Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I suddenly saw myself from outside, and I saw myself
Speaker 2: kind of explode in this cloud of blue post it notes,
Speaker 2: you know, like confetti, and they came down to the
Speaker 2: ground and they kind of masked in this pool of
Speaker 2: blue paint, and that was me. I had complete acceptance
Speaker 2: that had I died and vanished, that was fine. It
Speaker 2: was what was meant to be. There was a continuing
Speaker 2: consciousness of some kind. I know, it sounds crazy and
Speaker 2: very hard to put into words.
Speaker 1: That's renowned author Michael Pollan. He's talking about how a
Speaker 1: guided psychedelic trip on psilocybin molecule found in mushrooms helped
Speaker 1: him see his mortality through an entirely new lens.
Speaker 2: This is a very non interventionist therapy. The therapists say
Speaker 2: nothing during the experience except would you like a glass
Speaker 2: of water or a snack or need to go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom. It really they let your mind go where
Speaker 2: your mind wants to go. It is a kind of
Speaker 2: self exploration, self healing.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we hear from Michael Pollan about how
Speaker 1: plants have the power to change our minds. I'm Maya
Speaker 1: Shunker and this is a slight change of Plans a
Speaker 1: show about who we are and who we become in
Speaker 1: the face of a big change. I'm fascinated by the
Speaker 1: kinds of experiences that can drastically change our perspectives, and
Speaker 1: guided psychedelic trips have the potential to do just that.
Speaker 1: While psychedelics aren't legal in the US, they have been
Speaker 1: used in certain clinical trials and have delivered powerful therapeutic
Speaker 1: benefits for people struggling with things like addiction, depression, and
Speaker 1: existential distress. So what's happening to our brains under their
Speaker 1: influence that gives rise to these remarkable changes. Michael's written
Speaker 1: two books that explore the answer to this question, How
Speaker 1: to Change Your Mind and This is Your Mind on Plants.
Speaker 1: And so today we dig into the science of psychedelics.
Speaker 1: We started off by discussing the somewhat astonishing fact that
Speaker 1: basically every culture in the world has discovered psychoactive plants.
Speaker 1: They contain molecules that can alter human consciousness. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the morphine and the opium poppy and the caffeine
Speaker 1: in coffee and tea. Michael says there are a few
Speaker 1: explanations for why we're so drawn to these substances, for starters,
Speaker 1: they can provide pain, relief and stave off boredom.
Speaker 2: But then I think that there are more profound to
Speaker 2: which people have put these psychoactive plants. And I'm talking
Speaker 2: here about the more powerful ones, the ones we call psychedelics,
Speaker 2: and that is for access to other realms, other dimensions
Speaker 2: of reality and afterworld and underworld, and religious visions essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, mystical experiences that are at the heart of
Speaker 2: a great many religions. And it may well be that
Speaker 2: it was these psychedelic substances that opened up that way
Speaker 2: of thinking, that gave people the visions that were interpreted
Speaker 2: in such a way as to underwrite whole religions. And
Speaker 2: we just think of the artists who were influenced by psychoactives,
Speaker 2: you know, new metaphors, new insights, or scientific discoveries. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a great many scientific discoveries that trace to psychedelic use.
Speaker 2: I think of it as the natural history of imagination.
Speaker 2: But it sure is interesting.
Speaker 1: To think about it is, and I mean it is
Speaker 1: striking to me that it just appears like normal consciousness
Speaker 1: isn't enough for us humans, right, Like we're not sated
Speaker 1: by it. And look there's obviously a continuum, and I
Speaker 1: fall closer to the risk averse. I'm more of a
Speaker 1: boring person who seems I feel totally fulfilled by my
Speaker 1: current realm of consciousness. I know lots of other people
Speaker 1: have a much more exploratory mindset, but it is striking
Speaker 1: that across all cultures there is some itch for something
Speaker 1: beyond our everyday conscious experience.
Speaker 2: And we seek transcendence. Of course, not just through drugs.
