WEBVTT - Psychedelics Playlist: The Manifested Mind, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:14.040 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.440 Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.119 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.680 discussion of psychedelics with a special focus on psilocybin mushrooms. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.080 Um So, in the last episode, if you haven't heard 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:27.760 that yet, you should probably go back and listen to 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:29.760 that one first. That's where we lay the groundwork for 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:31.840 a lot of the stuff we're talking about today. Where 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.120 we ended up talking about a little bit about the 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:38.160 history of psychedelics, about where we stand in that history, 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:40.640 which will explore more over the next couple of episodes. 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.360 We talked about a lot of the common features of 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:48.120 the psychedelic experience and what those reported features have in 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.800 common with, say, what William James described as the mystical 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:55.160 experience or the religious experience. So we talked about like 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.680 the ideas of the psychedelic experience being ineffable or hard 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.400 to put into words, often having this quality of veridicality 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.640 or the noetic quality, seeming like it isn't just an experience, 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.679 but that it's somehow imparts true information do you? Right? 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.559 And then we also just talked about in general terms 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.280 like what is a drug? What what does this term 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.880 drug mean? Why do we apply it to some substances 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.080 that have a physiological effect on us and not to others? 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.399 And then what indeed is a psychedelic and uh and 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.040 again all those properties that we typically associate with the 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:31.240 psychedelic experience. Right. And one of the funny things is 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.479 when I was growing up, I thought of drugs as 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:38.280 one class of things that are all equally bad, um 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:40.880 and you know, all equally scary. And of course this 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.200 was you know, United States drug policy conditioning as it 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:47.160 filtered through into the education system. Uh. And in in 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:49.040 a way you can kind of understand, like, you know, 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.280 you want kids to be aware of the dangers of 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.720 messing with addictive substances. You don't want kids trying out, uh, 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.920 you know, heroin or cocaine or even tobacco. Really you know, 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:00.560 like yeah, I mean as a as a father, I 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.800 totally get that. But then all these other things get 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.680 lumped in with that stuff, right. And yeah, I mean 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.080 we could certainly a lot has been said, a lot 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:10.880 has been written, and we could probably spend a whole 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:15.120 time just dissecting the war on drugs and what what 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.680 didn't work, um, and just sort of some of the 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:22.160 problematic aspects of the messaging. Uh, because I remember growing 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.880 up and going to these like the dare rallies at school. Um. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:29.640 This is like like a a US educational outreach program 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.480 um to keep kids off of drugs. And and there 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.320 was this it did feel like drugs were just the enemy. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:38.560 And then anything else you might be take, like there 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:42.280 was medication. Drugs certainly wasn't something that would a term 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:46.520 that would be used to describe Thailand all or anything. Um. 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:48.560 But but yeah, and in doing this you end up 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.760 like like just vilifying all these substances, uh, and in 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.800 making and also perhaps making them more appealing in a 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.200 certain sense, you know, because you're telling all these kids 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.359 know this is dark, dangerous stuff, don't and near the 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.680 dark magic um of drugs. And and at the same 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.279 time it can lead to this false impression that drugs 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:12.200 were a product of the nineteen sixties, or at least 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:16.120 of the or the mid twentieth century, that we had 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.960 like a time before drugs. And then suddenly, h here come, uh, 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.480 you know, here comes the psychedelic counterculture. Here comes the marijuana. Marijuana, 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:26.600 of course came in earlier. Uh. The same can be 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.240 said of cocaine uh and UH and opium and uh 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:32.720 and so forth. But but still there's you could easily 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:34.639 get this false idea in your head that these were 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.160 products of modern society. There were new modern problems, and 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.240 certainly there are versions of these substances that were modern, 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:46.280 and problems that they introduced were thoroughly modern. Um. You know, 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:48.520 for for instance, you know, things like when you start 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.880 talking about like crack cocaine or you start talking about heroin, um. 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.960 You know, those are the more modern twists on on 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.480 very old organisms, you know, going back to the poppy 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.400 seed or the coca plant. Yeah, and even referring to 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.200 the more psychedelic substances, not say like opium based alkaloids 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.000 or something like that. But uh, you know, psilocybin and 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:11.400 l sc LSD was in a way kind of invented. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.160 It is a compound that was isolated from the urgad 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.360 in nineteen thirty eight, I think it was, and then 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.080 first you know, Albert Hofmann figured out what it was 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.000 in the nineteen forties, so that was kind of new. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.919 But psychedelics in general were not new, It's certainly been around. 