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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heat as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. My guest today

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Speaker 1: is an old, old friend of mine. His name is

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Speaker 1: Rick Doblin. He founded the Multi Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic

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Speaker 1: Studies to win his maps back in the mid nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: and he's been fighting the good fight on psychedelics reform

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Speaker 1: and legalisation for all those years. He's best known for

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Speaker 1: the role he's played in trying to get the f

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Speaker 1: d A to approve the drug m d m A

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Speaker 1: otherwise known as ecstasy for treatment of PTSD, and that

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Speaker 1: seems like it's gonna happen in the next couple of years.

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Speaker 1: But Ris also played a pivotal a really historical role

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Speaker 1: in the Psychelics Renaissance, both leading up to it and

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Speaker 1: what's going on now. So Rick, thanks ever so much

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Speaker 1: for joining me on Psychoactive even it's such a pleasure.

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Speaker 1: Glad to be home here talking with you. Okay, Well, well,

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Speaker 1: so my and if our listeners, I should let you

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Speaker 1: know that there's a special on Netflix that was put

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Speaker 1: together by Michael Polling called Changing Your Mind, based upon

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Speaker 1: his book. It's a four part series and one of

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Speaker 1: the episodes, I think focuses on Rick and Map. So

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Speaker 1: we thought this would be a really good time to

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Speaker 1: have Rick on to join us. So, Rick, is there

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Speaker 1: anything you want to tell you? Always right to begin

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Speaker 1: with about the special and what you think is going

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Speaker 1: to be in there. Uh that Yeah, Well, first off,

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Speaker 1: I like to say that, you know, we don't really

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Speaker 1: do science. We do political science, meaning that we have

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Speaker 1: to be very political about you know, what drug we use,

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Speaker 1: what patients we do that and keeping sense of the

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Speaker 1: larger political dynamics and so a lot of it is

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Speaker 1: symbolic communications. So one of the things that I'm so

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Speaker 1: excited about for the Netflix documentary is that there's two

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Speaker 1: minutes of the documentary that's going to be about a

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Speaker 1: police officer from the Boston area who's also a psychotherapist,

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Speaker 1: and he's been through our training program for therapists because

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Speaker 1: he's interested in giving m d m A to police

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Speaker 1: officers with PTSD and he's had people that he's um

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Speaker 1: in his department and departments that he knows of have

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Speaker 1: committed suicide police officers, and so he's very compassionate. And

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Speaker 1: I've gotten to meet his police chief and also the

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Speaker 1: head of the Police Offs Union for Massachusetts and others,

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Speaker 1: and we were able to persuade his police chief, Sarco

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Speaker 1: Gregarian is the police officer's name, that he should be

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Speaker 1: permitted to volunteer to receive m d m A in

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Speaker 1: a protocol that we have f d A d A

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Speaker 1: proof protocol to give him du made a therapist as

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Speaker 1: part of their training. And so he did get that permission,

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Speaker 1: and there's a documentary team following his journey from police

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Speaker 1: officers psychotherapist to police officers psychedelics psychotherapist, and two minutes

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Speaker 1: of him taking m DUMA and him commenting on it

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Speaker 1: was filmed and is going to be used in the

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Speaker 1: Netflix documentary. So I think the message that we're trying

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Speaker 1: to send to people. Is the opposite of this is,

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Speaker 1: you know, psychedelics for hippies. And you know, I've often

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Speaker 1: thought about the police as the predators and myself as

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Speaker 1: the prey and other drug users as the prey. But

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Speaker 1: in this case, you know, I've sort of wised up

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Speaker 1: about that, and I think if we weren't for the

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Speaker 1: drug war, you know, we would all be uh much

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Speaker 1: more grateful for the police. And so I think this

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Speaker 1: communications about how the m d m A says that

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Speaker 1: therapy is really for everybody. It's for um, police officers,

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Speaker 1: it's for prisoners, it's for prison guards. UM, it's for perpetrators,

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Speaker 1: it's for victims, you know, I think, I mean when

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Speaker 1: you're talking about the cops. I mean there's also been

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Speaker 1: this whole connection with the military, right imagine saw There's

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Speaker 1: something popped up just just recently, in fact, that the

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Speaker 1: former head of the Australian Defense Force, as a fellow

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Speaker 1: named Chris Barry, has said he hopes this moves forward

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Speaker 1: in Australia. And I think you've had your own contacts

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Speaker 1: with the Pentagon and with the military, if I recall correctly,

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Speaker 1: in Israel and also in Jordan's so maybe just you know,

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Speaker 1: say a little more about that. Yeah. Well, also the

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Speaker 1: head of the military in England is very interested in

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Speaker 1: m d m A and General Nick Carter, and he's

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Speaker 1: been very much support of of m d m A.

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Speaker 1: But for me also it has involved this kind of

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Speaker 1: healing process, the same as working with police officers, working

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Speaker 1: with the military, and you know, for this idea of

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Speaker 1: political science. You know, we have such support in America

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Speaker 1: for the military that I felt it was absolutely essential

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Speaker 1: that we have bipartisan support for what we're trying to do.

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Speaker 1: And so we've gotten support from some very right leaning philanthropists,

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Mercer being the most right leaning of them. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Cambridge Analytica and Bright Bart and Parlor. I

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Speaker 1: want to get into effort thing, but just stick with

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Speaker 1: the military leadership. You've had contacts with the Pentagon, You've

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Speaker 1: had contacts with Israeli Jordanian military. I mean, how far

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Speaker 1: have they gone would have been the most successful. Just

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Speaker 1: to give you a quick overview, We've treated over sixty

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Speaker 1: veterans with PTSD, but we have yet to treat a

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Speaker 1: single active duty soldier and so that is the kind

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Speaker 1: of crossover that we're anticipating as the next step in

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Speaker 1: this integration of psychedelic psychotherapy into society will be actually

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Speaker 1: working with active duty soldiers. And we are working with

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Speaker 1: a Dr. Bob Kaufman, who is senior emeritus psychiatrist at

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Speaker 1: Walter Reid, the military hospital there, and we're thinking that

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Speaker 1: over the next couple of months we might actually be

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Speaker 1: able to um enroll active duty soldiers as well. And

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Speaker 1: we do have support from Bob Persons, who's a major

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Speaker 1: philanthropist who himself had PTSD from Vietnam. He started going together,

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Speaker 1: he started Go Daddy, Yeah, yeah, and so he has

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Speaker 1: actually donated funds to treatment facility in Rockville, Maryland, not

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Speaker 1: far from Walter read specifically for active duty soldiers. But

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Speaker 1: here's where I learned about the hierarchies in the military.

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Speaker 1: This was now over ten years ago, and there's a psychiatrist,

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Speaker 1: Rob McClay at the San Dieg Enaval Medical Center, and

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Speaker 1: he had a two week inpatient program for Navy Seals

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Speaker 1: and Marines with PTSD, and this was the last step

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Speaker 1: before they would either get enough relief from their PTSD

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Speaker 1: symptoms that they could go back to duty, or they

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Speaker 1: would be transferred to the v A as disabled from PTSD,

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Speaker 1: and so he wanted to work with us on m

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Speaker 1: D m A. And what he said was that he

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Speaker 1: wasn't high enough in the hierarchy, that he needed to

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Speaker 1: get the support of the admiral in the facility. And

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Speaker 1: I said, okay, that sounds reasonable. So then he gets

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Speaker 1: the support of the admiral, and then he says, well,

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Speaker 1: the admiral likes this idea, but he's not high enough

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Speaker 1: in the hierarchy. We need to go to the Pentagon.

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Speaker 1: And I just kept thinking as I was going in

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Speaker 1: the Pentagon that, um, you know, in the sixties the

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Speaker 1: Yippies had tried to levitate the Pentagon as part of

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Speaker 1: their Vietnam War protests, and needless to say, the Pentagon

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Speaker 1: did not levitate. But here we were, all these decades later,

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Speaker 1: being invited into the Pentagon to talk about psychedelics the hippies.

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Speaker 1: The Hippies couldn't levitate it, but we could go in

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Speaker 1: and talk about helping the veterans with PTSD. And the

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Speaker 1: meeting went great, And then they said that they weren't

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Speaker 1: high enough in the hierarchy that we had to go

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Speaker 1: up to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs

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Speaker 1: in charge of all health for all the militaries of

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Speaker 1: all the different divisions, and they said we needed to

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Speaker 1: go onto the hill, meaning we needed to get political

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Speaker 1: support as well. So that's when we started engaging Senator j. Rockefeller,

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Speaker 1: and he also had a series of meetings with the

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Speaker 1: Eric Shinseki and several secretaries of the v A. And

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Speaker 1: this all culminated in a meeting in two thousand and

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Speaker 1: fourteen with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs

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Speaker 1: and his staff, and the National Center for PTSD of

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Speaker 1: the v A, the executive director and the assistant director

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Speaker 1: of that, and a variety of other people from the Navy.

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Speaker 1: What they said was that there was a concern about

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Speaker 1: working with active duty soldiers, and the concern was that

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Speaker 1: if they were to permit us to work with active

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Speaker 1: duty soldiers at that time, they were worried that the

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Speaker 1: need for treatment for PTSD was so great that that

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Speaker 1: would encourage active duty soldiers to try to self medicate,

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Speaker 1: and that they would get the quote wrong message, which

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Speaker 1: we've heard so much in drug policy. You know. My

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Speaker 1: my view of that it was, well, if the need

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Speaker 1: is so great, you know, you should immediately start research,

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Speaker 1: but the decision was made that we should start with veterans.

