WEBVTT - Rick Doblin on a Life in Psychedelics Advocacy 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.600 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.040 show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.760 views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media, 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.480 Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heat as 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.400 an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.720 even represent my own and nothing contained in this show 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.680 should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:44.720 any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. My guest today 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:47.280 is an old, old friend of mine. His name is 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:51.639 Rick Doblin. He founded the Multi Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.560 Studies to win his maps back in the mid nineteen eighties, 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.120 and he's been fighting the good fight on psychedelics reform 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:04.000 and legalisation for all those years. He's best known for 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.560 the role he's played in trying to get the f 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.520 d A to approve the drug m d m A 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:14.680 otherwise known as ecstasy for treatment of PTSD, and that 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.000 seems like it's gonna happen in the next couple of years. 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:22.360 But Ris also played a pivotal a really historical role 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:25.920 in the Psychelics Renaissance, both leading up to it and 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.760 what's going on now. So Rick, thanks ever so much 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:32.640 for joining me on Psychoactive even it's such a pleasure. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.520 Glad to be home here talking with you. Okay, Well, well, 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:37.640 so my and if our listeners, I should let you 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.640 know that there's a special on Netflix that was put 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.880 together by Michael Polling called Changing Your Mind, based upon 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.640 his book. It's a four part series and one of 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.640 the episodes, I think focuses on Rick and Map. So 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:51.560 we thought this would be a really good time to 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.120 have Rick on to join us. So, Rick, is there 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:55.680 anything you want to tell you? Always right to begin 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.120 with about the special and what you think is going 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.880 to be in there. Uh that Yeah, Well, first off, 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:04.920 I like to say that, you know, we don't really 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:09.280 do science. We do political science, meaning that we have 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.480 to be very political about you know, what drug we use, 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.799 what patients we do that and keeping sense of the 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.000 larger political dynamics and so a lot of it is 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:21.760 symbolic communications. So one of the things that I'm so 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:26.800 excited about for the Netflix documentary is that there's two 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.600 minutes of the documentary that's going to be about a 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:34.720 police officer from the Boston area who's also a psychotherapist, 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:39.320 and he's been through our training program for therapists because 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.480 he's interested in giving m d m A to police 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:47.200 officers with PTSD and he's had people that he's um 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:50.280 in his department and departments that he knows of have 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:54.720 committed suicide police officers, and so he's very compassionate. And 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.080 I've gotten to meet his police chief and also the 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.240 head of the Police Offs Union for Massachusetts and others, 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.280 and we were able to persuade his police chief, Sarco 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:09.440 Gregarian is the police officer's name, that he should be 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:14.240 permitted to volunteer to receive m d m A in 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:16.400 a protocol that we have f d A d A 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.040 proof protocol to give him du made a therapist as 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.919 part of their training. And so he did get that permission, 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.440 and there's a documentary team following his journey from police 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:32.640 officers psychotherapist to police officers psychedelics psychotherapist, and two minutes 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:34.960 of him taking m DUMA and him commenting on it 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:37.360 was filmed and is going to be used in the 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:40.680 Netflix documentary. So I think the message that we're trying 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.120 to send to people. Is the opposite of this is, 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.680 you know, psychedelics for hippies. And you know, I've often 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:50.640 thought about the police as the predators and myself as 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.040 the prey and other drug users as the prey. But 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.560 in this case, you know, I've sort of wised up 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:58.480 about that, and I think if we weren't for the 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.280 drug war, you know, we would all be uh much 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.440 more grateful for the police. And so I think this 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.240 communications about how the m d m A says that 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.880 therapy is really for everybody. It's for um, police officers, 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:19.440 it's for prisoners, it's for prison guards. UM, it's for perpetrators, 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.040 it's for victims, you know, I think, I mean when 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.520 you're talking about the cops. I mean there's also been 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.400 this whole connection with the military, right imagine saw There's 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.120 something popped up just just recently, in fact, that the 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:36.280 former head of the Australian Defense Force, as a fellow 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.000 named Chris Barry, has said he hopes this moves forward 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.040 in Australia. And I think you've had your own contacts 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.080 with the Pentagon and with the military, if I recall correctly, 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.039 in Israel and also in Jordan's so maybe just you know, 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.320 say a little more about that. Yeah. Well, also the 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:56.359 head of the military in England is very interested in 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.040 m d m A and General Nick Carter, and he's 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:01.440 been very much support of of m d m A. 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.200 But for me also it has involved this kind of 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:08.400 healing process, the same as working with police officers, working 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.840 with the military, and you know, for this idea of 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:16.200 political science. You know, we have such support in America 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.520 for the military that I felt it was absolutely essential 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.520 that we have bipartisan support for what we're trying to do. 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:28.640 And so we've gotten support from some very right leaning philanthropists, 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.800 Rebecca Mercer being the most right leaning of them. Uh, 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:37.960 you know, Cambridge Analytica and Bright Bart and Parlor. I 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:39.560 want to get into effort thing, but just stick with 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:44.000 the military leadership. You've had contacts with the Pentagon, You've 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.680 had contacts with Israeli Jordanian military. I mean, how far 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.480 have they gone would have been the most successful. Just 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.080 to give you a quick overview, We've treated over sixty 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.920 veterans with PTSD, but we have yet to treat a 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:01.320 single active duty soldier and so that is the kind 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.599 of crossover that we're anticipating as the next step in 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:10.560 this integration of psychedelic psychotherapy into society will be actually 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:14.760 working with active duty soldiers. And we are working with 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:19.280 a Dr. Bob Kaufman, who is senior emeritus psychiatrist at 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:23.120 Walter Reid, the military hospital there, and we're thinking that 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:24.919 over the next couple of months we might actually be 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:29.080 able to um enroll active duty soldiers as well. And 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:33.360 we do have support from Bob Persons, who's a major 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.880 philanthropist who himself had PTSD from Vietnam. He started going together, 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.560 he started Go Daddy, Yeah, yeah, and so he has 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:45.440 actually donated funds to treatment facility in Rockville, Maryland, not 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:49.200 far from Walter read specifically for active duty soldiers. But 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.200 here's where I learned about the hierarchies in the military. 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:57.760 This was now over ten years ago, and there's a psychiatrist, 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.400 Rob McClay at the San Dieg Enaval Medical Center, and 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:05.800 he had a two week inpatient program for Navy Seals 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.480 and Marines with PTSD, and this was the last step 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:13.600 before they would either get enough relief from their PTSD 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:15.640 symptoms that they could go back to duty, or they 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:20.520 would be transferred to the v A as disabled from PTSD, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:22.920 and so he wanted to work with us on m 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.760 D m A. And what he said was that he 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.120 wasn't high enough in the hierarchy, that he needed to 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.920 get the support of the admiral in the facility. And 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.320 I said, okay, that sounds reasonable. So then he gets 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.160 the support of the admiral, and then he says, well, 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:41.160 the admiral likes this idea, but he's not high enough 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:42.920 in the hierarchy. We need to go to the Pentagon. 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.320 And I just kept thinking as I was going in 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.640 the Pentagon that, um, you know, in the sixties the 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:52.320 Yippies had tried to levitate the Pentagon as part of 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.720 their Vietnam War protests, and needless to say, the Pentagon 0:07:55.800 --> 0:08:00.360 did not levitate. But here we were, all these decades later, 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.720 being invited into the Pentagon to talk about psychedelics the hippies. 