Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DRQP2CiMHU
hello freaks we're rocking at late night style it's 10:30 p.m. here in Los Angeles California and uh this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is brought to you by audible.com if youve never been to audible.com and you're a fan of uh either audio books or podcasts or um I mean they have old radio shows they have the op Anthony show it's it's really one of the best resources online for audio entertainment uh more than 100,000 different titles in unmatched selection if you will uh some of the best books uh that that you could get including um our friend Christopher Ryan's book sex at dawn that's on there right isn't it I I I believe so but yeah someone else is reading it though that's what it was and I told them that was [ __ ] um it's it's an awesome resource and if you go to audible.com Joo you will get one free audiobook and 30 free days of audible service is that World War Z yeah how was that you saw that right it's really good and then not so good it's really good and not so good together all mi in he's dreamy as always I don't want to say too much I don't want to spoil it for anybody I enjoyed it though it's it's an enjoyable film it's a [ __ ] Hollywood movie man it's a big Hollywood movie with Brad Pit it's PG-13 this is certain amount of [ __ ] of foot it's unavoidable anyway um you can buy that book or get that book for free if you go to audible.com Joe you get one free audiobook 30 free days of audio service from audible audio service that's like that sounds sexy uh we're also brought to you by Ting uh if you go to rogan.com you will save $25 either off one of Ting's delicious sexy Android phones or their service if you've never used or heard of Ting uh well I assume you haven't used him otherwise I'm just wasting my [ __ ] time here maybe you have and maybe you've heard this podcast a million times it's also possible there's no other way to do this commercial folks so I got to plow through um what Ting is is a a cell phone company that uses the Sprint backbone so it's uh all very high-end service and uh they try to do it in uh like a very reasonable way uh if you want to can so you can cancel at any time you don't have any contracts you also get credit on unused service if you don't use a certain amount of your
your service they'll drop you down to the next level which is really beautiful if you lose use less than you thought you would Ting drops you down to the next level and they credit you the difference on your next bill it's awesome love Ting man I used them uh two days ago uh at this place that I had my uh AT&T iPhone and I couldn't get service there any like good enough data service I tried my iPad which is Verizon same thing pulled out my Ting device was used streaming on their network uh from The Comedy Store and it was just doing Sprint works good at maybe that's why Joey always had Sprint that's right yeah I guess Sprint Works in places Verizon does and Verizon it's not no one's perfect at this point in time but what they're trying to do at Ting is just give you an option an option that's easier to swallow and uh it's a cool company and we enjoy doing business with them and go to ran. t.com save yourself have some money you dirty [ __ ] we're also about to finally this is the last one I swear to God and on it but on it's just a given I'll try to make it funny uh legal zoom.com is our last sponsor uh legal zoom.com is a website that essentially they they lay the framework for uh legal issues that you would normally have to go to a lawyer for and pay a lot of money um and what Legal Zoom wants to emphasize very clearly is they're not a law firm they provide self-help services at your specific Direction and they can also connect you with an independent attorney if you need additional guidance what they're there for is to make it much easier to do things like incorporate or form an LLC you can do it at legal zoom.com for just six for just $99 six I don't even know where I came six it's cuz it's evil legal legal stuff is evil I was thinking 666 it's really 99 um they can also help you out with trademarks copyrights patents if you got a great idea you want to protect if you have a family you can make a will yeah you know what that's crazy none of us have Wills I was I was talking to my friends the other day about that I was like do you have a will no what happens well if you live in California your parents live in California California gets all your [ __ ] unless your parents break into your house and steal everything really yeah I think it's he
gets all your [ __ ] I might be 100% wrong with but no but I guess there is a thing if you don't have a will it doesn't Auto you think it just automatically goes to your family but that's not always the case yeah I assume that it would be a pain in the ass tode especially if you're living with someone like if you're living with a girl or something like that M or a girl has a key to your house and she knows you're dead and just comes over and takes your [ __ ] that's how know the little she cares about you no doubt told me that was mine with you yeah but there be there' be like seven girls all butting heads trying to get in the door at the same time how dare you how dare you just that was a humble brag no no anyway Legal Zoom Lal zoom.com it's uh not a law firm remember it's uh they're just just trying to help you out um and I know there's like some code that I'm supposed to use but of course it's not on this copy probably I think it's just their code name is Rogan but let me just make sure you know you should like get all these guys together and just make it Rogan for everything I know it would be nice but it's not that way I bet you lose a lot of people that are just like [ __ ] it I don't know know it I'm just whatever yeah probably right yeah it's the code name Rogan I sorry it's right in front of my face not only that it's highlighted um you get a special discount from listening to this podcast so just enter the code name Rogan in the referral box and check out for more savings that's legal zoom.com you always have to say it like that at the end because that makes you more professional if you just go okay that [ __ ] commercial's over next like a theatrical ending I'm surprised you don't have to do one of those like quick fast talking things like Tom sigura on their podcast have something has something similar but at the end they have to do one of those and like and it's like they really have to say that e e it's weird we're we're well as long as they don't tell us what to actually say on the podcast I'm cool with almost anything that's a reasonable ad right it makes sense if it's something I would use and I would totally use this right I've used this yeah long as it makes sense to me but uh that's that doesn't Mak sense I'm not reading off any the
following connec on.com is the last sponsor o n niit t if you've never been go check it out get yourself some fitness equipment we got a lot of new [ __ ] in it if you haven't been into the website before into the website I don't think you go into a website if you go onto a website and why is it on and not in I mean you're not really on it what are you doing what are you doing when you go onto a website you're going on or you going in it you're actually entering it to it to it and then and then what do you do do you go in or do you go on it so I'm on the website you're on the website right but why is it on because you're on like you're on it your face on like you're in though you're in the website you're clicking different pages you're like in a book oh I'm 50 pages into my book or you're in most websites like your pictures and stuff so I think that's more confusing to most people me I'm in most websites you're like when I most people go to a website they're not in it well what you mean like on it dude you're [ __ ] I can't believe I'm talking to you I'm being serious I'm never going to stop saying [ __ ] either [ __ ] you right try to take you took away now how dare you that's so hard I'm taking [ __ ] back just I'm I'm I'm putting more words back in the vernacular you know what I'm talking about I'm not talking about diseases dummy there's some there's a [ __ ] [ __ ] somewhere going oh no oh I can't believe you did the voice on.com uh the new Primal bells are in uh if you haven't seen them they're this we we hired this awesome sculptor to draw these angry chimpanzee faces for uh kettle bells uh gives you a little bit of extra motivation when you working out I like to picture that chimp clamping down on my scrotum with his teeth that gets me through the last four or five reps uh if you've never used kettle bells before what they are is in my opinion one of the very best strength and conditioning um exercise equipment pieces of exercise equipment that you can buy they're a Russian invention and it's like a cannonball with a handle on it and you swing them around and you use your entire body in these these movements and I find that that's what really applies to not just physical um uh sports but just physical movement all physical movement like um picking
things up the ability to move stuff around your house you you you gain a Balan sort of strength whereas a lot of people one of the problems with people who uh don't use a professional trainer or don't exactly know what you're doing you can develop imbalances uh with your body because maybe you use your arms too much you don't use your legs enough or vice versa and it can be it can be a mess um one of the best things you can do if you're going to think if you're thinking about kettle bells or any kind of exercise thing is to hire someone who's really good who can show you what to do you can learn a lot of stuff from YouTube but you really should have someone sort of correcting subtle things in the way you're moving just to make sure that you have good form use a lightweight to begin with try to try to be very reasonable about what you're trying to do and then build write your write it down and build and when you do do that you will get get an immense set sense of satisfaction the sense of satisfaction that you get from pushing your body and getting your body into a good state of physical fitness it's not just a vanity thing it's it's really good for your health and uh you know I talk about it all the time but it's very hard for people to stop eating donuts and get off the couch it's very difficult to choose to have a salad instead of a a shitty cheeseburger it's hard it's hard to get your [ __ ] together but if you can get your [ __ ] together even just a little bit you'll feel better that's a fact I lost 8 lbs in two weeks have you really yeah and that's after quitting smoking which is like usually you gain weight with good feel you sexy [ __ ] Brian reel looking at Health he's uh he's cutting back on his coffee he's doing all kinds of [ __ ] next thing you know he'll be taking t+ I need some of that get some we got some I'll give you some I need some I'll bring you some uh next podcast cool all right that's the end uh use the code name Rogan that's r o g an and you will save 10% off any and all supplements all right my friends Rick doblin is here and we are going to get to the bottom of some [ __ ] please cue the musiccast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all [Music]
day Rick you made it I did Rick doblin who is the the head of maps or if you uh have never heard the is it called an acronym where it's Maps or is it yeah it is because it's you say it right when you don't say it it's an abbreviation is that what it is or we we try to figure that out once um but it stands for the multi Google is for it is what Google's for but somehow or another I'm not quite I don't totally have it together multidisiplinary Association for psychedelic studies uh you founded this yeah and I was surprised to discover it it has the most syllables of any organization in the nonprofit world for drug reform really yeah well it's a very interesting uh titled multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies that's what I love about it it's like you're coming at it from a whole bunch of different angles so isn't just doctors it's not you know just chemists it's a whole bunch of human beings yeah and I had learned from a previous nonprofit that when you want to create a nonprofit it's good to try to make it as broad as possible the purpose as you see different strategic ways to do things so I made it multidisiplinary which means we could look at psychedelics from virtually any perspective um Association to mean that it's publicly supported a nonprofit and I had images of you know tens of thousands of people banding together to support research in different areas um psychedelic was a a big Choice actually whether we should use the word whether we should use a different word whether we should um use a euphemism and so I felt like I wanted in this kind of second coming of psychedelics into the culture 40 years after the Crackdown that I wanted there to be a certain transparency and so I wanted to use the word psychedelic so people knew what I was doing and I was hoping that we can change the cultural connotations from what it was in the 60s of psychedelics uh Rebellion dropping out U you know finding your own sort of private Utopia somewhere certain kind of um not integrated into the culture and now that's I think the The Arc of the story is psychedelics came at a time when culture wasn't really ready and brought all sorts of things to the surface and over the last 40 years our culture has gotten ready with hospice
centers with birthing centers with yoga meditation all the things with flotation tanks all the things that were too hard to integrate at the time death and birth and just raw emotions that and also this globalization and growing sense of global spirituality now our cult cult is ready and I think we can over the next 10 20 years integrate psychedelics without the connotation of rebellion but to enhance what we're all doing together that's interesting I I like the use of the word psychedelics because you're owning it that is what it's about and you know and it's it shouldn't be something that people are afraid of or afraid of adding to something because it it'll somehow or another make it silly or make it oh psychedelics you know people want to dismiss it and they can much easier owning it is is I think is very important yeah and there's no other word that's even better no hallucinogen was used by the government it's like you're fake yeah I don't like that feeling either hallucinogen always makes me feel like I'm seeing something that's not there you know that's the idea yeah it's not real it's and for folks who don't know anything about psychedelics they imagine like literally like imagining someone in the room with you and that guy doesn't really exist you tell the difference the word before that in the ' 50s was even worse it was psychotomimetic O which means it mimics psychosis well it does on some people we have to be careful it does it does bring out all parts of ourselves I think we all have those kind of Parts where they're not really integrated and it seems extreme and you let the emotions carry you yes so that the safe place we have to be careful I think is true but the bad trip the difficult challenge the death rebirth that's in all of us as are these psychotic States I I actually had what I felt was probably the most Psy otic or deluded state of my whole life was doing LSD in a flotation tank wow yeah I can imagine so self- examinator anyway yeah you know the I'm not an LSD person I never have tried it because I've never trusted anybody in the right way to get it but I've done a lot of time in the tank on especially on high doses of Edibles edible weed you know that insanely uncomfortable feeling that you get where you get you get examinator about [ __ ] you did in high school like
really in depth about [ __ ] you did in high school good for yeah and the tank does that on its own so the tank with that together it's it's woo I imagine acid in the tank would be a similar experience yeah well I grew up reading John Lily and in the 1971 actually the Deep self did you read that one yeah but it was before that was programming and metaprogramming and the human bioom computer oh and that was so Technical and complicated I had to spend like a whole day on each page or something I just like figure this stuff out it was so early computer disc discussion and language about how the brain operates yeah he was a a real Pioneer like a real Pioneer I mean that dude was out there yeah but he went too far out and he wasn't grounded and his last um 30 years were kind of a sad tragedy I would say wasted potential um was that because of ketamine because he got involved heavily with ketamine which has some pretty dis disastrous results yeah ketamine is the most addictive of all the psychedelics yeah and it's physically addictive not so much physically which but more this uh reliable Escape that and this delusion of superiority so is there a withdrawal um not in that same way as heroin or it's not like physically it's just a psychological addiction more so there's a a shift in attitude and and but what I think was the problem with John Lily more than before the camine was a certain kind of Brilliance that was unbalanced and he was kind of arrogant and I don't think he was patient and he was way ahead of his culture you know way ahead and yet when he saw the Crackdown come I think he he sort of took this Superior position and and just felt like he's not going to work on a political struggle or even a scientific struggle to get these tools back he kind of withdrew and even from he just had this um somewhat self-destructive aspect too I I I read a lot about him and I met him and I actually ended up um trying to do MDMA therapy with him when it felt like he was really going downhill from the ketamine and from cocaine and wow that's intense that is the worry he was kind of my hero one of you know he and Stan gra and I would contrast them that Stan is doing Fant fantastically as traveling the world is totally together and a
major inspiration who was able to integrate into his life whereas John Lily was you could say arguably as brilliant but went off the track yeah it's it is possible that's one of the real issues with anything that completely Alters the way your mind works is that you could get into that too much you can get into that more than reality and lose your grip of this world well it is reality it's just a different view of reality um and I think that the grounding part and what we emphasize in our psychedelic therapy is that it's the integration work more than the experience itself that produces long-term benefits so that you can have these unusual experiences but what do you bring back from them right and how do you integrate that into your daily practices so that it's anchored so that you can try to get there without the drug it's like this Evolution process where you learn something and I found at least that for me the psychedelics are something that I can work with through a lifetime through a lifespan that I've learn some people say when you get the message hang up the phone and I felt that there's been different messages at different stages of my life and that I'm more able although it's still really hard you know to hear those things those the self-critical stuff like what you did in high school or what you know how you try to hear the message underneath the criticism and um I learned that a lot during and I began experience so I've seen that these experiences can have these lasting changes but that they don't always and they don't have to and particularly when you have these experiences that are unbalanced the drug starts wearing off and you haven't come to a new balance and during those periods the best solution at least is to continue therapy and do another session and that's where people often back off and they kind of freeze something in place that's at such a deep level it's hard to get to that deep level to move it forward yeah it's um it's it's a very personal thing isn't it like where you start from too you know for some folks it's like they've already they already have issues with reality itself they have issues with being grounded with being calm and I mean it's some people you could just you know you could just
