Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of throat. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Today you're in
Speaker 1: for a real treat. My guest is one of the
Speaker 1: outstanding psychedelic pioneers. Her name is Lady Amanda Fielding. If
Speaker 1: you've already heard of her, it's probably because she founded
Speaker 1: and directs the Beck Foundation, which has been Britain's leading
Speaker 1: research and advocacy institute focused on psychedelics since the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. But that was not the start of Amanda's
Speaker 1: work in this area. Indeed, her experimentation and advocacy date
Speaker 1: back to the sixties, when she first started speaking about
Speaker 1: the benefits of psychedelics. She's played a key role in
Speaker 1: legitimizing this issue in Britain and even globally. And not
Speaker 1: long ago, Amanda teamed up with her son Cosmo to
Speaker 1: create a for profits psychedelics company called Beckley psy Tech.
Speaker 1: She has led a truly fascinating life, which is mostly
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about with her today, and
Speaker 1: she's still going full steam ahead. So Amanda, thank you
Speaker 1: ever so much for joining me on Psychoactives. It's a
Speaker 1: great pleasure. So listen, I have to tell you. When
Speaker 1: I prepare for this, I'm remembering back it's I had
Speaker 1: started the Lindi Smith Center, wasn't even called Drug Policy
Speaker 1: Alliance at this point, and you know, I get a
Speaker 1: call from you. I don't even know if I knew
Speaker 1: who you were back then, and you're in New York
Speaker 1: and we land up having dinner and you're talking about
Speaker 1: all this stuff you want to do on psychedelics and
Speaker 1: da da da da da, And I'm thinking, who is
Speaker 1: this lady? I mean, who is this crazy British aristocratic
Speaker 1: lady who thinks she's going to change the world. But
Speaker 1: the truth is you've been doing it, and you've done it.
Speaker 1: So I want to start off by saying congratulations for
Speaker 1: whatever initial skepticism I had about you, you know that's
Speaker 1: my bad, and you've been having a tremendous impact. So
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, first of all, what is
Speaker 1: it you're most proud about that you've accomplished over these
Speaker 1: last few decades. I suppose it in from a sort
Speaker 1: of way, my dream has come true because my passion
Speaker 1: was always mysticism, the study of mysticism from a very
Speaker 1: small child, because I had a very kind of isolated
Speaker 1: up bringing, nothing much else to do except kind of
Speaker 1: dream and have mystical experiences. And then I studied all
Speaker 1: the states of consciousness from a young age. When I
Speaker 1: was sixteen, I was introduced to cannabis, and then when
Speaker 1: I was twenty one, I think it was I was
Speaker 1: introduced to LSD. And then most importantly, when I was
Speaker 1: twenty three, I met a Dutch scientist doctor who was,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the only genius I've met who had
Speaker 1: two hypothesis about what is the underlying mechanisms which alter
Speaker 1: consciousness in taking psychedelics but also natural ways of exercise, fasting, meditation,
Speaker 1: all of those sort of things. So I suddenly got
Speaker 1: a grip on how you could use psychedelics which are
Speaker 1: tools to alter consciousness and actually control how you perform
Speaker 1: with them, you know. So it was a satin getting
Speaker 1: into control of the tools when used. And for me
Speaker 1: that was a magical change because before that I thought, well,
Speaker 1: psychedelics absolutely wonderful, but you can't live on right. And
Speaker 1: then with this knowledge, I've realized my goodness. Men, So
Speaker 1: I as you mentioned this Dutch lover who has such
Speaker 1: a great influence on you, Bar, but there were two
Speaker 1: other men or males I should say, who I understand
Speaker 1: had a major impact on you. One of them I
Speaker 1: think was your father. Can you just say a little
Speaker 1: something about him. Yeah, he was a very kind of
Speaker 1: eccentric and charming man. I mean we lived on the
Speaker 1: edge of a fen in an old Anglo Saxon fortress
Speaker 1: which was rebuilt in two times with three modes, and
Speaker 1: we had no heating or petrol or anything like that,
Speaker 1: so new one came near us the whole winter. It
Speaker 1: was a very isolated in the sense of Alice in Wonderland. Life,
Speaker 1: quite tough farming. And my father was a big influence
Speaker 1: because he was very intelligent and he was very anti authority.
Speaker 1: I remember he said to me, whatever the government tells
Speaker 1: you always do the opposite, and I always thought that
Speaker 1: was a very wise bit of advice. And he came
Speaker 1: back from the board that diabetic and I was free.
Speaker 1: And I became his kind of his pet dog, his Cara,
Speaker 1: who stopped him falling into ditches and passing out. And
Speaker 1: you were like the youngest four kids. And as I
Speaker 1: understand that your family was kind of the impoverished aristocracy.
Speaker 1: They had the land but no money. And your dad
Speaker 1: was an alternative, contrarian thinker, And so I guess that
Speaker 1: sort of opens you up. He was not somebody to
Speaker 1: rebel against, but maybe somebody who opens you up into
Speaker 1: the ways of thinking and more absolutely ways He used
Speaker 1: to drive over the center of roundabouts instance, he couldn't
Speaker 1: be bothered to go around and say that said. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know he was. He was crazy. But he never
Speaker 1: did psychede Alex himself as far as you know, or
Speaker 1: did he No, he would have loved it. He loved
Speaker 1: people on psychedelics. He felt completely at home with them.
Speaker 1: But because if his bad diabetes, I always felt nervous
Speaker 1: of providing them for him in case it had a
Speaker 1: bad effect. Might know what to do. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was on on the edge of hyperglycemia all the time
Speaker 1: because he kept his sugar very locally. Didn't want to
Speaker 1: go blind, as he was an artist, and so he
Speaker 1: went in and out of kind of control of consciousness.
