Speaker 1: My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part three of our exploration of psychedelics. These compounds that
Speaker 1: lead to the mind manifesting experiences which we've been describing
Speaker 1: in the past couple of episodes. Now, if you're just
Speaker 1: tuning in, we recommend that you probably should go and
Speaker 1: check out the previous two episodes. First, this is probably
Speaker 1: one it's not best to jump in midstream, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a continuous, though at times meandering journey. The history
Speaker 1: of psychedelics not an all inclusive history, and so we've
Speaker 1: stressed multiple times, you know, there's no way that we
Speaker 1: can cover all of the studies, all the curious tidbits
Speaker 1: of history, all the various um traditional uses of psychedelic substances.
Speaker 1: So certainly we implore you to to check out some
Speaker 1: of the sources we've been ation to hear and explore
Speaker 1: them for yourselves, as well as you know, additional resources. Right,
Speaker 1: and so in the previous episodes we mentioned some books
Speaker 1: that have been part of our guides on the way through.
Speaker 1: I know you've been enjoying some of the works of
Speaker 1: Terrence McKenna and Michael Pollen as well. Been reading on that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Michael Polland's most recent book, How to Change Your Mind,
Speaker 1: is a great book about psychedelics that covers a lot
Speaker 1: of the same ground as some some history, some science,
Speaker 1: and especially this recent renaissance in psychedelic research and how
Speaker 1: it there's renewed interest I think since like the early
Speaker 1: to mid two thousand's, especially about the clinical significance of psychedelics,
Speaker 1: how they could actually be used to treat mental conditions, addictions,
Speaker 1: various problems people have, UH, and that they're not just
Speaker 1: a recreational drug, though there are also plenty of people
Speaker 1: who would make the case that it might not be
Speaker 1: a bad thing to use them recreationally. We're we're not
Speaker 1: going to try to evangelize or demonize either way or
Speaker 1: recommend that you use them. We just want to be descriptive, right,
Speaker 1: But we will we will discus us some of these
Speaker 1: viewpoints that are brought up regarding UH, the beyond medicinal
Speaker 1: uses of psychedelics, UH and UH as far as the
Speaker 1: modern stuff, like again we're living in an exciting time
Speaker 1: when they're they're all these these current studies going on,
Speaker 1: and we're revealing more and more about how psychedelics can
Speaker 1: be used to uh to help treat various UH problems,
Speaker 1: psychological problems, addictions, etcetera. We're probably gonna get into most
Speaker 1: of that in the following episode. This episode is largely
Speaker 1: going to deal with some of the original studies that
Speaker 1: we're taking place, especially in the nineteen fifties. Yeah, uh so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that comes as a surprise to
Speaker 1: a lot of people who, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about the the origins of the drug war, the counterculture
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixties, and I don't know, maybe you
Speaker 1: have some various ideas about the square nineteen fifties, it
Speaker 1: might come as a shock to you that there was
Speaker 1: a flourishing body of psychedelic research going on during the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, especially focusing on LSD
Speaker 1: and the treatment of things like alcohol is him in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and then later the use of psilocybin
Speaker 1: and various types of research in the early to mid
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. YEA, Psychedelics did not just emerge from a
Speaker 1: van at Woodstock and start corrupting the youth of America.
Speaker 1: Uh Now, now, before we go any further, I do
Speaker 1: want to take a step back for just a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to talk about about fun Guy or
Speaker 1: fungi if you will, Um, just in fungi if you're
Speaker 1: making a pizza. Isn't that the Italian way to say it.
Speaker 1: I've also watched like British documentaries where they for for fungi,
Speaker 1: but I'm I'm more of a fun guy, so I
Speaker 1: like go like go for I tend to go for
Speaker 1: fun Guy. Let's go with fun Guy, all right? So, um,
Speaker 1: I just want to take you a step back and
Speaker 1: just talk about just how weird and wonderful the entire
Speaker 1: Kingdom of fun Guy really is. Yeah. Well, and we
Speaker 1: should say the reason for that, of course, if you've
Speaker 1: been with us the last two episodes, is that of
Speaker 1: all the psychedelics that we've looked at, the most focus
Speaker 1: has been on psilocybin mushrooms, right, and even LSD is
Speaker 1: derived from urgat, which is a fun Guy. So so
Speaker 1: that so the the fungal element here is is very
Speaker 1: rich and second, so yeah, the kingdom fung gui because
Speaker 1: fungi are their own kingdom. Uh. We often associate them
Speaker 1: with plants in kind of an informal way. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: but we and they were considered plants of until the
Speaker 1: later half of the twentieth century. But there's something different,
Speaker 1: of course. Uh. They're thought to outnumber plants species on
Speaker 1: a scale of ten to one, and they all descended
Speaker 1: from a single species that derived from a common ancestor
Speaker 1: with animals about eight hundred million to nine hundred million
Speaker 1: years ago. Is it true that, uh, phylogenetically, humans are
Speaker 1: more closely related to fungi than to plants. I think
Speaker 1: that's that that is, that is what I have read,
Speaker 1: and and it's an amazing thing to think about. It's
Speaker 1: also something that you know, it's that fact that leads
Speaker 1: some people to wonder about our relationship with fung gui. Um.
Speaker 1: You know why in some cases we have this uh,
Speaker 1: this close relationship because ultimately fun guy have a lot
Speaker 1: more in common with us than they do with plants. Um.
Speaker 1: And and again that's interesting considering the close relationship who
Speaker 1: we have with them, and not only us, so there
Speaker 1: are other animals as well. I mean think that the
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants that stand out is one of the
Speaker 1: most impressive fung gui dependent species due to their practice
Speaker 1: of fungal agriculture, their mushroom farmers. Yeah, because you think
Speaker 1: about how humans use fun guy. We've certainly been focusing
Speaker 1: on psychedelics, but certainly fun guy factor into our cuisine,
Speaker 1: into our medicines, both in in major ways, but in
Speaker 1: also in ways we don't you know, major and obvious ways,
Speaker 1: but also in ways we maybe don't think about as much.
Speaker 1: Because certainly you think about cooking and mushrooms, you think
Speaker 1: about culinary mushrooms that you buy at the store, which
Speaker 1: I love mushrooms one of my favorite ingredients. Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: not every edible mushroom can be cultivated. I got to
Speaker 1: learn about this over the weekend. I went with a
Speaker 1: lie S servalists on a on a mushroom foraging walk
Speaker 1: and we get to pick a few different mushrooms that
Speaker 1: cannot be uh cultivated at least can't be cultivated in
Speaker 1: a you know, a dependable manner, and got to bring
Speaker 1: some home and eat them. Is that why chantrell's are
Speaker 1: so expensive? You can't grow them on a farm. Yeah? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I forget the exact species you know, but there are
Speaker 1: several varieties like that where if if local restaurant is
Speaker 1: serving them, they have to depend on foragers bringing them
Speaker 1: in and selling them. And so a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of foragers, a lot of mushroom enthusiasts kind of
Speaker 1: pay for their hobby by selling their mushrooms to local restaurants. Interesting,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so there's that level. I would obviously we
Speaker 1: eat them, but they're also you know, ingredients in many
Speaker 1: different foods, especially modern processed foods, and they're an important part,
Speaker 1: an essential part of the fermentation process yeast. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to be drinking some sort of weird
Speaker 1: mushroom tea to be partaking of medicinal fun guy, because
Speaker 1: of course we have penicillin to get it, which you
Speaker 1: know is I would love to do a future episode
Speaker 1: of our other podcast, Invention on penicillin because in terms
Speaker 1: of fungal inventions or discoveries however you want to describe it,
Speaker 1: like that is that is a major one and and
Speaker 1: it is totally fun. Guy depended it came from mold growth, right,
Speaker 1: which of course is a fungus. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, we also have we talked about
Speaker 1: the microbiome a lot, but we also have a microbiome
Speaker 1: which is a small but significant portion of the human
Speaker 1: bodies overall microbiome. UH Fungi also play a crucial role
Speaker 1: in the nutrient exchange of trees, growing around their roots
Speaker 1: like fungal gloves and exchanging nitrogen for sugars. Uh and
Speaker 1: this forms the basis of what some researchers call the
Speaker 1: wood wide web, which is kind of that that's a
Speaker 1: little too cute. That's a little it's a little too cute,
Speaker 1: because ultimately it's like really just mind blowingly weird to
Speaker 1: think about, because we're talking about a fungal network of hype.
