Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the subjects that gets asked about often by our
Speaker 1: listeners is the plant, the drug called cratum or cradum,
Speaker 1: and so I thought we'd do an episode on that.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I don't know a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: about it, and so I was looking around for who
Speaker 1: to have on and one of the names that just
Speaker 1: pops up everywhere, whose name is on you know, probably
Speaker 1: half of all more of the articles you see being
Speaker 1: published in the academic literature about creatum is Kirsten Smith.
Speaker 1: And she's now a postdoctoral fellow at night at the
Speaker 1: National's Tute on Drug Abuse, and so I asked her
Speaker 1: to join us. So, you know, Kirsten, thanks very much
Speaker 1: for coming on Psychoactive. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to be here. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the issue of creatum or Cradham or what do we
Speaker 1: call it? What's your take on that. I go with
Speaker 1: the people. So so long as most people using it
Speaker 1: say creat um, I'm going to pronounce the creatum. And
Speaker 1: when we get us the change of people who call
Speaker 1: it crowdham, I'll switch to the camp but grudgingly. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: well I mean I'll tell you so, so I'll try
Speaker 1: with creatum, I may revert to Cradham. And actually I
Speaker 1: was having dinner a couple months ago in London with
Speaker 1: a few friends of mine. One is in Foredom who
Speaker 1: heads i d PC, the International Drug Policy Consortium, and
Speaker 1: who's half Taie, and she said, Ethan, forget creatum, credum,
Speaker 1: it's creaton. That's what people call it in Thailand. Um,
Speaker 1: So let me just start by saying, obviously, this is
Speaker 1: another one of these plants, you know, like coca, like
Speaker 1: cot right, that is growing that has been growing outside
Speaker 1: the United States, in this case in um Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Right for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia. I think Miamar, Papua New
Speaker 1: Guinea um that's been indigenous there. And what can you
Speaker 1: tell us, I mean, is this something that goes back
Speaker 1: thousands of years or just a hundred or two hundred years?
Speaker 1: Thought us in on that. Yeah, it's a really unteresting
Speaker 1: story because when create I'm appeared in the United States,
Speaker 1: people are like, oh, this is a novel substance, and
Speaker 1: you know, to the United States it's new. You know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like anocentric and relatively speaking, it's not
Speaker 1: new um in other place. So you're correct, m Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia is where it's indigenous too. We do know that
Speaker 1: at least in the early nine hundreds there were some
Speaker 1: you know, case reports of creative use by Westerners of
Speaker 1: people you know, indigenous to those regions that you described
Speaker 1: using it in chewing the leaves primarily, or as a
Speaker 1: tea or beverage. So we can say for sure it's
Speaker 1: been documented for a hundred years, but as far as
Speaker 1: how it's been traditionally used, it's you know, not just
Speaker 1: similar to many other botanicals that are you know, are
Speaker 1: indigenous to to regions. So hayin Kelly and effects, trying
Speaker 1: to reduce fevers, but also and this has been well
Speaker 1: documented as well, being used as kind of a stimulant
Speaker 1: for people who are doing pretty harsh labor out in
Speaker 1: fields and oftentimes in that since it's chewed, but you know,
Speaker 1: it can be prepared with fresh leaves in in juice
Speaker 1: or tea. So the reasons for use are kind of
Speaker 1: like any psycho active substance or botanical in that people
Speaker 1: are using it in those areas to self treat medical
Speaker 1: symptoms UM and substance use UH disorders, So people who
Speaker 1: have been addicted to heroin, methaphetamine, an alcohol. Those are
Speaker 1: the three we've seen most often in um Asia, where
Speaker 1: creative has been used to basically substitute those harsher drugs
Speaker 1: in the region there. If you're looking at who's using
Speaker 1: it there in Southeast Asia, is it like working class people?
Speaker 1: Is a college students? Is a young people? Is it
Speaker 1: the elderly? I can speak to the fact that it
Speaker 1: is used far more often by males than females, and
Speaker 1: that the average age of uth initiation is typically older
Speaker 1: than other substances like nicotine or alcohol or heroin or methophetamine,
Speaker 1: and it seems to be that a lot more people
Speaker 1: in rural areas are using it. But as far as
Speaker 1: any sort of a no demographic breakdown, I can't speak
Speaker 1: the right. And so now we look at the creater
Speaker 1: that's being sold in the US. Is that basically being
Speaker 1: imported from these countries in Southeast Asia primarily? Yes, So
Speaker 1: that's the short answer most people, and this has been
Speaker 1: born out in the majority of the survey data. Most
Speaker 1: creative coming in the United States is from larger vendors
Speaker 1: that have changed over time. We have some entities that
Speaker 1: are are larger than others, a lot of mid level players.
Speaker 1: So people who I would say, you know, they do
Speaker 1: almost exclusively online sales. They get it from their connection
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia and then they package it and promote
Speaker 1: it and sell it here in the United States, either
Speaker 1: direct to consumer sales on the internet or through wholesale
Speaker 1: into shops that are then retail shops at gas stations,
Speaker 1: head shops, tobacco smoke shops, babe stores, and I expect
Speaker 1: to see it in other types of stores as well
Speaker 1: in the future. Well, I'm christ I have to tell
Speaker 1: you so in anticipation of your being on Psychoactive what
Speaker 1: I did right before the show was I walked around
Speaker 1: the corner where a new Creatum CBD shot just opened
Speaker 1: on like seventy one and Amsterdam, just a five minute
Speaker 1: walk from my apartment, and I bought some capsules and
Speaker 1: a chocolate bar and a tea. And so while we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation, UM drinking some Creatum tea. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna see if it has any effect on me by
Speaker 1: the end of the show. But uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to say it doesn't taste that good. Um. It's dank,
Speaker 1: but not in a good way like dank, because usual
Speaker 1: I usually said that stank in a good way. This
Speaker 1: is dank in a not as palatable way. It is
Speaker 1: very pungent, is how I like to describe. If you
Speaker 1: break those capsules open and smell the raw flat matter,
Speaker 1: it's um kind of funky. Yeah. And I purposely didn't
Speaker 1: buy the straight out powder because I figured with a
Speaker 1: capsule you can barely taste it. Here we don't have
Speaker 1: fresh leaves, so any tea is going to be with
Speaker 1: dry leaves, or it's going to be already packaged in
Speaker 1: some kind of energy shot looking extract or juice like thing.
Speaker 1: But over there they can actually brew the fresh leaves.
Speaker 1: We don't have people growing creatum trees in the United
Speaker 1: States in their backyard. In mass I've heard some anecdotes
Speaker 1: of a few people trying to grow creatum trees, and
Speaker 1: even if they do, it doesn't mean that they're going
Speaker 1: to get ones that have leaves that are matragen in
Speaker 1: varying um at first, which I should say that's the
Speaker 1: alkaloid that has a lot of the non psychoactive activity.
