Speaker 1: America's public enemy Number one in the United States is
Speaker 1: drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy,
Speaker 1: it is necessary to wage a new all out of mention.
Speaker 1: What if the cure for a lifetime of PTSD is
Speaker 1: really just a party drug from the nineteen eighties. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Prognosis, a podcast about health, medical technology, and the
Speaker 1: mind blowing innovation now under way in some of the
Speaker 1: least expected places. I'm your host, Michelle fay Cortes. Today
Speaker 1: we're taking a look at where illegal drugs need cutting
Speaker 1: edge therapy. Psychedelic drugs weren't always taboo. In the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. The medical world was actually really excited about them.
Speaker 1: Researchers studied LSD in psilocybin or magic mushrooms as a
Speaker 1: way to treat conditions like depression and even addiction. Before
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, more than a thousand studies involving psychedelics
Speaker 1: were published. Many people thought they were breakthroughs, providing the
Speaker 1: first hope for treating mental health conditions when little else worked.
Speaker 1: But then psychedelics became the drug of choice for the
Speaker 1: counterculture and the government cracked down. In Congress passed the
Speaker 1: Controlled Substances Act, criminalizing the use of psychedelic drugs and
Speaker 1: all that scientific research into their therapeutic potential. It ground
Speaker 1: to a halt. In recent years, the rules are relaxed
Speaker 1: a little. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the
Speaker 1: Drug Enforcement Agency are again allowing researchers to conduct studies
Speaker 1: on psychedelic drugs therapies. Some have been really promising, but
Speaker 1: they don't come cheap. So how do you bank roll
Speaker 1: a psychedelics revolution? A revolution that brings to mind Stoner's
Speaker 1: in taid more than patients and hospital gowns. One man
Speaker 1: thinks he knows here are Bloomberg's Christin Brown and Sarah
Speaker 1: McBride to take you on a trip. A few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: Sarah and I were cruising across the Nevada Desert in
Speaker 1: a rented van on our way to Burning Man. We
Speaker 1: weren't headed there on vacation. We were giving a ride
Speaker 1: to Rick Doblin. He's the CEO of a nonprofit called
Speaker 1: the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Most people just call
Speaker 1: it MAPS. And Burning Man, of course, is the annual
Speaker 1: party of the Nevada Desert. Thousands of people show up
Speaker 1: at this dust Bowl each year to parade around in
Speaker 1: crazy costumes, dance, enjoy the art, and yes, do drugs.
Speaker 1: But the party scene wasn't the only thing bringing Rick
Speaker 1: to Burning Man. Rick is a man on a mission
Speaker 1: to legalize some of those drugs as medicines. But so
Speaker 1: your goal is of intually not just medical decision of
Speaker 1: qui well, this legalization of psychedelics in general and mainstreaming
Speaker 1: of the opportunity for people they have healing experiences, spiritual
Speaker 1: experiences right under medical or not necessarily under medical supervision,
Speaker 1: under religious supervision, but also a fundamental human right to
Speaker 1: explore your own consciousness. Rick is a champion for the
Speaker 1: healing powers of drugs broadly known as psychedelics that includes LSD, mushrooms,
Speaker 1: and depending on who you talk to, m D m
Speaker 1: A also known as ecstasy. Like Michelle mentioned, those drugs
Speaker 1: are all illegal. Rick is hoping that with persuasive enough
Speaker 1: scientific research that will change. But nothing will change unless
Speaker 1: studies show those drugs hold healing power, and paying for
Speaker 1: those studies takes serious bank. That is what brings Rick
Speaker 1: to Burning Man. People often describe Rick as this sort
Speaker 1: of cheerleader for psychedelics. He was in full smooth mode
Speaker 1: even before we arrived at the Burning Man gates. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows him. On the way, he stopped at a rest
Speaker 1: stop and bumped into lots of people who wanted to
Speaker 1: catch up. He that was Floora Bellini, a spiritual adviser
Speaker 1: to entrepreneurs. When we run into her, she is a
Speaker 1: hot tip for Rick. She wants to introduce him to
Speaker 1: some people who might have money for maps. She throws
Speaker 1: out names like Guy la Liberte, who co founded Cirque
Speaker 1: to Slay, and Garrett camp, Uber's co founder. She and
Speaker 1: Rick agreed to try to reconnect when they got to
Speaker 1: the Playa. That's what the regulars like to call Burning Man.
