Rick Doblin: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #202

the following is a conversation with. rick doblin founder. and executive director of the. multidisciplinary association for. psychedelic studies. maps he is one of the seminal figures in. both the cultural history. and the cutting edge science of. psychedelics he was there. along with the biggest characters. throughout this fascinating history of. psychedelics. and he is here to tell the story quick. mention of our sponsors. theragun expressvpn blinkist and. sleep check them out in the description.

to support this podcast. as a side note let me say that exploring. the places the human mind can go. can help us understand where it comes. from how it works. and how to engineer mental journeys. whether that's through. life experiences chemical substances. brain computer interfaces or. interactions with artificial. intelligence systems on a personal level. i think the dissolution of the ego for. stretches of time. is a powerful tool for understanding. yourself a lot of things can do this.

including jiu jitsu literature. meditation but psychedelics is. definitely. at least arguably one of the most. powerful from psilocybin to dmt. i'm excited that people like rick are. leading the scientific research. that reveals the efficacy and the safety. of these substances. so that their proper dosage and usage. protocols can be understood. and people like me can safely and. effectively use them. not just for recreation but for rigorous.

exploration. of my own mind this is the lex friedman. podcast. and here is my conversation with rick. goblin could you give. an introduction to psychedelics like a. big bold whirlwind overview. what are psychedelics what are the kinds. of psychedelics out there. in whatever way you you think uh is. meaningful. all right well when i started maps the. multi-disciplinary association for. psychedelic studies it was very.

important for me that psychedelic being. the name. and the way in which the original. meaning of psychedelic. it's mind manifesting it was created by. humphrey osmond. in dialogue with aldous huxley. and so psychedelic means mind. manifesting. and so we interpret that very broadly. to mean dreams or psychedelic anything. that kind of brings things to the. surface.

holotropic breath work you know. hyperventilation is psychedelic. so most people think psychedelic is only. about certain kind of chemical. substances either natural. or synthetic but we've got a much. broader view of that. meditation can be psychedelic in some. ways but. our primary focus is on the drugs it's. on the. medicines or the you might call them. some people might call them. spiritual tools or sacraments. um there's sort of two general. categories of those.

one are what are called the classic. psychedelics and those are the ego. dissolving. sort of merged into unitive states. those are like lsd psilocybin mescaline. ayahuasca ibogaine dmt. things like that and then there's mdma. which some people even argue is not a. psychedelic. they'll say it's an pathogen or an. intactogen it's about touching within or. empathy. it doesn't do the same kind of ego.

dissolution. that the classic psychedelics do but it. brings material to the surface. and and it changes the way we process. information. and so i think you can quibble about. whether it's a. it's certainly not a classic psychedelic. but i think mdma is also a psychedelic. marijuana i would say it's a psychedelic. marijuana is closer to the classic. psychedelics than it is to mdma.

one point i like to make is dreams. because. then everybody can relate to that dreams. are psychedelic dreams. bring emotions feelings um. ideas concepts in symbolic form a lot of. times or just in raw motions to the. surface so. when people hear the word psychedelic. often they. are frightened by it it's about loss of. control. and it is to an extent loss of conscious. control. particularly with the classic.

psychedelics but you know and we know. with dreams that. we can have frightening dreams. nightmares but i think that. um anchoring the the concept of. psychedelic and dreams. is really helpful for people to know. that it's kind of a natural state. and that there are other ways that you. can catalyze it than by going to sleep. and that for thousands of years. substances have been used in that way. so you mentioned this idea of bringing. something to the surface which is really. interesting. so can you maybe elaborate the surface.

and what is. there in the depths of things and how. does. ego dissolution fits into that. all right well aldous huxley talked. about uh. the brain as a reducing valve that we. have an enormous amount of information. so right now there's an air conditioning. sound in the background. but that's not crucial to what you and i. are doing talking to each other so we. kind of tune that out. you know there's all sorts of sights and. sounds there's incoming information.

in all the different sense modalities. and we have to figure out um. what's important to us and so the. mind in a way focuses a lot on. what are our core needs and and. we filter all the incoming information. that we get towards focusing on what our. court needs and we can even get to um. abraham maslow in the hierarchy of needs. about.

survival needs belonging needs esteem. needs. go on so i think what. what i mean by bringing things to the. surface is. that we tend to. not focus on a lot of things that are. coming but we also push away things that. are difficult emotionally. difficult cognitively you know we all. know that we're on this very short. trajectory from birth to death but we're.

not. constantly thinking about dying. [Music]. although that can actually be helpful to. focus us. on what's really important traumas. are often suppressed. conflicts we see in america and around. the world the kind of rise of. irrationality. where people push away their logic in. order for their emotional. tribal needs to be met a lot of people.

are. suffering from early childhood traumas. of a different kinds or abandonment. issues or. anything so we we tend to focus on just. you know what we need to survive. and what we need for work and esteem and. so psychedelics. by dissolving this ego control or by. with mdma. kind of strengthening our sense of self. and our sense of self acceptance we can. bring in um. other information that have previously. been too complicated or too painful.

you don't think of psychedelics as. conjuring up something new. it is more revealing something that is. already there. i think that's a very crucial thing so. um. yes um um sasha shulgin. who um sort of the um godfather of. mdma you know he sort of rediscovered it. and. brought it um back into use he talked. about. his first experience was with mescaline.

his first psychedelic experience was. with mescaline. and he had a tremendous experience but. what he said about it was. he was having a human experience that. the mescaline was helping him access. rather than he was having a mescaline. experience. so that it's not like you pop a pill and. you always have the same kind of. experience as everybody else. the the experience is not contained in. the pill the pill. opens you up and you have an experience. of yourself. sometimes these are experiences that.

we've never consciously had. but we can say right now that we know. that. our body below the level of our. conscious awareness has all these. self-healing mechanisms. and we we don't modulate them. to a large extent by conscious control i. mean eventually we we are learning more. about the mind body and we learn about. the placebo effect how what we think is. the case but. but i think that there's experiences. that are below our level. of conscious awareness particularly once.

we're adults that. are more these unit of mystical. experiences sense of connection. you know i think kids are like this a. lot we kind of come from the void you. could say and you're born and you you. have. um a different way of processing. information what one. interesting point about that has to do. with ketamine which is. uh you know been approved s ketamine for. depression. but it's used for anesthesia and. roughly one-tenth the anesthetic dose. is a psychedelic dose and when it's used.

in anesthesia. there's what's called the emergent. phenomena so this is you get. enough ketamine for um you can be. operated on you're not in pain you're. not really there your ego's knocked out. but you can still breathe but as the. operations. uh get over and then people metabolize. the ketamine. there's a process that they call the. emergent phenomena it's like as you're. emerging from this. tranquilized state and that's where you. pass through the psychedelic phase and.

they don't prepare people. for that and. what we see is that a lot of adults have. difficult times with that. but children don't seem to have that. with those problems children are a. little bit more already in this kind of. state. and so ketamine is is used quite. frequently in children. now for anesthesia so. all of that is to say to your question. that um i think it. these psychedelics reveal things that. are within us.

some things that are how we process. information back when we are children. um other things that we've never thought. of before that are sort of. baked into our consciousness um. you know there's one um drug 5-meo dmt. it's this toxin from a sonoran toad. that many people consider it to be the. most powerful of all the psychedelics. and it kind of knocks the ego structures. completely out of it. and we experience something different.

but it's something i think that's always. within us it's at a deeper layer so we. knock out some of the higher cognitive. functions and then we experience things. in a different way. so my sense is that these are human. experiences that the psychedelics. bring us to yeah it's really profound. but and that's a dmt is a really. interesting example so. uh terence mckenna has talked about. these machine elves. right and there's this um i think. from the people i've heard speak about. the experience.

there's a sense that you are traveling. elsewhere. to meet entities whether they're elves. or not. so in your sense you're not traveling. elsewhere. you're just revealing something that's. within and maybe it's a. a particular mechanism of revealing. what's already within. yeah and i knew terence i spent a lot of. time talking with terence. and i do not um ascribe to a lot of. things that he was saying he was. tremendous entertainer.

and i think he did a lot of really good. things and focused us on. you know the power of psychedelics but i. think um i've never seen these quote. machine elves. i think culture is more determinative. of what people experience under. psychedelics. your preconceptions than um than we give. it credit for. and so i think there's a lot of um. priming that you could say that people. receive by. stories from their culture um.

you know with ayahuasca it's about. jaguars and amazonian animals and so i i. think these machine elves are this uh. construct of terrans that other people. do see there's actually some people that. are very interested in doing a study and. they're they're. well-funded and moving toward it to. keep people on an iv infusion of dmt.

for them specifically to see do they. contact. machine elves or aliens and what kind of. information do they bring back from. these other. cells other places or other entities. one question is you know who are we are. are we. connected to everything in the universe. we certainly know. in many cases you talk about waves or. particles you know. the quantum approach so i don't. interpret. um experiences that we have of some.

entity that's you know somehow or other. deep in our consciousness that's. not us it's a part of who we are so i. tend to interpret it in that way. the the question is how big are we. yeah i mean that that's uh and how many. ideas are within us that can be revealed. by changing the perspective you. mentioned physics one of the. what physicists mathematical physicists.

or mathematicians do. is the they reveal truths by looking at. a. by taking a slightly different. perspective on a problem that reveals. the simplicity. of how it actually works in totally new. ways. that's what einstein did that's what. like every progress in physics. and certainly every progress of. mathematics requires you to. take a different perspective and then. perhaps that's exactly what.

um psychedelics are doing it's not that. they're contacting. aliens that are elsewhere it may be. revealing the connection between us and. other. living life forms or actually might be. revealing. a totally new perspective on what life. is or what consciousness is. and giving us a glimpse at that even. though our cognitive capabilities are. limited. in to fully grasp and understand it so. it's just giving us an inkling of that. somehow. and it seems perhaps a little ridiculous.

not. from a scientific perspective in the. sense that. we don't have a good physics of life or. physics of intelligence or. physics of consciousness but getting a. glimpse of that it's giving us a little. bit of um. maybe an intuition of uh which way to. head. to uh to build such a physics. yeah yeah i think so i think that. there's this um. other concept i guess i would like to. talk about briefly this.

jungian collective unconscious this idea. that. somehow or other everything that has. ever happened. is still accessible maybe not with as. much. data or as much resolution. but that there's you know wave. resonances. so that i do believe that we can have. experiences as part of this human. collective unconscious. that we're not from our own life yeah.

and that that we can it's like the. holographic realities. and that that that there is a way to. gather. information that can be accurate about. other times and places. um through depth. investigations of our own consciousness. but i think what. what i tend to believe is that it's. because there's emotional resonances. between where we're at now in this life. and.

you know other kind of um. experiences that people have had before. and you know. we always hear about uh everybody who. talks about past lives they're always. kings and queens. you know yeah so i think that's you know. that's again you filter things what you. want to be true. but but i do think that there is a way. to access information. beyond what we've taken in in our own. temporal existence through our own five. senses in some ways i really find that.

compelling the notion that that. information is already there. and you're simply just moving the. attention of your mind. to different parts of that yeah i mean. we we have that with the radio. i mean you know you've got a frequency. you turn all this information. you could actually say right now between. the space between us we have the whole. world's knowledge that's up on the. internet. yeah it's right here yeah but we just. have to tune in. yeah what are the. interesting differences would you say.

between. the various psychedelics that you. mentioned ayahuasca dmt. acid lsd marijuana mescaline pcp cell. cybin mdma all. you mentioned a few of them they're. really interesting we'll we'll talk. about scientifically some of the. the different studies that have been. conducted on each but sort of at the. high level. what are some interesting differences. well one of the big ones that people. make a big deal of that i think is. completely misplaced. is some are from nature some are from.

the lab right so there's this kind of. like romantic thought that if it's from. nature it's good if it's from the lab. it's somehow tainted by humanity. and you know therefore some people are. like all for. plants psychedelics we see the policy. changes that have been happening in a. couple cities uh cambridge. somerville right not far from where. we're at now where they decriminalize. plant medicines so they call it. decriminalizing nature.

so i i think that there is. from my perspective certain. certain things from nature or poison. certain things from the lab are. spiritual even if they don't show up in. nature like lsd. now there is something lsd is lysergic. acid diethylamide. there is lysergic acid amide lsa. which comes from morning glory seeds so. it's very similar. but at the same time i'd say i don't buy.

into that distinction that there's some. fundamental preference. one of the things that terence mckenna. since we talked about him. he talked about how if it's from nature. it's good. and if it's not you know we should be. suspect. um of course he had a lot of great lsd. experiences but. actually terrance in 1984 we were at. eslin with a bunch of other people. this was before the crackdown on mdma. and this was some of the underground.

therapists and the above-ground. researchers were trying to. talk about how to protect mdma from this. eventual crackdown and. terence was like forget about it you. know it's from the lab. you know it's dangerous we have. thousands of years of history all these. other things and you know what do we. know about mdma and. blah blah blah i was like terence you're. so um. um unscientific bullshit another. way to say it is and and i just said you. know we need a study. of uh the safety of mdma and so then.

dick price who started. um aslan i said i'll put a thousand dick. prices he'd put a thousand so terence. was actually the catalyst for the first. study with mdma. wow um just because he was so. frustrating about how plants are okay. and you know if it's from the lab it's. bad yeah um so that's one distinction um. the the other distinction is this um. sense of uh classic psychedelics versus. things like mdma so to what extent do. they. uh dissolve the ego and you could say to.

