Rick Doblin: Will Psychedelic Medicine Transform Culture?

MAPS Founder and Executive Director Rick Doblin, Ph.D., shares his views on the potential of psychedelic research to transform human culture at Entheogenesis Australis 2011 (http://www.entheo.net/).

I spoke yesterday about how I had

tried to

mainstream myself in a way by going through the Kennedy school of

government by trying to get a job inside the government at the FDA

jobs

that this sort of max from reshma that was that the CIA came

recruiting to the Kennedy school

and I thought if they had the audacity to come recruiting I would pick up the

i'd ask you to apply

and so I thought what I want to do for the CIA

narrative

what ideal location to do a study and the national security implications

of legalizing drugs

because the CIA really does keep track of which groups around the country

ur

and around the world are selling drugs and we know that the CIA has made

alliances with various

groups like the northern alliance that compass and gas and reso

either money from

Levine’s stuff

this was around the time and iran contra swell shortly after that and so

I thought I would

see if I could work inside that state to try to understand really what are the

national security implications of legalizing drugs

and I made a pretty good presentation about why should be hired

and and that they were very interested I'd started up

my parents had sent me to Russia

when I was sixteen years old study ride studying Russian high school and

they gave me some books to give to the guys that that's the old guys incident

dot

started my underground career in Russia

which was

of interest to the guys the CIA

I had some really radical right wing relatives in Israel they were part

of the underground there

spent much time in jail if I guess prediction

so that turned out this guy was talking to us also assigned to the Israel

and so he knew some of the we had common friends and they said that there is

really

you can tell us what you want to do

and we're not interested in looking at the national security implications of

legalizing drugs once again you guys to workings about all these different kind

of things that

here's a

national security issues had we should start looking at

and then about six years later this was right around the time of the fall of

communism the biggest area at the CIA on

employment increase was in their counter-narcotics

division up for a hundred and fifty people or so and head of that came back

to the candy store

and ask them

you know at home but how I applied I want to do this resurgence all these

years later he got all these people had anybody

actually look at this and he said no we're not allowed

so there's just this incredible resistance to even conceiving of the

alternative

but I think that's really changing

and I think that has to change as we try to talk about how

we can integrate psychedelic since deciding how we can get some of the most

benefits from and it will require this larger

drug policy transformation

unbalance also talk a little bit about nine a

fact that they do five billion dollars worth of research

night actually has a monopoly on the supplier marijuana

it's legal for researched obviously they don't have a monopoly on supply

marijuana

in the united states but if you want to do research to look at the benefits of

marijuana

you have to get permission from the idea

to access their supplies we have tried

for about six years to get ten grams of marijuana

for vaporizer research further barking of a brighter to show how it

works in the neighbor strain

as we discuss a is this something stupid more likely make it through the FDA

and smoking

and so we've been unable really only people in America that can't buy ten

grams of Taiwan

after try and separate the layout that we work with

has finally given up they said it's bad for their business they don't want to do

things we recently

actually just a month ago submitted a protocol

to deny that

for a marijuana poster medic stress disorder study

and there are a lot of deaths are a lot of people that you use marijuana

proposed stress disorder it helps in three d sleep through the night there

are some advantages it's not a cure it's more treatment of symptoms working

within the amazing more

leading towards here's a start out research priority but

is primarily a protocol that we've submitted in order to try to demonstrate

that the night a system

is really fundamentally decide to obstruct research and developing

their wanting to madison

and so we just got back

the first-come communication from night at

and what they told us is that we've this is a very well designed study we have

tried for ten years to break the monopoly a big lawsuit against the deep

game trying to get our own

processes of life

are intended answers the supply of marijuana we have our own MDMA

aranella steelers private suppliers for all the difference like alex and that's

why we were able to make progress

so this

marijuana protocol got

five different groups it would have a

placebo marijuana two percent marijuana

two percentage c six percentage c

there's been

the last fifteen years a lot of interest and have a dialogue cd which hasn't

anxiety properties

so we've asked for supply of marijuana six percent

cc and six percent e a t cvd to compare against the tutsi

and then we that's for a higher doses twelve percent

t_e_c_ now we've done a marijuana plants the study of what marijuana

is most often use that medical marijuana dispensary is around the country

and it's somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen percent that people are now

