:37.000 And the doctor said, no, you're going to be fine.

01:11:40.000 Just ride it out.

01:11:41.000 You're going to be fine.

01:11:42.000 But obviously don't take it again.

01:11:44.000 But if anything goes horribly wrong...

01:11:46.000 Call me, but I think you're going to be fine.

01:11:48.000 And he said he just cleaned his house and organized his notes.

01:11:51.000 He said he took all of his comedy notes and just went over them.

01:11:54.000 He said, I couldn't believe how organized I was.

01:11:57.000 He was so motivated to get things done.

01:11:59.000 And that push of stimulants does happen.

01:12:01.000 This is why students abuse it.

01:12:03.000 But that push doesn't continue if you take it every day.

01:12:06.000 Okay, right.

01:12:08.000 So it's like you're chasing the dragon.

01:12:10.000 Yeah.

01:12:10.000 And the euphoria, I mean, your friend had some euphoria probably from it too.

01:12:15.000 That goes away as soon as you're used to the drug.

01:12:17.000 Well, he wasn't interested in doing it again.

01:12:19.000 He just accidentally did it, but he's like, God, I got so much work done.

01:12:23.000 And I've heard that before, like my friend Eddie. 0.92

01:12:26.000 My friend Eddie Bravo dated a few gals who had problems with stimulants and he said you would always tell because you go over their house it'd be fucking spotless. 0.80

01:12:34.000 He was like those chicks would always be cleaning their apartments. 1.00

01:12:37.000 They would just constantly be cleaning.

01:12:39.000 What is it about stimulants that make you want to get things done?

01:12:44.000 Well dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter boosted by stimulants and dopamine is the reward signal.

01:12:49.000 It's the salient.

01:12:50.000 This is interesting.

01:12:51.000 This is motivating.

01:12:52.000 So you get a motivation.

01:12:55.000 You know, you find even boring tasks interesting.

01:13:00.000 Wow.

01:13:00.000 So, you would want to do things like clean your house.

01:13:05.000 Yeah, because you want to do something.

01:13:06.000 Because you want to engage with your environment.

01:13:08.000 You want to explore, reshuffle, play around with your environment.

01:13:12.000 Now, for kids, this chasing the dragon thing with college has got to be a giant issue, though, right?

01:13:17.000 You're popping these pills, and at first it's benefiting you, and then slowly that starts to wear out, so you're taking And a lot of kids aren't ADHD, not dramatically, and they're taking stimulants off-label, other people's, you know, black market prescriptions.

01:13:33.000 And, you know, there are some consequences to psychostimulants.

01:13:36.000 There are some negative consequences if you're not managing them in the absolute right way you should, including things like cardiovascular side effects and habit formation and appetite suppression.

01:13:46.000 And, you know, all these things can cause major issues.

01:13:49.000 I mean, college students are some of the least healthy people anyways.

01:13:52.000 Yeah.

01:13:52.000 They're sleep deprived.

01:13:53.000 They eat like crap. 0.99

01:13:54.000 They don't know how to live their lives as adults yet, but they have no structure that their parents used to give them. 0.99

01:13:59.000 And so with all of these problems, you throw a stimulant into the mix and they find they can be super productive on it.

01:14:05.000 And you find kids that are now drug seeking or trying to get diagnoses so they can get drugs.

01:14:10.000 Yeah, we had this young gal who was an intern on Fear Factor back in the day.

01:14:15.000 And she was very nice.

01:14:16.000 And you would never think of her as being someone that had a problem with the drugs.

01:14:20.000 But boy, you bring up Adderall around her and like, ding! 0.90

01:14:25.000 Her eyes would light up like she had like two white stars for pupils.

01:14:29.000 And she'd be like, who has Adderall?

01:14:30.000 That's the cocaine response, right?

01:14:31.000 Oh, that's my cocaine.

01:14:32.000 You know, it's the reward.

01:14:35.000 It's the dopamine hit makes you go, yes, that's the most interesting thing I've ever heard of.

01:14:40.000 Yeah, I was watching her and this guy, this other guy who used to work there, and they had this conversation, and he's like, yeah, well, you know, I would just take Adderall.

01:14:47.000 And she's like, you got Adderall?

01:14:49.000 You have Adderall?

01:14:50.000 And it was weird.

01:14:52.000 It was like you were watching someone, it was like Gollum in the ring.

01:14:56.000 Yeah.

01:14:56.000 Like, oh, precious!

01:14:58.000 Yeah.

01:14:59.000 Dopaminergic drugs are, in my opinion, some of the most dangerous things we have because they hijack learning because they really get in the way.

01:15:06.000 And so it's not just that it's pleasurable and that's reinforcing.

01:15:09.000 It's the pleasurable and dopamine gets boosted to super physiological levels.

01:15:13.000 Well, how ironic that it hijacks learning when you're using it to help learn.

01:15:17.000 Yeah.

01:15:17.000 But you're not really learning, right?

01:15:18.000 You're just studying.

01:15:19.000 Yeah, some of the psychostimulants do seem to improve learning.

01:15:23.000 I think Ritalin is in that class, but Ritalin is a very atypical psychostimulant, a methylphenidate.

01:15:28.000 It's not a typical Adderall or something.

01:15:30.000 And it actually improves learning?

01:15:32.000 It seems to improve long-term potentiation, or at least affect it in some way that is not negative.

01:15:38.000 What about Provigil and NuVigil?

01:15:40.000 Those are other drugs that are...

01:15:41.000 I'm a huge... 0.97

01:15:42.000 I hate them.

01:15:43.000 Really? 0.94

01:15:43.000 Yeah. 0.94

01:15:45.000 I took Modafinil, Provigil, myself, off-label for attention, and just about died from it.

01:15:51.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:15:52.000 Ended up in the hospital, head-to-toe, hives, lungs closing up.

01:15:56.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:15:56.000 I've never heard that one. 0.71

01:15:57.000 I had a massive systemic reaction to it.

01:15:59.000 And people that have attention problems, and I grew up, you know, ADHD, people that have attention problems have dramatically increased side effects...

01:16:07.000 From that class of drugs, Provigil, NuVigil, Adafinil, you know, arm Adafinil.

01:16:11.000 I've taken that stuff and nothing.

01:16:14.000 Nothing's happened to me at all.

01:16:14.000 But I take 150 milligrams?

01:16:17.000 I took 100?

01:16:18.000 100?

01:16:18.000 Every morning for two weeks.

01:16:20.000 Well, it's prescribed to take every day.

01:16:22.000 I mean, when you're prescribed, you take it every day.

01:16:23.000 That's how it's supposed to be.

01:16:24.000 Oh, so you were given a prescription for this stuff.

01:16:26.000 This wasn't just an experiment?

01:16:27.000 No.

01:16:28.000 I mean, it was an experiment because I didn't like psychostimulants.

01:16:30.000 And I said, hey, this is just before I launched TrueBrain, which was one of the reasons I did it.

01:16:36.000 So, like, two and a half years ago.

01:16:38.000 And I ended up, you know, in the ER at UCLA, literally head-to-toe hives.

01:16:43.000 I couldn't, I couldn't.

01:16:44.000 I was miserable for about three and a half weeks.

01:16:46.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:16:46.000 What they said eventually was it was something called erythema multiform minor, and there's a major form that's called Stephen Johnson syndrome, and that's where your skin peels off. 0.71

01:16:57.000 Whoa, dude!

01:16:59.000 So I luckily didn't have that major version, but I was still incredibly miserable, and my lungs were having major issues.

01:17:05.000 So I just about died from modafinil.

01:17:08.000 I've heard many people that are terrified of that stuff, but they couldn't figure out a reason why.

01:17:13.000 And yours is the first real legitimate...

01:17:16.000 Well, it boosts brain histamine.

01:17:17.000 And histamine is like a master neurotransmitter, and all the other neurotransmitters can be modulated by it.

01:17:22.000 So you raise histamine, you raise dopamine.

01:17:23.000 You raise histamine, you raise serotonin.

01:17:25.000 And for me, the histamine, the brain histamine, caused a body histamine...

01:17:31.000 Oversensitization or reaction or something.

01:17:33.000 Wow.

01:17:33.000 So this is not uncommon.

01:17:35.000 If you look at the old, like, some of the review papers on modafinil, you find that all of the studies on people with ADHD have incredibly dramatically increased side effects compared to non-ADHD people.

01:17:47.000 So you shouldn't use, you know, modafinil's great if you're a sleep, you know, a narcoleptic person or somebody's doing, you know, sleep-wake-shift disorders or things, but unless you absolutely need it to modify your sleep, it's not great for attention.

01:18:00.000 I mean, I got some mild attention benefits from it the first couple of weeks.

01:18:04.000 It's just nothing compared to psychostimulants, it's nothing compared to neurofeedback, or even like meditation, mindfulness can change your brain and shore up attention resources.

01:18:13.000 I want to get to mindfulness in a moment, but what is the difference between NuVigil and ProVigil?

01:18:18.000 Yeah, so Modafinil, the first product, ProVigil is the brand name, is a mix of left and right hand molecules.

01:18:28.000 When you're making organic chemistry, things are sort of naturally developed in sort of two mirror image molecules in most chemical synthesis.

01:18:37.000 And so there's an L and an R form of the modafinil.

01:18:41.000 And they're mixed in the modafinil product.

01:18:45.000 In the R-modafinil, which is nuvigil, It's only one half.

01:18:49.000 It's the right-hand molecule, the R. And so the R molecule, theoretically, you know, typically in brain chemistry, one of the molecules is psychoactive, and one of them is much, much less so and or causes side effects.

01:19:04.000 So a lot of the modern drugs will use an L or an R form only and get rid of the other half of the molecule.

01:19:13.000 But modafinil, both the L and the R, versions of the molecule, are psychoactive.

01:19:19.000 The R form is a little more psychoactive and tends to have a more stimulant-type feeling.

01:19:24.000 So subjectively, I've taken both.

01:19:26.000 Subjectively, modafinil is interesting and has a sort of bimodal peak where you get one hump six hours in, another hump about 12 hours in.

01:19:34.000 R-menaphenyl has the same sort of 12 to 16 hour window of activity, but it's only one peak of activity.

01:19:40.000 It's because you're only one molecule.

01:19:42.000 So in regular menaphenyl, you're metabolizing two different substances, if you will, having slightly different effects from them.

01:19:49.000 And the R-menaphenyl is only one half of the molecule.

01:19:53.000 Of the mix of molecules you would get.

01:19:55.000 I've only tried NuVigil.

01:19:57.000 I haven't tried ProVigil.

01:19:58.000 But I've done it many times when I'm tired.

01:20:00.000 So ProVigil will be a little bit less stimulating, and you might have some additional effects from it that are not...

01:20:06.000 NuVigil or ProVigil?

01:20:08.000 Pro.

01:20:08.000 Pro is the mix of L and R. NuVigil, the generic name for NuVigil is R-Modafenil.

01:20:14.000 Okay.

01:20:15.000 You know, AR, modafinil, but it's the letter R. You can think of it that way, for the right-hand molecule.

01:20:20.000 So that's the more discrete, theoretically fewer side effects.

01:20:23.000 It's a bit stronger in some ways.

01:20:25.000 More of a stimulant effect, where provigil, or modafinil, is the racemic mix of the left and right-hand molecules.

01:20:32.000 And when you started having your side effects, was this an accumulative effect?

01:20:37.000 Did you see it right away?

01:20:39.000 No.

01:20:40.000 No.

01:20:40.000 No, it took about 12, 13 days in before I had a...

01:20:43.000 Like I woke up, my hands were kind of puffy and itchy.

01:20:47.000 And by the end of that day, there was like deep, deep soreness in a lot of parts of my body.

01:20:53.000 And like the bottom of my feet and my palms were like sensitive and itchy.

01:20:57.000 Whoa.

01:20:57.000 And I didn't take any more.

01:20:58.000 And the next day I woke up like with a pressure urticaria or massive hives.

01:21:03.000 So you knew that it was most likely related to that?

01:21:06.000 Well, I have no allergies to any medications.

01:21:08.000 I've never experienced anything else like that.

01:21:10.000 I've never had hives in my life.

01:21:12.000 I'm not someone who gets, you know, hay fever.

01:21:16.000 So I had no idea, but the only thing I've added into my sort of regimen...

01:21:21.000 At the same time, at the end of this two weeks, I also got the flu.

01:21:24.000 And it's likely that the immune surge of getting the flu interacted in some way with the histamine surge from the provigil.

01:21:34.000 And the two things together were sort of a perfect storm of my body hating itself.

01:21:40.000 Wow.

01:21:41.000 But I am not a fan.

01:21:43.000 I also think that the gains, the possible gains, attention, cognition, focus from modafinil are minor.

01:21:50.000 Not that dramatic.

01:21:52.000 I mean, choline forms, alpha-GPC, much stronger support to cognition than modafinil is.

01:21:59.000 Well, I found that to be the case.

01:22:01.000 I found choline to be much better as far as memory retention and execution and things along those lines.

01:22:07.000 But as far as being awake...

01:22:10.000 Yeah, less wakeful promoting.

01:22:11.000 But wakefulness and cognition are not necessarily the same thing.

01:22:15.000 Yes, I agree.

01:22:16.000 So, you know, wakefulness...

01:22:18.000 If that's your issue because of narcolepsy, because you're working night shift, there may be a reason.

01:22:23.000 You're a jet fighter or an airline pilot, a commercial airline pilot, where you're up for many hours having to remain on.

01:22:30.000 Sure, there's a reason it might make sense.

01:22:33.000 But not if you're a biohacker just trying to get a little more out of your schoolwork or more out of your high-powered business day.

01:22:38.000 I don't think there's really any benefit or any good reason to take them at Afanil compared to what else is out there.

01:22:43.000 Yeah, I know a dude who was taking it every day for like eight, nine years. 0.99

01:22:46.000 And he was wacky as fuck. 0.96

01:22:48.000 And I think that might have had something to do with it. 0.99

01:22:50.000 Maybe.

01:22:51.000 Yeah.

01:22:52.000 Chicken and egg, you know?

01:22:54.000 Yeah, not being forthcoming about taking it either.

01:22:56.000 It's one of those weird things you wanted to kind of keep on the DL. Tim Ferriss, who wrote a book, The 4-Hour Body, he didn't want to talk about it in his book because he was worried that people would start taking it like candy.

01:23:09.000 And they are, to some extent, especially in Silicon Valley.

01:23:12.000 Silicon Valley, yeah, I was just going to bring that up.

01:23:14.000 And Dave Asprey talks about, you know, metafinil.

01:23:16.000 And they're all very pro-metafinil.

01:23:17.000 I think I'm the only guy out there in the biohacking space who's like, this stuff is minimally effective.

01:23:24.000 It's dangerous.

01:23:25.000 And unless you're an arcoleptic, it's just not for you. 0.99

01:23:27.000 Well, coincidentally, you're the only one qualified to actually discuss the real mechanisms of the compounds and the way they affect your brain.

01:23:35.000 Yeah, I mean, and we don't know what modafinil really does to the brain.

01:23:39.000 There's some theories.

01:23:39.000 We think it boosts brain histamine.

01:23:41.000 We think it sort of flushes the orexin system, the hypothalamus, to make you wakeful.

01:23:46.000 But that's all still theory. 0.99

01:23:47.000 What about this shit? 1.00

01:23:50.000 Cannabis? 1.00

01:23:50.000 No, this isn't cannabis. 1.00

01:23:51.000 What is that?

01:23:52.000 This is tobacco.

01:23:53.000 This is one of these wacky vape pipes thing that the kids are smoking.

01:23:57.000 See these things?

01:23:58.000 Interesting.

01:24:00.000 It's a vaporizer for tobacco?

01:24:01.000 Yeah, everybody's smoking tobacco out of these wacky Yeah, I'm not a fan of tobacco.

01:24:05.000 I was a cigarette smoker for a few years.

01:24:07.000 You were?

01:24:07.000 Yeah, maybe like five years or six years.

01:24:09.000 How long ago was this?

01:24:10.000 I probably quit about 12 or 13 years ago.

01:24:15.000 So I think I smoked from like, you know, college and then a few years after.

01:24:18.000 The nicotine though, nicotine as a drug, does have some sort of a benefit or some sort of a promotion of cognitive function.

01:24:26.000 It hits glutamate receptors.

01:24:28.000 It affects learning in some ways, we think.

01:24:30.000 Sorry, co-choline receptors.

01:24:32.000 We think it's absolutely affecting learning in some way.

01:24:37.000 But nicotine, of course, is fairly addictive.

01:24:39.000 Right.

01:24:40.000 And nicotine is also carcinogenic all by itself.

01:24:43.000 All by itself, even though it has some medicinal benefits.