what extent do they. cause visions the 5-ht-2a serotonin. receptor subtype. which is responsible for a lot of that. where these drugs are activating. now masculine of all the psychedelics. chemically it's the most similar to mdma. it's a phenethylamine which is mdma so. in the 50s there was the 53 i think it. was the army chemical warfare service.

wanted to look at drugs for. interrogations mind control. non-lethal incapacitance they did. a study in eight substances these were. now toxicity studies in animals. and on the one side was methamphetamine. and the other was mescaline and mdma was. in the middle. chemically so. mescaline of the psychedelics tends to. have the. warmth that mdma has it's not as. ego-dissolving quite as some of the. others.

i mean it's the main active ingredient. in peyote it is very psychedelic very. visual. another distinction with these different. drugs is how long they last. and a lot of that has to do with the. route of administration. so for example if you smoke dmt. it takes 10-15 minutes and you're. within seconds you're off in another. world um similarly 5-meo dmt very rapid. when you take dmt in the form of.

ayahuasca. where it's mixed with another substance. that. makes it so that it's orally active then. it's a couple hours. so lsd is uh 8 10. 12 hours sometimes psilocybin is more. like five or six. hours or four to six hours mdma is. similar. it's one reason why in our research we. give an initial dose of mdma and then. two hours later we give half the initial.

amount. to extend the plateau because we want it. to last longer. for people to be in this therapeutic. state. so that's another distinction is um you. know how long these drugs last. another distinction is which of them. come from. a religious context they have a religion. built around them. we have this um sense that some people. are saying that 5-mo dmt. and the sonoran toad that they have this. long history of indigenous use but they. don't that's all modern it's made up. and it's kind of a new approach however.

there was thousands of years of use of. psilocybin mushrooms in religious. contexts um. from um 1600. bc to 396 a.d the world's. longest mystery ceremonies the. elusionian mysteries. you know sort of the heart of greek. culture the heart of western culture. that was a psychedelic potion called. kikion. that seems like it's very much like an. lsd-like substance.

um air got on grain and. you know lsd comes from aragon. so i think that there are a lot of ways. to look at these different substances. another. distinction is um you know which one of. them. are being researched right now in. scientific context and which are not. and because of the rise of all these. for-profit companies and everybody's. looking for what they can patent what. they can claim the land grab. you know more and more there are.

companies looking at every different. kind of psychedelics. the ones that are most important that. are not being researched. mescaline but now there's a company to. do masculine a journey collab. ibogaine which is crucial for opiate. addiction. there's a new company a. branch of this company a thai that's. going to be looking at ibogaine. so i'd say the rise of the for-profit. companies is making it so that. there's just going to be an enormous.

amount of investigations. into all these different psychedelics. but what we're going to see is the. development of new psychedelics that we. don't know anything about that have not. existed yet because. a lot of these for-profit companies are. going to want to. invent and patent and have composition. of matter patents on new molecules. so i think we'll see a lot of that. happening too that's really fast i mean. there's a lot of doors you've opened and. we're going to walk through all of them. including the research and so on but.

on this one little tangent of um the. future of psychedelics so engineering. new psychedelics. can you comment on maybe the the. chemistry and the biology of how. psychedelics work and where is the space. of possible. engineering of psychedelics and what. kind of things might they unlock. in terms of the possible places our mind. would be able to go and the. the effects of that of improving health.

but maybe at the basic level of. chemistry. and the space of what could be. engineered. well you you reminded me it's not i'll. get to exactly what you said but you. reminded me of. a talk i heard by buck mr fuller. shortly before he died and what he. talked about. is how technology was making things. ever smaller you know that we are able. to pack more and more information into.

smaller and smaller spaces. and that we're developing technologies. of communications with people you know. we now. know the internet and things like that. but what he said is that he thought the. eventual uh evolution of this sort of. research would move from this. miniaturization to telepathy. yeah and so it's like a shocking thing. for somebody like scientific like that. to say that yeah. um so will we unlock those parts.

where i talked about the collective. unconscious will we be able to. more consciously explore those areas. so i think that that's a possibility. there was. stan groff who's you know the world's. leading lsd researcher. and has been my mentor his wife brigitta. they were talking about stories that. they had heard about um. mdma that um people take and then on top. of that they do 5-meo dmt.

and so you get this ego dissolution but. underneath. that you have this sense of um ego. sort of um sense of self safety. of self acceptance kind of grounds it so. stan was like that's the future of. psychiatry that you can. watch without the terror of the ego. dissolution the sense that you're losing. your mind or you're going crazy or. you're dying or. you know that you have this grounded. sense of safety. while you're dissolving your normal.

sense of how you see things. and being able to engineer in in a. fine-tuned way that. that exact experience may be fine-tuned. to the person yeah as opposed to sort of. this. manual potion that's uh through through. uh. well i don't experiment although i don't. know about fine-tuning things to the. person in the sense that. um we believe there's this inner healer. this kind of you know inner healing. intelligence. we talked about it the body repairs. itself you know so. um i think we more need to create.

safety for people and then then what. emerges will be customized to what they. need to be looking at from this inner. healing intelligence. at the same time we will move to uh. you know we we hear so much about um. the new approaches to oncology. where you know you you do um genetic. analysis of different kind of tumors and. then you have certain kind of. chemotherapy agents and you do like. personalized chemotherapy i think we. will have. more like personalized psychedelic.

therapy but it'll be more like a. sequence of different drugs that people. go through over an extended period of. time and then you kind of customize. what's next and sometimes you'll combine. different drugs together like this. 5mu dmt and mdma or a lot of times. people do. lsd mdma combinations or psilocybin mdma. combinations. um chemistry and um. it's not my strength i'm i'm more into. clinical applications and policy but but.

i can say that. um from what i've learned from reading. from others and research done by others. that you know different psychedelics. have an. impact on different neurotransmitters. different other. parts of energies in the brain. the default mode network is. what's considered to be like our sense. of self. you know and it's this it's part of the. brain that's sort of is what i described. before scanning. the world and filtering information for.

what's really. important to us and both. um focusing us on things and also. helping us to ignore a lot of things. and the classic psychedelics all weaken. the energy in this default mode system. and therefore you get this flood of. information that you're not normally. paying attention to. and then you start seeing in more. creative ways or more connected. you actually move to beyond the verbal. kind of thinking into sort of. symbolic thinking a lot of times um.

and that's where you sometimes get these. uh mystical sense of connection how it's. all one and. you get the sense also of. how big the universe is and how small. each one of us is. so there's a lot of work that sasha. shulkin and albert hoffman. who invented lsd and first synthesize. psilocybin and what they call structure. activity relationships. what is the structural molecule and then. how do you predict. what that new molecule that never.

existed before is going to do. once you actually take it and. you can get close but you never really. know. until you actually take the drug and the. way that. sasha ran his experiments is that he. would take the drugs himself first. in low doses and he would sort of you. know step up the doses to have more. experiences if he thought it was. valuable he'd share it with his wife. anne. but then what they would do is if they.

both thought it was valuable they had a. group of 12 people that they were with. for many many years. and they would distribute these new drug. to these 12 people. and they would get the different. perspectives and he felt that 12 was. like a minimum number you know because. we're so unique how each of us see. things but then you kind of get a little. bit of a consensus on how a lot of. people are going to see it and then if. that. 12 people were positive about it then. they would turn it over to leo zeff. who he called the secret chief the. leader of the underground psychedelic.

therapy movement and then he would start. exploring it in therapy so. there's um still a lot of mysteries as. far as structure activity relationships. and. it's not going to be the case that. people go into the lab and. they tinker with molecules and they know. exactly what they're going to get. and a lot of it has to do with the not. so much. chemistry as morphology you could say. the shape of the molecule and how does. that. interact with receptor sites and so. we're getting better at.

modeling all of that and how does that. interaction relate to the. the the morphing of the human experience. and deeply understanding that. perhaps there's no equations yet for. that kind of thing you really have to. build up intuition by experiencing it. and over time and. sort of subjective self-report like. trying to build. an understanding of the effects of the. different chemistries yeah yeah you can. you can have approximate ideas but to. know exactly so.

you know when i first tried mdma which. was 1982. and this was after i had done lots of. lsd and masculine. and mushrooms um i was shocked at how. different it was than these other. substances. and yet how profound it was so are there. whole new kind of categories of classes. of drugs that we're not aware of that. would be. not so much this like eco-dissolution or.

emotional well what mdma does is uh. reduces activity in the amygdala. the fear processing part of the brain so. it's not just chemistry but it. it routes energy throughout the brain in. a different way it increases activity in. the prefrontal cortex. so you think more logically though that. i think has an enormous. impact on the effect of mdma the other. thing it does. is it increases connectivity between the. amygdala and the hippocampus so it helps. facilitate. um processing of things into long-term.

memory. um and with ptsd trauma is like never in. the past it's always about to happen so. will we one time develop drugs that. would even be specific to. certain kind of memories we're working. with a woman rachel yehuda. who is at the bronx va. and she's done some studies that are. with the epigenetics of trauma so she's. worked with holocaust survivors and. their children. and she has identified um.

epigenetic mechanisms by which trauma is. passed from generation to the. generations. sort of like set points for anxiety fear. certain. things like that but the question is can. you actually transmit memories. from one generation to the next now. this is not um dna. changes which happen over a very long. period of time in the. evolutionary scale but within one. lifetime within.

some experiences your epigenetics what. turns on the genes or turns off certain. genes that can. be impacted and that's what we know now. can be transmitted from generation to. generation. either by the father or the mother. through the sperm or the egg. so it's it's pretty um remarkable so. what what rachel's going to. try to do is mdma research for ptsd. and look at these epigenetic markers. before and after and see if they change. as a consequence of therapy so.

will we develop one day certain kind of. chemicals that will be able to bring. certain kind of memories to the surface. um that's not inconceivable the. epigenetic. angle is fascinating that there will be. these epigenetic perturbations that lead. to. memories living from one generation to. the other. and then bringing those memories to the. surface and using. using that as signal to understand what.

exactly the psychedelics bring. to the surface and not yeah yeah now the. other. portion of that though is culture i mean. culture is where we store all these. memories. and in the stories that we get passed. down. especially with a lot of shared you talk. about the holocaust or world war two. where it is um. it's deeply ingrained in the culture the. impact of those events. and sort of in aggregate the different. perspectives on that. particular event create a set of stories.

that you can plug into. and then they kind of resonate with some. aspect of you that creates a memory. that's. connected to like when i think about. world war ii and the holocaust. i think about my own family but in some. sense. it's also resonating with stories of. many others. so it's like somehow the two echo each. other. and i'm just providing my own little. flavor on top. the the meat of the stories are probably. those that are shared with others. it's plugging into the collective.

unconscious that that's. um that's really fascinating really. plugging into. like precisely plugging into particular. memories. as a way to uh to to uh. deal with trauma and ptsd that kind of. thing. yeah i'll just have that the most. important dream of my life. ever was of a holocaust survivor telling. me. that he was miraculously. saved from death.

and he knew that he was saved for a. particular purpose but he never knew. what that purpose was so in the dream. i'm seeing him on his deathbed and. and then he shows me whatever happened. to him during the holocaust. you know and then um we're back in the. room on his deathbed and he says well i. know what my. purpose was now and i'm like oh great. what was it he said let's. tell you to be a psychedelic therapist. and to study psychedelics and. bring back psychedelic research and. i thought to myself i've already decided.

to do this you can lay this on me. i can say yes and then you can die in. peace and then he died in front of my. eyes. in the dream so i think that that kind. of. cultural um transmission that i got from. when i was really young. you know then manifested in this dream. and that was this. story about how people can be. um incredibly vicious and can be. very motivated by irrational factors and. so. i i just feel that this this kind of.

multi-generational transmission of the. story of the irrational. you know being a murderous factor. and something i needed to respond to. was deeply ingrained and i i would say. my guess is you know more culturally. than this epigenetic. mechanism yes yeah but your sense is. that. whatever stimulated a certain. part of human nature in uh world war ii.

especially not to germany but also in. stalinist soviet union. still is within us within all of us just. like we were saying uh you know. um we embody quite a lot of things. yeah and one of those is whatever the. the capacity of for evil. i seems to be one of those things. yeah there's a quote um from carl jung. from just a few years that.

before he died what he says. and i'll just paraphrase it is that we. need to. understand psychology we need to. understand. who man is that the greatest danger. to us is man there are no other dangers. really. that impact our species and then he goes. on to say that. we are the source of all coming evil.

now this was 15 years or so after world. war ii. but yeah and and i'd say one of the most. important psychedelic experiences of my. life was a dmt. experience also terence was there ralph. metzner. andy weil a few others and we are um. sitting around ed eslin smoking dmt. and under the influence of dmt which now. this was the first time i've ever smoked. emt. um i had this super rapid fraction of a.

second like. dissolving of everything that i well. first off i saw. a horizontal line then i saw a vertical. line then it turned into a color. red than it was red then it turned into. cubes then it turned into like an. mc-escher kind of like. i don't know you know didn't make. logical sense and then i was gone. and then it was just this period of. five ten minutes of just feeling part of. this um enormous. wave of um billions of years of. evolution how. i had this sense that in my innermost.

