The Megyn Kelly Show - How Psychedelics Can Help People, Addiction in America, and Practicing Gratitude, with Dr. Roland Griffiths ｜ Ep. 483

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00:00:30.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.540 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.720 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:44.980 Oh my gosh, I'm excited for today's show.

00:00:47.340 This is something I know absolutely nothing about.

00:00:50.920 But it's popping up here, there, and everywhere.

00:00:54.800 And if you're like me and you've never taken a magic mushroom

00:00:58.480 and you don't know anything about it,

00:01:00.880 but you're hearing the buzz about this psilocybin,

00:01:05.320 you know, there's also LSD.

00:01:07.300 I get it.

00:01:07.860 I have the same associations with those,

00:01:09.580 at least LSD, that you might as a children of the 70s.

00:01:13.160 Um, but this is growing and growing in popularity

00:01:16.740 under controlled settings because it's proving to be a game changer.

00:01:22.440 A game changer when it comes to things like depression,

00:01:26.100 anxiety, um, even potentially addiction, anorexia, smoking.

00:01:33.440 I mean, we're going to go down the list of things that this drug

00:01:37.800 is potentially helping with and the studies there that are being done

00:01:41.420 on it now, thanks to our guest today.

00:01:43.620 Now, psilocybin is a naturally occurring, um,

00:01:46.400 basically compound that you can find in these magic mushrooms

00:01:49.940 and it affects the central nervous system.

00:01:52.380 I know what you're thinking.

00:01:53.760 Okay.

00:01:54.000 But it's not about getting high.

00:01:55.680 It's really not.

00:01:56.620 It is about treating some of these problems that a lot of people have.

00:02:01.200 My God, have you seen the latest stats on anxiety and depression?

00:02:04.220 Studies have shown that psilocybin has great potential

00:02:06.800 when it comes to depression, alcohol, addiction, uh, smoking.

00:02:11.180 We could go down the list.

00:02:12.560 Eating disorders, as I mentioned, OCD potentially.

00:02:15.420 Um, here to discuss all of this is the expert on the topic

00:02:18.520 and the author of many of these studies, Dr. Roland Griffiths.

00:02:22.340 Now, Roland is not a Timothy Leary, the guy at Harvard back in the 60s,

00:02:26.680 who was like getting, he was taking the mushrooms

00:02:29.920 and was just right alongside his patients and kind of fell into disgrace.

00:02:34.000 Roland is a straight arrow.

00:02:35.840 He is a man of science who came about this very professionally and scientifically

00:02:41.340 and had never taken a magic mushroom or done any of this,

00:02:44.900 but said this, this is an avenue that could potentially help a lot of patients.

00:02:48.960 He'd been at Hopkins researching how to, how to treat addictions and things like that.

00:02:54.140 Uh, he went to Hopkins right as soon as he got his, uh, degree back in, I think 1972.

00:02:58.360 And now as of 2019, they created a whole center around our guests today.

00:03:04.240 The first and only, I think only, but definitely first in the country,

00:03:07.160 um, that is devoted to studying these psychedelics.

00:03:10.780 He's the director of the center for psychedelic and consciousness research

00:03:15.560 at the Johns Hopkins university school of medicine.

00:03:19.960 Roland now at this point also has firsthand experience

00:03:23.800 in connection with psychedelics, a wealth of stories and a fascinating background.

00:03:29.480 He is the expert on this topic.

00:03:32.540 Welcome to the show, Roland.

00:03:33.800 So nice to have you here.

00:03:35.460 Thanks so much, Megan.

00:03:36.620 I'm delighted to be here.

00:03:38.440 What a background.

00:03:39.160 So I, I will tell you that we have a friend who first tried,

00:03:42.740 and I realize this is different ketamine

00:03:44.960 to help him with his depression a couple of years ago.

00:03:48.400 And my husband and I were like, that sounds nuts.

00:03:52.080 What's he talking about?

00:03:52.820 He was under the care of a psychiatrist.

00:03:54.880 And so he did it in the psychiatrist's office.

00:03:57.920 And he started talking to us about how it really changed his outlook on life

00:04:03.280 and really helped him with his depression.

00:04:05.400 And we were thinking, you know, my husband and I are pretty straight laced.

00:04:10.660 I mean, I, I've never, I was telling my team before we came on the air,

00:04:13.280 I've never smoked a cigarette.

00:04:14.460 I've never done marijuana.

00:04:17.100 I've, I've drank alcohol.

00:04:18.880 That's it.

00:04:19.780 So to me, I'm like, what are you doing?

00:04:22.340 You take it so like a, some mind altering substance.

00:04:24.480 And with your psychiatrist is a bad psychiatrist.

00:04:27.240 He's, he's failing at the, the normal ways that he's supposed to help you.

00:04:31.200 So these, these are all my biases before I came to it.

00:04:34.640 Then, then more and more people started talking about this.

00:04:36.800 And all the while you've been researching this as a scientist

00:04:40.120 and not somebody who's into recreational drugs.

00:04:44.460 At Johns Hopkins of all places.

00:04:46.720 One of, if not the most respected medical institution we have.

00:04:49.840 So let's go back to little Roland, young Roland in the 1970s.

00:04:56.700 And when you first started at Hopkins, what, what were you thinking about it?

00:04:59.700 Like, what was your goal as a young scientist to study there?

00:05:03.860 Yeah.

00:05:05.100 Thanks, Megan.

00:05:05.960 Um, let's see.

00:05:08.060 So I was trained, uh, at university of Minnesota in psychopharmacology,

00:05:13.440 which is this cross disciplinary field of psychology and pharmacology.

00:05:18.760 Uh, and came from that to Johns Hopkins, where we were doing research with mood altering drugs.

00:05:29.160 And then initially I was working both in the animal laboratory and the human laboratory,

00:05:34.840 very interested primarily in drugs of abuse.

00:05:39.360 And so for years, I'm, I'm now a full professor in the departments of psychiatry and neuroscience at

00:05:45.660 Hopkins.

00:05:46.100 Uh, and for years, my research program focused on, uh, abusable compounds, uh, and we developed

00:05:55.420 models for assessing drug abuse.

00:05:58.300 We're very interested in subjective effects.

00:06:00.620 Uh, and I've worked with, uh, a whole variety of different types of compounds from sedative

00:06:09.900 hypnotics to stimulus, cocaine, amphetamine, uh, dissociative anesthetics like ketamine, dextromethorphine,

00:06:18.600 uh, hallucinogens, uh, et cetera.

00:06:21.760 Uh, and so that was kind of my life, uh, course.

00:06:27.560 And then, and then interestingly, about 25 years ago, I undertook a meditation practice and,

00:06:38.200 uh, there was something.

00:06:39.900 That was intriguing to me about exploring interstates.

00:06:45.480 And I realized that I didn't have any strong orientation at all toward that.

00:06:52.580 Uh, and, uh, as I got more deeply involved with meditation, I started to have some very unique

00:07:01.660 experiences that, um, were unlike anything I had experienced before.

00:07:08.320 Uh, and which struck me as profound, uh, and I, and frankly, I didn't know what to make of

00:07:17.040 them, uh, that it had overtones of what people reported as spiritual experiences.

00:07:24.900 Uh, but I, I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't quite figure it out.

00:07:28.720 I started reading about different meditation traditions, uh, experiences that come out of

00:07:35.140 religious traditions.

00:07:36.380 And then I stumbled upon the older research from the 1950s and 60s on the psychedelics.

00:07:45.760 And there, that result, that, that research, uh, suggested that psychedelics could produce

00:07:53.420 some of these same kinds of interesting experiences.

00:07:57.220 And so at that time, well, let's, let's just kind of put it in, in perspective.

00:08:05.380 So psychedelics had been actually pretty extensively studied in the 50s and 60s, not, and, and early

00:08:14.880 70s, but not according to the methods that we would use, uh, today.

00:08:19.860 Uh, but then as we all know, the psychedelic 60s happened, uh, and, uh, these drugs were widely

00:08:29.260 used, misused under a variety of conditions, media, uh, really took that and emphasized what

00:08:40.420 really sounded like to all of us within the culture, that this was very bad news, uh, very

00:08:47.880 often emphasizing catastrophic, catastrophic outcomes, uh, people killing themselves or

00:08:54.680 jumping out of buildings or burning their eyes out, looking in the sun.

00:08:59.060 Uh, and then there was a whole narrative about chromosome damage.

00:09:04.340 And what that resulted in is, uh, uh, a, a functional shutdown of all human research, uh, with

00:09:15.100 these compounds, which is a fascinating thing to contemplate in and of itself because, uh,

00:09:22.680 it, it's actually so unusual that an area of science gets closed down altogether.

00:09:28.460 But what happened was the Nixon administration started this war on drugs, all of the drugs out

00:09:36.240 of that category, the psychedelics or hallucinogens, as they were known then, uh, went into schedule

00:09:43.440 one, the most restrictive schedule there is, uh, in terms of regulation, uh, the funding and

00:09:52.200 federal funding, uh, disappeared, uh, completely.

