#313: Michael Pollan — Exploring The New Science of Psychedelics

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Check it out. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to a very special episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm gonna start this off with a quote. Quote. What the telescope was for astronomy and the microscope for biology, psychedelics will be for the understanding of the human mind.

That is tributed to Stanislav Grof. This episode you're going to hear. I've been looking forward to recording for more than a year now. It might be the most important episode that I've put out in the last two to three years. So please trust me and give it a full Listen, even if you don't think it will interest you at all, it will surprise you, perhaps shock you, and definitely make you think differently.

Michael Pollins newest book is my new favorite of his. It is titled How to Change Your Mind, subtitle What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. This is An episode that will explore not just the science and applications of psychedelics, but also Michael's personal exploration.

It's quite a wild ride. For those who don't know who Michael Pollin is, on Twitter at Michael Pollan. He's the author of seven previous books, including Cooked Food Rules in Defense of Food, The Omnivores Dilemma, also a great book, and The Botany of Desire. Also a fantastic book, all of which were New York Times bestsellers, a longtime contributor to the New York Times magazine. He also teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the John S and James L. Knight Professor of Science Journalism. In twenty ten, Time Magazine. named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. This is also

where I want to make a public announcement, and that is partially due to Michael's book, I am committing a million dollars over the next few years to supporting scientific study of psychedelic compounds. This is for me by far the largest commitment to research and nonprofits that I've ever made. And if you'd like to perhaps join me in supporting at a higher level, check out Tim dot blog forward slash science. It's Tim.blog Forward slash. science. But why would I do this? Across the board.

I've done a number of things in the scientific realm and the molecules discussed in this episode are and some incredible clinical results from well designed studies have absolutely captured my attention over the last two years. And after waiting in and supporting some smaller studies, Seeing the results I've decided to go all in on scientists. exploring this area. It just seems to be an Archimedes lever for potentially solving a wide range of root cause problems instead of playing whack-a-mole with symptoms one by one. So

This episode will explain why I'm so goddamn excited. And all that preamble out of the way, grab a cup of coffee. Relax. Put your seat back, settle in, and I really hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Without further ado, here is

Michael. Power. I'm Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. Good to be here.

I am so thrilled to be sitting down to have this conversation and I thought back to when we First met And I believe I owe some thanks to Matt Mollenweg, uh the CEO of Automatic, because I believe that I Attended an event. He had organized.

that might have been for the Omnivores Dilemma. I think it it was perhaps uh indefensive food, but I've I've followed your career for so long and Read so many of your books, I thought one place we could start Is

with the the conception of Michael Pollan as food writer and A common misconception. start off with You just describing how the new book Came to be.

Writing this new book. Sure. Well, to go back, I think we met at a benefit for Grist. Oh that's right. That that is that is right. Matt was also involved. That was around the time of indefense of food or food rules or something. Yeah. At uh Tony Conrad's house. That's right. Uh absolutely. That goes back a few years. Yeah. But I think that was the first time we met. Um so yeah, this book does uh sh certainly seem like a departure for me, and in some ways it is. Um, but in other ways I see it as very continuous with the kind of work I've been doing.

As I see it, I I think of myself as a as a kind of nature writer. I really like writing about the engagement of humans with other species. And I've been doing that since my first book, uh, which was a book called Second Nature, which is really about what was going on in my garden. Um, and I've always been interested in the fact that we have these symbiotic relationships That were active participants in nature, not just spectators. Uh and then we have um

Uh and that the the the usual American way of thinking about nature that we inherit from Thoreau and Emerson and John Muir is of a very passive relationship. And I've always as a gardener, I've always been interested in the more active relationship, the way we use plants and the way they in turn use us. Um, so if that's the kind of spine or the the trunk of my work, all the food work is kind of a big fat branch off of that. Um and that's you know, looking at what is one of our most powerful engagements with the natural world.

Which is agriculture, uh, which you know changes nature more than anything else we do, really. Um, so I've been on that branch for now four books, I guess. And uh but I've never lost interest in the other ways we engage with the natural world. And one of the most curious of these which I touched on in uh in a book called Botany of Desire.

was the fact that we use plants to change our experience of consciousness. And a very select group of plants and fungi has evolved uh the chemistry that does that with varying degrees of uh of um Disruption. Um, and I've always been curious as to why such a desire, and it is a universal human desire, there's not a culture on earth that doesn't

use some plant or fungi fungi to change consciousness, with one notable exception. The Inuit. And the only reason they don't is none of that stuff grows there. Oh. And uh so what's that desire about? What good is it for us to change consciousness? Why do why do people seek it? So that's you know, that's kinda been a s uh theme of my work that I've never fulred in a book until uh this one, until How to Change Your Mind.

So there is that continuity in my mind, uh, and it is part of a larger narrative that I've always been interested in. And then there's the fact that I'm you know intensely interested in health. Uh I've been writing about health. uh in my last couple books on food, um, you know, we have a situation where Uh our biggest

physical health problems or chronic diseases linked to our diet. Um, but we also of course suffer from um a a real crisis in mental health. And that also made me very interested to take a look at psychedelics, uh, since they promise uh to uh to contribute to solving that problem. Did did that interest in exploring psychedelics?

This is gonna be a very uh Memento like conversation chronologically will probably bounce around quite a bit. Did that begin with The article about psychedelic psychotherapy in the New Yorker called The Trip Treatment. Did it precede that? How did How did that

Peace. Yeah. That was my first real foray. I I think I talked about psychedelics briefly in Botany of Desire and quoted Aldous Huxley and the idea of the reducing valve and um whether we had a more accurate or less accurate picture of the world when uh when high. Um but yeah, my ser my first serious forway foray was uh I'd heard this

remarkable uh about this remarkable research using psychedelics, psilocybin in particular, magic mushrooms. Or the ingredient m magic mushrooms to treat people uh who had cancer diagnoses. And this seems so improbable to me. Um I couldn't imagine wanting to take a psychedelic

When confronting my mortality. Um That I became very curious to explore it. Um And so embarked on what was almost a year long project, uh looking at uh psilocybin and

Talking to dozens of people, cancer patients, some of them still alive, some of them no longer alive. And how this single experience, a high dose psilocybin experience administered Uh with a guide, um, you know, in a very controlled setting. Had completely reset their thinking about mortality, had given them a mystical experience. that uh dissolved their egos and made them

Think about their place in the world. In such a novel way Or their sense of their own self interest as so broad. that dying uh lost its sting uh and completely in some cases. I I remember this one woman I talked to uh who had um

Uh her name was uh uh Dinah Bazar. She was a a figure skating instructor in New York City. And she was in her early sixties and she had ovarian cancer, and she was absolutely paralyzed. By the fear of a recurrence. Uh, even though she, you know, had a successful course of uh

Of therapy. And she She had a psilocybin. uh journey and uh she went into her body and under her rib cage She confronted this black mass.

It wasn't her tumor because it wasn't in her uh you know, where her ovaries would be. It was uh under her rib cage, and she realized it wasn't her tumor, it was her fear. And she screamed at it. She said get the fuck out of my body. And she said it vanished.

And from then on she uh had no fear. And in the article for the New Yorker, I was I did the usual play it safe journalist thing where I said and after the experience her fear had been substantially diminished, or something that I thought would slip past the fact checkers. And um as we tend to do. And uh they called her though and checked the quote with her and uh and she said no, that's completely wrong. It was not diminished. My fear was eliminated. And what she explained is I learned during that psilocybin trip.

That though I couldn't control the cancer. I could control the fear. And that was just life changing for her. Um so reading about these experiences Um which seem

You know, too good to be true almost, uh, almost implausible. I became more and more interested in going deeper. You know, as a journalist, there there are two kinds of articles we write. They're they're the ones where we exhaust the subject and we're so sick of it we can't wait to move on. And then they're the ones where we realized You know, I've only scratched the surface here. And this was one of those. I had only scratched the surface. There was so much more to learn. And then there was also this mounting curiosity to have some experiences of my own. We are definitely

Going to Uh explore that terrain. I thought uh one very helpful Of

The book is the glossary of terms that you include in the beginning. Mm-hmm. And It's actually in the end of the printed version. Oh it is. Alright, so I received a pre uh a pre publication copy. I moved it to the back. It just felt a little text. It is very textbooky, but it's it helps provide people with

whether at the back of the book or the beginning. Uh can can help to inform the conversation. So for people who are who have heard the term, no doubt. psychedelic or psychedelics.

Uh but are unclear on exactly what that refers to. Can you can you define that What are psychedelics? Sure, I'd be happy to I'd be happy to uh try. You know, one of the interesting aspects of the story of the history of what we'll call psychedelics, uh for reasons I'll explain.

is that uh the name kept changing because people really didn't understand these molecules. They were so strange. Uh so at first they were called psychotometics. Uh, this is in the early fifties, soon after L S D was uh made available to researchers. And uh psychotic it basically meant it was a psychoactive drug that mimicked psychosis. And and lots of psychiatrists would look at the what happened to people and say, Well, they're having a psychotic episode. Turned out to be wrong, but it sure looked that way. And um

And then they then other people called it a psycholytic, uh, which means mind loosening. And they were using it in uh basically in your typical Talk therapy session. uh as a way to loosen Uh lytic means mind loosening.

uh people's uh defenses and allow them to get in touch with subconscious uh thoughts and emotions. Psychedelic as a term is Coined in nineteen fifty seven. uh by a a a key figure in this history named Humphrey Osman

Osman is an English psychiatrist who moves to Saskatchewan. Because the provincial government was willing to let him study whatever he wanted, which happened to be Uh mescaline and L S D. And they had a very progressive health department in Saskatchewan. And um

He w he got involved with Aldus Huxley and in fact is the person responsible for giving Aldus Huxley his first mescaline experience. Uh and they corresponded extensively as people used to do, and in one of their correspondence they were They were trying to come up with a better word for these drugs because They simply didn't believe it was true that it made people crazy. In fact they believed

They could make people sane. So they went back and forth and Osmond. ironically enough, not the brilliant writer came up with it with the term that stuck, and that was psychedelic. And that essentially All that means is Mind manifesting.

That these are compounds that help the mind. manifest its its deepest uh qualities. And uh it caught on. And um we think of it as a very kind of sixties term associated with Timothy Leary and and the counterculture, but in fact it was uh coined by a psychiatrist in the fifties. Um so it simply means mind manifesting, and I use it to refer to what are sometimes called the classical psychedelics.

Um I tend not to think of MDMA as a psychedelic, even though some people do, or or cannabis as a psychedelic. But that group of chemicals that include mescalin, DMT, uh psilocybin, magic mushrooms, and LSD, and there and there's a handful of others. that uh are unified by the fact that they work on similar receptor network in the brain and have roughly similar uh effects.

