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2:39

Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heeart

2:41

Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

2:49

are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? My name

2:51

is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

2:53

and we're back with part three of our exploration

2:56

of psychedelics. These compounds

2:58

that lead to the mind manifesting

3:01

experiences which we've been describing

3:03

in the past couple of episodes. Now, if you're just

3:05

tuning in, we recommend that you probably should

3:07

go and check out the previous two episodes.

3:10

First, this is probably one it's not

3:12

best to jump in midstream, right.

3:14

Yeah, it's a continuous, though at

3:16

times meandering journey history

3:19

of psychedelics, not an all inclusive

3:22

history, and so we've stressed multiple times, you know,

3:24

there's no way we can cover all of the studies,

3:27

all the curious tidbits of history, all

3:29

the various um traditional uses

3:31

of psychedelic substances. So certainly

3:33

we implore you to to check out some of the sources

3:35

we've mentioned here and explore them for yourselves

3:38

as well as you know additional resources.

3:40

Right and so in the previous episodes we mentioned some

3:42

books that have been part of our guides on the

3:44

way through. I know you've been enjoying some of the works of Terence

3:47

McKenna done Michael Pollen

3:49

as well. We have been reading on that. Yeah, Michael

3:51

Polland's most recent book, How to Change Your Mind,

3:53

is a great book about psychedelics that covers a

3:55

lot of the same ground as some some history,

3:57

some science, and especially this re sent

4:00

renaissance in psychedelic research

4:02

and how it there's renewed

4:05

interest I think since like the early to mid two

4:07

thousands, especially about the clinical

4:09

significance of psychedelics, how they could

4:11

actually be used to treat mental

4:14

conditions, addictions, various

4:17

problems people have, uh and that

4:19

they're not just a recreational drug.

4:22

Though there are also plenty of people who would make

4:24

the case that it might not be a bad thing

4:26

to use them recreationally. We're we're not

4:28

going to try to evangelize or

4:30

demonize either way, or recommend that you use

4:32

them. We just want to be descriptive, right, But

4:34

we will we will discuss some of these viewpoints

4:37

that are brought up regarding uh

4:39

the beyond medicinal uses

4:41

of psychedelics, uh

4:43

and uh as far as the modern stuff.

4:45

Like again, we're living in an exciting time when

4:48

they're they're all these these current studies going

4:50

on, and we're revealing more and more about how

4:52

psychedelics can be used to uh

4:54

to help treat various uh

4:56

problems, psychological problems, addictions,

4:58

etcetera. Uh, We're probably gonna

5:00

get into most of that in the following

5:03

episode. This episode is largely going

5:05

to deal with some of the original studies that

5:07

were taking place, especially in the nineteen fifties.

5:09

Yeah, uh so, Yeah, this is a thing that

5:12

comes as a surprise to a lot of people who you

5:14

know, if you think about the the origins

5:16

of the drug war, the counterculture of the nineteen

5:18

sixties, and I don't know, maybe

5:20

you have some various ideas about the square nineteen

5:23

fifties, it might come as a shock to

5:25

you that there was a flourishing body

5:27

of psychedelic research going on during

5:29

the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties,

5:32

especially focusing on LSD

5:34

and the treatment of things like alcoholism

5:36

in the nineteen fifties and then

5:39

later the use of psilocybin and various

5:41

types of research in the early to mid nineteen

5:43

sixties. YEA, psychedelics did not just emerge

5:46

from a van at Woodstock and

5:48

start corrupting the youth of America.

5:51

Uh Now, now, before we go any further, I

5:53

do want to take a step back for

5:56

just a little bit, and I wanted to talk about

5:58

about fun guy or fungi if

6:00

you will, Um, just in

6:03

fungi if you're making a pizza. Isn't

6:05

that the Italian way to say it. I've

6:08

also watched like British documentaries where

6:10

they pre for fungi. But I'm

6:12

I'm more of a fun guy, so I like go like

6:14

go for I tend to go for fun guy. Let's go

6:16

with fun guy, all right? So, UM, I

6:18

just want to take you a step back and just talk about just how

6:21

weird and wonderful the entire kingdom

6:24

of fun guy really is. Yeah. Well, and

6:26

we should say the reason for that. Of course, if you've been

6:28

with us the last two episodes. Is that of all

6:30

the psychedelics that we've looked at, the

6:32

most focus has been on psilocybin mushrooms,

6:35

right, and even LSD is derived from

6:37

ergot, which is a fun guy.

6:40

So so that so the the fungal

6:42

element here is is very rich.

6:44

And second yes, so

6:47

so yeah the kingdom fun guy

6:49

because fun guy are their own kingdom.

6:52

Uh. We often associate them with plants

6:54

in kind of an informal way, um,

6:57

you know, but we and they were considered

6:59

plants of until the later half of the twentieth century.

7:01

But there's something different, of course. Uh.

7:04

They're thought to outnumber plant species

7:06

on a scale of ten to one, and they

7:09

all descend from a single species that derived

7:11

from a common ancestor with animals about

7:13

eight hundred million to nine hundred million

7:16

years ago. Is it true that, uh,

7:19

phylogenetically, humans are more

7:21

closely related to fungi than

7:23

to plants. I think that's that that is

7:25

that is what I have read and and

7:27

it's an amazing thing to think about. It's also

7:29

something that you know, it's that

7:31

fact that leads some people to wonder about

7:34

our relationship with fung gui. Um,

7:36

you know why in some cases, we have

7:39

this uh, this close relationship because

7:41

ultimately fungi have a lot

7:43

more in common with us than they

7:45

do with plants um and

7:47

and again that's interesting considering the close

7:49

relationship who we have with them, and not only

7:52

us, so there are other animals as well. I mean think that the leaf

7:54

cutter ants that stand out

7:56

is one of the most impressive fungui dependent

7:58

species due to their just a fungal

8:01

agriculture, their mushroom farmers.

8:03

Yeah, because you think about

8:06

how humans use fun Guy. We've certainly

8:08

been focusing on psychedelics, but

8:10

certainly fun Guy factor into our cuisine,

8:13

into our medicines, both

8:15

in in major ways, but in also

8:17

in ways we don't you know, major and obvious ways,

8:19

but also in ways we maybe don't think about as much.

8:21

Because certainly you think about cooking

8:24

and mushrooms, you think about culinary mushrooms that

8:26

you buy at the store, which I love mushrooms

8:28

one of my favorite ingredients. Yeah, of course, not every

8:31

edible mushroom can be cultivated. I got

8:33

to learn about this over the weekend. I went

8:35

with a licensed orbilists on a on a mushroom

8:38

foraging walk and we get to pick a

8:40

few different mushrooms that cannot be uh

8:43

cultivated at least can't be cultivated in a

8:45

you know, a dependable manner, and got

8:47

to bring some home and eat them. Is that why chantrell's

8:49

are so expensive? You can't grow them on a farm.

8:51

Yeah, um, well, I forget

8:53

the exact species, you know, but there are

8:55

several varieties like that where if

8:58

if local restaurant is served England,

9:00

they have to depend on foragers bringing them in

9:02

and selling them. And so a lot of a lot

9:04

of foragers, a lot of mushroom

9:07

enthusiasts kind of pay for their hobby

9:10

by selling their mushrooms to local

9:12

restaurants. Interesting, but

9:15

yeah, so there's that level. I would obviously we eat them.

9:17

But they're also you know, ingredients

9:19

in many different foods, especially modern

9:21

processed foods, and they're an important part, an

9:23

essential part of the fermentation process yeast.

9:26

Yeah, and you don't have to be

9:28

drinking some sort of weird mushroom

9:30

tea to be partaking of medicinal

9:33

fun guy, Because of course we have penicillin

9:35

to consider, which you know is

9:38

I would love to do a future episode of our other podcast,

9:40

Invention, on penicillin because

9:43

in terms of fungal inventions

9:46

or discoveries, however you want to describe it,

9:48

like that is that is a major one

9:50

and and it is totally fun. Guy depended.

9:52

It came from mold growth, right,

9:55

which of course is a fungus. And then on top of

9:57

that, you know, we also have we talked about the microbio

10:00

a lot, but we also have a microbiome,

10:02

which is a small but significant portion of

10:04

the human bodies overall microbiome. UH.

10:07

Fungi also play a crucial role in the nutrit

10:09

exchange of trees growing around

10:11

their roots like fungal gloves and

10:14

exchanging nitrogen for sugars uh.

10:16

And then this forms the basis of what

10:19

some researchers call the wood

10:21

wide web, which is kind of

10:23

that that's a little too cute, that's a little it's

10:25

a little too cute, because ultimately

10:27

it's like really just mind

10:30

blowing lye weird to think about, because

10:32

we're talking about a fungal network

10:35

of hi fi. Remember that

10:37

a mushroom. We we often think of the mushroom as

10:39

the thing itself, but the mushroom is just the fruiting

10:41

body um and the you

10:43

know, the the spores viewing death emergence

10:46

of a larger organism. And

10:48

so the these this network of hi fi underground

10:51

and growing around the trees

10:53

and between trees. It allows

10:55

for the plants to distribute resources

10:58

such as sugar, nitrogen, and foster risk.

11:00

Uh, you know, between one tree and another. Uh.

11:02

And by some definitions

11:04

this comprises a form of communication.

