Psychedeliology (HALLUCINOGENS) Part 2 with Charles Grob

Okay, once again, it's the Lady Eating Barriers of Abuse in the Park, Alie Ward. Here we are Part 2 of an episode Six years in the making. Go back to Part 1 if you didn't start there. You'll get all the basics. Do one and then you do two in that order. Okay, so we are talking psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, traumatology, and so much more with one of the leading experts in the field of psychedelics and

hallucinogen research. So in Part 1, we learned about the chemical structure of hallucinogens, what receptors and networks of the brain they work in, and if hallucinations are dreams, neuroplasticity, psychosis risks, secret CIA, shenanigans that killed even one of its closest allies, so much more. And in this episode, we're going to talk about how hallucinogens are administered in the safest medical settings,

different strains of mushrooms, decriminalization status, some recent rulings. We'll talk about cultivation, dimensions, what's reality? How does one avoid barfing and so much more? But first a huge thank you to patrons of allergies who pay $1 or more a month and submit questions for the show beforehand. These are wall-to-wall your questions. You can also support allergies by wearing an allergies shirt or a tote. You can tell a friend.

Those shirts and a tote are available at oligeesmarch.com or for $0.0 sense, feel free to leave us a review because they boost the show so much and they make my day. Such is this new one from Wildflower Soul, who works at an animal shelter and well listening to the Capy Bear episode quote it, Awaken to a primal feeling in my guinea pigs and they all started Weaking along like they were Capybearas. They were living their wild lives. Thank you. Everyone else lives short summers here cut banks,

Texture Crush, consult a doctor before doing any drugs. Let's get into it. Okay, so this very first question was all about Access. Maureen flood asked how long until we reach the point of being able to prescribe these to patients, Sarah Metzger and Johnny Clark asked what is your professional opinion about legalization,

Kelly Dooling, Gregorius of Tom's Adam T Burns, Emma Scott and Brennan Hicks. I wanted to know about legalization and Brenna wrote just to speak the FDA ruled against MDMA for treatment of PTSD. Do you think this ruling will affect the outcome of similar studies for shrooms?

So let's a your cues about set and setting decriminalization. Stone to ape theory, FMRI studies, neurodivergence, astrophysics, how to be a good trip sitter and my own experience following clinical guidelines for a big trip and more of your questions with a

Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Harbor UCLA Med Center, co-editor of the Tome, the Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens and Psychodeliologist Dr. Charles Grove.

A lot of people wanted to know about access. People wanted to know what's your opinion on legalizing all hallucinogenic mushrooms. How do you feel about Oregon recently legalizing it? Where are we at with it? If someone wanted to do this, like my psychiatrist just like just get a hold of some I so far haven't been arrested for talking about it. Maybe has changed in the last week given what we're learning about the maps.

Hearing at FDA it was you know very very negative. There are highly critical of maps so will it extend over to the psilocybin. I don't know. So maps side note stands for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and it's this nonprofit. It's based in the US and it focuses on research for MDMA for PTSD,

Iawaska for addiction and PTSD, medical cannabis, LSD and psilocybin for anxiety and depression. And just days before we sat down to record this, an FDA panel rejected research for MDMA aided therapy for PTSD, which is a huge blow to researchers and psychedelologists if you will. And according to this recent New York Times article about it, the panel wasn't convinced that the benefits outweighed the risks in MDMA assist therapy.

And they cited these potential cardiovascular effects, but also called into question how blinded the methodology is given that subjects can usually tell whether they have been given a dud or whether they are chewing their cheeks and rolling on Molly in front of a guy in a lab coat.

So it was a 9-2 vote total bummer and other experts and cheerleaders of this therapy, including some sexual assault survivors who showed up to speak about how revolutionary the therapy was for them have been pretty disappointed. Now, it should also be noted that the FDA doesn't regulate talk therapy at all. So it's a tough thing to regulate and it's a tough thing to study.

Now, what does this mean for access to hallucinogenic or psychedelic therapies? Now, criminalization varies not only country to country, but state to state and city to city. Now, organs do criminalization law went into effect in January 2023 and Denver has a green light. And California passed in resolutions in Santa Cruz and Berkeley and San Francisco, marking psychedelics as the lowest law enforcement priority.

They're like, don't worry about it. Now, back in 2019, Oakland passed a similar resolution stating that no city funds or resources can go to the enforcement of laws imposing criminal penalties for the use and possession of end theogenic plants by adults. So some places are more lucy, goosey than others when it comes to eating 60 million year old fungus that you can pick out of a cow patty if you know what you're doing.

I am very interested in seeing what happens with Oregon. My admission to them would be be as careful as you can and pay attention to safety parameters and keep an eye out for ethical and proprieties because that'll bring the whole house down. These are such valuable experiences there. The gifts of the gods they come to us from the earth, you know, and if you use wisely in a proper context with proper oversight and in moderation, not taking that heroic dose.

Most people, not a whole people, most people, whether the experience fairly well with a lot of important knowledge and insight. It's interesting. If you had told me when I was in high school that there would be weed stores everywhere and yoga mom selling. Teach seat tinctures I would not believe it's so it's interesting to see how much the legalization of marijuana and so many states might pave the way.

However, when is like Merck and Pfizer going to come in and the problem with marijuana legalizing is we now have to also deal with the synthetic cannabinoids. We need to deal with this kind of the free base product wax, you know, I've seen people get quite psychotic, especially young people who were predisposed to manic impressive illness. They would get manic they get psychotic and it wasn't was smoking just weed per se. Now, Dr. Grobe said there's also laboratory synthesized cannabinoid spice.

It's called which seems very on the nose or there are strains treated with a solvent to create a wax and their strength is often vastly underestimated in case you're looking to elevate your heart rate or have a massive panic attack if you are me. But when it comes to psychedelics. So one thing I think that's desperately needed in Colorado and Oregon is good public education.

This is going to be open to the public. There are going to be a lot of people who don't know much of anything about this. They need knowledge. They need to be instructed. Ideally, you would have legally sanctioned centers to facilitate psychedelic experience in the presence of trained and certified facilitators.

Right. Josie Rutherford and Jasmine Leo wanted to know about potential negative effects like remembered trauma falsely or truthfully remembered and Brooklyn Baron Laura would April Carter and Julia Lorraine asked in Julia's words. I'm so excited for this. Okay. Can you ask theologist about the incidents of psychosis induced by psilocybin and also if there are ways to prevent it?