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Speaker 1: And one of the people that was at that meeting

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Speaker 1: was Dr John Crystal, who's head of the Neuroscience division

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Speaker 1: of National Center for PTSD at Yale. And there was

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Speaker 1: a woman named Candice Monson who used to be the

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Speaker 1: head of women's health at the Boston VA and she

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Speaker 1: had developed a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder called

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Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, and conjoint means couples or diets,

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Speaker 1: and what that means is that in this diet, both

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Speaker 1: of them are brought into the therapy, but one of

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Speaker 1: them has PTSD and it affects the relationship there they're in,

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Speaker 1: but the other person doesn't have PTSD. And they felt

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Speaker 1: that if you could do this sort of couples therapy

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Speaker 1: or diets, that that might be more effective than just

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Speaker 1: treating the individual patient with PTSD. And so since they

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Speaker 1: had heard about the love drug and the hug drug

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Speaker 1: as ecstasy, their idea was that this would be a

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Speaker 1: good first step that we could try to blend m

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Speaker 1: d m A with cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, that we

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Speaker 1: had to pay for it. The v A would not

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Speaker 1: pay for it, they wouldn't refer any veterans to the study,

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Speaker 1: and the study would take place with academic affiliations, but

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Speaker 1: not inside the v A, and that we would not

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Speaker 1: be permitted at that time to do anything with active

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Speaker 1: duties soldiers, and so we thought any place we can

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Speaker 1: start is a great idea, and so that began our

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Speaker 1: first effort with v A affiliated therapist working outside of

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Speaker 1: the v A, and the results were phenomenal. It was

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Speaker 1: better than anything they'd ever seen before, both in the

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Speaker 1: reduction of PTSD symptoms in the person with PTSD and

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Speaker 1: also in the strength of the relationships, and so this

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Speaker 1: was just so exciting. We did six die ads and

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Speaker 1: we have now built on that and have funded a

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Speaker 1: study that's going to be with sixty diets in Toronto,

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Speaker 1: thirty that get cognitive behavioral can joint therapy and thirty

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Speaker 1: get cognitive behavioral con joint therapy with m d m A.

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Speaker 1: And we're also starting studies inside the San Diego VA

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Speaker 1: and eventually also inside the Phoenix b A to blend

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Speaker 1: M D m A with cognitive behavior can joint therapy.

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Speaker 1: It's safe to say that at this point, you know,

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Speaker 1: the head of the Veterans Administration, United Dates, probably you know,

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Speaker 1: the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin. Probably their equivalents

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Speaker 1: in other countries are all aware now of m d

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Speaker 1: m A and its potential to treat PTSD. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's safe to go even further that they

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Speaker 1: are both aware and supportive of the research. Like sure,

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Speaker 1: General Nick Carter, the head of the British military recently retired.

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Speaker 1: He spoke about how this was a very important priority

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Speaker 1: and that there should be more research and he actually

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Speaker 1: was speaking at a fundraiser at a million dollars was

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Speaker 1: raised for our research in London at King's College. You know,

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Speaker 1: the Israeli military is very supportive and they've you know,

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Speaker 1: permitted people that have PTSD from their war service to

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Speaker 1: be in our studies, people who are still well, it's

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Speaker 1: different in Israel and that once you're in the military

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Speaker 1: you still have to do like reserve duty for like

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Speaker 1: a significant amount of until you get I think around

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Speaker 1: forty or so. So those people were permitted there. So

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Speaker 1: I think that we we do have not just active awareness,

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Speaker 1: but I think we have good will in the sense

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Speaker 1: that these people hope that it works well. For example,

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Speaker 1: right now, there's over a million veterans receiving disability payments

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Speaker 1: from the v A for PTSD, and it costs the

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Speaker 1: v A over seventeen billion dollars a year in disability

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Speaker 1: payments to these million people just for their PTSD disabilities.

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Speaker 1: They get payments for other disabilities as well, So the

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Speaker 1: scale of the problem is enormous. Now people are thinking

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Speaker 1: it's somewhere like eighteen veterans a day committing suicide in

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Speaker 1: the US. It's just tragic. And so I think that

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Speaker 1: we have this cultural moment that's happening, which we call

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Speaker 1: the psychedelic Renaissance, that has been building over the last

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Speaker 1: twenty years, but now it's really reached a further development

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Speaker 1: point where I think we can now actually treat the

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Speaker 1: first active duty soldier. We'll be talking more after we

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Speaker 1: hear this ad. Earlier, you mentioned the Mercers, right, the Mercer's,

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Speaker 1: famous right wing philanthropists and political donors in America strongly

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Speaker 1: backed Trump for a very long time, and you took

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Speaker 1: some flak when you took some support from the Mercers.

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Speaker 1: And then more recently I saw that you know, former

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Speaker 1: Governor Rick Perry of Texas and then going the Trump cabinet.

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Speaker 1: He stepped out there big time on this stuff. So

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Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about that whole thing with

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Speaker 1: the mercers. And it made me about Rick Perry, the governor. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So with Rebecca, because she was so associated with Trump

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Speaker 1: and Bannon, a lot of people have demonized her, and

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Speaker 1: you know, I don't agree with those parts of her,

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Speaker 1: but she was willing to give us a million dollars.

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Speaker 1: The only limitation was that the money go to treat veterans,

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Speaker 1: and and I said sure, And I thought it was

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Speaker 1: absolutely essential that we have this bipartisan support. And and

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Speaker 1: that's what I've gotten enormous criticism about from people like,

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Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't work with her. But I had

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Speaker 1: this passover, said or a couple of years ago here

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Speaker 1: in Boston, and there was an elderly couple that was

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Speaker 1: at the second to last seats on a long table,

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Speaker 1: and and so we sat down next to them, and

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Speaker 1: this group of people were scientists there. They were mostly scientists.

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Speaker 1: So I went to this guy and I said, um,

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Speaker 1: you know our our ego scientist And he said no,

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Speaker 1: he was a judge. I said, okay, um. And then

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Speaker 1: his wife we started talking and she's recently written a

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Speaker 1: book about how to help people with their children who

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Speaker 1: are dying of various diseases, and the work with grief,

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Speaker 1: and so we got into this really long discussion about

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Speaker 1: m dm A therapy and all that we're doing, and

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Speaker 1: then we started talking about marijuana and the government monopoly

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Speaker 1: on marijuana that we were trying to break, and it

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Speaker 1: was just a delightful conversation, and somehow slowly I started

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Speaker 1: thinking that there was more going on. Then um meets

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Speaker 1: the and I looked at this guy and I said,

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Speaker 1: are you, by any chance Stephen Bryer, the Supreme Court judge?

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Speaker 1: And he smiled and he said, yeah, yeah, I am

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Speaker 1: that Stephen Bryer. And I said, oh my god. Well,

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Speaker 1: then let me ask you an ethical question, if you

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Speaker 1: don't mind. So this is after we've had, as I said,

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Speaker 1: all these discussions about psychedelics and grief and m d

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Speaker 1: m A. So I said, here's my ethical question. I

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Speaker 1: have accepted this million dollar donation from Rebecca Mercer, and

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Speaker 1: I'm getting enormous criticism for doing that, and I think

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Speaker 1: it's absolutely essential. It's it's that we must build bipartisans

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Speaker 1: support and so ethically, you know what do you think

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Speaker 1: about this? I said, Man, of our donors are more

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Speaker 1: on the progressive side, and um, you know, what's your

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Speaker 1: opinion of it? Ethically? He said, the essence of democracy

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Speaker 1: is trying to find common ground with people with whom

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Speaker 1: you may disagree with on every other issue, and that

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Speaker 1: in our hyperpartisan world there's not enough of that. So

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Speaker 1: he said, you did exactly the right thing to take

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Speaker 1: this money from Rebecca Mercer. So I felt, okay, the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court has said that I did the right thing.

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Speaker 1: But let's just shoot back for a few minutes, back

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Speaker 1: to the old ays, because I'm remembering. I think maybe

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Speaker 1: you and I met it might have been eighty eight,

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Speaker 1: and I remember I think you were responsible for taking

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Speaker 1: me to my first and maybe my second raves in

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Speaker 1: the early nineties, I think in San Francisco, Oakland or

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Speaker 1: nearby Richmond. And for me it was a real eye

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Speaker 1: opener to go to a rave. And I've done M

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Speaker 1: D M A a a number of times before with my

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Speaker 1: wife at the time, but to be in a rage,

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Speaker 1: just to see the atmosphere there, to see the absence

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Speaker 1: of kind of you know, men not hitting on women

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Speaker 1: in the same way they would if there was alcohol around.

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Speaker 1: Uh you know, if if you wanted to get up

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Speaker 1: close to the stage and have to elbow your way forward,

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Speaker 1: people just let you through. So I mean, you really

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Speaker 1: helped open my eyes to In fact, I'll tell you

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Speaker 1: you may remember this one of the great moments. We

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Speaker 1: went there with some friends of ours, John Morgan and

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Speaker 1: Linds So unfortunately are now deceased, but they were great

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Speaker 1: drug researchers. Lynn Lin's every one of the great sociologists

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Speaker 1: about this. You know, John Morrigan a professor at the

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Speaker 1: City University of New York Medical School. And we've gone there,

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Speaker 1: and you know, most people in the twenties. You and

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Speaker 1: I are I think in our late thirties at the time,

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Speaker 1: Lynn and John must have been late forties or in

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Speaker 1: their fifties. And there's this moment. John's kind of there,

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Speaker 1: he's kind of moving to the music, and some young

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Speaker 1: woman comes up to him and she says to John,

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Speaker 1: are you looking for your child? And he goes no,

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Speaker 1: and she goes, so why are you here? And he goes,

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Speaker 1: I just want to be enjoying myself. And she looks

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Speaker 1: at him and she goes, I want to be just

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Speaker 1: like you when I grow up, you know, and it

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Speaker 1: was this beautiful moment in a rain. And then I

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Speaker 1: think back to those days when m D m A

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Speaker 1: was much better known as ecstasy, when it was a

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Speaker 1: rave scene, when you were just getting going, Oh, when

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Speaker 1: the whole thing was seen as a bit flaky at

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Speaker 1: that time. I remember some years later, I think you

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Speaker 1: had done some study where they required people to take

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Speaker 1: some spinal fluid and the result was that some myth

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Speaker 1: went out there that you know, that that these spinal

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Speaker 1: taps caused you know, your spines to shrivel up. Back

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Speaker 1: in that day, when I would bring up n D

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Speaker 1: m A among people to know about it, the most

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Speaker 1: common thing I hear was doesn't it drain your spinal fluid?