Speaker 1: But as far as the importing itself, I mean, by
Speaker 1: the time it gets the United States, who knows what's
Speaker 1: going on because we have all of these different vendors,
Speaker 1: and then they're going to be handling it in the
Speaker 1: ways that get to consumers differentially. So we have some
Speaker 1: vendors who might be trying to just take one or
Speaker 1: two alkaloids and put it into an extract or. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: you'll see if you go online, especially are are the
Speaker 1: packets of pulverized plant matter or capsules that have the
Speaker 1: plant matter. And I think part of this is a
Speaker 1: function of just how Americans probably want to consume there
Speaker 1: their creatum. That's not to say people don't consume it
Speaker 1: by brewing tea. I knew I've seen people drink creatum tea.
Speaker 1: There are there are bars that are selling freshly made tea,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of other people just want
Speaker 1: to have the convenience of some kind of powder or
Speaker 1: capsule or something like that. Let me ask you a
Speaker 1: few questions about that. So, so, for you've mentioned matragine,
Speaker 1: I think that's the pronunciation um a number of times, right,
Speaker 1: And it sounds to me that like there's dozens of
Speaker 1: alkaloids in creatum, that matragy is the key one. And
Speaker 1: the way I imagine it is like, you know, matragy
Speaker 1: is to create a more or less what th HC
Speaker 1: is to cannabis or nicotine is to tobacco. Um in
Speaker 1: the sense that it's the dominant variable in this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's the principal cycleactive one. But that there are these
Speaker 1: other alk lloyds that you know, color the picture a bit.
Speaker 1: Is that accurate? Um? Or would you change what I said?
Speaker 1: We don't know yet, right, So it seems like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's this leave the percentage of alkaloid content. More of
Speaker 1: it is metrogany, right, But that doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: it's doing all the heavy lifting. So seven hydroxy um
Speaker 1: matrogyny is also it's a very small amount that is
Speaker 1: in leaves, and it's a metabolite of metrogany, but it
Speaker 1: does heavy lifting, right, So just because there's more of
Speaker 1: something doesn't necessarily mean it is the dominant thing. I
Speaker 1: like to use the kind of metaphor that Christopher Curty,
Speaker 1: my colleague at Florida, has said in some of his talks,
Speaker 1: which I think is very succinct and and elegant, which
Speaker 1: is to say that this leave is kind of like
Speaker 1: a symphony. Right, So we have the symphony with all
Speaker 1: these different instruments playing different notes. We know from the
Speaker 1: pre clinical and when I say that, I just mean
Speaker 1: the animal on human animal work. How some of these
Speaker 1: act in isolation, so that doesn't translate to a lot
Speaker 1: of human use because most people are taking things that
Speaker 1: probably have more than one alkaloid. That's changing a bit,
Speaker 1: but at least in the short time it's been in
Speaker 1: the US, people have been taking more diversified products than
Speaker 1: more isolated products in terms of the alkaloid content. So
Speaker 1: we don't know. For instance, maybe if we only take
Speaker 1: metrogenin and you know, give some purified form to humans,
Speaker 1: how that is going to produce an effect when in
Speaker 1: reality it's always been mixed with something, right, And if
Speaker 1: we want to understand these alkaloids, it's important to look
Speaker 1: at them in isolation, but also to look at them
Speaker 1: in combination, and we really don't have clearly. With human studies,
Speaker 1: we don't have any of that. But with the animals,
Speaker 1: we we do see that matrogeny has very specific effects
Speaker 1: at certain doses in certain species in certain routes of administration.
Speaker 1: But we know that there's four alkaloids that act as
Speaker 1: seevenly partial agonists AMU opioid receptors. However, there are at
Speaker 1: least two of these alkaloids plus several others acted delta
Speaker 1: kappa opioid receptors as well as mut opriod receptors as
Speaker 1: well as serotonin and dopamine and allergic So there is
Speaker 1: a lot going on with this leave And to Chris's metaphor,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know the note or the tenor,
Speaker 1: or the tune or the tempo of all of these
Speaker 1: different instruments yet um let alone how they work in concert.
Speaker 1: And I think that that that's where we we have
Speaker 1: a lot of work to do right now. That what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that affair been about what we know
Speaker 1: or think we know is actually coming from surveys. And
Speaker 1: then I saw, you know, there's that website errol wod
Speaker 1: e r O w I D, which is a spectacular
Speaker 1: website for people sharing information about, you know, their experience
Speaker 1: of various psychoactive substances. So it seems like there's a
Speaker 1: growing amount of survey stuff out there. Can you sum
Speaker 1: up the state of knowledge or aareness from these surveys
Speaker 1: to date or in terms of the surveys you're working on,
Speaker 1: is there stuff that you can share? Ye? You're correct,
Speaker 1: We've gathered data that suggests okay, yes, there's a self
Speaker 1: treatment narrative. People are absolutely using to decrease their anxiety,
Speaker 1: to decrease their depression symptoms, either in combination with medically
Speaker 1: prescribed drugs or because they don't want to take certain
Speaker 1: prescribed drugs because they couldn't tolerate them. And um also
Speaker 1: because they tried pupen orphe and tried methodone or tried
Speaker 1: to get all the alcohol, tried to stop using many
Speaker 1: different drugs and they fell in creative and it seemed
Speaker 1: to be what was a a bridge out of a
Speaker 1: relationship with drugs that they didn't like, and that it
Speaker 1: for many people was very effective and for other people
Speaker 1: it was not as effective. And clearly we don't have
Speaker 1: controlled studies, but I do think it's important to listen
Speaker 1: to what people are saying, and so one of the
Speaker 1: things we did after I came tonight to is just
Speaker 1: look at Reddit data and what people are talking about
Speaker 1: in these creatum subreddits. I have to say it was
Speaker 1: really refreshing to read it after having only looked at
Speaker 1: survey data that was being published, or only looking at
Speaker 1: case reports, which I have to say, the case reports
Speaker 1: are very valuable, and if you do a search for
Speaker 1: case reports related to creat Um, you need to really
Speaker 1: be cautious and how you read those case reports because
Speaker 1: they are often written by people who don't know anything
Speaker 1: about creat Um. So I will save you that diet
Speaker 1: tribe other than to say that the case reports have
Speaker 1: been a great source of information, but they're also a
Speaker 1: very narrow, narrow viewpoint and incomplete pictures. So after digging
Speaker 1: around in case reports and the survey data, reading what
Speaker 1: people actually have to say reminded me of like, you
Speaker 1: know what, why do I even care about this, which
Speaker 1: is that people are really trying to have a relationship
Speaker 1: with the substance that improves their life. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the tape take away in a very
Speaker 1: crude forum, and you know it informed quite frankly, the
Speaker 1: Reddit findings informed how I wrote some of the questions
Speaker 1: for this survey that we did shortly thereafter, which we're
Speaker 1: in the process of getting out into papers. Right now.
