Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #145

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Matthew Johnson,

00:00:02.800 | a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science

00:00:05.600 | at Johns Hopkins, and is one of the top scientists

00:00:08.920 | in the world conducting seminal research on psychedelics.

00:00:13.360 | This was one of the most eye-opening

00:00:15.760 | and fascinating conversations I've ever had on this podcast.

00:00:19.880 | I'm sure I'll talk with Matt many more times.

00:00:22.540 | Quick match interview sponsor,

00:00:23.920 | followed by some thoughts related to the episode.

00:00:26.640 | Thank you to a new sponsor, Brave,

00:00:30.080 | a fast browser that feels like Chrome,

00:00:32.280 | but has more privacy-preserving features.

00:00:35.440 | Neuro, the maker of functional sugar-free gum and mints

00:00:39.060 | that I use to give my brain a quick caffeine boost.

00:00:42.680 | Four Sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee.

00:00:46.800 | I'm just now realizing how ironic the set of sponsors are.

00:00:50.800 | And Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.

00:00:54.760 | Please check out these sponsors in the description

00:00:56.960 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

00:01:00.240 | As a side note, let me say that psychedelics

00:01:02.640 | is an area of study that is fascinating to me,

00:01:05.760 | in that it gives hints that much of the magic

00:01:08.240 | of our experience arises from just a few

00:01:10.680 | chemical interactions in the brain,

00:01:12.720 | and that the nature of that experience can be expanded

00:01:16.120 | through the tools of biology, chemistry, physics,

00:01:19.680 | neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

00:01:23.360 | The fact that a world-class scientist and researcher

00:01:26.200 | like Matt can apply rigor to our study

00:01:28.840 | of this mysterious and fascinating topic

00:01:31.720 | is exciting to me beyond words,

00:01:34.240 | as is the case with any of my colleagues

00:01:36.480 | who dare to venture out into the darkness

00:01:38.920 | of all that is unknown about the human mind,

00:01:41.700 | with both an openness of first-principle thinking

00:01:44.960 | and the rigor of the scientific method.

00:01:47.920 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

00:01:50.000 | review it with Five Stars on Apple Podcasts,

00:01:52.240 | follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,

00:01:54.920 | or connect with me on Twitter @LexFriedman.

00:01:58.080 | And now, here's my conversation with Matthew Johnson.

00:02:02.020 | Can you give an introduction to psychedelics,

00:02:05.960 | like a whirlwind overview?

00:02:08.800 | Maybe what are psychedelics,

00:02:11.720 | and what are the kinds of psychedelics out there,

00:02:14.560 | and in whatever way you find meaningful to categorize.

00:02:17.600 | - Yeah, you can categorize them

00:02:21.200 | by their chemical structure.

00:02:23.200 | So phenethylamines, tryptamines, ergalines.

00:02:27.520 | That is less of a meaningful way to classify them.

00:02:33.920 | I think that their pharmacological activity,

00:02:36.720 | their receptor activity is the best way.

00:02:39.380 | Well, let me start even broader than that,

00:02:40.960 | because there I'm talking about the classic psychedelics.

00:02:43.680 | So broadly speaking, when we say psychedelic,

00:02:46.960 | that refers to, for most people,

00:02:50.280 | a broad number of compounds

00:02:52.280 | that work in different pharmacological ways.

00:02:55.000 | So it includes the so-called classic psychedelics.

00:02:58.260 | That includes psilocybin and psilocin,

00:03:03.080 | which are in mushrooms, LSD, dimethyltryptamine, or DMT,

00:03:08.080 | it's in ayahuasca, people can smoke it too,

00:03:10.880 | mescaline, which is in peyote and San Pedro, cactus.

00:03:17.740 | And those all work by hitting

00:03:19.660 | a certain subtype of serotonin receptor,

00:03:22.500 | the serotonin 2A receptor.

00:03:24.540 | They act as agonists at that receptor.

00:03:27.240 | Other compounds like PCP, ketamine, MDMA, ibogaine,

00:03:33.600 | they all are, more broadly speaking, called psychedelics,

00:03:40.100 | but they work by very different ways pharmacologically.

00:03:45.780 | And they have some different effects,

00:03:48.220 | including some subjective effects,

00:03:49.700 | even though there's enough of an overlap

00:03:53.180 | in the subjective effects

00:03:55.300 | that people informally refer to them as psychedelic.

00:03:59.180 | And I think what that overlap is,

00:04:01.340 | compared to say caffeine and cocaine and Ambien, et cetera,

00:04:06.340 | other psychoactive drugs,

00:04:08.700 | is that they have strong effects

00:04:11.420 | in altering one's sense of reality

00:04:15.980 | and including the sense of self.

00:04:18.060 | And I should throw in there that cannabis,

00:04:20.700 | more historically, like in the '70s,

00:04:22.460 | has been called a minor psychedelic.

00:04:24.060 | And I think with that latter definition,

00:04:25.780 | it does fit that definition,

00:04:28.100 | particularly if one doesn't have a tolerance.

00:04:30.500 | - So you mentioned serotonin,

00:04:32.300 | so most of the effect comes from something around

00:04:35.300 | like the chemistry around neurotransmitters and so on.

00:04:39.020 | So it's chemical interactions in the brain,

00:04:42.820 | or is there other kinds of interactions

00:04:44.660 | that have this kind of perception

00:04:47.920 | and self-awareness-altering effects?

00:04:51.340 | - Well, as far as we know,

00:04:52.580 | all of the psychedelics of all the different classes

00:04:56.020 | we've talked about,

00:04:58.820 | their major activity is caused by receptor-level events.

00:05:04.700 | So either acting at the post-receptor side of the synapse,

00:05:09.700 | so in other words, neurotransmission operates

00:05:12.260 | by one neuron releasing neurotransmitter into a synapse,

00:05:17.260 | a gap between the two neurons,

00:05:19.280 | and then the other neuron receives.

00:05:23.140 | It has receptors that receives,

00:05:24.700 | and then there can be an activation caused by that.

00:05:28.640 | So it's like a pitcher and a catcher.

00:05:30.260 | So all of the major psychedelics

00:05:32.700 | work by either mimicking a pitcher or a catcher.

00:05:37.700 | So for example, the classic psychedelics,

00:05:41.420 | they fit into the same catcher's mitt

00:05:44.420 | on the post-synaptic receptor side as serotonin itself,

00:05:49.420 | but they do a slightly different thing to the cell,

00:05:53.560 | to the neuron, than serotonin does.

00:05:56.420 | There's a different signaling pathway

00:05:58.260 | after that initial activation.

00:06:00.460 | Something like MDMA works at the presynaptic side,

00:06:04.900 | the pitcher side, and basically it floods the synapse

00:06:08.820 | or the gap between the cells with a bunch of serotonin,

00:06:11.060 | the natural neurotransmitter.

00:06:14.260 | So it's like the pitcher in a baseball game

00:06:16.300 | all of a sudden just starts throwing balls every second.

00:06:20.420 | - Everything we're talking about,

00:06:21.420 | is it often more natural,

00:06:24.820 | meaning found in the natural world?

00:06:27.740 | You mentioned cacti, cactus,

00:06:31.060 | or is it chemically manufactured,

00:06:33.260 | like artificially in the lab?

00:06:35.580 | - So the classic psychedelics, there's--

00:06:38.580 | - What are the classics?

00:06:39.820 | So using terminology that's not chemical terminology,

00:06:44.420 | not like the terminology you see in titles of papers,

00:06:47.260 | academic papers, but more sort of common parlance.

00:06:50.220 | - Right, it would be good to kind of define their effects,

00:06:53.620 | like how they're different.

00:06:54.900 | And so it includes LSD, psilocybin,

00:06:57.580 | which is in mushrooms, mescaline, DMT.

00:07:00.780 | - Which one is mescaline?

00:07:01.940 | - Mescaline is in the different cacti,

00:07:04.220 | so the one most people will know is peyote,

00:07:07.340 | but it also shows up in San Pedro or Peruvian torch.

00:07:10.980 | And all of these classic psychedelics,

00:07:14.360 | they have at the right dose,

00:07:17.300 | and typically they have very strong effects

00:07:20.700 | on one's sense of reality and one's sense of self.

00:07:23.420 | Some of the things that makes them different

00:07:26.500 | than other more broadly speaking psychedelics

00:07:29.380 | like MDMA and others is that they're,

00:07:32.860 | at least the major examples,

00:07:35.780 | there are some exotic ones that differ,

00:07:37.460 | but the ones I've talked about are extremely safe

00:07:40.140 | at the physiological level.

00:07:42.160 | Like there's LSD and psilocybin,

00:07:44.020 | there's no known lethal overdose,

00:07:46.180 | unless you have really severe heart disease,

00:07:50.420 | 'cause it modestly raises your blood pressure.

00:07:52.180 | So same person that might be hurt shoveling snow

00:07:54.820 | or going up the stairs, that could have a cardiac event

00:07:59.820 | because they've taken one of these drugs.

00:08:03.060 | But for most people, someone could take 1,000 times

00:08:05.740 | what the effective dose is,

00:08:06.840 | and it's not gonna cause any organ damage,

00:08:09.500 | affect the brainstem, make them stop breathing.

00:08:11.420 | So in that sense, they're freakishly safe at the,

00:08:16.060 | I would never call any compounds safe

00:08:18.020 | 'cause there's always a risk.

00:08:19.620 | They're freakishly safe at the physiological level.

00:08:22.220 | I mean, you can hardly find anything over the counter,

00:08:24.700 | like that, I mean, aspirin's not like that,

00:08:26.220 | caffeine is not like that.

00:08:28.060 | Most drugs, you take five, 10, 20, maybe it takes 100,

00:08:33.060 | but you get to some times the effective dose,

00:08:36.060 | and it's gonna kill you or cause some serious damage.

00:08:38.660 | And so that's something that's remarkable

00:08:41.060 | about most of these classic psychedelics.

00:08:43.820 | - That's incredible, by the way,

00:08:44.980 | that you can go on a hell of a journey in the mind,

00:08:48.400 | like probably transformative,

00:08:52.540 | potentially in a deeply transformative way,

00:08:56.700 | and yet there's no dose that in most people

00:09:00.100 | would have a lethal effect.

00:09:02.500 | That's kind of fascinating.

00:09:03.700 | There's this duality between the mind and the body.

00:09:06.780 | It's like, it's the, okay,

00:09:09.980 | sorry if I bring him up way too much,

00:09:11.420 | but David Goggins is like,

00:09:13.020 | you know, the kind of things you go on on the long run,

00:09:17.060 | like the hell you might go through in your mind.

00:09:19.700 | Your mind can take a lot,

00:09:20.940 | and you can go through a lot with the mind,

00:09:22.900 | and the body will just be its own thing.

00:09:25.100 | You can go through hell, but after a good night's sleep,

00:09:29.020 | be back to normal, and the body is always there.

00:09:31.580 | - So bringing it back to Goggins,

00:09:32.860 | it's like you can do that

00:09:33.940 | without even destroying your knee or whatever.

00:09:35.620 | - Right, well, yes.

00:09:36.460 | - Or coming close and riding that line.

00:09:37.980 | - That's true.

00:09:38.820 | So the unfortunate thing about the running,

00:09:40.340 | which he uses running to test the mind,

00:09:42.980 | so the aspect of running that is negative,

00:09:47.100 | in order to test the mind,

00:09:48.220 | you really have to push the body,

00:09:51.180 | like take the body through a journey.

00:09:53.180 | I wish there was another way of doing that

00:09:55.820 | in the physical exercise space.

00:09:57.540 | I think there are exercises

00:09:59.860 | that are easier on the body than others,

00:10:01.420 | but running sure is a hell of an effective way to do it.

00:10:04.980 | - And one of the ways that where it differs

00:10:07.060 | is that you're, unlike exercise,

00:10:10.560 | you're essentially, you know,

00:10:12.420 | most exercise, to really get to those intense levels,

00:10:15.500 | you really need to be persistent about it.

00:10:17.860 | I mean, it'll be intense if you're really out of shape

00:10:19.740 | just jogging for five minutes,

00:10:22.680 | but to really get to those intense levels,

00:10:24.140 | you need to have the dedication.

00:10:25.900 | And so some of the other ways

00:10:27.220 | of altering subjective effects

00:10:31.900 | or states of consciousness take that type of dedication.

00:10:35.300 | Psychedelics, though, I mean, someone takes the right dose,

00:10:39.060 | they're strapped into the roller coaster,

00:10:41.540 | and something interesting is gonna happen.

00:10:44.460 | And I really like what you said

00:10:45.620 | about that distinction between the mind,

00:10:49.220 | or the contrast between the mind effects

00:10:51.620 | and the bodily, the body effects,

00:10:55.560 | because I think of this,

00:10:58.700 | I do research with all the drugs,

00:11:01.180 | you know, caffeine, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine,

00:11:04.420 | alcohol, legal, illegal.

00:11:06.780 | Most of these drugs,

00:11:08.480 | thinking about, say, cocaine and methamphetamine,

00:11:13.360 | you can't give to a regular user,

00:11:15.780 | you can't safely give a dose

00:11:19.220 | where the regular cocaine user is gonna say,

00:11:21.660 | "Oh man, that's like,

00:11:24.140 | that's the strongest coke I've ever had," you know?

00:11:28.380 | Because, you know, you get it past the ethics committee

00:11:30.780 | and you need approval,

00:11:32.300 | and I wouldn't wanna give someone something that's dangerous.

00:11:34.340 | So to go to those levels where they would say that,

00:11:37.180 | you would have to give something

00:11:38.180 | that's physiologically riskier.

00:11:41.500 | - Yeah.

00:11:43.340 | - Psilocybin or LSD,

00:11:45.140 | you can give a dose at the physiological level

00:11:48.140 | that is like, very good chance

00:11:50.660 | it's gonna be the most intense psychological experience

00:11:53.540 | of that person's life.

00:11:54.620 | - Yeah, that's true. - And have zero chance

00:11:56.260 | for most people, if you screen them, of killing them.

00:11:59.260 | The big risk is behavioral toxicity,

00:12:01.320 | which is a fancy way of saying doing something stupid.

00:12:03.820 | I mean, you're really intoxicated,

00:12:05.180 | like if you wander into traffic or you fall from a height,

00:12:08.100 | just like plenty of people do on high doses of alcohol.

00:12:11.420 | And the other kind of unique thing

00:12:13.020 | about classic psychedelics is that they're not addictive,

00:12:17.540 | which is pretty much unheard of

00:12:20.160 | when it comes to so-called drugs of abuse

00:12:23.020 | or drugs that people, at least at some frequency,

00:12:27.960 | choose to take.

00:12:29.260 | You know, most of what we think of as drugs,

00:12:31.560 | you know, even caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, cannabis,

00:12:36.500 | most of these you can get into alcohol,

00:12:39.000 | you can get into a daily use pattern.

00:12:41.960 | And that's just so unheard of with psychedelics.

00:12:46.720 | Most people have taken these things on a daily basis.

00:12:49.880 | It's more like they're building up the courage to do it,

00:12:53.400 | and then they build up a tolerance.

00:12:54.560 | Or they're in college and they do it on a dare,

00:12:56.560 | can you take acid seven days in a row?

00:12:59.120 | And that type of thing, rather than a self-control issue

00:13:02.320 | where you have and say, oh God, I gotta stop taking this,

00:13:04.480 | I gotta stop drinking every night,

00:13:06.080 | I gotta cut down on the Coke, whatever.

00:13:08.860 | - So that's the classic psychedelics.

00:13:11.360 | What are the, what's a good term, modern psychedelics,

00:13:15.640 | or more maybe psychedelics that are created in the lab?

00:13:18.480 | What else is there?

00:13:19.680 | - Right, so MDMA is the big one.

00:13:21.240 | And I should say that with the classic psychedelics,

00:13:23.920 | that LSD is sort of, you can call it a semi-synthetic,

00:13:26.840 | because there's natural, you know,

00:13:29.480 | from both ergot and in certain seeds,

00:13:32.220 | morning glory seeds is one example,

00:13:34.920 | there's a very close, there are some very close

00:13:38.340 | chemical relatives of LSD,

00:13:40.780 | so LSD is close to what occurs in nature, but not quite.

00:13:44.900 | But then when we get into the other non-classic psychedelics,

00:13:49.540 | probably the most prominent one is MDMA.

00:13:51.660 | People call it ecstasy, people call it molly.

00:13:54.080 | And it is, it differs from classic psychedelics

00:13:59.580 | in a number of ways.

00:14:00.760 | It can be addictive, but not so.

00:14:04.560 | It's like, you can have cocaine on this end

00:14:07.100 | of the continuum, and classic psychedelics here.

00:14:10.580 | - Continuum of addiction?

00:14:11.660 | - Continuum of addiction, you know.

00:14:13.100 | So it's certainly no cocaine.

00:14:15.020 | It's pretty rare for people to get into daily use patterns,

00:14:17.820 | but it's possible.

00:14:19.460 | And they can get into more like, you know,

00:14:21.140 | using once a week pattern,

00:14:23.100 | where they can find it hard to stop.

00:14:25.140 | But it's somewhere in between,

00:14:27.260 | mostly towards the classic psychedelic side,

00:14:31.220 | in terms of like, relatively little addiction potential.

00:14:35.880 | But it's also more physiologically dangerous.

00:14:39.580 | I think that the, certainly the therapeutic use,

00:14:43.300 | it's showing really promising effects for treating PTSD,

00:14:47.240 | and the models that are used,

00:14:48.280 | I think those are extremely acceptable

00:14:50.880 | when it comes to the risk-benefit ratio

00:14:52.680 | that you see all throughout medicine.

00:14:55.000 | But nonetheless, we do know that at a certain dose

00:14:59.560 | and a certain frequency that MDMA can cause long-term damage

00:15:03.740 | to the serotonin system in the brain,

00:15:06.780 | so it doesn't have that level of kind of freakish,

00:15:10.900 | bodily safety that the classic psychedelics do.

00:15:14.140 | And it has more of a heart load, a cardiovascular,

00:15:16.940 | I don't mean kind of emotion, I mean, in this sense,

00:15:19.500 | although it is very emotional,

00:15:20.700 | and that's something unique about its subjective effects,

00:15:24.020 | but it's more of a presser.

00:15:25.820 | - And the terminology used instead of like,

00:15:28.540 | freakish capacities,

00:15:30.220 | allowing you from a researcher perspective,

00:15:32.260 | but a personal perspective too,

00:15:33.660 | of taking a journey with some of these psychedelics,

00:15:37.340 | that is the heroic dose, as they say.

00:15:40.900 | So like, these are tools that allow you

00:15:43.000 | to take a serious mental journey, whatever that is.

00:15:45.640 | That's what you mean.

00:15:46.480 | And with MDMA, there's a little bit,

00:15:49.060 | it starts entering this territory

00:15:51.060 | where you gotta be careful about the risks

00:15:53.760 | to the body, potentially.

00:15:55.020 | - So yes, that, in the sense that you can't

00:15:58.140 | kind of push the dose up as high as safely as one can,

00:16:02.780 | if they're in the right setting, like in our research,

00:16:05.020 | as they can with the classic psychedelics.

00:16:07.260 | But probably more importantly,

00:16:09.380 | just the nature of the effects with MDMA

00:16:11.180 | aren't the full-on psychedelic.

00:16:14.500 | It's not the full journey.

00:16:16.540 | So it's sort of a psychedelic with rose-colored glasses on,

00:16:20.780 | a psychedelic that's more of,

00:16:22.860 | it's been called more of a heart trip than a head trip.

00:16:25.420 | The nature of reality doesn't unravel

00:16:28.760 | as frequently as it does with classic psychedelics.

00:16:32.380 | - But you're able to more directly sense your environment.

00:16:35.300 | So your perception system still works.

00:16:37.020 | It's not completely detached from reality with MDMA.

00:16:40.340 | - That's true, relatively speaking.

00:16:41.880 | That said, at most doses of classic psychedelics,

00:16:45.740 | you still have a tether to reality.

00:16:48.580 | Changes a little bit when you're talking about smoking DMT

00:16:50.900 | or smoking 5-methoxy DMT,

00:16:54.180 | which are some interesting examples

00:16:56.300 | we could talk more about.

00:16:57.540 | But with MDMA, for example,

00:17:02.540 | it's very rare to have what's called an ego loss experience

00:17:07.660 | or a sense of transcendental unity,

00:17:10.800 | where one really seemingly loses

00:17:15.380 | the psychological construct of the self.

00:17:18.100 | But MDMA, it's very common for people to have this,

00:17:24.180 | they still are perceiving themselves as a self,

00:17:26.780 | but it's common for them to have this warmth,

00:17:30.260 | this empathy for humanity

00:17:32.340 | and for their friends and loved ones.

00:17:34.180 | So it's more of,

00:17:35.380 | and you see those effects under the classic psychedelics,

00:17:38.700 | but that's a subset of what the classic psychedelics do.

00:17:41.540 | So I see MDMA in terms of its subjective effects,

00:17:44.420 | is if you think about Venn diagrams,

00:17:47.580 | it's sort of MDMA is all within the classic psychedelics.

00:17:50.540 | So everything that you see on a particular MDMA session,

00:17:54.260 | sometimes a psilocybin session looks just like that.

00:17:58.180 | But then sometimes it's completely different

00:17:59.940 | with psilocybin, it's a little more narrowed

00:18:02.760 | in terms of the variability with MDMA.

00:18:05.180 | - Is there something general to say

00:18:06.680 | about what the psychedelics do to the human mind?

00:18:11.540 | You mentioned kind of an ego loss experience

00:18:14.500 | in the space of Venn diagrams,

00:18:16.580 | if we're to like draw a big circle,

00:18:20.060 | what can we say about that big circle?

00:18:22.100 | - In terms of people's report of subjective experience,

00:18:28.540 | probably one of the most general things we can say

00:18:31.740 | is that it expands that range.

00:18:35.140 | So many people come out of these sessions

00:18:38.280 | saying that they didn't know it was possible

00:18:41.780 | to have an experience like that.

00:18:44.100 | - So there's an emphasis on the subjective experience

00:18:47.100 | that is there words that people put to it

00:18:52.100 | that capture that experience

00:18:55.060 | or is it something that just has to be experienced?

00:19:00.020 | - Yeah, people like--

00:19:01.980 | - As a researcher, that's an interesting question

00:19:03.660 | because you have to kind of measure the effects of this

00:19:08.660 | and how do you convert that into numbers?

00:19:13.140 | - Right.

00:19:13.980 | - That's the ultimate challenge.

00:19:15.860 | Is that possible to one, convert it into words

00:19:19.780 | and the second, convert the words into numbers somehow?

00:19:22.300 | - So we do a lot of that with questionnaires,

00:19:25.140 | some of which are very psychometrically validated,

00:19:28.060 | so lots of numbers have been crunched on them.

00:19:30.900 | And there's always a limitation with questionnaires.

00:19:33.560 | I mean, subjective effects are subjective effects.

00:19:35.580 | Ultimately, it's what the person is reporting

00:19:38.820 | and that doesn't necessarily point towards a ground truth.

00:19:45.580 | So for example, if someone says that they felt like

00:19:47.700 | they touched another dimension

00:19:48.900 | or they felt like they sensed the reality of God

00:19:52.580 | or if they, I mean, just you name it,

00:19:57.220 | people's ontological views can sometimes shift.

00:20:01.220 | I think that's more about where they're coming from

00:20:03.140 | and I don't think it's the quintessential way

00:20:05.180 | in which they work.

00:20:06.020 | There's plenty of people that hold on

00:20:06.900 | to a completely naturalistic viewpoint

00:20:09.620 | and have profound and helpful experiences

00:20:14.900 | with these compounds,

00:20:16.820 | but the subjective effects can be so broad

00:20:20.740 | that for some people, it shifts their philosophical viewpoint

00:20:25.740 | more towards idealism, more towards thinking of

00:20:30.140 | that the nature of reality might be more about consciousness

00:20:35.140 | than about material.

00:20:38.180 | That's a domain I'm very interested in.

00:20:40.300 | Right now, we have essentially zero to say about that

00:20:43.660 | in terms of validating those types of claims,

00:20:46.140 | but it's even interesting just to see what people say

00:20:48.260 | along those lines.

00:20:49.260 | - So you're interested in saying like,

00:20:50.820 | can we more rigorously study this process of expansion?

00:20:54.580 | Like, what do we mean by this expansion of your sense

00:20:58.980 | of what is possible in the experiences in this world?

00:21:02.900 | - Right, as much as what we can say about that

00:21:05.420 | through naturalistic psychology.

00:21:07.780 | Especially as much as we can root it

00:21:09.540 | to solid psychological constructs

00:21:13.540 | and solid neuroscientific constructs.

00:21:16.180 | - And I wonder what the impact is of the language

00:21:18.900 | that you bring to the table.

00:21:20.500 | So you mentioned about God or, speaking of God,

00:21:25.060 | a lot of people are really interested

00:21:26.460 | of theoretical physics these days at a very surface level,

00:21:29.420 | and you can bring the language of physics, right?

00:21:31.940 | You can talk about quantum mechanics.

00:21:33.940 | You can talk about general relativity

00:21:36.540 | and curvature of space-time,

00:21:38.500 | and using just that language

00:21:40.500 | without a deep technical understanding of it

00:21:43.260 | to somehow start thinking like,

00:21:45.660 | sort of visualizing atoms in your head

00:21:48.020 | and somehow through that process,

00:21:50.540 | because you have the language,

00:21:51.860 | using that language to kinda dissolve the ego,

00:21:55.260 | like realize that we're just all little bits

00:21:58.900 | of physical objects that behave in mysterious ways.

00:22:02.820 | And so that has to do with the language.

00:22:04.780 | Like if you read a Sean Carroll book or something recently,

00:22:07.980 | it seems like it has a huge influence

00:22:09.820 | on the way you might experience,

00:22:13.700 | might perceive the world and might experience

00:22:16.100 | the alteration that psychedelics brings

00:22:19.500 | to your perception system.

00:22:23.260 | So I wonder, like, the language you bring to the table,

00:22:25.980 | how that affects the journey you go on with the psychedelics.

00:22:30.420 | - I think very much so.

00:22:32.740 | And I think there's, I'm a little concerned

00:22:34.860 | some of the science is going a little too far

00:22:36.700 | in the direction of around the edges,

00:22:40.500 | speaking about changing beliefs in this sense or that sense

00:22:45.500 | about particular, in particular domains.

00:22:48.740 | And I think what really what,

00:22:50.620 | a lot of what's going on is what you just discussed.

00:22:53.660 | It's the priors coming into it.

00:22:56.820 | So if you've been reading a lot of physics,

00:23:00.940 | then you might bring up like space-time

00:23:05.820 | and interpret the experience in that sense.

00:23:08.100 | I mean, it's not uncommon for people come out

00:23:09.980 | talking about visions of the,

00:23:11.420 | it's not the most typical thing,

00:23:13.500 | but it's come up in sessions I've guided,

00:23:16.180 | the Big Bang and the, you know,

00:23:19.500 | this sort of nature of reality.

00:23:20.980 | I think probably the best way to think

00:23:23.900 | about these experiences is that,

00:23:26.460 | and the best evidence,

00:23:27.500 | even though we're in our infancy and understanding it,

00:23:30.500 | they really tap into more general psychological mechanisms.

00:23:34.740 | I think one of the best arguments is

00:23:36.500 | they reduce the influence of our priors,

00:23:41.380 | of what we bring into the,

00:23:44.340 | all of the assumptions that we all,

00:23:45.900 | that we're essentially, especially as adults,

00:23:48.020 | we're riding on top of heuristic after heuristic

00:23:50.380 | to get through life.

00:23:51.900 | And you need to do that.

00:23:53.300 | And that's a good thing.

00:23:54.380 | And that's extremely efficient.

00:23:55.820 | And evolution has shaped that,

00:23:57.700 | but that comes at an expense.

00:23:59.780 | And it seems that these experiences

00:24:04.780 | will allow someone greater mental flexibility and openness.

00:24:09.860 | And so one can be both less influenced

00:24:16.940 | by their prior assumptions,

00:24:18.940 | but still nonetheless,

00:24:21.180 | the nature of the experience can be influenced

00:24:23.340 | by what they've been exposed to in the world.

00:24:25.500 | And sometimes they can get it in a deeper way.

00:24:28.480 | Like maybe they've read,

00:24:29.320 | I mean, I had a philosophy professor one time

00:24:31.580 | as a participant in a high-dose psilocybin study.

00:24:34.980 | And he's like, I remember him saying,

00:24:37.100 | "My God, it's like Hegel's opposites defining each other.

00:24:40.420 | "Like, I get it.

00:24:41.540 | "I've taught this thing for years and years and years.

00:24:44.540 | "Like, I get it now."

00:24:46.420 | And so like that, you know,

00:24:48.100 | and even at the psychological, emotional level,

00:24:51.500 | like the cancer patients we worked with,

00:24:54.700 | you know, they told themselves a million times

00:24:56.300 | over the people trying to quit smoking,

00:24:57.620 | "I need to quit smoking.

00:24:58.620 | "Oh, I'm ruining my life with this cancer.

00:25:00.700 | "I'm still healthy.

00:25:01.540 | "I should be getting out.

00:25:02.360 | "I'm letting this thing defeat me."

00:25:03.680 | It's like, yeah, you told yourself that in your head,

00:25:05.260 | but sometimes they had these experiences

00:25:07.820 | and they kind of feel it in their heart.

00:25:10.180 | Like they really get it.

00:25:11.940 | - So in some sense that you bring some prize to the table,

00:25:16.940 | but psychedelics allow you to acknowledge them

00:25:22.060 | and then throw them away.

00:25:23.340 | So like one popular terminology around this

00:25:26.720 | in the engineering space is first principles thinking

00:25:29.800 | that Elon Musk, for example, espouses a lot.

00:25:33.860 | Let me ask a fun question

00:25:35.100 | before we return to a more serious discussion.

00:25:38.400 | With Elon Musk as an example,

00:25:42.160 | but it could be just engineers in general.

00:25:45.140 | Do you think there's a use for psychedelics

00:25:48.560 | to take a journey of rigorous first principles thinking?

00:25:53.560 | So like throwing away,

00:25:55.660 | we're not talking about throwing away assumptions

00:25:58.400 | about the nature of reality in terms of like our philosophy

00:26:02.120 | of the way we live day-to-day life,

00:26:04.060 | but we're talking about like how to build a better rocket

00:26:08.240 | or how to build a better car

00:26:09.960 | or how to build a better social network

00:26:12.360 | or all those kinds of things, engineering questions.

00:26:15.040 | - I absolutely think there's huge potential there.

00:26:17.720 | And there was some research in the late '60s, early '70s

00:26:22.840 | that it was very early and not very rigorous

00:26:26.020 | in terms of methodology,

00:26:28.100 | but it was consistent with the,

00:26:31.340 | I mean, there's just countless anecdotes of folks.

00:26:33.960 | I mean, people have argued that just Silicon Valley

00:26:37.140 | was largely influenced by psychedelic experience.

00:26:40.740 | I remember the, I think the person that came up

00:26:43.780 | with the concept of freeware or shareware,

00:26:46.260 | it's like it kind of was generated out of

00:26:50.460 | or influenced by psychedelic experience.

00:26:53.720 | So to this, I think there's incredible potential there

00:26:56.340 | and we know really next,

00:26:59.400 | there's no rigorous research on that, but.

00:27:03.180 | - Is there anecdotal stuff like with Steve Jobs?

00:27:05.700 | I think there's stories, right?

00:27:07.520 | In your exploration of that,

00:27:09.040 | is there something a little bit more than just stories?

00:27:12.680 | Is there like a little bit more of a solid data points,

00:27:16.440 | even if they're just experiential like anecdotes,

00:27:20.820 | is there something that you draw inspiration from

00:27:22.940 | like in your intuition?

00:27:24.340 | 'Cause we'll talk about,

00:27:25.580 | you're trying to construct studies

00:27:27.220 | that are more rigorous around these questions,

00:27:29.420 | but is there something you draw inspiration from,

00:27:31.660 | from the past, from the '80s and the '90s

00:27:34.220 | and Silicon Valley, that kind of space?

00:27:37.200 | Or is it just like you have a sense

00:27:40.380 | based on everything you've learned

00:27:42.560 | and these kind of loose stories

00:27:44.600 | that there's something worth digging at?

00:27:47.460 | - I am influenced by the, gosh,

00:27:50.140 | the just incredible number of anecdotes surrounding these.

00:27:55.140 | I mean,

00:27:56.260 | Carey Mullis, he invented PCR.

00:28:02.140 | I mean, absolutely revolutionized biological sciences.

00:28:05.900 | He says he wouldn't have won the Nobel Prize for him

00:28:08.380 | and said he wouldn't have come up with that

00:28:09.780 | had he not had psychedelic experiences.

00:28:14.300 | Now he's an interesting character.

