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You know, I ve dabbled in the world of psychedelics a little bit.
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Okay.
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I ve taken mushrooms a few times, maybe five, maybe five times.
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And luckily all my experiences have been really good.
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I ve taken mushrooms a few times at a party.
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which I ve enjoyed a lot because every time I ve taken mushrooms at a party, I ve weirdly just felt sharper.
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And I, I ve felt like a clearer view of the room, you know, socially, it s been fascinating and interesting to analyze everyone in a psychedelic way.
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Like I feel like I can,
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read the room more accurately than I ever have before.
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I feel like I m seeing clearly for the first time.
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And my opinions on people sort of change and become weirdly more accurate on mushrooms.
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So that s been my party mushroom experience.
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I ve dabbled
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in psychedelics, but I really don t know a lot.
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And I think it s becoming an increasingly more relevant topic as it s being revealed that it can help with mental health issues.
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It has therapeutic qualities.
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And so I m curious about this.
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I don t know a lot about it.
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So I m going to be interrogating Robin Carhart-Harris today, a pioneer and leading researcher in human neuroscience in psychopharmacology.
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And he s best known for his groundbreaking work on how psychedelics affect the brain and how they can be used to treat mental health issues.
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In 2019, he founded the world s first center for psychedelic research at Imperial College London.
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And there, he oversaw human brain imaging studies with LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT.
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Robin has also overseen several clinical trials of psilocybin therapy for disorders including depression, anorexia, and fibromyalgia.
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Basically, he is all about using psychedelics to help
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human suffering, improve the quality of people s lives through psychedelics.
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And, you know, I think a lot of us think of psychedelics and we think of, I don t know, doing shrooms with friends and painting and painting or doing shrooms at a music festival or doing LST at a rave or whatever.
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Like we think of psychedelics as being something
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that is very much recreational and also illegal.
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It s just, it s...
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sort of hard to comprehend in a way because I feel like we all have such a clear view of what psychedelics are, but today we re going to learn a new definition of psychedelics with the king, the king of psychedelics.
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He might not like me calling him that.
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Robin Carhart Harris, here he is.
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I think my first question for you is to like fully, I m just,
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Throwing it on you.
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My first question has to be, what was your first psychedelic experience?
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If you even have one.
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Maybe you ve never even tried them.
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Tell me everything.
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SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
It s funny that you would ask it that way.
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Most people say, have you ever tried it?
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It usually goes that way.
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Not, you know, tell me about your first one.
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I m wondering about the first one.
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SPEAKER_00
Gosh.
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I m just going to share.
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Yeah.
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So I was, uh, I was in my teens.
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I was, uh,
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It s the summer of 1995.
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I m 43 now, so I was 14.
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Young.
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Okay.
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And it was the summer holidays and I was with a couple of friends and we d planned it out and it was LSD and it was, it was called a golden microdot.
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And I was in my hometown of Bournemouth and it all happened there.
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Yeah.
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That s where I turned on for the first time.
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And was it a good experience, would you say?
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SPEAKER_00
No, it was pretty nightmarish.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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You know, it sort of develops and gets weird and then gets weirder and weirder and weirder.
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And then I thought I died and I thought I was in hell.
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Yeah.
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That s not good, is it?
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I thought I d been hit by a car.
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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And so my my bloodied corpse was probably on the road back there.
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And that s why I m feeling this weird.
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That s the only way I could possibly feel this weird is that I must be dead.
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And so, yeah, that was probably the peak sort of, you know, negativity of the trip.
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It got better, but good.
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At least it got better.
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I know I ve I ve been so lucky that I haven t had
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A bad experience.
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I have very few experiences, but I ve always done mushrooms.
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Like that was my first experience was with mushrooms and it was at a party and it was just a little bit.
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And that s the only psychedelic experiences I ve ever had.
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It s just a little micro dose, like not even a micro dose.
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It s like a little more maybe than a micro dose at a party.
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That s all I ve done.
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SPEAKER_00
That s, that s the better way to do it for sure.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, within reason and context, but jumping in the deep end like I did was a silly way to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
I think people are more, you know, younger people are more, um, clued up about psychedelics these days.
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What is the definition of psychedelic?
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Like what, what is it for, for those who are listening?
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And even for me, how do you define psychedelics?
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SPEAKER_00
So the word itself means soul revealing, psyche means soul, most literally.