Speaker 1: You've said that you yourself have not been much of
Speaker 1: a creatim consumer, but you've been open about the fact,
Speaker 1: and this makes you a little bit unusual at NIDA
Speaker 1: and in the research world. My understanding is that you
Speaker 1: yourself went through a period when you were younger of
Speaker 1: you know, being in trouble and maybe doing dependent upon
Speaker 1: heroin and and what have you. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could just share your story there, I mean, how did
Speaker 1: that come about? And how long were you involved in
Speaker 1: a problematic relationship with heroin or other legal drugs, and
Speaker 1: how did you get out of it? You know, it's
Speaker 1: something I didn't talk about a lot when I was younger.
Speaker 1: It's it's very inelegant how I refer to myself because
Speaker 1: I'm just like, well, I'm a person who used to
Speaker 1: inject heroin every day and was addicted to it. But
Speaker 1: I don't do the Twall stuff stuff, though I've I've
Speaker 1: tried that. I grew up in a fairly averagely dysfunctional,
Speaker 1: eccentric house. I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, and so it was
Speaker 1: just a normal college town. And you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any trauma as a child beyond normal American trauma.
Speaker 1: And just I was a very entitled, kind of lower
Speaker 1: middle class, suburban white kid, and I was very curious.
Speaker 1: And even when I was really young, I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to inject heroin because I saw it in pulp
Speaker 1: fiction and it looked really, really, really fun, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna do that one day. And in Knoxville,
Speaker 1: it's not like the heroine capital of the world. It
Speaker 1: never has been. So Knoxville, though it's technically in Central Appalachia,
Speaker 1: it's still very much a college, suburban I kind of town.
Speaker 1: And so it's like cannabis, cocaine, pills, psychedelics, alcohol. So
Speaker 1: I did the cannabis, you know, tried cocaine, tried psychedelics,
Speaker 1: of course, alcohol, things like that, and then prescription of
Speaker 1: opoids right, So it was morphine. I was sixteen years
Speaker 1: old and someone injected me with morphine. And then when
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, that's when oxycotton made its real debut,
Speaker 1: and oxycotton became much more widely available, and so that
Speaker 1: came first, and then heroin came after. It started off
Speaker 1: social and recreational and all of this stuff. I was
Speaker 1: a server full time, went to school at community college,
Speaker 1: but like just wasn't excelling, you know, I was just
Speaker 1: I wasn't on the street. I was, I guess by
Speaker 1: some standards, I was a highly functioning addicted person. By
Speaker 1: other standards, I was not meeting the expectations of someone
Speaker 1: with my upbringing and you know, socio economic status. And
Speaker 1: I was forced into rehab when I was nineteen. I
Speaker 1: absolutely didn't want to go and that was a twenty
Speaker 1: day and patient and then after that I just continued
Speaker 1: about my business and just you know, hit it from
Speaker 1: my family better. So I guess aged twenty two twenty
Speaker 1: three is when my boyfriend at the time and I
Speaker 1: were We still had jobs, but we were absolutely ready
Speaker 1: to stop. And I told my family I want to
Speaker 1: go to treatment again, and of course my steffdad caused
Speaker 1: his insurance company, and oh no, you know this is
Speaker 1: before the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act. Because you have
Speaker 1: already been jury have one time, you don't get to
Speaker 1: go again. So I detox at my parents house and
Speaker 1: they kind of like guarded me. And then after I
Speaker 1: left and I went back to my apartment, everything went
Speaker 1: back to how it was, and I couldn't get into
Speaker 1: a residential program, which is what I really needed and wanted,
Speaker 1: and so we kept using and then we I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not a secret, I'll just go ahead and
Speaker 1: say it. We robbed two banks and went to federal prison,
Speaker 1: and that is how I got sober. I got prison
Speaker 1: instead of buprenorphine. And that's how it ended for me,
Speaker 1: or how it changed, I should say. I will say that.
Speaker 1: You know, even now and I've done work, associate programs
Speaker 1: are available to incarcerated people. The lack of treatment, humane
Speaker 1: treatment that is informed, you know, informed consent and treatment
Speaker 1: options is still utterly appalling and almost borders on a
Speaker 1: human rights abuse issue. And I'm not saying we shouldn't
Speaker 1: have consequences for people who do illegal things that are
Speaker 1: a menace to society, right like I robbed it, but
Speaker 1: It's not like I was innocent, so I needed some
Speaker 1: sort of intervention or punishment, call it what you will.
Speaker 1: But the degree to which the facilities that people are
Speaker 1: aware housed in lack actual programs to help them is
Speaker 1: really amazing. It's just amazing. So I would say that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am extremely fortunate. But I also did not go
Speaker 1: to like summer camp either. It was really not a
Speaker 1: treatment oriented place to say the least. So I mean,
Speaker 1: would you say that your past experience with drugs and
Speaker 1: incarceration impacted who you are as a researcher and the
Speaker 1: work you're doing today. The answer to that is yes,
Speaker 1: to know. So, on the one hand, I am very
Speaker 1: much a um hard scientists, and you know, we need
Speaker 1: objective measures, we need validated instruments, we need validity of
Speaker 1: every kind, insert anything, and I'm pretty much on board.
Speaker 1: That said, I think because of my past and also
Speaker 1: because of my training and social science and social work,
Speaker 1: I am oriented also too, and more open and receptive
Speaker 1: to the fact that we need these objective measures, we
Speaker 1: need basic science, we need all of this very hard science. However,
Speaker 1: if you don't talk to a person who uses drugs,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, a psychoactive planet creative or cocaine
Speaker 1: or heroine or anything. You really are missing the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: and you're missing a big part of what will help
Speaker 1: you inform all of those validated instruments and the types
Speaker 1: of research questions you ask, the types of trials you do.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even be here had it not been for
Speaker 1: an acting with people in the real world. You use drugs, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's you need both. And I think that
Speaker 1: pre clinical scientists and even clinical researchers would do well
Speaker 1: to have conversations with people and qualitative work. The study
Speaker 1: that we're going to be doing is very rigorous. It
Speaker 1: has many objective measures. But if you don't have subjective
Speaker 1: measures as an outcome variable or as part of the
Speaker 1: data collection process, then you have an incomplete picture. And
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna be doing qualitative work as well,
Speaker 1: in addition to as saying creative products. So you need everything,
Speaker 1: and if you think you don't, then you're misguided. I
Speaker 1: hate to say, well, you know, because I think I
Speaker 1: first heard about you. I had just been a guest
Speaker 1: a few months back on a podcast that's done hosted
Speaker 1: by Creative Science, an organization is very committed to trying
Speaker 1: to put out accurate information about this, and the podcast
Speaker 1: host had recommended you is a good guest for Psychoactive.
