Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heeart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. So today I
Speaker 1: thought we'd bring you a sort of bonus episode. It's
Speaker 1: my old interview from last year with Michael Pollen. I
Speaker 1: did it back then because he had just written a
Speaker 1: new book called This Is Your Mind on Plants. But
Speaker 1: you know, last week Netflix released his spectacle Cular documentary
Speaker 1: based upon Michael's previous book called How to Change Your Mind,
Speaker 1: all about psychedelics research and its medical value. So in
Speaker 1: honor of that coming out, I thought, why not bring
Speaker 1: back that old episode. If you haven't listened to it before,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll enjoy it, And maybe even if you
Speaker 1: have listened, you'll enjoy it. Again Hello psychoactive listeners. Today
Speaker 1: is uh, well, we have quite a guest. He's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary writer and author. He is a professor of journalism
Speaker 1: at you see Berkeley. Uh. He's somebody I've known for
Speaker 1: quite a while who I think whose writing is changing
Speaker 1: the world, and that is Michael Pollen. So, Michael, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining me today. I'm very grateful
Speaker 1: for your time. Thank Yeah, we do go back. I
Speaker 1: guess too when I was writing about medical marijuana, right,
Speaker 1: I think I interviewed you then as exactly I was
Speaker 1: going to bring that up, which is it was back
Speaker 1: in the spring of nineties seven, and I think you
Speaker 1: had just maybe maybe around that time, you had published
Speaker 1: the piece on poppies and Opium and Harper's which is
Speaker 1: part of the chapter of your new book, This is
Speaker 1: Your Mind on Plans, And I had put together that
Speaker 1: ballot initiative in California on legalizing medical marijuana, hadn't drafted it.
Speaker 1: That had been a local activist, Dennis Room. So you
Speaker 1: came to see me. We spent a couple of hours
Speaker 1: together in my office, and we're beginning to plan out
Speaker 1: the next cycle. And I think since then we've crossed
Speaker 1: passed over the years. But let me open up by
Speaker 1: asking you. I mean, the next thing I saw you
Speaker 1: writing about drugs was The Bodany of Desire, where you
Speaker 1: wrote about what apples, potatoes, tulips and maria. Well, what
Speaker 1: I remembered about that piece I remember sitting around everywhere
Speaker 1: after you did it, was that what you did was
Speaker 1: really when you raised the question, is this victory for
Speaker 1: Proposition to fifteen, the medical marijuana initiative in California twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, did it represent a tipping point or
Speaker 1: beginning of a tipping point at ending the war on drugs?
Speaker 1: And the second key point you made there was that
Speaker 1: what it had really done was to open up a
Speaker 1: dialogue between the people in the government, between the cops
Speaker 1: and the growers, and the docks and the patients and
Speaker 1: you name it. And I just thought that in both
Speaker 1: rose respects, it was prescient. But I'm curious now when
Speaker 1: you look back on these last twenty five years. I mean,
Speaker 1: marijuana has not been a focus of your writing in
Speaker 1: recent years, But what do you think about this evolution?
Speaker 1: I mean, what's I Do you have concerns about it?
Speaker 1: Do you feel very good about it? I basically feel
Speaker 1: good about it. I think that what we learned from
Speaker 1: that episode was that a very important tool for changing
Speaker 1: attitudes towards drugs was um and this was your your idea,
Speaker 1: I think, was to reframe marijuana as a medicine rather
Speaker 1: than a kind of cheech and chong, you know, fun thing.
Speaker 1: And when the public began to see that it was
Speaker 1: helping people, and then it was AIDS patients of course,
Speaker 1: and some people with epilepsy UM and these were mostly
Speaker 1: anecdotal stories about how they had helped people, but that
Speaker 1: completely changed the public's attitude. The simple demonization of these
Speaker 1: obstinces became much harder when we began to think of
Speaker 1: them as medicines for some people. And I think it's
Speaker 1: that same game plan, and I don't use that word
Speaker 1: in a cynical way, has really driven the shifts around
Speaker 1: psychedelics too. What's interesting is there was never as much
Speaker 1: science around cannabis as a medicine. It was really largely anecdotal.
Speaker 1: It was a citizen science kind of movement, whereas the
Speaker 1: science around psychedelics has been um, you know, more conventional control,
Speaker 1: double blind studies. Yeah, I mean in a way, right,
Speaker 1: because you also had marijuana was in the farm of
Speaker 1: Copella until the twenties or thirties. Oh yeah, there was history,
Speaker 1: There were studies out there. There was the fact that marinol,
Speaker 1: that synthetic version of marijuana, was already available. They're on
Speaker 1: collegists already saying they were using it, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really a previous generation before me.
Speaker 1: That helps shift opinion on medical marijuana, because with ballot initiatives,
Speaker 1: you weren't really going to run a ballot initiative unless
Speaker 1: you went into it with already fifty or more public support.
Speaker 1: I think somewhat so only with the psychedelic stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: those local initiatives that began to win in Denver and
Speaker 1: in Oakland and now the big state went in Oregon
Speaker 1: last year. I mean, those were doable because of the
Speaker 1: work of others. And when I look at the work
Speaker 1: of others, I give a huge amount of credit to
Speaker 1: Rick Doblin's organization MATS. I give a lot of credit
Speaker 1: to the researchers, the Rolling Griffiths and Bob Jesse's and
Speaker 1: the others. But your book had to change your mind.
Speaker 1: I just think that had an explosive impact just personally.
Speaker 1: The number of people would come up to me and say, Ethan,
Speaker 1: I just read Michael Polland's latest book. I mean, where
Speaker 1: can I get some mushrooms? I've never done them, or
Speaker 1: I haven't done them in three or four years, So
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think about that? I really
Speaker 1: think that you've been this major catalytic writer about food.
Speaker 1: I'm the worst dilemma. But that book was extraordinary in
Speaker 1: its impact. Well, you know, I do hear that a lot,
Speaker 1: and people such as the couple that started the organ initiative,
Speaker 1: you know, have told me that it was reading not
Speaker 1: that book, but the New Yorker piece that preceded the
Speaker 1: book that inspired them. And it's incredibly gratifying. I mean,
Speaker 1: people write things and nothing happens all the time. To
Speaker 1: have anything happened. But I also feel that I was
Speaker 1: amplifying the voices of the researchers because these were incredible
Speaker 1: um findings, and I would interview the patients and tell
Speaker 1: their stories, and that's really what moved the needle. As
Speaker 1: with medical marijuana, hearing about individuals whose lives were transformed
Speaker 1: for the better. There's nothing more powerful than that. And
Speaker 1: of course that's what happened in Oregon, right. I mean
Speaker 1: they began that ballot initiative underwater. They were at forty six,
Speaker 1: I think, and they did have the resources that you
Speaker 1: didn't have back in the nineties. Um, they had a
Speaker 1: lot of advertising money. But what did they do with it? Well,
Speaker 1: they told the stories of cancer patients whose fear of
Speaker 1: death had been removed by their use of of psilocybin
Speaker 1: and picked up ten points in a very short amount
Speaker 1: of time. So the public is ready to hear these stories.