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:06.800 The Hippies couldn't levitate it, but we could go in 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.200 and talk about helping the veterans with PTSD. And the 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:14.080 meeting went great, And then they said that they weren't 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.760 high enough in the hierarchy that we had to go 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.320 up to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.200 in charge of all health for all the militaries of 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.080 all the different divisions, and they said we needed to 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.800 go onto the hill, meaning we needed to get political 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:34.359 support as well. So that's when we started engaging Senator j. Rockefeller, 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.840 and he also had a series of meetings with the 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.680 Eric Shinseki and several secretaries of the v A. And 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.080 this all culminated in a meeting in two thousand and 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:49.200 fourteen with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:54.120 and his staff, and the National Center for PTSD of 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:56.600 the v A, the executive director and the assistant director 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:01.960 of that, and a variety of other people from the Navy. 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:06.199 What they said was that there was a concern about 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:11.000 working with active duty soldiers, and the concern was that 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.160 if they were to permit us to work with active 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.560 duty soldiers at that time, they were worried that the 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.920 need for treatment for PTSD was so great that that 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.439 would encourage active duty soldiers to try to self medicate, 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:27.520 and that they would get the quote wrong message, which 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.839 we've heard so much in drug policy. You know. My 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:32.240 my view of that it was, well, if the need 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:34.600 is so great, you know, you should immediately start research, 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:40.360 but the decision was made that we should start with veterans. 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:42.640 And one of the people that was at that meeting 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.840 was Dr John Crystal, who's head of the Neuroscience division 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.400 of National Center for PTSD at Yale. And there was 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.400 a woman named Candice Monson who used to be the 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:56.000 head of women's health at the Boston VA and she 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.679 had developed a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder called 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:05.800 cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, and conjoint means couples or diets, 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.800 and what that means is that in this diet, both 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.760 of them are brought into the therapy, but one of 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:16.360 them has PTSD and it affects the relationship there they're in, 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.679 but the other person doesn't have PTSD. And they felt 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.120 that if you could do this sort of couples therapy 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.480 or diets, that that might be more effective than just 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:29.520 treating the individual patient with PTSD. And so since they 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.960 had heard about the love drug and the hug drug 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.840 as ecstasy, their idea was that this would be a 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.480 good first step that we could try to blend m 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.480 d m A with cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, that we 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:45.120 had to pay for it. The v A would not 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.920 pay for it, they wouldn't refer any veterans to the study, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.520 and the study would take place with academic affiliations, but 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.160 not inside the v A, and that we would not 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.640 be permitted at that time to do anything with active 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.199 duties soldiers, and so we thought any place we can 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.600 start is a great idea, and so that began our 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:11.360 first effort with v A affiliated therapist working outside of 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:15.400 the v A, and the results were phenomenal. It was 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:19.680 better than anything they'd ever seen before, both in the 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.960 reduction of PTSD symptoms in the person with PTSD and 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.680 also in the strength of the relationships, and so this 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:31.680 was just so exciting. We did six die ads and 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.280 we have now built on that and have funded a 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.840 study that's going to be with sixty diets in Toronto, 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:42.479 thirty that get cognitive behavioral can joint therapy and thirty 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:44.960 get cognitive behavioral con joint therapy with m d m A. 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.760 And we're also starting studies inside the San Diego VA 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.840 and eventually also inside the Phoenix b A to blend 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:54.959 M D m A with cognitive behavior can joint therapy. 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.679 It's safe to say that at this point, you know, 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:01.640 the head of the Veterans Administration, United Dates, probably you know, 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:06.520 the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin. Probably their equivalents 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.959 in other countries are all aware now of m d 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.840 m A and its potential to treat PTSD. Yes, yes, 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:17.040 and it's it's safe to go even further that they 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:21.320 are both aware and supportive of the research. Like sure, 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:25.239 General Nick Carter, the head of the British military recently retired. 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.240 He spoke about how this was a very important priority 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:31.600 and that there should be more research and he actually 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.600 was speaking at a fundraiser at a million dollars was 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:38.280 raised for our research in London at King's College. You know, 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.440 the Israeli military is very supportive and they've you know, 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.679 permitted people that have PTSD from their war service to 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:51.800 be in our studies, people who are still well, it's 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:54.040 different in Israel and that once you're in the military 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.800 you still have to do like reserve duty for like 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.320 a significant amount of until you get I think around 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.719 forty or so. So those people were permitted there. So 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:08.319 I think that we we do have not just active awareness, 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.520 but I think we have good will in the sense 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:15.320 that these people hope that it works well. For example, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:20.160 right now, there's over a million veterans receiving disability payments 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:23.680 from the v A for PTSD, and it costs the 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:29.720 v A over seventeen billion dollars a year in disability 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.640 payments to these million people just for their PTSD disabilities. 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.080 They get payments for other disabilities as well, So the 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.199 scale of the problem is enormous. Now people are thinking 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.880 it's somewhere like eighteen veterans a day committing suicide in 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.880 the US. It's just tragic. And so I think that 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:51.000 we have this cultural moment that's happening, which we call 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.320 the psychedelic Renaissance, that has been building over the last 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.079 twenty years, but now it's really reached a further development 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.920 point where I think we can now actually treat the 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:05.720 first active duty soldier. We'll be talking more after we 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:25.280 hear this ad. Earlier, you mentioned the Mercers, right, the Mercer's, 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:30.080 famous right wing philanthropists and political donors in America strongly 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:32.760 backed Trump for a very long time, and you took 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.400 some flak when you took some support from the Mercers. 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:37.880 And then more recently I saw that you know, former 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:41.600 Governor Rick Perry of Texas and then going the Trump cabinet. 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.000 He stepped out there big time on this stuff. So 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:46.800 tell us a little bit about that whole thing with 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:50.920 the mercers. And it made me about Rick Perry, the governor. Yeah. 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.800 So with Rebecca, because she was so associated with Trump 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.880 and Bannon, a lot of people have demonized her, and 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:00.200 you know, I don't agree with those parts of her, 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.720 but she was willing to give us a million dollars. 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.119 The only limitation was that the money go to treat veterans, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.320 and and I said sure, And I thought it was 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:14.680 absolutely essential that we have this bipartisan support. And and 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:17.480 that's what I've gotten enormous criticism about from people like, 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:19.480 you know, you shouldn't work with her. But I had 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:23.720 this passover, said or a couple of years ago here 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:27.600 in Boston, and there was an elderly couple that was 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.640 at the second to last seats on a long table, 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.440 and and so we sat down next to them, and 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.359 this group of people were scientists there. They were mostly scientists. 