Adam Strauss on Psychedelics, Theater & Curing OCD

use any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today, I'm talking with a fellow I've known for quite a number of years. His name is Adam Strauss, and he is a actor and a stand up comic, and he has this show that he's put on called The Mushroom Cure, which I've seen. I saw it a few years ago. It's an amazing show about basically trying to treat his own o c D obsessive compulsive disorder with psychedelics, in particular psilocybic mushrooms. Now, I mean this show isn't just

some little thing. I mean, I mean Adam has performed this show in the United Kingdom and in the US. It's gotten played at festivals, It's played in Edinburgh, has played off Broadway in New York, it's played at the Marsh Theater in Berkeley. It's gotten fantastic reviews across the board. I mean, it's been called a miracle of a show and a must see, a hilarious rithe rose c D,

a fabulous, perceptive trip, usually intelligent, outstanding revelation. And Adam has been described as an extremely talented comedian and tour to force. So it's just a real pleasure, Adam to have you on Psychoactive. Thanks for having me Ethan, and thanks for that intro. I feel like we should end the podcast right now because I'm not gonna be able to top that. I should just quote on a high note, no pun intended. Thanks thanks for having me on this

on your podcast. I've always enjoyed our unrecorded talk, so looking forward to this one as well. Yeah. Well, and I should actually just say to the audience, there's this recording that plays before each show that says, you know nothing you hear should be taken to be encouraging to use drugs, and you know here because we're gonna be

talking about drugs and mental illness and comedy. I just want to apologize to some listeners in advance if we sound irreverence, either Adam or me, because I'll get into the comedic mode with him. Perhaps. Um, it's not meant to be disrespectful, it's not meant to be insensitive. So but it is meant to hopefully shed light on O c D and the potential of psychedelics and also to really learn about Adams story here. So please forgive both

him and me if something hits you wrong. But I do want to start off by offering, I don't know, have you ever had that issue where people got upset by what you were doing, um with your comedy and O c D. You know, I would say not people who have actually seen the show, but I but there have been there has sometimes been pushed back in general, I would say more from the people who feel that psychedelics have a special, uh reverential place in the in

the pharmacopeia, which I don't actually disagree with. I do feel like they're unique compounds and and have a unique role, and that the idea of of bringing humor to them

is in some way inherently disrespectful. But yeah, that's something I pushed back strongly on, partially because I think, well, my own psychedelic experiences, humor and laughter is such a central part of them, even just to be very specific, I mean the way I've laughed mushrooms particularly, and and Sasha Shulgin talks about INTI called this trip to mean laugh. It does seem to be a fairly intimate um and I think personally a non trivial connection between psychedelic and laughter.

To me, one of the one of the many powerful things about laughter is there something humbling about it. When you're laughing, you're basically there's an element of surprise, something you didn't see coming. And I don't think it's too far a reach to say that there is. In the best jokes, there's sort of a mind expanding element where you see a possibility or a connection that you didn't previously see. And it's that that snap moment of recognition

and connection that elicits the laugh. And that to me also describes a lot of the psychedelic experiences, is that you know, with a joke, you have all the components there right, You're not necessarily being exposed to anything totally novel in terms of I'm trying to think of a classic joke, you know, a joke, let's say, a cliche

joke about you know, airplane food sucking. So you you know the concept of airplanes, you know the concept of food, but somehow it's presented in a way where you're seeing something new that you hadn't seen before. And so much of the psychedel experience for me is often that it's okay, I had all the pieces, but they're coming together in a way that I had never seen before, and that

can be revelatory. And I think there can be a small revelation in a joke, in a punchline before we get into you know, how you conceive the play and how it's evolved. I'm curious instorms of your own personal life. I mean, at what age do you do your parents realize that you have this condition, and what was it like either growing up with it or whatever age it really became a you know, significant issue in your life. It's interesting because it seems like people with O c

D fall into one of two camps. Some people will say, yep, I've had this from my early memories. I was born with O c D. But for many people there are clear precursors, meaning anxiety, often perfectionism, things like that that were problematic for them, but they didn't develop clear cut O c D until they had a specific inciting incident, a trauma essentially, And I fell into that ladder camp. I was from a very very early age. You know, a lot of really really intense emotional volatility. I would

get into these huge fights with my mom. I my emotions were out of control and I didn't know how to control them. And I saw therapist from an early age, and to me, one of the great shortcomings of traditional Western psychotherapy is it's really a mind game. It's a brain trying to help another brain, by which I mean I would see these therapists from an early age and they would would discuss, you know, why would I get so upset, Why would I get so angry? Why would

I get so out of control? And I would think about it and I would talk about it. No one ever actually told me, you know, what's going on in your body, what's happening at a at a visceral level. When a therapist would ask me how I was feeling, I would think about it. I wouldn't actually tune in to my physical sensations, and that's where psychedelics are instrumental. But I don't want to get too far ahead of

my story. So yeah, really really intense UM just overpowering anxiety, fear a lot of the time for a very early age, no obvious reason, no obvious trauma. Grew up in a loving, supportive household, but that was just there from the beginning, and and really I didn't have any tools um to to work with it. And so it was it defined my life in a lot of ways, just this this sort of omni present, not quite on the present it was.

I wasn't always anxious, but a lot of the time there was yet just this overpowering fear, and nothing really helped. Just to give a sense of the the scope of my challenges, I was hospitalized twice, both at age eighteen. That was when I had UM. My first girlfriend dumped me, and you know, I was admitted to the hospital ostensibly for suicidality, but I wasn't suicidal. I just couldn't handle how I was feeling, and I didn't know what to do. I just couldn't almost literally, I couldn't be in my

own skin. It was just too agonizing and and we're you getting all sorts of diagnoses and being prescribed al storts of pharmaceuticals as an adolescent. So I'm forty seven, so you know, the advent of prozac. I think that came out in night. I feel like if I was ten years younger, I probably would have been prescribed a lot of these psychotropic medications, but it wasn't particularly common. Having said that I was, I was prescribed some at ages.

I think fifteen or sixteen, I was prescribed antidepressant to try cyclic antidepressant I don't remember the name, but one of the earlier antidepressants before S. S. R. Eyes. And then at eighteen I was prescribed prozac. Um was on it for about a month and had a bad reaction and got off. And then beginning at nineteen or so, I was on Paxel and that began my my long

term relationship with S. S. R. Eyes. But staying with the timeline, so diagnoses, you know, generally the diag gnosis was depression, but that was just sort of a catch all diagnosis. One of the challenges with o c D is even among therapists UM it's often misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed because certainly some people with those c D have the classic you know, contamination fear, handwashing or checking the stove,

and I think most therapists will catch that. But there's so many different forms O c D can assume because at its root, O c D is basically a strategy, I would say, unconscious strategy, but a strategy to eliminate uncertainty because uncertainty makes us anxious, and that can assume so many different forms. So probably the the most appropriate diagnosis when I was growing up would have been something like generalized anxiety disorder. But what the fund does that mean?

