Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind?
Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Julie Douglas and this episode is The Shaman and
Speaker 1: the Scientist Hallucination. It is more or less a part
Speaker 1: two following up on our episode The Shaman and the
Speaker 1: Scientist My Egoic Mind. Both of these deal with psychedelics.
Speaker 1: So just on the last podcast, just want to let
Speaker 1: everyone know off the top of the podcast if you
Speaker 1: didn't get it from the title or the description, Yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about psychedelic substances in this episode,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna be talking about them largely from scientific standpoint,
Speaker 1: and from the standpoint is some very exciting and very
Speaker 1: important research that continues to go on right now into
Speaker 1: how these substances affect the human mind and what those
Speaker 1: effects can actually reveal about the inner workings of the
Speaker 1: human mind and potentially aid us in dealing with some
Speaker 1: very real mental problems, mental ailments, etcetera. And again this
Speaker 1: was borne out of the exhibit for I Am the
Speaker 1: Black Jaguar, which is at Emory University, and uh, there
Speaker 1: was a talk there that you attended with doctor Katherine
Speaker 1: McClain and doctor Charles Raison at this very topic. Yes,
Speaker 1: fascinating topic. Dr Katherine McClain involved in a lot of
Speaker 1: this exciting research at John Hopkins where they're they're taking individuals,
Speaker 1: they're exposing them to these various psychedelic substances and then uh,
Speaker 1: interacting with them, getting their perspectives on on what they're
Speaker 1: feeling and what's happening, looking at their brain, using radioactive
Speaker 1: tracers to observe exactly how this is affecting their mind.
Speaker 1: Lots of fascinating research, and as we discussed in the
Speaker 1: last podcast, we're in at an interesting stage in the
Speaker 1: sort of ebb and flow of psychedelic research. Psychedelic research,
Speaker 1: it makes it sound kind of silly, but research into
Speaker 1: psychede ex and how they affect the mind, because this
Speaker 1: is all this sort of kicked off in the fifties
Speaker 1: mid fifties, but by the end of the sixties took
Speaker 1: a dive to basically nothing because of the politics and
Speaker 1: the cultural bash backlash, and he didn't really get picked
Speaker 1: didn't pick up again. Until the nineties, and finally achieving
Speaker 1: some level of of steam again in the Dan of
Speaker 1: the twenty one century. But of course, a lot of
Speaker 1: these substances have been in use for thousands of years
Speaker 1: through shamanic practices in various parts of the world. What
Speaker 1: we're talking about here are anthony ogenic substances, uh, psychoactive
Speaker 1: substances used in religious or spiritual context. Yeah. To put
Speaker 1: it in a Simpson's standpoint, Homer Simpson takes peyote and
Speaker 1: then he talks to a space coyote, uh that talks
Speaker 1: to him and helps him deal with his problems. That's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, that's the pop culture simpsons simplified
Speaker 1: version of shamantic experience where some wise person a holy
Speaker 1: man or woman in a traditional setting that also you know,
Speaker 1: probably engages in various cultural traditional medicines. They give you
Speaker 1: a magical substance one of these, you know, the mushroom
Speaker 1: or the vine of ayahuassa, and then you take it.
Speaker 1: The shaman probably takes it to probably in higher doses,
Speaker 1: and then guide you on the experience. Yeah. And actually
Speaker 1: I had read that shamans were sometimes picked for their
Speaker 1: ability to bring on these states of these altered states
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Um by doing it actually just on their
Speaker 1: very own and not necessarily using any sort of substances.