Speaker 2: Extreme sports and intense periods of physical activity can do
Speaker 2: it releasing drugs in the brain, basically, I mean, we
Speaker 2: can drug ourselves in all sorts of ways. Fasting does it, dance,
Speaker 2: ecstatic dance, rhythm, you know, drumming. I think the desire
Speaker 2: for transcendence goes really deep, and it's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 2: do other creatures have it? We know that some other
Speaker 2: animals do like to change consciousness from you know, their
Speaker 2: elephants love alcohol apparently, and apparently birds will you know,
Speaker 2: favor cannabis seeds over all different kinds seems to addle
Speaker 2: them a little bit. But transcendence, that idea that you
Speaker 2: know that there is another, there is another realm of existence,
Speaker 2: another way to be, is something that I think is
Speaker 2: a deep human desire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering, Michael, if you can give us a
Speaker 1: quick history lesson, because in recent years there's been a
Speaker 1: huge resurgence of interest in the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics
Speaker 1: for people with anxiety, depression, addiction, terminal illness. What's been
Speaker 1: responsible for this shift?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of the big surprises in researching
Speaker 2: psychedelics was discovering how much research had been done during
Speaker 2: this period from the late forties through the mid sixties
Speaker 2: and the fifties. It was, you know, a really vibrant
Speaker 2: field of research with some very promising results using LSD
Speaker 2: and psilocybin to treat alcoholism, end of life anxiety, things
Speaker 2: like that. It was completely respectable, and then the work
Speaker 2: stops in the late sixties early seventies, there is a
Speaker 2: tremendous backlash under President Nixon, and the culture kind of
Speaker 2: turns against them. There's a backlash and the media, which
Speaker 2: had been incredibly positive about psychedelics turns on a dime,
Speaker 2: and so the research stops. The way it gets restarted
Speaker 2: is really a function of a couple things. One is,
Speaker 2: you have a group of psychiatrists, therapists of other kinds
Speaker 2: who never lost faith in the fact that these were
Speaker 2: powerful therapeutic agents, and in fact, some of them were
Speaker 2: working with them underground, and people in that world started
Speaker 2: kind of plotting the return of psychedelics. And then in
Speaker 2: the early nineties they kind of got a signal from
Speaker 2: the FDA. There was a bureaucrat there in charge of
Speaker 2: drug development, and he basically sends a signal to researchers that, look,
Speaker 2: we're going to just treat psychedelics like any other drug.
Speaker 2: If you've got a good experiment, if you've got a
Speaker 2: good indication, you think it's going to be useful for
Speaker 2: We're not going to discriminate against it. The key moment,
Speaker 2: I think, though, comes when Bob Jesse, who is an
Speaker 2: interesting character. He's not a doctor or a therapist. He's
Speaker 2: a computer engineer at Oracle who had experiences with psychedelics
Speaker 2: that had convinced him of their value. And he reaches
Speaker 2: out to a man named Roland Griffith, who is a
Speaker 2: very well respected psychopharmacologist at Johns Hopkins, you know, the
Speaker 2: leading medical institution in the country, and they cook up
Speaker 2: this study and it's not a clinical study, it's not
Speaker 2: a therapeutic study at all. It's an effort to see
Speaker 2: whether you could induce a mystical type experience in someone
Speaker 2: with a high dose of psilocybin. Mystical type experience is
Speaker 2: something that rolls and is personally very interested in. And
Speaker 2: they do this study that's published in two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: and it's the craziest study. I mean, the title is
Speaker 2: something like psilocybin can occasion mystical type experience and healthy
Speaker 2: normal people something like that. And for me to see
Speaker 2: these words mystical experience in the pages of a medical
Speaker 2: journal was just so mind blowing.
Speaker 1: And what is the hallmark of a mystical experience?
Speaker 2: Good question, I had no idea, But it involves a
Speaker 2: transcendence of space and time. Are euphoric feeling or feeling
Speaker 2: of intense well being, a dissolution of ego, followed by
Speaker 2: a sense of merging with something larger than yourself. You
Speaker 2: feel connected to nature or other people, or the universe
Speaker 2: of the divinity. And they found that of the two
Speaker 2: thirds of people who had this mystical experience, they reported
Speaker 2: enduring changes in their sense of well being going out
Speaker 2: six weeks or eights or something. And in a follow
Speaker 2: up study, they found that aspects of their personality, specifically openness,
Speaker 2: the trait of openness increased, and that's quite striking because
Speaker 2: in general the personality doesn't change in adults. So this
Speaker 2: study really is the foundation on which subsequent work has
Speaker 2: been done. And by looking at these results that there
Speaker 2: seemed to be an improvement and well being, the idea occurred, well,
Speaker 2: we should try this with cancer patients. We should try
Speaker 2: this with people who have what the psychiatrists call existential
Speaker 2: distress over their diagnosis or the proximity of death. And
Speaker 2: that became the first clinical trial that the people at
Speaker 2: Hopkins did, and it was duplicated at the same time
Speaker 2: at NYU.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, what's notable about some of these controlled
Speaker 1: studies is that participants report that their guided experiences on
Speaker 1: psychedelics are totally singular in nature, right, that they count
Speaker 1: among the top most meaningful experiences they've ever had. And
Speaker 1: I'd love to dig into the neuroscience just a bit
Speaker 1: so we can understand what is giving rise to these
Speaker 1: exceptional subjective states.
