Rick Doblin

00:00the call is that okay is that comfortable yeah that's good okay where there's a constant debate as to whether or not the headphones are the way to go because the headphones are the only way that you can hear exactly what other people going to hear when they listen to the podcast so you can kind of like review it while it's happening like and if only I wear headphones then it feels weird like I'm interviewing you yeah and it seems kind of to focus my attention just on the yeah I hear and yeah yeah like welcome back man it's good to see you Rick doblin from Maps that's for whatever reason that acronym I always uh stumble with multidisciplinary Association for psychedelic studies yes yeah and actually I was just um yesterday with and today with Ralph mner and I got the name from him in a way he wrote a book maps of Consciousness oh and I needed a name for the organization that had a p

00:56in it for psychedelic and so I was looking around for words that had a and it and maps and I really liked what Ralph did and with Tim and R D and the rest and so I I thought Maps it it helps you know explain a territory yeah well you guys are so important when it comes to the the dialogue of psychedelics because from an outsider this is how I always view maps maps is always like oh those are the actual really smart dudes are into psychedelics cuz there's so many wacky out there in the world of psychedelics they want to bring you crystals and talk to you about channeling and I know a Healer and there's so much going on that's so crazy and then there was science and then there was people doing actual peer-reviewed studies there was actual scientists involved there was real data and you guys were pursuing it the right way and I was like ooh these guys are so

01:50important cuz there's not a lot of people that that's one of the weird things about psychedelics you could tell people that you went out and drank whiskey until your feet went numb and your pants and no one cares but if you tell people that you got together with some friends and you took a naturally occurring psychedelic drug and you explored your Consciousness and you you're so much happier now and you feel better about life and you're more optimistic if you do that you're some wacky hippie druggie some loser well that's the perception and so we've got this uh coming out and we've looked at other social change movements like gay marriage and gay rights and it comes from people coming out cuz there are loads of smart people that do psychedelics or you know talented or emotionally wise and they just keep it quiet so people don't really know who in society has had these influences and

02:40they don't have to keep it quiet either I mean it's it's jobs think that their employees for some reason would be better off if they didn't do certain drugs certain jobs I think that's crazy the idea that they get to control your body when you're not there is just crazy yeah but if you look at the companies like Facebook and Google and uh all these tech companies they don't do drug tests they better not they'll lose everybody yeah they know not toe if Google did a pot test oh good lord oh my God they would lose the entire company it would come back it be like real straight laced Republican Trump supporting yeah yeah so the The Innovation and psychedelics and marijuana and looking at things in different ways people are getting to appreciate that I think more the culture is changing well we're in these camps you know we have these camps the dos and the don'ts

03:33do you take drugs do you not take drugs and you know and there's a lot of people that Pride themselves on one or the other whether they're a perturber or non-perturbed you know there's there's people that get weird about people that are doing things other than what they're doing they don't like it yeah and that's why we need this kind of coming out so we were having these Global psychedelic dinners and this is our 30th Anniversary actually tomorrow wow is the 30th year that I started maps in 1986 and we're asking people to um in their own homes or with their friends to invite people over and then have them tell stories of what psychedelics have meant to them or what their hopes are for psychedelic research so you're inviting everyone to do it like on a like to make a night of it yeah and it's like a holiday and yes yeah during April during the month of April generally

04:26you're creating your own holiday it's well there's people that have done this before there's with conversations about death with dinner mhm and drugs with dinner even right so they try to promote conversations in safe places but where people feel comfortable to really be more honest and they can open up and so it's kind of modeling on that it's and then it hopefully helps people to come out even more I mean we even have like a a Twitter uh um it's a hash psychedelics because MH and so people can write in and just say psychedelics matter to me because or you know I I I'm I'm more hopeful or I'm you know feeling that multigenerational trauma can be addressed through isn't that incredible that that is one of the best things for it is MDMA one of the best things as far as getting over traumatic experiences is an illegal drug yeah and yet there's a carved out area that we've been able to

05:26make legal which is the research area and it's because science is the vehicle in our culture that we trust more our religion than our religions and so it felt like science and healing were the ways into the culture that was freaked out by psychedelics in the 60s and now because of these crisis we're in and also these tools that can be shown to be really helpful and that people have made lives out of them that it's not hurt them it's helped them but people don't know it so that's where we think um the research is helping people create a space where they can talk about it well I think it's people are starting to understand the true nature of these things instead of the propaganda and they're doing it from people like yourself being really honest about their experiences and people like yourself even more importantly because there's not a lot of people like you that have

06:21actually gone out and pursued all the significant scientific data on psychedelics and the beneficial properties to it so that we can understand like we have this idea about a thing forget it put all your ideologies aside whether you're a right-wing or a leftwing we have an idea about a thing that's not correct and this idea about a thing is that there's a certain group of Consciousness adjusting substances that are for losers they're for dumb people they're for fools and don't you mess with those and everybody who does those is lazy and stinky and we and you lock there like people there's a a lot of people that automatically lock into that pattern of thinking that's their go-to for for any drugs anything that's not legal but yet those same people often times will drink they have no problem doing that and they a lot of times they'll take pills too which which is even more bananas yeah

07:17well there was this idea that drugs are marijuana hurts your IQ says I mean there's been um says who prove it is that true well there was a um study the national Institutes of Health just uh two weeks ago had a conference in Washington at the NIH headquarters the head of NIH was there the head of naida the head of NIH National insent mental health about marijuana and cannabinoids and it was a neuroscience review and they presented results that suggested that there was um heavy marijuana smokers that started early in their lives over um this was done in New Zealand over like a 20-year period had some um differences lower IQs than their control groups well if you're talking about people that are smoking marijuana heavily one of the things that I would say is that if you're smoking marijuana heavily you're not going to do a whole lot of thinking you're going to Zone the

08:13out you're going to do a lot of zoning out and while sober people might be absorbing more information you're probably off on the world of your own all day long that's not necessarily healthy I think all psychedelic drugs should be an enhancer but they shouldn't be in replace like you shouldn't say you know I'm just going to be high from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep every single day and this is how I exists I'm just high all the time high high high like take a break man yeah I I had that of sense of um as in my early 20s I was smoking all the time to be high high high and I enjoyed it and I felt it got me into things it got me really into physical work and labor really yeah it's F and exercise fantastic I mean that's the opposite of the couch potato idea you know that people have but pot and exercise um just men I ran the New York Marathon while I was stoned that's

09:07amazing I got tired in the middle and I walked into uh portapotty and smoked up some more you got tired you smoke some more weed and jump back in yeah that's amazing oh my God that's a great story that's hilarious a lot of Jiu-Jitsu people swun pot yeah before Jiu-Jitsu it's a big one snowboarders yeah snowboarders love it yeah snowboarders love it they say basketball players yeah they say that it's one of the things about the NBA it's like you better not be testing for weed CU these dudes love it yeah and it makes sense too because I don't play basketball but I play pool and it's it's um one similarity they share is that it's about touch and feel and that touch and feel is way enhanced like a lot of the best pool players also smoke pot you know this guy uh I don't know if I'm blowing up his spot probably probably shouldn't blow up a spot there's a a

10:02video of me doing an impression of him and he's like a genius I'll say it his name is Earl Strickland he's a genius pool player and I he might have occasionally enjoyed marijuana that's all I'm saying but um these guys like they say that um when when they're smoking pot and playing you can like see things better you have a better sense of where the balls going you have more sensitivity as far as how far it rolls yeah I used to play racketball a a lot and handball and a lot and sometimes I would play stoned and sometimes I when I was you you did have that deeper sense of being in the moment you were just one step instant more into the moment as and predicting and knowing and just um but I could never there was an unpredictability about it you know so so I could never really tell if I would play better or worse there was just well that's probably why you play

10:57good cuz you're never sure and you stay on the edge you know I that's there's a thing there's an ego dissolving quality of uh any of these psychoactive substances and I think that ego dissolving quality gives you more space to move around with all your other focuses that's my theory about it because I always felt like like with jiu-jitsu there you definitely feel better at Jiu-Jitsu when you're high and I was trying to figure out why well you also feel like you somehow or another you feel more more vulnerable yet you do better like you're more like like kind of freaked out by any aggression or more trying to avoid any sort of conflict that's what the driving studies of marijuana and drivers show that that people know that they're slightly impaired and they take defensive measures they drive slower and they're not we just more aware of the possibilities of an error as well yeah

11:54yeah and you're correcting for it and you drive yeah more carefully I I think that that's the um part that um we have to really be the experts on the risks as well as the benefits yeah definitely and that we can't ignore that there are are both sides of it for sure with Edibles yeah you know like Edibles and driving settle down just please settle down are you sure you sure that's a good idea yeah although I think the um idea we need to do is more move to performance test T and then that's directly what you're concerned and then you people's behaviors to themselves but you check their real performance not these indicators or predictors yeah from my personal experience there's a big difference between how you understand and operate under it as like someone who's been smoking pot for like 15 years versus someone who's been smoking pot for like a week or a month or even a

12:58year like there's a difference in sometimes your ability to handle being really high like you your anxiety takes hold of you because you're like oh my God and you start freaking out then you you can't drive you can't do anything and then there's people who that are just OG ge's like that Action Bronson character Action Bronson came in here this smoked like nine joints in the entire time he was here he just kept smoking I had to tap out I had to sit back and watch and he just never slowed down he kept going in he kept lighting up up I'm like this guy's insane but like a dude like that that guy can handle being high he understands how to be high but for a someone who's not really that experienced at it man especially in a car it's not a good idea yeah for sure it's you got to be again if you can just focus on performance and it can it takes a while to get used to

13:49it I think you the my point was the performance varies considerably depended upon the individual so I don't think you could even do like an across theboard performance test like say oh we've shown that this guy under five joints can do BMX flips cuz a lot of those BMX dudes they can do that drunk too you know what I mean yeah it has to be an individual examination yeah the the part that I really liked about um exercising and playing ret ball with marijuana is that um sometimes it would be so easy to forget the score and then you realize you're not really playing for the score it doesn't really matter and you're just so into the moment and playing as hard as you can yeah just enjoying the movement and there is this competition but it's like about helping each other do your best and and then the score yeah that's the one downside of you know you're high in playing Rec B trying to

14:39keep track of the score yeah you need like someone there who's sober you need to hire someone hire a dude with a clicker but we can't be bothered man well you just give each other participation trophies like they're doing with kids today where everybody gets a trophy so don't worry about the score just play just keep playing who won I don't know I I think this idea though of Science and the the being rigorous about things yes yeah I mean I saw something that you did about aliens and I I thought you did um like a TV documentary yeah I thought you did great about it I was very yeah I was impressed well the alien listen man nobody wants to believe more than me nobody wants to believe more than me believe me I want to believe but when I'm honest and I look at all the evidence it's not there folks there's nothing there there's nothing there there's like a few people that have seen some stuff

15:32there's some people that wrote affidavits other than that you got nothing you got some shaky ass pictures that could be anything it could be a bird that got shot out of a cannon I mean there's so many these photos that they're convinced or from another planet like are you serious man I think it'd be anything who knows what that is I I think the bigger question is if it's true then what yeah and that's what I've tried to look at and so for me if it's true that there's aliens from here somewhere else that are here what would I do differently in my life do I really need to solve that mystery which doesn't seem very compelling and doesn't seem likely but it wouldn't I think it's a way to be connected to something broader it's like a spiritual urging I think it's a it's like a secular Jesus yeah that's I really think it is and I don't think I'm the only one it's not like I

16:22don't even think this is my theory I think other people have definitely thought this up that there's some sort of a connection between people that don't want to believe in religion and don't want to believe in any sort of ancient ideologies but they desperately want some Superior and so they reach out to the skies and some of them get fixated on the idea of maybe even they have been personally visited because it makes them more significant it gives their life a bit more meaning you know you were chosen we're testing you we're trying you out conveniently always while you're dreaming but trust me dude it's really happening you're not just sleeping and dreaming something crazy no you are actually on a spaceship and so you get these people that are kind of delusional and when you look at the sheer raw numbers of people in this country and then you look at the UFO sto

17:12stories and go how many of these people could be delusional could it be all of them could it be some of them could it be most of them what what's the real number and that was the the cold hard thing that we got to on that Sci-Fi show because it doesn't discount the possibility of definitely not of exat terrestrial life and definitely not of people being visited it's entirely possible that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth observed dust and there was a unique unique moment where someone was there and witnessed it and maybe even was in contact with them and then they took off and they were gone and they never returned again that is entirely possible because that's entirely what we would do if we could just go from planet to planet as dumb as we are now if we could just go from planet to planet and do studies yeah we would do it and if we found an

18:01intelligent life form that was like more primitive than us like cave people like some 2001 sh with the the monolith you know if we found something like that you don't think we'd go say hi of course we would say hi we would definitely say Hi and then we jet back off in our Sleek machine off into the skies we would do exactly what we think they would do well you could make the case that we already know by looking at these tribes in the Amazon that are as if living cavemen without much contact mhm and we try more and more now just to let them alone but but yeah but you go there they're wearing Nikes you go there do have Kobe Bryant t-shirts on they have like Mickey Mouse hats I mean it's weird you see these people in the jungle and they have all this western clothing you like wow it's so weird but yet they're living like an indigenous tribe yeah there's very few that are