sense of who i. am uniquely individually this inner. voice that's talking to me that i didn't. develop english that that it's like a. gift to me from. millions of people that so that even in. my most. innermost uh sense it's not just me. it's it's the product of everything that. came before me i'm part of this bigger. system and then i just thought wow just. how many billions of years does it take. to reach this point. self-awareness and all this and it was.

glorious beautiful and then i had this. thought. um and this is where this kind of um. intellectual honesty i guess you could. say i just thought well if i'm part of. everything and everything's part of me. then it's not just the good parts that. hitler's part of me too. yeah and that was just this shock like a. stone. sunk you know and i just was very moody. for the whole. next day but it was that acknowledgement. that each of us carries these potentials. and what we activate is what matters but. what what our potential.

are is the whole full range of things. i don't know if you can comment about. the dmt trip itself and what it's like. starting from the very basic geometric. shapes and then launching. yourself into the context of the. enormity of space and time in the human. history. is there anything else to be said about. that kind of um. visually or physically.

or emotionally about that journey what. is. what it's like that brief journey that. reveals so much. well i was with a group of people the. way we were doing it. was um you know each of us would smoke. dmt. have 10 15 minutes experience while we. closed our eyes and you know everybody. else was just chatting and then the. person who did the dmt would come back. and tell their story what happened and. and then. we'd think about it for a bit and then. pass the pipe to the next person and so. this was like a whole. evening you know and so even the.

starting to interrupt even the. conversations themselves then. is part of the experience exactly yes. yes because it's also what you bring. back. right i mean i think that's particularly. for therapy you know it's not so much. about what the experience is. but it's what you bring back and what do. you integrate and then also. um how do you learn how to do these. things on your own without the drugs. there is this way because we're saying. it's it's sort of a core human. experience. the drug is the mediator but can we do.

this on our own and once you've seen it. and felt it then you have a little bit. better sense to. recreate it on your own although you. know i've had dreams where i've been. doing lsd. and tripping and it was just incredible. it was. i was tripping in my dreams but i had. not taken lsd. so there's this way in which we do that. so i. i would say that from the dmt experience. the sense of safety that's what i was. trying to get at with this. group of us and this group of friends.

trying to do this common exploration. that. if you have this sense of safety you're. incredibly. vulnerable because you are. giving up your um awareness really of. what's happening around you. i think there's what we're finding. is that in our psychedelic research. for ptsd um. and what we see with the vaccines that. that even african americans are. reluctant to.

volunteer for vaccines because they. haven't had that sense of safety. from the medical establishment. they don't volunteer for psychedelic. therapy even as much. so the overlay has to be this sense of. safety as you become vulnerable and. looking inside you're. you're not um i i was just actually. told about how there's a lot of work. being done inside prisons to teach. mindfulness and you know so. one of the um charlene who's my.

assistant is trying to do work on. um helping people in prison with. trauma potentially one day with mdma or. meditation or mindfulness but. one of the exercises was you know. teaching people to okay. here's how you deal with stress you know. just close your eyes and deep breath and. what charlene was saying is people don't. close their eyes in prison. you know you don't feel safe to do that. so um all that is just to say is that. um the context is the most important. factor so while i'll talk about.

the dmt experience the context was this. supportive sense of safety that i could. be completely vulnerable and. out of any kind of um control women i. think you know. often or less safe in this way than men. because of all the sexual assaults. um but what it can do. by taking the ego orientation. um offline to some extent it opens you. up to much more. and and to make a bigger point of that.

um we could say that um it's very. similar to the copernican revolution. and you know people thought that the. earth was the center of the universe. and you know the the inquisition. murdered people that. questioned that father bruno burned at. the stake actually one of the things he. said. i think that's worth all these years. later. saying is that when the inquisition. sentenced him to burn at the stake for.

espousing this idea that the earth was. not really the center of the universe he. said to the inquisition. he said your fear in sentencing me is. greater than my fear in being sentenced. that their world view was so rigid yeah. that they had to wipe out anybody that. would question. it and and so. this idea of psychedelics displacing our. ego as the center of the universe. and to realize that we are just rotating.

about on something much bigger. than our individual life you know our. ego is. is designed almost to protect this body. while we're alive. and you can understand all the good. reasons why that is. but it also disconnects us from this. bigger reality. and so the psychedelics dmt by knocking. this sort of. ego orientation or the default mode. network offline. you open up to the the bigger sweeps of. history.

so in that place of safety and. vulnerability. in that fascinating group of people when. their ego was dissolved in this way did. they have. similar experiences is there different. places that their minds went. yeah so you know once i had this kind of. shattering experience that hitler's part. of me. yes you know no one else in the group. had that probably. a lot of them have maybe had that before. or they they realize that they're not. just. you know the good the white hat good. people and that they're all good and.

they're you know we've got to fight. against the bad people. you know so no people will go in. different places and not only that. if you do it again you'll go into a. different place than you went to the. first time. unless you have not resolved the issue. so i had a sequence of lsd trips. that were very difficult but it was like. coming to the same. sort of conundrum the same challenge. that i was unable to overcome this idea. of letting go and really fully. dissolving.

letting the ego fully go and and i would. have this sequence of trips over a. couple months where i would reach this. point where i was too scared to move. forward and i would just be holding on. so there are there are repeated themes. sometimes. what stan groff has said which i find. very beautiful is that the. full expression of an emotion is the. funeral pyre of that emotion. and what that means is if you can fully. let in. something then the essence of of life.

has changed. is that it moves on that everything's in. motion. and if you can fully experience it even. if it's a sense that you're going to be. trapped in eternity. in this hellish state if you surrender. to that that's the way out. you know this full experience of. something is this. um funeral part of that emotion and so. that. runs against a lot of what modern. psychiatry is doing too which is to. suppress symptoms. and to and to instead of supporting.

people to kind of explore these. insecurities so that then they can. contain them. and then they can move on so yeah. resistance is not a way to make progress. right um although in. one of the reasons why we do the. supplemental dose during the mdma or why. there's advantages in a 10 hour lsd. experience is that. you have a lot of opportunities to come. up against this resistance.

it may be too difficult to deal with and. then you kind of push it aside and then. a couple hours later you come back to it. or you come back to it press news every. once in a while. if you're not ready it's hard to do that. i think the with mdma. you can negotiate that's i think a part. of. its safety in a sense you can have this. like oh i should be talking about this. but i. we're feeling this but it's too much for. me now you can push it away but with the. classic psychedelics. this kind of membrane between the. conscious and the unconscious.

that um once you take the drug and it. weakens this membrane and things are. coming up. um it's very difficult to negotiate. with it the the cl the key to successful. uh classic psychedelic trips is. surrender. you've talked about that you first began. to reconsider the negative. health myths around psychedelics when. you learned that the book. one flew over the cuckoo's nest was. written by ken gizzy when. he was in part under the influence of.

lsd. so how do you think lsd helped him ken. keys in. writing uh that incredible book. yeah um there's a a process that's. called semantic priming. and so what what that means is that i i. say um. night you say day you know there's kind. of normal patterns. of kind of you say one word what kind of. words come to you. next and so they've done some research. they meaning scientists have done some.

research. where you give people a psychedelic. and then you do this semantic priming. and what you. find is they have a wider range of. associations. than they normally would when they're. not under psychedelics. so i think for ken kesey um. he was able with psychedelics to get. like um a deeper kind of emotional. connection to some of these. states of mind that people were in the. instant this mental institution.

and that he could explore them more. in-depth and more eloquently and and. and also one of the things he talked. about was the fog machine. was you know how um people's minds were. sort of clouded by the people that ran. the institution and this. the fog machine would be coming in so i. think. the um imagery and the metaphors. that he used a lot in the book could. come to him during lsd experiences.

and and then now he wasn't doing um. you know very when you're writing you. have to be. literate uh you have to be able to write. you know so it would be more like. beginning and ends of lsd trips instead. of at the peak. but i think you would get a lot of these. um. the feeling tones or the images the. metaphors i think he would get. these extent also lsd lasts so long you. can get these extended focus.

and you can really elaborate on um. images and um so much of psychedelic. experiences are. poetic and metaphorical i mean you can. take um. you know veterans who've never um. read a book of poetry in their lives. you know and under the influence of mdma. just. what they describe the imagery and the. way they describe their experience is. metaphorical poetic it's incredible.

and so i think that ken kesey was. able to channel these what lsd did to. his mind. in a way that. most people couldn't do that he did. because he was trying to write this. novel and because he was so brilliant. yeah the i mean we'll talk about. psychedelics and treating. in uh bringing some of trauma to the. surface and dealing with all those kinds. of things but.

there's something also to the opening up. of creativity. for whether it's for writing purposes or. for. for in my world for engineering for. invention innovation and invention. itself is a very it's a deeply creative. process. and it's fascinating to think. with the aid of psychedelics what kind. of ideas can be brought to life. yeah well we have the whole phenomena of. a lot of the people in silicon valley.

and else microdosing psychedelics in. order to. have a little touch more of this. creative approach to things. i would love it to see if it was that's. more like terence mckenna territory. correct me if i'm wrong but i would love. to serve more scientific to where. there will be the rigor of saying how to. do it effectively. you know how to sort of understand sort. of um. not just almost um. you know to take the full.

journey of creative exploration and to. do it for. prolonged periods of time you know um. for years you know lifelong kind of part. of your life. of hot it empowers creativity i. i think of course you start with. um helping people. uh deal with trauma and then the next. step is. people who have moved past their trauma.

and are trying to do something create. something special in their life. how can then psychedelics empower that. yeah. now that also just to not shy away from. anything controversial yes. um that has to that gets us to this um. idea of psychedelics for vision quest. particularly for younger people you know. when you're. sort of moving into this adulting kind. of phase and you have to figure out what. are you going to do with your life. there's so many options a lot of people.

of course feel constrained that they. have very few options but. i think this idea of psychedelics as a. way to help you. find your calling or find your vision or. find your unique leverage point. i think we'll see that more and more as. our culture evolves and gets healthier. around the use of psychedelics it says. both the science. uh having the rigor of understanding how. to do it safely and the culture catching. up. to the fact that this is uh both safe. and uh like very useful.

yeah although i would question this idea. of safety. um so so we can understand physiological. risks. and we can minimize them and i think. there's very minimal. physiological risks from the classic. psychedelics virtually none. or for even mdma under safe conditions. psychological risks are. harder to address but we can do that.

through the sense of safety and support. but i think there's um a level of risk. there that we shouldn't overlook. and so you know to make a drug into a. medicine what we have to do is prove. to the satisfaction of the fda and other. regulatory agencies. that things are safe and efficacious but. even though they use those words proving. safety and safe and efficacious. it's in relationship to the disease that. you're trying to treat and you accept a. certain amount of risk.

so it's the risk benefit ratio rather. than. pure safety yeah absolutely. let me ask you about kankeezy a little. bit longer because the fascinating human. being. he was also part of project mk ultra. yeah. yes what was project mk ultra and what. uh lessons we should take away from it. well mk ultra was a program.

by the caa you know what they were. looking at was. can you take these drugs these. psychedelic drugs. and weaponize them in different ways. um for interrogation for true serums for. um. you know exposing somebody before they. give a big talk to something like lsd. and then they. you know can't talk or make a fool of. themselves or. can you spray lsd over the battlefield. and have everybody tripping and drop. their weapons and then you just walk up.

and. you know nobody dies and you've won you. know the battle. so so it's a fascinating concept yeah. they call it non-lethal incapacitance. and i think that's how uh one way to win. a war is. uh to enforce peace. to get everybody not caring about the. war but yes well i. think gandhi said something even better. which is that the true way to win a war. is to turn your enemy into your friend. yes. that's a beautiful way to put it yeah um. but. mk ultra was really nefarious and it was.

part of our military and it was done in. secret and um. they would dose people against their. will. i mean one of the most infamous things. uh. was that they had a house of. prostitution in san francisco and they. would um. have one-way mirrors all this stuff and. then they would just dose people with. lsd. they would have the prostitutes dose. these guys with lsd and and observe what. they would do and how they would. act and um the ca actually for a while. was dosing each other.

secretly and that there's a famous case. of this phil olsen that. [Music]. either jumped out of a window or was. pushed he might have been killed. um he was a cia guy and they gave him. lsd and then they're trying to see can. they break him down and get him to tell. secrets and. i think he felt uncomfortable with what. happened to him while he's under the. influence of lsd and. um whether he was pushed or or not i. don't know if we'll ever know. but uh mk ultra was.