Speaker 1: Remember that a mushroom. We we often think of the
Speaker 1: mushroom as the thing itself, but the mushroom is just
Speaker 1: the fruiting body um and the you know, the the
Speaker 1: spores viewing death emergence of a larger organism. And so
Speaker 1: the these this network of hi fi underground and growing
Speaker 1: around the trees and between trees. It allows for the
Speaker 1: plants to distribute resources such as sugar, nitrogen, and phosphorus,
Speaker 1: you know, between one tree and another. Uh and by
Speaker 1: some definitions, this comprises a form of communication these types
Speaker 1: of thinking can get really psychedelic on their own. Oh absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: mycologist Paul stainments, for instance, who did we mention the
Speaker 1: previous several times? So yeah, he's he's like a mushroom
Speaker 1: answer for everything. Guy, uh, you know, very important figure
Speaker 1: and modern mycology. And he's gone so far as to
Speaker 1: to suggest, according to Michael Pollen in his book, that
Speaker 1: these networks are in some sense conscious, that they're aware
Speaker 1: of their environment and they're able to respond to challenges accordingly,
Speaker 1: and Paul and says that that initially he thought this
Speaker 1: was mere metaphor you know that clearly statements is just
Speaker 1: being overly enthusiastic and metaphoric about what's going on with
Speaker 1: the systems, but that he thinks that growing evidence actually
Speaker 1: suggested it might be there might be more involved here. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this depends heavily on just simply what you
Speaker 1: mean when you use the word conscious, because there I
Speaker 1: think you can definitely make the case that mushrooms, in
Speaker 1: very interesting and surprising ways, are aware of their environments,
Speaker 1: you know, able to respond to to stimuli and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I think it would be much harder to
Speaker 1: make the case that, you know, the thing that we
Speaker 1: think of as like the hard problem of consciousness, meaning
Speaker 1: that it is having a subjective experience. There's something that
Speaker 1: it's like to be the mushroom. H I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that that's not true, but I don't know what the
Speaker 1: evidence for that. I think it's much more of a
Speaker 1: stretch to make that case. Now. On a on a
Speaker 1: similar similar lines, though, I got to your Eduardo Cone,
Speaker 1: Associate Professor of Anthropology at McGill University UH speak on
Speaker 1: basically the same topic at the twenty nineteen World Science Festival.
Speaker 1: He's the author of a book titled How Forests Think,
Speaker 1: and he's worked extensively with Amazonian people in his work,
Speaker 1: especially considering concerning their use of psychedelic substances. But he's
Speaker 1: focused on the same issue of like the use of
Speaker 1: fungal networks in the soil within forests as a as
Speaker 1: a type of communication or even thought. Yeah, he gets
Speaker 1: into this as well. So just to give you an idea,
Speaker 1: because it's ultimately, you know, kind of a heady concept,
Speaker 1: but but it's basically this idea that not that you
Speaker 1: have non human entities that quote unquote think via an
Speaker 1: ability to represent, produce and interpret signs interesting and so
Speaker 1: that this is uh. This is a quote from his
Speaker 1: book How Forests Think. Quote. Life is a constitutively semiotic.
Speaker 1: That is, life is through and through the product of
Speaker 1: sign processes. What differentiates life from the inanimate physical world
Speaker 1: is that life forms represent the world in some way
Speaker 1: or another, and these representations are intrinsic to their being.
Speaker 1: What we share with non human living creatures, then, is
Speaker 1: not our embodiment, as certain strains of phenomenological approaches would hold,
Speaker 1: but the fact that we all live with and through signs.
Speaker 1: We all use signs as canes that represent part of
Speaker 1: the world to us in some way or another. In
Speaker 1: doing so, signs make us what we are. Interesting semiotic
Speaker 1: definition of life. I don't know if I've ever encountered
Speaker 1: that before. And I took a class on semiotics. Oh yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I was that kind of Weirdough. Well, I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in his his thoughts and his work. I'd I'd love
Speaker 1: to actually see about having him on the show in
Speaker 1: the future. But like I said, he's worked extensively with
Speaker 1: Amazonian peoples and explore their use of ayahuasca, and he
Speaker 1: said that Amazonians use several technologies including psychedelics, but also
Speaker 1: dreams to connect with the mind of the forest, and
Speaker 1: he says that these approaches break down the way language
Speaker 1: tells us what we are. They help them find a
Speaker 1: path forward, path of healing and problem solving. And he
Speaker 1: also pointed out that the Shamans of the Amazon like
Speaker 1: basically have a message for the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: They want us to know that the world is a
Speaker 1: living world and that we have to connect ourselves with
Speaker 1: the mind of the forest to save ourselves from the
Speaker 1: planetary depression that we are now entering into. And I
Speaker 1: found this really interesting because this is UH, even though
Speaker 1: Cone to my knowledge that never mentioned Terence McKinnon his work,
Speaker 1: but some of this like lines up with the messages
Speaker 1: that mckinna had in The Food of the Gods and
Speaker 1: his other work regarding UH. This idea of an archaic revival,
Speaker 1: a necessary reconvergence with the natural world through psychedelics and
Speaker 1: UM and at least in mckinna's definition, and overall, you
Speaker 1: know Bohemian thread of human cultures to save us u
Speaker 1: from the you know, the doom of a nature deprived,
Speaker 1: ego driven dominator culture, to save us from silent running. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah in a way. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, there it matches
Speaker 1: up with this theory. I mean this, uh, this viewpoint
Speaker 1: of modern life will come back to this that you
Speaker 1: see this throughout a lot of the a lot of
Speaker 1: psychedelic literature and also just sort of counterculture nineteen sixties messaging,
Speaker 1: including Silent Running, which is very much a product of
Speaker 1: that time, the science fiction film that we've discussed previously
Speaker 1: on the show. Now Cone mentioned in the world Science
Speaker 1: Festivally he thinks even our modern fascination with psychedelics maybe
Speaker 1: a symptom of our disconnection with nature. And he says
Speaker 1: the solution isn't simply to to you know, take a
Speaker 1: psyche cadelic substance, but to rather live psychedelically, to live live,
Speaker 1: to be in the emergent mind. What exactly do you
Speaker 1: think he meant by that quote to, like, what is
Speaker 1: the emergent mind being there? Um my understanding, And like
Speaker 1: I said, perhaps we can get him on the show
Speaker 1: to discuss these these topics in greater depth. But I
Speaker 1: think he's he's talking about this basic idea that again
Speaker 1: you see again and again in the among advocates of
Speaker 1: psychedelic that there's there's something wrong with modern humans, that
Speaker 1: we're cut off from each other, that we're we're sort
Speaker 1: of in these little individual cells of the mind, and
Speaker 1: we are in many cases have great difficulty in being
Speaker 1: part of some sort of a larger system. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it maybe a bit elaborate to you know, to
Speaker 1: think of it. I mean, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would I would describe it. And my understanding is like
Speaker 1: an emergent mind, you know. But but but that's kind
Speaker 1: of the vibe I get from the idea that like
Speaker 1: we're we're cut off from each other, that we don't
Speaker 1: understand each other, we don't understand nature. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all wrapped up in our own egos, and if
Speaker 1: we could break through those boundaries, uh, that we would
Speaker 1: have a better relationship with each other and with the world.
Speaker 1: Like so often in the world of psychedelics and stuff
Speaker 1: coming from psychedelic enthusiasts, that that's the kind of statement
Speaker 1: that is either true, really profound, or extremely banal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I yeah, I get it, because I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there are probably shaking their
Speaker 1: hands as saying like, well, that just sounds like hippy nonsense,
Speaker 1: and it's not even new hippie nonsense. It's hippie nonsense
Speaker 1: I've heard time and time again. But for my own part,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, yeah, you can be overly optimistic
Speaker 1: about a lot of this stuff. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, you look at the literature, the scientific literature
Speaker 1: that that is that shows us and is continuing to
Speaker 1: show us what psychedelics can do. I think at this
Speaker 1: point it's you know, it's it's more a question of, like,
Speaker 1: at what level are psychedelics useful? Uh, you know, is
Speaker 1: it is it purely in the clinical world, Is it
Speaker 1: purely among you know, people who are suffering from some
Speaker 1: condition or another, or does it go beyond that? You know?
Speaker 1: I I think it depends on who's advocating on where
Speaker 1: that line should be drawn. I mean, some people draw
Speaker 1: it all the way at the horizon. Where you draw it,
Speaker 1: I think it's clearly a source of the conflict that
Speaker 1: led to the demonization of psychedelics and to the sort
Speaker 1: of closing of the psychedelic research regime in the in
Speaker 1: the mid to late nineteen sixties. Right. Yeah, Well, on
Speaker 1: that note, let's let's go to the nineteen sixties. In fact,
Speaker 1: let's go to the nineteen fifties. Okay, let's go. Let's
Speaker 1: go back. In fact, let's go to the nineteen let's
Speaker 1: do it. I'll take you up, and that we'll go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the forties. And let's just
Speaker 1: discuss twentieth century psychedelic research itself. So, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: most of these substances are nothing. Humans have used them
Speaker 1: for thousands of years, and even the synthesized substance LSD,
Speaker 1: of course is derived from a good fun guy that
Speaker 1: has been around forever as well. Right, But there was
Speaker 1: certainly a period of time between Albert Hoffman's nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three bicycle ride and Nixon's Controlled Substance Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy in which there were tons of studies that examined
Speaker 1: psychedelics and and and especially LSD in many cases because
Speaker 1: it was more readily available at the time. One reason, also,
Speaker 1: I think, is that the pharmaceutical manufacturer that Albert hof
Speaker 1: On worked for in the nineteen thirties and forties, uh Sandoz,
Speaker 1: which I guess held the patent on LSD, was just
Speaker 1: giving it out like candy. Basically, they were I think
Speaker 1: they were trying to find uses for it and their
Speaker 1: Their method of doing that was like, well, let's just
Speaker 1: give it for free to tons of researchers and they'll
Speaker 1: find a good way to use it. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like in the Lorax, the sneed was invented, which
Speaker 1: everyone needs. Like, if you invented this thing that clearly
Speaker 1: has some sort of use, but you're not exactly sure
Speaker 1: how to market it, You're not sure what the the
Speaker 1: uses for it, you you kind of just let everybody
Speaker 1: play with it so you can figure out how you're
Speaker 1: going to make your billions of dollars off of it.