18:51still pretty uncontacted they live primitive and I I actually did a peyot ceremony one time with um some Native American Church Shaman dude how many people could say that and but but but but this was bunch of people can say that but they wanted to see um what um a friend of mine who was helping them with their sheep was uh using cuz it seemed to help him get stronger and it was MDMA and so some she when when they would go off and do um peyote ceremonies somewhere else he would tend to their animals right and he sheep ecstasy no no no no no I'm sorry no is that did you understand what you're saying no okay I I was just trying to follow I think we might have gone too deep before this episode the the um a friend of mine was living out with a navajos to kind of get his head straight okay and he would um help take care of their animals when they this male female shamans both would go off to

19:54do peyote ceremonies oh wow and he stayed out there for about a year and he kind of put himself together and they said what helped you and we're interested in what your medicine is and he said it was MDMA and they said Well we'd be interested in trying to experience MDMA oh so I was invited out there and we ended up doing this ceremony in a Navajo they and they only spoke Navajo they didn't speak English at all and there was this like in the western movies there was someone a trail of dust coming and somebody came on Horseback to um be our translator and it was there dude it was their 17-year-old niece holy and she came to mediate during this MDMA experience and it became clear that this was really for her not so much for them to for for for them to show their 17 who torn between the different cultures that that something about our culture we wanted what they had or was we saw and

21:03respected it wow and uh and and a lot happened and and in the it was wonderful in all different ways and there some important healings but in the morning um when we were going this young woman uh was going to get back on her horse and she had 17 magazine wow and was reading it and that's I started figuring out that you know even out in the reservation in these protected cultures that the this globalization of ideas and internet and podcasts and people are being exposed to ideas that they wouldn't have normally been exposed to even in China I mean they having to do so much to kind of censor stuff yeah there's an explosion of thinking and ideas going on right now it's it's a very strange strange time yeah when it comes to that and I think people are getting unsettled because things they had thought were true and rigid or part of their Frameworks are are different in other

22:05places and how many people speak Navajo exclusively there's a bunch that's insane I didn't even know that that existed I didn't know that inside of this country there were entire cultures of people that speak in the original native language wow I didn't know that existed well it's probably very you know thin at these upper Generations because the the younger ones are arguably the best sounding their language is like the coolest sounding language ever it's got that you know there's like a a sound to it like there's something to their accent that just uh I guess it's like we're programm to think of Native Americans as like spiritual and authentic you know there's like this sound to it like do you remember that scene with Clint Eastwood was it the outlaw Josie Wales where he met that Indian and they got together and these are my words of life and also my words of death do you

23:03remember that speech Jamie do you know what I'm talking about looking for dude you got to find that it's so powerful it's like one of my favorite moments in a movie I mean those Clint movies were all ridiculous right like when you stop and look at it it's they're all ridiculous but there was something to that genre that spaghetti western genre because it it wasn't just that it was there were cool action movies but it was cool action movies that were in some ways reminding you of how people lived just a hundred years ago cuz these were all in the 1960s and70s and right that's when they did these movies MH well if this the 1970s in 1870 they were riding horses everywhere I mean this literally is a hundred years old you know 1865 they abolished slavery we're only talking about a hundred years and this cowboy western was going on and for us it it almost like hearkens to a time right

24:04before we up the country you know right when the first Marauders on wooden Wheels rolled their platforms covered in tarp across the entire continent to find a spot to have babies not that it was like this perfect Paradise before we got here definitely wasn't yeah that's a that's an interesting perspective that some people Gra on to um that the Native American people were completely at peace with each with each other they definitely weren't um they're amazing it's nothing to take away from their cultures I'm I'm fascinated by Native American culture it's just a amazing place that they existed on and for so long without any European influence while all this stuff was going on in the world they were living here in a very very different way in a lot of ways an intensely harmonious way with their environment with with nature itself and I think we like look at that and we have

25:00like all these deep spiritual attachments to that it's like it's like it means it's very significant but they fought amongst each other so much and that was their sport in a way I mean and and they had that as killing it was it was a way of becoming you know trained as a predator yeah and somehow that's so deep in us and that's part of the question I think for me with psychedelics and you know therapy is is is there a way to get get that out of the human heart in a way I think the way to get it out is the way that it's getting out right now and it's through information I think that when even you look at these Native American tribes that were harmonious with each other right they have these very close-knit bonds and close tribes and they're very communal but they didn't know these other people that were exactly like them that are 100 miles away and they assumed

25:50the worst and they assumed the worst too and they looked at each other and there was not enough communication they couldn't they couldn't interact with each other instantaneously they couldn't get to understand each other like we've talked about this in this podcast before but if it wasn't until like about a hundred years ago where a boat showing up didn't mean I mean if you were in like the 1800s and a strange boat pulled up on shore you're Ville right this is a terrible problem these are monsters with swords and they're going to jump off and they're going to shoot arrows at us that was really common if you got a boat that showed up a giant boat and a bunch of people got off you're man you just got invaded now that means tourists and you want tourist dollars and people have translators on their phone so they could speak to each other that people that

26:38speak different languages I mean it is this is an amazing time me it's some amazingly strange but we are experiencing each other on a much more even playing field than ever in the past and I think that's how we can exist with so many of us yeah and I think if we can see that really we're all more in common than we have different and we can appreciate the differences rather than be fearful of them and that what we have in common is this fundamental um sense of connection of being this web of life that really we're not virtually we're pretty similar to animals you know we're way close to people with different skin or different cultures to to be able to see that that um is who we really are and that acting from that and trying to um work on Cooperative Solutions and I think that that's if we can have lots of people having these direct experiences so that

27:41they can't be manipulated by politicians so it's it's about grounding this kind of globalization but comfort with um the sense of uh connection that that we're able to find these bonds that they do exist and that they can be built well I think one of the things that we're seeing in this extreme over sensitivity that we're experiencing right now there's this is like a really interesting time as far as like PC culture and what's what you can do what you can't do and cultural appropriation I mean people are going after people for cooking Mexican food that aren't Mexican yeah we're we're call that guy cultural appropriation we're trying to take iasa out of the uh iasa rituals and out of the jungles and turn it into um a therapy drug but that's out of respect it's not out of uh well that's that's an interesting analogy it's a different thing in a lot of ways but

28:43yeah yeah I mean the cultures can evolve you just have to be acknowledging where it comes from and try to bring give back as much as you're taking yeah what I was going to say though is that this over sensitivity is just it's a it's a side effect of this expanded understanding and in this expanded understanding now all the different things that are injustices in the world are being highlighted in a way that never been highlighted before so then people start going after them and then pushing the line further back and then they start looking for other slights that might be around you know other uh microaggression microaggressions anything what is this white people with dreadlocks Justin Bieber adds fuel to the cultural appropriation debate first of all ladies and gentlemen all you have to do is Google dreadlocks that's what I did and I found out that the ancient

29:33Greeks were like the oldest people that wore GRE dreadlocks like they they believe it might have come from the ancient Greeks also like a lot of other cultures wore dreadlocks Vikings wore dreadlocks this it's it's it's ac across the board with hair folks okay this is not a black thing not only that that's not what cultural appropriation is okay that's just style what cultural appropriation is is is like say if these Native Americans had a specific style of clothing that you if you wore it you were a shaman and you were a sacred person or you had a headdress that you wore during very intense spiritual ceremonies and someone just started wearing that for fun someone thought it was cool to wear that for fun well then it becomes offensive and that's cultural appropriation because you this these people have this ritual this very important sacred ritual and this one

30:26part of that ritual you are defacing you're mocking it openly and it's offensive to them it hurts them and even that's arguable that's cultural appropriation and I agree that there I think if someone has something that's sacred like a headdress or something that they specifically wear and then you walk around and wear it it's that's kind of a dick move right if you have to earn that it's like someone yeah it's like being a fake black Bel or having a fake PHD or pretending that you went to Vietnam and you didn't there's a lot of those people out there right all equally offensive but that's cultural appropriation is not a white guy wearing dreadlocks it's just not okay that's a kid who likes to wear his hair like that who gives a and the only reason why you give a is because you've run out of things that are really important to care about in your life because if

31:15you cared about really important you would concentrate on that that is a massive distraction if a white kid with dreadlocks is going to you're going to go out of your way to find anger in a white kid with dreadlocks all that says to me to me is you need more interests that's for sure you need more things that are interesting to you yeah that's called work avoidance you know you're just focusing on things that are yeah work avoidance right you're right yeah you're right that is a great way of uh approaching it it's exactly what it is people do do that well there was a class at leadership at the Kennedy School that I took it was taught by the only psychiatrist um on the faculty R hiitz and that was a big concept was that you know as a leader there's so much work avoidance being done in different ways and how do you help people focus on the issues that are tearing them apart or that they're

32:07avoiding but would be better if they try to work on it and you know that word work is weird because work avoidance doesn't just mean like actual work like working on your job it could mean working on yourself you know it could mean like there's a lot of people that get involved in wacky Behavior because they also are addicted to cigarettes and maybe they drink too much so they start getting addicted to Wacky Behavior as well not just as a side effect of the drugs but also to distract them from dealing with the work they create dramas they create and all almost like to just just to drown out the the nagging poking of all the you actually need to get done so you just tank your life again in this way tank your life again in that way yeah my my favorite approach to work avoidance is doing lots and lots of other work other than what's the most important thing oh really do you put off

32:59everything except like what you really need to do um I I catch myself doing that now and then that's that's crazy isn't it weird how your brain would just play little tricks on you like what is that you know I I think it's this anxiety a bit about this is a big Challenge and you don't know until you start how it's going to turn out and there's kind Lots at stake and and it's just it's a matter of what you tolerate from yourself too and you that's a a weird Line in the Sand that you got to kind of learn to draw if you want to actually get things done you got to say okay now from you know 700 p.m. to 9 p.m. I do this this is what I'm going to do I'm want to sit down we're going to work and you be the boss of yourself and then you sit down and you stare at that computer screen or you stare at the notebook and you do the writing that you were really trying to put off that's

33:48hard for people to do though because a lot of times your brain is very wishy-washy we Savor our choices we Savor our ability to open up our websites and just start go oh what's going on on dig.com today oh wow that's crazy and then next thing you know it's 45 minutes after you were supposed to start yeah I call it the tyranny of the empty page it's just so but it's so nothing yeah I I had so such a weird thing to be terrified of what really put me at ease was uh one Professor when I was working on my dissertation at the Kennedy School at Harvard and and I just had this idea that you had to have it so good you know to be wor wor they and what I was doing it just you know could you ever doesn't start that way so I had three professors but I needed a fourth on my committee and he was the um academic Dean he's terrific but I said to him you know should I um because you're so busy

34:46should I just work through with the other professors and then just give it to you in the Final Phase just for you to read over and he said no give it to me in the junk phase cuz that's when your comments are the most important but what it was God he acknowledged that there was a junk phase and and that helped me feel like okay I can start because I'm producing junk but it's you know you just keep trying to refine it refine it oh that's so important I mean ARA feier has this little uh piece of paper that he has glued or taped to his laptop and it says the first graft first draft of everything is and it's Earnest hemming way and it's like taped right underneath his screen that's such a good point you really have to go over things writing is weird and whenever I read something that's like ponderous and just labored I go did this did you read this again you got to read

35:38it after you write it you got to write it you got to read it and you got to rewrite it and that's where for me getting stoned and um editing stuff that I've written it's it's harder sometimes I can write when I'm stoned but it's very um it's early and it sometimes will be like um you know half hour for a paragraph or so right I'm thinking about all the different words and ways and it's what do you use to write with um to write with yeah do you have like particular software do you write with do you have anything um just Microsoft Word Do you ever uh try write room do you know what right room is um no right room is this program where the entire screen goes black here I'll show it to you the entire screen goes black and all you get is these green letters and you can't access your browser you can't you can't do this is what it looks like when I write oh nice so it's green letters

36:33there you can see it up on the big screen as well um so it's green letters black background and um so when I write like that man I I feel like it just zones me in just I can't do anything else I can't off I can't you know I just shut the Wi-Fi off and RAM that's for me the best way the best way to get into it you know yeah for me it usually takes uh um being like midnight or something like that have you ever seen scrier you know what scrier is scrier is pretty cool too it's something I've been using for years it's this program that you can set it up I think you set it up a bunch of different views but the one I like it looks like a corkboard so you have like index cards and you can write on index cards see them up there like that and they're all those index cards are expandable so each one of those index cards can be uh an essay and you click on each one of them and then you get to

37:31notes and you you can you can open them up and read the full extent of it you can highlight things and make notes on the highlights it's a really cool program I like it a lot it's really cool too because I like the I like corkboards and I I use them in real life and um I like I learned that from uh watching sitcom Writers Do you can you have it where you've got um like the different columns or different kinds of tasks and then you have them prioritized so you can kind of in one glance look at I don't know you'd have to explore that I only use it for notes but I'm sure I'm sure it's pretty flexible but I think it's mostly uh I don't know who who started using I think it was a screenwriting tool or initially I think it was but a lot of people use it because it's just uh it's it's a really cool uh view what kind of stuff are you writing it's mostly just just my thoughts on things then