[Music]. violating people's human rights it was. done in secret and. the irony of it is that ken kesey. is one of the people one of the main. early people that got lsd in this. context and then. he was one of the main people that. helped inspire the hippies to use. psychedelics to. oppose the vietnam war so. i think the cia kind of in many cases.

things get out of their control what. they think they can do and it turned. into be. [Music]. a disaster for them i think there was. some thought that some of the people at. the cia had this that if you can turn. people inside. you know take drugs and they just focus. on their internal experience they're not. going to be involved politically. it's a way to sort of take people. offline. and what i don't think they counted on. is that when you're offline and you have. these. unit of spiritual experiences and you. realize how we're all connected then why. do you want to.

go out and kill these vietnamese and put. a. one dictator over another dictator. dictators on both sides in north vietnam. and southeast. why are we doing that so mk ultra has. um just very disreputable. uh we're learning more and more about. what they did and one of the unintended. consequences was ken kesey. and not only that but then the grateful. dead who. began at the acid test that gizi was. helping to organize.

um and out of that emerged you could say. just this incredible um psychedelic. culture and you look at the bands that. began. in the 60s yes and which ones have. really survived to the. this day and um you know the grateful. dead. has survived longer than most any other. band i mean some of them have died and. all but but it was like the tightness. the the sort of. telepathy we talked about before that. they could just. get so tuned in to each other and each.

other's energies and they could do. improvisations and they could do this. incredible. work that i think the the the. sustainability of the grateful dead as a. group was a testimony testament to the. power of the lsd. experiences and that might have never. happened if not for mk ultra. but uh can we talk about uh. darkness a little bit so yeah yeah ted. kaczynski the unabomber was allegedly. part of the mk ultra studies.

while at harvard uh do you think this is. true. do you think it had an impact on him. psychologically intellectually. and so on i do think it's true and i do. think i it had an impact so. um we talked before about are these. drugs somehow rather. producing a certain kind of drug. experience or do they bring out what's. within. so we have this experience yeah on the. one hand ken kesey and he. sort of took positive things out of this. um on the other hand.

um you know we can um. get this uh opposition to the modern. world to technology and to the point of. uh. creating bombs to try to go after it so. that. the experience is not in the drug it's. this interaction between. the drug the person the context and so. we can heal people with psychedelics or. people can be driven crazy with. psychedelics. it depends again on the context and so.

i think it's both these things can be. true and i think it was really good that. you kind of. highlighted this that there is this um. polarities. and that it's not in the drug it's in. the the. other factors and it's who they were. beforehand and then how you use that. experience so. all that's to say is if we put lsd in. the water and everybody we're going to. get it it doesn't mean that all of a. sudden everybody's going to have a. mystical experience and then that's. you know all we need to do and humanity.

is spiritualized or. end war and all of this it's it's not. about. the drug and that that actually is why. for me. um we've also talked about um. engineering new psychedelics and all the. people that are going to be trying. for-profit companies to develop and. patent new psychedelics. for me the most important challenge is. new cultural contexts. that can create legality safety support. for the existing psychedelics that we. already have.

i mean we have so much incredible. tools in these existing psychedelics. that. it's more about creating context for. them to be used in. safe medical or personal growth or. recreational even with harm reduction. all these different ways that's more. important to me than. finding some new molecule that's. somewhat similar somewhat different. but you know it can be patented so it's. the social context. so i i do believe that ted kaczynski was. part of nk ultra and i think it affected. him in a negative way.

and that's a cautionary tale that it's. not in the drug it's in the context. the context the person still it feels. like um. if viewed from a therapy perspective. perhaps there was a way to use. psychedelics to help. ted kaczynski find a path out of the. darkness. i i think so and i think that um. this is where i think mdma comes in in a. way that.

mdma is um you know he felt very. isolated. and very much out of society in some. ways. mdma stimulates oxytocin which we. haven't mentioned which is the hormone. of nursing mothers of love and. connection. it provides a lot of this sense of. self-acceptance and safety and and. wanting to be in relationship there's. google dolan is a neuroscientist at. hopkins she's given. octopuses mdma they're solitary. creatures.

except mating season which is not very. often and but you give them mdma and. they become. more interested in hanging out with. other octopuses so. i think this um for people that have had. difficult psychedelic experiences. um mdma helps them integrate them we've. worked with people that had. a difficult lsd experience 40 years. before. and are still able to get back to that. under the influence of mdma. and work out some of the conflicts that. they weren't able to resolve. all those decades before so i think that.

psychedelics could have been helpful in. a different context for ted kazinski. but the other big part of it is that. people have to be willing to cooperate. with the experience we talked about. resistance. so people can resist these things it's. uh you know the saying is you can drink. bring bring a horse to water but you. can't make them drink yeah this is about. how. people have to be willing to go to these. spaces so. one of the essence of our therapeutic. approach is that we.

help people to heal themselves that we. are not. giving them the healing it's it's a flip. on the power dynamics. that existed um you would say in the 50s. and 60s my dad was a doctor and the. doctors were gods. and you know whatever they said was. right and you know we no longer of. course believe that but. um for a while psychoanalysis with freud. you know. that they gave the interpretation to the. patient the patient couldn't help. themselves but they would do the free. associations and then.

psychoanalysts would see these conflicts. and would would be the one that does the. healing. would give this interpretation and that. would open things up so. i i think it's this idea of empowering. people to heal themselves. and so if ted kazinsky had been in a. therapeutic setting with psychedelics. and if they'd had something like mdma. available or mda which was popular. during the 60s which is a more like mdma. lsd combination. the outcomes might have been different.

let's take a step into the world of. studies. timothy leary who was he. and what were the most important ideas. you've learned from him. well i did have the um. opportunity to get to know him. personally and to spend some time with. him. timothy leary. [Music]. well let's start with nixon saying he's. the most dangerous man in america. that's a good place to start yeah yeah.

and and why did nixon say that it's. because of this uh. tune in you know tur turn on tune in. drop out. [Music]. timothy leary was just an incredible. advocate for. um think for yourself question authority. those were things he said all the time. think for yourself question authority he. was a rebel. he was kicked out of west point um he. was a psychologist. who um was at harvard for three years.

from 60 to 63. before he got to harvard he had an. experience. with mushrooms. in mexico and that he said he learned. more in that experience than he had in. his entire academic career before then. about how the human mind works. and so he came to harvard wanting to do. research into psychedelics. and he did some very important studies.

both of which well one was called the. good friday experiment. which was whether psychedelics in. religiously inclined people taking. psilocybin in a religious setting. whether it could produce a mystical. experience. that took place at mars chapel at the. boston university. because it's a little bit subjective or. you could say entirely subjective what. people. describe happens to them he wanted to do. another study. which would be a more objective measure. and that was called the concord prison. experiment and that was the thought if. you can give people.

psilocybin mystical sense of connection. type experiences while they're in prison. when they get out. they'll be more pro-social and they'll. have reduced recidivism. um so tim did that he also did the. naturalistic studies of giving loads of. people psilocybin and. sort of writing down what their. experiences were the range of. experiences. later on in his time at harvard he just. they started doing lsd. and lsd is more cerebral longer lasting.

not as reassuring in a way as psilocybin. sometimes he's to say that if they never. got into lsd they'd still be at harvard. with the psilocybin so he was a great. american psychologist but then. he got tired of the psychology game. you could say or he would say that he. got. more and more interested in cultural. change. and various musicians and artists and.

all sorts of people started coming to. him for. the psychedelic experience that they are. in a way for creativity for other things. so he started hanging out with. all sorts of famous people or you know. creative people and. um he stopped going to classes all. a lot and um rom das richard alpert. you know had um given lsd to a student. that um romness was. courageous enough to admit that he had.

the sexual interest in. uh they weren't supposed to give it. undergraduates that was about the only. time that they ever did it and. psychedelics just getting more and more. controversial even in the early 60s. eventually got kicked out of harvard and. then he became. kind of a cultural icon for the. counter-culture and. was hounded by the police and nixon and. spent a lot of time in jail i mean he's. an incredible. person one thing that ramdas said. is that richard albert ramdas said.

i'm a rascal but leary's a scoundrel. what's the distinction um rascal's like. in good fun a scoundrel is like. you can't quite trust them i think um. um idea yeah it's a spectrum of sorts. yeah i think that leary was someone who. a little bit got addicted. to media attention yeah. but i i think that um overall he gets.

blamed a lot for the. backlash against the 60s the shutdown of. psychedelic research i think that. he is unfairly plain for a lot of that. um i think when you look back at the 60s. my son that the common narrative is that. it was because psychedelic's going wrong. people took psychedelics they weren't. prepared they had emotional breakdowns. they went psychotic they. killed themselves they did this or that. different problems of. people taking psychedelics in um context. that. they didn't feel preferably safe in or.

or just they weren't prepared or they. didn't know how much they were taking or. all this that so. the the backlash was because. psychedelics gone wrong. but i think the real reason well that. did happen. i think the real reason is psychedelic's. going right and. people having this sense of connection. and then. the opposite of what the cia was hoping. that it would kind of. turn people inward and take them away. from political struggles. it actually motivated people once you. actually. um have these psychedelic experiences.

your attitude towards death changes also. this idea of death becoming an intrinsic. part of life it's a natural cycle. it's not so much so i think people. realize that you know while there's this. billions of years of evolution. you know infinity whatever that means in. terms of time that we're here for a very. limited time and they end up wanting to. use their time well they have a. lessened fear of death and they want to. build this paradise on earth here now. instead of later.

so a lot of people really did get. motivated. to challenge the vietnam war to work on. the environmental movement civil rights. movement women's rights movement. anti-militarism. and it was that challenge to the status. quo that caused the backlash. so leary is someone who um in 1990. we had a now maps i started in 86 so in. 1990 we had this. conference to raise money out in. california and leary was there and ram. dust was there and ralph metzner was.

there and andy wilde was there and. terence mckenna was there and dennis. mckenna was there and all these. but there was one point where um. tim was speaking and afterwards i was. asking him some questions and i said do. you have any advice. for us on how to work with the. government and. and how to bring these psychedelics. forward that's what we're trying to do. i've got this non-profit for it you know. we're trying to do this research what is. your advice on. how to bring this forward and how to. work with the government. and he said fuck the government.

he said i am so far past asking for. permission for. anything but i'm glad that you're doing. it. and then he held up my hand like you. know like passing the torch. wow so it was and that's one of my. favorite photographs of me and tim where. he's sort of like but it was. after this fuck the government i'm so. far past asking for permission for. anything but. yeah i'm glad that you are now i did. follow-ups to the good friday experiment. and i did follow-ups 25-year follow-up. to the good friday experiment about a.

34-year follow-up to the concord prison. experiment. what i discovered in some ways i would. say is the key to the 60s what i just. told you but in the the follow-up to the. good friday experiment that i did in the. 80s. for my undergraduate uh thesis at new. college. in sarasota florida i eventually found. 19 out of the 20 people. it was just that was an enormous. challenge because their names were all. lost and. it just took forever years and years and. years to find them all. um but i discovered that those people.

that had the psilocybin experience in. the midst of. uh 25 years later with nancy reagan and. ronald reagan and if there ever were. there. a social pressure to disavow the. validity of the psychedelic experience. that was then. and instead they um affirmed it. that they thought with all of this years. of hindsight now looking back they. thought it was a valid mystical. experience. but i discovered that one of the persons. who had the psilocybin.

had this experience during the good. friday service. that um reverend howard thurman was the. minister he was martin luther king's. mentor. and reverend howard thurman was the. minister at boston merc at mars chapel. uh martin luther king got his phd at. boston university. and howard thurman had spent time with. gandhi. and so he was really kind of this hidden. person behind the civil rights movement. about. non-violence as their strategy but he.

was interested in the the political. implications of the mystical experience. so he permitted this. experiment to take place and there were. 20 divinity students from andover newton. in the basement and. 10 experimenters all the people on. religion and psychology. like houston smith and walters and clark. and leary and rhonda. mr others were there as a support part. of it and. the sermon was like three hours later we. actually have. three hours long we actually have the. original sermon from the good friday. experiment from howard thurman up on our.

website. it's incredible but part of it was tell. people there's a man on the cross. and this one person sort of heard that. and he thought. okay i got to do that i got to the. howard thurman was such a dynamic. speaker he said i gotta tell people. there's a man on the cross. and so he said what am i doing here in. this basement chapel. listening to the service i got to go. tell people to manage correct so he went. they thought he was just going to. bathroom but he ran out the door he's. running down commonwealth avenue. and houston smith and tim leary go after.

him. and um he had thought that since he. should tell somebody he should tell the. president. like why not but then he realized well. the president's in washington i'm. you know here in boston i'll just tell. the president of the university. so anyway he's running down the street. and and leary and. houston smith go after him and he. doesn't want to go back inside they. finally get him he's not hit by a car. um but they end up giving him a shot of. thorzine. what's dorizine thorazine is like a. major antipsychotic.

uh drug it's a tren it's it's a horrible. drug. uh but it knocks people out tranquilizes. them. we would never do that today um you know. we don't abort a difficult experience. like that. yeah but in any case they hid that that. was not part of the. um write-up of this experiment so. what they did is in a sense a little bit. exaggerated the benefits it later became. out. three years later after the experiment. or four years in time magazine it said. everybody that got psilocybin had a.

mystical experience like. saying it wasn't true not everybody. eight out of the ten did but not all ten. not this guy and they uh. minimized the risks so there was a bit. of that i think tim was reckless in that. way. it was underplayed the risks and over. promised. the benefits and then the concord prison. experiment. it turned out that um tim had fudged the. data. completely and it wasn't really. successful so. i i fought him for that the outside.

world was doing the opposite. it was exaggerating the risks and. blocking resources he felt justified. to fudge the data yeah because the. outside world was. fudging in a sense the the response to. the yeah. yeah exactly yeah so so that. that presents a very nice context um. fucked the government but i'm i'm glad. that somebody. is fighting the good fight from within. and doing it the right way which is.