01:24:47.000 Much less so carcinogenic than, like, tobacco.

01:24:50.000 But nicotine, even by itself, has some carcinogenic properties.

01:24:53.000 Right.

01:24:54.000 But you see the carcinogenic effects, or the people that have an issue with cigarette smoking, it's far more likely to cause cancer than it is people that are using, say, cigars.

01:25:08.000 Mostly because they aren't getting the dosages.

01:25:09.000 Is that what it is?

01:25:10.000 Yeah, people that use cigars are much more likely to have oral cancers.

01:25:13.000 People that smoke have lung cancers.

01:25:17.000 But what are the numbers on cigar smoking?

01:25:19.000 Because what I understand, what I've read, is it's fairly uncommon for people who are regular cigar smokers to get mouth cancer.

01:25:26.000 Like, you might have to be one of those wacky, you know, George Burns-type characters.

01:25:31.000 Right, he's always carrying one around.

01:25:32.000 Yeah, I'm not sure.

01:25:32.000 I'm not sure.

01:25:33.000 I mean, I think you're right.

01:25:33.000 I just think that as a class, like...

01:25:36.000 What's the benefit?

01:25:38.000 Again, some benefits to learning cognition, but you can get those same benefits by getting a good night's sleep.

01:25:44.000 Really?

01:25:45.000 Or by meditating.

01:25:48.000 I have friends that are writers that are cigarette smokers, and they say there's nothing like it.

01:25:53.000 Like Tony Hinchcliffe.

01:25:54.000 He just can't get off the cigarettes when he's writing.

01:25:57.000 He wrote for the Justin Bieber roast recently.

01:26:00.000 And he said when he's in a writer's room and he starts firing up the cigarettes, the ideas just start flowing.

01:26:06.000 Sure.

01:26:06.000 And, you know, is that state-dependent learning?

01:26:08.000 Because that's one he always writes.

01:26:09.000 Could be, right?

01:26:10.000 Also, you know, the saying we said for alcohol.

01:26:11.000 How many writers would say alcohol is their muse?

01:26:16.000 A lot.

01:26:17.000 I mean, it's sort of like the Steinbeck disease, right?

01:26:20.000 Hemingway.

01:26:20.000 Yeah, Hemingway.

01:26:21.000 This is really...

01:26:22.000 I mean, and is it true?

01:26:23.000 Hmm.

01:26:24.000 I don't know.

01:26:25.000 Yes, you can get yourself out of your own way.

01:26:27.000 You can get some, you know, some chemical support and start being creative.

01:26:31.000 But is it really, you know, helping you be generative in new ideas?

01:26:35.000 Or is it just helping you not be stressed?

01:26:36.000 Or is it simply that you've associated being creative with drinking?

01:26:40.000 Well, I know marijuana.

01:26:42.000 There's no doubt about it.

01:26:43.000 It's a little bit different, yeah.

01:26:44.000 That's giving you some ideas that just don't exist other than in the marijuana state.

01:26:49.000 And they might not be good ideas.

01:26:51.000 Yeah, they might be terrible when you're sober.

01:26:53.000 They sound great when you're sober.

01:26:54.000 Oh my god, I just discovered everything!

01:26:57.000 And then later you're like, what the hell was I thinking?

01:26:59.000 That doesn't...

01:27:00.000 Is that all I thought?

01:27:02.000 Well, that's not as exciting as I thought.

01:27:03.000 Well, it's also you try to read what you wrote down.

01:27:07.000 I used to have a joke about it.

01:27:10.000 I actually wrote this down.

01:27:12.000 A unicorn is a donkey from the future.

01:27:14.000 I wrote that down on paper. 0.99

01:27:15.000 I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? 0.98

01:27:17.000 It just shows you... 0.98

01:27:18.000 That doesn't make any sense.

01:27:20.000 But when I was high, I was like, this is hilarious.

01:27:23.000 It'd be funny if your audience was high.

01:27:25.000 Even if they were high, they'd be like, um, what?

01:27:28.000 A unicorn's a donkey from the future?

01:27:30.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:27:31.000 Yeah, not really. 0.96

01:27:31.000 Yeah, it's ridiculous. 0.96

01:27:32.000 But there's something that happens when you do smoke marijuana that does excite the creative aspect of consciousness. 0.69

01:27:41.000 Sure.

01:27:41.000 Whatever that is.

01:27:42.000 Whatever that is.

01:27:43.000 Good or bad.

01:27:44.000 We don't know everything cannabis is doing.

01:27:46.000 It's not simply one THC or the 11 from liver formats.

01:27:52.000 There's like 700 different psychoactive compounds in the burning plant, right?

01:27:55.000 And they differ depending on the strain.

01:27:58.000 Dramatically sometimes.

01:27:59.000 I mean, sativa and indiga are not the same plant.

01:28:02.000 Yeah.

01:28:02.000 You know, they came from very different sort of, you know, genetic trees, if you will.

01:28:06.000 Sure.

01:28:07.000 One being the South American variety and one being one of an intensely tropical climates.

01:28:14.000 Yeah.

01:28:14.000 And they have different benefits.

01:28:16.000 And, you know, so, I mean, I don't think we yet know.

01:28:19.000 And I'm kind of excited by what's happening with the medical and recreational cannabis in this country because we're finally doing some of the research.

01:28:26.000 We're finally looking into constituent components, all the other cannabinoids beyond THC. We're starting to examine the endocannabinoid.

01:28:34.000 We have a cannabinoid system built in.

01:28:37.000 There's a neurotransmitter called ananda, you know, the Sanskrit word for bliss, that hits our endocannabinoid systems.

01:28:45.000 That's ananda? 0.69

01:28:46.000 That's what the Sanskrit word for bliss is?

01:28:48.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:28:48.000 That's fascinating.

01:28:49.000 And we have, you know, we found the receptor in the body before we found the ligand, the binding compound in the body.

01:28:59.000 But we knew that this thing, this receptor in the body existed and cannabis bound to it.

01:29:04.000 And so this receptor, was this developed from the human body growing up or evolving with the use of this plant?

01:29:14.000 Is that where it's from or is it just inherently a part of our system?

01:29:17.000 I think it's inherently a part of our system.

01:29:20.000 Evolution tends to reinvent the same thing and tends to conserve biological constructs, molecules, organ systems across species.

01:29:30.000 So like, you know, a mouse has a heart, so does a human.

01:29:33.000 They also have endogenous, you know, cannabinoid systems.

01:29:39.000 I think we have at least two categories of cannabinoid systems.

01:29:43.000 One is immune and one is bliss.

01:29:47.000 And we know an exogenous, a plant that affects the bliss system, you know, cannabis.

01:29:55.000 Echinacea affects the other cannabinoid system.

01:29:58.000 Echinacea is an herb that boosts your immune system.

01:30:01.000 Does it really work to boost your immune system?

01:30:03.000 I think it does, yeah.

01:30:03.000 I mean, I certainly have taken it.

01:30:05.000 If you take it when you're just starting to get sick, it can shut down an illness, in my experience.

01:30:10.000 Really?

01:30:10.000 Yeah.

01:30:11.000 I've always wondered whether or not that was legit.

01:30:13.000 I think it is.

01:30:14.000 I don't think it's as dramatic as antibiotics or anything, but I do think there's something there.

01:30:19.000 But this plant, this purple coneflower echinacea plant, is a cannabinoid.

01:30:24.000 It affects your cannabinoid system.

01:30:26.000 That's how it affects your immune system.

01:30:28.000 That's amazing.

01:30:30.000 What about CBDs and CBDs in relationship to cancer, which is something that is being researched quite a bit lately?

01:30:38.000 Yeah, I'm not up on all the research.

01:30:40.000 Some of the first papers over the past couple of decades were all CBD, CBD, CBD, reducing inflammation, reducing cancer, killing cancer cells.

01:30:46.000 I've seen a few papers recently that say the non-CBD compounds also do that and do it better.

01:30:53.000 Wow, non-CBD oils.

01:30:55.000 Like THC has anti-cancer properties.

01:30:57.000 And do it better than CBDs.

01:30:59.000 It may, yeah.

01:30:59.000 CBDs being good for inflammation, joint pain, things along those lines.

01:31:04.000 The paper I read had THC also working on all those other aspects as well.

01:31:09.000 Wow.

01:31:09.000 So the isolation of the CBD might just be because people are trying to avoid THC? Trying to avoid the psychoactive, yeah.

01:31:16.000 Because CBD... Non-psychoactive.

01:31:20.000 It's non-psychoactive.

01:31:21.000 In fact, the ratio of CBD to THC affects how psychoactive something is.

01:31:25.000 So too much CBD and you aren't going to get high off your pot.

01:31:29.000 Even in the presence of THC. Interesting.

01:31:32.000 They counteract each other.

01:31:33.000 They counteract each other, exactly.

01:31:34.000 Sort of an inbuilt check.

01:31:35.000 Is it frustrating to you that all this stuff, which probably could have been figured out a long time ago, were legal?

01:31:41.000 Yeah.

01:31:42.000 It's a little frustrating, but I look at, you know, If you go back, you know, 100 years ago, technology was nowhere compared to where it is right now.

01:31:51.000 I sort of see us on the exponential curve, the hockey stick of acceleration now.

01:31:56.000 So would it have been nice if 50 years ago we were getting into this stuff?

01:32:00.000 Sure.

01:32:00.000 But on a global timescale, it doesn't really bother me that it's happening now versus last decade, no.

01:32:06.000 Well, it doesn't bother me that it's happening now.

01:32:08.000 What bothers me is the suppression that exists, that used to exist, like the same suppression that caused this, This reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to accept this treatment of epilepsy that didn't involve drugs that they sell.

01:32:22.000 Well, the initial anti-cannabis movement was textiles in this country, right?

01:32:27.000 Textiles and paper, actually.

01:32:29.000 Yeah, they didn't want the flax or the fibers coming in and supplanting the cotton industry and the fuel industries and things.

01:32:36.000 It was directly connected to the production and creation of a machine called a decorticator.

01:32:42.000 Decorticator?

01:32:42.000 Yeah, the decorticator was the first time that they developed a system of processing hemp fire that didn't involve slavery or hard manual labor.

01:32:50.000 The reason why cotton took such a foothold is because they came up with the cotton gin.

01:32:55.000 When Eli Whitney came up with the cotton gin, Cotton became much more viable than cannabis, than hemp.

01:33:02.000 The fibers of hemp are far stronger, far superior from making paper and cloth.

01:33:06.000 It's just way tougher.

01:33:08.000 Absolutely, like ten times what cotton is or something.

01:33:10.000 Canvas comes from the word cannabis.

01:33:13.000 Cannabis was originally a hemp product.

01:33:16.000 Oh, interesting.

01:33:17.000 Far more durable.

01:33:19.000 Far more durable for pants.

01:33:21.000 The original Levi's were made out of canvas.

01:33:23.000 It was all cannabis.

01:33:25.000 Interesting. 0.99

01:33:25.000 Yeah, it's all hemp-based until that motherfucker that they made that book or they made the movie... 0.99

01:33:33.000 Reefer Madness? 0.99

01:33:33.000 No, it wasn't that. 0.99

01:33:34.000 It was William Randolph Hearst, the Orson Welles movie.

01:33:38.000 Citizen Kane. 1.00

01:33:40.000 It was all about this one asshole. 1.00

01:33:42.000 William Randolph Hearst... 1.00

01:33:44.000 He owned Hearst Enterprises.

01:33:45.000 He owned all the newspapers.

01:33:48.000 He just had this massive stranglehold on information. 1.00

01:33:51.000 And he was a motherfucker. 0.99

01:33:53.000 And this guy came out with the idea of, first of all, they got in cahoots with Harry Anslinger, and they decided to call it marijuana, which wasn't the name for it before. 1.00

01:34:05.000 Marijuana was the name for a wild Mexican tobacco plant.

01:34:09.000 It wasn't even cannabis.

01:34:12.000 So when Congress was outlawing marijuana, they didn't exactly understand that they were outlawing hemp as a textile and as a commodity.

01:34:20.000 So then you had to get like a tax stamp in order to grow hemp and then They needed it for World War II, so they started this campaign, Hemp for Victory.

01:34:31.000 And Hemp for Victory was this famous video that Jack Herrer, who was a famous marijuana activist, found this video to sort of Establish what he had been saying all along.

01:34:47.000 Like, look, this is something that we had grown and used as a culture for thousands of years, human beings.

01:34:55.000 It was a huge part of, I mean, it was what George W., or George Herbert Walker Bush, it was what his parachute was made of when he parachuted to safety in World War II. It was what the sails that Columbus sailed on was made out of.

01:35:08.000 They were all made out of hemp.

01:35:09.000 Yep.

01:35:10.000 Rope.

01:35:10.000 Yeah, all of it.

01:35:11.000 Rope.

01:35:12.000 And when they decided to demonize it, the way they did it was to go after racism. 1.00

01:35:17.000 They said this marijuana plant was making blacks and Mexicans rape white women. 1.00

01:35:22.000 Right, right. 1.00

01:35:22.000 Everybody went fucking crazy. 1.00

01:35:24.000 Yeah, well, you know, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and marketing was even sort of, you know, a big player back then. 0.95

01:35:29.000 And nowadays, it's hard to get good information about anything without, you know, a decent degree to understand where the noise is coming from.

01:35:36.000 But in a lot of ways, it's very similar to what you're saying about taking away this non-drug option of treating epilepsy.

01:35:46.000 It's like they realize, okay, there's money to be made with this one solution, this new solution.

01:35:52.000 There's no money to be made.

01:35:53.000 Let's attack it. 0.99

01:35:55.000 And that's what they did.

01:35:56.000 Yeah, I mean, there's people making CBD or CBN-only strains of cannabis purely for epileptics now, that they suppress seizures.

01:36:05.000 I mean, you don't want to give a five-year-old kid a joint.

01:36:08.000 You know, they're already pretty stoned as a five-year-old, right?

01:36:11.000 But CBN or CBD can suppress epileptic activity.

01:36:15.000 You know, where is it?

01:36:16.000 I mean, that's a charged issue, giving a kid cannabis.

01:36:19.000 Mm-hmm.

01:36:19.000 But I don't see any ethical or problematic use, even with children, if you're using it as an anti-epileptic intervention.

01:36:29.000 Well, I have direct experience with a very good friend of mine who has a child who has extreme epileptic seizures.

01:36:33.000 He gives a kid medical cannabis now.

01:36:36.000 He moved to a state where it's legal.

01:36:37.000 He moved to Washington State, and he gives his kid a very small amount every day, and there's no longer any seizures.

01:36:44.000 This kid was having multiple seizures a day.

01:36:46.000 He's on the autism spectrum.

01:36:49.000 He's also got some pretty severe social issues, which were mitigated substantially once he started taking this.

01:36:56.000 Interesting.

01:36:56.000 But there's all sorts of other connections to gut bacteria, and there's a bunch of inflammation issues, diet, and things that change that for kids who suffer from these things that they don't totally, truly understand.

01:37:09.000 Right.

01:37:10.000 And we may never, because every individual is a little bit different, too.

01:37:12.000 I mean, autism specifically is not really one thing.

01:37:15.000 It's more like the autism.

01:37:17.000 The only thing consistent across them is the social deficit.

01:37:21.000 But you can have a high-functioning Asperger's individual with, you know, superior cognitive skills, incredible abilities, but still some deficits in other areas.

01:37:33.000 They're so concerned with opening up the doorway to this stuff that even non-psychoactive versions of these plants are illegal.

01:37:41.000 We have a huge issue with that at Onnit, my supplement company, because we sell protein.

01:37:47.000 Hemp protein is very bioavailable, but we have to get it from Canada.

01:37:51.000 You sort of can grow it with the states.

01:37:56.000 Didn't that law just change last week that we can now start growing commercial hemp? 0.91

01:38:01.000 Sort of.

01:38:02.000 You wouldn't know more.

01:38:03.000 It sort of has.

01:38:04.000 It sort of has.

01:38:05.000 But it's got a lot of resistance.

01:38:06.000 It's got a lot of resistance in terms of how it's going to react or how the federal government is going to react to it if a Republican gets in office in 2016. That's also one of the things about medical marijuana, like they've recently softened their stance considerably on medical marijuana,

01:38:24.000 but all it takes is like one thing, one Jeb Bush motherfucker to get into office and things can get really weird. 0.90

01:38:30.000 But as of right now, we have to get our stuff from Canada. 0.97

01:38:33.000 We would love to buy it from America, from American farmers.

01:38:36.000 But also, it just should be something that people could...

01:38:39.000 It's a plant. 0.97

01:38:40.000 It's ridiculous. 0.97

01:38:41.000 It's not killing anybody, and it's a plant. 0.97

01:38:42.000 It should be really that simple.