Speaker 1: So uh, they were definitely looking for people who had
Speaker 1: this ability to expand their minds into access at part
Speaker 1: of their minds that that that we don't normally use
Speaker 1: during the day, right or throughout the day, I should say, so,
Speaker 1: here's this idea that comes online that perhaps hallucinating is
Speaker 1: natural to humans, right, because you've had it in these
Speaker 1: rituals for thousands of years, we've had it in practice
Speaker 1: in this attempt to try to get a better understanding
Speaker 1: of our place in the world. But also you have
Speaker 1: something called d m T which is naturally occurring in
Speaker 1: nature die methyl trip to me yea. And this was
Speaker 1: this was first synthesized by British chemists in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: It has a psychotropic properties that were discovered twenty years
Speaker 1: later by Hungarian born chemist Stephen Sarah but then intent
Speaker 1: two Nobel laure Julius axel Rod he discovered d MT
Speaker 1: in human brain tissue. Okay, leading us back to the idea,
Speaker 1: this isn't something you just synthesize, this is something that
Speaker 1: is is in the mind that exists already up. So
Speaker 1: this led to speculation that the compound plays a role
Speaker 1: in psychosis. People research that possibility and eventually abandoned it
Speaker 1: again because of all the backlash against research into psychedelics anyway,
Speaker 1: but this was the beginning of our understanding of what
Speaker 1: d m T is and and what role it plays
Speaker 1: in these experiences, the shamanistic experiences, because it's always been
Speaker 1: a part of our brain, and it's present in plants
Speaker 1: such as that the yeah, exactly, and so we're when
Speaker 1: we talk about it being present in the brain, we're
Speaker 1: talking about trace amounts of these d m T molecules.
Speaker 1: So obviously it's not any sort of amount that's going to,
Speaker 1: uh say, allow us to accidentally start tripping because somehow
Speaker 1: there was some sort of trigger that occurred. But it
Speaker 1: does lead people to question why d m T is
Speaker 1: in the brain, what sort of role it's playing. And
Speaker 1: it should be noted that d m T is closely
Speaker 1: related to seratonin, which is the naturally occurring neurotransmitter that
Speaker 1: psychedelics effect so widely, and the pharmacology of d m
Speaker 1: T is similar to that of other well known psychedelics,
Speaker 1: So there's definitely a relationship going on there. It's just
Speaker 1: a question of again, what sort of role might d
Speaker 1: m T play in the mind? UM. There have been
Speaker 1: some people who say that it's produced by the penny
Speaker 1: on gland, but we don't know that for sure. Yes,
Speaker 1: don't go stealing pennil glands thinking you're going you're triggering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's a good point. It leads us to
Speaker 1: this question about whether or not hallucinations or something that
Speaker 1: are produced normally in nature, and whether or not hallucination
Speaker 1: is something that humans are supposed to do. UM. I
Speaker 1: bring this up because there's a two thousand eleven study
Speaker 1: at Whole University in the uk UM which has to
Speaker 1: do with hallucinating colors. Now. UH scientists asked a group
Speaker 1: of pre screened people to look at a set of
Speaker 1: gray patterns and try to visualize color. Eleven members of
Speaker 1: the group had been identified as highly susceptible to hypnosis UH,
Speaker 1: and then seven of these subjects were not susceptible at all.
Speaker 1: The study found that all subjects who were easily hypnotized
Speaker 1: reported seeing a range of colors even while not under hypnosis.
Speaker 1: In other words, their brain was hallucinating colors um and
Speaker 1: then m R I scans corroborated this and showed that
Speaker 1: the parts of the brain linked color perception lit up
Speaker 1: when they saw in otations imaginary hues of colors. So
Speaker 1: you have this idea coming online that you know there
Speaker 1: are parts of the brain that can work in conjunction
Speaker 1: to create the reality. And we talked about this a
Speaker 1: thousand times that what we construct is reality is uh,
Speaker 1: I should say, rather, our perception really is an approximation
Speaker 1: of reality, and that each of us is looking at
Speaker 1: the world in a completely different way. We're just sort
Speaker 1: of all agreeing on a couple of things to make
Speaker 1: sure we have some continuity in life. Now, it's interesting
Speaker 1: you mentioned that because on the subject of b MT,
Speaker 1: the subject of any of these substances, one of the
Speaker 1: things that Dr Catherine mcclaim brought up, specifically stressing the
Speaker 1: research environment that they use at John Hopkins where they
Speaker 1: have they don't just inject people with these psychedelic substances
Speaker 1: and then put them into like a padded room or
Speaker 1: something tomorrow, right, they have a they have a really
Speaker 1: calming um space that has some you know, abstract art,
Speaker 1: has some Buddhas has some other really just a spiraitual
Speaker 1: iconographies some comfy couches, and they do a certain amount
Speaker 1: of priming too, because they don't want to throw somebody
Speaker 1: into some read nightmare trip, you know, they want to
Speaker 1: send them on a more or less positive trip. They
Speaker 1: can't guarantee it, but they did find that on I
Speaker 1: believe psilocybin that outside of a clinical environment, about thirty
Speaker 1: of the people would say that they had a mystical
Speaker 1: experience inside of the experiment. When when they were controlling
Speaker 1: the the environment in which they were taking, you know,
Speaker 1: and surrounding them with this kind of mystical and calming stuff,
Speaker 1: they would see a seventy percent of the test subjects
Speaker 1: reported having a mystical experience. So what you're saying is
Speaker 1: again a lot of it is suggestion, right, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and going into it with with certain expectations as well.