11:07

These types of thinking

11:09

can get really psychedelic on their

11:11

own. Oh absolutely, um

11:13

mycologist Paul Statements,

11:15

for instance, who did we mention? I

11:18

mean the pole several times? So

11:20

yeah, he's he's like a mushroom

11:22

answer for everything. Guy. Uh, you

11:24

know, very important figure in modern

11:26

mycology. And he's gone so far as to

11:28

to suggest, according to Michael Pollen

11:30

in his book, that these networks are in

11:33

some sense conscious, that they're aware of

11:35

their environment and they're able to respond to challenges

11:37

accordingly, and Paulin says that that

11:39

initially he thought this was mere metaphor you

11:41

know that clearly Statements is just being

11:44

overly enthusiastic and metaphoric about

11:47

what's going on with these systems, but

11:49

that he thinks that growing evidence actually

11:51

suggested it might be there might be more involved

11:54

here. Well, I think this depends heavily

11:56

on just simply what you mean when you use

11:58

the word conscious because there

12:01

I think you can definitely make the case that mushrooms,

12:03

in very interesting and surprising ways,

12:05

are aware of their environments,

12:08

you know, able to respond to to stimuli

12:10

and stuff like that. I think it would

12:12

be much harder to make the case that, you know,

12:14

the thing that we think of as like the hard problem

12:16

of consciousness, meaning that it is

12:19

having a subjective experience,

12:21

there's something that it's like to be the

12:23

mushroom. Uh. I'm

12:26

not saying that that's not true, but I

12:28

don't know what the evidence for that. I think it's

12:30

much more of a stretch to make

12:32

that case now. On a on a

12:34

similar similar lines, though, I got to hear Eduardo

12:37

Cone, Associate Professor

12:39

of Anthropology at McGill University, UH,

12:41

speak on basically the

12:44

same topic at the twenty

12:46

nineteen World Science Festival. He's

12:48

the author of a book titled How Forests

12:50

Think, and he's worked extensively

12:53

with Amazonian people in his work,

12:55

especially considering concerning their use of psychedelic

12:57

substances. But he's focused on the same

13:00

issue of like the use of

13:02

fungal networks and the soil within

13:05

forests as a as a type of communication

13:07

or even thought. Yeah, he gets into this

13:09

as well. So just to give

13:11

you an idea, because it's ultimately, you know, kind of a

13:14

heady concept. But but it's basically

13:16

this idea that not that you have non human

13:19

entities that quote unquote think via

13:21

an ability to represent, produce, and

13:23

interpret signs interesting and

13:26

so that this is uh this a quote from his book

13:28

How Forests Think quote. Life

13:31

is a constitutively semiotic.

13:34

That is, life is through

13:36

and through the product of sign processes.

13:39

What differentiates life from the inanimate

13:41

physical world is that life forms represent

13:43

the world in some way or another,

13:46

and these representations are intrinsic

13:48

to their being. What we share with non

13:50

human living creatures, then, is not our

13:52

embodiment, as certain strains of phenomenological

13:55

approaches would hold, but the fact that we

13:57

all live with and through signs.

14:00

We all use signs as canes that represent

14:02

part of the world to us in some way

14:04

or another. In doing so, signs

14:06

make us what we are. Interesting semiotic

14:09

definition of life. I don't know if I've ever encountered

14:12

that before, and I took a class on semiotics.

14:14

Oh yeah, no, I was that kind of Weirdough,

14:17

Well, I'm very interested in his

14:20

his thoughts and his work. I I'd love to actually

14:22

see about having him on the show in the future. But

14:25

like I said, he's worked extensively with Amazonian people's

14:28

and explore their use of ayahuasca.

14:30

And he said that Amazonians use several

14:32

technologies, including psychedelics

14:34

but also dreams to connect

14:36

with the mind of the forest. And

14:39

he says that these approaches break down the way

14:41

language tells us what we are. They

14:43

help them find a path forward, path

14:45

of healing and problem solving. And

14:48

he also point out that the shamans of the Amazon

14:51

but basically have a message for the rest of the world,

14:53

and they want us to know that

14:55

the world is a living world and we

14:57

have to connect ourselves with the mind of the forest

15:00

save ourselves from the planetary

15:02

depression that we are now entering into.

15:05

And I found this really interesting because this is UH.

15:08

Even though Cone to my knowledge, didn never

15:10

mentioned Terence McKinnon his work, but

15:13

some of this like lines up with the messages that mckinna

15:16

had in The Food of the Gods

15:18

and his other work regarding UH. This

15:20

idea of an archaic revival a necessary

15:23

reconvergence with the natural world

15:25

through psychedelics and um

15:27

and at least in mckinna's definition, and

15:30

overall, you know bohemian thread

15:32

of human cultures to save us,

15:34

uh from the you know, the doom of a nature

15:36

deprived, ego driven dominator culture,

15:39

to save us from silent Running. Yeah,

15:41

yeah, in a way, yeah, absolutely, yeah. There it

15:44

matches up with this theory.

15:46

I mean this, uh, this viewpoint of of modern

15:49

life will come back to this that you see this throughout a

15:51

lot of the a lot of psychedelic literature and also

15:54

just sort of counterculture nineteen sixties

15:56

messaging, including Silent Running, which

15:58

is very much a product of that time. The

16:00

science fiction film that we've discussed

16:02

previously on the show. Now Cone

16:05

mentioned in the world Science Festivally. He thinks even

16:07

our modern fascination with psychedelics

16:10

maybe a symptom of our disconnection

16:12

with nature. And he says the solution

16:14

isn't simply to to you know, take a psyched

16:16

caedelic substance, but to rather live psychedelically,

16:20

to live live, to be in the

16:22

emergent mind. What exactly

16:24

do you think he meant by that quote to, like, what

16:27

is the emergent mind being there. Um

16:30

my understanding, and like I said, perhaps we

16:32

can get him on the show to discuss these these topics

16:34

and greater depth. But I think he's he's talking

16:37

about this basic idea

16:39

that again you see again and again in the among

16:41

advocates of psychedelic that there's that there's

16:43

something wrong with modern humans, that we're cut

16:46

off from each other, that we're we're sort

16:48

of in these little individual cells

16:50

of the mind, and we

16:52

are in many cases have great difficulty

16:55

in being part of some sort of a larger system.

16:58

Uh. You know, it's maybe a

17:00

bit elaborate to you know, to think of it. I

17:03

mean, I don't know if I would I would describe it. And

17:05

my understanding is like an emergent mind, you

17:07

know. But but but that's kind of

17:09

the vibe I get from the idea that like we're

17:12

we're cut off from each other, we don't understand

17:14

each other, we don't understand nature, you

17:17

know, we're all wrapped up in our own egos,

17:19

and if we could break through those

17:21

boundaries, uh, that we

17:24

would have a better relationship

17:26

with each other and with the world. Like so

17:28

often in the world of psychedelics

17:30

and stuff coming from psychedelic enthusiasts,

17:33

that that's the kind of statement that is either

17:35

truly profound or extremely banal.

17:38

Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I get it because I know a

17:40

lot of people out there, probably shaking their hands,

17:42

is saying like, well, that just sounds like hippie nonsense.

17:45

And it's not even new hippie nonsense. It's hippie nonsense

17:47

I've heard time and time again. But

17:51

for my own part, you know, I think, yeah,

17:53

you can be overly optimistic about a lot of this stuff.

17:56

But on the other hand, you know, you look at

17:58

the literature, the science, pivic literature that

18:01

that is that shows us and is continuing

18:04

to show us what psychedelics can do. I

18:06

think at this point it's you know, it's

18:08

more a question of like, at what level are psychedelics

18:11

useful? Uh, you know, is it is it purely

18:13

in the clinical world, Is it purely among

18:16

you know, people who are suffering

18:18

from some condition or another, or does

18:20

it go beyond that? You know, I I

18:22

think it depends on who's advocating

18:24

on where that line should be drawn. I mean, some

18:27

people draw it all the way at the horizon.

18:29

Where you draw it, I think is clearly a source

18:31

of the conflict that led to the demonization

18:34

of psychedelics and to the

18:37

sort of closing of the psychedelic research

18:39

regime in the in the mid to late nineteen

18:41

sixties. Right, yeah, Well, on that

18:43

note, let's let's go to the nineteen

18:46

sixties. In fact, let's go to the nineteen fifties.

18:48

Okay, let's go, let's go back. In fact,

18:50

let's go to the nineteen let's do it. I'll take

18:52

you up and that we'll go all the way back to the forties. And

18:55

let's just discuss twentieth century psychedelic

18:58

research itself. So,

19:00

as we've discussed, most of these substances are

19:03

nothing. Humans have used them for thousands

19:05

of years, and even the synthesized substance

19:07

LSD, of course, is derived from a

19:10

good fun guy that has been around forever as well.

19:12

Right, But there was certainly a period of

19:14

time between Albert Hoffman's

19:17

nineteen forty three bicycle ride and

19:19

Nixon's Controlled Substance Act of nineteen

19:21

seventy in which there were tons

19:23

of studies that examined psychedelics

19:26

and and and especially LSD in many cases

19:28

because it was more readily available at the time.

19:30

One reason also, I think is that the pharmaceutical

19:34

manufacturer that Albert Hoffman worked

19:36

for in the nineteen thirties and forties,

19:39

uh Sandoz, which I guess held the patent

19:41

on LSD, was just given

19:44

it out like candy. Basically, they were

19:46

I think they were trying to find uses

19:48

for it, and their their method

19:50

of doing that was like, well, let's just give it for

19:52

free to tons of researchers and they'll

19:54

find a good way to use it. Yeah. It's kind of like

19:57

in the Lorax the sneed was invented,

19:59

which everyone need. It's like if you invented this thing that

20:01

clearly has some sort of use, but you're

20:03

not exactly sure how to market it, You're not sure what the

20:05

the use is for it. You you kind of just let everybody

20:07

play with it so you can figure out how

20:10

you're going to make your billions of dollars

20:12

off of it. But I don't say that to

20:14

undermine the fact that it really does seem

20:16

like some researchers were finding extremely

20:19

promising clinical uses for LSD in the nineteen

20:21

fifties. Yeah, particularly and how they might be used to

20:23

treat addiction, depression, UM,

20:25

obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia,

20:28

autism, and end of life anxiety.