00:09:56.580 FDA stopped approving new research protocols.

00:10:02.280 And within academics, uh, it really became, uh, an area that you, you didn't want to express

00:10:09.440 any interest in because it immediately raised suspicions about, yeah, who are you and why

00:10:15.780 are you interested in this?

00:10:17.600 And isn't that a goofy thing to be doing?

00:10:20.580 In fact, I think.

00:10:21.840 Right.

00:10:22.040 Like, do we have another Timothy Leary on our hands and, and it's, it's been stigmatized

00:10:26.740 and only now is that, I mean, I came, as I say, I came into the, the subject with that

00:10:32.540 same judgment, you know, like that's, what do you mean?

00:10:35.260 That's a hardcore drug.

00:10:36.380 Who would do that hardcore drug? 0.99

00:10:38.040 And then I remember hearing Steve jobs saying that he did a bunch of LSD when he was younger

00:10:42.580 and he thought more people should do LSD and you know, that man created the iPhone.

00:10:46.980 So you've got to think, well, maybe it does unlock an area of consciousness that the rest

00:10:52.400 of us would like to access, but it's really just for trailblazers and yet maybe not.

00:10:58.640 So, so you're still in the, in the camp of only the weird people are kind of looking at

00:11:03.080 that and that's what my industry thinks of this, but I'm in this lane of study that could

00:11:06.820 lead me there.

00:11:08.160 I mean, it might be an interesting thing to study.

00:11:10.820 So you did the meditation, you got kind of into a mystical world here and there, like

00:11:18.260 sort of a light bulb when it goes off for you.

00:11:20.760 Yeah.

00:11:21.080 And then was that it?

00:11:22.300 Was it after that, that you said, I'm going to take the leap and actually propose a study

00:11:26.180 on this?

00:11:27.440 Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

00:11:30.260 This kind of, the thought of investigating inner life was new to me, frankly.

00:11:39.960 And, and here I was a full professor at Hopkins with an international reputation for conducting

00:11:47.360 research on mood altering drugs.

00:11:50.280 And now here was a set of compounds that had not been touched for decades because we had

00:11:58.360 essentially outlawed research with them.

00:12:01.640 And, and I thought, geez, that, that would be really interesting to study.

00:12:07.140 Now, it was not at all clear I could get approval for that kind of research because it has to

00:12:14.100 go through a very strict ethical review at my hop, at, at the institution level, and that's

00:12:22.340 Johns Hopkins.

00:12:23.460 And then of course it needs FDA approval and DEA approval.

00:12:28.880 But I was in principle interested enough to give it a try.

00:12:33.500 And I, going into that process, I thought maybe I had a 50% chance of getting it approved.

00:12:42.460 At that point, I had really started going back into the literature and thought we could conduct

00:12:48.200 these studies safely, but couldn't know that for certain.

00:12:56.380 And the thing that I really want to say is I'm really proud of Johns Hopkins as an institution

00:13:02.260 because there's, there was institutional risk for any academic center, green lighting, uh, research

00:13:10.340 of this type, just because if it, if it pulled in media attention, uh, it's going to raise the

00:13:18.680 specter of Timothy Leary and that sort of thing.

00:13:21.380 But, uh, Hopkins weighed the risk benefit ratios, put apart the, you know, the political or media

00:13:29.780 risk that they would, might undertake as an institution and approved the protocol.

00:13:34.840 And, and, and it was very, very carefully reviewed by the Dean of the medical school and the Hopkins

00:13:43.500 managing attorney as well as this review board, but they, they approved it and ultimately so

00:13:50.220 did FDA and DEA.

00:13:52.780 And so we ran this first study and Megan, I have to say that, I mean, the results for me

00:14:02.640 were astonishing.

00:14:04.760 Uh, and just to correct the, the record here, I, I had, I, what I'd consider a couple of trivial

00:14:15.960 experiences with psychedelics in the 1960s growing up, nothing that was meaningful, nothing that caught

00:14:24.620 my attention.

00:14:25.580 Uh, and so, so, so, uh, so I just, I don't want to claim to have been completely naive, but it was,

00:14:33.920 it was absolutely not something that I had any, uh, affinity toward.

00:14:40.760 And if anything, I would characterize myself as having been a skeptic at the time.

00:14:48.660 And, and, and there, you know, there were people in the culture that were very pro psychedelics.

00:14:55.420 And I have to say, I was, I was, I was suspicious of them.

00:14:59.880 So, so I'm going into this research like that.

00:15:03.100 And I did partner with a clinical psychologist, Bill Richards, who had extensive therapeutic

00:15:11.760 experience with psychedelics back when they were legal.

00:15:15.780 So he handled the clinical front.

00:15:18.660 I was the skeptical scientist going into this.

00:15:22.880 And this, just to jump in, this is, uh, this is the 2006 study.

00:15:25.800 Is this what you're talking about?

00:15:26.600 Correct.

00:15:27.140 Yeah.

00:15:27.380 Yeah.

00:15:27.920 And so before we get to that, before we get to that, let me just take one step back because

00:15:31.880 I do think the study, the stuff you were doing before that is interesting too.

00:15:34.700 And studying things that are addictive, that people are struggling, struggling with all

00:15:39.300 over America right now.

00:15:40.460 Many of the listeners to the show are going to be interested in this things like alcohol,

00:15:44.640 caffeine, or Nick caffeine, nicotine, and in addition to some of the other drugs you mentioned.

00:15:49.160 And so just before we get into the psychedelics, do you have, um, do you have a couple of words

00:15:54.120 on which of those is the most addictive and sort of the most pernicious, like the toughest

00:15:59.500 one to, to attack?

00:16:01.420 And this, like the, whatever you do, don't take that first cigarette versus the first drink

00:16:05.480 or the first, I don't know.

00:16:06.800 I'm just curious in your overall thoughts of addictive properties.

00:16:09.380 Yeah.

00:16:13.140 Uh, let's see, that's, there's no, there's no simple answer to that because the, um, the

00:16:19.460 probability that someone is going to become dependent depends on the set setting context

00:16:26.220 and the availability of the compound.

00:16:28.780 So the, actually the, the drug that more people in the world are dependent on and, and, uh, and

00:16:37.820 many would object to using the word addicted to, uh, uh, is caffeine, uh, but it's the world's

00:16:44.160 most widely used mood altering drug.

00:16:47.380 And it turns out that it does produce physical and psychological dependence.

00:16:53.420 If you use it daily at any, any kind of dose above, uh, you know, pretty small cup of coffee,

00:17:02.260 it's very likely you have developed low level physical dependence and what the pickup, the

00:17:11.340 sense of a wakefulness that occurs in the morning is in part due to suppression of low

00:17:17.520 grade withdrawal, uh, uh, symptoms that you have fatigue or tiredness or kind of muzzy headedness, 0.92

00:17:24.700 uh, being suppressed by that morning cup of coffee.

00:17:29.120 Uh, and, and so in that sense, in a culture in which caffeine is freely available, uh, you

00:17:39.280 know, people are going to much more likely become, uh, dependent on that.

00:17:44.560 And, and that actually, I, I ended up doing a lot of research on caffeine because it was

00:17:50.400 kind of a model system for understanding how drugs come to capture and control behavior.

00:17:56.760 And actually at the time that we did that, interestingly, the soft drink companies were

00:18:02.980 saying that they were adding caffeine as a flavor enhancer.

00:18:06.480 Oh, wow.

00:18:07.000 That was the only reason they did it.

00:18:09.260 And that story, you know, in retrospect, looks very much like what the cigarette industry was

00:18:16.380 claiming about nicotine.

00:18:17.660 Oh no, nicotine's a flavor additive.

00:18:20.000 And it's not, it's addictive.

00:18:23.160 Caffeine is, it's much lesser so, you know, but if you really want to talk about kind of

00:18:29.480 perniciousness, uh, then, I mean, we have the opiate crisis to look at, uh, right now. 0.64

00:18:36.180 It's very hard to back out of that.

00:18:38.940 I mean, cigarette smoking is, uh, is very addictive, uh, when, when available culturally as it has been.

00:18:46.980 Uh, the stimulants, cocaine and, uh, uh, and those sorts of drugs, uh, have, uh, relatively

00:18:57.000 high addiction potential.

00:18:58.760 Many of the sedative hypnotics and sleeping medications and sedatives also.

00:19:04.160 What's a sedative hypnotic?

00:19:06.740 Well, yeah, like, um, in, in the old days it was barbiturates.

00:19:11.640 Uh, but, uh, even, uh, some of the popular sleeping medications, they're not highly addictive

00:19:19.380 in the sense that, uh, there's social degradation that goes along with it, but one can easily

00:19:26.500 become dependent on those drugs.

00:19:29.560 And, and so, and these are also the anxiolytics, the, uh, uh, anxiety reducing drugs.