Speaker 1: You kind of see that with d MT as well,
Speaker 1: because I was looking at some of these accounts of
Speaker 1: of what d m T is like and um. In
Speaker 1: a letter to Alan Ginsburg, William Burrows described his own
Speaker 1: And it's of course important to know that William Burrows
Speaker 1: did a lot of things. I did a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of drugs. He did a lot of drugs, so
Speaker 1: he's he's maybe not the you know, a pure test subject.
Speaker 1: But he reported like the first time he took it,
Speaker 1: it was he he felt himself turning into a half man,
Speaker 1: half woman and that he was space time traveling. Whereas
Speaker 1: your buddy John Horrigan, author of Rational Mysticism, he had
Speaker 1: a totally well not a totally different experience, but he
Speaker 1: had a different take on the experience. Yeah, he took
Speaker 1: some ayahuasca because he is very interested and at the
Speaker 1: time of writing his book Rational Mysticism, was trying to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of what is a spiritual experience?
Speaker 1: You know, what's going on in the brain, what's going
Speaker 1: on with you know, scientist, what's going on with Shalman's
Speaker 1: and uh So he had the ayahuasca trip and it
Speaker 1: was not um It was not probably pleasurable. It did
Speaker 1: not seem like it was for him. But was it
Speaker 1: mind altering? Did it open up his perception that it
Speaker 1: seems to have done. Yeah, he said, quote after I
Speaker 1: threw up, I had a cosmic panic attack in which
Speaker 1: I was menaced by a malevolent day glow hued polyhedra.
Speaker 1: Have no desire to repeat this experience. So there you go, kids,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about doing the ayahuasca. UM. But it
Speaker 1: is really important. And this is what McClean says, particularly
Speaker 1: in her talk at Emery when she was speaking about
Speaker 1: therapeutic effects of psilocybern which is um. If you think
Speaker 1: about it as shrooms. You probably heard it on the
Speaker 1: street shrooms um. She had was saying that it is
Speaker 1: very important to try to guide the person into having
Speaker 1: a sort of breakthrough with the experience and having as
Speaker 1: pleasurable experience as they possibly can't aka not having a
Speaker 1: bad trip. Yeah, And that's a part of the whole
Speaker 1: shamanistic deal too, is that the ideas that you had
Speaker 1: a guide, there's a certain desired experience. That is then
Speaker 1: the attempt to create this experience via surroundings, via priming,
Speaker 1: via a certain story or narrative or our mythos surrounding
Speaker 1: that experience Versus somebody you know who just I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is that a concert and somebody passes them something and
Speaker 1: they take it totally different experiences. One is steeped in
Speaker 1: expectations and priming, in the idea that you're going on
Speaker 1: a journey, you're attempting to get somewhere perhaps change something
Speaker 1: about you, figure something out, and the other is taking
Speaker 1: something and seeing what happens and watching fireworks. As we've
Speaker 1: been discussing in this episode in the Other Shaman and
Speaker 1: the Scientist episode, our consciousness is not this really not
Speaker 1: this set thing. You know. Um, Like I said, you
Speaker 1: can look at a puppy or a cat and it'll
Speaker 1: change the way you're thinking and the way you're looking
Speaker 1: at reality. You know, you can you have a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and your things are gonna sharpen or fade
Speaker 1: in terms of your perception. The warmth from the cup
Speaker 1: of coffee will inform your ideas about the person you're
Speaker 1: talking to you right exactly, And according to Dr Katherine
Speaker 1: McLean in this talk that I attended and you attended
Speaker 1: in the form of an iPhone, I was inside really
Speaker 1: tiny and um, if you feel in your head around
Speaker 1: the sort of third eye area and sort of between
Speaker 1: your between your eyes back behind in middle frontal part
Speaker 1: of the brandan midfrontal cortex just buried there in the
Speaker 1: in the in the brain meat. Uh. There are two
Speaker 1: structures to play a key ro in maintaining our sense
Speaker 1: of self in time and space. I mean too vital
Speaker 1: that like, those are the big ones, right in terms
Speaker 1: of like how who I am and how I'm perceiving reality?
