Speaker 1: Hello Sunshine, Hey besties.
Speaker 2: Today on the bright Side, it is Wellness Wednesday, and
Speaker 2: we're answering all the questions you're too nervous to ask
Speaker 2: about psychedelics and their effect on the brain. What exactly
Speaker 2: happens in the brain when you do psychedelics, what's microdosing,
Speaker 2: and what are the benefits? And are psychedelics a viable
Speaker 2: treatment for mood disorders or PTSD. Doctor Harriet DeWitt is
Speaker 2: here to answer all these and more. She's a professor
Speaker 2: of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 2: and she's bringing more than forty years of research on
Speaker 2: this very topic to our conversation today. It's Wednesday, September fourth.
Speaker 3: I'm Simone Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the
Speaker 3: bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show when we
Speaker 3: come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten
Speaker 3: your day. All right, Simone, it's a new month, which
Speaker 3: means it's time for a new Reason book Club Pick,
Speaker 3: and it is the one hundredth book Club pick. It's
Speaker 3: so major. I don't know about you, but I get
Speaker 3: so giddy for these releases.
Speaker 2: I get so giddy too, and We've actually been sitting
Speaker 2: on this little secret for a while, the August pick,
Speaker 2: and I've been just staring at the cover because it's
Speaker 2: so gorgeous. Would you tell us more about it, Danielle?
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, this month's Reese's Book Club pick is super special.
Speaker 3: It's titled The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkel. And
Speaker 3: here's what's so special about it. Besides the fact that
Speaker 3: it's a great book, the author was Reese's English teacher.
Speaker 1: That's so incredible. I love this full circle moment.
Speaker 3: I know, and I know we mentioned it's the hundredth pick,
Speaker 3: but can you believe it's the hundredth pick? Like I
Speaker 3: remember when Reese's Book Club chose their very first book,
Speaker 3: and now we're on the hundredth.
Speaker 2: Pick, and lucky ass we get to have each one
Speaker 2: of these authors on our show.
Speaker 3: Well, this book is getting high praise. Another Reese's Book
Speaker 3: Club author, Ann Patchett said that this book is a
Speaker 3: howling love letter to the world.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's your understanding of what this book is about?
Speaker 3: Okay, So The Comfort of Crows is a little different
Speaker 3: from most of the RBC picks. It's part memoir, part
Speaker 3: nature writing, and it follows the plants and the creatures
Speaker 3: and the critters in Margaret Wrenkel's backyard over the course
Speaker 3: of an entire year, and in fifty two chapters, Margaret
Speaker 3: documents the seasons and the changes that come with them,
Speaker 3: and what's left is a portrait of both joy and grief.
Speaker 3: And Margaret's brother, who's a collage artist, made an original
Speaker 3: piece of art for every single chapter in the book.
Speaker 3: So no doubt it's going to be an enjoyable read
Speaker 3: and also a beautiful read.
Speaker 2: This is inspiring me to get out into nature and write.
Speaker 2: I think this would be such a great exercise in mindfulness.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can totally picture myself just curled up
Speaker 2: with this book under a tree, perhaps in a lush,
Speaker 2: verdant setting, you know, getting my photosynthesis on, listening to
Speaker 2: the birds chirping.
Speaker 3: I would have bet my entire collection of sneakers and heels,
Speaker 3: which are so beloved to me, that you would have
Speaker 3: used the word verdant in this description.
Speaker 2: So does that mean that I get some sneakers? What's
Speaker 2: going on here?
Speaker 3: I don't think we're the same size. Maybe I can
Speaker 3: give them to your kids.
Speaker 2: That's probably probably inaccurate. Shoe size.
Speaker 3: But yes, I feel like reading this book in nature
Speaker 3: would be really special.
Speaker 2: So nature does wonders for my mental health, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure a lot of you feel the same. It's just
Speaker 2: an instant stressbuster and moodlifter. And lately I've been hearing
Speaker 2: about a lot of people turning to psychedelics for similar vibes.
Speaker 4: Hmmmm.
Speaker 1: You know it's interesting you say that.
Speaker 3: I've you know, I go to like group dinners or
Speaker 3: events sometimes, and I'm hearing more and more people discuss
Speaker 3: plant medicine. It's becoming more popular. People are curious about it.