Speaker 1: But I don't say that to undermine the fact that
Speaker 1: it really does seem like some researchers were finding extremely
Speaker 1: promising clinical uses for LSD in the nineteen fifties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: particularly in how they might be used to treat addiction, depression, UM,
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and end of life anxiety.
Speaker 1: So in his book, Michael Pollen chats with Stephen Ross
Speaker 1: m D at the n y U Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study,
Speaker 1: which of course comes back to that end of life
Speaker 1: anxiety question that was explored earlier. I guess we'll explore
Speaker 1: that more, probably in the next episode. Yeah, we will.
Speaker 1: But in the book, uh Ross mentions to Pollen that
Speaker 1: you know, these efforts involved roughly forty research participants in
Speaker 1: more than a thousand clinical papers. So when we're talking
Speaker 1: about LSD studies of of the of the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, we're not talking about where we're
Speaker 1: gonna highlight a few isolated studies, but we're not talking
Speaker 1: about like just a study here, study there. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of research going on. It was huge.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a blip. Yeah, And initially, reach the
Speaker 1: researchers thought that LSD and later psilocybin, that they might
Speaker 1: be used to understand psychosis, as they believe that individuals
Speaker 1: who are using these substances to play displayed similar thoughts
Speaker 1: and behavior, And so clinicians also thought that, well, you
Speaker 1: could take one of these substances yourself and therefore get
Speaker 1: a taste of what a psychotic episode is like and
Speaker 1: then be better able to empathize with a patient exactly.
Speaker 1: And in this vein the same compounds we now refer
Speaker 1: to as psychedelic were then referred to by many clinicians
Speaker 1: as psychoto mimetics. Mimicking the state of psychosis, so your
Speaker 1: therapists could take this in order to understand what you
Speaker 1: were going through. Now, key figure from this period, uh English, Uh,
Speaker 1: psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond entered the picture, and he figured that Okay,
Speaker 1: if you had a substance like mescaline, and if it
Speaker 1: could if it could induce this sort of symptom, that
Speaker 1: these sort of symptoms in in a in a human
Speaker 1: who took it, then perhaps uh, you know, schizophrenia was
Speaker 1: due to a chemical and balance in the brain, which
Speaker 1: is kind of you know, ultimately an eye opening hypothesis. Right,
Speaker 1: If if this substance makes my brain do this, then
Speaker 1: perhaps what this patient's brain is doing is due to
Speaker 1: something you know, very chemical in nature as well, something
Speaker 1: that could be addressed perhaps with another chemical. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think the middle of the twentieth
Speaker 1: century period was actually a very important time for understanding
Speaker 1: the role of physical causes in mental phenomena. Like I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there was of course the rise of Skinnerism
Speaker 1: like B. F. Skinner and behaviorism, which you can have
Speaker 1: lots of criticisms about. Maybe it doesn't take into account
Speaker 1: cognition and the mind and uh, enough about what our
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions mean, because it was just about what
Speaker 1: can we do to control and measure external behaviors because
Speaker 1: that's the only thing we have access to as scientists.
Speaker 1: That that might not be the right approach, but it
Speaker 1: was certainly useful in some ways to kind of clear
Speaker 1: out I think a lot of the uh, the kind
Speaker 1: of almost religious, kind of metaphysical baggage that had been
Speaker 1: coming along for the ride with some versions of psychology
Speaker 1: up until then, with you know, Freud and Young and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah. It so so you know, ultimately we
Speaker 1: have this this push for biochemical answers to you know,
Speaker 1: concerning mental issues, and this prepared alls the the the
Speaker 1: young field of neurochemistry, leading in time to our modern
Speaker 1: understanding of neurotransmitters and their role in our mental states,
Speaker 1: leading to the discovery of serotonin and the development of
Speaker 1: s sr I antidepressant drugs. But then, you know, some
Speaker 1: also made the connection between the symptoms of psychedelic use
Speaker 1: and delirium tremens or the d T s Uh. This
Speaker 1: is of course associated with alcohol abuse, alcoholism, alcohol withdrawal.
Speaker 1: I think so like if you you're used to extensive
Speaker 1: alcohol consumption and then somebody stops, they might experience these
Speaker 1: uh negative symptoms that have been referred to as the
Speaker 1: delirium tremens. Yeah. So this led to a to the
Speaker 1: I think by modern from a modern viewpoint, kind of
Speaker 1: a weird idea, a weird seeming idea that you could
Speaker 1: use LSD to sort of shock alcoholics into sobriety and
Speaker 1: so osmond and a gentleman by the name of Abram
Speaker 1: Hoffer conducted these studies with hundreds I think seven hundred
Speaker 1: according to pollen uh alcoholics, and they found it effective
Speaker 1: roughly half the time. You mean using LSD to treat alcoholics. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And this particular study, by the way, was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that caught the eyes of Stephen Ross decades
Speaker 1: later as an example of the therapeutic potential of psychedelics
Speaker 1: quote buried in plain sight. Um. But anyway, the the
Speaker 1: original researchers here, they expected that the trips in question,
Speaker 1: the psychedelic experiences in question, would be essentially just nightmare
Speaker 1: fuel that would approximate the feelings of the d t s.
Speaker 1: And this was seemingly based on physicians Sydney Katz's reports
Speaker 1: that Paul and summarizes as being something like you'd you'd
Speaker 1: see in an an anti LSD propaganda from the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: just about how it's just just pure nightmare fuel and
Speaker 1: you know, it was running from demons sort of a thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course what happened is that they gave a
Speaker 1: court in their study anyway, that they found that when
Speaker 1: they gave these substances to people, they reported all manner
Speaker 1: of things, beautiful things. Even so, there was definitely some anxiety,
Speaker 1: some depression, some hallucination uh in individuals when they were
Speaker 1: administered psychedelics, but most reported feelings that were described as
Speaker 1: transcendental in nature, so that, for instance, an ability to
Speaker 1: see one's self objectively, almost as if for the first time.
Speaker 1: And so this would seem to be the experience or
Speaker 1: this was possibly an experience that was was playing a
Speaker 1: role in them then being able to cease their addiction.
Speaker 1: And of course, outside of the black box of experience,
Speaker 1: the research results spoke for themselves and indicated that, you know,
Speaker 1: something was working here. So this opened up the idea
Speaker 1: that there was something more to the experience and that
Speaker 1: it might be utilized as a treatment method. Now I
Speaker 1: know it was especially in Canada that that LSD treatment
Speaker 1: for alcoholism was picked up, and I think I think
Speaker 1: this one, this particular study was in Saskatchewan, I believe. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that was where Humphrey Osmond was based for
Speaker 1: a long time. But that another thing I think to
Speaker 1: make clear is that it's it's not thought that just
Speaker 1: giving somebody the drug triggers a change in the body
Speaker 1: that defeats alcoholism. That that there's something important going on
Speaker 1: by about the nature of the experience that people have
Speaker 1: on psychedelics that contributes to their recovery and and staying
Speaker 1: sober over time. Right right, Yeah, this sort of this
Speaker 1: metaphorical shaking of the snow globe, as as some call it,
Speaker 1: is playing a role in allowing, uh, some sort of
Speaker 1: you know, curative therapy to take place. Now, I should
Speaker 1: point out that in terms of this particular study, later
Speaker 1: on in the early sixties, the Addiction Research Foundation in
Speaker 1: Toronto set out to replicate these results with better controls,
Speaker 1: and they failed to reproduce the you know, the same
Speaker 1: robust results. Uh, And this ended up giving fuel to
Speaker 1: critics of of LSD, but also porters again stressed the
Speaker 1: importance of set and setting, right, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: something that I guess we'll come back to the sentiment,
Speaker 1: so all, I'll save my tangent here for later. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll put a pin in that and just know that
Speaker 1: we're gonna come back to the importance of set and
Speaker 1: setting in research. But but still there there was enough
Speaker 1: going on here that people were very encouraged, and by
Speaker 1: the by the end of the nineteen fifties, LSD was
Speaker 1: considered like a miracle cure for alcohol addiction. A lot
Speaker 1: of people were excited about it, and Paulin points out
Speaker 1: that one of the people that it was that ended
Speaker 1: up getting excited about it was none other than Bill Wilson,
Speaker 1: co founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Yeah, who who incidentally created
Speaker 1: credited his own sobriety to a life changing mystical experience
Speaker 1: he had on on belladonna, which also has psychoactive properties
Speaker 1: and was used in a treatment in treatment at Town's
Speaker 1: Hospital in New York City in nineteen thirty four. That's
Speaker 1: when when he had the substance as part of the treatment.
Speaker 1: And so you can see that in a lot of
Speaker 1: the Alcoholics Anonymous messaging, like the idea of the the
Speaker 1: idea of acknowledging a higher power, you know. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times people just interpret that as a
Speaker 1: more traditional kind of like, you know, you need a
Speaker 1: religion or something, especially if you're meeting in a church
Speaker 1: basement or you know, or something. Yeah. But in fact,
Speaker 1: it seems like this has something to do with the
Speaker 1: common kinds of mystical experiences that people have on psychedelics,
Speaker 1: where they, you know, they commune with some kind of
Speaker 1: reality greater than themselves. They believe that they've encountered some
Speaker 1: other being or some universal consciousness or the universe itself.