On the mine. on ph you know, on the phenomenology of the experience. So that's really when I talk about psychedelics, that's what I've got in mind. And the f by phenomenology, you mean the s subjective the reporting of the subjective experience. The felt experience, yeah. It's a very fancy word for how it feels. Uh Why did you dedicate

This book to your father. Oh well Um, for a couple of reasons, some of which I didn't understand till I finished the book. Um I did it.

because my dad was uh very sick for most of the time I was writing it. He he himself had terminal cancer and died of lung cancer in uh earlier this year in January. Um So I wanted it was my last chance to dedicate a book to him, or at least one that he would see. He didn't get to read it. Um so I thought I would do it. But As I've thought about it since I realized this book is v you know, very much about him. Uh a friend of mine read the book and said, Wow, your father's on every page

Yeah, I didn't know what That meant exactly, but I've I've since And I realized that One of the reasons I got so interested in the experience of cancer and and and that that confrontation with one's mortality.

Is that my dad was going through that. But Unlike the patients I was talking to. The volunteers and the psilocybin experience, he really didn't want to talk about it. And it was just a conversation we couldn't have.

And we had a lot of conversations in this last year or two. Um But For whatever reason I don't really understand how he was processing. uh what was coming.

Uh, because he really wouldn't share it. And so in a sense I was I was having conversations I wanted to have with him, although I was certainly afraid to in some ways. I was having those conversations with these other people, these these strangers who I got to know, uh, and and hearing how they thought about their death. And how psilocybin changed how they thought about their death.

really became a proxy for a conversation I never had with my father. What effect did that have on you? I mean d i if if if anything Jumps out. Just salient. Effects that had on you. Did you f do you

Did you end up feeling a sense of Of closure or resolution in some way. Uh You know

In a way I wish my father had been able to have one of these experiences. I don't know that he would have gone for it. Um, you know, he's of such a different generation. He was probably too old to qualify. He was eighty eight when he died. Um But it's kind of a black box. Uh you know, that was a generation didn't always talk about these things. And um Uh

I do think it had an effect on me in that having Given so much thought. To death. and the process and the afterlife as psychedelics makes you do.

Um I think in his last Weeks and months and days. I was more available to him than I would have been. Um I you know

I think that I was not Um As fearful or as defensive is probably a better word. You know, one of the things our egos defend us against is death. One of the big things. And so when we're confronted by it, we figure out a million ways to think about something else or tur or turn away if we can. But I was very present for his death. I was with him and my mother in the apartment for the last week.

And I didn't feel there was any barrier. I felt like I was able to Say everything I needed to say. to be physically available to him. Um, so in a sense I think my own my own psychedelic experiences and the amount of thought I'd given to

to dying uh because of that article I'd worked on. Um probably made me a a a better caregiver in some ways and s and and better able to process uh what was happening. And and you know, I guess I did a lot of preparation too,'cause I I saw it coming for a couple of years. Um

Uh, that takes you know, that takes away none of the power of the experience. Um but I do think if You know, it's funny, uh some some journalists um just started doing interviews on this book and one of the questions you get asked is how did your own experiences change you? And that's a hard question to answer. It's it's it's subtle in some ways, but It was my wife who said, Well Uh I really think you would have

You would have been different around your father at the end if you hadn't had those experiences. And you know, I think she's probably right. Yeah. Based on all of my Reading of your work. based on uh the the conversations I've observed you having, uh and our limited exchanges that we've had. You've always struck me as a very open minded

Uh journalist while very skeptical, which is a good combination for the j the profession you've chosen. What were you most sceptical of Going to into the process of saying considering a book on this topic and did you go in with the intention of

having your own experiences. I didn't go in with that intention when I started the New Yorker article. Um I didn't know it was possible to have uh obviously you can have a psychedelic experience if you can find the drugs, but I mean to have the sort of Orchestrated guided experience, which I think is it people need to understand is a fundamentally different way of using the same chemical. But the the experience is like very different. Um

And uh It was actually in the course of working on that article that I kept getting like these whispers that there was this underground and uh that you know there was a kind of shadow world not too far away from the um the you know the legit researchers I was I was interviewing. And um so I I started getting inklings that that might be possible. Um But I w I'm not a um

I'm not a psychonaut. Uh and I was not Uh I had very little experience. I mean I it was kinda odd. I just kind of came of age at a a little wrinkle in time where there weren't a lot of psychedelics around. And by the time they were available to me, I was I was terrified of them. I'm I'm sort of more a product of the moral panic against psychedelics than of the

Psychedelic sixties. I mean, just to give you an idea, I was twelve. during the summer of love. I was fourteen during w uh Woodstock. So this I was a little you know Uh I came a little late.

to the party and the party was getting pretty sour already. Um, you know, the scene San Francisco had gotten really sour and Uh there was a lot of uh bad information, but scary information about psychedelics that were out there. So this wasn't a natural thing for me. And You know, what you call my skepticism is journalistic skepticism, but it's also, you know, plain old fear and and you know, wondering, is this for real? Um

I did have skepticism. I think that the results of these studies uh which hadn't been published when I published on them. Uh it was quite it was very much to the New Yorkers' credit, but they were willing to let me do fourteen thousand words on essentially uh scientific research that hadn't been peer reviewed yet. Um and um

But I gradually became convinced by the you know the authority of the people uh who were talking to me that they had had a had had these transformative experiences. Um I tend to uh but I do write about Psychedelics. And I think that's this is somewhat unique about the book.

With one foot outside of this world and only one foot in it. Um And I think that that Distance is very important. Um, for various reasons. I think it's important to remain critical as a journalist and when you see things that are being hyped.

Um and you know that that may well happen with psychedelics. Um Uh it's something I I I'm concerned about Um But also as a way in for readers who may not be experienced or or may have their own doubts or fears. Um, I become a surrogate for the reluctant

Uh traveler. And um and that's you know, that's always been part of my work. I I I I don't like to write as an expert. Um another reason I sort of moved off of food at least for the time being, is I really like writing Closer to the beginning of the learning curve. Um when everything is still new and exciting and I and I can bring a sense of wonder to it.

I don't think readers really like being lectured by uh highly experienced experts. Um I think they'd rather come on a journey of uh or an education with you. And so I was outside this world and dipping my toe in, you know, first kind of very tentatively and then You know, kind of.

My whole foot. Uh and then much larger part of my body. Um But it wasn't a natural progression for me and it wasn't an easy progression. I mean We'll talk about this, but my you know, each of my own psychedelic journeys

um that I had for the book were preceded by a a sleepless night of uh incredible anxiety where I was just A ping pong ball with arguments going back and forth, like, are you crazy? You know, you're 60 years old. You could have a heart attack up there on that mountain and th this guy's not gonna call nine one one. He's he's worried about his freedom. Um and and then the other side saying, Well, come on, aren't you curious about what you might learn? And and by the way, you've got a book deadline coming up. You've got to do this.

And uh so I had Every every time. It it was like that. It never got easier. Um and uh You know, I realize now that was my ego defending itself against the assault to come. And Of course, our egos have command of our rational faculty, so they make really good arguments. And mine was definitely making a good argument to me, but thank God I ignored him.

C could you talk a bit about what we know or suspect about the neuroscience behind how these compounds may have the effects they have. And just as Please jump in to correct me at any point'cause you you are certainly better versed with with all of this, but

When you mention for people who who don't have the background, when you mentioned Guided experiences or uh supervised environments and the New Yorker piece. Uh I'll just ex uh give a little bit of background for people who may not be aware. That that includes certainly underground options, but also includes

uh universities like Johns Hopkins NY NYU, U T O A an ever expanding list. And uh some very, very uh credible Researchers uh

Who who would be considered the the researcher is researcher and scientist. Uh What do we know of the science? Because these these compounds have been so mysterious In a sense. They've been so continually used for

Certainly centuries, if not millennia. by millennia, yeah, different civilizations. Uh You can find totems from the Mazatecs going back thousands of years and so on. What what what new insights

or theories have uh have caught your attention in uh the The scientific. Yeah. Well the neuroscience, I just have to say, is absolutely fascinating. And for me, intellectually, that was kind of uh one of the most exciting parts of the research was

was learning what we're what These chemicals are teaching us about the mind and the brain. Uh, you know, there's a famous quote by Stanislav Grof. who was a um a Czech emigre psychiatrist who worked with psychedelics.

extensively when they were legal in his practice. And he said, I think this was in the early seventies, he said something that a You know Sounds outrageous, uh, which is that Psychedelics would be for the study of the mind what the telescope was for astronomy and what the microscope was for biology.

It's a pretty um big claim and um uh and it sounded like hyperbole to me when I first heard it. But having spent a lot of time in these labs with these scientists, I no longer think it's Impossible that he's right. Uh he may well be right. Um

But that said You know, the brain is still very poorly understood, consciousness even more poorly understood. So it's important To understand that everything I'm about to tell you is Um Uh you know

Hypothesis. Um and some goes a little further than hypothesis, but there's still a lot of mysteries. The first one being How does uh let's say you you ingest L S C or psilocybin, we know that it links to a certain kind of uh brain receptor, the Uh the uh H two five AR uh receptor, which is the same one that's that uh SSRIs engage with. And that sounds like oh, we really understand something, but

But what happens downstream of that we don't have a clue. How you get from that active activation of those receptors to the phenomenology, the felt experience of um of the drugs. Um so there's there's a lot we don't understand. But one of the most interesting clues uh has come from the um work done, especially at Imperial College in London. Uh but also it's now happening in other places in Switzerland and uh at Hopkins to to image the brains of people on psychedelics. Um by image I mean use fmri's or some of these other modalities. um to see what's going on in the brain when people are

Under the influence. And the biggest takeaway from that work, uh, and this is in papers that uh Robin Carhart Harris at Imperial College has published. Is that Contrary to what the the neuroscientist expected Which was that the brain would kind of light up with extra activity.

Uh because there was such you know visual and auditory fireworks going on during the experience. They found that um Activity in the brain was actually depressed by psychedelics. Particularly in one network.

This was a network I had never heard of before until I started doing this work and it was only discovered about fifteen years ago by a neuroscientist uh American neuroscientist at Washington University named Marcus Rickel. And that is the default mode network. Um called that because this is kind of where the brain goes when it's not busy. Um it's where you go to ruminate Worry

Uh Daydream. Um And it was discovered when they were Administering F M RIS uh to people and needed to get a baseline and they would tell people

Don't do anything, just lie there and don't You know, no tasks. And they would see that, oh interesting, the brain's actually quite active when you're doing nothing, and this part of it is very active. This part is a linked set of

structures that include the prefrontal cortex The uh posterior cingulate cortex, these are both in the cortex, which is the evolutionarily most recent part of layer of the brain on the outside. Um And

And then those link down into deeper older structures like that are involved with memory. uh and um emotions. Um And it appears to be a very important hub. Uh the brain is a hierarchical system and the default mode network kind of

is in charge, uh is a regulator of the whole. And um it's involved in a range of metacognitive uh functions. Uh that includes self reflection and rumination Time travel. That's thinking about the past and thinking about the future.