Speaker 2: I think, Well, curiosity is one of our core values
Speaker 2: here at the bright Side, and that's exactly what we're
Speaker 2: leading with with today's episode. We're all about asking questions
Speaker 2: and digging deeper to responsibly understand what all the hype
Speaker 2: is about when it comes to psychedelics.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you are our science girl, tell us what
Speaker 3: we know.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what we do know.
Speaker 2: I mean, psychedelics have been used in many cultures for
Speaker 2: thousands of years, so the way that people consume it
Speaker 2: today might be new, but psychedelics themselves are not. In
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight, LSD was first synthesized by a Swiss
Speaker 2: chemist named Albert Hoffmann. And then in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: we started to see this trend of prescribing LSD to
Speaker 2: treat people with disorders like alcoholism. Then by the sixties,
Speaker 2: it's estimated that up to forty thousand people were prescribed
Speaker 2: LSD for various mental health conditions. But at that point,
Speaker 2: that's when we started to see things turn and LSD
Speaker 2: became popular as a recreational drug. Then in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: the US government classified LSD as a Schedule one drug,
Speaker 2: meaning it has the highest potential for abuse and apparently
Speaker 2: no medicinal uses according to this government classification. So that
Speaker 2: basically gets us up to now, which is why this
Speaker 2: cultural shift that we're seeing around these drugs is such
Speaker 2: a big deal.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting to understand the history of it because
Speaker 3: I think we're both really curious about where it's going.
Speaker 3: Mike Rudo seeing psychedelics are on the rise in the US,
Speaker 3: but what does the science say.
Speaker 2: That's a big question, And here to break it all
Speaker 2: down for us is doctor Harriet DeWitt. She's a professor
Speaker 2: of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 2: and doctor de Witt has actually been studying the effects
Speaker 2: of drugs on the brain for decades, so I can't
Speaker 2: think of anyone better to speak on this topic. And
Speaker 2: she's currently researching the effects of MDMA and LSD on
Speaker 2: mood and neural function, so let's.
Speaker 1: Bring her in. Doctor Harriet DeWitt, Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, nice to be here.
Speaker 2: Your research focuses on the physiological, mood altering, and behavioral
Speaker 2: effects of drugs, including studies on the effects of psychedelic
Speaker 2: type drugs like MDMA and LSD. Why did you become
Speaker 2: so interested in this area of research.
Speaker 5: I've been doing studies with psychoactive drugs more broadly for
Speaker 5: many years, so I've done a lot of studies with
Speaker 5: emphetamine and valuum, THHC, alcohol, caffeine, a whole range of
Speaker 5: more kind of licit drugs in a sense. And then
Speaker 5: it became clear that MDMA was being widely used, and
Speaker 5: MDMA is very similar to emphetamine in many ways, but
Speaker 5: it seems to have this kind of unique pro social effect,
Speaker 5: and I thought we are in a really good position
Speaker 5: to test that under experimental condition. So in the studies
Speaker 5: that we do with healthy volunteers. We control people's expectancies
Speaker 5: when people expect to get a certain drug, and then
Speaker 5: that can influence how they respond to it. So we
Speaker 5: give the drug under double blind conditions, which means that
Speaker 5: neither the participant nor the person who's working with that
Speaker 5: person during the session, they don't know what the is getting.
Speaker 5: So that gives us a much more objective measure of
Speaker 5: how the drug makes people feel and how it makes
Speaker 5: them behave it leaves aside their expectancies. So usually when
Speaker 5: people use MDMA or LSD, they have very strong expectations
Speaker 5: that it's going to make them feel a certain way,
Speaker 5: and we were able to look just at the pharmacological
Speaker 5: effects holding those expectancies constant.
Speaker 3: So you got your PhD in the eighties, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: I'm so curious why this became your area of focus.
Speaker 3: Were you a hippie back in the day?
Speaker 1: What about this intrigued you so much?
Speaker 3: Because you're clearly like you could have gone into anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think drugs are really challenging and really interesting aspect
Speaker 5: of psychology because they combine biological factors with psychological factors. Here,
Speaker 5: we are giving a drug to people and we know
Speaker 5: it acts on a brain and receptors in the brain,
Speaker 5: and yet it has these profound psychological effects.
Speaker 4: My graduate work was actually in animal models of drug taking.
Speaker 5: It turns out that if you give a rat, you
Speaker 5: put a catheter into its vein and you allow it
Speaker 5: to press a lever to get drug, the animals will
Speaker 5: take most of the same drugs that people will take.
Speaker 5: If you make amphetament available, for example, they'll press a
Speaker 5: lever to get the umfetament over extended periods of time.