Speaker 1: It might have something to do with the ego dissolution
Speaker 1: that sometimes people experience on psychedelics. Wilson, by the way,
Speaker 1: would later try LSD with some researchers in l A.
Speaker 1: And he actually thought that it might prove very useful
Speaker 1: in treating alcoholism, and that that it might even have
Speaker 1: a place in a A. But others in the in
Speaker 1: the organization struck down this idea, you know, for for
Speaker 1: a few different reasons, one of which being that it
Speaker 1: would perhaps m the like the messaging of the organization itself, right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, that you would turn to another chemical um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so for a time LSD assisted psychotherapy was considered
Speaker 1: a powerful, legitimate and evidence based method for treating alcoholism
Speaker 1: in Canada. Definitely, But maybe we should take a break
Speaker 1: and then when we come back we can discuss some
Speaker 1: problems with scientific research on psychedelics. Thank thank Alright, we're
Speaker 1: back now. I think this is a good place to
Speaker 1: start discussing the fact that there are widely acknowledged inherent
Speaker 1: difficulties with doing rigorous scientific experiments on the effects of psychedelics.
Speaker 1: And so one of these problems is the problem with
Speaker 1: placebo control. Now, normally when you want to test and
Speaker 1: see if a new drug works, you need to do
Speaker 1: a placebo controlled test. You have to do this if
Speaker 1: you want to sort out specific pharmacological efficacy versus the
Speaker 1: placebo effect, you know, the effect that uh sometimes people
Speaker 1: who are given a treatment, even if the treatment doesn't
Speaker 1: have active ingredients, just the fact that they think they're
Speaker 1: being treated appears to cause uh a feeling that their
Speaker 1: condition has improved. They will report less, fewer negative symptoms
Speaker 1: or something like that. So, yeah, I imagine you give
Speaker 1: a hundred people a new anti nausea drug and then
Speaker 1: fifty of them report their nausea going away. Was it
Speaker 1: because the compound in the pill relieves nausea fifty of
Speaker 1: the time, or could much shore all of that response
Speaker 1: just be due to the placebo effect people thinking that
Speaker 1: they're being treated. So if you placebo control your drug
Speaker 1: trial to find out if there's a difference, subjects get
Speaker 1: randomly sorted into multiple groups, with one group getting the
Speaker 1: actual drug being tested and one group getting a pill
Speaker 1: that has no active ingredients, then you might be able
Speaker 1: to get a better idea. If the group who receives
Speaker 1: the drug gets significantly more of a desired outcome than
Speaker 1: the placebo group, then you can have confidence that the
Speaker 1: drug probably actually works. So if you wanted to run
Speaker 1: a placebo controlled test of whether, say, psilocybin helps people
Speaker 1: kick in alcohol addiction and then stay sober for six months,
Speaker 1: you'd want to run a test with people who actually
Speaker 1: get psilocybin versus people who think that they might be
Speaker 1: getting it but are actually getting a placebo. So why
Speaker 1: is this a problem with psychedelics, Well, that's because of
Speaker 1: the next issue, which is blinding. Uh So the thing
Speaker 1: you've got to do to have an effective placebo controlled
Speaker 1: test is blinding and double blinding. This is to avoid
Speaker 1: response biases from subjects and from the people who are
Speaker 1: carrying out the test. You have to blind the experiment,
Speaker 1: meaning subjects don't know which group they're in, and the
Speaker 1: people working with the subjects to conduct the experiment don't
Speaker 1: know who's in what group. Psychedelics make this hard because
Speaker 1: most of the time you can definitely tell whether you've
Speaker 1: received a large dose of psilocybin versus a placebo. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, even even if the individual, the test subject
Speaker 1: in question, and has no experience of psychedelic use, there's
Speaker 1: a very good chance that they have been exposed to
Speaker 1: some representation of it, some expectation of what the uh,
Speaker 1: the the the the experience is going to be like,
Speaker 1: just through media and culture. Yeah. Well, and the effect
Speaker 1: of the drug tends to be so powerful on the
Speaker 1: mind that it's nearly impossible for you to think, like, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't get anything. I mean no, Like if if
Speaker 1: you are becoming a Comets tale of disembodied consciousness, you
Speaker 1: watch your ego dissolve like sugar and a stream, you're
Speaker 1: probably part of the active test group. Right. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: even but even if the effects are not that strong,
Speaker 1: if the dosage is lower, like it will be undeniable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe not always because some people are very suggestible,
Speaker 1: you know, But but the majority of the time people
Speaker 1: are going to be able to tell what group they're in. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the experiment ers can usually tell if the subject they're
Speaker 1: working with is on LSD or psilocybin versus a placebo,
Speaker 1: like if you know, people who are on these drugs
Speaker 1: tend to act a certain way that's pretty different than
Speaker 1: people who are just getting a sugar pill. Now, there
Speaker 1: are some ways of making this a little bit better.
Speaker 1: For example, you can use an active placebo, which is
Speaker 1: a placebo that does something to the body that the
Speaker 1: subject will be able to sense. One example that has
Speaker 1: been used in historical research is niacin, which causes physiological
Speaker 1: effects like flushing of the face and tingling in the body.
Speaker 1: But still a lot of subjects and experimenters can probably
Speaker 1: still pretty easily tell the difference between if you've gotten
Speaker 1: a large dose of psilocybin or LSD versus niacin. So
Speaker 1: you still are going to have this blinding problem. But
Speaker 1: then there's another problem that makes it worse, a problem
Speaker 1: with conducting psychedelic research the same way you would conduct
Speaker 1: other drug research. And that is as we mentioned a
Speaker 1: minute ago, the importance of set and setting, And I
Speaker 1: remember it was in the first episode, I think, where
Speaker 1: we talked mostly about the importance of set and setting. Uh,
Speaker 1: people's takeaways from psychedelic assisted therapy seem hugely dependent on
Speaker 1: their expectations on the environment and on the guide. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was a Poulin who pointed out that
Speaker 1: really the only person to ever take LSD without any
Speaker 1: expectations of what it might consist of was Albert Hoffman himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he took it by accident and nobody knew what
Speaker 1: it was yet. Yeah, that's funny. But I mean it's
Speaker 1: clearly true that people's experiences on these drugs are highly
Speaker 1: dependent on on priming and on stimuli from around them
Speaker 1: and what they're told going in and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, like, for instance, just maintaining a very
Speaker 1: like calm therapeutic in a physical environment, having people interact
Speaker 1: with you, you know, the researchers in question in a
Speaker 1: likewise manner, that sort of thing. In other words, I
Speaker 1: would say, to get the most clinical use and the
Speaker 1: most positive effects out of these drugs, it seems like
Speaker 1: you specifically want to do the opposite it of what
Speaker 1: you normally do in a drug trial. You explicitly do
Speaker 1: want to bias the subject's expectations and interpretations of their
Speaker 1: drug experience in a way that suggests it will help
Speaker 1: them with their problems. Yeah. So basically, yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: doing a psilocybin study in which the individuals taking psilocybin
Speaker 1: are going to be laying on a beam bag jair
Speaker 1: for instance, listening to some ambient music and attended to
Speaker 1: by you know, you know, very courteous therapists, you would
Speaker 1: have to have the same situation going on with the
Speaker 1: placebo group, and in doing that you have all of
Speaker 1: these like situational effects that may well create like something
Speaker 1: kind you know, certainly not the psychedelic experience itself, but
Speaker 1: some sort of comforting, suggestible, um uh situation. But this
Speaker 1: has also been invoked to explain some of the differences
Speaker 1: in like some of the replication difficulties that people have
Speaker 1: had with psychedelic experiments, because sometimes, you know, people in
Speaker 1: these experiments are given psychedelics with a certain kind of
Speaker 1: set and setting, and then the replication attempt it just
Speaker 1: sort of gives them the psychedelics, but doesn't replicate the
Speaker 1: set and setting and finds that, oh, in this in
Speaker 1: this study that didn't replicate the original set and setting,
Speaker 1: people are not getting nearly as positive a benefit. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that just seems to show again how dependent the
Speaker 1: experience is on set and setting. Well, it comes back
Speaker 1: to like what the substance does that you know, and
Speaker 1: these even these early researchers, they they you know, pretty
Speaker 1: early on, we're convinced that it was not something that
Speaker 1: the substance was doing to the body. It was what
Speaker 1: it was the mind state it was creating. Exactly what
Speaker 1: could be gain from that mindset. Yes, psychedelics seem to
Speaker 1: be in into whatever extent that they are effective at
Speaker 1: helping people and have clinical significance. They seem to be
Speaker 1: more a facilitator of experiences than a direct action drug.
Speaker 1: It's not that you take psilocybin and the compound curious
Speaker 1: your alcoholism, but that taking psilocybin allows you to have
Speaker 1: an experience of profound emotional significance that helps people overcome alcoholism.