38:25I extract standup out of it you know I just I I'll I'll write like long form things I keep saying that I'm going to get back to writing a Blog but I just never uh I never have the the real itch to just I like I like like these half processed things that then become bits you know I almost like use it as like a farm like it's like I used to try to like write a joke I used to try to write like beginning punch line setup but then I realized like the best way for me at least with my style is to write a bunch of and then find out what's funny about it you know is uh tweeting sort of for you like notes or blog is useful sometimes it is yeah sometimes it's cool I like tweet I like texting uh tweeting rather because you only get 140 text characters those 140 characters I think that's good because it it makes you economize and it makes you edit and then it makes you it makes

39:20you a better joke writer in a lot of ways like the actual like um the figuring out the the clams and the punches in a joke I think you can get to them better when you learn how to say funny on Twitter because you only have 140 characters M that small amount of text in this little box and you've got to figure out a way to get your point across and hopefully be funny too you know sometimes like just stupid text to me like someone will say something really stupid just so silly and I just can't stop laughing like I think uh it's it's interesting like how tweets have like a Time where they work too you know like there something could have just happened the news and then someone will have the perfectly time ridiculous tweet and like in that moment like that dude like cracked up the whole party of of the world you know or that woman or whoever the hell said it there's a lot of uh

40:14people that like uh Jenny Johnson who was in here she's become famous and a a working comic from tweets just from being funny on Twitter wow you know it's amazing yeah it's crazy I haven't really used it well you guys use maps uses it oh oh we have tremendous yeah no you guys have excellent you guys are really on the ball too when it comes to uh social media and and getting getting people engaged and retweeting your stuff yeah Bryce Montgomery is in charge of that and he does great we have such a really team yes Bry no it's you guys are amazing it's it's so like I said it's so important to balance out people like me you want to s people like me you know well we're in this stage of the um what I'm considering our major reality check of our 30 years of existence and that's submitting the data from MDMA assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD these phase two studies that we've been working on for

41:14the last 15 years and submitting that to first off to our FDA consultants and then to FDA about going to the next step about going from explor studies to studies that if they work then you get approval as a prescription medicine as a prescription treatment so we're we're bringing all of these um data points that we've gotten roughly just in this bunch of studies around $7 million studies over 105 people and what we're able to tell is a story about risk and a story about benefit for post-traumatic stress disorder from any cause with MDMA assisted Psychotherapy as compared to um a placebo and also from the literature and working with people who have failed on other medications it's a weird subjective uh subject isn't it like how people feel how do you feel about you know your life because it's it's assisted Psychotherapy like how much of an impact specifically can you attribute

42:23to the drug right the um the test will actually determine that because one group of people will get the therapy with a placebo right I mean this is how we're thinking of for phase three and this is how some of the studies we did with phase two so I think being um rigorous and skeptical is really important super important so the first point is if you can do this with the therapy without the drug then why do you need the drug but there's so many variables when it comes to therapy as well right like the relationship between the therapist and the patient yeah there's so many variables and ranges of individual responses so there's these massive tables statistical tables for sample siiz calculations that help you figure out on the basis of all these assumptions how many people you need in this study right to get statistically significant results and how many do you

43:21need well we're still working through the different assumptions I would say a million let's get a million people high see what's up well just think of the cost though I know that's the problem there's got to be some billionaire character out there smart what's like Richard pron it Richard Branson started sing out M dma then we got a party there there are um support that we're we're getting that give makes me very hopeful about our ability to raise the money for phase three we think it's going to cost around 245 million wow and we have about half of it already wow either in hand or committed this is serious yeah well the consequences if it works is that then we can start setting up psychedelic Psychotherapy clinics for MDMA for PTSD we can start negotiating with the VA and the Department of Defense with their hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollar the the enormous um last year was

44:22about $6 billion that the VA spent in disability payments for about 600,000 um veterans that are disabled to some degree with PTSD just for PTSD just for PTSD around $6 billion every year what just in disability payments from that's what the human suffering too the money oh my God because the it's hard when people are traumatized I would have never guessed it was that high $6 billion do just for PT TSD I would have thought just for disability payments that's not cost counting other things wow and that's a lot of and what we're able what we've been able to show what we say in this group of 105 people is that uh and this is PTSD from any cause not just War but um childhood sexual abuse or rape or workplace accident trauma of any kind that um substantial percentage of these people can have significant ific Improvement and how that's evaluated is fortunately for us um there is a

45:34independent Raider administered scale for not for symptoms of PTSD and it's called the Caps the clinician administered PTSD scale it's the gold standard developed by the VA used by the FDA to approve zolof and paxel for PTSD and it's just been revised from caps 4 to caps 5 so it's work in progress over decades and so this this is the objective scale and people do have to tell their story to an independent Raider and the way that the independent rating system is going to be done is going to be a whole pool of them that are calibrated with each other inter rer reliability and they know how to administer this and they're randomly assigned to what we think will be about 230 people for one phase three study that's probably what we're going to be proposing and we need two of those studies two large scale phase three studies and what we're going to have is

46:39these Raiders will be randomly assigned to one of the subjects and they won't necessarily know is this the one-year followup the two-month followup that really is the primary outcome measure or the Baseline so the independent Raiders are really important because for skeptical people in science the double blind is a key development how you do an experiment you shouldn't know um the two conditions you shouldn't know which is the experimental one and which isn't because your biases might make you subtly see what you want to see right and it's very hard not to do that that's just kind of a human tendency so the idea has been these Placebo control double blind studies but it's good in theory but with a psychedelic drug you people tell if they've got a placebo that does nothing or a psychedelic drug it's a fundamental problem of This research and that's why

47:40these independent Raiders are even more important for people to have confidence in the results and what we've tried is a series of studies giving low dose MDMA and comparing it to medium and full dose and so the idea we thought was that if people people are confused about which dose they're getting but then we can show a dose response relationship then that's the double blind that's the solution to the double blind problem is that everybody knows they're getting MDMA but they don't know what dose they're getting and so you have to show the people that get the higher dose do better than the people that get the lower dose and the people patients might not know therapists could be confused that that's the ideal so that's that's what are heading for and that's what we've spent the last um 10 years or so researching with different low doses of MDMA 25 Mig 30 Mig 40 Mig 75 Mig 125 and

48:43we would always have this possibility of half the initial dose administered one and a half to two and a half hours later to prolong the experience and make it an 8 Hour therapy session so when these people are getting this uh ecstasy they're getting it or MDMA they're getting it in a clinical setting yeah they're getting it in a clinical setting how often uh um three times um 3 to five weeks apart in case so that's and it's a three and a half month therapy process of weekly Psychotherapy so the emphasis is on the Psychotherapy um the preparation the Therapeutic Alliance and then after 3 weeks there's the initial MD ma session and it takes place in a special uh Treatment Center treatment room where there's a male female Co therapist team with the person the person the patient is having their blood pressure monitored they're having their temperature monitored they're

49:43being videotaped the whole thing and there's videotapes on the therapist as well we're trying to understand about the method and the experiment this portion of it this session is about eight hours Jesus who's auditing all this footage we are we've loading it up we're we don't um we're we're we're not having somebody audit all of it we have the therapists um sort of note which are the decisive moments like a best of on YouTube We're developing this is our yeah actually so in order to train therapists the best way to train therapists is to show here's videotapes of actual patients under MDMA and this is how they're it's poetry it's it's it's po it's symbolic poetry people talk in terms of imagery because half the time their eyes are closed um listening to music having just their own private experience the other half of the time and more or less they're communicating with the

50:44therapists and and it it varies and there's no particular order of things so it's basically and this is what I felt with the Native Americans with the when we did MDMA with the in the Peyote Circle that they had these elaborate rituals that you know went through the whole night that were beautiful and filled with these rich symbols um but then they want so they did some of their opening prayers and they want to know what we were going to do and we didn't have anything it was like well we just sit around and somebody says it's kind of a more free form it felt that we had like a Poverty of ritual but also freedom to to explore like that and that's what we try to provide in this MDMA experience that people have um their unconscious as the guide and we're not the guide we're not steering them anywhere there's all these techniques we know we're not uh we're responding to this

51:42emergence of material that's been catalyzed by the relationship the setting and then the drug and we're supporting this emergence and different people will sometimes go to the trauma first or not talk about till the fifth hour or they'll go to child experiences that were supportive to build strength or they'll but but often it's in the symbolic language and they're sort of telling themselves a story wow and that story can reorder the um neural networks in their brain and deemphasize activity in certain fear centers of the amydala and can change how memories are stored 're we're just sending MDMA to Rockefeller University where one of the leading scientists in anxiety is going to start some studies When Animals mice rats I'm not sure which um and trying to look at fear Extinction and memory reconsolidation and how MDMA affects that whoa yeah so we're starting to get

52:46IDE fear Extinction like through giving someone MDMA least lessens anxiety yeah so it it it means that when you have memory you react with fear all the time that's and this this fear has never fully been processed it's all always like it's about happening it's it's not been fully processed because it's been so scary right or or emotionally R so with the MDMA you can help people through this way of reducing the fear response their activity in the amigdala is reduced wow and so people can um have the content without the fearful emotion so as some sort of a bridge or a blocker uh yes yeah but but it changes the structure of the memory to that person because or the reaction to the memory it it changes how the me every time you have a memory you have to consolidate from different parts your brain then you reconsolidate the memory yeah that's why people have weird false

53:51memories right that they would swear were real yeah your memories change over time but it's a memory of a memory that you're retelling it's almost like you're like if someone you know that had a story and they did something and they told it to you and then you tell your friends about that story that how hey I know Bob's story let me tell you Bob's story but you don't really know Bob's story because you only know it from him yeah you know what I mean like you weren't there when it happened and I think that's some of what happens with at least my memories as they get older and older I'm like is this this is a memory of a memory that I had yeah you have to double check a lot and what happens is that people's um memory for the trauma actually gets better so so you with MDMA you can somehow or another change what that memory is no you no that's the beauty part of it do you change your

54:42reaction to the memory but I mean what that is to you like the feeling tone yes so so because these memories were so scary they've been suppressed but but not successfully they're not fully integrated still activating fear reactions frequently and so when you can feel peaceful and then bring up the memories and and then because you're feeling peaceful people remember even better you know what you guys should really do if you really want to prove the Effy effectiveness of MDMA you should go to worldstarhiphop.com and find all those people that got up and give them ecstasy and see if it helps cuz there's so many people that got punted in the head and thrown off a building we have the Zeno project is that for worldstarhiphop.com exclusively it's for um electronic dance music festivals in burning man um that's definitely different definitely different yeah but I mean the idea of

55:46being able to better process trauma is universally appealing I think all of us have had bad moments in our life that you probably overcome and you you know you probably have some character because of those moments but it would be nice if you had a full handle on how it makes you feel yeah yeah and and that's where this memory enhancement comes in handy because then you can really learn from what happened can I ask you how you chose MDMA out of all the different psychoactive substances why yes um I felt that MDMA had a chance of being um welcomed into the culture as the first of the different psychedelics because it has that fear reducing it's it's not so psychedelic it's not a classic psychelic yeah it it doesn't make you feel like you're losing control right it makes it so that you feel a subtle shift of openness to um self-acceptance and self-love and this

56:50just self acceptance I think is like the core of it and your muscle Rel black people can stretch a couple inches more really when or more limber on MDMA no kidding yeah yeah have you have they ever done that with athletes um I don't know they should do it with athletes like people that are already really flexible like maybe gymnast or something like and that's yoga people and done martial arts people yeah you can do I think that's part of the the muscles relax and that part of your tension right is is or it's tense because of parts of your brain and so that the way in which you can then have this full memory when you're feeling peaceful and you're looking at it as if it's happened in the past which it did so you finally have got this perspective on it this piece makes it so that you're you're not seeing it as happening right now right because you realize it's not happening

57:47right now it happened then and so you're creating this um longer different kind of memory storage of something that was clearly in the past and it's connected now to this reflective peaceful tone so when the memory is reconsolidated restored the next time you call it you get the incident but you get the emotional tone of this peacefulness and that it's in the past and so you can do work within a period of minutes sometimes or hours of seeing a shift um and looking at something differently and processing these traumatic memories um it it's rare but one person was in our study and he dropped out after just one session it's like I got this he's like and and part of what he got um Tony Macy is his name was one of the Vets part of what he got was that he had been telling himself that he was on opiates for pain for injuries but that he was starting to realize it was really more of a

58:54escapism and that um he didn't need them and he didn't need drugs and he didn't need MDMA either wow he didn't need anymore and he'd had what he needed and well kudos yeah and we asked him later if um if if he would at least uh be part of our follow-up evaluations right and he said yes to that well that's nice of him and so he didn't have uh he wouldn't qualify for PTSD at the two Monon and then when it got closer to like the one year which is our last follow up he started saying well you know I'm still feeling pretty okay but I think I could learn more from MD may maybe can I have now some more of these sessions and we said well it's a rigid protocol you've dropped out um but let's just wait and see if you even would qualify to be in the study if you even have PTSD so we did the 12-month followup and he didn't have PT he wouldn't even qualify to be in the stud