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The other bit means to reveal or to make visible or manifest and kind of a poetic term, but coined in reference to psychedelic drugs, even though we apply it to art and music, it started with the drugs.
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um came on the scene in the 1950s after LSD was discovered in the 1940s.
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SPEAKER_00
So really like at its core it s referring to what these drugs do to the mind and that they reveal it, they open it up and so uh yeah that s that s what the word means and then you know psychedelic drugs, drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms, psilocybin is the drug in magic mushrooms, got DMT and ayahuasca,
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There s lots of psychedelics.
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People sometimes lump MDMA, molly, ecstasy in with psychedelics.
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And I think you can kind of get away with that.
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It s kind of soul revealing in a sense.
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Um, it has different properties.
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I m not sure I d put that one right at its core.
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And then maybe ketamine, but not really in my book, but kind of a pit.
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SPEAKER_00
So yeah, there are some that are sort of fringe edge case psychedelics.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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Do you think you wanted to research psychedelics because of your sort of horrific first experience or was your journey to researching psychedelics different?
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SPEAKER_01
Like what got you there?
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SPEAKER_00
I think it must ve been that, that, you know, started paving the road, but it wasn t obvious by the time I came to being kind of academic and, um, quite different to how I was in my teens, I was just drawn into psychology.
0
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So I was really into psychology, trying to understand the mind, I guess, you know, wanting to better understand myself and other people.
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And then.
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I got really into depth psychology, so psychoanalysis stuff, like unconscious mind and the ego and Freudian stuff.
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And then while doing that, while studying that, I discovered that psychedelics
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were used in the fifties and sixties in psychoanalytic psychotherapy to reveal the unconscious mind and dissolve the ego.
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So when I realized that and the penny dropped and I thought about, you know, my trips, it all made sense.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, ah, yes, of course.
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Did you have any psychological challenges growing up maybe that made you interested in how psychedelics can help the mind?
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Like, was that something that was inspiring to you?
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Is that something that you maybe felt like?
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I think a lot of times we fall into our passion out of necessity in a way, you know?
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It s not always that way, but it kind of was for me.
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It s like, I need this.
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I need to do this.
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Did you have that with psychedelics at all?
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You know, was it like, maybe you re anxious or maybe you re, you know, you ve struggled with depression.
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Have you struggled with those things and has that made you more interested in psychedelics as sort of a form of therapy in a way?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, in a, in a sort of indirect way.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I was an anxious teenager for sure, socially anxious.
1
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And so that was the pull to psychology.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I was like, what the hell s going on?
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Like, I don t understand this.
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This shouldn t be happening.
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It s like, it s annoying as well.
1
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So I, yeah, I guess in that sense, I was looking for some answers.
1
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I really was.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so that was, that was the pull into psychology and it was very strong.
1
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It was really like only that.
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you know, I wasn t going to be a professional footballer that way, by the way, soccer player.
1
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But so that was that was the pull.
1
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And then it wasn t obvious to me that psychedelics were helpful for mental health.
1
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Until until like I was in the job researching it, in a sense, when I wanted to first research psychedelics, which is in my
1
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um early 20s and I d done my psychoanalysis masters and I was looking for a PhD and I wanted to do a brain imaging study with LSD and I took that to someone in the UK and said you know this is what I really want to do and but it wasn t because I thought they could be useful in in mental in treating mental illness it was just that I thought that they were really you know amazing tools to see into the mind and that we would
1
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get, you know, amazing insights into the nature of the mind and the brain.
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If we did something like this, gave someone LSD in a brain scanner.
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In fact, I couldn t believe that no one had ever done that before.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, it was some way along, probably once we started giving people psilocybin, magic mushrooms in a brain scanner.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, and then they said they felt really good afterwards despite having magic mushrooms in a brain scanner.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I started putting things together, um, in terms of the history of magic mushroom use by certain cultures for, you know, visionary medicinal reasons.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the history with the psychotherapy stuff in the sixties, fifties and sixties.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we looked at the brain imaging data and saw things that made sense in the context of other treatments for depression.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, yeah, we put kind of two and two together and wrote a grant application to do a trial with psilocybin therapy and depression, which ended up being the first trial.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now we might be a couple of years away from psilocybin being a licensed medicine.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Across the Western world, you know, it s all like little stepping stones forward, different studies, but that was a pretty important milestone.