Some folks wanted to know how would one know before if they embark on this if they would be prone to psychosis or prone to well, are you at high risk? Why you look at your own history? Were there any preceding episodes where reality testing was in question? Mm-hmm. Or what about your biological family history, your biological genetic history?

If it's loaded with people with bipolar disorder, there I believe is significant risk. Now that they may whether it's just fine, but they're at higher risk. And then the next person who did not have such a history in his or her family. And if you're looking for someone to evaluate if this might be a good option for you, how does one go about that?

Now some patrons, Jasmine Alexandra and Jessica Stanley, Eva Hisova and Kate Munker and Walo asked if it's safe to self administer either on a company or with a friendly trip sitter or are there other researchy means to do it? I want to know where can you find a trained medical doctor or clinical trial to join? Oh God. I'm or a sitter. Yeah, that's a tough one to answer because I guess it's legal now in Oregon for us. I'm aware and it's approaching the Galilee in Colorado.

I'm not sure where they are with that process, but outside of those two states like you, you had to play your luck out on the open. Yeah, meet someone in a parking lot. Walk through the woods. I saw this great, you know, Paul Stammett's the famous ethnomicologist. So I'm going to talk about it. A great slide of a rural Oregon police station and it was this expansive front lawn. I know it was proliferating with with with still sign mushroom. So how did they get there?

Well, there was a disparate directing the spores to settle down there. Or did you have some wise guy kids who thought this would be a lot of fun to do? Just confiscated mushrooms just for like this is a good place. And last week we talked about how CIA operations to use LSD as a truth serum or in warfare disproportionately experimented on people of color sometimes in cruel and in humane ways.

And in the paper don't kill my buzz man explaining the criminalization of psychedelic drugs political scientist Conrad Sproul of the University of Oregon explains that in 1968 possession of LSD was banned by the US federal government in 1970. There was this controlled substances act that classified LSD and other psychedelics as schedule one drugs signifying that they had no medical potential and the highest possible potential for abuse.

And then in 1971 through the UN psychedelics were placed in the strictest category like above cocaine alongside heroin. And these bands largely arose from this fallout with MK Ultra, Disgustin Part 1 and this type of moral panic that was counter to the counter culture of the hippie or now boomer generation who were not keen to go fight in wars they did not agree with they were held against that and then this moral panic began.

And Sproul continues that no discussion of drugs in the US can be complete without addressing race which has been entwined with drug rhetoric from the beginning they're right and that the racialization of the drug problem and the resultant harm to communities of color has only increased with non white defendants convicted of drug crimes at massively disproportionate rates.

Sproul notes and in case you do not live in the United States let me just remind you that our healthcare systems and our prison systems are for profit. So it does pay to do drugs but it just pays somebody else. Well Matt Sikato and Josie brother Ferd Aaron White Megan Morgan all had questions do shrooms have to be grown in the wild and harvested or can they be farmed is such no you they can be cultivated. In fact the ones who developed the first procedure for this were the McKenna brothers.

Yeah back in the early mid 70s. So just a quick side note Terrence McKenna was a mystic and ethyl botanist and after trips to the Amazon stumbling into this field of psilocybin mushrooms. He worked with his brother to cultivate them using just home DIY equipment and in 1976 they first published the magic mushroom growers guide which was this seminal handbook that changed the accessibility to hallucinogens. You could just grow them in the garage and he took a lot of trips.

He wrote a lot about my expansion some theories about time being fractals and the world and time ending in 2012. Unfortunately he was not here to see that it's pretty much the same but worse as he died of this aggressive rain tumor at the turn of the century in 2000 at the age of 53. But Timothy Leary said that he was one of the most important people on the planet because of Terrence McKenna's work in cultivating them.

And so I understand that there's like golden teacher and there's penis and even those are like different strains of mushrooms. Do any of them have an effect some people wanted to know like Megan Morgan wanted to know how our doses determined? Well, you know you like to take a compound where there is some history of people having experience with that way you can gauge what the proper doses.

If it's super potent and will trigger a massive reaction that only you know two grams of mushrooms you want to contain the dosing on the other hand if they're old and they're kind of stale. Yeah, and they've been exposed to the elements and they're not as strong. It may take you have to be careful about this but it may take a higher dose. So if you've ever tried to dive into this world and you're like what's with the golden penis teacher I'm confused let's run it down right quick.

So there are different strains of the same species of psilocybin mushroom and the most common strains are golden teacher which has a slim stock and an umbrella cap. It said to be more gentle kind of a more introspective experience penis envy is a very dawn looking shroom. Clearly it has a thick stock and a little phallic hat and according to one independent lab the penis envy strain had double the potency of their golden emperor which was a derivative of a golden teacher.

So different strains can vary and for Libby Tomco who asked to the stocks versus the caps really have a difference in potency. I've heard the caps are significantly stronger. The research team found that the cap of the golden emperor mushroom was more potent than the stem but it was the inverse for the penis envy strain that had a more powerful shaft if you will.

So tip the cap to them for studying that and how they're cultivated can also make a difference apparently and there was a thing called the psychedelic cup competition.

It was held last fall in Denver of course and different species and strains were awarded with things like the most enviable or potency and one microbiologist shared the growing hack that water absorbing packs can only what you find at the bottom of like a beef jerky pouch but bigger can help keep mushrooms more potent as water breaks down psilocybin.

Noting that blue streaks on your stocks means psilocybin breaking down and you've kind of already lost it. What? So yes first time question ask her Renee Wenger who wanted to know is there shelf life and what happens if they go bad. How do they go stale like because I was I was micro dosing with some old ones didn't feel much. I had a friend we got some.

We're very well done. I gave a little bit to a friend again. Please do not arrest me and she did like a gram and she was like I was like tripping she's like I think these are really strong. Right. Where does the potency go. Yeah, what are the conditions that impact potency old Dave Nichols who's kind of this eminent medicinal chemist or natural products chemist maybe the world's leading scientists in this area.

You know he talks if you want to keep them fresh you keep them in a dark cool environment. So so that means if you expose them to sunlight just leave it lying around and it's maybe the climactic conditions are kind of hot and humid. It's likely going to lose some of its potency. And in a 2020 study stability of psilocybin and its four analogs in the biomass of the psychotropic mushroom psilocybi Cubensis researchers stashed some shrooms in different conditions and found that after a week.

