Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Yeah, my name is Julie Douglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: We are always discussing outrageous natural experiences, natural experiences that
Speaker 1: can color the mind with the feelings of the paranormal.
Speaker 1: The ultimate in all of these experiences is the one
Speaker 1: that we've spend a great deal of time thinking about
Speaker 1: his death. My dad always said, everybody does it, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't be that much to it. But and to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, that's that's true. There. It's one of
Speaker 1: the few things that is certain in any life until
Speaker 1: we reach some point where we're actually able to cheat
Speaker 1: death entirely. We're all going to go through this at
Speaker 1: some point or what it depends how you look at it,
Speaker 1: either go through or in there. And we have devoted
Speaker 1: just countless centuries, just as long as humans have been
Speaker 1: able to comprehend and ruminate on their more reality, we've
Speaker 1: been trying to figure out how this works and how
Speaker 1: best to prepare for death, or you know, we have
Speaker 1: tried to divert our attention away from it. Right, And
Speaker 1: when I think about diversions. One of the things that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is altering our minds right in the
Speaker 1: form of drugs. Well, that's that's one certainly one of
Speaker 1: the major interpretations of the use of things like psychedelics,
Speaker 1: And that's something we're gonna discuss here, because on one hand,
Speaker 1: there is definitely the heavy recreational view of psychedelic substances
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, the culture genre culture, the idea of
Speaker 1: just hippies staring dreamily into the sky. Or if you
Speaker 1: go to a concert and you see some young person
Speaker 1: with giant eyes staring at their hands the entire time, right,
Speaker 1: and then you may say, well, this person is clearly
Speaker 1: not getting anything out of this experience. This is just
Speaker 1: clearly an escapist experience that they're enjoying. But then the
Speaker 1: other side of psychedelic experience is rich history that we
Speaker 1: see in various cultures, the use of them as a
Speaker 1: ceremonial tool, as a religious tool to have some sort
Speaker 1: of heightened experience that will gain supposed insight into what
Speaker 1: life means, what death means, and all these questions. And
Speaker 1: then there's science, right, and then there is science, yes,
Speaker 1: And so what we're talking about here is the intersection
Speaker 1: of I guess what you could say, hallucinogenic medicine and
Speaker 1: the idea of end of life care. Recently, there was
Speaker 1: an article in The New York Times about this, a
Speaker 1: really great article called how psychedelic drugs can help patients
Speaker 1: Face Death. And we're going to talk about this, but
Speaker 1: before we talk about that, we should probably talk about
Speaker 1: other therapeutic uses for hallucinogens. Now, I have never founded
Speaker 1: the doctor and had hallucinogenic prescribed to me, so in
Speaker 1: what cases this is not something that is actually going
Speaker 1: to show up at your local drug store. But there
Speaker 1: have been a number of experiments, a number of clinical
Speaker 1: studies to see what uses they may have, because clearly
Speaker 1: they have a powerful effect on our mind and the
Speaker 1: way the mind works, and that's at the root of everything. So,
Speaker 1: needless to say, doctors have looked at that and said, well,
Speaker 1: there's got to be something here. Perhaps there's something here
Speaker 1: that we can utilize to treat other conditions. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: have actually found that ecstasy or m D m A
Speaker 1: as it's known, and we'll talk about a little bit
Speaker 1: more for their is an effective treatment for severe PTSD.
Speaker 1: They're also studies of people with cluster headaches who took
Speaker 1: LSD and reported their symptoms were greatly diminished, and psychedelics
Speaker 1: have been used for alcoholism and other addictions. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of this has been off the radar because obviously
Speaker 1: illegal drugs are sort of persona non grata here in
Speaker 1: the United States, so it's been very hard for scientists
Speaker 1: to be able to research these without a lot of
Speaker 1: different constraints. So recently, the last thirty forty years, people
Speaker 1: have been giving a little bit more scientific heft to
Speaker 1: this idea that we can use these drugs as therapy.
Speaker 1: So we inevitably have to turn to the character of
Speaker 1: Timothy Learry here, who I don't know. Do you watch
Speaker 1: the TV show Madman, Well, yeah, I've caught it before,
Speaker 1: and I understand that this week there was a foray
Speaker 1: into LSD, right, and Timothy Leary shows up, well, okay,
Speaker 1: alright in the show. Obviously, he actually entered the Great
Speaker 1: Void himself in the late nineties. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: a psychologist, a writer, and one of psychedelic drugs most
Speaker 1: ardent supporters. He conducted experiments at Harvard University with something
Speaker 1: called Pilo sybin And we'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that, and I'm sure you've heard the phrase turn on,
Speaker 1: tune in, and drop out. That's a guy who uttered it.
Speaker 1: There's also an album by that name. It's like a
Speaker 1: spoken word like psychedelic guidance album. It's actually pretty cool
Speaker 1: worth checking out if you're into that kind of music.