Speaker 5: So I originally started with animal models of drug taking,
Speaker 5: and then when I came to hear at the University
Speaker 5: of Chicago, I switched over to study humans, and so
Speaker 5: a lot of what I do is kind of bridging
Speaker 5: the two. So what happens what we know from animal
Speaker 5: studies and applying what the drugs.
Speaker 4: Do to humans.
Speaker 3: I've personally anecdotally seen real societal shift when it comes
Speaker 3: to people's views on psychedelics, particularly I know we live
Speaker 3: in la but particularly in the last five years. Even
Speaker 3: I'm curious how the societal shifts have impacted the work
Speaker 3: that you're doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the use of psychedelic drugs can continued
Speaker 5: at sort of an underground level for most of the
Speaker 5: time that we were not able to test them in
Speaker 5: under experimental conditions. And then there was a study I
Speaker 5: think in two thousand and six and Johns Hopkins with
Speaker 5: psilocybin that really turned things around and opened the door
Speaker 5: to more mainstream scientific research. And this was it was
Speaker 5: a very prestigious institution and a very prestigious researcher and
Speaker 5: a very conservative researcher in any ways, so he was able,
Speaker 5: this is Roland Griffiths. He was able to kind of
Speaker 5: turn things around and open the door to more mainstream
Speaker 5: psychiatric research. And from then on people have just been
Speaker 5: taken off with it. Everybody's fascinated by these drugs and
Speaker 5: what exactly do they do? Do they have potential in
Speaker 5: psychiatric practice. So it's a fascinating area of an understudied
Speaker 5: area of research.
Speaker 2: Well, if you ever run out of subjects, you can
Speaker 2: just throw a rock in Los Angeles and we can
Speaker 2: find you so many subjects. Because I truly echo what
Speaker 2: Danielle was saying, I feel like I hear about it
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, whether you're standing in line
Speaker 2: at Arawan or you're at the beach with some friends, offens.
Speaker 5: Everybody talks about their drug experiences. Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious how the changing perspectives around these drugs
Speaker 2: impact consumers, because it seems like as the perception is shifting,
Speaker 2: these drugs become more accessible as well.
Speaker 5: That's probably true, they are more accepted. So there used
Speaker 5: to be a feeling that they were dangerous in some way.
Speaker 5: I think that the fact that they were not legal
Speaker 5: for a long time, and well they're still not legal
Speaker 5: in a lot of places, but it gave the perception
Speaker 5: that they're dangerous and now there's kind of a relief
Speaker 5: from that that really they're not physically that dangerous, although
Speaker 5: they can be used, misused in you know, by the
Speaker 5: wrong people under the wrong circumstances. So yes, I think
Speaker 5: there's been a big opening up of public attitudes towards
Speaker 5: psychedelic drugs.
Speaker 2: So please explain to us what exactly happens in the
Speaker 2: brain when you do psychoactive drugs. And I'm sure the
Speaker 2: reaction or the process is different depending on which drug
Speaker 2: you take.
Speaker 4: Yes, each drug is quite different.
Speaker 5: So much of the work that I've done recently with
Speaker 5: the sort of psychedelic type of drugs has been with MDMA,
Speaker 5: and that we know. Actually what each of these drugs
Speaker 5: has in common is that they act on the different
Speaker 5: kind of receptors and the serotonin system. So MDMA, for example,
Speaker 5: stimulates the serotonin receptors. So serotonin receptors, as everybody knows,
Speaker 5: are also the target of antidepressant effects. So there's some
Speaker 5: connection there that some of the possible therapeutic effects of
Speaker 5: md maybe related to the fact that it acts on
Speaker 5: serotonin system, which is also where the SSRI reuptate blockers
Speaker 5: act regular antidepressants. The other thing about MDMA is that
Speaker 5: it stimulates the release of oxytocin. So oxytocin is a
Speaker 5: poor that's released in the body under circumstances to facilitate
Speaker 5: pair bonding, so mother child interactions and even male female
Speaker 5: courtship interactions, there's a release of oxytocin that makes people
Speaker 5: feel more bonded to one another, or at least more
Speaker 5: bonded to their in group, and so there's some speculation
Speaker 5: that it's that ability of MDMA to release oxytocin that
Speaker 5: makes people feel more connected with each other. It's still
Speaker 5: an open question from research point of view whether it's
Speaker 5: really the primarily the action on serotonin or the action
Speaker 5: on the oxytocin that does this. So that's MDMA and
Speaker 5: LSD different drug, and it acts again on a certain
Speaker 5: subtype of serotonin receptor. It also acts on a number
Speaker 5: of other receptors as well, like dopamine receptors as well.