Speaker 2: Well, the honest answer is, we don't really know. We
Speaker 2: have some really interesting hints, but there's a lot more
Speaker 2: work to be done. A researcher in England named Robin
Speaker 2: Carhart Harris put people in an fMRI machine and injected
Speaker 2: them with psilocybin in one trial and LSD in another,
Speaker 2: and he found something very interesting. Where he expected to
Speaker 2: see a kind of explosion of activity mirroring the extraordinary
Speaker 2: visual effects and emotional effects, he actually found the most
Speaker 2: notable thing was a quieting of activity in one particular network.
Speaker 2: And this network, which I had never heard of, is
Speaker 2: the default mode network. The default mode network is the
Speaker 2: part of your brain that's most active when you're not
Speaker 2: doing anything. It's where your brain goes. It's the default
Speaker 2: and it was discovered when they were doing fMRI tasks
Speaker 2: of other kinds and they had to get the baseline.
Speaker 2: So they tell people don't do anything, don't think about anything,
Speaker 2: or try not to think about anything, just lie there,
Speaker 2: and it turns out their brains lit up and all
Speaker 2: sorts of stuff went on, and a lot of it
Speaker 2: involved self reflection, worry, rumination, thinking about the future, thinking
Speaker 2: about the past. The default mode network seems to be
Speaker 2: involved with creating this projection or illusion that we have
Speaker 2: as self. It's involved in time travel, the ability to
Speaker 2: think about the future, and the past, which, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, you need if you're going to have
Speaker 2: a sense of self. Our sense of self is what's
Speaker 2: happened to us in the past and what we hope
Speaker 2: will happen in the future, or what we think might
Speaker 2: happen to us in the future. It's also involved in
Speaker 2: something called theory of mind. That's the ability to imagine
Speaker 2: the thoughts of other people, to understand that other people
Speaker 2: have thoughts, have a subjectivity, have an interiority. That's a
Speaker 2: big deal. And it's involved in what's called the narrative self,
Speaker 2: the story we tell ourselves of who we are and
Speaker 2: how we take new events and kind of weave them
Speaker 2: into that narrative. So you know, to the extent the
Speaker 2: self has an address in the brain. It appears to
Speaker 2: be in this network. And this network gets very quiet
Speaker 2: under psychedelics and in the minds of very experienced meditators,
Speaker 2: and you know Robin, then you know correlated reports of
Speaker 2: ego dissolution, and people can describe that it's quite a
Speaker 2: wild experience. You observe your sense of self completely melting
Speaker 2: or crumbling. It once happened to me when people reported
Speaker 2: that they had the most precipitous drops in activity in
Speaker 2: the default mode network. So that's one of the findings
Speaker 2: really of psychedelic science already. That is significant, I think
Speaker 2: for our understanding of consciousness and the self. But it's
Speaker 2: not the only theory of what's going on. There are
Speaker 2: people who aren't sold on the default mode. We're hoping
Speaker 2: to get some more precise answers to these questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in addition to some of the therapeutic effects,
Speaker 1: it is so compelling that this basic research can help
Speaker 1: us further understand what brain structures are associated with our
Speaker 1: sense of self.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's another area to investigate, too, is what psychedelics
Speaker 2: might teach us about the consciousness of children. You may
Speaker 2: know Alison Gopnik.
Speaker 1: Alison, Yes, I'm such a fan of hers.
Speaker 2: And she studies child consciousness and problem solving, and she's
Speaker 2: convinced that the psychedelic experience is as close as adults
Speaker 2: get to the mind of the child and the way
Speaker 2: of thinking and the kind of what she describes as
Speaker 2: the lantern consciousness, as opposed to the consciousness of adults,
Speaker 2: which is very focused and linear. Children take in information
Speaker 2: from all different sides, which allows for a different kind
Speaker 2: of creativity, and she thinks that there's a retrogression in
Speaker 2: psychedelic consciousness that closely resembles that of children. So that's
Speaker 2: a whole other avenue of exploration. That's very exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love her quote that babies and children are
Speaker 1: basically tripping all the time. Yes, what a lovely, colorful
Speaker 1: way of saying it.