Speaker 1: So it was rather like being with someone on edesty. Actually,
Speaker 1: And your mother was was also a free thinker, not
Speaker 1: so free, but she was. She was the daughter of
Speaker 1: a First World War hero, so she had certain noble
Speaker 1: attitude to life, and she kept the show of the road,
Speaker 1: which I can't pretend to my father, I think. And
Speaker 1: there was another figure I was going to say, but really,
Speaker 1: another male figure in your life who I think you
Speaker 1: say you learned something about the Lepazy from and who
Speaker 1: was was your other love of your life in your
Speaker 1: early years. I'm thinking about Birdie. Oh Birdie, Oh Birdie.
Speaker 1: Sorry I produced wrong, but yes, tell us about Birdie.
Speaker 1: Birdie was a great love of my life. I found
Speaker 1: him when his mother died on the window sill of
Speaker 1: flat in London, overlooking the river, and I brought him
Speaker 1: in and he was a day old. He had no feathers,
Speaker 1: and I fed him on a paintbrush with warm wheat
Speaker 1: a box and anyway he totally fed in love with
Speaker 1: me and I with him, and he literally became a
Speaker 1: kind of holy spirit, a superior spirit. He was always
Speaker 1: the boss. And when he grew up, my partner said,
Speaker 1: come on, we're going to be landed with his pigeon
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives. Let's put him out
Speaker 1: and let him fly. And I put him out, and
Speaker 1: then I thought, no, I'm not going to put him out.
Speaker 1: He won't survive. So I took him in and he
Speaker 1: was with us for the next fifteen years. Sir never
Speaker 1: in a cage. He was always free, and in the
Speaker 1: flat in London, we had the windows open so he
Speaker 1: could go out and fly and find himself a mate.
Speaker 1: But I was his mate. So all the other pigeons
Speaker 1: came in because he was a little rich boy of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and lived in our apartment, but he was
Speaker 1: by mate. And what did you learn from this relationship?
Speaker 1: A lot? I really learned a lot. He was my teacher.
Speaker 1: He was a very kind of dominant figure. Um there
Speaker 1: was no doubt he was a kind of leader, and
Speaker 1: he was an amazing personality. And I had very very
Speaker 1: strong telepathy with him. I always knew when he was
Speaker 1: in danger and sadly, I always had the feeling that
Speaker 1: he was going to rather be sacrificed like Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: that someone was going to kill him, And so I
Speaker 1: was always anxious for him because it was a kind
Speaker 1: of artificial life in the sense that he was a
Speaker 1: wild bird but living with me. So he lived in
Speaker 1: London and flew out of the window over the river
Speaker 1: and flew around London. And then on one occasion we
Speaker 1: took him camping with us and lost him. He was
Speaker 1: terribly jealous and lost him for ten days. So then
Speaker 1: I put adverts in the Times. I then went on
Speaker 1: the BBC News appealing to the nature to find him
Speaker 1: and returned him. And the television was blocked with thousands
Speaker 1: of people seeing him and saying he was held there.
Speaker 1: And we went all over long England trying to find him.
Speaker 1: And then the only telephone out of thousands of the
Speaker 1: telephone cause which got through was the one with Birdie.
Speaker 1: Because the man didn't have a telephone, he had sent
Speaker 1: his son to the police station, and because it was
Speaker 1: the police station ringing up, the call was transferred to me.
Speaker 1: Did you ever dose Burly with any with any elicty
Speaker 1: or anything? He used to dose himself. He loved cannabis,
Speaker 1: and actually we had might source cannabis and they were
Speaker 1: They played with the flower arrangement and at the cannabis
Speaker 1: and then kind of jumped up the flowers and jumped
Speaker 1: off and it was very sweet. And I also had
Speaker 1: two toads who lived with us for many many years
Speaker 1: free in the house, and a hedgehog. It was a
Speaker 1: very nice household, and I had a very long suffering
Speaker 1: partner to put up with these rivals. You know, most
Speaker 1: people when they talk people, especially in this field, oftentimes
Speaker 1: they describe their first psychedelics experience as um, you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes a glorious one. But I think in your case,
Speaker 1: it was a horrific one. It was a very very
Speaker 1: damaging experience. But it was impressive because many people would
Speaker 1: be traumatized by an experience like that, and you know,
Speaker 1: if this hurts you for months and just say enough
Speaker 1: with that. I've seen this horrible thing. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go back there. But you came back, sort of
Speaker 1: like the person who falls off a horse and says
Speaker 1: get right back on or something exactly, or the person
Speaker 1: who is allergic to the sea and ends up falling
Speaker 1: in love with someone who wants to go across that
Speaker 1: plantic on the raft. So that was me when it happened.
Speaker 1: I retired to back clear the house I grew up
Speaker 1: in into a hut here in the woods lovely, and
Speaker 1: after about three months someone came and say, come on,
Speaker 1: you must come a lovely party in London with Ravishanka playing.
Speaker 1: It will be fun. So I went and there I
Speaker 1: met this Dutch scientist, bart Uguez, who had arrived that
Speaker 1: evening at the invitation of someone called Joe Mellen and
Speaker 1: it would just love at first sight. So he actually
Speaker 1: had made the LSD. He was the scientist. He was
Speaker 1: the top favorite pupil in Amsterdam, and all the professors
Speaker 1: wanted him. And then he had suddenly realized the wonder
Speaker 1: of psychedelics. And he was absolutely a dream come true
Speaker 1: to me because he had this fantastic knowledge of natural
Speaker 1: science to a level that I hadn't known. You know,
Speaker 1: my my family was artistic and culture and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: all of that. But he was a um an encyclopedia
Speaker 1: of knowledge of the natural scientists. He came from family
Speaker 1: of natural past doctors, so he'd grown up in a
Speaker 1: household with two bars and you had a hot bath
Speaker 1: and a teasing code bar every day. So he'd grown
Speaker 1: in that sort of world, and his mother had died.