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SPEAKER_01
One was doing that first depression trial with psilocybin.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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I feel like there are so many psychedelic drugs and it can be easy as somebody who maybe doesn t study it to sort of lump them all in together in a way.
1
SPEAKER_02
What are the key differences between
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the main psychedelic drugs?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah well the main classic psychedelics would be drugs like LSD, psilocybin, magic mushrooms, DMT which is in ayahuasca but people smoke DMT as well.
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SPEAKER_01
In our studies we actually inject it and then you ve got
1
SPEAKER_01
a compound that s sort of weird, but it s probably a classic psychedelic.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, they re all weird, but 5-methoxy DMT, which was identified from these toads quite recently.
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SPEAKER_01
But anyway, I would say broadly speaking, at least DMT, LSD, psilocybin, those are the classic psychedelics and they re the ones that might open the psyche and
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reveal like you know maybe things that you ve uh repressed or overlooked or for sure they re really um perceptually visually perceptually disturbing like if we were tripping right now yeah depending on dose you know the walls might be moving and swaying and there s like a fractal kind of quality to to things surfaces and everything s more animated and
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Things can distort and then you close your eyes and you can have these very vivid, elaborate visions that sort of morph and change, have a kind of dreamlike quality in a sense.
1
SPEAKER_01
So those are the classic psychedelics, you know, historically some people like to call them hallucinogens.
1
SPEAKER_01
A little bit misleading because you don t typically see like a little green man just, you know, run through the wall into the room and start dancing or something.
1
SPEAKER_02
Right, it s not random.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not random.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s usually things that you re seeing that become distorted.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, and depending on dose, they can become really distorted and drug.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if you close your eyes, sure, you re seeing things that in a sense aren t there, but then they ve got to come from somewhere.
1
SPEAKER_01
So they come from the mind.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yep.
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So I would say like revealing things of the mind is really the quintessence of classic psychedelics.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that is what the term is saying.
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SPEAKER_01
I think that s true, that and the visual side of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
So near neighbor psychedelics like MDMA is more about sensation, positive emotion, like a sense of social, deep social connection.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s more reliably positive in a sense NDMA.
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SPEAKER_01
It s rarer that it would get dark and scary like classic psychedelics can.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, that s why it s often combined with, you know, music, listening and stuff and dancing.
1
SPEAKER_01
But in a psychotherapeutic context, it can allow you to go to dark places without being overwhelmed necessarily.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, for example, in post-traumatic stress disorder,
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People have been developing MDMA therapy for treating that.
1
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So, you know, combat veterans or victims of many types of trauma, severe trauma that cripples them psychologically.
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They can talk about those experiences under the MDMA where usually they just really couldn t talk about it.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, they would have overwhelming flashbacks or they might dissociate.
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So it s an incredible tool to facilitate psychotherapy in that sense.
1
SPEAKER_01
And with MDMA people generally can talk, you know, maybe with the classic psychedelics, like a big dose of magic mushroom psilocybin.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s so intense and weird that like talking is left till later on generally, you know, in the psychotherapy that that happens later on.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And then there s others like ketamine is more of a, it s more of a dissociative.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s defined that way as a dissociative anesthetic.
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SPEAKER_01
If you give too much, it becomes an anesthetic and knocks you out.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
It s dangerous that way.
1
SPEAKER_01
And, and it is used as an anesthetic in certain contexts, but it s less emotional in a sense.
1
SPEAKER_01
And, um, I don t think it s, it s so reliably revealing of the psyche, like the classic psychedelics.
1
SPEAKER_01
With the classic psychedelics in psychedelic therapy, there s often a lot of tears.
1
SPEAKER_01
And actually, it s a funny thing to say, but when people are crying in the trials, we generally know it s working, which is weird.
1
SPEAKER_01
But there s a kind of catharsis.
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SPEAKER_01
There s a release of this pent up emotion.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we think that s, you know, part of the healing action.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
So do these different drugs, when they impact the brain, do they impact the brain differently?
1
SPEAKER_02
Like do mushrooms impact the brain differently than LSD?
1
SPEAKER_02
Or is it sort of like, I m assuming they must be different because they re all sort of used for different things, or is it that
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, like what is the difference on a technical level inside of the brain?
1
SPEAKER_02
Like if you were to look at a scan of the brain, it s like, are different areas lighting up?