where you are so the 80s. let me ask what is uh maps the. multidisciplinary association for. psychedelic studies and what. what is its mission throughout the years. throughout the decades. yeah so uh maps is a non-profit. organization i created it as a. non-profit pharmaceutical company. i created an 86 after a dea the drug. enforcement administration. criminalized mdma in 1985 and that was.

after they started trying to do that in. 1984. and as i mentioned this uh terence. mckenna is sponsoring you know. motivating us to do this safety study. so so we did that in preparation for. this eventual crackdown. because mdma was called adam used as a. therapy drug. but it was also beginning to be sold as. ecstasy as a party drug and that was. taking place in public settings and bars. and so it was inevitable that the. crackdown would happen. and so i had a non-profit connected to.

buckminster. fuller earth metabolic design lab. that we use to support this lawsuit. against the dea to block them from. criminalizing mdma. we were winning in the court of public. opinion and winning in the court. the dea freaked out and the emergency. scheduled mdma in 85. the handwriting was on the wall that. they were not going to permit the. therapeutic use to continue because it. gets in the way of the narrative of the. drug war and these are terrible drugs. so in 86 is when i started maps as a.

non-profit pharma because the the. strategy that i realized is that. americans are open to medicines. you know that tools to ease suffering. that was the opening wedge the opening. door to changing attitudes. and it would be through science i would. say that my religion is more science. than anything else. yes and you know culture and. religion are metaphorical but often too. much they become.

literal but but i felt that through. science through medicine. um there would be way to bring these. drugs back to the surface. and the mission was always this mass. mental health. this idea that what we need is to. spiritualize humanity. einstein said the splitting of the atom. has changed everything except our motive. thinking. and hence we drift towards unparalleled. catastrophe. which shall be required if mankind is to. survive is a whole new mode of thinking.

so what is that new mode of thinking. i my presumption is that it's more of. this mystical sense of thinking that. that we're all connected. and then if we realize that we're all. connected we're not going to blow up the. world so. a lot of people say that you know if we. could just give lsd all to world leaders. that would be. you know then they'd have these. spiritual experiences the world would be. better but i actually had a ketamine. experience the day after that dmt. experience i described with the inner.

hitler. this ketamine experience was um i was. above and behind hitler as he was giving. a speech. like the nuremberg rallies kind of thing. and i was trying to think how do i get. into. his head how do i undo what he wants to. do. how can we deal with him and and i. realized this whole new thing about the. heil hitler salute and. you know he would like push energy out. and then everybody would do the salute. back to him and so it's like the one to. the many and the many to the one giving. all these people giving away their power.

and then how it would just sort of. ratchet up in intensity like these. vibrations. and and i realized there's no way to get. into his head this idea we've talked. about before about you have to be. willing. yes right so what that sort of helped me. understand. is that the strategy has to be mass. mental health it's not about changing a. few liters we need to change the mass of. humanity. to this new mode of thinking this new. spiritual way. so maps was a non-profit pharmaceutical. company. focused on psychedelics big pharma.

wasn't doing this work government wasn't. funding it so the only source of funds i. thought would be through nonprofit. donations and that's been true up until. just a couple years ago now that we have. the rise of these. for-profits but that's because we've. cleared out the regulatory. obstacles we've got more scientific data. about the benefits. funded through philanthropy we've. changed public opinion. and there's a lot less zeal for the drug. war so all of those. things have changed but at the time it. was mass mental health was the goal. two tracks one was drug development the.

other was drug policy reform. so that it's not just available to. people who have a clinical diagnosis but. people who. are personal growth or you know. they should have access to it as well i. did not know. at the time that no drug had ever been. made into a medicine by a non-profit. that was really good i didn't know that. i might have been a little bit more. daunted. and actually that didn't happen for 13. more years it happened in 1999.

and that was the abortion pill ru-46. that was approved in europe but. controversial nobody no pharmaceutical. company would take it. and it was john d rockefeller iii. through the population council with the. major donor being. warren buffett oh wow and the. rockefellers uh. and the buffetts and some of the. pritzkers were involved in funding this. so that was the first non-profit but but. the the maps was. designed as. from the very beginning not academic.

research into psychedelics but drug. development and that's a fundamental. distinction and that's why i think. we're years ahead now with everybody. else in terms of making. a psychedelic assisted therapy into a. medicine because our goal. from the very beginning was not. knowledge not academic research it was. practical it was drug development how do. we create new. social structures how do we create legal. access to these things. now in december of 2014. we created the maps public benefit.

corporation. so maps is a non-profit but you know. in our 35 years we've raised about 110. million dollars in donations. what i didn't know when i started maps. and it took me. um quite a few years i didn't even know. this until about. eight nine years ago was that in 1984. ronald reagan had signed a bill to. create incentives for developing drugs. that were off patent. so mdma was invented by merck in 1912.

it's in the public domain these. incentives are called data exclusivity. which means that if you make a drug into. a medicine that does no patent. protection. nobody can use your data for a period of. time. to market a generic and that will. effectively be. well it's five years you do pediatric. studies you get six months extension. and and we are being required if we. succeed in adults to work with. adolescents with ptsd. it blocks a generic competitor from. applying for for until that five and a.

half years is over takes fda at least. six months. to review so more or less six years of. data exclusivity 10 years in europe. is data exclusivity so the story then. became to the donors. that you're not going to have to give us. money forever because we can make money. selling mdma but we want to do. two revolutionary things you could say. one is psychedelic assisted. psychotherapy but the other is. marketing drugs when you market it with. the profit maximization motive. we end up in the extreme getting the.

distortions that we have in america. where we have the most. expensive health care system in the. world per capita but our outcomes are. down like 40 or 50. among the countries our average outcomes. we don't have a third of the people or. so don't. have insurance and it's just very. inequitable. so what we're trying to do is show a. different way to market. drugs and it's a modification of. capitalism it's called the benefit. corporation. where you maximize public benefit not. profit you still make a profit.

so selling mdma for a profit is not. something we could keep inside. the nonprofit because it's taxable it's. it's a business. so we've created the maps public benefit. corporation. which is a hundred percent owned by the. nonprofit so we have a non-profit that. owns a pharma company and and the. mission of that former company. is to maximize not profit but maximize. benefit. for society yeah yeah although there. still will be profits and. the profits that we're going to make are.

going to be used towards. the mission of maps which is again is. this mass mental health and. ending the drug war and and in fact. we've hired the boston consulting group. to help us plot our commercialization. strategy and so there is some. suggestions. based there's so many different. assumptions in this the number of. therapists that we train. the price that we set for the mdma. whether insurance companies will cover. it. but there's the possibility of somewhere.

in the range of three-quarters of a. billion dollars in profits. during this period of data exclusivity. just from the u.s you know and we're. talking about the. trying to do this research around the. world as well so that's what the benefit. corporation is the benefit corporation. is our pharmaceutical arm. we're about 130 people now somewhere in. that. fluctuates but one-third of them are in. the nonprofit we do. harm reduction psychedelic harm. reduction we help. you know create programs for.

people with difficult psychedelic. experiences at burning man at festivals. all over the world even in cities we're. now. negotiating with the um police the city. of denver. because denver has made the mushrooms. the lowest enforcement priority. you know we oregon has passed the oregon. psilocybin initiative so in those areas. where. maybe more people are going to gravitate. to do psychedelics we want there to be. harm reduction so that we don't have bad. stories coming out that would change. that so maps does the psychedelic harm.

reduction we do. public education we do a lot of it. that's what you and i are doing right. now we're doing that now. so but and but also research towards. well the research now is done in the. benefit corp in the benefit. yeah so so what happens is people donate. to maps get a tax deduction. maps transfers the money or you could. say invests in the benefit corp. yes the benefit corp will do the. research and then. maps is the sponsor but then we will. license the sale of mdma to the benefit. corp so. got it but but the research had done.

with an eye towards creating something. that has a big impact versus just. research for knowledge sake. yeah yeah because um. i'm interested in political change um. you can. the other part of it and which is that. the brain is the most. uh complex thing we know in the in the. universe. it's gonna it's endless i mean when are. we gonna really like this idea of will. we figure out telepathy will we figure. out. tapping into the collective unconscious. what is the extents of our brain.

you know how does the brain actually. work do you ask chemistry questions you. know so. if it's just the pursuit of knowledge. that is an endless thing and how does. that end the drug war how does that help. people directly so. that's why we're focused on drug. development more than mechanism of. action. before i ask you about a one but. several really exciting studies let me. ask sort of a personal question for me. so if i wanted to get. psychedelics from the maps.

public benefit corporation and uh. explore my own mind um how do i get to. do that. uh and when you won't be able to you'll. never be able this is very unfortunate. because the the reason is because the. benefit corp is designed as a. pharmaceutical company. so we can only work on clinical. indication so let's say you. you come to me and you just say oh i'm. really depressed can i get mdma to. overcome my depression or overcome my.

ptsd. you know we'll have to do research in. those indications um. and by when you say me you mean like a. doctor so this would be prescribed in. theory by doctors so this would go. through a doctor. yes and a prescription okay let me uh. let me ask another question. to further answer the so so that's where. the drug policy arm comes in. the drug policy reform so you should be. able to get. access to psychedelics for your own. personal growth yes but that's not. medicine so that's why we need.

to medicalize to have things covered by. insurance. to change people's attitudes the public. attitudes and then. we get this subsequent drug policy. reform. and and we're talking about it in terms. of licensed legalization so my view is. you should get a license to. do psychedelics you get a little. education stuff and then then you should. be able to buy it and do it on your own. so let me rephrase the question. more specifically so when can i if i. happen to have. um ailments of some kind where the. doctor decides that psychedelics could.

help. when would you be a loose estimate for. you. of when a doctor would be able to. prescribe to me something from. uh maps public benefit co and then. when for my personal growth and. creativity would i be able to get. something so like. just looking up this isn't like. guaranteed but like your vision your. hope. yeah um for yeah for for academics in. society. well the end of 2023 so two and a half. years from now.

we anticipate fda approval for the. prescription use of mdma for ptsd. because the fda does not. regulate the practice of medicine there. is what's called off-label prescription. what that means the label is what it's. approved for so the label said this is. approved for ptsd. and but let's say you come in anything. else social anxiety or whatever. you can go to the doctor they can give. it to you it might not be covered by. insurance they have to be a little bit. careful about malpractice if they're.

but i think the end of 2023 is when. you will be able to do that now there's. actually another program. very limited called expanded access. which is compassionate use. which means that and we have approval. for 50 people. for compassionate use right now we think. that'll grow. so that's going to open up in about two. months and so those are. people with ptsd they have to be. treatment resistant nothing has worked. for them and they can. access mdma while we're doing the phase. three studies.

wow and but they have to pay for it. themselves we're not. the sponsor has to pay for all the. research but expanded access. because there's no control group. everybody gets the mdma. people can pay for it themselves and we. think that'll start in a couple months. but it's very limited it's limited to. certain cities there's also a program. called right to try. which is um passed through congress it's. it's. it's similar this idea of compassionate. use but it cuts the. fda out of it and patients can negotiate.

directly with. pharma companies to get access to their. drugs. that's starting to happen i think in. canada now they're letting. people have compassionate access to. psilocybin. for life-threatening illness because. there has been studies with psilocybin. for cancer patients and others with. life-threatening illness. as far as your question about when will. you be able to access this. for personal growth outside of medicine. i'll take that to mean you know fully. legally where you can just go buy pure.

drugs somewhere when will that happen. you know we already are starting to see. the decriminalization in certain areas. of plants psychedelics. and we see overall drug drug crim like. that passed in oregon. so that any drug is now it's not legal. you can't. really fully set up clinics to. offer it to people or there's no legal. supply like that but. it's decriminalized so my sense of. things is based a lot on watching what. happened with medical marijuana and. marijuana legalization so we're sitting.

here in massachusetts where marijuana is. legal. but what happened first was medical. marijuana so. what we see is that medicalization. by demonstrating that under certain. contexts the risks are. much less than the benefits and then. there are benefits. and then people hear stories about. people that gotten better. and then that changes their minds then. eventually that builds up to. why are we throwing people in jail. shifts to culture yeah. yeah so i think that what we're going to.

have 2023. is mdma approved by the fda chances are. psilocybin will be a year two after that. then what we're going to need is a. decade of psychedelic clinics. that are going to roll out across. america. also other countries as well thousands. of these psychedelic clinics. we already have hundreds of ketamine. clinics. that are ketamine for depression um more. and more people are realizing that. ketamine when it's used with therapy. it's better than when it's not.

um but the therapists want to be. psychedelic therapists they don't want. to be a ketamine therapist or an mdma. therapist so those the cross-trained. so we'll have a decade of these. thousands of psychedelic clinics and all. these stories of people getting better. in 2035. is when i think that we will move to. licensed legalization. which is when you will have the option. of just going somewhere. once you've done this educational stuff. potentially. i also think it would be better to have. the opportunity for people to go.

for free paid for by tax money to these. clinics and you have your first. experience with psychedelics under. supervision. and you know what you're getting into. you've you know. to ask the questionnaire what the risks. are with the drugs then you get your. license. so 2035 is when i think that'll happen. and the clinics will be sites of these. initiations. yes and so be a safe environment just. like you said all the things that are. actually. uh maximize the likelihood of a pleasant. experience and all those kinds of things.

it is a frustratingly slow process and. the. fda being part of that process is very. frustrating that. of course there's there's benefits but. uh boy well i wish you could move a lot. faster. yeah well one thing that i've learned. from being a parent. is that when you have little kids it. seems like they'll be with you forever. but then when they grow up and they go. to college and they leave you look back. and like where did that.