Speaker 1: But when he then sent me a list of the
Speaker 1: survey they had done, and you know, just scrolling through
Speaker 1: the reports and seeing some of the other stuff of
Speaker 1: these sorties, you see people you know ofttimes writing back
Speaker 1: with these remarkable you know, how it helped them get
Speaker 1: off you put a heroin be habit behind them, or
Speaker 1: helped them when they relapse to sort of cut that
Speaker 1: relapse off and get better, or it helped with withdrawal,
Speaker 1: or it helped him dealing with a very serious pain
Speaker 1: condition where other opioids or other sorts of things weren't working,
Speaker 1: or maybe sometimes anxiety or depression. Let's Betty over Well mean,
Speaker 1: when you hear people describe how transformative this has been
Speaker 1: and how helpful it's been, now you also find people
Speaker 1: saying this is boring and it did absolutely nothing for me,
Speaker 1: and I'm utterly unimpressed. And that's fine. But for those
Speaker 1: that it has been helpful for during the time when
Speaker 1: we have very poor treatment options for people, and um
Speaker 1: a lot of people are very unsatisfied with the treatment
Speaker 1: options and there's a lot of stigma of course, and
Speaker 1: getting treatment for substance use disorder or chronic pain, even
Speaker 1: as highly undertreated and under diagnosed. So you have people
Speaker 1: who are sometimes desperate and they find Creatum and it
Speaker 1: seems to be what they've been looking for. And it's
Speaker 1: so true to just many substances, which is that you
Speaker 1: know something can be beneficial but also have some side effects.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the people who you know, we
Speaker 1: read the accounts of they seem to say, Okay, I
Speaker 1: take this every day. It's part of my life, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to take it, and I
Speaker 1: know that if I don't stop taking it, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: not feel great. I'm probably gonna have some withdraw symptoms.
Speaker 1: But by and large, the withdraw symptoms from Creatum seem
Speaker 1: to be well, no, they don't seem to be They're
Speaker 1: mild to moderate. So I would say that there are
Speaker 1: estimates of how many people are using Creatum or have
Speaker 1: used Creatum or daily regular users. I don't think we
Speaker 1: really know, but we do know that the sales in
Speaker 1: the industry is growing rapidly. If that's an indication, We'll
Speaker 1: be talking more after we hear this ad So, Kirsten,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing among the people are sort of
Speaker 1: casually using um creative now buying in the shops, using
Speaker 1: it like CBD or coffee or whatever, and the people
Speaker 1: are using it to deal with chronic pain, um or
Speaker 1: or with addiction. Are there major differences are are there?
Speaker 1: Are the latter group taking it at much higher doses
Speaker 1: or with greater frequency? Or how much variability is is
Speaker 1: there in that? So one key point to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is that many, I would say nearly all people
Speaker 1: that are using Creative are reporting, at least that we've
Speaker 1: looked at understable reporting more than one used motivation. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of overlap between having a drug
Speaker 1: addiction or having a prescription of dependence and then chronic
Speaker 1: pain and then depression anxiety. So when people are given
Speaker 1: a list of you know, to check off all of
Speaker 1: the motivations for use, they're checking off many, many motivations.
Speaker 1: And so we can't cleanly separate people of like only
Speaker 1: for this, only for that, because usually it's they're using
Speaker 1: it for multiple reasons. So that said, what I can
Speaker 1: say is that on average, people who regularly use are
Speaker 1: using two to four times a day, So let's say
Speaker 1: three times a day. They're dosing three times a day
Speaker 1: on average, and the amount um it varies, of course,
Speaker 1: because you can measure in cups of tea, com measure
Speaker 1: in grahams or spoonfuls or table spoons um. But the
Speaker 1: ranges aren't super wide, and we've looked at you know,
Speaker 1: higher doses and lower doses that can achieve effects, and
Speaker 1: doses that are too much, and dose doses that are
Speaker 1: ineffectual and things like that, and the range is not dramatic.
Speaker 1: But typically people who use regularly are using to you
Speaker 1: to three times a day, sometimes four times a day daily,
Speaker 1: and how they're taking it, it depends on the person.
Speaker 1: But the route of administration is always oral. You cannot
Speaker 1: inject creatum, you can't stort it, so it's always gonna
Speaker 1: be an oral route of administration. But we do have
Speaker 1: people who report using your thirteen times a day, and
Speaker 1: you have people reporting using like clockwork only three days
Speaker 1: a week, only before work because they have to stand
Speaker 1: on their feet at work all day. So it depends
Speaker 1: kind of on the person's situation. But I would say
Speaker 1: that the recreational users there's a lot more variability, and
Speaker 1: you know, you know, in frequency of use versus the
Speaker 1: people who are using as a self treatment, that's going
Speaker 1: to be more like regimented. And as of right now,
Speaker 1: create and withdraw symptoms tend to be very similar to
Speaker 1: opod with draw symptoms. That said, many withdraw symptoms are
Speaker 1: going to be very similar across drugs, right, So if
Speaker 1: you're if you're withdrawing from benzos or alcohol or cocaine
Speaker 1: or I mean, you're going to feel irritable, right like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what shruck it is, You're gonna be
Speaker 1: a little irritable. But other symptoms are more characteristics of
Speaker 1: opioid withdraw. But again, it depends on the symptom, it
Speaker 1: depends on the dose. So we do have a very
Speaker 1: crude signal of dose dependent withdraw effects. Meaning if you're
Speaker 1: taking higher doses more often over a longer period of time,
Speaker 1: then chances are you're going to experience more intense withdrawal symptoms.
Speaker 1: And then if you're taking less creative intermittently for a
Speaker 1: shorter period of time, that's that's the signal we have. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, how are you feeling. How's that creative
Speaker 1: treating you? You know, I just took another sip. You
Speaker 1: may have heard the ice cube there. I'm not enjoying
Speaker 1: the taste of it, I'll tell you that. And I
Speaker 1: don't know that I'm feeling any effect from it as yet.
Speaker 1: But then again, I'm very focused on our conversation, so
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens after. Yeah. Well, if I were
Speaker 1: to sum up what I'm what I'm hearing from you,
Speaker 1: and also I've been reading it, sounds like there's maybe
Speaker 1: what I'm crudely, one could break it into two camps.
Speaker 1: And there's people dealing with really serious issues around paying addiction, depression,
Speaker 1: and those who are dealing with lower levels of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe anxiety or or you know, energy focus, what have you.
