SYSK Selects: Can you Treat Mental Illness with Psychedelics?

Heart Radios How Stuff Works. WHOA and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheek, Bryant Cheech. Yeah, man, yeah, I wanted to start this one out like a twelve year old, so that's when I'm going with a twelve year old on acid maybe maybe, which has happened before in France. Actually really thanks to our old friends the c I A. Oh, they dosed kids. They just a whole town wow to see what would happen. And one kid came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her.

Really yeah, I can't remember the name of the town. I can see you would find that funny, but well, no people were like showing up at the hospital. There a lot of it was funny and that like, you know, all these nineteen fifties frenchees are losing their stuff for no apparent reason, right, right, but you know the suicides that resulted from that not very funny. Before we get started, I think we should do like an official c o

A for this one. I think that is a very good idea because what Josh and I are about to talk about are illegal drugs. But we just find it fascinating that they used to be used for certain things and they're starting to be used again in certain scientific research labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating, which is what we're talking about, right exactly. I guess this could be a follow up to our our mk Ultra cast. It's a follow up and uh it's an epilogue and

a prologue. Yes, yeah, very nice because we kind of came into the the c I A L. S D MK Ultra podcast like right in the middle of the history of LSD pretty much well towards the beginning, but um one of the things after when Albert Hoffman, right, the chemist who created LSD L tried it. Yeah, it was attempt uh, and tried it on himself intravenously. As I understand it, he injected it. We always says, first he took it by mistake, yeah, because it was a

blood thinner. And then he took it for real. Yeah. After that first bike ride home he was like, I gotta do some more. And then I read his quote, please, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature. Yes, to create Dr Hoffman. Yeah, and he was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist. Um. He was at the first person to come up with a synthetic hallucin Jim back in nineteen fourteen, a German chemist who worked for Merk the pharmaceutical company, came up with M

d M A better known as ecstasy that far back. Uh. Yeah, And here's a tip for you, chuckers Um. Anytime, according to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug and use it by its designer name, capitalize it. So ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking about the drug, Yes, and not just the euphoric feeling you get from life. That's different. That's a lower case okay, but it should be all caps. Yeah. Sure, so it was nineteen that m d M A was created. Yeah,

and it was. Um, I guess it served as a it's not a catalyst, because I think it's changed, but it was to be used in the synthesis of other chemicals. And it kind of sat on the shelves for a little while until somebody along the way and then I wonder what happens if I take this stuff? And they did, and the CIA again looked at it. I wanted to see what it could do, passed it up. Um, and a guy by the name of Alexander Shulgin right, Yes,

he's a dow chemist. And in eight at the age of seventy four, he published a study on the uthork effects of m d m A. It was the first time anyone had ever published a study here. But he was seventy four and he first noticed the uthork effects because he liked to take it and go to cocktail parties. Yeah. Um, so he's like, hey, man, this stuff is the bomb, and here's my study on it. Here that my findings, and let's everybody start taking this. So he starts giving

it to his friends, Um, including some psychiatrists. Did he give out passifiers? Not yet, that's coming though. That's very very close past fires came about UM. So Shilgin gives them to a friend who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist some of the more avant garde psychiatrists UM start giving it to their patients, and then it gets called ADAM. For a little while while this is going on, it is being

used by established psychiatrist. A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas finds out about this stuff and starts taking it, hires an underground chemist and has it made himself, and then

start selling it at clubs all over Dallas. And so this, this illicit use of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence on the club scene and about the mid eighties led to the outlaw of M D M A. We'll get into it more, but the point is to this very long and rambling intro, both of these drugs and others were legal at one time, were put to good use, beneficial use, and then outlawed, possibly unfairly, and then now we're starting to see them come back into use, hallucinogens

being used to treat mental illness and mental harm in legitimate circles, very legitimate. Quick question was that Dallas person was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows who it is. Still gotta start maybe probably, I think to begin with So, Josh, you mentioned the c I A. I do want to point out it wasn't just the Americans, Uh, the Canadian government

and British's British's It Works. Britain's m I six also experimented with LSD and between ninety and sixty five, forty people all over the world had been treated with LSD in treatments. Yeah, um, Carrie Grant, Yeah, can we go back to Hollywood In the nineteen yoursis so, a couple of guys set up shop. Arthur Chandler. What was the other guy's name, Oh, Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman, who was a radiologist, took acid and said, you know, I'm gonna

get into psychiatry. These guys set up a shop called the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills right in the middle of Beverly Hills. And this is back in the day when things were it was clean living going on, aside from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked, adultery. Probably some marijuana use going on here there, but that was

