Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show
Speaker 1: where we talk about all things drugs. But any views
Speaker 1: expressed here do not represent those of iHeart Media, Protozoa Pictures,
Speaker 1: or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed as an inveterate contrarian,
Speaker 1: I can tell you they may not even represent my own.
Speaker 1: And nothing contained in this show should be used as
Speaker 1: medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drug. Hello,
Speaker 1: Psychoactive listeners. Today we're gonna do something different. It's not
Speaker 1: just gonna be me talking one on one with a guest.
Speaker 1: But I've invited an old friend of mine who I've
Speaker 1: known god for a few decades. It's the nineties now,
Speaker 1: Julie Holland, Dr Julie Holland, who's really just a spa
Speaker 1: tacular writer, thinker, clinician, you name it, I mean, and
Speaker 1: she's written numerous books. I mean, she wrote one about
Speaker 1: working in the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
Speaker 1: She's written books about medical marijuana and m d M
Speaker 1: a h. She wrote a book called Moody bitches about
Speaker 1: women and psychoactive drugs and all sorts of other things
Speaker 1: as well, and she's been on major national TV as
Speaker 1: a correspondent, you name it. So what we decided to
Speaker 1: do was that we were going to do a little
Speaker 1: things sort of like car talk on drugs, you know,
Speaker 1: but rest ashore. We're not driving when we're doing this,
Speaker 1: And actually I don't think we're on drugs at the
Speaker 1: moment um. But Julie, it's great to have you joined
Speaker 1: me for answering these questions that have come in from
Speaker 1: our listeners. I'm very happy to be here. I don't
Speaker 1: have to pee in a cup to talk to you,
Speaker 1: do I ethan? Oh? Well, you know people used to
Speaker 1: say if you wanted a job at Drug Policy Alliance,
Speaker 1: you needed to fail a drug test, but that was
Speaker 1: never true. I am not driving. Let's just say, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to give just one extra little plug,
Speaker 1: which is that my most recent book that came out
Speaker 1: is called Good Chemistry, and it about cannabis and psychedelics
Speaker 1: and antidepressants and lots of the things we're probably gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about. That sounds fascinating. So today we're gonna
Speaker 1: roll off a bunch of questions. So let's go to
Speaker 1: the callers. Hey, um, you know, Michael Pollan has been
Speaker 1: doing a book tour for his latest book about psychedelics
Speaker 1: and keeps repeating the idea that the jury is still
Speaker 1: out on micro dosing, that it could all be placebo.
Speaker 1: And if someone who's been micro docing for several years
Speaker 1: and has read James Fadiman's book, I'd like to get
Speaker 1: your perspective on whether you believe that uh, micro docing
Speaker 1: should be in completely subperceptual doses or you should be
Speaker 1: taking enough of a micro doce that you definitely feel something.
Speaker 1: My impression and other people I've talked to who are
Speaker 1: micro dosing is that they're taking effective doses where the
Speaker 1: effects are noticeable and significant, whether or not it's a
Speaker 1: cure for anything ing or the impact that has UM.
Speaker 1: I can understand the jury still out, but I keep
Speaker 1: seeing Michael Pollen repeating that these are entirely sub perceptual doses,
Speaker 1: and that seems to me erroneous, And I wonder if
Speaker 1: you have taught I definitely have thoughts. First of all,
Speaker 1: I think there's different ways to micro dos and you
Speaker 1: could have a goal that you want sub perceptual doses,
Speaker 1: and then you know what I usually recommend with my patients.
Speaker 1: Is One easy way to figure out whether it's sub
Speaker 1: perceptual or not is if you're trying to read a
Speaker 1: book and the words are sort of breathing and swimming
Speaker 1: and moving around, that's probably not sub perceptual. But I
Speaker 1: feel like I know a lot of people who feel
Speaker 1: good when the micro dose. I was micro docing before
Speaker 1: it was called micro dosing. I didn't know that's what
Speaker 1: I was doing. But I'm not much of a drinker.
Speaker 1: When I was an undergrad and a premed I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to get drunk, but I wanted to have
Speaker 1: a certain levity in the proceedings for the night, and
Speaker 1: I would just have like a tiny little stem of
Speaker 1: a mushroom and I felt sort of a brilliant and
Speaker 1: connected and enjoyed myself and didn't have a hangover. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of different ways to micro dose.
Speaker 1: The study that Michael Pollen is referencing came out of Imperial.
Speaker 1: It allowed participants to self blind at home, so they
Speaker 1: referred to this as citizen science. It's not a clinical study.
Speaker 1: As a psychiatrist, I will say that the psychedelics lend
Speaker 1: a certain cognitive flexibility that can be very, very helpful
Speaker 1: for a broad range of psychiatric diagnoses. Certainly there's less rumination,
Speaker 1: less fixation. You know, it's a mind opening, heart opening.
Speaker 1: This can lead to creativity or emotional enhancement. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pluses to micro dosing. And I
Speaker 1: will also say, don't knock the placebo effect. You know,
Speaker 1: it's real. People expect to get better. They do get better,
Speaker 1: and thank God for the placebo effect in psychiatry, or
Speaker 1: things would be even worse than they already are. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know it's funny. During the beginning of pandemic, I
Speaker 1: was determined I was going to start micro docing myself,
Speaker 1: but I just kept spacing out on it every morning,
Speaker 1: so I never really got into it, never really tried it.
Speaker 1: I have done what I would call mini dozing, which
Speaker 1: is the twenty micrograms thirty micrograms which actually feel and
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed that. All I have to say, it does
Speaker 1: kind of knock me out the next day. Now on
Speaker 1: this issue, I mean, I want to believe, and I
Speaker 1: have enormous respect for Jim Fattiman who has done so
Speaker 1: much of the research on this thing, and he's collected
Speaker 1: I think a couple of thousands of anecdotal reports from people.
Speaker 1: He's really done a huge amount of work and found
Speaker 1: real positive benefits, and so I tend to lean that direction. Now,
Speaker 1: that study you mentioned by the Hungarian fellow abolished Saghetti
Speaker 1: at Imperial College in London with Dave rit So he
Speaker 1: found yeah, no better in the placebo. So and then
Speaker 1: there's Ilett Waldman's book, right, a very good book about
Speaker 1: her experience micro dosing and how she found it useful.
Speaker 1: So my sense is there's not much evidence of real
Speaker 1: potential harm. I understand why Michael is looking at Shaghetti
Speaker 1: study and saying, you know, the jury is out. Fatiman
Speaker 1: collecting thousands of reports suggests there's something really there, So
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely worth more research. Speaking of research
Speaker 1: and Fatiman, I love Jim Fatiman. He is, you know,
Speaker 1: an elder in the psychedelic community. But I really want
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to Sophia Corb, who is
Speaker 1: the person who's really gathering and collating the data and
Speaker 1: doing a lot of the work. That may be an
Speaker 1: ongoing theme when we talk about things, and I'm citing
Speaker 1: studies as I am always trying to shed some light
Speaker 1: on the people right behind the people who are getting
Speaker 1: quoted ethan Um. I'm a huge fan of the podcast
Speaker 1: and also high Julie, a huge fan of your books. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to know if you guys take any psycho
Speaker 1: active of drugs yourself, and if you do, how you
Speaker 1: determine for yourself whether to use the drug or how
Speaker 1: frequently to use it, and if there's anything off limits.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. Sorry to hear the answer. Well, Julie,
Speaker 1: you want to go first or show I jump in
Speaker 1: on that. Oh, maybe you should start, okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I sort of regard as a professional obligation
Speaker 1: first of all, to try as many subs as I
Speaker 1: can that they are in the realm of safety, and
Speaker 1: that means, you know, I've tried not just cannabis and
Speaker 1: many of the psychedelics, but I also there have been
Speaker 1: where I have tried cocaine, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: cocaine I never really enjoyed it all that much. For me.
Speaker 1: It was like drinking too much coffee and having post
Speaker 1: nasal drip and heroin. You know, years ago I did
Speaker 1: try it in various ways with friends I trusted, so
Speaker 1: it will load dose. I never did a high dose
Speaker 1: injection of heroin. I've never tried method on. I've never
Speaker 1: smoked cocaine, and I feel a little bit of professional
Speaker 1: and responsibility on my part for not having tried it. Um,
Speaker 1: But when it comes to which drugs I used, you know,
Speaker 1: I just try to follow all the principles of harm
Speaker 1: reduction and how my body feels and my mind feels.