01:38:43.000 Does it kill anybody?

01:38:44.000 No.

01:38:45.000 Is it turning people into slaves?

01:38:47.000 Well, if aspirin was invented today, if aspirin was invented today, aspirin would be a scheduled substance.

01:38:52.000 That's amazing.

01:38:52.000 Controlled substance.

01:38:53.000 It probably would, right?

01:38:54.000 It has side effects, it can kill you. 0.68

01:38:56.000 Sure. 0.99

01:38:57.000 Yeah, and not only that, there's a lot of medications that they prescribe, especially for people that have heart disease, where aspirin can just nip that shit right in the bud. 0.89

01:39:06.000 Aspirin is an amazing, amazing anti-inflammatory. 0.94

01:39:09.000 Oh yeah, absolutely.

01:39:10.000 And it's at least initially from a natural willow bark.

01:39:14.000 Yeah.

01:39:15.000 Can you get it in a natural form still?

01:39:17.000 Is it available?

01:39:18.000 You've got it in the forest and, you know, the inner bark of a white willow tree.

01:39:22.000 That's all it is?

01:39:23.000 And chew it, and then you'll get acetylsalic acid, yeah.

01:39:25.000 Wow.

01:39:26.000 And how will you know how much bark to chew?

01:39:28.000 I don't think the dosages are an issue.

01:39:30.000 I think you'll absorb it and get pain relief or whatever.

01:39:32.000 So it's only when you swallow it that it becomes an issue?

01:39:35.000 No, I think it's being absorbed through the mucosa, but I don't think you're going to get concentrated doses the way you do in tablets of aspirin.

01:39:42.000 Yeah, that's what I mean.

01:39:42.000 So, like, you can overdose on the tablets.

01:39:45.000 You can't overdose on chewing the bark.

01:39:46.000 You probably can, but... 1.00

01:39:48.000 You'd have to be an asshole. 1.00

01:39:49.000 You'd have to be an asshole. 1.00

01:39:49.000 And it probably tastes like ass. 1.00

01:39:51.000 I mean, these are very bitter substances, so... 0.99

01:39:53.000 How did everybody ever find out that that gives you a relief from a headache?

01:39:56.000 I don't know.

01:39:57.000 Probably some, you know, druid brewing tea or something, you know, a couple of years ago.

01:40:01.000 Yeah, it's an interesting thing that that's been around for so long, and it's sort of like very subtly swept under the rug, the health benefits of aspirin.

01:40:12.000 Sure, sure.

01:40:13.000 Well, you know, at least in the cardiac medicine, there's still this focus of giving people the heart risks, or cardiac risk of heart attack, you know, prophylactic doses of aspirin every day to reduce the strain on the blood system.

01:40:27.000 Well, I've also heard people say that after you get to a certain age, you should just take aspirin every day anyway, just to mitigate the natural reaction that your body has to inflammation.

01:40:36.000 Yeah, or the clotting.

01:40:37.000 It's really about clotting.

01:40:38.000 And I think, you know, paracetam is a better drug for that long term than aspirin, because it has other benefits.

01:40:44.000 That's interesting.

01:40:45.000 I wanted to bring those up, the different nootropics, like paracetam, the different racetams.

01:40:50.000 Sure.

01:40:50.000 What are your favorite ones when it comes to nootropics, and what causes you to prefer those?

01:40:57.000 Well, you know, I'm one of the scientists at TrueBrain, so I helped...

01:41:00.000 And TrueBrain is, you have it right here, it's...

01:41:02.000 Yeah, we bought some drinks.

01:41:04.000 It's a nootropic drink.

01:41:05.000 Yeah, we have drinks and capsule form.

01:41:06.000 And the drinks, sort of the first to market little mini drinks.

01:41:12.000 So you've got three different colors here.

01:41:13.000 Yeah, three different colors.

01:41:14.000 Green, blue, and orange.

01:41:15.000 Why is it different?

01:41:16.000 Well, one's caffeinated.

01:41:18.000 Which one?

01:41:18.000 It should say on it.

01:41:20.000 It's the blue or the green.

01:41:21.000 You don't know?

01:41:22.000 I forget. 1.00

01:41:22.000 This is your shit, man. 1.00

01:41:23.000 I know, I know. 1.00

01:41:24.000 Well, we keep iterating and changing it.

01:41:26.000 So this is the latest flavor we've ever come up with for you.

01:41:28.000 Okay, this is caffeine-free, the blue one.

01:41:30.000 All right, so the green one's caffeinated then.

01:41:32.000 Okay.

01:41:32.000 And the orange one is the boost.

01:41:34.000 So the blue and the green ones are paracetam-based with CDP-choline.

01:41:38.000 This is the original.

01:41:39.000 Yep.

01:41:39.000 The green's the caffeinated one.

01:41:42.000 It has 80 milligrams of caffeine, not a huge amount.

01:41:44.000 And then the orange one is oxyracetam-based.

01:41:47.000 80 milligrams is not a lot?

01:41:48.000 No.

01:41:49.000 That's like a cup of coffee, though.

01:41:51.000 It's like a four-ounce cup of coffee, of drip coffee.

01:41:54.000 Isn't that, though, like, aren't we considering that because of, like, how jacked up Starbucks is?

01:41:59.000 Because Starbucks' Aventi is 200 milligrams of caffeine.

01:42:03.000 More than that.

01:42:04.000 Is it?

01:42:04.000 Really?

01:42:05.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:42:05.000 Yeah, caffeine's somewhere between 75 and 150 milligrams for every eight ounces of drip, or one espresso shot.

01:42:13.000 So it takes three espresso shots to equal, like, the amount of caffeine in a 12-ounce drip coffee.

01:42:17.000 Right.

01:42:18.000 That's a lot of people think that espresso is much stronger.

01:42:20.000 And the darker you roast, the less caffeine you have in the bean, right?

01:42:23.000 That's another thing that's a misconception, right?

01:42:25.000 People think, oh, give me the dark roast. 0.99

01:42:26.000 I want to get fucked up. 0.99

01:42:27.000 No, a French roast is like up to a third less caffeine than a light roast. 0.99

01:42:31.000 What do you got there, Jamie?

01:42:34.000 450 milligrams from a 20?

01:42:37.000 Is that Starbucks?

01:42:39.000 Is that a venti?

01:42:40.000 Okay, so 180 is a short.

01:42:44.000 That's what I was thinking of.

01:42:45.000 So between a short, a tall...

01:42:48.000 Tall is their middle, right? 0.99

01:42:50.000 I fucking hate all these foreign words. 1.00

01:42:54.000 God damn it. 1.00

01:42:54.000 Don't call it a grande. 1.00

01:42:55.000 Call it a medium.

01:42:57.000 Well, there's lots of reasons to boycott these guys.

01:42:59.000 Now, they just went after the state of Vermont.

01:43:02.000 Starbucks and Monsanto joined together to file suit against Vermont for mandating labeling of GMOs.

01:43:09.000 What?

01:43:10.000 Starbucks and Monsanto.

01:43:12.000 They have GMO coffee?

01:43:13.000 No.

01:43:14.000 They just want to.

01:43:15.000 They don't want to be mandated to label.

01:43:17.000 What an if.

01:43:19.000 Well, isn't there an issue with GMOs that there's an immediate demonification?

01:43:24.000 Yeah, a knee-jerk.

01:43:26.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:43:26.000 What people don't understand is that every fucking tomato you buy at a grocery store is a genetic demon. 1.00

01:43:30.000 There's no such thing as a non-GMO cow. 0.99

01:43:32.000 There's no such thing as a non-GMO ear of corn. 1.00

01:43:35.000 If you're eating ears of corn, that shit has been modified. 0.99

01:43:38.000 Well, corn's been heavily modified recently, in the past 10-20 years, but we've been GMO-ing cattle with selective breeding for thousands of years. 0.99

01:43:46.000 Right, but isn't there a difference between selective breeding and splicing in non-native genetics, which they have done to increase the...

01:43:54.000 There's probably a difference.

01:43:55.000 Resistance to certain pesticides.

01:43:57.000 That freaks people out.

01:44:00.000 Rightly so, right?

01:44:01.000 Totally.

01:44:01.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:44:02.000 Isn't it one of those things where there's not an either or?

01:44:05.000 There's benefits to genetically modifying things to our advantage, but there's also greed. 0.96

01:44:10.000 And also when people don't want to address the actual real health concerns of their creations.

01:44:17.000 And that's what people were worried about.

01:44:19.000 That's why when Brazil as a country filed suit against Monsanto and won.

01:44:25.000 Brazilian farmers joined together and filed this gigantic suit.

01:44:31.000 But then there's the Indian farmers that they have this huge issue where they get leased out these seeds and then they're in debt and they wind up committing suicide. 0.64

01:44:42.000 Yeah, I heard that article recently.

01:44:44.000 God, it's staggering.

01:44:46.000 It's sort of like the old sharecropping model where you rent the land, sell the seeds, sell the tools, and now you must work for me for the next 60 years to make back your money.

01:44:57.000 Yeah, and Monsanto is the one who's profiting off of it.

01:45:02.000 What's this?

01:45:03.000 Monsanto Latte.

01:45:04.000 Tell Starbucks to serve only organic, non-GMO milk.

01:45:09.000 Yeah.

01:45:09.000 True.

01:45:10.000 Starbucks is a member of the Grocery Manufacturer Association Group challenging Vermont over GMO labeling requirements.

01:45:16.000 False.

01:45:16.000 Starbucks has joined forces with Monsanto to sue.

01:45:19.000 I was fooled.

01:45:19.000 How dare you?

01:45:20.000 I know.

01:45:20.000 I was fooled.

01:45:21.000 How dare you, Dr. Hill?

01:45:22.000 How dare you?

01:45:23.000 You're one of those guys.

01:45:24.000 I guess so. 1.00

01:45:25.000 Just for Pete's shit, you're fine. 0.99

01:45:26.000 Starbucks is not a part of Monsanto's GMO lawsuit. 0.99

01:45:29.000 This is from Starbucks.

01:45:30.000 Stop food labeling.

01:45:31.000 All right.

01:45:32.000 Well, now we know.

01:45:32.000 Okay, great.

01:45:32.000 That was from 2014, sir.

01:45:36.000 I read an article recently that seemed legit.

01:45:38.000 What was it in?

01:45:39.000 The Onion?

01:45:40.000 No, no, no.

01:45:41.000 It seemed legit.

01:45:42.000 It was written in English.

01:45:43.000 Right.

01:45:43.000 It was on the internet.

01:45:45.000 What the fuck's wrong with people? 0.99

01:45:45.000 That's the bar for some people, yeah. 0.99

01:45:47.000 Some people?

01:45:48.000 Well, there's a lot of, I mean, there's websites now that will just write stories.

01:45:52.000 They don't even pretend that they're writing something that isn't a, like, it's not even funny.

01:45:58.000 Yeah.

01:45:58.000 Like, they don't try to make it seem like a parody.

01:46:02.000 Right, it's just there to light a fire.

01:46:04.000 Right.

01:46:04.000 Well, it's clickbait.

01:46:05.000 Clickbait is a huge issue across the board.

01:46:08.000 It's a huge issue with sites even that I agree with.

01:46:11.000 There's a lot of progressive sites that do it.

01:46:14.000 They write these really inflammatory titles and then you read it.

01:46:18.000 Right.

01:46:18.000 I can't stand the, you know, and you won't believe what happened next.

01:46:21.000 It's like, no, I'm not going to even go there now.

01:46:23.000 Just leave me alone.

01:46:23.000 One of them was about peanut butter and jelly being racist.

01:46:27.000 And I was like, what the fuck is this? 0.99

01:46:29.000 And so, of course, everybody's tweeting it and retweeting it. 0.99

01:46:32.000 And if you actually read into it, it's like, I think some editor just jazzed up this idea of three meals a day and peanut butter and jelly and, you know, where does three meals a day come from?

01:46:45.000 What is the idea?

01:46:46.000 And then...

01:46:48.000 Someone actually put in the, you know, the byline, is it in fact racist? 0.99

01:46:51.000 Like, oh, what the fuck? 0.98

01:46:52.000 And then everybody's, they're saying that three meals a day is racist. 1.00

01:46:55.000 And then you start tweeting, it's clickbait. 1.00

01:46:57.000 They fuck you. 1.00

01:46:58.000 They just, and this, it's just this mad rush to get people to read your shit. 1.00

01:47:03.000 And in doing so, you've sacrificed all credibility. 1.00

01:47:06.000 Yeah, and you can be inflammatory about peanuts without being stupid. 0.99

01:47:09.000 I mean, peanuts are somewhat dangerous, you know, people's health, potentially. 0.90

01:47:14.000 No, Why did I read about peanuts that said that it wasn't always the case and that one of the real concerns about peanut allergies is that keeping kids from peanuts when they're very young because you're worried about peanut allergies could in fact be causing peanut allergies.

01:47:27.000 Yeah, there was recently a study that found that by doing a manipulation of gut bacteria they could eliminate peanut allergies in mice.

01:47:36.000 Really?

01:47:37.000 Yeah, so it seems to be some core, you know, functional gut thing that's gone awry to produce peanut allergies in these individuals.

01:47:48.000 This doesn't taste that bad.

01:47:49.000 Which one's that?

01:47:50.000 The caffeine one?

01:47:51.000 Yeah.

01:47:51.000 That's the worst one.

01:47:52.000 That's the most bitter of all three, yeah.

01:47:55.000 Because caffeine is a pretty bitter molecule.

01:47:57.000 Oh, it is?

01:47:57.000 Like it has a taste to it?

01:47:58.000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:47:59.000 Yeah, try a decaf versus caff coffee and you'll be able to tell the taste of the difference.

01:48:02.000 There's a bitterness under the caffeine flavor.

01:48:05.000 Yeah, there's like a milder sort of a taste.

01:48:07.000 What do you think about, like, you ever try that kopi luwak, that caffeine?

01:48:11.000 No, I have not tried it. 0.64

01:48:12.000 The bean that comes from a civics butt?

01:48:13.000 Yeah, I mean, I have a problem paying 70 bucks for a cup of coffee, first of all.

01:48:18.000 But I have not yet tried the Kopi Luwak.

01:48:21.000 Yeah, I bought a bag of it once.

01:48:22.000 Well, I bought it at a place, and it was really smooth.

01:48:27.000 If you haven't heard of it, there's an animal called a civic that is like some type of cat, actually.

01:48:32.000 Like a weasel, yeah.

01:48:33.000 But I think it's in the cat family. 0.98

01:48:35.000 And they eat coffee beans and then shit them out.

01:48:38.000 And the farmers didn't want to waste these coffee beans, so they would literally pick them out of the dung of the Civic and put it into, you know, they'd roast it. 0.71

01:48:47.000 And somehow or another, stomach acids do something to the bean.

01:48:51.000 Yeah, pre-digested.

01:48:52.000 It makes it really smooth.

01:48:53.000 Yeah, all the enzymes.

01:48:54.000 But does it affect the caffeine content?

01:48:56.000 I don't know.

01:48:57.000 I don't know.

01:48:58.000 My guess is the roasting is really where that matters the most, because you have to bring the oils out of the bean to the surface and caramelize them or oxidize them to produce the flavor you're looking for.

01:49:08.000 So my guess, and the longer you roast, the more the caffeine goes down.

01:49:11.000 And non-roasted coffee beans have some sort of antioxidant effect as well, right?

01:49:17.000 Yeah, the green coffee bean thing, the chloro...

01:49:20.000 what's the word?

01:49:21.000 Chloro...

01:49:21.000 I forget what the compound is.

01:49:22.000 Yeah, but there's some antioxidants in...

01:49:24.000 I mean...

01:49:25.000 Green, brown, whatever coffee you have, Westerners get more antioxidants from coffee, I think, than all other sources combined.

01:49:32.000 That's incredible.

01:49:33.000 You know, we drink a huge amount of coffee, but there's a lot of benefits.

01:49:36.000 I mean, I'm a big fan of the coffee.

01:49:39.000 But it gets demonized, doesn't it?

01:49:40.000 It sure does.

01:49:41.000 I mean, and there's some drawbacks.

01:49:43.000 You know, coffee would not be considered a strict nootropic.

01:49:45.000 I mean, my definition for the word nootropic is improving cognition, supporting output with no appreciable side effects.

01:49:51.000 So coffee does not fit that?

01:49:52.000 Doesn't fit that bar, but...

01:49:55.000 Do I use it?

01:49:56.000 Absolutely.

01:49:56.000 I mean, I wake up in the morning with too much blood in my caffeine stream, you know, race for the pour over and make one first thing.

01:50:01.000 Well, you know, I love it as a ritual.

01:50:03.000 It's like one of those things, I just love a warm cup of coffee in the morning.