00:28:15.540 | People should read his autobiography

00:28:17.080 | 'cause you could point to other things he was into.

00:28:19.620 | But I think that speaks to the casting your nets wide

00:28:22.660 | and this mental flex,

00:28:23.740 | more of these general mechanisms

00:28:27.320 | where sometimes if you cast your nets really wide

00:28:29.700 | and it's gonna depend on the person and their influences,

00:28:32.220 | but sometimes you come up with false positives.

00:28:35.220 | You connect the dots

00:28:39.040 | where maybe you shouldn't have connected those dots.

00:28:41.220 | But I think that can be constrained

00:28:44.700 | and so much of our,

00:28:47.200 | not only our personal psychological suffering,

00:28:49.180 | but our limitations academically

00:28:53.160 | and in terms of technology

00:28:55.620 | are because of the self-imposed limitations and heuristics,

00:29:00.620 | these entrenched ways of thinking.

00:29:03.620 | Like those examples throughout the history of science

00:29:06.460 | where someone has come up with a rat,

00:29:08.980 | the paradigm, Kuhn's paradigm shifts.

00:29:11.620 | It's like, here's something completely different.

00:29:14.540 | This doesn't make sense by any of the previous models

00:29:17.140 | and we need more of those.

00:29:20.540 | And then you need the right balance between that

00:29:22.620 | because so many of the novel, crazy ideas are just bunk.

00:29:26.920 | That's what science is about,

00:29:29.260 | separating them from the valid paradigm shifting ideas.

00:29:33.860 | But we need more paradigm shifting ideas in a big way.

00:29:38.980 | And I think you could argue that we've,

00:29:42.100 | because of the structure of academia and science

00:29:45.140 | in modern times, it heavily biases against those.

00:29:49.100 | - Right, there's all kinds of mechanisms in our human nature

00:29:52.660 | that resist paradigm shift quite sort of obviously.

00:29:56.980 | So, and psychedelics, there could be a lot of other tools,

00:30:01.060 | but it seems like psychedelics could be one set of tools

00:30:04.780 | that encourage paradigm shifting thinking.

00:30:08.980 | So like the first principles kind of thinking.

00:30:11.380 | So as a kind of, you're at the forefront of research here.

00:30:16.140 | There's just kind of anecdotal stories.

00:30:18.780 | There's early studies.

00:30:21.300 | There's a sense that we don't understand very much,

00:30:24.500 | but there's a lot of depth here.

00:30:26.760 | How do we get from there to where Elon and I can regularly,

00:30:31.460 | like I wake up every morning, I have deep work sessions

00:30:35.020 | where it's well understood, like what dose to take.

00:30:40.020 | Like if I want to explore something where it's all legal,

00:30:46.000 | where it's all understood and safe, all that kind of stuff.

00:30:49.020 | How do we get from where we are today to there?

00:30:53.540 | Not speaking in terms of legality in the sense like

00:30:57.220 | policymaking, all that like laws and stuff.

00:30:59.900 | Meaning like, how do we scientifically understand this stuff

00:31:02.940 | well enough to get to a place where I can just take it

00:31:06.540 | safely in order to expand my thinking,

00:31:10.800 | like this kind of first principles thinking,

00:31:12.540 | which I'm in my personal life currently doing.

00:31:14.780 | Like how do I revolutionize particular several things?

00:31:18.420 | Like it seems like the only tools I have right now,

00:31:22.300 | it's just, just, but my mind going,

00:31:27.040 | doing the first principles, like, wait, wait, wait.

00:31:29.420 | Okay, why has this been done this way?

00:31:31.760 | Can we do completely differently?

00:31:33.780 | It seems like I'm still tethered to the priors

00:31:37.500 | that I bring to the table and I keep trying

00:31:39.820 | to untether myself.

00:31:40.860 | Maybe there's tools that can systematically

00:31:43.140 | help me untether.

00:31:44.600 | - Yeah, well, we need experiments, you know,

00:31:47.260 | and that's tied to kind of the policy level stuff.

00:31:51.980 | And I should be clear, I would never encourage anyone

00:31:54.320 | to do anything illicitly, but yeah, you know,

00:31:59.900 | in the future we could see these, you know,

00:32:02.800 | compounds used for technical and scientific innovation.

00:32:07.800 | What we need are studies that are digging into that.

00:32:11.680 | Right now, most of what the funding,

00:32:13.740 | which is largely from philanthropy,

00:32:17.040 | not from the government, largely what it's for

00:32:20.040 | is treatment of mental disorders like addiction

00:32:24.040 | and depression, et cetera.

00:32:27.020 | But we need studies.

00:32:28.240 | You know, one of the early initial stabs

00:32:32.400 | on this question decades ago was they took some architects

00:32:36.380 | and engineers and said, what problems have you

00:32:39.940 | been working on?

00:32:40.860 | Where have you been stuck for months,

00:32:42.460 | like working on this damn thing

00:32:43.740 | and you're not getting anywhere?

00:32:45.040 | You're like, your head's butting up against the wall.

00:32:47.420 | It's like, come in here, take,

00:32:49.180 | and I think it was 100 micrograms of LSD.

00:32:51.140 | So not a big session.

00:32:52.740 | And a little bit different model

00:32:54.260 | where they were actually working.

00:32:55.260 | It was a moderate enough dose where they could work

00:32:57.140 | on the problem during the session.

00:32:59.940 | I think probably, I'm an empiricist,

00:33:04.420 | so I'd like to see all the studies done.

00:33:06.300 | But the first thing I would do is a really high dose session

00:33:09.460 | where you're not necessarily in front of your computer,

00:33:13.100 | which you can't really do on a really high dose.

00:33:16.020 | - And then the work has been talked about,

00:33:19.420 | you take a really high dose, you take a journey,

00:33:21.760 | and then the breakthroughs come from when you return

00:33:25.220 | from the journey and like integrate, quote unquote,

00:33:28.100 | that experience.

00:33:29.060 | - I think that's where all the,

00:33:30.660 | again, we're babies at this point,

00:33:33.660 | but my gut tells me, yeah,

00:33:35.460 | that it's the so-called integration, the aftermath.

00:33:38.260 | We know that there's some different forms

00:33:40.060 | of neuroplasticity that are unfolding

00:33:41.700 | in the days following a psychedelic, at least in animals.

00:33:44.780 | Probably going on humans,

00:33:45.780 | we don't know if that's related to the therapeutic effects.

00:33:48.300 | My gut tells me it is,

00:33:50.620 | although it's only part of the story.

00:33:52.940 | But we need big studies where we compare people,

00:33:55.660 | like let's get a hundred people like that,

00:33:57.660 | scientists that are working on a problem,

00:34:00.380 | and then randomize them too.

00:34:02.100 | And then I think you need a even more credible,

00:34:07.020 | active controls or active placebo conditions

00:34:10.100 | to kind of tease this out.

00:34:12.300 | And then also in conjunction with that,

00:34:14.900 | and you can do this in the same study,

00:34:16.260 | you wanna combine that with more rigorous

00:34:19.140 | sort of experimental models

00:34:22.900 | where we actually get there are problem solving tasks

00:34:25.260 | that we know, for example,

00:34:26.180 | that you tend to do better on

00:34:27.700 | after you've gotten a good night's sleep versus not.

00:34:30.180 | And my sense is there's a relationship there.

00:34:33.860 | The people go back to first principles,

00:34:36.780 | questioning those first principles they're operating under

00:34:39.220 | and getting away from their priors

00:34:43.100 | in terms of creative problem solving.

00:34:45.380 | And so you, I think, wrap those things

00:34:47.460 | and you could speak a little more rigorously about those.

00:34:50.180 | 'Cause ultimately, if everyone's bringing their own problem,

00:34:53.180 | that's more on the face valid side,

00:34:57.060 | but you can't dig in as much

00:34:58.780 | and get as much experimental power

00:35:01.300 | and speak to the mechanisms as you can

00:35:03.680 | with having everyone do the same sort of canned

00:35:06.820 | problem solving task.

00:35:08.840 | - So we've been speaking about psychedelics generally.

00:35:10.980 | Is there one you find from the scientific perspective

00:35:14.060 | or maybe even philosophical perspective

00:35:16.300 | that's the most fascinating to study?

00:35:18.580 | - Therapeutically, I'm most interested in psilocybin and LSD

00:35:22.340 | and I think we need to do a lot more with LSD

00:35:24.380 | because it's mainly been psilocybin in the modern era.

00:35:27.060 | I've recently gotten a grant

00:35:28.540 | from the Hefter Research Institute to do an LSD study.

00:35:32.260 | So I haven't started it yet,

00:35:33.440 | but I'm going through the paperwork and everything.

00:35:36.340 | - Therapeutic meaning there's some issue

00:35:38.980 | and you're trying to treat that issue.

00:35:40.380 | - Right, right.

00:35:41.740 | In terms of just like what's the most fascinating,

00:35:45.660 | understanding the nature of these experiences

00:35:47.660 | if you really wanna like wrap your head

00:35:49.200 | around what's going on when someone has

00:35:51.860 | a completely altered sense of reality and sense of self.

00:35:55.720 | There I think you're talking about the high dose,

00:36:00.720 | either smoked, vaporized or intravenous injection,

00:36:04.000 | which all kind of, they're very similar pharmacologically

00:36:07.820 | of DMT and 5-methoxy DMT.

00:36:12.200 | This is like when people, this is what,

00:36:14.220 | I don't know if you're familiar with Terrence McKinney,

00:36:16.260 | he would talk a lot about smoking DMT.

00:36:17.860 | Joe Rogan has talked a lot about that.

00:36:20.740 | People will say that,

00:36:21.620 | and there's a close relative called 5-methoxy DMT.

00:36:24.460 | Most people who know the terrain will say

00:36:26.460 | that's an order of magnitude or orders of magnitude beyond,

00:36:31.460 | I mean, anything one could get

00:36:33.580 | from even a high dose of psilocybin or LSD.

00:36:37.200 | I think it's a question about whether,

00:36:39.500 | you know, how therapeutic.

00:36:40.540 | I think there is a therapeutic potential there,

00:36:42.460 | but it's probably not as sure of a bet

00:36:45.340 | because one goes so far out,

00:36:47.820 | it's almost like they're not contemplating their relationship

00:36:50.780 | and their direction in life.

00:36:51.880 | They are like reality is ripping apart at the seams

00:36:55.700 | and the very nature of the self and of the sense of reality.

00:37:00.700 | And the amazing thing about these compounds,

00:37:05.300 | and same to a lesser degree with oral psilocybin and LSD

00:37:09.540 | is that unlike some other drugs

00:37:12.500 | that really throw you far out there,

00:37:14.840 | you know, anesthetics and even alcohol,

00:37:18.820 | like as reality starts to become different

00:37:21.760 | at higher and higher doses, there's this numbing.

00:37:24.840 | There's this sort of,

00:37:25.940 | there's this ability for the sense of being the center,

00:37:31.580 | having a conscious experience that's memorable

00:37:35.180 | that is maintained

00:37:37.400 | throughout these classic psychedelic experiences.

00:37:40.160 | Like one can go as far, so far out

00:37:43.760 | while still

00:37:44.720 | being aware of the experience

00:37:50.520 | and remembering the experience.

00:37:52.160 | - Interesting, so being able to carry something back.

00:37:55.480 | - Right.

00:37:56.720 | - Can you dig in a little deeper?

00:37:58.600 | Like what is DMT?

00:38:01.340 | How long is the trip usually?

00:38:04.020 | Like how much do we understand about it?

00:38:06.380 | Is there something interesting to say

00:38:08.800 | about just the nature of the experience

00:38:12.960 | and what we understand about it?

00:38:15.400 | - One of the common methods for people to use it

00:38:17.720 | is to smoke it or vaporize it.

00:38:19.840 | And it usually takes,

00:38:21.720 | this is a pretty good kind of description

00:38:23.440 | of what it might feel like on the ground.

00:38:25.480 | The caveat is it's a completely insufficient description

00:38:31.000 | and someone's gonna be listening.

00:38:33.040 | Who has done this, it's like nothing you could say

00:38:34.920 | is gonna come close.

00:38:36.160 | But it'll take about three big hits, inhalations

00:38:40.580 | in order to have what people call a breakthrough dose.

00:38:43.340 | And there's no great definition of that,

00:38:48.100 | but basically meaning moving away from,

00:38:52.600 | not just having the typical psilocybin or LSD experience

00:38:56.280 | where like things are radically different,

00:38:58.340 | but you're still basically a person in this reality

00:39:02.480 | to go in somewhere else.

00:39:04.780 | And so that'll typically take like three hits.

00:39:07.660 | And this stuff comes on like a freight train.

00:39:10.580 | So one takes a hit and around the time

00:39:14.380 | of the first exhalation,

00:39:16.220 | so we're talking about a few seconds in,

00:39:18.300 | or maybe just sometime between the first and the second hit,

00:39:22.580 | it'll start to come on.

00:39:23.900 | And they're already up to, let's say,

00:39:27.020 | what they might get from a 30 milligram

00:39:31.660 | or 300 microgram LSD trip, a big trip.

00:39:35.380 | They're already there at the second hit,

00:39:38.660 | but they're going, their consciousness is geared,

00:39:40.820 | this is like acceleration, not speed,

00:39:43.460 | to speak of physics, okay?

00:39:44.700 | It's like those receptors are getting filled like that

00:39:47.900 | and they're going from zero to 60 in like Tesla time.

00:39:51.620 | And at the second hit, again,

00:39:54.780 | they're at maybe the strongest psychedelic experience

00:39:57.780 | they've ever had.

00:39:59.100 | And then if they can take that third hit,

00:40:01.860 | and some people can't,

00:40:03.060 | they're propelled into this other reality.

00:40:11.300 | And the nature of that other reality will differ

00:40:14.500 | depending on who you ask,

00:40:15.780 | but folks will often talk about,

00:40:19.220 | and we've done some survey research on this,

00:40:22.340 | entities of different types, elves tend to pop up.

00:40:27.700 | The caveat is that I strongly presume

00:40:30.220 | all of this is culturally influenced,

00:40:32.980 | but thinking more about the psychology and the neuroscience,

00:40:36.700 | there is probably something fundamental,

00:40:39.060 | like for someone that might be colored as elves,

00:40:42.260 | others that might be colored as,

00:40:44.460 | Terrence McKenna called them self-dribbling basketballs,

00:40:48.900 | for someone else, it might be little animals,

00:40:51.300 | or someone else, it might be aliens.

00:40:53.100 | I think that probably is dependent on who they are

00:40:57.100 | and what they've been exposed to,

00:40:58.100 | but just the fact that one has this sense

00:41:00.900 | that they're surrounded by autonomous entities.

00:41:04.740 | - Right, intelligent, autonomous entities.

00:41:06.740 | - Right, and people come back with stories

00:41:08.620 | that are just astonishing.

00:41:11.740 | There's communication between these entities,

00:41:14.780 | and often they're telling them things

00:41:18.460 | that the person says are self-validating,

00:41:23.260 | but it seems like it's impossible.

00:41:25.620 | It really seems like, and again,

00:41:27.700 | this is what people say oftentimes,

00:41:30.620 | that it really is like downloading some intelligence

00:41:35.260 | from a higher dimension,

00:41:36.500 | or whatever metaphor you wanna use.

00:41:39.300 | Sometimes these things come up in dreams,

00:41:41.060 | where it's like someone is exposed to something that,

00:41:43.660 | I've had this in a dream,

00:41:45.740 | where it seems like what they are being exposed to

00:41:48.620 | is physically impossible,

00:41:51.700 | but yet at the same time, self-validating.

00:41:55.180 | It seems true,

00:41:56.020 | like that they really are figuring something out.

00:41:57.900 | Of course, the challenge is to say something

00:41:59.900 | in concrete terms after the experience

00:42:02.700 | that where you could verify that in any way,

00:42:07.020 | and I'm not familiar of any examples of that.

00:42:10.940 | - Well, there's a sense in which,

00:42:13.660 | I suppose the experience is like,

00:42:15.980 | you're a limited cognitive creature

00:42:22.380 | that knows very little about the world,

00:42:24.300 | and here's a chance to communicate with much wiser entities

00:42:29.220 | that in a way that you can't possibly understand

00:42:32.260 | are trying to give you hints of deeper truths.

00:42:37.260 | And so there's that kind of sense

00:42:40.540 | that you can take something back,

00:42:42.300 | but you can't,

00:42:43.540 | where our cognition is not capable

00:42:46.500 | to fully grasp the truth,

00:42:48.420 | we'll just get a kind of sense of it,

00:42:50.540 | and somehow that process is mind-expanding,

00:42:53.900 | that there's a greater truth out there.

00:42:56.180 | - Right.

00:42:57.020 | - That seems like what,

00:42:58.740 | from the people I've heard talk about,

00:43:01.140 | that seems to be what it is,

00:43:04.140 | and that's so fascinating that there's,

00:43:06.100 | there's fundamentally to this whole thing

00:43:08.980 | is a communication between an entity

00:43:11.100 | that is other than yourself, entities.

00:43:15.420 | So it's not just like a visual experience,

00:43:17.820 | like you're floating through the world,

00:43:21.100 | is there's other beings there,

00:43:23.380 | which is kind of,

00:43:24.220 | I don't know,

00:43:26.340 | I don't know what to sort of,

00:43:27.980 | from a person who likes Freud and Carl Jung,

00:43:30.700 | I don't know what to think about that.

00:43:32.180 | That being, of course,

00:43:33.580 | from one perspective is just you looking in the mirror,

00:43:36.660 | but it could also be from another perspective,

00:43:39.100 | like actually talking to other beings.

00:43:41.860 | - Yeah, and you mentioned Jung,

00:43:43.260 | and I think that's,

00:43:44.340 | he's particularly interesting,

00:43:45.660 | and it kind of points to something I was

00:43:47.740 | thinking about saying is that,

00:43:50.460 | I think what might be going on natural,

00:43:52.500 | from a naturalistic perspective,

00:43:55.060 | so regardless, whether or not there are,

00:43:58.660 | it doesn't depend on autonomous entities out there,

00:44:01.660 | what might be happening is that just

00:44:04.460 | the associative net,

00:44:07.460 | the level of learning,

00:44:10.020 | the comprehension might be so

00:44:16.060 | beyond what someone is used to

00:44:18.220 | that the only way for the nervous system,

00:44:21.500 | for the aware sense of self to orient towards it

00:44:26.500 | is all by metaphor.

00:44:28.660 | And so I do think,

00:44:30.300 | when we get into these realms,

00:44:31.820 | as a strong empiricist,

00:44:34.380 | I think we always gotta be careful

00:44:35.940 | and be as grounded as possible,

00:44:37.500 | but I'm also willing to speculate

00:44:40.180 | and sort of cast the nets wide with caveat,

00:44:43.220 | but I think of things like archetypes,

00:44:45.500 | and it's plausible that there are certain stories,

00:44:49.780 | there are certain,

00:44:50.740 | we've gone through millions of years of evolution,

00:44:53.820 | it may be that we have certain

00:44:55.380 | characters and stories that are sort of,

00:45:00.580 | that our central nervous system is sort of wired to tend to--

00:45:05.060 | - Yeah, those stories, we carry those stories in us.

00:45:07.780 | - Right. - And this unlocks them

00:45:09.020 | in a certain kind of way.

00:45:10.500 | - And we think about stories,

00:45:11.940 | like our sense of self is basically,

00:45:13.460 | narrative self is a story,

00:45:15.140 | and we think about the world of stories.

00:45:18.740 | This is why metaphors are always more powerful than,

00:45:21.300 | sort of laying out all the details all the time,

00:45:25.540 | speaking in parables,

00:45:26.740 | it's like if you really get some,

00:45:28.500 | this is why, as much as I hate it,

00:45:31.140 | if you're presenting to Congress or something,

00:45:33.340 | and you have all the best data in the world,

00:45:36.820 | it's not as powerful as that one anecdote

00:45:39.300 | as the mom dying of cancer

00:45:42.460 | that had the psilocybin session

00:45:44.620 | and it transformed her life.

00:45:46.580 | That's a story, that's meaningful.

00:45:48.540 | And so when this kind of unimaginable kind of change

00:45:53.300 | and experience happens with DMT ingestion,

00:45:58.300 | these stories of entities, they might be that,

00:46:04.780 | stories that are constructed that is the closest,

00:46:08.380 | which is not to say the stories aren't real.

00:46:10.020 | I mean, I think we're getting to layers where--

00:46:12.700 | - What is real, man? - It doesn't really, right.

00:46:14.700 | Yeah, yeah. - Yeah.

00:46:15.980 | But it's the closest we can come to making sense out of it

00:46:19.140 | because what we do know about these psychedelics,

00:46:22.300 | one of the levels beyond the receptor

00:46:24.100 | is that the brain is communicating it with itself

00:46:26.420 | in a massively different way.

00:46:28.460 | There's massive communication with areas

00:46:30.500 | that don't normally communicate.

00:46:32.620 | And so I think that comes with both,

00:46:36.940 | it's casting the nets wide.

00:46:38.660 | I think that comes with the insights

00:46:41.060 | and helpful novel ways of thinking.

00:46:42.800 | I do think it comes with false positives.

00:46:45.380 | That could be some of the delusion.

00:46:47.180 | And so when you're so far out there,

00:46:52.260 | like with DMT experience,

00:46:53.780 | like maybe alien is the best way

00:46:58.740 | that the mind can wrap some arms around that.

00:47:02.540 | - So I don't know how much you're familiar with Joe Rogan,

00:47:05.700 | but he does bring up DMT quite a bit.

00:47:08.380 | It's almost a meme.

00:47:09.980 | It is a meme.

00:47:11.220 | Have you ever, what is it?

00:47:12.700 | Have you ever tried DMT?

00:47:14.580 | (laughs)

00:47:16.260 | - I mean, I think he talks about this experience

00:47:18.620 | of having met other entities

00:47:22.300 | and they were mocking him, I think,

00:47:26.540 | if I remember the experience correctly,

00:47:28.680 | like laughing at him and saying F-you, F-you,

00:47:31.180 | or something like that.

00:47:32.740 | I may be misremembering this,

00:47:34.300 | but there was a general mockery.

00:47:37.260 | And what he learned from that experience

00:47:40.260 | is that he shouldn't take himself too seriously.

00:47:42.600 | So it's the dissolution of the ego and so on.

00:47:45.460 | Like, what do you think about that experience?

00:47:48.820 | And maybe if you have more general things

00:47:50.620 | about Joe's infatuation with DMT

00:47:54.620 | and if DMT has that important role to play

00:47:58.700 | in popular culture in general.

00:48:01.980 | - I'm definitely familiar with it.

00:48:03.420 | I remember telling you offline

00:48:04.980 | that the first time I learned who Joe Rogan was,

00:48:09.420 | it was probably 15 years ago.

00:48:11.460 | And I came upon a clip and I realized

00:48:14.200 | there's another person in the world

00:48:15.780 | who's into both DMT and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

00:48:19.020 | And I think both those worlds have grown dramatically since,

00:48:22.220 | and it's probably not such a special club these days.

00:48:24.460 | So he definitely got onto my radar screen quickly.

00:48:29.020 | - You were into both before it was cool.

00:48:31.980 | - Right, I mean, this is all relative

00:48:33.820 | 'cause there's people that were before the late '90s

00:48:36.500 | and early 2000s that were into it

00:48:37.820 | that say you're a Johnny-come-lately.

00:48:39.400 | But yeah, compared to where we're at now.

00:48:42.460 | But yet one of the things I always found fascinating

00:48:44.940 | by Joe's telling of his experiences, I think,

00:48:49.940 | is that they resemble very much

00:48:54.500 | Terrence McKenna's experiences with DMT.

00:48:57.860 | And Joe has talked very much about Terrence McKenna

00:49:01.020 | and his experiences.

00:49:03.260 | If I had to guess, I would guess

00:49:04.660 | that probably just having heard Terrence McKenna

00:49:08.540 | talk about his experiences,

00:49:10.460 | that that influenced the coloring of Joe's experience.

00:49:15.660 | - It's funny how that works.

00:49:17.260 | 'Cause I mean, that's why McKenna hasn't...

00:49:20.000 | I mean, poets and great orators give us the words

00:49:25.000 | to then start to describe our experiences

00:49:27.580 | 'cause our words are limited, our language is limited.

00:49:30.640 | And it's always nice to get some kind of nice poetry

00:49:33.260 | into the mix to allow us to put words to it.

00:49:36.400 | - Right.

00:49:37.520 | But I also see some elements

00:49:40.060 | that seem to relate to Joe's psychology,

00:49:43.220 | just from what I've seen of him,

00:49:45.340 | from hours of watching him on his podcast,

00:49:47.940 | is that he's a self-critical guy.

00:49:52.380 | And I think with all his positive...

00:49:53.980 | Ben, I'm always struck being a behavioral pharmacologist

00:49:56.780 | and no one else really says it about cannabis.

00:49:59.220 | I'll get back to the DMT thing about,

00:50:01.140 | he likes the kind of the paranoid side of things.

00:50:03.340 | He's like, that's you radically examining yourself.

00:50:05.860 | It's like, that's not just a bad thing.

00:50:07.560 | That's you need to look hard at yourself

00:50:09.980 | and something's making you uncomfortable, dig into that.

00:50:13.100 | And it's sort of along the lines of Goggins with exercise.

00:50:16.880 | And it's like, yeah, learning experiences

00:50:20.020 | aren't supposed to be easy.

00:50:22.020 | Take advantage of these uncomfortable experiences.

00:50:24.820 | It's why we call in our research in a safe context,

00:50:28.040 | with psychedelics, they're not bad trips,

00:50:30.240 | they're challenging experiences.

00:50:31.840 | - Nice, yes.

00:50:32.680 | Yeah, it's fascinating, just as a tiny tangent.

00:50:35.980 | It's always cool for me to hear him talk about marijuana,

00:50:40.780 | like weed, as the paranoia, the anxiety,

00:50:43.980 | or whatever that you experience

00:50:46.420 | as actually the fuel for the experience.

00:50:50.580 | Like I think he talks about smoking weed when he's writing.

00:50:54.420 | That's inspiring to me

00:50:55.500 | because then you can't possibly have a bad experience.

00:50:59.460 | I'm a huge fan of that.

00:51:00.500 | Like every experience is good.

00:51:02.400 | - Right, which is very Goggins.

00:51:04.780 | - Yeah, yeah, is it bad?

00:51:06.540 | Okay, all right, great.

00:51:08.300 | - Well, see, Goggins is one side of that.

00:51:09.980 | He wants it bad.

00:51:11.740 | Like he wants the experience to be challenging always.

00:51:14.840 | But I mean, like both are good.

00:51:17.500 | Like the few times I've taken mushrooms,

00:51:21.700 | the experience was like, everything was beautiful.

00:51:26.340 | There's zero challenging aspect to it.

00:51:29.900 | It was just like, the world is beautiful.

00:51:32.020 | And it gave me this deep appreciation of the world,

00:51:35.100 | I would say.

00:51:36.420 | So like that's amazing.

00:51:37.820 | But also ones that challenge you are also amazing,

00:51:41.220 | like all the times I drink vodka.

00:51:42.820 | (both laughing)

00:51:44.340 | But that's another, let's not.

00:51:45.960 | So back to DMT.

00:51:47.400 | - Yeah, Joe's treating cannabis as a psychedelic,

00:51:52.240 | which is something that I'd say,

00:51:53.260 | like a lot of people treat it more like Xanax,

00:51:56.660 | or like beer, or vodka.

00:52:00.380 | But he's really trying to delve into those,

00:52:03.420 | it's been called a minor psychedelic.

00:52:05.820 | So with DMT, as you brought up,

00:52:08.300 | it's like the entity's mocking him.

00:52:10.820 | And it's like, you're not, I mean,

00:52:11.980 | this reminds me of him describing his,

00:52:15.860 | writing his, or just his entire method of comedy.

00:52:20.860 | It's like, watch the tape of yourself.

00:52:24.080 | Don't just ignore it.

00:52:25.140 | Like, that's where I screwed up.

00:52:27.300 | That's where I need to do better.

00:52:28.580 | This like sort of radical self-examination,

00:52:31.760 | which I think our society is kind of getting away from,

00:52:34.060 | 'cause like, all the children win trophies type of thing.

00:52:36.980 | You know, it's like, no, no, don't go overboard,

00:52:39.720 | but like recognize when you've messed up.

00:52:42.300 | And so like, that's a big part of the psychedelic experience.

00:52:45.800 | Like people come out sometimes saying,

00:52:48.900 | my God, I need to say sorry to my mom.

00:52:51.140 | - Yeah.

00:52:51.980 | - You know, like, it's so obvious.

00:52:54.200 | Like, or whatever, you know, interpersonal issue,

00:52:57.860 | or like, my God, I don't, I'm not pulling enough weight

00:53:00.420 | around the house and helping my wife.

00:53:02.780 | And you know, these things that are just obvious to them,

00:53:07.140 | the self-criticism that can be a very positive thing

00:53:09.820 | if you act on it.

00:53:10.840 | - You've mentioned addiction.

00:53:13.600 | Maybe we could take a little bit detour

00:53:15.260 | and into a darker aspect of things,

00:53:18.180 | or not even darker, it's just an important aspect of things.

00:53:22.260 | What's the nature of addiction?

00:53:24.740 | You've mentioned some things within the big umbrella

00:53:28.980 | of psychedelics, maybe usually not addictive,

00:53:32.580 | but maybe MDMA, I think you said,

00:53:35.140 | might have some addictive properties.

00:53:37.180 | But the point is stuff outside of the psychedelics umbrella

00:53:41.060 | can often be highly addictive.

00:53:43.940 | So you've studied addiction from several angles,

00:53:47.360 | one of which is behavioral economics.

00:53:49.820 | What have you understood about addiction?

00:53:53.700 | What is addiction from the biological,

00:53:56.820 | physiological level to the psychological,

00:53:59.140 | to whatever is the interesting way to talk about addiction?

00:54:02.560 | - Yeah, and the lenses that I view addiction through

00:54:05.680 | very much are behavioral economic,

00:54:08.700 | but I also think they converge on,

00:54:11.420 | I think it's beautiful, at the other end of the spectrum,

00:54:13.500 | sort of just a completely humanistic psychology perspective.

00:54:18.500 | And it converges on what people come out of,

00:54:22.340 | you know, 12-step meetings talking about.

00:54:24.700 | - Can you say what is behavioral economics

00:54:27.340 | and what is humanistic psychology?

00:54:29.220 | What do you mean by that?

00:54:31.060 | And more importantly, behavioral economics lens.

00:54:33.820 | What is that?

00:54:34.660 | - So behavioral economics, my definition of it

00:54:37.220 | is the application of economic principles,

00:54:39.540 | mostly microeconomic principles.

00:54:41.600 | So understanding the behavior of individual agents

00:54:46.600 | surrounding commodities in the marketplace,

00:54:51.540 | applying microeconomic types of analyses

00:54:55.540 | to non-economic behavior.

00:54:59.940 | So basically at one point, like psychologists figured out

00:55:03.500 | that there's this whole other discipline

00:55:05.580 | that's been studying behavior,

00:55:06.820 | it just happened to be all focused on monetary behavior,

00:55:09.580 | spending and saving money, et cetera.

00:55:12.440 | But it comes with all of these principles

00:55:14.580 | that can be wildly and fruitfully applied

00:55:17.740 | to understanding behavior.

00:55:18.980 | So for example, I've studied things like

00:55:21.540 | demand curve analysis of drug consumption.

00:55:25.060 | So I look at, for example,

00:55:28.100 | the tobacco, cigarettes, and nicotine products

00:55:31.440 | through the lens of demand curves.

00:55:35.380 | And in other words, at different prices,

00:55:38.380 | if there's different work requirements

00:55:40.740 | for being able to smoke cigarettes,

00:55:43.460 | sort of modeling price.

00:55:45.980 | - Within that price data,

00:55:47.140 | there is some indication of addiction,

00:55:49.500 | how much you, the habits that you form

00:55:52.100 | around these particular drugs.

00:55:54.620 | - It's one important dimension.

00:55:56.380 | So I think a particularly important one there

00:55:58.100 | is elasticity or inelasticity,

00:56:00.500 | two ends of the spectrum.

00:56:02.660 | So that's the price sensitivity.

00:56:05.340 | So for example, you could have something

00:56:07.740 | that's pretty price inelastic, like gasoline.

00:56:12.740 | So the price of gas at times can keep going up

00:56:16.940 | and Americans are just gonna pretty much

00:56:20.460 | buy the same amount of gas,

00:56:21.540 | or maybe the price of gas doubles,

00:56:24.100 | but their consumption only decreases by 10%.

00:56:26.260 | So it's a sub-proportional reduction.

00:56:28.620 | So that's an inelastic.

00:56:29.940 | And that changes, like you push the price up high enough.

