Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heat as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. My guest today
Speaker 1: is an old, old friend of mine. His name is
Speaker 1: Rick Doblin. He founded the Multi Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic
Speaker 1: Studies to win his maps back in the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and he's been fighting the good fight on psychedelics reform
Speaker 1: and legalisation for all those years. He's best known for
Speaker 1: the role he's played in trying to get the f
Speaker 1: d A to approve the drug m d m A
Speaker 1: otherwise known as ecstasy for treatment of PTSD, and that
Speaker 1: seems like it's gonna happen in the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: But Ris also played a pivotal a really historical role
Speaker 1: in the Psychelics Renaissance, both leading up to it and
Speaker 1: what's going on now. So Rick, thanks ever so much
Speaker 1: for joining me on Psychoactive even it's such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Glad to be home here talking with you. Okay, Well, well,
Speaker 1: so my and if our listeners, I should let you
Speaker 1: know that there's a special on Netflix that was put
Speaker 1: together by Michael Polling called Changing Your Mind, based upon
Speaker 1: his book. It's a four part series and one of
Speaker 1: the episodes, I think focuses on Rick and Map. So
Speaker 1: we thought this would be a really good time to
Speaker 1: have Rick on to join us. So, Rick, is there
Speaker 1: anything you want to tell you? Always right to begin
Speaker 1: with about the special and what you think is going
Speaker 1: to be in there. Uh that Yeah, Well, first off,
Speaker 1: I like to say that, you know, we don't really
Speaker 1: do science. We do political science, meaning that we have
Speaker 1: to be very political about you know, what drug we use,
Speaker 1: what patients we do that and keeping sense of the
Speaker 1: larger political dynamics and so a lot of it is
Speaker 1: symbolic communications. So one of the things that I'm so
Speaker 1: excited about for the Netflix documentary is that there's two
Speaker 1: minutes of the documentary that's going to be about a
Speaker 1: police officer from the Boston area who's also a psychotherapist,
Speaker 1: and he's been through our training program for therapists because
Speaker 1: he's interested in giving m d m A to police
Speaker 1: officers with PTSD and he's had people that he's um
Speaker 1: in his department and departments that he knows of have
Speaker 1: committed suicide police officers, and so he's very compassionate. And
Speaker 1: I've gotten to meet his police chief and also the
Speaker 1: head of the Police Offs Union for Massachusetts and others,
Speaker 1: and we were able to persuade his police chief, Sarco
Speaker 1: Gregarian is the police officer's name, that he should be
Speaker 1: permitted to volunteer to receive m d m A in
Speaker 1: a protocol that we have f d A d A
Speaker 1: proof protocol to give him du made a therapist as
Speaker 1: part of their training. And so he did get that permission,
Speaker 1: and there's a documentary team following his journey from police
Speaker 1: officers psychotherapist to police officers psychedelics psychotherapist, and two minutes
Speaker 1: of him taking m DUMA and him commenting on it
Speaker 1: was filmed and is going to be used in the
Speaker 1: Netflix documentary. So I think the message that we're trying
Speaker 1: to send to people. Is the opposite of this is,
Speaker 1: you know, psychedelics for hippies. And you know, I've often
Speaker 1: thought about the police as the predators and myself as
Speaker 1: the prey and other drug users as the prey. But
Speaker 1: in this case, you know, I've sort of wised up
Speaker 1: about that, and I think if we weren't for the
Speaker 1: drug war, you know, we would all be uh much
Speaker 1: more grateful for the police. And so I think this
Speaker 1: communications about how the m d m A says that
Speaker 1: therapy is really for everybody. It's for um, police officers,
Speaker 1: it's for prisoners, it's for prison guards. UM, it's for perpetrators,
Speaker 1: it's for victims, you know, I think, I mean when
Speaker 1: you're talking about the cops. I mean there's also been
Speaker 1: this whole connection with the military, right imagine saw There's
Speaker 1: something popped up just just recently, in fact, that the
Speaker 1: former head of the Australian Defense Force, as a fellow
Speaker 1: named Chris Barry, has said he hopes this moves forward
Speaker 1: in Australia. And I think you've had your own contacts
Speaker 1: with the Pentagon and with the military, if I recall correctly,
Speaker 1: in Israel and also in Jordan's so maybe just you know,
Speaker 1: say a little more about that. Yeah. Well, also the
Speaker 1: head of the military in England is very interested in
Speaker 1: m d m A and General Nick Carter, and he's
Speaker 1: been very much support of of m d m A.
Speaker 1: But for me also it has involved this kind of
Speaker 1: healing process, the same as working with police officers, working
Speaker 1: with the military, and you know, for this idea of
Speaker 1: political science. You know, we have such support in America
Speaker 1: for the military that I felt it was absolutely essential
Speaker 1: that we have bipartisan support for what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: And so we've gotten support from some very right leaning philanthropists,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Mercer being the most right leaning of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Cambridge Analytica and Bright Bart and Parlor. I
Speaker 1: want to get into effort thing, but just stick with
Speaker 1: the military leadership. You've had contacts with the Pentagon, You've
Speaker 1: had contacts with Israeli Jordanian military. I mean, how far
Speaker 1: have they gone would have been the most successful. Just
Speaker 1: to give you a quick overview, We've treated over sixty
Speaker 1: veterans with PTSD, but we have yet to treat a
Speaker 1: single active duty soldier and so that is the kind
Speaker 1: of crossover that we're anticipating as the next step in
Speaker 1: this integration of psychedelic psychotherapy into society will be actually
Speaker 1: working with active duty soldiers. And we are working with
Speaker 1: a Dr. Bob Kaufman, who is senior emeritus psychiatrist at
Speaker 1: Walter Reid, the military hospital there, and we're thinking that
Speaker 1: over the next couple of months we might actually be
Speaker 1: able to um enroll active duty soldiers as well. And
Speaker 1: we do have support from Bob Persons, who's a major
Speaker 1: philanthropist who himself had PTSD from Vietnam. He started going together,
Speaker 1: he started Go Daddy, Yeah, yeah, and so he has
Speaker 1: actually donated funds to treatment facility in Rockville, Maryland, not
Speaker 1: far from Walter read specifically for active duty soldiers. But
Speaker 1: here's where I learned about the hierarchies in the military.
Speaker 1: This was now over ten years ago, and there's a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: Rob McClay at the San Dieg Enaval Medical Center, and
Speaker 1: he had a two week inpatient program for Navy Seals
Speaker 1: and Marines with PTSD, and this was the last step
Speaker 1: before they would either get enough relief from their PTSD
Speaker 1: symptoms that they could go back to duty, or they
Speaker 1: would be transferred to the v A as disabled from PTSD,
Speaker 1: and so he wanted to work with us on m
Speaker 1: D m A. And what he said was that he
Speaker 1: wasn't high enough in the hierarchy, that he needed to
Speaker 1: get the support of the admiral in the facility. And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, that sounds reasonable. So then he gets
Speaker 1: the support of the admiral, and then he says, well,
Speaker 1: the admiral likes this idea, but he's not high enough
Speaker 1: in the hierarchy. We need to go to the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: And I just kept thinking as I was going in
Speaker 1: the Pentagon that, um, you know, in the sixties the
Speaker 1: Yippies had tried to levitate the Pentagon as part of
Speaker 1: their Vietnam War protests, and needless to say, the Pentagon
Speaker 1: did not levitate. But here we were, all these decades later,
Speaker 1: being invited into the Pentagon to talk about psychedelics the hippies.
Speaker 1: The Hippies couldn't levitate it, but we could go in
Speaker 1: and talk about helping the veterans with PTSD. And the
Speaker 1: meeting went great, And then they said that they weren't
Speaker 1: high enough in the hierarchy that we had to go
Speaker 1: up to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
Speaker 1: in charge of all health for all the militaries of
Speaker 1: all the different divisions, and they said we needed to
Speaker 1: go onto the hill, meaning we needed to get political
Speaker 1: support as well. So that's when we started engaging Senator j. Rockefeller,
Speaker 1: and he also had a series of meetings with the
Speaker 1: Eric Shinseki and several secretaries of the v A. And
Speaker 1: this all culminated in a meeting in two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
Speaker 1: and his staff, and the National Center for PTSD of
Speaker 1: the v A, the executive director and the assistant director
Speaker 1: of that, and a variety of other people from the Navy.
Speaker 1: What they said was that there was a concern about
Speaker 1: working with active duty soldiers, and the concern was that
Speaker 1: if they were to permit us to work with active
Speaker 1: duty soldiers at that time, they were worried that the
Speaker 1: need for treatment for PTSD was so great that that
Speaker 1: would encourage active duty soldiers to try to self medicate,
Speaker 1: and that they would get the quote wrong message, which
Speaker 1: we've heard so much in drug policy. You know. My
Speaker 1: my view of that it was, well, if the need
Speaker 1: is so great, you know, you should immediately start research,
Speaker 1: but the decision was made that we should start with veterans.