01:50:08.000 It's just like, it feels like this is a nice way to relax your way into the day.

01:50:12.000 Absolutely.

01:50:12.000 And the ritual piece of it should not, I mean, it's a really big part of it for me.

01:50:16.000 It gives you a chance to be mindful.

01:50:18.000 When folks come into my office for QEEGs, I ask them to abstain from coffee that day or tea or whatever.

01:50:24.000 And then when they're done, I hand them a, you know, handcrafted cup of coffee that I've made for them.

01:50:28.000 Handcrafted is one of my least favorite expressions.

01:50:31.000 Is it really?

01:50:31.000 Yep.

01:50:32.000 I'm really getting pissed.

01:50:33.000 Is it redundant?

01:50:34.000 Well, it's just one of those things.

01:50:36.000 This is a handcrafted burger.

01:50:38.000 We serve handcrafted cocktails.

01:50:40.000 I make the coffee for my clients when they're done their brain map.

01:50:43.000 The doctor brings you a cup of coffee because it's...

01:50:46.000 Let me give you some good coffee.

01:50:47.000 My secret stash.

01:50:48.000 Oh, what kind of coffee do you use?

01:50:50.000 I use a mix of small origin, organic batches.

01:50:53.000 I have them delivered to me from a couple different places in the country.

01:50:56.000 Yeah.

01:50:56.000 So, there's a place up in Portland, Oregon that ships me my little, you know, stash.

01:51:01.000 Oh, that's nice.

01:51:02.000 Okay, cool.

01:51:03.000 Yeah, I have a bunch of different favorites.

01:51:06.000 Like, the coffees do have a different flavor profile.

01:51:09.000 Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure.

01:51:10.000 There's some interesting ones out there.

01:51:12.000 You know, I had this guy, Peter Giuliani.

01:51:15.000 Giuliano?

01:51:15.000 Giuliano.

01:51:16.000 Giuliano.

01:51:17.000 He's a coffee expert, and he told me that all coffee originates from Ethiopia.

01:51:22.000 Yeah.

01:51:23.000 All of it.

01:51:23.000 Initially?

01:51:24.000 Yeah.

01:51:24.000 A very narrow part of the world it grew in initially.

01:51:28.000 Yeah.

01:51:28.000 And from there, they started taking it to all these different parts of the world.

01:51:32.000 Like Arabica. 1.00

01:51:33.000 Arabica.

01:51:34.000 Arabica.

01:51:35.000 How do you say it?

01:51:36.000 Arabica.

01:51:37.000 Beans.

01:51:38.000 They took it to Saudi Arabia.

01:51:39.000 They took it to all these different parts of...

01:51:41.000 South America.

01:51:42.000 Yeah.

01:51:43.000 And then they started growing it in all these different places.

01:51:45.000 But we always can think of, you know, Colombia as being like where that dude Juan Valdez lives.

01:51:50.000 He's growing all the awesome coffee.

01:51:52.000 Right.

01:51:52.000 I actually prefer African coffees to South American, typically.

01:51:57.000 You know, a little more complexity, a little darker flavors in them, typically.

01:52:01.000 Well, he brought me some Ethiopian coffee that tasted like lemons.

01:52:04.000 Wow.

01:52:04.000 It was really interesting.

01:52:05.000 It was like, he doesn't drink it with any cream or anything in it, so it was just black coffee.

01:52:11.000 And it had this, like, really lemony taste to it.

01:52:13.000 It was really good.

01:52:14.000 Interesting.

01:52:15.000 Really good and really unusual.

01:52:16.000 I was like, whoa.

01:52:17.000 Wow.

01:52:18.000 And there's a bunch of different weird flavors, like Kona is one of my favorites from Hawaii.

01:52:23.000 Hawaii has some really interesting flavors, and you go, what is causing this stuff?

01:52:28.000 Altitude.

01:52:29.000 The water is growing in the soil.

01:52:31.000 Like Cuban cigars have a very distinct flavor.

01:52:34.000 Which we can now legally bring back into the country finally. 0.67

01:52:37.000 Like a hundred bucks worth, right?

01:52:38.000 Yeah, for now.

01:52:40.000 I mean, that's going to widen, I'm sure.

01:52:42.000 Yeah, I'm sure it will.

01:52:43.000 Officially, you can only go now if you're part of an education group. 0.99

01:52:46.000 Oh, I'm teaching people shit all the time. 0.99

01:52:48.000 There you go. 0.99

01:52:48.000 I'm part of an education group. 0.99

01:52:49.000 Having you on this program is educational for the folks that are listening.

01:52:53.000 So I think I'm a...

01:52:54.000 Who's to say I'm not?

01:52:55.000 You want to go to Cuba?

01:52:56.000 We should be... 1.00

01:52:57.000 Fuck yeah, dude. 1.00

01:52:58.000 Let's do it. 1.00

01:52:59.000 Let's drive one of those old cars they have down there.

01:53:01.000 That's right.

01:53:01.000 They have all these 1950s cars from before the embargo.

01:53:05.000 Yeah, because they haven't been able to get new cars.

01:53:07.000 Western cars, anyway, since then.

01:53:09.000 But it's sort of like a real knock on consumerism, because they do a great job with these cars.

01:53:13.000 These cars are in amazing shape.

01:53:15.000 There was this image that I saw recently online of all these people driving these 1950s, early 1960 cars, and they're beautiful.

01:53:23.000 They're really well-kept.

01:53:25.000 I was like, that is fascinating.

01:53:26.000 We have this idea that we have to get a new car every year, or we have to have a new model every year.

01:53:33.000 The new cars have to have a substantial improvement in all areas of performance and braking and gadgets and all this different jazz.

01:53:40.000 But they also, you know, like a modern car today, would not last 50 years on an island.

01:53:45.000 It's true.

01:53:46.000 You know, too many complexities, too many small electronics.

01:53:50.000 It just would fall apart.

01:53:52.000 You know, the reason they have 50s cars in Cuba is because you can re-manufacture and replace those parts and keep them running.

01:53:58.000 In a way that you would not be able to, like a Prius or some modern fuel-injected thing.

01:54:03.000 Especially a Prius.

01:54:04.000 Anything that has batteries, that's a huge, huge issue is the lithium-ion and the batteries.

01:54:10.000 Cobalt.

01:54:11.000 That stuff wears out.

01:54:12.000 Cadmium.

01:54:13.000 Yeah, that's one thing that people aren't taking into consideration when they think about the fact that they're driving some eco-friendly vehicle.

01:54:20.000 Well, it's eco-friendly for right here, not necessarily eco-friendly for where it's being pulled out of the ground.

01:54:26.000 Yeah, I saw an article, I think it was inflammatory more than real, but it pointed out that the ownership cost and the environmental impact of a Prius versus a Hummer We're equivalent.

01:54:37.000 Because the Prius has a 100,000 mile lifespan and there's all these really expensive mine battery components that go into it.

01:54:44.000 Where a Hummer has like a 300,000 mile lifespan and it's just an old-fashioned, you know, traditionally engineered car.

01:54:52.000 Right.

01:54:52.000 So there's a, you know...

01:54:54.000 That's sort of disingenuous though, because who the fuck drives a Hummer for 300,000 miles? 0.99

01:54:58.000 Totally. 0.98

01:54:59.000 And if you dig into the math, some of it is a little bit biased.

01:55:01.000 It doesn't seem to work out all that well.

01:55:02.000 But it's not simply that because you drive a car that is electric, that's not the only benefit.

01:55:08.000 You not buying gas is not the only benefit of having a hybrid. 0.99

01:55:12.000 It would be amazing, though, to see what would happen if you took every car in Los Angeles and replaced it with an electric car.

01:55:19.000 First of all, there would be...

01:55:20.000 People with dead batteries everywhere. 0.99

01:55:23.000 It'd be assholes that forgot to charge their car blocking the road off. 0.94

01:55:27.000 Because you don't have the access to charging. 1.00

01:55:29.000 It takes too long.

01:55:30.000 People are late for work. 0.98

01:55:31.000 They don't have that half an hour to get that 50% charge or whatever the fuck it takes.

01:55:35.000 But the sky would look different.

01:55:37.000 It might.

01:55:38.000 I mean, the air quality has improved pretty much every year since Reagan in L.A., right?

01:55:43.000 Like, Reagan was the peak of the horrible smog.

01:55:45.000 I have to tell folks that, you know, when I go back to visit the Northeast where I'm from, that, oh, yeah, we don't actually make jokes about L.A. smog.

01:55:51.000 It's like, well, it's actually not that bad.

01:55:53.000 The air quality is pretty darn good, especially where I live in, you know, West L.A. It's...

01:55:56.000 Were you getting the wave from the ocean air?

01:55:59.000 Yeah, it's pretty good.

01:56:01.000 The smog, you know, when I first moved to LA in 2005, I rode cross-country to motorcycle, and I was coming down to the San Fernando Valley, and there's this layer of black and orange sludge that I drove down into, you know?

01:56:12.000 Even that's happening less and less, I think.

01:56:15.000 So I think the sort of Southern California smog trope is really overblown these days.

01:56:21.000 Well, the smog laws that they put in place and the smog screens that you have to put your car through, they're pretty substantial.

01:56:28.000 They're doing a good job as far as that.

01:56:30.000 It makes it very difficult for you to take cars post-1975.

01:56:34.000 Pre-1975 they're exempt, but post-1975 cars, there's a lot of them that have a huge issue getting smogged, getting smog cleared.

01:56:42.000 Yeah, I have one that's post that, but it's a diesel, so it's exempt.

01:56:46.000 Oh, stinky. 0.81

01:56:47.000 No, it runs in vegetable oil. 0.99

01:56:48.000 Oh, you're one of those guys.

01:56:49.000 I have a couple of vehicles.

01:56:50.000 One's a veggie oil diesel, and one's a motorcycle.

01:56:53.000 I have a traditional gas car, too.

01:56:55.000 Now, when you say it runs on vegetable oil, where do you get your vegetable oil?

01:56:58.000 I haven't been driving it too much, so nowhere recently, but I have a friend from Inglewood who had a small company.

01:57:03.000 He delivers it.

01:57:05.000 He would deliver, you know, gallons of, you know, sort of reclaimed waste vegetable oil that he would clean.

01:57:10.000 Yeah, they'd kick it.

01:57:11.000 I had a buddy of mine who converted it.

01:57:12.000 He bought an old Mercedes, an old diesel Mercedes.

01:57:14.000 Those are the best ones to convert. 0.89

01:57:16.000 Yeah, and he converted it to kitchen oil, and he would get it from restaurants.

01:57:20.000 He would buy their kitchen oil.

01:57:21.000 Exactly.

01:57:22.000 Now, these days, I mean, 20 years ago you could do that.

01:57:24.000 These days, there's entire companies that have relationships with the Japanese-Chinese restaurants.

01:57:29.000 To do this and to resell it as a commercial company.

01:57:32.000 What kind of gas mileage do you get with one of those cars?

01:57:35.000 I mean, I was getting more than 30 miles a gallon with diesel still as an early 80s car.

01:57:41.000 And I think I lose one mile per gallon on veggie oil.

01:57:44.000 So instead of like 30, you'd get like 29 miles a gallon.

01:57:46.000 Yeah, or 31 to 30 or something.

01:57:48.000 And is it a large vehicle you're talking about?

01:57:50.000 Yeah, it's a 300 CD Mercedes, you know, 3,500 pound vehicle, big, heavy, two-door Mercedes, but still a big one.

01:57:56.000 That's not very heavy.

01:57:57.000 3,500?

01:57:58.000 Is that really heavy?

01:57:59.000 Compared to a modern car?

01:58:00.000 Sure.

01:58:01.000 Really?

01:58:01.000 Yeah.

01:58:02.000 What do you think a modern car weighs?

01:58:04.000 18 to 2500 would be my guess.

01:58:08.000 That's crazy.

01:58:09.000 No.

01:58:10.000 That's like a really, really light sports car.

01:58:13.000 Like a 1970 Porsche with everything stripped out, with no radio, no heat.

01:58:19.000 I don't know if that's true.

01:58:20.000 You can get down to 2,200 pounds.

01:58:22.000 I had an early 80s Oldsmobile Delta 88, a big old lanyard, and that thing was only 4,200 pounds.

01:58:28.000 That doesn't make sense either.

01:58:30.000 Are you sure?

01:58:31.000 Yeah.

01:58:31.000 Because I have a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, which is the lightest model they make.

01:58:38.000 It's 3,000 pounds.

01:58:39.000 Okay.

01:58:39.000 And that's very light.

01:58:41.000 It's extremely light.

01:58:42.000 I mean, it has carbon fiber seats.

01:58:45.000 They strip out all the sound deadening.

01:58:48.000 You sure it's like 2,000 pounds?

01:58:49.000 No, I'm 100% positive.

01:58:51.000 Okay.

01:58:51.000 I'm actually pretty deep in this world of lightning cars.

01:58:54.000 They drill into foot pedals to make the car lighter.

01:58:58.000 They drill into the handle of the door.

01:59:00.000 Have you ever seen a 1972 911?

01:59:04.000 Yeah.

01:59:04.000 It's a tiny car.

01:59:05.000 Oh, yeah.

01:59:06.000 Much smaller than a 911 of today.

01:59:09.000 If you're lucky, you get one of those down to 2,200 pounds. 0.85

01:59:12.000 If you're really a fucking psycho, you can get it down to like maybe 1,800, but you have to use carbon fiber fenders, fiberglass fenders, things along those lines. 0.96

01:59:22.000 You really compromise a lot of no comfort at all. 0.99

01:59:27.000 My Mercedes, I'm not sure what it weighs, but it's a heavy car.

01:59:32.000 It's not a light, low Well, it could be 3,500 pounds, but I mean like a BMW M3, for instance, which is a sporty car.

01:59:40.000 Yeah, I have a Mini Cooper, a modern one that's, you know, that's a small car.

01:59:44.000 Lightweight.

01:59:44.000 That's very lightweight, yeah.

01:59:45.000 But an M3, which is not a big car, is 3,900 pounds.

01:59:49.000 Wow, I'm surprised.

01:59:51.000 Yeah, most people are.

01:59:52.000 Most people think their cars are lighter than they really are.

01:59:55.000 For instance, like a Dodge Challenger.

01:59:58.000 You see those new Dodge Challengers?

01:59:59.000 You're looking at about 4,500 pounds.

02:00:02.000 Wow.

02:00:02.000 It's huge.

02:00:03.000 It doesn't look like it would be.

02:00:05.000 No, not at all.

02:00:06.000 You're dealing with V8 engines, metal frames.

02:00:09.000 Yeah.

02:00:10.000 Interesting.

02:00:11.000 All that jazz. 0.99

02:00:11.000 Yeah, people would be surprised at how heavier shit is. 0.99

02:00:14.000 Like, I have a Lexus XSUV, you know, that's like 6,000 pounds, that fucker. 1.00

02:00:19.000 Oh my god. 1.00

02:00:20.000 Big fat pig. 0.99

02:00:20.000 So maybe they're getting heavier again, too, then, as we bolt more things onto these vehicles? 0.99

02:00:25.000 Well, they're trying to make a lot more cars out of aluminum now, like Ford has done that.

02:00:30.000 Yeah, they've released a new truck with an aluminum frame, right?

02:00:32.000 Yes, they've done that with their F-150 and they've reduced it by more than 700 pounds.

02:00:36.000 Was it steel before, I assume?

02:00:38.000 Yeah, but it's amazing because the new aluminums that they're using are just as strong, if not stronger in some ways than steel, you know, and they're substantially lighter.

02:00:48.000 It's really incredible benefits as far as like gas mileage, all those things, yeah.

02:00:53.000 The way they construct them is a little bit different, but so far no detriment.

02:00:57.000 The new Range Rover is doing the same thing.

02:00:59.000 The new Range Rover is cut somewhere between six and seven hundred pounds from their cars as well.

02:01:04.000 Okay.

02:01:05.000 Interesting.

02:01:06.000 Well, you know, regardless of the weight of the MBZ, I'm still getting 30 miles to the gallon on diesel.

02:01:12.000 Well, diesel's way more efficient, right?

02:01:14.000 Yeah.

02:01:14.000 Well, it's compression.

02:01:16.000 It doesn't explode the fuel, it burns and releases the gases.

02:01:19.000 So it's not an explosive decompression, so it's much more efficient.

02:01:22.000 Neil Young has a ranch in Northern California where he grows his own plants, converts them into...

02:01:29.000 He's into biodiesel and powers his own vehicles with his own diesel creation.

02:01:34.000 Closed loop.

02:01:35.000 Isn't that amazing?

02:01:36.000 I love it.

02:01:36.000 He's a pretty amazing guy.