Speaker 1: I think the public is ahead of the politicians on drugs.
Speaker 1: And uh. They know that the drug war has been
Speaker 1: a failure, and they see the collateral damage, and they
Speaker 1: know now that the lies they've been told about drugs
Speaker 1: are just that, and they're much less likely to buy
Speaker 1: the propaganda. In the beginning of your new book, This
Speaker 1: is Your Mind on Plans, you write, my wager in
Speaker 1: writing this book is that the decline of the drug war,
Speaker 1: with its brutally simplistic narratives about your brain on drugs,
Speaker 1: has opened to space in which we can tell some other,
Speaker 1: much more interesting stories about our ancient relationship with the
Speaker 1: mind altering plans and fun guy with which nature has
Speaker 1: blessed us. And that opening to the book is actually
Speaker 1: a good description for why I'm doing this podcast now.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing, and we need this new conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think just ending the drug war is
Speaker 1: not enough because these are powerful substances. They're going to
Speaker 1: be part of our lives, They're going to be accessible.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to talk to our children about them. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we have to learn how to live with them,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, not obvious. Yeah, well you know.
Speaker 1: So let me give you a little shit about something
Speaker 1: and see how you respond to it. Right. You wrote
Speaker 1: an OpEd piece in the spring of I think in
Speaker 1: New York Times, right, and it was a reaction to
Speaker 1: Denver legalizing uh you know, plant medicines or pilocipic mushrooms
Speaker 1: I can't remember. Was narrow short, and you said, hold
Speaker 1: on here, you know, maybe the country isn't ready for
Speaker 1: this debate. And I was thinking, oh, well, Michael's just
Speaker 1: covering his ask this. His book is having such a
Speaker 1: huge impact. The last thing he needs is to be
Speaker 1: identified as a new Timothy Leary of psychedelics. But afy,
Speaker 1: tell me what you were thinking then and what you're
Speaker 1: thinking now about this, because now you're talking about opening
Speaker 1: up the debate. Yeah. So, Um. At the time, I
Speaker 1: was strongly influenced by the scientists that I had been
Speaker 1: interviewing and that we're really at the heart of my book,
Speaker 1: and they were all very nervous. Um. You know, this
Speaker 1: path had been laid out by Rick Doblin, originally of
Speaker 1: FDA approval. Right, We're gonna go through the phase one
Speaker 1: to three of the trials, then we're gonna get FDA approval,
Speaker 1: and then we'll reschedule psychedelics. And the fear then was
Speaker 1: that if this became a popular issue rather than this
Speaker 1: more or less hidden regulatory path, um, it would blow it.
Speaker 1: It would politicize psychedelics, and that I expected a backlash.
Speaker 1: I expected us to fall into the old culture war
Speaker 1: drug war narrative and that suddenly this research, which had
Speaker 1: not been controversial, would get to be controversial. So I
Speaker 1: was in effect being protective of this research, which I
Speaker 1: thought was so important and so promising that I didn't
Speaker 1: want anything to get in the way. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: that process is going on. It hasn't been affected for
Speaker 1: reasons I don't entirely understand. The Republicans have chosen not
Speaker 1: to fight this. Uh, you know, this suing for peace
Speaker 1: in the drug war that's happened. I think they've decided
Speaker 1: it's a losing issue. Uh. And and given that the
Speaker 1: how how the culture war is raging, it's very interesting
Speaker 1: they're leaving this one alone. And in fact, psychedelic research
Speaker 1: has has friends on the right. Rick Perry, the former
Speaker 1: Energy secretary and governor of Texas, as a supporter of
Speaker 1: psychedelic medicine. Rebecca Mercer gave money to MAPS, and Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon says friendly things about it. So as you know,
Speaker 1: and I evolved, I mean, what can I say. I
Speaker 1: still don't support the commercialization of psychedelics. I don't think
Speaker 1: that cannabis is the proper model. And cannabis you know
Speaker 1: where I live. You know their billboards on the Bay Bridge,
Speaker 1: you know, promising delivery of cannabis within two hours if
Speaker 1: you call them, like you know, by the time you
Speaker 1: get home in traffic, it'll be there. There'll be a
Speaker 1: guy you're on a bicycle with your with your cannabis.
Speaker 1: And um, that kind of active promotion of psychedelics is uh,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean maybe I'll be ready for that
Speaker 1: in a year too, but I'm not yet. And I
Speaker 1: think that decriminalization is very different, and I see all
Speaker 1: this capital moving into the psychedelic space, most of it
Speaker 1: for medical treatment, and I do believe there is a place,
Speaker 1: or there should be access for psychedelics for people who
Speaker 1: are not clinically you know, mentally ill um. I think
Speaker 1: they have a lot to offer all of us. But
Speaker 1: I'd love to find a model that is well suited
Speaker 1: to psychedelics, to magic mushrooms, and not as many people
Speaker 1: in the cannabis world want to do follow that path
Speaker 1: so that the magic mushrooms are sold right next to
Speaker 1: the to the cannabis, you know, vape cartridges, in the
Speaker 1: in the dispensaries. Um, that doesn't feel right to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Michael, I'm actually fairly sympathetic to
Speaker 1: your viewpoint. I'm also wary of the kind of over
Speaker 1: the counter commercialization and advertising. I think with marijuana, we
Speaker 1: recognize that it was inevitable and there probably was no
Speaker 1: other better model, and you just have to hope for
Speaker 1: good regulatory approach is at the state and ultimately the
Speaker 1: federal level. I mean, I do look at places like
Speaker 1: the Netherlands or Jamaica where they do seem to sell
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms in the same places that oftentimes cannabis is
Speaker 1: clause legally available and those don't seem to be an
Speaker 1: issue yet. But I agree it has to be careful
Speaker 1: and I don't want to see that that backlash either.