Speaker 2: This was an insight she had when her granddaughter was born.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah. You know you mentioned that you
Speaker 1: did have the experience of feeling your ego dissolved, and
Speaker 1: I know you did try psychedelics while you were writing
Speaker 1: your book. You say that you felt your sense of
Speaker 1: self scattered to the wind like a blizzard of post its.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, can you just paint a scene of
Speaker 1: the many ways in which ego dissolution expressed itself during
Speaker 1: your trips.
Speaker 2: It was such an interesting, strange experience. I was really
Speaker 2: not prepared for it. So I had a fairly high
Speaker 2: dose psilocybin experience guided by an underground guide somebody I
Speaker 2: really trusted. And I mentioned that because if you're going
Speaker 2: to let go to the extent of allowing your sense
Speaker 2: of self to completely vanish, you're going to have to
Speaker 2: feel very safe and very comfortable. And I did, you know,
Speaker 2: under her guidance. And anyway, at a certain point, well
Speaker 2: into the experience, she offered me what's called a booster dose,
Speaker 2: and I figured in for a dime, in for a dollar.
Speaker 2: I was doing this for my book, actually, and so
Speaker 2: I said sure, and I ate.
Speaker 1: Another research purposes, strictly.
Speaker 2: For research purposes, you know, in the interest of my readers,
Speaker 2: because it really was because I was although I was
Speaker 2: very curious, I was very afraid to do psychedelics, you know.
Speaker 2: I didn't do this till I was like in my
Speaker 2: late fifties, and I had a lot of fear of
Speaker 2: what could happen. I had read the stories of you know,
Speaker 2: bad trips, and I didn't know what. Also, you can
Speaker 2: discover really unpleasant things about yourself. And anyway, at this point,
Speaker 2: I suddenly saw myself from outside, and I saw myself
Speaker 2: kind of explode in this cloud of post it notes,
Speaker 2: blue post it notes, you know, like confetti, and they
Speaker 2: came down to the ground and they kind of masked
Speaker 2: in this pool of blue paint. And that was me.
Speaker 2: And I was absolutely sure it was me, but I
Speaker 2: was perceiving it from this new perspective that I had
Speaker 2: never experienced before. I don't know quite what it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't me. It was very equable, disinterested. It had
Speaker 2: no problem with what had happened. I didn't feel threatened
Speaker 2: in any way, and that was me. I was gone
Speaker 2: and that was fine. But I was still aware. And
Speaker 2: it was the first time it ever occurred to me
Speaker 2: that you could have awareness without self, which is something
Speaker 2: Buddhistic and Hindus will tell you about. But you know,
Speaker 2: that seemed very far from my experience. And then what
Speaker 2: happens when you don't have a self is that you
Speaker 2: merge with everything around you. And in this case, what
Speaker 2: I merged with was a piece of music. And she
Speaker 2: put on Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite number two in D minor,
Speaker 2: which is a very sad piece of music, so gorgeous. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I and I became one with the music. It
Speaker 2: was complete merging and it was incredibly beautiful. It's the
Speaker 2: most profound experience of music I'd ever had. And I
Speaker 2: felt as though the bow, the horsehair of the bow,
Speaker 2: was going over my body. And then at one point
Speaker 2: that I was inside the well of this you know,
Speaker 2: this wooden container, and it was so beautiful, and although
Speaker 2: it was very sad, I wouldn't call it a happy experience.
Speaker 2: It was very sad. It was all about death. I
Speaker 2: mean the piece of music. To me, it was all
Speaker 2: about death. But I was completely I had complete acceptance
Speaker 2: that had I died and vanished, that was fine. It
Speaker 2: was what was meant to be. Something followed on that
Speaker 2: death of the self. There was a continuing consciousness of
Speaker 2: some kind. I know it sounds crazy and very hard
Speaker 2: to put into words. I struggled to describe it in
Speaker 2: the book, but it was one of the most profound
Speaker 2: experiences of my life.
Speaker 1: The struggle you're having putting your experience into words is
Speaker 1: very characteristic of how many people feel after a trip. Right.