02:01:38.000 Oh, he's the best.

02:01:39.000 He's a fascinating dude.

02:01:40.000 He had some weird project he was doing, though, that everybody was like, alright, good luck with that.

02:01:44.000 He was trying to make some super expensive MP3 player that recreated the sound of vinyl, or as close to it as possible, and he had a GoFundMe or a Kickstarter or some shit like that, and people were like, what?

02:01:58.000 First of all, No one's giving Neil Young money.

02:02:00.000 It's not happening. 1.00

02:02:01.000 Dude, you're rich as fuck. 1.00

02:02:02.000 You got a thousand acre ranch in Northern California making your own diesel, alright? 1.00

02:02:07.000 Spend your money, dude.

02:02:08.000 Right, right, right.

02:02:08.000 So, like, that was problematic, but it was also, like, the shape of this thing, it was like a, you know those Tobolaroni, whatever it was, chocolate bars?

02:02:16.000 Mm-hmm.

02:02:16.000 That's what it looked like.

02:02:17.000 Like a pyramid shape, but long.

02:02:21.000 Pull it up, Jamie. 1.00

02:02:23.000 This is a fucking disaster. 0.99

02:02:24.000 I mean, it never went anywhere. 1.00

02:02:25.000 Nobody gave a shit about it.

02:02:26.000 But the idea behind it was to create a richer sound that sort of emulates the actual recording, the original recording of the mp3 tape. 0.71

02:02:36.000 Reproduces it without the lossy sort of compression.

02:02:38.000 Yeah, so to take this compressed sound and convert it into something that has more depth, more richness, too.

02:02:45.000 Sony has a new thing that they just announced, too.

02:02:48.000 Here it is.

02:02:48.000 The Pono.

02:02:49.000 Highest resolution.

02:02:50.000 See how it looks like a chocolate bar?

02:02:52.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

02:02:53.000 Weird fucking shape thing. 0.99

02:02:55.000 Is anybody buying those things, Jamie? 0.99

02:02:57.000 I don't know.

02:02:57.000 No.

02:02:58.000 Nobody's buying that fucking thing, Neil Young. 1.00

02:03:00.000 How dare you? 1.00

02:03:01.000 How dare you waste your time, you genius.

02:03:03.000 Looks kind of like a Nintendo game controller or something.

02:03:06.000 Yeah, it's a very odd-looking device.

02:03:09.000 And it kind of got trumped recently because Sony just released some new version of Walkman.

02:03:16.000 It's much thicker.

02:03:18.000 It's heavy.

02:03:19.000 It looks like a cell phone.

02:03:20.000 It looks almost like an iPhone.

02:03:21.000 But it's only for MP3s.

02:03:23.000 And this Sony version is just much, much...

02:03:27.000 It's much more powerful as far as its ability to...

02:03:31.000 much more powerful than your phone, rather.

02:03:32.000 I don't know if it's more powerful than Neil Young's creation.

02:03:35.000 We're getting away from things here.

02:03:38.000 Mindfulness.

02:03:39.000 I want to talk to you about mindfulness.

02:03:40.000 What do you mean by mindfulness?

02:03:42.000 When you say mindfulness, that's one of those terms that people go, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.

02:03:49.000 Practicing mindfulness, I love it as a thought, but I don't like all the baggage that's attached to it.

02:03:56.000 Yeah, and I think that most people who aren't doing it don't know what it is.

02:04:00.000 Right.

02:04:00.000 And I say, you know, developing meditation practices would be good for you, and I get the response.

02:04:04.000 Oh, I can never shut off my mind.

02:04:06.000 Well, that isn't the point of meditating.

02:04:09.000 It's like, you know, the point of going to the gym is not to be strong.

02:04:12.000 The point is to lift weights.

02:04:14.000 Like, there's an exercise.

02:04:15.000 Meditation is a practice you do, and you might get to a quieter mind, but the practice is not quieting your mind.

02:04:22.000 Right.

02:04:23.000 So to answer your question, mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment in a specific way on purpose.

02:04:33.000 Now that sounds simple.

02:04:34.000 It is.

02:04:35.000 But it's not really simple in practice, is it, for most folks?

02:04:39.000 It is.

02:04:40.000 It actually is.

02:04:41.000 Well, there's many different types of meditation, right?

02:04:42.000 The classic meditations, Vipassana, Samatha, Metta, these are all fairly similar in that you pick something, some anchor to hold your attention on.

02:04:52.000 And then simply you notice when you've drifted.

02:04:54.000 Since you have a mind, it will drift.

02:04:56.000 It'll get...

02:04:57.000 You know, fantasize, dream, remember, wish, plan.

02:05:00.000 And when you notice you're not holding that attention focus, that anchor, you release whatever it is you've gotten distracted by and bring your attention back to the anchor.

02:05:08.000 And that's the wrap of meditation.

02:05:11.000 That's it.

02:05:12.000 Oh, I'm supposed to be thinking about this sound or watching my breath or listening to one note or something in a music play.

02:05:19.000 Oh, I've gotten distracted.

02:05:21.000 Oh, let it go.

02:05:21.000 Not now.

02:05:22.000 Back to the focus.

02:05:23.000 Again and again and again and again.

02:05:25.000 And that's the entirety of most classic meditation is noticing when you've gotten distracted, you've left your anchor of your attention, put down the distraction, go back to the anchor.

02:05:35.000 So it's not a loss when you get distracted.

02:05:38.000 Not only is it not a loss, If you aren't getting distracted, you probably aren't alive.

02:05:43.000 You know, if you have a mind, it will get distracted.

02:05:46.000 That's what they do.

02:05:47.000 You know, your mind pays attention to your pains, your distractions, your wishes, your fantasies, your memories.

02:05:54.000 I mean, it's doing all of these things.

02:05:55.000 If you're able to sit down and shut your mind off, you probably don't have one.

02:05:59.000 So when people talk about the difficulty that they have in meditation, you think they probably get to that step.

02:06:06.000 And they go, God, I can't do it.

02:06:08.000 And they're basically saying, I'm not any good at it, instead of saying, well, being good at it or not is not the point.

02:06:14.000 The point is doing it.

02:06:16.000 You know, if you went to the gym and pumped iron and did a bunch of bench presses, were you good at it?

02:06:20.000 Well, maybe like a personal record or something, but going versus not going is what matters.

02:06:26.000 Not, you know, critiquing necessarily every little bit of what you do.

02:06:30.000 Some people are terrified, though, of silence.

02:06:33.000 Yeah.

02:06:33.000 Terrified of silence and just sitting alone doing nothing.

02:06:37.000 It's like, no! 1.00

02:06:38.000 They would rather climb a fucking mountain in their underwear than just sit alone in a room cross-legged and by themselves. 1.00

02:06:45.000 Just think, okay, I'm going to leave you here for three hours. 1.00

02:06:47.000 You can't talk.

02:06:48.000 I just want you to breathe in three hours.

02:06:50.000 The three hours thing is scary, too, right?

02:06:52.000 You tell people, here's how you should meditate, and they go to a meditation class, like a Buddhist center, and they have to sit there for an hour and a half.

02:06:58.000 That's a big ask, initially.

02:06:59.000 So I often tell folks...

02:07:01.000 20 minutes.

02:07:02.000 You know, even that can be a big ask for some folks.

02:07:05.000 So I say, you know, take your first five minutes and do a concentration practice.

02:07:09.000 Take a very narrow focus.

02:07:11.000 Like, watch the sensation of air crossing your upper lip.

02:07:14.000 Just pay attention to that tickle.

02:07:15.000 That's it.

02:07:16.000 Very narrow, tight, spatial focus.

02:07:19.000 And do that for five minutes.

02:07:21.000 By the end of that time, your mind's probably a little more stable.

02:07:24.000 And then do what I call an awareness or insight practice.

02:07:27.000 Watch more rhythmic things like your breath rise and fall or the sound of traffic going by the road or something.

02:07:32.000 And when you say your mind is more stable, how so?

02:07:35.000 Well, you have less random things popping up in your mind after doing some concentration practice.

02:07:41.000 It feels less busy, less of the monkey mind chatter.

02:07:43.000 It's still there, but it's a little less insistent when you've done some concentration practice.

02:07:49.000 I mean, concentrating on anything sort of redirects your attention resources and what you're thinking about.

02:07:55.000 And if what you're really thinking about is simply attending, focusing for its own sake...

02:08:02.000 I think?

02:08:19.000 These are all things that happen as a consequence of developing more resources.

02:08:23.000 So what you do on the cushion or wherever you happen to meditate translates to less reactivity, more sustained focus, better attention, better sleep, less anxiety, less anger.

02:08:35.000 But you aren't practicing all those things.

02:08:38.000 Those things come from having more stable attention.

02:08:42.000 More stable executive function.

02:08:43.000 I sort of feel like a lot of people operate on momentum and that they kind of, that momentum oftentimes is like nipping at their heels and they can never rest.

02:08:54.000 It's like the momentum of all their past actions and thoughts and the things they have to deal with in their life, their bills, their responsibilities, all that stuff is sort of pushing you.

02:09:05.000 Sure.

02:09:06.000 And when they go to bed, they're like, My head is still spinning.

02:09:09.000 I can't stop thinking.

02:09:10.000 I got a key.

02:09:11.000 My mind is rushing.

02:09:12.000 It's going to shut their mind off and all this background noise starts to rise to the surface.

02:09:15.000 Sure, yeah.

02:09:16.000 A meditation is something that can quiet that.

02:09:18.000 Absolutely.

02:09:19.000 It will help you choose how you react.

02:09:22.000 I mean, the phrase I use is intention versus momentum.

02:09:25.000 You learn to choose and to act versus react and to act from a place of choice and control instead of always reeling based on your environment.

02:09:35.000 Do you use sensory deprivation tanks?

02:09:37.000 I have.

02:09:38.000 I have not.

02:09:39.000 It might be fun to do, you know, considering I have a sort of ecstatic, shamanic history.

02:09:42.000 You have?

02:09:42.000 You have not?

02:09:42.000 I have not.

02:09:43.000 I have not used float tanks, no.

02:09:45.000 I've never done a float tank.

02:09:46.000 That's crazy.

02:09:47.000 I know, right?

02:09:48.000 I've never ended up in one, really.

02:09:51.000 I've been interested in it, but it never quite happened.

02:09:52.000 How does a guy like you not get into that?

02:09:54.000 That seems really bizarre to me.

02:09:55.000 You can't try everything.

02:09:56.000 I mean, there's all kinds of things that I've gotten into. 1.00

02:09:59.000 Yeah, but that's the motherfucker. 0.99

02:10:00.000 I can't believe you haven't tried that. 1.00

02:10:02.000 I've had one in my basement for the past 15 years.

02:10:04.000 Uh-huh.

02:10:05.000 13?

02:10:06.000 12?

02:10:06.000 12 years.

02:10:06.000 And is it a body temperature, Epsom salts kind of thing?

02:10:09.000 Yeah.

02:10:10.000 Well, I started doing it in the early 2000s.

02:10:15.000 I went to a place and tried it out for the first time and I was hooked.

02:10:18.000 I, you know, read about it, seen the Altered States movie, got excited about it, read John Lilly's book, The Deep Self, and if you've never done it, it's meditation times a hundred.

02:10:27.000 Sure.

02:10:28.000 Because you don't feel your body.

02:10:29.000 You, like, literally detach from your body.

02:10:31.000 Right, right.

02:10:31.000 Once you become relaxed enough to Do the same meditation practices.

02:10:37.000 I concentrate on my breath.

02:10:40.000 That's what I do.

02:10:41.000 In with the good, out with the bad.

02:10:42.000 And I do it over a long period of time.

02:10:45.000 I like to do a one minute breath.

02:10:48.000 I like to do one minute in and one minute out because it's very difficult and requires a lot of discipline.

02:10:53.000 It requires a lot of discipline not to just exhale all your air right away.

02:10:57.000 But in doing so, that's like the base.

02:11:01.000 That's how I build up my...

02:11:02.000 And then anything after that is easy.

02:11:04.000 And the focus on the breath takes away from freaking out about the fact that you're floating around this tank.

02:11:13.000 And you don't feel your body.

02:11:14.000 And the absence of sensory perception, you're really not getting anything in there.

02:11:18.000 You're getting a little bit of movement.

02:11:19.000 Sometimes your body will develop like itches.

02:11:22.000 God, I've got to itch my face. 0.99

02:11:23.000 And it's really, you don't, you didn't get bit by a fucking mosquito. 0.99

02:11:26.000 You're just freaking out. 0.99

02:11:28.000 It's random sensory.

02:11:29.000 Your brain's freaking out because it's not getting any input.

02:11:32.000 So it starts creating problems.

02:11:34.000 There's lots of ways you can sort of trick the brain into producing input.

02:11:38.000 Like that, even without climbing into a float tank, the simplest hack for that is probably something called Gansfeld classes.

02:11:46.000 Take a ping pong, cut it in half, trim the edges so they aren't sharp, and essentially make a pair of goggles where you're covering each eye with the ping pong half, ping pong ball, and then sit and look through the white balls at a white wall that you're projecting light onto,

02:12:04.000 so there's some indirect light.

02:12:06.000 Keep your eyes open and stare at the insides of these curved spaces.

02:12:09.000 You can't resolve distance.

02:12:11.000 You can't resolve a flat surface.

02:12:12.000 And after a few minutes, you start hallucinating.

02:12:15.000 Interesting.

02:12:16.000 It's the same thing you experience.

02:12:17.000 I'm sure you have some hallucinations when you're visions when you're deep in your float tank, too, right?

02:12:22.000 Yeah, you certainly do.

02:12:23.000 The same exact thing gets triggered within moments sometimes for some people, a few minutes anyways, with Gonsfeld.

02:12:28.000 Because the eyes are being open and trying to look but not seeing any surface.

02:12:31.000 It's a very similar phenomenon, I bet, to your float tank.

02:12:34.000 Yeah, I bet it is.

02:12:35.000 The difference being that in the flow tank, one of the benefits of it is the fact that in the absence of sensory input, it seems like your brain has way more resources.

02:12:45.000 So it seems like problems seem to be easier to fix.

02:12:47.000 Yep, yep.

02:12:48.000 Solutions seem to be more apparent.

02:12:50.000 You just have a better understanding of things.

02:12:53.000 Yeah, you know, I think why I haven't gotten into float tanks is because I have other, you know, ecstatic, ecstatic meaning taking you out of ordinary reality.

02:13:01.000 I have other techniques that work really well for me and that I tend to use, you know, like rhythmic movement until your mind, you know, shifts.

02:13:09.000 And then for technology-assisted stuff, I mean, I run a neurofeedback center.

02:13:12.000 I can put you in a state in half an hour, you know, with wires on your head.

02:13:18.000 And so if I want to dial in a specific state, I will dial in a specific state for myself.

02:13:23.000 This is a massive benefit to that tank.

02:13:25.000 I would really love you to experience it and then hear what your thoughts on it are.

02:13:29.000 Sure.

02:13:29.000 I'll send you down to the float lab in Venice.

02:13:32.000 You're in the west side.

02:13:32.000 Yeah, I live in Culver City.

02:13:33.000 Yeah, the float lab is the spot.

02:13:35.000 I mean, this guy Crash who's created these tanks has got the most advanced tanks in the world.

02:13:39.000 I have a friend of a friend, actually.

02:13:41.000 I've heard of him, so...

02:13:42.000 Yeah, he's a master when it comes to that.

02:13:44.000 He's really... 0.69

02:13:45.000 When the entire float world was building these flimsy plastic sort of shitty things...

02:13:51.000 I remember those things, yeah.

02:13:52.000 Yeah, he came up with this giant steel-walled structure that looks like a meat locker.

02:13:57.000 Okay.

02:13:57.000 His are far more insulated.

02:14:00.000 They retain heat better.

02:14:01.000 The linings are far thicker.

02:14:03.000 He uses the same linings that they use when they make koi ponds.

02:14:06.000 Oh, nice.

02:14:06.000 Like everything he built to the tenth degree.

02:14:09.000 Yeah, I'm interested in checking it out.

02:14:11.000 Might be some way we could do underwater.

02:14:13.000 Your head's not immersed, is it?

02:14:14.000 No, but it's under half water.

02:14:16.000 Your body's floating, right?

02:14:17.000 So if you're lying on your back...

02:14:19.000 I would love to do an EEG, but you can't do EEG underwater, so...

02:14:23.000 Or wet electrodes, so...

02:14:24.000 Couldn't you develop some electrodes?

02:14:28.000 Where are you attaching the electrodes?

02:14:29.000 Scalp.

02:14:30.000 Scalp?

02:14:30.000 All over the scalp?

02:14:31.000 Yeah.