Speaker 1: I mean that definitely scares me that possibility. Right, we
Speaker 1: went through that backlash once, of course, and uh, it
Speaker 1: could happen again. Um. You know, this country is prone
Speaker 1: to moral panics around drugs and it has been for
Speaker 1: a very long time. What's happening with the truffles in
Speaker 1: Amsterdam though, that's a that's a pretty weak form of psilocybin.
Speaker 1: You have to consume enough truffles to get a stomach
Speaker 1: ache for it to actually work. And you know some
Speaker 1: of these substances are you know, LSD is obviously very powerful,
Speaker 1: and uh, I do think that we have to find,
Speaker 1: you know, the proper cultural container. I was very influenced
Speaker 1: by rereading Andrew Wild's book The Natural Mind. It's like
Speaker 1: fifty years old. It's a very wise book, and he
Speaker 1: talks a lot, since he's done all this research in
Speaker 1: South America, of what we have to learn from indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures about how to safely use these powerful psychedelics. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll tell you Michael Andrew was my first guest.
Speaker 1: I did it in part because he has such a
Speaker 1: huge influence on me back in the eighties, reading The
Speaker 1: Natural Mind at the time, and then his other books
Speaker 1: Chocolate to Morphine in the Marriage of the Sun of
Speaker 1: the Moon. I mean. The other thing, of course, is,
Speaker 1: you know, he goes from drug writing to writing about
Speaker 1: integrative medicine, and he and he writes about coffee for example,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into that shortly. And you also go,
Speaker 1: you know, you do the stuff on marijuana, but the
Speaker 1: embodying desire gardening in this and then you become, you
Speaker 1: know the world's leading writer about food stuff. But I
Speaker 1: wonder how you think about your back and forth in
Speaker 1: the merging of these two issues. Yeah, well, for me,
Speaker 1: there of a piece. I mean, you have to go
Speaker 1: back in time to the beginning of my writing, which
Speaker 1: was very much about uh, you know, I began writing
Speaker 1: in the garden. I was very interested in the symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationship between us and plants and how plants have evolved
Speaker 1: to gratify our needs and desires. And that's a very
Speaker 1: successful strategy. Just look at the edible grasses, which now
Speaker 1: you know, have this huge amount of territory. We a
Speaker 1: lot to them because we depend on them for corn
Speaker 1: and rice. This has been a really winning strategy to
Speaker 1: hitch their wagon to ours. And so if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that, if that's the kind of trunk of my work,
Speaker 1: of the tree of my work, this interest in plants
Speaker 1: and people, ethnobotany, you might call it um. One big
Speaker 1: branch off of that trunk is food and agriculture. And
Speaker 1: I spent a couple of years writing about that, and
Speaker 1: I still do from time to time. I'm still very
Speaker 1: interested in that. And that's kind of the most profound
Speaker 1: way we change nature um is through our eating and
Speaker 1: what our agriculture does to the planet. Um. We change
Speaker 1: the land, we change the atmosphere, we changed the composition
Speaker 1: of species. So it was kind of natural I would
Speaker 1: dig into that first and and wrote three or four
Speaker 1: books about that. But another really interesting thing, we use
Speaker 1: plants for us to change consciousness. And this turns out,
Speaker 1: as as Andy says, in the natural mind, to be
Speaker 1: virtually universal. And so that's another interesting branch um of
Speaker 1: our use of plants and their cleverness in enlisting us
Speaker 1: in their their mission to expand their habitat they're also
Speaker 1: you know, both things we ingest that changes us. And finally,
Speaker 1: they're both critically involved in health, physical health for the
Speaker 1: most part with food, and mental health for the most
Speaker 1: part in drugs. But as we know, those lines even
Speaker 1: are not what you would think, and Andy has made
Speaker 1: a very strong case that the psychedelics can have, you know,
Speaker 1: real physiological effects and heal physical elements, not just mental elements,
Speaker 1: and that there's not a real difference between the two
Speaker 1: at some level. I also like moving on as a
Speaker 1: writer at a certain point. I prefer to write as
Speaker 1: an amateur and then I become an expert, and that
Speaker 1: kind of sucks it up from a literary point of view.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very gratifying as an advocate that you know,
Speaker 1: I learned about a said check, I published a book
Speaker 1: about it, and then I have a platform to argue
Speaker 1: for the world I want to see, and that's great.
Speaker 1: But as a writer, I really prefer being at the
Speaker 1: beginning and being the idiot on page one who has
Speaker 1: a set of questions but doesn't have his answers. Read
Speaker 1: the first page of any of my books and you'll
Speaker 1: see I really am very naive at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: what I like to do is dramatize the process of
Speaker 1: learning and what I have to do to learn, which
Speaker 1: includes not only talking to people and reading lots of books,
Speaker 1: but having experiences that are really relevant that teach us
Speaker 1: in a way that books can't teach us. And so
Speaker 1: you know, when I was writing about the cattle industry,
Speaker 1: I bought a cow and followed it through the process
Speaker 1: for Omnivor's dilemma. And as you know, when I wrote
Speaker 1: about psychedelics, I took you know, a menu of psychedelics,
Speaker 1: because there's no substitute for personal experience, um, And there's
Speaker 1: a perspective you have doing something for the first time
Speaker 1: that you'll never have again. So even though I'm a
Speaker 1: relatively green or young psychonaut as Andy reminds me every
Speaker 1: time we're on the stage together and he lists the
Speaker 1: hundreds of experiences he's at all. Right, I actually think
Speaker 1: there's a virtue in being a newbie that I see
Speaker 1: things that you might not see on your hundredth trip um,
Speaker 1: and that there's a quality of wonder. Not to mention
Speaker 1: the fact that the reader can identify more easily with
Speaker 1: someone doing something for the first time than for the
Speaker 1: hundredth time. Um, so there's a there's a bit of
Speaker 1: narrative strategy involved to right. One of the things I
Speaker 1: loved there was a piece of The Times a year
Speaker 1: or two ago, and it had you having a lunch
Speaker 1: at your home and it was with Isolet Waldman, who
Speaker 1: had written a book on micro dosing in fact, and
Speaker 1: I think she actually interned a Drug Policy Alliance when
Speaker 1: she was in her twenties. And then the novelist uh
Speaker 1: TC Boyle, who I remember reading his wonderful book about
Speaker 1: growing marijuana and paranoia in Humboldt back in eighty four,
Speaker 1: Budding Prospects. But then he wrote a very recent novel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary, Yeah exactly. It's called Outside Looking In. And
Speaker 1: one of the comments they quote you saying there is
Speaker 1: you're debating about what's going on American culture with with
Speaker 1: Isolet and TC Boiled and you say, I think part
Speaker 1: of what's going on is it's a reaction or or
Speaker 1: it's linked to the growing anxiety in American society, you know,
Speaker 1: and not not just Trump is um, but a whole
Speaker 1: range of other things. Does that still feel true to you?