I mean, it's a lot of these diagnoses. I've had a lot of critiques of the sort of the Western psychotherapeutic model, and one of them is this idea that there is these discrete diagnostic categories that have like real predictive or or therapeutic value, and I just I think in many cases that's not true. So so yeah, short short answer, capsule answer was, I was diagnosed with depression, but I certainly was not depressed. For me, it was really about fear, just this deep fear and uh yeah,

and the s R I started at age eighteen. By nineteen I was on Paxxel, and I was on pack Sel for many years. Then I switched over to Lexa pro Um, and I tried a number of other S s s R I S. I want to be careful here. The data on S s r I S is certainly for some people they are very, very helpful, and I always tell people if S s r I S are

working for you, use them. But for many people with O c D, the best data and there's not great data because there's no real incentive for pharmaceutical companies to do long term studies of S s s r I S. You just need to do an eight week trial to get FDA approval. Multiple a week trials, But the point is, you know, there's no there's no financial benefit for people to do long term studies financed by the drug. So there haven't been that many, but the ones that there

have been. Some public health studies show that in general, about half of people with O c D just don't respond to S s r S, and the half who do respond typically see only about a reduction and symptoms. So for the vast majority of people with O c D, S s r I don't work, or they give at best a moderate degree of relief, and that was that was my story. You know, maybe they helped a little bit, lowering some anxiety, but I was still sick in a word,

and getting sicker. And that is also characteristic of o c D, as it does tend to be a progressive condition in the sense of um well, they put it this way. I've never met someone with o c D who has had a spontaneous remission, with the exception of it. Seems like sometimes children with o c D they kind of just grow out of it. But I've never met an adult who said, yeah, you know, I had bad o c D and then it just kind of got better.

On the contrary, everyone i've met, if you're not treating it, if you're not working with it, um And I used that that was a preposition with intentionally working with because I think we can get into this. A lot of my path towards freedom has been not trying to fight the o c D, not trying to beat the o c D, but working with it. But if you're not, if you're not doing things actively to address the o c D, it I think pretty much invariably will just

take up more and more of your life. And that was that was my story even though I was doing things, I was on SS rise, I was in therapy, but it just wasn't UM wasn't that effective. And and sorry, I I want to clarify just one thing I mentioned. So I still wouldn't have said I had O c D, you know, in my twenties, but the general anxiety was getting worse and worse. And then the O c D came about when I had UM. Well, in a word, heartbreak, maybe that's two words, I'm not sure, but the most

significant romantic relationship of my life ended. And I actually didn't make this connection UM until I started doing the show The Mushroom Cure and kind of started writing about it. But in hindsight, it's very clear this relationship ended. And the simplest way I could put it is there was this profound heartbreak. There was this profound loss, but I wasn't able or willing to feel that loss in my body. I wasn't again, I didn't have the tools to really

feel those feelings. And so what I did is I really left my body entirely. I went entirely into my head. I was already very much in my head, but now

in the aftermath of this loss of this relationship. I really really just just went entirely into my head and developed this strategy in a sense of logical, but ultimately i'd say literally insane strategy, which is, well, if I can figure everything out in my head, if I can get everything right, if I can always get the right answer, that my life will be good and I won't have to feel these feelings again. I wasn't totally conscious of this,

but that's that's the way it uh came out. And it sounds it sounds like you're describing is as you're living with this generalized anxiety, depression, heartbreak, and then it all sort of kind of blossoms or transforms or starts to manifests o c D. And I'm wondering when it does manifests o c D do some of the other symptoms you had before, like, for example, depression or anxiety, do those subside a bit and get replaced by the O c D or do they all just become a

great big jumble. How does it all kind of fit or not fit together or interact? Or is there was there any silver lining in O c D V city the experiences you have suffered from before. So I wouldn't say I was ever depressed. Um. I think of depression as kind of this you know, retreat, drawn into oneself, you know, not wanting to get out of bed. And

I had some symptoms secondary to the anxiety. When the anxiety was really bad, sure I wouldn't want to get out of bed, but I'd never say I was truly depressed. Knowing people who really do suffer from clinical depression, it's um,

it's I think a pretty distinct condition. But the anxiety that really got wrapped up in the O c D, and in fact, well O c D is considered an anxiety disorder, and I think that's apt in I look at O c D at in one sense, as an attempt to eliminate anxiety that works in the very very very very short term. So let's take the example of

someone who has contamination fear. They're afraid that they're going to get AIDS because they touched a subway poll and they know logically it's not going to happen, but that fear is there, and so they wash their hands for the forty time and they feel a little bit of relief, maybe for ten seconds twenty seconds. Their anxiety goes down for a little bit, but then it comes back, so logically they'll do the thing that gave them relief. The

last time they'll watch, they'll wash again. So there is a payoff sometimes with engaging in O c D, but it's very short lived, and it actually ultimately increases anxiety because the harder you try to eliminate this perceived threat, this fear that you're contaminated. And I don't have that form, but to use this example, two things happen. One, you're giving that threat that fear more and more energy, more

and more attention, so it's getting bigger and bigger. The second thing, though, that happens is you're actually adding a second source of anxiety, which is real, uh, grounded in real life, which is all right, you've spent four hours in the bathroom washing your hands. Well, guess what now you're you might get fired from your job because you're not doing your job, or you know, your spouse may

leave you because they can't handle this anymore. So now there's real things happening in the world as a result of you trying to eliminate this fear that are actually creating more fear. And this is the really cruel vicious cycle of O c D. Well, what are you gonna do? Now? You're gonna do the thing that sometimes makes you feel a little bit better, even if it's only for fifteen

or twenty seconds. You're gonna keep washing. And that kind of comes back to why I would say O c D tends to be a progressive condition that gets worse because the more you do O c D, the harder it is to stop. And so for me, the anxiety was sort of this initially the fuel for O c D. But it's sort of like this perpetual motion machine where the more fuel you give it, the more it creates further fuel for O c D. So it just it ramped up the anxiety and yeah, the news just tightened.

So so step into parallel track. Now, so this is about living with O c D. But you at the same time you are living, I mean, you're having a life. I presume you're going to school, you're going to college, you're getting a job, maybe you're deciding to that, maybe

you're gonna go into comedy. What's that part of your life? Like, I mean, not not to make them two separate tracks, but the other parts of your life, And how's that going, Yeah, well, actually I like looking at as two tracks because that's what it felt for me. So I did have sort of this O c D track which was really the dominant story of my life. But then increasingly UM difficult, but I was trying to maintain outward appearances and it was challenging. So yeah, I was, you know, as the

O c D was really flourishing. After this relationship ended, I was UM. I was a founder of a company, a startup, which in a way enabled the O c D because I wasn't reporting to anyone else, so I could indulge my o c D in a way that I couldn't have if I had to report too, if I had a boss or something like that, like I could. I was going into work every day, but when I was at my computer, you know, there were days where I was just I was just obsessing, obsessing, obsessing and

not doing any work. And I could, you know, get away with it, um, But there was a high cost there.

And socially, you know, I was increasingly isolating, not because I didn't want to be around people, and we haven't talked about my specific symptoms, but it was mostly UM around decision making, you know, making a decision, reversing the decision, going back and forth and back and forth for hours, even over very very true your choices, engaging in my obsessions, figuring things out, obsessing over what MP three player to get, what shirt to wear, whatever the decision to your was.