Speaker 1: But first we have to get in and ask people
Speaker 1: who have never been burning roll around dirt. Oh let's
Speaker 1: not tell them we've never been them because I don't
Speaker 1: and they asked us. We'll just let you talk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see someone rolling around in the dirt right now? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why are they? Why is it like a hazing thing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not, Yes, I have refused. A few minutes later,
Speaker 1: I had changed my tune burns. Actually, this is my
Speaker 1: first Are you going to make me roll around in
Speaker 1: the dirt? Hey? Okay, I'll get off all right. I
Speaker 1: was looking it on the way now wearing my weights.
Speaker 1: That was me coming to grips with my new burning
Speaker 1: man milia. That's something Rick is pretty good at. He
Speaker 1: just adapts to whatever environment he's in, and it makes
Speaker 1: him a great fundraiser, perfect because mainstreaming psychedelics is massively pricey.
Speaker 1: Rick's biggest challenge right now is getting the green light
Speaker 1: from the Food and Drug Administration. He's just kicked off
Speaker 1: the final stage of that approval process, what's known as
Speaker 1: Phase three clinical trials. That means hundreds of people are
Speaker 1: testing a drug under close medical supervision. Rick chose's focus
Speaker 1: carefully people with post traumatic stress disorder like veterans, so
Speaker 1: a hundred people with PTSD will get treated with either
Speaker 1: m d m A or placebo, and doctors will monitor
Speaker 1: their progress closely. Those Phase three tests alone costs twenty
Speaker 1: six million dollars, and a nonprofit bringing a drug to
Speaker 1: market is rare. The only other one was Are You
Speaker 1: four eight six, an abortion drug approved in two thousand.
Speaker 1: It was also controversial. That brings us back to why
Speaker 1: Rick is something of a folk hero in certain circles,
Speaker 1: especially among people who hope psychedelics will one day win
Speaker 1: wide acceptance, and not just for PTSD treatment. And if
Speaker 1: you need money for something controversial, we're better to look
Speaker 1: for it than a burning Man. Burning Man has become
Speaker 1: a beacon for rich technorati. After all, tickets alone cost
Speaker 1: as much as dollars. Rick was already a long time
Speaker 1: Burner when he saw the potential wealthy tech people were coming.
Speaker 1: More and more people were coming from tech from the
Speaker 1: Bay Area. UM, it was a great opportunity to hang
Speaker 1: out and talk to people. So Rick doesn't hit people
Speaker 1: up for cash right at Burning Man. He gets to
Speaker 1: know them and when it's all over, then he asks
Speaker 1: them to donate to MAPS, his nonprofit. Many of his
Speaker 1: big donors are people he's met at Burning Man, or
Speaker 1: they're connected to people he's met there. The festival has
Speaker 1: become such an important place to cultivate donors. He listed
Speaker 1: in the MAPS annual report. His entire board of directors
Speaker 1: goes to Burning Man. That's six out of six. One
Speaker 1: guy on his board, David Brauner, runs the soap company
Speaker 1: Dr Brauner's. David also hosts a camp at Burning Man
Speaker 1: and sets aside an air conditioned crash pad there for
Speaker 1: Rick not that Rick sleeps much a burning Man. He's
Speaker 1: much too busy schmoozing. Rick has some pretty surprising donors.
Speaker 1: Richard Rockefeller, a great grandson of the famous oil baron,
Speaker 1: gave him money. Joby Pritzker, from the Chicago family behind
Speaker 1: Hyatt Hotels, sits on his board. Rebecca Mercer, the Trump megabacker,
Speaker 1: gave Maps a million dollars earlier this year. And a
Speaker 1: chunk of Rick's cash even comes from an air to
Speaker 1: the Precious Moments figurines, you know, those little porcelain Chaska's.
Speaker 1: But more and more he wants to tap into the
Speaker 1: set of young millionaires and billionaires that Silicon Valley is minting.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that calls for discretion. I asked him if there
Speaker 1: was anyone in particular on his ongoing wish list, anyone
Speaker 1: he's trying to bring on board to donate to Maps.
