WEBVTT - 256. The psychology of psychedelics ft. Paul Austin 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.760 Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:07.560 the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:09.399 the world, you know the deal. It is so great 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:11.880 to have you here back for another episode as we, 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:17.160 of course break down the psychology of our twenties, dealing 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.759 with our mental health. Our mindset in our twenties or 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:25.600 any age can feel like an extremely uphill battle, and 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.640 a lot of us are definitely looking for a solution 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.520 or looking for some magical cure, some way out a 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:36.000 better way to cope with our everyday experience. So when 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.560 we hear about something is seemingly life changing as psychedelic 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:41.839 treatment for our mental health, I think a lot of 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:46.360 our ears immediately perk up. You know, these drug set 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.080 for such a long time have been really associated with 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.000 like a party stone and lifestyle. Like there's suddenly being 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:55.480 talked about a lot in the healthcare community, and this 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.600 scene is very, very promising, even though the FDA did 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.160 recently reject the use of MDMA therapy to treat PTSD. 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.840 As we are recording this, it does seem like in 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.840 general across the world, like the tide is really turning, 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:12.080 and I think we have a lot of questions, what 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:15.520 does this actually entail? What would it feel like? Could this, 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:20.360 you know, one day be as common as treatment as antidepressants. 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.039 And it's such an evolving space personally, one that I'm 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:25.880 so fascinated by. But I'm definitely not an expert in 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.839 so today I thought I would bring on someone who 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.840 is someone who knows so much about this, more than me, 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.040 more than the average person, more than most of us 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.760 for that matter, Paul Austin, the founder of Third Wave. 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:37.680 Welcome to the show. 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:40.000 Thank you, Jimmy. It's great to be here. I love 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:44.280 the introduction. You touched on so many hot items when 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:47.000 it comes to mental health and psychedelics, and I'm so 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.000 excited to be able to talk with your audience about 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.840 this today. It's a topic that's become very popular these 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.000 last five or six years, and there's still a lot 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.480 of unknowns about it. So I'm hopeful that we can 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.240 clear up some of these misconceptions and provide a great 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.960 contextual understanding of what these medicines can do. 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.040 Well, can you just tell us a little bit about 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.640 yourself before we get into it. What's third Wave like? 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:12.600 What's been your experience that has gotten to the point 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.200 of being like basically an expert psychedelic coach. 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.440 So I grew up in a very traditional family in 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:24.959 the Midwest, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Church was the center point 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.840 of my upbringing, not in a fundamentalist way, but in 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.840 a sort of strict You're going to church every Sunday 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:36.960 and this is what we do as a family. And 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.800 so as part of that, naturally, my parents were very 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:44.960 anti drug They were very against especially illegal drugs like 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:50.240 you know, weed and cocaine and heroin and psychedelics. And 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.799 at the age of sixteen, my best friend in high 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.240 school introduced me to cannabis. I started to experiment with 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.160 cannabis a little bit until my parents found out and 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:01.160 they sat me down one Sunday after church, and my 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:03.760 dad looked at me and said, you know, I haven't 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.600 been this disappointed since my brother passed away in a 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:11.440 car accident thirty years before that. Before we had sat 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.040 down before they found out that I had smoked cannabis. 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:18.560 So clearly it was a monumental impactful thing that their 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.320 only son had decided to start to experiment with cannabis. Now, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.480 what I felt in that experience was I felt happy, 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:30.360 I felt laughter, I felt like. It was very curiosity provoking, 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:34.160 and I was starting to learn more and more about 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:38.120 cannabis at that time. Why was it illegal? Why was 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:41.520 it prohibited? Was it as bad as we thought it was? 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:44.000 And so that started to lead me down this path 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:49.160 of what Carl Jung would say is called individuation, which 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.760 is the path of becoming oneself right where I was like, clearly, 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.200 this person who I'm becoming won't be accepted by my family. 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:58.560 I'm going to have to just keep this part of 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:03.040 myself closed off. And soon after that, when I was nineteen, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.120 that same friend who introduced me to cannabis introduced me 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.320 to psilocybin mushrooms, and at the age of nineteen, I 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:13.080 had my first experience with psilocybin mushrooms. Soon after that, 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:16.120 I started to experiment with LSD a little bit as well. 