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SPEAKER_02
What s the difference?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So at the lowest level, sort of molecular level, yeah, the drugs look a bit different and that relates to how they stick to stuff in the brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they stick to different stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when they stick, they do different things as well.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, so drugs like LSD and psilocybin are actually quite similar.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they look a lot like a brain chemical called serotonin, which is swimming around our brains right now.
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SPEAKER_01
And most of it s actually in our guts, but in the brain, it does some important things.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s involved in a lot of different things, sleep, mood.
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SPEAKER_01
And we think especially mood probably.
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SPEAKER_01
And so there are certain sort of signaling proteins in the brain that serotonin would bind to and stimulate, and these drugs do that.
1
SPEAKER_01
LSD, psilocybin, because they look like serotonin, they re sort of like serotonin imposters, and they ll stick to these.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re called serotonin receptors, these proteins that will kind of tune brain function in different ways.
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SPEAKER_01
There s one in particular, it s called the serotonin 2A receptor, that the classic psychedelics stick to, and then they do their thing there.
2
SPEAKER_01
To cut a very technical story short to the gist of it, by stimulating these serotonin 2A receptors, they cause brain activity to become, in a sense, more chaotic.
2
SPEAKER_01
dysregulated.
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SPEAKER_01
So the usual kind of regulated function of our brains and our minds, like right now, being able to talk and stitch things together, have some sense of like assuredness about what s what.
2
SPEAKER_01
That depends on the regularity in a sense of our functioning brains right now.
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SPEAKER_01
And when they get funky and dysregulated, so does our experience of the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s kind of the gist of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s more to it.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s the sort of breakdown side of things, but maybe in, well, we think in the breakdown side of things, there s also a release side of things.
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SPEAKER_01
So stuff that before was constrained can come up more easily, like emotional circuitry can
2
SPEAKER_01
can be let off the leash a little bit, you know, and that can account for the crying and so on.
2
SPEAKER_01
And maybe the insight as well, because memories that were being constrained and now are unconstrained and can come up.
2
SPEAKER_02
So that s sort of what s happening maybe during, you know, while the drug is in your system.
2
SPEAKER_02
But what happens after?
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, do you go completely back to normal at some point?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or like after you do a psychedelic drug, are you forever changed in the brain?
2
SPEAKER_01
We don t know, but you might be.
2
SPEAKER_01
So this is a recent discovery of ours.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re just on the cusp of splashing it to the public.
2
SPEAKER_01
But we gave people their first magic mushroom experience, and we did it in a placebo-controlled way.
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SPEAKER_01
So first of all, we give them something inert that has no effect, really.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s actually a very low dose of psilocybin that shouldn t have any action.
2
SPEAKER_01
We scan their brains before all that, we scan their brains after the placebo, and then we give them a whopping dose of psilocybin, their first ever psychedelic experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we look in their brains a month after, and we did see some enduring changes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And actually it was in the anatomy of the brain, which is kind of weird and maybe at first a bit scary.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it is a question mark now, is that
2
SPEAKER_01
What if we looked a year later or even longer, would we still see it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it a permanent change?
2
SPEAKER_01
What does the change mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
All these questions, that s kind of classic science really.
2
SPEAKER_01
It sort of teases you, gives you a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ve got a bunch of other questions.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we have seen this change.
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SPEAKER_01
What is it?
2
SPEAKER_01
So we look at the cabling of the brain and we look at
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SPEAKER_01
how that changes, whether it changes at all.
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SPEAKER_01
We saw that it changed and it changed in a direction which is the opposite direction to what happens in aging and pathologies of aging like Alzheimer s.
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SPEAKER_01
So on that level, it s a good thing, maybe a good thing, we don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s a consistent direction to what happens in the brain when you go from being a baby into being an adult.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the fibers are becoming sort of more packed, we think, maybe, but we don t really know.
2
SPEAKER_01
The cables are sort of truer in the direction that they re going in.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re less sort of diffuse.
2
SPEAKER_01
In fact, that s what it is.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a diffusivity measure along a long cable that goes from the front of the brain into the middle of the brain.
2
SPEAKER_02
Do you think, I mean, let s say somebody has a bunch of mushrooms at home and they eat all of them.
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SPEAKER_02
It s just a bunch.
2
SPEAKER_02
They just eat all of them.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like, what happens?