59:48he still wanted to get some easy off you because there's other things to learn yeah like how good it feels yeah that's come on yeah trying to party he's trying to party under the opes of scientific study and and in order to be the most rigorous too there's a way to look at studies one is called um per protocol everybody that finishes the study and meets the criteria right and the other is called intent to treat so that means everybody that comes you got to look at their data even if they drop out or they lied to get in the study or they wouldn't have qualified or whatever it is once you have enrolled somebody that's the more conservative you just have to include everybody you can't just be picking the people that that fulfill your treatment plan right so this guy was a part of that um we couldn't normally count him but now that we're doing the most conservative intent to

60:38treat analysis we can include the Dropout so actually Tony scores of massive reduction in PTSD symptoms after just one session counts in our data wow because he was screened and had the first session there's so many variabilities happiness being such a crazy sort of unquantifiable thing right that's what everybody wants everybody wants some happiness and one of the things that MDMA does seem to provide a lot of people is relief from tension which in a lot of ways equals happiness I mean if if if un universally if you had to like say what is the one thing that people get from a drug called ecstasy it's you feel great right you feel relief you feel comfortable insecurities melt they just dissolve they don't they don't don't exist anymore and you can approach people in this really weird open way where you're not constantly ready to Judo whatever kind of bad they're

61:33sing your way like so many people when they communicate they always have some sort of a wall up or some sort of a barrier between their real feelings and what they're projecting so that they can sort of figure out how to navigate this conversation with the least amount of social damage you know I mean it's like this there's like a a a Zen to some styles of communication like this way of uh going through it with having the least amount of of conflict in your life but if everybody was on ecstasy that would be the vibe like there's a there's a vibe that you get and I'm not saying everybody should do it but what I'm saying is there's a vibe that you get when you're communicating on ecstasy makes it almost impossible to uh have arguments with people like it's weird like you communicate with people in this open way that you like never even attempt if you weren't both on MDMA Yeah

62:30we actually have a study starting in the next month or so we're we're going to give two people MDMA at the same time two a couple a diet well these are already people that are related again but one of them has PTSD and one of them it affects the relationship but doesn't have PTSD wow and so this was um a major major breakthrough because um the first study with psychedelics was u in the modern era was 1990 with Rick stman with a DMT study um and ever since then now for the past 26 years it's only been one person getting MDMA or siloc cybin or LSD or anything at a time so this is the first time that we've been able to work with two people at a time and give them MDMA and it's also the study that's in informal collaboration with the Veterans Administration National Center for PTSD it's a therapist that used to work within the national Center who's now at Ryerson University in Toronto who

63:32developed this approach and who was introduced to us through the work of um Richard Rockefeller who was opening the doors for us with the national Center for PTSD and we met this woman Candace Monson who's the researcher and she's developed what's called cognitive behavioral conjoint therapy and conjoint means couples and so it's a cognitive behavioral sort of scripted how you kind of think about your trauma and exercises about it but it's for couples and so when they were thinking how to blend MDMA with traditional non-drug psychotherapies that are used by the VA the couple's therapy they thought would be the most logical because it helps you to have those kind of communications you're the better listeners you're more empathic yeah you can get over stuck arguments and the PTSD really does affect the relationship and in a lot of ways and there's the researchers have all these measures of

64:31the relationship of the style of communication between the people we really care about the Caps the the clinician administered PTSD scale but it's going to be tremendously exciting and and we've been able to get permission for the first time to give two people MDMA and we'll be able to monitor that but couples's therapy even though it's a tremendous use of MDMA will never make it through the FDA because you can only take diseases you have to treat a disease it's not for personal Psychotherapy which is not a you know those things it could be anxiety disorder or PTSD or depression we have to treat diseases it's such a weird distinction you know there if there's something wrong and you have a substance that makes that wrong better why why does it something wrong have to be something you look at in a Petri dish well only because of the drug war it's only because it's illegal otherwise it

65:23doesn't make any sense it's obvious like there's a condition and a solution to that condition I mean this the fact that you're not dying from feeling like about your marriage it doesn't mean it's not a problem you know I mean that's so stupid yeah it it it will be one of the best uses of MDMA I mean that's like making toothpaste illegal it's like you know unless you have like a serious Dental disorder and you're really need to clean the holes you like you have like some sort of a a horrible root canal that's about to happen it's it's the idea that you can somehow or another keep people from doing what they want to do that's like at the heart of it all right right and and I think that the um this idea of again uh psychedelics because hashtag psychedelics because of coming out of the closet of people sort of saying that that this has been helpful and this is something good

66:20and we should be able to do this and um I I think the um eventual use we're sort of backing into this use in couples but it's really about making MD M do messon for PTSD and it's also about trying to understand what's the drug and what's the the context so while we had this context I was describing of this non-directive therapy of the the unconscious being the guide other people like cognitive behavioral they give you all these exercises to think about and how you think about your trauma and where and when it your triggers are all different kind of thought exercises and so we're seeing that MDMA is like a general tool and so we're because it's nonprofit drug development we're trying to work with as many other therapists with as many other U combinations of treatments that they want to use to explore if they want to blend MDMA with it and so we have this

67:19um 960 grams of the world's some of the world's purest MD don't tell me where it is I don't want to know made by Dave Nichols at don't even give up the dude's name they're gonna hold him hostage and make him make more no this was a we had a legal legal per legal MDM this is all legal what I'm saying 1985 I had a kilogram made oh my God and a what that's what is that 2 lb um 2.2 lb 2.2 lb Jesus Christ yeah good googly moogly young Jamie and this this was um two pounds of ecstasy yeah in the department of Medicinal Chemistry at purd oh my God and they got a better yield than they thought they got more than a Kil oh yeah I bet they did they snuck off with it in the middle of the night I only paid um $4,000 for it did you guys ever do a rave while you're making it absolutely not oh I like how you said that I don't believe you at all but way to go way to stick to

68:17the script yeah no that was this was you know there's like the legal track and oh I understand that's why the yield was totally off no but it was all right so we have 960 grams left 31 years later Jesus Christ and it's still the exact same thing we're using in our studies 31 years later it's the you know it's kept in um room temperature and without light without moisture dark it's just infuriating that it's taken this long for people to recognize what other people have said what other people have said for a long time and I understand the idea of having rigorous scientif ific testing but at a certain point in time it should be there should be enough anecdotal evidence and lack of for um I mean how many people have died from mbma has anybody um yes yeah what are the risks like what is the ld50 yeah well um ld50 is um a measure where you give a bunch of animals increasing

69:17amounts and the amount where you kill half of them right um the LD 50 of um MD main humans um I don't don't actually even know that number um but it has happened people have have they died from it or they died from I know people have died from dehydration have um died from hyperthermia right so MDMA affects your temperature controls which is one reason we measure temperature although in therapy but in a clinical setting lyed down there's no problem with temperature mhm at all um and normally there wouldn't be either if there was adequate harm reduction and people were drinking not just water but um electrolytes um and they would why people are always so sweaty is that what's going on they're sweaty but but they dance a lot too they D yes it's that combination so some people have maybe glow sticks keep them warm pacifiers glitter glitter I know my analogy about

70:19toothpaste is a bad one you know toothpaste and teeth but there is there is some weirdness to this idea aidea that we need uh a substance like gets classified whether you know no no matter whether it's legal or illegal it gets classified and when you make something a drug and that drug can only be used when there's an ailment then you lock out the whole possibility of performance-enhancing substances like we can't I mean we we don't disclude across the board performing enhancing substances I mean that's essentially what coffee is and it's mandatory I mean coffee braks are written into Union bills I mean all the like when they make a contract they write in coffee breaks like we've always had coffee breaks right that's a break to take a drug a productivity and it used to be illegal at one point yes it was where people gathered together and talk and fermented

71:09Revolution in England incredible so it's like many other things so we have this one performance-enhancing drug well ecstasy is probably a performance-enhancing drug as well because it it gets rid of some of the the that you've got clogging up your thinking right and it allows you to think more freely right and you can it's it's it's the most inherently therapeutic of all the psychedelics so when you ask me why did I choose MDMA I think one part is it is the most inherently therapeutic people tend not to have bad trips the kind of bad trips people have is when they take MDMA in a recreational setting and difficult emotions come up and they're with friends that just want a party and they try to stuff the emotions down and someone plays Slayer real loud or that would be worse too and then they end up worse so MDMA can make people worse off too well there's certain people that really

72:01shouldn't be allowed to chew gum and we should take them into account too there's certain people that are going to stub their toe every time they walk and I don't think we should Nerf the world okay and I think super important to recognize when you're looking at all these numbers and statistics that there is a certain percentage of these people in this world that are helpless you just can't do anything about them there is everything if you look at um skiing look at the number of people that die running into trees I mean every year there's about 35 or 40 people that die skiing every year dude we lost Sunny Bono you don't have to remind me yeah you have to bring it up throw salt in the wounds and that's not even counting people with Avalanches but but that's because there's I Got You Babe benefits and that's where again this coming out it's fun skiing is fun but you know so is

72:46driving race cars that's fun too there's a lot of stuff that's fun but dangerous look there's a lot of dangerous activities but the amount of people that actually die from ecstasy versus skiing very low in comparison to how many people take who skis do you think people ski more or take ecstasy more um I think that a lot of what people think is ex is ex meaning MDMA is really something else so that's another problem is right around half of it um math right with um aid.org there's an ecstasy uh pill testing program that they have been conducting that we helped start years ago people there's one licensed Laboratory licensed by the DEA in the United States that can take Anonymous samples of drugs so it's you can get drugs tested and so there's been this program to get ecstasy pills tested wow over 8 or 900 have already been tested and around half of them don't

73:39even have MDMA in them Jesus Christ so there's what are they mostly amphetamines they're amphetamines they're caffeine a lot of them caffeine pills yeah they're selling them as ecstasy sometimes they would um there there's test kits the dance Ave cells and sometimes um to fool the Tes get which turn a certain color if there's MDMA in it there's been pills that are one part MDMA nine Parts caffeine wow because there is the stimulant aspect and people stay up it it's um but that's a terrible up but the the risks of MDMA even in a a large recreational setting if if it were a post- Prohibition World those risks would be very manageable but there would be some people probably rare situations somebody might die um we have that all the time with cars with alcohol with you know I can't say that it would never happen it's like those freaks that are allergic to shrimp right or penicillin

74:36people die from yeah so there's going to be risk for everything there's nothing that's safe 100% even salt salt kills people people die from Salt overdoses every year right aspirin aspirin kills people yeah some thousands of people die every year from aspirin but the actual yeah it's yeah it's crazy um the number of people that fall in their bathtub and die and let's get rid of bathtubs let's make them all out of rubber yeah so one of the things that um my wife said about me when uh some of the neighborhood teenagers when we had our teenagers were thinking of um um coming to visit me at boom Festival in Europe which is one of these festivals where they have the most harm reduction um and these were teenage boys and what my wife said about me was that I wasn't really good at prevention but I was good at rescue and so that's for me prohibition versus Public Health you know prevention

75:34public you know prohibition but if we can be good at acknowledging the risks but being prepared for them the same way that festivals have medical tents and people have all sorts of physical problems yeah but the the problem is there's not a strict prohibition on dangerous things so the precedent already been set of of Freedom that precedent of Freedom we would like to extend across the board we we that's what we want we don't you can't tell me that I can go to a bar and drink my lungs out and smoke cigarettes all day long and I can take pain pills and I can do all these things but I can't have a joint you can't you can't tell me that it doesn't make any sense did you see the quote that was recently circulated on the Internet by Erman about the origins of the drug war I did see the quote but please repeat it well what basically he said that Nixon when

76:21they were looking at the protests that were being conducted by the hippies against the war against a lot of Nixon policies and the blacks who are arguing for civil rights that they knew they couldn't make it illegal to be black or illegal to be a hippie but they could look at the drugs that those groups were using and selectively criminalize and prosecute them and use them to break up those communities and that they knew they were exaggerating the science and that the drug war was a political war against certain kind of drug users who were considered to be a problem to Nixon and Erman and this was something that Erman said um 20 years ago didn't get that much attention and he's been dead I think 10 years now but it just came out again in an article and people are looking at what Erman said and it seems intuitively true intuitively true and just unbelievable how damaging and for how

77:11long I mean it's been going on since the 1970 so we're we're deep here yeah but it it also C triggered into a fear of the unconscious a fear the drugs not just these politic Parts but just the drugs themselves and the reasons why they were political well also the blanket label of drugs becomes really problematic because you have all these things lumped in together you've got heroin and marijuana in the same categories you've got cocaine and all these things that are so different and to call them all drugs it it's it's it's not a good implication it doesn't make sense it's not a good distinction like there should be obvious classifications like we all know like I say you you asked me about uh you were telling me about the Ecstasy and I immediately thought amphetamines so that's a category and that's how we should describe them I don't think describing things oh you do drugs you know like

78:04this is that's a dumb yeah of course I do what am I stupid they figured out how to do things that are way better than not having them right there's plenty of drugs that are excellent like the idea that you're going to be completely drug- free is dumb our our brains are drug Factory yeah I mean don't do damaging drugs don't do terrible drugs don't do meth don't do things that are going to you up yeah don't do yeah there's probably some stuff you should avoid just cuz it's not healthy for you but the problem is labeling them all drugs it depends on the dose it depends on the context so that one of the the FDA made their reputation in the early 60s on blocking thalidomide to be prescribed in America for morning sickness for pregnant women because it caused all these theide babies um and it was um a skeptical woman who ended up winning the president's Medal of Honor the only