00:19:37.160 So things like, uh, you know, Valium, uh, diazepam and, uh, and those, those sorts of things.

00:19:46.240 And, and people can easily get dependent on that with physical dependence and it can be

00:19:51.120 very, very difficult to get off of them as it can be with the opiates.

00:19:55.340 I think what you said about the, uh, the morning cup of coffee is very interesting.

00:19:59.540 So if you, when you feel better drinking that coffee, it may just be you suppressing your

00:20:06.120 withdrawal symptoms, not an actual pick me up.

00:20:09.820 Like if you could break the habit, you might feel as good as you feel post that cup of coffee

00:20:14.100 every morning without that cup of coffee.

00:20:16.940 That's yes, that's exactly right.

00:20:20.040 And it now doesn't mean that caffeine.

00:20:22.260 So if you're, if you're caffeine naive, caffeine, even low doses of caffeine will have a stimulant

00:20:30.900 effect, but your, your body adapts to that very quickly.

00:20:35.640 One of what, so one of the interesting things that we showed in the course of that research

00:20:40.160 is that caffeine is behaviorally active at doses far lower than anyone ever knew previously.

00:20:47.760 So a cup of coffee now talking, I'm not talking about a big Starbucks cup of coffee, I'm talking

00:20:54.220 about a six ounce cup of coffee usually delivers about a hundred milligrams of caffeine and many

00:21:01.940 people can detect the effects of caffeine at doses of less than 20 milligrams and many 10

00:21:12.000 or less milligrams.

00:21:12.920 So that's a couple of sips of coffee can produce reliable, detectable subjective effects.

00:21:20.900 And these are really rigorous blinded studies.

00:21:23.960 So we know this to be the case, but it was actually on the basis of people not having studied

00:21:30.680 those lower thresholds before that the soft drink companies could claim, oh yeah, this is

00:21:36.940 below the behaviorally active range.

00:21:40.660 And, and, and since then they've kind of fessed up, they now label how much caffeine is in

00:21:46.400 their product.

00:21:47.340 But at the time they were denying any, any physical, physiological effect of, of importance.

00:21:56.100 But as it, yeah, it turns out we, we certainly now understand that, that soft drinks, caffeinated

00:22:03.840 soft drinks, you know, if you take a couple of them a day, you're kind of now in the range

00:22:09.720 of developing physical dependence on them.

00:22:14.040 It's amazing how many drugs surround us, you know, the soft drinks and the coffee, not to

00:22:18.080 mention the cigarettes and the alcohol everywhere and the people taking the sleeping pills and

00:22:23.040 then the coffee to wake themselves up and so on, all these drugs, really not that great

00:22:26.920 for you.

00:22:27.680 And yet here's this little class of drugs over here.

00:22:31.040 That's been so demonized, you know, the, the, the drugs that, that you've been studying

00:22:35.100 that we're not allowed to touch.

00:22:36.940 You're not even allowed to research them.

00:22:38.700 That could be, do appear to be revolutionary in attacking major mental health challenges like

00:22:49.720 depression and anxiety and beyond.

00:22:52.300 So it's crazy how our medical system works, right?

00:22:55.160 Like they're dumping the more caffeine into the sodas, but you're not even allowed to look

00:22:58.520 into psilocybin.

00:22:59.260 Don't you touch that because people could get hurt.

00:23:01.320 Okay.

00:23:01.720 That's America.

00:23:02.680 All right.

00:23:03.060 So let's keep going.

00:23:03.940 So 2006, you get the approval.

00:23:06.600 Everybody's watching you closely and you take a look at psilocybin in.

00:23:11.980 Okay.

00:23:12.600 This is the headline.

00:23:14.200 Psilocybin can occasion mystical type experiences, having substantial and sustained.

00:23:20.860 That's important.

00:23:22.360 Personal meaning and spiritual significance.

00:23:25.780 So was that study on just regular folks who, who is, who are the subjects of that?

00:23:33.080 Uh, they were just healthy volunteers who had never before taken a psychedelic drug.

00:23:38.700 And so, uh, we, we wanted to recruit people who were, uh, psychedelic naive because we didn't

00:23:48.120 want a bias put in right at the beginning.

00:23:50.960 Because if someone had tried psychedelics and liked them, then they're very likely to report

00:23:56.980 good, good effects from them.

00:23:59.580 If they had tried psychedelics and had an awful, awful time, they probably wouldn't enroll in

00:24:05.500 the study.

00:24:06.940 And you could, so you can imagine what kind of biases that would create.

00:24:10.160 So we went in with these psychedelic naive individuals, and then we furthermore just bent over backwards 1.00

00:24:19.680 to, to make the drug as blinded as we could do so practically and ethically, uh, in terms

00:24:27.760 of not giving people strong expectations of what they might experience.

00:24:33.600 And then the, the way we prepared people as we would have about eight hours of clinical contact

00:24:41.520 time before the session, the session involved a rather high dose of, of, uh, psilocybin or another

00:24:50.000 drug we were comparing it to, uh, Ritalin or methylphenidate at, at a high dose under otherwise

00:24:58.080 blinded, uh, uh, conditions.

00:25:00.220 And then people come in, uh, for the session day into Johns Hopkins, into a room that's

00:25:08.800 decorated, you know, it's living room-like there's a, there's a couch and chairs and

00:25:14.800 art on the wall.

00:25:16.940 And, uh, and during that session, people take a capsule containing the drug.

00:25:23.060 Yes, there's a picture of it.

00:25:24.580 They take a capsule containing the drug. They're in the presence of two therapists or sitters or guides, as they're sometimes called. And the purpose there is just to let the person go inward and have their own experience.

00:25:47.480 So people are laying on the couch after taking this. They have headphones through which they're listening to music. They have eye shades just to have them go inward. And the support, the therapists or the guides or the sitters are there just to provide a safe container for them to have their own experience.

00:26:12.260 And the basic instruction is very simple. It's just go in, explore, see what comes up. You're safe. Yeah, we're here to support you. But it's not guided in the sense that people are going in with a problem to work on.

00:26:34.880 You know, we're therapeutic. Let me ask you a couple. Let me ask you a couple of quick questions just so we can get the outlines of this. How long after you take the capsule, does it kick in?

00:26:46.240 By 30 minutes, most people are beginning to feel effects, sometimes as early as 10 to 15 minutes. It reaches peak effect at about two to three hours.

00:26:57.520 Oh, boy. That was my second question. So like, how long is this experience? How long do you, should you plan on being out of question?

00:27:03.840 It's a day-long session. So people, as I said, they usually come in, they take the capsule at between eight and nine. The peak effects are occurring two to three hours later. And by four in the afternoon, they're pretty well back down to baseline.

00:27:24.520 They complete some questionnaires. No, they're not allowed to drive home. They need a pickup person, a family member or friend who will accompany them home and make sure they're doing fine.

00:27:41.320 By the next day, could they operate heavy machinery?

00:27:43.680 Yes, they could. But we ask them to come in the next day. We want to interview them the next day, make sure they're okay. But there's no-

00:27:56.680 I'm just trying to get my- Before we get to the effects and all that, I'm just trying to get to the sort of the setup.

00:28:00.840 Did you ever have- Has it ever happened that somebody like ran screaming and yelling out of the room? Like, oh my God, like an unexpected reaction.

00:28:08.660 Yes, yes. Yeah.

00:28:11.720 Oh, really?

00:28:12.500 No, not running the screen out of the room. We've never had that. But we've had people that might have liked to run and scream and get out of the room.

00:28:26.660 And that's the very purpose of developing this relationship of trust and support because those therapists, guides, sitters can ground people.

00:28:42.860 And we do a lot to prepare people for what they might encounter. And we give them a lot of instructions about how to navigate that experience. And that's very important, critically important.

00:29:00.100 Because there really are risks associated with taking these compounds, particularly under unsupervised conditions. Because people can't- As a matter of fact, the most common and probable bad outcome is that people will have some kind of panic attack.

00:29:20.080 And then they'll engage in some kind of dangerous behavior. And that can turn very ugly. People can commit suicide, homicide, but more often, they're confused, they're panicked, they could run out into the street, they could just get themselves into trouble.

00:29:43.820 This is why we do not do this alone. You do not go pick the mushroom in your backyard and eat it. You do this under the care of a professional if you do it at all.

00:29:53.040 Well, that's certainly my inclination. But as you know, there are state initiatives now, city initiatives that are moving toward decriminalization and legalization.

00:30:06.060 And so one of my concerns is that our culture does not get ahead of what we know to safely protect people.

00:30:15.680 And then as long as we're on all the dangers of these compounds. So number one is panic behavior, but that's just more probable.

00:30:29.500 A worse outcome is that it appears that some vulnerable people can develop long-term psychotic disorders.

00:30:39.720 So someone in their probably early 20s, if they have a vulnerability towards schizophrenia, the concern is, and we actually don't have scientific proof of this,

00:30:54.640 but we have enough case reports to make me believe it. The concern is that someone that already has a tendency towards psychotic disorder,

00:31:05.720 that exposure to these kinds of compounds might be enough just to push them over the edge.