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:19.800 And whereas cannabis was like fun and I laughed a 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.400 lot and helped me to get over some social anxiety, 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:29.839 psychedelics are very profound. There were some really deep insights 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.920 and awarenesses that I came to, one of which was 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.279 I'm not meant to live a conventional lifestyle. That life 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.919 is much more malleable than I previously had thought I 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.719 can create how I want to create, so why not 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:49.320 do that? So soon after university I moved abroad. I 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:51.520 taught English and Turkey for a year. I became a 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:54.640 digital nomad. Soon after that worked and traveled everywhere, and 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.680 at the age of twenty four, was in Budapest. This 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.120 was twenty fifteen, almost ten years ago. Notice that more 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.720 and more people were starting to talk about psychedelics, Joe 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.360 Rogan and Tim Ferris, and more clinical research was coming 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.520 out about it. Cannabis was being re evaluated and legalized, 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.159 and I thought, I think this is going to become 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.520 the next thing. So in twenty fifteen I started Third 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:21.280 Wave with the intention of making psychedelic education more accessible 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.600 and more available to everyone. And so the idea of 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:29.920 this third wave of psychedelics is that the first wave 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.760 was the ancient and indigenous use of psychedelics, the second 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.160 wave was the counterculture the fifties and sixties, and then 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.440 this third wave of psychedelics is the modern sort of 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:46.440 renaissance around psychedelic substances. And I believe it's critical that 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:50.280 as part of this we both honor the lineage and 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:55.760 the indigenous wisdom of these medicines, and we also utilize 0:05:55.880 --> 0:06:01.600 best practices based on scientific frame works and what we 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:03.960 know about these psychedelics and how they interact with the 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:08.159 body and the brain. So here I am talking about psychedelics, 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.599 talking about microdocene and it's been a pretty wild ride 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:13.960 these last you know, ten years or so, as they 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.599 really started to come into prominent mainstream attention. 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.200 Oh, I love that summary, and I really really love 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:24.159 what you said about combining the ancient indigenous wisdom with 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.920 some of the more like I don't know, i'd hate 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:31.880 to say like Western, but some of the more scientific, 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.320 like quote unquote scientific ways of seeing how this impacts 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:38.840 our brain. And of course I'm sure there have been 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.480 so many populations who have been able to witness this 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.840 since like the dawn of time, but a lot of 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:49.040 their knowledge has been snuffed out through a lot of impacts, 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:54.000 through colonization, through just like a genuine disinterest in anything 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.880 that was like countered to what a Western belief was. 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:01.120 So I really liked that we're acknowledging that because I 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:02.680 don't know, I just feel like there are so many 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:05.520 things that we're returning to the roots of I think 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:09.960 about how there's been this like huge biological reductionism of 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:13.360 so much to do with mental health, and now people 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:15.920 are like, hey, what if we you know, just made 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:18.160 sure that people had community, and what if we like 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.200 went back to a sense of purpose And this feels 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.920 very ache into that, like very similar of a returning 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.320 to something that's been known for a long time. With 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:30.400 your experience, what did you find that it kind of 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.560 unlocked for you? I know you you spoke quite generally 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:35.800 about it, but did you see like a shift in 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.679 how you saw the world, your attitudes towards the world, 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:40.680 or just your own mental well being? 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:46.680 No. One of the core things was this re connection 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:51.120 to spirit will call it or God or source or oneness. 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:53.160 You know. I mentioned I had been raised in the church. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.600 It was a Protestant, so you know, there's Catholic. Was Protestant. 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.080 You're a Protestant. And it was very dry. It was beautiful, 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.200 but it was very dry. We'd sing hymns, we'd say 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.920 the prayers, we'd read the Bible verses, but it wasn't 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.600 I didn't really get it. I never really experienced God 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.840 in its full entirety. And that's true. I think of 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.840 the majority of people who grow up in a religious environment. 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:19.560 It's a lot of the rituals, it's a lot of 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:21.440 the prayers, it's a lot of the hymns, but it's 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:25.440 not a lot of the direct experience. And so I 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.360 was becoming an atheist until I started to work with 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:31.120 high doses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. And when I 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.360 had those experiences, all of a sudden, it helped to 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:37.679 almost remind me of how connected I was to something 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.600 greater than myself. It sort of reopened this concept of 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:46.640 spirituality for me, and that had a number of downstream 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:52.200 positive benefits, one of which was I recognized that I 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.640 was deeply connected to everything around me. So the sort 0:08:55.640 --> 0:09:02.160 of classic cliche of LSD and psychedelics is hip hugging trees, right, 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.440 And yet anyone who's done a psychedelic in nature understands 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:10.200 that because there is this deep love and connection to 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.280 everything around us. And how the indigenous peoples who worked 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:17.440 with these substances their interactions with it was because it 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.160 helped them to remember that they were just these organisms. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.880 So they were just these people that were part of nature, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:28.000 not above or better than nature. So I experienced that 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.480 a deep and profound connection to the natural environment. I 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:39.080 also experienced a sense of comfort with myself, or authenticity 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.160 of who I was and who I am. That when 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:46.239 raised in a very religious environment, you are often shamed 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:50.840 for who you are or guilted into behaving a certain way. 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:53.600 And when I started to work with psychedelics, I came 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:55.319 to realize, oh, I could just let go of a 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:59.280 lot of that conditioning. At my core, at my essence, 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.160 there's actually a deep sort of sense of innocence and 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.719 love and purity, and I could tap back into that 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.280 and remember that, which helped me again, as cliche as 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:12.840 it may sound, to love myself again and love myself 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.040 in a very deep way. And I think the outcome 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.360 of that then was a lot of the depression and 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.959 anxiety that I'd struggle with when I started to work 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.920 with psychedelics. Intentionally, they just helped me to commit to 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:30.320 meditating more often, eating healthier, spending more time in nature, 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.240 spending less time on screens, committing to practices and behaviors 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:37.960 that ended up having a really positive and beneficial effect 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:41.080 on my mental health. Because certainly, when we take a 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:44.760 psychedelic that's doing some really interesting things to the brain. 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.240 That's great for some of these clinical conditions, but a 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:50.640 lot of it is how are we changing our behaviors 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.280 after the fact and who we hang out with and 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:57.040 who we spend time with. And psychedelics help that because 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.719 they facilitate something called neuroplasticity. But it's not just the 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.920 drug that's a magic pill. It really is a catalyst 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.320 for change, and we still have to commit to making 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.440 those changes in our everyday life if we want to 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.040 live better and feel better on an everyday basis. 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:14.480 And that's the thing. If anyone ever offers you like 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.080 a magic pill to cure every single problem in your life, 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.200 walk away like that's yeah, being highly, highly skeptical. And 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.200 I think it's great that you're saying that about this 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:27.280 as well, right, Like you can do you can take anything, 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.880 any substance under the sun, but if you don't do 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.640 something with the experience and put that into practice afterwards, 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:37.640 it's not gonna work. I also really like what you 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.080 said about experiencing a sense of oneness. And we had 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.640 someone on just recently called doctor A. Samilla, who is 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.880 a professor from Columbia who talks about spirituality and psychology, 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.000 and I think a lot of us have, you know, 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.000 who've experienced religion the institution of religion over the years 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:02.360 feel very like silenced by it, restricted by it, and 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:06.880 feels very clinical. But there's this new wave of people 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.040 who are like actually having a sense of purpose, feeling 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.360 that there is something divine and bigger is incredibly psychologically nourishing, 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.360 because the opposite of that is feeling like we are 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:19.679 completely alone, all of us are alone. No one can 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:25.480 understand our experience that like isolation is completely depressing, Like, 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.679 how does one not experience a level of like endogenous 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:31.959 mental health experiences if you. 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:32.880 Really do believe that? 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.640 But I want to move on to the impact on 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.080 the brain, and you talked about your plasticity, probably synaptic 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:42.280 pruning comes into this. Before we get into that, Actually 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:45.360 we need to clarify one thing which we haven't clarified yet, 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:47.280 Like I'm getting ahead of myself. What does it mean 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:51.200 when people say that psychedelics or medically supervised microturcing could 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:53.840 be used to treat things like addictional PTSD or end 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:56.080 of life care, Like, what do they actually mean? We've 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:59.840 talked someone about like more recreational usage shifting to like 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.920 more of a medical environment or being used in mainstream 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:07.160 care is someone literally going to give you a tap 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.320 of acid and say off you go, like go and 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:09.960 walk around. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.120 So in the nineteen fifties when LSD first came on 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.760 the scene, it was invented in nineteen thirty eight, psychedelic 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.160 properties were discovered in nineteen forty three. It was used 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.240 for about the first fifteen to twenty years within strictly 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:28.559 clinical environments to see what impact it would have on addiction, anxiety, depression. 