get them high or they could have you know some sort of psychedelic experience and they would be able to assimilate it into their life and they would benefit from it almost immediately whereas other folks almost needed to be I think education is is one of the big ones that we're really lacking in this country when it comes to these things and the word Shaman is such a such a loaded word yes because it's like healer you know when someone says they're healer all a sudden you okay you know what what other dumb [ __ ] are you going to say next you know right our whole therapeutic approach is based on the idea that there's an inner healer and it's the support that we provide to help people heal them so there's a power Dynamic often in Shamanism where sometimes the shaman is even the only one that does the drug and then heals you H it's not teaching you how to heal yourself so that we have this idea that like the body heals itself if you get a cut that the psyche has these self-healing mechanisms and brings things kind of to the surface so that it's not so much reality and psychedelic State it's almost like reality and more reality mhm and we know that from uh fmri brain scan studies that were recently done in England with siloc cybin that what it does in the brain is different than what we had been thinking and we had been thinking that it makes the brain speed up that that you know some's work even faster that that your perceptions are going and actually what it does is it makes parts of the brain slow down but it's the filtering parts of the brain so that we have enormous volume of perception coming to us at any one time and that's kind of what you can see in the tank too that when you start quieting everything down you can really you know think in different ways but we have this enormous amount of information and we only narrow and look at some of it what we need to do either for survival or for we focus and the controlling the filtering parts of the brain are what Sil cybin slows down so that and they work less well so you get more of a flood of what's already there what is the mechanism the filtering parts of the brain like when you say the filtering parts of the brain what what
are those well um they're generally Linked In What's called the default Network the default mode Network there's um and here becomes kind of a practical side of the work that I do which is basically trying to develop psychedelic drugs into prescription medicines and marijuana so from the fda's point of view um you have to show something safe and efficacious but you don't have to explain how it works so therefore I haven't really focused on that so I don't know the answer your question because um it's neuroscience and I don't need Neuroscience to know the exact you know quadrants of the brain so I've kind of got um people I work with and other people I rely on and other scientists to do that part it helps if you have an explanatory mechanism right but at the same time it's not necess Neary so what I've done is tried to be strategic and tried to focus on the stuff that's essential to move the culture forward to create legal context for psychedelics to show that they can be used responsibly well I was asking more for my own edification I wish I could answer you I always wanted I read that very study about uh AC quieting areas of the mind and I thought it was really fascinating and um I I attributed it to uh the the idea being that we are filled with noise you know that our mind is filled with noise our mind is filled with concentrating on a bunch of [ __ ] that's not really important and that that gets shut off and then you can sort of tune in to whatever the [ __ ] it is that you took and uh whatever it is that you took that's doing something and yeah I don't see it so much that stuff is not important but it's not as important I mean you need to do certain things to get through the day so you need to have a narrower Focus maybe not important wasn't even what I should have said it's just it's not that it's not important it's just sometimes there are things in your life that aren't that important but they take primary focus they take Center Stage you know whether it's an argument you got with a friend over almost nothing something that can be addressed you know really easily and quickly probably but whatever it is it's bothering you should I say something because I really feel like I'm being slighted and that'll [ __ ] with you all
day until you actually have the conversation with the person and it could be a million other things could be Financial issues that you have it could be something's wrong with your house and you have to pay to get it fixed and all these things just constantly chip away at your ability to focus on the now and to enjoy uh just enjoy the experience of life itself yeah I've never really felt comfortable kind of meditating to try to let all those things go because I get into this state where I have this idea of something should I do I should do and I think those things that you mentioned are really important how you relate to your friends those are those are the most important things of life not the least important but I've always felt like when I'm if I were to be meditating this idea will come up and I'm supposed to just let it go and I thought why don't I just do it so I'm more outer focused and for me the uh jogging and being stoned are like meditation oh it's definitely meditation yeah yeah jogging stoned is a a trip it's very different than than just exercising yeah but but I but I but I think that this idea of creating a space like in the tank or like a therapeutic setting where you're not paying attention to all those daily things where you can sink deeper to um other questions of life that that is really important you have to kind of consciously create a space for that yeah the the things that always come up in trips um for me that the the uncomfortable things are always things that I really should be working on anyway it's always like maybe I've hid an imbalance and I've focused too much on this and not enough on that or or whatever it is those those moments where it hits you it's like you should have known that anyway and if you if you knew if you were living in a harmonious way we wouldn't have to tell you this all right so get it over with figure that out and every trip that I've had that that where that's happened there' have only been a few of them that are really that were like super uncomfortable just really bad but those always I benefited from those every one of them now what do you mean by bad I don't mean bad uh I mean um uncomfortable like especially with the eating eating marijuana the eating marijuana thing a lot of folks do not give that the proper respect and
that's why they freak out and call the cops I'm sure you heard the great video of the police officers who stole marijuana from uh someone they pulled over and they made pot brownies and then got so high they panicked and called the police they called the ambulance police yeah they called the ambulance they saying think they have you you heard that before Brian yeah we' played it on here before that's right we played it oh sure play it for for a goof cuz it's [ __ ] ridiculous these poor people what they didn't know these these dirty cops is that marijuana when it's processed by your liver when you eat it produces something called 11 hydroxy metabolite an incredibly psychoactive material it's not like the THC high at all it's a totally different experience and much stronger and that's why a lot of people think that like they ate a cookie that it was laced like oh my God somebody Lac this with something no you're taking a totally different drug yeah we do harmer ction at festivals to try to uh imagine a post- Prohibition world so at bur Bernie man boom other festivals where we provide um and organize teams of therapists and others that work with people that have difficult trips and people the most people come sometimes is for eating too much marijuana yeah people don't realize how this this easily could be as strong as any psychedelic you take and that's not [ __ ] and listen to these poor [ __ ] foll 9911 call you will hear tone where the information has been removed a week my f take emergency yeah can you please send rescue uh to I think I'm having an overdose of Theos as my wife okay you and your wife yes over no of what marijuana but I don't know if it had something in it okay can you please send rescue okay how old are you I'm 28 29 years old and my wife is uh 26 please come 26 yes please have you guys been drinking also what have you guys been drinking today too no that's it no is there any weapons in the house no please come okay we're on our way you guys are you guys like do you guys have fever or anything no I'm just I think we're dying oh how much did you guys have uh I I don't know we made brownies and I think we're dead I really do okay how much did you put in the brownies I don't know I I was it a bag
who made the brownies I um my wife and I did Cuba come here okay get her she's on the she's on the living room ground right now is she breathing she's barely breathing is she awake I think so okay can you look pardon can you look can I yeah I can feel her she's laying right down in front of me time is going by really really really really slow okay well I'm the pH with you and you know do you know do you know how much bet you bought and put in the brownies pardon how much did you buy I don't I just please send rescue they're on the way but I'm trying to figure out how much you bought and put into the brownies sir probably like a quar ounce total a quar ounce total into the brownies did you guys eat all the brownies yeah we did okay you at all how boy why is that funny I'll tell you why it's funny cuz you can't die from it okay the only way pot's going to kill you is if you take 25 lbs and you drop it off of a CIA drug plane and it lands in your head that's how pot's going to kill you you could probably get a a heart attack though from that well if you do you anything can kill you a good movie could kill you if that's the case you [ __ ] yeah well the the other question is why did they think they were dying and it's not just because their heart was racing or things like that the the Judgment Day it's well it's like these filtering parts of the brain that the pot when you eat it like that kind of very powerful it is like tripping quote and so your sense of who you are he was pretty logical he was pretty good at answering the questions he had you know some problems so some of that yeah but I think people confuse ego death with physical death and ego death of letting go of who your narrow sense of who you are and opening up into something but you're scary and so people have defenses and they converted into I think I'm dying right cuz it feels like d you the you is dying in a way that's interesting but I mean don't you think also he's just [ __ ] panicking and thinking that he overdosed on a drug and just [ __ ] his pants I mean not even an ego death just an absolute fear of the fact that you don't know what the hell was in there and you well he knows he made it it was pot he knew what it was he just got taken by surprise how
strong it was but he said he doesn't know if there's anything in it well that's what you said right before is people started thinking it was lace with something but it's not so I mean I think the guy thought he was dying well I thought I was dying on weed before I caught really physically you thought you were dying yeah because I had you know something in my life I always thought I had something wrong with my heart you know so I had a like as a kid I would pass out and black out and just like fall to the ground I had to take the stress test as like a eight-year-old kid like you know taking running on the treadmill and stuff no they could never find out what happened you know then it would happen again like four years later so like growing up I always had this thing like all right I have a baboon heart type [ __ ] like it's like it's a broken heart or there's something with a valve that they just haven't detected and so when I smoked too much weed I immediately thought I felt my heart and I'm like all right my heart is [ __ ] up so I I it wasn't that the weed was killing me but it might be doing something to what I already thought had a problem with my heart already you know type thing in other words you were panicking like a little [ __ ] and you thought you were going to die when you hear when you feel your heart double beat you know you know when it just like you know that starts doing [ __ ] like that that's you certainly mind [ __ ] yourself yeah you know and it's I didn't know you had that thing though I didn't know that you you blacked out yeah I've blacked out five times in my life Wow you know and they've tried everything they've done tons of tests you know and it's only been like the last maybe five years that I just don't give a [ __ ] about that anymore you know I don't know what happens I don't ever get panic attacks anymore or anxiety anymore it just went away I mean I've been using a lot of Molly lately so maybe that's why yeah that's probably what it is you probably like good evidence for MDMA thy oh it's the best I I believe in that a million times over shms or anything especially when you're with a a loved one and there's definitely something in it I don't I don't think over I don't think it's a
competition or a race I think they all have their own little impact talking about psychedelic medicine psychedelic spirituality and it's the whole range of drugs at different times at different places but we do have n you know the other thing about psychedelics is it can there's there's a lot of states that can be achieved naturally and I think in the pursuit of uh psychedelics as a discipline as as something to truly legitimately study I think one of the things that they're going to open up is what yoga does to the body yeah yoga does something there intense come on Brian yoga class okay stop G if you if you take a really strong yoga class and you get through it you feel like you're high yeah yeah and I I'm aware of friends long-term yoga practitioners long-term uh meditators who have found that it's not either or that you can when you're practiced in these ways too that you can have a psychedelic experience you can go to a deeper place and then you can work you have a better sense of where you want to be and you can work sometimes for years to ground it and integrate it and it's it's this flow back and forth so I think the over Reliance on psychedelics can prove to be harmful because you're not doing the integration or with John Lily you're escaping but the idea that you'll stay somehow or other you know pure and do things all on your own there's a certain kind of um slowness or egotism about that it's it's not uh inappropriate to admit sometimes that we need physical catalysts we need help we need tools sometimes our defenses are so strong well I don't think it's an NE or situation I I don't think there's anything we for whatever reason we have this idea in our head that taking something something to get somewhere as a weakness you know there's a lot of people that believe that that taking a a drug to achieve a state like oh you can't deal with reality you're weak you know yeah there is that but then you switch it to cars like you take a car to get I took a plane in a car to get here yeah no you could definitely look at it that way I I just think the the idea is very strange when we we know that look our our bodies are these weird biological machines that we're constantly feeding different things to
we're constantly giving it different kinds of nutrients we we experiment with the diets we experiment with our carbohydrate balance and our protein we experiment with all these different things but when it comes to taking a plant especially something like mushrooms that's we've documented many thousands of years of of use and to decide all of a sudden that this is a weakness and that this is you know just unnecessary in society as if our society is perfect in every way and you know no need for self-examination here at all yeah well we're actually an anomaly as far as Society goes because most of them have uh the use of drugs the use of Altered States in some kind of uh sanctioned manner it's repressed and prohibited throughout our lifetimes we kind of have a sense that maybe that's the way it's been large parts of human history but it's not been that way they're encased in religious rituals or different kind of uh cultural context but they're not prohibited and they're respected and I think that's where we've lost touch with that and there's so much coming from people finding it on their own through various methods that the culture is changing I think it's definitely changing and I think what's really crazy is that the people who are suppressing psychedelics the people who seek to suppress it are the ones who need them more than anybody well exactly so our study right now that we're doing and again the with MDMA for postraumatic stress disorder like you point to Brian yes you're the poster boy kid congratulations yay just the first one for tonight um so we're working with veterans and then we've also expanded it now to work with firefighters and also with police officers and I had pretty much given up hope about getting a police officer actually to volunteer so we've had 15 people out of 24 the 15th is going through screening the first 11 were um 11 of them were vets and three were firefighters and now we have the first police officer that is going through screening so the people that are repressing it in some ways they do need it the most and how to help them um relax about it at least to let others or to explore themselves but at the same time I've been trying to get my father and mother to smoke pot since I was 20 years old wow and they've never once
done it but they're totally supportive of what I do they think it's tremendous but they will not there was one time when my mother had um uh uh some pain she had fallen down and and her leg was really in pain and she said she would try marijuana for pain and I got home like a week later cuz she in a different city and she said then she wasn't in enough pain anymore oh wow I was too slow poor mom well you know there's a lot of folks that are a prisoner to that propaganda that was just really shot home from the 30s on it's it's a pretty incredible feat when you stop and think about the effectiveness of marijuana not just for people like as far as like a a drug and not just for psychoactive properties but just the plant hemp itself just all the amazing benefits it has for as far as nutrition construction methods making paper and clothes and all these different things the fact that somehow or another they kept that from the public and kept it under wraps and kept from really from the average person's database most people just yeah ask him about marijuana being illegal what about hemp oh it's isn't that the same thing like what is people don't even know what the [ __ ] hemp is yeah well what they should know is that the largest hemp importing country in the world is the United States and the largest hemp exporting country in the world is China so why is that why we've kept illegal we're importing it but we're letting other people grow it it's incredible but that's the largest producer of of of pharmaceutical drugs is the United States that's why and that's really what it boils down to the pharmaceutical drugs without a doubt don't want marijuana to become legal and one of the doorways for marijuana to become legal is and is people figuring out how incredibly effective hemp is for so many things that we use other stuff for besides the psychoactive properties just it's makes it Fant fantastic protein powder my the company that I'm involved with on it my friend Aubrey and I we when we was first you met Aubrey up in San Francisco when we first started talking about uh hemp we we thought well maybe we could get a farm in this country and you know grow this hemp hemp seed and then use it for the protein powder completely non- psychoactive well we found out you can't even do that like