00:31:11.900 And there's no returning from a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Once that's in play, that's a lifelong condition.

00:31:19.160 And that's horrible. And so we go way overboard in terms of screening people as much as we possibly can who might have such tendencies.

00:31:32.620 So we disallow people to enroll if they even have a second degree relative with a history of schizophrenia.

00:31:43.160 That may be overly conservative, but it's a real risk. And in the widespread cultural enthusiasm that we have right now, I think it's being underplayed.

00:31:56.260 Would that be something, Roland, that you could tell before the person left the room at the end of the day?

00:32:01.200 Would you be able to tell? Oh, my God, he crossed over. 1.00

00:32:05.420 Oh, yes. Yes. So we've never had any volunteer develop long-term psychotic illness.

00:32:15.120 People can be destabilized because of the magnitude of the effect.

00:32:19.500 But that's very low. I mean, the incidence in which we have had to do aftercare, and we now have treated, I think it's 400, almost 500 people, 480, I think.

00:32:35.920 And the incidence in which we've had to support people after exposure to psilocybin is kind of very, very small.

00:32:51.320 I mean, I think we could count them on one hand.

00:32:54.360 And what that meant for those people is that they required some additional counseling afterwards above and beyond what we would have normally provided.

00:33:04.520 So we certainly haven't had any enduring psychotic processes.

00:33:09.460 But to me, this is further evidence that, forget the mushroom in your backyard, that's in a class of its own.

00:33:15.960 But like Colorado and Oregon, which are now, Oregon's making this, it has made this legal, and Colorado's on its way.

00:33:24.100 They're saying, okay, you'd have to go to a clinic to get it.

00:33:26.600 But who am I getting at the clinic?

00:33:28.760 Is it like some 24-year-old guy who had this experience himself, and he's just going to hold my hand?

00:33:34.140 Or am I going to get somebody like a Roland disciple who actually knows the right questions to ask if I'm a 24-year-old man with schizophrenia in my family history?

00:33:42.760 That's, you know, now we're on sketchy ground.

00:33:47.120 Yeah.

00:33:47.520 So the training of the therapist is crucial to assuring maximal positive outcome.

00:34:00.220 And frankly, you know, thus far, we don't have FDA approval of any of these compounds.

00:34:05.780 But it looks like it's forthcoming.

00:34:07.800 And so then these drugs will be available for medical, under medical conditions.

00:34:18.880 But I don't think the FDA, I know the FDA has not yet settled specifically on what kind of training requirements are going to be necessary in order to offer this kind of therapy.

00:34:31.780 And you can be sure that it's going to be much stricter within the structure of the medical system than it's going to be at the state level.

00:34:44.580 And so the state level training is, I haven't looked into it closely, but my sense is that the quality of the therapist could vary widely in terms of how good they are.

00:34:59.680 And so it's a source of concern, frankly.

00:35:08.200 All right.

00:35:08.400 So let me do this.

00:35:09.520 I want to talk about what you found in 2006 and now where it is today, because you did a truly groundbreaking work after that that's advanced this understanding of people who are suffering from cancer, people who are, I mean, think about what cancer victims go through, not only the diagnosis and the fear of end of life, but the treatments, which can be so devastating.

00:35:28.780 So Roland did another study on folks like that.

00:35:31.960 We're going to get into all of it when we come back with Dr. Roland Griffiths in two minutes.

00:35:39.640 Okay, Roland, so you take in a bunch of healthy people, you subject them to a bunch of questioning, you set the table for the experiment, they take the capsules, and what did you find?

00:35:52.420 Well, let's see.

00:35:54.500 So psilocybin, as we certainly expected, produced the whole array of psychedelic-like effects.

00:36:02.880 So there's visual phenomena, visual distortions, visual imagery comes up.

00:36:08.840 There may be greater emotionality, and that can be very positive, sometimes transcendent-like experiences, but also experiences of fear or unstabilizing kinds of experiences.

00:36:27.720 And then there can be somatic effects, the sense of body has changed.

00:36:35.400 And there can also be cognitive changes, and so people can think and imagine different things, including some paranoid thinking.

00:36:51.320 And that comes, that's very low, but that can occur.

00:36:54.460 So all those kinds of effects occurred.

00:36:58.080 And then at the end of the day, we gave people a whole set of questionnaires.

00:37:04.540 And one set of questionnaires had been developed originally to measure mystical experiences brought about naturally.

00:37:16.900 These are religious type of mystical experiences.

00:37:21.220 And we've since refined that questionnaire, and we call it the mystical experience questionnaire.

00:37:25.740 But what was really interesting is that people endorsed very highly the components of mystical experience that had been described by religious people throughout the ages in terms of discussing these.

00:37:45.200 And we could talk about the qualities of those.

00:37:47.740 But the key quality is this sense of connectedness to everything, and that can be experienced as a connection with the divine in religious terminology.

00:38:08.420 It doesn't have to be.

00:38:10.540 So there's a sense of the interconnectedness of all things, that we're all in this together.

00:38:15.020 There's a sense that that experience is precious.

00:38:20.200 It's, to put in religious language, it's sacred or deserving of reverence.

00:38:26.480 And then another feature is that the experience feels authentically true.

00:38:33.360 And people have these experiences and say it feels more real than everyday waking reality.

00:38:41.560 So those are the features.

00:38:42.820 They came out, you know, but by the end of the day, those become memories, right?

00:38:50.180 Now, here's what was astonishing to me.

00:38:53.660 I, at this point in my career, I had assessed a lot of people at high doses of all kinds of different psychoactive drugs.

00:39:03.920 And so I know how to measure subjective effects.

00:39:08.520 I know what to expect from them.

00:39:10.660 And here's what was interesting.

00:39:13.780 People would come back two months later, because the way the study was designed, there were two or three sessions.

00:39:19.480 So they're coming back two months later, preparing for a second session.

00:39:25.900 And I sit down and I asked them, well, what, you know, what do you remember about that, you know, your first session?

00:39:34.040 And the people who got psilocybin, I was blinded to who received what.

00:39:39.060 But the people who got psilocybin would say, oh, I remember that like it was yesterday.

00:39:45.380 That was what that's one of the most important experiences of my life.

00:39:52.700 And so here I'm a skeptic.

00:39:55.700 I've now heard stories about psychedelics.

00:39:59.880 But I wasn't prepared for that.

00:40:03.560 What so what does it mean?

00:40:05.280 This was one of the most important experiences of your life.

00:40:09.560 And so my immediate judgmental reaction was, what kind of life is this person had?

00:40:18.980 But no, they would say, well, you know, it's on par with the, you know, the death of my parent just recently.

00:40:27.420 My father passed, you know, or the birth of my firstborn child.

00:40:33.120 And you go, what, this, this was a six hour session in a, in a, in a faux living room like environment at Johns Hopkins.

00:40:46.680 And it's among the most meaningful experiences of your life.

00:40:52.020 And indeed, that's, that's kind of the core finding that there's something about these experiences that are remarkable.

00:41:02.340 In terms of how they're imprinted and remembered.

00:41:07.400 And then the attributions that people make to those experiences.

00:41:13.020 So I'd never, I'd never seen anything like that.

00:41:15.980 It hadn't occurred to me when we started the study, even to assess for something like that.

00:41:22.060 And we started developing scales.

00:41:24.600 How important is this experience?

00:41:26.380 A life, you know, lifetime of experiences from, you know, like an everyday experience.

00:41:32.340 Two goes up to, you know, within the 10 most meaningful experience of my life, five or the single most.

00:41:41.020 Well, yeah, in that study, and then there was something about spirituality.

00:41:44.820 In that study, 30% of the people said that the experience was the single most spiritually significant experience of their entire life.

00:41:55.480 And about 80% of people in those studies say it's in the top five most meaningful and spiritual significant of their lives.

00:42:06.160 Can I just ask you, like, back up, back up a little bit?

00:42:10.100 Because we were describing what they're experiencing.

00:42:12.240 Now I want to know, you know, how did it get so significant?

00:42:15.220 I'm picturing what you see when you look through a kaleidoscope.

00:42:19.220 I'm picturing, you know, 1970s TV animations.

00:42:23.920 You know, Picassos.

00:42:26.060 This is what's coming to mind as the images that would be flashing through your head with the eye mask on.

00:42:33.520 Not it?

00:42:34.440 Like, what's actually being seen?

00:42:38.420 Well, one of the features, Megan, of these experiences that defines them is that they're ineffable.

00:42:46.120 The first thing that people say is that I can't even describe it.

00:42:50.260 And so what you just described were experiences all in the visual realm, but this goes beyond that.

00:42:58.600 There may be people who have no visions at all, but yet these experiences take on that sense of meaning.

00:43:06.400 So I don't think we understand well enough, and certainly our neuroscience isn't refined well enough to know, you know, precisely what components of these experiences result in this incredible meaning-making.