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:40.040 So I went to this guy and I said, um, 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.560 you know our our ego scientist And he said no, 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.560 he was a judge. I said, okay, um. And then 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.720 his wife we started talking and she's recently written a 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:52.560 book about how to help people with their children who 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.600 are dying of various diseases, and the work with grief, 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.520 and so we got into this really long discussion about 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:01.600 m dm A therapy and all that we're doing, and 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.640 then we started talking about marijuana and the government monopoly 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.600 on marijuana that we were trying to break, and it 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:12.920 was just a delightful conversation, and somehow slowly I started 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:17.280 thinking that there was more going on. Then um meets 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:19.480 the and I looked at this guy and I said, 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:23.680 are you, by any chance Stephen Bryer, the Supreme Court judge? 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:27.760 And he smiled and he said, yeah, yeah, I am 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.120 that Stephen Bryer. And I said, oh my god. Well, 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.720 then let me ask you an ethical question, if you 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.040 don't mind. So this is after we've had, as I said, 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.840 all these discussions about psychedelics and grief and m d 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.840 m A. So I said, here's my ethical question. I 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:47.280 have accepted this million dollar donation from Rebecca Mercer, and 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.400 I'm getting enormous criticism for doing that, and I think 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.080 it's absolutely essential. It's it's that we must build bipartisans 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.040 support and so ethically, you know what do you think 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:01.200 about this? I said, Man, of our donors are more 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.399 on the progressive side, and um, you know, what's your 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:10.160 opinion of it? Ethically? He said, the essence of democracy 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.280 is trying to find common ground with people with whom 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.960 you may disagree with on every other issue, and that 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:22.200 in our hyperpartisan world there's not enough of that. So 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:25.240 he said, you did exactly the right thing to take 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.439 this money from Rebecca Mercer. So I felt, okay, the 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:31.720 Supreme Court has said that I did the right thing. 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.160 But let's just shoot back for a few minutes, back 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.160 to the old ays, because I'm remembering. I think maybe 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.160 you and I met it might have been eighty eight, 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.320 and I remember I think you were responsible for taking 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:46.919 me to my first and maybe my second raves in 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.080 the early nineties, I think in San Francisco, Oakland or 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:52.680 nearby Richmond. And for me it was a real eye 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.399 opener to go to a rave. And I've done M 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.720 D M A a a number of times before with my 0:17:57.760 --> 0:17:59.879 wife at the time, but to be in a rage, 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:03.400 just to see the atmosphere there, to see the absence 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.359 of kind of you know, men not hitting on women 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:07.680 in the same way they would if there was alcohol around. 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:09.679 Uh you know, if if you wanted to get up 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:11.800 close to the stage and have to elbow your way forward, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.520 people just let you through. So I mean, you really 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.560 helped open my eyes to In fact, I'll tell you 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:19.919 you may remember this one of the great moments. We 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.440 went there with some friends of ours, John Morgan and 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.000 Linds So unfortunately are now deceased, but they were great 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.560 drug researchers. Lynn Lin's every one of the great sociologists 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.040 about this. You know, John Morrigan a professor at the 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.359 City University of New York Medical School. And we've gone there, 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:37.320 and you know, most people in the twenties. You and 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:39.919 I are I think in our late thirties at the time, 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:42.840 Lynn and John must have been late forties or in 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.160 their fifties. And there's this moment. John's kind of there, 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.280 he's kind of moving to the music, and some young 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.560 woman comes up to him and she says to John, 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.280 are you looking for your child? And he goes no, 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:01.359 and she goes, so why are you here? And he goes, 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.560 I just want to be enjoying myself. And she looks 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.880 at him and she goes, I want to be just 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.560 like you when I grow up, you know, and it 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:14.800 was this beautiful moment in a rain. And then I 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.080 think back to those days when m D m A 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:20.080 was much better known as ecstasy, when it was a 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.800 rave scene, when you were just getting going, Oh, when 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.160 the whole thing was seen as a bit flaky at 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.320 that time. I remember some years later, I think you 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:31.920 had done some study where they required people to take 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.280 some spinal fluid and the result was that some myth 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:36.840 went out there that you know, that that these spinal 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.120 taps caused you know, your spines to shrivel up. Back 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.040 in that day, when I would bring up n D 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:44.359 m A among people to know about it, the most 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.000 common thing I hear was doesn't it drain your spinal fluid? 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:50.280 And it became one of those myths. It was like 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:55.080 LSD splits your chromosomes right, or marijuana makes men grow 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.679 breast um. I mean, it was these things that you know, 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:00.879 you know, might have had when I oda of truth 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.280 to them, but essentially became these broad cultural myths that 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.280 I think you had a battle against for quite some years. 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:09.280 Oh yeah, I mean there are still people that think 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:11.000 that m D m A causes holes in the brain, 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.760 because over twenty years ago, OPRAH broadcast a show about 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:18.640 a young woman that had used a lot of ecstasy, 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:21.639 used a lot of other drugs, and she had gotten 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:26.080 spec scan, which is blood flow in the brain, and 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.480 the spec scan supposedly showed holes in her brain. It 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.080 was a graphically manipulated image. It was totally fake. They 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:36.800 just took every area that had below a certain amount 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.199 of blood flow, they showed it as a whole, and 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:42.639 it was completely dishonest. And what was even more incongruous 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.000 was the woman whose brain it was riddled with these 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:47.880 holes that you could see in the image that they 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.320 showed was was on the show and she was walking 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.160 and talking and she was fine. You know, if you'd 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:54.600 be dead if you had those kind of holes in 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.399 your brain. But there are people today that still believe 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.119 that m d m A drain spinal fluid or m 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:04.040 DMA causes holes in your brain. And so the neurotoxicity 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:08.120 of m d M A was something that was used 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.400 for quite a long time and through the nineties as 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.119 well as an argument to block research. Actually, there was 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:18.120 a researcher, Frantz vole Inviter in Switzerland that had done 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.840 brain scans for the first time with people pet scans 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:24.560 before and after m d m A and found no 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:27.720 evidence of quote holes in the brain or neurotoxicity at all. 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:30.919 So then, let me just say, in the nineties, this 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:36.440 idea of MDMA and serotinergic neurotoxicity was becoming increasingly discredited, 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:40.200 and time was going by and people were still looking fine. 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:43.040 You know. The idea then finally became, oh, it's a 0:21:43.119 --> 0:21:47.080 time bomb theory that you you have cognitive reserve and 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.240 you can hurt your serotonin with m DMA and it 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.040 doesn't show up until you get old. Now, meanwhile, a 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:54.280 lot of old people in the seventies and eighties had 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:56.280 taken m d m A, they were fine. And then 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.199 things go along in the nineties and people are not 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:03.040 believing this. But NIDA is pretty committed to blocking research 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.280 into the benefits of illegal drugs at the time. Rick, 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:08.399 So I mean that you're you're actually leading into this 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:10.720 is a great place to make this transition because there 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:13.080 you are at MAPS, You're making stuff. But Maps is 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:15.800 still a small organization. You know, you're up to five 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.239 or ten people working for you. You're focused on this 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:23.320 little issue. Now the last five years, MAPS, together with 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.240 the public benefit corporation that you've created that's owned by 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:29.600 the nonprofit organization. You now got a couple hundred people 0:22:29.680 --> 0:22:31.879 working for you. You've got a budget, I think in 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:34.520 the tens of millions of dollars a year. You are 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.080 the largest drug policy formal organization in the world right now. 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.800 You know, you've spent decades out there, you know, making 0:22:41.800 --> 0:22:44.240 the provocative arguments all this sort of stuff, and now 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:48.560 you're transitioned into running you know, I mean something that's fantastic, 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.920 incredibly influential. Personally. You're out there like you're I see 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.040 you at the conferences. Now you're like a rock star there. 