even though hemp is legal I thought I didn't know that it literally can't be grown in the United States we buy it all from Canada yeah one of the um people on maps's board of directors is David Bronner and so from Bronner soaps his grandfather started and he's been very active in the hemp that's that hemp oil soap right yeah they use hemp oil and wording writing like a crazy person great documentary on Netflix about oh really what's it called uh I think it's called Dr Bronner's magic so yeah I have a friend that's all he Eddie Bravo that's all he us well David and his brother Mike have built this business from their father was kind of upset test they or their grandfather and they knew that so they took this business over when it was really fragmented in like a million or two a year in sales and they've built it up to over 50 million 50 million and they in sales soap not just soap but other products and they don't advertise they don't advertis what they do is they well they do now B Bon or so Get It Go Get It Well that's your local what they do is social justice activism they do um they focus on fair trade on other things but what David did about four months ago or five months ago is he constructed a cage a metal cage and he had um someone drop it off with him inside it in front of the White House right across the street and he was processing hemp plants he had gotten real hemp seeds he had grown it in the United States and he was processing it into hemp oil and he did this as a protest and the cage was to prevent the police to slow them down while they tried to stop him from doing it and he actually got convicted and had to do public service but what he was trying to show is that hemp which can be a food which can be any number of different things and can be grown in the United States was a crime that and just making it into hemp oil to put on his bread was enough to put him in jail and to give him a uh penalties it doesn't make any sense and it's insane that it continues to go on it's one of those right weird aspects of our society where you look at it and you go well there's got to be a reason let's let's search for a reason and you look for a reason and it literally doesn't exist well I think there are real strong reasons that go really deep that make us easy to miss
them but I think they're the natural fear that each of us has for when our social controls are relaxed that will become uh whatever we will become it's what you talked about even in the tent when the T the um flotation tank when things come up you know it's just people are scared of the compromises they've had to make make to live in society and of their basic urges and what happens when they're not in control and that's what these drugs represent and the 60s also represented not only these people that let themselves get out of control then they want to leave and drop out and then they want to change things and it it was um a difficult people are scared of their own I feel it in myself that I'm scared sometimes of of you know my deep desires or you know uhoh uhoh no that you just created a meme sir too late I feel like I'm scared of my deep desires I and you just hear some 1970s music playing over that yeah so I think that's a big part speaking of that Jim Kelly died today man the great karate master Jamie Jamie include being on that the dude from Ender the dragon rest in peace Mr Kelly sorry yes no no it's important to think about how short our time is it is right it really is that's why why we got to get all these anti-weed people high or at least help them see um more human rights more freedom why should they tell us what to do and I think the other part of it is that the drug laws have been used for social repression against minorities and either Mexicans or blacks or you know hippies and that letting loose of that Avenue of control there's in the power system and I think what we're needing to do to integrate these things to legalize marijuana to Legal gay marriage these kind of things where people see it's not going to tear apart the Fabrics of society that people can make contributions and that people can also learn to deal with their you know deep desires so that they're not so scared of them yeah we've made some massive Headway as a culture because of that um the the gay marriage thing the fact that Idaho got it before California that that hurt that really hurt that was like how how dumb are you [ __ ] that and the the the the name of the bill that eliminated the ability for gay people to get married the mar what was it defensive Marriage Act oh God how about
if you really want to defend marriage how about you stop people from getting divorced see how that works out you really want to defend marriage tell people they have to stay together that should be a t-shirt right there yeah for real you want to defend marriage marriage is ridiculous this is coming from a person who's married it's a stupid idea it's a legal contract that you sign with another human being and then you're going to bring in a bunch of other people if it doesn't work out and they get to dictate where your money and property goes so why' you do it because I love her and she's an awesome person and it makes her feel better and I don't give a [ __ ] we have children together and I'm not going anywhere you know so I I actually love being married to her I love her as a human being she's a great person but the whole involving the legal system part of it is so dumb it's just so ridiculously dumb it doesn't make any sense to me and I I I understand completely the need for child support and for some folks needed to be written in stone what they have to pay and things along those lines but you know I'm not that person and I I don't I don't think that I need to be regulated you know if I've done nothing wrong I don't think I need to be signed up to some system you know to prove that a relationship that I'm in is valuable to me it just it seems stupid it's almost seems like it's if you if you trust someone it's like I do trust you but I'm G to need that [ __ ] on paper it's like I I wonder since we're sort of male and more positions of power maybe marriage often is to more protect the woman oh maybe I mean I I I I certainly think that there's something to that you know a woman wants to feel more secure I've heard women say that I've heard women um complet like being completely outside of them Eve dropping in on a conversation and uh women were talking about you know I felt like much more secure in the marriage once or in the relationship once we were married it doesn't make any sense but we were together for 10 years but once we got married that I felt like it was real and then I could relax I had that part of my you know but that's their own social hang-up you know I think it's just some movie [ __ ] any different after you got married absolutely not I felt like uh I did
something that I always thought was ridiculous so well you know it's like you the idea behind it of of committing to a person and and and giving your all to a person that's all beautiful the the the real problem with anything where it's two people is who knows what those two people are going to be like 5 years from now who knows what they're going to be like 10 years from now and I've seen it and it's ugly I've seen people that got along great and then one person took a left the other person took a right and they're stuck in the same house together and they don't like each other anymore and it gets really gross and then when they have to separate op I've seen what happens when they use the legal system against each other I mean I I wrote a whole bit about it because I saw my friend who had to pay for his wife's lawyer he was she they were going to war and he had to pay for the enemy's General right I think it's it's ridiculous I think the idea that if you uh you know if you're taking care of the woman you should pay some form of alimony yeah definitely child support yes definitely you know split property that you got when you were together I'm for that for all that I'm for all that what I'm not for is this gross system where the lawyers play off of each other and try to stretch things out because that's how they make the most money where they ask for outrageous amounts so that you come back with like a little bit less and it becomes this mad hustle and like I said I am in no way saying that I'm not I'm not pro relationship but I've watched someone's life fall apart because of a bad divorce whereas if they broke up it would be cool but she dragged him through the mud legally for like a year and a half two years emptied his bank account it was horrific like targeted him and that can happen when you're legally attached to someone it just whereas you could be like okay we're broken up right well I don't want to be with you anymore you don't want to be with me anymore so we'll just go our separate ways no well or kids together or if you have they didn't that's what was even squarer there was not even kids involved like why do you have to pay for this person when you describ that somebody takes left the other person takes right I think that when we started trting to think about MDMA for couples's
therapy because that's one of the main people reason people use it is for relationships yeah and there's um but not all relationships should stay together so trying to do a study a scientific study of of MDMA with couples if you decide that your success is how many of them stay married that's not necessarily the smartest thing to do right so what we felt was that it would be if they make a mutual decision and whatever that decision happens to be if it can be they stay together they split up if there's some kind of mutuality about it if the MDMA helps them to listen to each other and to communicate and they can make a mutual decision that would be considered a success but we haven't gone forward with that research because politically having a difficult relationship is not a disease and we need to work in a disease context so that we can get prescription approval to have legal access in a medical context so that's a real issue you know that was the issue with modaal do you know what that is the uh yeah it's one of my Pro viil VI I'm using that right now actually are you really son of them I I am I might as well that's that [ __ ] that I've given you the stuff that keeps you awake that shit's the best it's well Tim Ferris who uh I respect very highly had a very interesting point about it he said I don't believe there any biological free lunch and that's why he doesn't he he didn't even put it in the 4our whatever 4our body because he was worried that people would just start chewing him like candy well I happen to know somebody that uses it for narcolepsy uses it twice a day for about you know 15 about to say the reason why it's prescribed for narcolepsy is because they initially created it for performance enhancing purposes and then the government's like um you can't just like say I want my brain to work better like you have to have a disease so they go narcolepsy and that's how it got approved right right but apparently it works for narcolepsy forar mean people fallen asleep all the time they're they're conking out what this stuff does is keep you awake yeah but it doesn't it's pretty transparent it doesn't add a lot of other things so it's it's very weird
the military is actually shifting towards towards it away from speed and amphetamines which well that's smart yeah speed [ __ ] you up and makes you do shitty things and makes you make terrible decisions poor decision- making capabilities almost wor worse than alcohol in a lot of ways yeah and it's Moda is also for jet lag it's for shift work M and uh you know the only reason I took it tonight is cuz I was caught in a gay pride parade in San Francisco couldn't get out of town they got and so I just wanted to um how how easy how easy is it to get prescrib something like that because as an example uh I have just got off cigarettes I wake up to you know I could barely get out of bed my whole day is just like I okay can I just lay back down I take 1/4 of an Aderall and 20 minutes later I'm just like how much work can I do I can my my brain's like alive it's working that's speed that's a completely different sort of experience but for something like like that it's it's also given to people that have like weird shifts you know jobs entertainers and stuff you know a lot of times L you're talking too much I can get your prescription oh okay you go to a doctor you tell you do don't worry I got a doctor Jesus no I mean for the norm person I guess go to the doctor no I know people have done it go to the doctor I'm not feeling so good I'm sleepy I think this is something called new vigil I think maybe that'll help me boom bang boom sh bam you're out the door with a prescription they're trying to give out prescriptions man doctors are trying to give you prescriptions do you know that you want to hear something [ __ ] crazy there was something in Montana that they recently released where Montana has you know x amount of people living in it 1/4 of them are on oxy cotton you know how [ __ ] crazy that is I need to verify that because someone told me that today uh oxyon I guess I just never try to go get prescription medicine ever well um I I think there's a time when um if it's um possibly helpful that it can be okay to do it I think I prefer trying to do things on my own without it and then only if it's uh beyond my capabilities or something that I think enhances it so I think the U the idea of jet lag shift you if doctors do want you to have a um
relationship to what it was approved for but around 40% of the prescriptions in America are called off label where doctors prescribe it for things that it's not been approved for oh I see and that cannot be stopped and what what some of what's some of the things that this drug is used off label I guess well I think it's uh off label people are just taking it for performance enhancing sub reasons that's why they're doing it that's the the the big reason that I always hear and the the big disease is narpy yeah and the concern is that um you know if people have performance-enhancing drugs but they're willing to hurt themselves in order to do it because there's no free lunch but with modaal there there are ranges of use of certain drugs where it doesn't seem like there are harmful consequences the the um Montana uh Gazette the Billings Gazette is the one that printed this it's it is one out of four damn that's unfuckingbelievable Montana has just under a million residents one out of four have an oxycon prescription it's incredible huh is that pain I wonder how they um listen I have I've gone in for operations before and they gave me all kinds of [ __ ] that I didn't take but they'll they'll give you whatever you need for pain even if you tell them it's nothing like I went into to get a deviated septum and uh they it's kind of uncomfortable thing they stuff your nose and they crack it and break it and widen it I had a really [ __ ] up septum and it was uh kind of I literally my nose was useless for most of my life till I had this operation but my doctor gave me like two different kinds of painkillers and I and I was like this doesn't even hurt though he was like like well it's going to probably tonight tonight you're probably going to be in some significant pain never came it was like it was weird I had this stuff stuffed up my nose but there was no pain but meanwhile if you're a person who's easily addictive and you take one of those and you go God damn it I can't sleep and then you take two more of those and then next thing you know you're going to another doctor and telling them you're in pain you get a second prescription and you're Off to the Races yeah we had one of the veterans in our uh PTSD study um took one dose Dr out of the study and under
the influence of this medium dose of MDMA um he started feeling that he was taking pain meds not just for the pain but he was kind of getting um addicted depended on them and he didn't want to do that anymore were War wounds things like that and so he decided that he didn't need the pain meds anymore and he also felt like he had come to terms with the issues that had caused him to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that he accepted the these things and that he could go forward without uh PTSD and so he dropped out of the study but we said we want to ask you at 2 months and 12 months are follow-ups how you're doing and his PTSD was still gone after a year that's amazing the PTSD um use uh the use of MDMA for PTSD is uh one of the ones that was discussed uh recently by this uh soldier who wrote this very eloquent letter and then committed suicide but he was talking about the DEA keeping treat letter on the airplane here yeah I assume that was what he was talking about because it's a big big issue with uh with veterans I assumed he was talking about marijuana well it could be that as well but I thought it was MDMA probably both but the MDMA one has been discussed a lot by friends that I have that have been in the military they they know it helps and they want to know about it you know they've heard it's the one where you you hear a lot of people going through very traumatic things and then they get over it they're okay they understand it and they accept and that set yeah they've heard about it anyway we had a meeting in the Pentagon where we were trying to get formal cooperation and they expressed that their biggest fear was that if they were to cooperate on an MDMA study that the word would get out uh more so than before and that a lot of people who were in the military who only a small number of them will get into clinical studies that they would go out on their own and get stuff that was impure or not in a or pure but not in a safe place and that they that would cause more harm and they said that shouldn't stop the research but that that was the concern and what we're thinking of saying and what we did say is that the word is getting out and we've had articles in stars and stripes and the Marine Corp timeses in