Speaker 1: They're saying, this is one of the most profound experiences
Speaker 1: of my life, and yet when they try and express
Speaker 1: it in words, it sounds cliche new ag you know,
Speaker 1: everything is love, that sort of thing. It's interesting interviewing
Speaker 1: Casey Musgraves, the country music singer and a previous episode
Speaker 1: of A Slight Change of Plans about her psychedelic trip,
Speaker 1: and I was actually asking whether the ability to create
Speaker 1: music in some way was an antidote to her inability
Speaker 1: to fully express the profound insights that she had had
Speaker 1: using the words that we have at our disposal.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you've just reminded me of one of
Speaker 2: the other of the eight characteristics of mystical experience, and
Speaker 2: that's ineffability, the fact that these are very hard to
Speaker 2: describe because it kind of defies the language we have.
Speaker 2: Our language wasn't built to describe these kinds of experiences.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that you alluded to is that
Speaker 2: there is a tremendous banality to some of the insights,
Speaker 2: the profound insights that people have, such as love is
Speaker 2: the most important principle in the universe. You know, that
Speaker 2: is banal, but it's also profound. And one of the
Speaker 2: things you come out of the experience realizing is that
Speaker 2: it's a very fine line between banality and profundity. And
Speaker 2: one of the things psychedelics does is it takes all
Speaker 2: that ironic crust we cover the world with and it
Speaker 2: scrapes it off really effectively, and suddenly things appear with
Speaker 2: the profundity and beauty of first sight. I mean, awe
Speaker 2: at the ordinary is a really you know, a piece
Speaker 2: of music, a flower, I mean, and that's another way
Speaker 2: in which I think you're recovering the mind of the child,
Speaker 2: and that's a wonderful aspect of psychedelic experience.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plants. I'm talking with Michael Polland about how psychedelics
Speaker 1: can change our minds. I wanted to hear more about
Speaker 1: the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. Studies show that when they're
Speaker 1: administered and guided clinical settings, they can help with a
Speaker 1: surprisingly vast number of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder, and fear of death.
Speaker 2: Now, I was initially kind of suspicious of the you know,
Speaker 2: is this some sort of panacea. It's being used for
Speaker 2: all these different things. And I remember interviewing Tom Insull,
Speaker 2: a psychiatrist, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health,
Speaker 2: and I said, isn't this a little weird that all
Speaker 2: these different indications are responding to the same kind of treatment,
Speaker 2: And he said, well, you're assuming that they're all different,
Speaker 2: you know, indications. They may be symptoms of a similar brain.
Speaker 2: And that is that a brain that's overly rigid in
Speaker 2: its thinking, that's trapped in patterns of rumination, and indeed
Speaker 2: all those things depression, anxiety, obsession, addiction represent people stuck
Speaker 2: in loops of destructive thought and behavior, and that what
Speaker 2: psychedelics may do is help you break out of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly that's constant with the use of SSRI's
Speaker 1: selective searchonin reptic inhibitors right, OCDA, anxiety, depression, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So it would be very reasonable to expect that what
Speaker 1: Tom is saying applies in this case. I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: you can share some examples of the therapeutic benefits that
Speaker 1: can be conferred by psychedelics, in particular people who are
Speaker 1: facing what you've referred to as existential distress. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the first group of patients I talked to were
Speaker 2: cancer patients, and I interviewed quite a few of them.
Speaker 2: Patrick Mattis is someone I wrote about in detail in
Speaker 2: the book. I never met him, he had died already,
Speaker 2: but I spent a lot of time with his wife
Speaker 2: and his therapist and learning about his story and reading
Speaker 2: his account. And he was a man he was about
Speaker 2: my age at the time, and a journalist like me
Speaker 2: also who had gotten cancer of the bile ducts. And
Speaker 2: his wife noticed the whites of his eyes that turned
Speaker 2: very yellow, and he was given a terminal diagnosis and
Speaker 2: struggled with that for a long time. It was really
Speaker 2: paralyzed by it. He read about this experiment going on
Speaker 2: at NYU. He was in New York, and he decided
Speaker 2: to enroll in this drug trial to see if this
Speaker 2: could help him with his anxiety and depression. His wife
Speaker 2: actually was against it because to her it represented giving up,
Speaker 2: but he had no intention of doing that. He was
Speaker 2: continuing with his at least for a while with his
Speaker 2: chemo after the experience, and he did it, and he
Speaker 2: had a mystical experience. It was very profound. He described
Speaker 2: it in great detail. He explored his body and visited
Speaker 2: his cancer. He saw it, and at one moment he
Speaker 2: climbed a kind of precipice in his mind and he
Speaker 2: looks out and he sees this kind of plane of consciousness,
Speaker 2: you know, a vista in front of him, which really
Speaker 2: he thought was what would happen to him after he
Speaker 2: was after he died, and he had a sense this
Speaker 2: was where he was going. It wasn't frightening. He was
Speaker 2: he would be okay to go there, but he wasn't ready.