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:56.560 You're getting interviewed over the major media. You know, you're 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.080 not doing just the kind of you know, drug policy 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:01.840 podcast like my but the Joe Rogans and all the others. 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.280 But I have to say, for you, what the hell 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.359 has this transition been like for you? I Mean, I 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:09.240 saw you a few years and I was gonna worry 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:11.239 because you're still traveling over the place and I'm saying, oh, 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:15.119 ship ricks burning out, but you're thriving these days. Um, 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:17.479 But what has been like personally for you to go 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.919 in the last five or ten years from chugging along 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:26.800 doing your thing to having a mega organization. So the 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:30.520 thing about MAPS that has been so delightful is that 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:35.880 there's a two pronged strategy. One is drug development, and 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:38.120 that's you know, going through the FDA trying to make 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:40.479 m d M a sist the therapy for PTSD into 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:44.600 an FDA proof medicine, also approved in Israel, Canada, Europe, 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:49.440 we're working in also Australia, Brazil and elsewhere with humanitarian 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:51.840 projects we're trying to start around the world. But the 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:55.879 other parallel track has been drug policy reform and really 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:58.359 trying to make it so that people can have access 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:03.560 to all all substances without having it to be a 0:24:03.640 --> 0:24:08.240 criminal situation. Pure drugs, honest drug education, harm reduction treatment 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:13.280 on demand. So those two paths have been very satisfying 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:15.800 to keep together in parallel. And what we've said to 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:18.640 people too is that if for whatever reason the drug 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:21.919 policy reform is bad for the business. You know, if 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:24.000 you can buy m DMA for ten or twenty dollars 0:24:24.800 --> 0:24:26.520 and to do it on your own, but it's sold 0:24:26.520 --> 0:24:29.800 for a lot more as a medicine covered by insurance, 0:24:30.320 --> 0:24:32.080 I don't care. I mean, if it's bad for the 0:24:32.119 --> 0:24:35.560 business model. You know, it's a fundamental human rights and 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:37.360 we've got to get rid of the drug war and 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:42.600 help people have these experiences beyond medicine, beyond religion, personal growth, spirituality, 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:47.400 couples therapy, all that. So for me, it's been very challenging. 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:52.240 And Chris lot Lacker, who is now the deputy director 0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:54.920 of MAPS, he started Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. 0:24:55.560 --> 0:24:58.760 He's helped with a lot of the management of the staff, 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:03.120 the goals. So I've become more fundraiser, traveling all over 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:08.399 giving talks, starting new projects. What's been really exciting is 0:25:08.480 --> 0:25:13.040 because we have had one successful Phase three study that 0:25:13.080 --> 0:25:17.679 we published May tenth one in Nature Medicine. It was 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:21.160 just outstanding the results of our first phase three study 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:24.439 and in fact Science and I'm so glad I'm mentioning this. 0:25:24.560 --> 0:25:27.520 So the journal Science publishes a list of what they 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:32.040 consider it to be the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs 0:25:32.040 --> 0:25:37.760 of the year, and fore they considered our Phase three 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:40.600 paper published in Nature Medicine as one of the world's 0:25:40.760 --> 0:25:45.600 top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year. And it was 0:25:45.680 --> 0:25:48.480 just so satisfied to really speak about m d m 0:25:48.480 --> 0:25:50.600 A and the therapeutic use of m d M A 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:52.920 as one of the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs of 0:25:52.960 --> 0:25:56.520 the year. You know, there's over We've guessed around four 0:25:56.600 --> 0:25:59.600 hundred for profits psychedel companies with the market crash there 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:02.920 maybe us now, but you know we're we're the leading 0:26:02.920 --> 0:26:05.679 one and we're the only one in phase three, and 0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:10.040 so because we are looking like there's a very good 0:26:10.160 --> 0:26:14.720 chance that we will eventually succeed the second phase three study, 0:26:14.760 --> 0:26:17.719 we had the interim analysis in May and the results 0:26:17.760 --> 0:26:23.280 were very good. We're we've got over probability of statistical significance. 0:26:23.320 --> 0:26:26.040 The safety data was good. The final data point will 0:26:26.080 --> 0:26:29.600 be in October. But because it looks pretty good, but 0:26:29.680 --> 0:26:32.800 I don't know that much about commercialization, and our team 0:26:32.840 --> 0:26:36.359 really didn't know that much about what happens once you succeed. 0:26:36.800 --> 0:26:39.000 It's like the dog that catches the car. You know, 0:26:39.040 --> 0:26:42.160 what do you do now? So we managed to hire 0:26:42.200 --> 0:26:46.840 a fantastic person, Mike Millette, who was the number two 0:26:46.880 --> 0:26:51.199 person for commercialization at Maderna, and they sold, you know, 0:26:51.240 --> 0:26:54.120 billions of dollars of the vaccine for COVID all over 0:26:54.160 --> 0:26:57.480 the world. And so he's now taken a good new 0:26:57.560 --> 0:27:00.960 challenge his wife as a therapist. So we have been 0:27:01.040 --> 0:27:04.840 building the benefit Corporation, which, as you said, for is 0:27:05.440 --> 0:27:08.480 owned by the nonprofit and just so or listener stand 0:27:08.600 --> 0:27:11.679 it is something that's allowed within the American tax code 0:27:11.720 --> 0:27:15.960 where a nonprofit can own a for profit corporation, where 0:27:16.000 --> 0:27:19.639 all the profits from the for profit corporation go back 0:27:19.680 --> 0:27:23.520 to the nonprofit to be spent. As the executive director 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:25.720 in the board see fit. But I think for you 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:29.200 it opens up the possibility that when the f d 0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:32.240 A ultimately approves m d M A for the treatment 0:27:32.320 --> 0:27:35.720 of PTSD and then presumably for other medical conditions as well, 0:27:36.359 --> 0:27:40.280 your public benefit corporation could then land up earning what 0:27:40.480 --> 0:27:45.199 hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it's very possible. So 0:27:45.280 --> 0:27:47.440 it will depend on the number of therapists we train, 0:27:48.000 --> 0:27:50.760 the price of m d m A, and the willingness 0:27:50.800 --> 0:27:53.080 of insurance companies and the v A to adopt it 0:27:53.119 --> 0:27:55.879 and cover the costs, which we think are are looking 0:27:55.880 --> 0:27:59.520 pretty good. And so one of the things that I'm 0:27:59.720 --> 0:28:02.440 really a proud of is that we've added Carl Hart 0:28:02.480 --> 0:28:06.080 to the board of directors of MAPS, and I think 0:28:06.080 --> 0:28:09.520 our listeners will know Carl Hart is the professor of 0:28:09.600 --> 0:28:13.440 Psychology and the neuroscience at Columbia, who was a previous 0:28:13.480 --> 0:28:17.120 guest on Psychoactive, and who has written two very important 0:28:17.160 --> 0:28:21.160 books about about drugs and about race and about freedom, 0:28:21.280 --> 0:28:25.080 and so, yes, his joining MAPS board is quite a coup. Yeah, 0:28:25.119 --> 0:28:29.119 And several people said, don't at him because he's so controversial, 0:28:29.480 --> 0:28:32.200 you know, because he's not just talking about psychedelics, he's 0:28:32.240 --> 0:28:35.320 talking about other drugs, opiates and heroin and saying things 0:28:35.320 --> 0:28:37.600 like I don't understand how anybody could share the Psychology 0:28:37.680 --> 0:28:39.640 Department of Columbia if they weren't using heroin on a 0:28:39.640 --> 0:28:42.160 regular basis. I thought it was a really choice quote 0:28:42.160 --> 0:28:46.080 on his partner. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's phenomenal. And 0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:49.200 I said, well, it's because of his principal stand in 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:51.360 the controversy. That's that's why we want him on the 0:28:51.400 --> 0:28:55.320 board of directors of MAPS. So you know, you've got 0:28:55.320 --> 0:29:00.480 attention obviously within your organization between those people who are 0:29:00.560 --> 0:29:04.800 driven by a broader commitment to psychedelics reform and even 0:29:04.840 --> 0:29:07.680 broader drug policy reform on the one hand, and the 0:29:07.720 --> 0:29:11.240 others who are sort of micro focused on ensuring the 0:29:11.320 --> 0:29:14.320 business side UH succeeds as much as possible, right and 0:29:14.320 --> 0:29:16.240 who want to kind of keep your heads down on 0:29:16.280 --> 0:29:19.200 the broader sets of issues. Yes, and you know, as 0:29:19.240 --> 0:29:22.920 we hire more and more people from pharma who don't 0:29:23.000 --> 0:29:27.600 have necessarily a psychedelic background, they have you know, more 0:29:27.840 --> 0:29:32.000 I would say, conservative instincts, and you know that they 0:29:32.000 --> 0:29:36.320 come from a more highly regulated environment. You know, pharmaceutical 0:29:36.360 --> 0:29:40.880 companies have to be really careful about what they say 0:29:40.920 --> 0:29:44.959 and do, particularly in the era of not speaking about 0:29:45.200 --> 0:29:48.960 unapproved uses, you know, or off label uses, our our 0:29:49.000 --> 0:29:52.479 safety lies, and just not going beyond the data. And 0:29:52.560 --> 0:29:54.800 so you know, there's nothing I've said during this discussion 0:29:54.840 --> 0:29:58.440 that's of any concern. Maybe you can answer this question, 0:29:58.480 --> 0:30:00.520 but presumably n d m A is going to be 0:30:00.600 --> 0:30:03.560 useful for seeing all sorts of other conditions, whether it's 0:30:04.440 --> 0:30:08.640 or range of others. You can talk openly about that stuff, right, Well, yes, 0:30:08.800 --> 0:30:11.560 I can say that these are hopes, not certainties, and 0:30:11.680 --> 0:30:15.240 that the right now, the data that we have from 0:30:15.360 --> 0:30:19.520 one phase three study is not sufficient to say that 0:30:19.560 --> 0:30:22.800 we have proved that m d m A is safe 0:30:22.800 --> 0:30:28.320 and efficacious. We have suggested that it's likely from this 0:30:28.360 --> 0:30:30.840 one phase three study, but we need a second phase 0:30:30.880 --> 0:30:35.760 three study that's also statistically significant and has an acceptable 0:30:35.800 --> 0:30:41.680 safety ratio. And then until FDA approves prescription use, we 0:30:41.720 --> 0:30:44.480 cannot say that we've proven safety and efficacy, even though 0:30:44.520 --> 0:30:46.840 we think that we may have it, it's still it's 0:30:46.840 --> 0:30:49.440 the FDA approval. What's the what's its approved by the 0:30:49.440 --> 0:30:52.680 way for for PTSD it can then doctors will then 0:30:52.680 --> 0:30:54.400 be allowed to use it for all sorts of other 0:30:54.440 --> 0:30:56.760 medical conditions. The FDA doesn't need to step in and 0:30:56.880 --> 0:31:00.920 approve it for each condition, right right, Pharmaceutical companies cannot 0:31:01.040 --> 0:31:07.000 knowingly promote or sell for off label uses, but the 0:31:07.040 --> 0:31:10.720 practice of medicine is such is that prescribers can prescribe 0:31:10.800 --> 0:31:14.240 both for what the labeled indication is and for anything 0:31:14.240 --> 0:31:17.560 else that they think is appropriate. There have been several 0:31:17.600 --> 0:31:20.400 cases that have gone through the u S courts where 0:31:20.400 --> 0:31:22.640 the FDA has tried to make it so that pharma 0:31:22.720 --> 0:31:26.880 companies could not even mentioned off label uses. But now 0:31:27.280 --> 0:31:30.800 if there is a scientific studies that we can share 0:31:30.840 --> 0:31:34.200 that with prescribers, even if it's a phase to study, 0:31:34.240 --> 0:31:37.360 meaning a smaller pilot study. So we've done studies with 0:31:37.440 --> 0:31:41.640 m duma sis that therapy for social anxiety and autistic adults. 0:31:41.840 --> 0:31:45.400 It was tremendously successful. We did a study with people 0:31:45.480 --> 0:31:50.360 with anxiety because of life threatening illnesses. The results were promising. 