00:56:33.220 | I mean, if it was $100 a gallon,

00:56:34.540 | it would eventually turn, the curve would turn

00:56:37.340 | and go downward more drastically and it would be elastic.

00:56:41.420 | But you can apply that to someone,

00:56:44.060 | someone who, a regular cigarette smoker,

00:56:46.940 | who is working for cigarette puffs,

00:56:50.660 | who's gone six hours without smoking.

00:56:52.620 | And you're asking questions like,

00:56:54.540 | yeah, how many times are they willing to pull this knob

00:56:57.580 | in the lab during this three hour session?

00:56:59.300 | I do a lot of work like this in order to earn a cigarette.

00:57:02.420 | How does the content of nicotine in that affect it?

00:57:05.460 | How's the availability of nicotine replacement products

00:57:08.340 | like nicotine gum or e-cigarettes affect those decisions?

00:57:12.460 | So you can, it's a certain lens of,

00:57:14.340 | it's sort of a way to take the kind of the classic

00:57:17.380 | behavioral psychology definition of reinforcement,

00:57:21.900 | which is just basically reward.

00:57:24.300 | How much is this a good thing?

00:57:25.500 | And it kind of breaks that apart

00:57:26.900 | into a multi-dimensional space.

00:57:31.060 | So it's not just the ideas reward or reinforcement

00:57:34.580 | is not unit dimensional.

00:57:36.180 | So for example, you can unpack that with demand curves.

00:57:39.580 | At a cheap price, you might prefer one good to another.

00:57:44.180 | So the classic example is luxury versus necessity.

00:57:47.060 | So diamonds versus toilet paper.

00:57:49.580 | So at those cheap prices,

00:57:51.460 | you can look at something called intensity of demand.

00:57:54.140 | If it was basically as cheap as possible,

00:57:56.260 | or essentially zero, how much would you buy of this good?

00:57:59.980 | But then you keep jacking up the price and you'll see,

00:58:02.840 | so diamonds will look like the better reward

00:58:06.260 | at that low price or intensity of demand side of things.

00:58:10.000 | But as you keep jacking up the price,

00:58:11.420 | you gotta have some toilet paper.

00:58:13.300 | And again, we can get into the whole like bidet thing,

00:58:15.740 | but forget that.

00:58:16.580 | You know, like I know Joe's been pushing that too.

00:58:19.560 | You're gonna hang on and keep buying the toilet paper

00:58:24.020 | to a greater degree than you will the diamonds.

00:58:26.700 | So you'll see a crossing of demand curves.

00:58:28.940 | So what's the better reinforcer?

00:58:30.900 | What's the better reward?

00:58:31.860 | Depends on your price.

00:58:33.660 | And so that's an example of one way to,

00:58:37.260 | and that of look at addiction.

00:58:39.540 | So specifically drug consumption,

00:58:41.940 | which isn't all of addiction,

00:58:43.540 | but it's like in order for something to be addictive,

00:58:46.540 | it has to be a reward.

00:58:48.900 | And it has to compete with other rewards in your life.

00:58:53.900 | And one of the two main aspects of addiction in my view,

00:58:59.260 | and this doesn't map onto how the DSM,

00:59:01.740 | the psychiatry Bible defines addiction,

00:59:04.560 | which I think is largely bunk,

00:59:06.460 | but there's some value to have some common description,

00:59:08.820 | but it's, you know,

00:59:10.980 | how rewarding is it from this multi-dimensional lens?

00:59:15.260 | And specifically, how does that rewarding value compete

00:59:19.820 | with other rewards, other consequences in your life?

00:59:24.820 | So it's not a problem if the use of that substance

00:59:31.020 | is rewarding, you know, okay, yeah,

00:59:32.780 | you like to have a couple of beers every once in a while,

00:59:35.180 | it's like not a problem.

00:59:36.580 | But then you have the alcoholic who is drinking so much

00:59:42.740 | that it tanks their career, it ruins their marriage.

00:59:47.700 | It's in competition with these pro-social aspects

00:59:51.560 | to their life.

00:59:52.400 | - It's all about comparing to the other choices

00:59:54.900 | you're making, the other activities in your life.

00:59:57.860 | And if you evaluate it as a much higher reward

01:00:01.380 | than anything else, that becomes an addiction.

01:00:05.420 | - Right, right.

01:00:06.260 | And so it's not just the rewarding value,

01:00:08.300 | but it's the relative rewarding value.

01:00:10.100 | And the other major aspect, again,

01:00:12.260 | from behavioral economics,

01:00:13.820 | the thing that makes addiction

01:00:16.460 | is something called delayed discounting.

01:00:20.420 | So in economics, sometimes it's called time preference.

01:00:23.500 | It's what compound interest rates are based upon.

01:00:26.860 | It's the idea that delaying a good,

01:00:29.420 | access to a good or a reward

01:00:31.460 | comes with a certain decrement to its value.

01:00:35.200 | So we'd all rather have things now than later.

01:00:37.780 | And we can study this at the individual level of,

01:00:41.980 | you know, would you rather have $9 today or $10 tomorrow?

01:00:46.980 | And when you do that, you get huge differences

01:00:52.820 | between addicted populations and non-addicted.

01:00:56.440 | Not just heroin and cocaine, but like just cigarette smokers

01:00:59.460 | like normal everyday cigarette smokers.

01:01:02.140 | And even when you look at something like,

01:01:04.180 | you know, monetary rewards.

01:01:06.420 | And so you can go into the rabbit hole

01:01:08.380 | with this delayed discounting model.

01:01:10.680 | So it's not only those huge differences

01:01:12.380 | that seem to have a face valid aspect to it.

01:01:15.300 | Like the cigarette smoker is choosing this thing

01:01:17.500 | that's rewarding today,

01:01:19.500 | but I know it comes with increased risk

01:01:21.400 | of having these horrible consequences down the line.

01:01:24.060 | So it's this competition between what's good for me now

01:01:26.480 | and what's good for me later.

01:01:28.360 | And the other aspect about delayed discounting is that

01:01:31.760 | if you quantitatively map out

01:01:33.680 | that discounting curve over time.

01:01:37.260 | So you don't just do the, you know,

01:01:39.220 | how much, you know, that $10 tomorrow,

01:01:43.100 | how much is it worth to you today?

01:01:45.200 | So you can say, what about nine?

01:01:46.460 | What about eight?

01:01:47.300 | What about $7?

01:01:48.240 | And you can titrate it to find that indifference point.

01:01:51.040 | And so we can say, aha, $6.

01:01:53.960 | You know, $10 tomorrow is worth $6 to you today.

01:01:57.700 | So it's by the one day it's decreased by 40%.

01:02:01.020 | We can do that also at one week and one month

01:02:04.180 | and one year and 10 years and map out that curve,

01:02:08.440 | get a shape of that curve.

01:02:09.640 | And one of the fascinating things about this

01:02:11.460 | is that whether you're talking about pigeons,

01:02:13.660 | making these types of choices

01:02:14.900 | between a little bit of food now

01:02:16.260 | or a little bit of food a minute from now,

01:02:17.540 | or rats or every like dozens of species of animals tested,

01:02:21.620 | including humans.

01:02:22.980 | The tendency is pretty consistently

01:02:24.860 | that we discount hyperbolically rather than exponentially.

01:02:29.860 | What exponentially means is that every unit of time

01:02:34.540 | is associated with the same proportional reduction.

01:02:37.580 | Every unit of delay is associated with the same,

01:02:40.260 | causes the same proportional reduction in value.

01:02:42.900 | And that's the way the compound interest rate,

01:02:45.300 | you know, works, you know,

01:02:47.420 | every day, you know, you get this sort of,

01:02:52.780 | whatever values in there at the beginning of that day,

01:02:54.740 | you get this, you know,

01:02:56.860 | we'll give you this amount of extra money

01:02:58.540 | to compensate you for that delay.

01:03:01.300 | But then the way that all animals tend to function

01:03:05.500 | is of this very different way where the reductions,

01:03:09.440 | the initial, that initial delay,

01:03:11.860 | so like one day's worth of delay,

01:03:13.660 | you see a much stronger discounting rate

01:03:16.580 | or reduction in value than you do over those.

01:03:20.420 | So you see the super proportional,

01:03:21.980 | then it changes to these lesser rates.

01:03:26.180 | And so the implication of that,

01:03:27.420 | I know I've gone like really into the weeds quantitatively,

01:03:29.740 | but what that means is that

01:03:31.140 | there's these preference reversals.

01:03:34.240 | When you have curves of that nature,

01:03:36.400 | the decay that's hyperbolic,

01:03:40.560 | it maps onto this phenomenon we see

01:03:46.860 | both in terms of how people deal with future rewards,

01:03:49.700 | but also how perception works.

01:03:51.780 | When two things are far away,

01:03:54.200 | whether it's physical distance

01:03:56.300 | or whether in terms of perception

01:03:57.780 | or whether it's in terms of time,

01:03:59.820 | when you're really far away,

01:04:01.860 | the value, the subjective value for that further,

01:04:05.700 | that delayed reward is larger.

01:04:08.980 | So for example, like let's say we're talking about 360,

01:04:13.860 | 364 days from now, you can get $9

01:04:19.020 | or 365 days a year.

01:04:21.700 | Now you get $10 and you're like,

01:04:23.460 | "Dude, it's a year, no difference.

01:04:26.220 | I'll take, why not get one more dollar?"

01:04:29.040 | You bring that same exact set of choices closer,

01:04:31.500 | nothing's changed other than the time to both rewards.

01:04:34.420 | And it's like, would you rather have $9 today

01:04:37.500 | or $10 tomorrow?

01:04:38.560 | And plenty of people would say,

01:04:39.700 | "Eh, about the same, I'll just go ahead and take it today."

01:04:43.140 | So you see this preference reversal.

01:04:44.980 | And so that's a model of addiction

01:04:49.980 | in the sense that consistently with true addiction,

01:04:54.980 | I would argue, you see this competition

01:04:58.140 | between molar and molecular utility.

01:05:01.660 | It's like interpersonal,

01:05:05.400 | like within the person competing agents.

01:05:07.940 | Someone sometimes has control of the bus

01:05:10.340 | that wants to do what's good for you in the short term

01:05:14.380 | and someone at other times

01:05:16.500 | is in control of driving the bus

01:05:18.180 | and they wanna do what's good for you in the long term.

01:05:22.500 | So you tell the, you're trying to quit

01:05:25.220 | and you see a doctor, you see your 12-step therapist

01:05:28.380 | and say, "God, I know this stuff is killing me.

01:05:30.740 | I'm really, I'm on the path, I'm done."

01:05:34.660 | And that's when you're kind of in their office

01:05:37.100 | or wherever it's not around you.

01:05:39.200 | And then later on that day, your buddy says,

01:05:41.220 | "Hey man, I just scored.

01:05:42.640 | I've got it right here, do you want it?"

01:05:44.060 | And that reward is right in front of you.

01:05:45.500 | That's like bringing those two choices

01:05:47.000 | right in front of you and it's like,

01:05:48.580 | "Hell yeah, I wanna use."

01:05:50.540 | And then you can go through that cycle

01:05:51.900 | for like years of the person telling themselves,

01:05:54.820 | "I wanna quit."

01:05:56.420 | But then other times that same person is saying,

01:05:58.760 | "I don't wanna."

01:05:59.740 | Functionally, they're saying, "I don't want to,"

01:06:01.980 | because they're saying, "Yeah, give me some."

01:06:04.240 | - So in the moment, it's very difficult to quit.

01:06:07.180 | - And this isn't just something,

01:06:08.420 | this is something that has huge clinical ramifications

01:06:11.120 | with addiction, but it's like all humans do it.

01:06:13.420 | Anyone who's hit the snooze alarm in the morning,

01:06:15.700 | like the night before they realize,

01:06:17.700 | "Oh, I gotta get up extra early tomorrow.

01:06:19.620 | That's what's ultimately better for me.

01:06:21.360 | So I'm gonna set the alarm for 5 a.m."

01:06:24.120 | And it goes off at 5 a.m.

01:06:30.780 | And then, so now those two consequences have come sooner

01:06:34.700 | and it's like, "What the hell?"

01:06:35.980 | And they hit the snooze alarm.

01:06:37.380 | And sometimes not just once, but then five minutes later

01:06:39.540 | and five minutes later.

01:06:41.740 | And so, and it's why it's easier to exercise self-control

01:06:45.940 | at the grocery store compared to in your fridge.

01:06:48.700 | Like if that snack is like 30 seconds away in your fridge,

01:06:53.700 | you're gonna more likely yield to temptation

01:06:58.140 | than if it is further away.

01:07:01.060 | - So then, to take a step back to something

01:07:03.540 | you brought up earlier, the inelasticity of pricing.

01:07:08.380 | Is it from a perspective of the dealers,

01:07:12.140 | whether we're talking about cigarettes

01:07:14.480 | or maybe venturing slightly into the illegal realm

01:07:19.480 | of people who sell drugs illegally,

01:07:23.120 | they also have an economics to them

01:07:25.540 | that they set prices and all those kinds of things.

01:07:28.080 | Does addiction allow you to mess

01:07:32.140 | with the nature of pricing?

01:07:35.820 | Like, so I kind of assume that you meant

01:07:39.460 | that there's a correlation between things you're addicted to

01:07:42.380 | and the inelasticity of the price.

01:07:44.640 | So you can jack up the price.

01:07:46.740 | Is there something interesting to be said

01:07:49.040 | both for legal drugs and illegal drugs

01:07:52.900 | about the kind of price games you can play

01:07:57.900 | because the consumers of the product are addicted?

01:08:03.940 | - Right, I mean, I think you just described it.

01:08:06.300 | Yeah, you can jack up the price

01:08:07.820 | and some people are gonna drop off,

01:08:10.900 | but the people, and it's not dichotomous

01:08:13.540 | 'cause you could just consume less,

01:08:15.280 | but some people are gonna consume less

01:08:16.920 | and the people that are most addicted are gonna keep,

01:08:19.520 | I mean, you see this, they're gonna keep purchasing.

01:08:23.420 | So you see this with cigarettes.

01:08:24.620 | And so it's interesting when you interface this with policy.

01:08:28.060 | Like in one respect, heavily taxing cigarettes

01:08:31.300 | is a good thing.

01:08:32.140 | I know it keeps, adolescents are particularly

01:08:35.180 | price sensitive, so you definitely,

01:08:37.700 | people smoke less and especially kids smoke less

01:08:40.660 | when you keep cigarette prices high

01:08:42.140 | and you tax the hell out of them.

01:08:44.300 | But one of the downsides, you've got to balance

01:08:46.780 | and keep in mind is that you disproportionately

01:08:50.020 | have working class, poor people,

01:08:52.860 | and then you get into a point where someone's spending

01:08:55.380 | a quarter of their paycheck on cigarettes.

01:08:56.660 | - So they're gonna smoke no matter what.

01:08:58.660 | And basically because they're addicted,

01:09:01.060 | they're gonna smoke no matter what

01:09:02.100 | and you're just, yeah, you're taxing their existence.

01:09:06.380 | - Right, so you're making it worse for them.

01:09:08.220 | If they don't, if they are completely inelastic,

01:09:10.540 | you're actually making that person's life worse

01:09:12.820 | because we know that by interfering

01:09:15.460 | with the amount of money they have,

01:09:17.380 | you're interfering with the other pro-social,

01:09:20.420 | the potential competitors to smoking.

01:09:23.940 | And we know that when someone's in more impoverished

01:09:26.580 | environments and they have less sort of non-drug

01:09:30.220 | alternatives, the more likely they're gonna stay addicted.

01:09:34.140 | So, you know.

01:09:35.780 | - Is there a data, this is interesting,

01:09:38.900 | from a scientific perspective of those same kind of games

01:09:42.780 | in illegal drugs?

01:09:44.520 | Sort of, because that's where most drug,

01:09:50.540 | I mean, I don't know, maybe you can correct me,

01:09:52.180 | but it seems like most drugs are currently illegal.

01:09:56.360 | And so, but there's still an economics to them, obviously.

01:10:00.100 | - Right. - That's the drug war

01:10:01.020 | and so on.

01:10:01.860 | Is there data on the setting of prices

01:10:05.220 | or like how good are the business people running

01:10:08.540 | the selling of drugs that are illegal?

01:10:11.300 | Are they all the same kind of rules apply

01:10:13.460 | from a behavioral economics perspective?

01:10:15.820 | - I think so.

01:10:16.660 | I mean, they're basically,

01:10:17.980 | whether they're crunching the numbers or not,

01:10:19.900 | they're basically sensitive to that demand curve

01:10:22.340 | and they're doing the same thing that businesses do

01:10:25.700 | in a legal market.

01:10:27.140 | And you wanna sell as much of a product

01:10:30.660 | to get as much money,

01:10:32.460 | you're looking more at the total income.

01:10:33.860 | So if you jack the price a little bit,

01:10:36.500 | you're gonna get some reduction in consumption,

01:10:38.820 | but it may be that the total amount of money

01:10:40.800 | that you rake in is gonna be more than,

01:10:44.380 | it's gonna overcompensate for that.

01:10:46.380 | So you're willing to take,

01:10:47.220 | okay, I'm gonna lose 10% of my customers,

01:10:49.220 | but I'm getting more than enough to compensate from that,

01:10:53.140 | from the extra money from the people who still are buying.

01:10:55.740 | - So I think they're more,

01:10:57.140 | and especially when we get to the lower,

01:10:58.420 | I wouldn't be surprised if people are crunching those numbers

01:11:01.520 | and looking at demand curves,

01:11:02.500 | maybe at the really high levels of the,

01:11:06.060 | up the chain with the cartels and whatnot, I don't know.

01:11:09.180 | That wouldn't surprise me at all.

01:11:10.300 | But I think it's probably more implicit

01:11:12.460 | at the lower levels where,

01:11:14.220 | something you brought up, drug policy,

01:11:17.220 | I will say that for years now,

01:11:19.780 | it's been this kind of unquestioned goal by, for example,

01:11:25.220 | the drug czars office in the US

01:11:28.740 | to make the price of illegal drugs as high as possible

01:11:32.660 | without this kind of nuanced approach that,

01:11:35.360 | yeah, if you make, for some people,

01:11:39.420 | if you make the price so high,

01:11:41.780 | you're actually making things worse.

01:11:43.860 | I mean, I'm all about reducing the problems

01:11:46.820 | associated with drugs and drug addictions.

01:11:48.740 | And part of that is that,

01:11:50.460 | are more direct consequences of those drugs themselves.

01:11:53.460 | But a whole lot is what you get from indirectly

01:11:57.540 | and sort of the,

01:11:59.740 | both for the individual and for society.

01:12:02.100 | So like making a poor person

01:12:04.420 | who doesn't have enough money for their kids,

01:12:05.860 | making them even poorer.

01:12:06.940 | So now you've made their children's future worse

01:12:10.940 | because they're growing up in deeper poverty

01:12:12.540 | because you've essentially levied a tax

01:12:14.940 | onto this person who's heavily addicted.

01:12:18.780 | But then at the societal level,

01:12:21.460 | so everything we know about the drug war

01:12:23.460 | in terms of the heavy criminalization

01:12:26.220 | and filling up prisons

01:12:27.380 | and reducing employment and educational opportunities,

01:12:31.540 | which in the big picture,

01:12:32.740 | we know are the things that in a free market

01:12:35.900 | compete against some of the worst problems of addiction

01:12:38.980 | is actually having educational

01:12:40.940 | and employment opportunities.

01:12:42.180 | But when you give someone a felony, for example,

01:12:44.600 | you're pretty much guaranteeing

01:12:47.380 | they're never gonna go very high on the economic ladder.

01:12:50.340 | And so you're making drugs a better reward

01:12:53.820 | for that person's future.

01:12:55.140 | - And so this is a quick step into the policy realm.

01:13:00.500 | And I think for both you and I,

01:13:02.820 | I'm not sure you can correct me,

01:13:04.100 | but I'm more comfortable into studying

01:13:07.020 | the effects of drugs on the human behavior

01:13:11.300 | and human psychology versus like policy.

01:13:13.180 | It seems like a whole giant mess,

01:13:14.820 | but there's some libertarian candidates for president

01:13:20.540 | and just libertarian thinkers

01:13:23.180 | that had a nice thought experiment

01:13:26.180 | of possibly legalizing,

01:13:28.740 | or spoken about possibly legalizing basically all drugs.

01:13:32.940 | In your intuition,

01:13:34.900 | do you think a world where all drugs are legal

01:13:39.740 | is a safer world or a less safe world

01:13:43.660 | for the users of those drugs?

01:13:45.260 | - It really depends on what we mean by legalization.

01:13:47.880 | So this is one of my beefs with this,

01:13:50.420 | how these things are talked about.

01:13:52.260 | I mean, we have very few completely laissez-faire

01:13:57.260 | legal drugs.

01:13:59.420 | So even caffeine is one of the few examples.

01:14:02.340 | So for example, caffeine and tea and coffee is in that realm.

01:14:05.720 | Like there's no limits, no one's testing,

01:14:07.420 | there's no laws, regulation at any level

01:14:09.340 | of how much caffeine you're allowed to buy

01:14:11.180 | or how much you're not allowed to buy.

01:14:12.020 | But even like with this Starbucks, like Nitro,

01:14:14.940 | there are rules with soda and with canned products,

01:14:18.040 | you can only put so much.

01:14:19.480 | - In there, yeah.

01:14:20.320 | - Yeah, so this is FDA regulated.

01:14:22.840 | And it's kind of weird because there's a limit to sodas

01:14:24.920 | that's not there for energy drinks and other things.

01:14:27.440 | But so even caffeine,

01:14:29.560 | it depends on what product we're talking about.

01:14:31.520 | Like if you're like no-dose

01:14:33.040 | and other caffeine products over the counter,

01:14:34.880 | like you can't just put 800 milligrams in there.

01:14:36.960 | The pills are like one or 200 milligrams.

01:14:39.440 | And so it's FDA regulated as no-re-counter drug.

01:14:41.960 | Some of the most dangerous drugs in society,

01:14:45.220 | I would say arguably one of the most dangerous

01:14:47.020 | classes of drugs are the volatile anesthetics, huffing.

01:14:49.660 | People huffing gasoline and airplane glue,

01:14:52.180 | toluene, whatnot, severely damaging to the nervous system.

01:14:57.180 | Pretty much legal, but there's some regulation

01:15:01.500 | in the sense that there's a warning label,

01:15:03.040 | like it's illegal to do it for,

01:15:04.900 | not that it's necessary, they're busting people for this.

01:15:07.900 | But it's against federal law to use this in a way

01:15:11.620 | other than intended type of,

01:15:13.660 | basically saying, yeah, don't huff this.

01:15:15.660 | Your paint thinner or whatnot.

01:15:19.060 | At least keeps people from selling it for that.

01:15:21.800 | 'Cause they're gonna go after that person.

01:15:24.560 | They're not gonna be able to find

01:15:25.520 | the 12-year-old who's huffing.

01:15:27.180 | So anyway, just as some extreme examples at the end.

01:15:30.980 | And then even the so-called illegal,

01:15:34.980 | like schedule one drugs, psilocybin,

01:15:36.500 | we do plenty in terms of schedule two,

01:15:39.500 | which is ironically less restrictive than psilocybin,

01:15:42.040 | but methamphetamine and cocaine,

01:15:43.420 | I've done human research with.

01:15:45.280 | My research has been legal.

01:15:47.060 | So they're scheduled compounds,

01:15:48.300 | but they're not completely illegal.

01:15:49.820 | You can do research with them

01:15:51.560 | with the appropriate licenses and approval.

01:15:55.640 | So there really is no such thing.

01:15:57.880 | And like alcohol, well, it's illegal if you're 12 years old

01:16:01.420 | or 18 years old or 20 years old.

01:16:03.540 | And for anyone, it's illegal to be drinking it

01:16:05.860 | while you're driving.

01:16:06.700 | So there's always a nuance.

01:16:09.180 | - There's rules, right? - It's not dichotomy.

01:16:11.180 | - And I actually should admit,

01:16:12.500 | it's been on my to-do list for a while

01:16:14.000 | to buy in Massachusetts some edible,

01:16:17.380 | or just buy weed legally.

01:16:18.960 | Yeah, haven't done that in Massachusetts,

01:16:23.700 | but this way.

01:16:24.540 | (Bridget laughs)

01:16:26.300 | And I wonder what that experience is like,

01:16:28.340 | 'cause I think it's fully legal in Massachusetts.

01:16:31.060 | And so I wonder what legal drugs look like to me.

01:16:35.780 | I grew up with even weed being like,

01:16:38.480 | it's like this forbidden thing.

01:16:42.180 | Not forbidden, but it's illegal.

01:16:44.580 | Most people, of course, I never partook,

01:16:46.500 | but most people I knew would attain it illegally.

01:16:50.580 | And so that big switch that's been happening

01:16:53.780 | across the country,

01:16:55.280 | there's like federal stuff going on

01:16:57.700 | to make marijuana legal federally.

01:17:00.380 | I'm half paying attention.

01:17:01.620 | - There's some movement there.

01:17:02.740 | I mean, the House passed a bill

01:17:03.800 | that's not gonna be passed by the Senate,

01:17:06.060 | but yeah, it's progress.

01:17:08.180 | - There's clearly a change.

01:17:09.980 | - Right, it's moving in a trend.

01:17:11.420 | - So that's the example of a drug

01:17:13.020 | that used to be illegal

01:17:14.500 | and is now becoming more and more and more legal.

01:17:16.900 | So I wonder what cocaine being legal looks like.

01:17:22.780 | What a society with cocaine being legal looks like,

01:17:26.060 | the rules around it,

01:17:29.740 | the processes in which you can consume it in a safer way

01:17:34.480 | and be more educated about its consequences,

01:17:37.080 | be able to control dose and purity much better,

01:17:41.260 | be able to get help for overdose.

01:17:44.120 | I don't know, all those kinds of things.

01:17:46.820 | It does, in a utopian sense,

01:17:49.560 | feel like legalizing drugs

01:17:52.000 | at least should be talked about and considered

01:17:56.480 | versus keeping them in the dark.

01:17:59.640 | - I agree.

01:18:00.480 | - But yeah, so in your sense,

01:18:04.200 | it's possible that in 50 years we legalize all drugs

01:18:10.260 | and it makes for a better world.

01:18:13.160 | - The way I like to talk about it is that,

01:18:15.300 | I would say that it's possible

01:18:17.080 | and it would probably be a good thing

01:18:18.400 | if we regulate all drugs.

01:18:21.020 | - How would you regulate cocaine, for example?

01:18:23.960 | Is there ideas there?

01:18:25.660 | - So yeah, and you were already going,

01:18:28.780 | where I was going with that,

01:18:29.940 | kind of first I described how there's always a nuance

01:18:32.100 | and even like the cannabis in Massachusetts,

01:18:34.180 | federally illegal.

01:18:35.100 | So for example, if I was like,

01:18:36.700 | and I have colleagues that do cannabis research

01:18:39.900 | where they get people high in the lab,

01:18:41.260 | like you're a federal funded researcher with NIH funds,

01:18:43.720 | you can't get that stuff from the dispensary

01:18:46.100 | 'cause you're breaking a federal law,

01:18:48.260 | even though the feds don't have the resources to go after,

01:18:50.920 | they don't want the controversy at this point

01:18:52.540 | to go after the individual users

01:18:53.860 | or even the sellers in those legal states.

01:18:56.320 | So there's always this nuance,

01:18:57.380 | but it's about the right regulation.

01:18:59.620 | So I think we already know enough that,

01:19:02.260 | for example, like I think safe injection sites

01:19:04.540 | for hard drugs makes a lot of sense.

01:19:07.100 | Like I wouldn't want heroin and cocaine

01:19:11.600 | at the convenience stores.

01:19:13.100 | And I don't think,

01:19:13.940 | maybe there's some extreme libertarians that want that.

01:19:16.080 | I think even the folks that identify as libertarians,

01:19:19.400 | probably most of them don't, well, I don't know.

01:19:21.740 | Like not all of them want that.

01:19:25.620 | I think that as a form of regulation,

01:19:27.620 | like look, if you're using these hard drugs

01:19:29.580 | on a regular basis,

01:19:31.860 | you're putting yourself at risk for lethal overdose.

01:19:34.280 | You're putting yourself at risk for catching HIV

01:19:37.940 | and hepatitis.

01:19:39.560 | If you're gonna do it, if you're doing it anyway,

01:19:43.580 | come to this place where at least you're not like,

01:19:46.080 | like pulling the water out of like the puddle

01:19:51.300 | on the side of the street.

01:19:52.380 | - Yeah, so it's done by professionals

01:19:54.140 | and those professionals are able to educate you also.

01:19:57.140 | So like a 7-Eleven clerk may not be both capable

01:20:01.700 | of helping you to inject the drug properly,

01:20:05.260 | but also won't be equipped to educate you

01:20:07.700 | at the negative consequences, all those kinds of things.

01:20:10.100 | - That's a huge part of it, the education.

01:20:11.920 | But then I think with the opioids,

01:20:13.740 | like the big part of it is just like with naloxone,

01:20:18.300 | which is an antagonist, it goes into the receptor.

01:20:22.020 | It's called Narcan.

01:20:23.060 | That's the trade name, but it's what they revive people

01:20:25.500 | on an opioid overdose.

01:20:26.980 | That's almost completely effective.

01:20:29.220 | Like if there's a medical professional there

01:20:31.100 | and someone's ODing on an opioid,

01:20:33.340 | they're virtually guaranteed to live.

01:20:35.380 | Like that's remarkable that if 100% at the opioid crisis,

01:20:40.380 | if all of those people right now that are dying,

01:20:43.040 | we're doing that in the presence of a medical professional,

01:20:45.300 | like even like a nurse with Narcan,

01:20:48.060 | there'd be basically almost no deaths.

01:20:50.020 | There's always some exceptions,

01:20:51.140 | but almost no deaths.

01:20:53.180 | Like that's staggering to me.

01:20:54.460 | So the idea that people are doing this,

01:20:56.720 | that we could have that level of positive effect

01:21:01.220 | without encouraging the drug.

01:21:02.620 | And this is where you get into this terrain

01:21:05.100 | of like sending the wrong message.

01:21:06.580 | And it's like, no, you can do that.

01:21:09.060 | You can say like, we're not encouraging this.

01:21:12.140 | In fact, probably one of the greatest advertisements

01:21:15.420 | for not getting hooked on heroin

01:21:16.900 | is like visiting a methadone clinic,

01:21:18.380 | visiting a safe injection site.

01:21:19.900 | Like this is not like an advertisement

01:21:23.660 | for getting hooked on this drug,

01:21:25.100 | but knowing that we can save people.

01:21:26.700 | Now you have a landscape here,

01:21:27.980 | 'cause a lot of times it's just like supervised injection,

01:21:31.140 | but you bring your own stuff.

01:21:32.460 | You bring your own heroin,

01:21:33.660 | which could still be dirty

01:21:35.660 | and filled with fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives,

01:21:38.840 | which because of the incredible potency

01:21:41.540 | and the more difficulty measuring it,

01:21:43.500 | and some differences at the receptor,

01:21:46.140 | like you may be more likely,

01:21:47.740 | you are more likely on average to lethally overdose on it.

01:21:51.620 | So you could, the level that's been more explored

01:21:55.060 | in Switzerland is in some places

01:21:58.220 | is you actually provide the drug itself

01:22:01.620 | and you supervise the injection.

01:22:03.180 | So I don't see-- - Do you like that idea?

01:22:05.140 | - Yeah, the public health data

01:22:07.100 | are completely on the side of,

01:22:08.740 | there's really no credible evidence to this.

01:22:11.020 | If we allow that, we're sending the wrong message

01:22:12.780 | and everyone's gonna, I mean, I'm not showing up.

01:22:15.580 | Like, and it's different by drug.

01:22:17.380 | Like, yeah, you legalize, you set up cannabis shops

01:22:19.920 | and some people are gonna say,

01:22:20.760 | "It's illegal, I'm gonna go there."

01:22:21.940 | I don't think a whole lot of people

01:22:23.020 | are gonna go to one of these places

01:22:24.900 | and say, "I'm gonna shoot up heroin for the first time."

01:22:28.100 | And even if like, you know,

01:22:29.380 | it's a country of 300 million people.

01:22:30.860 | Like even if someone does that,

01:22:33.260 | you have to compare this to the everyday

01:22:35.860 | people are dying from opioid overdoses.

01:22:39.200 | Like people's kids, people's uncles,

01:22:41.280 | people's like, these are real lives

01:22:42.820 | that are being shattered.

01:22:43.680 | So you just look at that.

01:22:45.400 | And then the other thing,

01:22:46.240 | I know this from having done residential,

01:22:49.100 | even like non-treatment research

01:22:50.500 | where we just have a cocaine user or something

01:22:52.900 | stay on our inpatient ward for a month

01:22:54.620 | and you really get to know them.