Speaker 1: It's been copiously sampled over the years. Learry is a
Speaker 1: very interesting character. Obviously an educated man, an expert in
Speaker 1: his field. Prior to his engagement with psychedelic substances, it
Speaker 1: was around five and his wife committed suicide and left
Speaker 1: him with a school age son and a school age daughter.
Speaker 1: So he has this going on in his life. And
Speaker 1: then at age thirty eight, he goes on this trip
Speaker 1: to Spain. He suffers this mysterious illness and just without
Speaker 1: the aid of any kind of drug or what have you,
Speaker 1: he has this mind altering experience, this moment that he
Speaker 1: claims really allowed him to sort of see through the
Speaker 1: limitations of his perspectives of the world before then. And
Speaker 1: it's in the years following that that he actually begins
Speaker 1: experimenting with psychedelic substances. He begins to incorporate it into
Speaker 1: his work and explore the possibilities of it and things
Speaker 1: as they tend to do. As we've discussed with good
Speaker 1: old Lily the dolphins, right right right, when you bring
Speaker 1: LSD into a study, especially back in these days, it
Speaker 1: has a tendency to sort of get out of control
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot of things spiraling
Speaker 1: out of control. Mainly this is because the researchers at
Speaker 1: the time, especially John C. Lily right with the dolphins,
Speaker 1: are taking the LSD. So this made me changing their
Speaker 1: perspective a little bit. And certainly it is darkening the
Speaker 1: doors depths of science in a way that feels like
Speaker 1: this drug is not being given sort of its due
Speaker 1: diligence because it's now being associated with counter culture, especially
Speaker 1: with Leary, because he really kind of took it up,
Speaker 1: became a celebrity, and you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of drug raids. Jordan Lyddy arrested him. Did he one
Speaker 1: of the raids that I did not know that? The
Speaker 1: Concord prison experiment was one of the big ones with him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but there's this other part of Leary that is
Speaker 1: really trying to look at this diligently and try to
Speaker 1: really apply scientific method to this. But then he's got
Speaker 1: all the craziness of the other part of his life,
Speaker 1: that sort of I would say, putting a dark cloud
Speaker 1: over his efforts well. And also he just becomes increasingly
Speaker 1: less academic and more spiritual as the day's progress and
Speaker 1: his the years progress. In his later life, he's making
Speaker 1: the rounds, he's giving speeches, but he's more concerned with
Speaker 1: the evolution of human consciousness. And he was a big
Speaker 1: advocate of cybernetics. He really thought cybernetics, right, we're going
Speaker 1: to be the key to our future, and reallys he's
Speaker 1: right on U. I guess what we should talk about
Speaker 1: is the Concord prison experiment because that's where you can
Speaker 1: see his bias really seeping in. Right. They're testing psychedelic substances. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they're testing psilocybin on the group of thirty two prisoners
Speaker 1: to see if they can adjust their recidivism rates. Right,
Speaker 1: So recidivism rate is that the person is going to
Speaker 1: be laid out of jail and then they will do
Speaker 1: something else which will land them back into jail. And
Speaker 1: as we know, the recivism rate has always been historically high,
Speaker 1: like at this point in this study, it was recidivism rate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's interested. Can you Basically the question here is
Speaker 1: by applying these psychedelic substances to these prisoners, can you
Speaker 1: change them? Can you make them a less violent person?
Speaker 1: Person it's less likely to engage in criminal behavior. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about taking somebody who is a prisoner, a
Speaker 1: person with a criminal path and is statistically likely to
Speaker 1: engage in crime. Again, right, and Key reports that it
Speaker 1: definitely helps them, that they become less antisocial, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is it did not really
Speaker 1: affect the prisoners at all. That rate of recidivism was
Speaker 1: the same, although he claimed that there was a reduction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a little squeaking of the The interpretation of
Speaker 1: the data in the study was made to lean more
Speaker 1: in favor of the findings. Again, he saw himself in
Speaker 1: a very specific way that clouded his judgment. I think
Speaker 1: here's a great quote. He says, we saw ourselves as
Speaker 1: anthropologists from the twenty first century, inhabiting a time module
Speaker 1: set somewhere in the dark ages of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: on this space colony. We were attempting to create a
Speaker 1: new paganism and a new dedication to life as art