Speaker 1: That or you just kind of speculating with them. When
Speaker 1: you said that, I don't remember saying that. I mean
Speaker 1: that it was the anxiety that was leading to interest
Speaker 1: in psychedelics. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean I see it
Speaker 1: more as a dissatisfaction with the tools we have to
Speaker 1: deal with mental illness and anxiety and depression and the
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that s SR eyes are increasingly
Speaker 1: um not working as well as they once did, and
Speaker 1: people really don't like taking them. I see it being
Speaker 1: driven by like a willingness to do something really outside
Speaker 1: of the box that people feel. You know, the underground
Speaker 1: use of psychedelics is booming also, and I think people
Speaker 1: are looking for hell uh, and that people are in
Speaker 1: a very stressed state. It has partly to do with
Speaker 1: our politics, it has partly to do with climate change,
Speaker 1: and the pandemic has has only intensified this, and many
Speaker 1: people are looking for healing and uh, And here are
Speaker 1: psychedelics that offer some relief, but a very different kind
Speaker 1: of relief. And that this is not self medication in
Speaker 1: the sense of using an opiate or alcohol to kind
Speaker 1: of dull your senses. As you know, psychedelic experience is
Speaker 1: really hard work and it's an attempt to go inside,
Speaker 1: which can be a very scary place to go. But
Speaker 1: people are looking for something more radical, something that in
Speaker 1: the in the true sense of the word, that will
Speaker 1: deal with the roots of their problem. It's depression, it's anxiety.
Speaker 1: It's just this sense that we're in a very very
Speaker 1: difficult time and the future, you know, has not looked
Speaker 1: this dark in my lifetime. Um, you know, the questions
Speaker 1: being raised not just about the environmental crisis, but about
Speaker 1: our political system, and well whether our political system can
Speaker 1: cope the environmental crisis, whether our political system can survive.
Speaker 1: And I think all these things make the potential of
Speaker 1: psychedelic healing very attractive to people. And they're they're willing
Speaker 1: to take a chance, right, They're willing to do something
Speaker 1: that may be way out of their comfort zone. I
Speaker 1: am really surprised at the people. I mean, many people
Speaker 1: come to me now like looking for psychedelic therapy, and
Speaker 1: we should tell your listeners, please don't come to me
Speaker 1: for this. I can't make referrals. It's just too dangerous
Speaker 1: for everybody. UM, find your own guide. But I'm amazed
Speaker 1: that who comes to me. They're just not the people
Speaker 1: you would think They're people in very prominent positions, people
Speaker 1: who look like they've got everything worked out in their lives,
Speaker 1: and they're willing to roll the dice and do something
Speaker 1: they never would have considered a few years ago. We'll
Speaker 1: be talking more after we hear this ADM. I have
Speaker 1: to say reading your chapter on mescalin in the current
Speaker 1: book was fascinating for me. First of all, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I must confess I've only done mescaline. I think
Speaker 1: once back, you know, years ago, I did synthetic mescaline
Speaker 1: and I didn't I did not appreciate the differences that
Speaker 1: you describe in your latest book between mescaline and LSD
Speaker 1: and psilocybin. And then you also quote Sasha Alexander Shulgin Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the brilliant backyard chemist who actually I was
Speaker 1: quite friendly with him. We visited his home in Latvia,
Speaker 1: California often times, and who was generous with me and
Speaker 1: having the experiment. Um. But he calls mescaline the queen
Speaker 1: of the psychedelics, and you had I think a Rabbi
Speaker 1: psychelic friend who said the same things, the king of
Speaker 1: the materials. So is your experience would you would you
Speaker 1: agree with that description? Yeah. I mean I had a
Speaker 1: really interesting, uh and positive experience with mescaline. I had
Speaker 1: a more profound one with psilocybin. And given the choice,
Speaker 1: what I do mescaline again, I guess I would. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really liked this quality of you know, the way
Speaker 1: it immerses you in the here and now. Um, it's
Speaker 1: very different than the psychedelics that at high dose take
Speaker 1: you somewhere else, take you to another world, another dimension.
Speaker 1: I was just more here than I'd ever been, and
Speaker 1: more absorbed in what was right in front of me.
Speaker 1: And in a way, it was the perfect drug for
Speaker 1: the pandemic. You know, where we were kind of claustrophobic,
Speaker 1: we were stuck in place. It felt like our worlds
Speaker 1: had shrunk down, still feels that way. And here was
Speaker 1: this drug that made what you had, the room you
Speaker 1: were in, the life you were leading so interesting and
Speaker 1: so nuanced and so rich with possibility and insight that
Speaker 1: you were completely content with your little nutshell. And I
Speaker 1: thought that was a very interesting experience. I think Huxley's account,
Speaker 1: and you know, these accounts influence us. You know, there's
Speaker 1: no innocent psychedelic experiences, right, They're very much constructed by
Speaker 1: our expectations, as Timothy Leary understood. But Huxley in The
Speaker 1: Doors of Perception, a lot of what I felt chimed
Speaker 1: with what he said, which was that he felt like
Speaker 1: the reducing valve of consciousness, the fact that our consciousness
Speaker 1: is trying to reduce the amount of information coming in
Speaker 1: because it threatens to overwhelm us, and it's more than
Speaker 1: we need for the business of living in survival. But
Speaker 1: there's so much more out there, there's so much more
Speaker 1: sensory information than we're taking in. That felt really right
Speaker 1: to me, and Shulgin says this too. He said he
Speaker 1: saw colors or nuances of colors that he didn't know existed.
Speaker 1: And it is that kind of child mind, which is
Speaker 1: taking in information from in all directions, is not focused.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of caffeine. I think psychedelics and caffeine
Speaker 1: are on two ends of a spectrum. Where caffeine helps
Speaker 1: you focus the lens where you want, which is very
Speaker 1: powerful for getting work done, which is why it suits
Speaker 1: capitalism so well. Psychedelics, you're bringing in information from all
Speaker 1: these you know, corners of the room and doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: encourage you to focus, but can be incredibly enriching to
Speaker 1: see what's out there. So it was interesting. I didn't
Speaker 1: have that experience of ego dissolution. I didn't have hallucinations,
Speaker 1: with the one exception of there were a couple of
Speaker 1: moments where I was a little bit overwhelmed by how
Speaker 1: much information was coming in and I closed my eyes
Speaker 1: to meditate. But the me that was meditating with somebody else. Um,
Speaker 1: And this happened a couple of times. I was like,
Speaker 1: who is this Latin American woman who's in my head meditating?
Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy, but um, but in general,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about hallucination. It was about perception and it
Speaker 1: was about taking in this information. The only negative experience
Speaker 1: I felt, besides this brief period of being overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: as as I quote this poet, the immensity of existence.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was really hit by that a couple
Speaker 1: of times at the peak, the only negative was it
Speaker 1: went on so long. I mean it's like fourteen hours,
Speaker 1: and I was done with the mescaline before it was
Speaker 1: done with me. Um. I wanted to just have dinner
Speaker 1: and go to bed, but it wasn't gonna happen. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's why they're not really using mescalin. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it means two shifts for your two guides, right, your
Speaker 1: two therapists exactly be kind of expensive. But it does
Speaker 1: seem like it's worth investigating or maybe working on the
Speaker 1: molecule as as Sasha Shulgin did so brilliantly, because it
Speaker 1: has some of M D M as qualities. You can
Speaker 1: feel very connected to somebody else on it, and you
Speaker 1: can hold a conversation, and it seems to me it
Speaker 1: could be useful in a group therapy context um, which
Speaker 1: might justify all the hours of therapist time. And there
Speaker 1: is a company that wants to work with it, Journey
Speaker 1: All that wants to use mescalin to work on alcoholism.
Speaker 1: And you know the Native Americans have used mescaline in
Speaker 1: the form of peyote with great success in a group
Speaker 1: setting and working often on alcoholism. Yeah. Well, you know
Speaker 1: I reread before talking with you now, another essay you
Speaker 1: wrote that. I just thought it was wonderful and it
Speaker 1: was about the challenges of writing about this, you know,
Speaker 1: about putting into the language. And I remember at one point,
Speaker 1: you know, you uh, you had done five M E
Speaker 1: O D M T The Toad Trip, the Signorian toad
Speaker 1: where you squeeze the glands and you get five mm
Speaker 1: o d m T. And you talked about the role
Speaker 1: of metaphors or rocket and the Big Bang or at
Speaker 1: another point, I think in the most recent book you're
Speaker 1: talking about comparing LSD and psilocybin too kind of a
Speaker 1: top down approach and mescalin almost a bottom up one.
Speaker 1: And I realized that as a writer, and as a
Speaker 1: brilliant writer, you have the luxury of looking at your
Speaker 1: words and crafting them words I'm interviewing this moment. You
Speaker 1: don't have that luxury of doing yet. Did you feel
Speaker 1: that when you were writing this most recent book and
Speaker 1: talking about your mescaline experience, that the words or the
Speaker 1: ways of writing flowed more naturally than it had a
Speaker 1: few years ago, just as you've Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: found a way to write about psychedelic experience for me,
Speaker 1: and that was hard to do when I when I
Speaker 1: first approached the whole issue, and I knew that there
Speaker 1: was going to be a chapter in How to Change
Speaker 1: Your Mind where I'd have to describe my trips, and
Speaker 1: I was very nervous about it because I've read a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, really shitty trip reports we all have,
Speaker 1: and uh, and you know, it's like telling people your dreams.
Speaker 1: You know, the chances are you'll bore them to tears.
Speaker 1: So I approached that as a very you know, nervous
Speaker 1: making part of the writing um. In the event, it
Speaker 1: was actually great fun, much more fun than I thought,
Speaker 1: and as a writer, it was some of the most
Speaker 1: fun I've had, and and writing about this Mescalin trip
Speaker 1: too was really fun. And what unlocked it for me
Speaker 1: was understanding that I was writing for people who probably
Speaker 1: hadn't had this experience, many of my readers, and I
Speaker 1: needed to address them directly about what I imagined they
Speaker 1: were thinking about what I just said. So in other words,
Speaker 1: I I go into the trip and I describe it
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of time. But when I reached
Speaker 1: a moment of incredulousness in my own mind, like there
Speaker 1: was a Latin American woman meditating in my head, I
Speaker 1: stopped and talked to the reader and said, I know
Speaker 1: how crazy this sounds, or yes, I know that love
Speaker 1: is the most important thing in the world. I know
Speaker 1: that there's a hallmark sentiment, but remember it's also profound.
Speaker 1: It can be both, and so this direct address to
Speaker 1: the reader gave me the license to go where I
Speaker 1: had to go, And I felt like I wouldn't lose
Speaker 1: that reader by taking account of their skepticism or their
Speaker 1: wrinkled brow or whatever it was. So once I kind
Speaker 1: of found that that little formula I could let go,
Speaker 1: I could totally cut loose. And you know, for a
Speaker 1: journalist who's normally writing things that have to stand up
Speaker 1: to fact checking right in that all box of checkable facts,
Speaker 1: when there's a lot of other interesting things that you
Speaker 1: can't quite pin down. Here, I'm transcribing the contents of
Speaker 1: my mind. There's no fact checking, right, I have it.
Speaker 1: I'm the expert on this story. And I imagine it's
Speaker 1: how novelists feel because they're they're basically as I imagine,
Speaker 1: I'm I don't write fiction, but they're telling themselves a story,
Speaker 1: or they're enacting a dialogue in their head and writing
Speaker 1: it down, and there's enormous freedom in that. And it
Speaker 1: was it was great pleasure. So I was very happy
Speaker 1: to write a book where I would get to describe
Speaker 1: another trip. You know. I also found sometimes, like when
Speaker 1: I smoke marijuana, if it's strong marijuana, I'll get into
Speaker 1: this thinking, oh my god, great thoughts, great thoughts, but
Speaker 1: so often later in the day, afterwards, the next day,
Speaker 1: they just seem like fluff, you know, Whereas I found
Speaker 1: that when I've done this has happened on mushrooms, has
Speaker 1: happened on ayahuasca, that actually, and especially if I don't
Speaker 1: get high at the end of the trip, that my
Speaker 1: thoughts can be very clear later that day or even
Speaker 1: the next and easy to remember, easy to remember, and
Speaker 1: actually have the really insights I had an influence of
Speaker 1: mushrooms years ago. They still have validity in my life today,
Speaker 1: and so I think that must be a benefit. Actually,
Speaker 1: you had, I think the same experience. Oh yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I did. There are insights I had, and you could.