Speaker 1: How old am I? Where? Where do I fit in
Speaker 1: with time? Where do I fit in with space? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like the basic stuff right there. Well, remember that
Speaker 1: was some of the meat of being a person when
Speaker 1: we talked about personhood. Disability to imagine yourself in the past,
Speaker 1: the present, in the future. Yea, So personhood itself you
Speaker 1: can you can isolate to a certain part of the
Speaker 1: brain that is susceptible to changes. Something to keep in
Speaker 1: mind when we're talking about not only how hallucinations and
Speaker 1: how psychedelics skew the experience of self and uh in
Speaker 1: in the outside world, but also just how susceptible to
Speaker 1: change are more or less default understanding of self in
Speaker 1: the outside world is okay? So McClain also brings into question.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned before that consciousness may not be
Speaker 1: as coherent as we think it is. So um what
Speaker 1: she shared with everybody is that there's something that makes
Speaker 1: us even more tricky, and that's the introduction of a
Speaker 1: drug called salvia de norium and um. In an experiment
Speaker 1: in they had volunteers take this drug, this hallucination, and
Speaker 1: what they found is that all of these people, all
Speaker 1: of them hallucinated that they had interactions with entities while
Speaker 1: on salvia, little men, elves, that kind of thing we're
Speaker 1: talking and I mean, we're really getting into the whole
Speaker 1: territory of of of paranoral experience and in spirits and
Speaker 1: and godlings and whatever else you might want to encounter
Speaker 1: in the woods. Now, that's not that I mean, that's weird, right,
Speaker 1: just because people had, you know, hallucinations specifically about entities.
Speaker 1: What's weird about this is that when they then had
Speaker 1: subsequent trips on salvia, they revisited those scenarios and those
Speaker 1: entities and other words, there's entities became somewhat of a
Speaker 1: part of the continuum of consciousness. Yeah, turned to the
Speaker 1: same I mean, I'm instantly reminded of dreams, of course,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about how crazy that the idea of
Speaker 1: encountering an entity is, and it's you know, and I
Speaker 1: imagine a number of people's minds are going a little
Speaker 1: wonky with just the idea of just who I'm They
Speaker 1: someone took a substance and then they encountered this being
Speaker 1: that wasn't real but seemed to have uh you know,
Speaker 1: seemed to act of its own volition. Of course, we
Speaker 1: were constantly having dreams at night in which we interact
Speaker 1: with things and essentially entities. We've all interacted with unreal
Speaker 1: people and unreal things and our dreams. But it is
Speaker 1: always were very often difficult to return to a dream.
Speaker 1: Whenever we have even just a motif returns and subsequent dream,
Speaker 1: it's something that's noteworthy much less the encountered with an
Speaker 1: exact same being or entity. So then that sort of
Speaker 1: blurs the line again between what what is illusion was
Speaker 1: reality and what we construct as reality. No, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that everybody should go out there and
Speaker 1: hallucinate and find an entity is and then have conversations
Speaker 1: with it. I'm just saying that I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that it's now coated as a memory and it's part
Speaker 1: of the continuum, right. And it's worth noting McLean's study
Speaker 1: was it was a small number of people she said
Speaker 1: for this, than which she had entities. And you do
Speaker 1: encounter plenty of cases where people have claimed to have
Speaker 1: taken uh salvia and they do not experience entities. So yeah. True. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is not a guaranteed ticket to fairyhood, no no.