Um Theory of mind, uh that's the ability to imagine mental states or attribute mental states to others. Um And uh the what is called the autobiographical memory. Uh the autobiographical self.

Forgive me. Um, this is kind of where we integrate what's happening to us. with the narrative we have of who we are Uh, which is a mix of, you know Everything that's happened to us before or the parts of our biography. We think about

And our objectives for the future. And to have an a a sense of self that's consistent over time. Something we prize, even though it's probably completely illusory. Um That work of constructing that happens in uh part of parts of the default mode network.

So you could say it's kind of the seat of the self or the ego to the extent that we can say that. And um and how interesting that this particular network, important as it is. gets goes offline, or at least has activity diminished. And And this is really interesting.

The more precipitous the drop in activity in the default mode network The more likely someone is Liable to report that they experienced ego dissolution. that that uh experience that's common on a high dose of psychedelics that can either be terrifying or Absolutely ecstatic.

Of having your sense of self disappear or melt or dissolve. and which is then followed by this merg you know the larger world, the nature, the universe, other people. And um Uh so that seems to be involved with the, you know, diminution of activity in this in this particular network. So that gives us a window into the self, uh and into spiritual experience because that

experience of ego dissolution. Feels to people like a mystical experience. Feels like Uh it's very spiritual, this sense of you know, transcending this bag of bones we are and and and actually connect with with larger entities.

And it's that experience too that um may make it easier to uh die. In that Ego dissolution is a kind of rehearsal for death.

uh giving up yourself and and then seeing and this was for me the most incredible thing Was that uh your ego could die But you still perceive. You there's still a consciousness, а наш нас.

And um and I think that that's enormously comforting to uh to people. So anyway, from a neuroscientific point of view, this is a really interesting insight. And psychedelics gave it to us. There are two other things I want to say about it that's that's also even more interesting. One is that when they When other researchers at Yale started scanning the brains of really experienced meditators, you know, people with ten thousand hours who really know how to How to meditate.

Um Their scans look very similar. to the people on psychedelics, on psilocybin. Uh that they too That meditation is another way.

to quiet the default mode network. And my guess is there's several others too. My guess is it's quieted when you're um uh you know, when you fast, uh s s uh you know, when you're on a vision quest, when you go into sensory deprivation. Um my guess is that all these uh powerful experiences may well involve

al alternate modalities for shutting off or quieting the default mode network. So That's a big takeaway, uh, and I think um will be significant in the future. The other point I want to make about that in the neuroscience is that Uh also coming out of Robin Carhart Harris' lab, um was they they mapped uh connections. They call it the connectome in the in the human brain. And that changes during the experience. When you turn off the default mode network, which which uh Robin refers to as the orchestra conductor or corporate executive or capital city of the brain, he has all these wonderful metaphors.

When that goes offline. Other parts of the brain and other networks that don't ordinarily talk to each other. strike up conversations. And if you look at this image, which is reprinted in my book. Actually they did it in color in the middle of the book. I didn't even know they could do this.

Uh toward the end of the book. Um you see that what had been this this uh set of principle, you know, main thoroughfares connecting different networks in the brain.

suddenly you get lots of little roads, st uh new connections, um myriad new connections get established. Basically because Probably because the default mode network is not requiring everybody come through that hub. And uh so you have, for example, perhaps Emotion centers talking directly to your visual cortex, which

Lo and behold, could allow you to see things you're Your feeling. Um you know, could pr could result in hallucinations. Those new connections may and and now I'm being speculative, may manifest as new perspectives, new ideas, new means, new metaphors. Um but the point is that by temporarily you know, disrupting the order of the brain, a new order forms.

And that order may have incredible value at at either the level of mental health and psychology, or at the level of creativity. Um, and that's what we need to get into right now. What what happens with those new connections? Do they endure or not? Uh and are there ways to uh help them endure longer? The visualization that you mentioned uh is so

And uh it it's really something to behold. So I I certainly encourage people Take a moment to soak the Image in when they have a chance to look at it.

And it's not hard to find online, too. It's not hard to find online. And what what I wanted to I mean certainly Yeah. These compounds are not panaceas. They don't Fix everything.

And and they do have risks. I mean I think we should talk about that. Oh we're absolutely gonna talk about the risks Uh. But be before we get to that, I wanted to Go back to the studies that have been done and to ask you what studies have Most

perhaps shocked you or surprised you or have stuck with you. And just uh for purposes of sharing on my side. The studies are really wide ranging, many studies had been performed. In the uh specif Well, I'm not sure what the early fifties and early sixties. But uh

the even looking at the more recent studies related to smoking cessation or different forms of addiction, certainly end of life anxiety, uh treatment resistant depression. Mm. There are a number of characteristics that have been really surprising to me when looking at the results, but I'd be curious to hear if there are any

uh related to the magnitude, persistence, or anything. Particularly memorable for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean the first one that was really memorable to me was the first one I read, and this was a two thousand six study by uh done at Johns Hopkins in the lab of Roland Griffiths, who I believe you know pretty well. I do. And Um

This was a kind of wild study because It didn't purport to have any practical utility at all. It wasn't uh It had nothing to do with health. or healing people, it was really an attempt to see If psilocybin could be used to occasion that's the verb they use to occasion

uh profound mystical experiences in people. And the title of this paper is kind of hilarious, you know, um high dose of psilocybin can occasion profound ex uh mystical experiences in people um that are have, you know, lasting value or something like that. Um I don't have it quite right, but it's uh it it just stood out as wait, scientists do this? That's pretty cool. Um and what's a mystical experience doing in a scientific experiment? Um but it in a way this was the predicate of all the research to come.

uh in this in this uh renaissance that's going on because um they had found first they had proven that you could safely administer these drugs in this environment And that uh with a very high percentage you could induce this kind of experience that people would report as one of the three uh two or three

Most Meaningful experiences in their lives. comparable to the birth of a child or the death of a parent. Um the fact that you could induce such an experience in a laboratory

reliably with a mushroom. Uh well that that kinda blew my mind. And and I talked I interviewed many people in that trial. And uh and it was really interesting to hear their experience. These are these are so called healthy normals. Um so they didn't have a pathology, they weren't dying.

Um And they were kind of spiritually inclined. Uh that was definitely um you know, it seemed to me a common denominator of the people, the volunteers Um but that That this drug would

create an experience that was indistinguishable from mystical experiences as we have them in the literature, as they were recorded by the great mystics of uh of all time, uh and and and and all the writers who talked about mystical experience from you know Whitman to Emerson to to Tennyson. Um So I thought that was a really cool study, um and the testimony of the people in it.

was very interesting. It was also interesting that um in a follow up they crunched that data very carefully and they discovered that Um a significally significant percentage of people uh who had had these psilocybin experiences had actually had changes in their personality that were enduring.

Um Psychologist divide personality up into five traits, and I'm not gonna remember them all, but it's things like conscientiousness, neuroticism. Extra version. openness and I forget the fifth um

But um openness, uh, which correlates with uh you know, tolerance for other people's points of view, ability to to take in lots of um surpris information. uh creativity Um Actually was increased, uh, statistically significant.

increase in openness. Um And that's It's very rare that personality changes in adults at all. And the idea that a mushroom could induce such a change was Really striking. Now this has yet to be reproduced, this particular result, but

Um Uh, whether there are lasting changes in personality of people who take psychedelics, I think is a really rich topic to explore and and and definitely deserves more work. The the smoking study you alluded to I thought was also fascinating. Um, you know, here you have one of the hardest of all habits to kick. Um

And uh eighty percent of people who went through this process, which involved two or three psychedelic trips. And so I then And some cognitive behavioral therapy. Uh in between.

Um eighty percent were confirmed abstinent, had had were not smoking at the six month mark, and that number fell to Uh, I think it was sixty seven percent after a year. Um this is a small pilot study, open label, which means everybody knew they were getting psilocybin, nobody got a placebo. Um but that's that's pretty impressive and in fact sixty seven percent success after a year is better than anything else that's out there. So this study needs to be uh reproduced in

Yeah, and that's not happening. Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but also As I understand it, it's it's not a marginal difference in Efficacy compared to the sort of standard of of care for looking at alternative treatments. Uh the the delta, at least with this

Preliminary study as you as you mentioned open labels. Something like that. I mean I I I somebody out there on the internet can certainly correct me, but I wanna say it was perhaps the alternative sort of option B, more traditionally speaking, would be somewhere in the twenties. And in terms of Efficacy.

at the six month mark looking at Abstinence rates. I could be I could be I think that um there's a there's a uh drug people use called Shantex. uh that I've seen advertised on television. I think that does a little better than that twenty percent mark. But you know, the patch is not that successful. And um uh so it's a big deal.

But was what was also noteworthy to me about that particular study was talking to the people in the study and and I would ask them, you know, so why did this make it any easier to quit smoking? I mean it doesn't seem to have anything to do with smoking. And they would describe an experience that Um put their life and their behavior in such a radically new context.

And they would say that You know, they would say these incredibly banal things. They'd say like I realize my breath is precious. And that there is no life without breath. And it's really stupid to to damage your breath.

And I'm like, duh. Yeah. Uh, didn't you know that already? And and they did know it in an intellectual way, but I think one of the the real hallmarks of psychedelic experience Is that Um

Things you think you know, but But really only exists on the very top of consciousness suddenly Set down roots. deep in your subconscious, and they become these

Um You know. Convictions, absolute rock solid convictions that you believe in a way you've never believed anything before. And that I think allows people to kind of You know, put flesh on some platitude like smoking is bad for you. Um

And uh and killing yourself is stupid. Um, suddenly you feel it at a much deeper level. And so I was struck by that. And in fact, Matt Johnson, who is the psychologist that at uh Hopkins who directed this study, he he calls them dumb moments. do it. Um that is that people have a lot of duh moments, but they're transformative. Um and that is that you know, if you've ever had a psychedelic experience, there is that weird uh bleeding

from banality into profundity and back again that happens. And uh that definitely um Seems to go on. So So one of the the ways one of the psychological mechanisms that may be at work is this ability to um reinforce an idea that we all already know or we should know better. And make it

powerful enough to actually guide our behavior. What are some of the appli potential applications or current applications in a in a scientific environment or elsewhere uh that are Most interesting to you. I'm personally tracking potential use of psychedelics, uh, which is certainly already in motion outside the US. Hopefully

will be research more in the US, but as it would apply to, say, opiate addiction. Um I mean really uh problems of epidemic Are there are there any particular applications? that you're paying Attention to

Yeah, well I you know, first of all, it's really important to understand that these that this research comes along at a critical moment. Um our mental health care system is badly broken um You know, if you compare mental health

treatment to any other branch of medicine. Um mental health care fails abysmally. I mean it has not extended lifespan, lowered mortality. Um it hasn't done what you know, uh work on cancer, work on the heart, work on um, you know, virtually other an infectious disease. It's remarkable what a pathetic

um track record it has. Um and with all the You know, use of SSRIs in the culture and shrinks, you know, which here in Berkeley there you know, every other person's a shrink. Um The fact is that uh rates of depression are soaring. Rates of suicide are rising dramatically, and addiction, too.