Speaker 1: And one of the people that was at that meeting
Speaker 1: was Dr John Crystal, who's head of the Neuroscience division
Speaker 1: of National Center for PTSD at Yale. And there was
Speaker 1: a woman named Candice Monson who used to be the
Speaker 1: head of women's health at the Boston VA and she
Speaker 1: had developed a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder called
Speaker 1: cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, and conjoint means couples or diets,
Speaker 1: and what that means is that in this diet, both
Speaker 1: of them are brought into the therapy, but one of
Speaker 1: them has PTSD and it affects the relationship there they're in,
Speaker 1: but the other person doesn't have PTSD. And they felt
Speaker 1: that if you could do this sort of couples therapy
Speaker 1: or diets, that that might be more effective than just
Speaker 1: treating the individual patient with PTSD. And so since they
Speaker 1: had heard about the love drug and the hug drug
Speaker 1: as ecstasy, their idea was that this would be a
Speaker 1: good first step that we could try to blend m
Speaker 1: d m A with cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy, that we
Speaker 1: had to pay for it. The v A would not
Speaker 1: pay for it, they wouldn't refer any veterans to the study,
Speaker 1: and the study would take place with academic affiliations, but
Speaker 1: not inside the v A, and that we would not
Speaker 1: be permitted at that time to do anything with active
Speaker 1: duties soldiers, and so we thought any place we can
Speaker 1: start is a great idea, and so that began our
Speaker 1: first effort with v A affiliated therapist working outside of
Speaker 1: the v A, and the results were phenomenal. It was
Speaker 1: better than anything they'd ever seen before, both in the
Speaker 1: reduction of PTSD symptoms in the person with PTSD and
Speaker 1: also in the strength of the relationships, and so this
Speaker 1: was just so exciting. We did six die ads and
Speaker 1: we have now built on that and have funded a
Speaker 1: study that's going to be with sixty diets in Toronto,
Speaker 1: thirty that get cognitive behavioral can joint therapy and thirty
Speaker 1: get cognitive behavioral con joint therapy with m d m A.
Speaker 1: And we're also starting studies inside the San Diego VA
Speaker 1: and eventually also inside the Phoenix b A to blend
Speaker 1: M D m A with cognitive behavior can joint therapy.
Speaker 1: It's safe to say that at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: the head of the Veterans Administration, United Dates, probably you know,
Speaker 1: the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin. Probably their equivalents
Speaker 1: in other countries are all aware now of m d
Speaker 1: m A and its potential to treat PTSD. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's it's safe to go even further that they
Speaker 1: are both aware and supportive of the research. Like sure,
Speaker 1: General Nick Carter, the head of the British military recently retired.
Speaker 1: He spoke about how this was a very important priority
Speaker 1: and that there should be more research and he actually
Speaker 1: was speaking at a fundraiser at a million dollars was
Speaker 1: raised for our research in London at King's College. You know,
Speaker 1: the Israeli military is very supportive and they've you know,
Speaker 1: permitted people that have PTSD from their war service to
Speaker 1: be in our studies, people who are still well, it's
Speaker 1: different in Israel and that once you're in the military
Speaker 1: you still have to do like reserve duty for like
Speaker 1: a significant amount of until you get I think around
Speaker 1: forty or so. So those people were permitted there. So
Speaker 1: I think that we we do have not just active awareness,
Speaker 1: but I think we have good will in the sense
Speaker 1: that these people hope that it works well. For example,
Speaker 1: right now, there's over a million veterans receiving disability payments
Speaker 1: from the v A for PTSD, and it costs the
Speaker 1: v A over seventeen billion dollars a year in disability
Speaker 1: payments to these million people just for their PTSD disabilities.
Speaker 1: They get payments for other disabilities as well, So the
Speaker 1: scale of the problem is enormous. Now people are thinking
Speaker 1: it's somewhere like eighteen veterans a day committing suicide in
Speaker 1: the US. It's just tragic. And so I think that
Speaker 1: we have this cultural moment that's happening, which we call
Speaker 1: the psychedelic Renaissance, that has been building over the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, but now it's really reached a further development
Speaker 1: point where I think we can now actually treat the
Speaker 1: first active duty soldier. We'll be talking more after we
Speaker 1: hear this ad. Earlier, you mentioned the Mercers, right, the Mercer's,
Speaker 1: famous right wing philanthropists and political donors in America strongly
Speaker 1: backed Trump for a very long time, and you took
Speaker 1: some flak when you took some support from the Mercers.
Speaker 1: And then more recently I saw that you know, former
Speaker 1: Governor Rick Perry of Texas and then going the Trump cabinet.
Speaker 1: He stepped out there big time on this stuff. So
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about that whole thing with
Speaker 1: the mercers. And it made me about Rick Perry, the governor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So with Rebecca, because she was so associated with Trump
Speaker 1: and Bannon, a lot of people have demonized her, and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't agree with those parts of her,
Speaker 1: but she was willing to give us a million dollars.
Speaker 1: The only limitation was that the money go to treat veterans,
Speaker 1: and and I said sure, And I thought it was
Speaker 1: absolutely essential that we have this bipartisan support. And and
Speaker 1: that's what I've gotten enormous criticism about from people like,
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't work with her. But I had
Speaker 1: this passover, said or a couple of years ago here
Speaker 1: in Boston, and there was an elderly couple that was
Speaker 1: at the second to last seats on a long table,
Speaker 1: and and so we sat down next to them, and
Speaker 1: this group of people were scientists there. They were mostly scientists.
Speaker 1: So I went to this guy and I said, um,
Speaker 1: you know our our ego scientist And he said no,
Speaker 1: he was a judge. I said, okay, um. And then
Speaker 1: his wife we started talking and she's recently written a
Speaker 1: book about how to help people with their children who
Speaker 1: are dying of various diseases, and the work with grief,
Speaker 1: and so we got into this really long discussion about
Speaker 1: m dm A therapy and all that we're doing, and
Speaker 1: then we started talking about marijuana and the government monopoly
Speaker 1: on marijuana that we were trying to break, and it
Speaker 1: was just a delightful conversation, and somehow slowly I started
Speaker 1: thinking that there was more going on. Then um meets
Speaker 1: the and I looked at this guy and I said,
Speaker 1: are you, by any chance Stephen Bryer, the Supreme Court judge?
Speaker 1: And he smiled and he said, yeah, yeah, I am
Speaker 1: that Stephen Bryer. And I said, oh my god. Well,
Speaker 1: then let me ask you an ethical question, if you
Speaker 1: don't mind. So this is after we've had, as I said,
Speaker 1: all these discussions about psychedelics and grief and m d
Speaker 1: m A. So I said, here's my ethical question. I
Speaker 1: have accepted this million dollar donation from Rebecca Mercer, and
Speaker 1: I'm getting enormous criticism for doing that, and I think
Speaker 1: it's absolutely essential. It's it's that we must build bipartisans
Speaker 1: support and so ethically, you know what do you think
Speaker 1: about this? I said, Man, of our donors are more
Speaker 1: on the progressive side, and um, you know, what's your
Speaker 1: opinion of it? Ethically? He said, the essence of democracy
Speaker 1: is trying to find common ground with people with whom
Speaker 1: you may disagree with on every other issue, and that
Speaker 1: in our hyperpartisan world there's not enough of that. So
Speaker 1: he said, you did exactly the right thing to take
Speaker 1: this money from Rebecca Mercer. So I felt, okay, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has said that I did the right thing.
Speaker 1: But let's just shoot back for a few minutes, back
Speaker 1: to the old ays, because I'm remembering. I think maybe
Speaker 1: you and I met it might have been eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and I remember I think you were responsible for taking
Speaker 1: me to my first and maybe my second raves in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, I think in San Francisco, Oakland or
Speaker 1: nearby Richmond. And for me it was a real eye
Speaker 1: opener to go to a rave. And I've done M
Speaker 1: D M A a a number of times before with my
Speaker 1: wife at the time, but to be in a rage,
Speaker 1: just to see the atmosphere there, to see the absence
Speaker 1: of kind of you know, men not hitting on women
Speaker 1: in the same way they would if there was alcohol around.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, if if you wanted to get up
Speaker 1: close to the stage and have to elbow your way forward,
Speaker 1: people just let you through. So I mean, you really
Speaker 1: helped open my eyes to In fact, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: you may remember this one of the great moments. We
Speaker 1: went there with some friends of ours, John Morgan and
Speaker 1: Linds So unfortunately are now deceased, but they were great
Speaker 1: drug researchers. Lynn Lin's every one of the great sociologists
Speaker 1: about this. You know, John Morrigan a professor at the
Speaker 1: City University of New York Medical School. And we've gone there,
Speaker 1: and you know, most people in the twenties. You and
Speaker 1: I are I think in our late thirties at the time,
Speaker 1: Lynn and John must have been late forties or in
Speaker 1: their fifties. And there's this moment. John's kind of there,
Speaker 1: he's kind of moving to the music, and some young
Speaker 1: woman comes up to him and she says to John,
Speaker 1: are you looking for your child? And he goes no,
Speaker 1: and she goes, so why are you here? And he goes,
Speaker 1: I just want to be enjoying myself. And she looks
Speaker 1: at him and she goes, I want to be just
Speaker 1: like you when I grow up, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was this beautiful moment in a rain. And then I
Speaker 1: think back to those days when m D m A
Speaker 1: was much better known as ecstasy, when it was a
Speaker 1: rave scene, when you were just getting going, Oh, when
Speaker 1: the whole thing was seen as a bit flaky at
Speaker 1: that time. I remember some years later, I think you
Speaker 1: had done some study where they required people to take
Speaker 1: some spinal fluid and the result was that some myth
Speaker 1: went out there that you know, that that these spinal
Speaker 1: taps caused you know, your spines to shrivel up. Back
Speaker 1: in that day, when I would bring up n D
Speaker 1: m A among people to know about it, the most
Speaker 1: common thing I hear was doesn't it drain your spinal fluid?