20 years ago you know so. we're still dealing with the legacy of. the civil war and slavery in america. yeah so actually a 20-year plan is not. that long. so while we say um. it's frustratingly slow and it is you. know i mean it's 50 years. since uh the psychedelic 60s and you. know. when right now it's um you know it's 36. years since mdma was criminalized. and you think about all those people.

that committed suicide from ptsd. or from anything else and all those. people that could have been helped. if the dea had accepted the. administrative law judge recommendation. that mdma. stay in schedule three it's it's. tremendously sad. at the same time culture evolves slowly. you know you read the bible or you read. all the stuff we're not that different. from people thousands of years ago. so how are we going to really evolve. enough over the next couple decades so. we don't destroy the planet and don't.

kill each other. that's why i think psychedelics have an. important role to play. that's why i've devoted my life to. psychedelics and it is frustratingly. slow. and what i said to myself is our whole. effort has not been fast enough can we. talk a little bit about ptsd and mdma. there's this fascinating uh paper. came out on a fascinating study that. you're a part of. that's a phase three study can you. describe what the study is can you. describe what phase three means.

can you describe um what the findings. are and why it's. in fact so important and impactful yeah. this study came out may 10th in nature. medicine. so one of the highest impact factors in. medicine journals it was tremendous. so to make a drug into a medicine the. first thing you need to do. is what are called non-clinical or. pre-clinical studies meaning. safety established in animals what does. the drug do. what are the side effects in animals.

where do you see the risks and. then you negotiate with fda to do phase. one studies. and phase one studies where you move. from animals to humans. and those are more safety studies and. trying to describe what the drug does so. that you can. determine if there is potential medical. value there. certain drugs like cancer drugs. are so toxic. that um you don't have phase one studies. in healthy volunteers.

it's like phase one slash two where it's. you you bring in the patients. but you still are doing sort of dose. response safety studies. but you use patients but most phase 1. studies are healthy volunteers. phase 2 are where you start bringing in. the patients. and you start experimenting with various. different things the. purpose of phase two is really just to. design phase three. now again i'm sort of putting out of the. picture in another area's mechanism of. action how do these drugs work.

phase two you're trying to figure out. what they do. who your patient population is what are. the risks who do you. include who do you exclude what are the. doses what is your treatment. what are your measures. in our case it was um you know how do. you do a double blind study. that was a big part of phase two that's. a big challenge for. psychedelic drugs any kind of drugs that. have a real strong effect. you know how do you do a double blind. study a double blind side to interrupt.

would mean that the patient should know. should not be aware whether it's a. placebo or not. and the research and the researcher does. not is not aware. and so for that lack of awareness when. the effect is really strong is very. difficult to do on both the researcher. and the patient. side yes and sometimes fascinating they. talk about triple blind. so the other part is the raters that. evaluate the symptoms and. before and after so you ideally want. triple blind do you want the patients. the researchers and the evaluators of.

the outcomes. all of them not to know what the drug. whether it was drug or placebo and. that's to reduce. experiment or bias so. and then then you move to phase three. once you've figured out how to design. the phase three studies and phase three. are the large-scale. multi-site placebo-controlled. double-blind. studies where you must prove safety and. efficacy. in order to get permission to market the. drug. now for us when we started maps in 86.

as i said it was one year after the. criminalization of mdma in 85. we had five different protocols that. were rejected by the fda. for studying with mdma and these were. all various phase one studies. they came from harvard from uc san. francisco from the university of in. arizona and albuquerque new mexico. all over and they were all rejected 1992. um six years after we started we got the. first permission.

for phase one and that took us through. much of the 90s. again things are slow because we have to. raise the money through donations and. and then in 1999 is when we started the. work with. ptsd and that then took us till. november 29 2016. which is when we had the end of phase 2. meeting with fda. so it took 30 years from the start of.

maps to the end of phase 2 meeting with. fda. and what we had discovered during phase. 2. was several different key points. the drugs that are available right now. for ptsd. the ssris zoloft and paxil. that have been approved by fda and. regulators in europe as well the. european medicines agency. for ptsd they work better in women than. in men. and they failed in combat related ptsd. all right so what we learned is that.

mdma-assisted therapy. works just as well in men or women and. it works in combat related ptsd. it works in regardless of the cause of. ptsd we also discovered that. even though there are stories that you. know people take mdm at raves and they. dance all night and they overheat and. they get hypothermia and they die from. overheating which is true and can happen. from pure mdma. or that sometimes people have heard. about needing to cool down. and so they drink water and then while.

they're. dancing all night and then they drink. too much water and then they dilute. their blood and they die from. hyponatremia. so there are risks of mdma but we. discovered that in a therapeutic setting. we can control all those risks those. things don't happen at all. so we discovered safety we could we. could demonstrate safety. we also figured out that our measure. the caps the clinician-administered ptsd. scale that it's the. gold standard all over the world for. measuring ptsd symptoms it's what the.

fda and the e may. require we discovered that it was a good. measure for us and that we could show. changes in that the other. big thing that we learned is that um and. we haven't mentioned this. yet but the work in the 50s and 60s with. lsd and psilocybin and the modern. research over the last 20 years with. psilocybin and classic psychedelics has. demonstrated. that there's a link between this. mystical experience this unit of. mystical experience and therapeutic. outcomes. for the treatment of addiction for.

working with people's life-threatening. illnesses. you know that for ocd for. obsessive-compulsive disorder that. there's. with the classic psychedelics both in. the 50 years ago and then the research. now has been. that there's a link between the depth of. the mystical experience and therapeutic. outcome. what we discovered is that that's not. the case for mdma. that people do score fairly high on the. scales of mystical experience not as. high. as they do with the classic psychedelics. but they do score pretty high.

on average and a significant number of. them have. over the cutoff for what would be. considered a full mystical experience. so enough to say that we could look at a. correlation and we didn't find any. the other thing that we discovered and. this was. more humbling i would say for me. personally. is that my dissertation at the kennedy. school a big part of it was on the. it's about the regulation of the medical. use of psychedelics and marijuana. big part of my dissertation was how to. do the double-blind.

study and i thought i'd solve the. problem and i persuaded my. dissertation committee that i'd solved. the problem. and the solution was therapy with. low-dose mdma. versus therapy with full-dose mdma and. everybody knows that they're going to. get mdma most of these people have never. done it before. they'll be confused about is at full. dose or low dose. and then the challenge is uh to pick a. dose that's. high enough so that there is this. confusion but not so high that it's so.

therapeutic that we can't tell the. difference between the groups. so we we studied zero meaning inactive. placebo. 25 milligrams 30 milligrams 40. milligrams 50 milligrams 75 milligrams. 100 milligrams 125 and 150. what we discovered is that my. dissertation was wrong and that. there is no good solution to the. double-blind problem. um what we found is that to our surprise.

actually was that 75 milligrams was an. effective dose. oh wow we didn't think that i mean the. normal doses like. full dose is like 125 milligrams. something like that. but 75 milligrams was an effective dose. and we discovered that the lower doses. so i was i was half right you could say. the the doses. of 25 30 40 50 they they could. produce enough confusion that you could. say that they were successful at. blinding not perfectly but.

enough confusion so that people. therapists couldn't. know for sure so that so that there was. this reduction of bias you could say. but what we discovered again to. to our surprise was that the low doses. made people uncomfortable. they they stimulated them. but they didn't reduce the fear and so. people still got better with the therapy. with low-dose mdma but if we gave them. therapy with inactive placebo they did.

even better. than if we gave them therapy with. low-dose mdma. so we we call it an anti-therapeutic. effect. well i don't mean to imply that they got. worse but it made people uncomfortable. people didn't like it you know but we. would still help them make some progress. so we had the blinding but what what it. meant by reducing the effect of. therapy with inactive placebo is that it. would make it easier for us to find a. difference between the two groups.

and so the real question is if you can. do it with therapy. why bother at a drug so we went to the. fda. and and so this was what we discovered. during phase two we went to the fda at. this end of phase two. meeting and we said we can give you. blinding. but it will make it easier for us to. find a difference between the two groups. and so we suggest. that we do therapy with inactive placebo. versus therapy with full dose mdma. that will cause a problem because most.

people will be able to tell what they've. got. yeah what um tom lawforn a doctor who. used to be head of psychiatry products. at fda is our. main advisor so the first thing he said. is that the double blind fails in. practice a lot even with ssris. because there are certain side effects. that you have with these drugs and the. doctors who are doing these research. when you're. reporting your side effects they can say. oh that's probably you got the active. drug instead of the placebo so. the double blind is in theory is.

terrific but in practice. it doesn't always work quite as well yes. and so what tom said is that there are. two. main approaches that they think are. important to reduce bias. the first one is easy to do it's called. random assignment. so you know sometimes there are studies. where you know you'll you'll treat a. bunch of people. with something and some fraction of them. will get better and some won't and then. you say. okay all those who didn't get better who. volunteers to get this new treatment.

and then you give them the new treatment. but the people that volunteer are more. likely to want to get better they're not. representative sample of everybody that. has these so when you have random. assignment. everybody is similarly motivated and has. meets the same inclusion exclusion. criteria. so that's what we talked of course we. need random assignment. the other part was when the bias double. blind doesn't work as well. then the system of independent raiders. is especially important of how you do.

that so we. have over a pool of raiders. over 20 of them and we do this monthly. in inter-rater reliability tests. to make sure that they um you know. evaluate the so that they're given a. videotape of a ptsd patient and then. they're supposed to rate them. according to their symptoms and then. then we sort of make sure that we've got. this. calibrated raider pool and it's all done. by zoom by. telemedicine and they're randomly. assigned to the next person that needs a.

rating. so they said 20 raiders yeah so we've. got like 20 raiders. and um we want what we want to do is is. make it so that each raider sees each. patient. only once maybe twice but but not. tracking them through the study. so that guys to reduce the bias in the. raiders that they they don't know where. this person is in the study. yes um and then and so. there's a fellow um bob temple who's. like the old wise man at the fda.

he's been there since 1972 he was in. charge of the office of science policy. and they brought him into the final. meeting of this. um process where we are trying to design. phase three so once fda said yes you can. go to phase three. that was november 29 2016. we then negotiated for eight months on. the design of phase three and all of the. other information this is fascinating. it's gonna need this process of design. ah it was. you know to the extent that i have any.

uh artistic creativity. it's in protocol design i really love. that so you enjoy this process i love it. i love it because it's always trade-offs. and it's. um yeah it's you know and i acknowledge. you know. that we are all biased and so how do you. there's something beautiful. about the scientific process designed to. get you to the truth. um especially when that scientific. process is trying to get to the truth of. the human. organism which is so complicated so it's. very difficult to uh.

to dissect to do to get the the the. strong effects. and when you're analyzing when you have. like raiders they're. they're watching a video. there's removing subjectivity from that. is very very challenging. yeah very very much so um. and so we came to this agreement with. fda though. that we would um use this uh independent. raider pool and. and so we learned in in phase two again.

that the double blind there was no. solution to the double blind problem and. and both the fda. and the european medicines agency in the. end agreed. that the best design was therapy with. inactive placebo. versus therapy with full dose mdma. accepting the fact that most people will. be able to tell. what whether they got nothing or they. got full dose mdma. most therapists will be able to tell the. difference but. that makes a harder test for us to show. a difference between the two groups. because we're giving them inactive. placebo and not the anti-therapeutic.

effect of low-dose mdma. so once we started phase three so then. we were able to start. in 2018 phase three and the paper. in nature medicine that just came out. was the. results of our first phase three study. we. came to agreement with fda that we would. do two. phase three studies each would have 100. persons in them. and what the fda said to us is that they. thought that we could prove.

efficacy with smaller numbers than they. wanted to see for safety. the reason they said that is that in. phase two we had a large effect size. so from a statistical point of view the. bigger of an. effect that you're looking for the fewer. number of people you need to get. statistical significance. when you're trying to find small. differences you need large numbers of. people to. sort of work out the noise um. so we were we came to agreement on two.

