WEBVTT - Touching the Void: Psychedelics and Death 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:13.720 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.240 My name is Robert Lamb. Yeah, my name is Julie Douglas. Julie. 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:22.040 We are always discussing outrageous natural experiences, natural experiences that 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:25.160 can color the mind with the feelings of the paranormal. 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.600 The ultimate in all of these experiences is the one 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.320 that we've spend a great deal of time thinking about 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.199 his death. My dad always said, everybody does it, so 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:37.720 they couldn't be that much to it. But and to 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:40.800 a certain extent, that's that's true. There. It's one of 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:43.240 the few things that is certain in any life until 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.320 we reach some point where we're actually able to cheat 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:48.800 death entirely. We're all going to go through this at 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:50.680 some point or what it depends how you look at it, 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:54.280 either go through or in there. And we have devoted 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.520 just countless centuries, just as long as humans have been 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.200 able to comprehend and ruminate on their more reality, we've 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:03.440 been trying to figure out how this works and how 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:06.760 best to prepare for death, or you know, we have 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.720 tried to divert our attention away from it. Right, And 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:13.720 when I think about diversions. One of the things that 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.160 comes to mind is altering our minds right in the 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:22.039 form of drugs. Well, that's that's one certainly one of 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.800 the major interpretations of the use of things like psychedelics, 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.280 And that's something we're gonna discuss here, because on one hand, 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:33.160 there is definitely the heavy recreational view of psychedelic substances 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:37.160 the nineteen sixties, the culture genre culture, the idea of 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.039 just hippies staring dreamily into the sky. Or if you 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:43.839 go to a concert and you see some young person 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:49.200 with giant eyes staring at their hands the entire time, right, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.600 and then you may say, well, this person is clearly 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:53.640 not getting anything out of this experience. This is just 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.920 clearly an escapist experience that they're enjoying. But then the 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.320 other side of psychedelic experience is rich history that we 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.160 see in various cultures, the use of them as a 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.600 ceremonial tool, as a religious tool to have some sort 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.520 of heightened experience that will gain supposed insight into what 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.400 life means, what death means, and all these questions. And 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.080 then there's science, right, and then there is science, yes, 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.560 And so what we're talking about here is the intersection 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:27.320 of I guess what you could say, hallucinogenic medicine and 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.400 the idea of end of life care. Recently, there was 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.480 an article in The New York Times about this, a 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:37.560 really great article called how psychedelic drugs can help patients 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:41.120 Face Death. And we're going to talk about this, but 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.080 before we talk about that, we should probably talk about 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:47.440 other therapeutic uses for hallucinogens. Now, I have never founded 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:51.280 the doctor and had hallucinogenic prescribed to me, so in 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.920 what cases this is not something that is actually going 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.280 to show up at your local drug store. But there 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:58.919 have been a number of experiments, a number of clinical 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.960 studies to see what uses they may have, because clearly 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.880 they have a powerful effect on our mind and the 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.960 way the mind works, and that's at the root of everything. So, 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:10.800 needless to say, doctors have looked at that and said, well, 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.119 there's got to be something here. Perhaps there's something here 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.320 that we can utilize to treat other conditions. Yeah, they 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.959 have actually found that ecstasy or m D m A 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:21.440 as it's known, and we'll talk about a little bit 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.079 more for their is an effective treatment for severe PTSD. 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:27.960 They're also studies of people with cluster headaches who took 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.680 LSD and reported their symptoms were greatly diminished, and psychedelics 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.960 have been used for alcoholism and other addictions. Now, a 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:39.680 lot of this has been off the radar because obviously 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:42.920 illegal drugs are sort of persona non grata here in 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:45.839 the United States, so it's been very hard for scientists 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:49.320 to be able to research these without a lot of 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:54.000 different constraints. So recently, the last thirty forty years, people 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.360 have been giving a little bit more scientific heft to 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.480 this idea that we can use these drugs as therapy. 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:03.120 So we inevitably have to turn to the character of 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.840 Timothy Learry here, who I don't know. Do you watch 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.040 the TV show Madman, Well, yeah, I've caught it before, 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.160 and I understand that this week there was a foray 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:16.799 into LSD, right, and Timothy Leary shows up, well, okay, 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.240 alright in the show. Obviously, he actually entered the Great 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.640 Void himself in the late nineties. But we're talking about 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.360 a psychologist, a writer, and one of psychedelic drugs most 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:31.320 ardent supporters. He conducted experiments at Harvard University with something 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:33.760 called Pilo sybin And we'll talk a little bit more 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.520 about that, and I'm sure you've heard the phrase turn on, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.479 tune in, and drop out. That's a guy who uttered it. 