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Speaker 1: And it became one of those myths. It was like

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Speaker 1: LSD splits your chromosomes right, or marijuana makes men grow

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Speaker 1: breast um. I mean, it was these things that you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, might have had when I oda of truth

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Speaker 1: to them, but essentially became these broad cultural myths that

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Speaker 1: I think you had a battle against for quite some years.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean there are still people that think

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Speaker 1: that m D m A causes holes in the brain,

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Speaker 1: because over twenty years ago, OPRAH broadcast a show about

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Speaker 1: a young woman that had used a lot of ecstasy,

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Speaker 1: used a lot of other drugs, and she had gotten

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Speaker 1: spec scan, which is blood flow in the brain, and

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Speaker 1: the spec scan supposedly showed holes in her brain. It

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Speaker 1: was a graphically manipulated image. It was totally fake. They

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Speaker 1: just took every area that had below a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of blood flow, they showed it as a whole, and

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Speaker 1: it was completely dishonest. And what was even more incongruous

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Speaker 1: was the woman whose brain it was riddled with these

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Speaker 1: holes that you could see in the image that they

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Speaker 1: showed was was on the show and she was walking

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Speaker 1: and talking and she was fine. You know, if you'd

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Speaker 1: be dead if you had those kind of holes in

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Speaker 1: your brain. But there are people today that still believe

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Speaker 1: that m d m A drain spinal fluid or m

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Speaker 1: DMA causes holes in your brain. And so the neurotoxicity

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Speaker 1: of m d M A was something that was used

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Speaker 1: for quite a long time and through the nineties as

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Speaker 1: well as an argument to block research. Actually, there was

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Speaker 1: a researcher, Frantz vole Inviter in Switzerland that had done

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Speaker 1: brain scans for the first time with people pet scans

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Speaker 1: before and after m d m A and found no

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Speaker 1: evidence of quote holes in the brain or neurotoxicity at all.

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Speaker 1: So then, let me just say, in the nineties, this

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Speaker 1: idea of MDMA and serotinergic neurotoxicity was becoming increasingly discredited,

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Speaker 1: and time was going by and people were still looking fine.

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Speaker 1: You know. The idea then finally became, oh, it's a

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Speaker 1: time bomb theory that you you have cognitive reserve and

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Speaker 1: you can hurt your serotonin with m DMA and it

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Speaker 1: doesn't show up until you get old. Now, meanwhile, a

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Speaker 1: lot of old people in the seventies and eighties had

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Speaker 1: taken m d m A, they were fine. And then

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Speaker 1: things go along in the nineties and people are not

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Speaker 1: believing this. But NIDA is pretty committed to blocking research

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Speaker 1: into the benefits of illegal drugs at the time. Rick,

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Speaker 1: So I mean that you're you're actually leading into this

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Speaker 1: is a great place to make this transition because there

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Speaker 1: you are at MAPS, You're making stuff. But Maps is

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Speaker 1: still a small organization. You know, you're up to five

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Speaker 1: or ten people working for you. You're focused on this

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Speaker 1: little issue. Now the last five years, MAPS, together with

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Speaker 1: the public benefit corporation that you've created that's owned by

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Speaker 1: the nonprofit organization. You now got a couple hundred people

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Speaker 1: working for you. You've got a budget, I think in

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Speaker 1: the tens of millions of dollars a year. You are

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Speaker 1: the largest drug policy formal organization in the world right now.

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Speaker 1: You know, you've spent decades out there, you know, making

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Speaker 1: the provocative arguments all this sort of stuff, and now

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Speaker 1: you're transitioned into running you know, I mean something that's fantastic,

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Speaker 1: incredibly influential. Personally. You're out there like you're I see

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Speaker 1: you at the conferences. Now you're like a rock star there.

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Speaker 1: You're getting interviewed over the major media. You know, you're

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Speaker 1: not doing just the kind of you know, drug policy

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Speaker 1: podcast like my but the Joe Rogans and all the others.

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Speaker 1: But I have to say, for you, what the hell

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Speaker 1: has this transition been like for you? I Mean, I

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Speaker 1: saw you a few years and I was gonna worry

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Speaker 1: because you're still traveling over the place and I'm saying, oh,

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Speaker 1: ship ricks burning out, but you're thriving these days. Um,

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Speaker 1: But what has been like personally for you to go

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Speaker 1: in the last five or ten years from chugging along

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Speaker 1: doing your thing to having a mega organization. So the

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Speaker 1: thing about MAPS that has been so delightful is that

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Speaker 1: there's a two pronged strategy. One is drug development, and

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Speaker 1: that's you know, going through the FDA trying to make

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Speaker 1: m d M a sist the therapy for PTSD into

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Speaker 1: an FDA proof medicine, also approved in Israel, Canada, Europe,

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Speaker 1: we're working in also Australia, Brazil and elsewhere with humanitarian

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Speaker 1: projects we're trying to start around the world. But the

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Speaker 1: other parallel track has been drug policy reform and really

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Speaker 1: trying to make it so that people can have access

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Speaker 1: to all all substances without having it to be a

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Speaker 1: criminal situation. Pure drugs, honest drug education, harm reduction treatment

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Speaker 1: on demand. So those two paths have been very satisfying

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Speaker 1: to keep together in parallel. And what we've said to

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Speaker 1: people too is that if for whatever reason the drug

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Speaker 1: policy reform is bad for the business. You know, if

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Speaker 1: you can buy m DMA for ten or twenty dollars

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Speaker 1: and to do it on your own, but it's sold

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Speaker 1: for a lot more as a medicine covered by insurance,

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Speaker 1: I don't care. I mean, if it's bad for the

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Speaker 1: business model. You know, it's a fundamental human rights and

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Speaker 1: we've got to get rid of the drug war and

430
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 1: help people have these experiences beyond medicine, beyond religion, personal growth, spirituality,

431
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:47,400
Speaker 1: couples therapy, all that. So for me, it's been very challenging.

432
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 1: And Chris lot Lacker, who is now the deputy director

433
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: of MAPS, he started Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

434
00:24:55,560 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: He's helped with a lot of the management of the staff,

435
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:03,120
Speaker 1: the goals. So I've become more fundraiser, traveling all over

436
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:08,399
Speaker 1: giving talks, starting new projects. What's been really exciting is

437
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 1: because we have had one successful Phase three study that

438
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:17,679
Speaker 1: we published May tenth one in Nature Medicine. It was

439
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:21,160
Speaker 1: just outstanding the results of our first phase three study

440
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:24,439
Speaker 1: and in fact Science and I'm so glad I'm mentioning this.

441
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: So the journal Science publishes a list of what they

442
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: consider it to be the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs

443
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: of the year, and fore they considered our Phase three

444
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: paper published in Nature Medicine as one of the world's

445
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year. And it was

446
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: just so satisfied to really speak about m d m

447
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:50,600
Speaker 1: A and the therapeutic use of m d M A

448
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:52,920
Speaker 1: as one of the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs of

449
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:56,520
Speaker 1: the year. You know, there's over We've guessed around four

450
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:59,600
Speaker 1: hundred for profits psychedel companies with the market crash there

451
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 1: maybe us now, but you know we're we're the leading

452
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:05,679
Speaker 1: one and we're the only one in phase three, and

453
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: so because we are looking like there's a very good

454
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:14,720
Speaker 1: chance that we will eventually succeed the second phase three study,

455
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:17,719
Speaker 1: we had the interim analysis in May and the results

456
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:23,280
Speaker 1: were very good. We're we've got over probability of statistical significance.

457
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 1: The safety data was good. The final data point will

458
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,600
Speaker 1: be in October. But because it looks pretty good, but

459
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: I don't know that much about commercialization, and our team

460
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: really didn't know that much about what happens once you succeed.

461
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: It's like the dog that catches the car. You know,

462
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:42,160
Speaker 1: what do you do now? So we managed to hire

463
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:46,840
Speaker 1: a fantastic person, Mike Millette, who was the number two

464
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:51,199
Speaker 1: person for commercialization at Maderna, and they sold, you know,

465
00:26:51,240 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of the vaccine for COVID all over

466
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: the world. And so he's now taken a good new

467
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: challenge his wife as a therapist. So we have been

468
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: building the benefit Corporation, which, as you said, for is

469
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,480
Speaker 1: owned by the nonprofit and just so or listener stand

470
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,679
Speaker 1: it is something that's allowed within the American tax code

471
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: where a nonprofit can own a for profit corporation, where

472
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 1: all the profits from the for profit corporation go back

473
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: to the nonprofit to be spent. As the executive director

474
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:25,720
Speaker 1: in the board see fit. But I think for you

475
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: it opens up the possibility that when the f d

476
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: A ultimately approves m d M A for the treatment

477
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 1: of PTSD and then presumably for other medical conditions as well,

478
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: your public benefit corporation could then land up earning what

479
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:45,199
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it's very possible. So

480
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:47,440
Speaker 1: it will depend on the number of therapists we train,

481
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 1: the price of m d m A, and the willingness

482
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:53,080
Speaker 1: of insurance companies and the v A to adopt it

483
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:55,879
Speaker 1: and cover the costs, which we think are are looking

484
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: pretty good. And so one of the things that I'm

485
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:02,440
Speaker 1: really a proud of is that we've added Carl Hart

486
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: to the board of directors of MAPS, and I think

487
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: our listeners will know Carl Hart is the professor of

488
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: Psychology and the neuroscience at Columbia, who was a previous

489
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:17,120
Speaker 1: guest on Psychoactive, and who has written two very important

490
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 1: books about about drugs and about race and about freedom,

491
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: and so, yes, his joining MAPS board is quite a coup. Yeah,

492
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: And several people said, don't at him because he's so controversial,

493
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,200
Speaker 1: you know, because he's not just talking about psychedelics, he's

494
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,320
Speaker 1: talking about other drugs, opiates and heroin and saying things

495
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: like I don't understand how anybody could share the Psychology

496
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 1: Department of Columbia if they weren't using heroin on a

497
00:28:39,640 --> 00:28:42,160
Speaker 1: regular basis. I thought it was a really choice quote

498
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:46,080
Speaker 1: on his partner. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's phenomenal. And

499
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 1: I said, well, it's because of his principal stand in

500
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 1: the controversy. That's that's why we want him on the

501
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:55,320
Speaker 1: board of directors of MAPS. So you know, you've got

502
00:28:55,320 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: attention obviously within your organization between those people who are

503
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: driven by a broader commitment to psychedelics reform and even

504
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: broader drug policy reform on the one hand, and the

505
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: others who are sort of micro focused on ensuring the

506
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: business side UH succeeds as much as possible, right and

507
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:16,240
Speaker 1: who want to kind of keep your heads down on

508
00:29:16,280 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 1: the broader sets of issues. Yes, and you know, as

509
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: we hire more and more people from pharma who don't

510
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 1: have necessarily a psychedelic background, they have you know, more

511
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: I would say, conservative instincts, and you know that they

512
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: come from a more highly regulated environment. You know, pharmaceutical

513
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: companies have to be really careful about what they say

514
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:44,959
Speaker 1: and do, particularly in the era of not speaking about

515
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: unapproved uses, you know, or off label uses, our our

516
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,479
Speaker 1: safety lies, and just not going beyond the data. And