20:31

So in his book, Michael Pollen chats with

20:33

Stephen Ross, m D of the n y U Pselocybin

20:36

Cancer Anxiety Study, which of

20:39

course comes back to that end of life anxiety

20:41

question that was explored earlier. I guess we'll explore

20:43

that more, probably in the next episode. Yeah,

20:45

we will. But in the book, uh, Ross

20:48

mentions to Pollen that, you know, these efforts

20:50

involved roughly forty research

20:53

participants in more than a thousand clinical

20:55

papers. So when we're talking about LSD

20:58

studies of of the of the

21:00

nineteen fifties, for instance, you know, we're not talking

21:02

about where we're gonna highlight a few isolated

21:05

studies, but we're not talking about like

21:08

just a study here, study there. You know, there

21:10

was a lot of research going on. Yeah, it was

21:12

huge. Wasn't just a blip. Yeah, And

21:14

initially, reach the researchers thought that LSD

21:17

and later psilocybin, that they might be used

21:19

to understand psychosis, as

21:21

they believe that individuals who are

21:23

using these substances to play displayed

21:25

similar thoughts and behavior. And

21:27

so clinicians also thought that, well, you could

21:30

take one of these substances yourself

21:32

and therefore get a taste of what a

21:35

psychotic episode is like and

21:37

then be better able to empathize

21:40

with a patient exactly. And in this vein,

21:42

the same compounds we now refer to as

21:44

psychedelic were then referred to by

21:47

many clinicians as psychoto mimetics,

21:50

mimicking the state of psychosis. So

21:52

your therapists could take this in order

21:54

to understand what you were going through. Now,

21:56

key figure from this period, uh English,

21:59

Uh, psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond

22:02

entered the picture, and he figured that, Okay, if

22:04

you had a substance like mescaline,

22:06

and if it could if it could induce this sort

22:08

of symptom, that these sort of symptoms in

22:10

in in a in a human who took it, then perhaps,

22:13

uh, you know, schizophrenia was

22:15

due to a chemical and balance in the brain, which

22:18

is kind of you know, ultimately an

22:20

eye opening hypothesis. Right, If

22:22

if this substance makes my brain do this,

22:25

then perhaps what this patient's brain is

22:27

doing is due to something you know, very

22:29

chemical in nature as well, something that could

22:31

be addressed perhaps with another chemical.

22:34

Well yeah, I mean, and I think this middle

22:36

of the twentieth century period was

22:39

actually a very important time for understanding

22:42

the role of physical causes

22:44

in mental phenomena. Like

22:46

I mean, you know, there was of course the rise

22:48

of Skinnerism like B. F. Skinner and behaviorism,

22:51

which you can have lots of criticisms

22:53

about maybe it doesn't take into account cognition

22:56

and the mind and uh, enough

22:58

about what our thought and emotions

23:00

mean, because it was just about what can we do to control

23:03

and measure external behaviors because

23:05

that's the only thing we have access to as scientists.

23:07

That that might not be the right approach, but it

23:10

was certainly useful in some ways to kind

23:12

of clear out I think a lot of the uh,

23:15

the kind of almost religious,

23:17

kind of metaphysical baggage that had

23:19

been coming along for the ride with some versions

23:22

of psychology up until then, with you

23:24

know, Freud and Young and all that. Yeah.

23:27

It so so ultimately we have this

23:29

this push for biochemical answers

23:32

to you know, concerning mental

23:34

issues, and this propels the

23:36

the the young field of neurochemistry,

23:39

leading in time to our modern understanding of

23:41

neuro transmitters and their role in our mental

23:44

states, leading to the discovery of serotonin

23:46

and the development of ssr

23:48

I antidepressant drugs. But

23:51

then you know, some also made the

23:53

connection between the symptoms of psychedelic

23:55

use and delirium tremens

23:58

or the d T. S Uh. This

24:00

is of course associated with alcohol

24:03

abuse, alcoholism, alcohol

24:05

withdrawal. I think so like, if you

24:07

you're used to extensive alcohol

24:09

consumption and then somebody stops, they might experience

24:12

these negative symptoms that have been

24:14

referred to as the delirium tremens Yeah.

24:16

So this led to inn to the I

24:18

think by modern from a modern

24:21

viewpoint, kind of a weird idea, a weird seeming

24:23

idea that you could use LSD

24:25

to sort of shock alcoholics into sobriety

24:28

and so osmond and a gentleman by the name of Abram

24:30

Hoffer conducted these studies

24:33

with hundreds I think seven hundred according

24:35

to pollen uh alcoholics,

24:38

and they found it effective

24:40

roughly half the time. You

24:42

mean using LSD to treat

24:45

alcoholics. Yes, yes, And this

24:47

particular study, by the way, was one of the ones that

24:49

caught the eyes of Stephen Ross decades

24:52

later as an example of the

24:54

therapeutic potential of psychedelics quote

24:56

buried in plain sight. Um,

24:59

but anywa, the original researchers here,

25:01

they expected that the trips in question,

25:04

the psychedelic experiences in question, would

25:06

be essentially just nightmare fuel that

25:09

would approximate the feelings

25:11

of the d t s, and this was seemingly

25:13

based on physicians Sydney Katz's

25:15

reports that Paul and summarizes

25:17

as being something like you'd you'd

25:20

see in an an anti LSD propaganda

25:22

from the nineteen sixties, just about

25:24

how it's just just pure nightmare fuel

25:27

and you know, it was running from demons

25:29

sort of a thing um. But

25:31

of course what happened is that they gave a

25:34

court in their study anyway, that they found that

25:36

when they gave these substances to people, they

25:38

reported all manner of things, beautiful

25:41

things. Even so, there was definitely some anxiety,

25:44

some depression, some hallucination uh

25:46

in individuals when they were administered

25:49

psychedelics, but most reported

25:51

feelings that were described as transcendental

25:53

in nature, so that, for instance, an ability

25:56

to see one's self objectively, almost

25:58

as if for the first time. And so this

26:00

would seem to be the experience,

26:03

or this was possibly an experience that was

26:05

was playing a role in them then being able

26:07

to cease their addiction.

26:10

And of course, outside of the black box of experience,

26:12

the research results spoke for

26:14

themselves and indicated that, you know, something

26:17

was working here. So this opened up the idea that

26:19

there was something more to the experience and

26:21

that it might be utilized as

26:23

a treatment method. Now. I know it was especially

26:26

in Canada that that

26:28

LSD treatment for alcoholism

26:31

was picked up, and I think I think this one, this particular

26:33

study was in Saskatchewan, I believe. Yeah, well,

26:35

I think that was where Humphrey Osmond was based

26:37

for a long time. But that

26:40

another thing I think to make clear is

26:42

that it's it's not thought

26:45

that just giving somebody the drug

26:48

triggers a change in the body that

26:50

defeats alcoholism. That

26:52

that there's something important going on by

26:54

about the nature of the experience

26:57

that people have on psychedelics,

27:00

uh, that contributes to their recovery and

27:02

and staying sober over time. Right right,

27:04

Yeah, This sort of this metaphorical shaking

27:07

of the snow globe as as some

27:09

call it, is playing a role in

27:11

allowing uh, some sort of you

27:14

know, curative therapy to take place. Now,

27:16

I should point out that in terms of

27:18

this particular study, later on in

27:21

the early sixties, the Addiction Research

27:23

Foundation in Toronto set out to replicate

27:25

these results with better controls, and they

27:27

failed to reproduce the you know,

27:29

the same robust results. Uh.

27:32

And this ended up giving fuel to critics

27:34

of of LSD, but also supporters again

27:36

stressed the importance of set and setting, right.

27:39

I mean, this is something that I guess we'll come

27:41

back to the sentiment. It's all I'll save my tangent

27:44

here for later. But yeah, we'll put a pin in that and

27:46

just know that we're gonna come back to the importance of set and setting

27:48

in research. But but still there

27:50

there was enough going on here that people were

27:53

very encouraged, and by

27:55

the by the end of the nineteen fifties, LSD

27:57

was considered like a miracle cure for alcohol

28:00

hall addiction. A lot of people were excited about

28:02

it, and Paulin points out that one of

28:04

the people that it was that ended up getting excited

28:06

about it was none other than Bill Wilson,

28:08

co founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

28:11

Yeah, who who incidentally create

28:13

a credited his own sobriety to

28:16

a life changing mystical experience

28:18

he had on on Bella Donna, which

28:21

also has psychoactive properties and

28:23

was used in a treatment treatment at Towns

28:25

Hospital in New York City in ninety

28:28

four. That's when when he had

28:30

the substance as part of the treatment. And

28:32

so you can see that in a lot of the alcoholics

28:34

anonymous messaging like the idea of the

28:38

the idea of acknowledging a higher power.

28:40

You know. I think a lot of times people just interpret

28:42

that as a more traditional kind of like, you

28:44

know, you need a religion or something, especially

28:47

if you're meeting in a church basement or you know, or something.

28:50

Yeah, But in fact, it seems

28:52

like this has something to do with

28:54

the common kinds of mystical experiences

28:57

that people have on psychedelics, where

28:59

they, you know, they commune with some kind

29:01

of reality greater than themselves.

29:04

They believe that they've encountered some

29:06

other being or some universal

29:08

consciousness or the universe

29:10

itself. It might have something to do with

29:13

the ego dissolution that sometimes people

29:15

experience on psychedelics. Wilson,

29:18

by the way, would later try LSD with

29:20

some researchers in l A and he

29:22

actually thought that it might prove very useful

29:24

in treating alcoholism, and that that it might

29:26

even have a place in a a but

29:29

others in the in the organization struck down

29:31

this idea, you know, for for a few

29:33

different reasons, one of which being that it would perhaps

29:35

muddy the like the messaging of the organization

29:38

itself, right, like, uh, you know

29:40

that you would turn to another chemical? Um.