Speaker 1: It seems it's the experience that actually matters. So just say,
Speaker 1: locking somebody in a sterile, uncomfortable white room, giving them
Speaker 1: a shot of psilocybin without a therapist or guide present
Speaker 1: is maybe not a very good recipe for getting the
Speaker 1: most positive effects out of the drug. But this is
Speaker 1: frustrating if you're like, you know, if you're used to
Speaker 1: running drug tests, because it seems that when psychedelics have
Speaker 1: a clinical significance, it is in some ways similar to
Speaker 1: an active placebo. It just appears to be an extremely
Speaker 1: effective active placebo. So yeah, there have been these kind
Speaker 1: of difficulties over the years. Like I'd say, the bottom
Speaker 1: line is that objective research is so important in medical science,
Speaker 1: but the standard methods that we have for objective research
Speaker 1: don't apply especially well to psychedelics, and some methods of
Speaker 1: achieving objectivity appear to directly counteract the most powerful clinical
Speaker 1: potentials of the compounds. Another problem we could talk about
Speaker 1: from the history of psychedelic research is not a systematic
Speaker 1: methodological obstacle, but it's more like a historical trend that
Speaker 1: you know, we're not alone in observing other people who
Speaker 1: observe this, which is that I would say, due to
Speaker 1: the unique properties of these drugs, a lot of researchers
Speaker 1: who focus on this subject area appear over time to
Speaker 1: tend to lose objectivity and become more endorsers and enthusiasts
Speaker 1: than objective scientists just trying to find out what's true. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I don't know to what extend. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of them, but I guess the problem is
Speaker 1: that the ones who do become certainly more noticeable voices
Speaker 1: are often the loudest. Right now, and again, I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, I'm not saying all people, all scientists
Speaker 1: who work with psychedelics to this or maybe not, probably
Speaker 1: not even most, but but but some significant numbers do
Speaker 1: follow this path, right and and and and again, their
Speaker 1: voices are the loudest. And in terms of loud the
Speaker 1: psychedelic voices, few voices were louder than Timothy Learies. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like one example of of of what you're talking about
Speaker 1: here Timothy Leary's work on the Harvard psilocybin project in
Speaker 1: the early sixties. Uh. Some of Lear's methodology there was
Speaker 1: highly criticized, and it basically seems like he was intentionally
Speaker 1: biasing the experiments to make psychedelics seem more clinically useful. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, which is a shame because the research does
Speaker 1: actually suggest that they're useful. It's just the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he was being hasty. He was being hasty, he was
Speaker 1: taking shortcuts for example. UM. An example of this is
Speaker 1: the Concord prison experiment, which was aimed at studying recidivism
Speaker 1: and inmates that were administered psilocybin, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is basically the ideas like if you give them psilocybin, like,
Speaker 1: how are they going to successfully transfer into uh, you know,
Speaker 1: back into normal everyday life or are they gonna wind
Speaker 1: up in back in the prison system again? And so
Speaker 1: he uh, you know, it sounds like a pretty interesting premise,
Speaker 1: but then the execution was flawed. He looked at recidivism
Speaker 1: rates ten months after release for the psilocybin takers, but
Speaker 1: thirty months later for the control group. And of course
Speaker 1: time is vital in all this because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: somebody like returning to life. Uh, and so like the
Speaker 1: I mean not just like month to month, but like
Speaker 1: day to day, week to week is vital in any
Speaker 1: kind of study having to do with recidivism. You know,
Speaker 1: you know because like the first day back, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what's somebody doing there be a visiting family or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's it's the as the days go by, as the
Speaker 1: weeks go by, as the months go by, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have to potentially deal with greater temptation and he and
Speaker 1: he was widely criticized by colleagues at the time for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Richard Alpert, who was also known as Ramdas, would later
Speaker 1: explain that, you know that the aim of the project
Speaker 1: was solid and had a reasonable therapeutic model, but would
Speaker 1: it would but it would have required long term application
Speaker 1: and study, and Leary just didn't have the patients for
Speaker 1: long term studies. Ultimately, this is something you see throughout
Speaker 1: Leary's life. You know, this restlessness, this lack of patients, passion,
Speaker 1: but then a tendency to rush things. And it's almost
Speaker 1: like he had more system one thinking, you know, the
Speaker 1: system to thinking. And of course, uh, this is not
Speaker 1: the preferable balance for serious scientific inquiry right now. There
Speaker 1: was another classic experiment from the golden years of psychedelic
Speaker 1: research in the nineteen fifties and early sixties, and this
Speaker 1: one I think we should look at for a minute
Speaker 1: that this was done under the supervision of Timothy Leary's
Speaker 1: Harvard psilocybin project, But it wasn't, I think directly carried
Speaker 1: out by Leary. It was directly carried out by a
Speaker 1: guy named Walter Panky. And this was the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two experiment with the use of psilocybin to occasion mystical
Speaker 1: experiences that were subjectively perceived as positive and valid by
Speaker 1: religious people. And this is sometimes known as the Marsh
Speaker 1: Chapel experiment or the Good Friday experiment because it took
Speaker 1: place on Good Friday, nine seen sixty two. So Walter
Speaker 1: Pankey at the time was a divinity student at Harvard
Speaker 1: Divinity School. And the basic details went like this, So
Speaker 1: you had twenty divinity students in the Boston area and
Speaker 1: each got an injection before a Good Friday Service at
Speaker 1: the Marsh Chapel of Boston University. Half got psilocybin, half
Speaker 1: got an active placebo, which was niacin. And remember Nia's
Speaker 1: intends to cause flushing and tinkling, so they would feel
Speaker 1: something going on. And the basic findings were that the
Speaker 1: students in the test group overwhelmingly reported positive and in
Speaker 1: some cases, life changing religious experiences, and some later rated
Speaker 1: this experiment Good Friday Service day as among the most
Speaker 1: profound and significant experiences of their lives. But there were complications.
Speaker 1: One subject on psilocybin had some kind of episode which
Speaker 1: involved trying to leave the chapel to proclaim a religious message,
Speaker 1: and he had to be tranquilized with thorazine. I think
Speaker 1: they backed off with the franquilizing people with thorazine after
Speaker 1: this experiment. And these were they These were the researchers,
Speaker 1: not like the old church ladies right, who may also
Speaker 1: keep thorazine on hand the pastor tranquilizing and so I
Speaker 1: was like, I was wondering, you know, how did this
Speaker 1: experiment hold up over time? What do people think looking
Speaker 1: back on it. There have been some later attempts to
Speaker 1: analyze and follow up on the experiment. One was by
Speaker 1: Rick Doblin of of maps uh an organization. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we've mentioned already, but I think you'll refer
Speaker 1: to later. Yeah, it's the Multi Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Speaker 1: Studies and they're they're involved in a number of research
Speaker 1: efforts and involving psychedelics and also m D M a UM.
Speaker 1: By the way, they also are involved in something called
Speaker 1: the Zendo Project, which aims to promote proper psychedelic peer support,
Speaker 1: especially for individuals, especially first timers who are having a
Speaker 1: difficult trip. So I think they've like set up operations
Speaker 1: that um major cultural festivities such as Burning Man before.
Speaker 1: But I think this is a really in our project.
Speaker 1: I like to see how it develops because I think
Speaker 1: it's an important step. If you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: see decriminalization of psychedelic substances in the United States, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is something we should continue to explore
Speaker 1: more as we go on. But I think, um, the
Speaker 1: idea of having the proper guides who know what they're
Speaker 1: doing is and is a very important part of what
Speaker 1: might be considered legitimate psychedelic use. I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of the research on the clinical significance of psychedelic so
Speaker 1: we should really stress is not just giving somebody a
Speaker 1: compound and then leaving them alone, right, you know it is.
Speaker 1: It is psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. So you might have a guide,
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist or a psychologist or somebody who is experienced
Speaker 1: in working with people. The therapist of some kind who
Speaker 1: either like guides you through the experience itself or sort
Speaker 1: of holds the space with you while you have your
Speaker 1: experience and then later helps you talk through it and
Speaker 1: go through the integration SSS. I think the idea of
Speaker 1: having positively socially chaperoned and uh and sort of like
Speaker 1: expert guided psychedelic experiences is a very important thing that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be under emphasized, and it's present in a lot
Speaker 1: of the traditional uses of psychedelics, Like when we talked
Speaker 1: about the traditional uses with the curanderas in southern Mexico.
Speaker 1: I mean that this wouldn't be you just take a
Speaker 1: drug out in the void by yourself. I mean you
Speaker 1: would be guided by someone who is a is a
Speaker 1: religious leader. You would have a shaman and in these uh,
Speaker 1: these test cases, you would have a therapist or you know,
Speaker 1: or a researcher that was that was filling in for
Speaker 1: that role. And then outside of the you know, the
Speaker 1: traditional usage or the research or medicinal or psychotherapist usage,
Speaker 1: there is still room for an individual like that, like
Speaker 1: somebody that is guiding the experience and setting and attending
Speaker 1: to set and setting. Yeah. Oh, but so that was
Speaker 1: important to mention, but we did get sidetracked, so I
Speaker 1: we're talking about Dublin. Yeah. Well, the follow up and
Speaker 1: analysis of the Origin Channel marsh Chapel experiment from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. Rick Doblin followed up on it in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, and he made some criticisms of the original
Speaker 1: studies methodology, Like he pointed out that there were the
Speaker 1: problems you would expect with double blinding that we already
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, um there were some imprecise questions and
Speaker 1: the questionnaire given to subjects to evaluate their experience, and
Speaker 1: a few other things, like the original study failed to
Speaker 1: report the fact that one participant had to be tranquilized,
Speaker 1: so it seems like something you probably should have mentioned.