Speaker 1: He said, to be a genius, you need your mother
Speaker 1: to die eighteen months or whenever his mother's side, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of obsessive really basically as a kind
Speaker 1: of substitute for losing his beloved mother. And as opposed
Speaker 1: to most people who take it LSD and think how interesting,
Speaker 1: He thought, now, how is it having its effect? And
Speaker 1: he came up with a very convincing and clever hypothesis
Speaker 1: that the underlying effect was more blood in the brain
Speaker 1: is so suddenly you had billions more brain cells combusting
Speaker 1: glucas and oxygen, and so you had much greater connectivity
Speaker 1: in the brain. And then you suffered from glucose lack
Speaker 1: because the brain cells use so much in high level cognition.
Speaker 1: So basically I fell in love with this hypothesis. That
Speaker 1: was because I found that I control my level of consciousness.
Speaker 1: I could take their LSD. In those days, we took
Speaker 1: big doses. Two and fifty micrograms was a normal trip
Speaker 1: in the sixties. So we took that every day more
Speaker 1: less and they would have a gap and take them off.
Speaker 1: But I found that with the knowledge I had got
Speaker 1: of how it worked, by increasing the capillary volume of brains,
Speaker 1: I found one could keep one's concentration and work at
Speaker 1: a higher level. Because we were kind of obsessively interested
Speaker 1: in the human animal would upright talking, we become how
Speaker 1: we are, why we did to complete Nightmare, as well
Speaker 1: as being so clever, what makes humans specifically human? And
Speaker 1: so that was a passion and it was just a
Speaker 1: very very exciting period. We'll be talking more after we
Speaker 1: hear this. Add One of the things I remember you
Speaker 1: telling me when earlier we met was that you were
Speaker 1: in that that you had a daily practice of micro dosing,
Speaker 1: and that you were micro dos you know, every day
Speaker 1: or most days of the week, for years at a time.
Speaker 1: And I've also you talked about taking higher doses and
Speaker 1: describing that sometimes when you take the higher doses repeatedly,
Speaker 1: you develop a tolerance such that taking the higher doses
Speaker 1: repeatedly almost becomes like micro dosing. That's exactly so I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could just say a little more about
Speaker 1: your own practice, both in the past and more recently,
Speaker 1: and the macro dozing versus the micro dosing and the similarities, etcetera. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about my old habits, because modern habits
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to talk about. In the old habits, Um,
Speaker 1: it was pre pre criminalization. Well, well, actually, a man,
Speaker 1: let me just say that. You know, I think you
Speaker 1: know some of that fears about talking about the present
Speaker 1: time are fading. So I want you to know that,
Speaker 1: in your honor, I took a little micro dose right
Speaker 1: before this session here, so so you know, I am
Speaker 1: in the moment under a very small dose, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of curious to see if my producers noticed any difference.
Speaker 1: But tell me about your old patterns and then you
Speaker 1: can share about the contemporary ones if you like. Well,
Speaker 1: I too took a little microtion on on a meeting,
Speaker 1: and um, in the old Dave when pre criminalization, we
Speaker 1: used to take two fifty normal big doses, but we
Speaker 1: took it more or less every day. I think it
Speaker 1: still has effect, but you get familiar with it. It's
Speaker 1: like hungry cows in the clover field. When you let
Speaker 1: them into the clover field, they all eat the clover
Speaker 1: and get rather ill, But once they've been in there
Speaker 1: for a few days, they kind of settled down, and
Speaker 1: I think getting high it is rather like that. It's
Speaker 1: still changes you, but not nearly as much. So, I
Speaker 1: having suffered my trauma of being given this whatever four
Speaker 1: thousand trips when I didn't ask for it, I didn't
Speaker 1: really like sudden, big trips, and I found that the
Speaker 1: when you've got there and got more used to it
Speaker 1: and balanced and could feel that one was high and
Speaker 1: enhanced cognition, but at the same time, one wasn't in
Speaker 1: any sense out of control. And that was a state
Speaker 1: I liked very much, and we liked it so much
Speaker 1: we never really wanted to have many days without it,
Speaker 1: because one didn't get a hangover when months stopped, but
Speaker 1: one came slightly down. And if you're in a beautiful
Speaker 1: place like Egypt or whatever, you know, having a good conversation,
Speaker 1: why why come down? So were you? Were you actually dosing?
Speaker 1: Then at the micro rim level for most days over
Speaker 1: many years back then, No, that was early on it
Speaker 1: was at a big dost dost But for how long
Speaker 1: a period was that over months or years or well,
Speaker 1: no one would do it for whatever, a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and then have a break. One of the things
Speaker 1: we were doing with psychoanalyzing ourselves, and if you do
Speaker 1: it on LSD, you can actually be patient and doctor. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: if you want to be the doctor, if you want
Speaker 1: to read the Freud or the Reich or whoever you're studying,
Speaker 1: you'd keep your sugar level normal, and if you wanted
Speaker 1: to dig deep into underground psychology, you'd let your sugar
Speaker 1: level drop, and then you go into a deep state
Speaker 1: of breaking through the levels of protection. And we did
Speaker 1: that for several years. It was very interesting with Birdie
Speaker 1: around us, and it was a very interesting period of
Speaker 1: breakthrough and learning about and what's been your practice in
Speaker 1: more recent decades there Around this, I'm much more delicate
Speaker 1: on myself that I should say, well, let me let
Speaker 1: me ask you this. I've said there's sometimes at the
Speaker 1: speeches of the Drum Parlicy Alliance in years pas that
Speaker 1: that that I regarded psychedelics in a way. I've thought
Speaker 1: about them as something that is some almost like wasted
Speaker 1: on the young, and it's something that one should make
Speaker 1: a commitment to doing as one grows older. That there's
Speaker 1: a way in which a strong psycholic experience can kind
Speaker 1: of stir up the emotional intellectual sediment in one's life
Speaker 1: and that that's a good thing. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you your thoughts about what's the relationship between psycholic
Speaker 1: use and healthy aging. I actually think psychedelics and I
Speaker 1: actually have a particular love of LSD because of its purity.