often advertising with their own analytical labs for up to twenty percent

sometimes ta cee so with my dad just told us is

forget about marijuana cvd they have actually done with sleeping at night

and they have no twelve percent to see their highest is around six percent

and they're going to just have to review our protocol FDA will tell us about

ten days

what they think about protocol night I will tell us

probably in six months that they don't like it

and that if we decide to reply to their critiques of take another six months or

so

this idea that there is this fundamental obstruction of medical marijuana

research

is just totally true and it's based on this government monopoly

so these are some of the

political obstructions that have been put into play

adware slowly overcoming them

with psychedelic sweet made an awful lot of progress

with the research and

I think there's been probably go

much greater social evolution for sure there has been from the illicit use of

psychedelic ps most of us at experiences in that way

millions of people have

and I think it has caused a lot of change in attitudes

it's not inherently cell

but I think it can be stopped

and I think trying to look at why it's important

back in nineteen eighty-three I was undergraduate in college

and I have read this book by Robert Mueller

and Robert Mueller

was at the time the assistant secretary general for the united nations

was like the the mistake that the u_n_

and heat basically

was outlining this book

it's called the genesis shaping global spirituality

is basic theory was that

a lot of conflicts are based on

nations against nation and that that's why

that united nations was created to try to resolve those but that underneath

these national complex

are a lot of religious conflicts

that they haven't made a lot of the the words that are taking place religious

prejudices

what we need to move to a healthier world is global spirituality

animated eloquent case

that this was something that people were moving towards the sense of

unity a sense of connection with that would be really helpful and so

I decided that I would write him a letter

I brought in a letter I said your book was a terrific it was very inspiring but

he didn't say a word about psychedelic

and psychedelic scanty helpful in understanding spirituality and they've

been used for thousands of years

for that purpose

but now researchers block

would you help try to start with the renewal of psychedelic research

and this was at the time when it was

sort completely blocked this was eighty three as I said the changes that FDA

took place eighteen nine ninety mistrustful

started in nineteen ninety

so to my daughter surprise

Robert Mueller wrote me back

thesis in sector shell wrote me a handwritten letter

and he said basically ah...

you understood my book

I agree with your planes and here's a series of people

who I think you should communicate with

and these were religious professionals religious mistakes from a bunch of

different traditions

the subtext was

seven MDMA etc

because of the time and the immensely dot I had mentioned to him that it

became a letter that was the case

so I started this

informal project of seeding various people Roman Catholic months

inside the monastery

because then Buddhist leaders ahead of their traditions in their country's

orthodox Jewish rabbis

and they were all willing to report back to Robert Mueller

what they did

one in particular Brother David stein the rust

who is a roman catholic mistaken mom

steven is eighties we're just together in Moscow to transversal psychology

conference over the s

it's just astonishing how he's been able to both stay within the

tradition and be so

distinctly minded but

he tried inh the monastery had

fun to be extremely helpful as a tool to deepen is meditation practice

and when we

were finally faced with the DEA trade criminalizing MDMA

he was willing to speak to the practice of the first article was in Newsweek

Brother David

said that

and you make helps you get to a place that you could spend twenty years trying

to get to in meditation practice

at also worked with for our reflects almond chocolate

who is an orthodox rabbi

who had that actually taken out steven timothy Leary

who was

before this Jewish renewal movement

he was willing to speak to the press is welcome spoke to the Washington post

in nineteen eighty five e compared mt made of the staff

what happened was that this kind of information feeding back to Robert Mueller

confirming this idea that psychedelic could play a role

in people who were deeply embedded in their own specific religious traditions

and it didn't help them become their spiritual practice

the fact that these people had a sense of social justice that they were willing

to speak to the media

also

showed to me that that this kind of psychedelic since social changes it

really can go together

and I worked with Robert Mueller

this is going to be I'm a bit hard to see

we designed the album

a dream protocol

and this is something that I

feel like I'm working towards a spoke

yesterday just about

in space for the treatment of the postman stress disorder

but what this study

is designed to do and this may take another

twenty years to do just maybe

America to do it somebody eventually will do this dot

and so

this is from the heart of a thing

psychedelic since social change what this study basically sets

is that what we need to get it right

work with people who are in training to be religious professionals in their own

different traditions

and just take them for like two to three year period

and we would

take maybe thirty people are you don't starter how many we take that we would

aside half of them to go through their dorm all

practice of training to be religious professor professionals in their

religion

and the other half

would be assigned

they have their training supplemented by cited alex

and we would do this in about three or four or five different religions

simultaneously

and then at the end of the period of time

the district four year period of his training process

what we would use a whole series of tests and we'll try to evaluate

each person to do

was supplemental site alex as a group called a compared to the people who went

through the training

in standard way

and that would be one of the analysis did they have you been

meditation practice or whatever they did consensus there's writing

you know what kind of personality changes that they have

then we would do a different kind of analysis which would be

what kind of visions what kind of imagery what kind of

psychedelic experience as well as the content of their psychedelic

experiences

and how did it compare through

the imagery from within their own religion

hardhat psychedelic experience is that

word

surprisingly Christians team

and someone tell

in one as described earlier today that is that I had to gain experience

and

I felt like I was being crucified on the cross up my own self perfectionism

it turned out to be

one of the most

is actually here after this

protocol was written in turn out to be one of the most important experiences

that I've had

but it was mediated in

largely Christian imagery terms which would sure something was a surprise to

me

so that we would look at the kind of imagery that these people had

how did it compare to their own religions and then the third analysis

would be a comparative across religion analysis to see

what were the common themes

between the people from the different religions and how many of their images

and how many of their processes were similar

and the baltic would be to try to determine

is there evidence for a

took harmon mystical experience that's

basically human

is there this common mystical or

or is it that these people are like climbing different mountains or is it

just

different paths to the same

I think if we could do a study like this

that it would be a way to try to

serb brings science and religion to gather

and also work on commonalities and I think we would end up finding

there is

more or less a common

mystical chord that all of us

access to

and we'd we heard

earlier today

about the

this it's parts of the mystical experience and im go over that also

again

but what was important to notice and representations was

the various categories were with out specific

religious imagery from any particular religion or culture

so that that those were by Bill Richards there were developed for the Good Friday