Speaker 5: So what's remarkable in the studies that I've done. The
Speaker 5: studies I've done have been with microdosing. So we give
Speaker 5: these very very small doses in the order of ten
Speaker 5: to twenty micrograms, and actually the dose that you use
Speaker 5: to trip is one hundred micrograms. They're tiny, tiny little doses,
Speaker 5: and yet they have these profound effects, and that tells
Speaker 5: us that the drug has very potent and very selective
Speaker 5: actions on certain receptor subtypes.
Speaker 4: So how does it act on the brain.
Speaker 5: So I've told you a little bit about the receptors
Speaker 5: that the drugs act on. There are other levels that
Speaker 5: you can study how the drugs act on the brain.
Speaker 5: There's these pictures you've probably seen of how different brain
Speaker 5: areas are normally connected with each other when the people
Speaker 5: are not under the influence, and then when you give
Speaker 5: them a psychedelic like psilocybin, then suddenly all kinds of
Speaker 5: parts that were not previously connected with each other become
Speaker 5: connected with each other, so they talk about complexity or
Speaker 5: sort of disorder or so you can also study how
Speaker 5: the drugs act on the brain at that level.
Speaker 3: I've heard you describe your research and your studies as unusual.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking that's because your research really focuses on pharmacological
Speaker 3: ways that drugs affect the brain in quote unquote healthy people,
Speaker 3: as opposed to how they can be used as a
Speaker 3: course of psychological treatment, which is what I hear about
Speaker 3: more often. What is your goal? What are you looking
Speaker 3: to accomplish in your studies?
Speaker 5: When you study the drugs at high doses and in
Speaker 5: a therapeutic context, there are so many things going on
Speaker 5: that we don't know what they're contributing. The subject has
Speaker 5: a relationship with a therapist, they have preparation sessions, they
Speaker 5: have a guide during the session, they have integration sessions afterwards,
Speaker 5: and we don't know how those experiences or those other
Speaker 5: behavioral components influence the response to the drug. And my
Speaker 5: question is just simpler, is what does the drug itself
Speaker 5: do to kind of psychological processes? So we can ask,
Speaker 5: for example, does it change your ability to detect negative
Speaker 5: emotions in other people.
Speaker 4: So MDMA.
Speaker 5: That's one of the things that we found with MDMA.
Speaker 5: The drug makes you less able to detect negative expressions
Speaker 5: in other people. And so that might be useful from
Speaker 5: a therapeutic point of view. That if you're talking, if
Speaker 5: you're talking to a therapists, and first of all, you
Speaker 5: perceived that there frowning a little bit, and the drug
Speaker 5: makes you not perceive that anymore, you might be more
Speaker 5: willing to interact and disclose. And similarly, if you're at
Speaker 5: a rave or at a party or something, if you
Speaker 5: don't see or perceive negative perceptions and other people, that
Speaker 5: might make it easier for you to interact socially. So
Speaker 5: my job, as I see it, is to see what
Speaker 5: kind of very basic behavioral constructs are affected by the drug.
Speaker 5: We also do studies where people are rejected in a
Speaker 5: kind of a game, computerized game. They're first they're accepted,
Speaker 5: and then they're rejected, and then we ask them how
Speaker 5: rejected do you feel? And the MBMA decreases their feeling
Speaker 5: of being rejected when they're excluded from this game. So
Speaker 5: we've done a whole series of studies trying to look
Speaker 5: at what the units of behavior are that the drugs
Speaker 5: act on.
Speaker 2: So from all your research, what is the best way
Speaker 2: for people to reap the benefits of these drugs in
Speaker 2: a responsible, safe way?
Speaker 1: Is it microdo saying what's your First.
Speaker 5: Of all, I don't think we know yet, And the
Speaker 5: drugs are being tested in a lot of different settings. So,
Speaker 5: for example, MDMA is being tested for post traumatic stress
Speaker 5: disorder specifically for that, and it's not so much. And
Speaker 5: psilocybin has been looked at for depression, and for alcohol
Speaker 5: used disorder, and for end of life anxiety. So people
Speaker 5: have designed studies around particular drugs and particular outcomes, and
Speaker 5: we don't know how general or how specific those are
Speaker 5: to particular drugs. So I think we'll have to wait
Speaker 5: and see what all these studies yield. We also don't
Speaker 5: know yet who might respond badly to the drugs. These
Speaker 5: are powerful drugs, and in these controlled studies we very
Speaker 5: carefully pre select who's going to be a participant or not.