517
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: so you know, there's nothing I've said during this discussion

518
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: that's of any concern. Maybe you can answer this question,

519
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 1: but presumably n d m A is going to be

520
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: useful for seeing all sorts of other conditions, whether it's

521
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: or range of others. You can talk openly about that stuff, right, Well, yes,

522
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: I can say that these are hopes, not certainties, and

523
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: that the right now, the data that we have from

524
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: one phase three study is not sufficient to say that

525
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 1: we have proved that m d m A is safe

526
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: and efficacious. We have suggested that it's likely from this

527
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: one phase three study, but we need a second phase

528
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: three study that's also statistically significant and has an acceptable

529
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: safety ratio. And then until FDA approves prescription use, we

530
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: cannot say that we've proven safety and efficacy, even though

531
00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: we think that we may have it, it's still it's

532
00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 1: the FDA approval. What's the what's its approved by the

533
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: way for for PTSD it can then doctors will then

534
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: be allowed to use it for all sorts of other

535
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: medical conditions. The FDA doesn't need to step in and

536
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,920
Speaker 1: approve it for each condition, right right, Pharmaceutical companies cannot

537
00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:07,000
Speaker 1: knowingly promote or sell for off label uses, but the

538
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: practice of medicine is such is that prescribers can prescribe

539
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: both for what the labeled indication is and for anything

540
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: else that they think is appropriate. There have been several

541
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: cases that have gone through the u S courts where

542
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: the FDA has tried to make it so that pharma

543
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: companies could not even mentioned off label uses. But now

544
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: if there is a scientific studies that we can share

545
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: that with prescribers, even if it's a phase to study,

546
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: meaning a smaller pilot study. So we've done studies with

547
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: m duma sis that therapy for social anxiety and autistic adults.

548
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 1: It was tremendously successful. We did a study with people

549
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: with anxiety because of life threatening illnesses. The results were promising.

550
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: Ben Sessa, psychiatrists in England, has done a study, a

551
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 1: small study looking at m DAMA for alcohol use disorder

552
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 1: and what he learned was that people who are suffering

553
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: from unresolved trauma often go to drugs and alcohol to

554
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: to cover it up so that they don't need to

555
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: think about their trauma. And if you can help them

556
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:12,239
Speaker 1: address the trauma, then you can make them make a

557
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: lot of progress with their alcohol use disorder or other

558
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: substance used disorders. We're thinking about doing studies with postpartum

559
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:23,200
Speaker 1: depression with depression. So far the studies with PTSD most

560
00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: people with PTSD have depression, but we have not yet

561
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: done a study of m d M A assisted therapy

562
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: for depression UM without PTSD. And really let me ask

563
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: you this. I mean, obviously you cannot get a pattern

564
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: on m d m A because it was invented almost

565
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago and then Sasha Shulgun kind of

566
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: rediscovered its therapeutic uses. But so how do you stand

567
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 1: to make money? Is it from the selling of m

568
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: d M a. Is it from the training of the

569
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: therapists or from setting up of clinics where m d

570
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 1: m A will be administered in a psychotherapeutic context. Where

571
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: does the money Yeah, So when we think about this

572
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: idea of public benefit, the public benefit for us is

573
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,880
Speaker 1: helping people get over PTSD, you know, to to reduce

574
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: their symptoms, to be able to rejoin life in a

575
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 1: better way. So the training of therapists could be a

576
00:33:15,600 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: money maker, and in fact we've brought in several millions

577
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: of dollars in fees, but so far they mostly discover

578
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,920
Speaker 1: our costs for the team and developing our training materials

579
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: and stuff. But we felt that the training of therapists

580
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: is not a profit center. And in fact, what we

581
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: want ideally is for schools of psychiatry and psychotherapy two

582
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 1: incorporate and embed in their core curriculums modules about training

583
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: people for m DUMA says that therapy for PTSD, for psilocybin,

584
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: for depression, for ketamine. So that we want this to

585
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 1: be mainstreamed, and so we are also licensing other programs

586
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: to provide m d m A training for MDMA therapists

587
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:04,840
Speaker 1: as long as they have the core competencies and the

588
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 1: core elements of our training program in them. So we

589
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: don't see the training as being a necessary profit center.

590
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 1: Clinics are a potential profit center, but there there are

591
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:23,320
Speaker 1: some problems of which I'm not fully aware of legally.

592
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: But you know, pharmaceutical companies owning clinics where their own

593
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: drugs are prescribed. But the clinics of the future, the

594
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: psychedelic psychotherapy clinics of the future, There's not going to

595
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: be an ketamine clinic here, a psilocybin clinic, there, an

596
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: m DM a clinic there. There's gonna be therapists that

597
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:44,879
Speaker 1: are ideally cross trained in all the different psychedelics, and

598
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: the clinics will provide customized, individualized, personalized psychedelic psychotherapy, and

599
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: the patient will come in and they'll have discussions with

600
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: their therapists and they'll say, all right, well we'll start

601
00:34:56,680 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: with this drug or that drug, and then we'll move

602
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 1: to this, and so clinics will be generalized psychedelic psychotherapy clinics.

603
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: Now interesting that when I started MAPS in nineteen eighty six,

604
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:10,239
Speaker 1: I knew, as you said, that Merk pharmaceutical company, the

605
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: German Murk, had invented m DMA, and it's in the

606
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:17,879
Speaker 1: public domain and there is uh you know, no way

607
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: to patent it, nor would we ever want a patent

608
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,760
Speaker 1: because we want to facilitate m DUMA research in the eighties.

609
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:25,800
Speaker 1: When I started MAPS in nine six, there was another

610
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: group founded by a fellow named Howard lots Off who

611
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: had discovered that I Begain, another psychedelic drug, was tremendously helpful,

612
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 1: uniquely helpful for helping people get through opiate addiction or

613
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: obiit dependence. What I mean is that in a couple

614
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 1: of days, under the influence of I Begain, you could

615
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,800
Speaker 1: get over your tolerance, to get over dependence on opiates,

616
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have a psychotherapeutic psychedelic process. You can

617
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: work on a bunch of the issues, and then with

618
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: enough after care and integration and support that a lot

619
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: of people could started a new direction in their life

620
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: free from opiates. So he was worried that there was

621
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: no way to do this in a nonprofit way, so

622
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:05,440
Speaker 1: he started a for profit company called n d A

623
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 1: International New Drug Application of NDA International, And as it

624
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:15,640
Speaker 1: turned out, several of the early researchers started suing each

625
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:20,800
Speaker 1: other for intellectual property for patents for use patents that

626
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: I began for OPI addiction and other dependencies. Any case,

627
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 1: I saw these lawsuits about I P really be very,

628
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: very destructive for the entire field, and that has basically

629
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: blocked I began development. Now those core patents have expired,

630
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 1: but I hired their same patent attorney and I said,

631
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: I would like you to help us develop an anti

632
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: patent strategy for use patents so that nobody, not MAPS,

633
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: nobody could patent m d m A for any of

634
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: the things that had had been used before PTSD or

635
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: any number of things so prior arts. So we tell

636
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: stories on our website. People tell stories of m d

637
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: m A useful for this or that, and then nobody

638
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: can claim to it. And entered that idea. So when

639
00:37:02,680 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: I started MAPS in eighty six, I had thought that

640
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: m d M A would go generic and there would

641
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: be no money making opportunities. It would be a low

642
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,280
Speaker 1: cost drug. But it was worth doing. It was essentially

643
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:16,520
Speaker 1: worth doing anyway. And there was this moment in two

644
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:21,320
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen. My wife was head of the Belmont

645
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:25,000
Speaker 1: Foundation for Education and they were having a gala, and

646
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:27,239
Speaker 1: I was going to the gala, and I thought, you know,

647
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:29,359
Speaker 1: she's in charge of this. There's a good food. I'm

648
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: just gonna get superstoned, and I'm just gonna eat. I'm

649
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: off work. And so while I was there, I ran

650
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:39,120
Speaker 1: across a patent attorney who I knew from Belmont, who

651
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: had helped patent broo LSD. And what he said was

652
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 1: that there was this policy that I had overlooked. I

653
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: took a class in food and drug regulation at Harvard

654
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: Law School and it wasn't even mentioned. And what it

655
00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:54,719
Speaker 1: is called is data exclusivity. So we have thanks to

656
00:37:54,800 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: give to Ronald Reagan for this. So in Ronald Reagan

657
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 1: signed a law to provide incentives for developing drugs that

658
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 1: were off patent and the incentive is called data exclusivity.

659
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: And so what it means is that if you are

660
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 1: the first to make a drug into a medicine that

661
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: has never been made into a medicine before and it's

662
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,879
Speaker 1: completely not pentable, that you have exclusive use of your

663
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:25,759
Speaker 1: data for five years. And if you do pediatric studies,

664
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: which the FDA is actually requiring us to do, if

665
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: we succeed m DAMA sys, that therapy for PTSD and adults,

666
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: which is eighteen years or over, we must do studies

667
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: in twelve to seventeen year olds and you get six

668
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 1: months more data exclusivity. And data exclusivity blocks a generic

669
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: competitor from having the FDA evaluate their application until the

670
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: five and a half years is over, and it takes

671
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: a minimum of eight months and potentially longer for the

672
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,879
Speaker 1: FDA to evaluate a generic manufacturer's license to make sure

673
00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: that it's really pure and stable their drug. So we

674
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:04,399
Speaker 1: have this period in excess of six years of data exclusivity,

675
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:07,520
Speaker 1: and then later England, I mean, the European Medicines Agency

676
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 1: made um similar data exclusivity law, but it's ten years

677
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:15,879
Speaker 1: data exclusivity in Europe. So the beauty of data exclusivity

678
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: from our point of view is that the fundamental difference

679
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: from it in a patent is that other companies can

680
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: develop their own data. We're not stopping anybody from doing anything,

681
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: and so if another company gets uh their own data,

682
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 1: they could get permission from FDA to market mptmacist the

683
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 1: therapy for PTSD, just as we But we have such

684
00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: a lead and it's so expensive that we don't think

685
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:40,879
Speaker 1: there's going to be any competition. We think that the

686
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:42,879
Speaker 1: competitors what they are going to do. And we even

687
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 1: don't really call them competitor as we call them, you know,

688
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: collaborators in this larger mission of mass mental health and

689
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 1: spiritualized humanity. So we will have this period of data

690
00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: exclusivity and that's where the moneymaking comes in. That that

691
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: we will be the only ones to be able to

692
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 1: market anyway. The other beauty of data exclusivity is that

693
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: we don't have to have nondisclosure agreements. We don't have

694
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: to keep the data private or proprietary. We just make

695
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:15,799
Speaker 1: everything public because we own the data from submitting it

696
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 1: to the FDA, because we were the sponsor, and we

697
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:23,240
Speaker 1: then get the data exclusivity automatically. It's not even a question.