experiment which I'll talk by the moment

but that there is

at least some scientific evidence to suggest that there is any

mystical experience a common spirituality that

something that's part of our hlegacy and that if we can experience

that deep down

it will more likely than not being asked to appreciate people from different

cultures and lobbyists here

of people from different religions it will be trying to take the

fundamentalism

that we've seen so many different religious context

and replace it with a really

live

profoundly

personally deeply felt

experience that then

leads one to be less rigid about the dog

I think that if thats

something that we can bring more into the world and I think we're all doing

that in our different lives for our experiences

that there is a way in which we can end up

really moving towards a more peaceful world

it's hard to articulate this kind of a a theory but I think it's what

really animates

mean more than trying that

help people who were dying with inside you're trying to help people with post

match stress disorder is really

for moving towards trying to do a study of this sort

and I think there's an enormous amount of resistance that will be there from

the religious traditions

from the fundamentalist but that its

I think we're we're moving towards this understanding of how we're in it

together it's oneworld

that we're not anymore isolated there

at global communications

if we really have from

we talked about

billions of people and billions of more people coming but gift

if there is in danger in a lot of

people with this fundamental core that that they're more similar to other

people and they are different

then I think

it will be more difficult for demagogues and dictators others to mobilize

through feared said

create outside enemies and then to dehze

I think that's the the big vision that's the whole

and we will get there and all sorts of different ways through

psychedelic studies of a whole range of clients but I think the the the big

payoff

from integrated circuit alex is true

kind of global spirituality and then helping people who are inclined to do so

accelerate p

process of actually getting to those details

I think that's what were we're hoping to to really reach

and why is it necessary according to Albert Einstein it has become

appallingly obvious

that our technology has exceeded our hty

i'm going to this is just sort of in the way that I did

robust and child tonight

circular thought about these things but the first list

throughout twins

he also said

the splitting of the adam has changed everything

saber mode of thinking

and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe

this is chris was talking about

but what is this mode of thinking

they decide think that

the mode of thinking that have to change is this

again sense of us as

primarily American are primarily our country primarily our race primarily are

gender primarily are

religion primarily our social class

that women who are primarily has compared to the world as and of nature a

separate

the mode of thinking this shift that we need to take

and I don't think that the idea that you go death is all that

I think there's some problems with this concept of either deficit I don't think

as long as we're h

and I think the it will ever really dot

there's really no and I think even wanting to die insert denying their

hty

I don't think it's health withstand rockwell has talked about is becoming

transparent to the transcendent

that the ego becomes transparent that it's becoming something that you can see

through it it assits rightful place

but it's never completely glob

so I think that the mode of thinking that my son is talking about the shift

that needs to take place is

who we think we are

and what is our place in the world and in the universe and if we can make that

she left

will avoid situations like this I was also as I said a draft resisters

preparing to go to

prison that that vietnam was something that was

the big

carmike childhood in nineteen years what to do about that

now and actually this is probably the

called a serious man

by the coen brothers etc I highly recommend you see it at this price

specially

amusing to people their Jewish setup

there is a scene where break for the c_n_n_ apprentice smoke pot bathroom

this is his efforts it to go through his bar mitzvah by permits for really did

not turn into a man

and it I thought it would

I really dead and I remember sitting in bed

for a whole week every night after my bar mitzvah thinking

it must have been a busy saturday

downtown must be somewhere you know it's like sample delivery all the presence of