Speaker 1: But of course our takeaway was, you know, hey, you
Speaker 1: you find some sort of being and then you pick
Speaker 1: up the conversation a couple of weeks later with that
Speaker 1: person in your head. This is a vital part, of course,
Speaker 1: of shamanistic experience. One is taking a substance for a
Speaker 1: spiritual purpose. I mean, because the spiritual um, spiritual accounts,
Speaker 1: mystical hands are full of people encountering unreal beings. So
Speaker 1: we can see exactly where that fits in a shatanistic traditions. Well,
Speaker 1: and like William William Burrows Burrows as Us spoke of
Speaker 1: the half man, half Woman, I mean, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of encounters, of course. Um. But what I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about next is this idea of eyes wide shut
Speaker 1: and particularly under the influence of ayahuasca. And I find
Speaker 1: this interesting because in the talk they were talking about
Speaker 1: how ayahuasca and visual processing get really wonky, because what
Speaker 1: you're talking about here are the areas of the brain
Speaker 1: associated with visual processing light. Um, and when you have
Speaker 1: your eyes open, right you you can see the sort
Speaker 1: of activity in your brain going on processing that what
Speaker 1: they found. Um And this is again McClean talking about this,
Speaker 1: and the talk is that people who are on ayahuasca
Speaker 1: with her eyes shut having hallucinations, we're having the same
Speaker 1: level of activity in their brains um and visually processing
Speaker 1: as they would in their waking hours and processing the data,
Speaker 1: which is very different from how we normally processed data
Speaker 1: when our eyes are closed. Yeah, we're not to that.
Speaker 1: Not only was the activity in the brain identical two
Speaker 1: eyes open there, it was identical to eyes open in
Speaker 1: an outside environment, in a in a very stimulus filled environment. Uh,
Speaker 1: they close their eyes and they're they're still encountering that
Speaker 1: much stimuli. Yeah, Which then it sort of placed this idea, Um,
Speaker 1: you know that you're the dream of your consciousness is
Speaker 1: merging with what your brain is perceiving as reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she she laid out that a lot of
Speaker 1: this does come down to this breakdown between the sense
Speaker 1: of self and other, between the self sense of you
Speaker 1: and the outside world and uh, um and and that's
Speaker 1: part part of what's at play here now. She and
Speaker 1: um and Rason talked about the dangers of ayahuasca. They
Speaker 1: did talk about how this is not taken lightly, particularly
Speaker 1: with this kind of psychoactive substance, because you apparently have
Speaker 1: to prepare your body very well for this type of
Speaker 1: hallucinogen um. And a lot of this has to do
Speaker 1: with the amount of serotonin that you already have in
Speaker 1: your brains. You don't want to mess with these levels. Um.
Speaker 1: And I say that not because I don't I think
Speaker 1: someone's going to do this, but um, this was something
Speaker 1: that they stressed in their talk, is that this is
Speaker 1: not stuff to play with. This is stuff that they
Speaker 1: do in the labs, the stuff that they make sure
Speaker 1: that people are mind and body prepared for. Because even
Speaker 1: the amounts of cheese with triglycerides that you eat will
Speaker 1: affect the amount of serotonin in your brain. And if
Speaker 1: you were to then take Ayahuaska and you had a
Speaker 1: lot of serotonin, you could be very dangerous, can actually
Speaker 1: lead to death. Um, so you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that all the levels are correct. Yeah, So, no matter
Speaker 1: how much you might want to And Timothy Leary's where
Speaker 1: it's going to billion your journey to God if you
Speaker 1: have to give up cheese first, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: because cheese is great, gonna booyah. What was that part
Speaker 1: of the sentence a billion, your journey to billion said, buya,
Speaker 1: your buya journey to guy. Yeah that works too. I
Speaker 1: guess I think I'm hallucinating. Um alright, So there's again
Speaker 1: this idea of hallucinations perhaps being a part of the machinery,