Speaker 1: and that's from the study itself. No, no, that's him
Speaker 1: as a general No, no, that's sort of one of
Speaker 1: his general mission statements. But I think it gives a
Speaker 1: good idea of why he might have gone off the
Speaker 1: path of scientific method there. Okay, so we we mentioned
Speaker 1: this guy. We mentioned Leary because he kind of helped
Speaker 1: to put the kaibash on funding for hallucinogens because obviously
Speaker 1: this guy all interwoven with counterculture. Nixon at one point
Speaker 1: called him the most dangerous personal live. Yeah, clearly that
Speaker 1: was the case. Funding dried up. We didn't really get
Speaker 1: to have a good chance to study the effects of
Speaker 1: hallucinogens as a therapy, as a motive therapy. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the drugs that are now currently
Speaker 1: being researched. And let's also talk about this guy named
Speaker 1: Stanislav Groff, because he's really important and that he I
Speaker 1: think was taking up where literally left off in terms
Speaker 1: of sort of falling off the map of the scientific method. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we have psilocybin, and this is the
Speaker 1: hallucinogen acceubstance that is obtained from certain types of mushrooms
Speaker 1: that are indigenous to tropical and subtropical regions of South America, Mexico,
Speaker 1: in the United States, in the sort of Georgia, Tennessee
Speaker 1: area where I grew up, this is mostly known as
Speaker 1: something that would grow on cow patties in pastors, I
Speaker 1: have to say, like a lot of teenagers hanging out
Speaker 1: in the dark, Yeah, trying to steal cow pies and
Speaker 1: see what they can harvest from them. So these are
Speaker 1: naturally occurring substances. Then you have in d m A,
Speaker 1: which is synthetic. Okay, this is a psychoactive drug, and
Speaker 1: it's chemically similar to methamphetamine and hallucinogenic mescaline, and it
Speaker 1: produces feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth and distortions
Speaker 1: and time perception and tactile experiences. The last three of
Speaker 1: those also apply to the psilocybin right rights say, and
Speaker 1: they they are helpful in reducing anxiety and enhancing self
Speaker 1: awareness as well as empathy, which is really important, it
Speaker 1: turns out when you are dealing with end of life care.
Speaker 1: So this guy, Stanisloft Graff, much of today's research is
Speaker 1: actually predicated on some of his work with psychedelic medicine
Speaker 1: in the early sixties, he began giving the drug psilocybin
Speaker 1: to cancer patients at the Spring Grove State Hospital near
Speaker 1: Baltimore and documenting their effects, and he described cancer patients
Speaker 1: who were completely clenched with fear, who under the influences
Speaker 1: of l s D or DPT, experienced relief from the
Speaker 1: terror of dying. That is really important because this, again
Speaker 1: is where our current researchers are licking, you know, at
Speaker 1: in the past. They're not looking at Leary, but they're
Speaker 1: looking at this guy to say, maybe there is something
Speaker 1: to this, Maybe there is a different way that we
Speaker 1: can approach end of life care. Because it's one thing
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, we all are going to
Speaker 1: die at one point, but it is certainly another thing
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, you have six months to
Speaker 1: eighteen months to live. So that's an entirely different situation.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a break and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about how these drugs
Speaker 1: could be very beneficial. And we're back. So, if one
Speaker 1: is staring down death, and one knows that it is
Speaker 1: imminent sometime in the next few months, the next few years,
Speaker 1: how can substances such as m d M A and
Speaker 1: psilocybin actually aid the patient and sort of smooth the
Speaker 1: transition in to death. Okay, Well, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of people that in the York Times article they focused on,
Speaker 1: and in fact there's a documentary out there too that
Speaker 1: talks about this guy named Charles Grobe and Pam Secuda,
Speaker 1: who is the patient that the article and some of
Speaker 1: his studies center around. Pam Secuda, fifty five years old.
Speaker 1: She learns, or she learned, I should say, that she
Speaker 1: had stage four a metastatic cancer. She was then given
Speaker 1: six to twelve months to live, and she actually ended
Speaker 1: up living four years. But about two years into it,
Speaker 1: she sought out help for the anxiety and depression that
Speaker 1: accompanied her feeling, her constant feeling that the other shoe
Speaker 1: was about to drop. So she found out about the
Speaker 1: study being conducted by Charles Grobe. He's a psychiatrist and
Speaker 1: a researcher at Harbor Harbor u c L, a medical
Speaker 1: center who at the time is giving solicibon to end
Speaker 1: stage cancer patients to see if it would allay their fears.