Speaker 1: And it became one of those myths. It was like
Speaker 1: LSD splits your chromosomes right, or marijuana makes men grow
Speaker 1: breast um. I mean, it was these things that you know,
Speaker 1: you know, might have had when I oda of truth
Speaker 1: to them, but essentially became these broad cultural myths that
Speaker 1: I think you had a battle against for quite some years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean there are still people that think
Speaker 1: that m D m A causes holes in the brain,
Speaker 1: because over twenty years ago, OPRAH broadcast a show about
Speaker 1: a young woman that had used a lot of ecstasy,
Speaker 1: used a lot of other drugs, and she had gotten
Speaker 1: spec scan, which is blood flow in the brain, and
Speaker 1: the spec scan supposedly showed holes in her brain. It
Speaker 1: was a graphically manipulated image. It was totally fake. They
Speaker 1: just took every area that had below a certain amount
Speaker 1: of blood flow, they showed it as a whole, and
Speaker 1: it was completely dishonest. And what was even more incongruous
Speaker 1: was the woman whose brain it was riddled with these
Speaker 1: holes that you could see in the image that they
Speaker 1: showed was was on the show and she was walking
Speaker 1: and talking and she was fine. You know, if you'd
Speaker 1: be dead if you had those kind of holes in
Speaker 1: your brain. But there are people today that still believe
Speaker 1: that m d m A drain spinal fluid or m
Speaker 1: DMA causes holes in your brain. And so the neurotoxicity
Speaker 1: of m d M A was something that was used
Speaker 1: for quite a long time and through the nineties as
Speaker 1: well as an argument to block research. Actually, there was
Speaker 1: a researcher, Frantz vole Inviter in Switzerland that had done
Speaker 1: brain scans for the first time with people pet scans
Speaker 1: before and after m d m A and found no
Speaker 1: evidence of quote holes in the brain or neurotoxicity at all.
Speaker 1: So then, let me just say, in the nineties, this
Speaker 1: idea of MDMA and serotinergic neurotoxicity was becoming increasingly discredited,
Speaker 1: and time was going by and people were still looking fine.
Speaker 1: You know. The idea then finally became, oh, it's a
Speaker 1: time bomb theory that you you have cognitive reserve and
Speaker 1: you can hurt your serotonin with m DMA and it
Speaker 1: doesn't show up until you get old. Now, meanwhile, a
Speaker 1: lot of old people in the seventies and eighties had
Speaker 1: taken m d m A, they were fine. And then
Speaker 1: things go along in the nineties and people are not
Speaker 1: believing this. But NIDA is pretty committed to blocking research
Speaker 1: into the benefits of illegal drugs at the time. Rick,
Speaker 1: So I mean that you're you're actually leading into this
Speaker 1: is a great place to make this transition because there
Speaker 1: you are at MAPS, You're making stuff. But Maps is
Speaker 1: still a small organization. You know, you're up to five
Speaker 1: or ten people working for you. You're focused on this
Speaker 1: little issue. Now the last five years, MAPS, together with
Speaker 1: the public benefit corporation that you've created that's owned by
Speaker 1: the nonprofit organization. You now got a couple hundred people
Speaker 1: working for you. You've got a budget, I think in
Speaker 1: the tens of millions of dollars a year. You are
Speaker 1: the largest drug policy formal organization in the world right now.
Speaker 1: You know, you've spent decades out there, you know, making
Speaker 1: the provocative arguments all this sort of stuff, and now
Speaker 1: you're transitioned into running you know, I mean something that's fantastic,
Speaker 1: incredibly influential. Personally. You're out there like you're I see
Speaker 1: you at the conferences. Now you're like a rock star there.
Speaker 1: You're getting interviewed over the major media. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not doing just the kind of you know, drug policy
Speaker 1: podcast like my but the Joe Rogans and all the others.
Speaker 1: But I have to say, for you, what the hell
Speaker 1: has this transition been like for you? I Mean, I
Speaker 1: saw you a few years and I was gonna worry
Speaker 1: because you're still traveling over the place and I'm saying, oh,
Speaker 1: ship ricks burning out, but you're thriving these days. Um,
Speaker 1: But what has been like personally for you to go
Speaker 1: in the last five or ten years from chugging along
Speaker 1: doing your thing to having a mega organization. So the
Speaker 1: thing about MAPS that has been so delightful is that
Speaker 1: there's a two pronged strategy. One is drug development, and
Speaker 1: that's you know, going through the FDA trying to make
Speaker 1: m d M a sist the therapy for PTSD into
Speaker 1: an FDA proof medicine, also approved in Israel, Canada, Europe,
Speaker 1: we're working in also Australia, Brazil and elsewhere with humanitarian
Speaker 1: projects we're trying to start around the world. But the
Speaker 1: other parallel track has been drug policy reform and really
Speaker 1: trying to make it so that people can have access
Speaker 1: to all all substances without having it to be a
Speaker 1: criminal situation. Pure drugs, honest drug education, harm reduction treatment
Speaker 1: on demand. So those two paths have been very satisfying
Speaker 1: to keep together in parallel. And what we've said to
Speaker 1: people too is that if for whatever reason the drug
Speaker 1: policy reform is bad for the business. You know, if
Speaker 1: you can buy m DMA for ten or twenty dollars
Speaker 1: and to do it on your own, but it's sold
Speaker 1: for a lot more as a medicine covered by insurance,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I mean, if it's bad for the
Speaker 1: business model. You know, it's a fundamental human rights and
Speaker 1: we've got to get rid of the drug war and
Speaker 1: help people have these experiences beyond medicine, beyond religion, personal growth, spirituality,
Speaker 1: couples therapy, all that. So for me, it's been very challenging.
Speaker 1: And Chris lot Lacker, who is now the deputy director
Speaker 1: of MAPS, he started Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.
Speaker 1: He's helped with a lot of the management of the staff,
Speaker 1: the goals. So I've become more fundraiser, traveling all over
Speaker 1: giving talks, starting new projects. What's been really exciting is
Speaker 1: because we have had one successful Phase three study that
Speaker 1: we published May tenth one in Nature Medicine. It was
Speaker 1: just outstanding the results of our first phase three study
Speaker 1: and in fact Science and I'm so glad I'm mentioning this.
Speaker 1: So the journal Science publishes a list of what they
Speaker 1: consider it to be the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs
Speaker 1: of the year, and fore they considered our Phase three
Speaker 1: paper published in Nature Medicine as one of the world's
Speaker 1: top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year. And it was
Speaker 1: just so satisfied to really speak about m d m
Speaker 1: A and the therapeutic use of m d M A
Speaker 1: as one of the world's top ten scientific breakthroughs of
Speaker 1: the year. You know, there's over We've guessed around four
Speaker 1: hundred for profits psychedel companies with the market crash there
Speaker 1: maybe us now, but you know we're we're the leading
Speaker 1: one and we're the only one in phase three, and
Speaker 1: so because we are looking like there's a very good
Speaker 1: chance that we will eventually succeed the second phase three study,
Speaker 1: we had the interim analysis in May and the results
Speaker 1: were very good. We're we've got over probability of statistical significance.
Speaker 1: The safety data was good. The final data point will
Speaker 1: be in October. But because it looks pretty good, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that much about commercialization, and our team
Speaker 1: really didn't know that much about what happens once you succeed.