something amiss

take a lot of time to get to me and

out I thought that what this is basically saying is that our normal

rites of passage in our culture don't really worked for many of us

I think that's part of the if you know of psychedelic says that

the tradition and and I i don't think that

it's always been this way promises may we really have worked in other

time periods where people were more ice were network to be able to read from the

store up

answer to assdult responsibilities

but this was right

in the face of these conflicts that I've seen in the world

what I was

seeing was that

I didn't have the tools like culture was not providing me with the tools

that would help me really to grow up and answer the spiritual questions

that I was struggling with even at thirteen

now I was fortunate to grow up at a time where

LSD was much more popular and

this is a picture of but

John Joko Ono and Timothy Leary

during their bed it for peace

I was fortunate in the way to be

living in this time of chart while

where

accurately and usually as I said yesterday that I really thought the

propaganda was true really thought that the listing agent permalink crazy

that there was something

fundamentally destructive about it to your brain so I wasn't at this time

really ready for it but but it was in my awareness

when I went to college

and there's a bill to start taking LSD

I am esther college in nineteen seventy one

I am took a bunch just a bunch of mass the land and I dropped out in

nineteen seventy two

exit right at work and as they are so I felt that

both myself that we are fundamentally over developed

intellectually and technologically and underdeveloped spiritually and

emotionally

and that is where

is closer than before and I i went to the guidance counselor at school

and I was so lucky that you gave me

a manuscript copy of stand drops from soviet union and conscious

and I was able to star reading that and and why things that stand wrote was that

LSD as the study of the mine

but the telescope is to astronomy

and the microscope is a biology

for me

stamp

put it all together in that here was science looking at spirituality

and also with the task of spirit

so wasn't philosophy there was a outcomes like wasn't really helpful to

people

as long as that that was sort of the ground in the past

and it felt like

I was waking up just as everything was being shut down I thought I was going to

go to jail

about one minute for a career

I can't be a doctor kapihl lawyer could be anything that's requires a license

and I'd need to respond to that were ready to respond to this kind of

social insanity

I thought I had to be second up their ste

that I will both need to therapy myself

and I will eventually hopefully be able to help other people through their own

struggles

so this was the the big visions but I think this is really still the case that

that psychedelic ps

can reliably produce

mine manifestation detroit talked a lot about dreams as the roar of the

unconscious and things like belts are very similar to that that that they will

bring out what's inside

when was the last time that in our culture in western culture that we

actually ad

psychedelic integrated into

the culture

how long has this

serve system of probation in the way did in place

and we have to go back to the ocean industries

they ran for two thousand years and they were the heart of retreat culture dave

people

were encouraged atleast once in their life to have an admissions re-experience

they were under pain of death they could not talk about it so we don't know

exactly what happened

but they wear com

psychedelic ritual

again did this transparent to the transcended they put people's sense of

who they were improper contacts that's at least what we can understand

what dealers and industries

were about there's been this is by Albert Hofmann

but but

problems elixir he ended up

and

carl ruttenberg wass in writing and

identified

what was the preparation of picking on the people drank

and they made the that this is that it had air got in it which was pretty clear

that

it was likely to be a psychedelic compound

now the ellison industries were shut down in three ninety six by the Roman

Catholic Church

so it's like competition for spirituality

and the church wanted to be the intermediary between you and your own

spirituality whereas

with yeltsin industries it was more direct

democratic

personal connection

and so this was really when we look back the last time so it's

cup sixteen hundred years that that our culture so when we think about how

difficult it will be

to bring back so I cannot seem to an integrated part

above board

where it's linked with

religious opportunities to to experience in different context

we're really trying to come over

appearing on process

there was also a bit of a divide between science and religion

that happen

in around five hundred years ago

and again it's this Oregon revolution

he wrote the fifteen forty two he wrote that the year before he died published

out of the revolutions of the celestial spheres

and then it was banned by the church in sixteen sixty

so this was where we're starting to get this idea

of the scientific method of scientific process and yet

we're seeing the conflict with fundamentalism in the conflict with

religion

brother bruno

incu

was one of the people that really

followed up on what brigades have done was

condemned for heresy

during his trial he said

I never ought to recant

nor will I

and when he heard his hands

which is a sense of death to be burned by the state he said in pronouncing my

sentence

your fear is greater than mine in hearing it

the fear of the status quo was change towards

the questioning of what they are remains a believing

and where they'd rather powerful

Galileo

was forced to recant

and in sixteen thirty three he was put under house arrest for the rest of his

life.

there's been this process where science was kind of developed in the way that

was separated from religion,

and separated from spirituality. a lot of

a lot of that is actually good I mean there's a lot of bunk in religion

a lot of things were science was able to I think to make a lot of progress but,

what we see now is that we have had

you know a science that is so disconnected from

morality and from

ethics

there was

t was saturn is in the united states who you are a lot of political

songs he talked about Werner von braun we developed a

rockets for that nazis and one of the scientists about governor brown brown is

saying

my job is just to make the rockets co-op where they come down is not my department

so I think there's in the sense that scientists are willing to create

enormous

engines of destruction and then it's not their responsibility with

politicians do with them

this is also something that we are now trying to

to overcome and we are in it

I think we're incredibly fortunate to live in an age that we are because

we have now

benefited from these centuries and

millennia these kind of restrictions that were overcoming so that

so in 1962

where I think science and religion really started coming together.

and this was the Good Friday experiment by Walter Pahnke.

and this was actually the best thing that Timothy Leary ever did

in my view

is that he was the fact we sponsor for this study

and what it was

was

twenty subjects

they were all training to be divinity students,

to be ministers

and they went into a church on Good Friday

and happened that's also I've been in half got a placebo and it was an active

placebo nicotinic acid,

and they went through a four-hour service

this was of at Boston university marched chapel buses were took place

seek to give you a sense of how non-controversial things worked out this

time

in 1962 the minister

was reverend Howard Thurman dynamic black minister he was Martin Luther

King's mentor

marla thing was getting a Boston at Boston university at the time

we have the establishment

saying yes you can bring a budget ripping people into church

we want to see as well as you get what's actually going to take place at this

experiment

was

one of the most

inspirational pieces of psychedelic research and many of the current

psychedelic researchers who were involved

trace a lot of their inspiration back to the study

because what it did show is that roughly

now whenever they says this typology of mysticism that was created just for this

experiment

there was

twenty subjects as I said nine out of the twenty had over sixty percent

cut-off time enough for the categories of mystical experience to be

considered to have the mystical experience

and eight out of those nine

hassle side one had the placebo

the claim was here that this experiment demonstrated in a scientific way that's

all sided

in a religious context in people that are religiously incline

and facilitate the mystical experience

and that at the six-month follow-up the people reported that they had

positive benefits in terms of their

their attitudes towards stamp their personalities that they they felt that

was beneficial to them

this study was

based on this kind of

questionnaire

and this was having evaluated

and any such early today so the sense of unity

this this is a ending buyout status both either internal or external so you can

have a sense that you're connected with the world the created world

where you're sorry the implicit or the explicit or that you're connected to the

sort of four months

russel can be a unity

without sorry deeper than substance

but it's a sense of connection overall in it together

this transcendence of time in space

this on the internal about it there's a sense of sacred essays this picture

because

inouye

how wonderful it is how much of a source of conflict but how wonderful it is that

with that

a couple hundred yards you've got

the place that's holy for the Christians the holy for the Jews and over the house

and if we cannot just eventually get to the place where we can appreciate

it's the multiplicity of forms of different religions that

really

adds to the sacredness rather than they're all warheads each other that

something

the potential that's what we're hoping for a sense of

being in conjunction with objective realities

some kind of scientific measurements there did indicate that

deeply felt

positive mood

an inevitability

this isn't the same xia shipping it's not quite know that you can communicate

in words but then gives an idea goes beyond the concepts

again these are not being too many particular Christian

imagery

in the mystical tradition

there's the experience itself but the real test is called the fruits test

what is this experienced done to people in their lives

has it been beneficial the ideas that if it's a genuine mystical experience it

has

positive benefits for the people that experience

and that it will

in recent live in their of their lives

unfortunately walter act he could get the study

back in a scuba diving accident and a nineteen seventy one

and so I'm convinced that he would have done this experiment if he had left

as I was

I dropped out of school for ten years I went back in nineteen eighty two

to college

and that part of a way to require two senior thesis

and I want to do something with psychedelic since I got research

and it was impossible at the time to get permission actually

administer stakeouts processors undergraduate

leftovers in the doctor had no connections

but what I realize is to do a long-term follow-up

to the Good Friday experiment

would be better than doing any kind of new research because

here was now

in the midst of the Reagan war on drugs the expansion of the war on drugs

trying to begin to just say no era

and I think it's just say just say no and the different ways really

aspired to plan works.