Speaker 5: Once the drug is used more broadly, then we're going
Speaker 5: to get a wider range of people, and we don't
Speaker 5: know who's going to be at risk for having bad
Speaker 5: reactions to the drug. For example, we're I think at
Speaker 5: the early stages, and I think people are studying each
Speaker 5: drug individual drugs for individual what they call indications. So
Speaker 5: that means like what you're targeting, and so it remains
Speaker 5: to be seen how those studies work out.
Speaker 2: We need to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 2: right back with Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, doctor
Speaker 2: Harriet DeWitt.
Speaker 1: And we're back with doctor Harriet DeWitt.
Speaker 3: I have heard, and this is a myth or a
Speaker 3: not a myth that I'd love for you to speak on,
Speaker 3: but I've heard that every time you take MDMA, it
Speaker 3: takes a piece of your brain, like it takes a
Speaker 3: chunk out of your brain.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 3: I wish everyone could see doctor DeWitt's faith right now.
Speaker 1: That's what people say, though. I think that's what they
Speaker 1: told you in school together.
Speaker 4: I think, so, I think, so what do we mean
Speaker 4: by a chunk?
Speaker 5: You know, if it means one neuron and there are
Speaker 5: thirty billion neurons in your brain, so it's just it's
Speaker 5: not a scientific statement.
Speaker 3: Our producers are saying they heard that too. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: glad I'm not alone.
Speaker 5: Okay, Okay, there there was some evidence or belief maybe
Speaker 5: thirty years ago now that MDMA had some what they
Speaker 5: call neurotoxic effects, but that has not been very well
Speaker 5: replicated or established at this point. So to best of
Speaker 5: our knowledge, it doesn't have a if used under controlled
Speaker 5: circumstances and not too often. I think any drug, if
Speaker 5: you take it at high enough doses and often enough,
Speaker 5: there's going to be some damage. But at the doses
Speaker 5: that we're talking about, like the trial for PTSD, they
Speaker 5: give it one two or three times separated by several weeks,
Speaker 5: it's I don't think it has a serious toxic effect.
Speaker 3: One of the concerns for people, I think in the
Speaker 3: last few years is that fentanyl is so widespread. Is
Speaker 3: there a way to test the safety of these drugs
Speaker 3: before ingesting them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there are services, but you can't get
Speaker 5: them at a moment's notice. You know, you could send
Speaker 5: in samples and get them back in a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks basically, but so and we also don't know from
Speaker 5: sample to sample how stable the constituents are. So one
Speaker 5: of the problems with fentanyl is that it's very potent,
Speaker 5: so you only need a tiny little bit to have
Speaker 5: a strong fight, just like LSD in fact in that way,
Speaker 5: and it's cleared really quickly, so that once it's in
Speaker 5: the system, the body clears it really quickly, so it's
Speaker 5: difficult to detect. And so yeah, so's it's potent, so
Speaker 5: you only need a little bit and then and then
Speaker 5: you need a little bit more for it to be
Speaker 5: lethal basically, So it's a very steep curve there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like a pretty risky proposition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's one of the greatest risks of
Speaker 5: using drugs non medically is that you cannot be sure
Speaker 5: of the source, whether you're getting what you thought you
Speaker 5: were getting, whether there are other constituents or other active
Speaker 5: drugs or inactive drugs.
Speaker 4: So is the risky thing.
Speaker 3: One other question I'm curious about is safety or the
Speaker 3: risk of taking drugs when you have underlying mental health disorders.
Speaker 3: I've heard people say, for instance, people that have bipolar
Speaker 3: disorder have to be incredibly careful with psychedelics. What does
Speaker 3: the research say about that, You.
Speaker 5: Know, it's not something that researchers go and study directly.
Speaker 5: If we have some impression that bipolar patients would be
Speaker 5: at risk, it's unlikely that we would get ethical approval
Speaker 5: to test it. So these are things that are going
Speaker 5: to emerge when the drugs are more broadly available and
Speaker 5: bad things happening. So we don't know yet which psychiatric
Speaker 5: disorders are really contraindicated, as I said, because we're selecting
Speaker 5: very clean populations, very carefully defined populations right now.