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.720 Like I said, over one thousand clinical papers were published 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.640 on the efficacy of LC to trade a range of conditions, 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.000 And unfortunately, when it got out into the mainstream culture 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.680 and was associated with Timothy Leary and turn on, tune 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.640 and drop out, the government prohibited and shut down not 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:49.240 only the recreational use but also the clinical research. And 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:54.680 that wasn't resuscitated until the late nineties when JOHNS. Hopkins 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.360 started to study this relationship between psilocybin and what they 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:03.680 called mystical type experiences or you know, experiencing God. And 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.120 what they found in that early clinical research is that 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.040 the more profound of an experience, the spiritual experience an 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.559 individual had, the more likely it was to heal the 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:18.520 depression or heal their addiction or heal you know, OCD, 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.120 or some of these other clinical indications that they were 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:23.400 struggling with. So on the one hand, it could be 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:27.000 described at a spiritual level that when we experience the 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:31.160 profundity of psychedelics, we are connected to this source of 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.760 unconditional love. And when we feel in our every sort 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.840 of part of our body that experience of unconditional love, 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.600 it has these incredible impacts in our capacity to love, 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:48.000 our capacity to be with ourselves, to understand ourselves, and 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.480 again most importantly, to start to make changes in our 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.360 everyday life that really honor and acknowledge that sense of 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:56.480 self love. Now, if we look at it from a 0:14:56.480 --> 0:15:05.720 neuroscientific lens, the common thread between depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD, 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.720 even PTSD is that when you do brain scans with 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:14.640 people who struggle with these clinical conditions, the two hemispheres 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.440 of the brain are not actively communicating, right, So the 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.360 brain activity is sort of withering away, And when you 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:25.080 take a psychedelic it's like you know, putting fertilizer into 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.960 your brain. All of a sudden, it activates both hemispheres. 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:32.479 Neuronal connectivity gets turned back online. They start to communicate 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:37.960 across the hemispheres again, and that activation allows for a 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:43.400 loosening of these constricted ways of being. So one of 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:48.440 the one of the technical terms is called the default 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.960 mode network, and the default mode network is a network 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:55.960 in our brain that helps us to do our everyday patterning. 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.120 It's sort of the habitual part of our brain that 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.520 is on autopi that allows us to navigate our everyday existence. 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.760 When that becomes too rigid, when that becomes too constricted, 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.760 then people start to notice that they're struggling with depression 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.080 or addiction or anxiety. And so part of interrupting those 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:20.720 patterns or interrupting those ruts is introducing a psychedelic. And 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.720 so the psychedelic comes in and it creates a more 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:28.240 entropic system, so more chaos, so to say, and that 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.560 chaos allows for a new perspective, a new look at things, 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:36.000 which allows people to sort of get out of the 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.400 pattern that they feel they've been stuck in and actually 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.640 see that they can experience life in a new and 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.680 unique way, that they don't have to feel that way 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.560 all the time, that they can actually feel this other way. 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:49.520 And then so much of working with a psychedelic when 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.960 it comes to working with a therapist in particular, like 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:56.480 in medical supervision, is it's not only the drug experience, 0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.560 but also how that coach or how that therapist or 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:04.080 psycho hiatrist is supporting you after that drug experience. Because 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:09.280 when you take a psychedelic, when the brain becomes more entropic, 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:15.040 then it's opening something called a critical learning period. And 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:18.359 the critical learning period is like when you're four or 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.680 five or six, your brain is in development. It's a sponge. 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:26.359 It's soaking up all of these you know, you know, 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:31.120 language and patterns and social behaviors and music. It can 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:33.360 just soak it all up. And then as we get 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.600 older that that learning period dies away, which is why 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:37.800 they used to think, okay, when i'm by time you're 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.840 twenty six, you know, you can't teach an old dog 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.280 new tricks. And now what we're discovering about psychedelics is 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.280 it actually reopens that critical learning period for at least 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.320 three to four weeks after the high dose experience. And 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.240 so people have this experience, they're able to see out 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.240 of their depression or out of their addiction, and then 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:59.520 the therapist or the coach is supporting them in that 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.520 month after to start to integrate what are actually new 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.720 patterns of behavior you can start to implement that will 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:07.639 help you feel this way more often. How do you 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:10.639 have a more regulated nervous system. How do you not 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:15.000 eat you know, fast food or processed food. How do 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:18.479 you get more sunlight and exercise? How do you spend 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.800 more time with loved ones or cut out a toxic relationship? Right, Like, 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.520 the psychedelic can help us to go AHA, but the 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:32.760 therapeutic work, the coaching work, actually allows those AHAs to 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.240 be integrated and become tangible in our everyday life. 