100 person phase three studies. uh and the idea is that it's very. possible that the. the first part the first study would. show the efficacy. because the effect is so strong yeah. yeah and the second but but also. safety as well so so you know one of the. things we also realized when you work. with a highly stigmatized drug. in the midst of still you know the drug. war and prohibition that we need. highly sympathetic subjects.

and we need to make the best case we can. which means we need to work with the. hardest cases. so that this is really needed and so we. end up enrolling people. the first study was chronic severe ptsd. and unlike many studies of ptsd we. enroll people that have previously. attempted suicide. wow so we have multiple people that have. tried to kill themselves. that we felt like um if we were to. exclude them what are we doing. those are the people that need it the. most so.

we we came to this agreement with fda. we're going to work with. chronic severe ptsd patients. including those that had attempted. suicide and. we would do these two 100 person studies. and. we also negotiated what's called an. interim analysis. so what that means is that when the. study. is um underway. um and often big big studies they have. this kind of interim analysis.

where what you do is and for us we. negotiated when we had 60. or 60 people had reached the primary. outcome measure. and all hundred had been enrolled then. we would take a look at the data. and if the statistical analysis that we. did. was showing you know based on a certain. effect size that we chose based on what. we saw in phase two. the interim analysis is for what's. called sample size re-estimation. so what it means is if the results.

aren't as good as you thought they would. you can add more people. and then you'll get statistical. significance. it means that your effect isn't as. strong as you thought it'll be harder to. get insurance to coverage but fda will. still approve it. because fdl also believes that these are. group. averages there may be some people that. will later figure out respond better. than others. so they'll approve it if it's. statistically significant even if it has. a low effect size. the ssris have low effect size so.

we did the interim analysis in march of. 2020. and what we discovered to our delight. was that. um we did not need to add any subjects. that's all we were told we weren't told. like what is the results we were just. told all we were going to get is a. number. zero or you need to add x numbers of. people to the study to get the. statistical significance that's right. around the time that covet hit. and lockdowns happened and we ended up. negotiating with fda that we would end. the study with 90 people instead of 100.

it took a while for us to end up doing. that so the paper that we just published. is on the results of 90 people i think. it was 46 in the mdma group 44 in the. placebo group and what we. discovered was that the study worked. better than we had even hoped. so the first thing is that you look at. statistical significance you have to get. 0.05. which basically means a nickel out of a.

dollar a 1 in 20 chance. that the difference between the two. groups is due to some random factor. rather than to your intervention. and in this case the the placebo group. gets therapy. and then with inactive placebo and then. the. group gets mdma with active placebo so. you have to get .05 there's another. measure. that the fda uses sometimes called. robust which means. one in a thousand instead of one in.

twenty one in a thousand and if you get. a robust. results .001. and you meet some other criteria they. might agree to approve the drug on the. basis of just. one phase three study instead of two. because when you think about. it a one in 20 chance for your first. seconds to. a phase three study a one in 20 chance. for your second phase three study you. multiply that together it's one in four. hundred. point zero um two five um.

that's pretty good so robust .001 is. even better than. two independent phase three studies each. at .05. what we ended up getting was one in ten. thousand point zero. zero zero one outrageous. yeah you know incredibly so that's a. measure of both the difference between. the two groups and the variability. and so what it meant is that we had. minimal variability. that most people who got to mba got.

quite a large. amount of benefit from it and most. people who got the placebo. were more or less in the same range as. well that's really exciting by the way i. mean. [Laughter]. mean i i i suppose it's exciting from a. perspective of. approval by the fda maybe perhaps that's. the way you're seeing it but it's also. exciting because it's it has a chance to. help people that are truly suffering. yeah well if we can get one in uh 10. 000 in the first phase three study.

chances are we can get one in 20 in the. second. so it's really going to be about safety. for us in the second phase three study. yeah now you can have. a large p value a large significance. but you could have an effect that's not. very significant. it's not clinically significant you can. have statistical significance without. clinical significance and as i said the. the more people you get in the study you. can find smaller and smaller differences. between two groups.

now we showed that we had um. a very large effect size so effect size. is based on. um that scale you mentioned well well. the scale of the effect size. is based on standard deviations. so an effect size of one means that your. results are one standard deviation away. from the norm that's considered very. large. the the ssris because they have they. were like .3.4.

effect size that's considered small. effect size medium is starting to be. around 0.6. and 0.8 and above are large effect sizes. we had what's called placebo subtracted. effect size there's two different ways. to look at it placebo subtracted means. you kind of look at the difference. between your two. groups and and what that is for us since. one group had therapy and one had. therapy plus mdma the placebo subtracted. effect size. is basically the effect of just the mdma.

because you've kind of washed out the. therapy that was 0.91. so we had a large effect size which was. different. wow over so 0.91 over the just the. therapy so over the placebo. yeah wow now when we do the. within group meaning the group that just. got the. mdma plus therapy look at their baseline. and their outcomes. that's another way to look at it and. that's what's going to actually happen. in practice because people are going to. get mdma plus. therapy that's 2.1 effect size two.

standard deviations away from the norm. is enormous effect size yeah. the other part is that we had. no effect by sight which is very. important so we had 15 sites two in. israel two in canada 11 throughout the. united states. the fda looks at is there a side effect. because what that might mean is maybe. you've got all your patients. or most of your patients going to this. one site which is these highly. experienced therapists and they're like.

you know hippies from way back. and they're super experienced with. psychedelics and you know and they're. they're getting great results but nobody. else gets good results. so we had no effect by sight which means. that's incredible. that we've been able to train all these. new therapists we had about um. about 80 therapists working at all these. 15 sites. we also discovered that there's a group. that's considered to be. very difficult to treat which is called. the dissociative subtype. so when people are traumatized.

one of the ways to psychologically. survive that. is you dissociate it's like you're not. there. when you do that though it's hard to. come back because when you come. back then you get all these painful. memories and fearful and so. um the extreme of that is called. dissociative identity disorder. kind of like schizophrenia almost. dissociative identity you're. so we let people in who are on the. dissociative. subtype and those are considered to be.

the hardest to treat because. the the theory is that you need to be. ego intact as i said the mystical. experience is not correlated. with therapeutic outcomes and you need. to be talking about what traumatized you. and working through that and expressing. it letting it out not keeping it in. so the dissociative subtype. seems like it's harder for them to get. back into the event because they're so. dissociated. what we showed is that those people did. even better on average than everybody.

else. so that mdma is integrative it helps. people. who are so separate that they make even. more rapid progress. so it's almost like them dma made it. more difficult for them to dissociate. yes yeah or you could say it made it. easier for them to remember. yes exactly to reverse the dissociation. yeah and we find that mdma. enhances memory for the trauma so that. you can have these. unconscious uh memories or memories that. you cannot remember. that you've suppressed so much but they.

distort your view. your filter of the world is distorted by. these fearful memories that the world. can't be trusted people can't be trusted. it's always about to happen. so we find that mdma increases memory. for the trauma but by reducing the fear. then the memories can come to the. surface then you can process them let. out the emotions cry scream shake. whatever and then through this mdma. effect on the amygdala and the. hippocampus it helps you. store these memories into long-term. storage so that they're not always about.

to happen they're in the past. they're part of your story but they're. not the whole story so we discovered. that the dissociative subtype. works better now none of this would be. enough. unless safety so from a safety. perspective. what we discovered is that there was one. woman in the study that attempted to. kill herself. twice during the study there was another. woman. that was so um. worried that she might kill herself that. the therapy brought these things to the. surface that she's been pushing away.

that she. checked herself into a hospital in order. to avoid self-harm. at the end of the study you know what we. learned is both of them were in the. placebo group. we didn't have anybody in the mdma group. attempt to kill themselves. so the mdma is really. helpful for giving people a sense of. hope. and and that they can somehow process. this. now it's not to say that nobody will. ever commit suicide.

and that's our big concern in the second. phase iii study. as i said it's more going to be about. safety than about efficacy we think. we'll get the efficacy but. we're very concerned about you know. safety. because we had um problems in the first. phase three study of somebody trying to. kill herself twice in the placebo group. you know it's it's the background for. having ptsd. so there'd have to be a disproportionate. number of people in the mdma group. try to kill themselves or succeed in. killing themselves then in the placebo. group.

for the fd to say oh this mdma it's too. dangerous it brings. we don't think that's going to happen so. those are. the other findings are that this from. safety is that the side effects are. transitory they're minor. they're they're um you know sweating or. jaw clenching or. you know slight temperature increase and. you know ev everybody that's been to a. rave knows about. you know taking ecstasy you know there. are some side effects. but they're minor they're transitory and. there has been this. massive problem of um during the 80s the.

90s. nida the nationalists on drug abuse was. trying to say that mdma was neurotoxic. and that you take it and it's going to. cause nerve terminal degeneration it's. going to be major. brain damage it's going to be. significant functional consequences and. back then they were saying that mdm is. too dangerous it should never even be. researched nobody should even get it. once. because it's poison and brain damage. well. we no longer believe that that was. exaggerated that was um. you know in service of the drug war but.

we've done in phase two. neurocognitive tests before and after in. two of our different sites and showed no. decline in cognitive functioning so we. we don't think that there's any. um neurotoxicity happening and the doses. that we use. there's no obvious functional. consequences people are getting better. and the other thing that we've learned. in um. phase two and that we still have to. learn from this study so what we showed. is that. um is the durability of the effect we. showed that um.

32 percent of the people that got the. therapy without mdma at two months after. the last experimental session no longer. had ptsd. just with the therapy which is. phenomenal because these are. on average 14 years ptsd one-third had. ptsd over 20 years. and just with the therapy. 32 no longer had ptsd at the two months. um however those people that got mdma it. was 67 percent. no longer had ptsd you know more than.

twice as good. in phase two and in phase three we're. also going to do the 12-month follow-up. that's not for the fda that's not for. approvability that's more for insurance. companies. because this is expensive a lot of. therapy time if it fades. you know if it's great results initially. but then it fades after six months. what's the point and what we showed. in phase two is that um. people keep getting better at the. two-month follow-up.

they're doing pretty well but at the 12. month follow-up they're even better. so it's durable people have learned how. to process trauma. they keep getting better so we've not. reached that point in this phase three. study where everybody's got their one. year follow-up but. we have also done three and a half year. follow-ups to some of the groups that. were in phase two. and showed that it was durable and we're. doing a long. long-term follow-up now to everybody to. many of the people in phase two some of. them treated 15 years ago. so that's all more for the insurance. companies so.

basically what we found in the paper. that we just published is that it was. highly efficacious highly significant. no effect by sight works in the hardest. cases. and the safety record was great that's. an incredible success. and that's really exciting especially. given that uh the people who've. committed. who attempted to commit suicide were let. into the study and. so these are is the people who are truly. suffering. um i mean.

that um that's incredibly exciting. and i mean just to speak to the. frustration why things can't move faster. but um. but for what it is it's incredibly. exciting. is there other studies of this nature. that you foresee. enabling that same kind of positive. impact whether it's mdma. for other things like treating addiction. or maybe it's psilocybin. for uh for other conditions is there. something else that's promising.

yeah i i think that um. what we've discovered i don't think is. unique to mdma. so it's mdma assisted psychotherapy. mdma is ideal for ptsd you know. maybe it won't work as well for ocd or. other things you know it's very. strategic why we chose mdma and why we. chose ptsd. but i i don't think that the results. that we've got are so. unique to mdma assisted therapy i think. that psilocybin assisted therapy is.

going to be great for. people with life-threatening illnesses. cancer. you know we're anxious about dying it's. looks like it's really good in the. treatment of addiction. um again these are in combination with. sort of the psilocybin tobacco was. cognitive behavioral therapy with. psilocybin. um i think that it's going to be a. little bit more difficult psilocybin for. depression. i don't know if it'll be quite as good. you know there are some biological. aspects sometimes to depression.

but i think there'll be really good. results for psilocybin for depression i. think it'll be approved it's considered. a breakthrough therapy by the fda. ibogaine is phenomenal for opiate. addiction helping people go through the. withdrawal and then. giving them this chance to deal with the. material that they've. that drives them for addiction um there. was ben sessa dr ben sessa in england. did mdma for alcohol use disorder. and that was really great the results he. got and it's it's the case that.

he ended up basically treating people. for trauma it's the trauma that people. run. the emotional challenges that people run. from into. quieting that pain through drug. addiction or alcoholism. so trauma is behind a lot of addiction i. i think that we are going to see. a revolution in psychiatry and that. there will be a lot of. conditions that have. left a lot of people still suffering. that psychedelic assisted therapy.

different psychedelics different. approaches but i think that we will see. a lot of hope for psychiatry and. psychotherapy and that psychedelics. would be a big part of. changing the practice of of psychiatry. and psychotherapy yeah this is really. to me fascinating so i i actually um. when i was younger for the longest time. wanted to be a psychiatrist. so i was excited by psychotherapy but. then i. uh perhaps incorrectly maybe you can. correct me but. became more and more cynical because it.

felt like it was more about prescribing. drugs than psychotherapy. i'm not going to correct you that's i. mean right now it's like there is a. crisis. in psychiatry that there are so many. psychiatrists that are so fed up because. they have been pharmaceuticalized yes. they meet people for 15 minutes they. adjust their medications. this is the way they make the most money. yeah but they've lost the art of talking. to people. yes it's it's true and that's why we see. that. so many young psychiatric residents are.

so thrilled by. psychedelics that they really want to. get back to. treating people as individuals not just. a bunch of chemicals. yeah that's truly fascinating because. the reason it was appealing to me it was. a way to. to study the human mind and to see ways. through talking that you can. make people feel better make people. better. you know make people suffer less and. that that was really exciting at the.

time i ended up then going to ai. because then i can understand the mind. from that angle but um. it's exciting that that that could be. also. revolutionized the field of. psychotherapy take it from its. uh back to its origins to where um a. psychiatrist. would be a scholar of the mind yeah well. you know freud talked about. dreams as the royal road to the. unconscious. and there was a lot of we you you really. spent a lot of time with people.

now um right before he died um. in in his last book freud wrote. something and again this will be a. rough paraphrase but he said that in the. future. we may learn about the energies of the. brain. and there'll be ways with chemicals to. influence that that will. help the therapeutic process yeah. [Laughter]. so you could say he was uh he was ahead. of his time. yeah this study paints a fascinating.