00:43:25.640 But in terms of visualization, I mean, that can show up in innumerable different ways.

00:43:33.160 And it can show up just as a carnival-like atmosphere, but it can also turn to sacred imagery or a sense of approaching something that is just beyond description.

00:44:00.220 And so if we're religiously inclined, they might use the word God and encounter with God.

00:44:06.780 So you don't have to steer them.

00:44:09.200 And I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but if you're going to use this to help somebody with stopping smoking or addressing their anorexia, do you have to steer them?

00:44:19.180 Like, we're going to conquer the smoking, picture the cigarette, you know, or even in this study.

00:44:25.100 Well, forget that.

00:44:27.060 Let me start again.

00:44:27.960 If you're dealing with depression, do you need to sort of say, we're going to focus on your depression so that you're kind of pushing them toward resolving the thing you're targeting?

00:44:36.620 Yeah, great questions.

00:44:38.520 Let's see.

00:44:40.940 So in therapeutic studies, there's a built-in intention for the session, and that it's going to be helpful for them in terms of managing whatever therapeutic condition they have.

00:45:00.420 Now, there's also research underway for approval of MDMA or ecstasy for treatment of PTSD.

00:45:14.560 And that's a, it's not a classic psychedelic, it's kind of like psychedelics though, but there the therapy session very explicitly focuses on, or the expectation is that people are going to talk about their traumatic experience.

00:45:36.340 With a drug like psilocybin, we don't invite people to talk at all.

00:45:41.400 I mean, if, and if some people are moved to talk, uh, we'll listen, but very often, uh, as soon as you start putting something in the ineffable range into words, it pulls you out of the experience.

00:45:56.660 So our counsel to people is to just stay with the experience, just trust, trust the process, be interested and curious about it.

00:46:08.400 Think about that.

00:46:09.720 So the, if somebody goes in and we'll talk about the anxiety, depression, but somebody goes in to do this, to see if it'll help with depression.

00:46:17.100 And then you don't have to direct them.

00:46:19.120 The mind knows what to do.

00:46:21.340 It, it, like trust in your, in your mind and your soul and the psilocybin working their magic without any specific push or direction.

00:46:32.820 That to me is so remarkable.

00:46:34.300 So we'll talk about what's happening, you know, what's actually happening physically in your brain.

00:46:40.260 What is doing this and what's the difference between psilocybin and ketamine and MDN, MD, MDMA, uh, and all the, like, does it matter?

00:46:51.040 You know, you should take LSD or does it matter?

00:46:52.780 So anyway, we have a lot more to get to, uh, including the remarkable lasting effects of these sessions and how you might be able to get one.

00:47:00.480 Dr. Roland Griffiths sticks around for the whole show today.

00:47:02.960 We're lucky to have him.

00:47:04.160 And remember folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East.

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00:47:12.600 Those are fun to look at, uh, over at youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

00:47:16.720 If you prefer an audio podcast, go on over and subscribe, follow, download, whatever.

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00:47:35.820 Now my kids are just saying, remember when you hit 100 and we celebrated and we're almost to 500.

00:47:41.180 We'll have to have another celebration that.

00:47:42.440 We're talking about the sustained benefit to those who participated in the study in terms of their world experience.

00:47:55.420 I mean, they're rating it up here when it comes to most meaningful events in their lives.

00:47:59.360 So, but what did that do for them?

00:48:01.480 So it, you know, like the birth of my three children, they were all very meaningful and they, you know, I remember them very fondly.

00:48:09.960 But what did they do for me as a human?

00:48:11.800 And well, when I ruminate on them, I, I'm filled with warmth and feelings of goodness and connection.

00:48:18.200 What's, what does this do for these folks?

00:48:22.900 Yeah.

00:48:24.780 Great.

00:48:25.340 Yeah.

00:48:25.560 Great question.

00:48:28.400 Let's see.

00:48:29.060 So the, the meaning that people take from these experiences is going to be very much intertwined with the set and setting, the kind of intention that people brought into the experience and the support that they receive after the experience in terms of making use of that.

00:48:51.040 But if, but if, if we take just the, uh, healthy volunteers that had this experience, uh, so many of them end up reporting.

00:49:02.060 And this is, in fact, it's years later, they continue to use this as a touchstone, uh, experience much in the same way that, that you might relate to the birth of your children.

00:49:16.880 And, and, and, and for me, this is very relatable.

00:49:20.140 My number one most meaningful experience was the birth of my first child, my daughter.

00:49:26.760 And, and, and, and for me, that changed my worldview.

00:49:30.760 I, I came, I came to an understanding of what the human race was truly about.

00:49:38.900 And it was, uh, it's magnificent and I wouldn't trade it, uh, for anything.

00:49:45.300 Uh, uh, so what did it mean to them?

00:49:48.800 Yeah.

00:49:49.300 Very often people made, I don't want to say similar kinds of attributions,

00:49:56.040 but they, they really felt that they had a new view of the world, a new worldview, a different sense of self, often one that was felt to be more interconnected, more alive in the, in the world.

00:50:12.940 Um, it's, yeah, it's very hard to draw generalities, but I think there's a positivity that comes out, out of this, a sense of self-efficacy.

00:50:26.040 That they have real choices to make in their lives and they end up making what appear to be positive choices about their lives going forward.

00:50:37.400 And that's in fact, why we think this has cross diagnostic generality with respect to treatment of very divergent kinds of psychiatric disorders.

00:50:49.360 And that's because you fundamentally change a worldview and, and someone's sense that they can make a difference, that they can change themselves.

00:50:59.420 And that, and that's why in the therapeutic context, these experiences are often set within a therapeutic framework.

00:51:08.960 So to give you an example, the work that we've done at Johns Hopkins on cigarette smoking, this was led by, uh, my colleague, Matt Johnson, uh, cigarette smoking is a very difficult, uh, habit to break, addiction to break.

00:51:26.220 And people come in having failed multiple times to, uh, uh, quit smoking and essentially they're self-labeling themselves as an addicted smoker.

00:51:38.400 And they have reason for doing that.

00:51:40.360 And this kind of experience, uh, and, and, and, and telling them how they can approach quitting going forward.

00:51:48.220 But this kind of experience frees them from that self-identified label as being addicted.

00:51:55.740 And so people can come out saying, well, yeah, I, I, I, I've failed many, many times, but in fact, I can put up with a little suffering.

00:52:06.620 I can put up with a discomfort of, of quitting.

00:52:09.740 I realized that that's going to be transient and I'm committed, you know, to the objective of being smoke free.

00:52:17.660 And so it's, it's, it's enough to push people into a cycle of making choices that benefit them going forward.

00:52:26.820 And so I think that it would be true in many respects with eating disorders and, uh, depression and anxiety and depression and cancer patients.

00:52:38.500 So how many sessions do you need to go to and how long are the results?

00:52:44.180 How long do the results last?

00:52:45.480 Yeah.

00:52:47.040 So, uh, our, we've done studies with single sessions.

00:52:53.380 So a single high dose of psilocybin, uh, appears to be efficacious.

00:52:58.760 We've also done studies with, uh, uh, two or three sessions.

00:53:05.440 Uh, I, I think when this is initially medically approved, I'm imagining it'll be initially for just a single, a single session.

00:53:14.560 Uh, but the, we're in our infancy in terms of understanding optimal use of these kinds of compounds and understanding at, at a, at both a deep physiological neurochemical level, how they work, but also at the psychological level, how they work and how these experiences can be best, uh, packaged in a way to produce enduring change.

00:53:42.560 So we're, we're, we're really just at the beginning of understanding this as a, as a therapeutic intervention.

00:53:49.620 And in terms of the duration, you know, how, how much bang you get for your buck?

00:53:53.720 Well, that, I mean, it's astonishing.

00:53:57.980 So, so we, the first study we ran was in, uh, cancer patients who had a life-threatening cancer illness and they were anxious and depressed.

00:54:08.380 And what we saw is rapid decrease in that anxiety and depression.

00:54:14.260 We followed them out to six months.

00:54:17.420 Another group at NYU that ran a very similar study did a five-year follow-up and, and those results were sustained out to five years.

00:54:29.340 This, you know, this, this is, it's remarkable within the domain of treatment of psychiatric conditions, right?

00:54:39.720 Because most psychiatric meds are temporary interventions.

00:54:44.740 They're intervening, you know, to, um, well, to, to block a receptor or to enhance, uh, something going on.

00:54:54.760 You know, you know, antidepressants are, are given chronically over, over a lifetime.

00:55:01.240 Uh, and this is a single exposure in a single afternoon producing enduring changes for, for years out.

00:55:11.560 And, and if you think about it, if in fact it is that people have a different worldview, a different sense of self, they start changing their behavior themselves.

00:55:21.660 Then you can understand that, that very well could be a process that endures in perpetuity.

00:55:29.940 That is extraordinary.