Speaker 3: I'd love to get into some of the specific experiments
Speaker 3: that you've run. There's one in twenty twenty that I
Speaker 3: found really interesting. One of the participants was a leader
Speaker 3: in the white nationalist movement. Can you take us through
Speaker 3: what you did in that study and what you found.
Speaker 5: Yeah, most of our studies are done in a group
Speaker 5: of participants, so we only look at the data for
Speaker 5: the whole group. This person, though, was in a study
Speaker 5: where we were testing maybe thirty people, and we were
Speaker 5: actually testing the effects of MDMA on pleasantness of social touch.
Speaker 5: So the point of the experiment is not that important.
Speaker 5: But he received the drug in the lab. And when
Speaker 5: they get the drug, they're in our lab here physically,
Speaker 5: and they stay for four or five hours or something,
Speaker 5: and then there's a research assistant goes in every once
Speaker 5: in a while, measures their heart rate, blood pressure, and
Speaker 5: gives them some questionnaires to fill out, and the researcher
Speaker 5: went in there and the person the subject had filled
Speaker 5: out on their form in capital letters, very large capital letters.
Speaker 5: I know exactly what I have to do now. My
Speaker 5: course is very clear, he said, look me up on
Speaker 5: the internet. So the research assistant went and looked him
Speaker 5: up on the internet and he was indeed the leader
Speaker 5: of a white nationalist group. So then they came to
Speaker 5: me and they said, well, what should we do. I
Speaker 5: was really nervous. I thought that the epiphany that he
Speaker 5: had was that he had to go and do something
Speaker 5: with a machine gun or something like that. So, you know,
Speaker 5: it really frightened me. If he's a white nationalist and
Speaker 5: he says, I know what I have to do now.
Speaker 5: So then we went and talked to him, and his
Speaker 5: epiphany was, I see what I'm doing right now. I've
Speaker 5: gone it all wrong. What's really important is luck this
Speaker 5: guy he was getting drug under a circumstances. He didn't
Speaker 5: know what he was getting. When we give people a
Speaker 5: drug at a beginning with star at a study like that,
Speaker 5: we tell him you might get a stimulant, you might
Speaker 5: get a tranquilizer, you might get a placebo you might
Speaker 5: get an antihistamine in this case, we said, also said
Speaker 5: you might get the MDMA, But he had no idea
Speaker 5: what drug he was getting, so there was no set there.
Speaker 5: He wasn't though, he had no reason to expect that
Speaker 5: this was going to be a love drug or anything.
Speaker 5: So what he said then when I talked to him afterwards,
Speaker 5: he said, it didn't really change his beliefs that much.
Speaker 5: He still felt he accepted the white nationalist beliefs, but
Speaker 5: he said it doesn't really matter. He said, that's not
Speaker 5: what's important in my life. What's important in my life
Speaker 5: is family and friends and caring for people and making
Speaker 5: social connections with people.
Speaker 4: So I thought it gave It was.
Speaker 5: Remarkable to me that the drug would produce this strong
Speaker 5: subjective experience, even though he didn't know what he was getting,
Speaker 5: So it was quite remarkable.
Speaker 2: So does this make you believe that perhaps MDMA and
Speaker 2: other similar drugs could help us shape social chain.
Speaker 5: In theory, yes, but in practice it's not anything that
Speaker 5: anybody would take on doing. I mean, that becomes a
Speaker 5: really a political and an ethical issue, and who's to
Speaker 5: say what direction of change, whether it's going to go
Speaker 5: in a good direction or a bad direction. It might
Speaker 5: make them more vulnerable to believing certain kinds of things.
Speaker 4: So I don't think.
Speaker 5: Researchers, psychiatric researchers are going to go to anything like
Speaker 5: that or make any kind of claims like that.
Speaker 2: I do wonder if it could be helpful in a
Speaker 2: recovery setting, like let's say somebody was electing for treatment
Speaker 2: and they came in yes, seeking a perspective and behavioral shift,
Speaker 2: and if it were administered in the controlled environment, I
Speaker 2: bet that could be helpful.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: And that's where the therapist comes in to sort of
Speaker 5: direct the kind of emotional experiences and put them into
Speaker 5: a constructive kind of direction. They are MDMA and have
Speaker 5: for a long time, and things like couple therapy, so
Speaker 5: there's it seems to facilitate kind of difficult conversations with people.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting.