78:57person from the FDA for blocking this drug um thite it was the epitome of the bad drug but now it's used in the treatment of cancer it's an approved medication theide is an approved medication is it just one of those medications that only affects certain certain blood vessels and it can be useful in certain ways or Terri so it you know it's not that there's good and bad drugs it's not that things are good or bad in themselves eles like I don't think methamphetamine is a bad you know there's uses for that do you ever do it um I've tried it what's it like um um I I only tried it one time did you clean your house it did have that kind of yeah energetic um you know it wasn't that um it was similar to cocaine um it was the stimulant that uh can be really useful my my father this was a shocking thing my my father is a doctor pediatrician and years ago he's

80:04retired now but he he well after I was into doing psychedelics and it dropped out this is what I was focusing on he shared with me that he and his uh medical friends did meth because they were under these ridiculous residencies and they had to work for these really long hours wow and that in the 50s it was very common for residents medical doctors all sorts of people do amphetamine to and and it's it was a major tool used in the war and with the soldiers and it it's um you know it doesn't have this um brain it doesn't have this evolutionary feel in a way it it helps you do what you're doing but there's a way where psychedelics help you refine what you're doing and so it just gives you energy does it give you confence there's a mood too yeah elev yeah there there's so MDMA is methylene dioxy methamphetamine so there is you know similar molecular change with other

81:03additions to it which fundamentally change how it happens what it does in the brain so that's a part of maybe what triggers the Euphoria as well as the dopamine release yeah that is part so that that chemically the Army in 1952 the chemical warfare people they were looking for mind control drugs and so they did a study with animal toxicity studies looking for ld50s and others with eight different drugs in a Range one of them was MDMA and one was it was um like methamphetamine to masculine whoa you know that so MDMA is kind of like um masculine in a sense that it has that um like which is from peyote which has this psychedelic um ego dissolving and uh rep things emerging and non-verbal processing and emotional intensity that it has that from masculine but it's not that Eco dissolving it's more you're calmer and that has the energy from methamphetamine but not in a jitu

82:11because you can sit still you can meditate meditators are now you know some of them have learned from MDMA or soloc ibin to deepen a meditative practice so you can use these in any number of of different ways and so you you kind of have this paradoxical combination of methamphetamine and masculine that produced you the molecule that does something different but reminiscent and it is something that I believe that will be used in initially highly controlled therapeutic settings for particular clinical indications and over time and by overtime I mean um 10 or 20 years there would be a a a development of psychedelic clinics like hospice centers hospice centers spread All Over America in 30 years the first one was 1974 2004 there was 3500 so a place to help people who are at the end of life so these are psychedelic treatment centers to help people do ego death or

83:13to to die to their own selves or to to see more or that these centers will be um developed All Over America I think over a process of once the drugs are approved and probably mdme and Sil cybin will both be approved around the same time um one of the other you know 2021 is our current predictions and then we'll start elaborating these clinics and then people will get more and more comfortable to it so that um medicalization precedes legalization and that's what we've seen with medical marijuana right that the culture gets comfortable through this process of um now research and use that they can trust that they see directly and they see distribution centers that aren't violent and people see a system and they then are now now it's the latest poll was 60% of Americans in favor Americans in favor of marijuana legalization wow the highest it's ever been that's

84:13incredible yeah so that I think that it's I think that we need people are under so much stress and if you look around at the world the world is under so much stress and the environment is under stress and the cultures are bumping up against each other that we need to have all the tools available to manage the stress because it's a it's a tremendously crucial time in human history where we have these capabilities through our technology that we never had before to impact planetary systems well in a way these psychedelic drugs are kind of a technology as well they're technology to get us to understand how our brain is functioning yes and there's there's this um um Confluence of Coincidence of timing that the um Albert Hoffman who invented LSD first off created in 38 and then accidentally ingested it in 43 felt that the development of nuclear splitting of the

85:09atom was occurring contemporaneously with this discovery of LSD MH and and in his view there was this kind of outer technology and this inner technology and that um Ein Stein said the splitting of the atom has changed everything except our mode of thinking and hence we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe what shall be required is a substantially new mode of thinking and Albert hoffen was like well I do wonder about the um the technology which you know many people think that if it comes from nature it's really good you know there if it's plant medicine but if it comes from a lab it's somehow suspect right but I I think that it comes from our mind we're from nature labs so LSD these nature these plants they just extract the chemicals from these plants when you break it down to what the chemicals are you can reproduce those in a lab it's not as simple as

86:03it's not natural it's exactly the same thing as natural right and it's all natural right because it's all from something that's on Earth well actually uh because we're trying to see um you know how we're operating in a a public benefit Manner and fair trade and all this I I asked the company that's now making us our kilogram of we're having a new kilogram of M ma made and oh Jesus you need more I thought you said you had a gang of it we have 960 Gams but it's it's not GMP medical it's not acceptable for phase three research oh yeah I would say that's something like that too I would uh I would say it went bad we got to we got to give it away to kids well we do we want to give it away to researchers so if there are researchers that are listening we have free I just became a researcher dude I'm researching I research for YouTube We would like to give it there but the um

86:55mostly crocodile attacks but I'll around with some MDMA well the the current one is um costing us um to have the medical grade is now costing us $400,000 oh of course we need that we need that medical grade and that's wait a minute you got like a bucket of this stuff laying around but well but it's not you know that's we're we're making this transition yes into the higher regulated areas so it is just that the standards of procurement weren strict is that yes that that this MD may just as pure as the what we're going to get by the way I should never used the wear procurement it's one of those words that I use and as soon as did I say the right word is that okay is that okay to use right there it's the pedigree of all the ingredients so there has to be a paper trail for all the ingredients and so you don't have that right now you got your from a dealer sort of one of

87:48the things that he didn't have all of the uh paperwork oh it's like a car apparently there's a part of the process of making MDMA where you need aluminum and and he took some aluminum oh Jesus Christ people were thrown Forks in there and he he took some aluminum foil and used it in the process oh and that's bad well because it's not like witchy aluminum foil and which batch and where did it come from oh Jesus Christ this guy threw aluminum foil into your mixture that what a janky ass way to make things you got to throw metal in it that seems so stupid uh I'm sure it was a really hey man you want to eat some cans yeah dude I'm in I want to roll or rolling yeah if I knew more chemistry I could kind of explain what it did in the in the process but well aluminum is super calm uh common rather aluminum is like a we think of aluminum as being frying pans but that's not the that's not the form

88:45it takes in the wild you know or car panels they make a lot of cars out of aluminum now because they figured out how to make like super lightweight but very strong aluminum that's as strong as steel but lighter but aluminum's everywhere it's in dirt like it's like one of the most common Metals so they use this stuff how much do you need like in say like a tiny amount I don't think it was all that much I I was um what does it do I I I don't I'm not a chemist so I can't really say you didn't get curious um and you found they throw aluminum foil and you were taking well I was just like wow this is pure MDMA great dude I would have been like hold the up you just say a fork in there dude sit down and you got to tell me what are you doing what are you doing why does it have to have aluminum foil we we went to the FDA and we said is there some way we can take this MDMA which is just as pure

89:36as what we're going to get and turn it into medical grade right and they said there's no way you can really do that you because you have to this is now preparing for prescription MDMA I understand right so so you have to take it from every initial ingredient has to be verified at the source weighed out documented and then you make it and then it's medical grade well is that right more or less so of this 400,000 we're um about 75,000 is just to validate all the methods that are being used okay another 54,000 is three-year stability studies to show that the MDMA can last three years even though we have MDMA from 1985 that we're still using that's that we have stabil Purity studies on throughout the years but it's about this particular batch and and actually our um 30th anniversary celebration on April 17th in Oakland at the Scottish Right Center is this a plug for a party this is a plug

90:31for a party how dare you just Snak that in see I just snuck that in is for um raising money to a legal drug deal to buy this MDMA how do uh people find out about this and how to get there they go to the maps.org website and there's information right on the homepage powerful thank you and and it's about helping people though also think about having dinners in their own homes with their friends so well you going to make a holiday dude why not man Columbus has a holiday and he's widely believed to be a piece of right uh yes yes I think um well Columbus is supposed to be a piece of okay well I I think that once we get MDMA as a medicine and then it becomes legal and then people are doing opinion on Columbus then we can turn Columbus Day into MDMA day it's a great idea I mean look Columbus did uh start something in motion but Columbus as a person and if you Google him boy he was

91:25a terrible human being he was there was an account of one of the missionaries I believe um that was there on the island I think it was a Catholic missionary I forget what religion but anyway this one religious person um wrote this account of what Columbus and his soldiers had did to some native people and it was just horrific and you realize these were the people that everybody was worried about like we were talking about a shows up and some monsters get off that boat and these were the people and what they had done to these people for gold they found out that some of them had gold and they just they just did horrific very similar to what like um happened on uh this Coast here um with uh the Incas you know the Aztecs rather yeah there's a story of cabesa Daka do you know that story which story is that Alvar nunz C this is the story a true story of people that found real

92:24gold uh Spanish conquistadors this this is um it's been made into a movie it should be made into a more major movie what's the movie called um Children Of The Sun Children Of The Sun have I have you seen that Jimmie why it was um I think that's what I think the movie should be called I'm not sure if it was that you just make up your own names for movies I don't like Star Wars bro I like Bigfoot and his buddy in space well the story that I'll I I've written actually this this is a incredible this is the hidden history of America this is the first meeting Children Of The Sun Children Of The Sun is um the script I've written actually what the are you doing man you smoke too much pot before the show be honest with us uh a little bit much littleit too much a little bit too much both of us did a little bit right little yeah it's good for Creative uh brainstorming and and so

93:15the and the movie the the story what is this movie that you can watch though um I I think it's it might be cabesa Daka uh it's got a dwarf Shaman that doesn't really exist in the real story and it's I think this has to be told true because it's the hope of America it's the hope it's u a story of um several hundred conquistadors around 1528 trying to link up with Cortez blowing off course in a hurricane land in around Tampa Florida and of this bunch of hundreds of these conquistadors only four of them survive W and they eventually one of them is black one of them is more a slave the rest are Conquistador is white and they become slaves so they start out at the head of the Empire exploring and plundering and then they get destroyed and they become slaves so they get captured they get captured every by Native Americans that lived in Florida yeah so the Native

94:10Americans that lived in Florida the seol tribe right is that them I'm not sure which they they they end up um running away and it takes eight years this whole process so they go through this is the charting so this is the first meeting of the the black white and red races in much of North America wow and at one point when they're slaves to get some use from them the Indians the Native Americans say they want them to do some healings they think they're special there there's a black person white they came and they say we're not healers we don't you know and they say if you don't do it we're going to not feed you and they try to do a healing and it actually works the person says they're better so what exists is um the document there's there's a lot of historical documents but the point what was the ailment that they documented um I'd have to I don't know what it was they they do

95:06talk about um but you wrote a script on it well I don't remember the exact first this was a long time but I I decided that at some point I couldn't try to make the movie happen and also try to make MDMA happen so you set it aside for a long time but it's the the myth the symbol I have set aside but I haven't even thought about for a long time but I think that the story is important for people to hear Alvar nunz CA deaka they became healers and they went eventually all they didn't people gave them all their stuff they didn't want it they just wanted to go to where the um where they thought Cortez was yeah but hold on how did they become healers just cuz they healed this one guy they just said this is our new job it seemed obviously I didn't know I was magic yes they they that was the they were like they were pressed into Service as healers and some of them they felt

95:57were particularly more talented than others at it and they ended up with um basically the the whole groups of Indians Would One Tribe would take them to the next tribe they had the allegiance of all of these Indians and they learned to live very humbly they didn't take stuff for themselves they were incredibly good survivors through amazing hardships and they saw their Humanity with the Indians and they had sort of conquered through love through these healings and then they ended up getting to where the West Was to to where Cortez I mean where the conistor were they finally saw burned out Villages and people as slaves and they were taken captured themselves wow and Alvar caka went and um was taken as prisoner back and he had to write this report to the king about what happened to the Expedition and the black man estano he stayed and he traveled up and

96:51explored a lot of California and ended up being being killed by the natives but the story Henry Miller wrote a tremendous introduction to this story about the salvation of of the you know this Westward Expansion the opportunity what it showed is that through this respect through whatever circumstances they got they through cooperation and non-violence they had the support they had and then well the four that they didn't kill the four that they yes the 96 that they killed they didn't get that yeah yeah it took them this nonviolence thing only worked out when it got down to like four people that's not a good strategy I would say that's 96% ineffective that's a terrible idea hey non violence work these four guys live to become wacky Carnival healers this is this is perfect I I I I would if you have time to look at this story of um this report and he you recommend a book on the subject yeah

97:56there's um there's the actual original document that Caba deaka Alvar nunz cabesa deaka The Marvelous Adventures of cabesa deaka I think is the translation of it yeah yeah that's the guy yeah a Ken Burns documentary on him called the West I believe is what I was looking up Ken Burns did something on him didn't Ken Burns do something on the the wild west wasn't that a different is that he did it on this guy this is uh say it's in it I'll show you but oh it's a part of it yeah oh I see story first appeared in the Ken Burns the West PBS documentary the first there in 1996 H wow yeah and this there's been an opera about it there's all a lot of people have sort of looked at this story and taken a lot of Hope from it that um even though it took a lot of death for these people to get to this attitude and and and the Indians were you know keeping slaves and killing each other