2
SPEAKER_02
Like, are psychedelics the type of thing that you can OD on?
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SPEAKER_02
Because it is, to me, like, you know, with other drugs, like, you know,
2
SPEAKER_02
you can very easily OD, just die.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t hear about that ever with psychedelics.
2
SPEAKER_02
Can you do that?
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SPEAKER_02
Like, can you overdo it?
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SPEAKER_02
And if so, what happens?
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SPEAKER_02
Or do we not even know that either?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, we do know.
2
SPEAKER_01
We do know because, you know, they say the dose makes the poison.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s true across the board for anything, any kind of drug.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you could take too much mushrooms.
2
SPEAKER_01
What would most likely happen is just that you would sort of lose awareness, lose contact with reality completely.
2
SPEAKER_01
You wouldn t really know that you re a human.
2
SPEAKER_01
You certainly wouldn t be able to talk or walk, you know, you probably wouldn t.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know of OD through the direct toxicity.
2
SPEAKER_01
I know of a vague case of a heart attack in someone who was elderly and had cardiac issues, had a vulnerable heart in the first place.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s not like say fentanyl where it s far too easy to OD and kill so many people.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, even alcohol has this small window of where you can be a bit tipsy or drunk to it s pretty dangerous now and can be fatal.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thankfully, it s quite rare that you re going to OD because of like some organ failure because of psilocybin or, or some other, you know, toxins say probably be more likely to be some other ingredient in the mushrooms than psilocybin.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, but, but, you know, nevertheless, if you, you eat that big plate of mushrooms, like it s not, it s not good news psychologically.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s going to be a wild ride.
2
SPEAKER_01
You might not remember much of it, that too.
2
SPEAKER_01
Um, and, uh, if, if you are conscious and online, so to speak, it s going to be just so outlandishly weird.
2
SPEAKER_01
that it s probably unpleasant as well.
2
SPEAKER_02
Have you found that a bad trip can actually be a beneficial one?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is that like, because I mean, I think a lot of people go into using psychedelics thinking, I hope that this is a good one.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, like, I hope that I hope this is good.
2
SPEAKER_02
I hope that, you know, I m that I don t see anything bad, that I don t see anything scary.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is it?
2
SPEAKER_02
inherently bad to have a bad trip?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or could it even be beneficial in some way?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it can be beneficial potentially.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, it s not inherently bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, maybe it is if it s really bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
So bad by severity and bad by duration, like the entirety of the trip was just hellish.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was probably bad news and that, you know, the lasting impact of that is probably going to be more likely to be negative than positive, or at least not so obviously positive.
2
SPEAKER_01
But many trips have the challenge and often that challenge happens early on when things start getting weird and, and, you know, your sense of self starts breaking down and there s something sort of instinctive that wants to push back on that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t like this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t want this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe attempts to stop it.
2
SPEAKER_01
and they re kind of futile.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that resistance can sort of define the struggle.
2
SPEAKER_01
But what
2
SPEAKER_01
often happens is that there s a sort of almost like a surrender to the struggle.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like, okay, I m tripping, you know, let s sort of sink into this and drop into it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then it very subtly and quickly can change into something that you re like surfing rather than just battling against.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s the kind of way we sort of tutor people in a sense, supervise people when we do the psychedelic therapy, sort of mentor people is to, you know, we don t dress it up.
2
SPEAKER_01
It can be challenging and especially early on.
2
SPEAKER_01
But when you feel that, know that your body s safe, that you re being looked after.
2
SPEAKER_01
Know that we ve seen this before many, many times.
2
SPEAKER_01
Um, we re confident in, you know, medicine and, and, um, try, try and go with the flow of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Have you noticed that there s something that can lead to a bad trip?
2
SPEAKER_02
It sounds like sort of fighting it can lead you to a bad experience.
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, is it even clear sort of what.
2
SPEAKER_02
makes an experience bad?
2
SPEAKER_02
Is it maybe somebody who has a lot of demons in particular?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or can it kind of just happen to anyone?
2
SPEAKER_02
It s sort of whatever your subconscious decides to do?
2
SPEAKER_02
Do we know what creates a bad trip?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not one thing, but we do know that there s a few potential contributors.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is simply just taking too much
3
SPEAKER_00
drug.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s harder to surf something when it s, you know, really, really intense.