29:43

Yeah. And so for a time, LSD assisted

29:46

psychotherapy was considered a

29:48

powerful, legitimate and evidence

29:50

based method for treating alcoholism in

29:52

Canada. Definitely, but maybe we should

29:54

take a break and then when we come back we can discuss

29:56

some problems with scientific

29:59

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32:07

Alright, we're back now. I think this is a good place

32:09

to start discussing the fact that

32:11

there are widely acknowledged

32:14

inherent difficulties with

32:16

doing rigorous scientific experiments

32:18

on the effects of psychedelics. And

32:20

so one of these problems is

32:22

the problem with placebo control.

32:25

Now, normally, when you want to

32:27

test and see if a new drug works, you

32:29

need to do a placebo controlled

32:31

test. You have to do this

32:33

if you want to sort out specific

32:35

pharmacological efficacy versus

32:37

the placebo effect. You know, the effect that sometimes

32:41

people who are given a treatment, even if the treatment

32:43

doesn't have active ingredients, just the fact that

32:45

they think they're being treated appears

32:48

to cause uh a feeling

32:50

that their condition has improved. They will report

32:52

less fewer negative symptoms or something

32:54

like that. So, yeah, I imagine you give a hundred

32:56

people a new anti nausea drug and

32:59

then fifty of and report their nausea going

33:01

away. Was it because the compound

33:03

in the pill relieves nausea fifty of

33:06

the time or could much shore all of

33:08

that response just be due to the placebo

33:10

effect people thinking that they're being

33:12

treated. So if you placebo

33:14

control your drug trial to find out if

33:16

there's a difference, subjects get randomly

33:19

sorted into multiple groups, with one group

33:21

getting the actual drug being tested and

33:23

one group getting a pill that has no active ingredients,

33:26

then you might be able to get

33:28

a better idea. If the group who receives

33:30

the drug gets significantly more of a

33:33

desired outcome than the placebo group, then

33:35

you can have confidence that the drug probably

33:37

actually works. So if

33:39

you wanted to run a placebo controlled

33:41

test of whether, say, psilocybin helps

33:44

people kick in alcohol addiction and then stay

33:46

sober for six months, you'd want

33:48

to run a test with people who actually

33:50

get psilocybin versus people

33:52

who think that they might be getting

33:54

it but are actually getting a placebo.

33:57

So why is this a problem with psychedelics.

34:00

Well, that's because of the next issue, which

34:02

is blinding. Uh. So the

34:04

thing you've got to do to have an effective placebo

34:07

controlled test is blinding and double

34:09

blinding. This is to avoid response

34:12

biases from subjects

34:14

and from the people who are carrying out the test.

34:16

You have to blind the experiment, meaning

34:18

subjects don't know which group they're in,

34:21

and the people working with the subjects

34:23

to conduct the experiment don't know who's in

34:25

what group. Psychedelics

34:27

make this hard because most of the time

34:29

you can definitely tell whether you've

34:32

received a large dose of psilocybin

34:34

versus a placebo. Right, I mean,

34:36

even even if the individual, the

34:38

test subject in question, has no

34:40

experience of psychedelic use, there's

34:43

a very good chance that they have been exposed

34:45

to some representation of it, some

34:48

expectation of what the uh, the

34:50

the the the experience is going to

34:52

be like, just through media and culture.

34:54

Yeah. Well, and the effect of the drug

34:57

tends to be so powerful

34:59

on the mind that it's nearly impossible for

35:01

you to think, like, no, I didn't get anything.

35:03

I mean no, Like if if you are

35:06

becoming a Comets tale of disembodied

35:08

consciousness, you watch your ego dissolve

35:10

like sugar and a stream, you're probably

35:12

part of the active test group. Right.

35:15

But but yeah, even but even if the effects

35:17

are not that strong, if

35:19

the dosage is lower, like it will be

35:21

undeniable. Yeah, I mean, maybe

35:23

not always, because some people are very suggestible,

35:26

you know. But but the majority of the time

35:28

people are going to be able to tell what group they're

35:31

in. Furthermore, the experiment

35:33

ers can usually tell if the subject they're

35:35

working with is on LSD or psilocybin

35:37

versus a placebo. Like you know,

35:40

people who are on these drugs tend to act a

35:42

certain way that's pretty different

35:44

than people who are just getting a sugar

35:46

pill. Now, there are some ways

35:48

of making this a little bit better. For example,

35:50

you can use an active placebo, which

35:52

is a placebo that does something to the

35:55

body that the subject will be able to sense.

35:58

One example that has been used in history worcle

36:00

research is niacin, which causes

36:02

physiological effects like flushing of

36:04

the face and tingling in the body.

36:07

But still a lot of subjects and experimenters

36:10

can probably still pretty easily tell the

36:12

difference between if you've gotten a large

36:14

dose of psilocybin or LSD versus

36:17

niacin. So you still are going to have

36:19

this blinding problem. But then there's

36:21

another problem that makes it worse, a

36:23

problem with conducting psychedelic research

36:25

the same way you would conduct other drug

36:27

research. And that is, as we mentioned

36:29

a minute ago, the importance of set and setting.

36:32

And I remember and it was in the first episode I

36:34

think where we talked mostly about the importance of

36:36

set and setting. Uh, people's takeaways

36:39

from psychedelic assisted therapy seem

36:42

hugely dependent on their expectations

36:45

on the environment and on the guide.

36:48

Yeah. I think it was a police who pointed

36:50

out that really the only person to ever take LSD

36:53

without any expectations of what

36:55

it might consist of was Albert Hoffman himself.

36:58

Yeah, because he took it by accident and nobody

37:00

knew what it was yet. Yeah, that's funny,

37:02

But I mean, it's clearly true that

37:04

people's experiences on these drugs

37:07

are highly dependent on on priming

37:10

and on stimuli from around them and

37:13

what they're told going in and all

37:15

that kind of stuff. Yeah, like, for instance, just maintaining

37:17

a very like calm therapeutic in

37:20

a physical environment, having people

37:22

interact with you, you know, the

37:24

researchers in question in a likewise

37:26

manner, that sort of thing. In other

37:29

words, I would say, to get the most clinical

37:32

use and the most positive effects

37:34

out of these drugs, it seems like

37:36

you specifically want to do

37:38

the opposite of what you normally

37:40

do in a drug trial. You explicitly

37:43

do want to bias the subject's expectations

37:46

and interpretations of their drug experience

37:48

in a way that suggests it will help them

37:50

with their problems. Yeah. So basically,

37:53

yeah, if you're doing a psilocybin

37:56

study in which the individuals taking psilocybin

37:59

are going to be laying on a being bag jair for instance,

38:01

listening to some ambient music and

38:03

attended to by you know, you know, very courteous

38:06

therapists, you would have to have the same

38:09

situation going on with the placebo

38:11

group, and in doing

38:13

that, you have all of these like situational effects

38:15

that may well create like something

38:18

kind you know, certainly not the psychedelic

38:20

experience itself, but some sort

38:22

of comforting, suggestible, um

38:24

uh situation. But this

38:27

has also been invoked to explain some of

38:29

the differences in like some of the replication

38:31

difficulties that people have had with psychedelic

38:33

experiments, because sometimes,

38:35

you know, people in these experiments

38:37

are given psychedelics with a certain kind

38:40

of set and setting, and then the replication

38:42

attempt it just sort of gives them the psychedelics

38:45

but doesn't replicate the set and setting

38:47

and finds that oh and this in this study

38:49

that didn't replicate the original set and setting,

38:51

people are not getting nearly as positive

38:53

a benefit. Uh, And that just seems

38:56

to show again how dependent the experience

38:59

is on and setting. Well,

39:01

it comes back to like what the substance does

39:03

that you know, and these even these early researchers,

39:05

they they, you know, pretty early on we're

39:08

convinced that it was not something that the substance

39:10

was doing to the body. It was what it

39:12

was the mind state it was creating. Exactly

39:15

what could be gained from that mindset.

39:17

Yes, psychedelics seem to

39:19

be in into whatever extent

39:21

that they are effective at helping

39:24

people and have clinical significance. They

39:26

seem to be more a facilitator

39:28

of experiences than a direct action

39:31

drug. It's not that you take psilocybin

39:33

and the compound curious your

39:35

alcoholism, but that taking psilocybin

39:38

allows you to have an experience of profound

39:41

emotional significance that helps

39:43

people overcome alcoholism. It

39:46

seems it's the experience that actually

39:48

matters. So just say, locking

39:50

somebody in a sterile, uncomfortable

39:52

white room giving them a shot of psilocybin

39:55

without a therapist or guide present is

39:57

maybe not a very good recipe for getting most

40:00

positive effects out of the drug. But

40:02

this is frustrating if you're like, you know, if

40:04

you're used to running drug tests, because

40:06

it seems that when psychedelics have

40:08

a clinical significance, it is in some

40:11

ways similar to an active placebo.

40:13

It just appears to be an extremely effective

40:16

active placebo. So yeah, there

40:18

have been these kind of difficulties over the years.

40:20

Like I'd say, the bottom line is

40:22

that objective research is so important

40:25

in medical science, but the standard methods

40:27

that we have for objective research don't

40:30

apply especially well to psychedelics,

40:33

and some methods of achieving objectivity

40:35

appear to directly counteract the

40:37

most powerful clinical potentials of these

40:39

compounds. Another problem

40:42

we could talk about from the history of

40:44

psychedelic research is not a systematic

40:46

methodological obstacle, but

40:48

it's more like a historical

40:50

trend that you know, we're not alone

40:52

in observing other people who observe this, which

40:55

is that I would say, due to the

40:57

unique properties of these drugs,

41:00

a lot of researchers who focus

41:02

on this subject area appear

41:04

over time to tend to lose

41:07

objectivity and become more

41:09

endorsers and enthusiasts than

41:12

objective scientists just trying to find

41:14

out what's true. Well, I mean, and I

41:16

don't know to what extend. It's a lot of them,

41:18

but I guess the problem is that the ones who do

41:20

become certainly more noticeable. Your voices

41:23

are often the loudest. Right now, and again,

41:25

I want to be clear, I'm not saying all people, all scientists

41:27

who work with psychedelics to this or maybe not, probably

41:30

not even most, but but but some

41:32

significant numbers do follow

41:34

this path, right and and and

41:36

and again, their voices are the loudest. And uh,

41:39

in terms of loud the psychedelic

41:42

voices, few voices were louder than

41:44

Timothy Learies. Um.