Speaker 1: She was given psychological tests who established that she was
Speaker 1: psychologically sound, but also another test to to kind of
Speaker 1: see what her level of depression and anxiety was, and
Speaker 1: she was given a placebo during one session, and in
Speaker 1: the second session she was giving the psilocybin. Now, that
Speaker 1: session lasted for about six hours. She wore headphones that
Speaker 1: piped in different music and nature sounds, and she also
Speaker 1: had black eye shades on and that was meant to
Speaker 1: encourage her to look inward. And I mentioned all of
Speaker 1: this because in a little while we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: this setting is really important. At the four hour point,
Speaker 1: she began to cry because she started to really empathize
Speaker 1: with her husband but what his feelings would be when
Speaker 1: she passed on. And then she says that she released
Speaker 1: all of this well of emotion and all of this
Speaker 1: energy that she had been putting towards her situation, and
Speaker 1: she began to look at it completely differently. And she
Speaker 1: came out of that session really feeling like she could
Speaker 1: approach death in a positive light, which is amazing. And
Speaker 1: her husband even says that she had a completely remarkable
Speaker 1: change in her demeanor because I remember that she's been
Speaker 1: living with this condition for two years now and again,
Speaker 1: feeling like that other she was going to drop in
Speaker 1: this one session completely changed her perspective, and a huge
Speaker 1: component of it seems to be her ability to empathize
Speaker 1: more with her husband and what he's experiencing and sort
Speaker 1: of see the situation outside of herself right which she
Speaker 1: saw is very specifically, she saw that she was robbing
Speaker 1: her present with these thoughts of the future. When you
Speaker 1: can say that we all do that on some level
Speaker 1: during the day, Oh yeah, I mean it comes back
Speaker 1: right back around to some of the things that we've
Speaker 1: been saying and things that have been said in Buddhist
Speaker 1: philosophy for for ages, and the idea that so much
Speaker 1: of our suffering is tied to worrying about the past
Speaker 1: and fretting over the future and focusing on self, and
Speaker 1: those are huge obstacles to overcome in the best of circumstances.
Speaker 1: If you're facing the end of life, that they can
Speaker 1: be even more insurmountable. What appears to be happening is
Speaker 1: that we see that focus on self fade under the
Speaker 1: substance as well as the worrying over the future, and
Speaker 1: instead she's putting more focus on what is happening in
Speaker 1: the present and what other people that are close to
Speaker 1: her are feeling. Another good example that the article points
Speaker 1: out as Laurie Reemer, a forty eight year old survivor
Speaker 1: of adult onset leukemia, because she's surviving. She knows at
Speaker 1: this point that she's in remission, but still her life
Speaker 1: is going to be cut short. She knows she's got
Speaker 1: like a decade or two decades remaining. Yeah, she said
Speaker 1: that she was fine when she thought she was near death.
Speaker 1: It was when she went into remission that she really
Speaker 1: became obsessed with, Okay, well when is this going to happen,
Speaker 1: and really having a lot of anxiety about it, intense
Speaker 1: fear and anxiety around relapse in death. Maybe that's because
Speaker 1: she had survived the first bout and so it felt
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are a lot of psychological factors that
Speaker 1: made her feel like this, this may happen again, it
Speaker 1: may not be so lucky. She participated in a study
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins University where rolling Griffith's was administering silas
Speaker 1: have been at a higher level than grobe was to
Speaker 1: see if he could elicit any mystical insights to help
Speaker 1: patients with their conditions, and Remer said when she underwent that,
Speaker 1: she said that her mind became like a series of
Speaker 1: rooms and she could go in and out of these
Speaker 1: rooms with remarkable ease. In one room there was the
Speaker 1: grief her father experienced when Remor got leukemia, and another
Speaker 1: her mother's grief, and in another her children's and yet
Speaker 1: another room was her father's perspective on raising her. She says, quote,
Speaker 1: I was able to see things through his eyes, and
Speaker 1: through my mother's eyes, and through my children's eyes. I
Speaker 1: was able to see what it had been like for
Speaker 1: them when I was so sick. And this is someone
Speaker 1: who went into this as an agnostic. She came out
Speaker 1: of it saying, I now have the distinct sense that
Speaker 1: there's so much more, so many different states of being.
Speaker 1: I have the sense that death is not the end,
Speaker 1: but just part of a process, a way of moving
Speaker 1: into a different sphere, a different way of being. That
Speaker 1: in and of itself is pretty amazing that she had
Speaker 1: that perspective change. But Griffith's, the person who administered the substance,
Speaker 1: has said that for fourteen months after participating in a
Speaker 1: solicitin study that was published in the Journal of psycho Pharmacology,
Speaker 1: believes last year of subjects said that it was one
Speaker 1: of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives and
Speaker 1: thirty said it was the most meaningful experience. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me wonder, well, what exactly is
Speaker 1: happening in the brain when this is going on, because
Speaker 1: obviously this has a lot to do with how these
Speaker 1: people are perceiving life now. Well, luckily, as we've discussed
Speaker 1: another podcast, we are able to look inside the brain
Speaker 1: and get an idea of what's going on. There's a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist at Imperial College London by the name of David J. Nutt,
Speaker 1: and Penis team used an m r I to scan
Speaker 1: healthy volunteers dosed on psilocide and in order to capture
Speaker 1: this transition from a normal, waking consciousness to the psychedelic state,
Speaker 1: they found it during these states of quote unquote understrad
Speaker 1: in consciousness that there was a deactivation of regions of
Speaker 1: the brain that interface our senses and our perception of self,
Speaker 1: which false ride in line with what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with her description of the way it felt, and
Speaker 1: with the idea that our obsession with self, our ego,
Speaker 1: our need to place ourselves at the center of this
Speaker 1: story are tied in with our suffering, especially as we
Speaker 1: approached that. Yeah, and I did see that One of
Speaker 1: the regions that was dimmed was the anterior singular cortex,
Speaker 1: and we've actually talked about that quite a bit. I
Speaker 1: think most recently we were talking about envy, and we
Speaker 1: were talking about one study in which they saw that
Speaker 1: people who were experiencing envy were actually what we were.