And there were hundreds of them a day, so I couldn't I couldn't figure things out if I was with other people. So I was increasingly isolating and just going deeper and deeper into this you know, O c D, Fantasy Lander, Nightmareland. This is all happening in your late twenties, early thirties. This was, Yeah, So the O c D

really started taking off when I was twenty nine. At this point, it was my life was basically going to work, trying to do some work if I could, coming home and obsessing and you know, being late to work because I was obsessing, and maintaining friendships. You know, I wasn't totally isolated, but but but yeah, less and less, it really felt like I was, yeah, drifting, drifting away from the world and drifting deeper and deeper into my own

my own head. And it's sort of like because your family know your friends or is this sort of they're kind of aware it, but it's basically between you and your therapist trying to figure it out. That yeah, yeah, it was. I really kept people out. People were aware that I was struggling, and again, this was not a new thing, So it wasn't new for me to be in a state of deep distress to the point that my functioning was, you know, impaired. So friends and family,

you know, that's who I was. That was part of my unfortunately part of my identity. So it wasn't like people thought everything was fine with Adam. But this new wrinkle of O c D was something that I very much didn't want to let people into because I had so much shame around it. We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. Tell me about then, how this show emerges. And I think the first time you form the mushroom cure of the show is what about ten

years ago or so? Yeah, you know, having seen it and you know, I know you I see a live four years ago in Berkeley. I mean, it's incredibly funny and touching, and you're obviously a talented comic, you know, in addition to being a good actor as well. How did that come about? How did you think to do it that way? And how does it differ now for or even a few years ago from what you originally conceived it as. Yeah, So I never had any ambition to do a solo show show or to be an actor.

I started doing stand up as the o c D was really getting worse and worse. Uh. And I actually look at stand up in some ways as an attempt, not conscious at the time, but an attempt to to get love and connection that I was too kind of afraid, too vulnerable to get in the form of an intimate relationship because this heartbreak had I don't want to say

cause the o c D but precipitated it. So I was increasingly isolated, and I was very lonely and in you know when you tell people you're comedian the last and say, oh, that's brave. But I think for me, it took less bravery to get on stage and try to get laughs from an audience and get love and connection and approval that way than it would have taken at that point in my life to be in another intimate relationship. And so I pretty much just started doing stand up and the O c D was getting worse

and worse. And I was trying everything. So in addition to the S s s R S and the therapy, I did all the alternative and holistic treatments, acupuncture orbs UM, you know, all this stuff, hypnotism, hypnotherapy. Nothing was helping. And I stumbled across this study out of the University of Arizona of psilocybin for O c D. And it

was a very small study. It's only nine subjects and to date still the only published study of any psychedelic for O c D, though fortunately there are three or four new ones and much bigger ones in the works right now. This is the one by is it is it Francisco Moreno, Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, Safety, efficacy and tolerability of psilocybin and nine patients with those c D as a very long title, you know. And I had

essentially no psychedelic experience. I had tried psychedelics, but they hadn't worked for me, probably in hindsight, because I was honest her eyes. So I saw the study. And what's interesting about the study is it wasn't the sort of studies they're doing now of like you know, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.

There wasn't much of a therapy component. They were basically giving people psilocybin at different doses, and there also wasn't long term follow up, but the results were very encouraging. All the subjects had you know, significant remission, some just for a short period of time, but they were they were getting results and results that you know, I hadn't

seen with any of the treatments I've found. And so even though I had very little psychedelic experience, there was this sense of what what I have to lose by trying this stuff, so that that set me off on my quest to cure my O c D with psychedelics. The period of time I recount in the USh from cure is two thousand and seven to two thousand and ten, by which point, you know, I've gotten a lot of healing,

I've gotten a lot of recovery. And there was a sense of I need to share this story because the story itself is the most incredible story that's ever happened to me. I'm not saying the show is incredible the ship. People may like or not like the show, but the actual events that unfolded, the coincidences the people I met, were to me just amazing and inspiring for me, and I felt incredibly lucky that I'd gone through these experiences, and suffice to say, you know, it's it wasn't a

smooth journey. I was trying to cure my OCD with psychedelics, with you know, in a pretty uncontrolled fashion, doing a lot of different psychedelics that high doses and fairly frequently. So there were some powering experiences. Yet somehow, in a way, everything seemed to come together to give me. This is that psychedelic cliche, but I think it's often an apt one to give me not what I wanted, but what I needed. In some way, I felt like I'd really

been given this tremendous gift. And I wanted to share this story, one because I thought it could help people, but to just because I was like, this is a great fucking story. I don't know if I can tell it well, but I know the story itself is worthy of being shared. So I started trying to talk about it in comedy clubs, but it quickly became apparent that

there was just too much narrative here. It's not the sort of thing where it is you know, the show is funny, but it's not a punch line every twenty seconds. So I had no experience with theater. I've never studied acting.

I'd barely even seen plays. But it was obvious that that would be the correct forum for it, so I um, I decided to do the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in two thousand and twelve, and that's where the show had its premiere and I had I have to ask you about I think I was listening to you being interviewed on

somebody else's podcast or something. Um uh, and you mentioned a relationship with Hamilton's Morris, another one of my guests who was on a few months ago, you know who's just you know, this wonderful psycholic researcher, and he had his uh Hamilton's Pharma copea TV show which was broadly watched.

I think you said that he was a comic. Yes, he we we met, he had he had a sort of brief involvement in the in the comedy scene, and that's how we met initially, and he was part of the He was part of this early story for me. He was a close and as a close friend and was someone who um even though he's significantly younger than me, it was a lot younger then was already I was gonna say dipping his toe into the psyculic waters. But more than dipping his toe was clearly you know, fascinated

by psychedelics. You know, had a lot of insight on them, and um, I just knew a lot more than I did. So we struck up a close friendship, and part of that friendship was exploring these compounds and talking about our experiences and supporting each other in our in our respective

And I'll say, I'm sure it's just a coincidence. But there's a moment in the play where you're talking about meeting a friend and he's giving you all this information about these white powders from China and these other things you should try in which doses, and the voice you give your friends sounds remarkably like Hamilton Morris. It's it's not a coincidence. And I'm okay saying this because I've asked Hamilton's permission. That was Hamilton's I'm depicting in the show.