Speaker 1: And that maybe the market for the latter group is
Speaker 1: big and growing big or very rapidly because of the
Speaker 1: rapid expansion of you know, Creatum's reputation and these stores,
Speaker 1: and that within all of that, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: if there's that spectrum of use, people are reporting a
Speaker 1: lot of positive stuff and at the same time people
Speaker 1: are talking about having sometimes negative consequences, right, having a
Speaker 1: hard time stopping using it. Oh, maybe not so hard
Speaker 1: at stopping opioids. People feeling nauseous, people getting sick, people
Speaker 1: you know, having other sorts of weird physical reactions that
Speaker 1: may or may not be connected to the creatum they
Speaker 1: were using. It might be connected to other drugs they
Speaker 1: were using, or some other health condition. Um. But that
Speaker 1: it's a very complicated sort of portrait of what's going
Speaker 1: on out there with only a small amount of information,
Speaker 1: where a lot of what's emerging is suggesting really interesting
Speaker 1: and promising potential and possibilities, um in terms of self
Speaker 1: treatment for depression, addiction, what have you. Uh, And that
Speaker 1: those appear to be greater than the negative side if
Speaker 1: you look at this more from a large a large
Speaker 1: you know, large lens. Yes, no, Yeah, did I do
Speaker 1: it justice? You know? I believe we should listen to
Speaker 1: people take what they say mostly on faith unless we
Speaker 1: have some reason not to, and believe, you know. And
Speaker 1: I would say that a lot of drug research and
Speaker 1: ad dictionary research, the validity of self report is actually
Speaker 1: quite good, you know. And we should keep in mind
Speaker 1: that these large online surveys are self selected. To so
Speaker 1: to sit down and take an hour, hour and a
Speaker 1: half long online survey that is unpaid, you have to
Speaker 1: either have a really favorable attitude or really unfavorable attitude
Speaker 1: to want to do that, and so um and and
Speaker 1: the fact that what we've seen from the large on
Speaker 1: line surveys tends towards the more positive beneficial effects from
Speaker 1: Creative as opposed to you know, adverse effects. Then people
Speaker 1: might say, and I've said, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: be cautious with you know, how much you know, you
Speaker 1: know what we really think we knew about this given
Speaker 1: that we have we have a possible self selection biased
Speaker 1: So one thing that we did with our small recontact survey,
Speaker 1: and I'll say the sample size is small, but we
Speaker 1: identified people who had ever used Creative in their lifetime
Speaker 1: on a completely unrelated survey, and we recontacted a portion
Speaker 1: of them. And you know, we had a small window
Speaker 1: of time to do this, and we asked a very
Speaker 1: comprehensive and they were compensated for their time. But they
Speaker 1: were not all current regular Creative users, meaning that we
Speaker 1: had people who would use Creative and quit. We had
Speaker 1: people who had may be used a few times. We
Speaker 1: had people who were regular users and still were regular users.
Speaker 1: And so we had a smaller but a much more
Speaker 1: diverse sample. And with those data, what we've seen it
Speaker 1: kind of maps onto what you've said, and we saw
Speaker 1: what al Garcia Romeyo found in his larger online survey,
Speaker 1: which were really low rates of meeting diagnostic criteria threshold
Speaker 1: for a creative use disorder, and that we found a
Speaker 1: larger proportion than he did, but it was still not
Speaker 1: a majority, and it was mostly mild and moderate. Now
Speaker 1: that's all fine and well, but the real meat of
Speaker 1: it is when you look at specific symptoms that clinicians
Speaker 1: used to diagnose a substance use disorder, and if anyone
Speaker 1: wants to go online and look these up, I think
Speaker 1: it is helpful because you see that there's many different
Speaker 1: facets that are used in coming into this diagnosis. And
Speaker 1: I was not surprised to see that looking at individual symptoms,
Speaker 1: pollerance and withdraw symptoms were well represented and they were
Speaker 1: the most widely endorsed. However, impairments and psychosocial functioning were
Speaker 1: not prevalent. When they're not the majority of people, right
Speaker 1: and for and who is a trained clinician, that is
Speaker 1: significant to me because when I think about helping people
Speaker 1: or what we need to do um to get, you know,
Speaker 1: to intervene if a person's relationship with drugs becomes problematic.
Speaker 1: It's that psychosocial impairment that is is kind of key,
Speaker 1: like are they are they putting their kids in the
Speaker 1: closet and neglecting to go to work and you know,
Speaker 1: pawnying their grandmother's TV to go get creatium. And that's
Speaker 1: not what we're seeing here. So it's a different animal
Speaker 1: than some other drugs, especially given that a majority of
Speaker 1: the sample had at one point used creat um regularly,
Speaker 1: meaning it's not like the everyone had just tried it once.
Speaker 1: The other way we assessed this was by asking people, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've established that you get acute effects from your dose,
Speaker 1: you know most of the time. We asked all these
Speaker 1: questions about effect and duration of effects. And because one
Speaker 1: thing David Epstein, my mentor, wanted to know is does
Speaker 1: create um for people who take it regularly enough? Does
Speaker 1: it act like an antidepressant over time where you can
Speaker 1: take it every day and not feel a psychoactive effect
Speaker 1: or do you achieve a psychoactive effect every time? And
Speaker 1: I told him it was definitely the latter, and he
Speaker 1: was like, all right, let's find out, and and it
Speaker 1: was most people felt in acute effect of their use
Speaker 1: of their dose when they took it, even if they
Speaker 1: had been dosing for a long period of time. And
Speaker 1: we asked them, okay, so you feel an effect, you're
Speaker 1: you're taking this regularly. Are these effects helpful in meeting
Speaker 1: your daily obligations? And are they in keeping with your
Speaker 1: meeting your daily obligations? Are they hindrance all? You know?
Speaker 1: We asked. They had many response options and the two
Speaker 1: most you know, highly endorsed options, where yes, creative is
Speaker 1: both helpful to meeting my daily effects and it's in
Speaker 1: keeping with my daily obligations. Right, it's not impairing my
Speaker 1: daily obligations or my ability to meet them. And for
Speaker 1: those people who said that it was helpful in meeting
Speaker 1: their daily obligations, that's like a cup of coffee, right,
Speaker 1: Like when I drink my coffee in the morning, it
Speaker 1: is like me, I'm taking a psychoactive draw. It's not
Speaker 1: only you know, not impairing my daily obligations. It's helping
Speaker 1: me meet my my roles and responsibilities because I do
Speaker 1: better work when I've had my coffee. The second, almost
Speaker 1: equally endorsed option was, you know, it doesn't help me
Speaker 1: meet my daily obligations, but it is in keeping with them, right,
Speaker 1: it's not impairing them in any way. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's more like a glass of wine. So like when
Speaker 1: I drink my glass of wine at night, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not hurting my ability to function and fulfill my
Speaker 1: daily roles and obligations. But I'm also not saying that
Speaker 1: it's you know, helping me fulfill them either. It's just
Speaker 1: the thing I do that I am wind with. Creating
Speaker 1: is very complex pharmacologically, So I'm not trying to say
Speaker 1: we should consider create them to be like a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee or like a glass of wine. But as
Speaker 1: far as drugs, set and stuttying and how people use
Speaker 1: drugs and all of these you know or psychoactive substances,
Speaker 1: we are seeing at least a signal and again more
Speaker 1: work absolutely must be done, but we are seeing a
Speaker 1: signal based on self report that this is more of
Speaker 1: a substance or a product that is in keeping with
Speaker 1: people's daily lives than a hindrance to it. Again, on
Speaker 1: the whole let me jump here into the politics of
Speaker 1: this thing, because I don't know if I told you this,
Speaker 1: but you know, I had barely been paying attention to
Speaker 1: create them while I was running Drug Policy Alliance. And
Speaker 1: then something happened in sixteen, which was the d e
Speaker 1: A announced that there were these problems with Creatum and
Speaker 1: that they wanted to zap it into Schedule one and
Speaker 1: do it quite precipitously. The fact of the d e
Speaker 1: A just kind of abusing its legal administrative powers to
Speaker 1: basically prohibit something that was probably used was offensive to
Speaker 1: our core principles. So we put out an alert to
Speaker 1: our two or fifty thousand email members the way we
Speaker 1: some do around marijuana legislation or opioid issues or you
Speaker 1: know your name, of the whole range of things that
Speaker 1: DPA was dealing with, and I and my colleagues were stunned,
Speaker 1: cursedon I mean, we got a response like we we thought,
Speaker 1: like people would barely notice this, who's paying attention on
Speaker 1: our lists to creative. In fact, we got more responses
Speaker 1: to that email blast than almost any other email blast
Speaker 1: we had ever done, maybe one or two marijuana one
Speaker 1: one on the Rave Act and m d m A
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. I mean, huge numbers coming in and
Speaker 1: people outraged about the d e A and people reporting
Speaker 1: their personal stories about hey, you know, I'd still be
Speaker 1: I'd be I'd be dead from fenital now i'd be addicted.