Speaker 1: Are there some that you have your eye on that
Speaker 1: you think you just cultivate them a little bit more,
Speaker 1: perhaps they'll support maps finance chime. Yeah, and would we
Speaker 1: know some of their names? But I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think visiting them will. Hell. Burning Man doesn't deliver just
Speaker 1: on the money front. Rick gets to know a lot
Speaker 1: of people on the research side too. Tons of scientists
Speaker 1: had to burning Man. One afternoon, I went to a
Speaker 1: talk on the neuroscience of psychedelics. It was given by
Speaker 1: a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and it
Speaker 1: was packed. Rick taps into that burning Man community to
Speaker 1: help a lot of movers and shakers in the field
Speaker 1: connect with each other. For example, one night, we were
Speaker 1: riding across the playa on a two story tall brass
Speaker 1: dragon art car. That's when Rick finally got the chance
Speaker 1: to introduce two key players in the movement, the Dutch
Speaker 1: military's head psychiatrist and a doctor from Arizona. Oh God,
Speaker 1: there is right there yet, Eric, I was great. I
Speaker 1: felt that I need to say, h oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's fine. To be clear. That's a high
Speaker 1: ranking doctor from the Dutch government on a work trip
Speaker 1: to burning Man. The night before, he told us he
Speaker 1: had gotten stranded on the far end of the play
Speaker 1: at and watched the sun rise. When he wasn't riding
Speaker 1: around on the art car, Rick was baking around looking
Speaker 1: for big wigs who could help his cause. He never
Speaker 1: quite reconnected with his friend Floor, the one who promised
Speaker 1: introductions to the Cirque des founder and the Ubert co founder.
Speaker 1: We know because we spent a whole night biking around
Speaker 1: the Plia with Rick looking for them. He struck out
Speaker 1: at one party where he was hoping to run into
Speaker 1: Sergey Brenn, the Google co founder, He wasn't there. Instead,
Speaker 1: Rick got to talk with Grover Norquist, the anti tax crusader,
Speaker 1: for around twenty minutes. He also hubbed up with Darren Aronofsky,
Speaker 1: the director of the movie Black Swan. Rick strategy is
Speaker 1: to kind of just go with the flow and hope
Speaker 1: that the chaos of Burning Man delivers him to someone
Speaker 1: with deep pockets and an interest in psychedelic drugs. This
Speaker 1: particularly here. You know, I don't have a list of
Speaker 1: people that I know where they're camping and I want
Speaker 1: to go see them. So that's how you've approached in
Speaker 1: the past. Yeah, sometimes I have that set up. This year,
Speaker 1: I don't. So this year is more like serendipity. And
Speaker 1: we thought he'd be upset by all the missed connections,
Speaker 1: but Rick always focuses on the positive, even when he
Speaker 1: just missed the co founder of Circus by a few minutes.
Speaker 1: He says it's fate, he'll have another opportunity for that introduction. Instead,
Speaker 1: he relishes the small victories, like getting part of his
Speaker 1: organization listed on a flyer each visitor receives when they
Speaker 1: arrive at Burning Man. Oh my god, Oh wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Oh wonderful is eight? That was just after we'd rolled
Speaker 1: into Burning Man. The flyer mentioned the Zendo Project, part
Speaker 1: of maps that helps people on bad trips at festivals.
Speaker 1: It was listed up high on the flyer above the fold.
Speaker 1: This is about the information. This is so good. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: keep with you. The guy's enthusiastic a hundred percent in
Speaker 1: that came through the first time we met Rick at
Speaker 1: a conference in San Francisco, he asked us if we
Speaker 1: minded doing our interview while he picked up a little weed.
Speaker 1: Rick lives in Massachusetts, where apparently the selection just isn't
Speaker 1: as good. He asked the saleswoman at the dispensary for
Speaker 1: the pottiest pot, and then he showed us how he
Speaker 1: planned to sneak his two hundred and twenty nine dollars
Speaker 1: worth of lemon tie test airport security when he flew
Speaker 1: back east Later that night. Really, Rick's entire adult life
Speaker 1: has been intertwined with the legal status of psychedelic drugs. Well,
Speaker 1: the first time that I ever tried psychedelics was at college,
Speaker 1: and it was in my freshman year of college, and
Speaker 1: it was LSD, and I was profoundly impacted by the
Speaker 1: sort of flow of thoughts and feelings. This was in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies. M d m A wasn't yet
Speaker 1: part of the college drug scene, but LSD and mushrooms were.
Speaker 1: By the nine eighties, m DMA became more popular. Rick
Speaker 1: was thinking he wanted to become a therapist and use
Speaker 1: m d m A to heal people. But then m
Speaker 1: DMA became illegal to so Rick, who was thirty but
Speaker 1: still working on his undergrad degree, sued the government. He lost,
Speaker 1: but found his lifelong calling. Rick realized that bringing m
Speaker 1: d m A back was going to be a political battle,
Speaker 1: so years after starting MAPS, he ended up getting a
Speaker 1: PhD from Harvard in public policy, not psychology. He toiled
Speaker 1: in obscurity for decades, but finally his cause has gained traction.