Speaker 1: You were seeing these parts of the brain, the anterior
Speaker 1: singular cortex where pain is processed, lighting up, so that
Speaker 1: we know that this part of the brain perceives pain,
Speaker 1: even if it's emotional pain, it's the same place that
Speaker 1: also processes physical pain. So it's interesting to see that
Speaker 1: that would go offline here as well. But another part
Speaker 1: of is that is also very intriguing, and that researchers
Speaker 1: wanted to try to get at, was why patients were
Speaker 1: able to hold onto this feeling, this memory for so
Speaker 1: long after having just one experience with these drugs. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that encoding the experience is really really
Speaker 1: important here, and that's what the researchers are doing. They're
Speaker 1: following up with the patients for weeks and weeks afterward,
Speaker 1: and they're dissecting what happened, and they're talking about the
Speaker 1: memories and just like you would do that in would
Speaker 1: say a trip that you took, um it begins to
Speaker 1: really form these long term associations. So trip yes, yes, she,
Speaker 1: I should say. Let's say you, yes, he took a
Speaker 1: trip to Paris, and you kept talking about it with, say,
Speaker 1: your significant other, and you've got the blueprint of that memory.
Speaker 1: And the same thing is happening with with the the
Speaker 1: psychological trip that these patients are taking. Really, the whole
Speaker 1: experiment here reminds me a lot of travel and how
Speaker 1: the memory is encoded. I think about any trip that
Speaker 1: I take a trip to another city. Let's say I'm
Speaker 1: going to Paris, France and I've never been to Paris,
Speaker 1: France before. I would ideally want to put some research
Speaker 1: in beforehand, figure out where I'm going to go, what
Speaker 1: I hope to get out of this trip, what I
Speaker 1: hope to gain from the experience, then go on the trip,
Speaker 1: and then when I get back process it. Be its scrapbooking,
Speaker 1: writing some blogs about it, talking about it with people.
Speaker 1: But I go into this trip with a certain expectation
Speaker 1: and I leave it with this aim of processing and
Speaker 1: learning from it. Okay, so I hear a little bit
Speaker 1: of priming going on, right, and that's what they're talking
Speaker 1: about here that it's not just a let's do some
Speaker 1: up and see what happens. They're talking about, Let's prepare
Speaker 1: them for this. Let's set the room up right, Let's
Speaker 1: make sure they're items to remind them of people they love,
Speaker 1: that we have the music and the ambiance is appropriate.
Speaker 1: And then after the experience, let's discuss and let's see
Speaker 1: what we can learn from this and then move forward
Speaker 1: with it. And the priming thing is really important here
Speaker 1: because they are talking to these patients about seeking relief
Speaker 1: from anxiety and depression, and they are saying that you
Speaker 1: want to administer this drug, and what we're hoping for
Speaker 1: you to do is to be able to conquer your fears,
Speaker 1: I'll lay your years and so already, and we've already
Speaker 1: seen this from the Placebo podcast that we did that
Speaker 1: even when you sometimes talked to a doctor, your symptoms
Speaker 1: will be reduced just by the very act of making
Speaker 1: an appointment or talking to someone. So already they are
Speaker 1: primed to have this experience. And this is really important
Speaker 1: because there are limitations to this, to this sort of
Speaker 1: drug therapy, right, And I was thinking about this. There's
Speaker 1: a book called Rational Mysticism by John Horrigan. It's really
Speaker 1: great and he talks really about inducing these various states
Speaker 1: of being. And we've talked about him married of times,
Speaker 1: but anyway, he is talking about one experiment, and this
Speaker 1: is a Leary experiment, by the way, and it's at
Speaker 1: the Miracle of marsh Chapel and it's in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: It's a double blind study, which is a good thing, right.
Speaker 1: It's called the Good Friday Study. They have ten Divinity
Speaker 1: students who are given the solicibbon and another ten were
Speaker 1: given a placebo and the Good Friday Service they're actually
Speaker 1: in the basement of the church, is piped to them
Speaker 1: while they're in the base. Okay, so these are Divinity students.