02:14:32.000 Could you keep it to the frontal area?

02:14:37.000 The thing with the EEG is, to compare your results to any existing literature, you have to record the same spots or the same distribution of spots.

02:14:45.000 Would there be a way to do it inside some sort of a diver's cap?

02:14:48.000 There might be, yeah, exactly.

02:14:49.000 There are a few ways that this might be accomplished, because I've seen EEGs done on actual divers, like on scuba divers.

02:14:56.000 So there probably are ways of, like, electrodes that can get wet, that you can sort of seal against the scalp with colloidal, you know, gels and things.

02:15:03.000 But I would love to see what happens to brains under that, you know, altered state.

02:15:07.000 Yeah, I would love to see you try it.

02:15:09.000 I'd love to see you do some tests on it.

02:15:11.000 Crash is also developing some sort of a weird video component to his tanks where he has engineered these screens to have the lowest amount of light emission that you can possibly Have while still seeing the image so that these images because you're in complete silence complete darkness I mean you you don't there's no light in there at all so having this incredibly minimal amount of light on these screens you can see the the images but you don't see the television I don't see the screen itself and

02:15:41.000 he believes in the absence of sensory input your your brain having more resources you can take in information better so you can learn quicker I mean, I think it's probably very likely.

02:15:52.000 Yeah, less distraction.

02:15:54.000 And also, you can do things if you did things from first-person perspective.

02:15:58.000 If you had videos of people learning things from first-person perspective, it could sync up in your mind.

02:16:04.000 Interesting.

02:16:04.000 Yeah.

02:16:05.000 Interesting.

02:16:06.000 It must happen to mirror neurons in some way, then.

02:16:08.000 Well, it's just theoretical at this point.

02:16:09.000 I don't think he's actually achieved it.

02:16:11.000 I mean, I know he's got the tank set up right now with this video.

02:16:16.000 Maybe you could take a look at it and see what you think.

02:16:18.000 Yeah, it sounds like we need to do it as a biofeedback component to it where what you're seeing is contingent on your brain moving in specific directions.

02:16:24.000 Mmm, yeah.

02:16:25.000 And then you actually could, I mean, if the float tank's putting you into this receptive state and deep state quickly, and it sounds like it is, with biofeedback, you could probably, you know, like, incredibly powerfully just move people across state shifts.

02:16:38.000 Well, it's the only atmosphere that I know of, the only environment, where your body is literally untethered from your mind.

02:16:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:16:45.000 You don't feel anything.

02:16:47.000 It feels like you're flying.

02:16:49.000 Interesting.

02:16:49.000 Like you're floating through the universe.

02:16:50.000 And there's a weird...

02:16:52.000 The illusion of motion that you get when you're in that thing.

02:16:56.000 When you're floating for a while, you feel like you're flying.

02:16:59.000 Like you feel like you're flying forward.

02:17:01.000 Interesting.

02:17:01.000 Like you're moving.

02:17:02.000 There's a feeling of movement.

02:17:04.000 Can you feel gravity?

02:17:05.000 I mean, are you aware of it?

02:17:06.000 No.

02:17:06.000 You're totally floating.

02:17:08.000 Because of the fact that there's a thousand pounds of salt in this water, and the water being 93.5 degrees when you float, or 94. Some people, you're floating in this, you're not feeling anything.

02:17:18.000 The water becomes your air.

02:17:20.000 The air becomes your skin.

02:17:22.000 It's all one thing, and you're just no more input, and you just...

02:17:25.000 Cool.

02:17:26.000 Yeah.

02:17:26.000 Total darkness.

02:17:27.000 I'd love to hear more about... 0.99

02:17:29.000 I just don't understand how you haven't fucked with that yet. 0.99

02:17:30.000 It seems like something right up your alley. 0.98

02:17:33.000 It does, actually.

02:17:34.000 It's probably just a function of I'm one guy.

02:17:37.000 Right.

02:17:38.000 There's too many things going on.

02:17:39.000 I mean, I've lived a lot of different lives, a lot of different careers. 0.98

02:17:42.000 Sounds like it, you crazy shaman, wacky tattooed man. 0.98

02:17:45.000 That's right. 0.98

02:17:45.000 I mean, I started grad school at age 35. Did you really? 0.98

02:17:48.000 You know, I had other careers before that.

02:17:50.000 Like, what other careers?

02:17:51.000 Oh, let's see.

02:17:53.000 I worked inpatient psychiatric crisis for many years.

02:17:56.000 That must have been fun.

02:17:58.000 Yeah, that was kind of crazy.

02:18:00.000 The most violent hospital in the state of Massachusetts.

02:18:02.000 Oh, Christ.

02:18:03.000 We were doing 5, 10, 15 restraints a shift when I first got there.

02:18:07.000 Wow.

02:18:07.000 And after a year, I took over training people how to do restraints.

02:18:10.000 That's why you started lifting weights?

02:18:12.000 No, I was actually really into Aikido back then.

02:18:14.000 Oh, okay.

02:18:15.000 And that's about safe, management of safe energy, or not getting hurt when people are throwing punches, basically.

02:18:21.000 And I took over training the restraint team, and after another year, we were down to like one a month.

02:18:26.000 So some of it was the expectations we were setting on the patients in the hospital, you know?

02:18:30.000 The conflict was there.

02:18:31.000 Okay.

02:18:31.000 Right, like oftentimes people discuss that when they talk about police violence, that much of the violence that they get involved in could be mitigated if they had a better way of communicating with people.

02:18:42.000 Sure, absolutely.

02:18:43.000 So I did that.

02:18:45.000 My first jobs were working on farms in a little farming town in the northeast, Pickberry's.

02:18:52.000 I was a baker and caterer for a few years.

02:18:55.000 I worked in residential homes with retarded and multiply disabled adults. 1.00

02:19:01.000 Worked in high tech for several years.

02:19:03.000 Worked in a middleware database company for a few years.

02:19:06.000 Worked for a neurofeedback guy.

02:19:08.000 Worked for an MRI imaging center doing a prediction of depression relapse based on brain changes when people withdrew their meds.

02:19:16.000 So really a pretty broad high tech, human services, and then now I'm sort of combining the two.

02:19:22.000 How much work do you do with people that have encountered traumatic brain injuries?

02:19:27.000 More than I thought I would be.

02:19:30.000 You know, neurofeedback is largely tuning circuits that exist.

02:19:35.000 And TBIs, traumatic head injuries, traumatic brain injuries, are often different architecture.

02:19:40.000 The brain has been physically traumatized.

02:19:43.000 Some TBI people, I can make really quick changes. 0.93

02:19:46.000 I have one client right now.

02:19:47.000 She came to see me.

02:19:48.000 She was having some tremors on opposite side from the head injury.

02:19:52.000 She was having a lot of impulsivity, which is a pretty standard thing when you're, you know, head injured.

02:19:56.000 Yeah, impulsivity is a weird one, isn't it?

02:19:58.000 Yeah, it's pretty dramatic often for head injuries.

02:20:01.000 And, you know, She's now finishing her 30 sessions.

02:20:05.000 She's, you know, gone off all of her meds.

02:20:07.000 She's no longer on anti-convulsant.

02:20:09.000 She's not on any anti-impulsivity meds and no slower sleep meds.

02:20:13.000 So her brain changed very, very quickly and sort of in the direction I was hoping it would, and it sort of just did what I asked it to.

02:20:20.000 I had a client last year who came to see me, and I just couldn't get his brain moving.

02:20:24.000 There was just too much going on.

02:20:27.000 What do you mean by couldn't get his brain moved?

02:20:29.000 I couldn't get his frequencies to train up or down enough.

02:20:33.000 I couldn't get his symptoms to shift.

02:20:35.000 He got worn out at noon every day, and he was really impulsive, and all the standard TBI stuff.

02:20:42.000 So I think I've worked in the past decade with about seven or eight TBI people, and three of them were dramatic responders, and a couple were tough movers.

02:20:53.000 So this guy, that you couldn't get him to move, what did you want to...

02:20:57.000 You know, he ended up going overseas to teach English.

02:21:00.000 He had an end to the time that I had him because he was going to the next job, which was overseas.

02:21:06.000 So I only had him for like six or eight weeks or something.

02:21:08.000 So had I had him, I would have said, look, let me stop billing you, which is what I do when I don't make results.

02:21:14.000 It doesn't happen very often.

02:21:15.000 But I said, let me stop billing you and then just keep training and just keep trying different things until I find something that works for your specific brain.

02:21:21.000 So you take some of the pressure off them by not making up financial?

02:21:24.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:21:25.000 So I sign people up for like a 30-session package, which costs some money, you know, costs a little over $4K. And 90% or more of people, their brains do exactly what I ask, and they're really happy with the results.

02:21:36.000 Does insurance cover that?

02:21:38.000 Sometimes.

02:21:39.000 Depends.

02:21:41.000 Alternatives, which is where I do neurofeedback, is not a provider for any insurance.

02:21:45.000 So if you've got a PPO or something, we can often submit against it for partial reimbursements or things.

02:21:50.000 The addiction side of alternatives, we actually are getting pretty good coverage these days.

02:21:54.000 Dr. Jaffe and Kern just got the center certified as an outpatient partial hospitalization day program.

02:22:01.000 That's the non-12-step treatment program we have there.

02:22:04.000 So this gentleman that you weren't getting results with, what was his issue?

02:22:07.000 He had some sort of a concussion, massive...

02:22:10.000 Yeah, a car accident.

02:22:11.000 Yeah, and he went coma for many weeks, lost a big chunk of his brain in the front, and so he had massive impulsivity because the frontal lobe, again, is your inhibitor.

02:22:20.000 So, like, as far as drinking, sexual things, speeding?

02:22:24.000 It was sort of like acquired ADHD. He sort of acquired it in his mid-40s because of his head injury, where he had no self-control, said whatever, you know, inappropriate, you know, and then he would get worn out by 1 o'clock every day, noon, 1 o'clock, he was just done, which is really common in TBI. Just not having any mental stamina.

02:22:43.000 And so for him, it was, let's get your sleep better, because he wasn't sleeping well.

02:22:46.000 Let's make your daytime energy better, and let's get you less impulsive with the goals.

02:22:50.000 And those things all moved, but they moved, you know, a fraction of what I really wanted them to move.

02:22:57.000 And most people, the reason why it was so frustrating, because for most people, neurofeedback is sort of, you know, it's my silver bullet.

02:23:03.000 I can do lots of things with it.

02:23:05.000 I expect that nine or more than nine out of ten people will just, you know, their brains will do what I ask.

02:23:12.000 Even if they're dramatically impaired, you know, profoundly self-stimming autistics, people with major PTSD or major alcoholism.

02:23:19.000 A really common presentation these days is people that have been on sleeping meds for decades and they aren't working and they can't sleep.

02:23:27.000 But they're still on massive amounts of sleeping meds.

02:23:30.000 Ambient type things?

02:23:31.000 Yeah, all kinds of things.

02:23:32.000 What are your thoughts on those?

02:23:35.000 The short answer is there's no such thing as a sleeping med.

02:23:38.000 None of these sleep drugs make you sleep.

02:23:41.000 They all are hypnotics.

02:23:43.000 They put you in a trance-like state.

02:23:45.000 They sedate you into a hypnosis or hypnotic state.

02:23:48.000 And then if you're tired and the normal sleep reflex is there, it takes over and you fall asleep.

02:23:53.000 But it didn't put you in a sleep state.

02:23:55.000 It put you in a hypnotic state, which is very different than a sleep state.

02:23:59.000 I have some friends that have real problems with those things.

02:24:01.000 They have to take them all the time.

02:24:02.000 Or they do take them all the time.

02:24:03.000 They think they have to take them all the time.

02:24:05.000 And they don't work after taking them for a while.

02:24:06.000 So people come to see me and say, I've been taking sleep drugs for, you know, 10, 20 years.

02:24:11.000 And I haven't slept well in 10 years.

02:24:13.000 And so I start training up their frequencies that cause deeper sleep at night, more relaxation.

02:24:20.000 Sleep architecture is maintained by specific frequencies in the brain, sleep spindles.

02:24:24.000 So I'll train those up, make them stronger, so they're able to fall asleep more easily, stay asleep more easily, wake up more refreshed.

02:24:30.000 So I have a friend, and he takes two a day. 0.99

02:24:33.000 He takes two of those fucking Ambien things at night. 1.00

02:24:35.000 He scares the shit out of me. 1.00

02:24:37.000 Everyone's always worried he's not going to wake up one day. 0.89

02:24:40.000 What would you do to that guy?

02:24:41.000 I would say, you know, how comfortable are you, you know, reducing your ambient?

02:24:46.000 And usually the answer is, I can't.

02:24:48.000 So, okay, let's move on. 0.90

02:24:50.000 Okay, let's forget him, because he's a junkie.

02:24:52.000 Let's go, I mean, ambient junkie. 1.00

02:24:54.000 He's probably a junkie for some other shit, too. 0.99

02:24:57.000 Let's go with someone who just has a problem sleeping, doesn't take anything. 1.00

02:25:00.000 It takes a little Tylenol PM or something.

02:25:02.000 I would just start training them.

02:25:03.000 I mean, doing a brain map and brain assessment.

02:25:05.000 Figure out which patterns are driving their sleep issues.

02:25:09.000 And usually it's some of the patterns involving too much beta activity toward the middle and back of the head.

02:25:14.000 Sometimes it's the same patterns that are producing some anxiety formations.

02:25:18.000 And so I'll find these patterns.

02:25:20.000 And then I'll just start training, you know, decreased amounts of beta, increased amounts of alpha or theta, bringing those slower brain waves up.

02:25:27.000 Maybe train up the sleep spindles, which is what keeps you deeply asleep.

02:25:30.000 Once you fall asleep, it prevents you from kind of being woken by all the outside stimuli.

02:25:35.000 And what would you train this with?

02:25:36.000 With biofeedback, you know, measure, because you're making all brain waves all the time.

02:25:39.000 This is something people often don't know.

02:25:41.000 Right now, Joe, you're making delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, and other brain waves we haven't named.

02:25:45.000 You're making all of them all the time.

02:25:47.000 Other ones we haven't named, we haven't identified them either?

02:25:49.000 We've identified them, but we haven't really named them.

02:25:51.000 You know, the...

02:25:53.000 In order of discovery, alpha was the first one.

02:25:58.000 Alpha is the first Greek letter.

02:26:00.000 But alpha is about 10 hertz, 10 cycles per second.

02:26:02.000 And there's at least two or three waves slower than alpha that we discovered later.

02:26:06.000 So in order of going from slow to fast, it's delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma.

02:26:12.000 And gamma traditionally stops at 40 hertz, 40 cycles per second.

02:26:16.000 But brain waves go up to about 200 or even 300 cycles per second.

02:26:20.000 Wow.

02:26:20.000 But we haven't given those functional bands, different names beyond gamma.

02:26:25.000 Is there any biodiversity?

02:26:28.000 Does everybody have the same sort of frequencies?

02:26:31.000 Everyone has the same functional frequencies.

02:26:32.000 But you might have more alpha.

02:26:35.000 I think?

02:26:53.000 I mean, very, very different, typically.

02:26:54.000 And so I'll take that baseline data and compare it to a normative database with thousands of brains in it and get heat maps, picture maps, out of that that tell me how different you are than the population, statistically.

02:27:07.000 How much of that varies based on intention, based on...

02:27:11.000 Not much at all.

02:27:12.000 A QEEG, or brain map, is stable year after year after year after year, barring maturation, medication, or head injury.

02:27:19.000 What about sleep?

02:27:20.000 If somebody's really sleep-deprived, there are some differences in the QEEG. But if there are a little bit vagaries in sleep here and there don't actually affect the sleep, it's much more important, like caffeine status and psychostimulant status.

02:27:34.000 Those things are a much bigger deal when I'm doing brain recordings than how rested you are.

02:27:38.000 I mean, folks come in having not slept, it's not a very valid reading.

02:27:40.000 Or having been, you know, drunk the night before, it's not a valid reading.

02:27:43.000 But if someone's just like, ah, I've got seven hours, not nine hours, ah, no problem.

02:27:48.000 You know, and then statistically we say, okay, you know, let's say your brain has X amount of alpha with your eyes open.

02:27:55.000 If it's too much, that means you're spacey.

02:27:57.000 Too much theta means you're impulsive.

02:27:58.000 Too much beta in the back might mean you're anxious.

02:28:03.000 You know, different asymmetries in the front may be depressed.

02:28:06.000 And so I'll see five to ten of these big patterns.

02:28:10.000 I draw some arbitrary line in the sand, you know, more than one and a half standard deviations I consider clinically relevant or problematic, maybe.

02:28:17.000 And then we sit and talk about all these patterns that rise to that, you know, outlier level and try to figure out, well, you know, this one can mean this.