Um is rampant. And so There's a real crisis here. And there hasn't been any real innovation in mental health care since I would say nineteen ninety or so, with the introduction of the SSRIs. Uh the antidepressants that work on the serotonin system.

Um So I'm particularly interested, as you are, in the work on addiction. Um I think that that's Uh Very promising and it's an area where we don't have a lot.

uh in the pipeline. Ibogaine is a is a another psychedelic uh comes from a root of a tree in Africa and it has been shown In um you know, still very preliminary research to be useful, uh, with opiate addiction. Um, partly because it blunts the um Uh the withdrawal symptoms at the same time it helps you Get off.

the the drugs. But it's a it's a very heavy and risky psychedelic and it lasts for a very long time. There are clinics in Mexico that are administering it. uh to opiate addiction. But there is work um planned to look at psilocybin and opiate addiction. Um psilocybin and alcohol addiction is is underway right now in a large

study at NYU that I think bears There's close watching. And then there's all the work that's about to happen about uh psilocybin and depression. Um Treatment resistant depression is the subject of study in Europe.

Uh coming up. Uh and that's uh people whose depression has not responded to two other forms of treatment. So a particularly needy group of people. And then uh a study in this country, um Of uh

of uh major depression. Um And uh that will be getting underway this year. Uh I think if these drugs can can really make a dent in those indications, it would be it would be enormous. Uh it would just be You know, and and the depression study is very interesting how that came about. Um The researchers, you know, had looked at depression in their population of cancer patients. They were they were dealing with both depression and anxiety. And

The results of those studies found that in roughly eighty percent of the cases Uh the patient the volunteers had had um s uh statistically significant reductions in symptoms of depression and anxiety. So pretty big deal, a very strong treatment effect. Much stronger, by the way, than the treatment effect that got SSRIs approved. Um But when they went to the FDA seeking permission to do a phase three trial in cancer patients

The FDA regulator said to them We've got a much bigger problem, uh, much larger population of people struggling with depression, and there's a strong signal here that this That these uh drugs may help with depression. So we want you to study that. Um

And part of the reason they did that is they well recognize that there's not a lot of uh drugs in the pipeline and the SSRIs are are um you know, losing their effectiveness, which was never too great to begin with, we're learning, you know, that SSRIs do perform slightly better than placebos. Um and their effect appears to

um fade over time and also people hate being on them. Um because of the side effects. Something that may surprise people and that is uh FDA support in this case.

And uh certainly we don't we we don't necessarily have to get into MDMA, but M D M A was uh granted Break through therapy designation. to expedite the process of s uh phase three trials for PTSD and

That seems at odd. With something uh that came up earlier, which was this moral panic. after the psychedelic sixties and the Control Substances Act and the current legal status of these drugs. So

What has changed? I mean you would think If we look at the mystical experiences and the peace that people feel, or the oneness, the timelessness, the ineffability. one would be inclined to think, hey, if you're trying to treat alcoholism with that, you're just gonna give them a state they want to return to over and over again.

Yeah. Why that that's a good question. Um I think it's important to understand that um Psedelics are not. The classical psychedelics are not addictive. Um so it's not like you're giving them another drug that they're gonna get.

hooked on. Um, you know, in the classic uh drug addiction experiments where you give a primate, you know, or I'm sorry, when you give a rat or a or a mouse two levers in the cage and one has food and one has uh cocaine or heroin. You know, they'll keep pressing the cocaine or heroin, uh, till they die. Um over and they'll prefer it over food.

Um If you make one of those levers give them access to LSD, they'll press it once and never again. They don't want to go there. And you know, if you've used these drugs, your first thought on on the conclusion of the experience is not, man, I gotta do that again. Um it takes months to recover. Um and and I don't mean recover, but it takes months to process everything that happened and it was so

It's so disruptive and and so extreme an experience that your first thought is not When where where can I get my next hit? So there's that. Um but yeah, I mean it's a weird idea. You know, back in the fifties, one of the the really interesting stories that that you find if you dig into the research deep enough and the fifties period is fascinating. Is that uh Bill W, the uh the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, uh first he got sober.

after he had been administered a psychedelic. Or a drug that some people call a psychedelic uh called Belladonna. in in the thirties. And then in the fifties he got involved with uh LSD therapy in LA. And he thought that L S D might be able to help alcoholics. And he and he went to the board which he was on of AA and said, Look

LSD we should really take a look at it and maybe we want to incorporate it in the program. And his fellow board members are like, Are you crazy? I mean, that's gonna that's gonna ruin our brand. That's gonna, you know, confuse people. So there is a kind of fundamental sense that it seems weird to treat a drug with another drug. Um, but these drugs are so substantially different and they appear to be effective in treating at least some kinds of addictions. that it would be shameful for us not to to do the research um and explore it. Um the kinds of risks

uh that are present in it. I mean, there are risk, but addiction is not one of them. Mm. If if that's the case, why have these Why have these compounds been So difficult to research.

Why are they not freely available? I mean what happened that took them off the table? For so long. Well, I mean the sixties happened. Um you know the uh there's a there's a a chapter in the book where I I look at um the the sort of rise and quick fall of psychedelics during the sixties. And it's a really fascinating episode and and there it's full of cautionary tales. Um

You know, it's funny, I would ask uh uh I would ask researchers I was interviewing, so what happened? Why was there such a backlash against psychedelics uh that that research was was sh closed down, you know, that never happens. That you have a promising field of research. And suddenly scientists feel they can't d do it anymore and they're told to stop. I mean this is you know, this is kinda dark ages stuff.

Um And and in and to a man, and they are mostly men, I'm afraid, um, they will say, um Well, it's too simple to blame Timothy Leary. And then they'll go on to blame Timothy. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and he does have a very important role in this. Um and basically Leary, you know, started studying uh psilocybin and then LSD at Harvard. from nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty three, and keep in mind the drugs were legal then. Um and uh But he got impatient with

with research, uh, with science, pretty early on and he decided well, you can't really do a controlled study of psychedelics, so why bother and He started studying psychedelics in a n what he called a naturalistic environment, which meant you know his living room. And uh And

As happens to some psychedelic researchers. They lose interest in treating individuals and acquire an interest in treating the whole of the culture. Um because they start seeing that, you know, retailing these things is too slow when they're so promising and they could actually save us from civilizational collapse. And you have this exuberance, irrational exuberance, I would add.

That seems to come up in the minds of some people who who work with these compounds. And it's an occupational hazard, I would argue. And uh and the current generation of researchers are guarding against it, but take'em out for a drink and you know They'll they'll come around to that place. The value of these

The value of these compounds for the whole civilization. Uh, which is interesting and they may well be right, but it's it's a dangerous way to talk, I think. Um And so Um something else was going on in the sixties, um, and that was that

These drugs uh were used By the um by teenagers and and people in their twenties. Um and

It created a a a um Uh a generate what was called a generation gap and a very unusual um splitting of the of the cultures and values of two generations. These drugs were doing something very unusual to that historical moment and something that will never happen again.

Let me explain what I mean. Tell us. The U a high dose uh psilocybin or LSD trip. is a kind of rite of passage, a searing rite of passage. You feel like you you you went in one person and you came out another person. Um

And It did this for the young at that point. That's who used these drugs. Not too many older people use them. Um And um Normally a rite of passage knits a culture together.

It's organized by the by the elders. Who set up the bar, whatever it is, whether it's a bar mitzvah or a vision quest or whatever it is, and the youth, the adolescents. Pass through that process. And then land in the country of the adults. And that's how you grow up.

Here was this really freaky rite of passage that That was taking young people And Dumping them in a country of the mind That adults knew nothing about.

Um And I think it really um drove a wedge in the culture. And it's no accident that you had this unusual Divergence uh of youth culture both in terms of everything from uh politics. uh dress, music

Diet. sexual mores, morality Um was different than adults and um and that was very destabilizing for the culture. And and you know, not surprisingly, the elders reacted with with fear and panic. Um

And tried to put an end to this. Uh, you know, um Richard Nixon called Timothy Leary, who was already a kind of a washed up psychology professor called him the most dangerous man in America. That's astounding. Um but you know he probably really believed it. He believed these drugs were We're keeping uh

men from you know, going to fight in Vietnam, um one of the things that happens is that you you you know, these drugs make you raise questions about the authority structure that you live in. And that was certainly happening. Um so they were very destabilizing and there was uh a backlash. Whether Timothy Leary was solely responsible for that. That that seems unfair. I mean he he he was definitely the East Coast. Um

uh person most responsible for it. But remember on the West Coast you had Ken Key. uh the writer uh who is turning on thousands of people in his acid tests. And is you know is also a psychedelic evangelist. Uh and he was turned on by the CIA inadvertently. Um, you know, they were They were testing their LSD and they were pay people fifty bucks to go to the VA hospital in in uh Menlo Park or Palo Alto and and uh and and Havados and they turned on the wrong guy. The story is so outrageous. Isn't it? It's like I mean I had never

I'd never been exposed to the details in your book and it's just if someone were to write a novel With that as the plot. I mean they'd have to be like Haruki Murakami or something. It's so Surreal. Yeah. And the idea that the that that that the sixties what we call the sixties might have been a a CIA mind mind control experiment gone horribly

Good or bad. is is mind blowing. Um so I think the drugs would have found their way into the counterculture one way or the other. There were you know there were other roots besides Timothy Leary, even though he was pushing really hard to make this happen. But that led to a backlash and you had um the government coming down hard on it, um The media who had uh been I and this was one of the real surprises in researching the book, incredibly boosterish about psychedelics.

uh time life which was the most one of the most important media empires In the country. Uh controlled by Henry Luce. They were actively promoting psychedelics up until uh up till nineteen sixty five. Henry Luce loved them. He and his wife had been treated successfully.