Things were still pretty fresh. The changes in concentrations were negligible. But after two months and on of storage nearly all of the alkaloids were reduced. And the bags that fare the best were stored in the dark at around 20 degrees Celsius or room temperature. But don't store them too cold because fresh mushrooms frozen to negative 80 degrees Celsius or negative 110 Fahrenheit had the highest degree of chemical staleness if you will.

Also I learned in this episode that psilocybin mushrooms have been around for about 65 million years kind of coinciding with the timeline of the great asteroid that killed the dinos and the KPG boundary layer. And the alkaloids that trip us out may have been selected through evolution because of insect or gastropod munchers. But evidence on that is debated. What is not at for debate is that most people don't want a bad trip or a kaleidoscope of brain terror.

And patron Maria Waman said that they've heard horror stories about getting stuck in a bad trip. And Josie Rutherford, Connie Connie Bobani, Tom Brody and Kevin Wildermuth asked about the old set and setting, meaning mindset and going into the good one and setting as in an environment that feels safe and secure as well as. Rayna Beckett, the assassin, C.C. Cross scientist Abby and Maria Waman. A lot of people also want to know about set and setting.

But Rayna wanted to know what happens during a bad trip or Abby wants to know does a bad first trip mean you're doomed to never have a good trip like.

What is the setting what I teach you know I'm actually talking on occasion with some of the young psychiatrists at UCLA who are very interested in this and I tell them and I'm actually able to demonstrate it once we did an experimental session with a patient if someone starts to get very anxious, very agitated and somewhat disoriented like what happened with this a few months ago with a subject.

The most helpful thing you can do you get their attention and you say I know you're having a challenging experience right now but you need to know this is time limited that if we just wait for you know some minutes or maybe a couple of hours you will return to your normative sense of self because the scariest thing and a bad trip is oh my god I've done something to myself I will never be myself again I will never find myself again so it's important to dispel that.

So we had the subject to was getting you know the model was it was open label so we knew what they were getting the first session he got 10 milligrams as we covered in part one a big trip is about 25 milligrams of straight synthesized standardized psilocybin in pill form and a micro dose on the other hand would be maybe three grams so 10 milligrams is between a giant and a tiny dose.

This is a depression and a month later he got 25 and my junior associates were after the first session which the guy did great they said oh this is this is a snap and I said no wait wait for session to 25 milligrams is going to be far more challenging and it certainly was and so he stood up he's kind of looking kind of frantic looking around it looks looks like he's feeling trapped and one problem was between where he was sitting and the door.

I was sitting so he would have to go for me I don't want that to happen so I figured time for me to talk so I gave him my wrap and it helped me okay he'll see that he calm down sat down couple minutes later big smile and said this is great yeah I can see so much you know someone told me before mine if you start to get scared.

Think of it like a sign to go toward that thing and yeah yeah ask it if you see something scary like a monster or something ask it what can I learn what can I from encountering you yeah what can you tell me what do I need to know yeah that's a Ralph Metsner used to teach he was one of the the most esteemed authorities in this area that I'm known is a great friend he died in I think 2018 or so he was a master at guiding people through these experiences and with you got into a scary place.

Don't run away that I just intensify the fear yeah head towards it in a calm deliberate way and ask may I may I have your attention and what can I learn what do you have to teach me and then it's remarkable what starts to happen yeah it's a good allegory for life to something starts to intimidate you it's maybe a sign like if you're scared to do something or anxious about something looking at that of why am I scared of this yeah is always good yeah now a lot of you share the question

will I cease being me in the moment or after why are they potentially life altering in beautiful and sometimes dangerous ways with patrons Luke Lafamina asking will it actually make me unsaid and these changes were also on the minds of Chelsea Wicked Daniel Optal Natalie Rousseau Maria Jura of Leyva Roy DeMir Sam Tyson Quis Pafka 34 Lynn then Huyang and Carly Delson along with J.D. Lanan Wondersnow what is psychedelic induced ego death when people talk about

what is that well ego is our sense of self and on some occasions particularly early on particularly with a high dose people feel that their sense of self is fragmenting and they kind of lose lose that sense of continuity with who they are and it's felt to be an integral part of the death rebirth process again you can see our episodes on

the pathology and quasi-thanatology if you have a lot of existential dread around death we also have one on quantum ontology with an astrophysicist who asks what is real and we have a scotohylogy one with a dark matter expert all of those really changed the way I viewed being alive and being dead as did my trip but what does the psychedelicologist think of these aspects Kurdish Takahashi asked is there any evidence of hallucinogenic therapy patients discovering connections to the world

connections to a spirit realm and bringing back divine messages for the betterment of humanity is there evidence of that and Annabelle and jasmine we they both wanted to know a few people asked about dimensions and a last to mushroom trips open us up to other dimensions what even is objective reality

well hopefully one question too much because we all have to come back to normative consciousness and function yeah we don't want to get too carried away with the sound strange and unusual this is but you have a little glimmer you have a you have a period of time you know maybe some minutes maybe some hours

you could look into the other side and sometimes astonishing things happen like your approach by a deceased relative yeah maybe one where there is some unfinished business or some questions you needed to ask yeah has it made you start a question what is time is time even linear like I interview to quantum ontologist who studies what is real is an astrophysicist and just about how much we don't know

and does your experience of watching other people and haven't gone through it yourself does that make you question how much we know about reality well I mean there are some astrophysicist and the like who got their insight by long psychedelic carry mullis who invented these genetic screens just a side note carry mullis is a 74 year old biochemist who spent a lot of his undergrad lab hours at Berkeley making LSD in the lab and he said

that his trips were more impactful than any coursework he'd done what happened to this guy oh on LSD he visualized the mechanics of PCR testing and later won a Nobel Prize for it in real life that wasn't a trip and very prominent individual he was on a documentary basically saying I took LSD and that's when I saw this happening it's kind of like the discover of the benzene ring a 19th century