01:22:55.620 | And sometimes you see, like, oftentimes

01:22:58.100 | that's the first time this person has had a discussion

01:23:00.780 | with a medical professional, any type of professional

01:23:03.020 | in their entire life around their drug use.

01:23:05.300 | Even if they're not looking to quit.

01:23:07.260 | And it's like, you know, you could imagine that

01:23:09.420 | in the safe injection settings where it's like,

01:23:12.620 | it might be a year into treatment.

01:23:14.180 | And they're like, you know, doc,

01:23:16.400 | I know you're not the cops.

01:23:17.440 | Like, you really care for me.

01:23:18.500 | Like, I think I'm ready to try that methadone thing.

01:23:21.160 | I think I'm really, I think I want to be done.

01:23:23.280 | - Just having a conversation about it, yeah.

01:23:24.720 | - Yeah, they get to trust the people

01:23:26.680 | and realize that they're there

01:23:29.000 | 'cause they truly like, they have a compassion,

01:23:31.060 | a love for this community, like as human beings.

01:23:34.480 | And they don't want people to die.

01:23:36.480 | And you get real human connections.

01:23:38.360 | And that, and again, like those are the conditions

01:23:40.940 | where people are gonna ultimately seek treatment.

01:23:42.960 | And not everyone always will, but you're gonna get that.

01:23:46.800 | And then you're gonna get people

01:23:48.400 | like looking into treatment options sometimes,

01:23:50.960 | you know, maybe years into the treatment.

01:23:53.720 | So it's like, there's just all of these indirect benefits

01:23:56.120 | that I think at that level,

01:23:57.680 | I don't know if you'd call that legalizing.

01:23:59.440 | You know, I think again, at least well-regulated.

01:24:02.720 | - Right, whatever that word is.

01:24:04.600 | Yeah, well-regulated, but out in the open.

01:24:08.280 | - Right, minimizing as many harms as we can

01:24:11.520 | while not encouraging.

01:24:13.400 | I mean, we don't encourage people to drink all the,

01:24:15.520 | I mean, people die every year from caffeine overdose.

01:24:17.900 | Like, you know, and there's different ways to like,

01:24:20.400 | you know, just by allowing something

01:24:21.920 | doesn't mean we're sending the message that,

01:24:24.080 | you know, by saying we're not gonna give you a felony,

01:24:27.000 | which is actually often the penalty for psychedelics.

01:24:32.000 | I just actually testified for the Judiciary Committee,

01:24:34.920 | the Senate, the Assembly in New Jersey.

01:24:38.480 | And just to move psilocybin from a felony to misdemeanor,

01:24:43.480 | they use different language in New Jersey, it's weird,

01:24:45.520 | but like the equivalent of felony misdemeanor.

01:24:47.200 | And that was like, two people didn't vote for that

01:24:49.600 | on this committee because it was,

01:24:52.360 | one of them said it might be sending the wrong message.

01:24:55.200 | And it's like, a felony, I mean, there's real harms.

01:24:59.120 | Like that's the scarlet letter the rest of your life.

01:25:01.600 | You're stuck at the lower ends of the employment ladder.

01:25:04.240 | You're not gonna get, you know, loans for education,

01:25:07.020 | all of this, maybe 'cause of a stupid mistake

01:25:09.000 | you made once as a 19 year old.

01:25:11.440 | Doing something that like, you know,

01:25:12.840 | a presidential candidate could have done and admitted to

01:25:15.280 | and had no problem, you know?

01:25:16.880 | - Yeah.

01:25:18.480 | What drug is the most addictive,

01:25:22.460 | the most dangerous in your view?

01:25:25.520 | Not maybe, like not technically,

01:25:29.080 | like specifically which drug,

01:25:31.360 | but more like in our society today,

01:25:34.280 | what is a highly problematic drug?

01:25:36.000 | We talked about psychedelics not being that addictive.

01:25:38.920 | On the other flip side of that, you mentioned cocaine.

01:25:43.100 | Is that the top one?

01:25:45.380 | Is there something else that's a concern to you?

01:25:48.020 | - It depends, and you've already alluded to this nuance.

01:25:50.260 | It depends on how you define it.

01:25:51.380 | If we're talking about on the ground today,

01:25:53.780 | in, you know, modern society, I'd say nicotine, tobacco.

01:25:58.780 | - Oh, interesting.

01:26:00.980 | - I mean, in terms of mortality,

01:26:03.500 | it kills far more than any other drug known to humankind.

01:26:08.500 | Four times more than alcohol,

01:26:11.000 | like a half million deaths in the US every year,

01:26:13.700 | and about five to six million worldwide due to tobacco.

01:26:18.560 | That's four times more in the US than alcohol.

01:26:21.580 | And if you graph all of the drugs, legal and illegal,

01:26:25.140 | like, you know, put all of the illegal drugs

01:26:28.060 | in like one category on that figure,

01:26:30.780 | and you put alcohol and tobacco on that figure,

01:26:33.340 | all the illegal drugs combined,

01:26:35.180 | barely, they're a barely visible blip to this incredible,

01:26:39.820 | like, there's no, even all of the opioid epidemic rolled up

01:26:43.300 | along with cocaine and everything else,

01:26:44.820 | meth, barely shows up compared to tobacco.

01:26:47.100 | - That's one of those uncomfortable truths

01:26:49.380 | that I don't know what to do with.

01:26:52.820 | It's like where everybody's freaking out

01:26:55.260 | about coronavirus, right?

01:26:57.140 | And nobody's freaking-- - The relative.

01:27:00.700 | - It's all relative.

01:27:01.540 | If you look at the relative thing,

01:27:03.780 | it's like, well, why aren't we freaking out

01:27:06.260 | about cigarettes, which we are, increasingly so,

01:27:10.060 | over the, historically speaking, right?

01:27:12.420 | - Right.

01:27:13.260 | It's like terrorism versus swimming pools.

01:27:14.940 | I remember that being back in the,

01:27:17.480 | after the war on terror started.

01:27:18.980 | It's like, yeah, there's not even comparison.

01:27:21.740 | - Okay, so, you know, that's a little sobering truth there.

01:27:25.380 | 'Cause I was thinking like cocaine,

01:27:26.940 | I was thinking about all of these hard drugs,

01:27:29.840 | but the reality is relatively nicotine is the big one.

01:27:33.340 | - And he didn't ask about mortality or deaths.

01:27:35.460 | He asked about addiction.

01:27:37.420 | But that really is hard to evaluate.

01:27:40.540 | It gets into those nuances I spoke of before

01:27:42.620 | about there's not a unidimensional way

01:27:45.140 | to measure reinforcement.

01:27:46.280 | It kind of depends on the situation

01:27:48.060 | and what measure we're looking at.

01:27:50.780 | But, you know, more people have access to tobacco.

01:27:55.020 | And I'm not advocating that we make it an illegal drug.

01:27:58.580 | I think that would be a horrible mistake.

01:28:00.900 | Although there is a very credible push

01:28:03.060 | to mandate the reduction of nicotine in cigarettes,

01:28:07.660 | which I have, most scientists that study it are for it.

01:28:10.900 | I think there's some real dangers there

01:28:14.100 | 'cause I see that in the broader history of drug use.

01:28:16.180 | It's like, when has drug prohibition worked,

01:28:19.340 | broadly speaking?

01:28:20.300 | And it's, to me, that path would only make sense

01:28:25.300 | in very good conjunction with e-cigarettes,

01:28:28.420 | which, once they're fully regulated, can be a safer,

01:28:31.580 | not safe, but much safer alternative.

01:28:34.300 | And if we tax the hell out of e-cigarettes

01:28:36.980 | and ban every attractive feature,

01:28:39.700 | like flavors and everything,

01:28:41.840 | then that's gonna push people to a black market

01:28:45.980 | if they can't get the real thing from real cigarettes.

01:28:47.780 | Like, some people will just quit straight out.

01:28:49.860 | But I think with the regulators

01:28:51.380 | and with a lot of scientists that study tobacco,

01:28:53.960 | like myself, it's a big part still of what I study,

01:28:57.760 | they're not used to thinking about tobacco really

01:29:01.960 | as a drug, largely speaking,

01:29:03.800 | in terms of, for example, the history of prohibition.

01:29:07.540 | And I think of, we already know there's an illicit market,

01:29:10.000 | a black market for tobacco to get around taxes.

01:29:14.680 | I mean, and for selling even loose cigarettes.

01:29:16.620 | That's what initially caused in Staten Island

01:29:18.520 | the police to approach, was it Eric Garland

01:29:20.880 | who was selling loose cigarettes and he got choked out?

01:29:23.480 | I mean, the thing that caused that police contact

01:29:25.200 | was he was selling, well, I think reported

01:29:27.920 | to sell individual cigarettes for like,

01:29:30.320 | you can sell them for quarter, happens in Baltimore.

01:29:32.280 | And it's like, that's technically illegal.

01:29:34.400 | But are you not gonna have massive boats

01:29:39.160 | of supplies coming over from China and elsewhere

01:29:42.260 | of real deal cigarettes if you ban the sale of nicotine?

01:29:47.260 | Like, it's obviously gonna happen.

01:29:49.960 | And you have to weigh that against,

01:29:51.720 | you're gonna create a black market

01:29:54.200 | to one size or another.

01:29:55.600 | - And your intuition, that really hasn't worked

01:29:57.520 | throughout the history when we've tried it.

01:29:59.840 | - Right, but I see a potential path forward,

01:30:01.900 | but only if it's well, if it's done

01:30:04.800 | in conjunction with e-cigarettes.

01:30:06.000 | - If there's a clear alternative

01:30:07.320 | that's a positive alternative

01:30:08.560 | that it kind of stares the population

01:30:11.560 | towards an alternative, yeah.

01:30:14.640 | - The difference here, the unique thing

01:30:16.600 | that could be taken advantage of here

01:30:18.040 | is nicotine is by and large not what causes the harm.

01:30:20.760 | It's the aromatic hydrocarbons,

01:30:23.000 | it's the carcinogens in tobacco,

01:30:26.320 | it's burning tobacco smoke, it's not the nicotine.

01:30:29.460 | So it's not like alcohol prohibition

01:30:34.120 | where you couldn't create the oduls,

01:30:37.640 | the near beer is not gonna have the alcohol.

01:30:39.720 | And so people aren't, like,

01:30:40.920 | here you do have the possibility of giving another medium,

01:30:45.200 | the ability to deliver the drug,

01:30:48.040 | which still aren't, to a lot of people,

01:30:49.840 | isn't preferred to the tobacco.

01:30:51.320 | But nonetheless, again, if you over-regulate those

01:30:54.200 | and make them less attractive,

01:30:55.400 | like if you aren't thoughtful about the nicotine limits

01:30:58.760 | and thoughtful about whether you're allowing flavors

01:31:00.840 | and everything, and if you over-tax them,

01:31:03.440 | you're actually decreasing the ability

01:31:05.440 | to compete with the more dangerous products.

01:31:08.680 | So I feel like there is a potential path forward,

01:31:11.080 | but I don't have a lot of confidence

01:31:12.440 | that that's gonna be done in a thoughtful, analytical way.

01:31:17.040 | And I'm afraid that it could decrease the,

01:31:20.200 | increase the black market, cause all of the harms.

01:31:23.160 | Like every other drug, we're moving away

01:31:24.600 | from the prohibition model slowly,

01:31:28.400 | but the big barge ship is making a very slow turn.

01:31:32.440 | And like, okay, we really had to step back

01:31:35.000 | and question if we went with nicotine, tobacco,

01:31:38.800 | are we moving into that direction?

01:31:41.600 | Like, big picture.

01:31:43.640 | - It doesn't quite make sense.

01:31:45.240 | You've done a study on cocaine and sexual decision-making.

01:31:50.240 | Can you explain? (laughs)

01:31:55.360 | Can you explain the findings?

01:31:56.960 | I mean, in a broad sense,

01:32:00.040 | how do you do a study that involves cocaine?

01:32:05.440 | And the other, how do you do a study

01:32:09.440 | involving sexual decision-making?

01:32:13.080 | And then how do you do a study that combines both?

01:32:16.720 | - Yeah, sex and drugs too.

01:32:18.040 | I'm just missing the rock and roll.

01:32:19.520 | It's like the two controversial,

01:32:21.400 | rock and roll isn't very controversial anymore.

01:32:23.800 | Yeah, so the cocaine, lots of hoops to jump through.

01:32:26.400 | You gotta have a lot of medical support.

01:32:28.440 | You gotta be at a, basically at an institution,

01:32:30.640 | a research unit like I'm at that has a long history

01:32:34.440 | and the ability to do that.

01:32:36.320 | And you get ethics approval, get FDA approval,

01:32:40.760 | but it's possible.

01:32:41.680 | And whenever you're dealing with something like cocaine,

01:32:43.960 | you would never wanna give that to a not,

01:32:46.600 | someone who hasn't already used cocaine.

01:32:49.320 | And you wanna make sure you're not giving it

01:32:50.880 | to someone who's an active user who wants to quit.

01:32:53.400 | So the idea is like, okay,

01:32:54.840 | if you're using this type of drug anyway,

01:32:57.240 | and you're really sure you're not looking to quit,

01:33:00.560 | hey, use a couple of times in the lab with us

01:33:04.280 | so we can at least learn something.

01:33:06.520 | And part of what we learn is maybe to help people not use

01:33:09.120 | and it'll reduce the harms of cocaine.

01:33:12.080 | So there's hoops to jump through.

01:33:14.360 | With the sexual decision-making,

01:33:16.680 | I looked at the main thing I looked at was this model of,

01:33:20.120 | I applied delayed discounting to what we talked about

01:33:22.840 | earlier, the now versus later,

01:33:24.480 | that kind of decision-making that goes along with addiction.

01:33:27.400 | I applied that to condom use decisions.

01:33:29.400 | And I've done, probably published about 20 or so papers

01:33:33.700 | with this and different drugs.

01:33:36.480 | - So the primary metric is whether you do

01:33:39.160 | or don't use a condom?

01:33:40.480 | - Right, so this is using hypothetical decision-making,

01:33:43.920 | but I've published some studies looking at,

01:33:47.700 | showing a tight correspondence to self-reported

01:33:50.640 | in correlational studies to self-reported behavior.

01:33:54.720 | - So this is like, so,

01:33:56.220 | like how do you, did you do a questionnaire kind of thing?

01:33:59.880 | - Right, so it's not quite a questionnaire,

01:34:02.360 | but it's a behavioral task requiring them to respond to.

01:34:07.360 | So you show pictures of a bunch of individuals

01:34:11.600 | and it's kind of like one of these fun behavioral,

01:34:13.640 | like in a lot of them you get like numbers are boring,

01:34:15.840 | but it's like, okay, hot or not,

01:34:17.440 | like which of these 60 people

01:34:18.720 | would you have a one night stand with?

01:34:20.560 | Men, women, so pick whatever you like,

01:34:22.520 | a little bit of this, a little bit of that,

01:34:23.520 | whatever you're into, it's all variety there.

01:34:26.920 | Out of that group, you pick some subsets of people.

01:34:29.160 | Who do you think is the,

01:34:30.520 | the one you most wanna have sex with the least?

01:34:32.400 | Who do you think's most likely to have an STI

01:34:34.120 | or least likely a sexually transmitted disease by STI?

01:34:37.880 | And then you could do certain decision making questions.

01:34:41.600 | So what I've done is asked,

01:34:43.840 | say this person, you read a vignette,

01:34:45.240 | this person wants to have sex with you,

01:34:46.320 | now you've met them, you get along.

01:34:48.080 | Casual sex scenario, like a one night stand.

01:34:51.300 | With a condom's available,

01:34:53.020 | just rate your likelihood from one to 100

01:34:54.800 | on this kind of scale, would you use it?

01:34:57.040 | - Would you use a condom?

01:34:57.880 | - But then you can change your scenario to say,

01:34:59.800 | okay, now imagine you have to wait five minutes

01:35:01.720 | to use a condom.

01:35:02.920 | So the choice is now, instead of using condom versus not,

01:35:05.600 | in terms of your likelihood scale,

01:35:07.320 | now it ranges from have sex now without a condom,

01:35:11.960 | versus on the other end of the scale is wait five minutes

01:35:15.320 | to have sex with a condom.

01:35:16.380 | So you rate your likelihood

01:35:17.600 | of where your behavior would be along that continuum.

01:35:20.400 | And then you could say, okay, well, what about an hour?

01:35:22.780 | What about three hours?

01:35:23.920 | What about, you know, what about 24 hours?

01:35:25.960 | - Misunderstanding.

01:35:29.200 | Now without a condom or five minutes later with a condom?

01:35:32.800 | - Right.

01:35:33.640 | - So what's supposed to be the preference for the person?

01:35:38.640 | There's a lot of factors coming into play, right?

01:35:44.200 | There's like pleasure, personal preference,

01:35:49.520 | and then there's also the safety.

01:35:51.520 | Those are two, like, are those competing objectives?

01:35:55.320 | - Right, and so we do get at that

01:35:57.120 | through some individual measures.

01:35:58.720 | And this task is more of a face valid task

01:36:01.160 | where there's a lot underneath the hood.

01:36:02.640 | So for most people,

01:36:04.720 | sex with the condom is the better reward.

01:36:07.560 | But underneath the hood of that is,

01:36:09.840 | just at the purely physical level,

01:36:11.520 | they'd rather have sex without the condom.

01:36:13.640 | It's gonna feel better.

01:36:14.520 | - What do you mean by reward?

01:36:15.720 | Like when they calculate their trajectory through life

01:36:19.720 | and try to optimize it,

01:36:21.380 | then sex with a condom is a good idea?

01:36:24.480 | - Well, it's really based on, I mean, yeah, yeah.

01:36:27.880 | Presumably that's the case,

01:36:29.320 | that there's, but it's measured by like,

01:36:32.760 | what would you, really that first question

01:36:34.200 | where there is no delay,

01:36:35.480 | most people say they would be at the higher end scale.

01:36:38.080 | A lot of times, 100%,

01:36:39.080 | they said they would definitely use a condom.

01:36:41.760 | Not everybody, and we know that's the case.

01:36:43.880 | See, it's like that some people don't like condoms.

01:36:46.200 | Some people say, yeah, I wanna use a condom,

01:36:49.120 | but a quarter of the time ended up not

01:36:51.000 | because I guess getting lost in the passion of the moment.

01:36:53.880 | So for the people, I mean, the only reason that people,

01:36:56.960 | so behaviorally speaking,

01:36:58.640 | at least for a large number of people in many circumstances,

01:37:01.080 | condom use is a reinforcer just because people do it.

01:37:03.960 | Like, you know, why are they doing it?

01:37:07.040 | They're not because it makes the sex feel better,

01:37:10.200 | but because it makes that,

01:37:12.040 | it allows for at least the same general reward,

01:37:15.040 | even if actually, even if it feels a little bit,

01:37:16.920 | not as good, you know, with the condom,

01:37:19.400 | nonetheless, they get most of the benefit

01:37:22.000 | without the concurrent, oh my gosh,

01:37:25.680 | there's this risk of either unwanted pregnancy

01:37:27.920 | or getting HIV or way more likely than HIV,

01:37:30.960 | you know, herpes, you know, in general rewards, et cetera,

01:37:34.760 | all the lovely ones.

01:37:36.400 | And we've actually done research saying like,

01:37:38.880 | where we gauge the probability of these individual,

01:37:41.640 | different STIs, and it's like, what's the heavy hitter

01:37:43.680 | in terms of what people are using to judge,

01:37:46.600 | you know, to evaluate whether they're gonna use a condom.

01:37:49.280 | - So that's why the condom use is the delayed thing,

01:37:52.520 | five minutes or more. - Right.

01:37:54.240 | - And then, yeah, because that's the--

01:37:56.360 | - Which would normally be the larger later reward,

01:37:58.320 | like the $10 versus the nine, it's like the $10,

01:38:01.000 | which is counterintuitive if you just think

01:38:02.800 | about the physical pleasure.

01:38:04.360 | - So that's a good thing to measure.

01:38:07.160 | So condom use is a really good concrete quantifiable thing

01:38:12.160 | that you can use in a study,

01:38:13.640 | and then you can add a lot of different elements,

01:38:15.960 | like the presence of cocaine and so on.

01:38:18.400 | - Yeah, you can get people loaded on like any number

01:38:20.640 | of drugs like cocaine, alcohol, and methamphetamine

01:38:22.840 | are the three that I've done and published on.

01:38:24.960 | And it's interesting that--

01:38:26.800 | - These are fun studies, man.

01:38:28.920 | - Right, I love to get people loaded in a safe context,

01:38:32.240 | and like, but to really, it started,

01:38:34.080 | like there was some early research with alcohol.

01:38:36.360 | I mean, the psychedelics are the most interesting,

01:38:38.040 | but it's like all of these drugs are fascinating.

01:38:40.320 | The fact that all of these are keys that unlock

01:38:42.840 | a certain psychological experience in the head.

01:38:46.560 | And so there was this work with alcohol that showed

01:38:49.080 | that it didn't affect those monetary

01:38:51.480 | delay discounting decisions,

01:38:53.160 | $9 now versus $10 later.

01:38:54.960 | And I'm like getting people drunk.

01:38:57.040 | And I thought to myself, are you telling me

01:38:59.800 | that getting someone, that people being drunk

01:39:04.160 | does not cause people, at least sometimes,

01:39:06.320 | to choose what's good for them in the short term

01:39:10.840 | at the expense of what's good for them in the long term.

01:39:13.800 | It's like, bullshit.

01:39:14.960 | But in what context does that happen?

01:39:19.320 | So that's something that inspired me

01:39:21.800 | to go in this direction of like, aha,

01:39:24.080 | risky sexual decisions is something they do

01:39:26.240 | when they're drunk.

01:39:27.120 | They don't necessarily go home,

01:39:28.280 | and even though some people have gambling problems

01:39:30.600 | and alcohol interacts with that,

01:39:31.880 | the most typical thing is not for people to go home,

01:39:34.800 | log on and change their allocation

01:39:37.000 | in their retirement account or something like that.

01:39:39.560 | - But they're more likely, risky sexual decisions,

01:39:42.480 | they're more likely to not wait the five minutes

01:39:44.520 | for the condom and instead go no condom now.

01:39:48.360 | - Right, that's a big effect, and we see that.

01:39:50.680 | And interestingly, we do not see,

01:39:53.320 | with those different drugs, we don't see an effect

01:39:55.240 | if we just look at that zero delay condition.

01:39:57.320 | In other words, the condom's right there waiting to be used.

01:39:59.200 | Would you, how likely are you to use it?

01:40:00.760 | You don't see it.

01:40:01.760 | I mean, people are by and large gonna use the condom.

01:40:05.720 | So, and that's the way most of this research

01:40:08.040 | outside of behavioral economics

01:40:09.480 | that just looked at condom use decisions,

01:40:11.520 | very little of which has ever actually administered

01:40:15.240 | the drugs, which is another unique aspect.

01:40:17.440 | But they usually just look at assuming the condom is there.

01:40:20.640 | But this is more using behavioral economics to delve in

01:40:23.680 | and model something that,

01:40:24.640 | and I've done survey research on this,

01:40:26.400 | modeling what actually happens.

01:40:28.200 | Like, you meet someone at a laundromat,

01:40:30.760 | like you weren't planning on, you know,

01:40:33.600 | one thing leads to another, they live around the corner,

01:40:36.600 | these things, you know, and like we did one survey

01:40:41.080 | with men who have sex with men

01:40:43.320 | and found that 25% of them, 24%,

01:40:47.200 | about a quarter, reported in the last six months

01:40:49.840 | that they had unprotected anal intercourse,

01:40:52.440 | which is the most risky in terms of sexually transmitted

01:40:56.280 | infection in the last six months in a situation

01:41:00.480 | where they would have used a condom,

01:41:01.880 | but they simply didn't use one just 'cause they didn't have

01:41:03.680 | one on them.

01:41:05.080 | So this, to me, it's like, if unless we delve into this

01:41:09.040 | and understand this, these suboptimal conditions,

01:41:12.480 | we're not gonna fully address the problem.

01:41:14.200 | There's plenty of people that say, yep,

01:41:15.680 | condom use is good, I use it a lot of the time.

01:41:18.800 | You know, it's like, where is that failing?

01:41:21.400 | And it's under these suboptimal conditions,

01:41:23.000 | which in frank, if you think about it,

01:41:24.480 | it's like most of the case.

01:41:26.520 | Action is unfolding, things are getting hot and heavy,

01:41:28.960 | someone's like, do you got a condom?

01:41:31.160 | Eh, no.

01:41:32.120 | It's like, do they break the action and take 10 minutes

01:41:36.240 | to go to the convenience store or whatever?

01:41:38.560 | Maybe everything's closed,

01:41:39.680 | maybe they gotta wait till tomorrow.

01:41:42.960 | - And there's something to be studied there on the,

01:41:47.960 | it just seems like an unfortunate set of circumstances.

01:41:49.920 | Like, what's the solution to that?

01:41:51.680 | I mean, what's the psychology that needs to be

01:41:57.840 | like taken apart there?

01:42:00.960 | Because it just seems like that's the way of life.

01:42:02.960 | We don't expect the things to happen.

01:42:05.120 | Are we supposed to expect them better,

01:42:07.360 | to be self-aware enough about our calculations?

01:42:11.680 | Or you see the 10 minute detour to a convenience store

01:42:15.880 | as a kind of thing that we need to understand

01:42:20.280 | how we humans evaluate the cost of that.

01:42:25.560 | - I think in terms of like how we use this to help people,

01:42:30.440 | it's mostly on the environment side rather than on the--

01:42:33.680 | - Individual side, cool.

01:42:34.560 | - Yeah, although those interact.

01:42:36.240 | So it's like, in one sense, if you're,

01:42:38.320 | especially if you're gonna be drinking

01:42:39.800 | or using another substance that is associated

01:42:42.400 | with a stimulant, alcohol and stimulants

01:42:45.440 | go along with risky sex.

01:42:47.280 | Good to be aware that you might make decisions

01:42:49.320 | just to tell yourself you might make a decision

01:42:50.960 | that you wouldn't have made in your sober state.

01:42:54.120 | And so, hey, throwing a condom in the purse,

01:42:57.160 | in the pocket might be a good idea.

01:43:00.900 | I think at the environmental level, just more condom,

01:43:03.400 | I mean, it highlights what we know

01:43:04.680 | about just making condoms widely available.

01:43:07.840 | - Something that I'd like to do is like

01:43:10.400 | reinforcing condom use.

01:43:12.480 | So just getting people used to carrying a condom

01:43:17.480 | everywhere they go, 'cause it's such a,

01:43:20.040 | once it's in someone's habit,

01:43:21.760 | if they are say like a young single person

01:43:23.600 | and they occasionally have unprotected sex,

01:43:27.640 | like training those people,

01:43:28.760 | like what if you got a text message once every few days

01:43:32.400 | saying, "Ah, if you show me a,

01:43:34.080 | "send back a photo of a condom,

01:43:35.400 | "within a minute you get a reward of $5."

01:43:38.360 | You could shape that up like,

01:43:39.960 | it's a process called contingency management,

01:43:41.760 | it's basically just straight up operant reinforcement.

01:43:44.680 | You could shape that up with no problem.

01:43:46.720 | I mean, those procedures of contingency management,

01:43:50.800 | giving people systematic rewards is like,

01:43:52.900 | for example, the most powerful way

01:43:54.200 | to reduce cocaine use in addicted people.

01:43:57.600 | - Is what?

01:44:00.760 | - By saying, "If you show me a negative urine for cocaine,

01:44:05.000 | "I'm gonna give you a monetary reward."

01:44:06.560 | And like that has huge effects

01:44:08.360 | in terms of decreasing cocaine use.

01:44:10.360 | If that can be that powerful

01:44:11.560 | for something like stopping cocaine use,

01:44:13.560 | how powerful could that be

01:44:15.520 | for shaping up just carrying a condom?

01:44:17.160 | 'Cause the primary, unlike cocaine use,

01:44:20.080 | here we're not saying you can't have the main reward,

01:44:23.440 | like you could still have sex,

01:44:25.400 | and you can even have sex in the way

01:44:26.640 | that you tell yourself you'd rather do it

01:44:29.160 | if a condom is available.

01:44:31.080 | You know, so, you know, like, you're not, you know,

01:44:35.200 | it's, relatively speaking, it's way easier

01:44:37.260 | than like not using cocaine if you like using cocaine.

01:44:40.160 | It's just basically getting in the habit

01:44:42.380 | of carrying a condom.

01:44:43.240 | So that's just one idea of like--

01:44:45.080 | - There could be also the capitalistic solutions

01:44:47.120 | of like there could be a business opportunity

01:44:49.400 | for like a DoorDash for condoms.

01:44:51.760 | - Oh yeah.

01:44:52.600 | - Like delivery.

01:44:53.920 | - I thought about this with--

01:44:55.120 | - Within five minute delivery of a condom

01:44:57.240 | at any location, like Uber for condoms.

01:44:59.560 | - I've thought about it, not with condoms,

01:45:01.200 | but a very similar line of thinking,

01:45:03.240 | a line that you're going into in terms of Uber

01:45:06.040 | and people getting drunk when they intend,

01:45:08.360 | they enter the bar planning to have one or two,

01:45:10.240 | they ended up having five or six,

01:45:11.560 | and it's like, okay, yeah, you can take the cab home,

01:45:14.840 | the Uber home, but you've left your car there,

01:45:17.220 | it might get towed, you might like,

01:45:19.320 | there's also the hassle of just, you know,

01:45:20.880 | you wanna wake up tomorrow with your hangover

01:45:22.440 | and forget about it and move on.

01:45:24.600 | And I think a lot of people in their situation,

01:45:26.320 | they're like, screw it, I'm gonna take the risk,

01:45:28.820 | just get it, you know.

01:45:29.920 | What if you had an Uber service where two,

01:45:32.120 | you know, you have a car come out with two drivers,

01:45:38.040 | and one of them, two sober drivers, obviously,

01:45:45.120 | and the person, the one driver drops off the other

01:45:49.660 | that then drives you home in their car, in your car.

01:45:54.660 | So that you can, I mean, I think a lot of people

01:45:58.000 | would pay 50 bucks, it's gonna be more than a regular Uber,

01:46:01.160 | but it's like, it's gonna be done, I got the money,

01:46:03.520 | I already spent 60 bucks at the bar tonight,

01:46:06.380 | like, just get the damn thing done,

01:46:09.240 | tomorrow I'm done with it, I wake up,

01:46:11.100 | my car's in front of my house.

01:46:12.960 | I think that would be, I think someone could,

01:46:14.840 | I'm not gonna open that business,

01:46:15.960 | so if anyone hears this and wants to take off with that,

01:46:18.540 | like, I think it could help a lot of people.

01:46:20.760 | - Yeah, definitely, and Uber itself, I would say,

01:46:23.520 | helped a huge amount of people,

01:46:25.440 | just making it easy to make the decision of going home,

01:46:30.040 | not driving yourself.

01:46:31.560 | - I read about in Austin, where they,

01:46:33.320 | I don't know where it's at now,

01:46:34.200 | where they outlawed Uber for a while,

01:46:36.280 | you know, because of the whole taxicab union type thing,

01:46:39.080 | and how just, yeah, there were like hordes of drunk people

01:46:42.040 | that were used to Uber

01:46:44.880 | that now didn't have a cheap alternative.

01:46:47.360 | - So, just, we didn't exactly mention,

01:46:51.840 | you've done a lot of studies in sexual decision making

01:46:54.240 | with different drugs.

01:46:55.200 | Is there some interesting insights or findings

01:46:59.560 | on the difference between the different drugs?

01:47:03.120 | So, I think you said meth as well, so cocaine.

01:47:07.840 | Is there some interesting characteristics

01:47:09.840 | about decision making that these drugs alter

01:47:12.040 | versus like alcohol, all those kinds of things?

01:47:14.680 | - I think, and there's much more to study with this,

01:47:16.800 | but I think the biggie there is that the stimulants,

01:47:20.480 | they create risky sex by really increasing

01:47:23.480 | the rewarding value of sex.

01:47:26.280 | Like, if you talk to people that are real,

01:47:27.680 | especially that are hooked on stimulants,

01:47:30.480 | one of the biggies is like,

01:47:32.360 | sex on coke or meth is like so much better

01:47:35.120 | than sex without, and that's a big part of what,

01:47:37.760 | why they have trouble quitting,

01:47:38.960 | 'cause it's so tied to their sex life.

01:47:41.760 | - So, it's not that your decision making is broken,

01:47:44.360 | it's just that you, well, you allocate--

01:47:46.840 | - It's a different aspect of their decision,

01:47:48.560 | yeah, on the reward side.

01:47:49.860 | I think on the alcohol, it works more through disinhibition.

01:47:52.400 | It's like, alcohol is really good at reducing the ability

01:47:56.840 | of a delayed punisher to have an effect on current behavior.