41:46

So, like one example of of

41:48

of what you're talking about here, Timothy Leary's

41:51

work on the Harvard psilocybin project in the

41:53

early sixties. Uh. Some of Lear's

41:55

methodology there was highly criticized,

41:58

and it basically seems like he was intentionally I seeing the

42:00

experiments to make psychedelics

42:03

seem more clinically useful. Uh,

42:05

you know, which is a shame, because the

42:07

research does actually suggest that

42:09

they're useful. It's just the uh,

42:12

you know, he was being hasty. He was being

42:14

hasty, he was taking shortcuts. For example.

42:17

An example of this is the Concord Prison experiment,

42:19

which was aimed at studying recidivism and inmates

42:22

that were administered psilocybin, and

42:24

uh, you know, this is basically the ideas like if you give

42:26

them psilocybin, like, how are they

42:29

going to successfully transfer into um,

42:32

you know, back into normal everyday

42:34

life or are they gonna wind up in back in the

42:36

prison system again. And so he uh,

42:38

you know, it sounds like a pretty interesting

42:40

premise, but then the execution was

42:42

flawed. He looked at recidivism rates

42:45

ten months after release for the psilocybin

42:47

takers, but thirty months later for

42:49

the control group. And

42:52

of course time is vital in all this because you're

42:54

dealing with somebody like returning to life.

42:57

Uh, and so like the I mean not just like

42:59

month to month, but like day to day, week to

43:01

week is vital in any kind of

43:03

study having to do with recidivism, you know, you

43:05

know, because like the first day back, you know,

43:07

what, what's somebody doing there, you know, visiting

43:09

family or whatever. It's it's the as

43:12

the days go by, as the weeks go by, as the months

43:14

go by, they're gonna have to potentially deal with

43:16

greater temptation and he and he

43:18

was widely criticized by colleagues

43:20

at the time for this. Yeah, Richard

43:22

Albert, who was also known as

43:25

Ramdas, would later explain

43:28

that, you know that the aim of the project was solid

43:30

and had a reasonable therapeutic

43:32

model, but would it would but it would have required

43:35

long term application and study, and

43:37

Leary just didn't have the patients for long

43:39

term studies. Ultimately,

43:42

this is something you see throughout Leary's life,

43:44

you know, this restlessness, this lack of patients,

43:47

passion, but then a tendency to rush things.

43:49

And it's almost like he had more system

43:51

one thinking, you know, than system to

43:54

thinking. And of course, uh, this is not

43:56

the preferable balance for serious scientific

43:58

inquiry. Now, there

44:00

was another classic experiment from

44:03

the golden years of psychedelic research in

44:05

the nineteen fifties and early sixties, and this

44:07

one I think we should look at for a minute that this

44:09

was done under the supervision

44:12

of Timothy Leary's Harvard psilocybin project,

44:14

but it wasn't, I think, directly carried out

44:16

by Leary. It was directly carried out by

44:19

a guy named Walter Panky. And this was

44:21

the nineteen sixty two experiment

44:24

with the use of psilocybin to occasion

44:26

mystical experiences that

44:28

were subjectively perceived as positive

44:31

and valid by religious people. And this is

44:33

sometimes known as the Marsh Chapel

44:35

experiment or the Good Friday experiment

44:37

because it took place on Good Friday nineteen

44:39

sixty two. So Walter Panky

44:42

at the time was a divinity student at Harvard

44:44

Divinity School, and the basic details

44:46

went like this, So you had twenty divinity students

44:49

in the Boston area and each

44:51

got an injection before a

44:53

Good Friday Service at the Marsh Chapel

44:55

of Boston University. Half

44:58

got psilocybin, half got an active

45:00

placebo which was niacin. And remember

45:02

nias intends to cause flushing

45:04

and tinkling, so they would feel something

45:06

going on. And the basic findings

45:09

were that the students in the test group overwhelmingly

45:12

reported positive and in some cases,

45:14

life changing religious experiences,

45:17

and some later rated this experiment

45:19

Good Friday Service day as among the

45:22

most profound and significant experiences

45:24

of their lives. But there were complications.

45:27

One subject on psilocybin had some

45:30

kind of episode which involved trying

45:32

to leave the chapel to proclaim

45:34

a religious message and he had to be tranquilized

45:36

with thorazine. I think they backed

45:38

off with the tranquilizing people with thorazine

45:41

after this experiment. And and and these were they,

45:43

These were the researchers, not like the

45:45

old church ladies right who

45:48

may also keep thorizin the pastor

45:50

tranquilizing with thorizine. And

45:53

so I was like, I was wondering, you know, how did

45:55

this experiment hold up over time? What do

45:57

people think looking back on it? There have

45:59

been some later attempts to analyze and follow

46:01

up on the experiment. One was by Rick Doblin

46:04

of of maps uh an organization.

46:06

I don't know if we've mentioned already, but I think you'll refer to

46:08

later. Yeah, it's the Multidisciplinary Association

46:11

for Psychedelic Studies and they're

46:14

they're involved in a number of research efforts

46:16

and involving psychedelics and also m D M

46:18

a UM. By the way, they also

46:20

are involved in something called the

46:22

the Zendo Project, which aims

46:24

to promote proper psychedelic peer support,

46:27

especially for individuals, especially first

46:29

timers who are having a difficult trip.

46:31

So I think they've like set up operations that um,

46:34

you know, major cultural festivities

46:36

such as burning Man before. But I

46:38

think this is a really interesting project. I'd like to see how it develops,

46:41

because I think it's an

46:43

important step. If you know, we're going to see

46:45

decriminalization of psychedelic substances

46:48

in the United States. Oh yeah, I mean this

46:51

is something we should continue to explore

46:53

more as we go on. But I think, um,

46:56

the idea of having the proper guides

46:58

who know what they're doing is and is a very

47:00

important part of what might be considered

47:03

legitimate psychedelic use. I mean, a

47:05

lot of the research on the clinical

47:07

significance of psychedelics, so we should really

47:09

stress is not just giving

47:11

somebody a compound and then leaving

47:13

them alone, right, you know it is It

47:16

is psychedelic assisted

47:18

psychotherapy. So you might

47:20

have a guide, a

47:22

psychiatrist or a psychologist, or somebody

47:25

who is experienced in working

47:27

with people. Uh, the therapist

47:29

of some kind who either like guides you through the

47:31

experience itself or sort of holds

47:33

the space with you while you have your experience

47:36

and then later helps you talk through it and go

47:38

through the integration process. I

47:40

think the idea of having positively

47:42

socially chaperoned and uh

47:45

and sort of like expert guided

47:47

psychedelic experiences is a very

47:49

important thing that shouldn't be under emphasized,

47:52

and it's present in a lot of the traditional uses

47:54

of psychedelics. Like when we talked about the

47:56

traditional uses with the curanderas in Southern

47:59

Mexico, I mean that this wouldn't be you just take

48:01

a drug out in the void by yourself. I mean

48:03

you would be guided by someone who

48:06

is a is a religious leader. You would have a

48:08

shaman, and in these uh, these test cases,

48:10

you would have a therapist or you know, or

48:12

a researcher that was that was filling in

48:14

for that role. And then outside of the you

48:16

know, the traditional usage or the

48:18

research or medicinal or psychotherapist

48:23

usage, there was still room for an

48:25

individual like that, like somebody

48:27

that is guiding the experience and setting and attending

48:30

to set and setting. Yeah. Oh, but so

48:32

that was important to mention, But we did get sidetracked,

48:35

so I were talking about Doblin. Yeah, Well,

48:37

the follow up and analysis of the original

48:39

marsh Chapel experiment from nineteen sixty

48:41

two. Rick Doblin followed up on it in the nineteen

48:44

nineties and he made some criticisms

48:46

of the original studies methodology, Like

48:48

he pointed out that there were the problems

48:50

you would expect with double blinding that we already

48:53

talked about earlier. Um

48:55

there were some imprecise questions

48:57

and the questionnaire given to subjects to a

48:59

value ate their experience, and a few other things

49:02

like the original study failed to

49:04

report the fact that one participant had to

49:06

be tranquilized, so it seems like something you probably

49:08

should have mentioned. And there was also

49:10

the fact that while on the whole

49:13

the students viewed their mystical experiences

49:15

on psilocybin a is very positive and profound,

49:18

many of them struggled with intense bouts

49:20

of fear and difficulty and negative emotions

49:23

at some point over the course of their trips,

49:25

and this probably should have been reported in more detail

49:28

than it was, though the experiences

49:30

were positive overall, but

49:32

also so. Dublin conducted a twenty

49:34

five year follow up with some of the seminary

49:37

students from the original study, and

49:39

he confirmed that they reported sustained

49:42

profound positive effects

49:44

from their religious experiences

49:46

with psilocybin. And I think

49:48

it's really notable of the marsh Chapel experiment

49:50

that this was not like so many

49:52

of the studies that came before research

49:55

into how to treat people's

49:57

problems like addictions or mental illness,

49:59

but you use psychedelics in a way to enhance

50:02

the experience of so called healthy

50:04

normals. This was a case where you know, these

50:07

people weren't like suffering and needing a

50:09

treatment. It was like, could

50:11

they have a profound religious

50:13

experience that they deemed valid

50:15

on with the aid of these substances. And

50:17

the answer appears to be yes. But that's

50:19

a very different question than most drug

50:22

trials investigate, right right,

50:24

Yeah, I mean generally it is it is with

50:26

the aim of curing a particular malady, of

50:29

seeing if something that the substance is useful in

50:31

treating a particular condition or symptoms.