Speaker 1: It's like the dog that catches the car. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you do now? So we managed to hire
Speaker 1: a fantastic person, Mike Millette, who was the number two
Speaker 1: person for commercialization at Maderna, and they sold, you know,
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of the vaccine for COVID all over
Speaker 1: the world. And so he's now taken a good new
Speaker 1: challenge his wife as a therapist. So we have been
Speaker 1: building the benefit Corporation, which, as you said, for is
Speaker 1: owned by the nonprofit and just so or listener stand
Speaker 1: it is something that's allowed within the American tax code
Speaker 1: where a nonprofit can own a for profit corporation, where
Speaker 1: all the profits from the for profit corporation go back
Speaker 1: to the nonprofit to be spent. As the executive director
Speaker 1: in the board see fit. But I think for you
Speaker 1: it opens up the possibility that when the f d
Speaker 1: A ultimately approves m d M A for the treatment
Speaker 1: of PTSD and then presumably for other medical conditions as well,
Speaker 1: your public benefit corporation could then land up earning what
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, it's very possible. So
Speaker 1: it will depend on the number of therapists we train,
Speaker 1: the price of m d m A, and the willingness
Speaker 1: of insurance companies and the v A to adopt it
Speaker 1: and cover the costs, which we think are are looking
Speaker 1: pretty good. And so one of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: really a proud of is that we've added Carl Hart
Speaker 1: to the board of directors of MAPS, and I think
Speaker 1: our listeners will know Carl Hart is the professor of
Speaker 1: Psychology and the neuroscience at Columbia, who was a previous
Speaker 1: guest on Psychoactive, and who has written two very important
Speaker 1: books about about drugs and about race and about freedom,
Speaker 1: and so, yes, his joining MAPS board is quite a coup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And several people said, don't at him because he's so controversial,
Speaker 1: you know, because he's not just talking about psychedelics, he's
Speaker 1: talking about other drugs, opiates and heroin and saying things
Speaker 1: like I don't understand how anybody could share the Psychology
Speaker 1: Department of Columbia if they weren't using heroin on a
Speaker 1: regular basis. I thought it was a really choice quote
Speaker 1: on his partner. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's phenomenal. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, it's because of his principal stand in
Speaker 1: the controversy. That's that's why we want him on the
Speaker 1: board of directors of MAPS. So you know, you've got
Speaker 1: attention obviously within your organization between those people who are
Speaker 1: driven by a broader commitment to psychedelics reform and even
Speaker 1: broader drug policy reform on the one hand, and the
Speaker 1: others who are sort of micro focused on ensuring the
Speaker 1: business side UH succeeds as much as possible, right and
Speaker 1: who want to kind of keep your heads down on
Speaker 1: the broader sets of issues. Yes, and you know, as
Speaker 1: we hire more and more people from pharma who don't
Speaker 1: have necessarily a psychedelic background, they have you know, more
Speaker 1: I would say, conservative instincts, and you know that they
Speaker 1: come from a more highly regulated environment. You know, pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: companies have to be really careful about what they say
Speaker 1: and do, particularly in the era of not speaking about
Speaker 1: unapproved uses, you know, or off label uses, our our
Speaker 1: safety lies, and just not going beyond the data. And
Speaker 1: so you know, there's nothing I've said during this discussion
Speaker 1: that's of any concern. Maybe you can answer this question,
Speaker 1: but presumably n d m A is going to be
Speaker 1: useful for seeing all sorts of other conditions, whether it's
Speaker 1: or range of others. You can talk openly about that stuff, right, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I can say that these are hopes, not certainties, and
Speaker 1: that the right now, the data that we have from
Speaker 1: one phase three study is not sufficient to say that
Speaker 1: we have proved that m d m A is safe
Speaker 1: and efficacious. We have suggested that it's likely from this
Speaker 1: one phase three study, but we need a second phase
Speaker 1: three study that's also statistically significant and has an acceptable
Speaker 1: safety ratio. And then until FDA approves prescription use, we
Speaker 1: cannot say that we've proven safety and efficacy, even though
Speaker 1: we think that we may have it, it's still it's
Speaker 1: the FDA approval. What's the what's its approved by the
Speaker 1: way for for PTSD it can then doctors will then
Speaker 1: be allowed to use it for all sorts of other
Speaker 1: medical conditions. The FDA doesn't need to step in and
Speaker 1: approve it for each condition, right right, Pharmaceutical companies cannot
Speaker 1: knowingly promote or sell for off label uses, but the
Speaker 1: practice of medicine is such is that prescribers can prescribe
Speaker 1: both for what the labeled indication is and for anything
Speaker 1: else that they think is appropriate. There have been several
Speaker 1: cases that have gone through the u S courts where
Speaker 1: the FDA has tried to make it so that pharma
Speaker 1: companies could not even mentioned off label uses. But now
Speaker 1: if there is a scientific studies that we can share
Speaker 1: that with prescribers, even if it's a phase to study,
Speaker 1: meaning a smaller pilot study. So we've done studies with
Speaker 1: m duma sis that therapy for social anxiety and autistic adults.
Speaker 1: It was tremendously successful. We did a study with people
Speaker 1: with anxiety because of life threatening illnesses. The results were promising.
Speaker 1: Ben Sessa, psychiatrists in England, has done a study, a
Speaker 1: small study looking at m DAMA for alcohol use disorder
Speaker 1: and what he learned was that people who are suffering
Speaker 1: from unresolved trauma often go to drugs and alcohol to
Speaker 1: to cover it up so that they don't need to
Speaker 1: think about their trauma. And if you can help them
Speaker 1: address the trauma, then you can make them make a
Speaker 1: lot of progress with their alcohol use disorder or other
Speaker 1: substance used disorders. We're thinking about doing studies with postpartum
Speaker 1: depression with depression. So far the studies with PTSD most
Speaker 1: people with PTSD have depression, but we have not yet
Speaker 1: done a study of m d M A assisted therapy
Speaker 1: for depression UM without PTSD. And really let me ask
Speaker 1: you this. I mean, obviously you cannot get a pattern
Speaker 1: on m d m A because it was invented almost
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago and then Sasha Shulgun kind of
Speaker 1: rediscovered its therapeutic uses. But so how do you stand
Speaker 1: to make money? Is it from the selling of m
Speaker 1: d M a. Is it from the training of the
Speaker 1: therapists or from setting up of clinics where m d
Speaker 1: m A will be administered in a psychotherapeutic context. Where
Speaker 1: does the money Yeah, So when we think about this
Speaker 1: idea of public benefit, the public benefit for us is
Speaker 1: helping people get over PTSD, you know, to to reduce
Speaker 1: their symptoms, to be able to rejoin life in a
Speaker 1: better way. So the training of therapists could be a
Speaker 1: money maker, and in fact we've brought in several millions
Speaker 1: of dollars in fees, but so far they mostly discover
Speaker 1: our costs for the team and developing our training materials
Speaker 1: and stuff. But we felt that the training of therapists
Speaker 1: is not a profit center. And in fact, what we
Speaker 1: want ideally is for schools of psychiatry and psychotherapy two
Speaker 1: incorporate and embed in their core curriculums modules about training
Speaker 1: people for m DUMA says that therapy for PTSD, for psilocybin,
Speaker 1: for depression, for ketamine. So that we want this to
Speaker 1: be mainstreamed, and so we are also licensing other programs
Speaker 1: to provide m d m A training for MDMA therapists
Speaker 1: as long as they have the core competencies and the
Speaker 1: core elements of our training program in them. So we
Speaker 1: don't see the training as being a necessary profit center.
Speaker 1: Clinics are a potential profit center, but there there are
Speaker 1: some problems of which I'm not fully aware of legally.
Speaker 1: But you know, pharmaceutical companies owning clinics where their own
Speaker 1: drugs are prescribed. But the clinics of the future, the
Speaker 1: psychedelic psychotherapy clinics of the future, There's not going to
Speaker 1: be an ketamine clinic here, a psilocybin clinic, there, an
Speaker 1: m DM a clinic there. There's gonna be therapists that
Speaker 1: are ideally cross trained in all the different psychedelics, and
Speaker 1: the clinics will provide customized, individualized, personalized psychedelic psychotherapy, and
Speaker 1: the patient will come in and they'll have discussions with
Speaker 1: their therapists and they'll say, all right, well we'll start
Speaker 1: with this drug or that drug, and then we'll move
Speaker 1: to this, and so clinics will be generalized psychedelic psychotherapy clinics.
Speaker 1: Now interesting that when I started MAPS in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: I knew, as you said, that Merk pharmaceutical company, the
Speaker 1: German Murk, had invented m DMA, and it's in the
Speaker 1: public domain and there is uh you know, no way
Speaker 1: to patent it, nor would we ever want a patent
Speaker 1: because we want to facilitate m DUMA research in the eighties.