German chemist Kekele who had a dream of a snake and then the snake bites the tail of another snake and they keep biting the tails until it's a six sided hexagon physicist Richard Feynman was also said to dabble I'm sure he was not alone in his field nuts so that's interesting so the physicist I think they're very engaged with this

and I'm sure some of the more prominent physicists had some first-hand experience did Stephen Hawking I don't know but you never know I know that Carl Sagan was quite impacted by psychedelics his best friend growing up was Lester Grinzpoon a Harvard psychiatrist who wrote a great book called psychedelic drugs reconsidered published in 1980 and it was basically a compilation of all the psychedelic research that occurred up to that point

and Lester told me and he also spoke publicly that his good friend Carl Sagan had had a number of psychedelic experiences which are of great value to him that makes sense that makes sense and what if your brain is already a little different Lizzy Booth wanted to know how hallucinogens affect people with ADHD or other neurodivergent people

my colleges Tony Wildman Paragran Eva high sova Rube eating dog hair for a living Kelli McCain and Aaron Donnie Mueller first request ask her wanted to know a little bit as an autistic person I'm fascinated by how physical difference in the brain structure such as reduced neural pruning manifest

and I'm wondering they say if those brain difference produced different effects and trips I know you've studied MDMA and autistic people anything that you that you observe doing those studies in terms of well I think we had some success in treating their incapacitating social anxiety these are adults on the autism spectrum very bright a bunch of them had done well academically through high school then went off to college and completely collapse and couldn't handle really the social scenes

yeah the social pressure so they went home and couldn't get out of their room we saw with our patients who received two experiences that they were able to move beyond that incapacitating social anxiety and function get back out in the world get degrees get jobs it was actually quite impressive and I think it really tells us that there's a

it opened me up to the neurodiversity movement that we shouldn't necessarily pathologize right you know people with autism that they just have a different style of understanding and living in the world we need to be we need to learn from them yeah for sure and for more in this you can see his 2018 paper reduction in social anxiety after MDMA assisted psychotherapy with autistic adults a randomized double blind placebo controlled pilot study

which found that participants in the MDMA group which was administered twice during two eight hour sessions showed a significant improvement on leboit social anxiety scale scores and it held up or continued to gradually increase even six months from the trial is there any way to study if something changes structurally or chemically in people who trip like I imagine putting someone who is tripping on mushrooms in an FMRI machine would be a little bit challenging for some

very challenging there's some scary stories about about someone kind of getting very anxious asking to be removed from the scanner and saying he didn't want to go back in getting a lot of pressure from the investigators that he did need to go back in because he would hurt science if he didn't that's not a good story

and he would go trip the back in but I think that's a very challenging place you know you're you hear that clanking noise your your immobilized pretty much it's very claustrophobic you know psychedelics can be challenging under the most optimal condition putting them in an MRI scanner

yeah that's not an optimal setting terrifying Emily Hebert Hannah Haram DTL one of one Caitlin Tendale Julia S Trevor Ogborn Josh Jones Megan Morgan all had nausea or why does it affect my guts or body and rumbly tumbley ways Joe or if you don't want to know not asking for a friend but the nausea

I will sometimes consume with food and I think it helps and Bethany B had a culinary query asking can certain foods or drinks eating them during a prior effect the way the experience goes people asked about why does celisiban make people nauseated and why does acid like something acidic

change how it affects you yeah yeah I really haven't observed a lot that much in the way of GI symptoms people who have taken celisiban I've had subjects tell me that taking these synthetic celisiban felt like a cleaner experience like gastrointestinal wise than eating a mushroom Oh interesting yeah where I hear much more about the GI effects is ayahuasca Oh God yeah I have friends that have done that that's very challenging yeah but it's it's an important part of the process

and they don't look at it as vomiting you know which is bad we'd look at it as we're conditioned to look at it as a bad thing they look at it as a purge yeah a purge you know where they will get rid of all the negativity and they visualize all the negative stuff

they're they're getting out of their system yeah I know someone who facilitates those and she was talking about just like the sweet sound of people barfing into buckets means that they're like healing yeah that's a real reframe and that's great but then what what people need to understand is at a certain point when you're wretching repeatedly you've already brought up everything that was to bring up but you still have this wretch reflex you got to use a little willpower to stifle it

yeah and to just settle back down because you know you're you're on a loop it's not of any value to you and it's disruptive to other people around yeah I remember encountering a little bit of nauseant and I remember having read like just tell yourself like it's okay it's okay but we can keep this in it's chill it's medicine don't worry about it it's okay to let it out yeah okay to let it go I wonder to you about animals Francis Bruce Baker and a bunch of people Jamie Denny

Denny it right the tiger and Hazel first time question ask her wanted to know do animals react to psilocybin well there's a book in the 80s or early 90s by a UCLA psychologist named Ron Segal and that was the whole premise of the book which was to make observations of animals in the wild you know accessing psychedelic plants and then making observations what happens Segal was a little controversial but I forget the name of the

oligiddo yeah Ron Segal that book was called fire in the brain clinical tales of hallucination and just as a side note Ron Segal was considered by Oliver Sacks and many others to be one of the foremost experts on hallucinations and as a psychopharmacologist living in LA he was a witness in the trial against actor Robert Blake who was accused of hiring someone to kill his wife and sometimes during the testimony Dr. Segal

discussed the use of drugs on mental states and casually revealed that he had been able to teach monkeys to smoke crack cocaine so I guess brains just say yum yum yum chemicals wherever you go but what other risks are there and we'll get to that right after the break but first each week we donate to a cause of the oligis choosing and this week Dr. Charlie Grove chose human rights watch which is a nonprofit composed of about 500 people

of over 70 nationalities who are country experts lawyers journalists and others who work to protect the most at risk from vulnerable minorities and civilians in wartime to refugees and children in need so that is human rights watch and a donation was made possible by sponsors of oligis okay back to your questions about risks this one was asked by Jocelyn Vincent Kathleen Carson

Rubbe Ashley Adair Devon Naples and Aaron Wilgamos so let's take a listen. Una Trevanovic wants to know what are the risks associated like is micro dosing safe for the brain like any I think people who are interested in this are like what's the worst that could happen

don't want to be like good too many to warn you. I think it's good to approach this with a fair degree of caution and we don't we're still trying to learn about it you know so the worst that could happen is somebody getting disoriented losing their sense of calm and containment running out of the building into the street I was consulted on a case at a big East Coast university where a young guy I think it was 19 who would never evidently never take on a psychedelic

and no psych history got a hold of some mushrooms and on an impulse took a substantial dose he then went walking around the very crowded streets crowded with people really loud a lot of noise and you know construction going on and just total hells who be out there and he had some friends with him who didn't really know what he was doing.