98:54you know but they were able to um have a a different kind of they they got off the boat as those you know rampaging people but but they transformed into um humanists and humble and actually Kaka was able to go on a second expedition to South America he was able to talk his way into it and he did it uh he explored more areas than other people did without killing any Indians and he discovered The iguasu Falls where the movie the mission was made M the big waterfalls and so he he sort of demonstrated that he was a good Ambassador between cultures and tried to still you know explore exploit but but do it in a way of um a little bit more collaboration that's really interesting man it's really interesting to think of cultures colliding like that like some crazy people from Spain getting in a boat getting out of their course and landing in Florida climbing out trying to figure

99:58out what the hell's going on getting attacked attacking people being at War and then four Dudes make it through that and live can you imagine how cool those guys must have been like talking to them yeah like the Native American decided you're so cool we're not even going to kill you man they they became Traders for a while before they kind of escaped trade d not Traders right yes Traders and and they could you know they got very hearty and imagine um how long did they live um this some of them well this estano ended up getting killed he stayed in Mexico he didn't want to go back to be a slave and then he went with the Christian missionaries up into California and then got killed in California Yeah by Native Americans here by Native Americans here um some of the other Americans need a better name they do it's clumsy Native American saying native americ is Clumsy saying

100:50Indian is even more clumsy I like uh First Nation that's like what the Canadians use I like that first nation's that's that's their real claim right their first nation cuz the bottom line is as far as we know their first nation but we don't you know well we did a study uh in Canada with First Nations people who were suffering from addiction because their their culture has been under such attack but it was um Peruvian third world Peruvian shamans bringing Ias to work with First Nations people who were addicted with Dr Gabor mate a western psychiatrist as kind of that guy's amazing he is mediating this um ex excession run by and and then we were able to um support the team that um did some outcome measures and suggested that that this um third world first world first Nations people that these it's cultural bumping into each other all over now more ever than before in the

101:55history of the world probably is that cultureal appropriation or no there I think it's appropriation if um if you don't if you steal from them if you pretend to be a Native American and hold your own peyote ceremonies with the feather head bend on and with red paint I think the you know flattery you know imitation is the most sincere form of flattery flattery so I think it's like you want people to adopt if you think it's good but they don't have to adopt your Dogma or your ual I mean I see that with our MDMA we have our method and we have it everything is videotaped we even have it scored we have Raiders that look at the therapists and score them on how much they're complying cohering with our method but we want other people with other methods to use it and see how it works in other contexts Native Americans have their own rules right when they have uh in their

102:46territories they can that's why they can put casinos up in there do they have rules as far as psychedelic drugs do they have their own rules well they have um cuz on Tri land well first off they have um Authority in tribal lands but a lot of people work in the military or do stuff with the federal government so they have the religious freedom to practice the Native American Church US Supreme Court upheld and a Congress that they can um but the federal government actually tried to limit it so that if you you had to have 25% Indian blood to be part of the Native American Church in order order to participate in the PE rituals the states don't have that kind of racial requirement but to try to prevent the spread of this religion from the Native Americans to wider groups of hippies and others that like peyote you know they tried to make a racial the federal government does have this racial

103:41limit but it's largely ignored and it's ignored by the states that's why white dudes were trying to be rosarians remember that that's where white dirty stinky people with dreadlocks came from that's how it was re United they were all fans of Bob Marley right he um that's why they I knew a dude who was a a pot dealer and he claimed Rari and he said this is part of my religion man it was like real serious right right right and those cases they've lost in court oh they have but they didn't lose the what is it Santo de DME what is the church how do you say the Santo DME went up to the ninth circuit it didn't go to the Supreme Court but the UN D Hall I I just came from Santa Fe the morning and that's where the lead Church the uny de vegetal was located in Santa Fe and it was Jeffrey bran from the Canadian Jewish bronan Family from Seagram's Fortune from smuggling alcohol

104:36during prohibition and then building this massive business as one of the grandkids he ended up uh becoming um appreciative of iasa and so he hired the best lawyers and worked on this case that they won a unanimous Supreme court case affirming the UN vegal the union of the plants it's it's two different plants roots and you know um Vines and and leaves and um you put it um together so it's the union un de vegetal or um and they have legal protection in the United States on the other hand it's you know it's a church um I I went to it and um I was hearing I I really enjoy I went to it twice and um the second time was like here's the myth of our church the myth of the or the origin myth and part of it was that King Solomon you know went to the Amazon and told them how to put these plants together right and I'm like King Solomon really and so there's it's just it is a religion right so I

105:48think that um well that's that's why the Supreme Court agreed with it cuz it's so wacky they're like yeah you guys sound like a religion right I mean but it's having that's how they know that they didn't make it up iasa it is having an incredible effect in America it's really amazing the number of different people that are using it not necessarily in these exact religious context but in kind of shamanistic or personal growth or more or or kind of little modified or or even in these these Services why hasn't that religion expanded well it's um it it it's being used quite a lot there's a lot of Ceremonies in California All Over America all over the world with iasa it's this but this Union de V yeah udv that but they have they're expanding somewhat but they're it's how saying they have authority they have authority to do they have legal Authority from the US Supreme Court

106:42they're the only ones um the Santo dii went up to the ninth circuit so they essentially have the same argument that the it just didn't get appealed to the Supreme Court by the prosecutors so they right but the y de vegal how do you say y un un de vegal they do have that so they're locked down they are yes and S dii is too but as I said they won in the appeals court and we got to get Richard Branson you got to get Richard Branson involved and start open these up like right next to Virgin Records they don't have Virgin Records anymore part of this the why haven't they expanded more it's part of it is you know how um cultural integration so cultural appropriation but cultural integration so they're bringing a tradition from a different culture right um and they're trying to integrate it at a rate where it doesn't uh it grows it's constitutionally protected but it

107:34doesn't um grow too fast maybe there's a way where it could grow too fast and there wouldn't be the care and the use of the tea and they want to make sure that it's responsibly handled these are the people that are running your church yeah yes yes yes Jeffrey brofman they're just too busy getting high they want to keep it on the DL know what they're doing no they to hide no no they trip out and lay on the floor well you know you don't hide by going to the Supreme Court obviously not I'm joking yeah but I think it's amazing that they did actually get the ruling I mean that's amazing they they're taking one of the most potent psychedelic drugs known to man it's true and but they got the support of mainstream religions because there's a lot of weird things that mainstream religions do for cultural practices or even well hasn't a precedent been set with wine yeah yeah

108:21it's so so is most certainly a drug and it can be used by um children in certain ritual ceremonies and it can but it's a common part of Catholicism like the wine is is a very common part there's a lot of weird stuff in religion and as soon as you start saying that one person can't do their weed weird stuff they go okay what kind of weird stuff do you got exemptions for yeah and you look at their exemptions you're like what you can cut baby dicks what are you doing you're rubbing dirt on your forehead on Wednesday you guys what the are you doing the and the idea that one could make fun of the other is just at a certain point in time like you guys have blinders on okay this whole thing is pretty wacky the union Yow deti they might have the right idea that might be the only way to do it well the part about that's really good is that while they have their dogma and their their

109:13Traditions it's about the experience right it's about the individual experience for yourself Rick stman did it with them and he told me uh it was very strange he said it's really strong he's like they do really strong iasa and they sing songs about Jesus I was like whoa Daddy what is that like he's like it's a trip yeah I think you I think you have to have a generous spirit in a way like okay it's Jesus but you know it's about reverence and then you kind of generalize in your own we were talking about this the other day and tell me if this makes any sense to you if you have this idea when you go like when you take I've never done iasa but I've done DMT on multiple occasions right so I've had this psychedelic effect the most potent version of that right I would wonder if you went in with the intention and had these experiences with the intention to communicate with some benevolent deity

110:13that you believe is responsible for all life and all love on the planet if you kept thinking of that as you entered into this dimethyl tryptamine State of Consciousness isn't it possible that a a vast majority of what is happening when you are having a psychedelic trip is the word the word hallucination is very strange because what the hallucination implies is in this world while we're sitting right here with tables and chairs and rooms something could you could see it but it could not be real the problem with that is like what are you seeing and why can't other people see can other people see it too well if other people could see it then it's not a hallucination right so it's how do you know what other people are seeing we really don't right now how do you know when you close your eyes you're on a psychedelic drug how much of what you're experiencing is your visual

111:06cortex interacting with your mind interacting with these drugs and your your creativity and your Consciousness they're colliding and gliding and dancing together along with your imagination and in hold hold on a second and In This Moment if you go into it with this intention your imagination can conjure up this Jesus type character in the iasa ceremony and he can be real and he can be what you want him to be and he can be a manifestation of your own experiences in this life that you've carried around as memories and carried around his emotions and that in this psychedelic state if you continually go to it with that intention it's entirely possible that they do experience something like that exactly I think that you we see through our own filters and we see a lot of times what we want to see and that we can coales a lot of um feelings and images that are like

112:04preverbal into certain kind of symbols well especially if you're on an insanely potent psychedelic drug yeah so the idea that we ever know the ultimate truth that it's not somehow or other filtered through our preconceptions um John Lily wrote this great book one of the things he did I thought was great was called simulations of God and it's like different conceptions that people have of God and how you get to these views and then there's a way to transcend that and see something even deeper and deeper and that that we have these filters and so the culture is and the context is more important than the drug so I think one of the issues of the 60s was people had so much Faith they they wanted so much cultural change they were so it was such a Strife filled time that they had this hope this unreasonable hope that the drugs were enough that the psychedelics were enough that they would

112:55somehow or other bring this connection to the truth to to this new understanding just by themselves and it's really more about the context but the context and with a proper open context and in our case a therapeutic context in the experimental sense then when you add the the pharmacology it produces really unusual opportunities to go very deep and that's what I think we can show that we can do that and contain it in a regulatory therapeutic healing context that can slowly be accepted by uh our culture and that that's really the the value proposition that we're presenting to the FDA see the way you described it is why maps are so important because I'm talking about making Jesus exist when you're tripping balls I'm making your own Jesus like while you're tripping and you bring it back to studies and Science and data and present a paper look I'm wearing a tie

114:00okay and so for us yes yes uh that we're actually discussing should I wear a tie at our 30th Anniversary or not what are you g do uh I haven't decided yet you should dress like Jimmy Hendrick but but the D the um the data is really this um double-checking of what we think is true right and it's a way where um we have to have that humility that we don't necessarily know this ultimate truth well there's no way to know and that's not just humility that's just a fact there's no way to know what you're experiencing what anybody else is experiencing when they're tripping you really don't know we don't know what it is and it's entirely possible that it's something that we don't understand yet yeah and so so the reason I brought back in a way to this science is that we're operationalizing its effect on symptoms so whether you have this memory that is actually true so whether it's Jesus or

114:53whether you're remembering childhood sexual abuse MH whether that I don't like how you tied the two of those together right the Catholic Church there was a little stop it few things I leaped over there but but but whether that occurred in actuality is an important question for the legal system or for other ways but from a therapeutic from a healing from a compassionate point of view if this expression if it's symbolic or actual if it has the consequence of helping people come to terms with themselves and to get more acceptance about what happened that's what we're looking at we're looking at the outcomes so I think that that's the Practical part that's the science part it's like there are questions um I I believe I I for a lot of times in my early LSD trips I wanted God to show up and I wanted the truth how arrogant like he's not busy yeah God doesn't have a lot of other going

115:51on remember from my bar mitzvah where I was like the very next day my bar mitzvah with the God you know I studied all this Hebrew so in my bed the next day after my bar mitu I was like I was the same I'm like I'm not a man I'm not any different than I was and I I I I could took me a couple days where I thought God was maybe busy maybe a lot of people got bar mitz with that day and after like a week I recognized you know I'm not going to change and it's going to take something else the ritual didn't quite do it and then even with my LSD trips wanting to see God wanting to have this Clarity and and not quite getting it and then appreciating that that that was a delusion in some ways that keeping the uncertainty is keeping integrity and and um but there's that strong longing for that for a certainty yeah that you're sounding like a dude who's rationalizing

116:46that he didn't get to meet God he's upset if God did show up the whole thing would be different right maybe God's like aliens doesn't visit everybody but when they he does visit it's a very unique experience and it's real I don't know man I think there's real problem in in saying you know what other people experience whether it's under the influence of psychedelic drugs or whether it's completely sober or whether it's in a meditative State the idea that anybody can tell you what you experienced or what you got out of something is foolish so then it becomes a matter of whether or not we're protecting people so if our laws are designed to protect people we should do it scientifically we should look across the board at all the damaging things and we don't do that at all that's why the government never discusses cigarettes cuz we all know how many people's cigarettes kill every year

117:31it's in the hundreds of thousands and no one brings it up no one running for president no one running for congress they just don't bring it up it's not something they want to fight against because if they do they'll get slaughtered with money so it's not about whether or not they're trying to protect us so then what is it about although at the same time cigarette use has been going down a little still half a million people die every year in this country still yeah it's still it's it's crazy if it was just 5,000 people from pot how quick would they shut it down if 5,000 people died prematurely every year because of marijuana how quick would it be the demon of television news it depends on what we do about the benefit side of the equation it's it's not cult it doesn't exist though you know you see what I'm saying like there is 5,000 isn't dying from pot but if it was like