698
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: It's an automatic opportunity to choose data exclusivity. So I see,

699
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: so you can be quite transparent with everything you're doing.

700
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile, once it gets approved, the revenue for

701
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: n DMA, the public Benefit Corporation immediately will come mostly

702
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 1: from the selling of n d M A and only

703
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:45,359
Speaker 1: in a small way from creating clinics or things like that. Yeah,

704
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,719
Speaker 1: or maybe not at all from creating clinics. We are

705
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:51,239
Speaker 1: thinking that we might want to have some centers of excellence,

706
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 1: some clinics with large numbers of therapists, you know, expertly trained,

707
00:40:56,040 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: and they'll become sort of research training and treatment sent ors.

708
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: We have to work out all the compliance issues to

709
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: see whether that's possible. But the main funds are going

710
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:09,439
Speaker 1: to come through the selling of m d m A

711
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:14,319
Speaker 1: as a prescription medicine. It's pretty relatively inexpensive to make

712
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical medicines, most of them. And then the value or

713
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,839
Speaker 1: what you charge is based on the value to the

714
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 1: offset the medical expenses, to the improved healthcare, to the society,

715
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:29,919
Speaker 1: to the individual, to the you know people now who

716
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: didn't work obviously for all the intensive linds of people

717
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: who are using m d m A outside this therapeutic context,

718
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: I mean the way that you and I have in

719
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 1: the past, and so many others, and where there's always

720
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 1: the problems of adulteration. I mean, just recently, there are

721
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 1: a couple of reports I think out of l A

722
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: of Fentinel getting mixed in which people tall with m

723
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 1: d m A and people die as a result of that.

724
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:52,359
Speaker 1: And I remember, even like you know, when m DMA

725
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: became the owner's ecstasy and at some point ecstasy developed

726
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 1: a bed name because it was no one as adulterated

727
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 1: um and the m A. And then in fact people

728
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:03,879
Speaker 1: come up with Molly as if somehow Molly is now

729
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,800
Speaker 1: the pure d M A L. I think it was

730
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: just the relabeling of of essentially an illicitly produced black

731
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: market drug of unknown potency impurity. But what I'm wondering is,

732
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: is this process that MAX is engaged in, what are

733
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,719
Speaker 1: going to be the spill over applications for the broader,

734
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: you know, tensive lines of people who are still presumably

735
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,720
Speaker 1: getting their M D m A off the black market

736
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,760
Speaker 1: and having to deal with issues of you know, potency

737
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:31,239
Speaker 1: impurity apart from their ability to access some forms of

738
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 1: you know, drug quality testing. Will there be any implications there?

739
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: There will be. There will be because I think what

740
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: we've seen from medical marijuana is that medicalization changes people's attitudes.

741
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: They've been fed propaganda for fifty years, you know, as

742
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 1: we talked about some of the dangers of marijuana. Marijuana

743
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 1: does have dangers. M DMA does have dangers, but the

744
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 1: propaganda has vastly exaggerated them, and the story is that

745
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: these dry tend to be all risks and no benefits.

746
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: And I think that's why the prohibitionists have so fought

747
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: research into medical marijuana research into psychedelics, because then you

748
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: start telling a more nuanced picture, and under certain contexts,

749
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: the benefits outweigh the risks. So what we've seen with

750
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: medical marijuana is that as more states have endorsed medical marijuana,

751
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:28,319
Speaker 1: the support for marijuana legalization for non medical, celebratory, recreational

752
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:31,440
Speaker 1: adult use, however you want to call it, has grown.

753
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,240
Speaker 1: And so I think we are now at this point

754
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:40,840
Speaker 1: in America where one hopes that maybe will have a

755
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: law that will pass through Congress signed by the President

756
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:47,959
Speaker 1: that takes away the prohibition of marijuana federally and leads

757
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: it to the states the way things happened with alcohol,

758
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:53,240
Speaker 1: So I think that we are going to see something

759
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: similar happening with psychedelics. That the more we move forward

760
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 1: with medicalization, and then even though we're talking about is

761
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: as only trained therapists will be able to administer at

762
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,719
Speaker 1: the patients only under direct supervision, MDMA will never be

763
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:13,399
Speaker 1: a take on drug, but people will start to understand

764
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: that there are tremendous therapeutic potentials for this, but also

765
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: a lot of potential benefits outside of medicine or outside

766
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: of religion. So I think that what we're already seeing

767
00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: is decrim Efforts for psychedelics that are taking place started

768
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,959
Speaker 1: in Denver, actually, which was the first city to make

769
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:36,920
Speaker 1: mushrooms the lowest enforcement priority. Then that went to Oakland

770
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 1: and they expanded it to plant psychedelics, and then in

771
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:42,399
Speaker 1: Arbor and and all sorts of other cities have now

772
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 1: done that. And then the state of Oregon has passed

773
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: at as an initiative, the organ Psilocybin Initiative, which is

774
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:55,759
Speaker 1: setting up a state legal system of trained guides who

775
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: may or may not be licensed to do therapy that

776
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: can give silicide. Been two a range of people, some

777
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 1: of them who have clinical conditions, but others who just

778
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,280
Speaker 1: wanted for personal growth. And there's gonna be something similar

779
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:12,600
Speaker 1: on the ballot in Colorado, but it's going to be

780
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 1: beyond just psilocybin. It will again do plant psychedelics. Now

781
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,359
Speaker 1: I should say that there's this not md No, there's

782
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:23,359
Speaker 1: this romantic notion that that has proven true for the

783
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: voters that if you say natural medicine, or you say

784
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: plant based medicines or it's from nature, you get a

785
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: lot more support than if you say, oh, and and

786
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,320
Speaker 1: there's also some good ones from the laboratory that they're synthetic,

787
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: like LSD and M D m A. So the initiatives

788
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: and the legalization efforts have so far left out uh

789
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: M D M A and LSD, which are laboratory based.

790
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 1: They are, you know, semisynthetic. Those molecules do not appear

791
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: in nature, but there's molecules that are somewhat similar that

792
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 1: then you modify. So I think that what we will see,

793
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: what UM basically suggesting is that if M D M

794
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:08,399
Speaker 1: A becomes commercially available as a medicine, what we need

795
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:12,239
Speaker 1: is a decade of the rollout of psychedelic clinics. And

796
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:14,800
Speaker 1: I think what we're gonna see is six or seven

797
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 1: thousand psychedelic clinics. In the course of that decade, we're

798
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: hoping to train at least therapists, and that there will

799
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: be these clinics all over America. And the reason I

800
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 1: use that number just to show where it comes from,

801
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:33,160
Speaker 1: is that there's over six thousand hospice centers. So if

802
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: you think where people go to have a different approach

803
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: towards death, and I think every town that's big enough

804
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: to have a hospice center is big enough to have

805
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:43,359
Speaker 1: a psychedelic treatment center. So I think we'll have six

806
00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:46,959
Speaker 1: or seven thousands of these psychedelic treatment centers. And the

807
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 1: FDA and regulators respond to data, but people respond to stories.

808
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:55,760
Speaker 1: That's why this Netflix documentary is going to be so important.

809
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad.

810
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:15,759
Speaker 1: You're you're hitting on a lot of issues here. I mean,

811
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking is, I think you're making some very

812
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,879
Speaker 1: interesting analogies both with marijuana and with a broader psychedelics

813
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,399
Speaker 1: and plant medicine thing. The way I look at it

814
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,000
Speaker 1: is what you're saying about medical Marona is exactly right.

815
00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:28,319
Speaker 1: And it was part of our long term strategy right

816
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:32,040
Speaker 1: that by normalizing and legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, it

817
00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:35,480
Speaker 1: would have a spillover effect in terms of public consciousness

818
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: around the relative safety and benefits of marijuana, and looking

819
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: in retrospect, it turned out that are strategic thinking around

820
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 1: that back to the mid nineties turned out to be accurate. Now.

821
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,279
Speaker 1: The difference, of course, is that when you're buying marijuana

822
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 1: that's been approved and has stayed oversight, bodies making sure

823
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: it's you know safe that the marijuana being produced illegally

824
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:01,359
Speaker 1: is not that much different. I'm it's got some pesticides

825
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 1: in this and that, But the risks of adulterated marijuana

826
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 1: are are really pretty diminimous. And even these reports about

827
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: finital getting mixed in with marijuana appear to be either

828
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:15,560
Speaker 1: nine bullshit right. So, I mean, you have the spill

829
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:18,279
Speaker 1: over in terms of the broader public consciousness, but the

830
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 1: issues of an adulterated market were not that significant. When

831
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: you look at the plant medicine stuff, and you hear

832
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 1: some of the people in the plant medicine coalitions who

833
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: are a little freaked out with all of the kind

834
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:34,680
Speaker 1: of medicalization, psychotherapeuticization of psilocybin, of mushrooms, of all these things,

835
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: and they worry. But my sense is what you're saying

836
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:41,320
Speaker 1: is exactly right. It's going to increase people's comfort around

837
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: thinking about these substances and using them. That the issues

838
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:48,440
Speaker 1: of adulteration, especially when it's you're talking about mushrooms or

839
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: things like that, or on mescaline when it comes from

840
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:54,439
Speaker 1: peyote or san pedro, are not that significant. But when

841
00:48:54,440 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 1: it comes to m d m A, you are talking

842
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,040
Speaker 1: about stuff a white powdered drug that's being reduced illegally

843
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 1: around the world where issues of potency and purity are real.