Speaker 2: He still wanted more time with his wife, and he
Speaker 2: kind of turned back, and he came out of the
Speaker 2: experience a changed man, and he had I forget how
Speaker 2: much time it was. It was like another eleven months
Speaker 2: where he was able to have great pleasure in life.
Speaker 2: He would spend his days walking along the Brooklyn Pier
Speaker 2: checking out new restaurants, had really good periods of time
Speaker 2: with his wife, and at a certain point decided to
Speaker 2: stop his chemo, which was really debilitating, and he wanted
Speaker 2: the clarity that would come with just living out his
Speaker 2: last months without medicine in his body. And he died
Speaker 2: a death of acceptance. People I interviewed described his room
Speaker 2: at Mount Sinai as like having this glow. He was
Speaker 2: incredibly settled and happy, and all the staff of the
Speaker 2: hospital would want to come by this room to get
Speaker 2: you a taste of this man who was approaching death
Speaker 2: with such equanimity. So it was, you know, it was incredible.
Speaker 2: And at one point his wife sent me a photograph
Speaker 2: of him snapped like three or four days before his death,
Speaker 2: and he was very thin, wearing the hospital smock, and
Speaker 2: he had an oxygen clip in his nose and he
Speaker 2: was beaming, so that you had a profound effect on me.
Speaker 2: And I interviewed a great many patients about their experiences,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of common denominators. One was
Speaker 2: a kind of a confrontation with death and a confrontation
Speaker 2: with one's cancer, and in most cases it made people
Speaker 2: much more accepting of their death. So I think it
Speaker 2: has a powerful application there for people with life changing diagnoses,
Speaker 2: and obviously not just cancer, I mean someone with an
Speaker 2: als diagnosis or any number of other terminal diagnoses. I
Speaker 2: was kind of sold on it for that use, and
Speaker 2: because we have so little to offer people, you know,
Speaker 2: we give them morphine which dulls their minds, and this
Speaker 2: clarifies their minds. So you know, hopefully this will become common.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, Patrick's story reminds me of the most stirring,
Speaker 1: powerful part of your book, which is learning that many
Speaker 1: people believe that the insights that they've tapped into while
Speaker 1: they're on these psychedelic trips do represent objective truths about
Speaker 1: the universe, right, this noedic quality, and that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not just dismissing their insights as these zany things
Speaker 1: that they had while they were high they see their
Speaker 1: experience as as this kind of window into some more
Speaker 1: accurate view of reality. You know, take Patrick who believes
Speaker 1: that he's confronted what his afterlife will look like, and
Speaker 1: to me, it raises some very interesting philosophical and moral questions.
Speaker 2: I struggle with that, and I asked some of the
Speaker 2: researchers about this, and I got a range of answers.
Speaker 2: I mean, one is, you know, well, we don't really
Speaker 2: know what happens after someone dies, and it's not for
Speaker 2: us to tell our patients what happens after someone dies.
Speaker 2: But I would say, you know, well, maybe what you're
Speaker 2: administering is a delusion to people. And I remember one
Speaker 2: researcher said, hey, if it works, who cares it? Took
Speaker 2: a purely pragmatic view.
Speaker 1: That's my camp for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, As someone who studies cognitive science and believes I
Speaker 1: guess I have a very reductionist view of life. But
Speaker 1: I am of the mind that all we are are
Speaker 1: subjective states, and so in the throes of a terminal illness,
Speaker 1: if you can be brought relief by believing the afterlife
Speaker 1: is one thing, great, you've reduced suffering. But again, not
Speaker 1: everybody has my exceedingly reductionist view of human existence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's something that needs to be explored.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that there are many ethical issues
Speaker 2: raised by psychedelics. But it's also important to understand that
Speaker 2: it's not the researchers that are planting this image of
Speaker 2: the afterlife, and it's not the pill. The pill is
Speaker 2: just is a catalyst for thoughts and fantasies and images.