Speaker 1: But but you know, the creative saved my life where
Speaker 1: I was dealing with this or pain, or my doctor
Speaker 1: wanted me on you know, oxy content, but this stuff
Speaker 1: work better, I mean, one after another after another. And
Speaker 1: so with that result in it is, you know, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm in connection with the American Creative
Speaker 1: Association and interacting with them, and we're reaching out to
Speaker 1: legislators and sending out other alerts. And you know, my
Speaker 1: understanding is that when the DA tried to do that,
Speaker 1: what happened was they failed, right that I think fifty
Speaker 1: thousand or more people wrote to uh D e A,
Speaker 1: and members of Congress stepped up and said cut this out,
Speaker 1: and leading researchers said this makes no sense, and so
Speaker 1: they backed off. And then the next thing I see
Speaker 1: is it looks like the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration,
Speaker 1: now seems to be on some campaign to try to
Speaker 1: put it in Schedule one or ban it. And and
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to understand why. I mean, they're putting
Speaker 1: out these reports claiming that there were forty creatum related deaths.
Speaker 1: But when you sift through the data, it appears that
Speaker 1: not a single one or maybe one or two involved
Speaker 1: create them alone and almost no strong evidence about calls
Speaker 1: of relationship and using creatum and dying. So you see
Speaker 1: this bullshit coming out of you know, the the organizations
Speaker 1: like d e A and f d A, And what
Speaker 1: I'm trying understand is that just same old drug war,
Speaker 1: redux drug war, you know, bullshit. What exactly is going
Speaker 1: on and what insight can you provide into this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff, especially now that you're working for the nationally
Speaker 1: sort of drug abuse and you're part of the bigger
Speaker 1: drug control establishment. Oh man, I never thought that someone
Speaker 1: say I'm part of the big drug control establishment. I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to get a T shirt made. Um,
Speaker 1: that is hilarious. So, although I do try to stay
Speaker 1: on top of policy and what's going on with creative
Speaker 1: in different states, you know, I don't get involved with
Speaker 1: that because it's not really my job and there are
Speaker 1: better people equipped to do it anyway. So I am
Speaker 1: low low, low low on the totem pole of of
Speaker 1: the hierarchy, of the of NIDA, of of the federal government.
Speaker 1: So d cannot make or should not at least historically,
Speaker 1: I should say, it has not been the case that
Speaker 1: d A does something hasty like schedule a substance that
Speaker 1: is a new substance without sufficient scientific evidence, right, And
Speaker 1: what don't say that again? You're saying d e A
Speaker 1: does not typically do that, has no real history of
Speaker 1: doing that, is not supposed to do that. No, No,
Speaker 1: we know what we know is not supposed to But
Speaker 1: if you look at their history, it seems to me
Speaker 1: one that's oftentimes been fundamentally anti scientific. And I think
Speaker 1: they're they're getting their act together a little bit better
Speaker 1: these days now the cannabis is being legalized in psychelics,
Speaker 1: is getting so much positive press around the research. But
Speaker 1: I mean, I just saw them as essentially a Neanderthal
Speaker 1: agency when it came to some of these policy issues
Speaker 1: and a whole range of things they were dealing with.
Speaker 1: But I'm very concerned about that. I looked at I
Speaker 1: think I think it was in the night A website,
Speaker 1: the fact page about create um. You know, it did
Speaker 1: not seem to reflect the kind of broad survey data
Speaker 1: and was more broadly known. It seemed to be, you know,
Speaker 1: as they did with marijuana, all about the negative negative, negative,
Speaker 1: negative negative without talking about any of the positive things
Speaker 1: that people are reporting. So, you know, I've seen this
Speaker 1: kind of drug war mentality permeating not just the law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies but also sometimes f d A, sometimes night
Speaker 1: to um, you know, and I you know, with cretum,
Speaker 1: where it's got this interesting potential to really be helping
Speaker 1: people struggling with addiction, struggling with pain, struggling with depression,
Speaker 1: it seems like there was a kind of knee jerk
Speaker 1: impulse to do you know, the opposite. My takeaway from
Speaker 1: talking with you, Kirsten, and also with the reading I've
Speaker 1: been doing an anticipation of talking with you is that
Speaker 1: you know, this country and maybe the world more broadly,
Speaker 1: would be better off if creatum does not get banned,
Speaker 1: and if the FDA begins to effectively regulate it the
Speaker 1: way it does sort of food supplements or other sorts
Speaker 1: of things, so that way they can keep track of
Speaker 1: adulterated products, you know, they can recall things, they can
Speaker 1: put out notices, they can ban certain things which aren't
Speaker 1: what they are being marketed to be. But that what
Speaker 1: we really need here is truth and labeling, truth and advertising.
Speaker 1: Going back to what the original food and Drug Act
Speaker 1: was all about back in the early part of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, and now that although there are certain risks
Speaker 1: associated with that approach, the benefits of that given the
Speaker 1: potential of creative and helping people struggling with all sorts
Speaker 1: of medical conditions. You know that that that the benefit
Speaker 1: is going to significantly exceed the cost if we can
Speaker 1: implement a sensible regulatory policy. Would you basically agree with that?
Speaker 1: I think we are scientists have so much work ahead
Speaker 1: of us that in this uncanny value where we have
Speaker 1: enough information, we have enough data, enough self report data,
Speaker 1: enough case reports, we we have enough information to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hold on here and let's just not make a large,
Speaker 1: sweeping policy decision that is not scientifically informed and that
Speaker 1: has very wide ranging public health implications. If people who
Speaker 1: are using creative daily all of a sudden cannot take
Speaker 1: their creatum and they are left with what you described
Speaker 1: earlier as a black market. So, given that we don't
Speaker 1: know the full breadth of the public health implications of
Speaker 1: what would happen if creatum was prohibited tomorrow, UM, I
Speaker 1: could say we can speculate like I have already done
Speaker 1: on the show earlier about what might happen for some
Speaker 1: people and to that, and you know, I can I
Speaker 1: can only say that if you know, if I were
Speaker 1: emperor of the world and could do whatever I would,
Speaker 1: I would probably have a whole lot of other systems
Speaker 1: in place to try to get science to reform policy
Speaker 1: better than it does. But I can't speak to any
Speaker 1: specific policy prescription right now other than that we desperately,
Speaker 1: desperately need more data. We need more science, right Kurson, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I'll say this to your response. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a little frustrated because it does feel like
Speaker 1: a hyper cautious way of essentially saying sort of yes,
Speaker 1: you agree. Because ultimately, policy does happen. People make decisions,
Speaker 1: d e A f d A does things. Legislators do
Speaker 1: things people researchers like yourself actually do need to be active.