01:48:00.280 | In other words, there's this bad thing

01:48:02.000 | that's gonna happen tomorrow, or a week from now,

01:48:04.240 | or 20 years from now.

01:48:06.120 | Being drunk is a really good way,

01:48:09.240 | and you see this in like rats making decisions.

01:48:11.640 | You know, a high dose of alcohol makes someone

01:48:14.840 | less sensitive to those consequences.

01:48:16.700 | So, I think that's the lever that's being hit with alcohol,

01:48:20.160 | and it's more just increasing the rewarding value of sex

01:48:23.780 | by the psychostimulants on that side.

01:48:26.960 | We actually found that it, and it was amazing,

01:48:28.920 | 'cause like hundreds of millions of dollars

01:48:30.240 | have been spent by NIH to study the connection

01:48:33.000 | between cocaine and HIV.

01:48:35.920 | Like, we ran the first study on my grant

01:48:38.520 | that like actually just gave people cocaine

01:48:41.800 | under double blind conditions, and showed that like,

01:48:43.960 | yeah, when people are on coke,

01:48:45.560 | like their ratings of sexual desire,

01:48:48.460 | even though they're not in a sexual situation,

01:48:50.320 | yeah, you show them some pictures,

01:48:51.420 | but you're just saying they're horny.

01:48:53.280 | Like, you get subjective ratings

01:48:54.480 | about like how much sexual desire you're feeling right now.

01:48:57.600 | People get horny when they're on stimulants.

01:49:00.480 | And a lot of people say, duh,

01:49:03.380 | if they really know these drugs.

01:49:04.800 | - But that's a rigorous study that's in the lab

01:49:07.000 | that shows like, there's a plot.

01:49:09.360 | - Right, the dose effects of that, the time course of that.

01:49:12.600 | - Yeah, it's not just--

01:49:13.840 | - Can you please tell me there's a paper with a plot

01:49:16.040 | that shows dose versus evaluation of like horniness?

01:49:21.040 | - Yeah, we didn't say horniness,

01:49:22.440 | we said sexual arousal.

01:49:23.760 | - Sexual? - Yeah, basically, yeah.

01:49:24.600 | - There's a plot?

01:49:25.600 | I'm gonna find this plot.

01:49:26.600 | - Right, well, I'll send it to you.

01:49:27.680 | There was one headline from some publicity on the work

01:49:32.260 | that said, "Horny cocaine users don't use condoms,"

01:49:36.400 | or something like that.

01:49:37.240 | (laughing)

01:49:38.060 | - You gotta love journalism.

01:49:39.360 | - I wouldn't have put it that way,

01:49:40.400 | but like, yeah, that's right on.

01:49:41.600 | - I guess that's what it finds.

01:49:43.800 | So you've published a bunch of studies on psychedelics.

01:49:48.000 | Is there some especially favorite,

01:49:53.000 | insightful findings from some of these

01:49:55.520 | that you could talk about?

01:49:57.360 | Maybe favorite studies or just something that pops to mind

01:50:01.640 | in terms of both the goals and like the major insights gained

01:50:06.640 | and maybe the side little curiosities

01:50:09.520 | that you discovered along the way?

01:50:11.440 | - Yeah, I think of the work with using psilocybin

01:50:14.920 | to help people quit smoking.

01:50:16.360 | I mean, we've talked about smoking

01:50:18.360 | being such a serious addiction.

01:50:21.520 | And so what inspired me to get into that

01:50:24.120 | was just kind of having behavioral psychologies

01:50:27.240 | my primary lens,

01:50:28.400 | sort of this sort of radical, empirical basis of,

01:50:33.400 | I'm really interested in the mystical experience

01:50:41.320 | and all of these reports, very interested.

01:50:45.000 | And, but at the same time, I'm like, okay,

01:50:48.520 | let's get down to some behavior change

01:50:51.560 | and something that we can record,

01:50:53.040 | like quantitatively verify biologically.

01:50:56.920 | - So find all kinds of negative behaviors

01:50:59.160 | that people practice and see if we can turn those

01:51:02.480 | into positive or change the behavior.

01:51:03.320 | - Right, like really change it, not just people saying,

01:51:06.320 | which again is interesting, I'm not dismissing it,

01:51:08.120 | but folks that say my life has turned around,

01:51:10.200 | I feel this has completely changed me.

01:51:12.200 | It's like, yep, that's good.

01:51:14.760 | All right, let's see if we can harness that

01:51:16.680 | and test that into something that's real behavior change.

01:51:21.480 | You know what I mean?

01:51:22.320 | It's quantifiable.

01:51:23.200 | It's like, okay, you've been smoking for 30 years.

01:51:26.000 | You know, like that's a real thing.

01:51:27.680 | And you've tried a dozen times, like seriously to quit

01:51:30.400 | and you haven't been able to long-term, like, okay.

01:51:33.600 | And if you quit, like we'll ask you and I'll believe you,

01:51:36.640 | but I don't trust everyone reading the paper to believe you.

01:51:39.200 | So we're gonna have you pee in a cup and we'll test that.

01:51:41.680 | We'll have you blow into this little machine

01:51:43.120 | that measures carbon monoxide and we'll test that.

01:51:45.560 | So multiple levels of biological verification.

01:51:48.640 | - Nice.

01:51:49.480 | - Like now we're getting like,

01:51:50.400 | to me that's where the rubber meets the road

01:51:51.960 | in terms of like therapeutics.

01:51:53.520 | It's like, can we really shift behavior?

01:51:55.640 | And since, and so much as we've talked about

01:51:58.560 | my other scientific work outside of psychedelics

01:52:00.440 | is about understanding addiction and drug use.

01:52:02.960 | So it's like, you know, looking at addiction,

01:52:04.600 | it's a no brainer and smoking is just a great example.

01:52:07.320 | And so back to your question,

01:52:09.000 | like we've had really high success rates.

01:52:11.040 | I mean, it really, it rivals anything

01:52:13.240 | that's been published in the scientific literature.

01:52:15.800 | The caveat is that, you know,

01:52:18.360 | that's based on our initial trial of only 15 people,

01:52:20.960 | but extremely high long-term success rates,

01:52:23.480 | 80% at six months per smoke-free.

01:52:27.440 | - So can we discuss the details?

01:52:29.320 | So first of all, which psychedelic are we talking about?

01:52:31.840 | And maybe can you talk about the 15 people

01:52:34.360 | and how the study ran and what you found?

01:52:37.240 | - Yeah, yeah, so the drug we're using is psilocybin

01:52:40.840 | and we're using moderately high

01:52:43.480 | and high doses of psilocybin.

01:52:45.960 | And I should say this about most of our work.

01:52:47.880 | These are not kind of museum level doses.

01:52:50.600 | In other words, nothing,

01:52:52.000 | even big fans of psychedelics wanna take

01:52:53.800 | and go to a concert or go to the museum.

01:52:57.320 | If someone's at Burning Man on this type of dose,

01:52:59.400 | like they're probably gonna wanna find their way

01:53:02.200 | back to their tent and zip up and hunker down for,

01:53:05.200 | you know, not be around strangers.

01:53:07.640 | Yeah. - And by the way,

01:53:09.720 | the delivery method, so psilocybin is mushrooms, I guess.

01:53:14.680 | What's the usual, is it edible?

01:53:19.160 | Is there some other way?

01:53:20.400 | Like how is people supposed to think about

01:53:23.160 | the correct dosing of these things?

01:53:25.120 | 'Cause I've heard that it's hard to dose correctly.

01:53:28.260 | - That's right.

01:53:30.480 | So in our studies, we use the pure compound psilocybin.

01:53:33.680 | So it's a single molecule, you know, a bunch of molecules.

01:53:36.760 | And we give them a capsule with that in it.

01:53:40.300 | And so it's just, you know, a little capsule they swallow.

01:53:44.880 | What people, when psilocybin is used outside of research,

01:53:49.880 | it's always in the context of mushrooms.

01:53:51.960 | 'Cause they're so easy to grow.

01:53:54.140 | There's no market for synthetic psilocybin.

01:53:56.240 | There's no reason for that to pop up.

01:53:59.000 | The high dose that we use in research is 30 milligrams,

01:54:04.000 | body weight adjusted.

01:54:10.080 | So if you're a heavier person,

01:54:11.200 | it might be like 40 or even 50 milligrams.

01:54:14.600 | We have some data that, based on that data,

01:54:18.480 | we're actually moving into like getting away

01:54:20.160 | from the body weight adjusting of the dose

01:54:22.440 | and just giving an absolute dose.

01:54:23.720 | It seems like there's no justification

01:54:25.080 | for the body weight based dosing, but I digress.

01:54:28.160 | Generally 30, 40 milligrams, it's a high dose.

01:54:32.920 | And based on average, even though, as you alluded to,

01:54:34.980 | there's variability, which gets people into some trouble

01:54:37.840 | in terms of mushrooms, like psilocybin cubensis,

01:54:40.520 | which is the most common species

01:54:42.540 | in the illicit market in the US.

01:54:44.960 | This is about equivalent to five dried grams,

01:54:47.800 | which is right at about where,

01:54:49.680 | right where McKenna and others, they call it a heroic dose.

01:54:55.560 | This is not hanging out with your friends,

01:54:57.400 | going to the concert again.

01:54:59.200 | So this is a real deal dose, even to people that really,

01:55:03.240 | just even to psychonauts.

01:55:05.040 | And we've even had a number of studies.

01:55:06.520 | - Psychonauts?

01:55:07.560 | - Yeah, people that, yeah, like astronaut or cosmonaut.

01:55:10.840 | - Psychonauts, great terms. - For psychedelics.

01:55:14.400 | Yeah, going as far out as possible.

01:55:16.080 | - But even for them, even for those

01:55:19.240 | who've flown to space before.

01:55:21.160 | - Right, right, they're like, "Holy shit,

01:55:22.640 | "I didn't know the orbit would be that far out."

01:55:25.840 | Or, "I escaped the orbit,

01:55:27.680 | "I was in interplanetary space there."

01:55:30.420 | (laughs)

01:55:31.560 | - So these folks, the 15 folks in the study,

01:55:34.040 | there's not a question of dose being too low

01:55:38.460 | to truly have an impact.

01:55:40.240 | - Right, right, very, out of hundreds of volunteers

01:55:42.680 | over the years, we've only seen a couple of people

01:55:44.760 | where there was a mild effect of the 30 milligrams.

01:55:48.680 | And who knows, that person's their serotonin,

01:55:51.520 | they might have lesser density of serotonin 2A receptors

01:55:55.280 | or something, we don't know.

01:55:56.380 | But it's extremely rare.

01:55:57.480 | For most people, this is like something interesting

01:56:00.680 | is gonna happen, put it that way.

01:56:01.520 | - Speaking of Joe Rogan, I think that Jamie,

01:56:04.360 | his producer, is immune to psychedelics.

01:56:09.360 | So maybe he's a good recruit for the study to test.

01:56:13.040 | - So that's interesting.

01:56:13.880 | Now, I'm not, the caveat is I'm not encouraging

01:56:16.040 | anything illicit, but just theoretically,

01:56:19.140 | my first question as a behavioral pharmacologist

01:56:21.800 | is increase the dose.

01:56:23.360 | (laughs)

01:56:24.480 | Like really?

01:56:25.320 | - Nobody's immune.

01:56:26.240 | - I'm not telling Jamie to do that, but okay.

01:56:30.160 | You're taking the same amount that friends might be taking.

01:56:33.040 | - But he was also referring to the psychedelic effects

01:56:35.900 | of edible marijuana, which is,

01:56:38.720 | is there rules on dosage for marijuana?

01:56:43.720 | Is there limits?

01:56:47.680 | Like places where it's, this all goes,

01:56:50.520 | it probably is state by state, right?

01:56:52.040 | - It is, but most, they've gone that direction

01:56:54.440 | in states that didn't initially have these rules

01:56:56.760 | have now have them.

01:56:57.840 | So it's like, you'll get, I think, five, 10,

01:57:00.720 | I think five or 10 milligrams of THC being a common,

01:57:05.720 | and this is an important thing,

01:57:07.920 | like where they've moved from not being allowed to say,

01:57:10.280 | like have a whole candy bar and have each of the eight

01:57:13.160 | or 10 squares in the candy bar being 10 milligrams,

01:57:16.240 | but it's like, no, the whole thing,

01:57:17.560 | because like, someone gets a candy bar,

01:57:19.160 | they're eating the freaking candy bar.

01:57:20.880 | And it's like, unless you're a daily cannabis user,

01:57:24.080 | if you take 100 milligrams, it's like,

01:57:26.740 | that's what could lead to a bad trip for someone.

01:57:30.880 | And it's like, a lot of these people, it's like,

01:57:32.560 | oh, I used to smoke a little weed in college,

01:57:35.160 | they might say, they're visiting Denver for a business trip,

01:57:38.320 | and they're like, why not?

01:57:39.160 | Let's give it a shot, you know?

01:57:40.320 | And they're like, oh, I don't wanna smoke something

01:57:41.840 | 'cause it's gonna, so I'm gonna be safer with this edible.

01:57:44.440 | And they like consume this massive, you know,

01:57:47.760 | but there's huge tolerance.

01:57:48.800 | So a regular, like for someone who's smoking weed every day,

01:57:52.240 | they might take five milligrams

01:57:53.680 | and kind of hardly feel anything.

01:57:55.680 | And they may really need something like 30, 40, 50

01:57:59.440 | milligrams to have a strong effect.

01:58:02.160 | But yeah, so they've evolved in terms of the rules

01:58:06.200 | about like, okay, what constitutes a dose, you know,

01:58:11.120 | which is why you see less big candy bars and more,

01:58:13.280 | or if it is a whole candy bar,

01:58:15.360 | you're only getting a smaller dose, like 10 milligrams or,

01:58:17.960 | yeah, 'cause that is where people get in trouble

01:58:20.440 | more often with edibles.

01:58:22.360 | - Yeah, except Joey Diaz, which I've heard.

01:58:25.880 | That's definitely somebody I wanna talk to.

01:58:27.520 | Out of the crazy comedians I wanna talk to as well.

01:58:30.120 | Anyway, so yeah, the study of the 15

01:58:33.680 | and the dose not being a question.

01:58:36.080 | So like, what was the recruitment based on?

01:58:39.200 | What was the, like, how did the study get conducted?

01:58:44.200 | - Yeah, so the recruitment, I really liked this fact.

01:58:47.000 | It wasn't people that, you know, largely were,

01:58:49.480 | you know, we were honest about what we were studying,

01:58:51.680 | but for most people, it was, they were in the category

01:58:54.760 | of like, you know, not particularly interested

01:58:57.520 | in psychedelics, but more of like,

01:58:59.920 | they wanna quit smoking, they've tried everything,

01:59:01.920 | but the kitchen sink.

01:59:03.760 | And this sounds like the kitchen sink.

01:59:05.520 | (laughing)

01:59:06.360 | You know, it's like, well, it's Hopkins,

01:59:08.400 | so, you know, thinking of that,

01:59:10.560 | sounds like it's safe enough.

01:59:11.820 | So like, what the hell, let's give it a shot.

01:59:13.640 | Like, most of them were in that category,

01:59:15.960 | which I really, you know, I appreciate,

01:59:19.880 | 'cause it's more of a test, you know,

01:59:22.120 | of, yeah, just like a better model of what,

01:59:27.040 | if these are approved as medicines,

01:59:29.040 | like what you're gonna have the average participant,

01:59:31.520 | you know, be like.

01:59:34.200 | And so the therapy involves a good amount

01:59:37.600 | of non-psilocybin sessions, so preparatory sessions,

01:59:41.320 | like eight hours of getting to know the person,

01:59:44.200 | like the two people who are gonna be their guides

01:59:46.000 | or the person in the room with them during the experience,

01:59:48.900 | having these discussions with them

01:59:52.160 | where you're both kind of rapport building,

01:59:53.840 | just kind of discussing their life, getting to know them,

01:59:56.840 | but then also telling them, preparing them

01:59:59.000 | about the psilocybin experience,

02:00:01.480 | oh, it could be scary in this sense,

02:00:03.040 | but here's how to handle it, trust, let go, be open.

02:00:05.800 | And also during that preparation time,

02:00:08.600 | preparing them to quit smoking,

02:00:09.880 | using really standard bread and butter techniques

02:00:12.240 | that can all fall under the label,

02:00:14.800 | typically of the cognitive behavioral therapy,

02:00:16.900 | just stuff like before you quit,

02:00:19.840 | we assign a target quit date ahead of time,

02:00:22.720 | you're not just quitting on the fly,

02:00:24.520 | and that happens to be the target quit date

02:00:26.720 | in our study was the day

02:00:27.920 | where they got the first psilocybin dose,

02:00:29.820 | but doing things like keeping a smoking diary,

02:00:31.740 | like, okay, during the three weeks until you quit,

02:00:34.760 | every time you smoke a cigarette,

02:00:35.840 | just like jot down what you're doing,

02:00:37.480 | what you're feeling, what situation, that type of thing,

02:00:39.960 | and then having some discussion around that,

02:00:41.640 | and then going over the pluses and minuses in their life

02:00:44.520 | that smoking kind of comes with,

02:00:45.880 | and being honest about the, this is what it does for me,

02:00:47.980 | this is why I like it, this is why I don't like it,

02:00:50.200 | preparing for like, what if you do slip, how to handle it,

02:00:53.880 | like, don't dwell on guilt,

02:00:54.920 | 'cause that leads to more full on relapse,

02:00:57.680 | you know, just kind of treat it as a learning experience,

02:00:59.600 | that type of thing.

02:01:00.440 | Then you have the session day where they come in,

02:01:04.040 | they, five minutes of questionnaires,

02:01:07.560 | but pretty much they jump into the,

02:01:09.200 | we touch base with them, and we give them the capsule,

02:01:13.920 | it's a serious setting, but you know, a comfortable one,

02:01:17.480 | they're in a room that looks more like a living room

02:01:19.520 | than like a research lab,

02:01:21.160 | we measure their blood pressure, they didn't experience,

02:01:22.920 | but kind of minimal, kind of medical vibe to it,

02:01:25.660 | and they lay down on a couch,

02:01:28.920 | and it's a purposefully an introspective experience,

02:01:32.080 | so they're laying on a couch during most of the

02:01:35.200 | five to six hour experience, and they're wearing eye shades,

02:01:38.120 | which has a better connotation as a name than blindfold,

02:01:41.200 | like, so they're wearing eye shades, but that's,

02:01:43.920 | and they're wearing headphones

02:01:45.400 | through which music is played, mostly classical,

02:01:49.120 | although we've done some variation of that,

02:01:50.600 | I have a paper that was recently accepted,

02:01:52.080 | kind of comparing it to more like gongs,

02:01:54.560 | and harmonic bowls, and that type of thing,

02:01:57.920 | kind of like sound, you know, kind of.

02:02:00.920 | - Yeah, you've also added this to the science,

02:02:04.320 | and have a paper on the musical accompaniment

02:02:07.200 | to the psychedelic experience, that's fascinating.

02:02:09.160 | - Right, and we found basically that the,

02:02:11.200 | about the same effect, even by a trend, not significant,

02:02:13.960 | but a little bit better of an effect,

02:02:15.280 | both in terms of subjective experience and long-term,

02:02:19.000 | whether it helped people quit smoking,

02:02:20.640 | just a little tiny non-significant trend,

02:02:22.680 | even favoring the novel playlist

02:02:26.000 | with the Tibetan singing bowls, and the gongs,

02:02:28.940 | and didgeridoo, and all of that,

02:02:30.640 | and so anyway, just saying, okay,

02:02:33.360 | we can deviate a little bit from this,

02:02:35.440 | like what goes back to the 1950s,

02:02:37.440 | of this method of using classical music

02:02:39.200 | as part of this psychedelic therapy,

02:02:41.120 | but they're listening to the music,

02:02:42.320 | and they're not playing DJ in real time,

02:02:44.400 | you know, it's like, you know, they're just,

02:02:46.800 | be the baby, you're not the decision maker for today,

02:02:49.600 | go inward, trust, let go, be open,

02:02:51.760 | and pretty much the only interaction,

02:02:53.480 | like that we're there for,

02:02:55.520 | is to deal with any anxiety that comes up,

02:02:57.600 | so guide is kind of a misnomer in a sense,

02:03:00.480 | it's more of a safety net,

02:03:02.680 | and so like, tell us if you feel some butterflies,

02:03:05.000 | that we can provide reassurance,

02:03:06.200 | a hold of their hand can be very powerful,

02:03:09.120 | I've had people tell me that that was like the thing

02:03:11.000 | that really just grounded them.

02:03:12.560 | - Can you break apart trust, let go, be open?

02:03:15.600 | What, so, in a sense,

02:03:21.440 | how would you describe the experience,

02:03:24.480 | the intellectual and the emotional approach

02:03:29.280 | that people are supposed to take

02:03:30.640 | to really let go into the experience?

02:03:34.240 | - Yeah, so, trust is,

02:03:37.960 | trust the context, you know, trust the guides,

02:03:41.920 | trust the overall institutional context,

02:03:45.120 | I see it as layers of like, safety,

02:03:47.240 | even though it's everything I told you about,

02:03:48.600 | the relative bodily safety of psilocybin,

02:03:51.080 | nonetheless, we're still getting blood pressure

02:03:52.640 | throughout the session, just in case,

02:03:54.640 | we have a physician on hand who can respond,

02:03:56.680 | just in case, we're literally across the street

02:03:59.200 | from the emergency department,

02:04:00.480 | just in case, you know, all of that, you know.

02:04:02.840 | - Privacy is another thing you've talked about,

02:04:04.920 | just trusting that you're,

02:04:07.080 | and whatever happens is just between you

02:04:09.240 | and the people in the study.

02:04:10.840 | - Right, and hopefully they've really gotten that,

02:04:13.280 | by that point, deep into the study,

02:04:14.760 | that like, they realize we take that seriously

02:04:17.080 | and everything else, you know,

02:04:18.280 | and so it's really kind of like a very special role

02:04:20.160 | you're playing as a researcher or a guide,

02:04:22.720 | and hopefully they have your trust.

02:04:25.800 | And so, you know, and trust that they can be as emotional,

02:04:28.120 | everything from laughter to tears,

02:04:29.680 | like that's gonna be welcomed, we're not judging them.

02:04:31.760 | It's like, it's a therapeutic relationship where,

02:04:34.760 | you know, this is a safe container, it's a safe space.

02:04:37.520 | - Safe space. - That has a lot

02:04:38.360 | of baggage to that term, but it truly is,

02:04:39.840 | it's a safe space for that, for this type of experience,

02:04:44.320 | and to let go, so trust, let's see, let go,

02:04:48.300 | so that relates to the emotional,

02:04:49.880 | like you feel like crying, cry,

02:04:52.920 | you feel like laughing your ass off, laugh your ass off,

02:04:55.960 | you know, it's like, all the things,

02:04:57.760 | actually that sometimes it's more challenging

02:04:59.880 | with a, someone has a large recreational use,

02:05:02.520 | sometimes it's harder for them,

02:05:03.560 | because people in that context, and understandably so,

02:05:07.340 | it's more about holding your shit.

02:05:09.360 | Someone's had a bunch of mushrooms at a party,

02:05:12.480 | maybe they don't wanna go into the back room

02:05:15.040 | and start crying about these thoughts

02:05:17.360 | about the relationship with their mother,

02:05:19.520 | and they don't wanna be the drama queen or king

02:05:22.620 | that bring their friends down,

02:05:23.840 | 'cause their friends are having an experience too,

02:05:26.340 | and so they wanna compose, you know?

02:05:29.080 | - And also just the appearance in social settings

02:05:31.440 | versus the, so prioritizing how you appear to others

02:05:34.980 | versus the prioritizing the depth of the experience,

02:05:39.420 | and here in the study, you can prioritize the experience.

02:05:42.720 | - Right, and it's all about, like you're the astronaut,

02:05:44.960 | and we're, there's only one astronaut,

02:05:46.800 | we're ground control, and I use this often with,

02:05:49.680 | I have a photo of the space shuttle on a plaque

02:05:53.560 | in my office, and I kind of often use that as an example,

02:05:56.700 | and it's like, we're here for you.

02:05:58.340 | Like, we're a team, but we have different roles.

02:06:00.300 | It's just like, you don't have to compose yourself,

02:06:04.140 | like you don't have to be concerned about our safety,

02:06:07.340 | like we're playing these roles today,

02:06:09.500 | and like, yeah, your job is to go as deep as possible,

02:06:12.420 | or as far out, whatever your analogy is, as possible,

02:06:16.140 | and we're keeping you safe, and so,

02:06:19.660 | yeah, and you, the emotional side is a hard one,

02:06:23.060 | you know, because you really want people to,

02:06:25.320 | like if they go into realms of, subjectively,

02:06:28.200 | of despair and sorrow, like, yeah, like cry,

02:06:32.360 | you know, like, it's okay, you know,

02:06:34.600 | and especially if someone's, you know, more macho,

02:06:37.120 | and you know, you want this to be the place

02:06:39.640 | where they can let go, and again,

02:06:43.020 | something that they wouldn't or shouldn't do

02:06:44.520 | if someone were to theoretically use it

02:06:46.680 | in a social setting, and like, and also,

02:06:50.980 | these other things, like even that you get

02:06:52.520 | in those social settings of like, yeah,

02:06:54.420 | you don't have to, like, worry about your wallet,

02:06:56.660 | or being taken advantage, or especially for a woman,

02:06:59.240 | sexually assaulted by some creep at a concert or something,

02:07:02.620 | 'cause they're, you know, they're laying down,

02:07:05.480 | being far out in the section. - There's like a million

02:07:06.480 | sources of anxiety that are external versus internal,

02:07:11.400 | so you can just focus on your own, like,

02:07:13.840 | - Right. - the beautiful thing

02:07:14.920 | that's going on in your mind.

02:07:16.480 | - And even the cops at that layer,

02:07:18.360 | even though it's extremely unlikely,

02:07:21.080 | for most people, that cops would come in

02:07:22.720 | and bust 'em right when, like, even at that theoretical,

02:07:25.280 | like, that one in a billion chance,

02:07:26.920 | like, that might be a real thing psychologically.

02:07:29.480 | In this context, we even got that covered.

02:07:31.440 | This is, we've got DEA approval.

02:07:33.160 | - Yeah. - Like, you are,

02:07:34.240 | this is okay by every level of society that counts,

02:07:38.080 | you know, that has the authority.

02:07:40.040 | So it's, so go deep, trust the, you know,

02:07:42.880 | trust the setting, trust yourself, you know, let go,

02:07:47.200 | and be open, so in the experience,

02:07:49.260 | and this is all subjective and by analogy,

02:07:51.480 | but like, if there's a door, open it, go into it.

02:07:54.960 | If there's a stairwell, go down it,

02:07:58.280 | or a stairway, go up it.

02:08:00.040 | If there's a monster in the mind's eye, you know,

02:08:03.240 | don't run, approach it, look in the eye,

02:08:05.400 | and say, you know, let's talk.

02:08:07.920 | - Greet it. (laughs)

02:08:08.760 | - Yeah, what's up, what are you doing here?

02:08:10.920 | Let's talk turkey, you know?

02:08:12.600 | - Dave Goggins entered the chat, okay.

02:08:14.840 | - Right, it really is that, that really is a heart of it,

02:08:18.520 | this radical courage, like it--

02:08:20.280 | - Courage.

02:08:21.120 | - People are often struck by that coming out,

02:08:22.680 | like this is heavy lifting, this is hard work.

02:08:25.520 | People come out of this exhausted,

02:08:27.800 | and it can be extremely, some people say

02:08:30.880 | it's the most difficult thing they've done in their life,

02:08:33.420 | like choosing to let go on a moment,

02:08:36.200 | a microsecond by microsecond basis.

02:08:39.760 | Everything in their inclination is to say stop,

02:08:42.960 | sometimes, stop this, I don't like this,

02:08:45.040 | I didn't know it was gonna be like this, this is too much,

02:08:48.200 | and Terrence McKenna put it this way,

02:08:49.880 | it's like comparing to meditation and other techniques,

02:08:52.760 | it's like spending years trying to press the accelerator

02:08:56.000 | to make something happen.

02:08:57.520 | High-dose psychedelics is like you're speeding down

02:08:59.680 | the mountain in a fully loaded semi-truck,

02:09:03.240 | and you're charged with not slamming the brake.

02:09:06.000 | (laughs)

02:09:06.840 | It's like, you know, let it happen, you know,

02:09:09.880 | so it's very difficult, and to engage,

02:09:12.320 | always, you know, go further into it,

02:09:14.880 | and take that radical courage throughout.

02:09:19.280 | - What do they say in self-report,

02:09:22.600 | if you can put general words to it,

02:09:24.600 | what is their experience like?

02:09:26.200 | What do they say it's like?

02:09:27.840 | 'Cause these are many people, like you said,

02:09:29.440 | that haven't probably read much about psychedelics,

02:09:33.000 | or they don't have, like with Joe Rogan,

02:09:35.040 | like language or stories to put on it,

02:09:39.200 | so this is very raw self-report of experiences.

02:09:43.720 | What do they say the experience is like?

02:09:45.880 | - Yeah, and some more so than others,

02:09:47.560 | 'cause everyone has been exposed at some level or another,

02:09:50.200 | but some it is pretty superficial, as you're saying.

02:09:53.160 | One of the hallmarks of psychedelics

02:09:57.000 | is just their variability, so I'm more,

02:09:59.120 | it's like not the mean, but the standard deviation,

02:10:01.960 | it's so wide that it's like,

02:10:03.400 | it could be like hellish experiences,

02:10:07.160 | and, you know, just absolutely beautiful

02:10:12.640 | and loving experiences, everything in between,

02:10:15.800 | and both of those, like those could be

02:10:18.520 | two minutes apart from each other,

02:10:20.360 | and sometimes kind of at the same time concurrently.

02:10:24.080 | So let's see, there's different ways to,

02:10:28.200 | there were some Jungian psychologists back in the '60s,

02:10:31.840 | masters in Houston that wrote a really good book,

02:10:34.120 | The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience,

02:10:36.080 | kind of which is a play on

02:10:37.680 | varieties of religious experience by William James,

02:10:41.600 | that they described this, a perceptual level,

02:10:44.600 | so most people have that, you know,

02:10:46.440 | when, whether they're looking at the room

02:10:48.600 | without the eyeshades on or inside their mind's eye

02:10:51.560 | with the eyeshades on, colors, you know,

02:10:54.600 | sounds like this, it's a much richer sensorium,

02:10:58.960 | which can be very interesting.

02:11:02.400 | And then at another level,

02:11:04.040 | masters in Houston called it the psychodynamic level,

02:11:08.000 | and I think you could think about it more broadly than,

02:11:10.640 | that's kind of Jungian,

02:11:11.840 | but just the personal psychological levels,

02:11:14.600 | how I think of it, like, this is about your life,

02:11:17.000 | there's a whole life review,

02:11:17.920 | oftentimes people have thoughts about their childhood,

02:11:20.280 | about their relationships, their spouse or partner,

02:11:24.280 | their children, their parents, their family of origin,

02:11:27.880 | their current family, like, you know,

02:11:30.160 | that stuff comes up a lot, including every,

02:11:32.560 | like the love, just people just like pouring with tears

02:11:35.800 | about like, how much, like it hits them so hard,

02:11:39.880 | how much they love people.

02:11:41.720 | Like in a way that, you know,

02:11:42.760 | for people that like, they'd love their family,

02:11:44.680 | but like, it just hits them so hard that like,

02:11:48.120 | how important this is and like the magnitude of that love

02:11:52.360 | and like what that means in their life.

02:11:54.400 | So those are some of the most moving experiences

02:11:57.160 | to be present for is where people like it hits home,

02:12:00.360 | like what really matters in their life.

02:12:02.840 | And then you have this sort of what masters in Houston

02:12:06.680 | called the archetypal realm,

02:12:08.600 | which again is sort of viewing with the focus on archetypes,

02:12:12.480 | which is interesting, but I think of that more generally

02:12:14.200 | as like symbolic level.

02:12:16.000 | So just really deep experiences where you have,

02:12:19.320 | you do have experiences that seem symbolic of,

02:12:22.440 | you know, very much in like, you know,

02:12:24.600 | what we know about dreaming

02:12:25.680 | and what most people think about dreaming,

02:12:27.440 | like there's this randomness of things,

02:12:29.600 | but sometimes it's pretty clear in retrospect,

02:12:31.840 | oh, like this came up because this thing has been on my mind,

02:12:36.220 | you know, recently.

02:12:37.060 | So it seems to be, there seems to be this symbolic level.

02:12:40.280 | And then they have this,

02:12:41.460 | the last level that they describe

02:12:42.960 | is the mystical integral level,

02:12:45.440 | which this is where there's lots of terms for it,

02:12:48.340 | but transcendental experiences, experiences of unity,

02:12:52.200 | mystical type effects we often measure.