Speaker 1: They are primed to have some sort of experience where
Speaker 1: they feel closer to God. That's where they're hoping the
Speaker 1: outcome is. But what they find is that eight of
Speaker 1: those ten Divinity students who got the solicition and have
Speaker 1: not great trips here, Like they have some enjoyable moments,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of having some problems with reality. And
Speaker 1: part of this reason is because again the setting and
Speaker 1: the priming, they're not quite there because they have another
Speaker 1: ten students that they are looking at them like they're
Speaker 1: complete animals, or wondering what's going on, or because they
Speaker 1: really don't know what's happening. They don't know these other
Speaker 1: people are being dosed, so they just think they're being
Speaker 1: crazy and they start kind of poking fun at them.
Speaker 1: So you're not in a room where you're by yourself,
Speaker 1: you have headphones on, you're looking inward. That's really important
Speaker 1: and I think that's why we should probably note that
Speaker 1: so far the very new research about this, at least
Speaker 1: of late, has been successful because it is in these
Speaker 1: conditions that are carefully created and you can't just go
Speaker 1: out I guess my point is and go into a
Speaker 1: you know, pick out a cow patty and it hoped
Speaker 1: to have this experience that's going to reduce your fears. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Buddhist and at one point psychedelic experiment or Alan Watts
Speaker 1: has a really fascinating quote on the matter. He said,
Speaker 1: psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight,
Speaker 1: but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by
Speaker 1: the various methods of meditation in which drugs are no
Speaker 1: longer necessary or useful if you get the message hang
Speaker 1: up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments like microscopes, telescopes,
Speaker 1: and telephones. The biologist does not sit with I permanently
Speaker 1: glued to the microscope. He goes away and works on
Speaker 1: what he has seen, which I think is a wonderful
Speaker 1: quote that it's nicely with these research approaches, because if
Speaker 1: you just pick up a telescope and you know nothing
Speaker 1: about the cosmos and you just look into the sky,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be pretty yeah, but you're not gonna learn anything.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna be anything to really grasp other than WHOA,
Speaker 1: that was kind of neat. It's like looking through a kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: But ideally you would want to know what you're looking at,
Speaker 1: and you would want to process it towards and that's
Speaker 1: what lots of talking about. Yeah. In Rational Mysticism also
Speaker 1: talked about a guy named David Nichols who's the chairman
Speaker 1: at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Purdue University, and
Speaker 1: he's conducted a number of experiments with MSDM that's ecstasy,
Speaker 1: but he has concerns about its toxic effects in cases
Speaker 1: of repeated doses, because we know that there are animal
Speaker 1: studies that bear out evidence that repeat doses can damage
Speaker 1: their tonein receptors. So again, it's not just something that you,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to say is kids don't
Speaker 1: feel like this is something that you need to go
Speaker 1: out into and explore. Um. Yeah, we're not advocating the
Speaker 1: use of the substances at all, certainly recreationally. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, the research is in its very early stages,
Speaker 1: and the article does bring up a very good point.
Speaker 1: It wonders whether this type of therapy is ever going
Speaker 1: to really come to fruition, given that drug companies could
Speaker 1: give two times about it. There's no money really in
Speaker 1: something that can be obtained from nature. Yeah, so certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean, as far as I mean, it's concerned because
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing that you can cultivate on
Speaker 1: your own, and if it was legalized and everyone, well
Speaker 1: not everyone, but certain portions of the population would simply
Speaker 1: cultivate it and you would probably I guess, buy it
Speaker 1: at your local farmers market, and then where's the cut
Speaker 1: for big farm right. Well, although as we have seen
Speaker 1: with herbal remedies, that does have a bit of a
Speaker 1: market too, so maybe there's a chance for that to
Speaker 1: be marketed to people. But then there's also the problem
Speaker 1: that there's a legal drug use and all that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say that in the future there is the
Speaker 1: possibility of this. This completely changes that the face of
Speaker 1: end of care giving or or even hospice. Right, you
Speaker 1: could have this administer to you by hospice worker, or
Speaker 1: go into a clinic and have an administered to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should also know not pretend that individuals and hospice
Speaker 1: care are not you know, you don't have people dying
Speaker 1: up to their gills and painkillers. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like that. We we're hesitant to administer powerful drugs two
Speaker 1: individuals who are dying, and nor should we. I think
Speaker 1: it's important to stress that I don't know what to
Speaker 1: sort of say, like, yes, we are administering well, you know, morphine, right,
Speaker 1: So in other words, you could administer another drug that
Speaker 1: would be beneficial to someone, right, because if you're talking
Speaker 1: especially the very end of life care, not used to
Speaker 1: I'm staring down my last few years of life, but
Speaker 1: I am on my deathbed. Different rules that apply, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: and here's where the gray area starts to come in UM.
Speaker 1: You know, who can have it? Who can't? Do you
Speaker 1: have to undergo psychological evaluation if you're really ill patients
Speaker 1: seeking comfort? What about chronic pain? You know what if
Speaker 1: you're not to really ill, but you have horrible chronic pain.