He published uh Gordon Wasson's uh first account of a magic mushroom experience in Mexico in the nineteen fifties. Um and in fact he insisted that all coverage of Oh psychedelics come to his desk so we could make sure it didn't have anything negative in it. So we the culture undergoes a radical one eighty around nineteen sixty five. And that leads to the closing off of research.

So that begs the question. Could it happen again? Um I don't think it could happen quite that way, and the reason it couldn't Uh and for this idea I I I credit

Rick Doblin. If he's right. And I you know, but he might he might be wrong, but Rick Doblin, who's the head of MAPS, the multi disciplinary association of psychedelic studies thinks that the culture has changed too much.

that we've absorbed so mu so many innovations of the sixties Um And that the people now in charge Many of them have tripped. Um, psychedelics are not so strange to them.

And that's why you have, you know really some establishment voices the psychiatric establishment. Um people like uh Paul Summergrad and uh Jeffrey Lieberman, both past presidents of the Americas Association, have talked about their own use of psychedelics and the role it played in their intellectual development. No doubt, uh some of these regulators at the FDA have, you know, first person experience of of uh of psychedelics. So they're not terrified of them in quite the way uh our parents were, or my parents were in the in the sixties. And and I think there's some

Uh comfort in that for people doing this research that It's unlikely to happen that way. Could it happen another way? Yes. I mean, let's say someone is someone dies in this research or there is um you know some some

Adverse uh You know, events. Um, or there are suicides uh associated with psychedelics, which have happened in the past and could happen again. the um the cultural climate could change. You know, we also have Jeffrey Sessions is the um is the uh

Attorney General, and he's You know, he's not content he's not happy with states legalizing cannabis. Um how's he gonna feel if the FDA comes forward and and approves Psychedelics. Um

It's not guaranteed that they'll be against it. I mean there's another lens you could take to this. Um they are deregulators and that's essentially what we're talking about, right? Is deregulating a pharmaceutical Um Can I jump in for one second? I'm I'm so curious, do you not think there would be incredible backlash if a sessions or someone else were to come out against phase three trials that are specifically dealing with, say Victims of sexual assault for PTSD. War veterans returning with

pronounced trauma and limbs blown off. I mean it seems to be such a bipartisan issue and in everyone's best interest. There would seem to be Some political risk. Yeah. Trying to Stop.

These types of studies. Maybe I'm maybe I'm not savvy enough. Absolutely right. And you've and your example is the good example. I mean the the the M D M A work or um PTSD Uh I mean this is you know, is there a more sympathetic population that you could possibly be helping? And in the same way, um, you know

Uh the whole system. finally was moved to make it easier to have access to AIDS drugs. 'Cause there was nothing else that could help. Um I think that yes, I think there would be a penalty. And I don't think it's an accident. It's not a right left issue when you start talking about the military and cops.

Um, you know, Rebecca Mercer has donated to uh to this to research, to psychedelic research. Uh specifically, I think, with the PTSD work. Steve Bannon has spoken out in favor of it. So Uh and and Peter Thiel is is an investor in um uh in psychedelic medicine. So it's It isn't necessarily the case that it's regarded as this left wing thing, even though it has these culture countercultural, you know, colorations.

Um so I don't think it's simple at all. Um But we'll see. We'll see. You know, if the FDA looks at these phase three results this is a couple years down the road and says that Yes. these drugs should be approved and doctors should be able to prescribe them. The DEA, the uh drug enforcement

administration, which is part of the Justice Department, then has to reschedule them. Scheduling drugs is a political um determination, finally, um and they have DEA has sometimes been immune to uh scientific information. Um, but I think it would be uh you know, it would be a an interesting moment. Uh I'm not sure how it would um

Uh come out. But I think that um this work We're dealing with post traumatic stress disorder and dealing with the

so called existential distress of cancer patients. Um wins the sympathy of the public. uh specially um when you're doing it with a drug that

where the risk profile is is really not very bad. Um So we'll see. I mean, I think it's a big question. Um, you know, the idea that there's any kind of logical response on the part of the Trump administration to anything, you know, ha that has to be factored into. S so the you mentioned uh

uh risks earlier. I think we should talk about that. I mean what what is the risk profile, right? What are the risks of these compounds? What's the you know the L D fifty. If we have a thousand people in a room What like what's the dose it takes to kill Five hundred of them. Uh well, there's there's no known lethal dose of um psilocybin or LSD. That's you know If it kills you it's not gonna be'cause it it's toxic. They're not toxic. They're I mean

Remarkably few molecules have this profound effect and they don't stay in your body that long. Um So t from a toxicity point of view. They're remarkably safe drugs. Um I think that the risks come uh are more psychological in origin. Um They are incredibly disruptive.

they disarm your usual defenses. And defenses, you know, can be very helpful as well as hurtful. And some people without their defenses get into real trouble. Um People do foolish things on psychedelics. People take them carelessly and they, you know, walk into traffic. Uh they ju you know they step off of buildings. Um

Uh so I think uh and then there is a a small Um Uh subgroup. Of people at risk for serious mental illness, things like schizophrenia. For whom psychedelics can be the trigger.

uh and push people into that first psychotic break. And I think that um That happened uh, you know, wasn't so uncommon with uh people in their early twenties using these drugs. And that happens to be the age where this Tends to happen.

Would it happen without the psychedelics? Probably another trauma would have set it off, if not the psychedelics. Um but but it does happen and I think that Um one of the reasons that there have not been any adverse events, any serious adverse events in the Thousand

Volunteers that have um been you know have been dosed in the modern era of research is that they're screening very carefully. Anybody who's got mental illness in their family is not uh eligible um And uh

So you know, that's kind of the luxury of doing small trials, you can be very picky about who you give the drug to. And that's one of the reasons that Phase three may not be quite as dramatic in its in its uh you know, success as as phase two has been.

Um so I think that There are people who should not take these drugs. And um uh and it's people at some psychological risk. Um That said, it's it's worth pointing out. Uh, there's a story I tell in the book, um, that very often

Doctors who in the sixties especially who weren't familiar with psychedelics and their and and and the phenomenology of them, um mistook. Panic attacks, simple panic attacks, which are common on the drugs. Um for psychotic breaks. And there's a great story that uh Andy Wilde told me, um Dr Andrew Wyl, uh about

after he got out of medical school in uh in nineteen sixty eight, he hustled out to San Francisco and volunteered at the Hayde Ashbury Free Clinic. And they were seeing lots of bad trips. And people would come in and they thought they were going mad, that they were gonna die. And and you know, we shouldn't minimize how bad a bad trip can be. It's a it's a it's a terrifying experience. And that that too is a is a is a risk, even if it is just a panic attack. Um But

Andy had had a lot of experience with psychedelics himself. And he saw these uh s this these symptoms for what they were and what he would do is he'd come into the little cubicle with his white coat and his stethoscope and his clipboard and he'd ask a few questions And then when he decided the person was not really psychotic, um, but was just freaking out, he would go to the he would say Excuse me, but there's someone in real trouble in the next cubicle.

And all at once these people were like Wow, there's someone more fucked up than I am. And they would feel so much better. And their symptoms would pass. Um So he understood that you could manipulate the experience, which is of course what the guides understand too.

And and rescue someone from what had been a uh a a pretty horrifying um Episode. Um, so you know, how many psychotic breaks were there in the sixties? You know, you hear it, you know But there were you know, the house the the emergency rooms were For a period were f you know, full of people on bad LSD trips.

And maybe that's true, but what was that actually. Um it may have just been a bad trip. And bad trips are are first they can be averted with good guiding. And second, they can actually be very useful to people if they're properly analyzed. Yeah.

And I think the uh At least you know the way that I've started to think about this reading your book and becoming involved with the research is that uh

medium or useful delineation is safe and unsafe trip. In the sense that difficult does not necessarily translate to long term negative outcomes. And Some cases. Ver very much the contrary. Yeah. And uh I I I wanna pause for just a second here to make an appeal if there are regulators, uh lawmakers listening, and that is that speaking as someone who

I assure you is not dancing around the playa in a thong at Burning Man calling himself a shaman. That's not my shtick, but Conversely has looked at uh mental illness in friends, suicide in friends in high school and college. Um

have friends with, say, eating disorders of twenty, thirty years that have been uh Not just mitigated, but resolved. defi I mean at least I can't say definitively, of course, but for years now. After say one to three controlled sessions.

Yeah. Looking at the risk profile of these drugs, there are risks, to be sure, uh, but the the potential benefit the the і кост ефективнес

And the Pronounced. Uh favorable risk profile is really remarkable. I mean beyond

Just about anything I've seen. Not a panacea, but with some very promising indications uh That That make it. At the very least worth

uh researching in depth. Uh And uh I don't wanna sound too much like I'm proselytizing, but yeah if you look at say Uh you know, if I there are drugs looking at my pharmacogenomics, if I were to take them I could have a fatal response. There are and which are common common, common drugs. Uh if you take grapefruit juice, which can certainly change the metabolism of many drugs, you can have horrible side effects. And if you look at if you were to print out, let's just say hypothetically years from now you have Silocybin available. And you go to Walgreens to pick up your psilocybin. Uh, and maybe it's only available through a therapist or or doctor who's going to be supervising a session, but nonetheless, let's imagine this is an exercise, and you pick up your

Your little white bag with the pharmacist's uh directions and warnings on the side. Uh compared to just about anything else to date that I would have Routinely consumed. The profile of something like a CL7 would be very, very favorable uh for a lot of things. Um and of course, we're operating from a place of incomplete information just because the research has been so stymied, but the the early indicators seem to be really promising. So I would just say from from the standpoint of regulators,

not calling it the uh sort of the golden goose, but this some of these compounds have the potential to transform uh How increasingly problematic often fatal problems in mental health and elsewhere are treated. So it's I you know, I I agree with you entirely and I think that

Yes, as with any drug, you've got to compare it with other drugs. Um, and that they all have risks and we put up with a certain amount of risk to get the benefit. And that the risks in this case, um, certainly at the biological level, are are minor compared to uh drugs we take routinely that um Uh even over the counter drugs that are more toxic. then um Than psychedelics, as far as we know. So I think that's definitely worth keeping in mind. You know, because these drugs are illicit, they're surrounded by this penumbra of

Fear. That's a good word. Panum. It's and we need to and we need to like look at them with a very kind of cool objective lens, which is hard to do. You know, David Nutt, who's a very well known psychopharmacologist in England, who's involved with the the research, it's in his lab that Robin Carhart Harris works. He did a very interesting analysis of a bunch of drugs and he would compare them not even to themselves but to other kinds of Risky behavior.