844
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 1: You know, when we look back at the history of

845
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:10,600
Speaker 1: the dozens or hundreds of people who have died from

846
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: using quote unquote ecstasy over the years, it does appear

847
00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:17,279
Speaker 1: that a substantial proportion of those was because the substances

848
00:49:17,280 --> 00:49:20,839
Speaker 1: they were using were adulterated in some way. And that's

849
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:24,480
Speaker 1: where I'm wondering. You know, as you succeed with getting

850
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: m d M A approved hopefully by four you know,

851
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:30,640
Speaker 1: will there be some spill over in terms of the

852
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:34,720
Speaker 1: safety of m d M A mean, because you know, paradoxically,

853
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:37,720
Speaker 1: probably the safest thing that could happen from a public

854
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:40,880
Speaker 1: health perspective would be for legally produced m d m

855
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: A to be the facto diverted to illicit markets. But

856
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: from a political and replatory perspective, that would be the

857
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,080
Speaker 1: worst possible thing that would happen everything you've been trying

858
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: to fight for. So what I mean, apart from the

859
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 1: public consciousness shifting in the positive way you talk about,

860
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 1: what about the market itself? Yeah, okay, let me just

861
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: correct one thing with is that people can die from

862
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:04,840
Speaker 1: pure M d M A. And what's happened in raves

863
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 1: is that sometimes with even with pure M d m A,

864
00:50:08,440 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: what people do is they dance all night or they

865
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:15,239
Speaker 1: overheat and they don't have adequate fluid. A lot of

866
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: these bars have seen that once people are in M DUMA,

867
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 1: they don't buy as much alcohol, and so they have

868
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: charged for water. Some egregiously have even turned off faucets

869
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: in the bathroom so you have to buy water. Um,

870
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 1: so people can die from what's called hyperthermia from overheating.

871
00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: Does not happen in clinical research ever, never, never, because

872
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,399
Speaker 1: there's adequate fluid replacement and people aren't dancing all night.

873
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: And so also sometimes people have heard the harm reduction

874
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:46,759
Speaker 1: message drink fluids, and so people will drink too much

875
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:50,320
Speaker 1: water and they die from what's called hyponitremia from thinning

876
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 1: their blood too much. And so the best harm reduction

877
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: message there is that drink stuff with electrolytes, fruit juices

878
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 1: or other things. Water is not the best. But I

879
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: had to answer your question directly, here's the beauty of

880
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: our situation. M d M A has been used by

881
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,399
Speaker 1: tens and tens and tens of millions of people over

882
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:11,080
Speaker 1: the last forty years, so the one in a million

883
00:51:11,160 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 1: or one in two million side effects have come to

884
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:18,280
Speaker 1: the surface because when the FDA evaluates a drug, usually

885
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: it's been studied in only hundreds or thousands of people,

886
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:22,720
Speaker 1: and so when you put it out in the market

887
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,240
Speaker 1: and a million people take it, then you start discovering

888
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:29,279
Speaker 1: more side effects. But we have this enormous body of

889
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: information over more than forty years about m DUMA being

890
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:38,479
Speaker 1: used in the most risky circumstances, often adulterated, and there's

891
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:43,000
Speaker 1: over five thousand papers scientific papers on m DUMA or ecstasy.

892
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 1: So if anybody really wants to look at what are

893
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:51,000
Speaker 1: the risks of m d m A from the scientific

894
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:55,360
Speaker 1: literature um, the investigators brochure and our reports are safety

895
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:57,800
Speaker 1: reports the FDA, which are also up on our website,

896
00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:01,520
Speaker 1: are really good resource. Also, we have what's called the

897
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 1: treatment Manual, which describes our therapeutic approach. So if people

898
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,360
Speaker 1: want to understand the therapy that's used with the m

899
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 1: d m A, they should read the treatment Manually. So

900
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: I think that this idea of as m DUMA becomes

901
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: medicalized and more and more people will hear stories about healing.

902
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:23,800
Speaker 1: They will, of course know that those stories are about

903
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:27,799
Speaker 1: pure M d m A. We have trained therapists and

904
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 1: others that help support people when they have difficult emotional experiences,

905
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 1: and that's a really important part of psychedelic harm reduction.

906
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: A lot of people still do not understand that M

907
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 1: d m A was a therapy drug before it was

908
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,759
Speaker 1: a party drug ecstasy, and a lot of people approach

909
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: these experiences as just I'm gonna take it. It's a party,

910
00:52:49,920 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have fun. And when difficult material comes up,

911
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 1: if they have memories of difficult emotional situations too many

912
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 1: times people think, oh, my experience is going bad, this

913
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 1: is turning into a bad trip. Let me suppress these

914
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:07,959
Speaker 1: bad thoughts and bad feelings, and then they can't really

915
00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 1: do that. And then if they don't pay attention to that,

916
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 1: now it's sort of moved up from the unconscious, it's

917
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 1: more conscious, they get to end up worse off for

918
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,080
Speaker 1: for months or years later. So I think the more

919
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: that the idea that these substances when combined with therapy

920
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:27,240
Speaker 1: have tremendous therapeutic potential for people with post traumatic stress

921
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:32,880
Speaker 1: disorder and other major mental illnesses, that the recreational market.

922
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,840
Speaker 1: People will have more of an idea of what to

923
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: do when difficult material comes into their awareness instead of

924
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 1: trying to suppress it. Hopefully they will open up to it,

925
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:47,720
Speaker 1: talk to their friends around them, create a safe space,

926
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: you know, and try to go through and let out

927
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:53,239
Speaker 1: those feelings and let out and express those emotions rather

928
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: than suppress them. So I think that there'll be fewer

929
00:53:56,239 --> 00:54:00,040
Speaker 1: people caught unaware by difficult material when they take the

930
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 1: drugs for parties then there are now, because still it's

931
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 1: not as widespread as we like the idea that these

932
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: can have tremendous therapetic potential. But but I think the

933
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:12,320
Speaker 1: other big part of harm reduction is called drug checking.

934
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: So the world's best example of psychedelic harm reduction at

935
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 1: a festival is the Boom festival in Portugal. And so

936
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: we we started the psychedelic harm reduction efforts at Boom

937
00:54:23,640 --> 00:54:26,319
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, and we started working at

938
00:54:26,320 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: Burning Man in two thousand and three. But because Portugal

939
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 1: has decriminalized drugs, you know, it was a tremendous decriminalized

940
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: possession for ones on usual. They did not decriminalize the transfer,

941
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:39,399
Speaker 1: sale or things like that. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah,

942
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:42,560
Speaker 1: and it was just a tremendous success. So at Boom

943
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:47,920
Speaker 1: they have thin layer chromatography on site to identify what

944
00:54:48,200 --> 00:54:53,319
Speaker 1: really is in these illicit drugs before you take them,

945
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:58,080
Speaker 1: and so it would be really important over time, particularly

946
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 1: with fentanyl being you now to adulterate a lot of

947
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:05,279
Speaker 1: different drugs. They have drug checking to be accepted as

948
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:09,439
Speaker 1: a standard part of harm reduction. And when you look

949
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:12,240
Speaker 1: at the number of people that have died of opiate

950
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:14,640
Speaker 1: related overdoses over a hundred thousand I think it's a

951
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:17,879
Speaker 1: hundred and seven or something thousand in America in one year,

952
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: a lot of that is adulterated with fentyl. So we

953
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:25,560
Speaker 1: really need drug checking until we get to the point

954
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:30,279
Speaker 1: of having full legalization where even the drugs that are

955
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 1: sold for non medical purposes are pure and people could

956
00:55:34,080 --> 00:55:36,120
Speaker 1: rely on their peer And I think, of course with

957
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,280
Speaker 1: this over those crisis of the acceptance by the public

958
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:43,160
Speaker 1: and even by law enforcement of fentanyl testing strips has

959
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: grown very substantially, and that will spill over obviously to

960
00:55:47,239 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 1: things like testing psychedelics and m DMA and such. And

961
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:53,720
Speaker 1: I need to bring this issue up obviously that even

962
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: in the psychotherapeutic regulated context. There are risks, and I

963
00:55:57,400 --> 00:55:59,759
Speaker 1: think you had to deal with this, right. There was

964
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 1: the to of of some of the therapists who were

965
00:56:01,960 --> 00:56:05,359
Speaker 1: associated with the m d m A studies, Um, you know,

966
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: getting accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. Right. I think New

967
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 1: York Magazine did a big expose on this stuff. And

968
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:13,920
Speaker 1: you're having to deal with this stuff. And I know

969
00:56:14,320 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: MAPS is you know, obviously takes all sorts of precautions.

970
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:18,759
Speaker 1: So what more can you can you? I mean, I

971
00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 1: know you may be limited by lawyers and this and

972
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:22,200
Speaker 1: that from what you can say, But what can you

973
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 1: tell people to reassure them when they're reading these reports

974
00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: about their being forms of you know, unethical behavior bicychlotherapists.

975
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: And we're not just talking about Shaman's down in the

976
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 1: jungles in South America. We're talking about in the US

977
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 1: and in Canada, you know, trained psychotherapist doing things that

978
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 1: are inappropriate. Yeah. I think it was a real tragedy

979
00:56:45,080 --> 00:56:48,279
Speaker 1: that had happened. You know, we're very sad for the

980
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:54,040
Speaker 1: person that had happened to and we have instituted a

981
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:58,640
Speaker 1: fair number of measures we think going forward, particularly as

982
00:56:58,680 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: we move into post approval use if we get that

983
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:06,319
Speaker 1: far to try to minimize that. So what we are

984
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,280
Speaker 1: aware of that this has only happened at one time

985
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 1: out of over about three and sixty patients. It may

986
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:15,920
Speaker 1: have happened more, but we're not aware of it. And

987
00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: we think with all of the media attention about it

988
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:21,320
Speaker 1: that that you know, we encourage if it did, haven't

989
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:27,280
Speaker 1: anybody else that they should come forward? The unethical sexual

990
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:31,640
Speaker 1: misconduct began after the therapy was over. In that one

991
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:36,680
Speaker 1: particular case, we immediately fired those people. They're not working

992
00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:39,360
Speaker 1: with us. We informed all of the therapists how serious

993
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:42,920
Speaker 1: of a transgression this was, that anybody else of course,

994
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: would get fired if that happened. We put out a

995
00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:49,760
Speaker 1: public statement. We even changed our informed consent form and

996
00:57:49,800 --> 00:57:52,440
Speaker 1: add a sentence about how beware if you are a

997
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 1: patient and started developing feelings, you know, sexual feelings for

998
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: the therapist. I think going forward, you know, we we

999
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:05,520
Speaker 1: have really made even more prominent in our training about

1000
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:08,680
Speaker 1: ethical behavior. We have a code of ethics, and we're

1001
00:58:08,720 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 1: talking about having a patient bill of rights that would

1002
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 1: be given to all the patients in research but also

1003
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 1: now post approval, mostly post approval. I don't think we

1004
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: haven't quite ready yet, but this idea of this patient

1005
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:24,960
Speaker 1: bill of Rights, which makes it very clear we're to

1006
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: complain to if there's anything that is happening that it

1007
00:58:28,280 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: feels inappropriate. Either at the tip, did it freak out

1008
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 1: the FDA at all or slow the process of proceeding

1009
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:42,360
Speaker 1: with Well, this happened around five years ago. We did

1010
00:58:42,440 --> 00:58:45,080
Speaker 1: report it to the FDA, to Health Canada, to all

1011
00:58:45,120 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: the regulatory agencies as soon as we heard about it.