Speaker 1: You know, you can also call them banal insights around
Speaker 1: love and connectedness, but they're real, you know, the sense
Speaker 1: of interconnectedness people feel on psychedelics. The illusion is the
Speaker 1: idea of separateness, right, and so there is a veracity
Speaker 1: to some of this these ideas we acquire. But also
Speaker 1: think of the people using psychedelics to quit smoking, and
Speaker 1: they come to the profound conclusion that smoking is stupid
Speaker 1: and it's killing them. They knew that at one level.
Speaker 1: But there is a sturdiness to the insight on psychedelics.
Speaker 1: It's it's what James called the noetic quality, right, that
Speaker 1: this is not just an opinion, this is a revealed truth,
Speaker 1: and some of the truths are really important. Um. And
Speaker 1: they have that etched in stone down from the mountain quality.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the keys to the
Speaker 1: success of psychedelics and helping people change bad habits such
Speaker 1: as addiction, is that whatever insights they come to, either
Speaker 1: directed towards them by their therapists or on their own,
Speaker 1: those insights are sturdier than the insights we have in
Speaker 1: everyday life. Well, now let's talk about the powerful role
Speaker 1: of set and setting. And one of the big points
Speaker 1: you make in the mescal in chapter I think it's
Speaker 1: in your other book as well, is for a lot
Speaker 1: of these drugs, there's the synthetic version, right in this
Speaker 1: case mescal in or or you can have that with
Speaker 1: psilocybin as well. And then there's the natural plant version,
Speaker 1: or the one that comes from the toad um in
Speaker 1: the case of five M E O D M T. Right.
Speaker 1: And actually, by chance, I met this guy last week,
Speaker 1: a Mexican guy named Mario Garnier, who is like the latest,
Speaker 1: you know, major advocate for the toad medicine. He actually
Speaker 1: comes from the Sonora area, and when he's asked, there's
Speaker 1: a debate synthetic versus the toad, and the way he
Speaker 1: resolves it is to say they're just different. They're a difference.
Speaker 1: Right now. I think he privately actually believes the real
Speaker 1: stuff is better, but he frames it that way. I
Speaker 1: remember Sasha Shulgin, he was a bit contemptuous. He said,
Speaker 1: use the synthetic, it's the same drug, and in fact,
Speaker 1: if anything, that's a little cleaner, so you're less likely
Speaker 1: to get sick. Now, you talk in the book about
Speaker 1: your own experience with a synthetic and then using I
Speaker 1: think the messical that comes from the sun pedro plant.
Speaker 1: I think in the second case the first ones are
Speaker 1: very high dose and was a kind of a lower dose. Um.
Speaker 1: But you also talk about how our view of this
Speaker 1: is so alien to people in the Native American church
Speaker 1: or Indigenous people's for whom the drug quote unquote is
Speaker 1: almost secondary to the ritualistic context, and they're very devoted
Speaker 1: to their cactus and they're not interested in synthetic mescaline.
Speaker 1: And they're not interested in san pedro, and in fact,
Speaker 1: they're not even interested in peyote that's been grown cultivated.
Speaker 1: They think that's not the same either, that it has
Speaker 1: to be wild. And there may be some truth to that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We haven't grown a lot of penoty,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna try and see what happens. But it
Speaker 1: may be like hydroponic lettuce, you know, it just maybe
Speaker 1: weak um. You know, I think it depends on the drug.
Speaker 1: I think that synthetics are often cleaner and there's less
Speaker 1: gastro intestinal upset. There are other alkaloids we know that
Speaker 1: are active UM. In the same way, Cannabis is not
Speaker 1: just THHC. It has other things going on and and
Speaker 1: maybe other things we haven't yet found. Same with the
Speaker 1: natural forms of most of these drugs. In the case
Speaker 1: of air got, you would not want to eat the
Speaker 1: natural form. That's you know, you could get gang green
Speaker 1: and insanity. I mean, bad things happen. And I just
Speaker 1: say to our listeners, is the connection with LSD, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the It's the fungus from which LSD is derived
Speaker 1: and has a dark history in European culture of leading
Speaker 1: to all sorts of problems when people ingested it on
Speaker 1: bad grain. Another way to look at this is, um,
Speaker 1: look at coca versus cocaine. You know, Andy and Wade
Speaker 1: Davis have written l quently about how coca leaves, which
Speaker 1: are used like caffeine is in our culture in South America,
Speaker 1: has a lot of positive attributes and very few negative attributes.
Speaker 1: And it is the refinement into cocaine where you end
Speaker 1: up with a powerful drug that people can get into
Speaker 1: trouble with and dit oh, you know opium, poppies, poppy
Speaker 1: tea is or even opium compared to the powerful synthetics
Speaker 1: like fenyl, and so it depends. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about things of equal strength, that's one argument. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about the fact that you're refining something from
Speaker 1: nature and making it orders of magnitude more intense, that's
Speaker 1: another story. Um. I think we can get hung up
Speaker 1: though on romanticizing things in their natural form, but there
Speaker 1: are some protections and having them in their natural form too,
Speaker 1: which is that they're often weaker and you know, likely
Speaker 1: to be less overwhelming. Yeah. Well, you know. The other
Speaker 1: thing I like about your writing, and especially in the
Speaker 1: most recent book, is the way you throw things into
Speaker 1: historical context. And I'm reading through it and I'm saying
Speaker 1: to myself, I wonder if he's going to mention Shivel Bush,
Speaker 1: won he gonna? And there there's Wolfgang schildren. He both
Speaker 1: this book Tasted Paradise a couple of decades ago, about spices, stimulants,
Speaker 1: and intoxicants, and he points out how in Europe they
Speaker 1: didn't have coffee or tea until the sixteen hundreds. They
Speaker 1: didn't have tobacco, I don't think till the fifteen sixteen hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: that actually spices played a role almost like Nebrians. They
Speaker 1: had alcohol, and they didn't even have hard liquor, right,
Speaker 1: they had low potency alcohol, So spices played that role. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a hard cider and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget when distillation comes in, but that's pretty late too. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: spices are the kind of forerunners of drugs. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, I mean if you eat chili peppers, right,
Speaker 1: or black pepper, lots of black pepper, you feel flushed
Speaker 1: and you feel it changes consciousness. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: many foods to change consciousness. Sugar Just watch kids with sugar.