50:34

But this is more about, if anything,

50:36

it's about treating the human condition

50:38

itself, right, Uh, seeing what effect

50:40

it could have on just sort

50:42

of baseline human experience. Yeah,

50:45

and I think maybe we should take another break and then come

50:47

back and explore that concept a little more. Hi

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53:57

alright, we're back, alright, So we sort of

53:59

know the general outline of what happened in the

54:01

mid nineteen sixties. There was this significant

54:03

backlash to what had been for

54:06

a while now, at least a decade and a half of

54:08

interesting, in some ways very promising

54:10

psychedelic research. But by

54:13

nineteen seventy or so, drugs were

54:15

public Enemy number one and scientific

54:17

research in them dropped off dramatically. Encountered

54:19

a lot of obstacles at that point, and

54:22

it's only more recently that we've seen

54:24

this renaissance of of psychedelic research.

54:26

So I guess we might want to look at a

54:28

question of like, and this is something that's hard

54:30

to answer in a definitive way, but examining

54:33

some possible reasons for

54:35

the cause of the moral panic around

54:37

psychedelics in the mid nineteen sixties.

54:40

First of all, I think some

54:42

of it you could chalk up to a somewhat

54:45

legitimate reaction to

54:47

the perceived over enthusiasm

54:49

of people like Timothy Leares some

54:51

of the scientists involved in psychedelic

54:53

research. We're clearly not practicing

54:56

the most rigorous objective science, and

54:58

we're in some cases turning into

55:00

enthusiasts and gurus,

55:02

something more like alternative religious leaders.

55:05

And it's not surprising at all that this

55:07

caused a lot of skepticism

55:09

and and uh and push

55:11

back within the scientific community. Right,

55:14

Yeah, because here's here's the Leary, this kind of

55:16

weird and at times kind of goofy character,

55:19

um and and at times very profound and well

55:21

spoken. I mean he was, he was a

55:23

very charismatic guy. But you

55:25

can you can understand I

55:28

think, you know, especially members

55:30

of the older generation and more traditional folks,

55:32

uh, being a little suspicious

55:35

of this character. Yeah. Another

55:37

big part of the backlash, I think, which Paullen

55:39

definitely acknowledges at length in his book,

55:42

is specifically, this is what we were talking

55:44

about before the break. How scary it

55:46

seemed that some psychedelic

55:49

enthusiasts were recommending psychedelics

55:51

to so called healthy normals,

55:54

you know, just regular people. Like the

55:56

ideas, well, we're going to tolerate a

55:59

lot of different methods of treating people

56:01

who are facing problems, people who

56:04

have mental illnesses or addictions. Uh.

56:06

And many of these solutions

56:08

could include drugs, even drugs

56:10

that have a potential for abuse, because

56:13

we think, well, it's you know, it's fighting a problem

56:16

and it's helping people get better. But

56:18

what if a drug implies

56:20

that the whole of society is sick

56:23

and there's something wrong with the baseline

56:25

culture that's so called normal people

56:28

could benefit from using it to affect

56:30

change on themselves. Yeah,

56:32

I mean it's quite a pilled, a hard pill to swallow,

56:35

you know, to to hear, oh, there's something there's something

56:37

terribly wrong with us, or there's something terribly

56:39

wrong with the way we're conducting ourselves in the modern

56:42

world. I mean, this continues to be one

56:44

aspect of, you know, of

56:46

the problem with communicating

56:49

the you know, the the dire threat

56:51

of climate change is because there is a certain

56:53

amount of judgment to be placed

56:56

on the way that that modern industrial

56:58

society has conducted itself. Well, yeah, I think

57:00

that's right. I mean, there's always going to be negative

57:03

reaction against any indictment

57:05

that goes to our general way

57:07

of life. Like we we want to indict

57:10

you know, antisocial abnormality,

57:13

like the the murderer or the

57:15

you know, somebody who did something very unusual.

57:18

But what if everybody is doing something

57:21

that's harmful. If if that's the case you

57:23

want to make, you're gonna have a hard time getting people

57:25

to accept it. Absolutely. Yeah, Yeah, I

57:27

mean ultimately nobody, nobody's gonna

57:29

want Everybody is afraid of change,

57:31

and certainly the nineteen sixties were a time

57:33

and where there in which there was a great fear of

57:36

various changes, not only the changes

57:38

that were uh, you know, offered or

57:41

at least advertised by you know, the psychedelic

57:44

counterculture, but also the fear

57:46

of change via political

57:48

ideologies, the fear of communism, uh,

57:51

the fear of racial integration. Uh,

57:54

you know, all these various changes that

57:56

were uh that we're taking place

57:58

in society. Yeah, and so you can definitely

58:00

see why there's a lot of fear around the idea

58:02

of treating normality.

58:05

You know, so Altice Huxley and Humphrey

58:07

Osmond they you know, we're friends and wrote

58:09

back and forth to each other in the nineteen fifties.

58:12

Uh. And there there is one letter that was quoted

58:14

in Pollen's book that I thought was interesting, where

58:16

Huxley was writing to Osmond in about

58:20

people taking compounds like mescal and

58:22

an LSD, and Huxley wrote,

58:24

quote, people will think that they are

58:26

going mad when in fact they are beginning

58:29

when they take it to go sane. And

58:31

also, as Pollen notes from his experience

58:33

researching the book, that there's this quote

58:36

drift from the treatment of individuals

58:39

with psychological problems to

58:41

a desire to treat the whole of society.

58:45

And uh, this drift, he says,

58:47

is a change that quote seems eventually

58:49

to infect everyone who works with

58:51

psychedelics, touching scientists

58:53

too. And so I think everyone

58:56

there is probably an overstatement. I think he's

58:58

you know, being a little casual. It does seem

59:00

to me to be a startling trend,

59:02

maybe one that should give us pause. I don't know, I mean,

59:05

it's worth considering that. But like how

59:07

many scientists involved in

59:09

the UH in the investigation

59:12

of psychedelics, do end up thinking

59:15

that it shouldn't just be used

59:17

to treat people in a clinical setting who are

59:19

experiencing one problem or another, but

59:21

it's something that so called healthy

59:23

normals should take to improve

59:25

their lives and improve the whole of society.

59:28

Well, I mean, it's it comes back to the

59:31

traditional uses of these substances. In many

59:33

cases they were they were not necessarily

59:35

taken purely as as as medicine

59:38

for an ailment. But in any case, it's just part of

59:40

you know, your continued Uh

59:43

you know what, what would we describe now as in a mental

59:45

health Uh? Yeah, I mean that's

59:47

a good point. And while we certainly

59:49

don't want to demonize these substances, I do

59:52

think also we should be skeptical

59:54

of of that impulse. I mean, it's

59:56

worth asking the question is

59:58

that correct or is that just is

1:00:00

that over enthusiasm based on positive

1:00:03

personal experiences that people have had.

1:00:06

Yeah? Yeah, And then I guess you could also say

1:00:08

it's it's kind of like if you're if you're acknowledging that they're

1:00:10

big, almost impossible problems

1:00:12

in the world, wicked problems as the UH

1:00:15

you know, as we often refer to them things that seem insurmountable,

1:00:17

the kind of problems that make us, you

1:00:19

know, the lead us to be convinced that surely

1:00:22

only you know, the return

1:00:24

of a savior or the interference

1:00:26

on by by aliens could

1:00:28

possibly help us solve Like humans are just incapable

1:00:31

of solving these problems on their own. Then perhaps

1:00:33

we're putting, we might be putting too much stock in

1:00:35

the powers of a psychedelic

1:00:38

substance to somehow fix that for us on an

1:00:40

individual level or a cultural level.

1:00:42

Yeah, I think that's a good point of comparison.

1:00:44

I mean, while while we

1:00:47

certainly don't want to deny the

1:00:49

evidence of the potential positive uses

1:00:51

of these things, you don't want to make them a god either.

1:00:53

I mean, you don't want to drift into

1:00:55

the miracle cure mentality, because

1:00:57

one of a a lot of these studies show, quite

1:01:00

frankly, is that there is a lot of

1:01:02

potential for psychedelics in in

1:01:04

treating things like addiction and depression

1:01:06

and all that. But they're not miracle cures.

1:01:09

It's not like you know that this fixes

1:01:11

all your problems immediately and then the world's

1:01:13

a perfect place now. There's another reason

1:01:15

that we can go to to explain

1:01:17

the anti psychedelic backlash

1:01:20

that I think is probably the most obvious

1:01:22

one, right, the countercultural associations

1:01:25

with and possible direct effects

1:01:28

of psychedelic use. Of course,

1:01:30

we all know these compounds came to be associated

1:01:32

with rebellion and rejection

1:01:34

of mainstream culture and rejection of

1:01:36

political authorities. You know, Timothy Leary

1:01:39

would would proclaim to people that

1:01:41

kids who took acid, quote, won't fight

1:01:43

your wars, won't join your corporations.

1:01:47

I mean that that's scary to the authorities,

1:01:49

right, right, Do you think they're not going to fight

1:01:51

our wars anymore? How are we gonna how are we gonna fight?

1:01:54

They're not gonna be a part of corporations. They're not going

1:01:56

to found Silicon Valley corporations

1:01:58

in the future. Yeah,

1:02:01

well that's funny. I mean that turned out not quite

1:02:03

to be true. A lot of the Yeah, a lot of these acid

1:02:05

takers did turn out to be business leaders.

1:02:08

It's obviously not a panacea against business.