Speaker 1: When it comes to marijuana, I've been enjoying it, you know,
Speaker 1: since I was eighteen years old, and um, I've never
Speaker 1: really been a daily consumer. I can go weeks without
Speaker 1: it and then, may you know, in the right situation,
Speaker 1: do it for a few days in a row. Recently,
Speaker 1: my principal cannabis consumption is a weekly ritual I have,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, ten milligrams of marijuana, take my headphones,
Speaker 1: and go for a long massage. So that's part of
Speaker 1: my healthy aging process. On the other hand, I also
Speaker 1: say with alcohol, I'm finding my body seems a little
Speaker 1: less tolerant these days, so I find myself just cutting
Speaker 1: back on that, and truth be told, I needed to
Speaker 1: cut back a bit on coffee as well when it
Speaker 1: seemed to be upsetting my stomach. So I still do
Speaker 1: my morning a day, and i still have my you know,
Speaker 1: drink of wall glass of wine occasionally with dinner. But
Speaker 1: I'm just waiting to see how my body feels about this. Now.
Speaker 1: I could go on and on, but let me give
Speaker 1: Julia a chance to answer this one. Well, the joke
Speaker 1: I usually make is that I've been a drug researcher
Speaker 1: from a very young age. I really knew what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do in life, and I got an early start,
Speaker 1: and I'm a bit of a workaholic. So I grew
Speaker 1: up in the seventies, lots of drugs available to me,
Speaker 1: lots of things to try, unfortunately sometimes not knowing that
Speaker 1: I was trying thing and getting another. I mean, I
Speaker 1: one of my sort of what do you call it
Speaker 1: when like the comic has a backstory, like their creation story,
Speaker 1: what is that called? I can't remember? Mine is that
Speaker 1: when I was in high school, in an effort to
Speaker 1: try mescaline, I inadvertently experienced PCP. So I had a
Speaker 1: pretty early, sort of not completely positive drug experience. Although
Speaker 1: honestly it gave me tremendous empathy for people who are
Speaker 1: psychotic and going through a psychotic process. So it ended
Speaker 1: up being foundational to my wanting to be a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: wanting to study drugs. But I, you know, I've tried
Speaker 1: just about everything. When I was an undergrad, I was
Speaker 1: also a singer in a band, and people were very
Speaker 1: generous with their drugs, so I got to try more things.
Speaker 1: And then as I became more sort of enmeshed and
Speaker 1: intertwined with the psychedelic research community, people would also offer
Speaker 1: me various things to try. So I feel like I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of various drug experiences and they helped
Speaker 1: to inform me about the brain and how it works,
Speaker 1: and my mind and how that works. And I have
Speaker 1: found certain things that really helped me open my heart
Speaker 1: and feel more connected and helped to put me in
Speaker 1: a in a sort of a healing, parasympathetic state. I
Speaker 1: spent time going to raves in the nineties and and
Speaker 1: had these really blissful, you know, group dance experiences. I
Speaker 1: went to Grateful Dead shows and had that sort of
Speaker 1: magical group experience. What was your worst experience, Julie, Well,
Speaker 1: the PCP was pretty tough. I'll tell you. Everything was
Speaker 1: sort of like a secret sign I had to interpret,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I thought that the because the
Speaker 1: radio was playing Jimmy Hendricks and Jimmy Hendricks had died
Speaker 1: of a drug overdose, that meant I was going to
Speaker 1: die of a drug overdose. It was It was pretty scary.
Speaker 1: One of the really scariest, most powerful things for me
Speaker 1: was that I had UM five m e O d
Speaker 1: M T, which is more potent than d M T uh,
Speaker 1: and I had a pretty pretty solid dose and that
Speaker 1: was a lot. It took me a long time to
Speaker 1: sort of process that or integrate that, and it kept
Speaker 1: me away from psychedelics actually for about two or three years,
Speaker 1: because I was so kind of a canna say, literally
Speaker 1: blown away by it. And I feel like in this
Speaker 1: case it maybe it maybe living by a long time,
Speaker 1: you mean, like weeks or months thereafter. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just I was impressed by how potent it was,
Speaker 1: how strong it was. I did have a little bit
Speaker 1: of like a flashback the next day where the towels
Speaker 1: looked like they were breathing to me and I wasn't
Speaker 1: on the drug, and that really upset me because I
Speaker 1: had spent a long time sort of arguing against this
Speaker 1: idea that flashbacks even exist. So again, every experience as
Speaker 1: I have had has really informed me tremendously and been
Speaker 1: a sort of a jumping point for me to educate
Speaker 1: myself even more about whatever I've been experiencing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta see if I think about some of my worst
Speaker 1: I remember one time, being eighteen or nineteen, I used
Speaker 1: to go to a sauna if they had at my
Speaker 1: college up at McGill in Montreal, and my friends and
Speaker 1: I was sometimes played backgam and see how long we
Speaker 1: could get into the game before we had to get
Speaker 1: out of sauna. But one time I got pretty high
Speaker 1: before I did that, and when I came out a sauna,
Speaker 1: I almost passed out. And the next day it was
Speaker 1: like that high was impregnated, just buried in my brain.
Speaker 1: It took me a day and a half to clear it.
Speaker 1: And with alcohol, you know, I mean like most people going,
Speaker 1: you know, in their young twenties, you know, I had
Speaker 1: my drink too much throw up. I found getting too
Speaker 1: drunk on bourbon worse than getting too drunk on tequila.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that one. But I remember there was
Speaker 1: one point I was starting to drink a little more
Speaker 1: and I realized one morning that I had had a
Speaker 1: blackout like I saw in my room. I've been playing
Speaker 1: all these records for friends and had no recollection of it.
Speaker 1: And that was just a signal to me, like, uh,
Speaker 1: enough's enough here. You and I both are not really
Speaker 1: big drinkers. And I talked to you about my theory.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's more than a theory, but um,
Speaker 1: there are many people who really don't metabolize alcohol very well,
Speaker 1: and if they still want to alter themselves, they're gonna
Speaker 1: have to find something else to do. And I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people. I really, I'm just not a good drinker.
Speaker 1: If I have more than two drinks, I feel absolutely
Speaker 1: nauseous and vomit and hangovers even from one or two
Speaker 1: drinks happened to me. So I'm not much of a drinker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I seem to know a lot of people of
Speaker 1: the Jewish persuasion who aren't great drinkers but are great
Speaker 1: drug takers or drug policy advocates or drug researchers. And
Speaker 1: the truth is that Jews don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: alcohol dehydrogen ase. Hm. Well, it's what's interesting, man, is Jews,
Speaker 1: you know, probably a higher percentage of Jews drink some
Speaker 1: alcohol than most other ethnic groups. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I sometimes joked the first time I ever had any
Speaker 1: wine was when I was seven days old, and they
Speaker 1: came with that knife at my brists, you know. And
Speaker 1: then I grew up drinking you know, little bits of
Speaker 1: wine as a kid when I was just you know, eight, nine,
Speaker 1: ten years old, and stuff like that. So we sort
Speaker 1: of grow up with familiarity. We do it in a
Speaker 1: familial context if it's done in that traditional way, and
Speaker 1: I sometimes think there was a real social protective element
Speaker 1: of that kind of a culturation, the same way some
Speaker 1: of these people talk about Italians and Italian families and
Speaker 1: drinking all that. Jews tend to drink less, I think. Um,
Speaker 1: but if you're doing in that ritual context, you get
Speaker 1: a certain familiarity. So Julie, is anything that you would
Speaker 1: not try? Oh oh well, you know, I've always sort
Speaker 1: of drawn the line that I won't personally inject anything
Speaker 1: into my body for whatever reason. So you know, I
Speaker 1: have snorted things and smoked things, and on the very
Speaker 1: rare occasion, put things into other orifices of my body.
Speaker 1: But you know, my motto growing up was sort of
Speaker 1: moderation and all things including moderation, like sometimes you've got
Speaker 1: to kick out the jams and do things that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't typically do, So maybe never say never. I think
Speaker 1: I could probably be talked into trying most things once
Speaker 1: as long as I knew it wouldn't you know, irreversible
Speaker 1: harm me m hmm, yeah, I used this funny I try.