1012
00:58:49,520 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 1: I don't think that it did freak them out. Again.

1013
00:58:52,880 --> 00:58:58,520
Speaker 1: The f d A is they don't regulate psychotherapy, you know,

1014
00:58:58,720 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 1: they regulate drugs, and so this is kind of a

1015
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: conundrum for them about, you know, how to do this

1016
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:07,000
Speaker 1: where the treatment is primarily psychotherapy, but it involves a

1017
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:09,040
Speaker 1: drug in this case m D m A or another

1018
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:11,640
Speaker 1: case of psilocybin or ketemine, you know, to make the

1019
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 1: therapy more effective. Although I should say that ketamine was

1020
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:18,200
Speaker 1: approved without psychotherapy s ketemine, So I think that, um,

1021
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:23,520
Speaker 1: what we are seeing is that this is a problem

1022
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 1: that goes beyond psychedelic psychotherapy to psychiatry and psychotherapy itself

1023
00:59:30,200 --> 00:59:33,040
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other kind of situations where there's

1024
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, close contact between people. So

1025
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:39,680
Speaker 1: I think that what we are needing to do is

1026
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 1: when when you think about a drug and from the

1027
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: point of view the FDA, you look at you balance

1028
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:48,040
Speaker 1: the risks and benefits, and so yeah, this is one

1029
00:59:48,040 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: of the risks. We don't think it's common. As I said,

1030
00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:54,400
Speaker 1: we only are aware of it of happening one time

1031
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: in the you know, roughly twenty years since we started

1032
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:01,120
Speaker 1: doing this kind of work. Well, well, let me I

1033
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:02,600
Speaker 1: see this thing. Part of the m d m A

1034
01:00:02,680 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: protocol involves always having a male and females therapist, and

1035
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 1: you've made the point that, in good part for cost

1036
01:00:09,920 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: and accessibility, that it should be sufficient if just one

1037
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: of them is a licensed therapist. But in this case,

1038
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: the scandal that resulted was what the other therapist, the

1039
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 1: fellow was somebody who had let his license lapse and

1040
01:00:22,960 --> 01:00:27,000
Speaker 1: therefore could not be held accountable by an oversight board

1041
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 1: in the same way that the licensed therapist could. So

1042
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: I mean, where are you on that issue now? I mean,

1043
01:00:33,040 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 1: do you is there ways of ensuring that people who

1044
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:39,480
Speaker 1: are not licensed by you know, a psychologist board of

1045
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:41,800
Speaker 1: some source, or therapist board of some sort can still

1046
01:00:41,880 --> 01:00:44,919
Speaker 1: be held accountable, or you still adhere to the issue

1047
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 1: that let's keep it the way it is for issues

1048
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: of cost and accessibility. Well, I I do believe that

1049
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:53,640
Speaker 1: we should try to keep with a two person team

1050
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:57,080
Speaker 1: for individual therapy. I do believe that the second person

1051
01:00:57,160 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 1: should not be required to have a license. The person

1052
01:01:00,600 --> 01:01:05,560
Speaker 1: that does have the license is held responsible, and so

1053
01:01:05,680 --> 01:01:09,640
Speaker 1: right now the female therapist who did have a license

1054
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:15,400
Speaker 1: is having challenges with her licensing board. So there are

1055
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:19,600
Speaker 1: people that are held responsible. I think that it's probably

1056
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 1: less likely to happen in two person teams, and even

1057
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:27,040
Speaker 1: less likely in group therapy, even though again this unethical

1058
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct came sexual after the therapy was over, when

1059
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:34,479
Speaker 1: the cameras were off, and after that was all done.

1060
01:01:34,520 --> 01:01:36,840
Speaker 1: So the major ethical issue wasn't what happened in the

1061
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: moments of therapy, which one can see on its old videotape.

1062
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:42,959
Speaker 1: The real issue was about one of the therapists getting

1063
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 1: involved sexually with the patient in subsequent period of time. Yes,

1064
01:01:47,520 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 1: I would say that the other part the essence of

1065
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:54,160
Speaker 1: our method, which again I don't think was followed by

1066
01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 1: this therapist team fully, is this idea that there's this

1067
01:01:59,240 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 1: inner healing and intelligence sort of what comes up has

1068
01:02:02,640 --> 01:02:04,960
Speaker 1: a certain wisdom to it when people are under the influence.

1069
01:02:04,960 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: But that fundamentally what we're doing is helping people heal themselves.

1070
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 1: So in traditional psychiatry, when you think about Freud and

1071
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: Friday and analysis, you know, you've got the therapist that's listening,

1072
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:19,400
Speaker 1: the person is on the couch, and then the therapist

1073
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:21,960
Speaker 1: every once in a while will give an interpretation. The

1074
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:25,200
Speaker 1: therapist is the healer and they find what's going on

1075
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:29,360
Speaker 1: in the person's unconscious during this free association process. But

1076
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 1: our approach is really designed to empower the patient to

1077
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:37,160
Speaker 1: heal themselves. So I think there's a certain aspect of

1078
01:02:37,240 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 1: that theoretical orientation that empowers the patient and it doesn't

1079
01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:45,480
Speaker 1: make the therapist into the source of all the healing

1080
01:02:45,680 --> 01:02:48,960
Speaker 1: or the drug either. UM. So I think it is

1081
01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:52,240
Speaker 1: an issue is how do we create safe spaces and

1082
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:55,520
Speaker 1: how do we do that once this um, you know,

1083
01:02:55,600 --> 01:03:00,960
Speaker 1: moves outside of a research context, UM and you know,

1084
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:03,720
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any perfect solution. I mean, I'm

1085
01:03:03,760 --> 01:03:05,800
Speaker 1: thinking about this case also. It was dealing with a

1086
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 1: patient whose traumas involved you know, sexual abuse as a

1087
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:12,800
Speaker 1: child and rape and I'm wondering if it's particularly challenging

1088
01:03:12,920 --> 01:03:15,600
Speaker 1: when the PTSD you're trying to deal with has this

1089
01:03:15,720 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 1: sexual component to it. I think it can be. Yes, yeah,

1090
01:03:21,120 --> 01:03:23,400
Speaker 1: I mean that's where it's even more important that we

1091
01:03:23,560 --> 01:03:26,560
Speaker 1: have this safe space. And now, not all of our

1092
01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:30,400
Speaker 1: teams are male female. We've actually had some all female teams.

1093
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 1: I'm not aware if we've had two male teams, but

1094
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:36,720
Speaker 1: that might have been the case. But I do think

1095
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:40,880
Speaker 1: that it's very delicate when people have been traumatized that

1096
01:03:40,960 --> 01:03:44,320
Speaker 1: they don't get redraumatized by the therapy. Now, some of

1097
01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:49,800
Speaker 1: the existing therapies prolonged exposure cognitive processing therapy, where they

1098
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:54,960
Speaker 1: involve people talking about their traumas. It's very difficult for

1099
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: people because these traumas are so emotionally powerful and painful

1100
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:02,040
Speaker 1: that often people drop out of those therapies, so that

1101
01:04:02,160 --> 01:04:04,520
Speaker 1: that's not the same kind of re traumatization that we're

1102
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:09,760
Speaker 1: talking about by unethical sexual contact. But but you know,

1103
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:12,920
Speaker 1: the md m A can help people deal with emotions

1104
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:16,560
Speaker 1: that would otherwise be overwhelming. So I think that there

1105
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:20,480
Speaker 1: is this concern that that you know, a valid concern

1106
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: that we should try to minimize to to zero. Going

1107
01:04:24,440 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: forward any of these situations in the future, and so

1108
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:32,320
Speaker 1: we are doing our best to do that. A different

1109
01:04:32,360 --> 01:04:35,600
Speaker 1: subject here. I mean, you've been so enormously successful at

1110
01:04:35,680 --> 01:04:39,280
Speaker 1: raising money for this work, especially in recent years, and

1111
01:04:39,320 --> 01:04:41,800
Speaker 1: a lot of it has been from very wealthy individuals,

1112
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 1: um and and but I know, you know, one thing

1113
01:04:44,480 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: I ran into in my last years of raising money

1114
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 1: for the marijuana reform marijuana legalization ballot initiatives was that

1115
01:04:51,360 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 1: as the industry started growing up, the wealthy philanthropists started

1116
01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:58,439
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I'm less interested. So many people

1117
01:04:58,480 --> 01:04:59,840
Speaker 1: are making money from this, why don't you go to

1118
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:03,040
Speaker 1: those those guys? You know, overwhelmingly the vast majority of

1119
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:07,320
Speaker 1: the funding from sixteen had come from people who were

1120
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:11,000
Speaker 1: philanthropically interested in this, not from people who are interested

1121
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 1: in is self interested for a profit way now, you've

1122
01:05:14,040 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 1: obviously gone through a similar transition. It was overwhelmingly, you know,

1123
01:05:17,400 --> 01:05:20,280
Speaker 1: philanthropic money you were raising. But in recent years, with

1124
01:05:20,400 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 1: the for profit side and having companies like the Tie

1125
01:05:23,600 --> 01:05:27,360
Speaker 1: or Compass that have multibillion dollar valuations, uh and other

1126
01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:30,640
Speaker 1: ones that are you know, very well financed, you must

1127
01:05:30,640 --> 01:05:33,240
Speaker 1: be running into the same thing where the philanthropists are saying,

1128
01:05:33,520 --> 01:05:35,200
Speaker 1: you know, go to the money guys. Now we're not

1129
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:37,560
Speaker 1: in it for the money. They are. Is that what's

1130
01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:40,080
Speaker 1: happening and how you dealing with it? Well, that's a

1131
01:05:40,080 --> 01:05:43,160
Speaker 1: great question, Eithan. So in MAPS history, we've raised over

1132
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:45,439
Speaker 1: about a hundred and thirty five or hundred forty billion

1133
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:51,080
Speaker 1: dollars in grants, mostly donations and a few grants, and

1134
01:05:51,560 --> 01:05:54,760
Speaker 1: we've reached this point where we needed a substantial amount

1135
01:05:54,760 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 1: of money in a short time to really prepare for

1136
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:03,520
Speaker 1: commercializa sh and so we did develop a new approach

1137
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:07,960
Speaker 1: which we're calling a regenerative financing, and it's through a

1138
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:12,080
Speaker 1: group called Vine Ventures, and it's our first effort to

1139
01:06:12,240 --> 01:06:17,480
Speaker 1: actually reach out to investors. But it's different than your

1140
01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:20,520
Speaker 1: traditional kind of venture capital where you try to get

1141
01:06:20,520 --> 01:06:26,400
Speaker 1: ten x returns. So it's for mission aligned investors where

1142
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:30,840
Speaker 1: what we promise to do is share revenue a percentage

1143
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 1: of the revenue. So we have created this Vine Ventures

1144
01:06:35,840 --> 01:06:39,919
Speaker 1: deal to raise seventy million dollars and it's for six

1145
01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:45,360
Speaker 1: point one per cent of North American revenue for eight

1146
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: years after commercialization. There's a waterfall situation, meaning that as

1147
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:54,680
Speaker 1: we return more and more to them, they get a

1148
01:06:54,720 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 1: lower and lower percentage, so we think it's most likely

1149
01:06:58,600 --> 01:07:02,720
Speaker 1: to be two x or three ax, but not beyond that.