02:12:56.160 | Europeans use a scale that will refer

02:12:58.500 | to oceanic boundlessness.

02:13:00.280 | This is all pretty much the same thing.

02:13:02.600 | This is like, at some sense,

02:13:04.860 | the deepest level of the very sense of self

02:13:08.240 | seems to be dissolved,

02:13:12.040 | minimize or expand it such that the boundaries of the self

02:13:15.340 | go into, and here, I think some of this is just semantics,

02:13:17.560 | but whether the self is expanding

02:13:19.820 | such that there's no boundary between the self

02:13:21.720 | and the rest of the universe,

02:13:24.040 | or whether there's no sense of self,

02:13:25.920 | again, might be just semantics,

02:13:27.200 | but this radical shift or sense of loss

02:13:30.040 | of sense of self or self boundaries.

02:13:33.080 | And that's like the most,

02:13:34.900 | typically, when people have that experience,

02:13:37.060 | they'll often report that as being the most remarkable thing.

02:13:40.300 | And this is what you don't typically get with MDMA,

02:13:43.400 | these deepest levels of the nature of reality itself,

02:13:46.800 | the subjectivity and objectivity,

02:13:48.600 | just like the seer and the seen become one,

02:13:53.600 | and it's a process.

02:13:57.260 | And yeah.

02:13:58.460 | - And they're able to bring that experience back

02:14:02.700 | and be able to describe it?

02:14:06.620 | - Yeah, but one of the, to a degree,

02:14:09.380 | but one of the hallmarks, going back to William James,

02:14:11.780 | of describing a mystical experience is the ineffability.

02:14:15.580 | And so even though it's ineffable,

02:14:17.660 | people try as far as they can to describe it,

02:14:20.380 | but when you get the real deal, they'll say,

02:14:22.500 | and even though they say a lot of helpful things

02:14:24.480 | to help you describe the landscape,

02:14:26.200 | they'll say, "No matter what I say,

02:14:28.500 | "I'm still not even coming anywhere close to what this was.

02:14:31.400 | "Like the language is completely failing."

02:14:34.020 | And I like to joke that even though it's ineffable,

02:14:36.700 | and we're researchers, so we try to F it up

02:14:38.940 | by asking them to describe the experience.

02:14:41.180 | - F it up.

02:14:42.020 | I love it.

02:14:42.860 | - Yeah. - It's a good one.

02:14:44.140 | But to bring it back a little bit,

02:14:46.340 | so for that particular study on tobacco,

02:14:50.380 | what was the results?

02:14:52.720 | What was the conclusions in terms of the impact

02:14:56.180 | of psilocybin on their addiction?

02:14:59.360 | - So in that pilot study, it was a very small

02:15:01.480 | and it wasn't a randomized study, so it was limited.

02:15:04.160 | The only question we could really answer was,

02:15:06.320 | is this worthy enough of follow-up?

02:15:08.140 | - Yes.

02:15:08.980 | - And the answer to that was abso-freaking-lutely,

02:15:11.080 | 'cause the success rates were so high,

02:15:12.520 | 80% biologically confirmed successful at six months.

02:15:15.940 | That held up to 60% biologically confirmed abstinent

02:15:19.540 | at an average of two and a half years, a very long fall.

02:15:22.820 | - Yeah, and so, I mean, the best that's been reported

02:15:26.340 | in the literature for smoking cessation

02:15:28.300 | is in the upper 50%, and that's with not one,

02:15:30.540 | but two medications for a couple of months,

02:15:32.860 | followed by regular cognitive behavioral therapy

02:15:36.420 | where you're coming in once a week or once every few weeks

02:15:38.860 | for an entire year.

02:15:40.980 | And so--

02:15:42.380 | - But this is what-- - It's very heavy.

02:15:44.580 | - This is just like a few uses of psilocybin?

02:15:48.020 | - So this was three doses of psilocybin

02:15:49.980 | over a total course including preparation, everything,

02:15:52.580 | a 15-week period where there's mainly,

02:15:54.980 | for the most part, one meeting a week,

02:15:58.300 | and then the three sessions are within that.

02:16:00.820 | And so it's, and we scaled that back in the more,

02:16:03.780 | the study we're doing right now, which I can tell you about,

02:16:06.460 | which is a randomized controlled trial.

02:16:09.160 | But it's the, yeah, the original pilot study

02:16:15.180 | was these 15 people.

02:16:20.540 | So given the positive signal from the first study

02:16:23.380 | telling us that it was a worthy pursuit,

02:16:25.020 | we hustled up some money to actually be able

02:16:26.940 | to afford a larger trial.

02:16:28.580 | So it's randomizing 80 people

02:16:30.580 | to get either one psilocybin session,

02:16:33.700 | we've narrowed, we've scaled that down from three to one,

02:16:36.960 | mainly 'cause we're doing fMRI neuroimaging before and after

02:16:40.660 | and it made it more experimentally complex

02:16:42.380 | to have multiple sessions.

02:16:45.100 | But one psilocybin session versus the nicotine patch

02:16:49.620 | using the FDA approved label,

02:16:52.260 | like standard use of the nicotine patch.

02:16:53.900 | So it's randomized, 40 people get randomized to psilocybin,

02:16:57.100 | one session, 40 people get nicotine patch.

02:17:00.140 | And they all get the same cognitive behavioral therapy

02:17:02.380 | through the standard talk therapy.

02:17:03.900 | And we've scaled it down somewhat

02:17:05.420 | so there's less weekly meetings,

02:17:07.240 | but it's within the same ballpark.

02:17:09.460 | And right now we're still,

02:17:10.940 | the study's still ongoing,

02:17:16.020 | and in fact, we just recently started recruiting again,

02:17:18.480 | we paused for COVID,

02:17:19.580 | now we're starting back up with some protections

02:17:21.860 | like masks and whatnot.

02:17:23.340 | But right now for the 44 people

02:17:28.340 | who have gotten through the one year follow up,

02:17:31.080 | and so that includes 22 from each of the two groups,

02:17:33.580 | the success rates are extremely high.

02:17:36.200 | For the psilocybin group,

02:17:37.540 | it's 59% have been biologically confirmed as smoke-free

02:17:41.300 | at one year after their quit date.

02:17:43.980 | And that compares to 27% for the nicotine patch,

02:17:48.180 | which by the way is extremely good for the nicotine patch

02:17:51.000 | compared to previous research.

02:17:53.060 | So the results could change because it's ongoing,

02:17:56.980 | but we're mostly done

02:17:58.260 | and it's still looking extremely positive.

02:18:01.380 | So if anyone's interested,

02:18:02.360 | they have to be sort of be in commuting distance

02:18:04.480 | to the Baltimore area, but you know--

02:18:06.580 | - To participate.

02:18:07.420 | - Right, right, to participate.

02:18:09.660 | - This is a good moment to bring up something.

02:18:13.680 | I think a lot of what you talked about is super interesting.

02:18:17.900 | And I think a lot of people listening to this,

02:18:19.940 | so now it's anywhere from 300 to 600,000 people

02:18:24.940 | for just a regular podcast.

02:18:27.220 | I know a lot of them will be very interested

02:18:29.460 | in what you're saying, and they're going to look you up.

02:18:32.820 | They're going to find your email

02:18:34.580 | and they're going to write you a long email

02:18:36.860 | about some of the interesting things they've found

02:18:39.700 | in any of your papers.

02:18:42.320 | How should people contact you?

02:18:45.920 | What is the best way for that?

02:18:47.940 | Would you recommend?

02:18:49.320 | You're a super busy guy.

02:18:50.780 | You have a million things going on.

02:18:52.580 | How should people communicate with you?

02:18:56.500 | - Thanks for bringing this up.

02:18:58.300 | I'm glad to get the opportunity to address this.

02:19:01.940 | If someone's interested in participating in a study,

02:19:05.020 | the best thing to do is go to the website.

02:19:07.300 | - Of the study or of, like, yeah, which website?

02:19:13.180 | - So we have all of our psilocybin studies.

02:19:15.820 | So everything we have is up on one website

02:19:18.840 | and then we link to the different study websites,

02:19:21.160 | but hopkinspsychedelic.org.

02:19:24.540 | So everything we do, or if you don't remember that,

02:19:27.480 | just go to your favorite search engine

02:19:30.000 | and look up Johns Hopkins Psychedelic

02:19:32.120 | and you're going to find one of the first hits

02:19:33.640 | is going to be our, is this website.

02:19:35.960 | And there's going to be links to the smoking study

02:19:38.120 | and all of our other studies.

02:19:39.160 | If there's no link to it there,

02:19:40.960 | we don't have a study on it now.

02:19:42.640 | And if you're interested in psychedelic research

02:19:45.000 | more broadly, you can look up, you know,

02:19:47.300 | like at another university that might be closer to you.

02:19:49.500 | And there's a handful of them now across the country.

02:19:52.260 | And there's some in Europe that have studies going on,

02:19:55.180 | but you can, at least in the US,

02:19:56.940 | you can look at clinicaltrials.gov

02:20:00.220 | and look up the term psilocybin.

02:20:02.220 | And in fact, optionally, people even in Europe

02:20:04.460 | can register their trial on there.

02:20:06.220 | So that's a good way to find studies.

02:20:07.660 | But for our research, rather than emailing me,

02:20:11.380 | like a more efficient way is to go straight

02:20:13.600 | and you can do that first, the first phase of screening,

02:20:17.080 | there's some questions online

02:20:18.680 | and then someone will get back in touch with you.

02:20:21.920 | But I do already, you know, and I, you know,

02:20:26.800 | I expect it's like going to increase,

02:20:29.640 | but I'm already at the level where my simple,

02:20:32.080 | limited mind and limited capacity is already,

02:20:34.400 | I sometimes fail to get back to emails.

02:20:37.680 | I mean, I'm trying to respond to my colleagues, my mentees.

02:20:41.460 | All these things, my responsibilities,

02:20:43.540 | and as many of the people just inquiring about,

02:20:46.140 | I wanna go to graduate school, I'm interested in this,

02:20:48.340 | I had this, I have a daughter that took a psychedelic

02:20:51.060 | and she's having trouble, and it's like,

02:20:53.260 | I try to respond to those,

02:20:54.760 | but sometimes I just simply can't get to all of them already.

02:20:58.060 | - To be honest, like from my perspective,

02:21:00.700 | it's been quite heartbreaking

02:21:03.500 | 'cause I basically don't respond to any emails anymore.

02:21:07.420 | And especially as you mentioned mentees and so on,

02:21:11.940 | like outside of that circle, it's heartbreaking to me

02:21:15.100 | how many brilliant people that are thoughtful people,

02:21:18.680 | like loving people, and they write long emails

02:21:21.540 | that are really, by the way, I do read them very often.

02:21:26.320 | It's just that I don't, the response

02:21:29.060 | is then you're starting a conversation.

02:21:31.740 | And there's, the heartbreaking aspect is

02:21:34.700 | you only have so many hours in the day

02:21:37.260 | to have deep, meaningful conversations

02:21:39.060 | with human beings on this earth.

02:21:40.860 | And so you have to select who they are,

02:21:42.540 | and usually it's your family,

02:21:43.700 | it's people like you're directly working with.

02:21:46.300 | And even, I guarantee you with this conversation,

02:21:48.660 | people will write you long, really thoughtful emails,

02:21:53.660 | like there'll be brilliant people,

02:21:55.840 | faculty from all over, PhD students from all over.

02:21:59.300 | And it's heartbreaking

02:22:00.300 | because you can't really get back to them.

02:22:01.660 | But you're saying like many of them, if you do respond,

02:22:05.380 | it's more like, here, go to this website.

02:22:07.620 | If you're, when you're interested into the study,

02:22:10.540 | it's just, it makes sense to directly go to the site

02:22:13.180 | if there's applications open, just apply for the study.

02:22:16.420 | - Right, right, right.

02:22:17.660 | You know, as either a volunteer

02:22:19.780 | or if we're looking for somebody,

02:22:22.580 | you know, we're gonna be posting,

02:22:25.220 | including on the Hopkins University website,

02:22:28.260 | we're gonna be posting if we're looking for a position.

02:22:30.940 | I am right now actually looking through,

02:22:32.580 | and it's mainly been through email and contacts,

02:22:35.420 | but should I say it?

02:22:37.540 | Because I think I'd rather cast my nets wide,

02:22:39.140 | but I'm looking for a postdoc right now.

02:22:40.860 | - Oh, great.

02:22:41.700 | - So I've mentored postdocs for, I don't know,

02:22:44.740 | like a dozen years or so,

02:22:46.340 | and more and more of their time is being spent on psychedelics

02:22:50.060 | so someone's free to contact me.

02:22:52.220 | That's more of a, that's sort of so close to home,

02:22:54.880 | that's a personal, you know, that like emailing me

02:22:57.900 | about that, but I come to appreciate more the advice

02:23:01.920 | that folks like Tim Ferriss have of like,

02:23:03.860 | I think it's him, like five cents emails, you know,

02:23:07.100 | like, you know, a subject that gets to the point

02:23:10.980 | that tells you what it's about

02:23:11.940 | so that like you break through the signal to the noise.

02:23:14.380 | But I really appreciate what you're saying

02:23:15.660 | because part of the equation for me is like,

02:23:17.660 | I have a three-year-old and like my time on the ground,

02:23:21.160 | on the floor, playing blocks or cars with him

02:23:23.820 | is part of that equation.

02:23:25.860 | And even if the day is ending

02:23:27.500 | and I know some of those emails are slipping by

02:23:29.220 | and I'll never get back to them,

02:23:30.380 | and I'm struggling with it already,

02:23:32.900 | and I get what you're saying,

02:23:34.180 | is I haven't seen anything yet

02:23:35.860 | if with the type of exposure that like your podcast gets.

02:23:39.020 | - This will bring an exposure,

02:23:40.380 | and then I think in terms of post-docs,

02:23:42.380 | this is a really good podcast in the sense

02:23:44.340 | that there's a lot of brilliant PhD students out there

02:23:47.860 | that are looking for posts from all over,

02:23:49.420 | from MIT, probably from Hopkins,

02:23:52.220 | this is just all over the place.

02:23:53.660 | So this is, and I, we have different preferences,

02:23:57.380 | but my preference would also be to have like a form

02:24:00.420 | that they could fill out for posts

02:24:01.940 | because it's very difficult through email

02:24:05.260 | to tell who's a really going to be a strong collaborator

02:24:09.020 | for you, like a strong post-doc, strong student,

02:24:12.280 | because you want a bunch of details,

02:24:15.620 | but at the same time,

02:24:16.480 | you don't want a million pages worth of email.

02:24:19.540 | So you want a little bit of application process.

02:24:21.580 | So I usually set up a form

02:24:23.300 | that helps me indicate how passionate the person is,

02:24:27.440 | how willing they are to do hard work.

02:24:32.440 | Like I often ask a question,

02:24:35.420 | people, of what do you think is more important

02:24:39.060 | to work hard or to work smart?

02:24:41.580 | And I use that, those types of questions

02:24:45.340 | to indicate who I would like to work with,

02:24:47.460 | because it's counterintuitive.

02:24:51.540 | But anyway, I'll leave that question unanswered

02:24:56.220 | for people to figure out themselves.

02:24:57.820 | But maybe if you know my love for David Goggins,

02:24:59.980 | you will understand.

02:25:01.660 | So anyway.

02:25:02.500 | - Those are good thoughts about the forms and everything.

02:25:04.340 | - It's difficult.

02:25:05.660 | And that's something that evolves.

02:25:07.420 | Email is such a messy thing.

02:25:09.900 | There's, speaking of Baltimore,

02:25:14.020 | Cal Newport, if you know who that is,

02:25:16.880 | he wrote a book called "Deep Work."

02:25:19.940 | He's a computer science professor

02:25:21.340 | and he's currently working on a book about email,

02:25:23.540 | about all the ways that email's broken.

02:25:25.780 | So this is gonna be a fascinating read.

02:25:28.700 | This is a little bit of a general question,

02:25:30.620 | but almost a bigger picture question

02:25:35.620 | that we touched on a little bit,

02:25:38.180 | but let's just touch it in a full way,

02:25:40.620 | which is what have all the psychedelic studies

02:25:43.420 | you've conducted taught you about the human mind,

02:25:49.420 | about the human brain and the human mind?

02:25:52.340 | Is there something, if you look at the human scientists

02:25:55.180 | you were before this work and the scientists you are now,

02:25:59.680 | how has your understanding of the human mind changed?

02:26:03.680 | - I'm thinking of that in two categories.

02:26:08.500 | One kind of more scientific.

02:26:13.340 | I mean, they're both scientific,

02:26:14.580 | but one more about the brain and behavior

02:26:19.580 | in the mind, so to speak.

02:26:22.820 | And as a behaviorist, I always see sort of the mind

02:26:25.180 | as a metaphor for behavior.

02:26:28.020 | But anyway, that gets philosophical.

02:26:30.240 | It's really increasing the,

02:26:35.260 | so the one category is increasing the appreciation

02:26:39.580 | for the magnitude of depth.

02:26:43.180 | I mean, so these are all metaphors of human experience.

02:26:47.440 | That might be a good way to,

02:26:48.980 | 'cause you use certain words like consciousness

02:26:51.020 | and whatnot, and it's like we're using constructs

02:26:53.660 | that aren't well-defined unless we kind of dig in,

02:26:56.940 | but into human experience,

02:26:59.740 | like that the experiences on these compounds

02:27:03.860 | can be so far out there or so deep.

02:27:07.200 | And that, like, and they're doing that by tinkering

02:27:10.900 | with the same machinery that's going on up there.

02:27:13.220 | I mean, my assumption, and I think it's a good assumption,

02:27:17.420 | is that all experiences,

02:27:20.220 | there's a biological side to all phenomenal experience.

02:27:25.220 | So there is not, the divide between biology

02:27:29.180 | and experience or psychology is,

02:27:35.980 | it's not one or the other.

02:27:38.420 | These are just two sides of the same coin.

02:27:43.060 | - I mean, you're avoiding the use

02:27:45.780 | of the word consciousness, for example,

02:27:47.580 | but the experience is referring to the subjective experience.

02:27:50.900 | So it's the actual technical use of the word consciousness

02:27:54.460 | of, yeah, subjective experience.

02:27:57.780 | - And even that word, there's certain ways that,

02:27:59.860 | like sort of like if we're talking about access consciousness

02:28:02.500 | or narrative self-awareness, which is an aspect of,

02:28:05.820 | like you can wrap a definition around that

02:28:08.300 | and we can talk meaningfully about it,

02:28:09.760 | but so often around psychedelics,

02:28:11.180 | it's used in this much more,

02:28:12.740 | in terms of ultimately explaining

02:28:15.420 | phenomenal consciousness itself,

02:28:17.180 | the so-called hard problem,

02:28:18.880 | relating to that question.

02:28:22.380 | And psychedelics really haven't spoken to that.

02:28:25.780 | And that's why it's hard,

02:28:27.020 | because like it's hard to imagine anything.

02:28:29.040 | But I think what I was getting is that

02:28:31.580 | psychedelics have done this by,

02:28:34.020 | the reason I was getting into the biology versus mind,

02:28:37.020 | psychology divide, is that,

02:28:39.220 | that just to kind of set up the fact that

02:28:42.300 | I think all of our experience is related

02:28:45.780 | to these biological events.

02:28:49.240 | So whether they be naturally occurring neurotransmitters,

02:28:52.860 | like serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine, et cetera,

02:28:56.420 | and a whole other sort of biological activity

02:28:59.200 | and kind of another layer up

02:29:01.580 | that we could talk about as network activity,

02:29:03.600 | communication amongst brain areas,

02:29:05.160 | like this is always going on,

02:29:06.740 | even if I just prompt you to think about a loved one,

02:29:10.580 | like there's something happening biologically.

02:29:13.420 | Okay, so that's always another side of the coin.

02:29:15.940 | So, and another way to put that

02:29:18.660 | is all of our subjective experience, outside of drugs,

02:29:21.780 | it's all a controlled hallucination in a sense.

02:29:26.780 | Like this is completely constructed.

02:29:28.900 | Our experience of reality is completely a simulation.

02:29:33.740 | So I think we're on solid ground to say

02:29:36.340 | that that's our best guess

02:29:37.380 | and that's a pretty reasonable thing to say scientifically.

02:29:40.980 | - Take all the rich complexity of the world

02:29:43.020 | emerges from just some biology and some chemicals.

02:29:45.980 | - So in that definition implied a causation,

02:29:48.780 | it comes from, and so that's,

02:29:50.820 | we know at least there's a solid correlation there.

02:29:53.900 | And so then we delve deep into the philosophy

02:29:57.260 | of like idealism or materialism and things like this,

02:30:00.420 | which I'm not an expert in,

02:30:01.500 | but I know we're getting into that territory.

02:30:03.940 | You don't even necessarily have to go there.

02:30:06.980 | Like you at least go to the level of like,

02:30:09.300 | okay, we know there's,

02:30:10.180 | there seems to be this one-on-one correspondence

02:30:12.340 | and that seems pretty solid.

02:30:14.820 | Like you can't prove a negative and you can't prove,

02:30:16.660 | you know, it's in that category of like,

02:30:18.980 | you could come up with an experience

02:30:20.540 | that maybe doesn't have a biological correlate,

02:30:22.620 | but then you're talking about,

02:30:24.540 | there's also the limits of the science.

02:30:25.860 | Is it a false negative?

02:30:26.860 | But I think our best guess and a very decent assumption

02:30:29.620 | is that every psychological event

02:30:31.940 | has a biological correlate.

02:30:33.740 | So with that said, you know,

02:30:36.140 | the idea that you can throw, alter that biology

02:30:39.340 | in a pretty trivial manner.

02:30:42.220 | I mean, you could take like a relatively small number

02:30:45.380 | of these molecules, throw them into the nervous system

02:30:48.900 | and then have a 60 year old person who has,

02:30:53.080 | you name it, I mean, that has hiked to the top of Everest

02:30:59.260 | and that speaks five languages and that has been married

02:31:02.700 | and has kids and grandkids and has, you name it,

02:31:06.700 | you know, like been at the top and say,

02:31:09.060 | this fundamentally changed who I am as a person

02:31:12.820 | and what I think life is about.

02:31:16.060 | Like that's the thing about psychedelics

02:31:20.940 | that just floors me and it never fails.

02:31:24.620 | I mean, sometimes you get bogged down by the paperwork

02:31:28.020 | and running studies and all the, I don't know,

02:31:30.180 | all of the BS that can come with being in academia

02:31:33.300 | and everything and then you,

02:31:34.700 | and sometimes you get some dud sessions

02:31:37.300 | where it's not the full, all the magic isn't happening

02:31:39.940 | and it's, you know, more or less it's,

02:31:41.380 | or it's either a dud or somewhere in the,

02:31:43.740 | and I don't mean to dismiss them, but you know,

02:31:45.260 | it's not like these magnificent sort of reports,

02:31:47.700 | but sometimes you get the full Monty report

02:31:50.700 | from one of these people and you're like,

02:31:52.660 | oh yeah, that's why we're doing this.

02:31:54.460 | Whether it's like therapeutically

02:31:56.520 | or just to understand the mind.

02:31:59.920 | And you're like, you're still floored.

02:32:03.720 | Like how is that possible?

02:32:05.760 | How did we slightly alter serotonergic neurotransmission

02:32:10.760 | and say, and this person is now saying

02:32:13.620 | that they're making fundamental differences

02:32:16.240 | in the priorities of their life after 60 years.

02:32:19.800 | - It also just fills you with awe

02:32:23.640 | of the possibility of experiences

02:32:27.000 | we're yet to have uncovered.

02:32:28.520 | If just a few chemicals can change so much,

02:32:32.200 | it's like, man, what if this could be up?

02:32:36.520 | I mean, like, 'cause we're just like took a little,

02:32:40.680 | it's like lighting a match or something in the darkness

02:32:43.200 | and you could see there's a lot more there,

02:32:44.920 | but you don't know how much more.

02:32:47.600 | And that's- - Right.

02:32:49.080 | And then like, where's that gonna go with like,

02:32:51.960 | I mean, I'm always like aware of the fact

02:32:53.600 | that like we always as humans and as scientists

02:32:55.760 | think that we figured out 99%

02:32:58.000 | and we're working on that first 1%

02:32:59.360 | and we got to keep reminding ourselves it's hard to do.

02:33:01.460 | Like we figured out like not even 1%,

02:33:03.800 | like we know nothing.

02:33:05.760 | And so like, I can speculate and I might sound like a fool,

02:33:09.600 | but like what are drugs, even the concept of drugs,

02:33:12.040 | like 10 years, 50 years, 100 years,

02:33:14.800 | a thousand years if we're surviving.

02:33:17.220 | Like, you know, molecules that go to a specific area

02:33:22.880 | of the brain in combination with technology,

02:33:25.120 | in combination with the magnetic stimulation,

02:33:27.720 | in combination with the, you know,

02:33:29.960 | like targeted pharmacology of like,

02:33:31.800 | oh, like this subset of serotonin 2A receptors

02:33:35.120 | in the clostrum, you know, at this time

02:33:37.800 | in this particular sequence,

02:33:39.400 | in combination with this other thing,

02:33:41.280 | like this baseball cap you wear that like has, you know,

02:33:44.880 | has one of the, is doing some of these things

02:33:47.720 | that we can only do with these like giant,

02:33:49.120 | like pieces of equipment now,

02:33:50.440 | like where it's gonna go is gonna be endless.

02:33:53.240 | And it becomes easy to, you know,

02:33:55.400 | combined within virtual reality

02:33:56.840 | where the virtual reality is gonna move

02:33:58.160 | from being something out here to being more in there.

02:34:01.520 | And then we're getting, like we talked about before,

02:34:04.100 | we're already in a virtual reality

02:34:06.640 | in terms of human perception and cognition models

02:34:11.080 | of the universe being all representations

02:34:14.080 | and, you know, sort of, you know, color not existing

02:34:16.680 | and just, you know, representations of EM,

02:34:20.240 | wavelengths, et cetera, you know,

02:34:22.000 | sound being vibrations and all of this.

02:34:23.840 | And so as the external VR and the internal VR

02:34:28.320 | come closer to each other,

02:34:30.240 | like this is what I think about

02:34:31.280 | in terms of the future of drugs,

02:34:32.960 | like all of this stuff sort of combines.

02:34:35.600 | And like where that goes is just, it's unthinkable.

02:34:40.600 | Like we're probably gonna, you know,

02:34:44.400 | again, I might sound like a fool

02:34:45.680 | and this may not happen, but I think it's possible,

02:34:48.960 | you know, to go completely offline,

02:34:50.760 | like where most of people's experiences

02:34:53.320 | may be going into these internal worlds.

02:34:58.320 | And I mean, maybe you through some,

02:35:02.400 | through a combination of these techniques,

02:35:03.800 | you create experiences where someone could live

02:35:05.400 | a thousand years in terms of,

02:35:08.080 | maybe they're living a regular lifespan,

02:35:09.640 | but in over the next two seconds,

02:35:11.140 | you're living a thousand years worth of experience.

02:35:13.320 | - Inside your mind.

02:35:15.040 | - Yeah, through this manipulation of the,

02:35:16.600 | like, is that possible?

02:35:19.440 | Like just based on like first principles.

02:35:22.960 | - Yeah, first principles, yes.

02:35:24.880 | - I think so.

02:35:26.080 | Like give us another 50, 100, 500, like who knows,

02:35:30.280 | but like how could it not go there?

02:35:33.200 | - And a small tangent, what are your thoughts

02:35:36.960 | in this broader definition of drugs,

02:35:39.400 | of psychedelics, of mind altering things?

02:35:42.200 | What are your thoughts about Neuralink

02:35:44.280 | and brain computer interfaces,

02:35:47.080 | sort of being able to electrically stimulate

02:35:52.080 | and read neuronal activity in the brain,

02:35:57.660 | and then connect that to the computer,

02:35:59.840 | which is another way from a computational perspective

02:36:04.840 | for me is kind of appealing,

02:36:06.640 | but it's another way of altering subtly

02:36:11.920 | the behavior of the brain that's kind of,

02:36:15.280 | if you zoom out, reminiscent of the way

02:36:18.080 | psychedelics do as well.

02:36:20.360 | So what do you have, like what are your thoughts

02:36:23.280 | about Neuralink, what are your hopes

02:36:26.200 | as a researcher of mind altering devices,

02:36:30.400 | systems, chemicals?

02:36:32.440 | - I guess broadly speaking, I'm all for it.

02:36:36.120 | I mean, for the same reason I am with psychedelics,

02:36:38.400 | but it comes with all the caveats.

02:36:40.480 | You're going into a brave new world

02:36:42.760 | where it's like all of a sudden,

02:36:44.400 | there's gonna be a dark side,

02:36:46.160 | there's gonna be serious ethical considerations,

02:36:51.080 | but that should not stop us from moving there.

02:36:54.760 | I mean, particularly the stuff from an unknown expert,

02:36:57.280 | but on the short list, in the short term,

02:36:59.720 | it's like, yeah, can we help these serious

02:37:01.400 | neurological disorders?

02:37:02.560 | Like, hell yeah.

02:37:03.520 | And I'm also sensitive to something,

02:37:06.600 | being someone that has lots of neuroscience

02:37:10.320 | colleagues with some of this stuff,

02:37:14.360 | and I can't talk about particulars, I'm not recalling,

02:37:16.800 | but in terms of stuff getting out there

02:37:20.720 | and then kind of a mocking of,

02:37:22.440 | oh gosh, they're saying this is unique,

02:37:27.160 | we know this, or sort of like this belittling of like,

02:37:29.840 | oh, this sounds like it's just a, I don't know,

02:37:33.080 | a commercialization or like an oversimplified,

02:37:36.000 | I forget what the example was, but something like,

02:37:38.680 | something that came off to some of my

02:37:40.320 | neuroscientific colleagues as an oversimplification

02:37:42.880 | or at least the way they said it.

02:37:44.640 | - Oh, from a New York perspective?

02:37:46.400 | - Right, oh, we've known that for years,

02:37:49.280 | but I'm very sympathetic to like,

02:37:52.080 | maybe it's because of my very limited,

02:37:54.120 | but relatively speaking, the amount of exposure

02:37:57.960 | the psychedelic work has had to my limited experience

02:38:00.520 | of being out there, and then you think about someone

02:38:02.880 | like Mike Musk, who's like really, really out there,

02:38:06.520 | and you just get all these arrows that like,

02:38:10.160 | and it's hard to be like when you're plowing new ground,

02:38:13.080 | like you're gonna get, you're gonna get criticized,

02:38:16.440 | like every little word that you,

02:38:18.040 | this balance between speaking to like people

02:38:20.160 | to make it meaningful, something scientists

02:38:21.520 | aren't very good at, having people understand

02:38:23.880 | what you're saying, and then being belittled

02:38:25.960 | by oversimplifying something in terms of the public message.

02:38:30.120 | So I'm extremely sympathetic, and I'm a big fan

02:38:33.160 | of like what that, you know, what Elon Musk does,

02:38:35.560 | like tunnels through the ground, and SpaceX,

02:38:39.040 | and all this, it's like hell yeah,

02:38:40.560 | like this guy has some great ideas.

02:38:43.840 | - And there's something to be said,

02:38:45.160 | it's not just the communication to the public.

02:38:47.400 | I think his first principles thinking,

02:38:50.240 | it's like, 'cause I get this

02:38:51.520 | in the artificial intelligence world,

02:38:53.000 | it's probably similar to neuroscience world,

02:38:55.240 | where Elon will say something like,

02:38:57.360 | or I worked at MIT, I worked on autonomous vehicles,

02:39:00.840 | and he's sort of, I could sense how much he pisses off

02:39:05.160 | like every roboticist at MIT, and everybody who works

02:39:08.920 | on like the human factor side of safety,

02:39:11.920 | of autonomous vehicles, in saying like,

02:39:14.680 | "Nah, we don't need to consider human beings in the car,

02:39:18.000 | "like a car will drive itself, it's obvious

02:39:21.280 | "that neural networks is all you need,

02:39:22.800 | "like it's obvious that we should be able to,

02:39:26.260 | "systems that should be able to learn constantly."

02:39:30.240 | And they don't really need LIDAR,

02:39:32.080 | they just need cameras, because we humans just use our eyes,

02:39:36.480 | and that's the same as cameras, so like it doesn't,

02:39:39.320 | why would we need anything else?