Speaker 1: I think there's probably a few of the psychedelics. I
Speaker 1: remember going to the Tell Your Ride Mushroom conference many
Speaker 1: years ago that Andy Wyle and others ran, and I
Speaker 1: met Gary Linkoff, the author of the Automo Guide to
Speaker 1: Wild Mushrooms, who was very interested in the psychedelic aspects
Speaker 1: of these things, and he described some experiences I think
Speaker 1: it was with Datura or some other very powerful fung
Speaker 1: u from mushroom out of Siberia just doing things to
Speaker 1: his body that you never want to have happened again.
Speaker 1: So I could see some things that are kind of
Speaker 1: off limits. And I think also with the injecting, although
Speaker 1: I've done that one or two times just with a
Speaker 1: very trusted friends, uh ministering it, it's not something I
Speaker 1: pursue wherever would recommend, that's for sure. We'll be talking
Speaker 1: more after we hear this add Okay, well, let's go
Speaker 1: to the next question. Hey, Ethan, loving the show. I've
Speaker 1: got a question. You've talked a lot about the medical
Speaker 1: and legal implications of a variety of drugs. I'm curious
Speaker 1: about the humanitarian implications Specifically, I'm wondering about cocaine. Is
Speaker 1: there a ethical way to do or buy cocaine or
Speaker 1: is the cocaine trade so sort of dirty and painted
Speaker 1: with humanitarian issues that it's not ethical at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no easy answer to that one, right,
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: this stuff is illegal means that there's no real way
Speaker 1: to get it. Otherwise, if you want to use it. Now,
Speaker 1: with cannabis, you could always argue the only ethical way
Speaker 1: to do it would be to say, grow your own,
Speaker 1: and that if you were buying it from people who
Speaker 1: had grown it, you know, whether in Mexico or Afghanistan
Speaker 1: or Columbia or California, that's somehow you are participating, contributing
Speaker 1: to an illicit market, you know, So is cocaine like
Speaker 1: you know, blood diamonds. In one sense, that's true, right,
Speaker 1: there are people being exploited, there's violence, there's global criminal
Speaker 1: organizations that are profiting on this stuff. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's also the case that there are hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: if not millions, of relatively impoverished people, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about coca growing peasants in South America or whether you're
Speaker 1: talking about poor people are involved in the retail sale
Speaker 1: of this stuff who are earning a decent living, sometimes
Speaker 1: in ways that they could not otherwise earn it. So
Speaker 1: I think the really responsible thing here is to say
Speaker 1: that the government should find better ways of legally regulating
Speaker 1: this so that people can obtain it in a legitimate,
Speaker 1: safe way without participating in a global black market. But
Speaker 1: you know, you go back to alcohol prohibition. I mean,
Speaker 1: the same arguments were made back then, where the alcohol
Speaker 1: prohibitions were saying, anybody who drinks, which included at that
Speaker 1: point maybe a good third or more of the country,
Speaker 1: you know, you're aiding in at betting, the black market
Speaker 1: and the components and the gangsters and all that. And
Speaker 1: that was true as far as it went. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, it was an idiotic prohibitionist policy by the
Speaker 1: government that was putting this whole business in the hands
Speaker 1: of the gangsters to begin with. So you know, I've
Speaker 1: never been much of a cocaine consumer. My principal elicits
Speaker 1: are something like mushrooms or cannabis, which don't really have
Speaker 1: all that much in the way of substantial ugly criminal
Speaker 1: organization markets. There's some of that, but it's with cannabis,
Speaker 1: but not a huge part of it. You know. Look,
Speaker 1: for most people, I'd say stay away from cocaine anyway,
Speaker 1: but if you do, it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: principal concern in the ethics of it. I want to
Speaker 1: say a few quick things about cocaine. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever something is made illegal, we end up making it
Speaker 1: stronger and stronger, and that is certainly what happened. The
Speaker 1: coca leaf went from being something where a person would
Speaker 1: make a tea out of the leaves or put a
Speaker 1: leaf or two in there between their cheek and gum,
Speaker 1: to making a much more strong in terms of a
Speaker 1: white powder that you could snort or inject, and then
Speaker 1: even stronger with turning it into the free base crack cocaine.
Speaker 1: So the truth is that you can buy coca leaves
Speaker 1: from a farmer and just make the tea or put
Speaker 1: them in your mouth, and I think that is the
Speaker 1: sort of safest and most natural way to use cocaine.
Speaker 1: When you make it stronger, you know, especially when you're
Speaker 1: snorting it, that is a really short half life. And
Speaker 1: you know, the joke I used to make back in
Speaker 1: the nineties is the only way you really appreciate cocaine
Speaker 1: is once you've been addicted to it and it makes
Speaker 1: your headache go away, then you like it. It's too
Speaker 1: quick acting. I think that there are better stimulants that
Speaker 1: do a better job sort of opening your heart and mind,
Speaker 1: and I feel like cocaine is a bit of a
Speaker 1: narrower that it certainly helps with focus and motivation, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit fleeting. Okay, let's go to the
Speaker 1: next question. Hi, my name is Rachel. I've been working
Speaker 1: in mica shelters or shelters for people who are mentally
Speaker 1: ill with chemical addiction for about five years now in
Speaker 1: New York City, and I've encountered all sorts of substance use. However,
Speaker 1: I have to say that the most common types of
Speaker 1: substance use that I see our alcohol used disorder and
Speaker 1: tobacco used disorder. And I've actually seen more casualties as
Speaker 1: a result of alcohol use disorder than anything else, and
Speaker 1: that's with the fentanel crisis in New York City and
Speaker 1: elsewhere throughout the States. I noticed that a lot of
Speaker 1: my clients, who especially clients who have psychotic disorders, choose
Speaker 1: to use alcohol and tobacco to dull their symptoms. Um
Speaker 1: many of them wind up very physically dependent on alcohol,
Speaker 1: and some of the casualties that I've seen have actually
Speaker 1: been from a lack of alcohol or alcohol withdrawal. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering why there's so little media coverage about alcohol use disorder,
Speaker 1: specifically because it's such a huge problem. Spending nine years
Speaker 1: running the Psyche or at Bellevue, I can tell you
Speaker 1: that the most casualties that we saw at the Psyche
Speaker 1: or at Bellevue were absolutely related to alcohol and cocaine
Speaker 1: and not really any other drugs in terms of statistically
Speaker 1: being significant. So I saw a real lot of fallout
Speaker 1: from people getting tremendously depressed, tremendously addicted, crashing hard, wanting
Speaker 1: to die, having spent money they didn't have or other
Speaker 1: people's money, and selling people's positions. And it does seem
Speaker 1: like it really does a number on people and on
Speaker 1: communities more than a lot of other drugs that we
Speaker 1: have access to. I also got very frustrated that alcohol
Speaker 1: wasn't really being portrayed accurately, and there wasn't accurate information
Speaker 1: about alcohol really being disseminated, because alcohol is actually the
Speaker 1: only drug that can kill you in withdrawal. It's medically
Speaker 1: dangerous to abruptly discontinue alcohol if you're using a high
Speaker 1: dose every day, and there's a thirty percent chance that
Speaker 1: you will have seizures that don't stop, and that is
Speaker 1: typically the thing that will kill you. Alcohol also is
Speaker 1: absolutely toxic to your liver and to your brain. And
Speaker 1: as much as we have this idea, which is really
Speaker 1: wrong that drugs are toxic to your brain, for the
Speaker 1: most part, there's nothing that's going to compare with alcohol
Speaker 1: in terms of chronic consumption and shrinking your cerebellum and
Speaker 1: causing tremendous memory problems and causing dementia. So, you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing her a favor, and we're doing everybody a
Speaker 1: favor by really letting people know that alcohol is really
Speaker 1: a toxic drug. There is a higher rate of addiction
Speaker 1: with alcohol than there is with some other drugs. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that in the drug policy community we're not
Speaker 1: supposed to sort of put down one drug and elevate another.