So everything in the show is true, Um, even characters names. But I did change Hamilton's name to Harrison simply because there's a reference in the show to Hamilton's the musical and it's not confusing, so I mean, and now it sort of makes a little bit of sense. He's got such a dry kind of tone about him. He is at heart a scientist. You know. He had this TV show which is a great show and entertaining, and he's

funny and he is entertaining. But the thing that really inspires him, so far as I can tell, is not being a public figure, is not being in the lime night limelight, but being in the lab. His ambition was to get in there in the lab and ticker with tinker with these compounds, and learn more about these molecules

and ultimately human consciousness. So uh, my motivation ultimately was to cure my O c D. But I'd be lying if I said a big part of it wasn't also just this deep curiosity about these totally unique mental and emotional states and and how these compounds interact with the human nervous system. Uh uh you know you reference in

the play. I think, uh, Sasha Shulgin, you know, and his various um what is its stages of of how high you are on a psychedelic you know, the scale, the Sulgan scale, and we're plus four is the big transcendental one and plus plus one is basically maybe a micro dose a little more, and plus two is maybe a museum level. Um So, had you read Shulgan early on or sort of you sort of become aware of it as you're uncovering stuff around, you know, psilocybin in

the you know, fifteen years ago whatever. Yeah, No, that that was Hamilton's doing. He's the one who turned me on to T. Sholgan and I you know, I devoured Peak hall uh t call. They're they're great unique books. You know, they're these we combination of like psychedelic recipe books, autobiography, a love story, meditations on the nature of consciousness and love and sex and um so yeah, those books really

were were mind expanding for me. When the person who looms largest in the show and in your story is a girlfriend who you call I mentioned a pseudonym of Grace. Actually that's not a pseudonym, but it's her. It's not her first name. I'll just leave it at that. But that's not okay that that that is what I called her in real life. So yeah, but do you think that your journey would have happened if you had not met Grace? I don't know. And this is one of

the coincidences I alluded to earlier. So without giving a way too much of the show, I'd read the study, this Morno study out of the University of Arizona, and I'd resolve that, Okay, I need to try psychedelics because nothing else is working. And it was very soon after I read that study that I met this woman at a comedy show in Times Square, of all places, the middle of New York, the most anonymous, you know, fish bowl in the in the Western hemisphere perhaps for people meeting,

and we struck up a relationship. And it turned out I didn't learn this until, you know, we've been dating for a little bit, that she had essentially cured her clinical, debilitating suicidal depression with mescaline containing cacti. And so it was the shocking coincidence that, you know, this person who had met seemingly randomly, had actually done in a sense of the thing I was trying to do, and had a lot of relevant experience. So that was instrumental, I

think in two ways. One she became sort of my my unofficial guide on a lot of these journeys. Too. There was this sense and there is this sense of coincidence that um with psychedelics, that sometimes I don't know coincidences mean, and I'm open to the fact they're meaningless, but it often feels to me like there is meaning.

And one way I like to look a coincidence is kind of keep going kind of a green flag from from the unit first, like, Okay, you're I don't even want to say on the right path, because right or wrong, I think is a slippery slope, but you're on a path.

And so I took it, even at the time when she revealed to me that oh she not only you know, did she have some experience with psychedelics, but she'd actually affected great healing herself with them, that Okay, I'm on the right path here, and absent that, I don't know, I don't know if I would have embarked on this journey. You know, there's other research going on now with ketamine and O c D, and obviously there's research going on

with psilocybin um. So it does appear that maybe multiple of these I don't know if there's anything within d M A and O c D, but it does appeal that there's numerous of these psycholics that could potentially work with a condition. And there's a funny scene in your in your play where you're talking about your marijuana deal or trying to say, I can't get any mushrooms. You know, there's a shortage, but how about some kennemine? And you react, no, no, no, no,

I need any I need mushrooms. But if in fact that that marijuana deal her friend of yours had been able to come up with kenemine, it makes me wonder there that might have also helped facilitate a bit of a breakthrough. One of the things that characterize O c D is a is a very sort of rigid, black and white way of thinking, and for me, in this context that manifested as well. The study was was mushrooms. So therefore I need mushrooms and I'm not interested in

anything else. Ultimately, through Hamilton's and other channels, I did do a lot of other things, you know, probably two dozen different you know, Shulgin invention research, chemicals, mescaline containing cacti, through grace LSD. But at that point I was very hell bent on mushrooms are going to fix me. Uh So I wasn't open to that. But I have subsequently worked with ketamine, and I've been talking about this on stage.

I love how with psychedelics, they're the only drug where you can say worked with you know, no one's ever like that. I've been working with crystal meth, you know, doing a lot of work with cocaine. You're doing the work with a capital T and a capital w R. Right, it's this exalted thing. But you know, again, I think I think there is something to that. I think that

it is. It is work. Uh can be heavy, hard work with psychedelics in a way it hasn't been, you know, smoking a joint or I haven't done cocaine since you know, I was nineteen, But doing a line of blow doesn't feel like work in the same way. Well, you know you also have you there's this phrase you came up with which I love. I think it was to describe your adventuring with all these chemicals. Um that that Hamilton others had told you about. You said you were engaging

in vigilanti psychotherapy, vigilanti psychopharmacology, psychopharmacology. Yes, and it really was that, right. I mean, you're out there trying anything

to try to take it into your own hands. The the timing of the play and the way you build up because I mean, for me, the point when this morning I'm watching it and I'm bursting out laughing, is when you get to the point of you know, actually being in a full blow in plus four experience, you know, on the psilocybic mushrooms, and tell me if I'm giving much, too too much away, then we can always cut it

out in the editing. Um. And then you call nine one more right, you know, there by cutting off your you know, full blowing experience. UM. But it does see that that that really is a pivotal moment in your life when that happens. Absolutely absolutely, UM. I mean I had over the course of that two thousand and seven to two thousand and ten period, I probably had I don't know, I'm gonna say sixty psychedelic experiences. A lot

of psychedelic experiences. So in the show I only talked about a handful of them, and I do highlight that one psilocybin mushroom trip as kind of this climax because it was a powerful trip and also a you know, from a dramatic drama theory perspective, good fodder because I did call nine one one on myself, and there there is a transcript of it, and it's accurate. I start the call starts out with me asking the nine one one operator if if she's got and that is why

I called nine one one. I want to be clear, as I say in the show, I don't call nine one because I wanted the cops to come to my house. I called because I had some burning existential questions and no one else was picking up their phone. And what had happened was I had thrown my cell phone away in the woods. I don't remember why, but I've thrown it away the woods. We subsequently recovered it. There was a landline at the house I was staying at, but

I couldn't remember any numbers. I remember my childhood phone number, which I called. No one picked that up, thankfully I remembered. I called zero, the old operator number. No one picked that up. And finally I called nine one one because I was consumed with this question of um, yeah, of of divinity, of higher power, of of what is God? Because on this master dose of mushrooms, there was a clear sense of all right, there's there's some order intelligence here,

but what is it? And so the operator asked me where I was for the address, and I had enough presence of mind to not tell her, but I was calling from a landline, and they traced the call and they showed up at at the house with a bunch of content. Thereby violated, you know, the number one rule of when one takes too much you know, marijuana, or one doesn't an intense psychologue trip which is never called

nine one one. And of course now there is fortunately something called the Fireside Project out there, which is for people who are having a psychedelic emergency or just want to process what's going on. I had one of the key founders of that project, Hanifaia Washington, on Psychoactive some months ago. But you know, hopefully if this ever happens to you again, Adam, you can call a fireside project. They're calling on one one. Definitely a better choice. So

that trip was pivotal. But I also should say the recovery I got thanks to psychedelics, it wasn't so much one experience. It was a handful of particularly important experiences that really, the simplest way I could put it is sometimes I think of o CD this way. It's like the brain or the mind is trying to fix a problem, a quote unquote problem in the body. And I put it in quote because it's not really a problem. But the supposed problem is these emotions, which are just physical

sensations that we don't want to experience, principally fear. So the mind of the o c D person is like, well, if I can get everything right, if I can figure everything out, then the fear will go away. And of course it doesn't work. So freedom from o c D for me has actually come from really just connecting to