Speaker 1: And there was also the fact that, while on the
Speaker 1: whole the students viewed their mystical experiences on psilocybin as
Speaker 1: very positive and profound, many of them struggled with intense
Speaker 1: bouts of fear and difficulty and negative emotions at some
Speaker 1: point over the course of their trips, and this probably
Speaker 1: should have been reported in more detail than it was,
Speaker 1: though the experiences were positive overall, but also so. Dublin
Speaker 1: conducted a twenty five year follow up with some of
Speaker 1: the seminary students from the original study, and he confirmed
Speaker 1: that they reported sustained profound positive effects from their religious
Speaker 1: experiences with psilocybin. And I think it's really notable of
Speaker 1: the marsh Chapel experiment that this was not like so
Speaker 1: many of the studies that came before, research into how
Speaker 1: to treat people's problems like addictions or mental illness, but
Speaker 1: to use psychedelics in a way to enhance the experience
Speaker 1: of so called healthy normals. This was a case where
Speaker 1: you know, these people weren't like suffering and needing a treatment.
Speaker 1: It was like, could they have a profound religious experience
Speaker 1: that they deemed valid on with the aid of these substances.
Speaker 1: And the answer appears to be yes. But that's a
Speaker 1: very different question than most drug trials investigate, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean generally it is it is with the aim
Speaker 1: of curing a particular malady, of seeing if something that
Speaker 1: those substances useful in treating a particular condition or symptoms.
Speaker 1: But this is more about, if anything, it's about treating
Speaker 1: the human condition itself, right, Uh, seeing what effect it
Speaker 1: could have on just sort of baseline human experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think maybe we should take another break and
Speaker 1: then come back and explore that concept a little more
Speaker 1: than all right, so we sort of know the general
Speaker 1: outline of what happened in the mid nineteen sixties. There
Speaker 1: was this significant backlash to what had been for a
Speaker 1: while now, at least a decade and a half of interesting,
Speaker 1: in some ways very promising psychedelic research. But by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy or so, drugs were public Enemy number one and
Speaker 1: scientific research in them dropped off dramatically, encountered a lot
Speaker 1: of obstacles at that point, and it's only more recently
Speaker 1: that we've seen this renaissance of of psychedelic research. So
Speaker 1: I guess we might want to look at a question
Speaker 1: of like, and this is something that's hard to answer
Speaker 1: in a definitive way, but examining some possible reasons for
Speaker 1: the cause of the moral panic around psychedelics in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen sixties. First of all, I think some of
Speaker 1: it you could chalk up to a somewhat legitimate reaction
Speaker 1: to the perceived over enthusiasm of people like Timothy Learies,
Speaker 1: some of the scientists involved in psychedelic research. We're clearly
Speaker 1: not practicing the most rigorous subjective science, and we're in
Speaker 1: some cases turning into enthusiasts and gurus, something more like
Speaker 1: alternative religious leaders. And it's not surprising at all that
Speaker 1: this caused a lot of skepticism and and uh and
Speaker 1: push back within the scientific community. Right, yeah, because here's
Speaker 1: here's the leary, this kind of weird and at times
Speaker 1: kind of goofy character, um and and at times very
Speaker 1: profound and well spoken. I mean he was, he was
Speaker 1: a very charismatic guy. But you can you can understand
Speaker 1: I think, you know, especially members of the older generation
Speaker 1: and more traditional folks, uh, being a little suspicious of
Speaker 1: this character. Yeah. Another big part of the backlash I think,
Speaker 1: which Paullen definitely acknowledges at length in his book, is specifically,
Speaker 1: this is what we were talking about before the break,
Speaker 1: how scary it seemed that some psychedelic enthusiasts were recommending
Speaker 1: psychedelics to so called healthy normals, you know, just regular people.
Speaker 1: Like the ideas, well, we're going to tolerate a lot
Speaker 1: of different methods of treating people who are facing problems,
Speaker 1: people who have mental illnesses or addictions. Uh. And many
Speaker 1: of these solutions could include drugs, even drugs that have
Speaker 1: a potential for abuse, because we think, well, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's fighting a problem and it's helping people get better.
Speaker 1: But what if a drug implies that the whole of
Speaker 1: society is sick and there's something wrong with the baseline
Speaker 1: culture that's so called normal people could benefit from using
Speaker 1: it to affect change on themselves. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: quite a pilled, a hard pill to swallow, you know,
Speaker 1: to to hear, oh, there's something there's something terribly wrong
Speaker 1: with us, or there's something terribly wrong with the way
Speaker 1: we're conducting ourselves in the modern world. I mean, this
Speaker 1: continues to be one aspect of you know, of the
Speaker 1: problem with communicating the you know, the the dire threat
Speaker 1: of climate change is because there is a certain amount
Speaker 1: of judgment to be placed on the way that that
Speaker 1: modern industrial society has conducted itself. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, there's always going to be negative
Speaker 1: reaction against any indictment that goes to our general way
Speaker 1: of life. Like we we want to indict you know,
Speaker 1: antisocial abnormality, like the murderer or the you know, somebody
Speaker 1: who did something very unusual. But what if everybody is
Speaker 1: doing something that's harmful. If if that's the case you
Speaker 1: want to make, you're gonna have a hard time getting
Speaker 1: people to accept it. Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, I mean ultimately nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna want. Everybody is afraid of change. And certainly
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties were a time and where there in
Speaker 1: which there was a great fear of various changes, not
Speaker 1: only the changes that were uh you know, offered or
Speaker 1: at least advertised by you know, the psychedelic counterculture, but
Speaker 1: also the fear of change via uh, political ideologies, the
Speaker 1: fear of communism, the fear of racial integration. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: all these various changes that were uh, that we're taking
Speaker 1: place in society. Yeah, and so you can definitely see
Speaker 1: why there's a lot of fear around the idea of
Speaker 1: treating normality. So Altice Huxley and Humphrey Osmond they you know,
Speaker 1: we're friends and wrote back and forth to each other
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. Uh. And there there was one
Speaker 1: letter that was quoted in Pollen's book that I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting where Huxley was writing to Osmond in nine
Speaker 1: about people taking compounds like mescal and an LSD, and
Speaker 1: Huxley wrote, quote, people will think that they are going mad,
Speaker 1: when in fact they are beginning when they take it
Speaker 1: to go sane. And also, as Pollen notes from his experience,
Speaker 1: researching the book, that there's this quote drift from the
Speaker 1: treatment of individuals with psychological problems to a desire to
Speaker 1: treat the whole of society. And uh, this drift, he says,
Speaker 1: is a change that quote seems eventually to infect everyone
Speaker 1: who works with psychedelics, touching scientists too, And so I
Speaker 1: think everyone there is probably an overstatement. I think he's
Speaker 1: you know, being a little casual, but it does seem
Speaker 1: to me to be a startling trend, maybe one that
Speaker 1: should give us pause. I don't know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: worth considering that. But like how many scientists involved in
Speaker 1: the UH in the investigation of psychedelics do end up
Speaker 1: thinking that it shouldn't just be used to treat people
Speaker 1: in a clinical setting who are experiencing one problem or another,
Speaker 1: but it's something that so called healthy normals should take
Speaker 1: to improve their lives and improve the whole of society. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it comes back to the traditional uses
Speaker 1: of these substances. In many cases they were they were
Speaker 1: not necessarily taken purely as as as medicine for an ailment.
Speaker 1: But in any case, it's just part of you know,
Speaker 1: your continued uh, you know what will would we describe
Speaker 1: now as in a mental health Uh. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: that's a good point. And while we certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to demonize these substances, I do think also we should
Speaker 1: be skeptical of of that impulse. I mean, it's worth
Speaker 1: asking the question, is that correct or is that just?
Speaker 1: Is that over enthusiasm based on positive personal experiences that
Speaker 1: people have had. Yeah? Yeah, And then I guess you
Speaker 1: could also say it's it's kind of like if you're
Speaker 1: if you're acknowledging that they're big, almost impossible problems in
Speaker 1: the world, wicked problems as the uh you know, as
Speaker 1: we often refer to them, things that seem insurmountable, the
Speaker 1: kind of problems that make us, you know, the lead
Speaker 1: us to be convinced that surely only you know, the
Speaker 1: return of a savior or the interference on by by
Speaker 1: aliens could possibly help us solve Like humans are just
Speaker 1: incapable of solving these problems on their own. Then perhaps
Speaker 1: we're putting, we might be putting too much stock in
Speaker 1: the powers of a psychedelic substance to somehow fix that
Speaker 1: for us on an individual level or a cultural level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that a good point of comparison. I mean,
Speaker 1: while while we certainly don't want to deny the evidence
Speaker 1: of the potential positive uses of these things, you don't
Speaker 1: want to make them a god either. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't want to drift into the miracle cure mentality, because
Speaker 1: one a lot of these studies show, quite frankly, is
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of potential for psychedelics in
Speaker 1: in treating things like addiction and depression and all that.
Speaker 1: But they're not miracle cures. It's not like you know
Speaker 1: that this fixes all your problems immediately and then the
Speaker 1: world's a perfect place. Now, there's another reason that we
Speaker 1: can go to to explain the anti psychedelic backlash that
Speaker 1: I think is probably the most obvious one, right, the
Speaker 1: countercultural associations with and possible direct effects of psychedelic use.