3
SPEAKER_00
And yes, people with a history of adverse life experiences, history of trauma, yeah, there s more, more dark stuff in there and it can come up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Also the intentions, if you re sort of trying to take a psychedelic for escapist reasons, it doesn t work that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to slap you in the face and cause a confrontation rather than an escape.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s like the inverse of what you were hoping for.
3
SPEAKER_00
Actually, younger people do seem to be more vulnerable to challenging experiences.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that s true even if you take into account experience with the drugs.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s a sort of logic to people who are less experienced are more likely to have challenging experiences because those who are more experienced have, well, they ve learned a lot, but they re also just simply gone back, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that would be unlikely if, you know, you had a really challenging experience and you closed the door on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Interrelational things, relationship stuff, um, can, can be a trigger.
3
SPEAKER_00
Life stress.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And like situational things, big time, you know, tripping in the wrong place.
3
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes that s hard to predict, because you could even be in nature thinking, oh, nature and psychedelics really go well together.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then, like, the cops show up, or what look like the cops, you know?
3
SPEAKER_00
And so it takes a turn that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, that formula isn t always that reliable.
3
SPEAKER_01
What about microdosing?
3
SPEAKER_01
What is the impact of microdosing on the brain?
3
SPEAKER_00
On the brain, yeah, there s been a little bit of work.
3
SPEAKER_00
It seems to do something even when you don t really notice it in the brain, which is quite cool and curious.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s the sort of idea with microdosing is that you can sort of cheat the trip in a sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
It takes so little that you re not tripping, but you re getting something.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s really the idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
And some people really swear by it, you know, big names, Paul Stamets, at least in my field, Jim Fadiman and like Amanda Fielding, the Begley Foundation, they re all really passionate believers in microdosing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s tricky because we ve done a bit of science there and it hasn t always come through as compelling that it s really doing something.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s hard actually for microdosing to beat placebo in trials.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s what made me, that s kind of what I was thinking, like about microdosing.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s very trendy in LA, you know, to microdose and whatever every day.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it is, you know, placebo, people overlook placebo.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ve wondered with psychedelics, it s like, if it s not, can it work in the background or does it have to be sort of a vivid experience in order for it to work, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, is the benefit from
3
SPEAKER_01
The trip itself, like, does it have to feel like a trip in order for it to do all the things that it does?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I guess that s sort of in my question is like, is that trip and that experience the thing that changes the brain?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a big question in the field.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a big question and there s debate around it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m of the school of thought that the trip is important, really important, and actually the evidence supports that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we can measure the trip in a few different ways.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can look at different aspects of its quality.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can look at how strong the emotional breakthrough is, that kind of crying stuff I was talking about earlier, the catharsis.
3
SPEAKER_00
The mystical type experience is a popular one.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Sort of a sense of transcendence and being at one with things, you know, nature, other people, the world, psychological insight, having insight into yourself and your past that you feel, then feel is helpful.
3
SPEAKER_00
So these are all things of the trip, of the psychedelic, psyche revealing, you know, property, core property of the drug.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so to try and cheat that by taking a tiny little dose, I m not sure it really works.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or there s even ideas that you can cheat it by playing with the molecules and the pharmacology to get an action that isn t a trip, but is therapeutic.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I just think that that s sort of,
3
SPEAKER_00
Sort of missing the point and also isn t really that logical because the trip in the human data seems to be carrying the response.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, I think microdosing
3
SPEAKER_00
is a bit like trying to bypass some of the psychotherapy aspects of psychedelic therapy through just relying on the drug.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s the other thing with microdosing is that it s a more regular use of the drug.
3
SPEAKER_00
It might be a tiny dose, but the idea is to like have a course of taking a psychedelic, maybe
3
SPEAKER_00
three or four times a week for six weeks, you know, and that starts to sound a little bit more like a course of an antidepressant like Prozac or something.
3
SPEAKER_00
To be honest for people like me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Having seen what psychedelic therapy can be in depression and other psychiatric disorders with just one or two dosing sessions, but the doses are high, but people are very well looked after and there is that psychotherapeutic support before and after.
3
SPEAKER_00
Seeing the life transformations with that approach, I wonder why you would, you know, favor that old model of relying more on a drug rather than just one or two doses of a drug.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the rest is really the psychotherapy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a bit of an attempt to sort of cheat the model, maybe because the model is a little hard to fit into the system.