1:02:11

But I did want to quote a couple of sections

1:02:13

from Pollen that I thought were very very

1:02:16

smart on this part. So first,

1:02:18

the first one is where Pollen said quote. LST

1:02:21

truly was an acid, dissolving

1:02:23

almost everything with which it came into contact,

1:02:26

beginning with the hierarchies of the mind,

1:02:28

the super ego, ego and unconscious,

1:02:31

and going on from their to society's various

1:02:33

structures of authority. And then two

1:02:35

lines of every imaginable kind, between

1:02:38

patient and therapist, research

1:02:40

and recreation, sickness and health,

1:02:42

self and other, subject and object,

1:02:45

the spiritual and the material. If all

1:02:47

such lines are manifestations of the Apollonian

1:02:50

strain in Western civilization, the

1:02:52

impulse that erects distinctions, dualities

1:02:55

and hierarchies and defends them, then

1:02:57

psychedelics represented the ungoverned

1:03:00

bowl Dianician force that blithely

1:03:02

washes all those lines away. That's

1:03:04

beautiful, and that comes back to Terence

1:03:06

mckinna's definition of them is boundary dissolving.

1:03:09

Yeah, and I think that's largely

1:03:11

correct based on everything we've read. But

1:03:14

another passage that I thought was very interesting

1:03:16

about this counterculture backlash is

1:03:18

uh. It goes like this quote. For what

1:03:21

other time in history did a society's

1:03:23

young undergo a searing right

1:03:26

of passage with which the previous

1:03:28

generation was utterly unfamiliar

1:03:31

Normally, rites of passage helped knit

1:03:33

societies together as the young crossover

1:03:36

hurdles and through gates erected and maintained

1:03:38

by their elders, coming out on

1:03:40

the other side to take their place in the community

1:03:43

of adults. Not so with the

1:03:45

Psychedelic Journey of the nineteen sixties,

1:03:47

which at its conclusion dropped its young

1:03:49

travelers onto a psychic landscape

1:03:52

unrecognizable to their parents. That

1:03:54

this won't ever happen again is reason to

1:03:56

hope that the next chapter in psychedelic

1:03:58

history won't be quite so divisive.

1:04:01

Well, I mean, it won't happen quite

1:04:03

the same way again. But as Paul and himself points out,

1:04:05

like he grew up in the

1:04:08

dark times of of

1:04:10

you know that he basically grew up in the moral

1:04:12

panic period. Yeah, so didn't really

1:04:15

experiment much with psychedelics when he was younger,

1:04:17

and really wasn't until quite recently

1:04:20

as as an older man, that he was able to really

1:04:22

experiment with them and understand them in

1:04:24

a greater sense. So I

1:04:27

feel like there are still going to be generational gaps

1:04:29

there. Well, that last sentence maybe far too optimistic.

1:04:31

I mean, the main part I was thinking about was the beginning

1:04:33

of this where he points out the idea of

1:04:35

rights of passage that expand the consciousness.

1:04:38

They are supposed to be passed on from

1:04:40

parents to children. And we've the generations

1:04:43

together, and if the young acquire a consciousness

1:04:45

altering right of passage that the older

1:04:48

generations don't have, that

1:04:50

can be terrifying to the older generations.

1:04:52

It's like they're not our children anymore.

1:04:54

They've been initiated into some other tribe.

1:04:57

No, I think it's a great point. I mean, yeah, this was a new

1:05:00

ride of passage that the older generation by

1:05:02

and large had no experience with. There's

1:05:05

one other possible thing going on in the nineteen

1:05:07

sixties that I think might be worth mentioning,

1:05:10

which is, well, maybe we'll get into

1:05:12

more detail about these studies in

1:05:14

the in the next episode. But there are

1:05:16

at least a couple of studies I've been reading

1:05:18

from the last decade or so, one

1:05:21

from two thousand eleven and one from eighteen

1:05:23

that are about adult personality

1:05:26

change occasioned by use of psychedelics.

1:05:29

So you've got these various ways of measuring personality

1:05:32

traits and and people might you

1:05:34

know, your personality might over time sort

1:05:36

of be in flux. But you know, mostly your

1:05:38

traits are going to be pretty set by the time

1:05:40

you're an adult. You know, you're around a baseline.

1:05:42

You might hover. But there appears

1:05:44

to be some evidence that using psychedelics

1:05:47

can actually change adults personalities.

1:05:50

And so one of the many

1:05:52

things that's been observed is that, for

1:05:54

example, use of psychedelics appears

1:05:57

to increase people in

1:05:59

a psycho logical personality trait

1:06:01

that's known as openness to experience.

1:06:04

People who take psychedelics appear to increase

1:06:07

in openness, and openness

1:06:09

is actually a highly socially significant

1:06:12

personality trade. Uh, It's been associated

1:06:14

with all kinds of other things in societies

1:06:17

and in various research, Like openness

1:06:19

is highly correlated with

1:06:21

with like lack of prejudice and

1:06:23

lack of authoritarianism, and

1:06:26

stuff like appreciation for

1:06:28

art and for other cultures and things. I

1:06:31

think you'd find the openness personality

1:06:33

trait largely associated with like environmentalism

1:06:36

and multiculturalism. Yeah, I mean, just

1:06:38

if nothing else, Like if if you were to

1:06:40

become more neophilic and you know,

1:06:42

uh, you know, attracted to new experiences,

1:06:45

you become more attractive to travel, and in

1:06:47

traveling you're exposed to to uh.

1:06:50

I mean, travel itself is kind of I

1:06:52

think has a lot to in common with psychedelic

1:06:54

experience. You know, where you suddenly

1:06:56

you're in in a place that is mostly

1:06:58

the same but a little different it and uh

1:07:01

people around you are different and yet

1:07:03

the same, and it forces you to sort of reconsider

1:07:06

who you are in the whole scenario. So

1:07:09

if this is true, yeah, that that there

1:07:11

are these cascading effects from the use of

1:07:13

psychedelics that maybe on

1:07:15

a broad scale, say changing

1:07:18

the personality is of a young generation,

1:07:20

especially changing them in ways

1:07:22

that might not be so congenial to you

1:07:24

if you are Richard Nixon or something, that

1:07:27

these personality changes could be perceived

1:07:29

as a direct threat to the polity

1:07:32

of the country. Yeah, and that's exactly how Richard

1:07:34

Nixon saw it. I mean, Richard Nixon

1:07:36

is is the anti psychedelic

1:07:39

uh U s president by

1:07:41

far. Yeah. I mean it's

1:07:43

difficult to unravel all this because on one

1:07:45

hand, you have to you have to try

1:07:48

and figure out what the nineteen sixties were, you

1:07:50

know, like what was the nineteen sixties experience?

1:07:53

And certainly you and I were not around

1:07:55

in the nineteen sixties, so we can't attest

1:07:58

to it. Um. We do have some listeners I know

1:08:00

that were and so hopefully we'll hear from

1:08:02

from you on it. UM. I remember

1:08:04

my my father told me once that Jefferson

1:08:07

Airplane Somebody to Love captured

1:08:10

what the sixties felt like. I

1:08:12

but I never had a chance to ask him what he really meant

1:08:14

by that. Maybe he just meant it was an iconic

1:08:16

song of the time, which you know it certainly was. UM.

1:08:20

But I guess that's one of the things

1:08:22

with it with the sixties two is that, like all

1:08:24

times, you know, the older generation is always

1:08:26

going to be concerned with what the young generation is doing

1:08:28

and how what they're doing doesn't reflect your

1:08:31

values. Like I

1:08:33

can't relate to the experience

1:08:35

of you know, of of grown up uh

1:08:38

in the nineties sixties. Uh. You know, you

1:08:40

know, a middle aged person looking at the young generations

1:08:42

and things and asking, oh, what are they doing with psychedelics?

1:08:45

Uh? But like maybe on some level,

1:08:47

I I understand that in regards to Pokemon, you

1:08:50

know, where I'm like, oh, I I had this was not part

1:08:52

of my childhood, and yet it's highly influential

1:08:54

for for for these kids. What am I

1:08:56

missing and why should I and to what extent should

1:08:58

I be afraid of it? Wait? Were you one of those preachers

1:09:01

going on TV during the Pokemon craze saying

1:09:03

it was causing devil worship? No? No,

1:09:05

but but I do love that kind of I

1:09:08

love the sort of mild moral panics like

1:09:10

that that there a rise

1:09:12

out of any new thing, be a Pokemon or Harry

1:09:14

Potter. I think there's one for Teletubbies.

1:09:17

Teletubbies. Yeah, yeah, so

1:09:20

so yeah. The fact that there's kind of a generational

1:09:22

divide and a and a in a moral panic popping

1:09:25

up around something like that in and of itself, I think just

1:09:27

is always going to be the case. And we see

1:09:29

shades with that. I mean, certainly, I think we have

1:09:32

it. We've discussed, we've discussed in the show before,

1:09:34

and we'll in the future. You know, we certainly

1:09:36

have some issues with with mobile

1:09:38

technology and with social media and

1:09:42

the effects that those uh technologies

1:09:45

are having on culture, and

1:09:47

certainly, you know, it can lean into some

1:09:49

sort of you know, crankiness

1:09:51

where we look at younger generations and say, oh,

1:09:54

they don't even know what it's like without social media.

1:09:56

That's our grumpy old men issue. Yes, it's

1:09:58

the tech. Yeah. Uh,

1:10:00

but we'll have to come back to that. But

1:10:04

but but yeah, the the the older generation

1:10:07

looked at the younger generation, and they didn't

1:10:09

see their values necessarily reflected

1:10:11

their values that had just carried them through

1:10:13

a World war and of course threatened to carry

1:10:16

into one final World war as well.