Speaker 2: They're not priming you to have an afterlife experience. They
Speaker 2: may be priming you a little bit to have a
Speaker 2: mystical experience in the way they prepare you. I mean
Speaker 2: that needs to be looked at. But everything that happens
Speaker 2: on a psychedelic experience is the product of your mind
Speaker 2: and to some extent, your expectations and your setting. I
Speaker 2: mean we know about.
Speaker 1: Set and setting very suggestible, yeah.
Speaker 2: Very suggestible, But it's really your creation. This isn't mind control.
Speaker 2: So if that's where somebody's mind takes them and that's
Speaker 2: a helpful place, it's hard to argue with that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, I tend to agree with you, but you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, people might have ethical qualms about that. But
Speaker 2: I come back to the fact that there's no information
Speaker 2: in the molecule. Right, it's all what your what your
Speaker 2: mind is creating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe it's subjective states, Yeah, it's it's about maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a reframing for skeptics or people who might have
Speaker 1: some concerns is that it is essentially a creative exploration
Speaker 1: into the types of things that could reassure an individual person. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, what what would pacify Patrick in this
Speaker 1: very specific situation and his mind engages with that.
Speaker 2: You know what's interesting there is you're healing yourself, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, and in fact, that is a large part
Speaker 2: what happens. I mean, these are this is a very
Speaker 2: non interventionist therapy. The therapists say nothing during the experience
Speaker 2: except would you like a glass of water or a
Speaker 2: snack or need to go to the bathroom. It really
Speaker 2: they let your mind go where your mind wants to go.
Speaker 2: It is a kind of self exploration, self healing, and
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's so much more we need to
Speaker 2: learn about it.
Speaker 1: For scaredy cats like me Michael, who will almost certainly
Speaker 1: never be willing to do a psychedelic trip. Are there
Speaker 1: ways of approximating the effects of psychedelics through other means, yes.
Speaker 2: There are. The most interesting one I came across is
Speaker 2: something called holotropic breath work. This was devised by Stan Groff,
Speaker 2: who was a psychiatrist who was doing a lot of
Speaker 2: psychedelic therapy in the sixties, and once the drugs were
Speaker 2: made illegal, he wanted to find a legal way to
Speaker 2: get the same results because he was getting amazing results
Speaker 2: with his patients, and borrowing from many different traditions, including
Speaker 2: yogic breathing techniques, he came up with this way of
Speaker 2: inducing a trance state that is very much like psychedelics.
Speaker 2: I did it once, and you basically have this pattern
Speaker 2: of breathing that I think hyperventilates you. You're breathing very
Speaker 2: fast and exhaling more than you're inhaling, and they're playing
Speaker 2: very loud, rhythmic drumming, and after a certain amount of time,
Speaker 2: a few minutes, you enter into this state where you
Speaker 2: and do that breathing without trying to. You're on your back,
Speaker 2: but you're dancing, all your limbs are moving. It's the
Speaker 2: strangest thing that you could induce this trance and you
Speaker 2: have the kind of imagery that you do on psychedelic experience.
Speaker 2: And I did it, and I felt like I'd run
Speaker 2: a marathon when it was over. It was a very
Speaker 2: intense experience, no drugs involved whatsoever. What is it doing
Speaker 2: in the brain. I think it may in fact be
Speaker 2: doing the same thing to the default mode network, because
Speaker 2: you're probably starving the brain of oxygen. But yes, there
Speaker 2: are non pharmacological ways to get similar effects.
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether we as humans would be more
Speaker 1: tolerant of non pharmacological states that actually rival the psychedelic
Speaker 1: ones if they're negative, if they're not drug induced, Like
Speaker 1: there's somehow this bias against the drug induced bad trip.
Speaker 1: But if I were to achieve that psychological state through
Speaker 1: natural means, somehow, I'm more okay with the idea of
Speaker 1: it going sour or being scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, we have a prejudic against exogenous drugs,
Speaker 2: but there are ways to drug yourself without them, and
Speaker 2: this is one. There may be risks though to doing that.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about risk, but one of the really
Speaker 2: striking things about the classical psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin
Speaker 2: and DMT is that there is no lethal dose. You
Speaker 2: can't overdose on these drugs and you can't overdose on
Speaker 2: all sorts of over the counter drugs. There is no
Speaker 2: risk of addiction either. I mean, I'm not trying to
Speaker 2: sell you on anything, Maya.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you haven't sold me on anything. I'm still
Speaker 1: not going to do it.