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:38.640 And you can totally see how that would also be 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:42.680 remarkable for PTSD. Right, you have all this trauma that's 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:45.520 wired your brain one way, and I'm sure like another 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.040 thing that comes up is like long term potentiation. Right, 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:52.000 Neurons that fire together, wire together. You've got all these 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.399 major highways in your brain that have been paved in 0:18:55.440 --> 0:19:00.320 concrete that say, this is scary, this is trouble. I 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:02.520 should be fearful, I should be worried based on these 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:06.879 previous experiences. And it sounds like when you introduce a psychedelic, 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.040 it's kind of like a tornado comes through. It might 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:14.879 seem kind of scary. But with that opportunity, you can say, actually, no, 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:18.080 like that road doesn't really fit here anymore. That road 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.400 like isn't really leading me to places where I want 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:22.480 to go. Like the roads being the neural highways and 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.080 your brain, and so it allows for that neuroplasticity, as 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:29.200 you said. And another really fascinating point that you brought 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:31.879 up that I absolutely love that you said, is this 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:36.560 misconception that our brains are fully developed, were done by 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:38.879 the time what twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven for men, 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.480 twenty five around for women. And that is just being 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:44.040 pro And I know that I've said that on the 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:45.879 show before. I've been like, yeah, you know, your brain 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:50.760 only gets fully developed at twenty five. It's like absolutely not. Yes, 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.720 Like you have this frontal like your frontal load basically 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:59.240 like locks into place. But within your brain there's so 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:02.960 much opportunity for flexibility. It's why as people get older, 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:07.000 their personality changes. It's why we see a decline actually 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.560 in the experience of mental health as people get older 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.359 as well, like past their fifties and sixties. So the 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:20.399 brain is constantly evolving. Has there been any longitudinal or 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:28.119 like in depth studies on introducing psychedelics to a population 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.600 group or to like a group of participants in seeing 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.000 what's happened, Like, is there a study you can pull 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.840 out that is, like a pretty important one that says 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.160 this has changed people's lives or this has had this impact. 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:48.240 Oh yes, I mean kind of a few notes here 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:53.720 to highlight in the in the like twenty ten, twenty eleven, 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:59.680 maybe twenty twelve, there was a research paper published. There 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.360 was a lot longitudinal research paper that essentially I'd ask 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:06.440 people who have been using psychedelics for forty or fifty 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:11.840 years since the nineteen sixties, are you healthy? Are you okay? 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.440 You know, because a lot of the sort of mainstream 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:19.240 stigma was all these psychedelic users, are you know, dropping 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:21.879 out or becoming schizophrenic or losing their mind? And what 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.840 they found was when you look at it over a 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:30.959 long time frame, psychedelics are really well tolerated by the 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.440 majority of people in a population that you do have, 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.480 you know, the one percent who are schizophrenic or have 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.600 potentially a personality disorder that should not be working with psychedelics, 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:51.040 but that the broad population can tolerate psychedelics really really 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:56.280 quite easily and quite well. Now, in the last twenty years, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.960 there's been quite a few clinical research papers published on 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:05.919 the efficacy of psychedelics. There's probably i would say three 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:12.440 to emphasize. One is the research on MDMA for PTSD. 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:16.760 So you mentioned PTSD already. When we have an acute trauma, 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.119 it can often become stored in our body and our brain, 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:27.600 and that trauma, that emotional imprint will lead to a 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.080 lot of nasty side effects over the long term. When 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:35.240 you work with something like MDMA, it creates a space 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.440 of safety for the nervous system and for the brain 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:42.879 to heal that underlying trauma, so that trauma can be 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:45.560 opened up, it can be processed, it can be integrated, 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.840 and it's no longer this festering wound that's in the 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.200 subconscious of the psyche. It actually gets brought up and 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.280 out and it can be healed and probably worked with 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.679 and this nonprofit group MAPS, which has a for profit 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:02.960 arm called Lycos, they were the ones who attempted to 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.679 get MDMA approval. They did phase three clinical trials, so 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.560 it was done over twelve weeks. They had therapists that 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.560 were there with them. They did MDMA three times over 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:15.719 those twelve weeks, seventy percent of those participants healed their 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:20.840 PTSD and they had PTSD on average for seventeen years, 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:22.800 which is wow, it's. 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.400 A huge number, seventeen years, huge. 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:30.160 Number, seven seventeen years, seven zero percent. So that's that's 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:35.359 one really fascinating clinical trial. Another really fascinating clinical trial 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.040 is this is this distinction between how psychedelics work in 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:43.399 the brain and SSRIs work in the brain, because a 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:46.439 lot of people who are coming into psychedelic work have 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:49.440 been on SSRIs orrently on. 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.160 Well, just quickly saying SSRIs basically antidepressants. 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:58.119 Yeah, that's helpful to clarify. So, and I'll provide a 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:00.560 caveat here. If someone is listening to the who is 0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:04.240 on one of these medications and they're interested in getting off, 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:06.639