Speaker 1: The level of pessivity and the drug research world for decades,
Speaker 1: the extent to which drug research just kept doing their
Speaker 1: thing and doing their research and following politically driven research
Speaker 1: agendas while the drug war got launched that arrested tensive
Speaker 1: millions of people and carcerated millions of people. I actually
Speaker 1: think there's a sort of moral and professional obligation for
Speaker 1: researchers to really be stepping out and to be a
Speaker 1: little clear about this. You know, I'll tell you before
Speaker 1: I stop runing Drug Policy Alliance, we launched a program
Speaker 1: that's under the leadership of Jewels Netherlands, you know, an
Speaker 1: Office of Academic Engagement, and it had two objectives. One
Speaker 1: was to ensure that the Drug Policy Reform Agenda d
Speaker 1: p A and the broader reform world was firmly grounded
Speaker 1: in research right. And the second was to basically empower
Speaker 1: researchers to get more involved in advocacy, because what happens
Speaker 1: is researchers is oftentimes adopt a position if we don't
Speaker 1: have enough research, we don't have enough evidence, a real
Speaker 1: position of kind of pessivity in the face of politicians
Speaker 1: and others, you know, making terrible decisions that harm people
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways. And when you have agencies whose
Speaker 1: default is to put something in Schedule one and prohibit it,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than to say, let's try regulating this
Speaker 1: first and as responsible as we can, and then as
Speaker 1: the evidence comes in, we'll deal with that. I really
Speaker 1: think it's important to be pretty clear about this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, you know, It's not just about what the
Speaker 1: evidence is in front of you. It's also about values.
Speaker 1: It's about core values about what kind of society we're
Speaker 1: going to live in. And so when somebody's out there
Speaker 1: saying prohibit hi hibit or FDA is doing this thing,
Speaker 1: you know, people including people working for the government as
Speaker 1: public servants doing drug abuse research, need to be able
Speaker 1: and willing to step up and say that's not right.
Speaker 1: Sorry to give you that rant there, but UM, I
Speaker 1: just felt like I needed to do that. The creative
Speaker 1: is kicking in, you're getting getting no no. I know,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that there's there's this optimistic part of me
Speaker 1: that thinks, okay, we have advocates taking the science that
Speaker 1: we're producing, the a K is using it along with
Speaker 1: a KA being American credim Association, Yes, and working at
Speaker 1: the state level to you know, implement over either overturned
Speaker 1: bands or prohibsions on creatum, but also to introduce some
Speaker 1: sort of regulatory um, you know, consumer Protection Act kind
Speaker 1: of um. You know, let's station And I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: thankful that that work is being done and that the
Speaker 1: work that we're doing UM at University is that NIDA
Speaker 1: can help inform that along with all of the stories
Speaker 1: of the people using Creative And I do think that
Speaker 1: you know Neida in particular, is you you alluded to
Speaker 1: some improvements earlier. They are actively working to revitalize their
Speaker 1: Creative web page to make it up to date and
Speaker 1: to make it more informative and in keeping with the science,
Speaker 1: and to have an outward facing, you know, set of
Speaker 1: facts to the extent that we have them that is
Speaker 1: more fleshed out and is more detailed than it currently is.
Speaker 1: So that is actively underway. I know that much. And
Speaker 1: I know that Neida is invested in understanding creatim better.
Speaker 1: So there is an appetite to understand this. And in
Speaker 1: the interim, I don't think anyone um would I would
Speaker 1: hope not shy away from this kind of common sense,
Speaker 1: you know regulation. So just a few last questions. One is,
Speaker 1: you know, I've heard about Creatum being used with various
Speaker 1: addictions and with pain um, but especially respect to opioid dependence,
Speaker 1: and and I've seen it, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: academic articles saying that basically there are elements of creatum
Speaker 1: that make it like an opioid, and in some respects
Speaker 1: it's like an opioid agonist like methanon or boopernorphine, and
Speaker 1: some plate loose sexist like an antagonist like uh, I
Speaker 1: guess nilox one in some respects is like a partial agonist,
Speaker 1: you know that, but that it operates on some of
Speaker 1: the opioid receptors and that's what makes it oftentimes helpful
Speaker 1: for people in trying to get off of opioids, to
Speaker 1: reduce withdrawal symptoms, to stay off of it, to use
Speaker 1: it as a substitute and something instead of maybe methodon
Speaker 1: or booper orphine. But what can you basically tell me
Speaker 1: about the relationship or the opioid like nature of creative
Speaker 1: The short answer is that at least for alkaloids act
Speaker 1: as partial agonists at new receptors, right, And those are
Speaker 1: the receptors that are responsible for analgesia and you know,
Speaker 1: like the pain culling effects, also some anxiolytic effects. But
Speaker 1: also what we're seeing is that they seem to be
Speaker 1: partial agonist, right, which means that there is a ceiling
Speaker 1: as to how much they're going to be able to
Speaker 1: activate um, you know, that receptor and produce an effect.
Speaker 1: And so there's what's called a biased opioid agonist and
Speaker 1: that term is highly hotly debated right now in terms
Speaker 1: of the mechanisms of action for bias agonism. Some people
Speaker 1: think there's a second messenger pathway the data rest and
Speaker 1: that doesn't get activated, and and that's what is often
Speaker 1: associated with respiratory depression g I upset things like that. Um, However,
Speaker 1: there's new literature to suggest, and again this is highly debated,
Speaker 1: and it's never kind of another but related conversation, there's
Speaker 1: a bias within the selectivity of the proteins before these pathways.
Speaker 1: Long story short. Some people and even I've put into papers, Um,
Speaker 1: you know these alkaloids metroggy and seems to act as
Speaker 1: a partial bias agnus. Well, I'm kind of walking that
Speaker 1: bias part back now until we know more. But we
Speaker 1: do know that, I mean, you know, it does act
Speaker 1: like I would say, it's closer to buprenorphine than methodone.