Speaker 2: But the risks, such as they are are. There are
Speaker 2: psychological risks. People do get into psychological trouble, especially when
Speaker 2: they don't pay enough attention to set and setting, and
Speaker 2: they don't do it with a guide, and they don't
Speaker 2: do it in a safe environment. It can be you know,
Speaker 2: it can be terrifying, and so you do have to
Speaker 2: keep that in mind. But when you know, I came
Speaker 2: to it late and I did my due diligence. I
Speaker 2: was not a twenty year old, you know, with no
Speaker 2: proper sense of you wrote a whole.
Speaker 1: Freaking book on it. No one's going to be able
Speaker 1: to compete with you on that front in terms of
Speaker 1: doing your due diligence.
Speaker 2: Well, but I wanted to make sure it was safe,
Speaker 2: and I really did look at all the research and
Speaker 2: convince myself this wasn't a stupid or irresponsible thing to do.
Speaker 2: There are legal risks we should point out. Unless you're
Speaker 2: in a drug trial. You know, you go to a
Speaker 2: university and enter. But aside from that, I convinced myself
Speaker 2: that the benefits would probably outweigh the risks, and I
Speaker 2: certainly feel that way having done it.
Speaker 1: I'd love to ask you a more personal question about
Speaker 1: the long term impact psychedelics have had on your own life.
Speaker 1: What are some enduring changes you've had in your perspective
Speaker 1: or your personality ever since?
Speaker 2: You know, I think the big thing is I acquired
Speaker 2: and it was during that episode of ego dissolution or
Speaker 2: you know, dissolution of self that I described a little
Speaker 2: more perspective on my ego or self I identify with it.
Speaker 2: I thought I was that person that voice, and I've
Speaker 2: come to see that it's one voice among several in
Speaker 2: my mind, and that I don't necessarily have to listen
Speaker 2: to it, and that sometimes I can recognize that my
Speaker 2: ego is up to his old tricks and he's being
Speaker 2: hypercritical or needlessly worrying, and I can kind of get
Speaker 2: some distance on it. And I find that very useful.
Speaker 2: It's exactly the kind of insight you might or practice
Speaker 2: you might get out of conventional psychotherapy. But I got
Speaker 2: it in the course of an afternoon, you know, and
Speaker 2: that was very useful. If you ask my wife, she
Speaker 2: would tell you that the experiences have made me more open,
Speaker 2: more emotionally available things like that. I'm not sure I can,
Speaker 2: you know, I necessarily see that, but it has opened
Speaker 2: up this space of curiosity about myself and self exploration,
Speaker 2: and I found it very useful. I mean every time
Speaker 2: I've done it, you know, I learned things about myself
Speaker 2: I didn't know before, and that's incredibly valuable, especially at
Speaker 2: my age. I'm in my sixties now, and you sort
Speaker 2: of think that that process, you know, would have slowed
Speaker 2: or ended, but not at all. It's actually been intensified
Speaker 2: by this.
Speaker 1: Okay, now you're selling me a little bit in the
Speaker 1: last minute, Folks. He gets me while I'm weak in vulnerable. No,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. Thank you so much, Michael.
Speaker 2: Oh my pleasure. I really enjoyed talking to you. I
Speaker 2: hope we can do this in person next time.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written and executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 1: Tyler Green, our senior producer, Jen Guerra, our senior editor,
Speaker 1: Ben Holliday, our sound engineer, Emily Rosstek, our producer and
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Louis Scara wrote our theme song and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone there, including Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, Lee tal
Speaker 1: Malotte and Heather Fame, and of course a very special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans on Instagram at doctor Mayah Schunker. See you
Speaker 1: next week.
Speaker 2: So how does this sound? I think I'm on the
Speaker 2: proper microphone. Why are the three legs of this microphone
Speaker 2: not the same length.
Speaker 1: We like to introduce logic puzzles into the mike set up, Michael,
Speaker 1: So if you could figure out the three leg problem,
Speaker 1: that's actually part of the challenge.
Speaker 2: Oh god, this is a
Speaker 1: Admissions ticket to the interview.