He was jumping in with a trigger warning slash spoiler alert about a 2003 self-harming incident that was later ruled by medical examiners to be an accident and not a suicide.

So then he ended up going into the student library where a week before another kid had gone up to a high floor and had jumped to his death this kid didn't know the other one but he knew the story and he went into the elevator his friends followed he went up to like the tenth floor and he walked over to the railing and looked over it then his friends were getting very anxious.

So they dragged him back dragging him back to the elevator but he broke free and he just vaulted right over the railing took a tenth story dive. Oh god. That's the worst thing that could happen. Is that evidence of psychosis? He got disoriented. He got disoriented. He got very anxious. He lost his sense of self.

But you know psychosis, it could have been a transient psychosis his reality testing was disturbed but chances are he had been in a setting where people knew what he was doing and they could contain him. He could have gotten through that pretty quickly and gotten to the other side and been calm and contained and not put himself in any seriously dangerous situation. Yeah, that's tripsitting important there. Yeah, that's an important role. That's a lot of responsibility.

Yeah. For a 79 page guide on how to conduct a trip like the research psychiatrist do see the Yale Manual for Silicibin Assisted Therapy of Depression. Which notes that beforehand the session preparation checklist is room decor like arts and plants and flowers, sheets, blanket pillow. They note it's good to have a water resistant sheet below cotton sheets in case of incontinence. It's also good to have a barf bucket which they call an MSS basin.

They also recommend standard music system, ambient speakers, eye shades, having some lamps, some comfortable lighting, maybe throwing some art materials and they also have rescue medications on hand which can be anti-anxiety drugs in case someone starts to freak out. Now, it also notes that the researchers and nursing staff greet the participant. They give standard medical and psychiatric assessments.

They check the blood pressure and pulse. They evaluate the participant for suicidality. They conduct urine toxicology and if appropriate, a pregnancy test. And they ask the participant about any changes in their medications. Also, headphones or a speaker and an eye mask highly recommended and to keep your thoughts moving, there's this five and a half hour Spotify playlist titled Imperial College of London Silicibin Clinical Trial Playlist that I hear is very handy.

Well, one and only Arty Schmutz wants to know. Is it true that vitamin C potentials, Silicibin's hallucinogenic effects linked with minerals? I've never seen anything convincing on that. I know there's anecdotal accounts. Yeah, but nothing that's like definitely doing that. There was interest in some vitamin B early on in the 50s. They thought maybe some vitamin Bs were metabolites or had some kind of role in this. Humphrey Osborne was looking into that but nothing ever came of it.

I understand that for placebo, they'll administer niacin and people get niacin. That's a B vitamin. Yeah, we did that as a placebo. I won't do it again. Really? Worst side effects were both niacin reactions. Were they really? People there were just, well, they're very sensitive. They're very fair complexion. They got bright red face, got real red and they started itching all over. How it lasted for 30, 40, miserable minutes?

Now niacin is a B vitamin, vitamin B3. And if taken in high concentrations like over 50 milligrams, the small blood vessel so the skin can dilate and lead to hot, itchy red sweaty skin and a feeling like ants are in your arms. According to one lady who drank a five-hour energy drink during a college road trip and thought that she was dying, it's not subtle.

We knew they're on placebo. We broke the blind. It wasn't an ideal placebo. I thought that needed a placebo condition and there really isn't a good placebo condition. The Hopkins group likes to take very tiny dosages of the experimental medicine. But if there is anything to micro-dosing, then there might be somewhat of a therapeutic effect even taking a tiny dose as a placebo. So I thought that was kind of confusing the situation. No, we use like cornstarch.

That's smart. Although I'm doing something very different from my new study, which is a multi-site study and I'm putting together with some colleagues where we're going to treat people approaching the end of life in the palliative setting who are overwhelmed with demoralization. And what does that mean exactly? You've lost all sense of purpose. Meaning has dissipated. You're in a terrible, unsolvable, existential crisis. It's every day.

I mean, I feel like I became way less afraid of death after I took that. I was just like, okay, well, that's cool. I'll be fine. Either way I'll be fine. There's a long tradition amongst indigenous people where these plant compounds are administered to initiate to really explore different realms of consciousness, including dying and envisioning or envisioning people you've known either yourself or you know through legend or myth envisioning that.

Well, a lot of people wanted to know about the stoned ape theory patrons and human apes Nick and Melaniseon, first and press, drasker, who asked, I'm curious what your thoughts are about the stoned ape hypothesis. Is there any legitimacy to the hypothesis or is it all bunk? Does it have any truth to it? Is it bogus that the apes in the wetlands were munching on mushrooms and they became so inspired with their experience that they had to convey it in some manner.

To another ape and thus began language. That's a great theory. I don't think there's much proof. And also we should clarify that that's not a theory, but rather a hypothesis by Terence McKenna that language developed relatively quickly in humans because of enhancements to the linguistic centers in the brain from magic mushrooms and plant hallucinations.

But most scientists are like a little bit like, and they don't give it too much credence. Even some of dr. Grobe's own work is cited in essays attempted to offer proof like this recent psychology today article that noted dr. Charles grow with University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues conducted a study in the early 1990s exploring the effects of regular ayahuasca use in Brazil.

They found that individuals who drank ayahuasca regularly scored higher on neuropsychological tests than controls who did not drink this brew. But even the guy quoted in that article, Charlie or pal Charlie Grobe, is unconvinced needs better evidence. What about neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Kitty Oldman wanted to know about interesting research on psilocybin and MS.

Well, this is now being explored. I know the study looking at depression and people with Parkinson's, same with MS. And also, you know, it's funny years ago, particularly regarding MDMA, we get into these endless debates about whether or not MDMA was neurotoxic. And I would argue, strenuously, that that was not the case. But now we're getting data that would indicate that psychedelics have neuroplastic effects. So what are the implications there to people with neurologic disease?

And for more on this, you can see the 2022 study from psychiatry to neurology, psychedelics as a perspective therapeutic for neurodegenerative disorders, which notes optimistically that recent studies with rodents revealed that psychedelics like psilocybin,

there are putic effects might extend beyond treating major depressive disorder and substance use disorder. For example, they write psychedelics may have efficacy in the treatment and prevention of brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. Now preclinical work shows the ability to induce neuroplasticity, so changing the brain and synaptogenesis that deals with synapses. And psychedelics may also act as immunomodulators by reducing these levels of pro-inflammatory markers.