02:28:25.000 Is that true for you?

02:28:26.000 Oh, it is.

02:28:26.000 Okay, great.

02:28:27.000 Let's believe that one.

02:28:28.000 This one can mean this.

02:28:29.000 This one can mean this.

02:28:30.000 Oh, this one isn't true?

02:28:31.000 Okay, that's a normal variant for you.

02:28:32.000 Let's move on.

02:28:33.000 So these are not diagnostic tests.

02:28:35.000 They're more sort of prognostic, where I'm guessing about what might be true.

02:28:38.000 But the pattern, the brain mapping patterns, don't fit into nice diagnostic boundaries.

02:28:43.000 So I might see a really dramatic ADHD pattern, and the person reports somewhat mild attention problems.

02:28:50.000 But, you know, if there's a dramatic outlier, three, four standard deviations out of range, chances are very good that thing is causing you some trouble in some way. 0.98

02:29:01.000 I would like to do this, but I'm worried that I might find out I'm way more fucked up than I think I am. 0.98

02:29:05.000 Well, everyone's a little bit fucked up, you know? 0.99

02:29:07.000 I mean, all brains are different. 1.00

02:29:08.000 What about the Dalai Lama? 1.00

02:29:10.000 He's pretty fucked up, too. 1.00

02:29:11.000 He's got that stupid robe on. 1.00

02:29:13.000 Didn't he have a major health crisis recently? 1.00

02:29:15.000 I don't know.

02:29:15.000 I think he did, yeah.

02:29:16.000 I just say that.

02:29:17.000 I have a friend who... 1.00

02:29:18.000 Had some experience with him and said he's kind of full of shit. 1.00

02:29:21.000 I have a friend who grew up with him, actually. 1.00

02:29:24.000 They grew up together in a monastery.

02:29:26.000 That's hilarious.

02:29:27.000 He doesn't say much about him, but he's also a Tibetan guy, so he's pretty chill.

02:29:32.000 It's a weird way to live your life.

02:29:36.000 As the reincarnation of a godhead or a spiritual leader?

02:29:40.000 Yeah, I would say so.

02:29:41.000 I think Steven Seagal is one of those, too, according to him.

02:29:43.000 Didn't he gain some sort of reincarnation status?

02:29:47.000 Did he?

02:29:47.000 As an Aikido master, I'm sure.

02:29:49.000 I actually initially was trained by the guy that was his first teacher.

02:29:53.000 Really?

02:29:55.000 That teacher I do not like teaches through pain and intimidation.

02:29:58.000 Really?

02:29:59.000 I'm not terribly impressed with Seagal's Aikido.

02:30:02.000 How dare you?

02:30:03.000 I know. 1.00

02:30:04.000 He's going to come kick my ass now. 0.99

02:30:07.000 I'm an Aikido person, and I haven't done it in a few years, but I'm not that impressed with Seagal's lineage or his on-screen Aikido. 0.99

02:30:15.000 Wow.

02:30:16.000 How rude.

02:30:16.000 I know.

02:30:17.000 I know. 1.00

02:30:17.000 I'm such a jerk. 1.00

02:30:18.000 I can't even believe you're saying this. 1.00

02:30:20.000 Well, I don't understand Aikido that much, so I'm sure you would know more than me.

02:30:24.000 To me, it looks cool flipping people around.

02:30:26.000 Sure, yeah.

02:30:26.000 It looks like you have to cooperate.

02:30:28.000 It doesn't look like it would work.

02:30:30.000 I think if you shot a double on him and got a good grip on your hands, he's going for a ride.

02:30:37.000 Yeah, it's, you know, most of Aikido is learning to recognize force coming at you and not being in the way of it.

02:30:43.000 Right. 0.98

02:30:44.000 You just creep up on them slow and punch them in the face. 0.98

02:30:46.000 As long as you're not, like, running at them, like, with your hand over your head like this, you're gonna be okay. 0.97

02:30:52.000 Right, exactly.

02:30:52.000 Although, you know, you can, you know, the angle of the hips and the eyes, I mean, you can sort of...

02:30:56.000 A lot of Aikido, like a lot of martial arts, is very heavy in the footwork.

02:31:01.000 So you step to one side and pivot around, and by the time they've swung their fist, they're overbalanced now, and you can just knock them over.

02:31:07.000 Yeah, but you take an NCAA D1 wrestler.

02:31:11.000 Good luck.

02:31:13.000 Put one of those guys against, you know, Osensei or some of the people, the pinnacle of Akito, and I'd love to see that.

02:31:18.000 I would too.

02:31:18.000 Against me?

02:31:19.000 Kick my ass. 1.00

02:31:20.000 Yeah, but against the best guy. 1.00

02:31:22.000 You bring your best guy. 0.99

02:31:23.000 I don't give a fuck. 0.99

02:31:25.000 There actually were, in the 70s, several videotaped multi-martial art competitions, expositions, between Osensei, the founder, and several other principles of other martial arts. 0.98

02:31:37.000 Can you watch that online?

02:31:38.000 You can, yeah.

02:31:38.000 Really?

02:31:39.000 I would like to watch that.

02:31:40.000 How do you say this guy's name?

02:31:42.000 O-sensei.

02:31:43.000 O-sensei.

02:31:45.000 He has a name that I don't remember, but he's known as O-sensei in Aikido.

02:31:48.000 What do you recommend?

02:31:49.000 What video?

02:31:50.000 Is there one specific one that I could look at?

02:31:52.000 There's an exposition video from the 70s that's sort of the big one that shows him knocking people over without touching them and things.

02:32:00.000 You know, it's a little crazy.

02:32:01.000 A little?

02:32:02.000 Yeah.

02:32:02.000 But, like, not his friends, like, you know, the karate master from Japan getting knocked over and things.

02:32:07.000 Without him touching them.

02:32:08.000 Yeah.

02:32:09.000 I mean, there's a few of that.

02:32:09.000 How do you think that worked?

02:32:11.000 Knowing what you know about the mind.

02:32:13.000 Probably because he, you know, gave us a little cue that made them prepare to move in one way and then switched it and, you know, essentially using their mind against them, overbalancing them, you know?

02:32:23.000 You believe that?

02:32:24.000 Yeah.

02:32:25.000 Really?

02:32:25.000 You think that a guy can knock a guy over with his mind just by giving him subtle cues?

02:32:29.000 Well, no.

02:32:29.000 Yeah, like shifting your weight to the person attacking you shifts their weight and then moving out of the way as the person falls over.

02:32:36.000 That doesn't work.

02:32:37.000 That is only going to work on someone who doesn't know how to fight.

02:32:40.000 100%.

02:32:40.000 Well, you should look at some of these videos.

02:32:42.000 I would love to look at them right now with you.

02:32:44.000 Okay.

02:32:44.000 Let's see if you can pull that up.

02:32:46.000 I have a vast, extensive experience in watching bullshit, especially martial arts bullshit, and a lot of it comes from these traditional martial artists that claim to be able to anticipate and use people's Well, 0.98

02:33:02.000 there's very little claims being made by Osensei. 0.98

02:33:04.000 In fact, and he doesn't claim that he has some ancient lineage that, you know, came down from the mountain.

02:33:08.000 He created it from Tai Chi and horses and sword forms and everything else.

02:33:12.000 It's a modern art, not an ancient art.

02:33:14.000 Well, there's some martial arts that are very, the ancient martial arts that are very effective in actual hand-to-hand competition.

02:33:21.000 Judo, for instance.

02:33:22.000 Very effective.

02:33:23.000 Jiu-jitsu, of course, a derivative of...

02:33:25.000 And Akito's not really a hard martial art.

02:33:27.000 Like a jiu-jitsu.

02:33:28.000 I mean, Akito is a jiu-jitsu.

02:33:31.000 It's in that category.

02:33:32.000 But it's softer than Judo or Kung Fu.

02:33:35.000 Redistribution of energy martial art.

02:33:37.000 You take someone's energy, use it against them.

02:33:38.000 The issue is...

02:33:39.000 Is this the gentleman?

02:33:40.000 That's a sensei, yeah.

02:33:41.000 So this is someone coming at him?

02:33:44.000 Okay, this is terrible. 0.99

02:33:45.000 Show me something good because this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. 0.98

02:33:48.000 That guy's running into him. 1.00

02:33:50.000 See, this is the thing with all these goddamn demonstrations. 0.99

02:33:52.000 That guy's willingly cooperating. 1.00

02:33:54.000 Look at that.

02:33:56.000 He's practicing the technique.

02:33:57.000 In practicing the technique, you either cooperate or your arm breaks.

02:34:00.000 Well, this isn't even cooperating.

02:34:01.000 This guy's throwing himself on the ground. 0.97

02:34:03.000 This is silly. 0.89

02:34:05.000 This guy's running towards him and letting this guy clothesline him. 0.78

02:34:08.000 Come on, that doesn't ever happen.

02:34:10.000 The guy's just standing there.

02:34:12.000 This would never work against a trained fighter.

02:34:15.000 Never.

02:34:15.000 Not in a million years.

02:34:17.000 You get an NCAA Division I wrestler, he's gonna shoot on this guy, and this guy's gonna be on his head in seconds.

02:34:25.000 It just doesn't work.

02:34:27.000 This is what I'm looking at.

02:34:29.000 I'm looking at nonsense.

02:34:30.000 Well, you're looking at people practicing techniques, not a multi...

02:34:33.000 Yeah, let's see the multi.

02:34:34.000 What should he look for?

02:34:36.000 Exposition, I think.

02:34:37.000 I think it was in Japan.

02:34:39.000 Exhibition or exposition?

02:34:41.000 I think it was exhibition.

02:34:42.000 Exhibition, not exposition.

02:34:44.000 Yeah.

02:34:46.000 Exhibition.

02:34:48.000 Tell me one of those looks good.

02:34:52.000 And then I think if you put either judo or karate and you'll also find it, because it was a multi-martial art meeting in the 70s.

02:34:58.000 There's a lot of fuckery when it comes to martial arts and a lot of people that get trapped into all this fuckery and I've met a lot of people that are very intelligent people that swear that their sensei is the guy that has the answers to all this jazz and I just have I've seen too much I know how much of it is based on predetermined ideas that you have about this person's abilities I make no claims about my senseis,

02:35:26.000 the people I've learned from being from on high. 0.86

02:35:29.000 The first day I rode a motorcycle, I crashed it when flying through the air and was standing on my feet watching the bike spin away.

02:35:38.000 Because I was doing a keto so much.

02:35:39.000 Oh, I'm sure.

02:35:40.000 Well, that's balance.

02:35:42.000 There's a lot of videos of guys getting...

02:35:44.000 There's a great video of a guy getting rear-ended while he's on a bike.

02:35:47.000 He flips through the air and lands on his feet.

02:35:49.000 And it just...

02:35:50.000 Yeah, I was thrown.

02:35:50.000 I landed on my shoulder on a street on tar and was standing up watching the bike spin away with one little tiny tear on my shoulder because I took the force of being thrown the way my body had been trained.

02:36:02.000 Well, I'm definitely not saying that learning how to fall isn't a huge skill to have if you want to ride a motorcycle and fall down.

02:36:09.000 Learning how to fall is a big part of both judo and jujitsu and aikido and a lot of different martial arts. 0.99

02:36:16.000 But this motherfucker's not stopping anybody from taking him down. 0.99

02:36:19.000 I'm telling you right now, that old dude with his clothesline technique. 1.00

02:36:23.000 This is hard to see with that kind of shit. 0.99

02:36:25.000 It's also hard to pick apart from here. 0.99

02:36:31.000 If you were in the dojo watching the footwork, you might perceive it a little bit differently.

02:36:38.000 Watching someone who's not a 90-year-old guy with a polite student.

02:36:43.000 Right.

02:36:44.000 You know, there are different...

02:36:45.000 Right. 0.99

02:36:46.000 That's why I want to see some real shit. 0.99

02:36:48.000 I've never seen it. 0.99

02:36:49.000 Every single one of those.

02:36:50.000 I mean, I've seen some judo demonstrations where there was one that we played recently.

02:36:54.000 It was amazing.

02:36:55.000 There was this old judo.

02:36:56.000 But the way he moved was logical.

02:36:58.000 I mean, I understood that what he was doing was effective.

02:37:01.000 Yeah.

02:37:01.000 Based on my knowledge of the human body movement.

02:37:04.000 That's not...

02:37:05.000 I'm watching some...

02:37:06.000 Cooperation there.

02:37:07.000 I'm watching a guy run into this guy's punches or this guy's forearms.

02:37:12.000 Got anything, Jamie?

02:37:13.000 No?

02:37:14.000 Got a Turkish wrestler versus Aikido guy.

02:37:22.000 Okay.

02:37:24.000 Let's see.

02:37:25.000 First of all, the wrestler looks like he's about 60. And who knows if he's really a wrestler.

02:37:32.000 Takes him down, like I thought.

02:37:34.000 Mount.

02:37:35.000 Exactly.

02:37:35.000 That's what I'm saying.

02:37:36.000 Taps him.

02:37:37.000 Head and arm choke. 0.97

02:37:37.000 That's what I thought. 0.97

02:37:39.000 Now, let's see this again.

02:37:41.000 Okay, he's gonna try it again.

02:37:43.000 Okay, here he goes.

02:37:46.000 Grabs him.

02:37:47.000 Throws him to the ground.

02:37:48.000 Again.

02:37:49.000 Grabs him.

02:37:49.000 Throws him to the ground.

02:37:50.000 Yeah, this is what I expected.

02:37:52.000 Exactly.

02:37:53.000 See, this is what happens in real life.

02:37:56.000 This is what happens.

02:37:57.000 This is an arm bar.

02:37:58.000 This is a guy who's not even good at arm bars.

02:38:00.000 He needs the left leg over the face.

02:38:02.000 That's reality. 1.00

02:38:03.000 This shit doesn't work. 1.00

02:38:04.000 And it's a beautiful art to practice. 1.00

02:38:07.000 It looks cool, but as far as efficacy and actual grappling against a skilled grappler...

02:38:13.000 But the goal is not skilled grappling.

02:38:15.000 The goal is to learn how force works when your body's flying through the air.

02:38:19.000 Right.

02:38:19.000 And when someone's punching in the face, learn how that force is coming at you to be safe.

02:38:24.000 The goal is not to strike.

02:38:25.000 Many Aikido places don't even teach much in the way of attacks.

02:38:28.000 Well, that guy wasn't striking him.

02:38:30.000 That guy just grabbed him.

02:38:31.000 Right.

02:38:31.000 But I'm saying that it's not a me-against-you conflict art.

02:38:36.000 It is, let's work on playing around with forces that are moving between us together.

02:38:40.000 I totally understand that.

02:38:42.000 And I think it was initially developed to disarm people with a weapon.

02:38:47.000 When someone would come at you with a weapon to use the energy of that weapon to take it away from them.

02:38:51.000 I just think as far as an actual martial art, it's one of the least effective in real practice.

02:38:58.000 I mean, yeah, but again, the goal is not necessarily face-to-face combat.

02:39:02.000 You can pick other things that are more military and are trying to kill.

02:39:07.000 When the goal is kill, the goal is not killing or meeting force with force.

02:39:10.000 The goal is keeping people safe in Aikido.

02:39:12.000 That's why I brought up wrestling. 0.99

02:39:13.000 The goal in Krav Maga is to kill you, or to kill your opponent as quickly as possible. 0.77

02:39:18.000 That's why I brought up wrestling, because wrestling the goal isn't to kill you either. 0.96

02:39:22.000 The goal is to just hold on to you.

02:39:25.000 Well, the goal is to control.

02:39:27.000 Control your body, which would be probably the most effective way to avoid getting hurt.

02:39:32.000 If you had someone coming at you, if you can control their body, they can't hurt you.

02:39:35.000 Sure, but controlling yourself is probably the higher focus on Aikido, I would say. 0.99

02:39:42.000 I think you're fucking buying some mumbo jumbo, pal. 0.99

02:39:44.000 I think they got you. 1.00

02:39:46.000 Maybe they do.

02:39:46.000 Maybe I've been indoctrinated.

02:39:48.000 Well, there's just a long history of that stuff where it's like a part of people's map of the world.

02:39:54.000 You have your model of the world of what's effective and what's not effective.

02:39:59.000 There's a lot of people that don't like the idea of mixed martial arts because it's not In many ways, it's not traditional martial arts and some of the some of the positive benefits of traditional martial arts have sort of been cast aside in favor of Mohawk tattooed savages,

02:40:16.000 right? 0.98

02:40:16.000 But the reality is a lot of the ideas that Powered those traditional martial arts beliefs are bullshit. 0.98

02:40:24.000 Mm-hmm And we thought they were real for a long time and there was only one way to find out they were real competition. 0.84

02:40:30.000 Yeah and And in competition, you find that the reality is most of that stuff doesn't work.