Speaker 1: I think in a way, it's the most cognitively um
Speaker 1: stimulating and it's the least toxic. So you know, even
Speaker 1: when you take it regularly for a while, when you
Speaker 1: come off it, you don't have a hangover, you don't
Speaker 1: have any craving. There's no aspect of addiction about it.
Speaker 1: And actually one needs more discipline to take it than
Speaker 1: not to take it. In a funny sort of way,
Speaker 1: it needs discipline to take it and work with it.
Speaker 1: And we used to, I mean we were kind of
Speaker 1: rather passionate workers, and as recreation, we used to play
Speaker 1: the game the Chinese game go you know go, which
Speaker 1: is very much a game of skill. There's no luck,
Speaker 1: and go you is pattern recognition, So it's intuitive thinking.
Speaker 1: It's using your intuitive brain to see patterns. And Chinese
Speaker 1: masters generals used to instead of fighting walls play it's
Speaker 1: surrounding to opponent and capturing them. And and it's an
Speaker 1: absolute compulsive game is like life. Every movement in life,
Speaker 1: it is on the go board and we were very
Speaker 1: addicted to it. And I found that if I was
Speaker 1: on LSD and I kept my sugar level normal so
Speaker 1: I wasn't hyper lycemic, I would win more games if
Speaker 1: my opponent wasn't on LSD. And it was my first
Speaker 1: real experiment on cognition using myself as the subject, and
Speaker 1: it actually convinced me that it can not that it
Speaker 1: always dots at all, but it can increase cognition. I
Speaker 1: won more games if I was high. And when this
Speaker 1: comes to the issue of healthy aging, it suggests you
Speaker 1: think it can keep the brain more youthful and vibrant
Speaker 1: as we get older. From sixty six onwards, my life
Speaker 1: was doing experiments first on myself and then I set
Speaker 1: up the bed To Foundation to do it out in
Speaker 1: clinical trials and UM I was always interested in its
Speaker 1: effect on kignition and quite recently doing research on micro docing.
Speaker 1: We did a research on rats and you give them
Speaker 1: a choice of old new toys. Rats, they prefer the
Speaker 1: toys they know and familiar, but if you give them
Speaker 1: an enhanced environment, then they love the new toys. Old
Speaker 1: rats and if you give them L S D for
Speaker 1: three days, don't play with the new toys they go.
Speaker 1: So I think that that means that it definitely inspis neuroplacity,
Speaker 1: a delight in new things exploring. Do you think in
Speaker 1: human beings that micro dosing is going to be approved
Speaker 1: to be more effective if people have previously had the
Speaker 1: experience with a larger dose or are they really disconnected?
Speaker 1: Can people have never done high dose get the same
Speaker 1: benefit from the micro dose? I think they're disconnected. I'm
Speaker 1: a great believer in the potential of micro doses to
Speaker 1: enhance certain you know, physiological happenings and psychological I think
Speaker 1: micro doss are wonderful in the sense that they are
Speaker 1: doing what the food those stuff, but as as we know,
Speaker 1: at a very much smaller and more easily manageable rate.
Speaker 1: And I'm at the moment doing work on dementia more broadly,
Speaker 1: but Alzheimer's particularly and indeed on Parkinson's with micro docing
Speaker 1: psychedelics and actually having some very interesting results. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: should just tell our listeners. I mean, you know, literally,
Speaker 1: Amanda and I are talking in mid April, and just
Speaker 1: the day before our conversation here there's this news item
Speaker 1: that's in the press, I mean, in New York Times,
Speaker 1: all the media around the world about some new philocybin
Speaker 1: study that was done in Imperial College and UCSF University, California,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, with you know, Robin Carhart Harris, one of
Speaker 1: your colleagues, and maybe in some respects proteges and basically
Speaker 1: finding that you know, they had done. It's a small study,
Speaker 1: they said, it raises more questions than it answers, but
Speaker 1: showing the ways in which the brain is different under
Speaker 1: the influence of a psychedelic in terms of addressing depression
Speaker 1: as opposed to using the standard antidepressants. That the scan
Speaker 1: shall flourish it of neural activity, right, and a sort
Speaker 1: of liberating effect on the brain. So I guess people
Speaker 1: are excited about this study because it's confirming some of
Speaker 1: the hypotheses about how this may actually be working. But
Speaker 1: that study we actually did the first one when I
Speaker 1: used to set up um with Dave not I persuaded
Speaker 1: him to join me in studying psychedelics, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember when it was two thousand five or something, and
Speaker 1: what we first had to do a lot of work
Speaker 1: on cannabis to begin with, which was interesting. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to do LSD, of course, because I love LST
Speaker 1: the best um. But there's too much to boo. No
Speaker 1: one wants to touch LLST. So we did psilocybin because
Speaker 1: no one knows how to spell it what it is,
Speaker 1: and it has very little to move value. So we
Speaker 1: worked on psilocybin, and I wanted to do brain imaging too,
Speaker 1: to look into my old hypothesis of the increase in
Speaker 1: compilary volume. So we found, funny enough, not an increasing complority,
Speaker 1: which surprised me. I think the technology was limited in
Speaker 1: those days. But we found a decrease in the blood
Speaker 1: supply to the default mode network. And that's the kind
Speaker 1: of modern expression for the eager, as Freud used to talk,
Speaker 1: called the ego mechanism. And it had been observed that
Speaker 1: people with psychological disall is like depression, addiction, post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress as orders had a hyperactive default mode network. So
Speaker 1: we thought, well, maybe with psilocybin it will help treat depression.