0:31:50.960 --> 0:31:54.000 Ben Sessa, psychiatrists in England, has done a study, a 0:31:54.080 --> 0:31:57.360 small study looking at m DAMA for alcohol use disorder 0:31:57.400 --> 0:32:01.080 and what he learned was that people who are suffering 0:32:01.240 --> 0:32:05.680 from unresolved trauma often go to drugs and alcohol to 0:32:05.680 --> 0:32:07.200 to cover it up so that they don't need to 0:32:07.200 --> 0:32:09.000 think about their trauma. And if you can help them 0:32:09.000 --> 0:32:12.239 address the trauma, then you can make them make a 0:32:12.240 --> 0:32:14.560 lot of progress with their alcohol use disorder or other 0:32:14.600 --> 0:32:18.400 substance used disorders. We're thinking about doing studies with postpartum 0:32:18.440 --> 0:32:23.200 depression with depression. So far the studies with PTSD most 0:32:23.240 --> 0:32:26.120 people with PTSD have depression, but we have not yet 0:32:26.160 --> 0:32:29.160 done a study of m d M A assisted therapy 0:32:29.200 --> 0:32:34.000 for depression UM without PTSD. And really let me ask 0:32:34.040 --> 0:32:36.160 you this. I mean, obviously you cannot get a pattern 0:32:36.240 --> 0:32:38.080 on m d m A because it was invented almost 0:32:38.120 --> 0:32:40.400 a hundred years ago and then Sasha Shulgun kind of 0:32:40.400 --> 0:32:44.160 rediscovered its therapeutic uses. But so how do you stand 0:32:44.200 --> 0:32:45.880 to make money? Is it from the selling of m 0:32:45.920 --> 0:32:48.800 d M a. Is it from the training of the 0:32:48.800 --> 0:32:51.600 therapists or from setting up of clinics where m d 0:32:51.680 --> 0:32:55.160 m A will be administered in a psychotherapeutic context. Where 0:32:55.200 --> 0:32:59.160 does the money Yeah, So when we think about this 0:32:59.320 --> 0:33:04.200 idea of public benefit, the public benefit for us is 0:33:04.360 --> 0:33:08.880 helping people get over PTSD, you know, to to reduce 0:33:08.920 --> 0:33:11.400 their symptoms, to be able to rejoin life in a 0:33:11.440 --> 0:33:15.560 better way. So the training of therapists could be a 0:33:15.600 --> 0:33:18.760 money maker, and in fact we've brought in several millions 0:33:18.760 --> 0:33:21.640 of dollars in fees, but so far they mostly discover 0:33:21.720 --> 0:33:24.920 our costs for the team and developing our training materials 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:27.880 and stuff. But we felt that the training of therapists 0:33:27.960 --> 0:33:31.920 is not a profit center. And in fact, what we 0:33:32.000 --> 0:33:37.200 want ideally is for schools of psychiatry and psychotherapy two 0:33:37.960 --> 0:33:45.000 incorporate and embed in their core curriculums modules about training 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:48.040 people for m DUMA says that therapy for PTSD, for psilocybin, 0:33:48.080 --> 0:33:51.080 for depression, for ketamine. So that we want this to 0:33:51.120 --> 0:33:56.480 be mainstreamed, and so we are also licensing other programs 0:33:56.800 --> 0:34:00.680 to provide m d m A training for MDMA therapists 0:34:01.040 --> 0:34:04.840 as long as they have the core competencies and the 0:34:04.880 --> 0:34:07.520 core elements of our training program in them. So we 0:34:07.600 --> 0:34:12.440 don't see the training as being a necessary profit center. 0:34:12.920 --> 0:34:19.279 Clinics are a potential profit center, but there there are 0:34:19.320 --> 0:34:23.320 some problems of which I'm not fully aware of legally. 0:34:23.360 --> 0:34:25.920 But you know, pharmaceutical companies owning clinics where their own 0:34:25.960 --> 0:34:29.600 drugs are prescribed. But the clinics of the future, the 0:34:29.600 --> 0:34:34.080 psychedelic psychotherapy clinics of the future, There's not going to 0:34:34.160 --> 0:34:36.960 be an ketamine clinic here, a psilocybin clinic, there, an 0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:40.360 m DM a clinic there. There's gonna be therapists that 0:34:40.440 --> 0:34:44.879 are ideally cross trained in all the different psychedelics, and 0:34:45.040 --> 0:34:51.880 the clinics will provide customized, individualized, personalized psychedelic psychotherapy, and 0:34:51.920 --> 0:34:54.600 the patient will come in and they'll have discussions with 0:34:54.640 --> 0:34:56.680 their therapists and they'll say, all right, well we'll start 0:34:56.680 --> 0:34:58.279 with this drug or that drug, and then we'll move 0:34:58.320 --> 0:35:03.440 to this, and so clinics will be generalized psychedelic psychotherapy clinics. 0:35:03.920 --> 0:35:07.080 Now interesting that when I started MAPS in nineteen eighty six, 0:35:07.120 --> 0:35:10.239 I knew, as you said, that Merk pharmaceutical company, the 0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:14.160 German Murk, had invented m DMA, and it's in the 0:35:14.160 --> 0:35:17.879 public domain and there is uh you know, no way 0:35:17.920 --> 0:35:19.920 to patent it, nor would we ever want a patent 0:35:19.920 --> 0:35:22.760 because we want to facilitate m DUMA research in the eighties. 0:35:22.800 --> 0:35:25.800 When I started MAPS in nine six, there was another 0:35:25.880 --> 0:35:29.040 group founded by a fellow named Howard lots Off who 0:35:29.120 --> 0:35:33.600 had discovered that I Begain, another psychedelic drug, was tremendously helpful, 0:35:33.680 --> 0:35:37.480 uniquely helpful for helping people get through opiate addiction or 0:35:37.520 --> 0:35:40.000 obiit dependence. What I mean is that in a couple 0:35:40.000 --> 0:35:41.960 of days, under the influence of I Begain, you could 0:35:42.000 --> 0:35:44.800 get over your tolerance, to get over dependence on opiates, 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:48.560 and you're gonna have a psychotherapeutic psychedelic process. You can 0:35:48.600 --> 0:35:51.239 work on a bunch of the issues, and then with 0:35:51.360 --> 0:35:54.319 enough after care and integration and support that a lot 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:56.719 of people could started a new direction in their life 0:35:56.719 --> 0:35:59.680 free from opiates. So he was worried that there was 0:35:59.800 --> 0:36:02.040 no way to do this in a nonprofit way, so 0:36:02.080 --> 0:36:05.440 he started a for profit company called n d A 0:36:05.560 --> 0:36:10.319 International New Drug Application of NDA International, And as it 0:36:10.320 --> 0:36:15.640 turned out, several of the early researchers started suing each 0:36:15.640 --> 0:36:20.800 other for intellectual property for patents for use patents that 0:36:20.840 --> 0:36:23.759 I began for OPI addiction and other dependencies. Any case, 0:36:23.800 --> 0:36:28.279 I saw these lawsuits about I P really be very, 0:36:28.480 --> 0:36:31.960 very destructive for the entire field, and that has basically 0:36:32.000 --> 0:36:36.080 blocked I began development. Now those core patents have expired, 0:36:36.120 --> 0:36:39.560 but I hired their same patent attorney and I said, 0:36:39.600 --> 0:36:42.000 I would like you to help us develop an anti 0:36:42.120 --> 0:36:46.520 patent strategy for use patents so that nobody, not MAPS, 0:36:46.600 --> 0:36:48.680 nobody could patent m d m A for any of 0:36:48.680 --> 0:36:51.120 the things that had had been used before PTSD or 0:36:51.520 --> 0:36:54.160 any number of things so prior arts. So we tell 0:36:54.200 --> 0:36:56.680 stories on our website. People tell stories of m d 0:36:56.760 --> 0:36:59.000 m A useful for this or that, and then nobody 0:36:59.000 --> 0:37:02.680 can claim to it. And entered that idea. So when 0:37:02.680 --> 0:37:05.200 I started MAPS in eighty six, I had thought that 0:37:05.400 --> 0:37:08.000 m d M A would go generic and there would 0:37:08.000 --> 0:37:10.120 be no money making opportunities. It would be a low 0:37:10.120 --> 0:37:12.280 cost drug. But it was worth doing. It was essentially 0:37:12.280 --> 0:37:16.520 worth doing anyway. And there was this moment in two 0:37:16.560 --> 0:37:21.320 thousand and fourteen. My wife was head of the Belmont 0:37:21.360 --> 0:37:25.000 Foundation for Education and they were having a gala, and 0:37:25.239 --> 0:37:27.239 I was going to the gala, and I thought, you know, 0:37:27.320 --> 0:37:29.359 she's in charge of this. There's a good food. I'm 0:37:29.440 --> 0:37:32.440 just gonna get superstoned, and I'm just gonna eat. I'm 0:37:32.480 --> 0:37:34.960 off work. And so while I was there, I ran 0:37:35.040 --> 0:37:39.120 across a patent attorney who I knew from Belmont, who 0:37:39.120 --> 0:37:42.120 had helped patent broo LSD. And what he said was 0:37:42.640 --> 0:37:46.360 that there was this policy that I had overlooked. I 0:37:46.400 --> 0:37:48.880 took a class in food and drug regulation at Harvard 0:37:48.920 --> 0:37:50.600 Law School and it wasn't even mentioned. And what it 0:37:50.680 --> 0:37:54.719 is called is data exclusivity. So we have thanks to 0:37:54.800 --> 0:37:59.160 give to Ronald Reagan for this. So in Ronald Reagan 0:37:59.200 --> 0:38:03.160 signed a law to provide incentives for developing drugs that 0:38:03.160 --> 0:38:07.440 were off patent and the incentive is called data exclusivity. 0:38:07.520 --> 0:38:10.279 And so what it means is that if you are 0:38:10.320 --> 0:38:12.839 the first to make a drug into a medicine that 0:38:12.880 --> 0:38:16.200 has never been made into a medicine before and it's 0:38:16.239 --> 0:38:20.879 completely not pentable, that you have exclusive use of your 0:38:20.960 --> 0:38:25.759 data for five years. And if you do pediatric studies, 0:38:25.840 --> 0:38:29.040 which the FDA is actually requiring us to do, if 0:38:29.080 --> 0:38:32.080 we succeed m DAMA sys, that therapy for PTSD and adults, 0:38:32.120 --> 0:38:35.160 which is eighteen years or over, we must do studies 0:38:35.160 --> 0:38:37.560 in twelve to seventeen year olds and you get six 0:38:37.600 --> 0:38:41.680 months more data exclusivity. And data exclusivity blocks a generic 0:38:41.719 --> 0:38:46.799 competitor from having the FDA evaluate their application until the 0:38:46.840 --> 0:38:48.520 five and a half years is over, and it takes 0:38:48.560 --> 0:38:52.000 a minimum of eight months and potentially longer for the 0:38:52.120 --> 0:38:56.879 FDA to evaluate a generic manufacturer's license to make sure 0:38:56.880 --> 0:38:59.759 that it's really pure and stable their drug. So we 0:39:00.160 --> 0:39:04.399 have this period in excess of six years of data exclusivity, 0:39:04.440 --> 0:39:07.520 and then later England, I mean, the European Medicines Agency 0:39:07.640 --> 0:39:11.279 made um similar data exclusivity law, but it's ten years 0:39:11.320 --> 0:39:15.879 data exclusivity in Europe. So the beauty of data exclusivity 0:39:15.920 --> 0:39:18.920 from our point of view is that the fundamental difference 0:39:18.960 --> 0:39:21.880 from it in a patent is that other companies can 0:39:21.960 --> 0:39:25.560 develop their own data. We're not stopping anybody from doing anything, 0:39:26.320 --> 0:39:29.160 and so if another company gets uh their own data, 0:39:29.200 --> 0:39:32.759 they could get permission from FDA to market mptmacist the 0:39:32.760 --> 0:39:35.239 therapy for PTSD, just as we But we have such 0:39:35.280 --> 0:39:38.440 a lead and it's so expensive that we don't think 0:39:38.440 --> 0:39:40.879 there's going to be any competition. We think that the 0:39:40.920 --> 0:39:42.879 competitors what they are going to do. And we even 0:39:43.040 --> 0:39:45.840 don't really call them competitor as we call them, you know, 0:39:46.160 --> 0:39:49.960 collaborators in this larger mission of mass mental health and 0:39:50.000 --> 0:39:53.200 spiritualized humanity. So we will have this period of data 0:39:53.239 --> 0:39:56.840 exclusivity and that's where the moneymaking comes in. That that 0:39:56.960 --> 0:39:59.600 we will be the only ones to be able to 0:40:00.040 --> 0:40:04.160 market anyway. The other beauty of data exclusivity is that 0:40:04.360 --> 0:40:08.200 we don't have to have nondisclosure agreements. We don't have 0:40:08.280 --> 0:40:12.239 to keep the data private or proprietary. We just make 0:40:12.239 --> 0:40:15.799 everything public because we own the data from submitting it 0:40:15.880 --> 0:40:19.080 to the FDA, because we were the sponsor, and we 0:40:19.160 --> 0:40:23.240 then get the data exclusivity automatically. It's not even a question. 0:40:23.320 --> 0:40:28.040 It's an automatic opportunity to choose data exclusivity. So I see, 0:40:28.080 --> 0:40:31.080 so you can be quite transparent with everything you're doing. 0:40:31.440 --> 0:40:34.799 And then meanwhile, once it gets approved, the revenue for 0:40:35.000 --> 0:40:38.880 n DMA, the public Benefit Corporation immediately will come mostly 0:40:38.960 --> 0:40:41.200 from the selling of n d M A and only 0:40:41.239 --> 0:40:45.359 in a small way from creating clinics or things like that. Yeah, 0:40:45.640 --> 0:40:47.719 or maybe not at all from creating clinics. We are 0:40:47.760 --> 0:40:51.239 thinking that we might want to have some centers of excellence, 0:40:51.560 --> 0:40:56.000 some clinics with large numbers of therapists, you know, expertly trained, 0:40:56.040 --> 0:41:00.279 and they'll become sort of research training and treatment sent ors. 0:41:00.600 --> 0:41:02.440 We have to work out all the compliance issues to 0:41:02.480 --> 0:41:04.920 see whether that's possible. But the main funds are going 0:41:05.000 --> 0:41:09.439 to come through the selling of m d m A 0:41:09.440 --> 0:41:14.319 as a prescription medicine. It's pretty relatively inexpensive to make 0:41:14.320 --> 0:41:19.040 pharmaceutical medicines, most of them. And then the value or 0:41:19.080 --> 0:41:22.839 what you charge is based on the value to the 0:41:23.360 --> 0:41:27.160 offset the medical expenses, to the improved healthcare, to the society, 0:41:27.200 --> 0:41:29.919 to the individual, to the you know people now who 0:41:29.920 --> 0:41:34.040 didn't work obviously for all the intensive linds of people 0:41:34.080 --> 0:41:37.680 who are using m d m A outside this therapeutic context, 0:41:37.719 --> 0:41:39.000 I mean the way that you and I have in 0:41:39.040 --> 0:41:41.400 the past, and so many others, and where there's always 0:41:41.440 --> 0:41:43.920 the problems of adulteration. I mean, just recently, there are 0:41:44.040 --> 0:41:45.759 a couple of reports I think out of l A 0:41:46.040 --> 0:41:48.560 of Fentinel getting mixed in which people tall with m 0:41:48.640 --> 0:41:50.400 d m A and people die as a result of that. 0:41:50.600 --> 0:41:52.359 And I remember, even like you know, when m DMA 0:41:52.480 --> 0:41:55.920 became the owner's ecstasy and at some point ecstasy developed 0:41:55.920 --> 0:41:59.319 a bed name because it was no one as adulterated 0:41:59.520 --> 0:42:01.520 um and the m A. And then in fact people 0:42:01.560 --> 0:42:03.879 come up with Molly as if somehow Molly is now 0:42:03.920 --> 0:42:05.800 the pure d M A L. I think it was 0:42:05.880 --> 0:42:09.560 just the relabeling of of essentially an illicitly produced black 0:42:09.560 --> 0:42:13.120 market drug of unknown potency impurity. But what I'm wondering is, 0:42:13.120 --> 0:42:15.880 is this process that MAX is engaged in, what are 0:42:15.880 --> 0:42:18.719 going to be the spill over applications for the broader, 0:42:18.760 --> 0:42:21.920 you know, tensive lines of people who are still presumably 0:42:21.960 --> 0:42:24.720 getting their M D m A off the black market 0:42:24.960 --> 0:42:27.760 and having to deal with issues of you know, potency 0:42:27.800 --> 0:42:31.239 impurity apart from their ability to access some forms of 0:42:31.800 --> 0:42:35.719 you know, drug quality testing. Will there be any implications there? 