Speaker 1: But I will say that at Bellevue, most of the
Speaker 1: casualties we saw were from alcohol and cocaine, and so
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to sort of vault their use
Speaker 1: except for in very low dose, ritualized kind of settings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean this also will be clear, right, I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking about high dose alcohol, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: a large majority of our population others are doing low
Speaker 1: dose alcohol. Um, there's obviously I agree with the risk
Speaker 1: and about being the really bad drug out there in
Speaker 1: many regards. On the other hand, there's also this really
Speaker 1: interesting evidence from around the world that moderate consumption is
Speaker 1: when goes older, it can reduce cardio rat vascular risks
Speaker 1: and perhaps lent in life. Um. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: campaign by World Health Organization that's almost an abstinence only
Speaker 1: campaign with alcohol now that we have to ward against.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the shelters and things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing people should know about is there's
Speaker 1: a type of policy or innovation in some cities called
Speaker 1: quote unquote wet housing has other names for it as well.
Speaker 1: But it basically is the basic idea that you have
Speaker 1: people who are severely addicted to alcohol, who, as Julie
Speaker 1: would say, would quite likely, you know, go through the
Speaker 1: dts and die if they were suddenly withdrawn. They are
Speaker 1: frequently being arrested, landing up in emergency rooms. So a
Speaker 1: number of cities, from Seattle to Toronto to a range
Speaker 1: of others, even some of the Midwest set up this
Speaker 1: housing where people can live there and they're allowed to drink,
Speaker 1: and there's some rules. I mean, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: be an asshole, you can't be violent, but you're allowed
Speaker 1: to drink in this place. Some places will even provide
Speaker 1: some of the alcohol. And the evaluations of this wet
Speaker 1: housing have found, in fact that what happens is that
Speaker 1: the people in this wet housing land up drinking less
Speaker 1: than they did on the streets because they don't need
Speaker 1: it as much anymore. They land up being arrested less
Speaker 1: than even emergency is less more likely to reconnect with
Speaker 1: their families or get low level jobs and things like that.
Speaker 1: So it's a great innovation, not unlike you know, other
Speaker 1: harm reduction programs, needle exchange programs, what have you, I
Speaker 1: wish we had more of this, you know, in New
Speaker 1: York City and a range of other places. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a supervised injection facility. So I support
Speaker 1: the idea of supervised injection facilities, and I definitely love
Speaker 1: this idea of what housing. It is harm reduction at
Speaker 1: its finest, you're really reducing medical harm, social harm. You know,
Speaker 1: high dose alcohol is associated with violence, with homicide, and
Speaker 1: with suicide, which is something that we don't talk about
Speaker 1: very much. Suicide is a leading cause. It's one of
Speaker 1: the leading causes of death in America. It probably is
Speaker 1: the leading cause of accidental death. Now it's overtaken motor
Speaker 1: vehicle accidents. And you know, then there's all those overdoses,
Speaker 1: and you can overdose on alcohol. So anything where you're supervised,
Speaker 1: where you're educated, where you're supported, you're gonna end up safer,
Speaker 1: maybe using less and more importantly, like you were talking
Speaker 1: about ethan, re establishing connections, creating a new support system
Speaker 1: so you're not so isolated, because the pain of isolation
Speaker 1: sometimes drives unhealthy choices around alcohol and other drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not just right that you can overdose just
Speaker 1: by drinking too much alcohol by itself, but that until
Speaker 1: the advent of fentonel, many or most opioid overdoses. When
Speaker 1: you saw that headline saying heroin over those he and
Speaker 1: over almost inevitably it involved combining heroin with either alcohol
Speaker 1: or benzos, which is the other drug like alcohol where
Speaker 1: if you suddenly withdraw you might die, and the other
Speaker 1: one that can be very deadly when you're combining with
Speaker 1: things like opioids or alcohol. In terms of dramatically increasing
Speaker 1: the risk of overdose, I mean, fentonel, of course, is
Speaker 1: something we're all by itself. It's powerful enough that you
Speaker 1: can just dive in overdose. But with most street heroin
Speaker 1: that was not really the case. Alcohol was the hidden killer.
Speaker 1: But the headlines they could have say at alcohol over
Speaker 1: those deaths and then report in the background at all
Speaker 1: there was heroin evolved as well, but it was really
Speaker 1: the combo of those two things. Yeah, Hi, this question
Speaker 1: is for Dr Holland. I'm a big fan of your
Speaker 1: work and your writing and m appreciative that I get
Speaker 1: to ask you a question. I was hoping you could
Speaker 1: speak to the potential benefits of psilocybin therapy versus the
Speaker 1: risks of people coming off of long term medications such
Speaker 1: as benzodiazepines and things that help with anxiety or depression,
Speaker 1: knowing that from what I understand, you have to kind
Speaker 1: of taper off those medications before you can try psilocybin
Speaker 1: for therapy. So I was hoping you could speak to
Speaker 1: um the protocol of coming off of meds and how
Speaker 1: soon a person can start to try to use mushrooms
Speaker 1: therapeutically once they've come off of their meds. This is
Speaker 1: a really great question, and I get asked this uh
Speaker 1: in various forms a lot, which is this idea. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm on psych meds, I want to try psychedelics. What
Speaker 1: do I do? And it's really complicated because there are
Speaker 1: different psychedelics that have different rules, and sometimes you're talking
Speaker 1: about medical safety and other times you're just talking about efficacy.
Speaker 1: For instance, it may not be terribly dangerous to take
Speaker 1: m d M A with an S s R I,
Speaker 1: but you really won't feel the m D M A,
Speaker 1: so there's not much point and it probably is not
Speaker 1: good for you. But there's growing evidence that you may
Speaker 1: be able to take psilocybin even though you're on S
Speaker 1: S R I S for a long time, I was saying,
Speaker 1: we don't have data, we don't have data, but they
Speaker 1: just started to be the tiniest bit of data showing.
Speaker 1: There was a study that I think it was Mattias Leakda,
Speaker 1: but I'm not positive and I don't want to misspeak,
Speaker 1: but there was a study that just came out showing
Speaker 1: that they gave S S R S for two weeks
Speaker 1: before they gave psilocybin and people still did feel the psilocybin. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous combinations really have to do with ayahuasca,
Speaker 1: where there are certain medicines you absolutely cannot take. But
Speaker 1: the other question that got brought up, which is about
Speaker 1: coming off medicines so you can have an experience, right,
Speaker 1: and this is a really fragile, difficult experiment to do.
Speaker 1: If you've been on psycho medicine for a long time
Speaker 1: and you want to come off them for any reason,
Speaker 1: you have to do it with somebody who is a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: who is at least a medical doctor who knows you,
Speaker 1: who can work with you, because you have to very
Speaker 1: very slowly taper, preferably with something else in place. You know,
Speaker 1: there are some medicines that I use that you can
Speaker 1: safely combine with psilocybin or other medicine so that you
Speaker 1: don't have to be totally off meds. But it is
Speaker 1: a very vulnerable place if you've come off meds, and
Speaker 1: also if you've had a very intense psychedelic experience, you're
Speaker 1: in a vulnerable place. You need support and integration, and
Speaker 1: you're off meds. That's dangerous. So these things really have
Speaker 1: to be done. I'm not saying it has to be
Speaker 1: a medical model, but I am saying that if you're
Speaker 1: coming off of medicines, that does have to be a
Speaker 1: medical model, and that anybody who's having macro doses needs
Speaker 1: a lot of support before, during, and after so they
Speaker 1: can process everything that happened. And sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: go back on your meds. It's just too much to
Speaker 1: have just unearthed the trauma and be off meds. It
Speaker 1: is a dangerous process, and I'm glad that people are
Speaker 1: asking about it and talking about it. I mean, Julie,
Speaker 1: what do you think in terms of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when people are saying that as psychedelic medicine proceeds, this
Speaker 1: could actually displace a not insignificant part of the broader
Speaker 1: s s R I and other sort of pharmaceutical treatments
Speaker 1: of mood disorders, depression, things like that. What's your thought
Speaker 1: about that? I say yes please, and when absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean we you know, I've been doing psycho farm since
Speaker 1: it has not changed very much. It's the daily dose.
Speaker 1: It's sweeping a lot of things under the carpet and
Speaker 1: just not minding that you have a lumpy carpet. And
Speaker 1: as you know, I mean a macro dose of psychedelics
Speaker 1: really takes the carpet out back and you whack it
Speaker 1: and you can vacuum up the floor in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can get a lot of deep work done.
Speaker 1: And everybody's got trauma, right, every person, no matter how
Speaker 1: easy your childhood was. Even if you were born with
Speaker 1: a silver spoon, at some point somebody was looking the
Speaker 1: other way and the spoon went into your eye. You know,
Speaker 1: you were not parented perfectly all the time, I guarantee it.