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:41.200 There's also an album by that name. It's like a 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.760 spoken word like psychedelic guidance album. It's actually pretty cool 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:47.800 worth checking out if you're into that kind of music. 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.279 It's been copiously sampled over the years. Learry is a 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.760 very interesting character. Obviously an educated man, an expert in 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:59.000 his field. Prior to his engagement with psychedelic substances, it 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:03.800 was around five and his wife committed suicide and left 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.320 him with a school age son and a school age daughter. 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:08.200 So he has this going on in his life. And 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:10.599 then at age thirty eight, he goes on this trip 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:13.359 to Spain. He suffers this mysterious illness and just without 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.159 the aid of any kind of drug or what have you, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.120 he has this mind altering experience, this moment that he 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.479 claims really allowed him to sort of see through the 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.200 limitations of his perspectives of the world before then. And 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:26.960 it's in the years following that that he actually begins 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.760 experimenting with psychedelic substances. He begins to incorporate it into 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.119 his work and explore the possibilities of it and things 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:36.960 as they tend to do. As we've discussed with good 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.440 old Lily the dolphins, right right right, when you bring 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:42.680 LSD into a study, especially back in these days, it 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:44.239 has a tendency to sort of get out of control 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.080 a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot of things spiraling 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:49.000 out of control. Mainly this is because the researchers at 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:51.400 the time, especially John C. Lily right with the dolphins, 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:55.840 are taking the LSD. So this made me changing their 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:59.599 perspective a little bit. And certainly it is darkening the 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.600 doors depths of science in a way that feels like 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:05.200 this drug is not being given sort of its due 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:09.840 diligence because it's now being associated with counter culture, especially 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:11.520 with Leary, because he really kind of took it up, 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.360 became a celebrity, and you know, there are a lot 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:18.800 of drug raids. Jordan Lyddy arrested him. Did he one 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:20.560 of the raids that I did not know that? The 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.599 Concord prison experiment was one of the big ones with him. Yeah. 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:25.640 But but there's this other part of Leary that is 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.359 really trying to look at this diligently and try to 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.280 really apply scientific method to this. But then he's got 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.240 all the craziness of the other part of his life, 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.080 that sort of I would say, putting a dark cloud 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:41.360 over his efforts well. And also he just becomes increasingly 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:46.240 less academic and more spiritual as the day's progress and 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:48.680 his the years progress. In his later life, he's making 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.440 the rounds, he's giving speeches, but he's more concerned with 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.160 the evolution of human consciousness. And he was a big 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:57.320 advocate of cybernetics. He really thought cybernetics, right, we're going 0:06:57.360 --> 0:06:59.599 to be the key to our future, and reallys he's 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:01.200 right on U. I guess what we should talk about 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.479 is the Concord prison experiment because that's where you can 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:09.000 see his bias really seeping in. Right. They're testing psychedelic substances. Specifically, 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.000 they're testing psilocybin on the group of thirty two prisoners 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:15.160 to see if they can adjust their recidivism rates. Right, 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.800 So recidivism rate is that the person is going to 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:19.800 be laid out of jail and then they will do 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:21.840 something else which will land them back into jail. And 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.640 as we know, the recivism rate has always been historically high, 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:29.760 like at this point in this study, it was recidivism rate. Yeah, 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:32.720 so he's interested. Can you Basically the question here is 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:36.920 by applying these psychedelic substances to these prisoners, can you 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:41.480 change them? Can you make them a less violent person? 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.880 Person it's less likely to engage in criminal behavior. I mean, 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:46.960 you're talking about taking somebody who is a prisoner, a 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.600 person with a criminal path and is statistically likely to 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.880 engage in crime. Again, right, and Key reports that it 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.880 definitely helps them, that they become less antisocial, etcetera. But 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:00.200 the fact of the matter is it did not really 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.880 affect the prisoners at all. That rate of recidivism was 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.360 the same, although he claimed that there was a reduction. Yeah, 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.240 there was a little squeaking of the The interpretation of 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:12.480 the data in the study was made to lean more 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:15.320 in favor of the findings. Again, he saw himself in 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.440 a very specific way that clouded his judgment. I think 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.200 here's a great quote. He says, we saw ourselves as 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.080 anthropologists from the twenty first century, inhabiting a time module 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.120 set somewhere in the dark ages of the nineteen sixties, 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.280 on this space colony. We were attempting to create a 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:35.000 new paganism and a new dedication to life as art 