0:42:35.800 --> 0:42:38.520 There will be. There will be because I think what 0:42:38.600 --> 0:42:45.120 we've seen from medical marijuana is that medicalization changes people's attitudes. 0:42:45.160 --> 0:42:49.960 They've been fed propaganda for fifty years, you know, as 0:42:49.960 --> 0:42:52.920 we talked about some of the dangers of marijuana. Marijuana 0:42:52.960 --> 0:42:55.480 does have dangers. M DMA does have dangers, but the 0:42:55.520 --> 0:42:59.480 propaganda has vastly exaggerated them, and the story is that 0:42:59.520 --> 0:43:03.040 these dry tend to be all risks and no benefits. 0:43:03.160 --> 0:43:05.640 And I think that's why the prohibitionists have so fought 0:43:05.719 --> 0:43:09.840 research into medical marijuana research into psychedelics, because then you 0:43:09.840 --> 0:43:13.120 start telling a more nuanced picture, and under certain contexts, 0:43:13.719 --> 0:43:16.640 the benefits outweigh the risks. So what we've seen with 0:43:16.719 --> 0:43:22.440 medical marijuana is that as more states have endorsed medical marijuana, 0:43:23.120 --> 0:43:28.319 the support for marijuana legalization for non medical, celebratory, recreational 0:43:28.600 --> 0:43:31.440 adult use, however you want to call it, has grown. 0:43:32.400 --> 0:43:35.240 And so I think we are now at this point 0:43:35.280 --> 0:43:40.840 in America where one hopes that maybe will have a 0:43:40.920 --> 0:43:43.640 law that will pass through Congress signed by the President 0:43:43.760 --> 0:43:47.959 that takes away the prohibition of marijuana federally and leads 0:43:47.960 --> 0:43:50.400 it to the states the way things happened with alcohol, 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:53.240 So I think that we are going to see something 0:43:54.239 --> 0:43:59.640 similar happening with psychedelics. That the more we move forward 0:43:59.719 --> 0:44:03.120 with medicalization, and then even though we're talking about is 0:44:03.200 --> 0:44:06.239 as only trained therapists will be able to administer at 0:44:06.280 --> 0:44:09.719 the patients only under direct supervision, MDMA will never be 0:44:09.760 --> 0:44:13.399 a take on drug, but people will start to understand 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:17.520 that there are tremendous therapeutic potentials for this, but also 0:44:18.200 --> 0:44:21.000 a lot of potential benefits outside of medicine or outside 0:44:21.000 --> 0:44:23.600 of religion. So I think that what we're already seeing 0:44:24.520 --> 0:44:29.680 is decrim Efforts for psychedelics that are taking place started 0:44:29.680 --> 0:44:32.959 in Denver, actually, which was the first city to make 0:44:33.040 --> 0:44:36.920 mushrooms the lowest enforcement priority. Then that went to Oakland 0:44:36.960 --> 0:44:39.640 and they expanded it to plant psychedelics, and then in 0:44:39.880 --> 0:44:42.399 Arbor and and all sorts of other cities have now 0:44:42.440 --> 0:44:45.600 done that. And then the state of Oregon has passed 0:44:45.680 --> 0:44:49.279 at as an initiative, the organ Psilocybin Initiative, which is 0:44:49.320 --> 0:44:55.759 setting up a state legal system of trained guides who 0:44:55.800 --> 0:44:58.040 may or may not be licensed to do therapy that 0:44:58.120 --> 0:45:03.360 can give silicide. Been two a range of people, some 0:45:03.520 --> 0:45:07.360 of them who have clinical conditions, but others who just 0:45:07.400 --> 0:45:10.280 wanted for personal growth. And there's gonna be something similar 0:45:10.320 --> 0:45:12.600 on the ballot in Colorado, but it's going to be 0:45:12.600 --> 0:45:16.440 beyond just psilocybin. It will again do plant psychedelics. Now 0:45:16.480 --> 0:45:19.359 I should say that there's this not md No, there's 0:45:19.360 --> 0:45:23.359 this romantic notion that that has proven true for the 0:45:23.480 --> 0:45:27.440 voters that if you say natural medicine, or you say 0:45:27.480 --> 0:45:31.560 plant based medicines or it's from nature, you get a 0:45:31.600 --> 0:45:34.160 lot more support than if you say, oh, and and 0:45:34.400 --> 0:45:37.320 there's also some good ones from the laboratory that they're synthetic, 0:45:37.440 --> 0:45:41.880 like LSD and M D m A. So the initiatives 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:46.200 and the legalization efforts have so far left out uh 0:45:46.400 --> 0:45:49.840 M D M A and LSD, which are laboratory based. 0:45:49.840 --> 0:45:53.880 They are, you know, semisynthetic. Those molecules do not appear 0:45:53.880 --> 0:45:56.480 in nature, but there's molecules that are somewhat similar that 0:45:56.520 --> 0:45:59.800 then you modify. So I think that what we will see, 0:45:59.800 --> 0:46:04.080 what UM basically suggesting is that if M D M 0:46:04.120 --> 0:46:08.399 A becomes commercially available as a medicine, what we need 0:46:08.520 --> 0:46:12.239 is a decade of the rollout of psychedelic clinics. And 0:46:12.280 --> 0:46:14.800 I think what we're gonna see is six or seven 0:46:14.920 --> 0:46:18.719 thousand psychedelic clinics. In the course of that decade, we're 0:46:18.760 --> 0:46:23.200 hoping to train at least therapists, and that there will 0:46:23.239 --> 0:46:27.640 be these clinics all over America. And the reason I 0:46:27.760 --> 0:46:30.120 use that number just to show where it comes from, 0:46:30.239 --> 0:46:33.160 is that there's over six thousand hospice centers. So if 0:46:33.160 --> 0:46:35.160 you think where people go to have a different approach 0:46:35.200 --> 0:46:38.000 towards death, and I think every town that's big enough 0:46:38.040 --> 0:46:40.200 to have a hospice center is big enough to have 0:46:40.200 --> 0:46:43.359 a psychedelic treatment center. So I think we'll have six 0:46:43.440 --> 0:46:46.959 or seven thousands of these psychedelic treatment centers. And the 0:46:47.080 --> 0:46:52.719 FDA and regulators respond to data, but people respond to stories. 0:46:53.239 --> 0:46:55.760 That's why this Netflix documentary is going to be so important. 0:46:57.360 --> 0:46:59.279 Let's take a break here and go to an ad. 0:47:13.000 --> 0:47:15.759 You're you're hitting on a lot of issues here. I mean, 0:47:15.800 --> 0:47:17.719 what I'm thinking is, I think you're making some very 0:47:17.760 --> 0:47:20.879 interesting analogies both with marijuana and with a broader psychedelics 0:47:20.880 --> 0:47:23.399 and plant medicine thing. The way I look at it 0:47:23.440 --> 0:47:26.000 is what you're saying about medical Marona is exactly right. 0:47:26.040 --> 0:47:28.319 And it was part of our long term strategy right 0:47:28.360 --> 0:47:32.040 that by normalizing and legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, it 0:47:32.120 --> 0:47:35.480 would have a spillover effect in terms of public consciousness 0:47:35.480 --> 0:47:39.360 around the relative safety and benefits of marijuana, and looking 0:47:39.360 --> 0:47:43.040 in retrospect, it turned out that are strategic thinking around 0:47:43.080 --> 0:47:47.080 that back to the mid nineties turned out to be accurate. Now. 0:47:47.200 --> 0:47:50.279 The difference, of course, is that when you're buying marijuana 0:47:50.400 --> 0:47:53.759 that's been approved and has stayed oversight, bodies making sure 0:47:53.840 --> 0:47:57.440 it's you know safe that the marijuana being produced illegally 0:47:57.680 --> 0:48:01.359 is not that much different. I'm it's got some pesticides 0:48:01.400 --> 0:48:04.560 in this and that, But the risks of adulterated marijuana 0:48:04.880 --> 0:48:08.360 are are really pretty diminimous. And even these reports about 0:48:08.480 --> 0:48:11.120 finital getting mixed in with marijuana appear to be either 0:48:11.200 --> 0:48:15.560 nine bullshit right. So, I mean, you have the spill 0:48:15.680 --> 0:48:18.279 over in terms of the broader public consciousness, but the 0:48:18.360 --> 0:48:21.960 issues of an adulterated market were not that significant. When 0:48:21.960 --> 0:48:23.960 you look at the plant medicine stuff, and you hear 0:48:24.080 --> 0:48:26.560 some of the people in the plant medicine coalitions who 0:48:26.800 --> 0:48:28.680 are a little freaked out with all of the kind 0:48:28.680 --> 0:48:34.680 of medicalization, psychotherapeuticization of psilocybin, of mushrooms, of all these things, 0:48:34.760 --> 0:48:37.000 and they worry. But my sense is what you're saying 0:48:37.080 --> 0:48:41.320 is exactly right. It's going to increase people's comfort around 0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:45.080 thinking about these substances and using them. That the issues 0:48:45.120 --> 0:48:48.440 of adulteration, especially when it's you're talking about mushrooms or 0:48:48.440 --> 0:48:50.680 things like that, or on mescaline when it comes from 0:48:50.719 --> 0:48:54.439 peyote or san pedro, are not that significant. But when 0:48:54.440 --> 0:48:57.080 it comes to m d m A, you are talking 0:48:57.120 --> 0:49:01.040 about stuff a white powdered drug that's being reduced illegally 0:49:01.080 --> 0:49:05.160 around the world where issues of potency and purity are real. 0:49:05.640 --> 0:49:07.759 You know, when we look back at the history of 0:49:07.800 --> 0:49:10.600 the dozens or hundreds of people who have died from 0:49:10.760 --> 0:49:14.120 using quote unquote ecstasy over the years, it does appear 0:49:14.120 --> 0:49:17.279 that a substantial proportion of those was because the substances 0:49:17.280 --> 0:49:20.839 they were using were adulterated in some way. And that's 0:49:20.840 --> 0:49:24.480 where I'm wondering. You know, as you succeed with getting 0:49:24.719 --> 0:49:28.040 m d M A approved hopefully by four you know, 0:49:28.239 --> 0:49:30.640 will there be some spill over in terms of the 0:49:30.840 --> 0:49:34.720 safety of m d M A mean, because you know, paradoxically, 0:49:35.400 --> 0:49:37.720 probably the safest thing that could happen from a public 0:49:37.719 --> 0:49:40.880 health perspective would be for legally produced m d m 0:49:40.880 --> 0:49:44.640 A to be the facto diverted to illicit markets. But 0:49:44.760 --> 0:49:47.440 from a political and replatory perspective, that would be the 0:49:47.440 --> 0:49:50.080 worst possible thing that would happen everything you've been trying 0:49:50.120 --> 0:49:52.680 to fight for. So what I mean, apart from the 0:49:52.719 --> 0:49:55.600 public consciousness shifting in the positive way you talk about, 0:49:55.800 --> 0:49:59.000 what about the market itself? Yeah, okay, let me just 0:49:59.080 --> 0:50:01.600 correct one thing with is that people can die from 0:50:01.600 --> 0:50:04.840 pure M d M A. And what's happened in raves 0:50:05.120 --> 0:50:07.960 is that sometimes with even with pure M d m A, 0:50:08.440 --> 0:50:10.960 what people do is they dance all night or they 0:50:11.000 --> 0:50:15.239 overheat and they don't have adequate fluid. A lot of 0:50:15.280 --> 0:50:18.000 these bars have seen that once people are in M DUMA, 0:50:18.040 --> 0:50:20.040 they don't buy as much alcohol, and so they have 0:50:20.160 --> 0:50:24.200 charged for water. Some egregiously have even turned off faucets 0:50:24.200 --> 0:50:27.239 in the bathroom so you have to buy water. Um, 0:50:27.320 --> 0:50:32.239 so people can die from what's called hyperthermia from overheating. 0:50:32.600 --> 0:50:36.960 Does not happen in clinical research ever, never, never, because 0:50:37.280 --> 0:50:40.399 there's adequate fluid replacement and people aren't dancing all night. 0:50:40.440 --> 0:50:43.520 And so also sometimes people have heard the harm reduction 0:50:43.600 --> 0:50:46.759 message drink fluids, and so people will drink too much 0:50:46.800 --> 0:50:50.320 water and they die from what's called hyponitremia from thinning 0:50:50.360 --> 0:50:53.320 their blood too much. And so the best harm reduction 0:50:53.400 --> 0:50:57.360 message there is that drink stuff with electrolytes, fruit juices 0:50:57.640 --> 0:51:00.360 or other things. Water is not the best. But I 0:51:00.360 --> 0:51:02.960 had to answer your question directly, here's the beauty of 0:51:02.960 --> 0:51:05.000 our situation. M d M A has been used by 0:51:05.040 --> 0:51:07.399 tens and tens and tens of millions of people over 0:51:07.400 --> 0:51:11.080 the last forty years, so the one in a million 0:51:11.160 --> 0:51:14.160 or one in two million side effects have come to 0:51:14.239 --> 0:51:18.280 the surface because when the FDA evaluates a drug, usually 0:51:18.280 --> 0:51:21.080 it's been studied in only hundreds or thousands of people, 0:51:21.120 --> 0:51:22.720 and so when you put it out in the market 0:51:22.760 --> 0:51:25.240 and a million people take it, then you start discovering 0:51:25.360 --> 0:51:29.279 more side effects. But we have this enormous body of 0:51:29.360 --> 0:51:33.960 information over more than forty years about m DUMA being 0:51:34.040 --> 0:51:38.479 used in the most risky circumstances, often adulterated, and there's 0:51:38.520 --> 0:51:43.000 over five thousand papers scientific papers on m DUMA or ecstasy. 0:51:44.040 --> 0:51:47.000 So if anybody really wants to look at what are 0:51:47.520 --> 0:51:51.000 the risks of m d m A from the scientific 0:51:51.160 --> 0:51:55.360 literature um, the investigators brochure and our reports are safety 0:51:55.360 --> 0:51:57.800 reports the FDA, which are also up on our website, 0:51:58.200 --> 0:52:01.520 are really good resource. Also, we have what's called the 0:52:01.560 --> 0:52:05.839 treatment Manual, which describes our therapeutic approach. So if people 0:52:05.880 --> 0:52:08.360 want to understand the therapy that's used with the m 0:52:08.440 --> 0:52:12.080 d m A, they should read the treatment Manually. So 0:52:12.560 --> 0:52:16.600 I think that this idea of as m DUMA becomes 0:52:16.600 --> 0:52:20.640 medicalized and more and more people will hear stories about healing. 