Speaker 1: And everybody has trauma and everybody needs to sort of
Speaker 1: sift through some of that to feel better. And the
Speaker 1: way we've been doing in psychiatry lately is that you
Speaker 1: just take the meds to feel better and you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily deal with all the trauma um And I would
Speaker 1: even go further and say that our country has childhood
Speaker 1: trauma that you know, the way we treated indigenous populations
Speaker 1: and the way that we treated the Black community, our
Speaker 1: country has deep childhood wounding and trauma that needs to
Speaker 1: be processed. And all of us on our screens and
Speaker 1: taking our meds and not dealing with our own trauma,
Speaker 1: not dealing with our country's trauma, it's creating a big mess.
Speaker 1: So I think psychedelics can help us really unearthed some
Speaker 1: of the causes for psychiatric symptoms. Yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: was interesting on a discussion with Michael paul In a
Speaker 1: little while back, we talked about peyote in Native American
Speaker 1: church and how part of that, you know, the value
Speaker 1: there is in dealing with the sorts of traumas that
Speaker 1: you're talking about right there. And it's also why I
Speaker 1: think there's you know, a more and more vigorous effort
Speaker 1: to try to engage with African American communities, black people
Speaker 1: about seeing it can there be because there's been this resistance,
Speaker 1: you know, to all drugs and psychedelics being thrown in
Speaker 1: with all the bad drugs, But could this actually play
Speaker 1: a constructive and positive role in some of those regards. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there was this work looking at racial trauma
Speaker 1: and using psychedelics to start to address the effects of
Speaker 1: racial trauma, and you know that was Monica Williams work
Speaker 1: just came out, and one of the things that they
Speaker 1: were looking at that really made a difference is just
Speaker 1: this sort of cognitive flexibility of starting to just open
Speaker 1: up your perspectives a little bit. Yeah, but Julia, I
Speaker 1: have more and more people asking me like, hey, where
Speaker 1: can I find a guided session using psilocybin or something
Speaker 1: like that? And it's still unless you get yourself enrolled
Speaker 1: in some kind of research study, it's still essentially an
Speaker 1: underground enterprise, right. I mean, nobody's really be getting busted
Speaker 1: for this stuff, but nobody's really advertising it on the
Speaker 1: internet either. Well I don't know. I mean I don't
Speaker 1: go on the you know, dark web or whatever, so
Speaker 1: I can't say what's available where. But you know, this
Speaker 1: is a really weird phase in psychiatry where we've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of new treatments that are really going to
Speaker 1: be at our disposal but not quite yet. And you know,
Speaker 1: the only one that's legal right now is ketamine and
Speaker 1: a lot of the ketamine clinics are set up and
Speaker 1: they've got the infrastructure set up, but they're planning on
Speaker 1: offering other drugs once those things are available. M hm, well,
Speaker 1: I think we got a question about ketamine. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is Jill By. I was calling to um read a
Speaker 1: message for Dr Needleman and Dr Hollard. Um. It's just
Speaker 1: wondering what her opinion is on psychotherapy. It's just and
Speaker 1: husion and she's done them and if she thinks they're valuable,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. So, I mean, Julie, what about
Speaker 1: the role of ketamine here? I mean it's like the one,
Speaker 1: you know, legal thing out there. How big a role
Speaker 1: do you think it's going to play in all this,
Speaker 1: whether it's in depression or in other sorts of conditions. Um,
Speaker 1: Ketamine has has been a real bush whacker really for
Speaker 1: the field of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. You know, this is
Speaker 1: an FDA approved drug for treatment resistant depression. First of all,
Speaker 1: what's a bush whacker Like somebody who goes ahead and
Speaker 1: cuts down all the bushes so that it's easier for
Speaker 1: you to walk behind them. What would you call that?
Speaker 1: It's building a foundation for psychedelic assistant psychotherapy. It is
Speaker 1: the one that's legal now, and it's not nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it absolutely puts you in I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: that it's a psychedelic state exactly. I mean this, Look,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a whole interview pretty soon about whether ketamine
Speaker 1: is a psychedelic. Why are we calling it a psychedelic.
Speaker 1: It is a dissociative anesthetic. It's not officially a psychedelic.
Speaker 1: It's not a classical psychedelic. It does not tickle the
Speaker 1: five H T two a receptor, which you could sort
Speaker 1: of think of as like the psychedelic receptor. Ketamine acts
Speaker 1: on the glutamate system. It actually acts in a way
Speaker 1: that is similar to both dexter methorphan, which is a
Speaker 1: copt suppressant, and PCP. So it is a dissociate anesthetic.
Speaker 1: But when you are in that dissociated state, you're in
Speaker 1: sort of a space where you can think about your issues,
Speaker 1: or your behavior or your trauma um. You are in
Speaker 1: an altered state, and it is a state that you
Speaker 1: can engage in psychotherapy. You could be talking to a therapist,
Speaker 1: you could be taking notes, writing things. I know people
Speaker 1: who sort of surface right down some notes and then
Speaker 1: they go back in to see what's going on. Then
Speaker 1: they come up right in a few more things. I
Speaker 1: think that it is a catalyst to help psychotherapy go
Speaker 1: deeper and possibly be more efficient at getting to traumas
Speaker 1: and starting to work through traumas. So in that way,
Speaker 1: it's great in terms of treating depression. Some people have
Speaker 1: really strong reactions to it and get better. Most people,
Speaker 1: even if they get better, they don't stay better, so
Speaker 1: they need sort of like booster treatments. But that tends
Speaker 1: to be just the IVY without the talking. Ken Amine
Speaker 1: assisted psychotherapy is when you're really talking through the therapy,
Speaker 1: which is what you would do with m D m
Speaker 1: A or with psilocybin um. I know it can be done.
Speaker 1: It is done. I have patients who are slowly sort
Speaker 1: of unwinding their cognitive rigidity around certain compulsions or rituals
Speaker 1: or ways of thinking. You know, maybe you can sort
Speaker 1: of change the tapes that are running in your playing
Speaker 1: in your mind in the background. So I definitely think
Speaker 1: that it has therapeutic potential. But in terms of M
Speaker 1: D m A or psilocybin I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: you ain't seen nothing yet. If he think ketamine works.
Speaker 1: Wait till what's coming down the pike. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: she'll say, you know, I think with ketamine for people
Speaker 1: are interested in One of the godfathers is not the
Speaker 1: guide father research in this area is a fellow named
Speaker 1: Phil Wolfson, and it's worth you know, googling him checking
Speaker 1: out his website for his fantastic information. Interviews that are there,
Speaker 1: and a forthcoming episode of Psychoactive will be an interview
Speaker 1: with professionalized Daquar Columbia, who has one of the few
Speaker 1: federally approved grants in which he was doing ketamine administration
Speaker 1: with meditation in in order to help people deal with
Speaker 1: substance abuse. So there really is potential there. There's also
Speaker 1: using it at a high dose intervention as well as
Speaker 1: low dose, so there's different methodologies that are people trying
Speaker 1: to work out well. Worries me is to see these
Speaker 1: kind of fly by night places beginning to pop up
Speaker 1: all around the country. You know, you get some anesthesiologists
Speaker 1: who wants it will make a little extra money on
Speaker 1: the side. They set it up there administering it in
Speaker 1: a kind of non healthy environment. They're not doing the
Speaker 1: processing and the integration, and I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the concerns where Kennyman could actually land up getting a
Speaker 1: bad name because of this proliferation of people using it
Speaker 1: without even never having tried it themselves or really knowing
Speaker 1: the literature and knowing the proper way to do this.