Speaker 1: These are the sort of questions that start to arise
Speaker 1: when you talk about UM using something that is illegal. Well,
Speaker 1: in the New York Times article, they mentioned one of
Speaker 1: the possibilities, what does it mean that everyone over the
Speaker 1: age seventy to use it? Right? Right right? Which which
Speaker 1: reminds me of a Patton oswal about different rules that
Speaker 1: apply after each birthday. And it was something like, after
Speaker 1: ninety you were legally allowed to kill a person. Because
Speaker 1: if you're ninety and you can kill somebody with your
Speaker 1: bare hands, I think with the rule, yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see the reasoning there. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: you reach ninety years old, you've accomplished a lot, you've
Speaker 1: suffered through a lot. Maybe you get to have one
Speaker 1: free strangulation, maybe you get to experiment a little with
Speaker 1: these substances now that you're in the clear. Well, and
Speaker 1: this always point really, this always points back to cannabis too,
Speaker 1: and all the debates about that about whether or not
Speaker 1: we should legalize drugs. You know, are we hamstringing ourselves
Speaker 1: by making them illegal? Will things really turn into a
Speaker 1: crazy maelstrom of drug laden activity if we were to
Speaker 1: do that. I don't know anyway, but it does bring
Speaker 1: that up, that debate up once again. But in any case,
Speaker 1: it does kind of remind me that in order to
Speaker 1: get to these altered states, that doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: be through drugs. As you talked about, there are other
Speaker 1: ways to enter into this, And we talked about lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming as a way to gain perspective. Even traveling we've
Speaker 1: talked about as being a completely dissentering experience that can
Speaker 1: change the way that you frame reality for you yourself,
Speaker 1: and even the overview effect. We talked about that, and
Speaker 1: about astronauts glimpsing the earth as they were returning and
Speaker 1: having these epiphanies that we were all one big humanity role. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and then you know, roll into that meditation,
Speaker 1: various forms of meditation that are practiced in various traditions,
Speaker 1: even fiction. I'm a big supporter of mixed stuff up
Speaker 1: if necessary, pick and choose from the cosmic buffets which
Speaker 1: you like, fill in the gaps with your own creations
Speaker 1: and try applaying that. I'm not saying at all cure
Speaker 1: everything in your approach to death, but it couldn't hurt.
Speaker 1: As we're discussing though, the use of psychedelic substances on
Speaker 1: the death bed, it's interesting to you point out that,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'll just suxilate. The author on his
Speaker 1: deathbed asked his wife to inject a hundred micrograms of
Speaker 1: L S D into his muscle tissue, and she obliged,
Speaker 1: and that was in the n died in his home
Speaker 1: that way. And of course Leary was probably the biggest
Speaker 1: fan of psychedelic experiences and knew that he was dying.
Speaker 1: He was doing a prostate cancer. So here's a quote
Speaker 1: from him on the matter. He says, I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to the most fascinating experience in life, which is dying.
Speaker 1: I've been writing about self directed dying for twenty years.
Speaker 1: You've got to approach your dying the way you live
Speaker 1: your life, with curiosity, with hope, with fascination, with courage,
Speaker 1: and with the help of your friends. So there you
Speaker 1: have it. It's a fascinating area of discussion. A lot
Speaker 1: of gray area there as well. It's frightening to think
Speaker 1: about because we're talking about death. Yeah, it's not to
Speaker 1: feel good sort of thing, right, but again it does
Speaker 1: you know, we all are going to approach it at
Speaker 1: some point too. But it does really change the stakes
Speaker 1: when you know what your death sentences. And certainly nobody
Speaker 1: likes to suffer or see others suffer. So it's an
Speaker 1: interesting topic to cook into. And I think it's important
Speaker 1: to look at these psychedelic substances in a frame of
Speaker 1: reference that is a little departed from the criminal legal
Speaker 1: fun not fun, uh, you know, mess up your life,
Speaker 1: stay normal sort of dichotomy is that that are so
Speaker 1: often referenced. All right, shall we look at some psychedelic
Speaker 1: male from our Psychedelic Robot? Yes, let's bring it over
Speaker 1: all right. First of all, and this is a response
Speaker 1: to our plant communication episode, but it ties in loosely
Speaker 1: with us because we mentioned at the think the start
Speaker 1: of the podcast, if we were to die and become
Speaker 1: re incarnated as a plant, what would we choose? And
Speaker 1: Chris writes in and says, hey, Robert and Juli, I
Speaker 1: just listened to two of your podcasts for the plant
Speaker 1: communication one. I was surprised you wanted to be the
Speaker 1: plants you were. If I were given the choice, I
Speaker 1: would want to be a Californian red oak I think
Speaker 1: that is their name, the ones that grow hundreds of
Speaker 1: feet tall, uh and are really big so you can
Speaker 1: drive cars through them. Not only would you have a
Speaker 1: nice long life, you would be protected by humans and
Speaker 1: have a nice view. Well you couldn't see anything, but
Speaker 1: it would be cool anyway. So that's Chris's thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wouldn't want to be a tree
Speaker 1: in the next life that someone drives a car through
Speaker 1: and destroys my roots system, but that's just me. I'm
Speaker 1: still sticking with Moss on that one, alright. We also
Speaker 1: did an episode on lucid dreaming, which we referenced in
Speaker 1: this podcast, and I have a few responses to that.