military.com about the results of our studies I think they owe it to the soldiers and I think that if they wanted to start a Kickstarter to have MDMA clinics pop up with legitimate stuff government approved and tested all throughout the country it would it could be user funded we are going to do that with the Indiegogo Kickstarter doesn't take medical issues but Indiegogo does okay we are going to try to do it to crowdsource uh support for the study with veterans firefighters and police officers great idea the thing about uh the psychedelics so that people understand what we're really talking about with the Psychedelic medicine is it's only used a few times it's not like the drugs that we were talking about that people get prescribed every day or several times a day right it's only part of a psychotherapeutic process with more non-drug Psychotherapy sessions and what they can integrate from it so our three and a half month program for PTSD uh treatment includes only 3 days of MDMA I think people need to understand that all these things are tools that have been denied us and uh that I used to do a joke about it that like marijuana's like a hammer you know you could you could Hammer nails with it or you could just hit yourself in a dick if you're [ __ ] crazy like just cuz you have a tool doesn't mean you're going to use it properly and when you smoke too much pot and freak out and when you you know take acid and jump off a roof yes you've done it improperly but you're dealing with this incredibly complex thing that is really not being explained to the general public the the dabbling in psychedelics is all sort of done with anecdotal evidence passed on by friends or books that you've read or all the all these you know and it's unnecessary in this point we have enough information there's enough data there's enough online it Maps .org right yeah ad maps.org we we are doing drug development in the open we publish our protocols we publish our data we publish all of our timelines of our relationships with regulatory we publish our review of the literature we have a treatment manual that describes what the therapy component is that's there with our adherence criteria we're trying to make the all of it publicly available
and at the same time that's the pressure that's coming on the pharmaceutical companies actually to release more of their data but the important thing is that the DEA is not stopping MDMA research the FDA is not stopping we are able to do psychedelic research in the United States and most countries of the world where we want to we have studies right now in Israel Switzerland Canada and we've done Iain research in Mexico and New Zealand iasa research in Canada so that the only thing that's really politically blocked right now is marijuana research what that's hilarious it's it's shocking but it's totally true you're getting all this research done and this is this is very new like two decades ago this was not possible it was impossible and when did it start being possible well actually what happened was and and I did my um disertation at the Harvard Kennedy School of government I got my Master's and PhD there and the part of my dissertation was on how this happened who at the FDA changed things and was it other places as well was it a social consensus and it turns out that in the late 1980s there was a lot of particularly Reagan had been before Pro business there was a lot of concern that the FDA was too slow evaluating drugs that they were mostly trying to block risks and they didn't care that much about treating illness and so the FDA set up this group called The Pilot drug evaluation staff which was that they would pilot drug evaluation methods to try to speed up the drug review process and this group needed drugs to actually work with and so they looked around the other part parts of the FDA and they kind of cobbled together different kind of drugs and they looked at the people that had control over scheduled drugs and marijuana all the psychedelics and they had been suppressing things for decades and they said sure we'll give this up and so this new Branch came they didn't but they also were more science over politics so starting in 1990 the first study was uh approved with DMT by Rick stman and we had tried for five studies before for years before with MDMA all rejected but once this new team got into place um then they had to review our study MDMA for cancer patients with anxiety and there was a 1992 advisory committee meeting to determine whether the FDA would go
forward with psychedelic research and they did it bureaucratically in a brilliant way they had the DEA there they had the uh office of National Drug control policy they had the national instit on drug abuse they had Representatives from all of these branches and they proposed an idea and their idea was that the regulations that they put on the major drugs for the pharmaceutical industries that the risks of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana were no different and so they would treat these drugs as if they were drugs being developed by the pharmaceutical industry and the same procedures would be fine and the DEA naida the drugar office they all thought man you put it in there they'll it'll never get out again because who can act like the pharmaceutical companies and so they all signed off and FDA got this policy in 1992 and then they approved our first study with MDMA which was a safety study and then they started approving studies with Sil cybin and then expanding our MDMA studies into patient populations so there's a 20year history now and a lot of track record and data and now we have data on the benefit side not just on the risk side so that we can talk about balancing before people could say there are no benefits there's these risks therefore nothing's permitted so the Dynamics have completely changed and we've demonstrated so far over 800 people have taken MDMA in clinical research all over the world and you know nobody has gone uh nobody's had a serious uh adverse event that left them harmful nobody has become adct as far as we know to MDMA nobody went crazy so we've demonstrated there are safe places are study with LSD in Switzerland for people who were dying was 12 people and 11 of them had never done LSD before so it's not we're trying to show that it can be brought to people who are not from this culture not used to this but it can be helpful to them in a controlled setting with supportive therapists and with a lot of integration and preparation work and people are aware of uh other studies like the Johns Hopton study on psilocybin now that's gotten a lot of steam because uh these people many years later experienced great personality benefits that stuck with them yeah that was um the study of um Sil cybin and
people who were spiritually inclined see if they could have a spiritual experience that actually there was the classic study that that's modeled on was called The Good Friday experiment and it was done in 1962 and it was one of the best things that Timothy ly ever did and I ended up doing a 25y year followup to it tracking these people down but basically in 1962 lots of people thought that psychedelics had some genuine spiritual potential and Martin Luther King was getting a PhD at Boston University and his mentor there was Reverend Howard Thurman this Dynamic black Minister who's just fantastic and he agreed to have Timothy lry and Romos and others 20 people and 10 guides come into their church on Good Friday and do an experiment and these were all students from Andover Newton the iCal Seminary and half of them they all got pills half were cybin 30 migrs which is pretty strong and the other half was nicotinic acid which gives you this hot flush and it acts quicker so that was going to be their double blind and then they went through the Good Friday service and Walter Panky who did this study was a doctor a minister and getting a PhD at Harvard and he had spent a year going through the world's mystical literature to develop a questionnaire for what the mystical experience was and he extracted all specific mentions of you know Jesus or Moses or it's just more of this abstract what is a mystical experience and administered this questionnaire and nine out of the 20 people had um either a partial or a full mystical experience and eight out of those nine had the sil Simon and so the conclusion was that for people who are religiously inclined in a religious setting you can have uh psychedelic drugs s does precipitate what seems to be a genuine mystical experience not a hallucination but in the mystical literature the real test is called the fruits test is what does you bring back what are the fruits of this experience and that only comes with time and Walter Panky who did the study died from a scuba diving accident 1971 and so he would have done this but in the middle 80s when I was uh getting my undergraduate degree I decided to track these people down for my senior thesis at new College colge of Florida which is
this experimental school and my father was really helpful my mother was too I I identified 19 out of the 20 and was able to interview 16 of them and what I found was that the people who had the placebo most of them didn't remember it that vividly but the people who had the siloc Sabin had very Vivid memories of parts of it and at the same time they said that they considered it to be a genuine experience they'd had non-drug mystical experiences since they preferred the non drug mystical experiences because they were more uniformly positive they lost their fear of death and they felt more focused on the here and now and on social justice because they had this unit of experience that helped them identify with the planet with the people with not so much the all the divisions that divide us they saw a deeper unity and so they were more social justice minded and activists and I think that's a little bit of a key to the 60s as psychedelics go right they they inspire people to try to make a better world and we can do that not in an oppositional way but we can do it with in the heart of the culture and that's the challenge that we face it's really interesting you said that what they had was a real religious experience or a real mystical experience um one of the the things that's been on my mind over the last few months when it comes to psychedelic experien is that when people want to tell you oh you're just something is going on your imagination your create your visual cortex is getting stimulated by this drug and it's creating a bunch of hallucinations it could be that but it also could be something else it could be you are experiencing some Divine State of Consciousness you are in contct with some other form of intelligence and either it's a hallucination or it's this other real experience but either way you have the exact same experience whether you really went to a place and talk to super spiritual highly intelligent beings or you imagined you did you're still having the exact same experience and it's incredibly Vivid that's the one of the weirdest aspects about any sort of psychedelic experience is that they're almost more real than reality itself and I think because of that it's even more important that we keep our critical faculties in a way because we
are always a filter and our culture how we're so I don't think we're ever seeing absolute reality or the truth and I think that's where you get in danger where people think I you know God spoke to me God said this or I know this for sure because there is our our filter that we're seeing it through but you try to see as much as you can but I think we have to be aware that um and be cautious and see how it works in life so under LSD therapy and MDMA therapy we tell people don't make decisions while you're doing the therapy you know wait for a couple weeks weeks after or you know at least Under the Influence it's is for exploring not for deciding H that's interesting although some things do get changed sometimes though you have yeah you have like a really uh obvious reaction where you know you're very aware that okay you know this is this is what needs to be done and I need to do this right away yeah that does happen yeah and I think one one of the more Vivid examples for me was when I was sitting for someone who was doing MDMA who was a physician and and during the experience his arm became paralyzed completely paralyzed that's how you know you're high yeah and start stop working and we were like it's not you know permanent and it's it's psychosomatic you don't really need to you know we don't need to take you to the hospital and he was a doctor but his arm was paralyzed and over time he told this story that lasted a couple hours but the story was that he as was with his mother and his siblings at the bedside of their father who was dying and all this life support and they had this discussion about whether they should pull the plug or not um and because he was the doctor and they decided that they would and so he actually pulled the plug and the complicating thing was that he hated his father and he wasn't really sure was this his anger at his dad or was this what his mother really wanted so as he explored this emotionally complex issue and realized he really didn't kill his dad he did what his mother and his siblings were saying it was Humane the feeling started coming back to his arm wow so that was the arm that pulled the plug yeah is there a real plug that actually I thought be but you know whatever there depends on it I don't know good point good yeah because like
pulling the plug is the expression but what a [ __ ] stupid if life Sport Systems really like just go back there and unplug it you know that's how they shut them off well we never we don't want to kill people so we don't have an off button so you have to just pull the plug like really so the expression is true that's you said something that I thought was really interesting too where you said that in the 1960s you don't think people were ready for it I think a lot of people were I think that the culture wasn't and I think even the if you read the electrolite acid test you know there's ways in which people are damaged and left behind and that's something where I felt they weren't quite ready for the but isn't that the case always just with in general there's always going to be people that are damaged and left behind well I think one of the beautiful things about the Marines in the military is that they don't leave anybody behind and I think that the psych that we should adopt that we should be the Psychedelic Marines I love it a way don't leave anybody behind that's really good advice except there's some really annoying people out there and if you get hooked up with them and you know for whatever reason they can't carry their own weight psychically psychologically emotionally they're really [ __ ] needy at a certain point in time you need to cut you need to cut ties can't fix the whole world I think that's really you can't you know you can't and you to tell people that they can is crazy talk all right there's some people that are just broken animals you can't fix them um unfortunately it's not you and it's not me but we both know people who we would say you know what if you had like if there was a show like uh in one of those fixme up shows you know they have those like home improvement shows or weight loss shows if had a guy who's just a complete [ __ ] mess and they said just Rick doblin this is your assignment for this show you're going to take this guy and Elevate his Consciousness and and just make him a much better person do you think you could do it with a complete idiot well I think the beauty of it is that people have to do part of it themselves yes and if they're and they own it and that's where they become empowered and you can't fix them without them taking the
courage and maybe there's ways you can help them through drugs or through therapeutic Lions to but they already have have that path in mind right they have to be willing to take certain kind of steps forward and so that I think that is the beauty that we can't heal everybody that they have to heal themselves I think there's also a a big danger as a human being in almost embracing the fact that you're not going to improve because it takes away all the pressure of trying to improve all the self-examination as soon as you just say he I don't give a [ __ ] you know don't give a [ __ ] do you really not give a [ __ ] or do you is that your psychic Shield to keep you from examining all the holes in your life's game cuz that's more likely the case well we talked about the um uh Army veteran that committed suicide who wrote that letter and one part of that letter was that he had felt like he would never get better yeah and I just kept thinking if he could have had an MDMA experience would he still have been able to find a some hope and a reason to live or would he still have committed suicide and those are the questions there's he he talked about it 22 veterans a day or committing suicide seems like he was dealing with physical pain as well I think there was a bunch of different things going on with that's where he was upset at the DEA I think also at uh pain meds and how they regulated pain meds so I I think MDMA actually in combination with morphine it's been used in dying people um enhances the pain control so MDMA has pain Rel qualities and when you combine it with morphine when people are you know in hospice settings things like that that you have better pain control and you don't need as much morphine and you start waking people up so that they're not tranquilized out and you open their heart so that people can have these be beautiful pretty much pain-free experiences there's a woman that wrote a book honor thy daughter about her daughter who died in the early 30s from cancer and how she had gone through a series of psychedelic therapy sessions as she was dying with um MDMA and mushrooms LSD MDMA combination but that it really enriched her daughter's life and she felt she needed to write a book about it to let people know so I think that the use of these drugs when people
are in pain it's not just mental pain there is a whole link between mental pain and physical pain and MDMA actually does help in this kind of I see psychedelic medicine psychedelic hospice will be pretty common I think 20 30 years from now and we'll look back and think that you know it made sense 50 years ago it absolutely does I mean I think that's one of the best uses for them to give people like uh I remember Larry Hagman who who died uh was on and uh died recently great guy uh I never got to meet him but I I really loved his interviews he was so candid and and just warm and friendly and he was talking about the importance of uh an acid trip that he had where it took away his fear of dying yeah joy barar and CNN that was fantastic that was a fantastic interview it really was because uh he wasn't saying it like he was a c he was just uh was explaining what it did and why it did that and you believed him you know you really did believe him yeah I spent years trying to meet him because I knew that he had done LSD therapy in the 60s and he wrote about it in his autobiography and my mother-in-law actually sent me this message saying Larry Hagman is done LSD so then I started trying to find him and eventually I did meet him and we got to be uh friends and and he was a donor to maps and he wrote this um he helped us in a lot lot of different ways and he was so human that he would be from Jr and known all over the world but when you were with him he just was present present and and he wasn't you know ego inflated and he was just a really nice person and um I felt that that he had this idealism and this uh Joy from his whole life but he also really valued U his psychedelic experiences his experiences with MDMA his experiences with marijuana and it was kind of ironic that someone who was so valued by the culture um couldn't be open about that that he had to keep that hidden well he did for a long time until until he wrote that book yeah yeah the joy bear experience but I think also it's like the um the atmosphere for an actor actors get picked for things and if you're very controversial I mean for every Charlie Sheen and of course we're dealing with 2013 where Charlie Sheen can get away with being his crazy Koke snorton hormonger and like he just wears