Speaker 1: So that was the first depression study we did at
Speaker 1: the Battery Imperial Research Program, and Robin was actually I'd
Speaker 1: sent him to study with Dave Nut and he'd become
Speaker 1: our principal investigator. The three of us work together for
Speaker 1: whatever fifteen years doing research. Well, for our listeners, we
Speaker 1: should I should just explain that David Knut, who will
Speaker 1: be a guest on Psychoactive at sometime in the near future,
Speaker 1: is really one of Britain's leading scientists and a former
Speaker 1: advisor to the government who got booted for speaking too
Speaker 1: honestly about the reality of drugs and drug research. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'm also curious in your past, right,
Speaker 1: you had this period the sixties and seventies of the psycholics,
Speaker 1: your initial experiences, your relationship with the Dutch great love
Speaker 1: of your life as you've called them, bart Um, and
Speaker 1: then you start Beckley Foundation, which really is played a
Speaker 1: major role in sponsoring and instigating and psychedelic research but
Speaker 1: also carrying out funder is not just instigator, it's also
Speaker 1: carrying out and hands on and all of that. But
Speaker 1: there's this period in your life. I mean, what happens
Speaker 1: with you in the in the eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of quiet period where you're not out there.
Speaker 1: You haven't created Beckley Foundation, but you're not It wasn't
Speaker 1: actually quite um. I was fully occupied trying to spread
Speaker 1: the word of the wonder of psychedelics and in the
Speaker 1: cannabis from sixty s onwards onwards. I was convinced of
Speaker 1: the value potential value of these compounds for human civilization
Speaker 1: and the possibility that they increase learning. I actually myself
Speaker 1: gave up nicotine addiction by deciding, actually because Barth thought
Speaker 1: it was a horrible habit, I decided to give it
Speaker 1: up with a trip of LSD and decided, no, it's
Speaker 1: a horrible habit. And I did that and never smoked
Speaker 1: another cigarette. So the years later I suggested to Roland
Speaker 1: really Um at Johns Hopkins when he suggested what should
Speaker 1: we do with the five thousand, five thousand dollars I
Speaker 1: had to donate at that point, And he said, what's
Speaker 1: study might you like? And I said, well, why not
Speaker 1: the study I did on myself back in the sixties
Speaker 1: of overcoming nicotine. And so that study is turned into
Speaker 1: a very successful Well sure, I mean you planted the
Speaker 1: seeds for the first significant grant from the National Student
Speaker 1: Drug Abuse for her to looking at psyche alex an
Speaker 1: addiction that Matt John's in his colleagues at Johns Hopkins. God,
Speaker 1: so you know, congratulations, congratulations, they're wonderful teams. And then
Speaker 1: that was exciting. And then I do think I was
Speaker 1: largely responsible or was getting Dave not involved in that,
Speaker 1: and that then through that Robin involved by setting up
Speaker 1: the Beckley Imperial Research Program, which went on for whatever
Speaker 1: twenty years. So when you and I met back in
Speaker 1: ninety in New York, I think that must have been
Speaker 1: just about the time you were creating the Beckley Foundation,
Speaker 1: or maybe you'd previously created under a different name or something.
Speaker 1: But I guess you gathered that it's one thing to
Speaker 1: be out there as an individual voice, you know, Lady Amanda,
Speaker 1: and a different thing to be out there as a
Speaker 1: foundation doing all the things that a foundation can do. Exactly.
Speaker 1: I found sadly that as a voice, I couldn't break
Speaker 1: the two boot. For thirty years I've been trying to
Speaker 1: throw out, you know, I've been as active as I
Speaker 1: could be in trying to bring about change, to get
Speaker 1: scientists to do research, to persuade people of the potential
Speaker 1: value of these compounds, and indeed to trying to stop
Speaker 1: the terrible mistake of prohibition and then teach against it.
Speaker 1: But I realized that it was a losing battle as
Speaker 1: a female with no letters after my name, a deaf
Speaker 1: school at sixteen, and no letters often my name, no money, children, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't change global drug policy, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't open the doors to the research. And so suddenly
Speaker 1: I realized, well maybe it was. It was an artwork.
Speaker 1: Really to become a foundation, it costs nothing. It costs
Speaker 1: a thousand pounds or something to become a foundation. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize foundations should have money. I just I called
Speaker 1: myself a foundation. Well, first I was called the Foundation
Speaker 1: to Further Consciousness, and then I thought that sounded a
Speaker 1: bit maybe hippy. So I thought Batley, the name of
Speaker 1: my house, sounded more like Berkeley or Bletchington or well Man.
Speaker 1: I have to let me ask you a frank question, though.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, right, you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: burden being a woman in this field when there are
Speaker 1: very few with any women, especially in the early years
Speaker 1: of psychedelics, and not having the degrees, the advanced degrees.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you are this kind of
Speaker 1: minor royalty. You are Lady Amanda, and I'm curious the
Speaker 1: one way to being part of this mill you sort
Speaker 1: of do you think in what ways did it help
Speaker 1: you to open up doors in England to get through
Speaker 1: in some respect? I mean, I mean, just just frankly,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think if you hadn't, what would
Speaker 1: have been like without that? In what ways were there
Speaker 1: some advantages? Funny enough, I actually didn't. I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't have it. I married it. And it's just like
Speaker 1: having a badge because I didn't have letters after my name,
Speaker 1: and people, even nowadays, even women, I don't think that
Speaker 1: one is capable of being creative scientifically unless you're got
Speaker 1: a PhD. I mean, I luckily had the father I had,
Speaker 1: who said, you know, I had no respect for professors
Speaker 1: or blah blah head people, or he never had that respect.