0:52:20.680 --> 0:52:23.800 They will, of course know that those stories are about 0:52:23.920 --> 0:52:27.799 pure M d m A. We have trained therapists and 0:52:27.840 --> 0:52:32.160 others that help support people when they have difficult emotional experiences, 0:52:32.600 --> 0:52:35.360 and that's a really important part of psychedelic harm reduction. 0:52:35.520 --> 0:52:39.840 A lot of people still do not understand that M 0:52:39.920 --> 0:52:42.360 d m A was a therapy drug before it was 0:52:42.400 --> 0:52:45.759 a party drug ecstasy, and a lot of people approach 0:52:45.960 --> 0:52:49.520 these experiences as just I'm gonna take it. It's a party, 0:52:49.920 --> 0:52:53.920 I'm gonna have fun. And when difficult material comes up, 0:52:53.960 --> 0:52:59.080 if they have memories of difficult emotional situations too many 0:52:59.120 --> 0:53:02.640 times people think, oh, my experience is going bad, this 0:53:02.719 --> 0:53:05.200 is turning into a bad trip. Let me suppress these 0:53:05.280 --> 0:53:07.959 bad thoughts and bad feelings, and then they can't really 0:53:07.960 --> 0:53:10.560 do that. And then if they don't pay attention to that, 0:53:10.680 --> 0:53:13.000 now it's sort of moved up from the unconscious, it's 0:53:13.040 --> 0:53:15.400 more conscious, they get to end up worse off for 0:53:15.400 --> 0:53:18.080 for months or years later. So I think the more 0:53:18.200 --> 0:53:23.040 that the idea that these substances when combined with therapy 0:53:23.480 --> 0:53:27.240 have tremendous therapeutic potential for people with post traumatic stress 0:53:27.239 --> 0:53:32.880 disorder and other major mental illnesses, that the recreational market. 0:53:32.960 --> 0:53:35.840 People will have more of an idea of what to 0:53:36.000 --> 0:53:40.600 do when difficult material comes into their awareness instead of 0:53:40.600 --> 0:53:44.839 trying to suppress it. Hopefully they will open up to it, 0:53:45.160 --> 0:53:47.720 talk to their friends around them, create a safe space, 0:53:48.400 --> 0:53:50.279 you know, and try to go through and let out 0:53:50.280 --> 0:53:53.239 those feelings and let out and express those emotions rather 0:53:53.280 --> 0:53:56.160 than suppress them. So I think that there'll be fewer 0:53:56.239 --> 0:54:00.040 people caught unaware by difficult material when they take the 0:54:00.120 --> 0:54:03.040 drugs for parties then there are now, because still it's 0:54:03.080 --> 0:54:05.680 not as widespread as we like the idea that these 0:54:06.280 --> 0:54:09.040 can have tremendous therapetic potential. But but I think the 0:54:09.080 --> 0:54:12.320 other big part of harm reduction is called drug checking. 0:54:13.160 --> 0:54:17.799 So the world's best example of psychedelic harm reduction at 0:54:17.800 --> 0:54:20.719 a festival is the Boom festival in Portugal. And so 0:54:20.760 --> 0:54:23.640 we we started the psychedelic harm reduction efforts at Boom 0:54:23.640 --> 0:54:26.319 in two thousand and two, and we started working at 0:54:26.320 --> 0:54:30.520 Burning Man in two thousand and three. But because Portugal 0:54:30.560 --> 0:54:33.600 has decriminalized drugs, you know, it was a tremendous decriminalized 0:54:33.640 --> 0:54:37.000 possession for ones on usual. They did not decriminalize the transfer, 0:54:37.120 --> 0:54:39.399 sale or things like that. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah, 0:54:39.440 --> 0:54:42.560 and it was just a tremendous success. So at Boom 0:54:42.600 --> 0:54:47.920 they have thin layer chromatography on site to identify what 0:54:48.200 --> 0:54:53.319 really is in these illicit drugs before you take them, 0:54:53.400 --> 0:54:58.080 and so it would be really important over time, particularly 0:54:58.080 --> 0:55:01.400 with fentanyl being you now to adulterate a lot of 0:55:01.400 --> 0:55:05.279 different drugs. They have drug checking to be accepted as 0:55:05.360 --> 0:55:09.439 a standard part of harm reduction. And when you look 0:55:09.480 --> 0:55:12.240 at the number of people that have died of opiate 0:55:12.320 --> 0:55:14.640 related overdoses over a hundred thousand I think it's a 0:55:14.680 --> 0:55:17.879 hundred and seven or something thousand in America in one year, 0:55:18.600 --> 0:55:21.480 a lot of that is adulterated with fentyl. So we 0:55:21.520 --> 0:55:25.560 really need drug checking until we get to the point 0:55:26.080 --> 0:55:30.279 of having full legalization where even the drugs that are 0:55:30.280 --> 0:55:34.080 sold for non medical purposes are pure and people could 0:55:34.080 --> 0:55:36.120 rely on their peer And I think, of course with 0:55:36.200 --> 0:55:39.280 this over those crisis of the acceptance by the public 0:55:39.400 --> 0:55:43.160 and even by law enforcement of fentanyl testing strips has 0:55:43.200 --> 0:55:47.080 grown very substantially, and that will spill over obviously to 0:55:47.239 --> 0:55:51.279 things like testing psychedelics and m DMA and such. And 0:55:51.400 --> 0:55:53.720 I need to bring this issue up obviously that even 0:55:53.840 --> 0:55:57.360 in the psychotherapeutic regulated context. There are risks, and I 0:55:57.400 --> 0:55:59.759 think you had to deal with this, right. There was 0:55:59.760 --> 0:56:01.960 the to of of some of the therapists who were 0:56:01.960 --> 0:56:05.359 associated with the m d m A studies, Um, you know, 0:56:05.400 --> 0:56:09.160 getting accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. Right. I think New 0:56:09.200 --> 0:56:12.120 York Magazine did a big expose on this stuff. And 0:56:12.160 --> 0:56:13.920 you're having to deal with this stuff. And I know 0:56:14.320 --> 0:56:17.120 MAPS is you know, obviously takes all sorts of precautions. 0:56:17.160 --> 0:56:18.759 So what more can you can you? I mean, I 0:56:18.760 --> 0:56:20.560 know you may be limited by lawyers and this and 0:56:20.560 --> 0:56:22.200 that from what you can say, But what can you 0:56:22.600 --> 0:56:25.640 tell people to reassure them when they're reading these reports 0:56:25.680 --> 0:56:30.960 about their being forms of you know, unethical behavior bicychlotherapists. 0:56:30.960 --> 0:56:33.000 And we're not just talking about Shaman's down in the 0:56:33.080 --> 0:56:36.040 jungles in South America. We're talking about in the US 0:56:36.120 --> 0:56:39.759 and in Canada, you know, trained psychotherapist doing things that 0:56:40.040 --> 0:56:45.000 are inappropriate. Yeah. I think it was a real tragedy 0:56:45.080 --> 0:56:48.279 that had happened. You know, we're very sad for the 0:56:48.320 --> 0:56:54.040 person that had happened to and we have instituted a 0:56:54.080 --> 0:56:58.640 fair number of measures we think going forward, particularly as 0:56:58.680 --> 0:57:01.640 we move into post approval use if we get that 0:57:01.719 --> 0:57:06.319 far to try to minimize that. So what we are 0:57:06.400 --> 0:57:10.280 aware of that this has only happened at one time 0:57:10.840 --> 0:57:14.239 out of over about three and sixty patients. It may 0:57:14.239 --> 0:57:15.920 have happened more, but we're not aware of it. And 0:57:15.960 --> 0:57:18.880 we think with all of the media attention about it 0:57:18.920 --> 0:57:21.320 that that you know, we encourage if it did, haven't 0:57:21.320 --> 0:57:27.280 anybody else that they should come forward? The unethical sexual 0:57:27.360 --> 0:57:31.640 misconduct began after the therapy was over. In that one 0:57:31.760 --> 0:57:36.680 particular case, we immediately fired those people. They're not working 0:57:36.720 --> 0:57:39.360 with us. We informed all of the therapists how serious 0:57:39.400 --> 0:57:42.920 of a transgression this was, that anybody else of course, 0:57:42.960 --> 0:57:45.520 would get fired if that happened. We put out a 0:57:45.560 --> 0:57:49.760 public statement. We even changed our informed consent form and 0:57:49.800 --> 0:57:52.440 add a sentence about how beware if you are a 0:57:52.520 --> 0:57:56.360 patient and started developing feelings, you know, sexual feelings for 0:57:56.400 --> 0:57:59.920 the therapist. I think going forward, you know, we we 0:58:00.040 --> 0:58:05.520 have really made even more prominent in our training about 0:58:05.600 --> 0:58:08.680 ethical behavior. We have a code of ethics, and we're 0:58:08.720 --> 0:58:12.800 talking about having a patient bill of rights that would 0:58:12.840 --> 0:58:16.560 be given to all the patients in research but also 0:58:16.640 --> 0:58:19.680 now post approval, mostly post approval. I don't think we 0:58:19.680 --> 0:58:21.800 haven't quite ready yet, but this idea of this patient 0:58:21.800 --> 0:58:24.960 bill of Rights, which makes it very clear we're to 0:58:25.080 --> 0:58:28.080 complain to if there's anything that is happening that it 0:58:28.280 --> 0:58:34.080 feels inappropriate. Either at the tip, did it freak out 0:58:34.120 --> 0:58:36.600 the FDA at all or slow the process of proceeding 0:58:36.640 --> 0:58:42.360 with Well, this happened around five years ago. We did 0:58:42.440 --> 0:58:45.080 report it to the FDA, to Health Canada, to all 0:58:45.120 --> 0:58:48.400 the regulatory agencies as soon as we heard about it. 0:58:49.520 --> 0:58:52.840 I don't think that it did freak them out. Again. 0:58:52.880 --> 0:58:58.520 The f d A is they don't regulate psychotherapy, you know, 0:58:58.720 --> 0:59:00.880 they regulate drugs, and so this is kind of a 0:59:00.880 --> 0:59:03.000 conundrum for them about, you know, how to do this 0:59:03.120 --> 0:59:07.000 where the treatment is primarily psychotherapy, but it involves a 0:59:07.080 --> 0:59:09.040 drug in this case m D m A or another 0:59:09.120 --> 0:59:11.640 case of psilocybin or ketemine, you know, to make the 0:59:11.640 --> 0:59:14.360 therapy more effective. Although I should say that ketamine was 0:59:14.360 --> 0:59:18.200 approved without psychotherapy s ketemine, So I think that, um, 0:59:19.320 --> 0:59:23.520 what we are seeing is that this is a problem 0:59:23.560 --> 0:59:29.760 that goes beyond psychedelic psychotherapy to psychiatry and psychotherapy itself 0:59:30.200 --> 0:59:33.040 and all sorts of other kind of situations where there's 0:59:33.080 --> 0:59:36.520 a lot of you know, close contact between people. So 0:59:36.920 --> 0:59:39.680 I think that what we are needing to do is 0:59:39.880 --> 0:59:42.480 when when you think about a drug and from the 0:59:42.480 --> 0:59:44.400 point of view the FDA, you look at you balance 0:59:44.440 --> 0:59:48.040 the risks and benefits, and so yeah, this is one 0:59:48.040 --> 0:59:51.560 of the risks. We don't think it's common. As I said, 0:59:51.560 --> 0:59:54.400 we only are aware of it of happening one time 0:59:55.120 --> 0:59:59.160 in the you know, roughly twenty years since we started 0:59:59.160 --> 1:00:01.120 doing this kind of work. Well, well, let me I 1:00:01.200 --> 1:00:02.600 see this thing. Part of the m d m A 1:00:02.680 --> 1:00:07.680 protocol involves always having a male and females therapist, and 1:00:07.720 --> 1:00:09.880 you've made the point that, in good part for cost 1:00:09.920 --> 1:00:13.200 and accessibility, that it should be sufficient if just one 1:00:13.240 --> 1:00:16.520 of them is a licensed therapist. But in this case, 1:00:16.600 --> 1:00:20.160 the scandal that resulted was what the other therapist, the 1:00:20.200 --> 1:00:22.920 fellow was somebody who had let his license lapse and 1:00:22.960 --> 1:00:27.000 therefore could not be held accountable by an oversight board 1:00:27.000 --> 1:00:30.520 in the same way that the licensed therapist could. So 1:00:30.560 --> 1:00:33.000 I mean, where are you on that issue now? I mean, 1:00:33.040 --> 1:00:35.320 do you is there ways of ensuring that people who 1:00:35.360 --> 1:00:39.480 are not licensed by you know, a psychologist board of 1:00:39.520 --> 1:00:41.800 some source, or therapist board of some sort can still 1:00:41.880 --> 1:00:44.919 be held accountable, or you still adhere to the issue 1:00:44.960 --> 1:00:46.960 that let's keep it the way it is for issues 1:00:47.000 --> 1:00:51.120 of cost and accessibility. Well, I I do believe that 1:00:51.400 --> 1:00:53.640 we should try to keep with a two person team 1:00:53.760 --> 1:00:57.080 for individual therapy. I do believe that the second person 1:00:57.160 --> 1:01:00.560 should not be required to have a license. The person 1:01:00.600 --> 1:01:05.560 that does have the license is held responsible, and so 1:01:05.680 --> 1:01:09.640 right now the female therapist who did have a license 1:01:09.800 --> 1:01:15.400 is having challenges with her licensing board. So there are 1:01:15.440 --> 1:01:19.600 people that are held responsible. I think that it's probably 1:01:19.760 --> 1:01:22.800 less likely to happen in two person teams, and even 1:01:22.880 --> 1:01:27.040 less likely in group therapy, even though again this unethical 1:01:27.080 --> 1:01:31.320 sexual misconduct came sexual after the therapy was over, when 1:01:31.320 --> 1:01:34.479 the cameras were off, and after that was all done. 1:01:34.520 --> 1:01:36.840 So the major ethical issue wasn't what happened in the 1:01:36.880 --> 1:01:40.640 moments of therapy, which one can see on its old videotape. 1:01:40.880 --> 1:01:42.959 The real issue was about one of the therapists getting 1:01:43.000 --> 1:01:47.360 involved sexually with the patient in subsequent period of time. Yes, 1:01:47.520 --> 1:01:49.760 I would say that the other part the essence of 1:01:49.800 --> 1:01:54.160 our method, which again I don't think was followed by 1:01:54.200 --> 1:01:59.120 this therapist team fully, is this idea that there's this 1:01:59.240 --> 1:02:02.640 inner healing and intelligence sort of what comes up has 1:02:02.640 --> 1:02:04.960 a certain wisdom to it when people are under the influence. 1:02:04.960 --> 1:02:09.680 But that fundamentally what we're doing is helping people heal themselves. 