it and owns it for that to be a thing 20 years ago for an actor it could be a career killer yeah and when he was doing Dallas I mean the the consciousness of The public's opinion on on psychedelics was very much different than it is today yeah well he was um in Dallas when MDMA first became a party drug and it was used at U the Stark Club of which there's a documentary that's sort of the explosion of MDMA the transformation from MDMA as a secret quiet um therapeutic drug used um underground isn't quite right because it was still legal but it was used in a quiet way for fear that if it became known it would become illegal and then in Dallas it started being used and distri Ed by different people in nightclub settings and Dallas was the place right Dallas was the place and there's a documentary about the star club and there's interviews with Larry Hagman in there and what he's talking about is this discussion he had with one of the um police officers in Dallas and they were saying that Larry had caused them to lose lots and lots of money and he's like well what do you mean I I caus you to lose lots and lots of money he said well after MDMA became illegal we were going to bust the Stark club and we had this whole Tactical Team and everything was set to go and then you and some friends came in to party there not necessarily take MDMA and so we didn't want to bust Larry Hagman from Dallas that's hilarious and so we had to call off the bust and then come back and do it another time more times more more rather evidence that times have changed yeah because today they would be psyched to bust Larry Hagman you know if it was like some dude like that like don't make it Larry hman make it you know some other famous TV star he he didn't necessarily anything that they could bust him on but he was so nice he he let us auction off a dinner with him uh as a donation to maps and this couple and also Andy Andy wild did that too so we had a dinner but the the deal Larry made is I had to come along oh and I was like that would be great I love that's not a bad deal wow what a great dinner yeah who you who you guys eat dinner with well this group uh this family from Canada and they they were just ordinary people but they had one of them the woman had struggled with cancer had they
were um just loved Dallas and loved I Dream of Genie and oh that's right he was on I dream of jeie yeah and we had such a nice time at the dinner they also bought the dinner with Andy wild who was he the boss on I dream Genie no he was the astronaut he was the other he was the main character with Barb in love with Barbara Eden that's right yeah I always get him confused with Bewitched I get I Dream of Genie and bewitched confused they're they're he is wow and bewitch was the one where they had a different dude like they they killed off the dude and brought in the same yes yes that was same name different guy I think now that Larry is the gone I can share that um he had a bong that was made like the bottle that Genie lived in oh wow where's that now wow that would be worth a lotone and we got to smoke some pot together in this Genie bottle Genie bottle and he said that somebody had talked to him about marketing it and making lots of them and he said no he didn't want to have that done yeah well that's too bad we're going to make it now [ __ ] sorry but then the family he was so nice with this family and just and also with me just treat us like you know part of his family we had dinner his kitchen that when it came time for the dinner with Andy wild that the family invited Larry and he came so I with um a friend of his to help him travel and we ended up just a few months before he died um going up and sea planes and stuff onto this island where Andy W lives and having this really wonderful experience that's awesome yeah yeah I think guys like him that do do those sort of interviews that's that's a really really important thing because the Public's perception of people who do LSD is almost entirely limited to fuckups and you know and crazy people and w people or they used to do acid oh this guy used to do acid he did acid back when he was just off his rocker you never hear about a positive drug experience like that from a very respected person right and that that's what we need is the coming out of loads of people like that who are retiring Baby Boomers so I think time is on our side there's all these people who are more Fearless because they're not worried about what they tell their kids or they're not worried about their jobs they've made a reputation and they can
talk like Steve Jobs I I had a wonderful opportunity I I tried for years and finally managed to have a half hour conversation with him about our LSD study did he give you like a half an hour on an iPhone and go ready go and Press Start was it FaceTime it start 29 28 before I had an iPhone and U you didn't have an iPhone when you met him how dare you I didn't meet him it was just on the phone and um at the end of it he said you know send me a proposal but um I did and never heard back he wasn't known for being philanthropic but I had gotten a letter from Albert Hoffman to him um on his um after his2 birthday wow and um great acid lives to be 102 he he was incredible and he was married for over 70 years the same person U he led I mean Albert Hoffman to Pivot just for a second was such a perfect example we're so fortunate that he's the one that invented LSD because he was everything what I'm trying to talk about in terms of inte he was a big successful chemist for a major pharmaceutical company Sandos he made drugs that sold hundreds of millions of dollars he lived more or less in the same place he had a wife for over 70 years he had children very normal guy very normal guy brilant guy was his wife a pink Dragon um we I was fortunately uh able to be with Albert when he tried MDMA for the first time wow how old was he when he United States in his 80s that's incredible it was um or late 7 um and so what he said was um ah finally something I can do with my wife because she had had kind of a scary experience with LSD a lot of people have man yeah have you done any tests with like candy flipping like mixing um you know with acid well I I believe that that actually has incredible therapeutic potential um however we've not actually tested it because in the scientific world you want just one variable if possible and so to combine LSD and MDMA which drug are we trying to make a medicine and always going to combine them but I once it becomes legal that would be I think maybe even before well that's the question you know it maybe it's 10 years before these drugs can become medicalized legal in a medical way really think that that long um I you really think it could be sooner I think it's possible now more than ever I think
um there's a certain track of data that you have to produce a certain set of requirements that we're on the track of doing but it looks to me like it's 8 to 10 years even you would certainly know well always been wrong I've always been wrong and I've always underestimated how long it takes what we were talking about earlier with gay rights I think they equate because when I was a kid uh I remember I was living in San Francisco uh from uh 7 to 11: and I was around a lot of gay people and uh it was completely normal because that was just what I was around and then when I moved to Florida when I was 11 my friend candy his candido is's a Cuban kid his dad was really pissed off with the newspaper slams it down and he was he was mad that uh that the [ __ ] wanted to get married that's what he kept saying believe this [ __ ] these [ __ ] want to get married and then I remember I was like 11 I was like what why do you care like well you're a grown man like this is what how stupid some grown men are and I was like that's a weird argument like that's a strange thing so that was you know a long ass time ago I'm 45 years old now so 34 years ago and um the IDE no it's not yeah it is okay but it's the idea that that back then it was it was really something that people fought against it was really uh a subject of you could you could be public about it and not feel like an ignorant [ __ ] whereas today if you say that you're against gay people being married like you're nothing but a fool right you're nothing but a fool if you you you honestly think it's either you're crazy with religion and you honestly think that somehow or another it's possible to cure a person of being gay and if they believe in the scripture that's you know that I can't even talk to you that's that's a different animal but if you're a rational person and you accept the fact that people are born gay and you you have an issue with them marrying their lover like you're a crazy person yeah I think though that people who are irrational there there that's the question how do we and I think there's a way that they're fearful of something that blocks their rational thinking and if you can somehow or other help them and I think a lot of people who are so anti-gay or scared of their own gay feelings that's
kind of a cliche but I think that's often the case but I think what drove me early on into an interest in psychedelics is that I was so terrified of World War II and the Holocaust and how people can be so blind or be willing to be so driven by irrational factors that I thought what can we do to try to help get to heal that CU some people you know they they can be quite powerful and they can um how do you respond and that that was the Dilemma for me and I finally felt that um growing up with the Vietnam war that that was something that now I was being called to fight and I decided to become a draft resistor but I saw the nuclear standoff between the US and Russia and it just seemed like the irrational was so powerful the demonization of the other and the making of the enemy that there was um I couldn't figure out how to uh contribute to breaking through that cycle and it finally felt like this um deep spiritual EXP experience of connection and letting people's spheres come up where they could look at them more that that would be for an individual make us more grounded and less likely to be manipulated our irrational factors and if millions of people could have that experience which did happen during the 60s but if we can expand it that maybe there's a basis to go through the crisis that we're facing over the next couple decades as a species and as globalization and people are bumping up against each other that it felt like somehow or other the irrational is based a lot on fear and how can we help people to counter that with love with hope or with looking with self-acceptance and I think that's where the MDMA is so useful that the fear of self-criticism or the fear that MDMA helps people to accept who they are and the LSD and the sil Sabin the iwasa the Mescal and the Peyote those the drugs they are challenging in a different way and that they do this dissolving of the control mechanisms and dissolving of the ego and and hopefully people can let go and blend and be strengthened from that and that's the support that we need to provide to help that to be happening and I think you know just the way that this religious fundamentalism against gay marriage I mean right now we have a crisis of fundamentalism around the world it's a crisis of ideology yeah so
and it's also a crisis of power because once someone gets into a position where they can espouse their ideology you listen to them that is power and then they use that power to get money to manipulate to get sex to do whatever the [ __ ] they want not pay taxes is a lot of craziness it's almost like in the not pay taxes thing it's almost like they're in cahoots it's like the government has decided look it'd probably be beneficial if you guys did a good job and you know culted up the [ __ ] out of some people and get them all whacked out on your ideas to the point where they're complete fundamentalists on your idea so how about you not pay tax you know how about we help you along there you know make it even more profitable and more susceptible to to corruption well I think that there there is that um way in which the government can be influenced by groups sure and I think that's something also that we have to be wary of it's a mess but at at the same time we have to work through groups and work through government so I think this um one of the first things we learned at the Kennedy School is there is no the government it's like your body there's no your body body there's all these different organ systems they all work in different ways well we find out about that when the government goes after itself like when when this General portus thing happened we found out the CIA and the FBI don't necessarily see eye to eye right you know right and that's where our strategy is built that the FDA is putting science over politics while the other forces are trying to either slow down or black research and where it comes with marijuana is that there's a Government monopoly on the supply of marijuana that can be used in Federal research so even though there's no Monopoly on the supply marijuana the only kind that's been grown under DEA license is controlled by the national instit on drug abuse and if that's hilarious you want to get uh to do research to make marijuana into a medicine the FDA will give you permission we have a permission to do a study with marijuana in 50 Veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder and our distinction is that the marijuana is more about treating symptoms and the MDMA is more about curing is getting and then you only need MDMA a few times with
marijuana people sort of need it every day yeah but we have FDA approval and naida and the Public Health Service rejected the protocol and refused to provide the marijuana for us and they only can review protocols for marijuana because they've got sitting on this Monopoly and we were 12 years lawsuit and we won and one and then we lost in the First Circuit Court of Appeals to break the Monopoly but that's the core reason why we're not able to make progress with marijuana research and we are able to make progress with psychedelics and what are they afraid of with marijuana I think they're afraid of the whole drug war collapsing that the marijuana is incredibly demonized it's widely used most there's a lot of people that know that it's not so dangerous and I think it's the it's a symbol it's a symbol of cultural rebellion and that's where it was embedded in certain people's minds and even though it was made illegal in 37 with the marijuana tax act then it was illegal shortly after prohibition ended and it was illegal during the Depression and mostly it was Mexicans and blacks that smoked pot and so it was a way to repress people who were competing for low-wage jobs it was a way to block the hemp industry various things like that and but but it largely was a minor thread in American history until the 60s and white Suburban people started kids started smoking pot and you had this massive explosion of pot and then pot and LSD got associated with cultural rebellion and now all these years later you know there are many people that smoke pot that are at least out about that and they've made a lot of contributions so I think it's more now about fear of parents for their kids is shifted but that's what's driving what's left of the drug war is parents wanting to protect their kids and also all these vested interests that have the prison unions and things like that the but I think that Dynamic we're trying to is Shifting also and so there's a way in which those of us who are interested in enhancing our lives with these drugs in positive responsible ways need to do so need to speak about it where possible yeah and need to demonstrate that it's not about tearing down the society it's it's strengthening it's all of us coming together to face these incredible
challenges and we need all the inspiration and we need all the creativity and we need all the energy that we can get well unfortunately for some people they really can't speak out about it because they get drug tested at work that's a big issue I mean the the the the idea that something that stays in your body as long as marijuana gets tested when the psychoactive the the the the time in which your body brings it back to baselines less than 24 hours right I mean is you're you're you basically just have Trace metabolites that stay in your system for a long ass time but they're not psychoactive so you're at work you get you smoke a joint on Friday you're at work on Monday they make you take a piss test you piss positive they're penalizing you for something you're doing when you're not at work that really is not going to affect work you can also be arrested for driving Under the Influence yeah for metabolites that you took from pot a week ago right it's nonsense it's so crazy the idea that that first of all the idea that they treat they have some arbitrary level that they test you for and they say well this is you can't operate a marijuana vehicle vehicle on marijuana if you have this fer system it's been proven what what test have you done where's the when you look at the science the experienced marijuana smokers are not debilitated by in their driving and there's been a lot of driving tests that have been done and what they show is that when you are drinking alcohol and driving that you are impaired but you don't think you're impaired and so you are more Reckless that under marijuana people know that sometimes their instincts their reaction time might be slow so you take compensating action so people are more careful when they're driving and more aware so in driving not in simulators but when they're out and driving roads and cars that and in simulators too that marijuana is very um minimally affecting driving and you become paranoid so you drive a little slower and and you react a little slower too you really think you react slower physically no I mean by that that no cuz I've a lot of look at all these B players that you know and do it it's just yeah you know about that Jiu-Jitsu I I didn't huge in the Jiu-Jitsu
Community massive snowboarding a massive amount of people smoke pot and then go train it's a they they it's so much so they have T-shirts rolling while stoned you rolling stoned they have all these different uh I mean it's so common in the Jitsu world yeah play racketball and so I kind of have combined marijuana and racketball and trained myself to be really quick reacting yeah and sometimes I play my best games when I'm stoned and sometimes I don't but but I sometimes you don't give a [ __ ] but I can never tell ahead of time um whether it'll be better or not but that's funny but I think with driving that um what I meant by reaction time is that you don't take precipitous action so the classic thing is that you're I'm going somewhere I'm thinking about something I I I don't turn where I wanted to turn but then I just like calmly find my way back I don't like jerk the wheel want to clarify though that that's you you're you're an intelligent guy and you have your [ __ ] together I think for most folks it's you know I don't like driving High I don't I'd rather be sober yeah I'd rather be sober um I don't like there's a lot of things that I don't like to do when I'm high I don't like I don't mind it but I don't want to get pulled over and I'm high and I got to talk my way out of you know some cop being upset at me for being high like dude I'm telling you I drive fine I'm good I don't want to be involved in that situation and I don't I think I'm I would be kind of a hypocrite if uh if I said that and like or if I if I had a problem with some people getting high in driving but I know some people are impaired there's there's they shouldn't drive there's certain people that freak out when they get high I don't believe in driving when you're impaired yeah and when you're freaking out I think even if it's only psychologically even if your reflexes are still there you're still impaired you know you're freaking out oh my god get the exit don't drive like that please so it's not for every sobriety driving I think go hand in hand I I did have the you talked about being high and having to talk to a police officer um I was actually going to visit John Lily and a chemist friend of mine had separated the isomers of ketamine and I was going to um bring that to John