And he got in really hot water. Uh not only did he say that alcohol is more toxic than LSD, which got him fired. He was working for the government as their uh the Labour government's drugs advisor. Um but then he said Um, riding a horse is more dangerous than taking MDMA. Now we never put those two things together, but you know, why don't we have this conversation about a horsepack. I'm just I'm just seeing the commercial, like this the thirty second spot safer than riding a horse. So you know, I think we have to I think we're really nuts. I mean, in general, you know, any behavioral economist, I'm sure you've had them on the show, will tell you that we're in we're nuts about risk and and really irrational in how we confront it.

Um So it's important to understand that There are risks, they're mostly psychological, people can have very painful experiences. Um, but in terms of poisoning your body, um, you could do a lot worse. And one of the portions in your book that really caught my attention

And got me excited was related to the default mode network, and I'm probably gonna butcher this paraphrasing, so I want you to correct me, but Uh the It was the observation that perhaps some of these That a lay person is prone.

Separate. Whether that's Chronic anxiety. Chronic depression.

Uh O C D. Eating disorders. That they may not in fact be as separate as as we think. And I want to say that Dr. Tom Insyl Uh on or of mental health.

Could you could you just elaborate on that because this It it it's so exciting to me for for many reasons. That I I wanna do it justice. So could you explain.'Cause it's one of the most exciting uh things in the book, I think. Uh, and I talk about this idea that we may be close to or or see a path to developing what I call the grand unified theory of mental illness, or at least a set A a big set of mental illnesses.

That includes Anxiety. addiction and obsession. Um and um one of the questions I asked Insel when I interviewed him was and this is, you know, one of the things I was skeptical about, um, that it seems kind of implausible to me that one drug or one uh you know

category of drugs like psychedelics should work on so many different indications. Um isn't that a little too good to be true? Isn't that, you know, aren't you talking panacea? And he said, Well what makes you think Those Indications are so different. Those illnesses are so different. Um and he said the distinctions be between depression, anxiety, obsession, and addiction are actually um uh there's a lot of of of of

uh bleeding over from one to another. And that the the the names that we give them are really uh an artifact of the um of the insurance industry and the d the D SM um you know, the diagnostic manual. Um we have to assign a a number to every diagnosis. And so we tend to separate things. And um but he's kind of more of a lumper and he and he suggests that, you know, these could be very similar phenomenon.

Uh and that, you know, uh one way uh another psychiatrist put it is is um You know, Depression is is kind of regret about the past. And anxiety is regret about the future. And I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. They are, you know, the real difference between depression and anxiety is tense, isn't it? And um

So when you when you step back to another level. And you look at Um the mechanisms that may be at work here. You begin to see how

Bs Um illnesses may be very similar. Uh how do I mean? Well If you look at uh again, go back to Robin Carhart Harris' work on the default mode network, um

His premise, he wrote another really interesting paper. I strongly anyone who has an appetite for a little neuroscience, um, should check out this paper. It's called The Entropic Brain. Uh and you should put it on your website. I can send you. Yeah. I'll put it in the show notes. And um

Uh and there he His his idea is that the brain is a is As we know, a very complex system. And um it has an order An emergent order that is to some extent

enforced or regulated by the default mode network. Uh and the ego is the felt Um you know, version of that. Um and the ego's job is to kind of patrol the boundaries. All right. It's the cop on patrol and it's patrolling the boundary between you and the other, you know, things that aren't you. And you and your unconscious. And um and the system

You know, has this kind of structural order. But In many people that order gets overly rigid. And that brains function along a spectrum from entropy to uh rigidity. And on the entropy end.

Um You have uh serious psychological ailments like uh schizophrenia. Um, and you also but you also have childhood consciousness, which is very chaotic and very psychedelic.

Uh in many ways. And um Uh and then on the other end of the the spectrum you get to these uh illnesses characterized by too much order. Essentially. And that's depression and obsession and uh addiction. And these are essentially ailments Where people get stuck in repetitive loops.

That these deep grooves of thought and behaviour. um are which are enforced by an ego that's become almost punishing, you know, um, you know, too authoritarian. And so these brains are kinda locked. And these other brains you know, are just w way loose.

And there's a there's a place you wanna be in the middle there. There's a point of criticality really where you have enough entropy Um but also enough order. And that we go wrong when we when we get too far to one end or the other. Um that's his theory anyway. It's it's speculative but but it but has a lot of explanatory power. And um Basically

He thinks that uh psychedelics work. by increasing the amount of entropy in the brain. And that entropy

Up to a point is a very positive thing. And that it is the lack of entropy that that traps people in uh these very rigid patterns of thought and behavior. And then essentially the LSD or the psilocybin lubricates cognition. Um It can go too far and leads to magical thinking, which is also on the too much entropy side.

Um, but it also can help break people out of those habits. So there you begin to see the the outlines of a un a grand unified theory of mental illness. That and that's that's really exciting stuff. It uh it makes me think of it's so so exciting. Uh Because it's it's it's sort of offers this tantalizing possibility that you could address many, many different separately labeled conditions in a similar way. Uh

Speaking with a uh a researcher in this field, very well published. Scientist. And uh the the analogy that he used, and I'm gonna modify it a little bit, but he said that

Because my question to him was what What is it? What is a plausible explanation for h why these some of these compounds seem to have this long term reorganizing. Affect.

Because the the the half life of the drug, so to speak, is not months long. So like what the what the hell happens where these people in some cases have this persistence of personality change where they have more empathy a year later, two years later. What on earth can explain that? And the picture he painted because the the mechanisms are still so poorly understood was well you can imagine If

You're on a On a ski mountain. Oh, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. After a few hours, you have all these worn ruts and it becomes more and more likely that people are gonna use the the ruts that have been laid down. But if there's You can't you can't get out of them, right? You can't your sled or your skis keeps tending back into them. And you're Yes.

And so if but if you suddenly have five feet of fresh powder, whatever, three feet, it doesn't really matter, and then you get up to the top of the lift, you all of a sudden have to, by almost by definition, choose a new path. Uh you're at least given the flexibility to choose your new route. And uh but taken too far, it's just like being stuck in a Blizzard, right? Well that's not gonna that's my own addition. Not terribly original, but y but um It's uh I really need to meet uh Robin at some point. I haven't used it. You do, you need to have him on. He's uh he's he's a brilliant guy and I think he will be recognized as a really important neuroscientist. Um he's just got a very unusual mind because he can do the hard science But he's also trained as a psychoanalyst. He's actually a Freudian. Very c very interesting mix of uh he got into this'cause he wanted to show the psychological the the the neuroscientific basis for Freudian ideas like repression.

And uh and so yeah, he's a he's a really interesting guy. Th I think that that snow metaphor is really powerful. Um we we don't understand the mechanism, what exactly is uh filling those ruts. Uh, you know, in a way that lasts. I mean I think though it may go back to that image of um you know creating some new linkages in the brain, some new pathways. And basically

You know, that's what learning is. It's a pathway in the brain and then you reinforce it. By um repetition? So that if you have had such a linkage on an experience and you simply think about it a lot. And I've certainly done this in my own experiences. It reinforces it. Um you can use meditation to reinforce it. You can uh just merely just replay it in your head.

Um And and in time you're creating a a more and more uh resilient linkage. And and that's why I think that the Integration uh period after the session is so important. Um, you know, in in all the both underground and above ground uh guided sessions, there are three stages. They you know, they prepare you for it. They they guide you, they sit with you while you're having the experience.

And then you always come back the next day, and this is probably the most important part. To figure out what the hell was that all about. And it's often hard to know. And and many of us take a you know, a big psychedelic experience that we put in this box called Weird drug experience and we put it away on the shelf.

'Cause we don't know what to do with it and no one's gonna help us. Um but At the integration the guide will will um have you talk out your experience, tell the narrative. And then we'll kind of underscore certain ideas. And I and I remember well some times I had when I when I had Good guiding that um

they would by by um emphasizing one particular theme or insider image Um Basically make that linkage uh much stronger than it would have been. And it became the thing that I thought about the most and and then was um and acquired a certain kind of power in my mind. Um so so I think that there's a lot more to be done with figuring out how to take elements from the experience and um and kind of

Reify them and make them more real and and more lasting. Michael, this seems like a good time to get into those personal experiences and I don't know where to start, but I thought since you mentioned Themes, images, insights. We could use that as a jumping off point and you could start wherever you'd like to start really, but uh I would be very curious to hear

You describe Any of your experiences that that uh ended up being very meaningful. For you. Sure. Yeah.

Um You know, it's funny, I I said earlier I approached the uh my psychedelic journeys with a lot of trepidation and and I approached the writing of them with a lot of trepidation all after the fact because I you know, I didn't know that I could It's a real literary challenge. Um, if you think about how many trip reports you've read that were any good. Um you know, the you can count them on one hand. And uh so that was the kind of Everest I kept moving toward as I was going through the book. It's like oh my God, I'm gonna have to explain these

experiences in the event, it turned out to be great fun to write about. Um I I really enjoyed writing about it. It was it was a challenge, but um of the best of the best sort. Um I had just to give you the landscape of it, um I had uh experiences with uh LSD, these are guided experiences with LSD psilocybin uh five MEO DMT And uh which is a pretty obscure psychedelic that's made from the um Well that is the smoked venom of the Sonoran desert toad.

Yes, somebody figured that out. Um, and then uh ayahuasca. uh a couple um ayahuasca circles. Um I would say that for me the the most Um

Useful. insightful experience was a guided Silocybin um journey. where I was trying to approximate the dosage being used in the um

uh in the above ground trials. Uh I think I was a little shy of that. Um And uh I worked with a a wonderful guide, a woman on the East Coast, and um What can I say about this experience? What was really important about this experience was that um I experienced uh ego dissolution for the first time.

Um I had read a lot about it, non dual consciousness and uh Uh and I was curious to have such an experience and also, you know, very nervous about it. Um just to pause sorry to interject. So non dual Meaning what? That means that you're no longer the observer Yeah. Normally, you know, we're the subject, we're the perceiving subject, and everything else is the object of our perceptions, right? And we have this kind of split and that kinda defines our consciousness to a large extent. And uh it's a rather self selfish way of looking at things, but that's how most

of us look, and probably many animals look at things that way too, uh, although we don't have much report. Um and uh but that non-dual consciousness is where that sense of separation. um breaks down. Either because they're Other subjects you're aware of, you know, I mean I've had an experience where the plants were I realized they had a subjectivity too, and they were They were looking back at me in a sense. And um that that that also tends to break down dual the sense of duality that that we go through life with.