Speaker 1: Rather like Birdie he in the war, he chose to
Speaker 1: be a private and so I never kind of um,
Speaker 1: I felt a need to get a PhD and spent
Speaker 1: six years of my life doing that because I felt
Speaker 1: that through knowledge of it, one could feel one's way.
Speaker 1: So in many ways maybe it was a disadvantage, but
Speaker 1: one does the way, it goes the way one can.
Speaker 1: But the kind of misconception about me, funny enough, is
Speaker 1: people always like to say I fund research. I never
Speaker 1: had funding. I had to go out and beg on
Speaker 1: the street corners. It was like being a prostitute trying
Speaker 1: to it still is. It's a part of I most
Speaker 1: hate and it's and actually it's got more difficult now
Speaker 1: there's billions floating around in the psychedelic world. In fact,
Speaker 1: the study we started, the Depression study, the the company
Speaker 1: which took over our study and never added anything scientifically,
Speaker 1: is worth a billion you're talking about contest here, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't benefited the poor little Beckley Foundation who
Speaker 1: is struggling. I'm I've got wonderful sub studies at the moment,
Speaker 1: a whole rare wonderful studies I'm doing, and it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to find funding. But anyway, let's take a break
Speaker 1: here and go to an ad. Now you've created so
Speaker 1: you and your son, Cosmo have created a company now though,
Speaker 1: so just is that just based out of the frustration
Speaker 1: of trying to raise money for a Beckley Foundation or
Speaker 1: is it to seize these opportunities? What can you tell
Speaker 1: us about that? That happened a few years ago when Cosmo,
Speaker 1: my younger son, I said should we work together? To
Speaker 1: do a for profit company, and so as it as
Speaker 1: really raising the money is amazing. How little money in
Speaker 1: my forty years doing what they've done I've had. I
Speaker 1: should think probably it's two or three million or something.
Speaker 1: I've never added it up, but I've had it up.
Speaker 1: It's very very little. And everyone always thinks I have
Speaker 1: vast sums of money because I have a title it whatever.
Speaker 1: So creating a company not just a foundation here, what's
Speaker 1: the reason for doing that? And how do you deal?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, now there's all this criticism of people
Speaker 1: creating companies, and you know, we probably share similar concerns
Speaker 1: about the abuse of the pattern process and the greediness
Speaker 1: that can corrupt things. I have to say, I am
Speaker 1: a founding director, but Cosmo runs with The first company
Speaker 1: we did was a cannabis company, and we did it
Speaker 1: with the biggest cannabis company in the world, m called Cannopy,
Speaker 1: and we had a joint venture, so there were two
Speaker 1: of us and two of them on the board. We
Speaker 1: had a fifty fifty relationship and it was a dream
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. It went very very well, and
Speaker 1: then they wanted to buy us, and we were delighted
Speaker 1: and they bought us, and then we started a psychedelic company,
Speaker 1: which is what I wanted to do all the time,
Speaker 1: more than a cannabis company. And because he's running that
Speaker 1: and with amazing skill and charm, I think he does it,
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping so far he's kept his ethics. I
Speaker 1: do the exploratory work. That's what I'm good at, and
Speaker 1: what I love is the seed the seed work. I
Speaker 1: don't want to have to have kind of beavy of
Speaker 1: bankers on my back and have to raise hundreds of millions.
Speaker 1: It's it's not something with treasure at all. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be good at it, and I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: But I love the exploratory work. And so he's he's
Speaker 1: doing that and he's doing it very well. And um,
Speaker 1: we work. Yeah. I mean, let me ask you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know. I remember there was this time,
Speaker 1: I think it was back in two thousand six and
Speaker 1: I was up in Oxford giving a talk and I
Speaker 1: realized you lived very close and I called you and
Speaker 1: you said, oh, come on over, come on over, and
Speaker 1: I go over to your place. I've never been there before,
Speaker 1: and it turned out it was your birthday. Um, and
Speaker 1: and it was basically it was just you and your husband, Jamie,
Speaker 1: and your son's Cosmo and Rocky and their girl friends
Speaker 1: and me, the seven of us having a wonderful time.
Speaker 1: And you know, I substantly would cross past with Cosmo
Speaker 1: because then he got very involved with this documentary Breaking
Speaker 1: the Taboo, which had been launched by President Cardoso and
Speaker 1: a young filmmaker in Brazil or Fernando Grosstein Andrata, and
Speaker 1: then and then your son Cosmo teamed up with Richard
Speaker 1: Branson's son Sam to make this. So you know, I
Speaker 1: saw him getting pulled in this area. So you obviously
Speaker 1: had a very strong and positive influence on him. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious to the extent you feel comfortable talking about it.
Speaker 1: You know, how did you bring up your two boys?
Speaker 1: I mean, here they knew their mother was out there
Speaker 1: about cannabis and psychedelics and their kids, and so were
Speaker 1: they doing these things? I mean, how did you feel
Speaker 1: about they're using it? Find enough, they always view We
Speaker 1: never ever hid anything from them. And yet they were
Speaker 1: incredibly well balanced, and they both went to Oxford and
Speaker 1: studied classics, got to double first in classics, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're hardworking, charming, attractive, wonderful fathers, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? But they grew up knowing what their parents did.