Speaker 1: When I started MAPS in nine six, there was another
Speaker 1: group founded by a fellow named Howard lots Off who
Speaker 1: had discovered that I Begain, another psychedelic drug, was tremendously helpful,
Speaker 1: uniquely helpful for helping people get through opiate addiction or
Speaker 1: obiit dependence. What I mean is that in a couple
Speaker 1: of days, under the influence of I Begain, you could
Speaker 1: get over your tolerance, to get over dependence on opiates,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have a psychotherapeutic psychedelic process. You can
Speaker 1: work on a bunch of the issues, and then with
Speaker 1: enough after care and integration and support that a lot
Speaker 1: of people could started a new direction in their life
Speaker 1: free from opiates. So he was worried that there was
Speaker 1: no way to do this in a nonprofit way, so
Speaker 1: he started a for profit company called n d A
Speaker 1: International New Drug Application of NDA International, And as it
Speaker 1: turned out, several of the early researchers started suing each
Speaker 1: other for intellectual property for patents for use patents that
Speaker 1: I began for OPI addiction and other dependencies. Any case,
Speaker 1: I saw these lawsuits about I P really be very,
Speaker 1: very destructive for the entire field, and that has basically
Speaker 1: blocked I began development. Now those core patents have expired,
Speaker 1: but I hired their same patent attorney and I said,
Speaker 1: I would like you to help us develop an anti
Speaker 1: patent strategy for use patents so that nobody, not MAPS,
Speaker 1: nobody could patent m d m A for any of
Speaker 1: the things that had had been used before PTSD or
Speaker 1: any number of things so prior arts. So we tell
Speaker 1: stories on our website. People tell stories of m d
Speaker 1: m A useful for this or that, and then nobody
Speaker 1: can claim to it. And entered that idea. So when
Speaker 1: I started MAPS in eighty six, I had thought that
Speaker 1: m d M A would go generic and there would
Speaker 1: be no money making opportunities. It would be a low
Speaker 1: cost drug. But it was worth doing. It was essentially
Speaker 1: worth doing anyway. And there was this moment in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen. My wife was head of the Belmont
Speaker 1: Foundation for Education and they were having a gala, and
Speaker 1: I was going to the gala, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: she's in charge of this. There's a good food. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna get superstoned, and I'm just gonna eat. I'm
Speaker 1: off work. And so while I was there, I ran
Speaker 1: across a patent attorney who I knew from Belmont, who
Speaker 1: had helped patent broo LSD. And what he said was
Speaker 1: that there was this policy that I had overlooked. I
Speaker 1: took a class in food and drug regulation at Harvard
Speaker 1: Law School and it wasn't even mentioned. And what it
Speaker 1: is called is data exclusivity. So we have thanks to
Speaker 1: give to Ronald Reagan for this. So in Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: signed a law to provide incentives for developing drugs that
Speaker 1: were off patent and the incentive is called data exclusivity.
Speaker 1: And so what it means is that if you are
Speaker 1: the first to make a drug into a medicine that
Speaker 1: has never been made into a medicine before and it's
Speaker 1: completely not pentable, that you have exclusive use of your
Speaker 1: data for five years. And if you do pediatric studies,
Speaker 1: which the FDA is actually requiring us to do, if
Speaker 1: we succeed m DAMA sys, that therapy for PTSD and adults,
Speaker 1: which is eighteen years or over, we must do studies
Speaker 1: in twelve to seventeen year olds and you get six
Speaker 1: months more data exclusivity. And data exclusivity blocks a generic
Speaker 1: competitor from having the FDA evaluate their application until the
Speaker 1: five and a half years is over, and it takes
Speaker 1: a minimum of eight months and potentially longer for the
Speaker 1: FDA to evaluate a generic manufacturer's license to make sure
Speaker 1: that it's really pure and stable their drug. So we
Speaker 1: have this period in excess of six years of data exclusivity,
Speaker 1: and then later England, I mean, the European Medicines Agency
Speaker 1: made um similar data exclusivity law, but it's ten years
Speaker 1: data exclusivity in Europe. So the beauty of data exclusivity
Speaker 1: from our point of view is that the fundamental difference
Speaker 1: from it in a patent is that other companies can
Speaker 1: develop their own data. We're not stopping anybody from doing anything,
Speaker 1: and so if another company gets uh their own data,
Speaker 1: they could get permission from FDA to market mptmacist the
Speaker 1: therapy for PTSD, just as we But we have such
Speaker 1: a lead and it's so expensive that we don't think
Speaker 1: there's going to be any competition. We think that the
Speaker 1: competitors what they are going to do. And we even
Speaker 1: don't really call them competitor as we call them, you know,
Speaker 1: collaborators in this larger mission of mass mental health and
Speaker 1: spiritualized humanity. So we will have this period of data
Speaker 1: exclusivity and that's where the moneymaking comes in. That that
Speaker 1: we will be the only ones to be able to
Speaker 1: market anyway. The other beauty of data exclusivity is that
Speaker 1: we don't have to have nondisclosure agreements. We don't have
Speaker 1: to keep the data private or proprietary. We just make
Speaker 1: everything public because we own the data from submitting it
Speaker 1: to the FDA, because we were the sponsor, and we
Speaker 1: then get the data exclusivity automatically. It's not even a question.
Speaker 1: It's an automatic opportunity to choose data exclusivity. So I see,
Speaker 1: so you can be quite transparent with everything you're doing.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile, once it gets approved, the revenue for
Speaker 1: n DMA, the public Benefit Corporation immediately will come mostly
Speaker 1: from the selling of n d M A and only
Speaker 1: in a small way from creating clinics or things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe not at all from creating clinics. We are
Speaker 1: thinking that we might want to have some centers of excellence,
Speaker 1: some clinics with large numbers of therapists, you know, expertly trained,
Speaker 1: and they'll become sort of research training and treatment sent ors.
Speaker 1: We have to work out all the compliance issues to
Speaker 1: see whether that's possible. But the main funds are going
Speaker 1: to come through the selling of m d m A
Speaker 1: as a prescription medicine. It's pretty relatively inexpensive to make
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical medicines, most of them. And then the value or
Speaker 1: what you charge is based on the value to the
Speaker 1: offset the medical expenses, to the improved healthcare, to the society,
Speaker 1: to the individual, to the you know people now who
Speaker 1: didn't work obviously for all the intensive linds of people
Speaker 1: who are using m d m A outside this therapeutic context,
Speaker 1: I mean the way that you and I have in
Speaker 1: the past, and so many others, and where there's always
Speaker 1: the problems of adulteration. I mean, just recently, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of reports I think out of l A
Speaker 1: of Fentinel getting mixed in which people tall with m
Speaker 1: d m A and people die as a result of that.
Speaker 1: And I remember, even like you know, when m DMA
Speaker 1: became the owner's ecstasy and at some point ecstasy developed
Speaker 1: a bed name because it was no one as adulterated
Speaker 1: um and the m A. And then in fact people
Speaker 1: come up with Molly as if somehow Molly is now
Speaker 1: the pure d M A L. I think it was
Speaker 1: just the relabeling of of essentially an illicitly produced black
Speaker 1: market drug of unknown potency impurity. But what I'm wondering is,
Speaker 1: is this process that MAX is engaged in, what are
Speaker 1: going to be the spill over applications for the broader,
Speaker 1: you know, tensive lines of people who are still presumably
Speaker 1: getting their M D m A off the black market
Speaker 1: and having to deal with issues of you know, potency
Speaker 1: impurity apart from their ability to access some forms of
Speaker 1: you know, drug quality testing. Will there be any implications there?
Speaker 1: There will be. There will be because I think what
Speaker 1: we've seen from medical marijuana is that medicalization changes people's attitudes.
Speaker 1: They've been fed propaganda for fifty years, you know, as
Speaker 1: we talked about some of the dangers of marijuana. Marijuana
Speaker 1: does have dangers. M DMA does have dangers, but the
Speaker 1: propaganda has vastly exaggerated them, and the story is that
Speaker 1: these dry tend to be all risks and no benefits.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why the prohibitionists have so fought
Speaker 1: research into medical marijuana research into psychedelics, because then you
Speaker 1: start telling a more nuanced picture, and under certain contexts,
Speaker 1: the benefits outweigh the risks. So what we've seen with
Speaker 1: medical marijuana is that as more states have endorsed medical marijuana,
Speaker 1: the support for marijuana legalization for non medical, celebratory, recreational
Speaker 1: adult use, however you want to call it, has grown.