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.960 They've been used by humans for hundreds or thousands of years. Yeah, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.240 I mean we're talking about organisms. We're talking about species 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.200 that evolved to thrive in our world. And um, you know, 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:38.960 take psilocybin for instance. Again, it's found in some two 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.480 hundred different varieties of a two hundred different species of mushrooms, 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.400 and um, exactly why they have these properties is still 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:51.400 something that scientists or are looking into. But according to 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.880 a two thousand eighteen study from Ohio State University UH 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.000 the psychedelic properties of pilocybin containing mushrooms, it may have 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.919 evolved as an app a tight suppressant to deter insects 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.400 that frequented the the animal dung from which the mushrooms grew, 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.000 which is which is interesting, Yeah, because that is that's 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.200 not even a quality of the psychedelic experience that we 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.320 even touched on in the previous episode. But there is 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.839 an appetite suppressant that is taking place as well. So 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.320 maybe a lot of the classic effects that we identify 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.600 as psychedelic are merely byproducts of the of the compounds 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.960 that the primary evolutionary purpose of which is an appetite 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.720 suppressant that that's just hypothesis. Right. With the hypothesis, it's 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.600 still still an open question. But but yeah, there's no 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:40.200 such things as LSD. Munchie's right, I mean, there are 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:43.200 funny enough that there are much weirder hypothesis, I mean, 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.159 much weirder ones that a lot of the In the 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.120 last episode we talked about the people with the sort 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:51.040 of mico centric worldview who come to see you know, 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.680 like Terrence McKenna and the people who come to see mushrooms. 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.280 Is some in some way kind of secretly running the world, 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.080 and some of these people, you know, they'll get into 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:04.040 ideas of how, well, really the reason that psilocybin exists, 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.040 you know, this compound has these effects on us, is 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.880 that evolved as some kind of communication mechanism where the 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.159 mush you know, the fungus world is trying to break 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.640 through to us because we're the like dominant moving species 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.120 that controls energy and ecosystems, and it's trying to get 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.960 through to us and open our minds to its priorities. 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.960 It's it's interesting. Now, certainly we're not going to get 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:31.400 into the question of whether psilocybin containing mushrooms are gods 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.279 or whether they're conscious or whether they're conscious. Well, actually, 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:37.080 I think maybe Edward Ocone might have something to say 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:39.599 about that, but he does, uh yeah, and we'll touch 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.440 on that a little later. But even but I don't 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:43.400 want to associate him too much with this um with 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:46.159 right with the you know, the sort of more extreme 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.200 version of this. But in terms of just associating psilocymon 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.839 and psychedelics with gods, there's nothing new about that. We'll 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.880 get into that as we go here. One of the 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:01.520 connections that mckinna makes in his stone and Ape hypothesis 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.640 is that since you have psilocybin growing out of the 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.120 dung of verbivores, namely a cattle, this would have been 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:13.480 something they would have become obvious to people's that were 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.560 rearing cattle in the ancient world, and then it would 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:18.960 have traveled with them as they brought their cattle with them. 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:21.600 And he makes a case I'm not sure exactly how 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:26.440 strong it is for the various cattle gods of antiquity, uh, 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.120 you know, the sort of you know, horned gods, the 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:32.400 golden calf. Yeah, part of their association is with the 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.679 psilocybin mushrooms that would have been almost like the milk 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.760 of the animal. Like the animal produces meat, the animal 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:43.160 produces milk. The animal produces this substance that allows us 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:46.800 to engage in a mystic experience. That's an interesting potential 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.720 ecological relationship. I mean the same way that zoonotic diseases 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.160 follow human civilization where they've got domesticated animals, right, because 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:57.960 they're in close proximity to certain domesticated animals, the diseases 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:00.600 that affect those animals have a greater likely of jumping 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.040 over into you know, into the human strains, right. Um. 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:05.960 But you could say the same thing about things that 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:10.160 are not diseases but other follow on organisms, for example, 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.920 psilocybin mushrooms right right. Yeah. Now, to be clear, I think, 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:15.720 you know, as we're discussing the show before, I think 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.920 it's always um too tempting to try and point to 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.880 a single thing as being like the prime motivator in 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.160 the creation of mythologies and the genesis of gods and 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.320 so um. You know, I'm kind I'm open to the 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.280 idea that psilocybin could have played a role in the 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:32.040 character of some of these guys. And we do see 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.480 specific gods as we'll discussed that have clear iconography associated 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:40.080 with psychedelic substances, but of course there are there's so 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:44.360 many other processes going on in the generation of divine 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.960 entities in the human mind. Well, one interesting question, at 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.440 