3
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s dig into sort of the life-changing effects, you know, psychedelics can have on anxiety and depression.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sort of dig into what you ve discovered there.
3
SPEAKER_00
Gosh, I mean, the transformations are amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Often, you know, people claim that the intervention has been life-saving, literally.
3
SPEAKER_00
They d say that they probably wouldn t be around anymore through taking their life.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve also done trials in anorexia and, you know, it s the most deadly psychiatric disorder.
3
SPEAKER_00
So life-saving, but in a sense, a different way, although the anorexia can be like a slow suicide in a sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then, you know, psychedelic therapy for severe drug and alcohol abuse.
3
SPEAKER_00
Again, the intervention can be life saving.
3
SPEAKER_00
So.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the turnaround is pretty remarkable and when it s so fast, I mean, I m talking about the best cases, but there s a lot of very, very good transformations.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so people understand what kind of proportions am I talking about.
3
SPEAKER_00
In the depression trials, it s about two thirds of people, 60, 70% will show a significant response.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
that s better by roughly about 20% on current treatments.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s a pretty potentially pretty significant improvement, I would say, on current treatments by efficacy alone, how well it works.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a bunch of other stuff to worry about in a sense, but that s a big one.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s got to work.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s got to work well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, yeah, we have done those trials in depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
Personally, I designed a couple of trials, helped design a third trial that a company has now developed on and are doing what s called a phase three trial, which could lead to a license for psilocybin therapy for depression federally.
3
SPEAKER_00
This isn t some state level ballot initiative or anything that s happened as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
But
3
SPEAKER_00
Now this is through the medical system, getting psilocybin approved so doctors can give it basically.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that could be a couple of years away.
3
SPEAKER_00
MDMA could even get a license like that for treating PTSD this year.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s been filed already and is being looked at by the medical regulators here in the US.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, we re on the cusp of major like infrastructure level changes with psychedelics.
3
SPEAKER_00
We won t necessarily notice it overnight, which is a good thing, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, it needs to be a sort of incremental change, but like key sort of milestones are about to be reached this year.
3
SPEAKER_01
So exciting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you think everyone can benefit from psychedelics in some way?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, do you think that, like, let s say, let s take the average person.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, being a human comes with challenges.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like everybody has a little depressive episode, a little anxious episode here and there as a result of what s happening in their lives.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they don t have an ongoing issue.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s take the average person who has the average ups and downs, but maybe doesn t need to be treated for anything.
4
SPEAKER_00
Would they still benefit from psychedelics in some way?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or do you think that it s not something that should ever be used
4
SPEAKER_00
for everyone and rather it s more useful when attacking a specific problem.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t think we should be prescriptive like, you know, I don t know if Timothy Leary really said this, you know, his phrase is turn on tune and drop out.
4
SPEAKER_02
And the idea is that he was trying to popularize it so that everyone would take LSD in the sixties.
4
SPEAKER_02
I wouldn t be prescriptive like that, but
4
SPEAKER_02
Even so, I think most people probably can benefit.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s no should here, it s just more like could.
4
SPEAKER_00
Could, totally.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you don t have to be suffering from depression where now it s really obvious that it could benefit you.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, sure, the transformation there could be really dramatic, could be lifesaving.
4
SPEAKER_02
But that doesn t mean that healthy people can t improve in their life satisfaction and well-being.
4
SPEAKER_02
And they do.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like we ve done those studies and quite reliably and markedly people improve.
4
SPEAKER_02
And there s, you know, often a nice long tail to it as well.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like it lasts.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you think maybe for the average person it s beneficial because
4
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of fun.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s kind of fun, but sometimes, you know, like that first trip I was telling you about, it s, it s not always fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And, uh, you take too much, it s the wrong context.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so, and that s not just me sort of saying, you know, kids don t try this at home.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s just the truth of it.
4
SPEAKER_02
Um, you know, it, it isn t a walk in the park.
4
SPEAKER_02
It was a very weird walk in the park.
4
SPEAKER_02
And there s a lot of drugs that are hedonic, that just make you feel good.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, people talk about, oh, let s not be too exceptionalist about psychedelics.