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.640 and that's from the study itself. No, no, that's him 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.640 as a general No, no, that's sort of one of 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.360 his general mission statements. But I think it gives a 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:45.520 good idea of why he might have gone off the 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:48.840 path of scientific method there. Okay, so we we mentioned 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.640 this guy. We mentioned Leary because he kind of helped 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:56.079 to put the kaibash on funding for hallucinogens because obviously 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.760 this guy all interwoven with counterculture. Nixon at one point 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.440 called him the most dangerous personal live. Yeah, clearly that 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.120 was the case. Funding dried up. We didn't really get 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.800 to have a good chance to study the effects of 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:13.960 hallucinogens as a therapy, as a motive therapy. So let's 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.439 talk about some of the drugs that are now currently 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.240 being researched. And let's also talk about this guy named 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:25.640 Stanislav Groff, because he's really important and that he I 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:29.320 think was taking up where literally left off in terms 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.640 of sort of falling off the map of the scientific method. Okay, Well, 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.840 first of all, we have psilocybin, and this is the 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:41.120 hallucinogen acceubstance that is obtained from certain types of mushrooms 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.000 that are indigenous to tropical and subtropical regions of South America, Mexico, 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.199 in the United States, in the sort of Georgia, Tennessee 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.560 area where I grew up, this is mostly known as 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.480 something that would grow on cow patties in pastors, I 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:56.559 have to say, like a lot of teenagers hanging out 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.880 in the dark, Yeah, trying to steal cow pies and 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.120 see what they can harvest from them. So these are 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.880 naturally occurring substances. Then you have in d m A, 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.920 which is synthetic. Okay, this is a psychoactive drug, and 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:14.720 it's chemically similar to methamphetamine and hallucinogenic mescaline, and it 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:20.080 produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth and distortions 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:23.720 and time perception and tactile experiences. The last three of 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.200 those also apply to the psilocybin right rights say, and 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:30.600 they they are helpful in reducing anxiety and enhancing self 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:33.520 awareness as well as empathy, which is really important, it 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.400 turns out when you are dealing with end of life care. 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.599 So this guy, Stanisloft Graff, much of today's research is 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:43.800 actually predicated on some of his work with psychedelic medicine 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.839 in the early sixties, he began giving the drug psilocybin 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.200 to cancer patients at the Spring Grove State Hospital near 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.000 Baltimore and documenting their effects, and he described cancer patients 0:10:55.520 --> 0:11:00.240 who were completely clenched with fear, who under the influences 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.520 of l s D or DPT, experienced relief from the 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.400 terror of dying. That is really important because this, again 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.480 is where our current researchers are licking, you know, at 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.080 in the past. They're not looking at Leary, but they're 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.200 looking at this guy to say, maybe there is something 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:17.320 to this, Maybe there is a different way that we 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:21.319 can approach end of life care. Because it's one thing 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:23.040 to say that, you know, we all are going to 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.400 die at one point, but it is certainly another thing 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.080 to say, you know what, you have six months to 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:32.440 eighteen months to live. So that's an entirely different situation. 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:33.880 All Right, we're gonna take a break and when we 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:36.600 come back, we're going to talk about how these drugs 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:44.240 could be very beneficial. And we're back. So, if one 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.400 is staring down death, and one knows that it is 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.760 imminent sometime in the next few months, the next few years, 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.360 how can substances such as m d M A and 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.839 psilocybin actually aid the patient and sort of smooth the 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.720 transition in to death. Okay, Well, there are a couple 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.200 of people that in the York Times article they focused on, 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:06.200 and in fact there's a documentary out there too that 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:09.959 talks about this guy named Charles Grobe and Pam Secuda, 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.560 who is the patient that the article and some of 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:18.120 his studies center around. Pam Secuda, fifty five years old. 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.200 She learns, or she learned, I should say, that she 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.760 had stage four a metastatic cancer. She was then given 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.160 six to twelve months to live, and she actually ended 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.600 up living four years. But about two years into it, 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.640 she sought out help for the anxiety and depression that 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.480 accompanied her feeling, her constant feeling that the other shoe 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.640 was about to drop. So she found out about the 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.680 study being conducted by Charles Grobe. He's a psychiatrist and 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.880 a researcher at Harbor Harbor u c L, a medical 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:49.240 center who at the time is giving solicibon to end 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:52.760 stage cancer patients to see if it would allay their fears. 