Speaker 1: Lots of scientists are studying m d m A and PTSD,
Speaker 1: some of them get funding for MAPS in one especially
Speaker 1: compelling study published this year, twenty six veterans and first
Speaker 1: responders with PTSD got therapy along with m d m A.
Speaker 1: After just two sessions, they no longer met the medical
Speaker 1: definition of PTSD. So we think one is when it
Speaker 1: will become m d m A sisted psychotherapy will be
Speaker 1: a legal treatment available by prescription, So that's roughly three
Speaker 1: years from now. But that's not just Rick's opinion. Here's
Speaker 1: Gooul Dolan, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies
Speaker 1: psychedelic drugs. The clinical trials of m d m A
Speaker 1: for PTSD are remarkable and the responses are like nothing
Speaker 1: we've ever seen before, right, I mean, fs arise don't
Speaker 1: work out well, therapy doesn't work out well. You know,
Speaker 1: no ner a psychiatric drugs basically has those has had
Speaker 1: those kinds of responses. Gool's most recent study was kind
Speaker 1: of amazing, and it grabbed a nice big headline in
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Her researchers gave m DUMA to octopuses,
Speaker 1: which are usually really kind of owners, and octopus has
Speaker 1: basically started hugging each other, or, as Gool put it,
Speaker 1: they definitely become more pro social on m d M A.
Speaker 1: A lot of Gool's research, like the Octopus study, focuses
Speaker 1: on figuring out how psychedelics work. There's a lot we
Speaker 1: don't know, but it seems that the real power of
Speaker 1: the drugs is putting people in a state of mind
Speaker 1: where they're more receptive to things like suggestion or empathy.
Speaker 1: In a sense, what the drugs really do is help
Speaker 1: people heal themselves. That's one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: them tricky drugs for pharmaceutical companies to pursue. Most of
Speaker 1: the research surrounding psychedelics involves using them to make typical
Speaker 1: talk therapy more effective, rather than using them on their own.
Speaker 1: Not to mention then, in studies, the drugs seemed to
Speaker 1: do their job after only a few doses, rather than
Speaker 1: a potential lifetime income stream of a prescription pill, and
Speaker 1: patents have expired on M d M A, so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't really make them much money anyway, but researchers are
Speaker 1: still making incredible discoveries. Johns Hopkins is a major hub
Speaker 1: of psychedelic research. Back they did a small pilot study
Speaker 1: of smokers after going through one psychedelic session. A whopping
Speaker 1: eight of the volunteers had kicked their habits. Six months later,
Speaker 1: after a year, sixty seven were still non smokers, and
Speaker 1: it could also help alcoholics. When Gul was a medical school,
Speaker 1: she spent some time staying why AA meetings are effective.
Speaker 1: Her research has suggested psychedelics might make them work even better.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you could make a case that
Speaker 1: if you gave M D M a at um, you know,
Speaker 1: one of these these alcoholics anonymous meetings instead of coffee
Speaker 1: and cigarette that, you know, the efficacy of those interventions
Speaker 1: might be bigger. The space has really grown in recent years.
Speaker 1: Another nonprofit, the U. S Oona Institute, will soon sponsor
Speaker 1: its own trials for psilocybin, and there is at least
Speaker 1: one corporate venture in the space, Compass Pathways. They're planning
Speaker 1: their own Phase three trials in Europe and North America
Speaker 1: for treatment resistant depression. Cool thinks that funders and regulators
Speaker 1: are becoming more open minded to a future of psychedelic
Speaker 1: medicines because so many of the medicines that we have
Speaker 1: today aren't really working. I mean, I can imagine all
Speaker 1: kinds of scenarios that you might want to use. This
Speaker 1: from Rick's point of view, PTSD is the best scenario
Speaker 1: for winning the approval of regulators in the public too.
Speaker 1: Both of the drugs that proved to treat it, Paxel
Speaker 1: and zolof are considered pretty ineffective, but studies show that
Speaker 1: m d M A is very effective. Once MAPS paves
Speaker 1: the way for m d M as medicine, Rick thinks
Speaker 1: it will be easier to legalize psychedelics all out. The
Speaker 1: PTSD trials will take at least three years, but access
Speaker 1: could come even sooner under what's known as compassionate use programs,
Speaker 1: in which patients can gain access to experimental therapies before
Speaker 1: trials are complete. Therapists we talked to you said the
Speaker 1: results can be really amazing. One therapist who worked on
Speaker 1: MAPS earlier trials said that m DMA helped heal a
Speaker 1: woman with PTSD who had previously gone to more than
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred therapy sessions for now. People sometimes seek out
Speaker 1: treatment outside mainstream medicine among a network of underground psychedelic therapists.