Speaker 1: and particularly when you look at something like meditating monks,
Speaker 1: to bent monks in particular, there have been accounts all
Speaker 1: over the place about monks being able to meditate to
Speaker 1: such a degree that they begin to hallucinate themselves. So
Speaker 1: we talked about this before and um with hallucinations having
Speaker 1: something in common with meditating in terms of quieting the
Speaker 1: default mode network, this chattering part of your brain. Makes
Speaker 1: you wonder if again, through meditation you can access the
Speaker 1: same sort of hallucinatory experience, this realm of dreaming, of
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. Even well, it instantly reminds me of Mendala's
Speaker 1: the idea that the bitten monkst especially will there's sort
Speaker 1: of there's the outer Mendola. You know that you see
Speaker 1: an art depictions, but these are kind of blueprints for
Speaker 1: a really kind of a thought palace or kind of
Speaker 1: a memory palace, this kind of mental space that they
Speaker 1: put their minds in a place now. And I mean
Speaker 1: that in terms of there's actually like a floor plant,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and it's a way of containing some
Speaker 1: very complex spiritual ideas and and so creating this crazy
Speaker 1: structure in their head. It seems similar in many ways
Speaker 1: to the kind of crazy structure one mind encounter, say
Speaker 1: on D M T or you know, Awassa or one
Speaker 1: of the one of these substances where one closes their
Speaker 1: eyes and experiences some sort of amazing architecture or explosions
Speaker 1: or what have you. Uh. The difference being, of course,
Speaker 1: here that the monk is having to work really hard
Speaker 1: to achieve this level of calm and concentration and uh
Speaker 1: in meditative state, whereas the individual taking this substance, not
Speaker 1: to say that it's easy, not to say that it's
Speaker 1: a necessarily a shortcut, but there's less intense concentration involved
Speaker 1: in reaching that state. I don't know if this relates
Speaker 1: to it specifically in terms of hallucinations, but I do
Speaker 1: know that there's one practice in meditation where you um,
Speaker 1: you essentially try to imagine your own decomposition. And the
Speaker 1: idea is not just to you know, get try to
Speaker 1: figure out what your school would look like, but to
Speaker 1: try to figure out, you know, how ephemeral life is
Speaker 1: and how important the present is and um, apparently this
Speaker 1: is something that is very disturbing because it can take
Speaker 1: over the imagination parts of your brain, right and as
Speaker 1: we had discussed and hallucinating color. Um, sometimes what you're
Speaker 1: talking about here is just sort of making the inference
Speaker 1: that this will happen in your mind, taking it and
Speaker 1: running with it. Yeah, you see that that's actually a
Speaker 1: motif and cool due to Bettan art and some of
Speaker 1: the mandala and mandala a can uh creations where you
Speaker 1: see like flate and bones and oceans of blood and
Speaker 1: it's not like a morbid death metal celebration of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's about the ephemeral nature of things and about
Speaker 1: the the limits of physical existence, right and again trying
Speaker 1: to get a better awareness of life and opening up
Speaker 1: your mind a bit um. All right, So there's this
Speaker 1: idea that this is, you know, speaking of ephemeral nature
Speaker 1: may not be long lasting, but there's some evidence that
Speaker 1: the drug use as well as the meditation could have
Speaker 1: long term impact. Thinking about Roland Griffins, I believe it's
Speaker 1: his name, and he is the person we talked about
Speaker 1: his eleven study of the stage four and cancer patients
Speaker 1: who were taking um hallucinogens in order to try to
Speaker 1: vanquish there they're very very obviously, very obviously real fears
Speaker 1: that were hamstring them in daily life, their anxieties because
Speaker 1: of their illness and their disease. Um I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention it because us. Uh. What they found is that
Speaker 1: some of these patients, up to two years after their
Speaker 1: hallucinatory experience were still garnering the positive effects of their experience.