who hadn't tried the different isomers yet um this is in Florida and it was way a long time ago and u i was um I had a Porsche 914 which is small cheap car but just says the open top and so I was going from s to Florida to Miami and it was just such a beautiful night and the moon was out and I was ston and I thought okay I'm going to speed it's just beautiful I'm going to get a ticket but it's okay and I thought okay as long as I'm just going to get this ticket well why don't I just think about what I could tell the police officer when the inevitable happens so you're thinking about this as you're planning for your ticket as I'm planning for your ticket what what can I tell him about that would somehow or other be um be okay and I thought the first thing is don't deny that I'm speeding you know don't don't contradict anything but the main thing I thought is what do we have in common you know and the only thing I could think of is were two guys out on the road on a f lonely guys on a Friday night out in the roads and so I thought you going to blow this guy to get out of the ticket is that what you're trying to say how dare you I now the story was that um I was on my way to see my girlfriend okay and I was late and I was late okay and officer I am speeding and I'm sorry s and but that's what I was doing and so it happened I got pulled over I told the story and the guy was like you know I'm going to let you go just tell her that it's uh from me that you owe this for me that's a nice guy you can get lucky and get a nice cop yeah I've had that happen many times and then with John Lily um you know he one of the iceers is more active than the other and so you know that was interesting but I also did get the sense that he was too much into the ketamine and too much into this other state and it I started trying to think about how possibly we could help him because he was such a major contributor and a hero of mine and one of the people that was a dolphin trainer that worked with him with some of his Dolphins had this sense uh Roberto Goodman had this sense that um he was also going downhill and so we arranged to get together with them to do MDMA therapy and during that he kind of became very much um into his body but he had abscesses from where he was shooting himself oh God he was in
terrible shape so he was shooting camine oh yeah yeah yeah inter muscularly or did you doen he would do it IV sometimes he would do it in inter he would get he just was so trying to be out of body in another place that he wasn't taking care of himself wow and he was and and it was painful to him and and so he kind of bounced into this awareness of what he was doing so he had infections he had an infections yeah he was hurt wow and he um he didn't want to stay there and deal with it and so what we we couldn't help him you know right because he didn't want to just didn't want to deal with it he also was probably dealing with the reality of a decaying body and he was an older man and he probably figured you know what this these states of mind I like this better you know I'll just ride this [ __ ] until the wheels fall off I mean there's a lot of people that take that approach as well yeah you know and to a guy who spent so much time in Altered States Of Consciousness I don't think it's unreasonable to like prefer that you know I don't I think it is I think it is because I I think when you get this um deeper sense about how um life is so precious that that you can have these other states of mind but that it should be inculcating compassion a sense that you have to contribute to make it a better world that this kind of self-destructive but is it ultimately futile I mean isn't we live we die I mean um if this guy is feeling his body giving out on him and he says you know what I'm just going to shoot cabine until the boat hits the Rocks well I think giving makes people happy a lot of times people who are depressed you know if they serve or help others I even thought about that about the vet that you know if there was some way you know he felt that he was a harm to his family and that he was doing them good by killing himself and I think if only there would have been some soup kitchen or something that he could have felt that he was contributing maybe that would have he kind of addressed that didn't he though he was talking about the all the widows that he created and that he didn't feel like he had the the right to exist right but that's psychological material to work through that's not you know necess and I think even that's a hard thing to say but you're saying it
from coming from someone who's at MDMA experiences and I think unless somebody has they they really would would listen to this like a straight person not not mean not gay but I mean a square a guy who's never done any drugs and well I've you know really not been into drugs and I've took some Percocets in college if that person heard that they' be go what is this guy talking about like the guy had post-traumatic stress disorder from murdering people and you know committing war crimes he's openly spoke about it in this letter and then you're telling him he's going to take ecstasy and he's going to he's going to be able to work through that like how what what the [ __ ] are you talking about yeah that's a really good point um in fact people have accused us of like you're going to try to help people just forget what they did and you can make mindless soldiers who will commit war crimes and then they they get a drug and they feel better and they go back and so I I think that's a really good point you raised because it's not that people say that was good that I I can accept that that was good they don't reframe what they did into something good but they realize that they it's done if they accept it it can give them the chance in the rest of their life to make up for it not that you can in any way but it it gives you a way to go forward in a positive way and I think that if we do this in U Marines let's say my guess is that it will make them more sensitive about those kind of occasions where they might be Reckless with their machine gun or something yeah that it might make them more careful um I don't know these are like unknown questions and it's it's really important but the the process of dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder is to more live in the present to let the the past inform you not to deny it and but not to be so oppressed by it and to accept what you've done and I think once you accept that there is that evil in all of us that we have to like those you know that we all have the capacity under certain circumstances U to that that you can accept that and uh what we hope is that people then can move forward and recognize that they still have some life and every day they can make choices and every day they can try to be helpful to somebody or or not and I think that's
what we're talking about the healing it doesn't make them look back and say that was okay what I did I think we we are in a very strange period of of of human history where we we know that we have all these issues we know we have massive government corruption we know we have massive Financial corruption we know we have the great majority of people who don't agree with the war acts that are going on whether it's drone attacks or what have you and we wonder like why is our society so far behind why have we achieved so such great technological and and Military Heights but yet socially we're so [ __ ] up and we have all the tools to fix that and what that's what's really insane it's like individuals have found their own unique situations that through yoga or through MDMA or through uh meditation or even some through religious chanting and and and learning how control of your breath can change states of Mind people have gone that through jogging you were talking about smoking pot and getting high I know a lot of people who think things through when they're jogging and and let things go when they're jogging too I think there's many many many pieces um that we can use to try to fix this problem and they all they're all documented like we're not living in the Dark Ages anymore right and I think this is one of the first Generations that's been around that's experienced that that has that many tools and I I think you were right on when you talked about how we're overdeveloped intellectually and underdeveloped emotionally and spiritually it's not even that we're underdeveloped it's just we're not developed at all you know what I mean it's like most people are acting on momentum or imitating their their atmosphere yeah well we're developed some we think from the primates or from our Pure instincts yeah I mean a societ society it's pretty crazy I mean groups are you know that that's what I thought about you know Hitler's Germany that that you've got a culture that's insane or not or right North Korea right now yeah they're all programmed and yeah so that there's a way in which if you look at our technology which is miraculous yeah um but we and we have capacities now to alter the planet with global warming but we don't have the emotional
and spiritual uh development to cope with the technological changes and in a way that's been really productive this kind of separating out the intellect from religion and morals you know because religion and morals have sort of squashed the intellect and didn't want uh cernus and Galileo and just a whole history of things that but is that really religious or is that just the people claiming to be religious it's human beings yeah right it's just the ideologies Behind these ideas that didn't want to relinquish power yeah CU Albert Einstein talked about how um true science and True Religion are not in opposition and that the scientist is also you know in a state of Wonder and spiritual appreciation yeah because people that think that religion is ridiculous or that God is ridiculous or the concept of a higher power is ridiculous you know what else is ridiculous the whole universe itself the fact that there's a floating ball quarter the size of the Earth called the moon just floating in space above us how B heavy is that stupid thing it's just floating above us oh and without it our our world would not exist because our temperature would not be regulated enough that we could live in cold climates and hot climates it wouldn't be predictable enough it would be [ __ ] I mean that's that's crazy that's way crazier than some guy who built everything you know Big Bang that's crazier than anything that religions ever come up with ever that the whole universe was smaller than the head of a pen and then it exploded 13 whatever billion years ago and created the skies above and everything you say yeah well you said is it feudal you live and you die and and I think that those moments of Wonder or appreciation for just how miraculous mysterious incomprehensible or those moments of love that there's a way in which they make life worth it I agree and I think that there can be uh I want I don't want to use the word religion but there can and I don't like ideology but there could be a way of living the life with wonder and with sharing knowledge and with just looking into what we have learned Rock Solid about the very Universe we live in and respecting that and worshiping that I mean in a way you know not like I'm not
talking about like a deity but about like like a great Wonder like the great wonder that it really is there's a benefit to that yeah and taking that into the pain I think is being able to take the loving energies into the places that need healing and that that's where so just having a spiritual meditating on top of a Mountaintop and trying to you know get off the wheel of suffering and stuff that seems like a very egotistical way actually and having the sense that while we th some of us are privileged in all different ways to really be healthy and be wonderful without and in Wonder without being so threatened that there's a lot of people that aren't and that we have to um not only feel those moments but then try to somehow as Martin Luther King talked about the Arc of History make some contribution of some way that helps it for others too you know what is also ironic one of the weird things that's going on with Society uh is that as our technological capabilities increase we also fill our skies with light pollution and we can't see the stars and one of the best psychedelic experiences I ever had outside of doing a drug was I went to the kek observatory in Hawaii on the big island and we drove through the clouds and as we were driving like you wonder if it's going to be a cloudy day cuz then you won't be able to see anything it takes a while to get up there and I was like damn looks like it's cloudy but then we drove through the clouds and you realized oh this thing is so high up there that you actually drive past where the clouds are this is nuts and we went up to the observatory and the view is just insane because the big island is set up for the observatory so all the lights that they use for street lights are very special type of diffused lighting that doesn't give light pollution off so you have this incredible view of the Stars where you see the whole Milky Way like a movie like a like those pictures of space and somehow or another it's just above us and you're looking at it it's it's so unbelievably humbling and and and magical I was like I was staring into the impossible and I remember being upset that I couldn't see this every night like that's up there all the time and and not seeing that and just making
it this blank screen by doing that you sort of like lose you lose the feel for what's really going on yeah we're out of touch with that a lot I had this bonding moment with in some ways my opposite my family and I were on a vacation in Israel and we decided to go across the Sinai desert by car to go see uh Cairo and the pyramids and we had to work with an Egyptian company and they had people had armed guards cuz it's kind of dangerous now and so as we were driving through the Sinai desert um and it was so dark and the sky was magnificent we we asked if we could just um stop the car and just sort of walk a bit from the road there was hardly any virtually no other traffic on the road the only thing were military checkpoints every once in a while and we just went out and so these um it was Ramadan too and so these Muslims who were with guns to protect us uh who were Jewish we just stood under the stars in the middle of the desert with no light pollution and just were had this shared moment of kind of awe at the Majesty yeah the the the the view of the actual view that we're supposed to see I think is really what inspired people throughout history to to create the idea of gods and to create this I mean the the the insane view that you get of that that just the images of those Magical Lights in the sky millions and billions of them just to see that is it's so humbling and to not see that it's It's so dead it's so numb like we don't have an appreciation for the fact that we're in space you watch a documentary it seems kind of abstract but when you're on top of the observatory and you you look out and you have that incredible view of the Stars you go oh my God like we are really in space right now we we're on a big organic spaceship we're moving thousand miles an hour in a circle yeah it's nuts it's it's weird to see and what what it's done to Stuart bran talked about a lot about the with the whole earth CL the picture of the Earth from space yeah we're the first generation or je that's ever had that image and those astronauts that go up in the space station and the space shuttle they all talk about the experience it's being very Transcendent you know when you take that view of the Earth from above and you look down you see just the nature of the whole reality of a planet in a solar system in a
galaxy in a universe and it's it all just sort of falls into place you're like oh my God but when you're down here and you know you're stuck in traffic and the sky's dark you don't even think about it like you're you're on this Majestic ride through the heavens instead you're overwhelmed with the mundane [ __ ] of this person in front of you not reacting to the green light yeah come on [ __ ] right and if you can somehow do both it's not that and that's where I think l lily got wrong you know he thought the spiritual part was the more important part and it's the balance my daughter Ellie is in eighth grade and she had to do a project with uh for National History Day and with a couple of her girlfriends they did a project on Apollo 11 which was and it turned out um the girl that she did it with um Michael Collins was her grandfather he was the one that was on the when Armstrong put his foot on the and um buzz Aldrich that he was the one that stayed in the capsule and so they actually got to interview him as part of this and he did talk about for him what was so amazing both being up there in space and seeing the Earth but also when he got back and they went around the world and people were you know cheering and talking about things he said that he thought that people would say you know look what you Americans did and wherever he went people said look what we did huh like it was the human race that we went to the moon and people wanted to be part of that and he because it was such a space race with Russia he sort of we did it but he saw you know Americans did it but he saw around the world that people said we all collectively did it that would the idea of we all collectively are in this thing together that we are a global community that that that's really one of the last saving hopes of humanity and I think the internet has sort of reinforced that idea in a way that never existed I think nationalism the idea of nationalism seems so much more Preposterous now especially nationalism in a war sense not nationalism there's nothing wrong with being proud of the town you live in nothing wrong with uh cheering for the you know your home basketball team there's nothing wrong with any of that but what's wrong is when it translates into war and I think