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.400 She was given psychological tests who established that she was 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.719 psychologically sound, but also another test to to kind of 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.959 see what her level of depression and anxiety was, and 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:07.360 she was given a placebo during one session, and in 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.280 the second session she was giving the psilocybin. Now, that 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:16.120 session lasted for about six hours. She wore headphones that 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.840 piped in different music and nature sounds, and she also 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:21.360 had black eye shades on and that was meant to 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.880 encourage her to look inward. And I mentioned all of 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:25.920 this because in a little while we'll talk about how 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.480 this setting is really important. At the four hour point, 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.320 she began to cry because she started to really empathize 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:36.280 with her husband but what his feelings would be when 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:39.280 she passed on. And then she says that she released 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:43.080 all of this well of emotion and all of this 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.000 energy that she had been putting towards her situation, and 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.959 she began to look at it completely differently. And she 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:53.760 came out of that session really feeling like she could 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.720 approach death in a positive light, which is amazing. And 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.720 her husband even says that she had a completely remarkable 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.160 change in her demeanor because I remember that she's been 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.800 living with this condition for two years now and again, 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.640 feeling like that other she was going to drop in 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.680 this one session completely changed her perspective, and a huge 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.280 component of it seems to be her ability to empathize 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.320 more with her husband and what he's experiencing and sort 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:23.680 of see the situation outside of herself right which she 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:27.360 saw is very specifically, she saw that she was robbing 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.920 her present with these thoughts of the future. When you 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:32.600 can say that we all do that on some level 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.000 during the day, Oh yeah, I mean it comes back 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:36.760 right back around to some of the things that we've 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:38.920 been saying and things that have been said in Buddhist 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.920 philosophy for for ages, and the idea that so much 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.720 of our suffering is tied to worrying about the past 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.840 and fretting over the future and focusing on self, and 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:51.120 those are huge obstacles to overcome in the best of circumstances. 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:53.960 If you're facing the end of life, that they can 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:56.560 be even more insurmountable. What appears to be happening is 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:59.920 that we see that focus on self fade under the 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:03.120 substance as well as the worrying over the future, and 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.160 instead she's putting more focus on what is happening in 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:08.520 the present and what other people that are close to 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.320 her are feeling. Another good example that the article points 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.160 out as Laurie Reemer, a forty eight year old survivor 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.520 of adult onset leukemia, because she's surviving. She knows at 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.600 this point that she's in remission, but still her life 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.400 is going to be cut short. She knows she's got 0:15:22.440 --> 0:15:25.760 like a decade or two decades remaining. Yeah, she said 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.120 that she was fine when she thought she was near death. 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:31.360 It was when she went into remission that she really 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:35.080 became obsessed with, Okay, well when is this going to happen, 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.680 and really having a lot of anxiety about it, intense 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.800 fear and anxiety around relapse in death. Maybe that's because 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.320 she had survived the first bout and so it felt 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:47.480 I'm sure there are a lot of psychological factors that 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.560 made her feel like this, this may happen again, it 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.960 may not be so lucky. She participated in a study 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:57.440 at Johns Hopkins University where rolling Griffith's was administering silas 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.200 have been at a higher level than grobe was to 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.960 see if he could elicit any mystical insights to help 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.840 patients with their conditions, and Remer said when she underwent that, 0:16:07.120 --> 0:16:09.040 she said that her mind became like a series of 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.120 rooms and she could go in and out of these 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.880 rooms with remarkable ease. In one room there was the 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:18.400 grief her father experienced when Remor got leukemia, and another 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.720 her mother's grief, and in another her children's and yet 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.480 another room was her father's perspective on raising her. She says, quote, 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.880 I was able to see things through his eyes, and 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:30.920 through my mother's eyes, and through my children's eyes. I 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:32.960 was able to see what it had been like for 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.160 them when I was so sick. And this is someone 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:39.600 who went into this as an agnostic. She came out 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.080 of it saying, I now have the distinct sense that 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.320 there's so much more, so many different states of being. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.560 I have the sense that death is not the end, 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:49.360 but just part of a process, a way of moving 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:52.800 into a different sphere, a different way of being. That 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:55.000 in and of itself is pretty amazing that she had 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:59.960 that perspective change. But Griffith's, the person who administered the substance, 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.800 has said that for fourteen months after participating in a 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:08.320 solicitin study that was published in the Journal of psycho Pharmacology, 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.000 believes last year of subjects said that it was one 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.720 of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives and 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:22.320 thirty said it was the most meaningful experience. Yeah, so 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:26.320 it kind of makes me wonder, well, what exactly is 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.359 happening in the brain when this is going on, because 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.360 obviously this has a lot to do with how these 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:36.560 people are perceiving life now. Well, luckily, as we've discussed 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:38.840 another podcast, we are able to look inside the brain 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:41.199 and get an idea of what's going on. There's a 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.800 psychiatrist at Imperial College London by the name of David J. Nutt, 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:47.600 and Penis team used an m r I to scan 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.240 healthy volunteers dosed on psilocide and in order to capture 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.320 this transition from a normal, waking consciousness to the psychedelic state, 0:17:57.080 --> 0:18:00.000 they found it during these states of quote unquote understrad 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.119 in consciousness that there was a deactivation of regions of 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:07.320 the brain that interface our senses and our perception of self, 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:10.680 which false ride in line with what we were talking 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.600 about with her description of the way it felt, and 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.919 with the idea that our obsession with self, our ego, 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.320 our need to place ourselves at the center of this 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:22.280 story are tied in with our suffering, especially as we 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:25.080 approached that. Yeah, and I did see that One of 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:28.840 the regions that was dimmed was the anterior singular cortex, 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.439 and we've actually talked about that quite a bit. I 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:33.679 think most recently we were talking about envy, and we 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.000 were talking about one study in which they saw that 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:40.720 people who were experiencing envy were actually what we were. 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:42.840 You were seeing these parts of the brain, the anterior 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:47.520 singular cortex where pain is processed, lighting up, so that 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:49.879 we know that this part of the brain perceives pain, 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.679 even if it's emotional pain, it's the same place that 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:57.119 also processes physical pain. So it's interesting to see that 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:59.760 that would go offline here as well. But another part 0:18:59.760 --> 0:19:02.680 of is that is also very intriguing, and that researchers 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.040 wanted to try to get at, was why patients were 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.880 able to hold onto this feeling, this memory for so 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:14.359 long after having just one experience with these drugs. And 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.080 it turns out that encoding the experience is really really 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:20.560 important here, and that's what the researchers are doing. They're 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.080 following up with the patients for weeks and weeks afterward, 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.280 and they're dissecting what happened, and they're talking about the 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.560 memories and just like you would do that in would 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:31.159 say a trip that you took, um it begins to 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:36.760 really form these long term associations. So trip yes, yes, she, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.040 I should say. Let's say you, yes, he took a 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.920 trip to Paris, and you kept talking about it with, say, 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:44.840 your significant other, and you've got the blueprint of that memory. 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.080 And the same thing is happening with with the the 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.160 psychological trip that these patients are taking. Really, the whole 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:53.760 experiment here reminds me a lot of travel and how 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:55.879 the memory is encoded. I think about any trip that 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.960 I take a trip to another city. Let's say I'm 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.359 going to Paris, France and I've never been to Paris, 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:03.600 France before. I would ideally want to put some research 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:05.639 in beforehand, figure out where I'm going to go, what 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:07.560 I hope to get out of this trip, what I 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:10.240 hope to gain from the experience, then go on the trip, 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.919 and then when I get back process it. Be its scrapbooking, 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.840 writing some blogs about it, talking about it with people. 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.280 But I go into this trip with a certain expectation 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.000 and I leave it with this aim of processing and 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:23.800 learning from it. Okay, so I hear a little bit 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.680 of priming going on, right, and that's what they're talking 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.440 about here that it's not just a let's do some 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.480 up and see what happens. They're talking about, Let's prepare 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:35.320 them for this. Let's set the room up right, Let's 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:38.600 make sure they're items to remind them of people they love, 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.200 that we have the music and the ambiance is appropriate. 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.280 And then after the experience, let's discuss and let's see 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.320 what we can learn from this and then move forward 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:48.520 with it. And the priming thing is really important here 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.760 because they are talking to these patients about seeking relief 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.320 from anxiety and depression, and they are saying that you 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.280 want to administer this drug, and what we're hoping for 0:20:57.320 --> 0:20:59.359 you to do is to be able to conquer your fears, 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.960 I'll lay your years and so already, and we've already 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.199 seen this from the Placebo podcast that we did that 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:07.640 even when you sometimes talked to a doctor, your symptoms 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.120 will be reduced just by the very act of making 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.960 an appointment or talking to someone. So already they are 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.480 primed to have this experience. And this is really important 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:20.000 because there are limitations to this, to this sort of 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:23.240 drug therapy, right, And I was thinking about this. There's 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.280