Speaker 1: Don Old rights and says, hey, guys, I just finished
Speaker 1: listening to your lucid dreaming episode and wanted to add
Speaker 1: to it. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for years
Speaker 1: now and have on numerous occasions lucid dreams myself. You
Speaker 1: mentioned briefly various medications that could affect dreams, but failed
Speaker 1: to touch on one in particular. Kalia zaka takchi is
Speaker 1: an herbal supplement used by shaman's to induce lucid and
Speaker 1: or prophetic dreams, commonly intended to help find answers that
Speaker 1: that may be plaguing an individual or their tribe. It
Speaker 1: is often smoked in a cigarette with equal parts callia
Speaker 1: and tobacco. In fact, lucid dreaming in general seems to
Speaker 1: be very common shamanistic ritual practice around the world. Love
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks. We also heard from Brian Brian and
Speaker 1: writes and says, Hi, Robert and Julie really enjoying your podcast.
Speaker 1: Keep up with great work on the subject of flying
Speaker 1: and dreams. You mentioned that most people fly in a
Speaker 1: stiff superman pose while dreaming. I've never had it that easy.
Speaker 1: To get off the ground required vigorous flapping of my
Speaker 1: wide stretched arms and where it's much better if I
Speaker 1: start off running downhill. Take off feels as if I'm
Speaker 1: swimming in molasses and seems to take all of my
Speaker 1: strength to pull off. Once I'm off the ground, I
Speaker 1: can pick up speed and fly very easily, but still
Speaker 1: always using my arms as if they were wings. Just
Speaker 1: thought you might be interested in a different flying technique.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the great show, and uh so there you
Speaker 1: go a different method of flying about. And then we
Speaker 1: also heard from Max. Max writes in and says, dear
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie and the Lucid Dreaming episode, you discussed
Speaker 1: flying in dreams to be stiff. Although I've also experienced
Speaker 1: flying stiff and dreams, I'm usually able to steer the
Speaker 1: flying by moving my arms and legs. When I'm able
Speaker 1: to steer, I seem to fly much longer, probably because
Speaker 1: when flying stiff, I seem to crash as soon as
Speaker 1: I realize I'm flying. I think that when I realized
Speaker 1: I'm flying, my logic takes over and tells me that
Speaker 1: I cannot fly, resulting in the crash. Thanks for the
Speaker 1: great podcast and the hours of thoughts inspired by them, Max,
Speaker 1: those are really cool. I was just thinking about how
Speaker 1: we were talking about how logic is somehow there's the
Speaker 1: idea that logic is still somehow online, um when you're
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming, which is not usually the case in dreams,
Speaker 1: but we do see logic and the methods well. And
Speaker 1: I was just thinking too in my own experiences of flying.
Speaker 1: There are times that I plummet to the ground and
Speaker 1: I have to tell myself like no, no, you can
Speaker 1: do this, and it's um and so I was just
Speaker 1: thinking like, yeah, maybe there was other times when you
Speaker 1: see the logic centers really coming online and you have
Speaker 1: to kind of stay back off a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fly here. So let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear about your dreaming or lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming experiences. We would love to hear your thoughts on
Speaker 1: psychedelic substances and our journey into death. Like I said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of gray area in there, and we'll
Speaker 1: be interested to hear people's different takes on it. And
Speaker 1: we're not opposed to hearing from people who have really
Speaker 1: dealt firsthand with preparations for death and staring down into life.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook
Speaker 1: we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind and on Twitter
Speaker 1: we are Blow the Mind. And I should also point
Speaker 1: out that currently there is a really cool video series
Speaker 1: that we did and it is called Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Kid's Mind. Ten episodes. Short videos are about six
Speaker 1: minutes each. Check them out, watch them with your child,
Speaker 1: or watch them, steal all the information, and then present
Speaker 1: the ideas as your own your child. Both uses are valid.
Speaker 1: We put a lot of work into that and we're
Speaker 1: really proud of it. Also, there is a photo contest
Speaker 1: called stuff to Blow Your Mind. You can reach it
Speaker 1: on the House Stuff Works homepage. You can reach it
Speaker 1: on the House Stuff Works or stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind Facebook pages into really cool photos that you've taken,
Speaker 1: vote on other photos, possibly win an iPad? What an iPad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I know, I've already checked into this,
Speaker 1: but you guys can, so check it out. Drop us
Speaker 1: a line if you will at blow the Mind at
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