00:55:31.900 I mean, just to think about, as you point out the number of antidepressants that people are taking and the self-medication they do with alcohol or drugs or what have you.

00:55:39.940 And potentially one day could completely change the way you see things.

00:55:46.100 Now, and I want to get into the cancer study in a little bit more detail, but before we do, can we just spend a minute on the differences between psilocybin, ketamine, LSD, and MDMA?

00:55:57.620 Yeah.

00:55:57.980 So, uh, so, uh, so psilocybin is what we call a classic psychedelic and, uh, other classic psychedelics, although they're not identical, but they're, they're more similar than not, are, uh, LSD and DMT, which is in ayahuasca used in South America.

00:56:18.820 It's an admixture, uh, it's also, it's also, it's also, uh, uh, uh, uh, mescaline used by Native Americans and their religious ceremony, uh, is also a classic hallucinogen.

00:56:34.520 So MDMA is, uh, is pharmacologically, uh, different.

00:56:39.820 It, it, it, it works at some of the same receptor systems, but it's not a classic psychedelic and it, uh, it more than the classic psychedelics produces this flooding of, uh, empathetic response.

00:56:57.960 And it's very often felt to be a heart opener, but, um, but it looks like it, it's very useful in terms of treatment of post-traumatic stress.

00:57:09.820 Wow. And is that last chance?

00:57:13.640 Now, ketamine is, uh, entirely different compound.

00:57:18.560 So that is a dissociative anesthetic.

00:57:21.480 It's related to PCP, which is, uh, not good.

00:57:28.000 Uh, it, uh, it does produce these dissociative effects.

00:57:32.740 It doesn't have some of the depth of meaning and, and, uh, and the, and the,

00:57:39.460 or the colorfulness of, uh, visualizations, uh, uh, and it is physically addicting in the sense that classic psychedelics are not.

00:57:52.040 So, uh, uh, it produces a classic withdrawal syndrome and so people can, if they get involved with ketamine, can increase the dose and become dependent on it.

00:58:04.000 And, uh, and that can be a result in, in tragic outcomes.

00:58:09.820 However, ketamine is effective as an antidepressant, uh, but it differs from the classic psychedelics in that its effects are relatively short-lived.

00:58:24.600 Uh, and so very often, uh, people will emerge from their depressive, uh, symptomatology, but that's only temporary.

00:58:34.960 And over the course of a week or two weeks or a little bit more, uh, their depression will recur.

00:58:41.460 So that's why ketamine-

00:58:42.600 Ketamine sounds much better.

00:58:44.160 Yeah.

00:58:44.500 It sounds much better than, than the ketamine.

00:58:47.500 Well, they're, they're, they're very different experiences.

00:58:51.240 And, uh, and I think, uh, a high dose of psilocybin is likely to be more psychologically challenging than a high dose of ketamine.

00:59:02.000 Uh, so it's apples and oranges really.

00:59:04.580 Yeah, but I was joking with the team before we started about what kind of a difference could this make in one's personality and outlook?

00:59:11.460 Like if I, if I were to go through this psilocybin or you mentioned MDMA or MDMA, the, the, the heart opener, would I come back on and say, you know, I really see Megan Markle's point.

00:59:22.660 Maybe it really is Prince William's fault.

00:59:24.420 You know what I, would I start to see, would it change my whole outlook on people?

00:59:29.820 I don't know.

00:59:35.620 No, I, no, I, I, let's see.

00:59:38.600 I think, I think you would feel changed fundamentally, uh, you know, and to what extent, what extent your major worldview would shift is, is not, is not, uh, determined by, by the drug.

00:59:56.920 But I, I, I don't have any, I don't, well, I shouldn't say you specifically, cause I don't, yeah, I, yeah, I don't know where you would react within the spectrum, but, but, but people feel changed and they feel like the change and what they have learned from the experience is really a value, a very special value to them.

01:00:24.480 And so, and so, I think people would put different words around, you know, how that changed them.

01:00:35.900 I mean, yeah, if they're, if they're happy in their life, otherwise, uh, they're not going to make radical, uh, radical changes.

01:00:45.560 Uh, but I'm sure all of us could, all, all of us are not leaving, uh, living absolutely optimal lives.

01:00:57.820 And so there's plenty of room for fine tuning.

01:01:01.660 So how does it work?

01:01:03.040 I don't want to go too deep in the science because I think, you know, just a little, we'll go a long way there, but what's it, what's, what's it doing to our brain to allow all of this to happen?

01:01:13.440 Well, well, I, I, I wish we knew, uh, we're not entirely ignorant that the basic neuroscience of this and, and our understanding of this is accumulating at an astonishing, uh, rate, uh, but we're still deeply ignorant.

01:01:35.700 So just very quickly, we know where drugs like psilocybin bind in the brain.

01:01:43.860 We know what receptors they bind to serotonin 2A.

01:01:47.560 We know where those receptors are in brain.

01:01:50.540 We know how those areas of the brain are activated or deactivated when someone takes psilocybin.

01:01:57.700 And we know something about the brain interconnectedness and how those patterns within the brain, what parts of the brain are talking to other parts.

01:02:07.460 We know a little bit about how that, uh, that's functioning under the influence of these, uh, drugs.

01:02:14.480 And, and, and, and there's some suggestion that there's a down regulation of a system that's responsible for self-referential processing, this kind of obsessionality that we have with ourselves.

01:02:28.560 But there, the trail gets very thin because we're really talking at the core here about the nature of consciousness, the nature of our own experience, and how do we hold ourselves in the, in the world?

01:02:45.460 Who do we think we are?

01:02:47.040 And, uh, and, uh, and, yeah, we are, we're in grade school, kindergarten, maybe a nursery school, uh, with respect to our understanding about that, uh, from a, from a reductionistic scientific standpoint.

01:03:07.380 But because it's at this higher level psychological, uh, you know, about the sense of self and the sense of meaning, the sense of purpose, that's all getting intertwined in here in some way that feels magnificently profound and reorganizational.

01:03:30.300 Uh, so, so, so people will use the term feeling reborn, uh, in, in, in a sense that things are new in a way that they hadn't experienced them before.

01:03:42.980 But is there a, I was going to say, is there a limit on how many of these sessions you can do?

01:03:49.740 You know, is it, does it, does it cause brain damage if you go back too many times?

01:03:55.820 No.

01:03:56.340 So that's, uh, that's important.

01:03:58.500 With the classic psychedelics, they, they don't produce classic dependence.

01:04:04.120 Uh, they don't produce physical dependence, although some people may want to take them again.

01:04:10.380 But even if you want to, even if someone wants to take them again, it's, it's generally months or years between uses, not days.

01:04:19.820 And they're not habit forming in that sense.

01:04:22.660 Uh, there was, uh, a lot of concern about brain damage.

01:04:26.860 And, uh, and, uh, and that appears not to be the case with the classic, uh, psychedelics.

01:04:32.780 It's more of an issue, uh, but that would be debatable with clinical, uh, doses of ketamine and MDMA.

01:04:42.060 Uh, and, uh, uh, there is some literature about high dose MDMA producing some, uh, enduring neurological problems.

01:04:53.060 But that's a, that's an area of active debate.

01:04:55.920 But that, that's even not a, within the debatable range with the classic hallucinogens.

01:05:02.060 Can, can, should anyone try this?

01:05:10.940 Let's see.

01:05:11.580 Well, I'm not going to recommend, uh, they do so unless it's in, uh, you know, under, uh, a regulated protocol, you know, that's been approved by the FDA and has the, all the constraints built, uh, uh, built into it.

01:05:28.560 So, uh, so, uh, so I, I think right now it's, uh, buyer beware, although our culture is making these drugs available.

01:05:38.500 And, uh, and I don't know how that's going to roll out at the state levels and the, and the county levels.

01:05:46.000 Uh, uh, uh, you know, but I, I certainly be reluctant to encourage anyone to, uh, uh, to seek that out unless they're very carefully screened.

01:06:00.080 And we talked about, uh, and during psychotic illness, you certainly don't want that.

01:06:05.740 And, uh, and, uh, and you'd like to be under optimal clinical care before, during, and after these sessions because they can be disorienting and, uh, and, and, uh, you know, the motto is do, do no harm.

01:06:25.600 So let's be very careful.

01:06:27.400 These are very powerful interventions, but very promising.

01:06:31.500 Wow.

01:06:33.560 So let's talk about the cancer patient study, because that is a profound group of, of people who are suffering mightily.

01:06:42.880 And if you want to talk about, you know, depression and people who are facing the end of their life, who have to go through chemotherapy and radiation and so much, just so much heartache and physical ache at one time, that's where you'd go to find patients dealing with all of that.

01:06:57.220 Um, when you went into that study, I read that you said something to the effect of.

01:07:01.500 I really wanted to be careful because the last thing I wanted to do was add to their disappointment, their agony, their physical or other challenges.

01:07:11.580 I mean, that, that must've been a tough one for you emotionally, mentally to take on.

01:07:18.200 Yeah.