Speaker 5: And there's even an interesting undertaking in between the Israelis
Speaker 5: and the Palestinians that they put people together in kind
Speaker 5: of an ayahuasca group and try and get people with
Speaker 5: very kind of long standing negative feelings about the other
Speaker 5: group and putting them together and having them just be
Speaker 5: with the other group.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting.
Speaker 3: How about a study that you published called Psychedelics in Medicine,
Speaker 3: Can evidence keep up with enthusiasm? What does that title mean?
Speaker 5: Well, that people are going very quickly. Even though there's
Speaker 5: a kind of a blossoming of the research. People are
Speaker 5: have great expectations that the psychedelic drugs are going to
Speaker 5: solve all kinds of problems. So they have great expectations
Speaker 5: that it's going to that the drugs, that psychedelic drugs
Speaker 5: are going to be useful for a lot of different things.
Speaker 5: But in order to make that conclusion, we have to
Speaker 5: do the research, We have to do the science part
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 4: So the question is has the.
Speaker 5: Science kept up with the enthusiasm of what they might do.
Speaker 5: So that particular article was an introduction to a special
Speaker 5: issue where there were maybe six or so different papers
Speaker 5: that reviewed different aspects of psychedelic drugs.
Speaker 3: What do you make of the increasingly mainstream popularity of
Speaker 3: the drugs? Why do you think people are more interested now?
Speaker 5: I think they're becoming more socially acceptable, and there's also
Speaker 5: a little bit more information about under what circumstances they're safe.
Speaker 5: So I think the microdosing people perceive that as being safe,
Speaker 5: and it probably is for the most part, although there
Speaker 5: turns out there are some possible heart problems if you
Speaker 5: use it over a long period of time. So I
Speaker 5: think there's Yeah, they're being tested in mainstream psychiatry and disgusted,
Speaker 5: so then that has a carryover effect. And it's in
Speaker 5: every popular magazine that you come across, in New York
Speaker 5: Times and New Yorker and the Economists. Everywhere you see
Speaker 5: studies of the magic of what psychedelics might do.
Speaker 2: So I know that there's a study that your lab
Speaker 2: did that is quote among the first to report that
Speaker 2: low dose LSD may differentially affect people with depression. So
Speaker 2: if someone is interested in using psychedelics for their mental health,
Speaker 2: what does that mean in practice? What is the process like,
Speaker 2: how does someone even begin to explore this as a
Speaker 2: treatment option?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think we're there yet.
Speaker 5: The drug is still Schedule one, so it's not available
Speaker 5: for medical practice, not available to physicians to prescribe. But
Speaker 5: I thought it was an interesting finding because we pre
Speaker 5: selected people. We had healthy volunteers with low scores on
Speaker 5: a depression scale, and then volunteers who scored high on depression,
Speaker 5: and that this low dose of elicti seemed to produce
Speaker 5: different effects in the depressed people that reported more positive mood,
Speaker 5: and they also reported more psychedelic effects, So it suggests
Speaker 5: that there was something different about their brains to begin
Speaker 5: with that when they come into the study, that the
Speaker 5: drug has a different effect on. So I think it's
Speaker 5: very promising. So the evidence so far on microdosing has
Speaker 5: been very mixed. There isn't very strong evidence that microdosing
Speaker 5: does much. But most of the studies have also been
Speaker 5: done with completely healthy volunteers, and it's possible that the
Speaker 5: microdosing has some effect in people who have some initial problem.
Speaker 5: So in this case it might be depression. You could
Speaker 5: also look at it in people who are depressed or
Speaker 5: in people who have some other major issue going some
Speaker 5: kind of problem going on in their lives. So it
Speaker 5: could be that the reason we haven't seen the marked
Speaker 5: effects in the healthy volunteers is because we haven't been
Speaker 5: looking at the right people. And so this is kind
Speaker 5: of a promising new direction, and we probably will go
Speaker 5: on and look at this now with more depressed people
Speaker 5: and see was it just by chance or can we
Speaker 5: replicate it basically in another sample, So we'll do that.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that MDMA may be close to being approved
Speaker 2: as a potential PTSD treatment. Would you talk to us
Speaker 2: more about the approvals process, like what lies ahead in
Speaker 2: order for these drugs to become more viable options for
Speaker 2: the public.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the approval process is very long and very expensive
Speaker 5: and onerous. So an organization called LYCOS went to the
Speaker 5: trouble and expense of doing three what they call phase
Speaker 5: three trials, so trials with patients with PTSD, and they
Speaker 5: had quite promising results and this summer they presented it
Speaker 5: to the Food and Drug Administration for approval or to
Speaker 5: an advisory committee. Unfortunately, the advisory committee had a lot
Speaker 5: of questions about how the study had been done and
Speaker 5: they didn't recommend that the FDA approve it, and in
Speaker 5: the end, the FDA did not approve it. So this
Speaker 5: was a real setback for the field, basically because it
Speaker 5: was the first of these drugs that was put forward
Speaker 5: to the FDA as a possible therapeutic medication and there
Speaker 5: were very promising results, so it did really improve the
Speaker 5: situation for a lot of patients with PTSD. In the end,
Speaker 5: it was not approved, so they're going to have to
Speaker 5: go back now and do more studies or figure out
Speaker 5: what to do next.