Speaker 1: In other words, they had a sense of calmness, They
Speaker 1: felt very expansive. They uh no longer worried so much
Speaker 1: about their own fate or the fate of others. They
Speaker 1: just sort of were trying to be present in their
Speaker 1: daily life. And they think the researchers think that the
Speaker 1: reason for this may be very similar to how other
Speaker 1: memories work. So you've talked about this before. You take
Speaker 1: out a memory and you examine it, you might change it,
Speaker 1: tweak it a little bit. It gets stronger in your
Speaker 1: memory every time you take it out. Well, when the
Speaker 1: patients went through that experience and they sat down with
Speaker 1: researchers and went over it again and again, they think
Speaker 1: that the same thing was happening. They were establishing long
Speaker 1: term memories that were then um sort of telling them
Speaker 1: how they were going to feel about this in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that s in particular. I remember the one of the
Speaker 1: keys first of all was preparation. They prepared these individuals
Speaker 1: for their experience, you know, make sure that the environment,
Speaker 1: the preconceived notions, the expectations of the of the trip
Speaker 1: um were firmly set in place. And then afterwards it
Speaker 1: was then about taking apart what happened, what the experience,
Speaker 1: the altered modes of perception and experience that occurred, and
Speaker 1: you know, basically journaling about it, taking that memory out,
Speaker 1: looking at it, learning from it, putting it back, and then,
Speaker 1: like you say, continuing to take it out because every
Speaker 1: time you take it out, any memory, it's not this
Speaker 1: little structure sculpted out of rock. It's made out of
Speaker 1: clay and multi you know, still malleable clay. And every
Speaker 1: time you take it out and pod around in your hands,
Speaker 1: be it, uh, you know, some traumatic memory of childhood
Speaker 1: or the greatest day of your life. You get it out,
Speaker 1: you're putting your fingers in it, you're mentioning it around
Speaker 1: you're changing the shape of it however slightly. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're resurrecting the neural correlate's right and making them that
Speaker 1: much stronger. There's a podcast called Secular Buddhist that mcclaim
Speaker 1: was on in she was talking again about the ability
Speaker 1: of there to be long term effects and um, she
Speaker 1: was talking about a John Hopkins University study that gave
Speaker 1: a high dose of psilocybe into fifty one adult participants,
Speaker 1: and thirty of them, she says, went a measurable personality
Speaker 1: change that lasted more than a year. Now, when she
Speaker 1: talks about personality change, they're talking about five different aspects
Speaker 1: of personality and one of them, um was a trait
Speaker 1: called openness, and she says that that is the only
Speaker 1: one that changed with these participants who had the measurable
Speaker 1: change over a year long period. Now, she says that
Speaker 1: of the personality traits that that we know of and
Speaker 1: we define personality by that, eight percent of that is genetic,
Speaker 1: and so you're sort of born with you know, these
Speaker 1: types of personality traits that you're either stronger or weaker in.
Speaker 1: So you could be stronger or weaker in openness. And
Speaker 1: she said that It's very interesting that there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of tweaking you can do with personality, but with
Speaker 1: this one trade openness, you could perhaps forge the way
Speaker 1: um to continue to thrive in in the space of
Speaker 1: openness with your personality and perhaps even vanquished depression as
Speaker 1: a result, or continue to have an expansive worldview. Well,
Speaker 1: this is weird. I'm kind of maybe it's because we're
Speaker 1: recording this during the Christmas season, but hearing this, I
Speaker 1: cannot help but wonder in a Christmas Carol, does even
Speaker 1: ebone'z er Scrooge do d M t or to or
Speaker 1: consume my loss? Because here you have a curmudgeon ly individual,
Speaker 1: very setting his ways, setting his personality, and then one
Speaker 1: night he trips his mind out completely and encounters three, no,
Speaker 1: well four ghosts, right, encounters a uh four separate entities
Speaker 1: who take him on this fantastic voyage through time and space.
Speaker 1: And then when he wakes up, what's the big chain?
Speaker 1: And Scrooge he's more open, Right, he opens the window
Speaker 1: and he's calling out to children in the street that
Speaker 1: normally he would just want to beat with a stick,
Speaker 1: but now he's saying, oh, look, what day is this
Speaker 1: young chap and uh, and then it's uh, and then
Speaker 1: his life is changed. I mean, he's still scrooge, like
Speaker 1: you say, a lot of his personality is still gonna
Speaker 1: be set in stone, but there's that portion on that
Speaker 1: openness that has that has been altered by the experience.