least interesting to me, is the question of why did 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:56.720 we start taking these substances. Clearly, the use of psilocybin 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:58.600 goes way back into history, and we'll talk sort of 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:02.280 about the natural and cultural story of of psilocybin, especially 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:06.239 in a in a bit, But like why what benefit 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:10.959 biologically would there have been to doing this? I mean, 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.000 is it something that humans do just as a sort 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:16.480 of like byproduct of the way their brains work, and 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.240 there is no real biological benefit or is there a 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:23.000 biological benefit that maybe we don't fully recognize. Is there 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:27.520 an adaptive reason to take psychedelic drugs? Yeah, because a 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:29.760 lot of times we think of these substances as being 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:34.120 especially in the Western context, you know, purely recreational, purely 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.400 even hedonistic, and that's not what we're seeing out of 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.840 the especially the more recent studies and even the studies 0:09:41.840 --> 0:09:44.360 of the nineteen fifties and sixties. And it's also not 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.719 what we see in traditional societies that use them, there 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.280 was an attempt and these were used very seriously as 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:55.719 a means of solving problems and uh, communing with the 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.040 mystical world, etcetera. Yeah, that's exactly right, and and so 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.800 you can I mean, one thing that automatically sticks out 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.520 there for me is that if there is some kind 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:06.959 of adaptive value to these things, it could have some 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.960 kind of uh, you know, social reinforcement role. Right, You know, 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:12.560 this is a common kind of thing. You say, what 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.959 is the value of X cultural practice? Very often you 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:18.920 could say, well, maybe it's strength and strengthen social bonds 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.319 in some way, you know, helps groups work together better. Um, 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.800 it helps them share information and bond better, so they're 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.280 more effective as a hunting team or something like that. 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.360 So that's a possibility, but we don't know that's the case. 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:33.960 But another way of thinking about it is, could we 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.679 better understand the uses of psychedelics and humans and the 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.920 reasons for those uses by looking at the effects of 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:45.520 psychedelics in other animals. Uh So, for one thing, there 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.400 are some people in the world that actually gives psychedelic 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:52.880 drugs to domestic animals for ritual and practical purposes. And 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.520 there's one example I came across the I thought was 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.079 a really interesting study. This is a study by Bradley 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:03.400 Bennett and Rokyo Alarcon called Hunting and Hallucinogens the use 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:06.520 of psychoactive and other plants to improve the hunting ability 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:10.240 of dogs. So this is giving psychedelic substances to animals 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:14.000 with a purpose that's it's not research related, but also 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.920 not um purely recreational like some of these videos you 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:22.880 see of say, squirrels allegedly consuming psychedelic mushrooms. Right, yeah, 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.840 so this would be something parallel to an adaptive value 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.040 in a hunting scenario. And so this paper was in 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:31.800 the Journal of ethno Pharmacology in two thousand fifteen. So 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.720 the authors here looked at the use of psychoactive substances 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.080 by two tribes in South America, the Shuar and the 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:44.600 Quechua of Ecuador, who are reported to give hallucinogenic plants 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.760 to their hunting dogs in order to improve their hunting ability. 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:51.520 And the authors find that this practice is prevalent and 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.320 they think it's likely adaptive. Now, what good would it 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:57.600 do to give a hunting dog a hallucinogen, right, it 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.320 seemed to me if you didn't think too deeply about it, 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:02.360 that just seems counterproductive. Right, It's going to make the 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.680 dog distracted, probably less effective, right. Yeah. The idea is 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.120 that what it would would alter its perception of reality. 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.760 But doesn't it need a fine tune perception of reality 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.439 in order to do it's hunting exactly? But the authors 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:19.600 quote hypothesize that hallucinogenic plants alter perception in hunting dogs 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:24.920 by diminishing extraneous signals and by enhancing sensory perception, most 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.839 likely old faction, or the sense of smell that is 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:31.640 directly involved in the detection and capture of game. Now 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.000 this is interesting because we always have to recognize that 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.160 a dog is a far more uh, smell based creature 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.600 than than we can really almost more, it's more more 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:46.040 smell based than we can imagine, Like, uh, you know, 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.840 we're such a visual species and uh and certainly, uh, 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.360 psychedelics are going to alter the sense of smell. And 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.560 we discussed that briefly last time, Like you, smells may change, 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:00.800 smells may seem strange, and imagine that in a creature 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.040 for whom smell is this really rich means of sensing 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.440 the external world. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think in 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.440 the same way that the psychedelic experience is often ineffable. 