Speaker 1: Just explained to our audience. Many of them won't know
Speaker 1: the difference between those two because they're both being used
Speaker 1: for people are struggling with addiction to heroin or other
Speaker 1: you know, illicit opioids. UM and methodon can only be
Speaker 1: attained for most people for addiction treatment and a clinic,
Speaker 1: many of which are very hard to access in parts
Speaker 1: around the United States, where's booper and orphine is something
Speaker 1: that can be prescribed by physicians, so it's much more
Speaker 1: easily accessible. So when you say that maybe creatives a
Speaker 1: little more like boopern orphine than it is like methodon,
Speaker 1: what exactly do you mean without getting too technical. Methodon
Speaker 1: is what's called a full agonist, meaning that you can
Speaker 1: increase the dose really really really really high, and you
Speaker 1: can keep increasing that dose until you've died. Basically, so
Speaker 1: there's um you know, there's going to be more effect
Speaker 1: with the more you take of it, and with puper
Speaker 1: noorphine there's a ceiling effect, meaning and it's a partial agnes.
Speaker 1: You know, people thought less of the potential for abuse
Speaker 1: or misuse, and you know that may or may not
Speaker 1: be true. That's a different conversation, but I think the
Speaker 1: main thing to keep in mind is that whatever Creative
Speaker 1: is doing, there are non opioid mechanisms of action. Right,
Speaker 1: So even if we just wanted to call Creative an opioid,
Speaker 1: which I'm not ready to call it an opioid point blank,
Speaker 1: but the psychoactive substance this plant has action ovoid receptors,
Speaker 1: but it has action these other receptors as well. And
Speaker 1: again going back to that symphony analogy or metaphor that
Speaker 1: Chris has, you know, we don't know what they're all
Speaker 1: doing in combination. It could be that one is attenuating
Speaker 1: the activity and of another or potentiating the activity of another.
Speaker 1: And you know, we don't know what people are using
Speaker 1: Creative in conjunction with. But more importantly, if someone is
Speaker 1: trying to get off the opioids and they think that
Speaker 1: you know, creative is helpful, well, Creative might be helpful
Speaker 1: because of its opioid like properties, but you hear people withdrawing,
Speaker 1: using benzos and using alcohols, so it isn't necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: And often I would say even the bigger, bigger point
Speaker 1: is that many people who are using opioids or are
Speaker 1: Polly substance users, right, they're using many drugs. If they're
Speaker 1: trying to get off many drugs, well, it could be
Speaker 1: that the omnibus effects of creatum are I just feel
Speaker 1: better when I take creatum And we don't know if
Speaker 1: it's the action at at opioid like at new receptors
Speaker 1: that is doing the heavy lifting. Likely that's part of
Speaker 1: the story, but it could be that it's a lot
Speaker 1: of different things pharmacologically that are making the person feel better.
Speaker 1: Even stimulants can make a person feel better, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a one to one opioid replacement
Speaker 1: or opioid substitution. But what we're seeing is that some
Speaker 1: people are using it for ovoid substitution. But we're also
Speaker 1: seeing some of that with amphetamine and alcohol. And so
Speaker 1: the question I'm want to ask you about creatum, and
Speaker 1: this is my last question, is in your gut jump
Speaker 1: forward ten fifteen years, do you think that creatum has
Speaker 1: a potential to play a really important role in this
Speaker 1: country and elsewhere in dealing with problems like opioid addiction,
Speaker 1: other drug dependence, pain, and maybe some other conditions, or
Speaker 1: do you remain very skeptical it really can play a
Speaker 1: big role in the future. Well, I don't even have
Speaker 1: to use my gut on this one. All of the
Speaker 1: work that I've done, all of what I've seen firsthand,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm staking my career on this. Or I
Speaker 1: love to research traditional opioids obiodious disorder treatment. If I
Speaker 1: didn't think creatum was going to be relevant, And when
Speaker 1: I say I mean relevant on many different levels, both
Speaker 1: creating products proliferating in real world settings, but also more
Speaker 1: sophisticated understandings of the mechanisms of actions and how that
Speaker 1: can be leveraged into some therapeutics, and both can currently
Speaker 1: such that there's like a medicinal creatum similar to cannabis
Speaker 1: situation going on. You know, if I didn't think creatum
Speaker 1: was going to be relevant, I wouldn't be sitting here
Speaker 1: talking to you. And again, you know, it's not even
Speaker 1: my gut. If I thought it was not helping people,
Speaker 1: I would be working on something else. But I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, it takes a really really long time to
Speaker 1: take any uh, you know, alkaloid or you know, molecule
Speaker 1: and get this particular set of molecules into a format
Speaker 1: that can be delivered to humans and certain trials and
Speaker 1: then tested and brought to market. So you know, the
Speaker 1: just and future is the just in future. And I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, to the point about policy, if
Speaker 1: creatim is scheduled, it's going to make our job a
Speaker 1: lot harder and as researchers to do our work. Christen,
Speaker 1: I am really grateful for your taking the time to
Speaker 1: be on psychoactive with me. I really wish you more
Speaker 1: a success as your career moves on, and I hope
Speaker 1: you're going to be coming outstanding researcher and scientists about
Speaker 1: creative and other substances and bring your life experience to
Speaker 1: bear on all of that. So thank you ever so
Speaker 1: much for joining me on this program. Absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: would only ask one last question, how are you feeling
Speaker 1: with your creatum tee? Well, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I've been very animated on this episode,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's the creatum that maybe maybe that way,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you don't I don't know. When I
Speaker 1: went to the shop, you know, they were distinguished between
Speaker 1: the red creatums and the green cretums, and the red
Speaker 1: was more sedating and the greens. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the same kind of bullshit like you to
Speaker 1: hear like his indicinsativa really different or not? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: But I and this liquid one I drank, they don't
Speaker 1: even tell you whether it's red or green. All I
Speaker 1: know is I'm feeling pretty good. You should try and extract.
Speaker 1: I'm not prescribing that. I'm not endorsing creative us, but
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that that's not clinical advice. That does
Speaker 1: not I do not speak for anybody but myself. I
Speaker 1: appreciate the nonprofessional advice. Thank you, so thank you, so
Speaker 1: very very much. No, thank you for the opportunity. It
Speaker 1: was lovely. We love to hear from our listeners. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to share your own stories, comments and ideas,
Speaker 1: then leave us a message at one eight three three
Speaker 1: seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero,
Speaker 1: or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man.
Speaker 1: You can also find contact information in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures.
Speaker 1: It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman is produced by Noam
Speaker 1: Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden,
Speaker 1: Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronotsky from Protozoa Pictures,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from my Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and
Speaker 1: a special thanks to a Brio s f Bianca Grimshaw
Speaker 1: and Robert bb Next week I'll talk with Dr Gave,
Speaker 1: one of the world's leading psychotherapists working with the drug kennemine.
Speaker 1: I feel like kenemine is a beautiful medicine and I
Speaker 1: think it has a lot of advantages. I really feel
Speaker 1: psychedelic psychotherapy allows one to almost find the door out
Speaker 1: of our prison, which are all patterns, are characters, are conditioning,
Speaker 1: and to have new possibilities and an emergence into the
Speaker 1: full aspects of who we are, not based on our
Speaker 1: survival based strategies from childhood in the environments we grew in.
Speaker 1: So I really feel it is a process of liberation
Speaker 1: and growth and new possibilities. Subscribe to Psychoactive now see it,
Speaker 1: don't miss it.