4
SPEAKER_02
I hear that, but I also think they re quite distinct from a lot of drugs in how sort of fundamentally they alter consciousness and then not being like most drugs, being like,
4
SPEAKER_02
obviously fun and sort of recreational.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m sure they can be fun and maybe in lower doses, but it can easily, you know, not be fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Have you used psychedelics to help you in your own life?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, have you used them
4
SPEAKER_00
maybe as a tool to, I don t know, help you get through a challenging time?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or has that not made sense in your life yet?
4
SPEAKER_02
No, it s made sense.
4
SPEAKER_02
I ve done that on a few occasions.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, I think it s best to not to take psychedelics too much.
4
SPEAKER_02
And knowing the research, I know that you don t need to.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, it can be pretty sparing.
4
SPEAKER_02
Um, what does that mean?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like, you know, once a year or a couple of times, um, yeah, just more like in medicine, you call it PRN.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think it means like it stands for pro renata and I think it means you take the medicine when you need it.
4
SPEAKER_02
So not like a regular course, but when a symptom emerges, maybe take the medicine.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
And that s PRN.
4
SPEAKER_02
Um, so yeah, I ve, I ve done that and it has been helpful.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s difficult to know how would, how things would have been having not done it, but I think, you know, I didn t do a trial of myself, but I could tell you as a human in a sort of qualitative way, I think it was beneficial.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
A couple of times in my life, at least.
4
SPEAKER_00
I feel like a lot of people look at.
4
SPEAKER_00
psychedelics as something that is also spiritual.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s your opinion on the spiritual side of psychedelics?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, a lot of people, I feel like I ve heard especially people taking DMT and feeling like they re having, you know, some sort of experience with maybe God or, or, you know, something like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think that is?
4
SPEAKER_00
Where does spirituality and psychedelics meet for you, or do you find them to be separate completely?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m curious your opinion on their connection.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, the connection is real and very close and important.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s a major aspect of the classic psychedelic experience with, you know, the drugs like LSD, psilocybin, DMT, 5-methoxy DMT.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s quite dose dependent in a sense, I think, that it can produce these spiritual experiences.
4
SPEAKER_02
There are different names people use for them, spiritual experience, mystical type experience, peak experience, which is a bit more humanistic, a little less kind of supernatural in a sense or potentially supernatural.
4
SPEAKER_02
Unitive experience is one I like because it does get to the core of it, I think, and also mechanistically.
4
SPEAKER_02
I ll lay my cards on the table.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m not a supernaturalist.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s often the case when you re a scientist.
4
SPEAKER_02
And if ever you were or had that in you, it gets kind of beaten out of you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
For better or worse.
4
SPEAKER_00
I can imagine.
4
SPEAKER_02
course I ve got to think better, but maybe actually there can be a sadness to lose sort of magic, but then there s magic in a poetic sense.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it s very real and it s very reliable and a major aspect of the experience and any attempt to try and, I don t know, scrub it out of this area is just in vain because it s really a core aspect of it.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, we come back to the term psychedelic, psyche revealing, psyche is soul.
4
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, there s that side of psychology that talks about insight into yourself and your past and your traumas.
4
SPEAKER_02
But then there s another side of psychology, you know, Carl Jung, who would talk about insight into
4
SPEAKER_02
what it is to be a being, you know, a human being and sort of a deeper sort of human shared inheritance in a sense that for me and for him was a spiritual place.
4
SPEAKER_02
How we interrelate and how we relate to the rest of nature, very transcendent.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I think it s that transcendence that is the core of spirituality, interconnectedness and oneness.
4
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, when you sort of explain it out, you realize it s not a woo-woo thing, and it s a disparaging phrase, but it s not a supernatural thing.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s a very beautiful thing of this, you know, universe.
4
SPEAKER_02
So yeah, in a curious way, I think psychedelics could help validate spirituality.
4
SPEAKER_02
If it needs that, many people might be challenged by that and say, it doesn t need validating.
4
SPEAKER_02
You don t need to validate my religion or anything like that.
4
SPEAKER_02
In the cultural domain of science, you certainly do.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I m not proposing we validate religion, but maybe the core of religion that is the spiritual experience, we could validate actually and explain what it is, you know, why those experiences happen.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and then think about what the insights mean.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I can t wait to come in one day and get a little help with my anxiety.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m a very anxious, anxious, anxious, anxious, anxious, anxious girl.
4
SPEAKER_00
So maybe one day you can do a study on me.
4
SPEAKER_02
Maybe.
4
SPEAKER_00
This has been a privilege.