my body more than anything else. And I understood this, I should say, intellectually before I began working with psychedelics, because I had done so much work in therapy and the the standard therapy for o c D, cognitive behavioral therapy and particularly exposure response prevention, is really geared towards

acceptance or surrendered. So the idea is, since o c D is trying to neutralize these unwanted emotions, these unwanted physical sensations, if you can accept those sensations instead of trying to get rid of them, then you're basically taking the wind out of o c D sales, You're depriving it of its of its reason for being and so therefore this therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, is really about acceptance or surrender, and I understood this intellectually, and so I

would be going through O c D and I'd be saying to myself, Okay, just accept the anxiety. Accept the anxiety. But I was just saying it to myself a conversation I was having in my brain, where actual acceptance happens at a physical level. These emotions exist in the body and they have to be accepted in the body. But I just had no access to my physical experience. So the first time, even though I've done years of therapy geared towards acceptance, the first time I actually was able

to do acceptance viscerally physically was on psychedelics. I had an experience which isn't isn't explicitly in the show, but it's it's sort of part of a number of trips I recount where I was experiencing O c D. I was obsessing, and if I weren't on psychedelics, I would have just thought about it more, trying to figure out harder in my head. But the psilocybin it connected me deeply to my body and I could actually really feel that fear in my body. In fact, I couldn't help

not feel it. I had to feel it. It was so present, and because I've been exposed to cognitive behavioral therapy, there was little sort of light bulb moment where I was like, oh, this is what my therapist has been talking about all these years. Instead of running from the sensation, since I can finally feel it clearly, let me really go into it and just open up to it fully. And when I did that, the obsessive thoughts just kind of quieted down, and the feeling was still there. It

was unpleasant. This isn't a story of like, oh yeah, if you accept that, you know it's transmuted into love and light and joy and bliss. I do believe that happens sometimes, but certainly not routinely. It was like, Okay, if I accept the sensation, guess what I have to feel? The shitty sensation I don't have to feel. But the upside is it undercuts the O c D. I'm no longer obsessing. And the other thing is it's not like O c D prevents me from feeling it. I'm still

feeling it at some level. I'm just trying to shut it out. So once I had that oriens on psychedelics on that trip and then many other trips, gradually I learned how to do that when I wasn't tripping, how to really tune into my physical experience and open up to these unwanted, fierce sensations and find freedom that way.

You know, I was googling around just you know, before our conversation here, and I came across one of the co founders one of the psychedelics venture funds, was being asked what he's excited about, and he referenced this study at Yale on psilocybin and O c D. But one of the things he said is he goes, there appears to be little to no psychotherapy needed, as severe manifestations of O c D appear to be more like a

motor disorder than one with a psychological underpinning. But on the other hand, you know, we typically hear all about psychedelics, you know, being most dramatically more valuable and safer to be doing it with ecotherapy, and in your own personal experience, you seem to talk about that. I mean, have you heard about this outcome of the Yale study or what's your sense about that that reported finding. No, I'm not.

I'm aware of the study and I know I I know one of the researcher who was involved and then had a career change. Um, but I didn't know. I didn't know that specific finding. I know it hasn't been published yet. But that man, that that resonates with my experience in a way that I've not heard other people

talk about, which is yes. So I just I just kind of halucidated this whole idea about for me, so much of it was the physical experiencing piece of psychedelics, and let me go into that a little bit more. I have not found insight to be particularly useful from psychedelics insofar as O c D. I've certainly had insights that have been helpful in my life, but it wasn't like it wasn't like these revelations that helped me from psychedelics. With O c D. It wasn't like, uh, this, you know,

changing my self perception. It was very concretely, this connecting me to my body, and once in my body, I have the choice. It's not gonna happen automatically, but at least I have the option or ability to accept my emotions in a way otherwise don't and thereby gain freedom from them. So that accords what you just read. That accords with my experience where it's not so much it's not something that you're talking through, it's something that you're experiencing.

So that's very cool. I'm I'm glad you shared that. Well, let me as see this to I mean, what are the really funny moments in the play is when you talk about going to see your therapist, like what was the name Dr Wilson calls Dr Wilson there, I did change his last name, so yes, but you know you're kind of, you know, riffing on him and you're kind

of making fun of him and his degrees. But you know he's pushing you, um to try to have a new approach to this and to get out of your head and your intellectual understanding, which is only going to go so far, even though that's the way he's communicating

to you. But he suggests to you that basically your O C D is like an addiction, and just as there is an iconics addiction Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous for addiction, that you should go to O C Obsessive Compulsive Anonymous, and you tell this story of going and it's very funny because you're kind of, you know, looking at all the skin pickers and the hair pullers and the handwashers, and what are you still doing here if it's all working.

Yet on the other hand, you kind of land up by saying this actually plays an important role that for you, maybe it was less about combining uh psilocybin with psychotherapy and more about combining psilocybin with what you learned by going through a sort of twelve step approach. Yeah, and I think all three of those components psilocybin, and i'd say not just psilocybin. I mean the show is the mushroom Cure because it was inspired by that study of psilocybin,

and that's what I was hell bent on getting. But ultimately mushrooms were very helpful, but LSD was helpful. Research chemicals were helpful. More recently, I found ayawaska to be helpful. So psychedelics certainly one component. Generally speaking, psychotherapy helpful in the sense that it introduced me to this concept of a acceptance. But in psychotherapy it was just a concept for me. It wasn't a practice until I brought psychedelics

into the picture. And then yeah, the twelve step thing very powerful and something that I still I still am involved in because well, I think there's a few components. Um One is there is something very healing about peer support and commiseration. There's a lot of people getting help from a therapist one on one, but the group peer support aspect is powerful one because it's not just about getting support from other people with O c D giving support.

The concept of service, which is a central concept in twelve step programs, is so powerful for me because with O c D and addiction generally, you know, you're very consumed with your own safety, your own happiness, your own comfort, and just trying to do things for other people, even if it's just going through the motions, it does at least for me, it gets me out of my own head and that gets me out of O c D because O c D only exists in my own head. So that's part of the twelve step thing that was

helpful for me. And what the twelve step thing brings in that I personally have found helpful is this idea of more of a cosmic surrender, whereas psychotherapy CBT it's like all right, acceptance is allowing these emotions to be there with a twelve step thing. There's this idea of a higher power, which is a concept that you know, I'm not even going to try to touch on because it's something I certainly have no clarity on, and frankly, people who have a lot of clarity on that sometimes

scare me. But this idea of the idea that I'm not in control, whether or not I believe you know that the universe is run by by God or by uh nature. One thing that I can get behind is this idea that I'm not in control. And this idea of letting things go, of turning things over, even if I don't know what I'm turning them over to I found and find helpful is just that reminder coming back to And this idea of powerlessness, that's a very powerful concept.