Speaker 1: You're right, He's probably still going to be somewhat thrifty, right,
Speaker 1: but maybe he's just gonna be a little bit more
Speaker 1: open in his heart and more available to people, hopefully
Speaker 1: a year from that experience. That's awesome. I've never really
Speaker 1: thought about it. I don't know. I guess I say
Speaker 1: it's the Christmas time around it, and it's and then
Speaker 1: talking about all this psychedelic experience and how it can
Speaker 1: considerably change somebody suddenly. Well, speaking of those four spirit guides,
Speaker 1: I wanted to close out with a quote from John Horrigan,
Speaker 1: who talks about how there's his resurgence and hallucinat chick
Speaker 1: drugs and scientific inquiry and uh, rather scientific inquiry. He's
Speaker 1: as I applaud the psychedelic renaissance with this caveat. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spiritual texts often emphasize the dangers of mystical experiences, whether
Speaker 1: they're generated by drugs, fasting, meditation, or other means. That
Speaker 1: is the theme of an old Talmudic tale in which
Speaker 1: four rabbis are brought into the presence of God, one
Speaker 1: becomes a heretic, one goes crazy, one dropstead, and one
Speaker 1: returns home with his faith affirmed. So I think it's
Speaker 1: his point of saying, all of this is very interesting,
Speaker 1: but we should not approach this lightly because what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here is the mind, and while it's very
Speaker 1: fertile ground um, it is also very fragile. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's powerful stuff. The effects can be long lasting and
Speaker 1: can can literally change who you are. So if you
Speaker 1: end up going down any of those routes, again, we
Speaker 1: don't advise it. We don't condone the use of any
Speaker 1: of these substances, but do put some thought into it
Speaker 1: and realize that you're you're talking about some really powerful
Speaker 1: agents that affect who you are at a very basic level.
Speaker 1: All right, And if you you want to find out
Speaker 1: more about these topics, I'm sure you do. Uh. We
Speaker 1: have a number of articles on how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com about it. We have an article about l s D.
Speaker 1: We have an article about psychedelic mushrooms, a number of
Speaker 1: articles about how the mind works in terms of things
Speaker 1: that we've referenced in this podcast, and now there's if
Speaker 1: you live in the Atlanta area, the Jaguar exhibit will
Speaker 1: probably be gone by the time you hear this, or
Speaker 1: or certainly will be gone long term. But check out
Speaker 1: what Emory's doing because they're always having fascinating exhibits. They
Speaker 1: always do a big Tobad exhibit every year. They're always
Speaker 1: bringing in really top shelf presenters to share something in
Speaker 1: the arts and the sciences, something culturally, something historic, really
Speaker 1: cool place, a great university in terms of stuff that
Speaker 1: you can obtain without traveling to Atlanta. The book by
Speaker 1: John Horgan, Rational Mysticism, Yeah, very good. I think it
Speaker 1: was written in two thousand three, two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the research is still very much
Speaker 1: um cutting edge or what people are building on some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that he goes through. It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: And then on on on that flicks the d MT
Speaker 1: documentary d MT the Spirit Molecule that's available for streaming there,
Speaker 1: as well as a number of Ted talks that get
Speaker 1: into you know, just how the brain works and uh.
Speaker 1: And then if you want something just a little cheesier.
Speaker 1: There's some there's some great, some great horror movies about
Speaker 1: people taking these substances and turning into mindless killers. There's
Speaker 1: a great movie called Blue Sunshine. It's uh, kind of
Speaker 1: a cheesy but but a very interesting horror flick about
Speaker 1: like former flower children who in who ten years later
Speaker 1: all start losing their hair entering into psychotic psychotic killers
Speaker 1: because they took some sort of tainted LSD back in
Speaker 1: the day. So uh, anyway, it's all up there if
Speaker 1: you want to explore it. Um As for getting in
Speaker 1: touch with us again, we would love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone who has thoughts on this particular topic, given the
Speaker 1: nature of this subject, but we may not be able
Speaker 1: to share everything to share with us with the rest
Speaker 1: of the listeners that we're still happy to hear from everybody.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
Speaker 1: on tumbler. We are stuff to blow your mind on
Speaker 1: both of those. You can also find us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: where our handle is below the mind, and you can
Speaker 1: always drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com brought
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