Speaker 1: And so I think we are now at this point
Speaker 1: in America where one hopes that maybe will have a
Speaker 1: law that will pass through Congress signed by the President
Speaker 1: that takes away the prohibition of marijuana federally and leads
Speaker 1: it to the states the way things happened with alcohol,
Speaker 1: So I think that we are going to see something
Speaker 1: similar happening with psychedelics. That the more we move forward
Speaker 1: with medicalization, and then even though we're talking about is
Speaker 1: as only trained therapists will be able to administer at
Speaker 1: the patients only under direct supervision, MDMA will never be
Speaker 1: a take on drug, but people will start to understand
Speaker 1: that there are tremendous therapeutic potentials for this, but also
Speaker 1: a lot of potential benefits outside of medicine or outside
Speaker 1: of religion. So I think that what we're already seeing
Speaker 1: is decrim Efforts for psychedelics that are taking place started
Speaker 1: in Denver, actually, which was the first city to make
Speaker 1: mushrooms the lowest enforcement priority. Then that went to Oakland
Speaker 1: and they expanded it to plant psychedelics, and then in
Speaker 1: Arbor and and all sorts of other cities have now
Speaker 1: done that. And then the state of Oregon has passed
Speaker 1: at as an initiative, the organ Psilocybin Initiative, which is
Speaker 1: setting up a state legal system of trained guides who
Speaker 1: may or may not be licensed to do therapy that
Speaker 1: can give silicide. Been two a range of people, some
Speaker 1: of them who have clinical conditions, but others who just
Speaker 1: wanted for personal growth. And there's gonna be something similar
Speaker 1: on the ballot in Colorado, but it's going to be
Speaker 1: beyond just psilocybin. It will again do plant psychedelics. Now
Speaker 1: I should say that there's this not md No, there's
Speaker 1: this romantic notion that that has proven true for the
Speaker 1: voters that if you say natural medicine, or you say
Speaker 1: plant based medicines or it's from nature, you get a
Speaker 1: lot more support than if you say, oh, and and
Speaker 1: there's also some good ones from the laboratory that they're synthetic,
Speaker 1: like LSD and M D m A. So the initiatives
Speaker 1: and the legalization efforts have so far left out uh
Speaker 1: M D M A and LSD, which are laboratory based.
Speaker 1: They are, you know, semisynthetic. Those molecules do not appear
Speaker 1: in nature, but there's molecules that are somewhat similar that
Speaker 1: then you modify. So I think that what we will see,
Speaker 1: what UM basically suggesting is that if M D M
Speaker 1: A becomes commercially available as a medicine, what we need
Speaker 1: is a decade of the rollout of psychedelic clinics. And
Speaker 1: I think what we're gonna see is six or seven
Speaker 1: thousand psychedelic clinics. In the course of that decade, we're
Speaker 1: hoping to train at least therapists, and that there will
Speaker 1: be these clinics all over America. And the reason I
Speaker 1: use that number just to show where it comes from,
Speaker 1: is that there's over six thousand hospice centers. So if
Speaker 1: you think where people go to have a different approach
Speaker 1: towards death, and I think every town that's big enough
Speaker 1: to have a hospice center is big enough to have
Speaker 1: a psychedelic treatment center. So I think we'll have six
Speaker 1: or seven thousands of these psychedelic treatment centers. And the
Speaker 1: FDA and regulators respond to data, but people respond to stories.
Speaker 1: That's why this Netflix documentary is going to be so important.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break here and go to an ad.
Speaker 1: You're you're hitting on a lot of issues here. I mean,
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking is, I think you're making some very
Speaker 1: interesting analogies both with marijuana and with a broader psychedelics
Speaker 1: and plant medicine thing. The way I look at it
Speaker 1: is what you're saying about medical Marona is exactly right.
Speaker 1: And it was part of our long term strategy right
Speaker 1: that by normalizing and legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, it
Speaker 1: would have a spillover effect in terms of public consciousness
Speaker 1: around the relative safety and benefits of marijuana, and looking
Speaker 1: in retrospect, it turned out that are strategic thinking around
Speaker 1: that back to the mid nineties turned out to be accurate. Now.
Speaker 1: The difference, of course, is that when you're buying marijuana
Speaker 1: that's been approved and has stayed oversight, bodies making sure
Speaker 1: it's you know safe that the marijuana being produced illegally
Speaker 1: is not that much different. I'm it's got some pesticides
Speaker 1: in this and that, But the risks of adulterated marijuana
Speaker 1: are are really pretty diminimous. And even these reports about
Speaker 1: finital getting mixed in with marijuana appear to be either
Speaker 1: nine bullshit right. So, I mean, you have the spill
Speaker 1: over in terms of the broader public consciousness, but the
Speaker 1: issues of an adulterated market were not that significant. When
Speaker 1: you look at the plant medicine stuff, and you hear
Speaker 1: some of the people in the plant medicine coalitions who
Speaker 1: are a little freaked out with all of the kind
Speaker 1: of medicalization, psychotherapeuticization of psilocybin, of mushrooms, of all these things,
Speaker 1: and they worry. But my sense is what you're saying
Speaker 1: is exactly right. It's going to increase people's comfort around
Speaker 1: thinking about these substances and using them. That the issues
Speaker 1: of adulteration, especially when it's you're talking about mushrooms or
Speaker 1: things like that, or on mescaline when it comes from
Speaker 1: peyote or san pedro, are not that significant. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to m d m A, you are talking
Speaker 1: about stuff a white powdered drug that's being reduced illegally
Speaker 1: around the world where issues of potency and purity are real.
Speaker 1: You know, when we look back at the history of
Speaker 1: the dozens or hundreds of people who have died from
Speaker 1: using quote unquote ecstasy over the years, it does appear
Speaker 1: that a substantial proportion of those was because the substances
Speaker 1: they were using were adulterated in some way. And that's
Speaker 1: where I'm wondering. You know, as you succeed with getting
Speaker 1: m d M A approved hopefully by four you know,
Speaker 1: will there be some spill over in terms of the
Speaker 1: safety of m d M A mean, because you know, paradoxically,
Speaker 1: probably the safest thing that could happen from a public
Speaker 1: health perspective would be for legally produced m d m
Speaker 1: A to be the facto diverted to illicit markets. But
Speaker 1: from a political and replatory perspective, that would be the
Speaker 1: worst possible thing that would happen everything you've been trying
Speaker 1: to fight for. So what I mean, apart from the
Speaker 1: public consciousness shifting in the positive way you talk about,
Speaker 1: what about the market itself? Yeah, okay, let me just
Speaker 1: correct one thing with is that people can die from
Speaker 1: pure M d M A. And what's happened in raves
Speaker 1: is that sometimes with even with pure M d m A,
Speaker 1: what people do is they dance all night or they
Speaker 1: overheat and they don't have adequate fluid. A lot of
Speaker 1: these bars have seen that once people are in M DUMA,
Speaker 1: they don't buy as much alcohol, and so they have
Speaker 1: charged for water. Some egregiously have even turned off faucets
Speaker 1: in the bathroom so you have to buy water. Um,
Speaker 1: so people can die from what's called hyperthermia from overheating.
Speaker 1: Does not happen in clinical research ever, never, never, because
Speaker 1: there's adequate fluid replacement and people aren't dancing all night.
Speaker 1: And so also sometimes people have heard the harm reduction
Speaker 1: message drink fluids, and so people will drink too much
Speaker 1: water and they die from what's called hyponitremia from thinning
Speaker 1: their blood too much. And so the best harm reduction
Speaker 1: message there is that drink stuff with electrolytes, fruit juices
Speaker 1: or other things. Water is not the best. But I
Speaker 1: had to answer your question directly, here's the beauty of
Speaker 1: our situation. M d M A has been used by
Speaker 1: tens and tens and tens of millions of people over
Speaker 1: the last forty years, so the one in a million
Speaker 1: or one in two million side effects have come to
Speaker 1: the surface because when the FDA evaluates a drug, usually
Speaker 1: it's been studied in only hundreds or thousands of people,
Speaker 1: and so when you put it out in the market
Speaker 1: and a million people take it, then you start discovering
Speaker 1: more side effects. But we have this enormous body of
Speaker 1: information over more than forty years about m DUMA being
Speaker 1: used in the most risky circumstances, often adulterated, and there's
Speaker 1: over five thousand papers scientific papers on m DUMA or ecstasy.
Speaker 1: So if anybody really wants to look at what are
Speaker 1: the risks of m d m A from the scientific
Speaker 1: literature um, the investigators brochure and our reports are safety
Speaker 1: reports the FDA, which are also up on our website,
Speaker 1: are really good resource. Also, we have what's called the
Speaker 1: treatment Manual, which describes our therapeutic approach. So if people
Speaker 1: want to understand the therapy that's used with the m
Speaker 1: d m A, they should read the treatment Manually. So
Speaker 1: I think that this idea of as m DUMA becomes
Speaker 1: medicalized and more and more people will hear stories about healing.
Speaker 1: They will, of course know that those stories are about
Speaker 1: pure M d m A. We have trained therapists and
Speaker 1: others that help support people when they have difficult emotional experiences,
Speaker 1: and that's a really important part of psychedelic harm reduction.