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree. I've had patients of pretty bad experiences
Speaker 1: because they're just left on a stretcher with an I
Speaker 1: V running and no one to talk to. And it's
Speaker 1: a pretty weird state to be in if you're not
Speaker 1: used to altered states. Um. The other thing it's worth
Speaker 1: mentioning is that it absolutely has a much higher abuse
Speaker 1: potential addiction potential than any of the classic psychedelics. My
Speaker 1: chire and I have patients who go to NA meetings
Speaker 1: or other twelve step meetings with all sorts of different
Speaker 1: people and groups, and they're saying that they're seeing more
Speaker 1: people coming in from Kenemine. So, you know, we have
Speaker 1: heard over the years. I don't know even you and
Speaker 1: I know some of the same people. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while you heard about somebody having a little bit
Speaker 1: of an issue with Kenemine. They usually, you know, get
Speaker 1: through it, get around it, but it does kind of
Speaker 1: pull some people in for some reason. People it can
Speaker 1: be addicted. You gotta be careful, you know. I will
Speaker 1: say that I had my own experience doing it last
Speaker 1: year with somebody who was at Kennemine therapist. I was
Speaker 1: surprised at its power. It was short, only hour and
Speaker 1: a half. You know. I'm usually pretty grounded even when
Speaker 1: I'm doing high dose psilocybe and lushrooms, but this one
Speaker 1: took me some places and I found it really valuable
Speaker 1: in terms of some of the insights that I took
Speaker 1: away from there. Definitely, it is a bit untethering, you know,
Speaker 1: so you do sort of end up out there a bit.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that it's short acting is great
Speaker 1: for therapy, you know. One of the issues with these
Speaker 1: medicines like m D m A maybe maybe three or
Speaker 1: four hours little I've been made before to six hours LSD,
Speaker 1: you're looking at easily ten or twelve hours. That's a
Speaker 1: long time to sit and talk to your therapist, you know.
Speaker 1: So some of the companies are looking to make some
Speaker 1: of these drugs shorter acting so that you can have
Speaker 1: more like an hour or two experience and then kind
Speaker 1: of get your head together and go back out in
Speaker 1: the world. And that will be interesting to see. But
Speaker 1: that is one of the advantages of ketamine is that
Speaker 1: it is fairly short acting. In fact, I understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons why you don't hear
Speaker 1: as much about LSD or mescaline as you do about
Speaker 1: psilocybin for some of these research studies is that there
Speaker 1: could be twelve hour experiences, and the amount of time
Speaker 1: and the cost of having a therapist sit there for
Speaker 1: that long is a major impediment to trying to make
Speaker 1: this stuff more widely available. Yeah, it's too much. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing I used to say about LSD back in
Speaker 1: the day is like you're pretty much guaranteed to see
Speaker 1: the sunrise when you take acides. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's doesn't matter when you take it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just you're still going. Maybe you're done, maybe you've got
Speaker 1: the message, you want to hang up the phone, but
Speaker 1: the phone still calling you. So I think, especially if yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're doing research, you know, it's tiring for the patient,
Speaker 1: it's tiring for the therapist, everybody who's you know, monitoring
Speaker 1: the session. And you know, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that mine met is looking to do is to
Speaker 1: basically cap the experience, so it's shorter. They and some
Speaker 1: other companies I believe are looking at ways too, so
Speaker 1: that they can use LSD, but that they can make
Speaker 1: it shorter. Acting. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad. Yes, this is Marcia Rosenbomb in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: My question to Julie and Ethan comes as a parent,
Speaker 1: I need to ask always with the drug issue, what
Speaker 1: about the kids? Specifically? I'm interested in your take on
Speaker 1: the new emergence of psychedelics and also vaping and e cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Those two, it seems to me, are key issues when
Speaker 1: it comes to kids today. And you're both parents, How
Speaker 1: did you deal personally with these issues when your kids
Speaker 1: were teenagers? What did you say to them? What would
Speaker 1: you say to other parents who are concerned about kids
Speaker 1: and drugs? Well, I guess I should reveal our audience.
Speaker 1: That's a bit of a loaded planted question there. The
Speaker 1: caller Marcia Rosenbaum, um, who is my my dear, dear
Speaker 1: friend and longtime colleague, and also who Julian knows well.
Speaker 1: She really pioneered and founded the safety first approach to
Speaker 1: drug education, basically introducing a sex education model or harm
Speaker 1: education approach to drug education with adolescence and emphasizing that
Speaker 1: you don't want kids using drugs, but if they do,
Speaker 1: the bottom line has got to be about keeping them safe.
Speaker 1: So you know, I mean what I would say to
Speaker 1: Marcia on this, and I really to our listeners, um
Speaker 1: is you know it's funny. I was talking to my
Speaker 1: daughter about this. Who now? Who's now? And are you thirties?
Speaker 1: And you know our understanding is I don't talk about
Speaker 1: anything involving what she may or may not have done,
Speaker 1: or we might have done together or whatever. But you
Speaker 1: know what she said to me was Dad. You know
Speaker 1: what you can say is that you always talked very
Speaker 1: openly to me about this and honestly and non judgmentally.
Speaker 1: And it meant that when there was an issue with
Speaker 1: me or my friends or something I knew, I could
Speaker 1: give you a call and get the best possible advice
Speaker 1: about whether it was a friend going through a bad
Speaker 1: trip with to deal with that, or had it relate
Speaker 1: to the whole cannabis stuff or tobacco and nicotine stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that that was valuable. And I can also
Speaker 1: say that when it comes to psychedelics, I know quite
Speaker 1: a number of people who either did mushrooms, typically with
Speaker 1: their teenage child or people who are now growing who
Speaker 1: did it with their parents when they were young. And
Speaker 1: I have to say in those cases, I mean, I
Speaker 1: tend to know more responsible people where those things generally
Speaker 1: worked out pretty well. That's not to recommend it, it's
Speaker 1: just to say it's not that remarkably unusual or heretical.
Speaker 1: But Julie, what do you say. Well, I've been sort
Speaker 1: of preaching harm reduction since the mid eighties, and I
Speaker 1: had my kids in two thousand, two thousand four, so
Speaker 1: they were really born into Amilia where there was a
Speaker 1: lot of talk and of drug use and drug safety
Speaker 1: and benefit maximization and harm minimization and the importance of education.
Speaker 1: Like my kids have been hearing this since, you know,
Speaker 1: before they could talk. The biggest thing, I think it's
Speaker 1: the same for me and for you, Ethan. You know,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing to me was always that I wanted
Speaker 1: them to be able to come to me. I wanted
Speaker 1: them to be able to ask me any question and
Speaker 1: know that they were going to get an answer. I
Speaker 1: wanted them to know that there was no shame in
Speaker 1: any of it. Sex, drugs, it's all natural, it's all
Speaker 1: normal to want to alter yourself, to want to connect
Speaker 1: with other people, or connect with yourself, or connect with nature. So, UM,
Speaker 1: my daughter, she's not very into drugs at all. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think one of her ways of sort
Speaker 1: of defining herself, you know, apart from me, is that
Speaker 1: she does alcohol and she doesn't really like drugs very much. UM.
Speaker 1: Our son, his tastes go more towards where my taste
Speaker 1: go in terms of drugs he likes or drugs he's
Speaker 1: interested in. UM. But we you know, we are in
Speaker 1: a town where there really is a lot of stigma
Speaker 1: and shame around drug use. It's very conservative town. It's
Speaker 1: a very churchy town. I love it here, but the
Speaker 1: drug education in the high school is terrible. And I've
Speaker 1: sort of decided my son as a senior now. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that my to do
Speaker 1: list is that once he leaves and I won't embarrass him,
Speaker 1: I really want to work with them on their curriculum
Speaker 1: to change things. Because the drugs that are mostly used
Speaker 1: here with with my kids in this in this town
Speaker 1: is alcohol and vaping. And either this is when we're
Speaker 1: going to kind of get into it, I'm afraid, but
Speaker 1: a lot of my son's friends are addicted to nicotine
Speaker 1: and are having trouble stopping. And I was a cigarette
Speaker 1: smoker for many, many years. I actually started smoking this
Speaker 1: is fun in fifth grade when I was ten. I
Speaker 1: was very tough with the girl James Dean was completely
Speaker 1: like my hero. I had like a denim jacket with
Speaker 1: the collar up and the cigarette hanging out of my mouth.
Speaker 1: Nobody bothered to tell me I was a girl at
Speaker 1: that point. I was just like a total tomboy. But
Speaker 1: I've been smoking cigarettes offen on since I was ten
Speaker 1: years old, and it was hard for me to quit.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine. It took me several times. I
Speaker 1: quit for a couple of years, I would come back
Speaker 1: to it, quit for a couple of years, come back
Speaker 1: to it. And you know, I was honest with the
Speaker 1: kids about how hard it was for me to quit smoking,
Speaker 1: and how I really didn't want them to smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 1: I really don't want them anywhere near white powders because
Speaker 1: they don't know what they are. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to counterfeit, and most people don't counterfeit things
Speaker 1: like cannabis and mushrooms and and things that you can
Speaker 1: easily look at them and know what they are. My
Speaker 1: kids know not to smoke pot if it's wet or
Speaker 1: smells like from aldehyde. Um. I know a lot about
Speaker 1: PCP and from the inside out, and you know, my
Speaker 1: kids know that that may be one that they would
Speaker 1: like to avoid, and they tell their friends. So, you know,
Speaker 1: for for me, I feel like it's kind of worked out.