Um so so This happened um You know, this wasn't always a pleasant experience. I uh Uh I I took the mushroom, it was a very large mushroom that I ate with some chocolate. Um and it was a it was she she was kind of Um

More in the shamanic style of guides, as many underground guides are, it really is a you have a sense of ceremony more than you do in the above-ground trials. Um And uh initially one of the problems I've had with the underground guides is their musical taste. Which is just horrible very often. I mean, to me, it's it's the kind of music that's fine if you're getting a really high quality Massage at a you know, a top resort. But for a psychological experience it seems a little

Um uh wanting. And so she put on this piece of of new age claptrap and uh and it immediately put me in and I thought it was electronica. I thought it was electronic music. It turned out not to be. But um and I and it immediately put me in this space of a computer uh or video game. I was in a c a world that had been generated by computers and And it was dark.

And very sleek. It wasn't scary, but it was claustrophobic and and just I wanted to be outside. So there I was in this in this dystopian video game going along and seeing, you know, all these uh digitally created things and you know, I can imagine somebody who would enjoy this space, but it wasn't my space. And uh and I asked her to change the music and it got a little better. And um and as the experience uh moved on, I started to get a little anxious that oh my God, I'm trapped in computer world. How can I get out of here? And um but I remembered my flight instructions. Um that's uh a word used at Hopkins for to describe what um you're told in the preparation session, which is if you if you see anything scary, don't try to get away from it.

You know, step right up to that monster and say What are you doing in my head, or what have you got to teach me? Um and uh and it's very good advice. And or surrender. you know, relax your mind and flo downstream. You know, these all these mantras they give you. And they're actually really helpful. And I realized, all right, I just have to surrender to this. And I got deeper into the experience. Um and then I um uh Am I going too slow in this narrative? Is this okay?

This is great. I'm in no no rush. Okay. Um And then I was it was very powerful for a while and I was um uh getting a little nervous about it and I thought I'm gonna take off my eyeshades. I'm wearing these eye shades. And one of the great things about the eye shades is They're a powerful technology. I mean, much more powerful than you can imagine. More powerful than VR, virtual reality, which is not that powerful. But you know, it it sends you inside. So if you take it off.

And I took it off just to make sure reality was still existing. Um and and to reorient myself and also because I had a P Um, you know, suddenly I saw the you know the the the the room I was in and and uh the guide and the the plants and the walls and the furniture and I was like, ah, reality. I love it. And um uh

And but I had to pee and I and I went to the uh uh she escorted me to the bathroom'cause I could barely move. And um when I came back And I did definitely didn't want to look in the mirror. I was really nervous of what I would see and uh and I didn't want to look at her either. And I was just like I peed I produced this uh described this spectacular crop of diamonds because everything had this beam of light that was, you know, being addressed directly to me. Um

And then I came back and she said, Did I want a boost her dose? And I said, Yes. Uh And I looked at her for the first time as she was kneeling next to me and she holds out her hands another mushroom. And she has transform. She's normally blonde, uh, and she had and her hair had turned black and she was

This old Mexican Indian and she had She had morphed into Maria Sabina, this legendary figure and psychedelic history who gave Gordon Wassen the the uh the first person first Westerner to ever try psilocybin his ceremony in in uh Oaxaca back in the in the 50s. And she had turned into this person, and her hands were leathery and her face was stretched over her cheekbones. It was quite. shocking and I and I had to look away and I didn't want to tell her what had happened to her. Um

So I take this uh stepped up dose. And when I do that and then I go back under and I put on the um Uh The shades the eyeshades again. Um

I have this uh sense of um dissolution. Um that my Identity has just exploded into a thousand little slips of paper, like like s little post-its. And I was watching it just get blown to the wind, and um but I wasn't panicking.

I had no desire to to reassemble, you know, collect all the paper and put it back in a pile. It was like, no, this is fine. And um I realized that that's what was happening and there was nothing to be done but surrender to it and that my sense of self was falling apart. Before my eyes. But what does that mean? How can

Your sense of self. Who's my eyes? Who's who's perceiving this? Um, and then it got even more extreme, and I saw myself Uh spread out over the landscape like a coat of paint or butter.

Um And I was Totally fine with it. That was the kind of most amazing thing and and I can explain

What exactly happened because My ego was out there, but there was still an eye to take in the scene. And the lesson of it was that You know, what have

What should have felt like this Personal cataclysm. Total loss himself. There was no category labeled personal anymore. And I was able to perceive this whole scene with this

Dispassionate objectivity. It was like That's the way it is. Unperturbed. And it was this new

I had had access to this amazing vantage point. Um And it made me realize I'm not identical to my ego. You know, that chattering voice in our head that accompanies us most of the time. It's kinda neurotic and can be annoying. But is useful too. I mean it You know, your ego is what gets the book written.

Um but uh but I had completely separated from it and I hadn't been annihilated. That was the amazing thing. So that to me was the big takeaway from this experience. There were other things that happened. I had a uh a much happier experience with music toward the end, um after constantly fighting with Mary, the name I give the guide.

About her musical taste. We finally agreed and She put on these Bach. uh unaccompanied cello sweets, which are you know It's a yo yo ma recording. It's just They're stunning and they're depressing. They're really

Mourn, infinitely sad pieces of music. Um just to cello, nothing else. Um And Now that I was in this non dual state.

Uh to listen to music, I mean those words don't describe what happens. It's to become music. You become identical with the music. And I became identical at various times with the the bow, the horsehair bow, you know, surfing over those strings of that cello. And then I I went into the cello and you know, that mouth of space that's where all those vibrations come from. And um And a a a a total mystical merging. with this piece of music. And and to listen to this music now sends chill up my spine, um, because I had It wasn't Yo Yama, it wasn't Bach, it was like

this universe. And I was Of it. Um so what does that all mean, you know? Um Uh it was um a powerful

Lesson. in uh the role of our ego, I think, in our lives. And that's what I talked about the next day when I came back for the integration session. Um I said I had I realized that there might be another ground on which to plant our feet. Besides this Ego, this self interested ego. And um

But I didn't know what to do with it,'cause my ego was back on patrol, you know, pretty quickly, um, you know, doing its usual thing, keeping, you know, my unconscious at bay and making me understand that I am me and not somebody else and all all the stuff it does. But she said and it was interesting, she said, Well, you've had the experience of not reacting as your ego normally would that that You know,'cause the ego is kinda trigger happy, right? It's defensive by definition. It it it it it marshals all your defenses and you're supposedly in your interest. And sometimes it is in your interest. But that I'd had a a taste of what it was like to not.

be the victim of those trigger reactions. And she said that's something you can cultivate. And uh and I've been cultivating it ever since. Um so that was for me a That was big news. That was a big insight for me. And um and I think about that a lot and I and I think it has to some extent change my relationship to my ego, I can um

I I know when he's up to his old tricks sometimes and I can spot it and and sometimes I can um put him in his place. Um and that's useful. Now You know. thirty years of psychoanalysis, you could probably get to the same place. Um you do a lot of work on your ego. Um, but this I did in four hours or five hours. Um so that was a I I I now look back on that as a um a very positive experience that taught me something important.

That also gave me uh I mean, it was a spiritual experience and I'm not someone who who's had a lot of'em. Um but that merging with the the music was um as powerful as spiritual experiences I've had. And it also gave me a little insight into what is spiritual experience. You know, that term has always kind of mystified me. Um And I think it's no different. I mean, I hate to put it in these psychodynamic terms, and I don't mean to demean anyone's more um

mystical understanding of it. But to me it's uh mystic uh mystical or spiritual experience is what happens when your ego is um put aside. Um A spiritual experience is about

A sense of merging with something larger than you. And it's your ego that stands in the way. And um to the extent that you can subdue it. Or or just put it off to the side for a few hours. Amazing things happen.

Um, and you realize that you are part of a larger entity and that the mind of Bach or Yo Yo Ma is completely accessible to you. And um Uh and that was a big deal too. So wild. I I it's hard for me to even respond to that because as you noted

Uh yeah. I thought you did a very masterful job. of of describing these experiences in the book, if one of the hallmarks of mystical experience Is Ineffability. It poses a uh quite a challenge. Challenge to put into prose. Uh

And I I think that if if we think about prose and words also you mentioned the psychotherapy and certainly there's absolutely a a role to be played But it it strikes me that They're not mutually exclusive, but these these very difficult to describe psychedelic experiences Allow people oftentimes to feel things

Or to embody things, to experience things that that would be very hard. Two talk themselves to as a gingerbread trail to a conclusion that then allows them to intellectually s uh change their behavior or relationship to their ego, things like that. I mean there are certain things that are difficult to talk your way out of if you didn't talk your way into them and and and I'm

Fascinated by Or hope to certainly learn more about why these why these things seem to have the effect that they do, and our understanding is so partial. Uh but looking at so you mentioned the treatment resistant depression, there's a study at Hopkins also that I've been involved with uh For the last you know year.

uh a year, year and a half. Uh and the for instance there's a if if anyone's interested in throwing their hat in the ring, there's an unfunded study uh at this point at Hopkins they're considering looking at Alzheimer's and even the potential well I think they would be looking mostly at it's effects on depression and anxiety, but there there are some people who have uh postulated that there may be a role in neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Uh uh

uh or an effect at least from psilocybin, which is really uh tantalizing, of course. I mean selfishly speaking, I have Alzheimer's on both sides of my family, so I'm of an acute interest in that. But if we if we zoom out from the these individual studies uh Have you thought about How these drugs This These these classes.

Might Intersect. with broader societal opportunities or threats. Uh

At all. Uh I mean and not not to get to Pie in the Sky PN is or anything like that. Avoid that. Um, you know, uh I mean we have pathologies at the individual level and we have pathologies at the at the civilizational level or the national level. Um And uh what's striking to me is that

The two Biggest I think the two biggest challenges we face. As a as a culture are um

The environmental crisis And um tribalism. There are other words you can put on that, but let's use tribalism. Um

Mm. Both of which are functions of Ego consciousness. Um, in that What we do to nature has a lot to do with the fact that we objectify nature.

And that we think of ourselves as the only subject. And everything else is an object, therefore for our use. Um Same with uh um Tribalism. That too is a sense of

uh you know an ego Patrolling a border. On that. Everything on this side is us, and we will protect it, and everything on that side we're in a zero sum contest with. So these drugs

You know, offer An antidote to both those ways of thinking. And it is no accident, I'm sure, that the Uh the fact that the sixties, you know, represented the birth of environmentalism. Um yes, there was, you know, Rachel Carson and the Cuyahoga River on fire and all the other things that were happening then, but psychedelic consciousness also may have contributed to environmental consciousness because one of the things that happens is that the world becomes animate. In a way it wasn't before.

And that the plants and the animals and the fungi all have their points of view too, and you feel very connected. Uh in a way that makes it hard. to be destructive. Um and same with people. I mean, you feel connected to all different kinds of people. So, you know, I'm not suggesting we need to put these drugs in the water supply. Um there might be some individuals that we can all think of who would benefit enormously if they were willing to undergo this sort of therapy. Um but They're I think they're extremely relevant to the moment we're in and the problems we're struggling with. And perhaps it's no accident that this Renaissance is coming about.