Speaker 1: Some of that even goes on at Burning Man. Rick
Speaker 1: spent much of his last few days there counseling a
Speaker 1: veteran suffering from PTSD. Rick could tell the man needed help.
Speaker 1: It was somebody that seemed on the verge of, you know,
Speaker 1: massive mental breakdown. Was was in a massive mental breakdown
Speaker 1: when we met, crying and talking about how there was
Speaker 1: no point. Nothing else had worked PTSD for decades. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just such a powerful appeal for help. And
Speaker 1: the fact that it was both a veteran and a
Speaker 1: retired police officer. The same person who had been a
Speaker 1: veteran and also a police officer now was retired. It
Speaker 1: just made me think that this is the ideal kind
Speaker 1: of person we're trying to show. If we're trying to
Speaker 1: mainstream psychedelics. You know, what's more mainstream than a veteran
Speaker 1: and a police officer. Along with the counseling, Rick treated
Speaker 1: the vet with m d m A. This wasn't the
Speaker 1: full treatment that MAPS is undertaking and its Phase three trials.
Speaker 1: The Phase three treatments are our of therapy with three
Speaker 1: M d m A sessions one month apart, but Rick
Speaker 1: gave the flavor of it. It was very inspiring because
Speaker 1: there was a point where this person was able to
Speaker 1: breathe more fully than in many, many years. It started
Speaker 1: a process that I think provided hope, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not again a one dosed miracle cure, but to see
Speaker 1: someone start in a puddle of tears and feeling like
Speaker 1: all the options had been exhausted and there was no
Speaker 1: reason to live anymore. To having hope and interest in
Speaker 1: another um therapy sessions was profoundly inspiring. And also the
Speaker 1: fact that it was someone who had been a police
Speaker 1: officer for fifteen years and before that, veteran in the
Speaker 1: Navy for a very long time. Rick says the vet
Speaker 1: is doing better and looking into getting more therapy. In
Speaker 1: one sense, legalizing m DMA for medical youth or otherwise
Speaker 1: would just be a recognition of something that is already true.
Speaker 1: Medicine isn't something that just treats illness. I think it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to figure out which uses count as medical
Speaker 1: and which uses don't. Uh, and it's become more and
Speaker 1: more difficult as medicine itself has become more consumer oriented.
Speaker 1: That's Matt Lambkin, a law professor at the University of Tulsa.
Speaker 1: Lamb Can points out that while the approval and regulation
Speaker 1: of a drug often hinges on it having medical purpose,
Speaker 1: we also prescribe a lot of drugs to people without
Speaker 1: any medical condition at all. So what do we mean
Speaker 1: by a medical use um. It's intuitively appealing to think, well,
Speaker 1: what we mean is treating some kind of illness, But
Speaker 1: if you take just a second to think about it,
Speaker 1: medicine does lots and lots of things besides just treating illnesses,
Speaker 1: and always has right contraception, abortion, the are medical interventions
Speaker 1: that are usually not provided to treat any illness. Lambkin
Speaker 1: can also see a future not too far away where
Speaker 1: m d m A is illegal medicine. So a lot
Speaker 1: of things that seemed unlikely to me a while ago
Speaker 1: with respected drug policy. UM I mean, I never imagined
Speaker 1: that we would be where we are today in terms
Speaker 1: of uh marijuana across the States. It was sort of
Speaker 1: inconceivable twenty years ago. The FDA does have a track
Speaker 1: record of following the science wherever it goes. That means
Speaker 1: that m d m A could soon be widely prescribed.
Speaker 1: One thing that could easily get in the way of that, though,
Speaker 1: is money to keep pushing the science forward. Rick knows
Speaker 1: he has an uphill battle ahead, but for him that's
Speaker 1: no obstacle. I've had to really learn how to be
Speaker 1: happy with trying rather than succeeding. And that's it for
Speaker 1: this week's prognosis. Thanks for listening. Do you have a
Speaker 1: story about healthcare in the US or around the world.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you. You can email me
Speaker 1: at m Cortes at Bloomberg dot net or find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Fay Cortes. If you were a fan
Speaker 1: of this episode, please take a minute to rate and
Speaker 1: review us. It helps new listeners find the show. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by Lindsay Cradowell. The story editor was
Speaker 1: Mark Chauffit. Thanks also to Drew Armstrong and Liz Smith.
Speaker 1: Francesco leviashead of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.