Speaker 1: A lot of people still do not understand that M
Speaker 1: d m A was a therapy drug before it was
Speaker 1: a party drug ecstasy, and a lot of people approach
Speaker 1: these experiences as just I'm gonna take it. It's a party,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have fun. And when difficult material comes up,
Speaker 1: if they have memories of difficult emotional situations too many
Speaker 1: times people think, oh, my experience is going bad, this
Speaker 1: is turning into a bad trip. Let me suppress these
Speaker 1: bad thoughts and bad feelings, and then they can't really
Speaker 1: do that. And then if they don't pay attention to that,
Speaker 1: now it's sort of moved up from the unconscious, it's
Speaker 1: more conscious, they get to end up worse off for
Speaker 1: for months or years later. So I think the more
Speaker 1: that the idea that these substances when combined with therapy
Speaker 1: have tremendous therapeutic potential for people with post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: disorder and other major mental illnesses, that the recreational market.
Speaker 1: People will have more of an idea of what to
Speaker 1: do when difficult material comes into their awareness instead of
Speaker 1: trying to suppress it. Hopefully they will open up to it,
Speaker 1: talk to their friends around them, create a safe space,
Speaker 1: you know, and try to go through and let out
Speaker 1: those feelings and let out and express those emotions rather
Speaker 1: than suppress them. So I think that there'll be fewer
Speaker 1: people caught unaware by difficult material when they take the
Speaker 1: drugs for parties then there are now, because still it's
Speaker 1: not as widespread as we like the idea that these
Speaker 1: can have tremendous therapetic potential. But but I think the
Speaker 1: other big part of harm reduction is called drug checking.
Speaker 1: So the world's best example of psychedelic harm reduction at
Speaker 1: a festival is the Boom festival in Portugal. And so
Speaker 1: we we started the psychedelic harm reduction efforts at Boom
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, and we started working at
Speaker 1: Burning Man in two thousand and three. But because Portugal
Speaker 1: has decriminalized drugs, you know, it was a tremendous decriminalized
Speaker 1: possession for ones on usual. They did not decriminalize the transfer,
Speaker 1: sale or things like that. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was just a tremendous success. So at Boom
Speaker 1: they have thin layer chromatography on site to identify what
Speaker 1: really is in these illicit drugs before you take them,
Speaker 1: and so it would be really important over time, particularly
Speaker 1: with fentanyl being you now to adulterate a lot of
Speaker 1: different drugs. They have drug checking to be accepted as
Speaker 1: a standard part of harm reduction. And when you look
Speaker 1: at the number of people that have died of opiate
Speaker 1: related overdoses over a hundred thousand I think it's a
Speaker 1: hundred and seven or something thousand in America in one year,
Speaker 1: a lot of that is adulterated with fentyl. So we
Speaker 1: really need drug checking until we get to the point
Speaker 1: of having full legalization where even the drugs that are
Speaker 1: sold for non medical purposes are pure and people could
Speaker 1: rely on their peer And I think, of course with
Speaker 1: this over those crisis of the acceptance by the public
Speaker 1: and even by law enforcement of fentanyl testing strips has
Speaker 1: grown very substantially, and that will spill over obviously to
Speaker 1: things like testing psychedelics and m DMA and such. And
Speaker 1: I need to bring this issue up obviously that even
Speaker 1: in the psychotherapeutic regulated context. There are risks, and I
Speaker 1: think you had to deal with this, right. There was
Speaker 1: the to of of some of the therapists who were
Speaker 1: associated with the m d m A studies, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: getting accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. Right. I think New
Speaker 1: York Magazine did a big expose on this stuff. And
Speaker 1: you're having to deal with this stuff. And I know
Speaker 1: MAPS is you know, obviously takes all sorts of precautions.
Speaker 1: So what more can you can you? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you may be limited by lawyers and this and
Speaker 1: that from what you can say, But what can you
Speaker 1: tell people to reassure them when they're reading these reports
Speaker 1: about their being forms of you know, unethical behavior bicychlotherapists.
Speaker 1: And we're not just talking about Shaman's down in the
Speaker 1: jungles in South America. We're talking about in the US
Speaker 1: and in Canada, you know, trained psychotherapist doing things that
Speaker 1: are inappropriate. Yeah. I think it was a real tragedy
Speaker 1: that had happened. You know, we're very sad for the
Speaker 1: person that had happened to and we have instituted a
Speaker 1: fair number of measures we think going forward, particularly as
Speaker 1: we move into post approval use if we get that
Speaker 1: far to try to minimize that. So what we are
Speaker 1: aware of that this has only happened at one time
Speaker 1: out of over about three and sixty patients. It may
Speaker 1: have happened more, but we're not aware of it. And
Speaker 1: we think with all of the media attention about it
Speaker 1: that that you know, we encourage if it did, haven't
Speaker 1: anybody else that they should come forward? The unethical sexual
Speaker 1: misconduct began after the therapy was over. In that one
Speaker 1: particular case, we immediately fired those people. They're not working
Speaker 1: with us. We informed all of the therapists how serious
Speaker 1: of a transgression this was, that anybody else of course,
Speaker 1: would get fired if that happened. We put out a
Speaker 1: public statement. We even changed our informed consent form and
Speaker 1: add a sentence about how beware if you are a
Speaker 1: patient and started developing feelings, you know, sexual feelings for
Speaker 1: the therapist. I think going forward, you know, we we
Speaker 1: have really made even more prominent in our training about
Speaker 1: ethical behavior. We have a code of ethics, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about having a patient bill of rights that would
Speaker 1: be given to all the patients in research but also
Speaker 1: now post approval, mostly post approval. I don't think we
Speaker 1: haven't quite ready yet, but this idea of this patient
Speaker 1: bill of Rights, which makes it very clear we're to
Speaker 1: complain to if there's anything that is happening that it
Speaker 1: feels inappropriate. Either at the tip, did it freak out
Speaker 1: the FDA at all or slow the process of proceeding
Speaker 1: with Well, this happened around five years ago. We did
Speaker 1: report it to the FDA, to Health Canada, to all
Speaker 1: the regulatory agencies as soon as we heard about it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that it did freak them out. Again.
Speaker 1: The f d A is they don't regulate psychotherapy, you know,
Speaker 1: they regulate drugs, and so this is kind of a
Speaker 1: conundrum for them about, you know, how to do this
Speaker 1: where the treatment is primarily psychotherapy, but it involves a
Speaker 1: drug in this case m D m A or another
Speaker 1: case of psilocybin or ketemine, you know, to make the
Speaker 1: therapy more effective. Although I should say that ketamine was
Speaker 1: approved without psychotherapy s ketemine, So I think that, um,
Speaker 1: what we are seeing is that this is a problem
Speaker 1: that goes beyond psychedelic psychotherapy to psychiatry and psychotherapy itself
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other kind of situations where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, close contact between people. So
Speaker 1: I think that what we are needing to do is
Speaker 1: when when you think about a drug and from the
Speaker 1: point of view the FDA, you look at you balance
Speaker 1: the risks and benefits, and so yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: of the risks. We don't think it's common. As I said,
Speaker 1: we only are aware of it of happening one time
Speaker 1: in the you know, roughly twenty years since we started
Speaker 1: doing this kind of work. Well, well, let me I
Speaker 1: see this thing. Part of the m d m A
Speaker 1: protocol involves always having a male and females therapist, and
Speaker 1: you've made the point that, in good part for cost
Speaker 1: and accessibility, that it should be sufficient if just one
Speaker 1: of them is a licensed therapist. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the scandal that resulted was what the other therapist, the
Speaker 1: fellow was somebody who had let his license lapse and
Speaker 1: therefore could not be held accountable by an oversight board
Speaker 1: in the same way that the licensed therapist could. So
Speaker 1: I mean, where are you on that issue now? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you is there ways of ensuring that people who
Speaker 1: are not licensed by you know, a psychologist board of
Speaker 1: some source, or therapist board of some sort can still
Speaker 1: be held accountable, or you still adhere to the issue
Speaker 1: that let's keep it the way it is for issues
Speaker 1: of cost and accessibility. Well, I I do believe that
Speaker 1: we should try to keep with a two person team
Speaker 1: for individual therapy. I do believe that the second person
Speaker 1: should not be required to have a license. The person
Speaker 1: that does have the license is held responsible, and so
Speaker 1: right now the female therapist who did have a license
Speaker 1: is having challenges with her licensing board. So there are
Speaker 1: people that are held responsible. I think that it's probably
Speaker 1: less likely to happen in two person teams, and even
Speaker 1: less likely in group therapy, even though again this unethical
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct came sexual after the therapy was over, when
Speaker 1: the cameras were off, and after that was all done.
Speaker 1: So the major ethical issue wasn't what happened in the
Speaker 1: moments of therapy, which one can see on its old videotape.
Speaker 1: The real issue was about one of the therapists getting
Speaker 1: involved sexually with the patient in subsequent period of time. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would say that the other part the essence of
Speaker 1: our method, which again I don't think was followed by
Speaker 1: this therapist team fully, is this idea that there's this
Speaker 1: inner healing and intelligence sort of what comes up has
Speaker 1: a certain wisdom to it when people are under the influence.
Speaker 1: But that fundamentally what we're doing is helping people heal themselves.