Speaker 1: We never hid anything from and I think that's where
Speaker 1: I'm a great believer in in that basically, so I
Speaker 1: had a wonderful relationship, and now my other son have
Speaker 1: also gotten to the family business. One could call it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually know quite a number of people
Speaker 1: for whom their children were introduced by such a psycholics
Speaker 1: by the parents or and I have other friends who themselves,
Speaker 1: when they were young, were introduced by their parents. And
Speaker 1: in almost all those cases it may because of the
Speaker 1: people I know and hang out with whose turned out
Speaker 1: to be very positive relationships where the children have turned
Speaker 1: out all are these ones? And what what was your
Speaker 1: experience around that. I've an amazingly positive relationship with both
Speaker 1: my boys. We actually never had a quarrel, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: they really were wasn't anything to fight about, you know,
Speaker 1: they were they were free. The one thing I'm mind
Speaker 1: it was good manners, firm on manners, and the rest
Speaker 1: they just did by choice. You dabbled in politics in
Speaker 1: your younger years, right, didn't you try worrying for office
Speaker 1: in the past? But I never loved it. I hated it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not my natural place. I realized that
Speaker 1: I had to do it to change the policies say
Speaker 1: that we could do the research, because in in the seventies, sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: scientists couldn't do didn't want to. It would have ruined
Speaker 1: their career. So one couldn't find a scientist who was
Speaker 1: willing to do research actually or a doctor. And so
Speaker 1: another of my pet loves was trepan nation. So that
Speaker 1: was another by taboo area. Just explain what the ideas
Speaker 1: I think many of our listeners won't know which reprenation is.
Speaker 1: Tremp Nation is making a hole in the skull to
Speaker 1: allow the vessels, the blood vessels in the brain to
Speaker 1: pulsate fully on the heartbeat. That's an ancient operation which
Speaker 1: has been done throughout history. Actually, I knew the person
Speaker 1: who is in charge of the show The Caves, which
Speaker 1: is kind of years old, and they found trepanned skull
Speaker 1: and absolutely amazingly, I'm actually doing a study at the
Speaker 1: moment at Yale with the latest brain imaging technology of optogenetics.
Speaker 1: They're the first people to look at the effect of
Speaker 1: sarahtonin LSD on the tone of the blood, vessels and beer,
Speaker 1: collaborating together to look into my old love hypothesis of
Speaker 1: the fact that underneath the changes we experience with psychedelics,
Speaker 1: but also all the natural things meditation, etcetera, etcetera, deep
Speaker 1: breathing is an increase of capillary volume. And say, we
Speaker 1: were talking about the research they do and how they
Speaker 1: create a window in the scalp of the mice in
Speaker 1: order to be observed. What's happening with their special cameras
Speaker 1: pick up these arrays. Is brand news only just being involved?
Speaker 1: And I said, when when you tropan the scal do
Speaker 1: you notice any change in cerebral circulation? And they said,
Speaker 1: of course we do. It's a terrible problem as a
Speaker 1: sudden burst of activity. So that happened last week, and
Speaker 1: it shows old hypothesis if you've had since nine six,
Speaker 1: that making a hole in the skull increases the pulsation. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm proposed saying, and I'm reading about your theories about
Speaker 1: about the importance of blood flow or capillary action, and
Speaker 1: then I'm saying, you know people who we both highly respect,
Speaker 1: and you know very well, David Nutt or Robin Carhart Harris,
Speaker 1: and they're going, I don't know so much about the
Speaker 1: blood flow hypothesis. I think they're saying it's more about
Speaker 1: neural networks, more about electric impulses. But when Robin said
Speaker 1: to me that when we did the research and it
Speaker 1: showed um a decrease of blood to the default mode
Speaker 1: network and not the increase, she said, Oh, man, don't
Speaker 1: aren't you world have disappointed your your hypothesis being proved wrong.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'm disappointed, but I don't think it's
Speaker 1: proved wrong. Wait and see. Let's just see if technology
Speaker 1: will proved me right. And I think that's about to happen.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I'm doing at the moment. I've
Speaker 1: got a series of six breaking edge research projects, all
Speaker 1: to do with this. Half of them are to do
Speaker 1: with the full those looking into the mystical experience, and
Speaker 1: with that, I'm doing a study at Kings with wonderful
Speaker 1: collaborators looking at precision as fMRI with the highest tesla,
Speaker 1: the highest power we've ever used, seven tesla, which has
Speaker 1: never been used in psychedelics before. So we're looking at individuals.
Speaker 1: You're looking at much more detail, much higher resolution, to
Speaker 1: see what is happening in the brain. And that together
Speaker 1: with looking at the microscopic level and then looking at
Speaker 1: the different forms like pet and all the different meg
Speaker 1: all the different brain imaging technologies. I think i'd approve
Speaker 1: myself how many studies involved giving micro docing and how
Speaker 1: many are the more macro docing, and how many involve
Speaker 1: any level of psychotherapy. Yeah, it's it's a two headed study,
Speaker 1: a dub splity eagle like the Trust of the Beckley Foundation.
Speaker 1: One half is looking at macro at full dose and
Speaker 1: that's the study I'm doing um at the moment, I
Speaker 1: was working on it today at Kinks. Is really exciting one.
Speaker 1: And then to balance it, I'm going to do a
Speaker 1: pet scan and all other sorts of stunds. Is that
Speaker 1: there's a lot at different places. I'm working in Argentinea, Brazil, America,
Speaker 1: all sorts of I set up collaborations where I find lovely.
Speaker 1: What can you bring in Mastrick that involved psychelics and pain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting one. That was micro docing and we
Speaker 1: showed that a micro dose of LSD. Always I try
Speaker 1: to work with LSD because I promised Elbert Hofton that
Speaker 1: I will bring it back into civilization and we showed
Speaker 1: that it improved mood, cognitive functioning, neuroplasticity, and pain management.