02:39:41.040 | You just have to make a system that learns faster

02:39:42.880 | and faster and faster, and neural networks can do that,

02:39:46.440 | and so that's pissing off every single community,

02:39:48.880 | it's pissing off human factors community,

02:39:50.600 | saying you don't need to consider the human driver

02:39:53.280 | in the picture, you can just focus on the robotics problem,

02:39:56.080 | it's pissing off every robotics person

02:39:59.440 | for saying LIDAR can be just ignored,

02:40:01.720 | it can be camera, every robotics person knows

02:40:04.320 | that camera is really noisy,

02:40:06.320 | that it's really difficult to deal with,

02:40:08.200 | but he's, and then every AI person who says,

02:40:13.200 | who hears neural networks and says like,

02:40:16.560 | "Neural networks can learn everything,"

02:40:18.560 | like almost presuming that it's kind of going

02:40:20.520 | to achieve general intelligence.

02:40:22.200 | The problem with all those haters in the three communities

02:40:26.880 | is that they're looking one year ahead, five years ahead,

02:40:31.080 | the hilarious thing about the quote unquote ridiculous

02:40:35.080 | things that Elon Musk is saying is they have

02:40:37.440 | a pretty good shot at being true in 20 years,

02:40:40.520 | and so like, when you just look at the, you know,

02:40:43.020 | when you look at the progression

02:40:45.680 | of these kinds of predictions,

02:40:47.300 | and sometimes first principles thinking can allow you

02:40:51.200 | to do that is you see that it's kind of obvious

02:40:55.120 | that things are going to progress this way,

02:40:58.160 | and if you just remove the prejudice you hold

02:41:01.000 | about the particular battles

02:41:04.600 | of the current academic environment,

02:41:06.560 | and just look at the big picture of the progression

02:41:09.600 | of the technology, you can usually see the world

02:41:14.480 | in the same kind of way, and so in that same way,

02:41:17.080 | looking at psychedelics, you can see like,

02:41:20.040 | there is so many exciting possibilities here

02:41:22.800 | if we fully engage in the research.

02:41:25.040 | Same thing with Neuralink, if we fully engage,

02:41:28.640 | so we go from 1,000 channels of communication

02:41:31.440 | to the brain to billions of channels

02:41:33.840 | of communication to the brain,

02:41:35.680 | and we figure out many of the details

02:41:38.560 | of how to do that safely with neurosurgery and so on,

02:41:42.120 | that the world would just change completely

02:41:45.200 | in the same kind of way that Elon is,

02:41:47.480 | it's so ridiculous to hear him talk

02:41:49.240 | about symbiotic relationship between AI

02:41:52.440 | and the human brain, but it's like, is it though?

02:41:57.960 | (Lex laughing)

02:42:00.640 | Is it?

02:42:01.480 | Because I can see in 50 years,

02:42:03.600 | there's going to be an obvious,

02:42:05.600 | like everyone will have, like obviously you have,

02:42:08.320 | like why are we typing stuff in the computer?

02:42:11.120 | It doesn't make any sense, that's stupid.

02:42:13.160 | People used to type on a keyboard with a mouse?

02:42:16.280 | What is that?

02:42:17.120 | - And it seems pretty clear, like we're gonna be there.

02:42:19.240 | - Yeah.

02:42:20.080 | - Like, and the only question is like, what's the timeframe?

02:42:21.680 | Is that gonna be 20 or is it 50 or 100?

02:42:23.960 | Like, how could we not?

02:42:25.280 | - And the thing that I guess upsets

02:42:27.400 | with Elon and others is the timeline he tends to do.

02:42:31.720 | I think a lot of people tend to do that kind of thing.

02:42:33.800 | I definitely do it, which is like, it'll be done this year,

02:42:37.560 | versus like it'll be done in 10 years.

02:42:39.640 | The timeline is a little bit too rushed,

02:42:41.520 | but from our leadership perspective,

02:42:43.160 | it inspires the engineers to do the best work of their life,

02:42:47.320 | to really kind of believe,

02:42:49.880 | because to do the impossible, you have to first believe it,

02:42:52.920 | which is a really important aspect of innovation.

02:42:56.000 | - And there's the delay discounting aspect

02:42:57.840 | I talked about before.

02:42:58.840 | It's like saying, oh, this is gonna be a thing

02:43:00.480 | 20, 50 years from now.

02:43:01.800 | It's like, what motivates anybody?

02:43:04.240 | And even if you're fudging it,

02:43:05.380 | or you're like wishful thinking a little bit,

02:43:07.080 | or let's just say erring on one side

02:43:09.760 | of the probability distribution,

02:43:12.360 | like there's value in saying like, yeah,

02:43:14.440 | like there's a chance we could get this done in a year.

02:43:17.240 | And you know what?

02:43:18.080 | And if you set a goal for a year and you're not successful,

02:43:21.120 | hey, you might get it done in three years.

02:43:23.200 | Whereas if you had aimed at 20 years,

02:43:25.560 | well, you either would have never done it at all,

02:43:27.080 | or you would have aimed at 20 years

02:43:28.320 | and then would have taken you 10.

02:43:30.020 | So the other thing I think about this,

02:43:32.800 | like in terms of his work,

02:43:34.400 | and I guess we've seen with psychedelics,

02:43:36.680 | it's like there's a lack of appreciation

02:43:39.280 | for like sort of the variability

02:43:40.760 | you need in natural selection,

02:43:42.560 | sort of extrapolating from biological,

02:43:45.000 | you know, from evolution, like,

02:43:47.440 | hey, maybe he's wrong about focusing only on the cameras

02:43:51.040 | and not these other things.

02:43:52.520 | Be empirically driven.

02:43:53.780 | It's like, yeah, you need to,

02:43:54.840 | like when he's, you know,

02:43:56.600 | when you need to get the regulation,

02:43:57.800 | is it safe enough to get this thing on the road?

02:43:59.080 | Those are real questions.

02:43:59.920 | And be empirically driven.

02:44:01.280 | And if he can meet the whatever standard is relevant,

02:44:04.800 | that's the standard and be driven by that.

02:44:06.560 | So don't let it affect your ethics.

02:44:07.940 | But if he's on the wrong path, how wonderful.

02:44:11.440 | Someone's exploring that wrong path.

02:44:12.720 | He's gonna figure out it's a wrong path.

02:44:14.000 | And like other people, he's,

02:44:15.840 | damn it, he's doing something.

02:44:17.760 | Like he's, you know, and,

02:44:19.920 | and so appreciating that variability,

02:44:23.880 | you know, that like, it's valuable,

02:44:26.080 | even if he's not on,

02:44:27.280 | I mean, this is all over the place in science.

02:44:29.760 | It's like a good theory.

02:44:30.960 | One standard definition is that

02:44:33.160 | it generates testable hypotheses.

02:44:35.400 | And like the ultimate model

02:44:37.640 | is never gonna be the same as reality.

02:44:39.200 | Some models are gonna work better than others.

02:44:40.720 | Like, you know, Newtonian physics got us a long ways,

02:44:45.720 | even if there was a better model, like waiting.

02:44:49.600 | And some models weren't as good as, you know,

02:44:52.280 | were never that successful,

02:44:53.480 | but just even like putting them out there and testing.

02:44:56.440 | We wouldn't know something is a bad model

02:44:58.640 | until someone puts it out anyway, so.

02:45:00.400 | - Yeah, diversity of ideas is essential for progress, yeah.

02:45:04.300 | So we brought up consciousness a few times.

02:45:07.760 | There's several things I wanna kinda disentangle there.

02:45:11.240 | So one, you've recently wrote a paper titled

02:45:13.240 | Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus,

02:45:16.020 | Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine.

02:45:18.100 | So that's one side of it.

02:45:20.480 | You've kind of already mentioned that

02:45:21.920 | these terms can be a little bit misused

02:45:24.520 | or used in a variety of ways

02:45:28.920 | that can be confusing.

02:45:32.440 | But in a specific way,

02:45:34.540 | as much as we can be specific about these things,

02:45:39.100 | about the actual heart problem of consciousness

02:45:41.600 | or understanding what is consciousness,

02:45:44.280 | this weird thing that it feels like,

02:45:46.760 | it feels like something to experience things,

02:45:50.720 | have psychedelics given you some kind of insight

02:45:55.720 | on what is consciousness?

02:45:58.240 | You've mentioned that it feels like psychedelics

02:46:01.080 | allows you to kind of dismantle your sense of self,

02:46:05.840 | like step outside of yourself.

02:46:09.160 | So that feels like somehow playing

02:46:13.560 | with this mechanism of consciousness.

02:46:15.880 | And if it is in fact playing with

02:46:18.040 | the mechanism of consciousness using just a few chemicals,

02:46:21.440 | it feels like we're very much in the neighborhood

02:46:24.160 | of being able to maybe understand

02:46:27.760 | the actual biological mechanisms

02:46:30.000 | of how consciousness can emerge from the brain.

02:46:32.720 | - So yeah, there's a bunch there.

02:46:34.880 | I think my preface is that I certainly have opinions

02:46:39.280 | that I can say, here are my best speculations

02:46:42.720 | as just a person and an armchair philosopher,

02:46:47.480 | and it's that philosophy is certainly not my training

02:46:50.320 | and my expertise.

02:46:52.280 | So I have thoughts there,

02:46:53.480 | but that I recognize are completely

02:46:55.520 | in the realm of speculation,

02:46:57.340 | that are like things that I would love

02:46:59.460 | to wrap empirical science around,

02:47:01.560 | but that are, you know, there's no data

02:47:06.360 | and getting to the heart problem,

02:47:08.320 | like no conceivable way, even though I'm very open,

02:47:11.760 | like I'm hoping that that problem can be cracked.

02:47:14.620 | And I do, as an armchair philosopher,

02:47:16.960 | I do think that is a problem.

02:47:18.040 | I don't think it can be dismissed as some people argue,

02:47:20.640 | it's not even really a problem.

02:47:22.960 | It strikes me that explaining just the existence

02:47:25.440 | of phenomenal consciousness is a problem.

02:47:27.480 | So anyway, I very much keep that divide in mind

02:47:30.480 | when I talk about these things,

02:47:31.800 | what we can really say about what we've learned

02:47:34.160 | through science, including by psychedelics,

02:47:35.600 | versus like what I can speculate on

02:47:38.520 | in terms of the nature of reality and consciousness.

02:47:42.760 | But in terms of, by and large, skeptically,

02:47:47.760 | I have to say, psychedelics have not really taught us

02:47:52.240 | anything about the nature of consciousness.

02:47:55.720 | I'm hopeful that they will.

02:47:57.000 | They have been used around certain,

02:48:01.060 | I don't even know if features is the right term,

02:48:03.000 | but things that are called consciousness.

02:48:04.840 | So consciousness can refer to not only

02:48:06.800 | just phenomenal consciousness,

02:48:08.280 | which is like, you know, the source of the heart problem

02:48:11.920 | and what it is to be like Nagel's description,

02:48:16.120 | but the sense of self, which can be sort of like

02:48:20.400 | the experiential self moment to moment,

02:48:22.840 | or it can be like the narrative self,

02:48:24.480 | the stringing together of stories.

02:48:25.960 | So those are things that I think can be,

02:48:29.160 | and a little bit's been done with psychedelics

02:48:33.920 | regarding that, but I think there's far more potential.

02:48:41.120 | - So like one story that unfolded is that

02:48:43.680 | psychedelics acutely have an effects

02:48:45.960 | on the default mode network,

02:48:48.320 | a certain pattern of activation

02:48:50.640 | amongst a subset of brain areas

02:48:52.180 | that is associated with self-referential processing.

02:48:55.880 | It seems to be more active,

02:48:57.240 | more communication between these areas,

02:49:01.240 | like the posterior cingulate cortex

02:49:04.000 | and the medial prefrontal cortex, for example,

02:49:06.000 | being parts of this that are,

02:49:07.560 | and others that are tied with sort of

02:49:10.960 | thinking about yourself, remembering yourself in the past,

02:49:13.540 | projecting yourself into the future.

02:49:15.640 | And so an interesting story emerged

02:49:18.600 | when it was found that when psilocybin is on board,

02:49:23.600 | you know, in the person's system,

02:49:25.600 | that there's less communication amongst these areas.

02:49:29.320 | So with resting state fMRI imaging,

02:49:32.160 | that there's less synchronization

02:49:35.220 | or presumably communication between these areas.

02:49:38.200 | And so I think it has been overstated

02:49:41.600 | in terms of, ah, we see this is like,

02:49:43.120 | this is the dissolving of the ego.

02:49:45.240 | The story made a whole lot of sense,

02:49:48.200 | but there's several,

02:49:50.960 | I think that story is really being challenged.

02:49:53.460 | Like one, we see increasing number of drugs

02:49:55.840 | that decouple that network,

02:49:59.560 | including ones like that aren't psychedelic.

02:50:02.680 | So this may just be a property, frankly,

02:50:05.000 | of being like, you know, screwed up, you know?

02:50:07.800 | Like, you know, being out of your head,

02:50:09.240 | being like, you know.

02:50:10.600 | - Anytime you mess with the perception system,

02:50:12.440 | maybe it screws up some,

02:50:15.600 | just our ability to just function

02:50:17.720 | in the holistically like we do in order,

02:50:20.960 | yeah, for the brain to perceive stuff,

02:50:22.600 | to be able to map it to memory,

02:50:24.120 | to connect things together,

02:50:25.840 | the whole recur mechanism,

02:50:28.160 | that could just be messed with.

02:50:30.400 | - Right, and it could, and I'm speculating,

02:50:32.200 | it could be tied to more,

02:50:33.120 | if you had to download a new language, everyday language,

02:50:35.360 | like not feeling like yourself.

02:50:37.560 | So whether that be like really drunk

02:50:39.160 | or really hopped up on amphetamine,

02:50:41.040 | or, you know, like we found it,

02:50:43.720 | like decoupling of the default mode network

02:50:45.480 | on salvinorin A, which is a smokable psychedelic,

02:50:49.000 | which is a non-classic psychedelic,

02:50:51.000 | but another one where, like DMT,

02:50:52.800 | where people are often talking to entities

02:50:55.000 | and that type of thing.

02:50:55.840 | That was a really fun study to run.

02:50:57.320 | But nonetheless, most people say

02:50:58.680 | it's not a classic psychedelic

02:51:00.320 | and doesn't have some of those phenomenal features

02:51:04.440 | that people report from classic psychedelics

02:51:06.880 | and not sort of the clear sort of ego loss type,

02:51:11.160 | at least not in the way that people report it

02:51:12.920 | with classic psychedelics.

02:51:13.960 | So you get it with all these different drugs.

02:51:15.520 | And then you also see just broad changes

02:51:19.160 | in network activity with other networks.

02:51:21.440 | And so I think that story took off a little too soon,

02:51:25.840 | although, so I think,

02:51:27.320 | and the story that the DMN, the default mode network,

02:51:30.720 | relating to the self,

02:51:32.380 | and I know some neuroscientists,

02:51:34.000 | it drives them crazy if you say that it's the ego,

02:51:36.960 | but self-referential processing, if you go that far,

02:51:42.120 | like that was already known before psychedelics.

02:51:45.160 | Psychedelics didn't really contribute to that,

02:51:48.920 | the idea that this type of brain network activity

02:51:52.640 | was related to a sense of self.

02:51:56.200 | But it is absolutely striking that psychedelics

02:52:00.160 | that people report with pretty high reliability,

02:52:02.400 | these unity experiences that where people subjectively,

02:52:06.280 | like they report losing or getting like the boundaries

02:52:10.160 | of the, however you wanna say it,

02:52:11.360 | like these unity experiences,

02:52:15.000 | I think we can do a lot with that

02:52:16.560 | in terms of figuring out the nature of the sense of self.

02:52:19.480 | Now, I don't think that's the same as the hard problem

02:52:23.440 | or the existence of phenomenal consciousness

02:52:25.800 | 'cause you can build an AI system,

02:52:27.560 | and you correct me if I'm wrong,

02:52:28.760 | that will pass a Turing test

02:52:31.640 | in terms of demonstrating the qualities

02:52:34.840 | of a sense of self.

02:52:37.280 | It will talk as if there's a self,

02:52:38.840 | and there's probably a certain algorithm or whatever,

02:52:43.840 | computational, scaling up of computations that results

02:52:47.880 | in somehow, and I think this is the argument with humans,

02:52:52.160 | but some have speculated this,

02:52:54.000 | why do we have this illusion of the self that's evolved?

02:52:56.840 | And we might find this with AI that it works,

02:53:01.560 | having a sense of self,

02:53:03.360 | and that's stated incorrectly,

02:53:06.120 | acting as if there is an agent at play

02:53:12.200 | and behaviorally acting like there is a self,

02:53:17.000 | that might kind of work.

02:53:18.440 | And so you can program a computer or a robot

02:53:23.400 | to basically demonstrate, have an algorithm like that

02:53:27.360 | and demonstrate that type of behavior,

02:53:28.920 | and I think that's completely silent

02:53:30.960 | on whether there's an actual experience inside there.

02:53:33.840 | - I've been struggling to find the right words

02:53:36.760 | and how I feel about that whole thing,

02:53:38.520 | but 'cause I've said it poorly before,

02:53:42.360 | I've before said that there's no difference

02:53:44.360 | between the appearance and the actual existence

02:53:48.840 | of consciousness or intelligence or any of that.

02:53:51.560 | What I really mean is,

02:53:53.560 | the more the appearance starts to look like the thing,

02:54:00.720 | the more there's this area where it's like,

02:54:03.400 | I don't think,

02:54:04.760 | our whole idea of what is real and what is just an illusion

02:54:11.880 | is not the right way to think about it.

02:54:16.760 | So the whole idea is like,

02:54:18.760 | if you create a system that looks like it's having fun,

02:54:22.920 | the more it's realistically able to portray itself

02:54:27.240 | as having fun, there's a certain gray area

02:54:31.160 | which the system is having fun.

02:54:33.760 | And same with intelligence, same with consciousness.

02:54:36.640 | And we humans wanna simplify,

02:54:40.000 | like it feels like the way we simplify the existence

02:54:43.000 | and the illusion of something

02:54:46.120 | is missing the whole truth of the nature of reality,

02:54:50.480 | which we're not yet able to understand.

02:54:52.600 | Like it's the 1%, we only understand 1% currently,

02:54:55.520 | so we don't have the right physics to talk about things,

02:54:59.160 | we don't have the right science to talk about things.

02:55:00.960 | But to me, like the faking it

02:55:05.440 | and actually it being true is,

02:55:08.460 | the difference is much smaller

02:55:12.800 | than what humans would like to imagine.

02:55:15.680 | That's my intuition, but philosophers hate that

02:55:18.520 | because, and guess what?

02:55:21.240 | It's philosophers, what have you actually built?

02:55:23.640 | (Lex laughing)

02:55:25.120 | So like to me, that's the difference

02:55:27.280 | between philosophy and engineering.

02:55:28.840 | It feels like if we push the creation, the engineering,

02:55:32.920 | like fake it until you make it all the way,

02:55:35.160 | which is like fake consciousness

02:55:37.120 | until you realize, holy crap, this thing is conscious.

02:55:41.280 | Fake intelligence until you realize, holy crap,

02:55:43.480 | this is intelligence.

02:55:44.560 | And from my curiosity with psychedelics

02:55:48.360 | and just neurobiology, neuroscience,

02:55:52.000 | is like it feels, I love the armchair.

02:55:55.680 | I love sitting in that armchair

02:55:57.540 | because it feels like at a certain point,

02:55:59.540 | you're going to think about this problem

02:56:01.920 | and there's going to be an aha moment.

02:56:04.120 | Like that's what the armchair does.

02:56:06.760 | Sometimes science prevents you from really thinking, wait.

02:56:10.560 | Like it's really simple.

02:56:14.400 | There's something really simple.

02:56:15.880 | Like there's some, there could be some dance of chemicals

02:56:20.880 | that we're totally unaware of.

02:56:22.320 | Not from aspects of like which chemicals to combine

02:56:26.760 | with which biological architectures,

02:56:29.320 | but more like we were thinking of it completely wrong.

02:56:32.920 | That, just out of the blue, like maybe the human mind

02:56:38.720 | is just like a radio that tunes into some other medium

02:56:44.160 | where consciousness actually exists.

02:56:46.080 | Like those weird sort of hypothetical,

02:56:49.640 | but maybe we're just thinking about the human mind

02:56:52.140 | totally wrong.

02:56:53.280 | Maybe there's no such thing as individual intelligence.

02:56:56.860 | Maybe it is all collective intelligence between humans.

02:57:00.240 | Like maybe the intelligence is possessed

02:57:02.280 | in the communication of language between minds

02:57:05.560 | and then in fact consciousness is a property

02:57:08.120 | of that language versus a property of the individual minds.

02:57:13.240 | And somehow the neurotransmitters will be able

02:57:15.760 | to connect to that.

02:57:16.600 | So then AI systems can join that common collective

02:57:21.160 | intelligence, that common language.

02:57:23.240 | You know, like just thinking completely outside of the box.

02:57:25.400 | I just said a bunch of crazy things.

02:57:26.760 | I don't know, but thinking outside the box

02:57:29.840 | and there's something about subtle manipulation

02:57:33.280 | of the chemicals of the brain which feels like the best

02:57:38.280 | or one of the great chances of the scientific process

02:57:43.200 | leading us to an actual understanding of the hard problem.

02:57:46.840 | - So I am very hopeful that, and so I,

02:57:50.480 | I mean, I'm a radical empiricist,

02:57:52.240 | which I'm very strong with that.

02:57:54.160 | Like that's what, you know, so science isn't about

02:57:57.960 | ultimately being a materialist.

02:57:59.960 | It's like, it's about being an empiricist in my view.

02:58:02.720 | And so for example, I'm very fascinated

02:58:04.520 | by the so-called psi phenomenon.

02:58:06.400 | You know, like stuff that people just kind of reject

02:58:08.320 | out of hand.

02:58:09.180 | You know, I kind of orient towards that stuff

02:58:12.840 | with an idea of, you know, hey, look, you know,

02:58:16.560 | what we consider, like anything exists as natural.

02:58:19.840 | And so, but the boundary of what we observe in nature,

02:58:23.480 | like what we recognize as in nature moves,

02:58:26.480 | like what we do today and what we know today

02:58:28.760 | would only be described as magic 500 years ago

02:58:31.280 | or even a hundred years ago, some of it.

02:58:32.840 | So there will surely be things that,

02:58:36.080 | like you explained these phenomenon

02:58:37.760 | that just sound like completely,

02:58:39.560 | they're supernatural now,

02:58:41.200 | where there may be for some of it,

02:58:42.960 | like some of it might turn out to be a complete bunk

02:58:44.800 | and some of it might turn out to be,

02:58:47.120 | it's just another layer of nature,

02:58:49.120 | whether we're talking about multiple dimensions

02:58:50.960 | that were invoked or something

02:58:51.800 | where we don't even have the language to work.

02:58:53.680 | And what you're saying about the moving together

02:58:55.560 | of the model and the real thing of conscious,

02:58:58.820 | like I'm very sympathetic to that.

02:59:00.720 | So that's that part of like on the armchair side

02:59:03.240 | where I wanna be clear, I can't say this as a scientist,

02:59:06.160 | but just in terms of speculating,

02:59:08.720 | I find myself attracted to these

02:59:11.160 | more of the sort of the panpsychism ideas.

02:59:15.720 | And that kind of makes sense to me.

02:59:17.560 | I don't know if that's what you meant there,

02:59:18.960 | but it seemed like related the sense that ultimately,

02:59:22.680 | if you were completely modeling,

02:59:26.840 | like it's like if you completely modeling,

02:59:28.920 | unless you dismiss like the idea

02:59:31.360 | that there is a phenomenal consciousness,

02:59:33.040 | which I think is hard given that we all,

02:59:34.440 | I seem like I have one, that's really all I know,

02:59:37.400 | but that's so compelling, I can't just dismiss that.

02:59:41.520 | Like if you take that as a given,

02:59:44.880 | then the only way for the model and the real thing to merge

02:59:49.000 | is if there is something baked into the nature of reality,

02:59:54.000 | sort of like in the history of like there are certain

02:59:58.320 | just like fundamental forces or fundamental,

03:00:00.840 | like, and that's been useful for us.

03:00:03.240 | And sometimes we find out

03:00:04.480 | that that's pointing towards something else

03:00:05.640 | or sometimes it's still, seems like it's a fundamental

03:00:09.280 | and sometimes it's a placeholder for someone to figure out,

03:00:11.040 | but there's something like, this is just a given,

03:00:13.120 | this is just, and sometimes someone like gravity

03:00:16.200 | seems like a very good placeholder

03:00:17.360 | and then there's something better that comes to replace it.

03:00:19.760 | So, I kind of think about like consciousness

03:00:23.200 | and I didn't, I kind of had this inclination

03:00:25.120 | before I knew there was a term for it,

03:00:27.080 | Rossellian monism, the idea that,

03:00:29.920 | which is a form of, again, I'm not,

03:00:32.600 | I'm an armchair philosopher, not a very good one.

03:00:35.600 | - Broadly panpsychism, by the way,

03:00:37.120 | is the idea that sort of consciousness permeates all matter

03:00:40.440 | and it's a fundamental part of physics

03:00:44.640 | of the universe kind of thing.

03:00:45.960 | So, and there's a lot of different flavors of it

03:00:49.120 | as you're alluding to.

03:00:51.240 | - And something that struck me as like consistent

03:00:53.560 | with some just, you know, inclinations of mine,

03:00:56.560 | just total speculation is this idea of

03:01:00.400 | everything we know in science

03:01:04.080 | and with most of the stuff we think of physics,

03:01:06.440 | you know, really describes, it's all interactions.

03:01:10.840 | It's not the thing itself.

03:01:13.840 | Like there is something to the,

03:01:18.840 | and this sounds very new agey,

03:01:20.240 | which is why it's very difficult

03:01:22.000 | and I have high bullshit like meter and everything,

03:01:25.000 | but like an isness.

03:01:26.560 | I mean, I think about like Huxley,

03:01:28.000 | Aldous Huxley with his mescaline experience

03:01:30.160 | in "Doors of Perception," like there's an isness there

03:01:32.640 | and Alan Watson, like there is a nature of being,

03:01:37.640 | again, very new agey sounding,

03:01:39.240 | but maybe there is something to,

03:01:40.960 | and when we say consciousness,

03:01:43.320 | we think of like this human experience,

03:01:45.200 | but maybe that's just, that's so processed

03:01:47.480 | and so that's so far,

03:01:50.960 | so derivative of this kind of basic thing

03:01:53.680 | that we wouldn't even recognize the basic thing,

03:01:55.640 | but the basic thing might just be,

03:01:57.520 | this is not about the interaction between particles.

03:02:00.520 | This is what it is like to exist as a particle

03:02:05.520 | and maybe it's not even particles.

03:02:07.640 | Maybe it's like space-time itself.

03:02:09.640 | I mean, again, totally in the speculation area.

03:02:11.760 | - And something out there in space-time.

03:02:13.160 | So it's funny 'cause we don't have neither the science

03:02:16.160 | nor the proper language to talk about it.

03:02:18.560 | All we have is kind of little intuitions

03:02:21.120 | about there might be something

03:02:23.840 | in that direction of the darkness to pursue.

03:02:26.840 | And in that sense, I find panpsychism interesting

03:02:31.400 | in that it does feel like there's something

03:02:35.480 | fundamental here, that consciousness is not just like,

03:02:39.360 | okay, so the flip side,

03:02:40.760 | consciousness could be just a very basic

03:02:43.800 | and trivial symptom, like a little hack of nature

03:02:48.560 | that's useful for survival of an organism.

03:02:53.360 | It's not something fundamental.

03:02:55.200 | It's just this very basic, boring chemical thing

03:03:00.200 | that somehow has convinced us humans,

03:03:03.280 | 'cause we're very human-centric, we're very self-centric,

03:03:06.680 | that this is somehow really important,

03:03:08.320 | but it's actually pretty obvious.

03:03:10.480 | But, or it could be something really fundamental

03:03:13.480 | to the nature of the universe.

03:03:15.320 | So both of those are, to me, pretty compelling

03:03:18.600 | and I think eventually scientifically testable.

03:03:21.680 | It is so frustrating that it's hard to design

03:03:24.040 | a scientific experiment currently,

03:03:25.880 | but I think that's how Nobel Prizes are won,

03:03:29.560 | is nobody did it until they do it.

03:03:32.400 | - The reason I lean towards, and again, armchair spec,

03:03:36.680 | if I had to bet like $1,000

03:03:39.960 | on which one of these ultimately would be proven,

03:03:41.560 | I would lean towards, I'd put my bets

03:03:44.600 | on something like panpsychism rather than the emergence

03:03:49.600 | of phenomenal consciousness through complexity

03:03:52.560 | or computational complexity.

03:03:55.200 | Because, although certainly,

03:03:57.080 | if there is some underlying fundamental consciousness,

03:04:01.200 | it's clearly being processed in this way,

03:04:05.360 | through computation, in terms of resulting

03:04:08.480 | in our experience and the experience,

03:04:10.200 | presumably, of other animals.

03:04:11.400 | But the reason I would bet on panpsychism is, to me,

03:04:14.420 | Occam's razor, it just, in terms of truly the hard problem,

03:04:18.880 | like at some point you have an inside looking out.

03:04:22.360 | And even looking refers to vision,

03:04:23.800 | and it doesn't, that's just an,

03:04:25.640 | but just there's an inside experiencing something.

03:04:29.880 | At some point of complexity, all of a sudden,

03:04:34.760 | you start from this objective universe,

03:04:36.480 | and all we know about is interactions

03:04:37.880 | between things, and things happen.

03:04:39.680 | And at this certain level of complexity,

03:04:42.200 | magically, there's an inside.

03:04:44.200 | That, to me, doesn't pass Occam's razor as easily

03:04:48.800 | as maybe there is a fundamental property of the universe.

03:04:53.800 | There's both subjective and objective.

03:04:56.680 | There's both interactions amongst things,

03:04:58.820 | and there is the thing itself.

03:05:02.640 | - Yes. - But, yeah.

03:05:04.240 | - So, I'm of two minds.

03:05:05.640 | I agree with you totally, half my mind.

03:05:08.040 | And the other half is I've seen,

03:05:10.000 | looking at cellular automata a lot,

03:05:12.040 | which is, it sure does seem that we don't understand

03:05:16.720 | anything about complexity.

03:05:18.240 | Like the emergence, just the property.

03:05:21.520 | In fact, that could be a fundamental property of reality,

03:05:25.960 | is something within the emergence

03:05:28.200 | from simple things interacting,

03:05:30.420 | somehow miraculous things happen.

03:05:33.440 | And like that, I don't understand that.

03:05:36.120 | That could be fundamental, that like,

03:05:40.160 | something about the layers of abstraction,

03:05:44.280 | like layers of reality,

03:05:46.800 | like really small things interacting,

03:05:48.800 | and then on another layer emerges actual complicated behavior

03:05:53.800 | even on the underlying thing is super simple.

03:05:57.120 | Like that process, we don't really don't understand either.

03:06:00.160 | And that could be bigger than any of the things

03:06:02.920 | we're talking about.

03:06:04.800 | That's the basic force behind everything

03:06:07.880 | that's happening in the universe,

03:06:09.640 | is from simple things, complex phenomena can happen.

03:06:16.600 | - And the thing that gives me pause

03:06:19.320 | is that I'm concerned about a threshold there.

03:06:24.320 | Like, how is it likely that,

03:06:26.240 | now there may be, and there may be some qualitative shift

03:06:28.840 | that in the realm of like,

03:06:30.480 | we don't even understand complexity yet,

03:06:32.880 | like you're saying, like, so maybe there is,

03:06:34.840 | but I do think like if it is a result of the complexity,

03:06:38.120 | well, just having helium versus hydrogen

03:06:41.480 | is a form of complexity.

03:06:43.040 | Having the existence of stars versus clouds of gas

03:06:45.880 | is a complexity.

03:06:46.720 | The entire universe has been this increasing complexity.

03:06:50.640 | And so that kind of brings me back to then the other

03:06:53.320 | of like, okay, if it's about complexity,

03:06:57.240 | then it exists at a certain level

03:06:59.880 | in these simple systems like a star,

03:07:02.600 | or a more complex atom.

03:07:05.440 | - Panpsychism, that's right.

03:07:06.920 | But we humans, the qualitative shift,

03:07:09.640 | we might have evolved to appreciate

03:07:12.920 | certain kinds of thresholds.

03:07:14.440 | - Right. - Yeah.

03:07:15.400 | - I do think it's likely that this idea that,

03:07:18.480 | whether or not there's an inner experience,

03:07:20.200 | which is phenomenal, it's the hard problem,

03:07:22.400 | that acting like an agent, like having an algorithm

03:07:26.520 | that basically like operates as if there is an agent,

03:07:29.480 | that's clearly a thing that I think has worked.

03:07:32.920 | And that there is a whole lot to figure out there

03:07:35.840 | that, and I think psychedelics will be extremely helpful

03:07:40.320 | in figuring more out about that,

03:07:43.240 | because they do seem to a lot of times eliminate that,

03:07:47.360 | or whatever, radically shift that sense of self.