At the time it is. You mentioned the drinking water. Uh let's let's let's talk about it for a second. So there are uh there are I've I've observed As I'm sure you have people who are Okay. Uh

militant proselytizers of psychedelics who are are are prone to the same type of rhetoric that seemed to cause a lot of trouble in uh in the earlier um iteration of all this and the putting it in the drinking water, making it legal. You wanna go to seven eleven and just get a The LSD smoothie.

Seems like a bad idea to me. Uh then you have people on the f on the far other end of the spectrum, uh Certainly in not too distant uh history who would not even if consider Publishing a scientific study involving psychedelics wouldn't even consider the scientific merit of a study. And we s we we seem to be in a very

Uh well as you put it, Renaissance where the research is finally being done uh to clarify the mechanisms of action and the Yeah the the the potential, but also the risks uh of these of these drugs, and it's so exciting to me having really spent so much time as you have looking at this. What are the ways that people can screw this up?

Uh Do you know what I mean? Because it's just I really, really think we have an incredible opportunity Two Decipher. How These

plants uh and compounds that have in many cases existed well certainly existed but been consumed for millennia And how they fit into A world that is bursting at the seams. With not decreasing but increasing prevalence of certain types of mental health problems and other issues. It's it just it's such an opportunity that I don't want to see

Wasted Uh Wha how can people screw it up? And what would you is there anything you would ask of people? Uh certainly I would say to people, don't go don't find some shaman on like casual encounters on Craigslist uh and order mail order God knows what from the dark web and just decide to do it. With your friends on a weekend. Terrible, terrible, terrible idea, among other things. Yeah.

And and and you know, going down to Peru and with the first, you know, shaman you meet. I mean, there have been horrible stories coming out of Peru with uh you know, sexual assault of women and uh there was a murder the other day um involving a a healer and uh In Peru um Uh so I think carelessness is the great threat. Um and I think carelessness is part of what doomed uh psychedelics in the sixties or temporarily dim them in the sixties. You know, one of the great lessons if you if you study history is that um until our own time

When psychedelics came along and we didn't have any sort of Conventions or rules to govern their use. Uh and many people did get into trouble and the psychedelics themselves, you know, ignited a uh catalyzed a kind of backlash. Um but you go in history and you see that um these powerful substances were were only used in a very controlled Um

considered way. And that you didn't have individuals taking them on their own. There was always a circle, there were always elders, there was the shaman, there was the person who had lots of experience of the of the territory administering it to people. Um, it was always Uh Organized in a ritual. There was a ceremony. Um all these cultural forms. I'm not saying those ones are right and we should simply uh adapt those or adopt those.

Um they may not be right. to Western culture, we may have to come up with our own rituals, our own ceremonies, our own rules of the road for these drugs. And I think that to some extent that was the failure of the sixties. Now I don't wanna paint it with a broad brush. There are many people who had wonderful experiences with psychedelics in the sixties who had uh important insights and and and and created um you know great art as a result of their experiences. But

for the culture as a whole it it it led to this backlash and and uh and And a fair amount of suffering. And also the loss of thirty years of good research that we could have been doing. Um, and I think that had to do with the fact that we did not have a proper cultural container. Um so the question we now face is what is that container? One of them is the medical system. That's the path that they are on at NYU and Hopkins. I don't think that's the only path.

I agree strongly with Bob Jesse, who's you know, one of the motive uh forces behind the revival of research, who who says, you know, yes, there are people who are suffering and we have to help them. But These drugs are also good for what he calls the betterment of well people. Um people like myself, people like yourself. Um

And that it would be a shame if their use was restricted only to toward people with um DSM diagnoses of one kind or another. Um so what's the proper vessel for them? Is it is it a religious vessel vessel? Well, that's not comfortable with everybody. Um we need to figure this out. Um you know, the Greeks apparently used as psychedelic and the mysteries of Eleusis The Eleusian Mysteries as they're called was a was an annual rite

where everyone who wanted to in the culture well not the Not the slaves, but not just the elite, used uh something called the Kikion, which was a psychedelic apparently, and they had visions and they went to the you know, the afterworld or the underworld, and um it was a very powerful annual rite. You were not allowed to use the Kiki on any other time. In fact, somebody once did. They got a hold of some and they had a party. And they were severely punished for doing this.

'Cause they understood that this had to be taken in the best interest of the whole society in a way that was um carefully regulated Um And so I think that's where we find ourselves. I think that the um uh is figuring out

A way to use these drugs to make them accessible to more people. Um but to contain their risks. uh and to um house them in a um uh a cultural form that's appropriate to them and appropriate to us. Um that I think is how you prevent Um

uh the kind of carelessness that led to trouble. You know, I mean I think Leary's sin, if he had one, was giving up on the idea of a guide. And um uh and I think that the the guide, whether it's you know, a friend who stays close to ground or somebody preferably very well trained and experienced, um makes all the difference. Um and especially as you get older, I think, where you're less of a risk taker, um, people in their twenties will do the craziest things. I mean look at the way they drive, let alone the way they take drugs. Um but as you get older Um working with a guide is a um uh

is at least it was for me, uh made the experience uh created a space in which I could surrender and and put down all my defenses. I'm not gonna do that. You know, walking around Manhattan. Um And so We have a lot of work to do designing the experience uh and understanding what the drugs are doing, but designing the experience in a way that is safe

and conducive to the kind of um uh work we want to do. Such an exciting area. of of exploration. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I am too. Cautiously optimistic and uh y you and I have both Interview people and heard these stories of transformation, not just anecdotal, but also in very controlled scientific environments and uh you also hear stories as I'm sure you have. I I heard a story recently.

And I was talking about the phase three trials with someone and uh their nephew Who is I wanna say probably getting the age wrong, doesn't really matter for the purposes of illustrating, but he has he has suffered from severe O C D. For many years, which has been debilitating. Smart kid did a ton of research, went on to PubMed, ultimately determined that

for him see he thought might be A tool to help Uh mitigate his O C D and it worked. But due to the legal classification, he was caught With

mushrooms and expelled from school. And it's just so tragic. In a case like that that these tools are not available um to those who could benefit. And I I I really hope that people will uh at the very least consider the importance of scientifically exploring these things. And there's so many different angles of

uh examination, but that's that's certainly one. At the very least. I mean. supporting those who are attempting to understand how these things do what they do. Uh And I I have to commend you for putting this book together and and I mentioned this to you in person some time ago, but there was uh simultaneously great relief and great

Pff to kind of hand to the the forehead because you you saved me from attempting to write what would have no no doubt been a far uh inferior books. So th I I I I really appreciate you taking the The time and also the The uh

bringing on board and not relinquishing your skepticism as you Explored this entire world. In the subject matter, I I really think that it is It is such a critical subject at such a critical time. So I I not only

And I'm not I don't get any uh vig on this, certainly. Uh recommend people read it themselves, but it's it's a it's it's a book that I think Is mind expanding on so many levels, even if you never have any interest in consuming Uh it is a It is an incredible lens through which

to learn more about the mind. And more about ultimately your entire experience of reality is is is uh as far as we know Is filtered through this thing we hold between our ears. Uh so it Yeah.

Uh certainly seems in everyone's best interest. But um I really appreciate all the time that you've taken uh today and uh hope we can talk about this many more times. But uh besides besides people reading the book, which everyone should, I I really f it's it's I've read many of your books. It is my favorite of your books. Mm-hmm. It's such a Difficult. tight rope to walk and you and you really you really did an excellent job.

Uh do you have any Parting comments, suggestions, asks of the audience. You know, I you know, it's funny, uh people have asked me, are am I an advocate uh for psychedelics? And um And and the answer is no, not yet.

Um I'm an advocate, as y as you just said, I thought you said quite eloquently, uh the research. We have to support the research. There is enormous potential here, um, but it still has a long way to go. Um we haven't answered all the questions. Uh as you say, this is a book and this is a An enterprise speaking larger than the book.

Uh to understand the mind. It's not to understand psychedelics. Psychedelics are a tool, as Stanislav Grov said all those years ago. I they are a r a really powerful tool to understand the mind. And potentially your mind. Um And so uh

You know, I think It's Mm. Keep abreast of the research, read some of these papers, read some of Robert Carhart Harris's papers. Um And uh

And you know, there are more books to be written about it, Tim. I don't think you should give up on that idea. I think you should just wait a little bit. Uh there's so much to be said. It is such I I feel like I got every now and then as a writer you get lucky and you hit the the right topic topic at the right moment. And I just felt like, oh my God, I'm a kid in a candy store. I have this amazing subject. I'm learning So many things I didn't know. Um, and uh it was the most exciting experience I've had as a writer and uh and I'm hoping, you know, that the reader feels the same way.

Yeah, you paddled you paddled for the wave at the right time, uh, I think. And uh for For everybody listening, uh As I alluded to earlier, I will include links to not only the book, but uh some of the studies like the the entropic brain and everything that we talked about. I will include links to the image too. The uh

Absolutely. I'll I'll include i links to all of those things in the show notes, uh, which you can just find at Tim.blog forward slash podcast and uh search pollen. And you'll it'll pop right up. Uh Tim, I just want to thank you too for your um I mean, you know, it's wonderful to be interviewed by somebody who is so deeply informed on the subject and so passionate. So Thank you for your time and uh and the amount of thought you put into it. And for reading the book uh early and uh

Uh I'm very grateful. Entirely my pleasure and uh To be continued. So I know you have a a a busy few weeks and months ahead. So Yeah, it's gonna be crazy. And and I encourage your your um Your listeners and readers to uh come to one of my events. I'm doing

I don't know, twenty events in the next month all over the country. And if you go to my website, um or uh Michaelpollan.com Uh the schedule is there and um please come and uh introduce yourself. Wonderful. I will encourage everybody to do that. They can also say hello to you on Twitter at Michael Pollin and I'll include your other social handles as well in the show notes. Uh I will let you get back to your day, good sir. Uh but uh wonderful to share this time with you and uh

Thank you again for writing the book. I really I really think it's it's it's an impressive Resource and story. Uh So thank you for that. And thanks for shining a light on it. I really appreciate it. Alright, and for everybody. Till soon. And uh For everybody listening, until next time.

Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off. for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Last year, I committed to making sleep a top priority. trying to fix onset insomnia or continuing to fix that. depth of sleep, quality of sleep, I tracked a lot, I test it a lot. and I revisited really everything. from daily routine to the surfaces I slept on, playing with the chili pad, whatever. And when I moved to Austin I got all new beds, including mattresses from Helix.

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