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.000 There's this quality to it that you can't describe once 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.880 it's over and communicate to other people. I think probably 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.200 the sense experience of other kinds of animals, animals like dogs, 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.640 is probably ineffable and and un understandable from our point 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.120 of view, Like there's no way for you to picture 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:30.120 or put yourself into the level of chemo sensitivity of 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.120 a dog there, you know, their level of engagement with 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.840 all of the chemical signals going on around them that 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.280 we only get this tiny, blunt, faint kind of whiff 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.200 of um and and so. Yeah, so that's obviously an 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:45.880 important part of their hunting perception. But of course they 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.360 have other senses to They've got hearing and smell and 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.040 all that. So maybe what's going on again, we don't 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.720 know this, This is just what the author's hypothesize, you know. 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:55.360 In the last episode, we talked about how one of 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.960 the common reported effects of taking psilocybin as a holy 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:03.160 synogen is the experience of heightened perceptions, like you know, 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.599 colors might seem more more vivid or brighter, or you 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.760 might feel like you have in a more cute sense 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.520 of hearing. Um, it's hard for me to imagine that, 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.120 like the you know, you actually have greater resolution in 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:18.079 your eyeballs for sight, But there might be something going 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.400 on in the brain where suddenly more power is devoted 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:25.440 to noticing detail in what you see or something like that. Um, 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.960 And so you can imagine maybe the same news true 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.520 in these hunting dogs. Maybe you know, brainpower gets sort 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.480 of reorganized in a way where there's new levels of 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.000 attention to detail and smell that would normally be dedicated 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:41.680 to other senses or other distracting mental processes. But then again, 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.920 we don't know that's the case. That's just interesting possibility 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.400 for what's going on here. If this is in fact adaptive, 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.160 which the authors think it probably is. Uh. The author 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.080 is also right, this is funny that quote. If this 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:55.960 is true, plant substances might also enhance the ability of 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.720 dogs to detect explosive drugs, human remains, and other targets 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.160 for which they are valued. So so the drug dogs 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.800 will now be given will be given drugs. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.360 this is interesting and a possible future in which let's say, 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:15.560 explosive sniffing dogs will be micro dosing um or or 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.600 perhaps macro dosing in order to find what they're looking for. Uh. 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.320 We do want to stress that we are not encouraging 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:25.600 anyone out there to uh take a psychedelic substance an 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.920 attempt to carry out any particular tasks in their life. 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.360 UM No. We're also not encouraging people to dose their 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.880 pets or domestic animals with substances you might not know 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:39.120 the effects of. I mean, that's just not advisable. But this, 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.840 this does remind me, of course, micro dosing is this 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.560 is what's supposed to trend and like Silicon Valley and 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.760 so forth, where take a little bit less a little 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.040 bit of some sort of psychedelic in order to give 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.720 you with what some supposed slide edge of whatever your 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.120 coding job happens to be, etcetera. And uh and I 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.480 don't know. I even't looked at the research on that 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:59.040 to see if there is any research on that to 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.560 say exactly how that holds up. Um, but it does. 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.800 It does remind me of a recent Saturday Night Live 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.080 sketch and which there was a there's a film reviewer 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.080 who appears on Weekend Update who instead of micro dosing 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.400 to go review films as macro dosing. So he's taking 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.680 like a colossal amount of psychedelics and then going and 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.120 seeing just whatever the Hollywood films of the day happened 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:26.880 to be and then having these just crazy um reviews 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:30.920 of them. I recommend everybody check that out. I haven't 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.720 seen that one now. I think something that's interesting about 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.960 this hunting dog study, though, is that it it kind 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.200 of like roughly falls in line with some of the 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.600 arguments the McKenna maide back in ninete and Food of 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:47.480 the Gods for psilocybin aiding humanities ancestors along three different levels. 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:50.160 So but but one of the key areas is that 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.400 he was pointing to the work of psycho pharmacologist Roland L. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.560 Fisher uh saying, quote, small amounts of psilocybin consumed with 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.520 no awareness of its psycho activity while in the general 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:05.320 act of browsing for food and perhaps later consumed consciously 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.960 in part a noticeable increase in visual acuity, especially edge detection. 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.520 As visual acuity is at a premium among hunter gatherers. 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.400 The discovery of the equivalent of quote chemical binoculars could 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.000 not fail to have an impact on the hunting and 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.240 gathering success of those individuals who availed themselves of this advantage. 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.520 That's interesting, yeah, yeah, um. And and he also argues 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:33.240 that at higher doses, restlessness and sexual arousal would have 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:37.320 played a role. And then finally shamanistic ecstasy would have 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:39.800 would have of course been an important part and it 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.040 clearly was an important part of the use of psychedelics 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.119 early people. Now I'm not I'm not saying that this 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:48.840 paper really backs up McKenna in any meaningful way here. 