Speaker 1: So in traditional psychiatry, when you think about Freud and
Speaker 1: Friday and analysis, you know, you've got the therapist that's listening,
Speaker 1: the person is on the couch, and then the therapist
Speaker 1: every once in a while will give an interpretation. The
Speaker 1: therapist is the healer and they find what's going on
Speaker 1: in the person's unconscious during this free association process. But
Speaker 1: our approach is really designed to empower the patient to
Speaker 1: heal themselves. So I think there's a certain aspect of
Speaker 1: that theoretical orientation that empowers the patient and it doesn't
Speaker 1: make the therapist into the source of all the healing
Speaker 1: or the drug either. UM. So I think it is
Speaker 1: an issue is how do we create safe spaces and
Speaker 1: how do we do that once this um, you know,
Speaker 1: moves outside of a research context, UM and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any perfect solution. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this case also. It was dealing with a
Speaker 1: patient whose traumas involved you know, sexual abuse as a
Speaker 1: child and rape and I'm wondering if it's particularly challenging
Speaker 1: when the PTSD you're trying to deal with has this
Speaker 1: sexual component to it. I think it can be. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's where it's even more important that we
Speaker 1: have this safe space. And now, not all of our
Speaker 1: teams are male female. We've actually had some all female teams.
Speaker 1: I'm not aware if we've had two male teams, but
Speaker 1: that might have been the case. But I do think
Speaker 1: that it's very delicate when people have been traumatized that
Speaker 1: they don't get redraumatized by the therapy. Now, some of
Speaker 1: the existing therapies prolonged exposure cognitive processing therapy, where they
Speaker 1: involve people talking about their traumas. It's very difficult for
Speaker 1: people because these traumas are so emotionally powerful and painful
Speaker 1: that often people drop out of those therapies, so that
Speaker 1: that's not the same kind of re traumatization that we're
Speaker 1: talking about by unethical sexual contact. But but you know,
Speaker 1: the md m A can help people deal with emotions
Speaker 1: that would otherwise be overwhelming. So I think that there
Speaker 1: is this concern that that you know, a valid concern
Speaker 1: that we should try to minimize to to zero. Going
Speaker 1: forward any of these situations in the future, and so
Speaker 1: we are doing our best to do that. A different
Speaker 1: subject here. I mean, you've been so enormously successful at
Speaker 1: raising money for this work, especially in recent years, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it has been from very wealthy individuals,
Speaker 1: um and and but I know, you know, one thing
Speaker 1: I ran into in my last years of raising money
Speaker 1: for the marijuana reform marijuana legalization ballot initiatives was that
Speaker 1: as the industry started growing up, the wealthy philanthropists started
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I'm less interested. So many people
Speaker 1: are making money from this, why don't you go to
Speaker 1: those those guys? You know, overwhelmingly the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the funding from sixteen had come from people who were
Speaker 1: philanthropically interested in this, not from people who are interested
Speaker 1: in is self interested for a profit way now, you've
Speaker 1: obviously gone through a similar transition. It was overwhelmingly, you know,
Speaker 1: philanthropic money you were raising. But in recent years, with
Speaker 1: the for profit side and having companies like the Tie
Speaker 1: or Compass that have multibillion dollar valuations, uh and other
Speaker 1: ones that are you know, very well financed, you must
Speaker 1: be running into the same thing where the philanthropists are saying,
Speaker 1: you know, go to the money guys. Now we're not
Speaker 1: in it for the money. They are. Is that what's
Speaker 1: happening and how you dealing with it? Well, that's a
Speaker 1: great question, Eithan. So in MAPS history, we've raised over
Speaker 1: about a hundred and thirty five or hundred forty billion
Speaker 1: dollars in grants, mostly donations and a few grants, and
Speaker 1: we've reached this point where we needed a substantial amount
Speaker 1: of money in a short time to really prepare for
Speaker 1: commercializa sh and so we did develop a new approach
Speaker 1: which we're calling a regenerative financing, and it's through a
Speaker 1: group called Vine Ventures, and it's our first effort to
Speaker 1: actually reach out to investors. But it's different than your
Speaker 1: traditional kind of venture capital where you try to get
Speaker 1: ten x returns. So it's for mission aligned investors where
Speaker 1: what we promise to do is share revenue a percentage
Speaker 1: of the revenue. So we have created this Vine Ventures
Speaker 1: deal to raise seventy million dollars and it's for six
Speaker 1: point one per cent of North American revenue for eight
Speaker 1: years after commercialization. There's a waterfall situation, meaning that as
Speaker 1: we return more and more to them, they get a
Speaker 1: lower and lower percentage, so we think it's most likely
Speaker 1: to be two x or three ax, but not beyond that.
Speaker 1: And then after this eight year period it just completely disappears.
Speaker 1: And because it's about a share of the revenue, and
Speaker 1: this is I think a really crucial point. There's no ownership,
Speaker 1: there's no control, there's no board of director seats, and
Speaker 1: on top of it, they don't care if we use
Speaker 1: a lot of the revenue for patient assistance programs, or
Speaker 1: for drug policy reform, or for other things that might
Speaker 1: not bring them back more money. So that it's about
Speaker 1: a revenue share. And we're probably around million or so
Speaker 1: of the seventy million so far raised. Um there's a
Speaker 1: fair number of the donors that didn't want to be
Speaker 1: involved because they didn't want to switch from donors to investors.
Speaker 1: And so my hope is that once we complete this
Speaker 1: seventy million dollar raise, which we think will happen in
Speaker 1: the next month or so, that we are going to
Speaker 1: need still a substantial amount of money. You know, as
Speaker 1: you succeed, your ambitions increase. So, as I said, we're
Speaker 1: wanting to globalize the patient access to m d m A,
Speaker 1: We're wanting to do all sorts of humanitarian projects, and
Speaker 1: so we're gonna need a fair amount of money to
Speaker 1: to do the research in Europe, to really do the
Speaker 1: commercialization in the US, there will be a point where
Speaker 1: we hit what we're calling a sustainability point, and that's
Speaker 1: where the income from the sale of m d m A,
Speaker 1: the profit from the sale of m d m A,
Speaker 1: covers all of the costs and then starts generating more
Speaker 1: money for more research, for more drug development, and also
Speaker 1: for moving some money to the nonprofit for drug policy reform,
Speaker 1: and also for you know, patient assistance programs. Patient assistance
Speaker 1: programs are particularly difficult in our situation because when you
Speaker 1: see a add on TV for a pharmaceutical drug and
Speaker 1: it says, if you can't afford the drug, you know,
Speaker 1: talk to us. We can give it to you for
Speaker 1: freer low cost um for us. If we give people
Speaker 1: a dm A for free, it doesn't do them any
Speaker 1: good unless they can afford the therapy, and the therapy
Speaker 1: could be ten dollars. So how do we really provide
Speaker 1: patient assistance and equitable access to people that can't otherwise
Speaker 1: afford it? For a large number of people, we're gonna
Speaker 1: need to give them the m DMA for free, but
Speaker 1: also pay their therapists. Well yeah, I mean, is it
Speaker 1: the hope that health insurance will start to cover this stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: they will, but we've got one third of people in
Speaker 1: America will accorded to one third don't even have insurance,
Speaker 1: and often they have underinsured. So I think my hope
Speaker 1: is that after we have completed the seventy million dollars,
Speaker 1: I would like to do the rest with philanthropy, to
Speaker 1: go back to the philanthropic model and instead of saying here,
Speaker 1: if you invest, this is what we can return to you,
Speaker 1: to really go back to the story is here. If
Speaker 1: you donate, here's the change that we can make in
Speaker 1: the world. And even though it will end up generating
Speaker 1: resources that we will be using for more research, manitarian
Speaker 1: projects based and assistance, Prince joke post for him, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you rather have us use the resources for that instead
Speaker 1: of giving back to investors. So I think the Vine
Speaker 1: Ventures deal came at a crucial time. It's a courageous
Speaker 1: and novel way of raising funds with this royalty financing.
Speaker 1: So Rick, I gotta tell you, I could just keep
Speaker 1: going here. I've loved having this conversation and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a closet with no air conditioning. But
Speaker 1: this I've loved catching up with you, you know, and
Speaker 1: having our conversation get recorded for Psychoactive listeners. So what
Speaker 1: you've done, your focus, your commitment, your obsessiveness, your ethical values. Uh,
Speaker 1: it really is extraordinary. Rick, So you know, God bless
Speaker 1: with all this stuff. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That's very sweet. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your
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Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Ethan Natalman. You can also find
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noham Osband and Josh Stain.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to
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Speaker 1: Morris International, before that chief executive office there, and he's
Speaker 1: been a leader within the tobacco industry in making the
Speaker 1: transition from cigarettes to non smokable nicotine alternatives. I said
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Speaker 1: we don't only have a model incentive. We have a
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