So neuroplasticity, help with those synapses, reducing inflammation, current and future psychedelologists, no pressure, but we're all counting on you if you can fit in your schedule. Speaking of schedules, Sonya Bird asked, how do I figure out the right microdosing? And other microdosing questions came from Brooklyn Baron, Jasmine Alexandra, Kai Kishmoto, Christopher Pluba, Vincent Beck, Jones, or Spence, Felix, Kelly McCain, and Kevin Quest.

What about when it comes to microdosing? If people are like, I'm going to try it, I'm going to do it anyway. To the on or off like Marco Centora wanted to know once every two days. I've heard different regimens. I've heard like once every four days. Does it just last in your system for a couple days or? Yeah, if you look at blood measures, it'll clear, but there's some experiential component that an all likelihood persists.

It's at its to build up a state every four days, build up an account of a steady state level and see if that has any therapeutic components. But again, I'm waiting for the research to come out on this. We need more micro psychopharmacologist. That's like the bottom line. There you go. Several people wanted to know when it comes to becoming a researcher in this field. Where do you see it going like legality wise? Well, I tell you what my father told me. I already told you. I'll tell you again.

He said, son, you need to get credentials. No one will listen to you unless you get credentials. And for me, being his son, there was only one credential he was retiring. So I had to go to medical school, which I was avoiding. But then realized I had a greater goal to pursue. And I went for it. Did you ever ask the mushrooms like, should I become a doctor or what, man? Oh, back in those days, it was a long interlude. Yeah. It was not the time, not the place set setting, we're not optimal.

So I just read. I just read. And I know that was a fascinating area. I know that's some limited experience in the late 60s in college. But then not again for another 20 years. But I read everything I could. And then 20 years on, I had a lot of opportunity to see for myself. Yeah. Those are very valuable. That being said, I haven't done anything since, you know, six years or so. Oh, yeah. I don't feel called to it. It's a calling.

Yeah. People feel called not by their friends saying, don't be a wolf, man. No, it's a calling. You feel instinctive, catexes to some greater force in nature or the spirit realm or whatever you want to call it. That here's this potentially remarkable experience. And you, you're lucky enough to live in a time and place where you actually have access. And you are predecessors, your ancestors for centuries didn't have a clue that these compounds even existed.

Because they were underground. They were totally secret. And people who practice using them were condemned with the harshest punishments of the enclosation. They would try to wipe out the indigenous people in South Central America and about the midwives in Europe, in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, who know about plants, medicinal plants. The images of the witches flying on their broomsticks. Yes. Do you know what that is?

Yes, I do. We had a witch episode recently, but rubbing balm on the broomstick and then inserting it. Yeah. Flying high. Flying high. Yeah, but the authorities, all men, the church authorities, the secular authorities were horrified by this. For more on indigenous perspectives on this, you can see the ethnoecology episode and the witchology episode on indigenous beliefs and the culture of witches and spells. And they murdered millions. This is an a million, mostly women, mostly plant healers.

The midwives, yeah. Is that the hardest thing about what you do is getting over really conservative views or fears or institutions that want to kind of stifle the research? I haven't run into that. I know it's funny. I for years, I was cautioned to keep my interest to myself. And I was at Johns Hopkins for many years. And the chairman there didn't want to hear anything about this. So I kept my interest to myself.

Every month I go to the medical library, look at index medicus, what was new was psychedelics, hallucinogens, or surgical anthems. I'll just try to keep up that way. But it was seen as a career killer. This would be back in the 70s, 80s, in the late 70s. We all asked to present the research paper to our medical school class. So I found a paper of Stan Groff's where he treated terminal cancer patients with anxiety and depression with LSD and DPT.

It had phenomenal outcomes. Remarkable. One of the most moving papers I had ever read in the medical literature. So I chose that one. I distilled it down. I put together my talk. I thought I had a great talk. It was succinct at a point. It was fascinating. And I'm really excited looking forward to what are my classmates and what are the professors? What, how are they going to react to this? What are they going to say? What comments will they have? What questions will they ask? Crickets.

Nothing. Complete silence. And then I realized, oh my, I'm not supposed to talk about this. So it really wasn't until I left Hopkins in the late 80s and came out to California and met some, you know, like-minded psychiatrists. And like any researcher, having colleagues or a network of friends in the field can help the cause move along faster and smoother. I did an episode with James Burke of the British Series Connections and he told me in that some really great advice I think of all the time.

One plus one equals three. Two people can create things greater than the sum of their parts. It's bad math. It's a great philosophy. Marlene D'Ares, who's an anthropologist, you know, who really kind of helped me realize that it was still possible even though decades had passed. And so I had my vision. I had my plan and nothing could ever come of it because it wasn't the right time.

By the early 90s, it was the right time. You had Rick Strathman in University of Mexico, got permission in 91 to study intravenous DMT. I got permission in 92 to study MDMA and normal volunteers and then Deborah Mesh in University of Miami got permission the following year to study people on an ibogaine. That was the first opening. And then Francisco Marano at Arizona in the early 2000s did a very nice proof of concept study using psilocybin for people with refractory OCD.

Oh wow. And then Roland Baltimore did a study looking at the degree to which psilocybin may facilitate a powerful altercated consciousness, a powerful transcendent state, mystical state, which were according to the literature, going back to the 50s and then into the 60s, that having a mystical experience or having a powerful transcendent or transpersonal experience would make it more likely that individual would have a very positive longstanding therapeutic outcome.

And I'm glad that that hasn't been that huge of a challenge for you career wise. Do you have any gripes about the job you do? Do you have anything? Oh, well, I have a straight job. I'm a mainstream psychiatrist, I'm the director of a large division of childless and psychiatry. We have a lot of trainees. I really like kids. I was the oldest in a big family so I grew up around kids. It was always fun. So it was a natural fit for me.

Meanwhile, you know, it really was what I got to harbor. Harbor UCLA in 93 that I was really able to move forward with the MDMA study, the IOSCA study, the next decade, it was a psilocybin and a life study. And now we hope to have another multiside psilocybin study. Yeah. Is there anything that's the hardest part of your job? My commute. Your commute?