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.120 And I'm also not sure if his interpretation of Fisher's 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.280 work is completely fair or if he's leaning into his 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:57.760 assumptions on this. But you know, if if psilocybin makes 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.520 a hunting dog slightly better at hunting, or a hunter 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.840 gather slightly better at their thing, then I think this 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:06.920 is kind of interesting. I mean that the same case 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.920 can can and is made for natural substances that work 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.640 as stimulants, which of course are widely used through human culture. 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.320 And uh, you know, for every employee out there who's 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:23.280 not micro dosing with psilocybin, everybody else is micro or 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:27.720 macro dosing with caffeine, ultra dosing on or um. Goodness. 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:32.119 I remember hearing tales of like the older newsrooms where 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:34.480 a cigarette met was a was a request where someone 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.080 would be like working on a deadline and they're drinking 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.280 coffee and they need somebody to actually like stick the 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:41.639 cigarette in their mouth to give something and light it 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:43.560 up for them so they can have the the nicotine 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.320 rush to finish their job. Or even the cliche of 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.160 the use of cocaine in business in Wall Street. Yeah, 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.679 or and before that, the you know heard tales of 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:55.119 you know of labors, you know, being depending on cocaine 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.280 back back in the day as being like a primary 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.320 mean of just getting through the labor of the day. 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:04.320 And of course in the armed forces of centuries you 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.600 see a lot of use of stimulants. Certainly we've talked 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:09.520 about this in the show before. The use of stimulants 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:12.800 by the Nazis during the Second World War was pretty extensive, 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.600 especially in the Liftwaffe, and and today you still see 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:20.160 variants various stimulants that are designed for you some long 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.560 flights in military context. All right, well, I think maybe 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:25.359 we should take a break, and then when we come back, 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.000 we will talk a little bit about animals self administration 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:35.399 of hallucinogens. Alright, we're back. So before we get into 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.960 the self administration of psychedelics by animals, it's just a 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.520 quick reminder that animals in general I have are known 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.960 to make use of various chemicals in their environment. It 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.919 may be something more internal, like a poison dart frog 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:53.639 acquiring its toxicity via the plants that it consumes, or 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.480 it could be something like lemurs that take a centipede, 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:01.480 crush it, and spread the the toxicity of the of 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.320 of this species on their fur, presumably to keep insects away. 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:07.920 So there are plenty of cases like that where it's 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:12.560 either a more complex part of the creatures physiology or 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.000 it is something that they are doing almost like tool 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.760 use of the toxins in their environment. Great example of 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:23.040 this I remember from our Squirrels episodes was the ground squirrel. Uh, 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:26.040 I don't know. I think some western United States or 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.080 western North American ground squirrel has a strategy for avoiding 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:34.400 its rattlesnake predators, which is finding discarded rattlesnake skins after 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:36.720 the snake sheds its skin, chewing that up and rubbing 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.400 it all over its body and the bodies of its young. Wow. Yeah, 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.200 that's brilliant. But so these are all, you know, self 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:47.840 administrations of of chemicals by animals. So would animals take 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:52.200 psychedelic drugs given the opportunity do Do they just seek 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.080 these things out and consume them voluntarily? It's one thing 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.680 if maybe an animal consumes a hallucinogen by accident, you know, 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:03.240 because it's just there's a psychedelic compound in their environment 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.119 and they happen to eat it while they're foraging, versus 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.320 behaviors were it really does seem like they're actively seeking 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:11.960 it out and after they have the experience once try 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:15.320 to repeat it. Have you ever seen the movie The Bear? No, 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.040 I haven't, so I forget the French director's name he 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.000 directed the original, or the name of the rose Um. 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:23.600 But but The Bear I remember as being a very 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.359 fun film about this this bear, using lots of like 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:28.760 real bears used in the film. But there's a sequence 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.000 in which the bear eats a psychedelic mushroom and has 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.000 a psychedelic experience and it's pretty wonderful of you. If 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:37.600 you don't see the whole movie, I recommend everyone check 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:41.440 out that sequence on like YouTube if it's still out there. Well, 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.080 the Bear would not be alone in the animal kingdom, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.840 it turns out. So there is a paper that I 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.119 want to refer to here from the International Journal of Addictions. 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.520 This is from nineteen seventy three, so a lot of 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:54.800 thinking about drugs has changed since then, but this does 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:59.040 document some like recorded animal behaviors that are pretty interesting. 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:01.200 So this is called an the Logical Search for Self 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:06.760 Administration of Hallucinogens by Ronald K. Siegel, And so it's 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:10.480