picture. of a future where first for medical. applications but then also in general. psychedelics of various forms could be. used by the broader society. forgive the perhaps ridiculous question. but. if much of society including our. politicians are. um taking psychedelics. and dissolving their ego and going. through this whole process. how how do you think the world may look.

different. in 20 30 50 years ah. okay so um i i said that i think. licensed legalization happens in 2035. yes. right so um and i think by 2050. um we will have enough people. hopefully spiritualized. we're also talking about um we hear so. much in terms of. climate change about you know net zero. carbon. so our goal is net zero trauma.

when do we have a world with net zero. trauma i mean right now. you know we have two sites in israel so. we help a few people but the recent war. with gaza. has traumatized millions of people on. both sides. so we are a long way away from net zero. trauma. um but that's the hope and that's. i think possible i think humanity as a. whole. um is.

like lemmings heading over a cliff with. climate change and with. the nuclear proliferation and just the. the religious hatreds and the more the. retreat to authoritarianism and. fundamentalism. and tribalism so i i think that there's. a very good chance though that. psychedelics used wisely so it's not. just makes psychedelics. legal and everybody takes them and you. know as you talked about ted kaczynski. you know. it's the context that people take it in.

but i think that there's. um a reasonable chance that enough. people can sort of you could say. um clean their filters uh. to see people as um. more similar to them than different not. to label them as the enemy. stan groff again had this beautiful. phrase about um. transparent to the transcendent. the death that's what yeah so for our. ego can can we be transparent to the.

transcendent because. can the filter that we look through the. world at be cleaned. to um you could say cleansing the doors. of perception you know. can it be clean to the point where we. can see the humanity in everybody. and see that um. one way to say this is that can we get. to the point where religions are seen as. like languages. where we all have this need to. communicate there's. thousands of different languages you. know we don't say that this language is.

fundamentally better than this language. this language is the only right language. everybody must speak english and. russian is bad or german is better you. know maybe we'll get to that point that. that religions are like that that their. different cultural backgrounds different. symbol systems different um. saints and heroes and messiahs and all. this but that. you know yeah jesus is the son of god. but so are we so is everybody you know. or yes you know the jews are the chosen. people but so is everybody. so can we get there i think that we can. and i think that we need to to survive.

the challenges that we're facing. and the hope is that by bringing. psychedelics as tools forward and trying. to bring. the context around them to be one of. responsibility rather than just profit. maximization. and just you know get as many people to. do them from all these for-profit. companies. you know can we and then also drug. policy reform and embed. knowledge in the society can we get to. honest drug education.

you know dare the drug awareness. resistance. education you know is fundamentally. twisted i mean. but it's the program that's used in a. lot of schools now. so can we get honest drug education pure. drugs harm reduction. and knowledge about therapeutic uses and. um. on the one hand and and more of these. thousands of psychedelic clinics. um i'm hopeful um and that that's our. goal. but in this landscape of um.

pharma companies they make a lot of. money. some people are worried about the impact. of those com you know. uh a big pharma on the landscape of. human trauma. yeah yeah and so there's of course some. companies could do good. but that's not inherent like um. many of these companies are not. optimizing for good they're optimizing. from profit exactly. exactly does this uh rise of for-profit. pharma companies were eu.

how do you navigate it do we still have. for-profit companies that. basically uh do what uh maps does which. is like. fight the good fight for the benefit of. humanity like what like how do we. proceed in this in landscape or work. where drugs can make a lot of money. well i am concerned overall i think the. rise of the for-profit. companies we have to realize is a sign. of success. that we have overcome.

the regulatory prohibitions we've. overcome. a lot of the public attitudes that are. against it we've demonstrated some. success so the rise of the for-profit. companies. are a sign of the progress that we've. made on the other hand turning things. over to profit maximizing companies. the big concern is that they're going to. try to. minimize the amount of therapy and make. it so the cost. is less so insurance companies are more. likely to cover it and then that they. just sell the most drugs.

the other thing we've seen as an example. of this is s. ketamine by johnson johnson for. depression and it's done by a profit. maximizing company. they don't know anything about. psychedelic psychotherapy or. psychotherapy at all. and so they've gotten approval for. s-ketamine on the basis of it's just a. pharmacological treatment. and it's not delivered with therapy the. results fade pretty quickly. so you need to get more ketamine and so.

it's. designed in a way to maximize the. profits for the. pharmaceutical company but it doesn't. maximize patient outcomes. what we're seeing though in these. various clinics that are being set up is. that a lot of people are realizing. that it works better with therapy. and so the clinics are run by people. that are therapists so that when they. provide therapy they're making more. money and and then you need less. ketamine. also ketamine itself s ketamine is a.

isomer of ketamine that's been patented. for depression. and they sell it for hundreds of dollars. but ketamine itself. is one of the world's essential. medicines it's off patent it's been. around for a long time it was the main. battlefield anaesthetic in vietnam. and it's only a few bucks because it's. generic so. a lot of the ketamine clinics are saying. great thank you. johnson johnson you've helped. demonstrate that ketamine is good for. depression but we're not going to buy it. from you. we're going to buy it for a few bucks. and we're going to add therapy to it.

now there's a bunch of ketamine mills. you could say that are that are. just prescribing the ketamine and then. people are making a lot of money there. so i am worried about that i think the. best thing that we can do. is create an alternative narrative. a different kind of example we can lead. by example we can't make. for-profit companies into benefit. corporations. unless they want to do that we can't. make them to you know really. maximize patient outcomes but if we. create an example.

of something that's different the hope. is that. um people will gravitate towards that. and some of the other. companies like even now we have exxon. and other these uh companies. oil companies saying oh we're big into. alternative energy and we're. you know and that starts with companies. that show an example that uh. then communicates to the public that. this is something exciting and then they. demand of. the same of exxon and so on the public. demands and. you could say the same thing for the.

public demanding the. the big pharma to uh to. optimize for benefit versus optimize for. profit. and maybe giving power to the therapists. more power to the therapist more power. to the doctors that ultimately. uh want i think. incentives are interesting but i think. doctors ultimately. care more because they're in direct. contact with humans. they want to make people better it's not. you know sure they want to make money.

but they ultimately want to make people. feel better because they get to look at. people and it's so joyful. to make people feel better at the end of. the day so giving more power to them. is also perhaps one of the ways that you. then incentivize. uh the the pharma companies that are. trying to do good because the doctors. will choose those companies. yeah now the other part of this is drug. policy reform. right so that if we make it so you can. buy mdma for 10 or 20 bucks.

on your own and we've trained people on. here's our therapeutic method. here is our ways for peer support. then people have an alternative from. buying it from the pharma companies. so most of the for-profit companies. have come to this conclusion that um. drug policy reform is bad for their. business model. i think they're making a fundamental. mistake and i think the reason is that.

the more that we destigmatize this the. more that we sensitize people to this is. an approach. even when people can get it on their own. and do it with their friends or do it. with themselves. there's going to be even more people. that say oh my god i've got real. serious issues i would rather go to. trained professionals. covered by insurance and i think it'll. increase the business but most. of the for-profit companies don't see it. that way and so. as a non-profit that owns a benefit corp.

we're not trying to maximize sales or. profits so that. but but i do believe that drug policy. reform creates this alternative. access point for people and that will. help keep the for-profits in check. to some extent as well. i love it uh is there um let's put on. your. wise visionary hat and ask. when you look to young folks is there. advice you can give. to young people today whether in high. school or college.

about career about life. you've lived quite a non-linear and. fascinating life yourself. is there advice you can give either on. career or more generally in life. well i i would say what what people. often hear is that um. you know we're not actually here for. that long a period of time. um and so to the a and the world is on. fire. and whether humanity survives is not.

clear. and whether how many species are we. going to kill before we figure out not. to do that anymore. so i would advise you to really. try to. develop a combination of what do you. need in terms of. income for your own survival but what. does the world need in terms of. um help to make the world better. and you know howard thurman who he.

talked about who. who ran the good friday experiment the. minister there he said. he's got a famous quote attributed to. him he says um. and this is exactly it to young people. he said um. you know there's nothing particular that. you should do but find what makes you. come alive because what the world needs. is people that have come alive and are. passionate. so i i would say that. beware of this uh.

trap that you need um vast resources. that you need all this stuff. you know uh you know i i keep thinking. of the. super wealthy people in first class on. the titanic. you know as the titanic is sinking you. know their money's not going to help. them. the the earth is like titanic you know. we're sinking we're destroying the. planets destroying the environment so. it's um you need a certain amount of. money to be comfortable. to not be at that edge of survival. because once you're at that edge of.

survival it's hard to think about. anything else but but i'd say to young. people. to the extent that you're able to do. this and again student debt and all this. kind of stuff is a big problem there too. but really just try to. find this combination of what the world. needs and what you need the other thing. to say to young people is um life is a. lot shorter than you think. that and a 20-year plan is not really. that long.

so if it takes you 20 years to get in a. position to do what you want to do. go for it you know have long-term plans. the the other part. that was so important for me to um. keep doing what i've been doing. basically now it's. um 49 years that i've sort of been. devoting my life on psychedelics since i. was 18. when i started i didn't think it would. ever work i just thought this is the. only idea i have in this crazy world. you know this is what i want to work on. luckily i had support from my family.

that took care of my survival needs. so i could do that but i realized that. if my. happiness was dependent upon. accomplishments. that i might never be happy that i was. able to. reframe happiness in terms of effort. yeah so if i'm trying hard to get stuff. um. to be better whether it's better or not. i can be happy at the end of each day. i tried and so i think you you try to.

separate out. the goals that you have and your. happiness to whether you're trying hard. the other thing i would say is that. everybody has. this humanity within them so be very. careful about dividing the world into us. and them. um you know and try to. so so one of the things that i've done. um. that has um taken a long time because. you know i feel like um you know drugs.

are illegal i always felt like you know. the police were the predator and i'm the. prey. yes you know but now we're working with. the police and the police have. tremendous trauma from the work that. they do. we have one police officer who is now. going he's a full-time police officer. he's also a psychotherapist and he's. going through our training program. to learn how to give mdma therapy to. other police officers. and i met his police chief a couple. times he got permission from his police. chief to go to the second part of our.

training program which is where we give. mdma to therapists who volunteer as a. patient. so we have just a couple weeks ago dosed. the police with mdma. yeah and so i think this idea of those. people that are on the quote other side. try to see through that to their. humanity. to what their pains and suffering what. their struggles are to the extent that. you can. and that i think and and build long-term. relationships you. you never know what's gonna um come.

around 20 years from now so you you help. some people try to keep these. relationships going 20 years from now. something could. could come and um and. also um be persistent. you know yeah i think that's. that's been the key to success i mean. once the fda or dea figured out. we're not going anywhere they're gonna. have to deal with us. then we started getting some progress. it's a mix of patience and stubbornness.

that gets things done is there something. you've. figured out through your journey with. psychedelics. about some of the big why questions. about life. like oh like what the heck's the value. of love. um why does it suck so much that we die. and uh and for some of us maybe it's the. russian and me but it's. quite terrifying the notion of it or the. biggest why question of them all which.

is what's the meaning. of it all well um yeah what i've. discovered is that um. we don't need answers to those questions. you know. that the fact that um. we can feel happy you know that we can. love that we can have. moments of happiness that's enough. you know figuring out these big. questions you can get lost in that. and um you we all can come up with our. answers what's what's the meaning of.

life why. why is there life why is there. consciousness but um. i don't know that we need those answers. what we know is that we're um. social creatures that um. we people other people can make us happy. by certain things we can make other. people happy. that one life is enough so this other. part about uh. why is it so um tragic that we die yeah. um i i don't think it's tragic that we. die so first off if you believe in this. collective unconscious but but but.

we have an impact that lasts but i i. think that. for me at least i've been of the view. that um. we should be grateful for death that. death makes life precious. that if we had an infinite amount of. time. you know i mean i'm i'm a bit of a. procrastinator about stuff. particularly things that are really you. know hard to do and you just you know. you just don't do it and then like. where'd the day go i was gonna do that. so. so if we had an infinite life we never. died um know would life be precious.

would we do anything i don't think so so. my parents um gave um. you know every jewish new year they. would they would make their uh new. year's card. and and one of the quotes was fantastic. it was just uh. we have to make up for the brevity of. life with the intensity of life. oh man that is good. well the end makes things precious death. makes life precious.

the end of this conversation makes it. precious. and uh which is a great way to end eric. it's i wanted to talk to you for a long. time. i share you were very excited about the. study i can now understand. exactly why this is really promising. this is really exciting gives me hope. about. the future even if it doesn't come. fast enough but like you said had to be. patient and stubborn. thank you so much for wasting all your. valuable time with me today it's truly.

an honor to meet you and talk to you. not a waste at all i really appreciate. it this time together. thank you for listening to this. conversation with rick doblin and thank. you to. theragun expressvpn blinkist and. asleep check them out in the description. to support this podcast. and now let me leave you with some words. from terence mckenna. nature loves courage you make the. commitment and nature. will respond to that commitment by. removing impossible obstacles. dream the impossible dream and the world.

will not grind you. under it will lift you up this is the. trick. this is what all the teachers and. philosophers who really counted. who really touched the alchemical gold. this is what they understood. this is the shamanic dance and the. waterfall this is how magic is done. by hurling yourself into the abyss and. discovering. that it's a feather bed thank you for. listening and hope to see you. next time.