Well, what I found, it's imperative that I have people who have got a lot of energy and are very well organized because I'm a bit all over the place. I need people to keep me on track. I had a wonderful resident who just moved back to East Coast and I need to find someone who could take her place. Maybe you'll get some emails out of this. What about your favorite thing about what you do? What's living the dream? You know, I always dreamed of doing this.

And here I had these remarkable opportunities. They just they just fell to me. And I'm very grateful that, you know, the universe has been so kind to me. And I'm really excited about the capacity these compounds have to have a therapeutic impact on people whose conditions do not normally lend themselves to positive effects from standard conventional treatments. And I love also that there's a 700 page textbook that people can find if they want to know the compendium of like vetted information.

My book, which him grids me a Colorado. We co-edited a book, which is amazing. Yeah. Because there is research out there that I'm sure people want to know that book has everything. Yeah. Yeah. Published by Gilford Press. Got it. We'll link it everywhere. Yeah. This has just been such a dream of mine. I've wanted to interview for so long since before I even tripped out myself. So this has really been an exciting episode. I enjoy talking with you and maybe won't meet again. Yeah. I hope so.

So ask tremendous experts, trippy questions. And for more on Dr. Charlie Grobe's work and books, including his handbook of medical hallucinogens, you can see the links in the show notes. And there's more up on our web page at alleyword.com slash allergies slash psychedelology, lots of links to lots of studies. You can find us at allergies on X and Instagram. I'm at alleyward alley has just one L. And I recently put up some new videos on Instagram and TikTok for a concept.

I'm working on called holidays observed with your pod mom, Jared sleeper. So please do go look for those. They're fun. Also, we launched a whole new show in its own feed, smallages. It's available wherever you get podcasts. Each week we release a new G-rated and shortened episode of allergies. They are classroom safe, suitable for all ages and occasions. So we moved our smallages to their own feed, have at it. There's more of them.

If you're going on a family road trip, if you have friends with kids, please do send them a link. Also, you can become a patron of allergies at patreon.com slash allergies for as little as a buck a month. Allegis merch available at the link in the show notes, Aaron Talbert, Adminz, our Allegis podcast Facebook group. Avaline Mollick makes our professional transcripts. Noel Doherth is our scheduling producer Susan Hale is our managing director.

And again, frankly, a trip sitter every week to in fact, checking extra research to Kelly, our Dwyer, does the website. And piecing together the fractals of audio, our Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes-Mateland of mainland audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme song. And I told you a secret. This week it's a kind of a big one. If you stick around, I said I would tell you a little bit about my own experience.

Tossing 3.4 grams of relatively fresh and potent psilocybin mushrooms down my gullet in an effort to fix my brain. So after my dad died, you know, it wasn't the easiest time I was going through it. I was going through depressed talking to my psychiatrist about antidepressants and anxiety stuff like that. And at the time I wasn't on an antidepressant or a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or SNRI, which deals with neuropein effort as well.

So talking to my psychiatrist, he notes this study showing that psilocybin therapy in a clinical trial was shown to be more effective than Lexa Pro. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do that. So I'm going to go for it. My psychiatrist sent me all this information on how to do it, how to conduct it myself. I have a friend who knows a pharmacist who grows these things very well. And I'm again, the laws listening, it happened in Oregon, but I was really, really, really nervous to do it.

I'd never taken any psychedelics like that. I think I'd probably had like a cap of a mushroom once and like barely felt anything. So I was very worried about throwing up. I was very worried about having an absolute panic attack. Because sometimes if I smoke too much weed, it's just like I suddenly get terrified of death. And I realized that all that lies before us are horrible experiences of pain and disappointment. So I was afraid of that happening.

And I was reading the protocol about how you should journal ahead of time so that you set out your kind of intentions. You know what shit you want to go through and examine or look at. I went whole hog according to Yale Protocol Imperial College of London, other methodologies like Dr. Grobes, read how they did the experiments, headphones, playlists I talked about, I'm asked. Now the day before I journaled about like what my intentions were, like why was I doing this?

What kind of stuff did I want to clear out? And I wanted to get through this feeling that my worth was tied to how helpful I was or how much I was making other people happy. I wanted to get through this anxiety and this perfectionism that is always using like self-criticism to make me work harder. I wanted to reconnect with happiness in my life and like allow myself to feel happy without fearing that like another shoe was going to drop, which is just anxiety.

And I wanted to feel more open to trusting and not feel like, oh, if I get rejected by someone or if I do one thing wrong, someone's going to be so mad at me forever. I wanted to just trust that people who love me love me and that was okay. And so I also wanted to process my dad's death and so I wanted to sort of like connect with how my family relationships are and really feel like I could be myself.

And so I journaled a day before, I said, I found these by the way I found these in an old binder, I said that some of the things I was looking for was comfort and confidence and ease and openness. And I wanted to make better choices for my body. I love hiking and walking and running. I wanted to do more of it. I wanted to not work more than I work. And so I went into it with all that. And then the day of I was super nervous. I ate like a very light breakfast, gotten pajamas.

Jared was my tripsitter. I did have one or two Xanax pills on hand. In case I freaked out, turned out I didn't need them at all. So I'm not going to tell you how to obtain things legally. That seems pretty murky, but I will tell you that we had some. They were very potent. Great. We put them in a coffee grinder until they were dust and then I put them in a glass of tangerine juice, choked it down like it was metamuse or something.

And so then I get in pajamas. I have my headphones. I have a mask. Jared sitting in the foot of the bed. And I get in bed and I'm like, okay, I don't feel anything which goes on for like 45 minutes. Right. And then suddenly my hands started to feel kind of tingling. I was like, oh, okay. I started to feel like a little stony baloney. And I was like, okay, Jared's like put the headphones on. Turn on the music.

And so then I started to feel a little bit nauseous. And I remember hearing just tell your body, it's okay. This thing is here to help you. Don't barf it. You worked hard for this. Don't barf it up. It's okay. It's a friend. It's a friend. Like when your dog is like, whoa, you're like, it's the mail man. They have a present for us. So did a little bit of that with myself. It passed, which was cool. I was super afraid of barfing didn't at all.

And then I put on the mask. I was listening to the music. I was like, whoa, you know, like trippy spa music. But it kind of served like a music in a trailer where it just brings things along. It takes you by the hand and keeps your thoughts moving, which was really helpful, I think. And so the first thing I kind of remember is feeling like I was coming into like a train station.