1:10:18

And so it makes sense that these

1:10:20

typical generational concerns would be

1:10:23

exasperated by the introduction

1:10:25

of something new, or at least new from a Western

1:10:28

perspective. There was not only consciousness

1:10:30

changing, but but also foreign. And

1:10:33

remember remember that most anti drug messaging

1:10:35

in America has depended on xenophobic

1:10:37

and or racist messaging. An

1:10:39

association was also made between uh

1:10:42

psychedelics and radical leftist

1:10:44

ideologies, so I

1:10:46

think that was very much a factor as well. Well. I

1:10:48

mean, one thing that's interesting I remember from reading

1:10:50

the individual testimonials of the people

1:10:52

who were involved in the marsh Chapel experiment. This

1:10:55

is anecdotal, so this is only just you

1:10:57

know, the happen things they happen to report. But

1:10:59

I I think multiple members of the marsh

1:11:01

Chapel experiments said that, you know, they had

1:11:04

their psilocybin experience and

1:11:06

it prompted them to go get involved in the

1:11:08

civil rights movement. Uh so

1:11:10

you know which, of course, by the you know, the conservative

1:11:13

authoritarian uh you know, white ruling

1:11:15

class impulse at the time would have probably they would

1:11:17

have seen that as a political threat. Speaking

1:11:20

of political threats, let's get back to Richard

1:11:23

Nixon. Okay, So Richard Nixon famously

1:11:25

considered Timothy Leary quote the most dangerous

1:11:28

man in America and uh

1:11:30

and and he apparently his handlers were even

1:11:32

concerned at different times that leftists

1:11:34

might try and slip Nixon LSD. Uh.

1:11:38

I'm sure somebody was working on a plan there, one

1:11:40

of those sixties pranksters. Oh well yeah, Actually,

1:11:43

allegedly Jefferson airplane lead

1:11:45

singer Grace Slick uh plan

1:11:48

to slip LSD into Nixon's tea

1:11:50

at a White House tea party because

1:11:52

apparently she attended uh the same college

1:11:54

as Nixon's daughter, and there was going to be an event there

1:11:56

at the White House. But if the event

1:11:58

turned out to be an all female events, so Nixon

1:12:00

wasn't actually there, and I think she

1:12:03

got kind of she got scared off by the

1:12:05

security and left. Anyway, she didn't try to give

1:12:07

any to pat apparently

1:12:11

not. Uh, well, she had they didn't

1:12:13

quite make I think she was accompanied by Abby

1:12:15

Hoffman, who was Ye, this sounds

1:12:17

like an Abby Hoffman's so it didn't. The

1:12:21

scheme didn't actually make it through the front door, so

1:12:23

they didn't actually get to that level of

1:12:25

of decision making. But this

1:12:28

all does lead to an interesting question that comes

1:12:30

up from time to time, sometimes flippantly

1:12:33

and other times quite seriously. If

1:12:35

certain world leaders could be tricked into

1:12:37

having a psychedelic experience, could

1:12:39

we change them? Could there be like a Scrooge

1:12:41

moment? Right? Would they see themselves

1:12:43

objectively? Would they connect with others

1:12:46

or connect with nature in a meaningful and life

1:12:48

changing way. I've heard people say

1:12:50

this. In fact, I remember a lot of teenage stoners

1:12:52

things like that, if you just get

1:12:55

all these dictators, and you know, we'd

1:12:57

stop all the wars, if we could just get people

1:12:59

to take acid or I think they'd even

1:13:02

just say like smoke weed or something. I'm

1:13:05

I mean again, I'm I'm very

1:13:07

open to and and interested in

1:13:09

the many of the reported positive effects

1:13:12

of psychedelic experiences, but I do

1:13:14

not believe it is a miracle drug in that

1:13:16

way right that it can't just in and of itself

1:13:18

cure human nastiness, especially

1:13:21

because set and setting are so important. I mean,

1:13:23

what if you take a drug and the setting is

1:13:25

the is the Nixon White House? Right? If you have

1:13:27

a psychedelic experience where you're just

1:13:29

like all revved up on the idea of

1:13:31

slaughtering your enemies and stuff that I

1:13:34

don't know, I don't I'm not sure that

1:13:36

would make things better. Yeah.

1:13:38

Like, one specific version of this question that I've

1:13:41

kind of tossed around in my own head from time to time

1:13:43

is not so much. You know, what have we um?

1:13:45

You know, what if Hitler took acid? Kind of a thing. But

1:13:49

uh, you know, if we look at when

1:13:51

l s d uh came into being. It

1:13:53

was first synthesized in eight

1:13:56

in Switzerland, m D m A was first created

1:13:58

in Germany in wealth and in

1:14:00

both cases no one realized what

1:14:02

they discovered. You know, it wasn't ntild later that they

1:14:05

took him off the shelf and looked at him again. But

1:14:07

what if these substances are leaked out into Europe,

1:14:10

especially Germany before World War Two?

1:14:12

And granted LSD would have only had like a year

1:14:14

to work its magic, but I'm not

1:14:17

the only one who's thought about this. For instance, Terence

1:14:19

mckinna and Food of the Gods wondered

1:14:21

what would it have been like if the Nazis had

1:14:24

found out about LSD quote

1:14:26

it is frightening to imagine some of the possible

1:14:28

consequences had Hoffmann's discovery

1:14:30

been recognized for what it was, even a moment

1:14:33

earlier. So there, I mean, he's

1:14:35

looking at it. It's not necessarily a good

1:14:37

thing for everybody who takes it, but like that,

1:14:39

it could be a facilitator of great

1:14:41

evil. Yeah, yeah, I he

1:14:43

may have gone into more detail on this in other

1:14:46

works or lectures. Certainly, Uh

1:14:49

McKenna spoke a lot about these

1:14:51

topics, but so but I am not aware

1:14:53

of any additional thoughts he had on the

1:14:55

matter. But I suspect that they would have probably

1:14:57

done much the same as the CIA did their

1:15:00

experiments with with the LSD,

1:15:02

you know, searching for ways to use it as a weapon or

1:15:04

a mind control substance and then ultimately

1:15:07

find it wanting in that regard. Yeah, and

1:15:09

then we've talked about this in other episodes of Stuff to Blow

1:15:11

your Mind in the past, But yeah, that seemed to be the

1:15:13

primary focus of like defense based research

1:15:15

on psychedelics in the nineteen fifties is can

1:15:18

we get it to make people do what

1:15:20

we want against their will or as a

1:15:22

truth serum? Right, and and certainly this

1:15:24

was the deal with the Third Reich. They were in a state

1:15:26

of total war. They were interested in rockets,

1:15:29

yes, but they weren't interested because of any space

1:15:31

exploration advantages. They

1:15:33

it was about weapon delivery. It was

1:15:35

about pursuing their own awful and

1:15:38

and and racist ideology um,

1:15:40

this conquest mentality. Yeah. Absolutely.

1:15:43

But on the other hand, uh, you know, Hitler

1:15:46

took a lot of drugs, especially

1:15:48

after is apparently taking a lot

1:15:51

of stimulants, a lot of opioids, and

1:15:54

so you know, one you can't help

1:15:56

but wonder, right, like, what what if

1:15:58

out Off Hitler had taken a bunch of M D M

1:16:00

A and L S d UM in nineteen

1:16:03

forty two? Would that have had any effect?

1:16:06

I'm suspicious that that it would have any

1:16:08

effect. Ultimately, Yeah, I don't. I don't

1:16:10

think I buy the sowner line that you

1:16:12

know, just get the dictator to take a psychedelic

1:16:14

and they will be cured. I mean, it's

1:16:17

hard to know, but I'm I doubt it. I

1:16:19

mean, it would be interesting as an experiment, though, Yeah,

1:16:21

just just to poke one of them up out there. Well,

1:16:23

another interesting question is, instead

1:16:26

of like these individuals say, like dose

1:16:28

the dictator cases, if psychedelics

1:16:31

and psychedelic culture were more widespread

1:16:34

in general throughout the world, you

1:16:37

know, and throughout industrialized society

1:16:39

is going way back. I do wonder

1:16:41

then, like if the you know, the common if

1:16:44

the common drug of choice

1:16:46

among industrialized societies

1:16:48

in the eighteenth and nineteenth

1:16:50

century had not been alcohol but

1:16:53

had been psilocypin or something.

1:16:55

Yeah, And I think that's ultimately the more interesting

1:16:57

question is not what if Hitler had taken out

1:16:59

as to d or or M D m A. But

1:17:02

what if they what if they had been at large

1:17:04

in um in German culture of

1:17:06

preceding the war UM And

1:17:09

you know, ultimately, like the counter argument to that would

1:17:11

be, well, there already was a strong bohemian

1:17:14

vibe in pre war Germany,

1:17:16

and it it was not sufficient to

1:17:18

prevent the horrors of the Second World

1:17:20

War and beyond. But yeah, I think ultimately,

1:17:23

when you see people like Terence McKenna arguing for

1:17:25

an archaic revival for some sort

1:17:27

of like return and the psychedelically

1:17:29

assisted return to nature

1:17:31

and interconnectedness. Like they are talking

1:17:33

about a cultural movement, They're not

1:17:35

talking about strategic doses,

1:17:38

dosing of of of key individuals.

1:17:40

Yeah, if only were that easy. All right, we've

1:17:43

been going a while. I think we got to wrap it up for this one,

1:17:45

but we we got to come back in the next. We were originally

1:17:47

going to do just three episodes, but psychedelics

1:17:50

took hold, and now we've been

1:17:52

going for three and we still haven't gotten to the twenty

1:17:54

one century revival in psychedelic

1:17:56

research, which we will focus on next time

1:17:58

as right, So join us for part

1:18:00

four of our psychedelic

1:18:03

series here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And I

1:18:05

mean, who knows there might be a part five. We just

1:18:07

we have no idea. We have no idea when this is going to end.

1:18:09

All right. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes

1:18:11

of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind

1:18:13

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1:18:16

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1:18:18

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