And powerlessness in the context of O c D. The way I look at it is I'm not powerless over my actions. I have a choice about whether to accept my anxiety or try to get rid of it by engaging in O c D. I have a choice of whether I'm going to engage in obsessive thinking in rituals. But where I am powerless is I can't choose the sensations in my body, and I can't choose the thoughts that come into my mind. O c D is about

trying to control those sensations and those thoughts. If I do the ritual right, if I think the correct thought, then the sensations or thoughts will change. And if you really buy into the twelve step thing, what you're saying is no, I actually am powerless over those thoughts when

they arise, when they go. And if you accept that, paradoxically, there's a great deal of freedom because you're saying, Okay, I can't control, you know, my thoughts and experiences, so I can just kind of let it go anim just to competise that. I mean, so when I think about some of the the ping pong gang that you do in this show, you know which side of the street

to walk on, the sunny side of the shady side? Uh, you know which iPhone or MP three player to buy, which shirt to wear to a performance, whatever, But just say to take the one about walking down the street and whether to go to the sunny side of the shady side. So, now being more liberated from your O c D or having it subsided so it's no longer

such a controlling thing. What does that mean when you talk about the surrender powerlessness, that you're walking down the street, that you feel this consciousness of should I go on the other side and back and forth happening, but that you just sort of accept that you're going to have this feeling in your body, but you'll just stick with where you are. So in the show, I talked about a lot of these sort of daily O c D things, what to wear, wat side of the street to walk down.

So when I started to get real recovery from most c D, those daily smaller forms of O c D, those went away entirely, so I don't have that anymore. What side of the street to walk down? Initially, though, when I started to recover, it was exactly as you described. I'm walking down this side of the street, and I'm gonna keep walking on this side of the street, even though now my mind is telling me I should cross to the other side of the street because the other

side is sunny and I need sunshine. I'm just gonna keep walking on the shady side, and I'm going to really open up to the discomfort and anxiety. And once I did, that. You know a number of times that anxiety, uh it just went away. Where it flares up now is more in novel decisions, decisions I don't encounter that often in bigger ones. So decisions often about career stuff. Should I do a tour of the show in this city or that city? That sort of thing, and there

it's the same thing. It's okay, I'm experiencing this anxiety. My mind is telling me I have to think about this morning. I have to figure out the perfect answer. I know rationally, I'm not going to find a perfect answer. I know rationally that the more I think about it, the more confused I get, the more fearful I'm going to get, and the harder it's going to make a decision. But but yet, I really do still want to keep thinking about it because I don't want to feel this

discomfort right now. So let me just really try to open up the discomfort as best as I can. And in a way, it really comes down to how quickly am I willing to take the hit, because I'm going to You know, when I have anxiety about a decision, there's going to be a moment where I'm going to have to fully experience that anxiety if I want to get past it, and I'd love to say that, you know, I just accept and surrender instantly, but I don't. I can still I can still go down that rabbit hole

a little bit. But yeah, to get that freedom is it's the same thing as when I was walking down the streets. It's just really opening up at a physical level experiencing it. And I should be clear, it's not necessarily a one time thing. If it's like a big decis vision, I might have to do that thirty or forty times a day, and it may come up and keep popping up for days on end, and it's going to be part of my experience, and it's going to be unpleasant and it's going to cause a degree of suffering.

But the more unwilling to accept, the less suffering and the more freedom I find. Let's take a break here and go to an ad M. You've mentioned how the length of this show has been reduced from about you know, in two hours to about eighty minutes or so, and obviously that involved telling less of the you know, fewer anecdotes about your drug experiences. But were there ways in which the show evolved as your insights into O c D and your condition. Uh changed during the time since

you started the show. The show certainly evolved a lot, but I would say it was less as a result of my journey with O City and Psychedelics, because I mean that journey wasn't complete in two thousand and twelve when I started doing the show, and it's still it's ongoing for me as well. But you know, all the events I recount, we're finished by about two thousand and ten. So really the evolution is more the evolution of me

as a performer and writer and creator. So when I did the show first in Edinburgh in two thousand and twelve the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, pretty much nothing could be longer than an hour general, I mean, you can, but it's very hard to draw audiences. So the show is an hour and it got a you know, a strong critical response, reviews and people, you know, it got a

very positive response. But I came away from the festival feeling like, ah, there's so much important stuff I'm leaving out that I didn't find it totally fulfilling sharing the show because I do have this, perhaps some would say, an obsession with truth, Like I really I don't embellish things in the show. I don't. It's it's all truthful. But it felt to me like there were so many omissions that I wasn't fully capturing the truth. And so after Edinburgh, I was like, you know, yeah, I think

I've told this story and I'm done with it. And I started working on other projects, but I kept wanting to come back to the show. I kept wanting to come back to this story. So then I decided, you know what, forget any time limits. Why don't you just figure out how to tell the story and the way that feels most truthful to you, and length be damned.

And so I started doing that and it cut longer and longer, and so when I was doing the New York Fringe Festival in two thousand and fourteen, it was over two hours long, and and it was just me sitting at a desk, because I remember, I had no acting experience, I had no background in the theater, so for me, it was really about the story, and it

was me sitting at a desk telling the story. And it's still got a very strong reception um but there was a feeling that there was a feeling that it still hadn't assumed its final form, and so then I began working with a director for the first time who

I still work with. His name is Jonathan Libman. Really just brilliant, brilliant theater director, and he introduced me to the language of theater, by which I mean he would say things like, well, instead of spending four minutes telling this story, you can act it out in twenty five seconds if you get up from behind your desk and walk over here, and we change the lights and you know that, that sort of thing. So that was and has been a very fruitful relationship where we've now brought

to the show gradually more of these theatrical elements. But shortening the show has come down to, yes, cutting recounting some of the drug experiences and some other experiences, but also in some ways substituting um minutes of words with a few seconds of gesture or lighting or movement, and that's that's allowed the show to assume it's current form. I'm curious to other drugs, I mean not psychedelic drugs,

but things like cannabis or alcohol. You use those and do they play into your experience of O C D in anyway? I don't use alcohol. I have nothing against alcohol, it's just I don't like I don't like alcohol hangovers. So that's that's uh, not something I use. I do not work with alcohol. I'm not working without. Uh. Cannabis. Yeah, cannabis can be a double edged sword. Um, I do I like cannabis. I'd say I generally smoke cannabis probably like once a week on average. I find it can

be helpful creatively. It can give me insight and perspective that's different from my sober mind, and that can help creatively in terms of, you know, my work shows, uh, comedy writing, but also in terms of like looking at relationships in my life in a different light, where cannabis can be quite helpful for me at least it can

promote empathy. It can promote me really kind of seeing, Oh, I didn't realize, but this person is doing this because it's probably because they have this trauma and I didn't connect the dots. And sometimes it's like I might not even be right about my interpretation, but the interpretation itself leads to more compassion and that that helps UM open things up in how I'm going to respond to that relationship.

On the other hand, I will say cannabis sometimes I have found, you know, I tend to like kind of speedy sativas, and that can lead to more racing thoughts and more so there have been times where I've had, like I found myself kind of yeah, starting to obsess on cannabis in a way where I feel like the cannabis is um is potentiating the obsession was ayahuasca. Your experience in ayahuasca is something distinctive, um in any way from all the other ones, well, the other tecal experiences.