but that in the midst of that

what I decided to do is I would track these people down

the best like that

an interview them and say okay you're now you were going to be ministers who

had just mystical experience,

perhaps you've had other non-drug mystical experiences through the benefit

of the wisdom of the aging of the time

what do you think now

back on what happened

I went to the andover newton theological seminary where the experiment had taken

place

and I said would you be willing to

because these names who who are was in the study was all

secret hidden that no I did was actually the spec all I knew it was

that they had gone to andover newton

in nineteen sixty two

and so I went there I said would you put something in the newsletter

saying that I'm doing this study so that if anybody was actually

in the original study they contact me

and that they refused to do that

they were distancing themselves from this won the most important experiments

ever in the history of

scientific study of religion done with their students

and they did one other thing about it

and so out of like frustration I sort of went to their library and I thought I

wonder if they don't have a copy

water tank these these sir

and they didn't again you have a copy of it

and just a wandering around I happen to st on

the alarm right

newsletter that

listed dubbed

everybody's names and addresses

crack that photograph bat

and he was about yours articulate just mailed everybody understands really

identified nineteen of twenty people

it took me about four years I travel in person to interview seventeen of them

when I discovered in this long-term follow-up

really anchored by decision to continue in my life's direction working for a

second alex and I also think I

understood a little bit more about

the struggles of the sixties because when we tend to think about

what happened in the sixties and you have it

the image of the cultural revolution, the turmoil

a lot of the backlash people

claim is due to

people that

had terrible experiences with psychedelics they weren't prepared to jut a

window of italy

wetpaint did the fear of parents about their children

having experiences that that sort of charitable part

that that was

the idea of psychedelics gone I'm wrong

is what really triggered a backlash

and what I

believed to be the case now is that

it's psychedelic one right

that triggered the backlash

and by that I mean is that

the people in this study

told me that

what I found was that

it develop tenancy he asked appreciation of life in nature

it deepen their sense of joy it deep in commitment to the Christian ministry or

to whatever other locations the subjects shows

enhance their appreciation of unusual experiences and emotions

in increase their tolerance of other religious systems

it deepened their economy in the face a difficult life crises

introduce their fear of death

and greater solitary identification with foreign people's minorities women and

nature

this is our not constantine at what was also shocking to me

what's that

the people that were and that's all side and group hat and extremely vivid in

for at least some portion of their psilocybin experience the people that work and that's all side and group hat and extremely vivid in

memory

for at least some portion of their psilocybin experience

but the people in the placebo group most of them

could barely remember what happened in the study

it wasn't something that was really that if it's like if I would ask you

what movie did you see twenty five years ago

you know and tell me about it

ilic it it probably has faded over time

so that something about these experiences imprint really deeply and

memory

and they have this

a motion all power

has lifelong consequences

and when you have this mystical sense of connection

it does reduce your fear of death I think it makes you a little bit more

willing to put yourself on the line

to participate it makes you value life more while you have it

and this again in the fridge test

what I

heard from these people in the study genesis a small sample they were already

sort of social justice minded in order to become ministers black

they thought they did and passed this process

so just let me know think that

the fuel that

helpful impart with

the anti-Vietnam war movement with the environmental movement with the women's

rights movement

even to some extent of the civil rights movement that there was

a lot of the psychedelic spirituality taking place in an informal way

and it was inspiring

people to get involved.

and that time was so polarized o

that it really ended up

but there was really not much of the way to that

to do this and that that's return in the culture counter-culture

I think now here we are

you know forty, forty-five years later and we're trying to get over

this sort of culture counter-culture divide I think that's the importance

of trying to do the research was like a dodge that's the importance of us if

there is no more

with global warming with there is no more away there is no more island there

are no more private little utopias, that we can create overstated

we are all in it together and I think that's

in a way one of the good messages of global warming and about things that

people are going to understand how interconnected we are

so again this links towards the initial study that I thought that I would like

to do one day which is people from all different legends

trying to really understand is there a common or

so out this is about

leading towards the where are we with psychedelic renaissance

forty four years for there to be any attempt to replicate

the Good Friday experiment.