1150
01:07:02,840 --> 01:07:05,800
Speaker 1: And then after this eight year period it just completely disappears.

1151
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:10,920
Speaker 1: And because it's about a share of the revenue, and

1152
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:14,360
Speaker 1: this is I think a really crucial point. There's no ownership,

1153
01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,800
Speaker 1: there's no control, there's no board of director seats, and

1154
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:20,440
Speaker 1: on top of it, they don't care if we use

1155
01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: a lot of the revenue for patient assistance programs, or

1156
01:07:24,440 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: for drug policy reform, or for other things that might

1157
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: not bring them back more money. So that it's about

1158
01:07:32,000 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 1: a revenue share. And we're probably around million or so

1159
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:41,680
Speaker 1: of the seventy million so far raised. Um there's a

1160
01:07:41,680 --> 01:07:44,320
Speaker 1: fair number of the donors that didn't want to be

1161
01:07:44,360 --> 01:07:47,520
Speaker 1: involved because they didn't want to switch from donors to investors.

1162
01:07:48,640 --> 01:07:52,080
Speaker 1: And so my hope is that once we complete this

1163
01:07:52,200 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 1: seventy million dollar raise, which we think will happen in

1164
01:07:55,000 --> 01:07:58,080
Speaker 1: the next month or so, that we are going to

1165
01:07:58,200 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: need still a substantial amount of money. You know, as

1166
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: you succeed, your ambitions increase. So, as I said, we're

1167
01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:08,120
Speaker 1: wanting to globalize the patient access to m d m A,

1168
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:11,960
Speaker 1: We're wanting to do all sorts of humanitarian projects, and

1169
01:08:12,040 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 1: so we're gonna need a fair amount of money to

1170
01:08:14,880 --> 01:08:18,160
Speaker 1: to do the research in Europe, to really do the

1171
01:08:18,160 --> 01:08:21,400
Speaker 1: commercialization in the US, there will be a point where

1172
01:08:21,439 --> 01:08:25,080
Speaker 1: we hit what we're calling a sustainability point, and that's

1173
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:28,080
Speaker 1: where the income from the sale of m d m A,

1174
01:08:28,120 --> 01:08:30,559
Speaker 1: the profit from the sale of m d m A,

1175
01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:33,800
Speaker 1: covers all of the costs and then starts generating more

1176
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:38,120
Speaker 1: money for more research, for more drug development, and also

1177
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:42,799
Speaker 1: for moving some money to the nonprofit for drug policy reform,

1178
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:46,719
Speaker 1: and also for you know, patient assistance programs. Patient assistance

1179
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:49,880
Speaker 1: programs are particularly difficult in our situation because when you

1180
01:08:49,960 --> 01:08:53,160
Speaker 1: see a add on TV for a pharmaceutical drug and

1181
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:54,880
Speaker 1: it says, if you can't afford the drug, you know,

1182
01:08:55,120 --> 01:08:56,600
Speaker 1: talk to us. We can give it to you for

1183
01:08:56,720 --> 01:08:59,800
Speaker 1: freer low cost um for us. If we give people

1184
01:08:59,840 --> 01:09:01,800
Speaker 1: a dm A for free, it doesn't do them any

1185
01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:05,080
Speaker 1: good unless they can afford the therapy, and the therapy

1186
01:09:05,120 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: could be ten dollars. So how do we really provide

1187
01:09:09,880 --> 01:09:14,360
Speaker 1: patient assistance and equitable access to people that can't otherwise

1188
01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:17,760
Speaker 1: afford it? For a large number of people, we're gonna

1189
01:09:17,800 --> 01:09:19,640
Speaker 1: need to give them the m DMA for free, but

1190
01:09:19,680 --> 01:09:22,560
Speaker 1: also pay their therapists. Well yeah, I mean, is it

1191
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:25,479
Speaker 1: the hope that health insurance will start to cover this stuff? Well,

1192
01:09:25,520 --> 01:09:28,240
Speaker 1: they will, but we've got one third of people in

1193
01:09:28,280 --> 01:09:30,480
Speaker 1: America will accorded to one third don't even have insurance,

1194
01:09:31,160 --> 01:09:34,679
Speaker 1: and often they have underinsured. So I think my hope

1195
01:09:34,760 --> 01:09:37,719
Speaker 1: is that after we have completed the seventy million dollars,

1196
01:09:38,160 --> 01:09:40,600
Speaker 1: I would like to do the rest with philanthropy, to

1197
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:44,960
Speaker 1: go back to the philanthropic model and instead of saying here,

1198
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:47,439
Speaker 1: if you invest, this is what we can return to you,

1199
01:09:48,120 --> 01:09:51,200
Speaker 1: to really go back to the story is here. If

1200
01:09:51,240 --> 01:09:53,800
Speaker 1: you donate, here's the change that we can make in

1201
01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:57,920
Speaker 1: the world. And even though it will end up generating

1202
01:09:58,040 --> 01:10:01,679
Speaker 1: resources that we will be using for more research, manitarian

1203
01:10:01,720 --> 01:10:04,519
Speaker 1: projects based and assistance, Prince joke post for him, wouldn't

1204
01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:08,440
Speaker 1: you rather have us use the resources for that instead

1205
01:10:08,479 --> 01:10:11,639
Speaker 1: of giving back to investors. So I think the Vine

1206
01:10:11,720 --> 01:10:15,400
Speaker 1: Ventures deal came at a crucial time. It's a courageous

1207
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:20,600
Speaker 1: and novel way of raising funds with this royalty financing.

1208
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:23,160
Speaker 1: So Rick, I gotta tell you, I could just keep

1209
01:10:23,200 --> 01:10:26,400
Speaker 1: going here. I've loved having this conversation and you know,

1210
01:10:26,479 --> 01:10:28,559
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a closet with no air conditioning. But

1211
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:30,680
Speaker 1: this I've loved catching up with you, you know, and

1212
01:10:30,720 --> 01:10:34,840
Speaker 1: having our conversation get recorded for Psychoactive listeners. So what

1213
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:41,679
Speaker 1: you've done, your focus, your commitment, your obsessiveness, your ethical values. Uh,

1214
01:10:41,760 --> 01:10:45,360
Speaker 1: it really is extraordinary. Rick, So you know, God bless

1215
01:10:45,400 --> 01:10:47,960
Speaker 1: with all this stuff. Thank you, Thank you very much.

1216
01:10:48,040 --> 01:10:55,200
Speaker 1: That's very sweet. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your

1217
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:57,439
Speaker 1: friends about it, or you can write us a review

1218
01:10:57,439 --> 01:11:00,680
Speaker 1: at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. We

1219
01:11:00,800 --> 01:11:03,240
Speaker 1: love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to

1220
01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:06,240
Speaker 1: share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave us

1221
01:11:06,240 --> 01:11:10,400
Speaker 1: a message at one eight three three seven seven nine

1222
01:11:11,520 --> 01:11:16,240
Speaker 1: sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can

1223
01:11:16,280 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find

1224
01:11:20,040 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find

1225
01:11:23,240 --> 01:11:27,439
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production

1226
01:11:27,479 --> 01:11:31,000
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by

1227
01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:35,320
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain.

1228
01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:40,080
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus

1229
01:11:40,120 --> 01:11:43,679
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt

1230
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:47,200
Speaker 1: Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our

1231
01:11:47,360 --> 01:11:50,960
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to

1232
01:11:51,040 --> 01:12:04,759
Speaker 1: A Brio s F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next

1233
01:12:04,800 --> 01:12:08,800
Speaker 1: week I'll be talking word perhaps the most famous tobacco

1234
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,960
Speaker 1: company executive in the world. His name is Andre Collins Apolos.

1235
01:12:13,000 --> 01:12:16,479
Speaker 1: He is currently the chairman of the board of Philip

1236
01:12:16,479 --> 01:12:20,479
Speaker 1: Morris International, before that chief executive office there, and he's

1237
01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:23,960
Speaker 1: been a leader within the tobacco industry in making the

1238
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:29,920
Speaker 1: transition from cigarettes to non smokable nicotine alternatives. I said

1239
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:32,800
Speaker 1: many times also to investors, the margin we make on

1240
01:12:32,920 --> 01:12:38,599
Speaker 1: this products, Spoke three products is better than cigarette. So

1241
01:12:38,920 --> 01:12:41,160
Speaker 1: we don't only have a model incentive. We have a

1242
01:12:41,200 --> 01:12:46,719
Speaker 1: financial incentive to sell these products. And they're better because

1243
01:12:46,920 --> 01:12:50,599
Speaker 1: we convinced the regulators around the world to give us

1244
01:12:51,040 --> 01:12:54,479
Speaker 1: better tax treatment than on cigarettes, and they understand that

1245
01:12:54,520 --> 01:12:57,600
Speaker 1: if you have a better product, you need to incentivize

1246
01:12:57,600 --> 01:13:01,640
Speaker 1: both manufacturers and consumers to switch to this. It okay,

1247
01:13:01,640 --> 01:13:05,840
Speaker 1: So I think it makes sense to us not to

1248
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:09,720
Speaker 1: sell cigarettes, subscribe to Psychoactive now, see it, don't miss it.