01:07:19.020 Yes, it was.

01:07:20.600 Uh, and, uh, as I think we'll end up talking about my, I now have personal empathy with these people that I didn't at the time.

01:07:29.540 But, but, but yes, so this was our first therapeutic study and, and it was in people who were depressed or anxious because of this cancer diagnosis.

01:07:41.740 And how can one not have empathy for that, uh, particularly in our, uh, particularly in our, our culture?

01:07:50.860 I mean, that is kind of the deepest existential question, isn't it?

01:07:55.100 What, what, what, what, what are we doing here?

01:07:58.280 What happens when we die?

01:08:00.060 And that's a source of tremendous fear for some, for some people, uh, other, others not, depending on what your worldview beliefs are.

01:08:11.660 But for many, it is, and it's a completely understandable one.

01:08:17.520 And so, I, uh, again, this was our first therapeutic study and I thought, do we know what we're doing here?

01:08:25.060 And, uh, and, uh, and, and we need to be careful because whatever that is like to lean into that question about the, the termination of life, uh, we wouldn't want to make that worse in people.

01:08:40.020 Uh, but there had been an older literature from the 60s that suggested that this kind of intervention would be helpful.

01:08:50.740 And, uh, and it turned out, and indeed it was.

01:08:54.560 And, uh, and so I was relieved as that study, uh, progressed.

01:09:00.580 There was, uh, actually at, when we initiated the study, we did so at, uh, at our highest dose of psilocybin.

01:09:09.640 And we just had a couple of people whose response, you know, wasn't as good as I would have hoped.

01:09:16.920 And I, and so I worried about that.

01:09:18.620 And we, we dropped the dose of psilocybin down.

01:09:22.360 I don't know now in retrospect, whether that was necessary or not, or whether I was just being overly cautious.

01:09:30.080 But when you're, when you're working with new compounds under new conditions, I'm going to default to being overly cautious.

01:09:37.760 And in any case, the dose we gave produced these profound effects.

01:09:42.700 Most people having these remarkable experiences, many of them reporting a changed sense of, uh, of death and, and what that, and what that means.

01:09:59.680 And I think that came out differently for different people.

01:10:03.820 Some people put it into a religious context and they, and they now were sure that they would encounter an afterlife.

01:10:13.400 Uh, other people didn't put it into a religious context per se, uh, yet they felt that there was something, uh, that existed after death.

01:10:28.740 Um, and some just felt that there was a, there was some kind of benevolence in, in this whole, in this whole story that we're involved with.

01:10:40.060 There's some beauty and elegance in this and dying was okay.

01:10:44.880 Boy, I think the, I think what I found to be most touching about the outcomes of, of those, uh, patients and their stories is very often they came out of these experiences in this really uplifted state in which they ended up consoling their caretakers.

01:11:07.820 I mean, there was a role reversal, they had family members who were really worried about them and wanted to do right by them.

01:11:16.580 And they almost, a number of them just turned that back on their caretakers and were providing assurances to their caretakers that this is sad.

01:11:28.060 I'm, I'm going to leave.

01:11:29.740 I have to go, uh, but it's okay.

01:11:33.040 And it's beautiful and everything's going to be all right.

01:11:36.700 And to hear, hear those stories, I mean, it still kind of makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up because of the emotional significance that had for everyone that they came in contact to.

01:11:49.560 Oh my God, I was tearing up just thinking about that.

01:11:52.440 What a, what a difference and what a tool in the arsenal, you know, to help these people who are suffering so much.

01:12:00.860 I, I'm so moved by, I want to get it for my mom.

01:12:03.920 She doesn't have cancer, thank God.

01:12:05.080 But I, I would love to just see how it changes life perspective for her.

01:12:09.180 You know, I just, this could be used on, you know, far and wide for anybody who's suffering or feeling down or facing end of life issues.

01:12:16.660 And that does lead me to your story, Roland, which is, you know, I said, and I know you don't look at it like this, but I said to my team, um, I'm really not looking forward to the part where we have to break the audience's hearts and tell them what's going on with Roland.

01:12:32.480 Because that study on the terminally ill cancer patients would become relevant to you personally.

01:12:39.740 What, what happened?

01:12:40.980 How did you find out that you, you have cancer?

01:12:44.800 Yeah.

01:12:45.600 So, uh, this was about 14 months ago.

01:12:49.320 I went in for a routine screening colonoscopy, believing myself to be completely healthy.

01:12:55.880 I take care of myself.

01:12:57.080 I watched my diet.

01:12:58.040 I exercise, uh, and came out with, in short order, a stage four cancer diagnosis that's been, uh, resistant to treatment.

01:13:10.240 So, so, so the irony is that all of a sudden I was in the position, uh, of the patients that I'd spent so much time with and talking about their views on what death and dying is about.

01:13:24.920 But, uh, but, uh, but Megan, the astonishing thing about this is that it's rather than being depressed and anxious for me, it's, I consider the whole thing to be a blessing.

01:13:40.460 And it's been this just remarkable experience of joy and gratitude.

01:13:49.080 And I don't quite know how I came to have this experience, but I, but I, I have an idea.

01:13:55.720 Um, you know, um, you know, I had a long history of practicing meditation.

01:14:01.160 And so I was accustomed to going in, in interrogating my thoughts, feelings, emotions as they come up.

01:14:11.220 And, and this is what you learn to do in meditation.

01:14:14.600 Although, uh, I don't want to soft pedal it.

01:14:18.100 Meditation's hard because most people, and, and I was one of those initially, get very discouraged very quickly, uh, feeling that they're, there's nothing here or, or that they're a failure.

01:14:30.920 And, and, and the, so it's tricky working with meditation, but, but what one comes to learn is that, uh, you don't need to identify with the narrative self, the voice in your head.

01:14:45.960 You don't actually need to identify with emotions or feelings that come up that, that, that, that the voice in your head, those feelings, uh, exist within this kind of larger context, this larger frame of mind.

01:15:05.800 And if you don't identify with that, then it's going to pass it.

01:15:12.200 And, and, uh, but if you lock into a narrative story about what's happening, then it's, that's becomes your world.

01:15:20.820 It's like the addicted cigarette smoker identifying as addicted, and then they are.

01:15:26.020 And if you identify as being anxious or depressed, that's where you find yourself.

01:15:31.840 So with the diagnosis, I, uh, at first there was this sense of, it was just unreal.

01:15:40.880 I just, it was just a bad dream, frankly, uh, and my wife and I cried, uh, a lot, uh, but it was confusing.

01:15:49.740 And then this happened just over a few days.

01:15:52.540 And then I went through and started sorting through kind of the emotional states that would emerge.

01:15:59.040 And, you know, one would be anxiety or depression, you know, or resentment, uh, toward a medical system that maybe put me at a screening interval that was inappropriate, you know, or, or going to combat with the cancer or denial.

01:16:16.820 It's not really happening.

01:16:18.180 And, and none of those struck me as being pleasant places to be, uh, and, uh, and so that's, I, I, I really didn't want to go there.

01:16:29.740 What, what I recognized was that, that this was a springboard into gratitude, just gratitude for the preciousness of our lives.

01:16:43.620 And it's something we, we all know, right?

01:16:46.980 This is something really remarkable that we find ourselves as these highly evolved sentient creatures walking the earth surface, talking in the middle of culture, you know, but what's going on here?

01:17:02.880 How did this, what's the backstory behind this?

01:17:07.860 How do we account for this?

01:17:09.400 How do we account for the fact that we can even be aware that we're aware that we know that we know something?

01:17:17.780 And for me, when you contemplate that gratitude comes up, this is life is a precious gift is precious beyond belief.

01:17:27.780 And so my choice then became to deeply practice gratitude and use the, the so-called problems that arise from a diagnosis like that.

01:17:42.720 And there are plenty of opportunities with surgery and chemotherapy and all the side effects and dealing with the medical, uh, profession.

01:17:51.520 You could, you could, there's all kinds of opportunities to collapse into different states, but they can be used in, in a way that just reflects back as a reminder that each moment is precious.

01:18:05.960 Each moment is unretrievable.

01:18:09.680 And that's what this 14 months has been like for me.

01:18:13.780 So it's a gift, it's a blessing and, and, uh, my wife and I often talk about what a tragedy it would have been had I just been run over by a bus on that day that I was walking out to that screening colonoscopy appointment because I wouldn't have had this.

01:18:31.620 I, I, I thought I, I thought I was pretty awake to the joy and miracle of, of life before this, but it's much more so now.

01:18:42.640 And so I'm moved to talk about it just because, uh, I think in principle, we can all wake up much more than we are.

01:18:54.040 And I want to encourage people to do that absent a terminal diagnosis.

01:18:59.100 Mm-hmm, Roland, thank you for sharing that.

01:19:02.600 My God, I'm, I'm definitely, I feel more emotional about it than, than you do, but I know you've dealt with it and there's so much wisdom in what you just said there.