Speaker 1: That's their drug. It's a powerful effect. But I love
Speaker 1: that Chivel Bush book and I remember reading it back
Speaker 1: in the eighties and thinking, wow, this is a fast
Speaker 1: sinating area and and that was one of my inspirations
Speaker 1: to write about drugs. The other is a book I
Speaker 1: wonder if you know by uh By Lenson called On Drugs.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a brilliant book that no one's
Speaker 1: heard of about drugs. And um, he's very good at
Speaker 1: looking at the cultural and economic um identity of different drugs.
Speaker 1: You know that cocaine is a consumerist drug, right, you
Speaker 1: always want more. It drives that consumerist economy, and other
Speaker 1: drugs make you very content with what you have in
Speaker 1: front of you, cannabis. And then he had a wonderful
Speaker 1: chapter on LSD and how it was orientalized by Timothy
Speaker 1: Leary and it's really true. You realize it's it's so
Speaker 1: much of you know. He used the Tibetan Book of
Speaker 1: the Dead as the frame for the experience, and it's
Speaker 1: really just about how constructive these drug experiences are, but
Speaker 1: yet they do have qualities that push them in one
Speaker 1: direction or another. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad. He also writing me about the ways
Speaker 1: in which society has transformed. I mean, alcohol is the
Speaker 1: far and away the most widely consumed drug and revolutionary
Speaker 1: error early nineteenth century America, other parts of the world. Um,
Speaker 1: but then there's the transition here and in other countries,
Speaker 1: United Kingdom elsewhere, man a bunch of the Western world
Speaker 1: to coffee, and that in an increasingly industrialized world, that
Speaker 1: is more appropriate. I love the point you make that
Speaker 1: it can't be just coincidence that both the emergence of
Speaker 1: coffee and the emergence of the minute hand of the
Speaker 1: clock happened around the same time. Yeah. Well, you know
Speaker 1: what's really interesting about the arrival of caffeine, coffee and
Speaker 1: tea and chocolate in Europe. Those three substances arrive in
Speaker 1: the same decade in England, which makes that a really
Speaker 1: a red letter decade as far as I'm concerned. But
Speaker 1: we see it before and after the introduction of a
Speaker 1: of a powerful drug. Because the older drugs like alcohol, cannabis, opium,
Speaker 1: they've been around, you know, since prehistory probably said, we
Speaker 1: don't know what a world without them was really like.
Speaker 1: But we see the arrival at a moment in time
Speaker 1: of caffeine, and it changes things in a profound way.
Speaker 1: And people at the time noticed they're writing about this
Speaker 1: new sober and civil drink and that you know, clerks
Speaker 1: and offices are no longer drunk and they're doing a
Speaker 1: better job and um. And it was immediately grasped that
Speaker 1: this drug was well suited for mental work in a
Speaker 1: way alcohol wasn't, and was well suited for operating machinery.
Speaker 1: So the the industrial revolution, you know, gets a big
Speaker 1: push from the arrival of caffeine. It creates the kind
Speaker 1: of worker that you want. And you know, before that
Speaker 1: people were doing physical work outdoors and it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if you were buzzed, and people were buzz because they
Speaker 1: were drinking, you know, at breakfast, because alcohol was safer
Speaker 1: than water. And that's why you even gave alcohol to
Speaker 1: your kids. Um, in the form of hartsider, I mean,
Speaker 1: not strong forms of alcohol, but but everybody got al
Speaker 1: hall once you start doing work that involves heavy machinery,
Speaker 1: and especially when you need a night shift, you know,
Speaker 1: because these machines are so expensive and you want to
Speaker 1: run them all night. Caffeine is what allows us to
Speaker 1: stay up late. Caffeine disconnects us from uh natural time.
Speaker 1: The time of the sun used to be would work
Speaker 1: from dawn till dusk. With caffeine and electric light or
Speaker 1: gaslight and a few other things like coal, you could
Speaker 1: have a night shift and an overnight shift. And it
Speaker 1: had a profound effect on creating a human being, a
Speaker 1: human body that could work in the in the context
Speaker 1: of a mill or another kind of technological setup. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think it had a big effect. And if you
Speaker 1: want an example of what's going on with capitalism and caffeine,
Speaker 1: just look at the coffee break and think about that.
Speaker 1: You know, your employer gives you a drug coffee or
Speaker 1: tea and then paid time in which to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: That's InCred Why is your employer doing that not to
Speaker 1: be nice. They're doing it because they know that you
Speaker 1: you will work better and harder and more efficiently. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So part of what you do is you write this
Speaker 1: broad historical perspective and you also raise concerns about the future.
Speaker 1: You point out that with climate change, many of the
Speaker 1: coffee growing regions maybe hurt the most. You know, you
Speaker 1: point out another place that with you know, we've typically
Speaker 1: gotten our opioids from the opium plant, morphine, heroin, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But now we see fentyl emerging, or we see other
Speaker 1: either semi or total synthetics that may be displacing this.
Speaker 1: We now see a for profit psychedelics world that knows
Speaker 1: that part of its opportunity to make money is by
Speaker 1: designing slight variations on the natural substances which they can't patent.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, any thoughts about where we're going
Speaker 1: in terms of our psychoactive drug use of the future, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a few different futures out there, and I don't
Speaker 1: know which one is going to predominate, but I think
Speaker 1: they're going to be multiple. I mean, there isn't a
Speaker 1: kind of enclosure movement in the corporate world around psychedelics
Speaker 1: and attempt to patent as much as possible. Compass Pathways
Speaker 1: is most notorious for wanting to patent psilocybin, and you
Speaker 1: can't exactly but they patent of one crystalline form of it,
Speaker 1: and whether that's a meaningful patent or not remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. But you know, psilocybin will continue to grow
Speaker 1: in cow patties, it will continue to grow in closets
Speaker 1: and the gardens, and it's I think it'll be hard
Speaker 1: to control. There will be the you know, the natural form,
Speaker 1: the mushroom form that will still be out there, and
Speaker 1: and underground therapy won't go away. I think it will
Speaker 1: actually get even more successful. There was a period where
Speaker 1: the underground therapists were worried they were going to be
Speaker 1: written out of psychedelic medicine. But they're no longer worried
Speaker 1: about that because the demand is going to be so
Speaker 1: great and they have access to the drug and they
Speaker 1: they're the ones with a lot of experience too and
Speaker 1: administering it. And then there's gonna be this religious path.