so this was Bob Jesse was here

a before he end up Bill Richardson ron prentice

did the sell side mister charged that what was different about this is that

they worked with people individually rather then in groups

before the Good Friday experiment group and also

that they worked in a non-religious setting they worked in a hospital

and even still

they showed

that's also identification mystical type experiences having substantial insisting

personal meetings personal significance

so that we've gotten over that that has to do it Good Friday experiment

in a sense a nice lately has been replicated

we've been able to start research at Harvard

within MDMA for cancer patients with anxiety so we've there you go stick

Timothy Leary to some extent

also we've been able to tell us the as the quintessential symbol of the sixties

we now have our Swiss LSD the study

and it's for people who are dying

we just heard out last week they were straining the twelfth and final

subject in the study

and this woman has a dance stage breast cancer

and the results are

we're not sure what the results are going to be but at least we've

concise so far that

we've been able to safely administer LSD in a therapeutic setting without

anybody having a serious adverse effect

I described yesterday MDMA mesa sadistic guard for PTSD and

all these different countries and

hopefully also in Australia

there's the series of that this was a paper recently published the archives of

general psychiatry is the top journal in

world in psychiatry

and they were willing to publish

so so I've asked a friend of life

we should say that we submitted our MDMA post-traumatic stress

disorder study to the same journal

and we went through similar kind of problems with horrible reviewers whose

job it was the dennis

kicked out

they did such a terrible job that one of the psychiatrists under

didn't do the general editor that I showed the refused to

wrote to the general editor of the archives

and said it's an embarrassment to the archives the low quality of the

reviewers

and that psychedelic research is starting up

and it should be taken seriously and Charlie Gruver submitted newspaper after

we submitted our paper and they decide to review he has

more unbiased manner

and so they ended up publishing that

there's a study at Johns Hopkins style of cancer patients theirs and why you

study

with cancer patients

there said nicotine missed additions that it was so side of the Johns Hopkins

opinion studied this

unfortunately has been shut down in Russia. Russia's got a heavy hand but for

a while the police check it out

psychotherapy research in the world was ketamine research with your benefits ki

in Russia

and

it's been really helpful with alcohol heroin addiction

surfs the hype there

and

also we're doing it had to be in project in mexico so

there's effort say it's also I've been event when you start with

alcoholism restriction

and there's a whole series of studies recitals in your assigned to the

university of surat with operates against

all over the place this is

source I dint study with f_m_ arriving glenn

there's just a northern I watched this now

been used in research with freeze-dried in capsulated ayahuasca

the u_s_s_ how do you take outstanding studies at but you can standardized the

dose

and they've been able to do this weekend he gene mapping what happens with

people's brains and I'll ask it

this is an Barcelona

there's research all over the place. but what some out what

threatens the research this sort of move towards

expanding the psychedelic research and then eventually also the spirituality

studies

in some ways that they're not-medically since I cannot and so

what matters that as we have picked

the symbolically the big festivals

where there is

a lots of use of psychedelic Burning Man being one of them

the other big Booming in portugal

so this is the now and I wasn't here discussion at outside about

portugal and to tell you that

the is that the

festivals we've set up a week on psychedelic emergency services.

And what we're trying to show is that in a post-prohibition world

that there will be loads of people still experimenting like adults and there will

be lots of people still getting in trouble

having it

the serb my nasty manifesting experience a lot of stuff that happen that's

difficult for people to integrate difficult for people to have a

particularly if people are taking it only for a party enough

they're sort of seeing that the

deeper issues they either one run from initially they're not opening to

them they don't understand how to work with them

so what we've been able to do is

set up a psychedelic emergency services

and to show that that it's possible with the therapeutic approach

to take people who have sort of inadvertently std into deep

psychological issues and by offering them support,

that we're able to really help

reduce a lot of

the problems and that the

Boom Festival because it's in Portugal to go with drugs or deter mines gets the

world's example

so if you can imagine this there is

thin-layer chromatography

done on-site so all the drugs that are being sold at the festival are analyzed

right there

and there's no police objections to it

and in fact the people that are

analyzing it create a powerpoint presentation

which they then

broadcast with a slideshow

on the side of their ten so that all the people of the festival will you just wander

by and you just can't see

what something was supposed to be in what it is

it's just amazing

it was really helpful to up to that the other students sometimes people expect

that this bill I don't know was that I

by looking at the the list of what had been analyzed you know what was in it

they the organizers of this festival this is the chill out space

this is specifically for people who have been tripping we need a place to rest.

they've created

they spent thirty thousand euros just on a therapy team of about about thirty people

to work

twenty four hours a day for a whole festival altered to work with people that came in

and they did it out in the open in a way to

really educate everybody so it's like

if you go to a festival ball and you know that there's a medical tent you're not

so worried about hurting yourself if you know

there's a cycle commercial services people concert

relax about their psychedelic use.

what I want to explain I was just the principles of psychedelic harm reduction.

so it turned up dot explain how it is that people who

but you don't know the patient the person the visitor

the first part is that you create a safe space

the way in which you do that it can be anywhere

but the senses that represented the

sitting for the people that come

you need to serve say to them in a way I'm going to be here for as long as it

takes that you have a stable interpersonal relationship

it could last for twelve hours it could last for days

people sometimes comes out the

Boom space for the century space

at Burning Man in-state for days but you create a safe space

what that also means is that people are not

they're not judges and not judgmental stage where you can do

let people feel free to bacon

let out their emotions whatever they happen to be that you will see protect

them

but that you will

also in some ways really support them in their process

so it's more than just

you know the drugs for the last another six hours you're going to come down don't

worry about it it's far what's bothering u it's more psychedelic therapy brief

intervention

but that's a place, the safe container is really the critical first

apt

that the understanding is that

you're sitting not guiding

and what that means is that the candy in her unconsciously unconscious is the guy

the person is their own

therapist in the way and you're trying to help them navigate this material

that's coming up but you don't necessarily know what they need to do

what they need to think about

what will be that that he that he owes them

but your goal is to be there with them

and this doesn't mean that you're

sort of neutral but it does mean that you can be enquiring you can ask

provocative questions

but then you have let go

and see how they respond.