118:16the the 500,000 are diving from cigarettes are extremely significant right okay well what should be done well what we should do is make everything legal and then let people figure out what you want to do and not want to do which is what we do with most things today right most things like cigarettes and alcohol that can kill you we let you try exactly cuz no one should be able to tell you what to do man if you want to Charles Bukowski it and just drink and smoke yourself to an early grave and just uh scribble all the cool along the way who gives a it's all finite right who's one person to tell another person that they can't BMX jump or sky well I think I think you can have that I want you to be free I want to be free to do what I feel I should do I you should have the same freedom but if you are hurting yourself I'm compassionate and let's try to see are you struggling with

119:04your own trauma or what but but not to try to um what do you do about rock climbers um yeah you just try to get safe equipment what rock climbers with bad childhoods you just cut them off you know people um people can make choices about risk in different ways and I think you really at some point you know where does it shade into suicide and you know well do you think suicide should be legal there's another one well I think the um I think there should be I mean the I don't think you should be punished if you tried to get committed suicide and you survived then I I don't right I don't think you need that America you don't like going to jail I don't think it should be against the law and I think this suicide you know when people are end of life in pain makes sense to me certainly but there has to be a lot of protections but I think there is this a general um feeling

120:07like life is a gift that I have and that that somehow we need to run its course rather than well I think this is another way where're MDMA therapy will help and I think that there's a lot of people that are haunted by their memories memories of their past memories of their own failures me memories of things that they did wrong and those things can really with you you know you people Define themselves in this weird way like by their past failures like that is that's all the experience they have that's all they know of themselves and they it they people have a very difficult time just saying okay well those things are things that I'll never do again I made these mistakes and now I'm this person who's learned and that's a really hard jump for some people because they need some sort of a memory definition of their patterns of behavior and when the memory definition when they

120:54look in their own memory and everything is just failures and coming up short and missed your rent and carot repossessed those kind of failures over and over and over again stack up and you define Yourself by those failures and it becomes really hard to move forward it's really hard for people and so each little positive step that people can do can be so significant because it Alters the course not just Al like there was this Tony Robbins thing once and I I hate quote Tony Robbins he's got some really good quotes but one of the things he was talking about was how just incremental changes in your life like if you have two cars that are going or two boats that are going in this direction and one veers off course just 5 degrees well if they both go 10 miles this one goes further and further and further from the other one and it keeps going further it's going it's it changes the

121:39course it changes the direction and MDMA therapy or any sort of a psychedelic experience that's boundary dissolving and and ego dissolving and it just gets to the raw heart of the matter and allows you this really intense perspective on it that's almost unattainable without those experiences then that person leaves that and they have almost like a fresh start and a fresh understanding of who they are they self-define differently and that in itself is like a recipe for Success yeah there's this beautiful part of um accepting oneself and loving oneself even with all of these failures even with everything that's happened it's not that you deny that it happened or don't see it it's just this sense that you can relax and feel that self-love and that is what's so rare and I think that's why MDMA is one of the most popular illegal drugs in the world yeah and why it needs

122:39and will become a medicine and the reason that I um selected it is also because training therapists reaching to the mainstream so that when we talk about how do we incorporate this as a medicine it's with healers it's with doctors and therapists and I think what we've found is that we have FDA permission for a study where we can administer it to therapists in part of our training program we're studying the psychological effects of MDMA taken by healthy Volunteers in a therapeutic setting wow and it's a double blind crossover Placebo controlled study but we can bring in therapists from all over the world and give them an MDMA session where they're the patient and they're seeing our method of how to deliver it and so MDMA is something that I think will have a smoother easier way into Psychiatry and into psycho therapy because of it so gentle because it isn't

123:34so much ego dissolving as ego clarifying um your defenses are um relaxed and you can kind of accept yourself for who you are so you can see more clearly and then how you integrate that and and how you make it so that that affects your daily life life afterwards I think it's really important you're saying about it being a manageable experience it's one of the most manageable experiences of all the psychedelics because it feels really good yeah yeah it's not like you're going to have a bad trip for the most part although some of the veterans have said you know I don't know why they call this ecstasy why do they say that because they're going through this Trauma from their War so it's it's like so even under the experience of MDMA or under the influence of MDMA it's still um they didn't like the fact that it was bringing back those memories that what it is they liked it cuz that was part of

124:23this healing but it was painful so so I'm it makes the pain bearable it doesn't make the pain go away or it doesn't change your memory like it didn't happen well especially someone in war it's like you you really can't imagine what their experiences are it could be even worse you know childhood sexual abuse and you can't trust your parents or you can't trust your circumstances or yeah it's all terrible all terrible it's all right yeah and how people can um get into these patterns it's awful and and it seems like um through the techn MDMA as part of the Technologies of healing well it's one of the things that we were talking about with Jamie uh before this podcast started before you got here we were saying how ridiculous it is that it takes so long to get things passed and that the government the DEA is going to review marijuana in July well they have this thing in July yeah well they're

125:19going to say no and we've been working well explain what they're going to say no to um I believe that um the request is that marijuana be rescheduled from schedule one to schedule two um and that this rescheduling the the framework if you don't mind could you explain what the difference between schedule one schedule two from the point of view so schedule one is the worst drugs and they have no medicinal value no medicinal value um they're no current they're not current accepted medical and there's no currently accepted safety under medical supervision and no currently accepted medical use and high potential for abuse schedule two drug and these are the most heavily criminalized drugs schedule two except for certain exceptions in schedule two which are also drugs with a high abuse potential but have an accepted medical use like methamphetamine and Coke and cocaine and

126:10heroin and heroin is not in the US but um OPI all the opiates are heroin is legal in England but it's been um blocked here so but but oxyc contant are in SCH every medicine that you can get is schedule that's essentially the same as heroin right isn't it it's very sometimes more dangerous in certain ways but I mean examp the psych the psych it's a synthetic it has very similar yes effects yeah but it has a medical use for pain right so moving from schedule one for schedule two there's been efforts to try to force the DEA to do this but the way the schedules are set up there has to be a currently accepted medical use and the data is not there and you talked before about you know when do you have enough anecdotal data or I I believe that we are so capable of fooling ourselves into believing what we want to believe and to seeing Jesus when Jesus might not be there that that we

127:02need science we should take marijuana through the drug development system we should take the psychedelics it doesn't need to we're about to start a study with marijuana I basically started trying to do drug development research with marijuana 1992 this is the first time 2016 but so there's no established medical benefits of marijuana that have been proven in any scientific way yes there's been a lot of evidence in Phase 2 pilot studies but the definition of real proof is phase three studies these large scale studies that you work and negotiate with FDA for the marijuana plant now GW Pharmaceuticals is a company in England that grows marijuana takes extracts satac it's a THC and CBD combination in a pill and then they also have epidex which is CBD for childhood epilepsy so they are in phase three studies so there are people working with marijuana extracts in different non-smoking

128:01Delivery Systems going through the system but the plant itself is highly effective it doesn't cause lung cancer if you smoke it if you vaporize it um it's even less irritating to lungs and there's um the possibility that lowcost plant in in Israel right now they grow High potency trim buds for 50 cents a gram $14 an ounce so I think there's public benefit in making the marijuana plant in smoked or vaporized form into a medicine available paid for by insurance as a alternative to all these other medicines but there is no effort right now we're starting six years ago we started a study for marijuana for PTSD and Veterans so we've talked about MDMA and the IDE IDE is to help people with a few MDMA sessions not need MDMA not need drugs sort of reorganize their brain but there's a lot of people with PTSD that find marijuana to be helpful they don't have the nightmares they're more present

129:03focused and they're thinking well maybe I don't want to do this MDMA or maybe um it's a supplement so there's never been a study of marijuana for PTSD there's been um lots and lots of anecdotal reports hundreds you know thousand of people saying that it's helpful in different ways but marijuana is a paliative meaning that it just treats the symptoms and it's used usually every day so it's taken us six years we're about to start the study and it will take us another several years to finish it um part of it will be at John's Hopkins part of it will be in Arizona 76 veterans with chronic treatment resistant PTSD and we're testing one sample that's high THC one that's high CBD one that's kind of TC CBD combination and then one Placebo and you got a $2.1 million Grant from the state of Colorado powerful Colorado to do this study and it's going to be a definitive

129:58thing and because again we're nonprofit we're giving away the protocol there's no intellectual property like that and so there's a a for-profit company Privateer that actually has bought the Marley brand and they have a um their medical marijuana company venture capital and they have um that's hilarious um Tay which is a big production marijuana production factory in British Columbia supplies like 5,000 patients um they're owned by Privateer and we've given them our marijuana protocol and so they're going to use the study with our study with the same study design but with their marijuana and they're going to vaporize and they're going to we're going to smoke and then there's a new study starting in Australia there's this guy whose grandchild had pediatric epilepsy and nothing helped and then they tried CBD and it stopped the epileptic seizures to a great extent and then the father

130:48donated 33 million to the University of Sydney for Canabis Research it's the largest Grant in the hisory of the University of syney so they're going tooc and they're going to uh get marijuana from tillay but put into capsules as Edibles so we're going to have three different studies um similar in design but smoked vaporized and Edibles we're going to combine the data and so this is the scientific process but it'll take us it's taken us six years so far just to get this even started the study will be 3 years then we'll learn from it and we'd probably need to do another 3 four year study a phase three because this is just phase two and in the meantime we have to break the Government monopoly on marijuana because in the US we're stuck with the government marijuana and say explain that well the please in 1968 Andy W actually at um Harvard wanted to do a study with marijuana and

131:46so the federal government started a farm at the University of Mississippi to grow marijuana for research and ever since then the National Institute of drug abuse has contracts now and so the University of Mississippi a professor El soli is now in charge they're the only federally licensed DEA licensed marijuana in America and the FDA is a federal agency so it can only work with drugs that are federally legal so the only source of marijuana in America that can be used in clinical research is this marijuana controlled by the national insute on drug abuse which has been anti- marijuana with this contract with the University of Mississippi and we have tried Maps has tried starting in 2000 to break this Monopoly and we submitted a application in 2001 with Professor Lyall craker at UMass Amherst and we won a DEA administrative law judge lawsuit the second time I've sued the DEA and one

132:43but in the end they ignore the judges they ignore the science and the politics takes over and so and we lost in the appeals court in 2013 so the way I described that we have this 960 gr of super pure MDMA but it's why did they appeal the government what did they say when they're appealing they said that um that the government had an adequate Supply what does that mean for everybody and all research for the research yeah we show that they didn't have what we needed and also meaning that the um there has to be an adequate and uninterrupted Supply produced under adequately competitive conditions well also so did you factor in the fact of the different strains have different responses yeah yeah that's that's why we're using these um you know different right but the government did they do they understand there's a different strangs are associated with different feelings only

133:38recently have they had any CBD available so GW Pharmaceuticals started in 1998 combining satx was THC and CBD it was up until just last year that they had the US government could provide marijuana with CBD in it they they've not been focused on making these things into medicines it's it's more low potency Research into the risks of marijuana and it's the final next step in the medical marijuana story is to end the obstruction on privately funded drug development research trying to make the plant into a medicine and that's what um ironically it's easier to do research with psychedelics than with marijuana to try to make it into a medicine because we control our drug so I'm getting uh a GMP MDMA I it's the same stuff we're going to use in phase three that we want to Market but the federal government marijuana can only be used in research it can't be marketed and because the

134:38strains are all so different we can't show marijuana helps for PTSD with one strain and then just say oh give us approval for any other strain right so we need to use this and this is the true for FDA for other Botanicals if you're going to do do a study in Botanical medicines the phase three study needs to be with the same a consistent batch that you want to Market well I guess this is all important because we want the same sort of stringent process to be taking place for a drug say for arthritis or something like that like there's so many drugs that have been gone through clinical trials and wound up still even after all that being dangerous but the problem with this is that we know it's not dangerous it's not like there's any question whatsoever about whether or not it's hurting anybody yes and what I'm basically saying is about insurance and U science so that it should be what I'm

135:24saying is marijuana should be legal right away of course people should be able to get this the process that we're trying to go through with making the marijuana plant into a medicine is solving the fundamental issue that all of these medical marijuana states that have approved medical marijuana laws the patients have to buy the medicine themselves MH they don't get it covered by insurance right that'll only happen when you go through the FDA and you've made it federally legal so the intention is to make it so that people can get their medicine so that they can get it paid for by insurance is that the intention yeah it's like a medicine right I mean and so the way to do that is to make it federally legal like that's the best pathway you think to Federal legalization well I think by I'm talking about ferally legalized for medicine right so to go through the FDA

136:13process then insurance companies um I mean they can be doing studies now and look at the fact that people are using marijuana instead of a lot of more expensive pharmaceutical medications and that from an insurance company point of view it could be wise to subsidize marijuana right now it just hasn't happened yet as far as I'm aware that insurance companies in Canada the Canadian government pays for medical marijuana for Veterans for PTSD the Canadian government pays for that even though there's been no science these studies that these three studies will be the first on marijuana for PTSD controlled studies and so there's the likelihood that once we make it into an FD approved medicine insurance companies will then be willing now it's federally legal to cover it as a medicine for what it's been proved to be particularly if it saves the money on other medicines so