And there was just like a sea of faces like when you see old movies like Ben Hurr, where there's a lot of people in a colosseum. It was like that. It was just like faces that were all like, hey, you made it. And it was like, holy shit. These are all my ancestors. This is bonkers. Where'd everyone come from? How do you guys know it's coming? They're like, hey, you're here. You did it. And I was like, whoa, this is, I got a lot of people to catch up with. This is so cool.

And then one of them started leading me down into this labyrinth. Everything was kind of like brown stone clay. And they were like, let me show you around. Let me show you around. There were people scattered waving as I was going by. And I was like, oh, this is the trip. And then for a second, I did get scared at something. There was like some kind of foreboding, scary feeling. And I remembered hearing when that happens.

It stopped and asked, what is this here to teach me? Like go at it with curiosity instead of like, oh no, listening is going to suck my brains out. And so I think that I can't remember. But I think that that thing that I encountered was just like, are you sure you should? And I had to tell the thing like, no, I think we're good here. Thank you, though. And gosh, I remember being in like a Lisa Frank, like rain bow.

This all by the way, headphones and eye shades on. So this was all like in my mind's eye. I wasn't looking at anything. So I was having kind of like lucid dreams of of a lot of bridges and like a beautiful Japanese garden that was all in rainbows. And then I started talking to dead people. That was pretty nannis. Like dad came through. He's like, hey, what's up? You made it. I was like, Dad, what's up?

We had a long conversation about how much injustice there is in the world and how he was proud of me for trying to fight, which was really great to hear even if my brain just made it up. I also talked to a brother in law who had died. A long conversation about how we were both like childless, but an aunt and an uncle who were happy to take care of our nieces and our nephews and not to worry about not having kids.

I had this really wild sort of like processing of the fact that I am not going to bear kids and probably won't raise them. If you listen to my mystery surgery a few months ago, I had I got I got nothing in there that makes babies had them all taken out. I've been having health problems with that for over a decade.

Anyway, I was having these like these really great conversations with some sort of voiceless voice being like, hey, don't worry about it. Some people are here to further their DNA and to keep that going. That's okay. You're here to make stuff and put it in the world, which is going to help other people race or kids.

So don't worry about it. That's not your legacy. DNA is not your legacy. That's also why you have so many great like female friends who understand what it's like to want to make things and maybe not prioritize motherhood. So I was like, that actually really helps. Thank you so much for that.

So long conversations without words and crying never cried so much in my life, but like happy tears like when you watch videos of someone coming home from a trip and their dog loses their mind recognizing them and is so happy. It was like that kind of crying.

Soking handkerchiefs, Kleenex just crying in bed and at one point, you know, Jared, he's sitting at the end of the bed during the beginning of this. But my dad and I in this mystical realm, we're talking about Jared and how much he was so helpful and how much love he showed when my dad was in hospice.

And we were talking about like, what a great guy. And then at one point, I had to be like, Hey, Jared, can you leave actually because it's just awkward because we're like talking about you. And he was like, okay, let me know if you need anything. At one point, I didn't have to go to the bathroom. And I was like, hey, can you help me? And I made very, very sure not to look in the mirror. I heard that bad things happen when you do.

Although I did peak under my eye mask and all I could see was I looked like someone who would just been on a 20 hour flight with turbulence. It wasn't a good look, but I remember being like, that's what I should look like right now. Anyway, it got back to bed.

The whole thing lasted like six hours. I started to come down from it and felt really glowy and peaceful. And I remember sitting on the couch and sort of telling Jared about it just how much I realized I'm so lucky to be able to do my dreams. And I can let myself be happier about that.

And I also just would have wasted of energy and molecules and hormones and ideas. So here's the deal. When I came out of it, I was like, all of my problems in life were soft. I've never felt more peaceful and confident and centered and grounded and full of love. Right.

And I was like, that's the thing. That lasts for a bit, right. That lasts for weeks, months. But then when things start to get challenging and you start to forget all those thoughts and how they fell in your body and your mind. And you start picking up old habits, then that can kind of dissipate.

It's a reminder you have to actively remember that what you like learned or what you saw, what you got a chance to feel that good for a bit. What do you have to do to put those things in place, whether it's like having better boundaries, whether it's having more confidence in yourself, whether it's looking on people who are difficult in your life with more empathy or with maybe less empathy, depending on the relationship.

So it's like you learn how good things can feel and how like your essence is a competent and full of love and all of these things. And then it's just a matter of on the outside world, doing all those things that get you to that place. And so that was my experience of it. For me, it was super, super transformative. I have thought of that trip every single day for the last couple of years. It's definitely one of the most impactful experiences of my life.

I'm so glad that I didn't take sacred ethnobotanical medicines in a setting that was cavalier. I think that they have a lot that they can teach you about how your own mind works. So just can those thoughts and that reframing can get you in a much deeper way. Anyway, that is my story about it. Super transformative. I think about it all the time. I'm not afraid of death.

I feel like whatever happens to you, your molecules become something else, your atoms become something else. Maybe I'll be a frog. Maybe I'll turn into a plane. That would be a random choice, but it could happen. Who knows? But whatever happens, you're just we're here for a relatively short time. Everyone's just a tiny little baby that wants to be loved. A lot of anger and fear can make people get a bit off track.

But the really important thing is that you have to be much more kind to yourself. And when you are that way, you will be kinder to others. So that's my big rainbowy mystical trip. I can't stress enough that it's really important to talk to a doctor and do a ton of research.

Make sure that you're not at risk for anything like psychosis or anxiety, cardiovascular stuff. Do not go into this lightly is my suggestion. If you decide to do something like this. Also journal before, journal after. Just be very careful. No matter what, just try to take some of those lessons about being kinder to yourself and just like appreciating nature and time and all the things that are good around you. Anyway, I hope this helps.

As I say, do the thing, make the project, do the art, text the crush, cut your hair, wear ugly shoes if you like them. You aren't anybody else. And that's great. So you don't have to be. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this two-parter and this extra long secret. If this is your first episode of Listen to Ideologies, the secrets are not usually this long. If you've listened to the end, congratulations for sticking it out with me. And sleep tight, we all love you. Bye-bye. Sometimes intense.