Speaker 1: My kids are good, they're healthy, they understand harm reduction philosophy,
Speaker 1: and they've chosen really sort of different paths. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Julia if I one of my outest moments was when
Speaker 1: my daughter Lila was I think in junior high school
Speaker 1: and the DARE officer was there and getting a little
Speaker 1: talk and Lyla raises her hand and says, first of all,
Speaker 1: have you read the book Marijuana Miss Marijuana Facts by
Speaker 1: John Morrigan and lind Zimmer, which was the outstanding book
Speaker 1: in the nineties and early two thousands, you know, analyzing
Speaker 1: the dad of marijuana. And he shook his head, and
Speaker 1: then he said, and what about the medical value of marijuana?
Speaker 1: You know? So I was immensely proud of my daughter
Speaker 1: standing up to him. The other thing is this whole
Speaker 1: issue about parents being on in front of their kids.
Speaker 1: I mean in a way because I first became a
Speaker 1: public figure the year Lyla was born in and you know,
Speaker 1: I've been in a world where marijuana is just sort
Speaker 1: of part of the milieu. So she grew up knowing
Speaker 1: that her dad would, you know, smoke this thing. And
Speaker 1: I was very anti tobacco, anti cigarettes, something of my
Speaker 1: friends who were professors, and she might be with us
Speaker 1: when she was a kid, and she would see us
Speaker 1: smoking and joint sharing a joint. We and we didn't change,
Speaker 1: our personalities didn't change. These were people who were like
Speaker 1: her uncles and aunts. So she developed a kind of understanding.
Speaker 1: And now I wasn't living in a community like you are.
Speaker 1: That's so conservative, you know, Lila. I had to teach
Speaker 1: her at the age of six, in the age of
Speaker 1: nine and twelve as she grew up different ways of
Speaker 1: understanding that and how to relate to it, and how
Speaker 1: to talk about it, and talking to her about unjust
Speaker 1: laws and why this is not right, and also making
Speaker 1: a distinction between something that somebody does occasionally and something
Speaker 1: that people do too much of, and between cannabis on
Speaker 1: the one hand and tobacco on the other. Now, when
Speaker 1: it comes to this issue of tobacco and with a
Speaker 1: whole vaping, e cigarette vaping thing and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, no kids out of lessons we know
Speaker 1: knowledge and they not smoke, they shouldn't be vaping. Let's
Speaker 1: just establish that, right. It's not a good idea, you know,
Speaker 1: for at all this to be doing any of these
Speaker 1: drugs quite frankly, right. But when you look closely at
Speaker 1: the evidence, just a number of things that I think
Speaker 1: are really important to understand. The first one that is
Speaker 1: that overwhelmingly the evid it indicates that vaping, these e cigarettes, jeweling,
Speaker 1: you name it, are dramatically less dangerous than cigarettes, just
Speaker 1: because most of what's dangerous about cigarettes is the burnt
Speaker 1: particle matter. Right, It's not the nicotine. Nicotine hooks you,
Speaker 1: but nicotine is not a particularly bad drug for your health.
Speaker 1: It's that it hooks you so easily, and if you
Speaker 1: then start consuming the nicotine and a smokable form, that's
Speaker 1: what's really deadly about it. And I think the evidence
Speaker 1: is still out and it's probably gonna turn out that
Speaker 1: vaping and thesics turn out to be less addictive than cigarettes. Secondly,
Speaker 1: when you look really closely at the evidence. It turns
Speaker 1: out that most kids who are vaping are not sticking
Speaker 1: with it, and they're not getting dependent upon it. And
Speaker 1: oftentimes the one who do are the ones who already
Speaker 1: had some experiences consuming tobacco or cigarettes in other forms,
Speaker 1: right they were not necessarily there, tend to be less
Speaker 1: likely to have been the tobacco naive folks, or they're
Speaker 1: the ones who are more open to risk taking behavior.
Speaker 1: So I think we need to understand that variable as well.
Speaker 1: There's almost no evidence of people moving from vaping into
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes, although it concerns made is that a majority
Speaker 1: of Americans now believe that vaping is as or more
Speaker 1: dangerous than cigarettes. And that's one n eighty degrees different
Speaker 1: than the truth. But it's a kind of information that's
Speaker 1: being promoted by the anti you know, nicotine organizations and
Speaker 1: by government agencies. Most people still believe that what happened
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago where people were landing up
Speaker 1: in the hospital with something called the Valley of vaping
Speaker 1: related disease and lung disease, and there were two thousand
Speaker 1: hospitalizations and dozens of deaths, They still think that was
Speaker 1: about the cigarettes, when in fact it had essentially nothing
Speaker 1: to do with these cigarettes. It was entirely about illegally
Speaker 1: produced tainted THHC cartridges. So I think there's reason for
Speaker 1: concern about less and vaping. But when you look at
Speaker 1: the benefit for adult smokers, where e cigarettes turn out
Speaker 1: to be more effective than anything else we now have available,
Speaker 1: more effective than patches and gums and medications in helping
Speaker 1: people stop smoking. The benefits of making this stuff easily available,
Speaker 1: including in non tobacco flavors for adults, is a huge advantage,
Speaker 1: and the risk and downside for young people of getting
Speaker 1: into this is you know, modest at best. When the
Speaker 1: leading experts in the world about this, Ken Warner, the
Speaker 1: former Dina University of Michigan School of Public Health, who's
Speaker 1: modeled this out, comparing you know, the potential risk to
Speaker 1: kids with benefits to adult smokers, what you see is
Speaker 1: an overwhelming benefit in terms of years of life saved
Speaker 1: if we can popularize the cigarettes among adults and hopefully
Speaker 1: keep it down and discourage it among young people. But
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be freaking out and it shouldn't be driving
Speaker 1: policy the way it has. Hey, Ethan actually love the show.
Speaker 1: I know you're involved in drug policy and activism for
Speaker 1: a while. But now that you stepped down from that,
Speaker 1: have you begoten more involved in the business side of drugs?
Speaker 1: Have you invested in any cannabis and psyched Dallas businesses?
Speaker 1: And where do you think that whole industry is heading? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or ethan? Are you on any payrolls of any of
Speaker 1: these vape companies. I take absolutely not a penny from
Speaker 1: anybody in the tobacco, nicotine, vape, you name it. And
Speaker 1: I think it's not because I have a huge ethical
Speaker 1: reservation against doing it. I just think that the smearing
Speaker 1: of reputations and the ad hominant attacks in this area
Speaker 1: around tobacco harm reduction versus absence only tobacco policies is
Speaker 1: more vicious than anything I ever encountered in the entire
Speaker 1: drug war, drug policy reform areas. So I stay clear
Speaker 1: of that. I remember you saying that at Horizons a
Speaker 1: while back. Yeah, but you know, I'll tell you when
Speaker 1: it comes to it. Was interesting when I stepped down
Speaker 1: from running Drug Policy Alliance four or four and at
Speaker 1: years ago, all sorts of people you know, were saying ethan, ethan.
Speaker 1: I mean, you played a pivotal role in inventing this industry.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't exist at this point, but for the work
Speaker 1: you did, you should get in there and profit in it.
Speaker 1: And so a whole bunch of companies were interested in
Speaker 1: having me on their advisory boards, and I would have
Speaker 1: been paid something for that, and I couldn't bring myself
Speaker 1: to do it. You know, it just seemed unseemly to
Speaker 1: jump from being a nonprofit advocate for policy reform for
Speaker 1: ethical and policy reasons to being on the for profit side.
Speaker 1: And I was wary of getting involved with any one
Speaker 1: individual company because in case they got in trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: then my being involved with them publicly would be um
Speaker 1: kind of negative news item and affect my reputation and such.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I also just even avoided
Speaker 1: investing at all. But then this year I decided to
Speaker 1: change a bit. So what I've done is I'm still
Speaker 1: not getting involved with any individual companies. I did earlier
Speaker 1: this year invest in one of the marijuana hedge funds,
Speaker 1: where basically I don't even know what they're invested in.