that this is the first culture that is really sort of openly embraced a global Society you know I think kids today they're far less likely to buy the [ __ ] when it comes to us against them or any ideas about you know what's really going on with geopolitical struggles yeah we we know it's kids in Iran like they're just they're kids they're trying to get out of the under the thumb of an oppressive government my son Eden who is just going to college he was playing a Halo and you can play multi you know and he was playing with somebody in Saudi Arabia that's so crazy it's fantastic and I think what we see a lot is the rise of fundamentalism you know the Orthodox Jews are nuts the the some of the Orthodox Christians and Muslims all these fundamentalists I think because of the forces of globalization because it's harder to sustain that we're the one right religion they're they're kind of having to Circle their way dragons and they become a bit more extreme and so it might look on the surface that things are getting worse but I I think that's this defensive mechanism where they can barely hold it together and I I think it won't end up with homogeneous one world religion one government will appreciate those small things about the you know the local town where you are you can appreciate the differences even more when you feel part of the commonality you don't have to be scared of the differences cuz there's something deeper can access I think there's also a problem that people have in that human beings we share chimpanzee alpha male DNA and we are always looking for leaders and the other problem is once someone becomes a leader we see this with politicians and dictators we saw it with the people that that came in after Mubarak in Egypt tried to pass all these crazy [ __ ] laws that essentially made them dictators and then the people were like what are you talking talking about like this is this is what we just shed blood for like and you [ __ ] are trying to make yourself immune to prosecution for all these different things that you could be doing like [ __ ] you no you can't do that and I think seeing that for the first time you know globally even though right now it may be very frustrating for us and it is frustrating for us because we don't
think change is coming quickly enough change that corresponds with what we know about the world I think it is if you look at it historically if they look back to this time I think this will be a time of great turmoil and great change it's just that we measure history in these 20 30y year bursts you know and I think the 20 year burst that we're in right now is just bananas well I I think as I get older and as I watch my kids grow that for me 10 or 20 years is no longer such a long time right it's not and I think as you get older time speeds up too and so it's like those cops that were yeah they so so you can but but we're not quite so scared fortunately and the um this idea of having a 20 30 year plan or even to recognize as all the spiritual Traditions talked about is that these great things are not accomplishable in one generation or by one in one lifetime so that we just start the process or we not start it but we continue and then we try to pass it on to the next Generation but I think that there is this you know intensification and crisis and in that I think eventually the um the the fundamentalists will need to find more genuine spirituality not in this rigidity and hopefully they'll be able to um coexist there was these demonstrations of millions of people in Egypt you know against the Muslim brother Brotherhood this is the first government in Israel that doesn't have the religious Orthodox as part of the governing body which is a really healthy thing this what who who who made that quote history is a race between education and catastrophe who's that who is responsible for that quote you know I don't know that's yeah I don't remember who it was whoever it was they were bad [ __ ] whoever it was but that's uh that's really what seems to be going on HG Wells was it HG Wells yeah oh good that that really does seem to be well of course it's HG Wells guy was awesome yeah um I think that that does seem to be what's going on seems to be also that sometimes it it almost feels like people need an antagonist in order to perform at their very best it's almost like we need a rival to inspire us to reach Great Heights yeah and it depends how you see them if they're deeper down your
ally so that like let's say in sports teams you know you want your opponents to be as good as possible because that will call out the best in you so on some level you want the worthy opponent mhm that you don't have to totally destroy you just are sort of co-evolving together so I think we do need to test ourselves against against others and against our ourselves but we don't need to see the other side as the enemy to be destroyed and and I think um I used to play this game um I grew up in Chicago and W Lake Michigan and some friends and I would go in there and we'd play the the greatest catch game and each of us guys we'd throw football to somebody else it was like half in the water and our our goal as the thrower was to get it just barely where they could reach it where they had to make the spectacular dive and show off to everybody how great they were and then they would have to do it back and so we were sort of helping we we were like allies but we were pressing each other to to do these spectacular things that's really interesting well that's one of the principles of uh of Jiu-Jitsu and of martial arts is that you're really only as good as your training Partners yeah if you train with really good people you become really good and that's just you you elevate to the level of the competition in the training room it's also the same a lot with uh stand-up comedians we're inspired by other really funny stand-up comedians and when you find a particular group of group of talented people in in a town or an area often times they'll develop a lot of very talented people around them who imitate the fact that you know that there's a high level of the art form in that area so like Austin Texas is a good example it's like there's always a lot of really good guys there and because there's always a lot of really good guys there there's always a lot of really good guys there it's New York City is another one but obviously there's much more money involved in like places like New York or LA and being good so that becomes sort of a factor as well but are you from a did you spend time in Austin no I just have a lot of friends there and I've done a lot of standup there but I just know the local scenes always really strong there always there's a few places in the country as a comedian the
scene the local scenes are very strong Denver they always have a really strong local scene and that's another one that's pure because it's not really attached to Hollywood in any way it's just pure standup comedy and then there's um San Francisco um Boston La New York little bit a phoenix a little bit but it's it's a very limited thing and you can sometimes one or two great comedians will be in one area and then boom it'll Blossom like um Houston was Sam Kennison and Bill Hicks they were all at this Houston Comedy Annex and because of them in this one particular area it started to take off yeah that's sort of the idea of Silicon Valley yeah sure get a bunch of brilliant people you get inspired by other brilliant people they share ideas they they you know they pump each other up and the idea that there's plenty for everybody right and that working together could be much more satisfying and you're you're much happier if your friends are doing well as as much as you are yeah yeah in fact um one of our um Ashan Haley one of our board of directors who recently died was a um brilliant computer guy and he kept trying to say that that we should try to think from abundance rather than from constant need and and well that's a that's just a general principle of Life famine mentalities are terrible way of approaching life and that's the way a lot of people approach life they approach life as if there's a finite amount of resources and they have to get theirs and that's what leads to people cheating on their taxes that's what leads to people lying and trying to steal money and stealing money from their employers and [ __ ] along those lines they're coming from from a a standpoint of famine like they're stockpiling nuts for the winter right they're not as comfortable about their ability to generate new resources yeah and that's that's a terrible mentality and that is a mentality and that that sort of those sort of philosophies those ideas can be reinforced or they can the the opposite can be reinforced a a generous Bountiful mentality can be en forced as well yeah well for us I mean it's going to be 15 to20 million to make MDMA into a medicine and the same for psilocybin or LSD and we don't have all
that money that's crazy I have but it costs pharmaceutical companies way way more than that it should cost the amount that it costs to get one guy high on MDMA and he should do it and go oh listen to me make it legal trust me just stop stop the [ __ ] yeah but but we've had to have that attitude that that the resources are out there and once we can demonstrate that we can use them wisely as we grow the resources will grow and so far you know we're in our 27th year and that's what what's happening how happy are you now that you're seeing all this like really tangible progress um real tangible progress very happy but but I'm also um because I woke up to all this in 1971 and 72 right after the backlash um I'm concerned a lot I'm trying to be very sensitive about another backlash and will possible today I think it's possible I don't think it's impossible I don't think it's likely right now it just seem it seems like the information is just too prevalent well but how how would you explain the fact that we can't even do marijuana research there's a massive repression and so if well those people should be in jail that's really what should should happen someone should realize what's going on and start locking people up and go let's play your game because what you're doing is ridiculous you're ruining people's lives for something that really should not be your choice it should not be another person's Choice whether or not they masturbate and it should not be another person's Choice whether or not they smoke pot and it's really along the same lines yeah well I'm not so sympathetic with putting them in jail but I would like to take the source of their power which is people's fear that they've generated and others and try to get more that's why I'm so glad to be talking with you in this you know podcast to people to try to educate them to to realize that there is a way where we can work together and make things better I agree but I think the people that have done things that have put people in jail for things along those lines for for selling Potter for growing pot or for owning pot that they're criminals those are societal criminals well I'd say that they have a bridged other people's human rights without a doubt and they have done so
with full cultural support and I think the way to move forward is not to be so punitive for those that did it although for some I mean uh but but to talk about Evolution and to talk about how a different approach is necessary and you know whenever um in Alaska when there was a medical marijuana legalization Bill one of the first years ago there was this whole idea of reparations to pay people that were in jail and the polling that was done by the poit by the people trying to pass this initiative um showed that that was a really weak part part so were you try to impose these penalties on people for past behavior that a time was sort of socially sanctioned what I meant by that was the the people that are actively working like privatized prison unions things along those lines working to keep these drugs illegal so that they profit and that's creepy there's there's there's some real reprehensible [ __ ] that's going on it's not as simple as they're acting within culturally defined rules and regulations there's some behind the scenes shady [ __ ] that's based on Deception well that the stuff like that is should be illegal yeah you know but I think that the corporate capitalistic approach that we have does permit that kind of stuff and it permits lobbing Congress and it permits this this process where people try to get their own interests Advanced sometimes over the interests of others and and isn't it fascinating that I mean I don't know if you feel like this but that the the thing that would fix the woes that Society has more than anything is a thing that these people are trying to keep from becoming legal like that might be the big race The Big Race might be recognizing that there are some Fantastic Tools to change the consciousness of this culture right and I think that idea of thinking about them as tools is really the crucial distinction because they're not good or bad in and of themselves it's how they're used and our whole drug policy is there's good bad good drugs and bad drugs bad drugs are illegal and good drugs you get a Burger King yeah or or from the pharmaceutical company but it's all about good and bad when it's actually um how you use it and even the drug that was demonized the most in a
way in the 50 in the 60s was theide the drug that was the medical drug that caused uh birth defects in babies and the FDA stopped that in the US but it was prevalent throughout Europe and now phalidomide has become a medicine and the same kind of shrinking of blood vessels and things it's used in leprosy and it it's used in cancer treatment so a drug that was among the most demonized of all has now been approved by the FDA with certain kind of safety procedures to make sure pregnant women don't get it but it it's the idea that these are tools and we have the ability to approach these tools in an intelligent way in a respectful way or uh in a reckless way and what we want to do is try to um change these value judgments and probation support people's human rights to explore their own Consciousness uh to have freedom of thought and to find a way to integrate it into a society that's moving forward how do you do that by getting through the corruption because that's the only thing that's holding it back really the only thing holding it back is corruption at this point with the amount of data that's been accumulated on medical marijuana well okay uh the amount of data that's been accumulated the the government has been effective the the DEA parts of the government naida in preventing What's called the phase three studies the large scale definitive studies that by law Congress has created FDA must have to prove safety and efficacy so at this moment there is not enough data of the kind that the FDA uses for any other drug and if we accept the idea that the FDA should regulate marijuana and psychedelics like they do any other drug then we have to acknowledge that there's not enough research for the FDA to approve it it's people twist it say the FDA has rejected marijuana and Medicine which they have not we just don't have enough research that way and they won't allow you to do PHR research right and so that's why the states I think have enough evidence to make it legal MH and patients and doctors have enough evidence to decide to try it it's just that in our system that we've created to try to make it so that through science we don't just see what we want to see but we kind of have a closer view of what's there there are
these procedures that still need to be undertaken for marijuana and also from MDMA so that's why I say we're probably 10 years away from making MDMA into a medicine and I think we'd be five six years away from making marijuana into an FDA approved medicine if the repression would be lifted right today now what are the what is the difference between the stage that the FDB FDA requires and the data that has been accumulated well for there's the pre-clinical stage so what that means is preclinical clinical means humans so there's a whole series of animal studies looking at toxicity that are required by the FDA before you can get a drug into humans once you've done that then there's phase one 2 3 and four and phase one is working with people who are not patients who are healthy volunteers to try to categorize what the drug does and what it does at different Doses and for certain drugs that are especially toxic like cancer drugs they have like Phase 1 a phase 2 where it's a combination where the drug is so dangerous that it only can be used in patients and so you do these dose finding studies looking at the side effects and in general that's what phase one is phase two is where you start working with patients and you start seeing what does it do what is it good for how good is it what are your measures how well do your measures work how do you do the double blind to make sure you're not seeing what you want to see what is your scientific methodology for the studies um what is your treatment approach what dose are you using that that's for phase two and that can take years and years and years I mean we've been Phase 2 uh for MDMA for um about um nine years so far wow yeah starting in 2004 is when we got the first perm we actually had permission in 200 from 2000 to 2001 in Spain for MDMA for PTSD and we had some me media attention that was very positive on the radio and the main TV and newspapers and radio and it motivated the anti-drug authority the forces of repression to shut the study down and we weren't powerful enough to overcome it in Spain and that's where it was um first started though with a study that that we were working with women survivors of rape with okay but then you've got phase two so then once you have figured out your designs and the magnitude and the
variance of the effect how strong is it and how common is it is there a large number of people that don't respond at all or do most people respond then you can size your phase three studies so with marijuana we have enormous amount of information up to the phase 2 level and the FDA will have more information about marijuana MDMA LSD than about any other drug that they've ever approved in their entire history and the reason is because they the research is usually done with hundreds of or thousands of people 10,000 is about as high as you go but we've had LSD used by tens of millions of people and marijuana by hundreds of millions of people and we know the one one in a million side effect or the one in five million side effect that we only discover from from ptical drugs once they're approved so it would not take um a long time we already know that we would work with marijuana with nausea control for cancer chemo therapy marijuana for pain particularly for people on opiates because we've already shown in phase two studies funded by the state of California that when you combine marijuana with uh opiates that people get better pain control and they don't need as much of the opiates and because of oxyc content all these big concerns so we we know the areas that we would study with marijuana and we know the safety profile so we mainly need to just do studies in 250 500 people to look at the particular patient groups that we want to approve we have to get highquality standardized medical grade marijuana to do it in um and so maybe we're 5 years away if the political barriers were removed right today which they're not what happens to someone that takes LSD and goes crazy because I've had many people tell me stories I know what the the Sid Barrett story from uh Pink Floyd is a famous one I don't know if it's true but that was the word was that he had taken too much acid and lost his mind I think it's possible but it depends on the support of context and before you asked about um the candy flipping about MDMA LSD yeah so in we in the future when people are having this very difficult LSD experience maybe they go to the emergency room or something adding MDMA takes it from this terrifying sense of dying ego destruction and grounds it so