Speaker 1: Of course, we all know these compounds came to be
Speaker 1: associated with rebellion and rejection of mainstream culture and rejection
Speaker 1: of political authorities. You know, Timothy Leary would would proclaim
Speaker 1: to people that kids who took acid, quote, won't find
Speaker 1: your wars, won't join your corporations. I mean that that's
Speaker 1: scary to the authorities, right, You do you think they're
Speaker 1: not going to fight our wars anymore. How are we
Speaker 1: gonna how are we gonna fight? They're not gonna be
Speaker 1: a part of corporations. They're not going to found Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley corporations in the future. Yeah, well that's funny. I
Speaker 1: mean that turned out not quite to be true. A
Speaker 1: lot of the yeah, a lot of these acid takers
Speaker 1: did turn out to be business leaders. It's obviously not
Speaker 1: a panacea against business. But I did want to quote
Speaker 1: a couple of sections from Pollen that I thought were very,
Speaker 1: very smart on this part. So first, the first one
Speaker 1: is where Paullen said, quote LST truly was an acid,
Speaker 1: dissolving almost everything with which it came into contact, beginning
Speaker 1: with the hierarchies of the mind, the super ego, ego,
Speaker 1: and unconscious, and going on from their to society's various
Speaker 1: structures of authority. And then two lines of every imaginable kind,
Speaker 1: between patient and therapist, research and recreation, sickness and health,
Speaker 1: self and other, subject and object, the spiritual and the material.
Speaker 1: If all such lines are manifestations of the Apollonian strain
Speaker 1: in Western civilization, the impulse that erects distinctions, dualities, and
Speaker 1: hierarchies and defends them. Then psychedelics represented the ungovernable Dionysian
Speaker 1: force that blithely washes all those lines away. That's beautiful,
Speaker 1: and that comes back to Terence mckinna's definition of them
Speaker 1: is boundary dissolving. Yeah, and I think that's largely correct
Speaker 1: based on everything we've read. But another passage that I
Speaker 1: thought was very interesting about this counterculture backlash is uh.
Speaker 1: It goes like this quote. For what other time in
Speaker 1: history did a society's young undergo a searing right of
Speaker 1: passage with which the previous generation was utterly unfamiliar. Normally,
Speaker 1: rites of passage helped knit societies together, as the young
Speaker 1: crossover hurdles and through gates erected and maintained by their elders,
Speaker 1: coming out on the other side to take their place
Speaker 1: in the community of adults. Not so with the psychedelic
Speaker 1: Journey of the nineteen sixties, which at its conclusion dropped
Speaker 1: its young travelers onto a psychic landscape unrecognizable to their parents.
Speaker 1: That this won't ever happen again is reason to hope
Speaker 1: that the next chapter in psychedelic history won't be quite
Speaker 1: so divisive. Well, I mean it won't happen quite the
Speaker 1: same way again. But as Paul himself points out, like
Speaker 1: he grew up in the dark times of of you
Speaker 1: know that he basically grew up in the moral panic period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so didn't really experiment much with psychedelics when he was younger,
Speaker 1: and really wasn't until quite recently as as an older
Speaker 1: man that he was able to really experiment with them
Speaker 1: and understand them in a greater sense. So I feel
Speaker 1: like there are still going to be generational gaps there. Well,
Speaker 1: that last sentence maybe far too optimistic. I mean, the
Speaker 1: main part I was thinking about was the beginning of
Speaker 1: this where he points out the idea of rights of
Speaker 1: passage that expand the consciousness. They are supposed to be
Speaker 1: passed on from parents to children. And we've the generations together,
Speaker 1: and if the young acquire a consciousness altering right of
Speaker 1: passage that the older generations don't have, that can be
Speaker 1: terrifying to the older generations. It's like they're not our
Speaker 1: children anymore. They've been initiated into some other tribe. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a great point. I mean, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was a new ride of passage that the older generation
Speaker 1: by and large had no experience with there's one other
Speaker 1: possible thing going on in the nineteen sixties that I
Speaker 1: think might be worth mentioning, which is and well, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get into more detail about these studies in the
Speaker 1: in the next episode. But there are at least a
Speaker 1: couple of studies I've been reading from the last decade
Speaker 1: or so, one from two thousand eleven and one from
Speaker 1: eighteen that are about adult personality change occasioned by use
Speaker 1: of psychedelics. So you've got these various ways of measuring
Speaker 1: personality traits, and and people might you know, your personality
Speaker 1: might overtime sort of be in flux, but you know,
Speaker 1: mostly your traits are going to be pretty set by
Speaker 1: the time you're an adult. You know, you're around a baseline.
Speaker 1: You might hover. But there appears to be some evidence
Speaker 1: that using psychedelics can actually change adults personalities. And so
Speaker 1: one of the many things that's been observed is that,
Speaker 1: for example, use of psychedelics appears to increase people in
Speaker 1: a psychological personality trait that's known as openness to experience.
Speaker 1: People who take psychedelics appear to increase in openness, and
Speaker 1: openness is actually a highly socially significant personality trade. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's been associated with all kinds of other things in
Speaker 1: societies in various research, Like openness is highly correlated with
Speaker 1: with like lack of prejudice and lack of authoritarianism, and
Speaker 1: stuff like appreciation for art and for other cultures and things.
Speaker 1: I think you'd find the openness personality trait largely associated
Speaker 1: with like environmentalism and multiculturalism. Yeah, I mean, just if
Speaker 1: nothing else, Like if if you were to become more
Speaker 1: neophilic and you know, uh, you know, attracted to new experiences,
Speaker 1: you become more attractive to travel, and in traveling, you're
Speaker 1: exposed to to uh. I mean, travel itself is kind
Speaker 1: of I think has a lot to in common with
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience. You know, where you suddenly you're in in
Speaker 1: a place that is mostly the same but a little different,
Speaker 1: and uh, people around you are different and yet the same,
Speaker 1: and it forces you to sort of reconsider who you
Speaker 1: are in the whole scenario. So if this is true, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that there are these cascading effects from the use
Speaker 1: of psychedelics that maybe on a broad scale, say changing
Speaker 1: the personality is of a young generation, especially changing them
Speaker 1: in ways that might not be so congenial to you
Speaker 1: if you are Richard Nixon or something that these personality
Speaker 1: changes could be perceived as a direct threat to the
Speaker 1: polity of the country. Yeah, and that's exactly how Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon saw it. I mean, Richard Nixon is is the
Speaker 1: anti psychedelic uh U S president by far? Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's difficult to unravel all this because on one hand,
Speaker 1: you have to you have to sort of try and
Speaker 1: figure out what the nineteen sixties were, you know, like
Speaker 1: what was the nineteen sixties experience? And certainly you and
Speaker 1: I were not around in the nineteen sixties, so we
Speaker 1: can't attest to it. Um. We do have some listeners
Speaker 1: I know that were and so hopefully we'll hear from
Speaker 1: from you on it. Um. I remember my my father
Speaker 1: told me once that Jefferson Airplane Somebody to Love captured
Speaker 1: what the sixties felt like. I but I never had
Speaker 1: a chance to ask him what he really meant by that.
Speaker 1: Maybe he just meant it was an iconic song of
Speaker 1: the time, which you know it certainly was. Um. But
Speaker 1: I guess that's one of the things with it with
Speaker 1: the sixties. Two is that, like all times, you know,
Speaker 1: the older generation is always going to be concerned with
Speaker 1: what the young generation is doing and how what they're
Speaker 1: doing doesn't reflect your values. Like I can't relate to
Speaker 1: the experience of you know, of grown up uh in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Uh. You know, you know, a middle
Speaker 1: aged person looking at the young generations and things and
Speaker 1: ask what are they doing with psychedelics? Uh? But like
Speaker 1: maybe on some level, I I understand that in regards
Speaker 1: to Pokemon, you know where I'm like, oh I I
Speaker 1: had this was not part of my childhood, and yet
Speaker 1: it's highly influential for for for these kids. What am
Speaker 1: I missing and why should I and to what extent
Speaker 1: should I be afraid of it? Wait? Were you one
Speaker 1: of those preachers going on TV during the Pokemon craze
Speaker 1: saying it was causing devil worship? No? No, but but
Speaker 1: I do love that kind of I love the sort
Speaker 1: of mild moral panics like that that there arise out
Speaker 1: of any new thing, be a Pokemon or Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: I think there was one for Teletubbies. Teletubbies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so yeah. The fact that there's kind of a
Speaker 1: generational divide and a and a and a moral panic
Speaker 1: popping up around something like that in and of itself,
Speaker 1: I think just is always going to be the case,
Speaker 1: and we see shades with that. I mean, certainly, I
Speaker 1: think we have it was we've discussed, we've discussed in
Speaker 1: the show before and will in the future. You know,
Speaker 1: we certainly have some issues with with mobile technology and
Speaker 1: with social media and the effects that though uh technologies
Speaker 1: are having on culture, and certainly, you know, it can
Speaker 1: lean into some sort of you know, crankiness where we
Speaker 1: look at younger generations and say, oh, they don't even
Speaker 1: know what it's like without social media. That's our grumpy
Speaker 1: old men issue. Yes, it's the tech. Yeah, uh, but
Speaker 1: we'll have to come back to that. But but but yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the older generation looked at the younger generation,
Speaker 1: and they didn't see their values necessarily reflected their values
Speaker 1: that had just carried them through a World war and
Speaker 1: of course threatened to carry into one final World war
Speaker 1: as well. And so it makes sense that these typical
Speaker 1: generational concerns would be exasperated by the introduction of something new,
Speaker 1: or at least new from a Western perspective. There was
Speaker 1: not only consciousness changing, but but also foreign. And remember
Speaker 1: remember that most anti drug messaging in America has depended
Speaker 1: on xenophobic and or racist messaging. An association was also
Speaker 1: made between uh, psychedelics and radical leftist ideologies, so I
Speaker 1: think that was very much a factor as well. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, one thing that's interesting, I remember from reading
Speaker 1: the individual testimonials of the people who were involved in
Speaker 1: the marsh Chapel experiment. This is anecdotal, so this is
Speaker 1: only just you know, the happen things they happen to report.