I'd say it's a matter of degree and that we talked about this sort of and it sounds like for you as well. With psilocybin containing mushrooms, so much of it is this very just deep, concrete physical experience, and ayahuasca I find even more so a physical experience for me. So I really I don't get like immersive visions on ayahuasca. I don't get much insight. And maybe that's because I've

already done so many psychedelics. Maybe I've kind of plucked the low hanging insight fruit from the psychedelic tree already. But the physical experience of ayahuasca it really really just grounding me and my grounding me and my body is um. I find it has that effect more so than any other psychedelic So I did ayahuasca a bunch of New

York and then I went down to Peru. And in Peru I did I think, I did tense ceremonies in sixteen nights, which I don't know if I necessarily recommend it, but it was One effect of this is I discovered I had feet. I mean, I knew intellectually I had feet, but I had never really had a deep awareness of the sensations coming from my feet until I think it was after my a thiahuasca ceremony and I'm walking into like the you know, dining hall at this retreat center.

Maybe it was the loca, the ceremonial space, but I was walking into one a space that had these very rough hewn wood playing floors, and I became acutely aware of the you know, minute gradations of pressure and temperature on my feet. And it sounds trivial, but that has been a significant thing for me that I stayed with me. That was four years ago, five years ago, and I still have the sort of baseline awareness of the sensations in my feet. That is quite literally grounding for me.

And it's those sort of experiences that I've had on ayahuasca that I have not had on any other Psychedelogyally, you're reminding me on my very first M d M A experience, which was in my early thirties, and one of the things I remember was all of a sudden being conscious how much I carried most of my energy and my my body consciousness in my torso and how

much they were not. I did not feel grounded and under the under the n d M A experience, I felt myself becoming more ground in my feet, hitting you know, on the ground, and it felt like a better place to be. But it was, I say, the first time I've had that consciousness. And you know, I am able to recome back at certain points of that consciousness, which I think has been has been helpful. But you know,

let me, let me go back to me again. So in these gatherings, right, so you're you're entering in this world, I mean, you're going to obsessive compulsive anonymous, right, you're

presumably talking about this. I mean, I imagine because of your work, you're being invited to conferences about obsessive compulsioness you're meeting large numbers of people who experience and live with O c D. I'm wondering about what's the reaction to them, um when they hear about your experience, and because I mean it must be in some respects in the way you're sort of almost spreading the word about a cure. And I'm wondering also not what is it now,

but also how is it evolved? American I will imagine ten years ago with the whole notion of having a mushroom cure for O c D sounded way out there, as opposed to now when the magic of psychedelics and the psychedelic renaissance is all in the news, that there's a different reaction. But just describe a bit some of the response if you've gotten from people living with o c D, whether it's into twelve step programs or elsewhere.

I have not talked about this explicitly in twelve step meetings because in the twelve step framework, one of the guidelines is you don't talk about outside treatment, so people won't talk about S s R. Eyes. You know, it's really focused on this twelve step approach. But certainly i've spoken you know, widely conferences and podcasts like this, and yeah, you know, I think there's a selection bias and that the people who reach out to me are people who

are open to this. I'm sure there are people who are not open to this and may maybe put off by the idea of using psychedelics for o c D. But I get a lot of, you know, emails and messages on social media from people who are essentially saying, yeah, I want to do what you did, you know, what what do you suggest? And the fact that I get so many people reaching out to me, I think reflects the fact that there are are so many people out there with o c D who are just not being

sufficiently helped with with standard treatments. And this is not to take anything away from you know, it's a lot of very committed, very compassionate, very talented o c D therapists out there who are doing great work. And again, therapy can be life changing for some people, and for that matter, S s s R I S can be life changing for some people, but for many people, the existing

remedies just aren't aren't enough. And that's one of the things that I find that really upsets me about the fact that this Morano study was published in The study I read of psilocybro procy was published in December two thousand and six. We're sixteen years almost sixteen years later, and there hasn't been a single follow up study published,

though again that will change very soon, thankfully. But meanwhile, two percent of the population is estimated to suffer from o c D. People with o c D have ten times the suicide rate of the general population. Like this is a huge societal, worldwide problem, and yet my mind, the most promising new treatment that's come along in decades, maybe ever, there's been almost no investigation of it. Uh,

though thankfully that is changing. So that's all to say that the reactions I've gotten are generally from people who are desperate and because what they've tried hasn't helped during the same shoes I was in and and are looking for for guidance and working with psychedelics for their own healing. Well, hopefully we'll see it opening up of funding from the

federal government right thing. For a long time, they're only willing to provide money for knamine research dealing with O c D or addictionary conditions like that, And hopefully that's beginning to change because of the changes at the leadership. But you know, a national steit of health nationally seen of drug abuse, and obviously there's the private money um coming into this at this time, so you know, we

can hope for some sort of more significant breakthrough. But I'm mostly curious and do you consider O c D a form of addiction? Yes, yes, I do. The hesitation of my original yes was because I have sometimes gotten a little bit of pushback on when I say, oh, CD is an addiction, as people who take issue with that because to them, addiction has a negative connotation, and I get that does have a negative connotation, but I

don't mean it that way at all. I would define an addiction broadly speaking, as a strategy to avoid or eliminate pain that works in the very short term, but then creates more pain. And at the beginning of our conversation I talked about o c D in that context. But certainly, let's look at alcohol. An alcoholic when they drink, they often will feel a little bit better, but then they feel worse when it wears off, and they feel worse because the consequences of their drinking are making their life,

you know, unsustainable, so what do they do? They drink more So addictions are and I also said earlier I don't like the term mental illness. In some ways, I sometimes wonder if the model of addiction is not the best way to describe all of what we call mental illnesses, if they're not all at some at some level, at some deep levels, some sort of strategy to help us feel better that ultimately makes us feel worse, which in

turn drives more of that that that behavior. So in that sense, I absolutely do think viewing o c D as an addiction is a helpful way to look at it. I do see a lot of people with o c D who try to fix themselves, and I think this is because to really get freedom from o c D requires you feeling the feelings you don't want to feel, and that's uncomfortable. So that's what I was trying to do. And if there are people with o c D listening to this, and I imagine there are listen, I could

be wrong. But what I can say, and I think I said this at the beginning, is I don't know anyone with o c D who has gotten better on their own. This is a condition that if you have real, full blown o c D. I believe that there is an element of powerlessness and help and support from outside your own brain is essential, and I think calling it an addiction can drive that point home in a way that can hopefully be helpful for some people to hear.

I've heard you make the point that comparing mental illness to physical illness or for example, O c D two diabetes is just another illness. On the one hand, it's beneficial in that it can be destigmatizing, but on the other hand, it ignores the existential aspect of struggling with addiction or O c D or things like this. Yeah, that's part of my that's part of my concern with the term mental illness. You some that are perfectly is Yeah,

I don't mental illness. I like the fact that it's saying, Okay, this is something that you didn't choose any more than you chose, you know, to to have cancer. It's not something that you know, you should be blamed for. But I don't like the fact that, well, you know that it's really been the drug companies that have propagated this idea that oh, this is, you know, the same way a diabetic takes insulince. Some with depression has low serotonin and needs to take an s s R I. First

of all, at a neurochemical level, that's not true. We found that some people with depression seem to have lower than average serotonin, some people seem to have higher than average serotonin. There's never been a clear correlation found with any mental illness and specific neurochemical state, though there are neuro anatomical differences, but whether those are a result or

cause as questionable. So that's one thing. But yeah, so much of what we now look at mental illness in other cultures and other times would have been seen as a spiritual malady or spiritual challenge. And I think there can be something beautiful u in looking at it that way, and something empowering, which is that, no, this isn't just some chemicals in your brain going hey wire to me there.