Speaker 1: So it's a way for me to kind of be
Speaker 1: involved in the industry when my own money without having
Speaker 1: any conflicts in the sense that I don't know which
Speaker 1: company they're doing or any of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Of course, I invested exactly the wrong time early in
Speaker 1: the year, so my investment is probably down twenty five
Speaker 1: percent since I put the money in UM. The second
Speaker 1: thing I did was that a few months ago I
Speaker 1: got a phone call UM from a fellow Tom Blaney,
Speaker 1: who had been the outside accountant and his firm for
Speaker 1: Drug Policy Alliance for like twenty years and done a
Speaker 1: great job. And he explained to me that his firm
Speaker 1: was actually involved with on the few big firms doing this,
Speaker 1: p KF O'Connor Davies UM. So I just recently the
Speaker 1: summer signed a little contract with them to advise them
Speaker 1: and to try to open up some doors for them
Speaker 1: UM so that they can be you know, prideing financial
Speaker 1: services for people in the industry. So that's been my
Speaker 1: involvement there. And just very recently, after actually a little
Speaker 1: consultation with Julie, I joined the advisory board of one
Speaker 1: of the psychedelics investment funds. But Julie, what about you?
Speaker 1: What about me? So I am on the scientific advisory
Speaker 1: board of a few companies. One is a cannabis grow
Speaker 1: operation called Maui Grown Therapies that's in Hawaii, And I
Speaker 1: advise a psychedelic VC firm called Paulo Santo UM and
Speaker 1: a few other things. I mean, there's a really interesting
Speaker 1: company called a Pathica that's working with artificial intelligence and
Speaker 1: the psychedelic space that I think is going to do well.
Speaker 1: So I'm advising them. Yeah, anything working out well for
Speaker 1: you as yet or right now, they're all kind of
Speaker 1: long term bits. Yeah. Well, you know, actually one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm really excited about UM and you know,
Speaker 1: Dimitri mugianis and maybe Ross Ellenhorn, I know, you know Dmitri.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you know Ross, But they and
Speaker 1: I are trying to sort of create a psychedelic retreat
Speaker 1: company but also to have a presence in in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and they're called Cardia UM. They want to have a
Speaker 1: retreat in Costa Rica and Jamaica and here in the
Speaker 1: United States once once that is legal to do, so
Speaker 1: maybe Oregon, you know, if our listeners are interested. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dmitri Mugian is a wonderful human being. Here. There's a
Speaker 1: documentary about his work with Ibi Gaine. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the name of it. Julie. Yes. Dangerous with Love. Dangerous
Speaker 1: with Love I highly recommend is a very honest, uh
Speaker 1: documentary about his experience administering I Begain and then doing eboga,
Speaker 1: the the root origin of I begin himself. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'll tell them it's like yellice thing. I'm really just
Speaker 1: learning it. I mean, I've begun speaking a few events,
Speaker 1: this one fund, the Jails Fund that's been you know,
Speaker 1: one of the startup funds in this I'm kind of
Speaker 1: intrigued to see if I can be helpful to them
Speaker 1: and learn as I go. So I don't feel the
Speaker 1: same um resistance I did before I sort of developed.
Speaker 1: And it was frustrating, of course, because when you do
Speaker 1: the work I do, you sometimes get a sense of
Speaker 1: which companies and which people are going to be most successful.
Speaker 1: And so when I look back, I realized that some
Speaker 1: of the people I most liked and appreciated and who
Speaker 1: I might have invested with are the ones who in
Speaker 1: fact have done the best in this industry. So I
Speaker 1: do have little bits of regret, but I feel in
Speaker 1: the end, I'm doing okay, and uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to have created this change without having profited from it.
Speaker 1: As yet yeah, you and I are also sort of
Speaker 1: involved in non various nonprofit projects and things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always felt very uh maybe not officially
Speaker 1: involved with dp A, but certainly unofficially adjacently always involved
Speaker 1: with d p A. And you know, with MAPS, have
Speaker 1: been the medical monitor that's the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Speaker 1: Studies MAPS dot org and be the medical monitor off
Speaker 1: and on for them for like twenty years, and now
Speaker 1: i'm their medical advisor. But none of these things really
Speaker 1: pay anything, I should say, you know, it's not really
Speaker 1: about the money. No, that's right. You know, I decided
Speaker 1: on LEFTB I was not going to stand on the board,
Speaker 1: but I haven'tformally continued to advise, and I'm on the
Speaker 1: advisory board. I see US, for example, which is a
Speaker 1: wonderful organization that organizes the World Ayahuaska Congress. I'm on
Speaker 1: their advisory board. There's another advisory board in terms of
Speaker 1: representing the perspectives and interests of people who are responsibly
Speaker 1: receiving opioid medications but are getting discriminated against because of
Speaker 1: the way the pendulum has swung against proper pain management
Speaker 1: because of some of the abuses on that we're done
Speaker 1: in the past. So yeah, I know there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that, but none of the service on these nonprofits
Speaker 1: pays anything. It's really something we do because we care
Speaker 1: about the cause and never stop will that never will
Speaker 1: stop caring, never stop will. Couldn't have said a better myself. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: big Stonor look at you, Yeah, Julie. Well you know
Speaker 1: we do. We do. We we live good lives, We
Speaker 1: have fun in this stuff. We fight the evils of
Speaker 1: the drug war, Yes we do. We're very healthy. People
Speaker 1: tell us how young we look all the time because
Speaker 1: we put anti inflammatories into our system on a regular basis. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's when we're looking at it. A lot of people,
Speaker 1: I think, realize that cannabis is anti inflammatory, but many
Speaker 1: people don't realize that psychedelics also are really potent anti
Speaker 1: inflammatory medicines. And you're going to be hearing more about
Speaker 1: this and it will help to keep you young and healthy.
Speaker 1: You mean, so I should be supplementing my tumeric black
Speaker 1: pepper anti inflammatory with more of this stuff, huh like
Speaker 1: micro docing. Well, Paul Stammet's would tell you that, yes,
Speaker 1: you you should. You should be having mushrooms and other
Speaker 1: mushrooms and be vitamins. Oh my god. I look forward
Speaker 1: to having Paul on the show. I mean I just
Speaker 1: watched that documentary Fantastic Fun Guy. That is fantastic thing.
Speaker 1: I probably know most of the people interviewed in it.
Speaker 1: But Paul will be a great guest and we eventually
Speaker 1: have him. I mean, he is really the guru of mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Absolutely too well, Julie listen, thanks ever so much for
Speaker 1: joining me on this in our car talk on drugs
Speaker 1: without driving. But I hope we do this again. This
Speaker 1: was really good, really fun, and uh you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's see if we get some more questions in the
Speaker 1: future and we'll come back at this. I would love that.
Speaker 1: That would be great. Count me in. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I would love for you to reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and over voicemail. The number we've set up
Speaker 1: is eight three three seven seven nine two four six,
Speaker 1: So I want to know what you find interesting and
Speaker 1: what you disagree with. I want to hear your suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics and guests, and I want to hear your experiences.
Speaker 1: Please leave us a message at eight three three seven
Speaker 1: seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho Zero
Speaker 1: and if you couldn't keep track of all this, find
Speaker 1: the information in the show notes. Psychoactive is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Kacha Kumkova and Ben Cabrick.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
Speaker 1: and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick for I Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our
Speaker 1: music is by Ari Blusian and a special thanks to
Speaker 1: Aviv Brio, SF Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty. My next
Speaker 1: conversation will be with Professor Elias Dokuar, a research or
Speaker 1: at Columbia University doing fascinating work in using ketamine and
Speaker 1: meditation to treat drug addiction, reading about you know your
Speaker 1: research on dealing with people struggling with alcohol, cocaine, cannabis,
Speaker 1: and basically using ketamine as a way to get people
Speaker 1: to move into meditation correct by approximating the meditative experience,
Speaker 1: by making it easier to practice, and also by motivating people.
Speaker 1: Demoralization is I think a big part of addiction. So
Speaker 1: I also hope that the medicine would disrupt that, that
Speaker 1: it would provide a sense of refresh possibility. Subscribe to Cycleactive.
Speaker 1: Now see it, an'll miss it.