and you can help them

the flat tax people say like drop the word like by you know my mother died

and then they go on and but you know that that's an emotionally charged

came from and so by asking them about it is and permission

it tells them that you're willing to go there

into that depth of emotions with them.

so that you can't

it's not like you know where they need to go that that's the the key

swift transfer of traditional psychoanalysis with a therapist

the psychiatrists are gives you the interpretation this also makes it so

that you can understand some way work with people that you've never met before

you don't have a history they're just in a crisis right that.

this is I think even more of a key point which is that you talked through

not talked down.

help people to work

directly with whatever issues that they're presented.

that you suggest that they look at this and they look at that that that

your goal is not that turned them away

and say here's some beautiful flowers you know the life can be beautiful

but it's to really say and what is it that's father so you talked them through

it

you don't try to take them away from it

and then

the core principle is it difficult is not the same is debt

most people have this idea I'm up for a party and taking psychedelic cemented

gets tricky

that means it's bad that major off-track

and so by telling people that difficult is not the same as bad

this can be difficult even learn sometimes

more from things that are difficult from the bird things that are easy

and so this is kind of how we

work in this is the way how we're trying to prepare the culture

we've been able to develop a curriculum

for up high school and college students that includes

we've had the greatest how-to you help a friend of yours if they're having

a difficult experience

and what we found is that by

straining in that way

were actually teaching how to trip I've had a trip in a productive therapeutic

way

but it's all again in this harm reduction helping a friend of yours

but that's the way in which it gets passed a lot of the resistances

and we're able to try it

built in some ways

more of a cultural understanding of how to work with psychedelics.

the reason that

and showing you this is that clear able

through our research to affect the culture and cultural understanding of

psychedelics,

in a lot of different ways and it's reaching this wonderful space now where

Elle magazine very popular magazine for women

this was the current issue

in a couple months they're going to have an article on MDMA propose to

manage stress disorder

so that it's really good mothers the parents who are worried about their kids

I think it is still the driving force behind the drug war. it's the fear I

think the parents for their children that started at the bottom anchor of how

politicians are able to really generate fear

and so by trying to come across to parents to women in a different way if

you look at the history appropriation

that women's christian temperance union was

involved in helping to create prohibition

was very much

linked with the women's suffrage movement because the thought was that

women

in order to try to protect their children would vote for prohibitions so

women's voting rights and prohibition work intimately linked

early days of the twentieth century

and it was women's groups that ended up being the ones that really helped and

prohibition

by seeing that their kids were sir succg to the allure of

the speak-easies the lord of the easy money level

gangster phenomena that

I think we will

see the end of

global prohibition when we start seeing the rise of parents movements

that are not just saying let's make that war on drugs harder

so this is a key part but even more than this

is Oprah

that slides I showed you yesterday from com about holes in the brain

were shown on Oprah's TV show

and 2001

so in the march issue of

omega scene which is her own magazine

there's going to be another article on MDMA propose dramatic stress

disorder

so in terms of the social cultural change

really we're starting to calm in the way so I think

people can hear it from unlikely sources and what's this story's going to be about

his book our work with PTSD with MDMA but also this story

of marlboro and how

and this is the work with

MDMA help people who are dying

artists died at age thirty three of cancer Marilyn was her mother MDMA help people who are dying

ma

artists died at age thirty three of cancer Marilyn was her mother

Marilyn and

one of your daughter to be in the study at Harvard with cancer patients this

study was in

ready to enroll her

at the time and so she worked with an underground psychotherapist

Marilyn was the

because they are addressed

and

there was a whole series of

sorted out experiences for the last

about five months of mars life

to endure may sessions

psilocybin mushroom session LSD and image combination session

and then gave him a session that was three days before mark item

mention died under the influence of endearment

while her mother was reading her

this book from Laura Huxley this time last moment that was about the

death of all the stocks like and all this ask to be administered LSD yes

for this time

so this is kind of a story coming too

people through Oprah magazine

I think it's just

awaiting release it's another sign that this cultural change there's a hunger

four

healing that word able to respond to you

to get back to act but your own government is doing to this issue

the image that

this is that the Marilyn who notices that this image of helping mother

helping her daughter to die

and more specialty select

but this is supposedly facing facts looking this insomnia, memory loss

or psychological problems

this is the

the face of fear

in terms of memory loss

this is impresses a study impressed in the journal addiction

that is denied have funded we MAPS started it was at one of our best

examples of leveraging money we spent fifteen thousand dollars it turned out

from a scientific point of view looking at cognitive consequences of

heavy ecstasy use

it's very difficult because the people that are using ecstasy are often using a

lot of other drugs as well

marijuana,

alcohol and there

dancing all night how do you tell what the MDMA

or what the ecstasy is 'cause even the ex is not always MDMA but how do you

separated apart

and it's a problem with

scientific research and we were

fortunate not to have one-up maps member write to us and say I've got the

solution to this

methodological problem

there's a bunch of people that have done only ecstasy and no other drugs right

how could this possibly be

and then it turned out that what I was writing to us from Utah

and for those of you don't know utilize the home of the Mormons

and the Mormons are against alcohol against tobacco against all sorts of

things of the budget like fallen Mormons kids

subway for accessing

and it turned out to get a fifteen thousand dollar pilot study

the excesses population insisted

and at that time night it was

sir disappointed because there are fewer campaign based on

MDMA maker in dopamine which was in Science magazine had to be with drama

paper it was trackers won the worst examples

cited at the air

the study was retracted because they did not have that in an instead of MDMA

these animals

penetrated the bottles that somehow or other switched

so they had to retract the whole study

that was sort of hungry for what's bad with animate

and we're hungry for what's the real facts about MDMA.