I believe there is a narrative around this. There is a story around this, There is a reason, which again is not to say there's blame, it's not to say you're at fault, but that maybe this is one way to put it. I think a diabetic um you know who who's managing diabetes. I don't know if they're going to have a spiritual transformation from that. I don't know if they're going to have an existential epiphany, but I

think these mental illnesses do have that potential. There is an opera tunity in mental illness for growth for transformation that I don't think exists with say, diabetes, and I don't want to ignore that. M hm. So I Adam, in addition to doing this show off and on for many years now, you're also started a new show called Adam Strauss Is Not Unhappy by a sort of unscripted commentation. In fact, I'm wondering the last time you and I crawls past, I think was in December and New York

at the Horizons conference. And then a friend of our, Sarah Rose cis guy, has this comedy show called drug Test she puts on downtown, and if I recall correctly, maybe you did a little element of that there. But what can you tell us about this new show, why

you're doing it, what it's about, what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, So I'm doing The Mushroom Care every Friday at the March Theater in Berkeley, and I'm doing Adam stress Is Not Unhappy every Saturday, and the reason I structured it that way is I want people to come to The Mushroom Cure who will and want to hopefully come to Adam Stress is not unhappy because it's otherwise a difficult show to market because it is unscripted, and in some way I do have a lot of freedom from o

c D. But I'm still someone who i'd say, perhaps more than the average person like certainty, and in a way doing an unscripted show is it's an odd choice because there's radical uncertainty. I'm getting on stage not really knowing what I'm going to say or how it's going to go. I mean, there's an element of improvisation on The Mushroom Cure, but it's it's mostly scripted, and it's this odd thing where I think part of my own path to freedom has been doing the things that feel

the scariest. They take me the first furthest outside of my comfort zone, and certainly psychedelics do that. I mean, that's part of why I think psychedelics do have unique promise for o c D is and not micro dosing for me. I think, like do high doses probably have unique promise for O c D because they are in exposure for the root fear that I think underlies all forms of O c D, which is loss of control

if you take a large dose of mushrooms. Really, what you're saying is, I'm choosing to let go of control. I'm choosing to do the thing that my O c D least wants me to do. And this Adam stress is not unhappy show is really me doing that on stage, Me going up and saying, Okay, a big part of me wants to have perfect control, but another part of me wants more freedom. So I'm going to go up and see what happens when I just relinquished control to an extent. That's very unusual I think in any sort

of live performance. And it's been um At times, it's been pretty magical, you know. I've I've found moments and experiences and shared things on stage that I never would have scripted that I've been I think a lot better than what I could have come up with. At times, it's felt pretty scary, uh, being up are and not quite knowing where I'm going. But there's some part of me that feels this real pull towards these putting myself

in these situations that forced me to let go. That forced me that that if I try to hold on tightly, it's it's it's not gonna work. And I would apply that to psychedelics because certainly I had trips where I tried to control and you know, I got I got my ass kicked. Essentially, I had things got really scary, and I learned with psychedelics that Okay, when things are really really intent, when they're really really overwhelming, it's the way is not to hold on tighter. The way is

to let go more and listen. It's very easy for me to say this with you right now on this podcast sober. When I'm in that psychedelic space, it's still a scary choice, and it's not when I always make but I am drawn to that choice because I feel like there's there's that's the way freedom lies, and that's that's what I'm going for in this show. Having said that,

I also am it is a show. It's not about, you know, my own therapi, So certainly the agenda is also to entertain people and connect with them at a deep level and make them laugh and make them think and make them feel and uh yeah, it's it's something I've very much enjoyed doing. And what about are there other shows out there that get into Remember one time being at one of the MAPS big conferences, and I think they had a whole series of comedians going up

there doing some psycholics relevant. Ye right, some of them are actually are pretty good. But are there any other standout comics doing this kind of work, doing about you know, ripping about psychedelics of their own experiences or things like that. Let me be very clear here, Ethan, no no one else doing this is any good. No one should watch anyone else. They all say that they're setting me up. No, yeah,

there are. It's you know when I when I was talking about this stuff in two thousand and twelve, there really was no one else. Now there's a handful of people. I'm sure it'll be increasing as more and more people have psycholic experience. But you know, some of my favorites Duncan Trustle, who doesn't do much live performance now but is really brilliant. I mean they showed the Midnight Gospel, which is not uh not overtly psychedelic, but it's just

very psychedelic in tone. I mean, Duncan is I think it's I consider Duncan a genius in that he's just pushing boundaries of the forum and someone who the psychedelic experience has I think been transformative and informative his work. So he was at that that maps Comedy Bank. But I think referring to in two thousand seventeen, it was the lineup was him, me Shane Moss, who is also great. He has a show called A Good Trip, which is

also great. So he's wonderful. Uh just yeah, funny and sightful, vulnerable, all the stuff. I love. Sarah Rosuskin. She has not a show like a solo show, but she does this thing drug Test in New York, which always is great. Um. And I'm sure there's more people out there who I'm not aware of. So I think it's clear that psychedelics are rapidly becoming a bigger part of the cultural consciousness.

And I'm sure that's going to translate to say about you and the Mushroom Cure, is that not only are you doing pretty comedy like well the others, but your thing is simultaneously dramatic and touching and proving to be therapeutic for people who watch it and ultimately, you know, come to some greater insight about what's going on their own lives or people around them, or how they might

find their own cure. So with all that in mind, I want to thank you for joining me on Psychoactive and I look forward to crossing paths hopefully soon, and best of luck with both you know, Mushroom Cure as well as with the new show. I hope it all works out really well. Thanks so much, Ethan. Yeah, I really enjoyed chatting with you. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories comes to ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noam Osband and

Josh Stain. The Executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio, and me Ethan Naedelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks to Ab Brio, s f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert bb. Next week I'll be talking with David Simon, co creator of The Wire, who has a new series, We Own This City on HBO. He describes it as a sort

of coda to The Wire. When I was covering the department in the late eighties, you know, into the nineties, it's not like every cop was great. You know, there were a lot of guys who were humps and they you know, they couldn't make a case save their lives. But they were usually in squads with one or two guys who knew how to get a case through the courthouse. They had the skill set. I mean, you need to know how to work informants and not be worked by informants.

You need to know how to testify in court without purguring yourself. You need to know how to write a search and seizure warrnt. You need to know how to use various forensic tools that that that don't have any relation to the drug war, that are basically skill sets that don't have anything to do with drug prohibition. And those things died. They died on the vine that the drug war taught everybody how to not do police working

made for stupid generations of cops. And then those generations, those those guys are now the colonels and the majors. They're teaching the lieutenants the wrong metrics, and the lieutenants are teaching the guys on the street the wrong metrics. And the only thing that it cost us was police work in America. Subscribe to Cycoactive now, see it, don't miss it.