01:19:10.980 The, the thought, uh, we don't need to identify with thoughts or emotions as they arise that what a concept.

01:19:19.100 So it's there, the anger, maybe a feeling of betrayal of getting gypped of why me, what could have been like they're, they're marching by you like ants in a parade, but you don't have to accept them.

01:19:37.140 Yeah. I mean, you can, you can take advantage of that. So if, you know, so, so anger comes up, right. And, and kind of the immediate response, if you kind of query what's going on is, yeah, you want to get back.

01:19:52.400 And, you know, however you're going to manifest that, but, but there's energy that comes. And if you go inside and kind of query that, uh, you can recognize that there's all this energy and you've given it a label of anger and you, you don't have to act on that.

01:20:10.240 In fact, you can just repurpose that toward gratitude. Like, yeah. Oh my God. I'm here. I mean, why? And, and it's not going to serve me to, to act on that anger. I mean, sometimes it will. I mean, you know, some, we, we have these conserved, uh, evolutionary conserved tendencies, you know, for some good reasons.

01:20:37.180 But, but, but a lot of times within our culture, you know, we're, uh, acting out primitive responses that just don't serve us or the people we're reacting to optimally.

01:20:51.340 And so let me just restate that. So make sure I understand it. So you're, so if in my analogy of the little answer walking by with anger, bitterness, you know, betrayal, it's not that you're saying I reject you and I reject you and I reject you.

01:21:04.260 It's that you're changing what's written on their sign. You're saying, I'll take all the energy on your sign of that very big emotion that is available to me.

01:21:12.040 And I'm going to, I'm going to, on the opposite side of that sign, I'm going to write gratitude and I'm going to use all that energy to funnel toward that.

01:21:20.940 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take it one step forward. You can, you can thank the little aunt or whatever the condition is, you know, for providing you this further wake up call. You're just not going to go with the message that's on their side.

01:21:37.220 Oh, that's extraordinary. That's so helpful. I love the way you're saying that. So did you have to, because I know we never sort of got to the point where in the midst of your research, at some point you did try the psilocybin in a serious way, not, not the sort of cursory, you know, twenties things you talked about.

01:21:58.880 Did you need to do it again, Roland, you know, after the diagnosis, did you, did you choose to do it again or was, were the earlier experiences enough for you?

01:22:09.360 Yeah. Well, let's see. So the, the way I handled the diagnosis initially, um, and, and of course the, because I'm known for the psychedelic research, people ask me, oh, are you going to take psilocybin?

01:22:24.960 And in fact, that was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do. I, I felt that I was in the, in this altered state, more awake, alive, joyful with greater equipoise than I'd ever been before.

01:22:41.880 And I actually thought, no, why, why would I ever want to, uh, disturb that? So, so, so, you know, but also at that point, I'd done a lot of meditation and I did have some interesting psychedelic experiences that may have informed my ability to respond like that.

01:23:03.240 But I wasn't, but I wasn't, I wasn't drawn to that. I, I have subsequently, since the diagnosis, uh, had one experience with a, with a psychedelic in which I made, which I just used it for some self inquiry that was, was very interesting.

01:23:21.000 Uh, but, uh, uh, it, uh, it doesn't explain much about what I'm encountering now, how I'm responding to the diagnosis and, and my eagerness to, uh, uh, to communicate about that, uh, including wanting to launch a whole research program that speaks to this very issue.

01:23:46.900 Mm-hmm. The, the study you did on cancer patients showed large decreases in depression, anxiety, death, anxiety, and increases in feelings of quality of life, meaning of life, optimism, sustained after a six month follow-up.

01:24:05.460 So now for you, you don't sound fearful, death, anxiety, you certainly don't seem to have that. I mean, I think a lot of us who don't have your diagnosis have that.

01:24:16.900 And I wonder how is it possible, right? Like I, people of faith often say they don't fear death, but how is it possible that actually facing it, you don't fear it? Is that a connection to a higher power? Like what, what's the, what's going on in your mind as you think about it?

01:24:34.200 Yeah. So, so I, so I'm, I, I, yeah, I don't know how unique I am, but I'm a scientist. I'm a skeptic. It's really hard to get me to say that I believe in anything, right? Because the very nature of science is to be skeptical and want proof.

01:24:54.540 And so I, I don't know and don't have any strong beliefs about what happens when we die.

01:25:06.180 Because I'm bred within a scientific reductionistic tradition. I'm inclined to put low probability on afterlife, at least as it's described very often in, in beautiful religious traditions in which you're, you know, assured this glorious coming together with family.

01:25:35.460 And friends and friends and, and the divine. And, and, and I, and I, I, I, I certainly would put that at low probability, but also as a skeptic, I, if someone said that that was a certainty, I would be skeptical of that.

01:25:58.320 So there's, so, so there's, so, so, so I do maintain, albeit a very low probability of, of something that survives death.

01:26:10.080 I do remain intensely curious about that, you know, and it can be very low probability to still maintain that curiosity.

01:26:23.300 And, and so, so that certainly is at play.

01:26:27.540 And then I, but, you know, more, more than that, it's the gratitude practice, the leaning into the preciousness of life.

01:26:36.280 It just means every day, every moment, every minute is, is one that we need to choose, how we're going to show up, whether we're going to be present with that.

01:26:49.340 But, but, but, but all of the magnificence of, of this entire adventure that we all as sentient creatures find ourselves in is in principle available to us every moment if we allow ourselves to stay awake to that.

01:27:12.000 And I think that's, and I think that's, and I think that's what I want people more than anything to do, to contemplate that.

01:27:19.460 And what I really want is ultimately, and I don't want to sound like Timothy Neri, but I, but I, I think it's attainable eventually, and this is going to be multi-generational,

01:27:31.800 that the, our cultures are going to awake to this, and that we need to see and feel at a deeper level, the magnificence of what this process is, and at some fundamental level, we're all in this together.

01:27:51.600 We're all, we're all, we share the same dilemma, right, of the one thing that we know to be true is that we're conscious.

01:28:03.200 That's probably the only thing we can affirm, and I can affirm it for me, I can't affirm it for you or anyone else.

01:28:10.160 And we're all stuck in that, that very real situation, unless you haven't thought about it very deeply, you know.

01:28:19.460 And so from that, there's this sense of compassion that opens up, at least for me, for everyone.

01:28:26.060 I mean, I see everyone's, or most of us are stuck in some ways.

01:28:31.780 And in principle, that's unnecessary.

01:28:35.640 And so the long-range vision is that if we're going to survive as a species, and I do mean survive as a species,

01:28:45.100 we've got to figure this out before we terminate ourselves by all these existential opportunities, be it bioweaponry or nuclear war, AI risk, or, you know, what have you.

01:29:02.080 And I'm not, you know, and I'm not thinking that that's around the corner next week or tomorrow, and it can get overblown for sure.

01:29:10.540 But in the longer run, we've got to sort this out.

01:29:16.400 And wouldn't it be lovely if we could?

01:29:19.660 Wouldn't it?

01:29:21.120 I mentioned Steve Jobs.

01:29:23.240 I'm thinking of him now as I listen to you, and also a man of science in a different way.

01:29:28.620 And on his passing, was reported to have said, wow, oh, wow, oh, wow, dying of pancreatic cancer.

01:29:39.820 And I've always thought there could have been something, you know, for a man like that, that he was seeing and communicating in his own way back to us.

01:29:48.280 And I believe it'll be there for you, and I believe it'll be there for me too, and I hope and I pray it'll be there for my family and me as well.

01:29:56.460 What a remarkable hour, Roland.

01:29:59.060 I'm so grateful to meet you.

01:30:00.260 I feel so emotional.

01:30:01.380 I don't want to lose you.

01:30:04.500 So we cry for ourselves, and we lean into gratitude that you've been here and that we got to meet you.

01:30:10.600 And I send all my best and all my love to you and your wife and your family.

01:30:14.500 Thank you, but I want to reflect that back on you.

01:30:20.740 I want you to join me in the celebration of what you have and what you bring and lean into the incredible gift that we're given.

01:30:34.640 So thank you.

01:30:36.140 I'm going to work on that.

01:30:37.240 You've inspired me to work on that.

01:30:39.080 And maybe I'll swing by the clinic sometime very soon.

01:30:41.020 All the best, Roland.

01:30:45.020 Lots of love.

01:30:45.620 Thank you for being here.

01:30:47.180 Okay.

01:30:47.700 Bye-bye.

01:30:49.760 I want to tell the audience that if you want to support Roland and his work, go to Griffiths.

01:30:56.640 That's two Fs in there.

01:30:59.240 G-R-I-F-F-I-T-H-S. 1.00

01:31:02.800 GriffithsFund.org.

01:31:04.760 All right.

01:31:05.320 And we'll be back tomorrow.

01:31:07.060 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:31:11.940 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 31, 2023

How Psychedelics Can Help People, Addiction in America, and Practicing Gratitude, with Dr. Roland Griffiths ｜ Ep. 483

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