and so we were willing to do an encouragement to others that you got

but this pilot study on MDMA in this population and then the doctor

of john albert submitted a tonight at one point eight million dollar five-year

grant

so it's just coming out in a study designed to minimize limitations found

in many prior investigations we failed to demonstrate

market residual hotmal dot that's extasy users

this finding contrasts with many previous findings including our own

and emphasizes the need for continued caution

in interpreting field studies of cognitive function

extasy users

this will be coming up here lisa

so guests will be I think face that we would like people to think about

in terms of

and MDMA this is but woman veterans were enrolling women veterans

and this is just so much different

than myspace

this is we are hoping to to try to communicate

and this is the last five businesses

this is from the nest I'd like to wander around cities at night

I get a much better feel for them

you know there's not as many people they are sometimes all smallpox

go wandering around then

one time I was wandering around Washington DC and I ended up

not so far from the Supreme Court building

about three or four in the morning and it was the veterans for four more

smith had this

big

sort of obelisk

triangular obelisk that when up several stories

and it happens panels of

all the different wars that Americans have been there

you know analyst I'd just like

house you know he's more glorifying war war war

and then I turned the corner around that one of the the panels that was behind

this quote was at the base of that

obelisk

"since wars begin in the minds of men it is in the minds of men that the defense is a peace must be constructed"

and eyesight even the veterans of foreign wars as for appointing this way.

and this is what I hope is the future of

psychedelic ps cultural change in

social evolution.

could be playing successful challenge and the American constitution

lifetime strydom

night sure

spiritual religious country scum

well

first up there has been some successful challenges

you know there's half a million people in the Native American Church

that have legal permission to use parrot

but again the live

the supreme court

said that

people have to be twenty five percent

indian block

or or more

so it's the first time that we have

a religion based on race

which is of course outrageous

but secondly the we've got to go to hell

the I wass the church and sensitivities up to the supreme court

to argue religious freedom

and they won their case unanimously.

now I think the problem is that

the problem of religious freedom

in a sense is that you have to be part of our religion.

you know we want attain I don't and want to have to say

that I can only get from my rabbi or something

you know I want to be a week I think it's the biggest thing is that we each

have our own

direct line spirituality.

and we have to try to protect so that's even hurt that will require

drug legalization is there's no

personal spiritual

freedom in the constitution is religious freedom is freedom in groups

and also you have to show the was stacked against it so

you can't win you have to really show that the drug is interval to the

religion

it's actually a central there's no religion without the drug

so people have tried

and a lot of times it's been the wrong people you know when you do a test

case yet and really the ideal exceed a bunch of Jamaican Rastafarian tharam

drug smugglers

who get busted and I know this is my religion

you know so there's a lot of bayad religious

a lot precedent against the drug smugglers are trying to use it

so I think that that that really exist to religious freedom, personal spiritual

freedom is too much

individually too much drug legalization it

and you have to have ways to treat to teach the yahoo a c train

you know you really have to be a religion.

and read but I don't have to be done

the court

and so I think also that law is evolving over time that that

i'd just don't think that the cases are ready for any thirty and there is a

deliveries union has

a whole section of lawyers just devoted to working on the drug

you know and and they basically

taken that helped a bit with the has handed down has also been legal case

and they've won their except that night circuit.

so that there are some small victories but they're pretty very

tightly

defined religious groups and it's it's not going to affect the all the people.

just on that some people if it was like

in teaches too so I could barely a.

again there's this time

it's just so you just start districts of psychedelic you know I mean Leary tried

that.

you know and it didn't work for him so that it's a kind of thing where

I really think science and medicine is more likely to be the way to

change the culture.

that that there are people it right at DMT church and New York.

d_d_t_ back to the activity check out

eight yo again it's like

they've been able to get away with two for a while.

you know and so

the DEA has limited resources the police have limited resources so they're

going to try to go after what they think of a high priority

cases the ones where they can mostly get

the larger dealers.

so they're not actually like on the proper underground psychedelic

therapists are people who are using

psychedelics in a religious way. although they did

target the grateful that

tours and they had a whole there's there is a at one point there are several

thousand people who are

in jail for LSD from the Grateful Dead who works

so that the DEA did see that it's kind of feeding ground for the prison

system.

in order to develop a new religions church psychedelic it would be

a difficult case to make. people could try I mean I think

it's like

to bring down the elephant you know you come out from all these different

directions

and there's and more the idea of cognitive liberty thing rather than

religious freedom is to say

we have the freedom of the press we have the freedom of assembly we have freedom

of speech

but underlying all about

is the freedom of thought

the cert implied by the bill of rights.

and that freedom of thought requires us to be able to access the full range of

consciousness.

so that there's actually lawyers who are trying to make that case one of them

Richard Boyer

we're together at the sensing commission

when they're trying to get the penalties for MDMA.

and that you know it so it's like these are important

arguments they won't win but the change people's thinking but my

wife was

a lobbyist for the Quakers in Washington DC

and she said that they never won a single threat

but they at least could say the military budget is too big

at least about some kind of

people thinking so I think that it could possibly be a good thing to try to start

charges psychedelic difficult but I don't think

they would do much practically

yeah thank you catherine

but

but did not accept our effectiveness but have a lot of the us the and sticking

out of it

that they claim that at all and I did not state what the turnout react

filled out and and and that there were trying to get the appetite licensing or

track myself

I think will have to call it

call creek placed on the back