02:40:36.000 Yeah, but you know, that's also competition.

02:40:38.000 I mean, I've been attacked in bars.

02:40:40.000 You know, someone grabs me in a bar, and before they know it, I'm standing next to them, and they're not interested in attacking me anymore because their wrist is, you know, in pain or they're on the ground.

02:40:49.000 You know, that's happened to me. 0.96

02:40:50.000 I've used this stuff in real-world environments, not against some, like, you know, professional wrestler who's coming at me, but against some asshole in a bar. 0.99

02:40:59.000 Right. 0.95

02:41:00.000 You know, it's very valid.

02:41:02.000 It's very useful.

02:41:03.000 Okay. 0.98

02:41:04.000 What that means to me is it works great as long as a guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. 1.00

02:41:09.000 Well, you know, a traditional martial artist isn't going to walk around trying to kick people's asses. 1.00

02:41:14.000 That's what an unskilled asshole does. 1.00

02:41:16.000 Yeah, but that's not necessarily true. 1.00

02:41:20.000 Because you could run into someone who's an asshole who's skilled and just they have issues. 1.00

02:41:25.000 They could have emotional issues. 1.00

02:41:27.000 There's a lot of people that are skilled fighters that go and pick fights.

02:41:31.000 Yeah, I suppose. 0.99

02:41:32.000 And if you have Aikido and they have that, you're going to get fucked up. 0.98

02:41:37.000 No, because I'm not going to engage with their fight. 0.98

02:41:38.000 I'm going to step aside when they, you know...

02:41:40.000 And also, these guys are drinking beer in the bar. 1.00

02:41:42.000 They're drunk and jerks. 1.00

02:41:43.000 You're in the bar, too. 1.00

02:41:44.000 But I don't get out of control with alcohol.

02:41:46.000 You're assuming they do, though.

02:41:48.000 I think the best martial arts will work on trained killers.

02:41:53.000 And Aikido just doesn't.

02:41:55.000 Okay.

02:41:57.000 I want to shatter beliefs, but this is an important subject to me because it's something that I went through my entire adult life.

02:42:06.000 And as a young man, I kind of went through the broad spectrum of what to believe in, what not to believe in.

02:42:12.000 I have no problem that it's not a competitive martial art.

02:42:15.000 It doesn't work the way wrestling or Krav Maga or karate or judo.

02:42:21.000 I'm okay with it being not as practical as those.

02:42:25.000 I still think there's incredible benefit in learning to use your body and keep yourself safe in a crisis environment.

02:42:32.000 Well, there's benefit in gymnastics.

02:42:34.000 There's benefit in a lot of different things that I would...

02:42:37.000 Look, one of the best platforms for going into jiu-jitsu, we're recently finding, is breakdancing.

02:42:46.000 These breakdancing guys, there's a whole team of them from 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu that started out as breakdancers, and these guys have this incredible athletic ability, because they learned how to support themselves on one hand, do handstands, and spin around, and they can manipulate their bodies in these incredibly unique ways.

02:43:03.000 And these guys, you'd never think of breakdancing being a martial art, but once these guys learn basic positions, they're so good at them, because I I would say that the same is true of an Aikidoka.

02:43:15.000 You can take someone who's learned that and put them in a more hard form.

02:43:18.000 They're going to have skills that descend from balanced posture, moving around your center, moving from a strong place.

02:43:26.000 I would agree.

02:43:27.000 I would agree.

02:43:27.000 Most certainly.

02:43:28.000 I just would...

02:43:29.000 I would be real concerned, and this is one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about this.

02:43:33.000 I'm very nervous about people getting inaccurate ideas in their head.

02:43:38.000 And I've seen it in action.

02:43:40.000 I mean, we used to have guys when I was...

02:43:43.000 My competition days that would come to the gym that had come from some crazy kung fu martial art where they had this distorted perception of reality and they would spar with people who actually knew how to fight and they would get knocked out. 0.99

02:43:56.000 It was horrible to watch because they had this idea in their head of who they were and then in practice it just didn't work at all.

02:44:02.000 Nobody in an Aikido center has an idea of themselves as a sparring person.

02:44:06.000 No, but they have the idea of themselves as how well they would be able to keep someone away from them.

02:44:21.000 What do you mean you wouldn't have been there?

02:44:22.000 He would have come at me and I would have stepped to one side and just not been away.

02:44:25.000 But don't you think that guy wanted to do that?

02:44:26.000 No, because he was trying for a specific technique.

02:44:29.000 He was like, grab my arm and I'll do the technique I'm thinking of.

02:44:32.000 So do you think that if you were in a matted room with someone who's a trained grappler, you'd be able to keep them away from you?

02:44:37.000 For longer than that guy, yeah.

02:44:39.000 Yeah, maybe not much longer.

02:44:41.000 Yeah, you gotta try that.

02:44:43.000 A lot of people have ideas in their head of what is possible, but you gotta put that in action.

02:44:48.000 I'm also heavily trained in restraining people.

02:44:51.000 How so?

02:44:52.000 I mean, I've restrained people in psych hospitals for several years.

02:44:54.000 That was my job.

02:44:55.000 Crazy people flipping out, throwing chairs, you know, six-foot-five, 300-pound people, and I can restrain them alone often or with one other person.

02:45:03.000 You know, one of the things that I think would be really interesting to talk to you about specifically is what is going on in the mindset of someone who is engaging in conflict.

02:45:13.000 Because one of the most important aspects of any physical altercation is being able to keep your wits about you.

02:45:20.000 Yeah.

02:45:20.000 You know, violence, conflict causes a huge surge in adrenaline, cortisol, which is a stress hormone, and it shuts down the connections between the executive, the CEO of the brain, and the other parts of the brain.

02:45:36.000 We sort of have a dual-track brain or mind, almost.

02:45:40.000 We have top-down resources and bottom-up resources.

02:45:44.000 So there's automatic things that happen.

02:45:45.000 Like, I can't look at the picture behind you without seeing it.

02:45:48.000 That's bottom-up.

02:45:49.000 That's automatic.

02:45:49.000 And then there's top-down, you know, how I interpret what I'm seeing or how I decide to feel about it.

02:45:55.000 That's top-down versus bottom-up.

02:46:00.000 A lot of the bottom-up stuff in crisis and in violence is what takes over.

02:46:04.000 And the top-down ability for your intentions, your perceptions, your moment-to-moment perspective on your brain or on your reality, that goes away in a crisis.

02:46:15.000 And the PFC, the prefrontal cortex, gets shut down, or at least its connections between the PFC and the rest of the brain gets shut down a little bit, and you go into automatic deal-with-the-crisis mode.

02:46:24.000 I wish we could monitor that in competitive martial arts contests, because I've seen it time and time again where people are professionals, and they have a long experience of competition, but they get to the big event, whether it's fighting for the world championship, fighting a contender,

02:46:41.000 the main event on a big show, and they freeze.

02:46:43.000 Totally.

02:46:44.000 You see the nerves, you see them walk up.

02:46:47.000 I used to be, in college I was a fencer, and I fenced a lot, you know, weapons.

02:46:52.000 And most of the time it's pretty chill.

02:46:55.000 I'm left-handed, which is an advantage in fencing often, and so I was pretty good at my school.

02:46:59.000 I was one of the better people.

02:47:01.000 But then you go to these big events, and the adrenaline kicks in, and there's spectators and a crowd.

02:47:08.000 It's a very different environment.

02:47:09.000 It's state-dependent learning, where you learn skills in one set of Contexts, and if the context change too much, the skills may not be there.

02:47:18.000 So these fighters who get to the big event haven't practiced in the big event room or with enough noise or enough flooding or enough, you know, caring about the fight.

02:47:28.000 Right.

02:47:28.000 To the point where they can bring the same resources online that they learned.

02:47:32.000 You know, it's like musicians.

02:47:33.000 I'm sure you know some musicians who can't play unless they're stoned.

02:47:36.000 Because that's the only way they've ever played music.

02:47:39.000 Right, yeah.

02:47:40.000 State-dependent learning.

02:47:41.000 So that's always overblown.

02:47:43.000 It's not quite as dramatic an effect as we think it is.

02:47:45.000 You see it with stand-up comedy, too.

02:47:47.000 You see sometimes people can work well with small crowds with very little pressure, and then if you put them in front of a large crowd, you literally see them constrict.

02:47:56.000 Yeah, and some of that's the sweet spot they're used to living in, right?

02:48:00.000 There's the stress response curve.

02:48:01.000 It's an inverted U, the Yerkes-Dodgson curve.

02:48:04.000 And a little bit of stress.

02:48:05.000 It's sort of stress versus performance on two axes.

02:48:07.000 A little bit of stress means better performance.

02:48:10.000 A little more stress, better performance.

02:48:12.000 A little more stress, performance plateaus.

02:48:14.000 A little more stress, performance degrades.

02:48:17.000 And this can be like stressors, like I'm stressed out, or just physiologic arousal, heart beating, you know, getting ready to do something.

02:48:24.000 A little bit of this stuff is good.

02:48:25.000 A lot of it is not good.

02:48:27.000 And if you're not used to existing, not used to performing in a mode on the far end of that curve, your performance is gone.

02:48:34.000 Yeah, it seems like there's a wall that they hit that's unexpected.

02:48:39.000 Yeah.

02:48:39.000 And then they just get this, like, I didn't think this wall was going to be here.

02:48:43.000 Now what?

02:48:44.000 Well, they're used to performing somewhere in the top of the curve where they're stressed out enough or they're physiologically aroused enough to perform very, very well.

02:48:52.000 But a little more stress, reaction time's down, judgment's down, awareness, memory, learning, all these things are impaired.

02:49:00.000 In that sense, do you think there's anything that you could do that would help athletes compete under massive amounts of pressure?

02:49:06.000 Yeah, I do actually.

02:49:07.000 This sleep spindle that we tend to train up called SMR, sensory motor rhythm in the brain, seems to improve athletic performance.

02:49:14.000 It's used a lot in golfers who are trying to get in the zone.

02:49:18.000 Most neurofeedback is this non-voluntary operant shaping, but with golfers, you follow them on the golf course with a laptop, and when their brain goes in, they tee up and get ready to strike the ball.

02:49:31.000 And then they wait until the computer makes a noise and tells them, okay, you're in the zone now.

02:49:36.000 And then they release and you hit the ball.

02:49:38.000 And so there they're trying to associate the feeling of being in the zone with performing, with delivering the golf balls, the club swing or something.

02:49:47.000 Is it one of those things that's very difficult to replicate?

02:49:49.000 Because a lot of times being in the zone means almost like you're in that zen state.

02:49:54.000 Right, which is why you're training the brain to go there again and again and again, and you're giving an audio cue, so you start to recognize, oh, that tone means zone.

02:50:03.000 That's what it feels like right now.

02:50:05.000 Okay.

02:50:05.000 And if you reinforce that association, if you're pointing at that state and saying, oh, there it is, there's your brain, it's in that state, you get sort of more able to access it.

02:50:14.000 Is it difficult to replicate when you have a guy there with a laptop?

02:50:18.000 It seems like an almost...

02:50:19.000 For golfing, it is.

02:50:20.000 There's several sports and performance-oriented neurofeedback approaches these days, and they all are somewhat similar.

02:50:26.000 You know, reducing the stress response and increasing attention to keep you in that sweet spot to some extent.

02:50:32.000 You know what would be fascinating?

02:50:33.000 If you monitored the brainwaves of fighters leading right up to the moment they got into the cage and then take the equipment off of them, let them compete, and then find out where the winners were when they stepped in and where the losers were.

02:50:46.000 That might work.

02:50:47.000 The brain sometimes changes states very, very quickly.

02:50:51.000 Because it's a lead-up to an event, you probably would get relevant data.

02:50:57.000 But you're right, you have to take the equipment off when you're actually physically moving around.

02:51:02.000 Especially if you're going to get hit.

02:51:03.000 Just movement.

02:51:04.000 Muscles are also electrical.

02:51:06.000 And so any muscle movement causes a burst of noise which swamps the brain measurements.

02:51:12.000 So you would get a lot of noise, even if they're warming up.

02:51:14.000 Yeah.

02:51:14.000 It wouldn't really work.

02:51:15.000 Yeah, pretty much.

02:51:16.000 So you'd have to kind of measure them in stillness as they were about to step into the cage, and that would take too much time.

02:51:22.000 Might not.

02:51:23.000 I mean, it depends on what you're measuring.

02:51:24.000 When I do assessments, it's a full head of EEG and gelled caps and things, but you can stick a single wire or an ear clip on someone's head and measure EEG. How long would it take?

02:51:32.000 30 seconds.

02:51:33.000 That might be worth studying.

02:51:36.000 Measure for a 30-second baseline or something?

02:51:38.000 Yeah.

02:51:39.000 I don't know.

02:51:40.000 I don't know enough about it, but I would think that there would be some interesting data that you would get based on...

02:51:44.000 I mean, it would be really fascinating if we found out, but look at this.

02:51:47.000 All of the winners were in this zone, and all of the losers were in this area.

02:51:52.000 Yeah, you'd probably find increased fast alpha, sort of flow state, you know, a lot of beta, but not a lot of very fast beta, so focus but not anxiety.

02:52:01.000 Yeah.

02:52:01.000 Probably very low amounts of slow brainwaves like delta and theta, which happen when you're dreaming or creative or checked out.

02:52:08.000 So my guess is the performance would be correlated with better access to flow states and focus states and less presence of anxiety states and distractible states.

02:52:20.000 There's so much to learn when it comes to the human mind.

02:52:23.000 This is such a fascinating subject of conversation because most people have no idea of what's going on below the surface.

02:52:32.000 It's like we have this unbelievably powerful supercomputer that's running our reality and we don't have a clue as to how to operate it.

02:52:39.000 The most complicated machine we know about.

02:52:41.000 You know, three pounds, but more connections in the brain than there are stars in the galaxy.

02:52:47.000 Yeah, when I did this infinite monkey cage with Brian Cox recently, and they were talking about how much more complex a frog is than the universe.

02:52:55.000 I'm like, I'm done.

02:52:58.000 Theoretically, the human brain can store more bits of information than there are atoms in the universe.

02:53:05.000 Now, we don't store all that information, but we're never going to run out of storage space.

02:53:09.000 This is a bit of a cheat, but the rubric for that is you take the number of neurons you have, let's say 100 billion.

02:53:15.000 We have more, but 100 billion.

02:53:17.000 And you think about the connections they can make with other neurons.

02:53:20.000 So 100 billion neurons tied to 100 billion neurons.

02:53:22.000 And let's ignore recurrent connections.

02:53:25.000 And let's ignore connections from one neuron to multiple, which does absolutely happen.

02:53:29.000 It's actually the rule versus the exception.

02:53:31.000 And let's ignore the fact that glial cells, which are also brain cells, are also computational.

02:53:36.000 Let's just take the neurons, and just take the neurons connected to all the neurons.

02:53:41.000 So, number of neurons raised to the power of the number of neurons.

02:53:45.000 So, 100 billion raised to the power of 100 billion.

02:53:47.000 That number is larger than the estimate of atoms in the universe.

02:53:53.000 Jesus Christ.

02:53:54.000 So you can store more bits of information than there are bits of information.

02:53:59.000 That's insane.

02:54:01.000 We should end with that.

02:54:02.000 Perfect. 0.99

02:54:03.000 It's the ultimate mindfuck, ladies and gentlemen. 1.00

02:54:05.000 Wow. 0.99

02:54:06.000 You're welcome.

02:54:06.000 Thank you very much, man.

02:54:07.000 It's been an amazing, amazing conversation.

02:54:09.000 Thanks for having me.

02:54:09.000 I really enjoyed it.

02:54:10.000 Really fascinating.

02:54:10.000 Your stuff, people, if you're interested, it's called True Brain.

02:54:14.000 This is the nootropic blend, the three different ones.

02:54:17.000 I tried the one with caffeine, which you said tastes the least good, and it was pretty good.

02:54:21.000 Great.

02:54:22.000 And your center is called Alternatives?

02:54:25.000 Alternatives Brain Institute.

02:54:27.000 You can access to both the websites at alternativesbh.com, which is behavioral health, and then trubrain, trubrain.com.

02:54:35.000 Really, really fascinating.

02:54:36.000 Thank you very much.

02:54:37.000 I really appreciate you coming on.

02:54:38.000 All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back in a couple of hours with Duncan Trussell.

02:54:42.000 So we'll see you then.

02:54:44.000 Much love.

02:54:44.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 24, 2015

Joe Rogan Experience #629 - Andrew Hill, PhD

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