Speaker 1: But I think multiple members of the marsh Chapel experiments
Speaker 1: said that, you know, they had their psilocybin experience and
Speaker 1: it prompted them to go get involved in the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. Uh so you know which, of course, by
Speaker 1: the you know, the conservative authoritarian, uh you know, white
Speaker 1: ruling class impulse at the time would have probably they
Speaker 1: would have seen that as a political threat. Speaking of
Speaker 1: political threats, let's get back to Richard Nixon. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon famously considered Timothy Leary quote the most dangerous
Speaker 1: man in America. Okay, and uh and and he apparently
Speaker 1: his handlers were even concerned at different times that leftists
Speaker 1: might try and slip Nixon lsd Uh. I'm sure somebody
Speaker 1: was working on a plan there, one of those sixties pranksters.
Speaker 1: Oh well, yeah, Actually allegedly Jefferson airplane lead singer Grace
Speaker 1: Slick uh plan to slip LSD into Nixon's tea at
Speaker 1: a White House tea party because apparently she attended uh
Speaker 1: the same college as Nixon's daughter, and there was going
Speaker 1: to be an event there at the White House. But
Speaker 1: if the event turned out to be an all female event,
Speaker 1: so Nixon wasn't actually there, and I think she got
Speaker 1: kind of she got scared off by the security and left. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she didn't try to give any to Pat apparently not uh,
Speaker 1: well she had they didn't quite make I think she
Speaker 1: was accompanied by Abby Hoffman, who was this sounds like
Speaker 1: an Abby Hoffman's Yeah, so it didn't the the scheme
Speaker 1: didn't actually make it through the front door, so they
Speaker 1: didn't actually get to that level of of decision making.
Speaker 1: But this all does lead to an interesting question that
Speaker 1: comes up from time to time, sometimes flippantly and other
Speaker 1: times quite seriously. If certain world leaders could be tricked
Speaker 1: into having a psychedelic experience, could we change them? Could
Speaker 1: there be like a Scrooge moment? Right? Would they see
Speaker 1: themselves subjectively, would they connect with others or connect with
Speaker 1: nature in a meaningful and life changing way. I've heard
Speaker 1: people say this. In fact, I remember a lot of
Speaker 1: teenage stoners sings like this, like if you just get
Speaker 1: all these dictators and you know, we'd stop all the wars,
Speaker 1: if we could just get people to take acid, or
Speaker 1: I think they'd even just say like smoke weed or something.
Speaker 1: I'm I mean again, I'm I'm very open to and
Speaker 1: and interested in the many of the reported positive effects
Speaker 1: of psychedelic experiences, But I do not believe it is
Speaker 1: a miracle drug in that way, right, that it can't
Speaker 1: just in and of itself cure human nastiness, especially because
Speaker 1: set and setting are so important. I mean, what if
Speaker 1: you take a drug and the setting is the Nixon
Speaker 1: White House, Right, if you have a psychedelic experience where
Speaker 1: you're just like all revved up on the idea of
Speaker 1: slaughtering your enemies and stuff that I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not sure that would make things better. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: one specific version of this question that I've kind of
Speaker 1: tossed around in my own head from time to time
Speaker 1: is not so much you know, what have we um,
Speaker 1: you know, what if Hitler took acid? Kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, if we look at when l
Speaker 1: s d uh came into being. It was first synthesized
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight in Switzerland, m D m A
Speaker 1: was first created in Germany in nineteen twelve, and in
Speaker 1: both cases no one realized what they discovered. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn' until later that they took him off the
Speaker 1: shelf and looked at him again. But what if these
Speaker 1: substances are leaked out into Europe, especially Germany before World
Speaker 1: War Two? And granted LSD would have only had like
Speaker 1: a year to work its magic. But I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one who's thought about this. For instance, Terence mckinnay
Speaker 1: and Food of the Gods wondered what would it have
Speaker 1: been like if the Nazis had found out about LSD
Speaker 1: quote it is frightening to imagine some of the possible
Speaker 1: consequences had Hoffmann's discovery been recognized for what it was,
Speaker 1: even a moment earlier. So there, I mean, he's looking
Speaker 1: at it. It's not necessarily a good thing for everybody
Speaker 1: who takes it, but like that, it could be a
Speaker 1: facilitator of great evil. Yeah, yeah, I he may have
Speaker 1: gone into more detail on this in other works or lectures. Certainly,
Speaker 1: Uh McKenna spoke a lot about these topics, but so
Speaker 1: but I am not aware of any additional thoughts he
Speaker 1: had on the matter. But I suspect that they would
Speaker 1: have probably done much the same as the CIA did
Speaker 1: in their experiments with with the LSD, you know, searching
Speaker 1: for ways to use it as a weapon or a
Speaker 1: mind control substance and then ultimately find it wanting in
Speaker 1: that regard. Yeah, and then we've talked about this in
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind in the past.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that seemed to be the primary focus of
Speaker 1: like defense based research on psychedelics in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: is can we get it to make people do what
Speaker 1: we want against their will or as a truth serum? Right,
Speaker 1: and and certainly this was the deal with the Third Right.
Speaker 1: They were in a state of total war. They were
Speaker 1: interested in rockets, yes, but they weren't interested because of
Speaker 1: any space exploration advantages. They it was about weapon delivery.
Speaker 1: It was about pursuing their own awful and uh and
Speaker 1: racist ideology um, this conquest mentality. Yeah, absolutely, But the
Speaker 1: other hand, Uh, you know, Hitler took a lot of drugs,
Speaker 1: especially after is apparently taking a lot of stimulants, a
Speaker 1: lot of opioids, and so, you know, one you can't
Speaker 1: help but wonder, right, like, what what if out Off
Speaker 1: Hitler had taken a bunch of M D M A
Speaker 1: and L S d UM in nineteen forty two would
Speaker 1: have had any effect. I'm suspicious that that it would
Speaker 1: have any effect. Ultimately, Yeah, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: I buy the Soner line that, you know, just get
Speaker 1: the dictator to take a psychedelic and they will be cured.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to know, but I'm I doubt it.
Speaker 1: I mean it would be interesting as an experiment, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just to poke one of them up out there. Well.
Speaker 1: Another interesting question is instead of like these individuals say,
Speaker 1: like dose the dictator cases, if psychedelics and psychedelic culture
Speaker 1: were more widespread in general throughout the world, you know,
Speaker 1: and throughout industrialized society is going way back. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do wonder then, like if the you know, the calm
Speaker 1: and if the common drug of choice among industrialized societies
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth and nineteenth century had not been alcohol
Speaker 1: but had been psilocybin or something. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that's ultimately the more interesting question is not what if
Speaker 1: Hitler had taken analysis D OR or M D M A,
Speaker 1: but what if they what if they had been at
Speaker 1: large in UM in German culture of preceding the war
Speaker 1: UM And you know, ultimately, like the counter argument to
Speaker 1: that would be, well, there already was a strong bohemian
Speaker 1: vibe in pre war Germany, and it it was not
Speaker 1: sufficient to prevent the horrors of the Second World War
Speaker 1: and beyond. But yeah, I think ultimately, when you see
Speaker 1: people like Terence McKenna arguing for an archaic revival, for
Speaker 1: some sort of like return and the psychedelically assisted return
Speaker 1: to nature and interconnectedness, like they are talking about a
Speaker 1: cultural movement, they're not talking about strategic doses, dosing of
Speaker 1: of of key individuals. Yeah. If only were that easy.
Speaker 1: All Right, we've been going a while. Think we got
Speaker 1: to wrap it up for this one, but we we
Speaker 1: gotta come back in the next. We were originally going
Speaker 1: to do just three episodes, but psychedelics took hold, and
Speaker 1: now we've been going for three and we still haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to the twenty one century revival In psychedelic research,
Speaker 1: which we will focus on next time as right, So
Speaker 1: join us for part four of our psychedelic series here
Speaker 1: on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And I mean, who
Speaker 1: knows there might be a part five. We just we
Speaker 1: have no idea, We have no idea when this is
Speaker 1: gonna end, all right. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mothership, that's what we'll find it all Uh,
Speaker 1: you'll find links out to various social media accounts. You'll
Speaker 1: find our t shirt store. Also, if you want to
Speaker 1: interact with us, and more importantly, interact with other folks
Speaker 1: who listen to the show and have insightful things to
Speaker 1: share about it and related topics, head out on over
Speaker 1: to Facebook. They have the discussion group they're called we
Speaker 1: call it the Discussion module and Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind Discussion Module. You can apply, join and discuss there.
Speaker 1: It's the only good thing on Facebook pretty much anyway.
Speaker 1: Big thanks as always to are excellent audio producer Maya Cole.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback about this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.