Speaker 3: Who would you recommend psychedelics for.
Speaker 5: I guess I have to think about the medical, scientific
Speaker 5: part of me and also the human part of me.
Speaker 5: I guess if you could participate in one of these
Speaker 5: trials where everything is given under very closely monitored circumstances,
Speaker 5: that would be a way to test it. But if
Speaker 5: you were just somebody with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or
Speaker 5: even PTSD and just take it for yourself, I would
Speaker 5: caution against that, just because so much kind of psychological
Speaker 5: support goes with On the other hand, with really careful
Speaker 5: and cautious use in healthy people, I think that the
Speaker 5: drugs can reveal other ways of being or other ways
Speaker 5: of seeing the world if they're used in a responsible
Speaker 5: ways and from a physical point of view, they're not
Speaker 5: that harmful. That is not like cigarette smoking that's going
Speaker 5: to give you cancer, orlcohol that's going to give you
Speaker 5: liver disease. With the frequency of the doses that do take,
Speaker 5: so people don't take LSD every day for a long
Speaker 5: period of time. They take it once and maybe take
Speaker 5: it again in a couple of months, and it's a
Speaker 5: mixed experience. So under those circumstances, you know, it's not
Speaker 5: there's no real physical hazard. There is some psychological hazard,
Speaker 5: of course.
Speaker 3: Doctor Jowett. What do you think is next for your research?
Speaker 5: Well, I would like to follow up this depression study.
Speaker 5: I'd like to see whether the microdoses improve depression. And
Speaker 5: you know, if there's a possibility of a therapeutic of
Speaker 5: low doses of an LSD or low doses of a
Speaker 5: psychedelic relieving symptoms of depression, that would be really big.
Speaker 5: That would be great. So I'm interested in that. I'm
Speaker 5: also interested in lots of other things. I'm interested in
Speaker 5: how drugs interact with social settings. So how is it
Speaker 5: that the it's not just the drug changing behavior, but
Speaker 5: it's the drug combined with the person that they're talking to,
Speaker 5: whether it's a therapist or a friend, and so how
Speaker 5: do those interactions occur?
Speaker 4: And I'm interested in that rug. It turns out.
Speaker 5: Many of these drugs like MDMA and alcohol, even emphetam
Speaker 5: and make people feel more connected with other people. So
Speaker 5: somehow there's this social component that using the drug makes
Speaker 5: you feel closer to other people. So I think that's
Speaker 5: kind of an interesting thing that hasn't been studied very much.
Speaker 3: Is that lasting or does it just make you feel
Speaker 3: more connected in the moment.
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: Well, all we do is ask the people how connected
Speaker 5: they feel with their partner at the end of the session,
Speaker 5: and then we ask them again two days later, and
Speaker 5: they still feel connected with that person two days later. Now,
Speaker 5: whether that's a memory of you know, that they felt
Speaker 5: connected with that person and they're remembering it two days later,
Speaker 5: or whether they still have a strong feeling of connection
Speaker 5: at the moment the two days later, we don't know.
Speaker 3: Got it. This has been really I would say eye opening,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to say brain expanding instead. I'm really
Speaker 3: grateful for your time. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Well, you had good questions. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Talking to Thank you so much, doctor Douitt.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to see what your research produces next.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Doctor Harriet DeWitt is the founder and primary investigator of
Speaker 2: the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory and a research professor at
Speaker 2: the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 3: We have to take another short break, but we'll be
Speaker 3: right back.
Speaker 1: We're back.
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Speaker 3: That's it for today's episode. Tomorrow, we're talking Paralympics with
Speaker 3: award winning disability advocate Sophie Morgan. She's covering the games
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Speaker 1: Y See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.