Speaker 1: So now we're doing more into the pain and since then,
Speaker 1: I'm discovering how microdocing and these compounds can potentially help
Speaker 1: with neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer's, dementia, parkinson because my Joe,
Speaker 1: Mike's partner dot Parkinson's and the micro dose of actually
Speaker 1: I again works on the dopamine production. Well, listen, last
Speaker 1: last question here. You know, it's about you've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, on the one hand, the importance of the
Speaker 1: mystical experience and obviously Rolling Griffiths and all his work
Speaker 1: at Hartkins, he Folk it makes a big point of that,
Speaker 1: you know, and and also at the same point ego
Speaker 1: dissolution and the role of psychological and ego dissolution, And
Speaker 1: how do you see that connection between the mystical experience
Speaker 1: and the ego dissolution aspect of this? Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: it really beautifully because science has killed off spirituality and
Speaker 1: hence mankind is even more loss than they were before.
Speaker 1: And now right at the very center of the new
Speaker 1: sounds is mysticism. Because funnily enough, we and other players
Speaker 1: have noticed that those who have a mystical experience in
Speaker 1: their therapy of overcoming and terrible problem are the most successful.
Speaker 1: They most successfully overcome there whatever it is depression or addiction,
Speaker 1: or or fear of dying. And that is, I think,
Speaker 1: because what we've seen, the underlying factors in what's happening
Speaker 1: is the whole brain. And this I think is because
Speaker 1: underneath there's much more blood supply. The whole brain is
Speaker 1: flooded with connectivity and the controlling, repressive part which humanity
Speaker 1: has has learned through conditioning to repress parts of the
Speaker 1: brain so it can squeeze for limited blood supply to
Speaker 1: where it's most needed to survive. That's what we animals
Speaker 1: be human upright talking it learned to do, and that
Speaker 1: was the kind of trick which enabled us to become
Speaker 1: the rulers of the universe in vert commerce, but also
Speaker 1: the neurotic psychotic species we are because it's a grip
Speaker 1: which takes control of us and we aren't control of it.
Speaker 1: And I think the experience of a psychedelic can in
Speaker 1: the right setting let loose the repressive grip of the
Speaker 1: eager and make the whole brain more neuroplastic. So the
Speaker 1: person can take over a new outlook. Like I decided
Speaker 1: a smoking nicotine is actually disgusting. I don't want to
Speaker 1: do it anymore. And it's so deep the change in
Speaker 1: one that one actually doesn't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1: And I think, do you see what I mean? Well, listen,
Speaker 1: here's my real last question. Here's my real last question,
Speaker 1: which is, on the one hand, we see all this
Speaker 1: emphasis now on the importance of integrating psychedelics with psychotherapy
Speaker 1: and the ways in which psychotherapy can both improve the
Speaker 1: positive effect of the psychedelic and also minimize the chances
Speaker 1: they go go in the other direction. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of psychedelic use is happening outside that context.
Speaker 1: And I remember you and I you know, we crossed
Speaker 1: passive burning Man back about fifteen years ago, and here
Speaker 1: where this amazing burning Man environment, you know, where people
Speaker 1: are all using it without really therapy. And so how
Speaker 1: do you reconcile those two things that the broader use. Well,
Speaker 1: I grew up in my psychedelic experience, not with it therapy.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were very serious people and looking at
Speaker 1: why why are we the way we are? And how
Speaker 1: do we curious and how do we heal ourselves and
Speaker 1: all of that. But we never took it with a therapist.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't just in what we did. We
Speaker 1: were looked after ourselves. But I think if you've got
Speaker 1: bad traumas to overcome, the psychedelic setting of therapy can
Speaker 1: be very, very healing and therefore very valuable. I'm not
Speaker 1: against it, but I didn't think it's essential for everyone,
Speaker 1: And I think it's terrible mistake to criminalize it if
Speaker 1: it isn't in a medical setting, because in my opinion,
Speaker 1: what you do with your own consciousness, if you don't
Speaker 1: do anything which damages other people, is totally your private affair.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't have anything to do with the state
Speaker 1: or anyone else. Well, thank you very much for bringing
Speaker 1: it back to the core principle that we're all fighting war.
Speaker 1: So Amanda, thank you so much for joining me. Then
Speaker 1: your work is amazing. Good luck with the rest of
Speaker 1: the foundation and your own research and uh and with
Speaker 1: a company and all of that, and best wishes to
Speaker 1: your family as well. I'll leave you, love you, Indivi
Speaker 1: you and hope to see you really too. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you're enjoying psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or
Speaker 1: you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from
Speaker 1: our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories,
Speaker 1: comments and ideas, then leave us a message at one
Speaker 1: eight three three seven seven nine six that's eight three
Speaker 1: three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive
Speaker 1: at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Ethan Natalman. You can also find contact information in our
Speaker 1: show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers
Speaker 1: are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronotsky
Speaker 1: from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Ari Blucien and a special thanks to a Brio s
Speaker 1: f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week, I'll be
Speaker 1: talking with Garth Mullet's the host of an award winning
Speaker 1: podcast called Crackdown that he co produces with his fellow
Speaker 1: drug users and drug user organizers and activists in Vancouver
Speaker 1: on Monday, though, We're going to first play you an
Speaker 1: episode of his Crackdown podcast, and then on Thursday, he'll
Speaker 1: be my guest on Psychoactive. Listen to this clip for
Speaker 1: a sense of what's ahead. I'm an old school dope fan,
Speaker 1: you know. That's the story of my life is I've
Speaker 1: been on some kind of opioid pretty much every day
Speaker 1: of my adult life. For most of them, and for
Speaker 1: a long time that was heroin, and for a while
Speaker 1: now it's been methadone and uh, everything in between. And
Speaker 1: I came to understand our struggle just through my own
Speaker 1: personal experience with police. People get it all twisted here.
Speaker 1: They say it's an opioid crisis, it's an addiction crisis.
Speaker 1: It's not for me. It's a death crisis. It's a
Speaker 1: toxic rug supply crisis. You know, whether it's someone being
Speaker 1: wired to a substance or someone dying. And these are
Speaker 1: completely different things that require different solutions. Subscribe to Cycleactive now,
Speaker 1: see it, don't miss it.