03:07:51.560 | - Let me ask the craziest question.

03:07:53.320 | Indulge me for a second.

03:07:54.960 | This is a joke.

03:07:57.440 | - You're tired of what we've been talking about?

03:07:58.640 | Like, okay, I gotta get my seatbelt on.

03:08:00.680 | - All of this is a science,

03:08:02.600 | all of that, despite the caveats about armchair,

03:08:05.840 | I think is within the reach of science.

03:08:08.720 | Let me ask one that's kind of also within the reach

03:08:11.840 | of science, but as Joe likes to say,

03:08:14.000 | it's entirely possible, right?

03:08:15.640 | Is it possible that with these DMT trips,

03:08:21.480 | when you meet entities, is it possible that these entities

03:08:26.480 | are extraterrestrial life forms?

03:08:29.560 | Like, our understanding of little green men

03:08:33.200 | with aliens that show up is totally off.

03:08:36.580 | I often think about this, like,

03:08:37.880 | what would actual extraterrestrial intelligence look like?

03:08:42.880 | And my sense is it would look like very different

03:08:47.960 | from anything we can even begin to comprehend.

03:08:51.520 | - And how would it communicate?

03:08:52.880 | - And how would it communicate?

03:08:53.720 | - Yes, would it be necessarily spaceships

03:08:55.360 | with the Ursula travel or?

03:08:57.080 | - Could it be communicating through chemicals,

03:09:00.040 | through, if there's the panpsychism situation,

03:09:03.480 | if there's something, not if, I almost for sure know

03:09:07.480 | we don't understand a lot about the function of our mind

03:09:11.360 | in connection to the fabric of the physics in the universe.

03:09:16.240 | A lot of people seem to think we have theoretical physics

03:09:18.600 | pretty figured out.

03:09:20.020 | I have my doubts, because I'm pretty sure

03:09:22.720 | it always feels like we have everything figured out

03:09:24.640 | until we don't.

03:09:25.480 | - Right, I mean, there's no grand unifying theory yet,

03:09:28.160 | right, that's been widely recognized.

03:09:30.600 | - We could be missing out, like,

03:09:32.600 | the concept of the universe just can be completely off.

03:09:36.040 | Like, how many other universes are there,

03:09:38.680 | all those kinds of things.

03:09:40.500 | I mean, just the basic nature of information,

03:09:43.520 | the time, all of those things.

03:09:47.840 | - Yeah.

03:09:48.680 | - Yeah, whether that's just like a thing

03:09:50.600 | we assign value to, or whether it's fundamental or not,

03:09:53.700 | that's a whole chunk.

03:09:56.160 | I could talk to Shankara forever about whether time

03:09:58.160 | is emergent or fundamental to the reality.

03:10:01.120 | But is it possible that the entities we meet

03:10:04.240 | are actual alien life forms?

03:10:06.600 | Do you ever think about that?

03:10:08.160 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

03:10:10.320 | And I've, to some degree, laid my cards out

03:10:13.400 | by identifying as a radical empiricist.

03:10:15.840 | So the answer, is it possible?

03:10:18.600 | And I think, ultimately, if you're a good scientist,

03:10:21.400 | you gotta say, now that's at the extremes, it's a yes.

03:10:26.400 | And it might get more interesting when you had to,

03:10:28.400 | you're asked to guess about the probability of that.

03:10:31.280 | Is that a one in a million, one in a trillion,

03:10:34.520 | one in a, one in more than the number of atoms

03:10:38.240 | in the universe probability?

03:10:41.040 | - And as an empiricist, it's like, what is a good testable?

03:10:44.500 | Like, how would you know the answer to that question?

03:10:47.240 | Or how would you be able to validate it?

03:10:49.480 | - Well, can you get some information that's verifiable,

03:10:52.520 | like information about some other planet,

03:10:58.520 | or some aspect, some, and gosh,

03:11:02.200 | it would be an interesting range,

03:11:03.480 | but what range of discovery that we can anticipate

03:11:06.480 | we're gonna know within, you know, whatever,

03:11:10.120 | a few years, next five, 10, 20 years,

03:11:13.440 | and seeing if you can get that information now,

03:11:17.040 | and then over time, it might be verified.

03:11:20.200 | You know, the type of thing like, you know,

03:11:22.200 | part of Einstein's work was ultimately verified,

03:11:24.880 | not until decades and decades later,

03:11:26.480 | at least certain aspects through empirical observations.

03:11:31.480 | - But it's also possible that the alien beings

03:11:34.600 | have a very different value system

03:11:36.480 | and perception of the world,

03:11:37.680 | where all of this little capitalistic improvements

03:11:40.520 | that we're all after, like predicting,

03:11:42.600 | the concept of predicting the future too,

03:11:45.320 | is like totally useless to other life forms

03:11:50.160 | that have, that perhaps think in a much different way,

03:11:56.480 | maybe a more transcendent way, I don't know, but.

03:11:58.960 | - So they wouldn't even sign the consent form

03:12:00.640 | to be a participant in our experiment.

03:12:03.040 | - They would not, they would not.

03:12:05.840 | And they wouldn't even understand

03:12:06.960 | the nature of these experiments.

03:12:08.240 | I mean, maybe it's purely in the realm of the consciousness

03:12:13.240 | that we talked about.

03:12:16.760 | So communicating in a way that is totally different

03:12:20.880 | than the kinds of communication

03:12:22.120 | that we think of as on Earth.

03:12:24.200 | Like what's the purpose of communication for us?

03:12:27.840 | For us humans, the purpose of communication

03:12:30.240 | is sharing ideas, it feels like.

03:12:32.960 | Like converging, like it's the Dawkins memes.

03:12:37.840 | It's like we're sharing ideas in order to figure out

03:12:41.600 | how to collaborate together to get food into our systems

03:12:45.920 | and procreate and then murder everybody

03:12:49.080 | in the neighboring tribe because they'll steal our food.

03:12:52.640 | Like we are all about sharing ideas.

03:12:54.880 | Maybe it's possible to have another alien life form

03:12:59.800 | that's more about sharing experiences.

03:13:02.100 | Like it's less about ideas, I don't know.

03:13:05.880 | - And maybe that'll be us in a few years.

03:13:07.880 | How could it not?

03:13:08.720 | Like instead of explaining something laboriously to you,

03:13:11.800 | like having people describe

03:13:12.960 | the ineffable psychedelic experience,

03:13:14.800 | like if we could record that

03:13:17.160 | and then get the Neuralink of 50 years from now,

03:13:19.880 | like oh, just plug this into your--

03:13:21.560 | - Just transfer in the-- - Yeah, it's like,

03:13:22.880 | oh, now you feel what it's like.

03:13:24.920 | And like in one sense, like how could we not go there?

03:13:27.600 | And then you get into the realm,

03:13:28.640 | especially when you throw time into it,

03:13:30.080 | are the aliens us in the future?

03:13:32.480 | Or even like a transcendental temporal,

03:13:35.380 | like the us beyond time?

03:13:37.440 | Like I don't know, like you get into this realm

03:13:39.320 | and there's a lot of possibilities.

03:13:41.080 | Yeah, but I think there's one psychedelic researcher

03:13:45.360 | who did high-dose DMT research in the '90s

03:13:49.240 | who speculated that,

03:13:50.820 | that, and there was a lot of alien encounter experiences,

03:13:54.120 | like maybe these are like entities

03:13:57.480 | from some other dimension or--

03:13:59.160 | - Jared-- - He labeled it

03:14:00.160 | as speculation, but you know.

03:14:02.160 | - Do you remember the name?

03:14:03.760 | - Oh, Rick Strassman.

03:14:04.800 | - Oh, Rick Strassman. - Who did, yeah, yeah,

03:14:06.480 | the DMT work.

03:14:07.720 | He labeled it as speculation, but you know, I think that,

03:14:11.600 | yeah, I think we'd be wise to kind of, you know,

03:14:17.120 | it's always that balance between being empirically grounded

03:14:21.920 | and skeptical, but also not being,

03:14:23.680 | and I think in science, well, often we are too closed.

03:14:27.880 | Which relates to like, you're talking about Elon,

03:14:29.500 | like in academia, it's like often,

03:14:31.760 | like I think you're punished for thinking

03:14:33.280 | or even talking about 20 years from now

03:14:35.040 | because it's just so far removed from your next grant

03:14:37.520 | or for your next paper that you're, it's easy pickings.

03:14:41.920 | And you know, that you're not allowed to speculate, so.

03:14:45.280 | - I think I'm a huge fan of, I think the best way,

03:14:49.200 | to me at least, to practice like science

03:14:52.880 | or to practice good engineering is to like do two things

03:14:57.280 | and just bounce off, like spend most of the time

03:15:00.400 | doing the rigor of the day-to-day

03:15:03.500 | of what can be accomplished now in the engineering space

03:15:05.720 | or in the science, like what can actually,

03:15:08.000 | what can you construct an experiment around,

03:15:10.560 | do like that, the usual rigor of the scientific process,

03:15:14.040 | but then every once in a while on a regular basis

03:15:17.600 | to step outside and talk about aliens and consciousness

03:15:21.920 | and we just walk along the line of things

03:15:25.440 | that are outside the reach of science currently.

03:15:27.800 | Free will, the illusion or the perception

03:15:33.640 | of the experience of free will, of anything,

03:15:37.720 | just the entirety of it, being able to travel in time

03:15:41.680 | through warm holes, it's like it's really useful to do that,

03:15:45.480 | especially as a scientist, like if that's all you do,

03:15:49.320 | you go into a land where you're not actually able

03:15:53.120 | to think rigorously.

03:15:54.180 | There's something, at least to me,

03:15:56.440 | that if you just hop back and forth,

03:15:59.200 | you're able to, I think, do exactly the kind of injection

03:16:03.440 | of out-of-the-box thinking to your regular day-to-day

03:16:07.600 | science that will ultimately lead to breakthroughs.

03:16:11.440 | But you have to be the good scientist most of the time.

03:16:15.160 | - And that's consistent with what I think

03:16:17.120 | the great scientists of history,

03:16:19.480 | like in most of the history, the greats,

03:16:24.480 | the Newtons and Einsteins, I mean, they were,

03:16:29.480 | there was less of, and this changed, I think,

03:16:31.400 | as time marched on, but less of a separation

03:16:33.720 | between those realms.

03:16:34.760 | It's like there's the inclination now

03:16:36.720 | for it's like as a scientist,

03:16:39.560 | and this is science, this is my work,

03:16:42.640 | and then this, my inclination is to say,

03:16:44.800 | oh, Lex, don't take me too seriously

03:16:46.360 | 'cause this is my armchair.

03:16:47.340 | I'm not speaking as a scientist.

03:16:48.520 | I'm bending over backwards to say, to divide that self,

03:16:52.780 | and maybe there's been less of,

03:16:54.240 | there's been that evolution,

03:16:55.800 | and the greats didn't see that.

03:17:00.280 | I mean, Newton, and you go back in time,

03:17:02.160 | and it's like that obviously connects to then religion,

03:17:04.560 | especially if that is the predominant world,

03:17:05.920 | or Newton, like how much,

03:17:07.800 | how much time did he spend trying to decode the Bible

03:17:11.840 | and whatnot, and then maybe that was a dead end,

03:17:14.360 | but it's like if you really believe in that,

03:17:17.040 | in that particular religion, and you're this mastermind,

03:17:20.200 | and you're trying to figure things out,

03:17:22.360 | it's not like, oh, this is what my job description is,

03:17:24.600 | and this is what the grant wants.

03:17:25.660 | It's like, no, I've got this limited time on the planet.

03:17:28.560 | I'm gonna figure out as much stuff as possible.

03:17:30.920 | Nothing is off the table,

03:17:32.360 | and you're just putting it all together,

03:17:34.560 | so this is kind of this trajectory

03:17:35.880 | is really related to the siloing in science,

03:17:38.960 | like again, related to my, oh, I'm not a philosopher,

03:17:42.880 | whether you consider that a science,

03:17:45.700 | or not empirical science,

03:17:47.080 | but going to these different disciplines,

03:17:49.240 | like the greats didn't observe the,

03:17:53.080 | boundaries didn't exist, and they didn't observe them.

03:17:55.280 | - Yeah, so speaking of the finiteness of our existence

03:18:02.440 | in this world, so on the front of psychedelics,

03:18:07.440 | and teaching you lessons as a researcher, as a human being,

03:18:11.020 | what have you learned about death, about mortality,

03:18:16.080 | about the finiteness of our existence?

03:18:18.520 | Are you yourself afraid of death,

03:18:21.760 | and how has your view, do you ponder it,

03:18:25.840 | and has your view of your mortality changed

03:18:28.340 | with the research you've done?

03:18:30.360 | - Yeah, yeah, so I do ponder it, and--

03:18:34.240 | - Are you afraid of death?

03:18:35.120 | - Probably on a daily basis I ponder it.

03:18:37.760 | I'd have to pick it apart more and say,

03:18:40.140 | yeah, I am afraid of dying, the process of dying.

03:18:46.080 | I'm not afraid of being dead.

03:18:48.840 | I mean, I'm not afraid of, I think it was Penn Jillette

03:18:50.800 | that said, and he may have gotten it from someone else,

03:18:53.440 | but I'm not afraid of the year 1862, before I existed.

03:18:58.440 | I'm not afraid of the year 2262, after I'm gone.

03:19:02.560 | It's gonna be fine, but yeah, dying,

03:19:06.200 | I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid of dying.

03:19:11.040 | And so there's both the process of dying,

03:19:13.520 | like, yeah, it's usually not good.

03:19:15.260 | It'd be nice if it was after many, many years,

03:19:18.760 | and just sort of, I'd rather not fall, die in my sleep.

03:19:23.560 | I'd rather kind of be conscious,

03:19:24.760 | but sort of just fade out with old age maybe,

03:19:26.960 | but just being in an accident and horrible diseases.

03:19:31.800 | I've seen enough loved ones.

03:19:33.180 | It's like, yeah, this is not good.

03:19:34.400 | This is enough to be, I'd like to say that I'm peaceful

03:19:39.400 | and sort of balanced enough that I'm not concerned at all,

03:19:41.640 | but no, like, yeah, I'm afraid of dying.

03:19:44.400 | But I'm also concerned about, I think about family.

03:19:47.720 | I'm afraid or at least concerned about not being there,

03:19:55.640 | like with a three-year-old, not being there,

03:19:57.760 | not being there for him and my wife and my mom

03:20:01.920 | the rest of her life.

03:20:03.880 | I'm concerned about not, I'm concerned more about

03:20:06.680 | the harm that it would cause if I left prematurely.

03:20:10.040 | And then kind of even bigger along the lines

03:20:11.760 | of some of the stuff that Ford,

03:20:13.240 | I think we've been talking about,

03:20:14.120 | I think maybe way too much about just like,

03:20:17.960 | and I'll never know the answer.

03:20:19.940 | So even if I lived to 120,

03:20:22.320 | but I wanna know as much as I can,

03:20:24.460 | but like, how is this gonna work out like as humans?

03:20:28.720 | Are we, and a big one, I think is, are we gonna,

03:20:30.720 | and I don't think, unfortunately, I'm gonna learn it

03:20:33.320 | in my lifetime, even if I live to a ripe old age,

03:20:37.280 | but I don't know.

03:20:38.840 | Is this gonna work out?

03:20:39.880 | Like, are we gonna escape the planet?

03:20:41.680 | I think that's one of the biggies.

03:20:42.920 | Like, are we gonna like, the survival of the,

03:20:45.220 | like, I think the next, like the time we're in now,

03:20:48.560 | it's like with the nuclear weapons, with pandemics

03:20:51.000 | and with, I mean, we're gonna get to the point

03:20:54.440 | where anyone can build a hydrogen bomb.

03:20:57.520 | Like, you know, it's like, you just like the,

03:21:00.200 | or engineer like the, you know,

03:21:02.000 | something that's a million times worse than COVID

03:21:03.760 | and then just spread it.

03:21:04.600 | It's like, we're getting to this period of,

03:21:06.980 | and then not to mention climate change, you know,

03:21:09.160 | it's like, although I think that's not,

03:21:10.920 | there's probably gonna be surviving humans

03:21:12.680 | with that regard, you know, but it could be really bad.

03:21:15.440 | But these existential threats,

03:21:17.960 | I think the only real guarantee

03:21:19.700 | that we're gonna get another, you name it,

03:21:22.120 | thousand, million, whatever years is like diversity,

03:21:26.880 | diversify our portfolio, get off the planet, you know,

03:21:31.440 | don't leave this one, hopefully we keep, you know,

03:21:33.120 | but like, and I, you know,

03:21:36.400 | it's like either we're gonna get snuffed out

03:21:38.640 | like really quickly, or we're gonna,

03:21:42.440 | like if we reach that point

03:21:44.040 | and it's gonna be over the next like 100, 200 years,

03:21:46.880 | like we're probably gonna survive like until like,

03:21:51.920 | I mean, you know, like our sun,

03:21:54.160 | like, and even beyond that,

03:21:55.240 | like we're probably gonna be talking about millions

03:21:57.600 | and millions of years.

03:21:58.640 | It's like, and we're, I don't know,

03:22:01.840 | in terms of the planet, four billion years into this.

03:22:04.280 | And depending on how you count our species, you know,

03:22:06.120 | we're, you know, we're millions of years into this.

03:22:08.920 | And it's like, it's just like the point of the relay race

03:22:11.680 | where we can really screw up.

03:22:13.760 | - So that would make you feel pretty good

03:22:15.280 | when you're on your deathbed at 120 years old

03:22:19.080 | and there's something hopeful about,

03:22:21.560 | there's a colony starting up on Mars and it's like.

03:22:24.800 | - Yeah, Titan, like whatever, you know, like, yeah,

03:22:27.320 | like that we have these colonies out there

03:22:29.360 | that would tell me like, yeah,

03:22:32.120 | then at least we'd be good until like the, you know,

03:22:35.280 | hopefully, probably until the sun goes red giant,

03:22:39.480 | you know what I mean?

03:22:40.400 | Rather than, oh, like 20 years from now

03:22:43.160 | when there's some, someone with their finger

03:22:45.360 | on the nuclear button that just, you know,

03:22:47.240 | misperceives, you know, the radar, you know,

03:22:50.960 | like the signal they think Russia's attacking,

03:22:54.400 | they're really not or China.

03:22:56.160 | And like, that's probably how a nuclear accident war

03:22:59.240 | is gonna start rather than, you know,

03:23:01.560 | or the, like I said, these other horrible things.

03:23:03.960 | - Does it not make you sad that you won't be there

03:23:07.800 | if we are successful at proliferating

03:23:10.560 | throughout the observable universe,

03:23:13.720 | that you won't be there to experience any of it?

03:23:17.720 | - Yeah. - It's just the ego death,

03:23:18.760 | right?

03:23:19.600 | - Yeah, the death 'cause you're still gonna die

03:23:21.840 | and it's still gonna be over.

03:23:23.440 | - Right. - That's, you know,

03:23:26.320 | Ernest Becker and those folks really emphasize

03:23:30.120 | the terror of death that if we're honest,

03:23:33.760 | we'll discover if we search within ourselves,

03:23:36.040 | which is like, this thing is gonna be over.

03:23:38.800 | Most of our existence is based on the illusion

03:23:43.800 | that it's gonna go forever.

03:23:46.960 | And when you sort of realize

03:23:48.960 | it's actually gonna be over,

03:23:50.400 | like today, like I might murder you

03:23:53.200 | at the end of this conversation.

03:23:54.800 | (laughing)

03:23:57.040 | It might be over today or like you on going home,

03:24:01.920 | this might be your last day on this earth.

03:24:04.000 | And it's, I mean, like pondering that,

03:24:09.000 | I suppose one thing to be,

03:24:13.400 | if I were to push back, it's interesting,

03:24:18.360 | is you actually, I think you seek comfort

03:24:22.240 | in the sadness of how unfortunate it would be

03:24:25.840 | for your family to not have you.

03:24:28.080 | Because the really, even the deeper,

03:24:31.080 | yes, but that's the simple fear.

03:24:34.080 | Even the deeper terror is like,

03:24:36.360 | like this thing doesn't last forever.

03:24:41.360 | Like I think, I don't know,

03:24:43.160 | like it's hard to put the right words to it,

03:24:47.400 | but it feels like that's not truly acknowledged

03:24:52.400 | by us, by each of us.

03:24:55.680 | - Yeah, I think this is the,

03:24:58.680 | getting back to the psychedelics

03:25:00.000 | in terms of the people in our work with cancer patients

03:25:02.600 | who we had psilocybin sessions to help them,

03:25:05.320 | and it did substantially help them,

03:25:07.300 | the vast majority, in terms of dealing

03:25:11.000 | with these existential issues.

03:25:12.480 | And I think, it's something we,

03:25:14.080 | I could say that I really feel that I've come along

03:25:16.880 | in that both being with folks who have died

03:25:19.720 | that are close to me, and then also that work,

03:25:22.520 | I think are the two biggies, and sort of like,

03:25:24.840 | I think I've come along in that sort of acceptance

03:25:28.640 | of this, like it's not gonna last.

03:25:32.480 | Whether at the personal level

03:25:34.800 | or even at the species level,

03:25:35.960 | like at some point, all the stars are gonna fade out,

03:25:38.480 | and it's gonna be the realm of,

03:25:39.640 | which is gonna be the vast majority,

03:25:41.720 | unless there's a big crunch,

03:25:42.680 | which apparently doesn't seem likely.

03:25:44.800 | Like most of the universe,

03:25:46.040 | there's this blink of an eye that's happening right now

03:25:47.880 | that life is even possible, like the era of stars.

03:25:51.080 | So it's like, we're gonna fade out at some point.

03:25:53.480 | And then we get at this level of consciousness,

03:25:58.120 | and like, okay, maybe there is life after death,

03:26:00.640 | maybe there's maybe times in illusion,

03:26:02.240 | maybe we're gonna, like, that part I'm ready for.

03:26:04.920 | Like, I'm like, you know, like,

03:26:07.600 | that would be really great, and I'm looking,

03:26:09.160 | I'm not afraid of that at all.

03:26:10.320 | It's like, even if it's just strange,

03:26:12.680 | like if I could push a button to enter that door,

03:26:15.400 | I mean, I'm not gonna, you know, die,

03:26:16.880 | you know, I'm not gonna kill myself,

03:26:17.920 | but it's like, if I could take a peek

03:26:19.880 | at what that reality is, or choose,

03:26:21.920 | at the end of my life, if I could choose

03:26:23.320 | of entering into a universe where there is an afterlife

03:26:27.040 | of something completely unknown

03:26:28.320 | versus one where there's none,

03:26:29.480 | I think I'd say, well, let's see what's behind that.

03:26:32.200 | - That's a true scientist way of thinking.

03:26:33.980 | If there's a door, you're excited about opening it

03:26:36.840 | and going in.

03:26:38.120 | - Right, but I am attracted to this idea, like,

03:26:41.080 | you know, and I recognize it's easier said than done

03:26:45.200 | to say I'm okay with not existing.

03:26:47.400 | - Yeah.

03:26:48.240 | - It's like the real test is like,

03:26:49.060 | okay, check me on my deathbed.

03:26:50.520 | You know, it's like, it's, oh, I'll be all right,

03:26:52.560 | it's a beautiful thing, and the humility of surrendering,

03:26:55.360 | and I really hope, and I think I'd probably be more likely

03:26:59.080 | to be in that realm right now than I would,

03:27:01.480 | like, or check me when I get a terminal cancer diagnosis,

03:27:05.320 | and I really hope I'm more in that realm,

03:27:06.920 | but I know enough about human nature

03:27:10.080 | to know that, like, I don't wanna,

03:27:11.400 | I can't really speak to that,

03:27:12.680 | 'cause I haven't been in that situation.

03:27:15.200 | And I think there can be a beauty to that,

03:27:16.960 | and the transcendence of like, yeah,

03:27:19.600 | and you know, it was beautiful,

03:27:22.000 | not just despite all that, but because of that,

03:27:25.040 | because ultimately there's gonna be nothing,

03:27:27.240 | and because we came from nothing,

03:27:29.000 | and we dealt with all this shit,

03:27:30.280 | the fact that there was still beauty,

03:27:31.640 | and truth, and connection, like,

03:27:33.760 | that, you know, like, it just, it's a beautiful thing,

03:27:39.000 | but I hope I'm in that, it's easy to say that now, like,

03:27:43.520 | yeah.

03:27:44.360 | - Do you think there's a meaning to this thing

03:27:47.520 | we got going on, life, existence, on Earth,

03:27:52.520 | to us individuals, from a psychedelics researcher perspective

03:27:58.080 | or from just a human perspective?

03:28:00.680 | - Those merge together for me,

03:28:03.160 | because it's just hard,

03:28:04.320 | I've been doing this research for almost 17 years,

03:28:07.200 | and like, not just the cancer study,

03:28:09.600 | but so many times people, like,

03:28:12.840 | I remember a session in one of our studies,

03:28:16.040 | someone who wasn't getting any treatment for anything,

03:28:18.280 | but one of our healthy normal studies,

03:28:19.660 | where he was contemplating the suicide of his son,

03:28:23.520 | and just these, I mean,

03:28:25.840 | just like the most intense human experiences

03:28:28.740 | that you can have in the most vulnerable situations,

03:28:32.600 | sometimes, like, people, like, you know,

03:28:35.880 | and it's just like, you have to have a,

03:28:38.500 | and you just feel lucky to be part of that process,

03:28:40.720 | that people trust you to let their guards down like that.

03:28:44.040 | Like, I don't know, the meaning,

03:28:47.640 | I think the meaning of life is defined meaning,

03:28:52.640 | and I think, actually, I think I just described it

03:28:54.880 | a minute ago, it's like that transcendence of everything,

03:28:58.040 | like, it's the beauty despite the absolute ugliness,

03:29:02.560 | it's the, and as a species,

03:29:06.100 | and I think more about this,

03:29:07.520 | like, I think about this a lot,

03:29:08.880 | it's the fact that we are, I mean, we're,

03:29:13.880 | we come from filth, I mean, we're, you know, we're animals,

03:29:18.800 | we come from, like, we're all descendant

03:29:21.440 | from murderers and rapists, like, we,

03:29:24.720 | despite that background, we are capable

03:29:29.520 | of this self-sacrifice, and the connection,

03:29:33.800 | and figuring things out, you know,

03:29:36.640 | truth science and other forms of truth, you know, seeking,

03:29:40.240 | and an artwork, just the beauty of music

03:29:44.120 | and other forms of art, it's like,

03:29:46.360 | the fact that that's possible is the meaning of life, I mean.

03:29:51.360 | - And ultimately, that feels to be creating

03:29:54.520 | more and richer experiences,

03:29:57.360 | from a Russian perspective, both the dark,

03:30:03.400 | you mentioned the cancer diagnosis,

03:30:05.400 | or losing a child to suicide,

03:30:07.960 | or all those dark things is still rich experiences,

03:30:12.960 | and also the beautiful creations,

03:30:16.880 | the art, the music, the science,

03:30:19.000 | that's also rich experience,

03:30:20.280 | so somehow we're figuring out,

03:30:22.680 | from just like psychedelics expand our mind

03:30:25.000 | to the possibility of experiences,

03:30:26.480 | somehow we're able to figure out different ways

03:30:29.440 | as a society to expand the realm of experiences,

03:30:33.080 | and from that we gain meaning somehow.

03:30:35.000 | - Right, and that's part of like this,

03:30:36.720 | we're going across different levels here,

03:30:38.040 | but like the idea that so-called bad trips

03:30:40.960 | or challenging experiences are so common

03:30:42.800 | in psychedelic experiences, it's like,

03:30:44.600 | that's a part of that, like, yeah, it's tough,

03:30:47.680 | and most of the important things in life

03:30:49.480 | are really, really tough and scary,

03:30:51.800 | and most of the things like the death of a loved one,

03:30:54.480 | like the greatest learning experiences,

03:30:57.680 | the things that make you who you are, are the horrors,

03:31:01.120 | and it's like, yeah, we try to minimize them,

03:31:03.280 | we try to avoid them, but, and I don't know,

03:31:06.720 | I think we all need to get into the mode

03:31:08.040 | of like giving ourselves a break,

03:31:09.240 | both personally and societally.

03:31:12.800 | I mean, I went through like the,

03:31:14.520 | I think a lot of people do these days in my 20s,

03:31:16.560 | like, oh, the humans are just,

03:31:19.520 | they're kind of a disease on the planet,

03:31:21.560 | and like, and then in terms of our country,

03:31:23.760 | in terms of the United States, it's like,

03:31:25.040 | oh, we have all these horrible sins in our past,

03:31:28.360 | and it's like, I think about that,

03:31:29.560 | like the, I think about it, like my three-year-old,

03:31:34.560 | it's like, yeah, you can construct a story

03:31:36.880 | where this is all just horrible,

03:31:39.000 | you can look at that stuff and say, this is all just horror,

03:31:42.440 | you know, we're, you are, like,

03:31:44.000 | there's no logical answer to our, you know,

03:31:46.200 | rational answer to say we're not a disease on the planet,

03:31:48.640 | from one lens, we are, you know, you know,

03:31:52.480 | and like, there's, you could just look at humanity as that,

03:31:57.080 | like nothing but this horrible thing,

03:31:58.200 | you can look at any, and you name the system,

03:32:00.720 | you know, modern medicine, Western medicine,

03:32:03.840 | you know, the university system,

03:32:05.680 | and it's like, you could dismiss everything,

03:32:07.000 | it's a, you know, big pharma,

03:32:08.480 | like, hopefully these vaccines work,

03:32:09.960 | and then like, okay, I'd like to, you know,

03:32:11.680 | like, I'm kind of glad big pharma was a part of that,

03:32:14.680 | like, you know, and it's like the United States,

03:32:17.720 | you can like point to the horrors,

03:32:19.600 | like any other country that's been around a long time

03:32:22.640 | that has these legitimate horrors,

03:32:24.200 | and kind of dismiss, like, these beautiful things,

03:32:27.760 | like, yeah, we have this like modifiable

03:32:30.160 | constitutional republic that just,

03:32:32.540 | like, I still think is the best thing going, you know,

03:32:36.880 | that as a model system of like how humans

03:32:39.920 | have to figure out how to work together,

03:32:41.440 | it's like it's, how, there's no better system

03:32:45.440 | that I've come across.

03:32:47.280 | - Yeah, there's, if we're willing to look for it,

03:32:50.160 | there's a beautiful court to a lot of things we've created.

03:32:53.340 | Yeah, this country is a great example of that,

03:32:57.080 | but most of the human experience has a beauty to it,

03:33:00.720 | even the suffering.

03:33:02.200 | - Right, so the meaning is choosing to focus

03:33:05.720 | on that positivity and not forget it.

03:33:07.560 | - Beautifully put.

03:33:08.760 | Speaking of experiences, this was one of my favorite

03:33:12.400 | experiences on this podcast, talking to you today, Matthew.

03:33:15.960 | I hope we get a chance to talk again.

03:33:17.640 | I hope to see you on Joe Rogan.

03:33:19.400 | It's a huge honor to talk to you.

03:33:21.040 | Can't wait to read your papers.

03:33:23.200 | Thanks for talking today.

03:33:24.280 | - Likewise, I very much enjoyed it, thank you.

03:33:27.520 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

03:33:29.040 | with Matthew Johnson, and thank you to our sponsors.

03:33:32.320 | Brave, a fast browser that feels like Chrome,

03:33:35.280 | but has more privacy-preserving features.

03:33:38.040 | Neuro, the maker of functional sugar-free gum and mints

03:33:41.720 | that I use to give my brain a quick caffeine boost.

03:33:44.320 | Four Sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee.

03:33:47.640 | And Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.

03:33:51.360 | Please check out these sponsors in the description

03:33:53.720 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

03:33:56.640 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

03:33:59.280 | review it with Five Stars and Apple Podcasts,

03:34:01.600 | follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,

03:34:04.360 | or connect with me on Twitter @LexFriedman.

03:34:07.240 | And now, let me leave you with some words

03:34:08.880 | from Terrence McKenna.

03:34:10.840 | "Nature loves courage.

03:34:12.960 | "You make the commitment, and nature will respond

03:34:15.240 | "to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles.

03:34:18.720 | "Dream the impossible dream,

03:34:20.760 | "and the world will not grind you under.

03:34:23.320 | "It will lift you up.

03:34:24.880 | "This is the trick.

03:34:26.220 | "This is what all these teachers and philosophers

03:34:28.680 | "who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold,

03:34:32.700 | "this is what they understood.

03:34:34.800 | "This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall.

03:34:37.960 | "This is how magic is done,

03:34:40.040 | "by hurling yourself into the abyss

03:34:42.560 | "and discovering it's a feather bed."

03:34:45.040 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

03:34:48.880 | (upbeat music)

03:34:51.460 | (upbeat music)

03:34:54.040 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #145

Chapters