Speaker 1: I'm very interested to see these new churches or you
Speaker 1: know that use psychedelic as a sacrament. I mean, already
Speaker 1: we have three of them. There's two ayahuasca churches that
Speaker 1: have the legal right to use ayahuasca, and then there's
Speaker 1: the Native American Church, which has a legal right to
Speaker 1: use peyote. But there will be a church of psilocybin
Speaker 1: in a church of LSD. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: going to be very hard for the Supreme Court to
Speaker 1: deny that they are either religions or that this is
Speaker 1: their sacrament, and that the jurisprudence around religious freedom has
Speaker 1: gotten so crazily expansive that I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be like an exploding cigar when it gets to Samuel
Speaker 1: Alito's desk one of these churches, and yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they don't always feel they have
Speaker 1: to be consistent, you know, they don't they it was saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember Justice Scalia, you mentioned right and
Speaker 1: shot down the Native American Church is right to use peyote,
Speaker 1: and fortunately Congress overturned them. But Scalia was not consistently
Speaker 1: bad on all drug issues. But he may have been
Speaker 1: somebody who just kind of saw America as a Christian
Speaker 1: nation or Judeo Christian nation, as fundamental to his conception
Speaker 1: and that therefore allowing something like this might threaten it.
Speaker 1: But how outrageous, I mean, given the fact that white
Speaker 1: people came to this country seeking religious freedom, the free
Speaker 1: exercise of religion, and they put it in the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: And here are the people who pre existed us using
Speaker 1: their sacrament and being told by the Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: the United States that the drug war is more important
Speaker 1: than your religious practice. I mean, it was just one
Speaker 1: of the most outrageous decisions, and I'm really glad it
Speaker 1: was undone, so you know, you get into the Native
Speaker 1: American Church. One are the interesting things? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you make the point that if people, white people and
Speaker 1: all others who are not part of the Native American
Speaker 1: Church are gonna use mescaline, don't get it from peyote,
Speaker 1: get it from the synthetic or else get it from
Speaker 1: then pedro plant, which grows in abundance and is very hearty. Right.
Speaker 1: But you also interestingly pointed out that Native Americans did
Speaker 1: not actually use this until a hundred years or so ago,
Speaker 1: whereas the traditional use went back hundreds of not thousands
Speaker 1: of six thousand years sixth value among the witch all
Speaker 1: in Mexico and others as well. Yeah, the story of
Speaker 1: the Native American Church and how it was created and
Speaker 1: what it did for Native Americans who is to me
Speaker 1: one of the more moving stories I've I've written about. Um.
Speaker 1: It is true that it wasn't until the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: at least that white people noticed it that they were
Speaker 1: using peyote in a ceremonial way. Um. It was a
Speaker 1: revival of a practice UM that had been continuous in Mexico.
Speaker 1: And remember the distinction between Texas and Mexico is fairly
Speaker 1: recent and peyote grows on both sides of the Rio
Speaker 1: Grand in a strip there and um, there may have
Speaker 1: been Native Americans in Texas South Texas who used it continually,
Speaker 1: but for most Native Americans, it was really when they
Speaker 1: were forced onto reservations in Oklahoma and brought into close
Speaker 1: contact with one another that this practice spread um and
Speaker 1: became a really an inter tribal um practice and did
Speaker 1: a lot to knit different Indian groups together, because remember,
Speaker 1: before we got here, they weren't Native Americans, uh, in
Speaker 1: both in in both senses, there was no America. But
Speaker 1: also they were separate nations, and many of them hated
Speaker 1: each other. They were agrarian people, and there were nomads,
Speaker 1: and they had many different lifestyle and and so it's
Speaker 1: it's only us that have forced them to be lumped together.
Speaker 1: And the Native American Church when that phrases invented, is
Speaker 1: the first time the phrase Native American is used. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen to but anyway. At a at a
Speaker 1: moment of maximum trauma for American Indians in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: this is after the Ghost Dance has been suppressed violently,
Speaker 1: there's a massacre at wounded knee. This is after um,
Speaker 1: we've begun taking Indian children from their parents, cutting off
Speaker 1: their hair, putting them in boarding schools, where the avowed
Speaker 1: aim was to and this is a quote to kill
Speaker 1: the Indian and save the man. It was the policy
Speaker 1: of the US government to destroy Indian culture. Um. Many
Speaker 1: of their religious practices were outlawed, the sun dance, for example,
Speaker 1: and and by the way, we're outlawed until the Carter administration.
Speaker 1: So this is a kind of horrible episode. And um,
Speaker 1: the Native Americans found that peyote used in ceremony was
Speaker 1: helped accommodate them to their new lives, um and helped
Speaker 1: heal them from things like alcohol, which don't really become
Speaker 1: a problem until reservation life. And so you know, this
Speaker 1: is a traumatized people, and they found relief in Payote
Speaker 1: and continue to the Payote is um is is Now.
Speaker 1: You know, there're two or fifty thousand members at least
Speaker 1: in the Native American Church, and and I don't know
Speaker 1: how many different tribes, but dozens and dozens of tribes.
Speaker 1: So it's a very hopeful story. And it's a story
Speaker 1: from which we we stand to learn a lot well.
Speaker 1: And closing let me just say, you know, when I
Speaker 1: think about the future of psychoelic assistant psychotherapy and whether
Speaker 1: health insurance will pay for it. Reading in your book
Speaker 1: that the Indian Health SUS pays for peyote sessions, I mean,
Speaker 1: what a great you know, precedent for covering the costs,
Speaker 1: like sister therapy soles like. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me. It's great to catch up. I love your
Speaker 1: new book. Um, do you have any plans what the
Speaker 1: next book is? Not yet? Not yet, I'm I'm working
Speaker 1: on that. I've been too busy with this one. Always
Speaker 1: a pleasure to talk to you. Ethan, Yes, YouTube, Michael,
Speaker 1: thanks very much. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Katcha Kumkova and Ben Cabrick. The executive
Speaker 1: producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren
Speaker 1: Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alice Williams and Matt Frederick for
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by
Speaker 1: Ari Belusian and a special thanks to avivt Brio sef
Speaker 1: Bianca Grimshaw, and Robert Beatty. If you'd like to share
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Speaker 1: message at eight three three seven seven nine sixty. That's
Speaker 1: one eight three three psycho zero. You can also email
Speaker 1: us as psychoactive at protozoa dot com or find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. And if you couldn't keep
Speaker 1: track of all this, find the information in the show
Speaker 1: notes zero