1:02:10.280 --> 1:02:13.840 So in traditional psychiatry, when you think about Freud and 1:02:14.120 --> 1:02:17.120 Friday and analysis, you know, you've got the therapist that's listening, 1:02:17.120 --> 1:02:19.400 the person is on the couch, and then the therapist 1:02:19.680 --> 1:02:21.960 every once in a while will give an interpretation. The 1:02:21.960 --> 1:02:25.200 therapist is the healer and they find what's going on 1:02:25.320 --> 1:02:29.360 in the person's unconscious during this free association process. But 1:02:29.640 --> 1:02:33.080 our approach is really designed to empower the patient to 1:02:33.160 --> 1:02:37.160 heal themselves. So I think there's a certain aspect of 1:02:37.240 --> 1:02:42.160 that theoretical orientation that empowers the patient and it doesn't 1:02:42.200 --> 1:02:45.480 make the therapist into the source of all the healing 1:02:45.680 --> 1:02:48.960 or the drug either. UM. So I think it is 1:02:49.040 --> 1:02:52.240 an issue is how do we create safe spaces and 1:02:52.280 --> 1:02:55.520 how do we do that once this um, you know, 1:02:55.600 --> 1:03:00.960 moves outside of a research context, UM and you know, 1:03:01.000 --> 1:03:03.720 I don't think there's any perfect solution. I mean, I'm 1:03:03.760 --> 1:03:05.800 thinking about this case also. It was dealing with a 1:03:05.840 --> 1:03:09.000 patient whose traumas involved you know, sexual abuse as a 1:03:09.160 --> 1:03:12.800 child and rape and I'm wondering if it's particularly challenging 1:03:12.920 --> 1:03:15.600 when the PTSD you're trying to deal with has this 1:03:15.720 --> 1:03:21.040 sexual component to it. I think it can be. Yes, yeah, 1:03:21.120 --> 1:03:23.400 I mean that's where it's even more important that we 1:03:23.560 --> 1:03:26.560 have this safe space. And now, not all of our 1:03:26.600 --> 1:03:30.400 teams are male female. We've actually had some all female teams. 1:03:30.920 --> 1:03:33.280 I'm not aware if we've had two male teams, but 1:03:33.400 --> 1:03:36.720 that might have been the case. But I do think 1:03:36.760 --> 1:03:40.880 that it's very delicate when people have been traumatized that 1:03:40.960 --> 1:03:44.320 they don't get redraumatized by the therapy. Now, some of 1:03:44.360 --> 1:03:49.800 the existing therapies prolonged exposure cognitive processing therapy, where they 1:03:49.840 --> 1:03:54.960 involve people talking about their traumas. It's very difficult for 1:03:55.000 --> 1:03:58.960 people because these traumas are so emotionally powerful and painful 1:03:59.360 --> 1:04:02.040 that often people drop out of those therapies, so that 1:04:02.160 --> 1:04:04.520 that's not the same kind of re traumatization that we're 1:04:04.520 --> 1:04:09.760 talking about by unethical sexual contact. But but you know, 1:04:09.800 --> 1:04:12.920 the md m A can help people deal with emotions 1:04:12.960 --> 1:04:16.560 that would otherwise be overwhelming. So I think that there 1:04:16.720 --> 1:04:20.480 is this concern that that you know, a valid concern 1:04:20.720 --> 1:04:24.360 that we should try to minimize to to zero. Going 1:04:24.440 --> 1:04:28.520 forward any of these situations in the future, and so 1:04:28.560 --> 1:04:32.320 we are doing our best to do that. A different 1:04:32.360 --> 1:04:35.600 subject here. I mean, you've been so enormously successful at 1:04:35.680 --> 1:04:39.280 raising money for this work, especially in recent years, and 1:04:39.320 --> 1:04:41.800 a lot of it has been from very wealthy individuals, 1:04:42.440 --> 1:04:44.440 um and and but I know, you know, one thing 1:04:44.480 --> 1:04:47.560 I ran into in my last years of raising money 1:04:47.600 --> 1:04:51.280 for the marijuana reform marijuana legalization ballot initiatives was that 1:04:51.360 --> 1:04:55.760 as the industry started growing up, the wealthy philanthropists started 1:04:55.800 --> 1:04:58.439 to say, you know, I'm less interested. So many people 1:04:58.480 --> 1:04:59.840 are making money from this, why don't you go to 1:04:59.840 --> 1:05:03.040 those those guys? You know, overwhelmingly the vast majority of 1:05:03.080 --> 1:05:07.320 the funding from sixteen had come from people who were 1:05:07.320 --> 1:05:11.000 philanthropically interested in this, not from people who are interested 1:05:11.040 --> 1:05:14.000 in is self interested for a profit way now, you've 1:05:14.040 --> 1:05:17.360 obviously gone through a similar transition. It was overwhelmingly, you know, 1:05:17.400 --> 1:05:20.280 philanthropic money you were raising. But in recent years, with 1:05:20.400 --> 1:05:23.520 the for profit side and having companies like the Tie 1:05:23.600 --> 1:05:27.360 or Compass that have multibillion dollar valuations, uh and other 1:05:27.440 --> 1:05:30.640 ones that are you know, very well financed, you must 1:05:30.640 --> 1:05:33.240 be running into the same thing where the philanthropists are saying, 1:05:33.520 --> 1:05:35.200 you know, go to the money guys. Now we're not 1:05:35.240 --> 1:05:37.560 in it for the money. They are. Is that what's 1:05:37.560 --> 1:05:40.080 happening and how you dealing with it? Well, that's a 1:05:40.080 --> 1:05:43.160 great question, Eithan. So in MAPS history, we've raised over 1:05:43.240 --> 1:05:45.439 about a hundred and thirty five or hundred forty billion 1:05:45.480 --> 1:05:51.080 dollars in grants, mostly donations and a few grants, and 1:05:51.560 --> 1:05:54.760 we've reached this point where we needed a substantial amount 1:05:54.760 --> 1:05:58.920 of money in a short time to really prepare for 1:05:59.040 --> 1:06:03.520 commercializa sh and so we did develop a new approach 1:06:04.400 --> 1:06:07.960 which we're calling a regenerative financing, and it's through a 1:06:08.120 --> 1:06:12.080 group called Vine Ventures, and it's our first effort to 1:06:12.240 --> 1:06:17.480 actually reach out to investors. But it's different than your 1:06:17.520 --> 1:06:20.520 traditional kind of venture capital where you try to get 1:06:20.520 --> 1:06:26.400 ten x returns. So it's for mission aligned investors where 1:06:26.440 --> 1:06:30.840 what we promise to do is share revenue a percentage 1:06:30.840 --> 1:06:35.720 of the revenue. So we have created this Vine Ventures 1:06:35.840 --> 1:06:39.919 deal to raise seventy million dollars and it's for six 1:06:39.960 --> 1:06:45.360 point one per cent of North American revenue for eight 1:06:45.440 --> 1:06:52.120 years after commercialization. There's a waterfall situation, meaning that as 1:06:52.400 --> 1:06:54.680 we return more and more to them, they get a 1:06:54.720 --> 1:06:58.520 lower and lower percentage, so we think it's most likely 1:06:58.600 --> 1:07:02.720 to be two x or three ax, but not beyond that. 1:07:02.840 --> 1:07:05.800 And then after this eight year period it just completely disappears. 1:07:06.360 --> 1:07:10.920 And because it's about a share of the revenue, and 1:07:10.960 --> 1:07:14.360 this is I think a really crucial point. There's no ownership, 1:07:14.400 --> 1:07:17.800 there's no control, there's no board of director seats, and 1:07:17.840 --> 1:07:20.440 on top of it, they don't care if we use 1:07:20.520 --> 1:07:24.400 a lot of the revenue for patient assistance programs, or 1:07:24.440 --> 1:07:28.120 for drug policy reform, or for other things that might 1:07:28.120 --> 1:07:32.000 not bring them back more money. So that it's about 1:07:32.000 --> 1:07:37.680 a revenue share. And we're probably around million or so 1:07:37.840 --> 1:07:41.680 of the seventy million so far raised. Um there's a 1:07:41.680 --> 1:07:44.320 fair number of the donors that didn't want to be 1:07:44.360 --> 1:07:47.520 involved because they didn't want to switch from donors to investors. 1:07:48.640 --> 1:07:52.080 And so my hope is that once we complete this 1:07:52.200 --> 1:07:54.960 seventy million dollar raise, which we think will happen in 1:07:55.000 --> 1:07:58.080 the next month or so, that we are going to 1:07:58.200 --> 1:08:01.080 need still a substantial amount of money. You know, as 1:08:01.120 --> 1:08:04.320 you succeed, your ambitions increase. So, as I said, we're 1:08:04.360 --> 1:08:08.120 wanting to globalize the patient access to m d m A, 1:08:08.480 --> 1:08:11.960 We're wanting to do all sorts of humanitarian projects, and 1:08:12.040 --> 1:08:14.880 so we're gonna need a fair amount of money to 1:08:14.880 --> 1:08:18.160 to do the research in Europe, to really do the 1:08:18.160 --> 1:08:21.400 commercialization in the US, there will be a point where 1:08:21.439 --> 1:08:25.080 we hit what we're calling a sustainability point, and that's 1:08:25.120 --> 1:08:28.080 where the income from the sale of m d m A, 1:08:28.120 --> 1:08:30.559 the profit from the sale of m d m A, 1:08:30.760 --> 1:08:33.800 covers all of the costs and then starts generating more 1:08:33.840 --> 1:08:38.120 money for more research, for more drug development, and also 1:08:38.280 --> 1:08:42.799 for moving some money to the nonprofit for drug policy reform, 1:08:42.880 --> 1:08:46.719 and also for you know, patient assistance programs. Patient assistance 1:08:46.720 --> 1:08:49.880 programs are particularly difficult in our situation because when you 1:08:49.960 --> 1:08:53.160 see a add on TV for a pharmaceutical drug and 1:08:53.160 --> 1:08:54.880 it says, if you can't afford the drug, you know, 1:08:55.120 --> 1:08:56.600 talk to us. We can give it to you for 1:08:56.720 --> 1:08:59.800 freer low cost um for us. If we give people 1:08:59.840 --> 1:09:01.800 a dm A for free, it doesn't do them any 1:09:01.800 --> 1:09:05.080 good unless they can afford the therapy, and the therapy 1:09:05.120 --> 1:09:09.840 could be ten dollars. So how do we really provide 1:09:09.880 --> 1:09:14.360 patient assistance and equitable access to people that can't otherwise 1:09:14.400 --> 1:09:17.760 afford it? For a large number of people, we're gonna 1:09:17.800 --> 1:09:19.640 need to give them the m DMA for free, but 1:09:19.680 --> 1:09:22.560 also pay their therapists. Well yeah, I mean, is it 1:09:22.680 --> 1:09:25.479 the hope that health insurance will start to cover this stuff? Well, 1:09:25.520 --> 1:09:28.240 they will, but we've got one third of people in 1:09:28.280 --> 1:09:30.480 America will accorded to one third don't even have insurance, 1:09:31.160 --> 1:09:34.679 and often they have underinsured. So I think my hope 1:09:34.760 --> 1:09:37.719 is that after we have completed the seventy million dollars, 1:09:38.160 --> 1:09:40.600 I would like to do the rest with philanthropy, to 1:09:40.640 --> 1:09:44.960 go back to the philanthropic model and instead of saying here, 1:09:45.000 --> 1:09:47.439 if you invest, this is what we can return to you, 1:09:48.120 --> 1:09:51.200 to really go back to the story is here. If 1:09:51.240 --> 1:09:53.800 you donate, here's the change that we can make in 1:09:53.840 --> 1:09:57.920 the world. And even though it will end up generating 1:09:58.040 --> 1:10:01.679 resources that we will be using for more research, manitarian 1:10:01.720 --> 1:10:04.519 projects based and assistance, Prince joke post for him, wouldn't 1:10:04.560 --> 1:10:08.440 you rather have us use the resources for that instead 1:10:08.479 --> 1:10:11.639 of giving back to investors. So I think the Vine 1:10:11.720 --> 1:10:15.400 Ventures deal came at a crucial time. It's a courageous 1:10:15.479 --> 1:10:20.600 and novel way of raising funds with this royalty financing. 1:10:20.840 --> 1:10:23.160 So Rick, I gotta tell you, I could just keep 1:10:23.200 --> 1:10:26.400 going here. I've loved having this conversation and you know, 1:10:26.479 --> 1:10:28.559 I'm sitting in a closet with no air conditioning. But 1:10:28.720 --> 1:10:30.680 this I've loved catching up with you, you know, and 1:10:30.720 --> 1:10:34.840 having our conversation get recorded for Psychoactive listeners. So what 1:10:34.920 --> 1:10:41.679 you've done, your focus, your commitment, your obsessiveness, your ethical values. Uh, 1:10:41.760 --> 1:10:45.360 it really is extraordinary. Rick, So you know, God bless 1:10:45.400 --> 1:10:47.960 with all this stuff. Thank you, Thank you very much. 1:10:48.040 --> 1:10:55.200 That's very sweet. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your 1:10:55.200 --> 1:10:57.439 friends about it, or you can write us a review 1:10:57.439 --> 1:11:00.680 at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. We 1:11:00.800 --> 1:11:03.240 love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to 1:11:03.280 --> 1:11:06.240 share your own stories, comments, and ideas, then leave us 1:11:06.240 --> 1:11:10.400 a message at one eight three three seven seven nine 1:11:11.520 --> 1:11:16.240 sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can 1:11:16.280 --> 1:11:20.040 email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find 1:11:20.040 --> 1:11:23.240 me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find 1:11:23.240 --> 1:11:27.439 contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production 1:11:27.479 --> 1:11:31.000 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by 1:11:31.000 --> 1:11:35.320 me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain. 1:11:35.640 --> 1:11:40.080 The executive producers are Dylan Golden Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus 1:11:40.120 --> 1:11:43.679 and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt 1:11:43.680 --> 1:11:47.200 Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our 1:11:47.360 --> 1:11:50.960 music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to 1:11:51.040 --> 1:12:04.759 A Brio s F Bianca Grimshaw and Robert BP. Next 1:12:04.800 --> 1:12:08.800 week I'll be talking word perhaps the most famous tobacco 1:12:08.960 --> 1:12:12.960 company executive in the world. His name is Andre Collins Apolos. 1:12:13.000 --> 1:12:16.479 He is currently the chairman of the board of Philip 1:12:16.479 --> 1:12:20.479 Morris International, before that chief executive office there, and he's 1:12:20.520 --> 1:12:23.960 been a leader within the tobacco industry in making the 1:12:24.040 --> 1:12:29.920 transition from cigarettes to non smokable nicotine alternatives. I said 1:12:29.960 --> 1:12:32.800 many times also to investors, the margin we make on 1:12:32.920 --> 1:12:38.599 this products, Spoke three products is better than cigarette. So 1:12:38.920 --> 1:12:41.160 we don't only have a model incentive. We have a 1:12:41.200 --> 1:12:46.719 financial incentive to sell these products. And they're better because 1:12:46.920 --> 1:12:50.599 we convinced the regulators around the world to give us 1:12:51.040 --> 1:12:54.479 better tax treatment than on cigarettes, and they understand that 1:12:54.520 --> 1:12:57.600 if you have a better product, you need to incentivize 1:12:57.600 --> 1:13:01.640 both manufacturers and consumers to switch to this. It okay, 1:13:01.640 --> 1:13:05.840 So I think it makes sense to us not to 1:13:05.880 --> 1:13:09.720 sell cigarettes, subscribe to Psychoactive now, see it, don't miss it.