137:12that's the cultural of course then the pharmaceutical drug companies are going to there's going to be a bounce back there it's all really the only thing that's holding us back is this nutty system that we have right now that's so complicated to make something as harmless as marijuana become legal well well the system has been blocked the system itself when it's unblocked isn't really that long you just talked about how Civil War wasn't that long with with psychedelics u i mean part of it is also resources you know do we have the resources to fund the studies but in in 1992 the FDA had an advisory committee meeting the de was about what to do about medical marijuana what to do about psychedelics and should they be permitted to be studied as medicines this was in 1992 so there had been roughly 20 years of suppression of research Crackdown after the 60s the FDA

138:01had this advisory committee meeting the National Institute of drug abuse convened a meeting of their animal researchers doing studies on psychedelics and Other Drugs in animal models trying to figure out what they do they recommended human use the advisory committee recommended that human research be resumed and the FDA adopted that so that we've actually had this open door with um research at the FDA if we had the resources except for marijuana because the marijuana was controlled by the national C of drug abuse we had broken that we'd gotten our own supplies of psychedelics after as their own supplies of cybin so now the system takes um six to 10 years something like that of doing the research once you have a drug that you think does something to to prove it and that is take some time and it costs a lot of money but it doesn't cost billions like the pharmaceutical company

138:57will tell you I mean we're actually um able to make MDMA into medicine in part because it's a demonized drug because it's ecstasy governments over the world have spent over $300 million probably more by now on Research with MDMA if you go into the scientific literature in Medline and you put in MDMA or ecstasy there's over 5,000 papers a lot of science has been done that we haven't had to pay for about the RIS risks but even then when we sort of take that and then do the kind of studies that we need to do with psychedelics it it feels like the system is takes time to prove it but we are so good at tricking ourselves and there is something to be said for this process and so I think when we talk about how come marijuana is into medicine part of it is that the process has been gummed up for 50 years and is still gummed up by this last step I mean there was another step that to get

139:54access to this federal marijuana you had to have a Public Health Service review that was created in 1999 because before that they only gave the marijuana to government researchers you you couldn't even do your own funded study with marijuana through the FDA because you couldn't get the marijuana it was only for their researchers 99 they created this policy that would open it up in their minds but there was a special review in addition to FDA DEA and IRB that that we just were able to succeed in getting them to eliminate the Obama Administration eliminated it last summer this Public Health Service review it's what blocked our marijuana PTSD study for years and years that's gone the last thing to get gone is this Government monopoly on marijuana and we're working we're planning to resubmit an application from Professor craker we're working with Covington Burling a

140:41big DC Law Firm taking the case pro bono to um do a legal analysis um and then we will try to persuade we we're working with Senator Jill brand and Senator Warren and others have been engaging the DEA and on DCP HHS human in discussions about this Monopoly there's growing support in Congress and this is the last vestage of uh sort of politics blocking the science with psychedelics or marijuana then the system will have to work with and in the meantime people can go around and legalize and and then that gets access and so we're not saying wait for the science to well do you have any fear with uh the upcoming elections do you have any fear if we go right-wing that there might be some blowback yeah I mean I fearful that all the time I mean my my sort of core imprint was that in 1971 I first took LSD in 1972 you know I decided that this is what I want to devote my life to and I

141:41looked around and I saw all the research has been shut down right I I I sort of came you came in one year after the big sweeping prohibition I woke up to it not when it was thriving but right after the backlash that's why I think I was so motivated to get involved with MDMA because I learned about MDMA in 1982 when it was an underground psychedelic Psychotherapy tool under the code name Adam that the government had no knowledge of were in Dallas this was at Dallas no Dallas is where Adam MDMA turned into ecstasy so that's where they started selling it above ground there's a incredible movie that's going to come out the star Club about the club in Dallas where it really got well known but it because it had this dual life one has this quiet underground therapy drug with about half a million doses having been used by around 19 uh 84 and then the other was this public ecstasy use I

142:35thought okay now I know about it ahead of time I can see the Crackdown coming everybody could see the Crackdown coming but now we can organize now we can have we can talk to people about it it's not a crime we can gather our forces and have people try it even and that where I became um really and politically involved is in the 80s well it's just amazing how long it's taken but it's amazing that you have the fortitude to push through for so long I mean the world the world and the consciousness of the people owe you guys a massive debt I mean a debt of gratitude for sure that you've you've been out there pushing this envelope and and chipping away it's like one of many weapons chipping at this wall of ignorance but Maps is a really powerful one and and we've been able to do it in a way where right now we have um two senior retired FDA officials who are acting as

143:34our Consultants to prepare our documents because they felt that there's a strong need for new treatments for PTSD I mean they don't necessarily are saying anything about cultural change or spirituality or drug war they're just saying soldiers just for so other people everybody with PTSD they they have watched over the last 15 20 years what we've done and um actually there's a woman on our staff ilsa Jerome that is in been reviewing all these papers all these 5,000 papers and developing what's called um in conjunction with other members of our team uh a investigator's brochure a summary of the literature with a risk benefit kind of calculation how you take all of this information and then what does it mean in terms of the risk that you present to the patients in the study and that you tell the doctors and the people at the FDA thought that we were doing it fairly in a in a time

144:31when it was being distorted in all these different ways and ilsa is actually a little bit more um conservative than I am and I knew that it was kind of good to let her take the lead in writing this and that it got the respect of the FDA so that's where I'm pretty hopeful that isn't it kind of strange that uh MDMA being used to treat PTSD is a a primary motivating factor for the federal government trying to make it legal because if you think about it PS PTSD is inexorably associated with war yeah with so so in some sort of a strange way war was responsible for accelerating the legalization of MDMA yeah which is really crazy I mean that is like Yin and Yang in like a a biomechanical form yeah that's um a keto yeah that's crazy if you really look at what that is yeah now now we've also though what about the other The Next Step does we've been accused of by or people have raised the

145:32cautionary tail which I disagree with but they've said some people have said um are you making War more easy to wage now more pal if you are reducing the costs of War oh wow are you making War that's convoluted more likely of an option and I think it's a a worthwhile question to ask it it applies to all medical doctors that work for the military right surgeons you know are are you by treating people making it easier for there to be I think it's a very narrow perspective it's a very narrow perspective and it's also not taking into consideration the actual psychoactive effects of that substance because that substance makes someone loving so if you think that giving out pills that make you more loving or more likely going to generate more war or make war more palatable I think the opposite is probably true I think the people who become more loving who can relay the experiences of the

146:30horrors of War to other people who become more loving because they also get a hold of this stuff then I think that's more likely to eliminate war or lessen war or at least mitigate it significantly because I think that war is probably mitigated sign significantly now in comparison to like the sheer numbers of people like in comparison to you know 500 years ago 600 years ago it's probably way less war yeah I just watched a lecture fell step Pinker just yes was very interesting about the reduction of violence or the well it's way easier it's way safer and I think that things like psychedelic drugs in particular but also the meditative techniques um focusing on being in the moment focusing on learning how to manage your mind and there's a lot of things that people are practicing and attempting to to use in their everyday life today mindfulness and it's it's

147:26it's a subject that's repeated very often and people are trying to find a better way of approaching different dilemmas in their life and this is a tool for those things it's a tool for those things that should be considered alongside of yoga alongside of meditation alongside of reading self-help books alongside of having good friends you can open up with and you can discuss things together and get encouragement from each other and and maybe even criticism from each other I mean all those things exist in in all sorts of different forms and they exist in psychedelics as well a lot of the times I mean especially I find eating marijuana to be one of the most self analyzing objective introspective experiences you can have it's like a real wakeup call to any holes you might have in your game it just smacks you into place and sends you back out there in the world you're like okay I got

148:14it I got it I got it those are tools and there's are they're all tools that can be used and a variety of different ways but to deny the fact that they can be used beneficially at this point is really silly because we are finite beings we live a short amount of time wouldn't it be nice if you got rid of most of your by the time you hit 80 yeah wouldn't it be nice and I think this um sense of isn't it about time that it is and I think there there is a um mainstream system that's ready to incorporate that's reaching out on the other you know side in a way and that this possibility of really integrating this does seem to be the case and I I think with the military um I think the their training is to make people to suppress their emotions and to not feel the emotional consequences to act in the heat of battle without the emotions and I think with MDMA if you help people feel the emotional

149:13consequences of their actions even if you've healed them from trauma and they want to go back to their units that they are going to be more careful more sensitive they'll be I I so I I have there's a German psychiatrist that um torson passi and he sort of raised this issue for me is what about the Concentration Camp guards what if they were tormented and they came to you for MDMA therapy you know you're a German therapist and they come to you would you treat the Concentration Camp people for their trauma and I think the question question is are they are people who are worked with in this emotional Way for their trauma more or less likely to go back into these situations that produce the trauma in the first place well that question only becomes valid if you think should you punish a person who's done something like that in all ways forever or should you try to make them better

150:09right I mean you're not exonerating them for what horrible things they've done but should if you're going to keep them alive shouldn't you try to make them a better person do you have some sort of a responsibility to do that I would say the argument if you want to look at our civilization in the like the most efficient manner you want to look at it the mo like what is the best way to get our civilization together we'll have less less crazy people less mean people less you know less Psychopathic security guards at awit so if you do have one you could probably get a lot of data from studying that guy and and you know he's obviously going to be in jail for the rest of his life it's not going to hurt yeah I mean what what ton was trying to say is would you do that for active military where they it's not historical but they go back and I'm saying I don't well that's

150:54like would you do it for a hobbit you know would you get on your time machine and travel back to the Roman days give it to them well you don't have to worry about that you have to worry about people today right and I feel that trying to bring that healing approach that those loving feelings which MDMA can really generate through oxytocin and prolactin the hormones released that are in nursing and bonding MDMA releases those hormones that same drugs that women get when the orgasm yeah yeah yeah and actually torson has written this terrific paper about how orgasms the post-orgasmic state and he's compared the post-orgasmic state and the hormonal release to MDMA and I think when we talk about MDMA a good way to think about it is the post-orgasmic state you're satiated you're you're not striving dude if you could come and it felt as good as being on ecstasy let's not kid ourselves let's

151:48not kid ourselves I don't know what what coming for that guy feels like but if he's he feels like he's coming on MDMA all right dude settle down settle down I don't know if I'm buying it what an endorsement of MDMA some might be exaggerating a little bit it just I mean it feels real good but it's the MDMA feels like you're not even here you're in some Planet love you know I only did it once did it once two two pills super powerful stuff the next day I was wrecked and that that was not worth it for me I I definitely learned a lot from the experience but the next day was absolutely horrendous well it's probably horrendous because you wanted to do things when we talk about people to who think about MDMA what we say is don't do anything after it's a two-day experience you need the second day to rest and reflect and again it's what's the purpose of it if you're trying to

152:42have this experience this loving experience and then kind of bring appropriate some of that into your daily life learn and integrate it then the very next day is one of the most important parts because you're still halfway in halfway out you're able to think about it that's where a lot of the integration work gets done so in our therapy we make it so that people spend the night in the treatment center just so that they don't have to move they don't have to get distracted and then there's hours of psychotherapy the next day to help them integrate it and then when they go home we call them every day on the of for a week on the phone just to check in and see how they do what's up it's Rick yeah Rick Rick doblin what's up dude how you feeling like I just came all the time all the time bro all right man peace out we got to wrap this up man unfortunately we started a little late

153:37and I got to get out of here okay um is there anything you can um direct people towards uh the website which is maps.org yes and in fact um we're having our 30th anniversary celebration on um Sunday April 17th and we're live streaming it for free so it's maps.org um how you going to know when people are DEA agents undercover there well tie clips actually um we have our first uh re senior retired DEA consultant ah smart man and smart but again it's compassion I mean he had a son who um listed in the Army and has PTSD and is 50% disabled from PTSD and has found marijuana to be helpful again isn't it fascinating that's what yeah that it's those kind of stories that help me think that we can do this integration we can and I am worried about right-wing backlash but there's a couple things that we've put into place first off the work with the military I mean right-wing

154:36lovees the military if we're trying to help the military there's also people are compassionate about uh childhood sexual abuse survivors and and so it I think that we have enough of a base of evidence and a long pattern since 1992 of the Precedence at the FDA that I think we could um survive the FDA also recently did something very interesting with the abortion pill ru46 that they made it easier uh on women they eliminated one required step that the science showed that they didn't need and so the FDA is very much trying to be science over politics I mean they they will have an FDA commit that's appointed by and confirmed by president but at the same time the people that are there are really focused on science over politics and compassion the other part is that we have international strategy so we're that was the longest time anybody ever talked over the music but

155:33it was awesome awesome information and I wish I didn't have to get out of here but I really do so thank you very much hash psychedelic because too psychedelic because what does that mean no don't say it don't stop I got to go um so maps.org and the uh the party one more time is April 17th Sunday April 17th in Oakland in Oakland where at exact Scottish right Temple what time it start starts from 5: to 11: can you tiet to the door um you no not for for the evening part but not for the banquet so you got to go to maps.org and there's all that information thank you beautiful thank you sir much appreciated all right ladies and gentlemen that's it for the week see you soon bye-bye W sorry it was already pass