that people can work through it so I think that LSD has that potential to destabilize people but in a supportive environment that can be helpful and and handled and supported so that that's fascinating so the candy flipping aspect of it the adding nvma might mitigate some of the negative effects of the the stress that you could get from the the asset experience oh yeah completely and yeah and then you can so you know one possible um thing we would like to study one day would to take people who are dying and start them like we did in Switzerland start them with LSD and 4 hours later administer MDMA so that way LSD peaks in around three and a half hours 3 three and a half hours so they go through the whole challenging LSD of Letting Go um of opening up and it's it's you know hopefully they can make it through that and then at the 4 hours you give MDMA and then everything softens and they can take it in more and then they integrate as they're coming down oh so you you ride one wave right into the next yeah or if they're flipping out if it's too painful or too difficult for them maybe at the one at the two hours you could administer MDMA there and you don't even have to administer a full dose of MDMA it' be like a half dose of MDM softens it somewhat do they have a synergistic effect yeah they do they do they do so the two of them together what's the difference between well it's more like um there there's an expansion aspect to it but there's a grounding aspect as well so you you you think that's a really good combination then in that sense I I think it is yeah on the other hand for um you know sometimes for Spiritual purposes let's say uh where people are looking for this ego dissolution um you know you start with LD you start with psilocybin you know some sometimes the experiences last 8 10 10 hours or more sometimes if you don't fully if you open up to the energy flowing through you then the Psychedelic experience tends to take a shorter amount of time and if you end into this resistance because for whatever reasons it's really difficult it prolongs the experience and once you enter into those kind of places if you were to add MDMA then people can integrate it more helpfully have you done any studies like
what the difference is between like hippie flipping and candy flipping using mushrooms instead of uh is there any difference to that or again we haven't done any studies because combining drugs but um more or less it's it's similar MDMA blends with um ketamine even MDMA grounds people with ketamine grounds it's such a shame that we can't find out about it what it it's probably going to turn out to be like a Jack and Coke well people were like why didn't you guys do this from the beginning it was my favorite thing in in college it was so hard to find but when you did you you bought a lot and you just save you sat on those how how did you do it did in terms of the timing cuz I I'm talking about where you know did you take them both at the same time these were actually uh designed together where it was like it was like a candy where it had both of the chemicals in it that's the only way I've ever done it now I've done it since then but done it separately with mushrooms and then just taken you know uh yeah I think it's was I took it when I was peeking I would dose myself with the the Molly which would then take whatever an hour or so 45 minutes later you would start feeling but yeah it's great I love those two together and if you need any if if there's a way to sign up online to any of your things let me know I was robbed by gunpoint so I got the post-traumatic stress if you need that well we we need people to be um it's not as easy as getting a prescription for marijuana to get in our studies we have independent Raiders you have to have uh treatment resistant means you have to have had PTSD and diagnosed PTSD is very minor compared to like Soldier PTSD too they're dealing with like real debilitating issues you just got freaked out one night no I got a gun in my chest and I thought I was gonna die was scared I was scared of black people for six months and it still comes back to me once in a while when it's dark out right right well people can sign up online uh to donate to Maps because we're funded by uh individuals the pharmaceutical companies aren't interested because these drugs are off patent and they're only offered a few times so far we've not been able to get a government grant although we are working with the
national instrumental health and we are uh Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia recently sent a letter to the assistant secretary of defense for health Affairs um saying that MDMA PTSD research should be looked into so but we have yet to obtain any kind of federal funding or pharmaceutical funding or major pharmaceutical or major foundations so we're more individuals and family foundations trying to bring this um research forward well I think what you doing is awesome because you you guys are bringing legitimacy to this that would never be done by guys like Brian or myself and uh or any of the other people that are out there enjoying the fruits of your labor and the fact that these doors have been broken down now and or or opened I should say and and work is being done and evidence is being put forth that really can't be refuted anymore and it's slowly but slowly starting to accumulate yeah I I would say that this can't be refuted right now we're at this stage where we have to replicate our results because that's the key part of science you you may have done it once but can you do it again and again and again and that's where we have um still to prove so we haven't completely uh proven our case yet uh but it's you know moving we hope in that direction well that's awesome man and I I think uh I think there's really exciting things coming up I really do I feel like our culture is starting to shift and uh I think it's stuff like what you're doing is a big part of that getting that information having it on the internet allowing people to share l links allowing people to go to whether it's maps.org or any of the different websites aid.org aood is a great website we were there fiscal sponsor we went to college together oh nice um we try to help other organizations in that way um I think this idea of getting um honest information out for people to make their own decisions yeah that's what we're about it's a matter of time right hopefully yeah yeah well my dad is hilar my dad is 86 and three quarters and he sent me an email today and it said uh here's a link to an article about uh marijuana reform and he said oh it's going to be legal in my lifetime wow I was like right Dad I said I hope you're right you know even if you
have to live another 20 years I would have never thought in 2013 it would still be illegal when I was a kid I would I thought it was a matter of time well I I was on the board of normal for a while quite a while and I was with people who started normal in 1970 and 71 and thought it would be legal in a few years so that sort of tempers my uh sense of time to be with people who um you know over 40 years ago thought it was only going to be a few years away that marijuana would be legal and fortunately they're still working to try to help bring that about do you lose enthusiasm sometimes when you see that it's still illegal after all this no it's the um it's about it's a worthy like an a worthy ponent it's a worthy goal and so I think we just do what we want to do there's times when I felt like I was so blocked that I needed to do something where I could actually see change and so I stopped work for a week and painted my house and that was great that's funny oh that that really must you must must get to feel like you're spinning your wheel sometimes well for years and we we just spent four years with uh Health Canada trying to get an import export permit to bring in 8 gram of MDMA and this is after Health Canada had approved the protocol and our IRB had approved the protocol and the uh four years it took and and they went through all these ridiculous things about the pharmacy had to have bulletproof glass it had to have all these alarm systemof glass people going to come and steal your eight grams of acid or MDMA that was eight grams yeah that would be in a safe and the safe had to be disguised in a wooden cabinet and the safe had to be bolted to the floor they were harder than the US it was ridiculous but we eventually you know prevailed we just took every ridiculous thing and we did it I mean my policy is surrender you know when there's certain kind of irrational things coming from people who are more powerful try to give it to them well that's probably why you're in the position that you're in you're the facilitator of this I'm willing to dialogue Venture forth continue sir yeah and there are parts that are um exciting that that are connections that you know are just coming together like even for the National Institute of Mental Health
there there was a um um in the late 1980s the fellow who's the current head of the National Institute of Mental Health was doing MDMA neurotoxicity research in animals and I visited him and he was um you know this sort of hidden away in the Countryside Animal research lab to you know not attract all these animal rights protesters and we had to go through all this guards and barbwire and stuff but he seemed like he was sincerely interested in the question and wasn't trying to twist the results to justify the drug war and we developed uh a respect I I certainly respected him and about two years ago year and a half ago I wrote him an email I hadn't talked to him and since that point he's now become the head of the national ins mental health and I just said is now a good time to apply for a grant for MDMA PTSD research or is it so politically hot it's just not worth it and he said now is a time and he appointed someone else inside the n amh who's an expert at PTSD to help us prepare applications that are more likely to be uh accepted but what he did say is that the actual decisions are made by peer reviewers the way they've set up for government money to be distributed that they bring in the scientists and he said the system of peer review is well known not to be sympathetic with Innovation so even though we have all the support it still may not work it's hard to get systems to accept in a and change what can uh people at home that are listening to this podcast or watching it what can they do to to help you to help keep this momentum going well first off become a member um sign up for monthly membership um we just had the incredible conference where psychedelic science 2013 largest psychedelic conference that we've ever had in the US over 1900 people there's whole I IA track the biggest iasa uh conference ever and clinical research and um I was approached by um am Amara this group that helps groups crowdsource uh transcription and translation of these talks and videos are not searchable on Google but when you do a transcript or if you do transcript of these shows people can then search on the transcripts and that gets them to the video so people if they're interested and it would be a tremendous thing for
them to learn to to go to the maps website maps.org to our psychedelic science 2013 conference page and you could sign up if you wanted to listen to some of these lectures which are tremendous and transcribe or translate them if you know other languages awesome yeah there there's other things people could do I you guys have a Twitter page um we have Twitter we have what's the Twitter page um maps maps news Maps news yeah we have a tremendous social media team already remember we are going to do a Indiegogo campaign starting probably in a week or so to raise $10,000 for the Zeno project at berning man our harm reduction program so people could tell other people about that and then we're going to go as we said earlier to uh probably a $250,000 request for the study with veterans with MDMA um I think people can come out to their families people can come out to people that they just talk about and not be so reticent if psychedelics have been helpful or even if they've not been helpful you know to talk about how what they learned about about what they think are these tools maybe they use them poorly maybe they use them well but I think look at the gay rights movement and think maybe they use the wrong tool for the wrong job too because they didn't have education about it yeah and we're finding that people that sometimes use psychedelics at festivals for what I would say is the wrong reason just to have a fun time and not the right reason well mind told well it's beautiful but I think you have to be ready for the difficult stuff yes and if you're trying to suppress the difficult stuff that's when people get into trouble even more yeah I'm obviously joking around yeah but but I I think the celebratory use is really important and that's why for us medicalization is not the for maps as a 501c3 not TR to change the laws we're about medicalization but I think as a society we need spiritual use we need personal growth creativity we need a broader U drug policy which would have adults have the right to use psychedelics I think it would be like the driver's license model where you would perhaps have a certain education you have to pass a test and maybe even to start out so we avoid a backlash there would be psychedelic clinics where
you would go have an experience under supervision and if you did it well uh meaning you didn't totally flip out you know then you would have the right to buy it on your own and I I think what we would do with um children I think drugs would be illegal for minors legal for adults but 23 states in the United States have a parental override for alcohol that if you want to give your kid alcohol in 23 States you can do that and I think that that's how we handle underage is that we leave it not that the government prohibits it all but that it's families decide among themselves how they want to handle it that's awesome I'm going to have one more question and I'm going to let you go uh Terrence McKenna's stoned ape theory is a fascinating proposal that human beings evolved from lower hominids because we got in contact with psychedelic mushrooms and his theory I don't know if it's correct but according to him and his brother his brother um if you just Google search the uh Dennis McKenna podcast I don't remember which number it is you can find it pretty easily with a quick search but he gave some really interesting scientific reasons for why he believes it's it's uh very possible that that's what happened the doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years all this attributed to psilocybin well Dennis was one of the speakers at the conference and so people could actually uh translate and transcribe his talk if they wanted beautiful beautiful but I I I think the the the the deeper question is can the the Apes that we are today evolve further with mushrooms and I think the answer to that is clear yes whether the Apes of several million years or 100 thousand years ago used mushrooms it's certainly plausible and hard to say one way or the other I am not in a position to say I believe it or not I think Terrence said some things that were pretty um exaggerated like this whole idea that the end of the Mind calendar was going to be the end of the world and or mass conscious just in a khole well he talked about a massive Consciousness shift and it would all be different and yeah well he talked about that we were going to reach a point of technological singularity he thought that we were going to reach a point of infinite novelty and that tracking it with his uh
time wave zero algorithm that he created he created this really sketchy thing when he was on mushrooms that was based on the iching that supposedly maap novelty or human Innovation that you could put it through a graph but I think when you get really [ __ ] high you can see patterns in almost anything yes and he had this this iching pattern that he had chased down for like 20 plus years and created a formal mathematical program yeah some uh mathematical experts actually engaged him in dialogue and yeah the Watson disagreement right yeah so I think if if you know Dennis McKenna just wrote a book Brothers at the screaming abyss and there's a good discussion about some of the um criticism and the value of time wave zero so I I I was um actually ter was the one that started helped start MDMA research because we were at a conference at esselin it was um in 1983 and it was already clear because of Dallas and stuff that MDMA was being used in public setting and that the Crackdown would come and so the underground therapists and the shans chemist you know so we had this meeting to to figure out what to do um and Terrence was like forget about MDMA it's from the lab it's got to be a plant you know mushrooms thousands of years plants are better you know we can trust them they're from nature and you know and and look at all these risks of MDMA and all this stuff and I was like well I don't see these risks and so um and I also don't believe that plants are drugs from plants are inherently better tools that that we're part of nature that what comes from the human mind is is out there so I said I'll put up $1,000 towards an MDMA study we'll see how risky it really is and then Dick Price who founded eln like 30 seconds 10 seconds later said I'll put up $1,000 and so it was in response to Terren going on about plant medicines being best and MDMA being super dangerous that we did this study and kept it quiet until the DEA moved to criminalize and then we surfaced with the study that's interesting well that's great yeah that's that's very funny I've always wanted to hear different people's take on that theory cuz I thought it was a fascinating Theory the idea that humans became us because of psychedelic and the best culprit is mushrooms cuz they're like sort of built in you don't
have to cook them you don't have to do anything weird you don't have to you know extract anything just chew away and boom Here Comes the Boom well I felt when I had my bar mitzvah when I was 13 that um it did not turn me into a man the coming of age that's a really unrealistic expectation too 13 [ __ ] I I mean I was the oldest of four that's what my parents told that's what I expected but they came up with that back back when people were only living to be 30 yeah so when I and I was disappointed I was the same I was really bmer I was like I remember being in bed for the whole week and I'm thinking a lot of people must have had their Bar Mitzvah that day and God must be slow and he'll come around to me eventually oh that's hilarious you know and then and finally nothing happened and I just was sad about it but when I took LSD for the first time I felt that it touched the parts of my psyche that I had hoped my bar mitzvah would touch wow LSD better than Bar Mitzvah that's your next meme you got two memes so far out of this show well thank you very much Rick this is a really awesome conversation I'm glad we could pull it off despite the gay pride parade in the Illuminati trying to hold it back we made it happen go to maps.org ladies and gentlemen and uh what is it Maps uh news on Twitter please follow that as well Facebook and Facebook and uh let's do this again sometime man I think we could have done that 3 hours if I wasn't so tired yeah well I uh maybe you should have tried modaal I got to work tomorrow I want to sleep uh thank you uh everybody for tuning into the podcast thanks to Ting for sponsoring us go to uh ran. thing.com and save yourself some cash on an awesome company thanks also to audible.com go to audible.com for/ Joe for your free audio book and 30 days free of audible service and thanks also to Legal Zoom if you use the code name Rogan in the referral box you could save some cash Legal Zoom is not a law firm but they provide self-help services at your specific Direction thanks also to on it.com that's o n niit t use the code name Rogan and save yourself some money uh we will be back someday this week I'm working crazy hours so I I I hardly know what day it is or what's up I'm it's I'm a mess lately but um we'll see you freaks in Vegas Joey Diaz and I are
playing uh in Vegas at the Joint uh in the Hard Rock this Friday night there's some tickets still available and uh it should be an awesome weekend cuz it's a UFC weekend so that's July 5th Friday night the joint in Hollywood all right we love you and we'll see you soon [Music] bye