among the hopheads, Yeah, exactly. So he sets up a couple of rooms with a couch and uh starts booking patients at a rate of like six or eight hours of session, depending on what was going on with the person, and five days a week. There were books solid hundred bucks of pop Hunter, which is a lot of any back then. And I guess that included the drugs. The

drugs and the time that you were there. So they would sit with you, they would give you some blinders to block out distractions, and then you would go into sort of like the more meditative sort of acid trip. Essentially you were tripping hard would because you were on pharmaceutical grade LSD produced by the Sandoz company. We're talking about Alice Huxley, novelist, and actually he died tripping. Did

you know that? Really? Yeah, he was. He had um throat cancer, I think, and uh, the last thing he ever wrote was a note to his wife requesting um such and such milligrams of LSD or micrograms of LSD injected intramuscular intramuscularly really, and that was about six hours before he died. So he died tripping and a grateful Dead record. That was his last request before the Grateful der Uh. Screen screenwriter Charles Brackett took it. Director Sidney Lament as it lay or Lament I think okay. I

always said may, but I think I'm wrong. He took it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful. He re experienced his own birth, which apparently a few people did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either. And um Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to Time magazine publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador and possibly an agent um for the US government, and they both took acid so much that Henry Loose and Time Magazine said we need to write about this. This

is awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of good press that Time Magazine gave LSD in the fifties, um as a basically a cure. All Um, and again, Carrie Grant got into it big time. Apparently he had like at least a hundred trips. I believe. Yeah he was. Yeah, let's talk about him for a second, because he was one of these guys that carefully constru truct did his persona.

He worked very hard apparently he was the The line he always gave was a lot of people want to be carried grant, and I'm one of them, indicating that this suave, Mr cool persona was completely fabricating, created by himself so he could get you know, the fame and everything, but deep down he suffered as a human until he started taking acid, right, and then he had um, well, he had some pretty interesting revelations, one of which I read one of the somebody thought to write down the

stuff that he Some of the insights he had, um, some were kind of deep. Others were like, if I have to look at a man, he should be required to comb his hair and brush his teeth and wear a clean shirt. Yes, it was interesting, so it kind of ran the gamut. But yeah, he um he became a real devotee of l s D. He's yeah, and um well she got him into it, right. I think who wrote that We're we're part of this. We're basing this part on a Vanity Fair article art. Yeah. Um,

it's called the Carrying the Sky with Diamonds. But he

was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only one, um, but he lived to see it outlawed and public sentiment turn against it, right, just like m D, m a UM, pilocybin, magic, mushrooms and part of the well really one of the You could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who might otherwise have been helped by LSD with his his naive bravado of you know, the establishment just needs to get over its hang ups and we should all take acid.

Whether or not you agree that that's a good idea, it's a stupid thing to say. Leary was originally a Harvard side chiatrist, right, yes, and he started taking I think mushrooms and then he eventually started taking LSD and was fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. Yeah, and um, that was pretty much the beginning of the

end of LSD. Yeah, they may have continued to use LSD as treatment for mental patients, mental illness and depression if not for Timothy Leary, who was trying to spread the word about acid. That's right. Uh, back to carry Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh. He had a couple of stories written about him in nineteen fifty nine and Look magazine, the Curious Story behind the New Carry. Grant gave a glowing account of LSD and then this is the best the following year the Good

Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it the Secret of Grant's Second youth. I want to get a copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah? And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast is so weird that these things were considered incredibly wonderful and benign um and now they're they're just viewed as just so they're evil and their outlaws simply because they

were made illegal right prohibited um. And again there's kind of a movement toward saying, hey, you know, maybe Timothy Leary did give this a bad name. Maybe that that um underground chemist in Dallas, uh really kind of put a terrible spread on this, and we should look at these again, right, she cannot tell one more story? Yes?

From Hollywood of the nineteen sixties. Yes, Esther Williams, famous UH diva actress from the n g M studio friend of Carrie Grants, called Carrie Grant up after these articles and said, Hey, can you introduce me to your doctor, Dr Hartman? He did so. At the time, she was aging, just had gone through a divorce, Her husband left her with huge debt with the I R S. And she was still struggling with the death of her sixteen year

old brother. She goes in the office, she takes acid, does her session, goes home to her parents, still on acid, has dinner with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror, says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror, and I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled by a split image one half of my face, the right half was me, the other half was the face of a sixteen year old boy. The left side of my

upper body was flat and muscular. I reached up with my boys hand to touch my right breast and felt my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I understood perfectly in that moment. When my brother died, I took him into my life so completely he became part of me. Yeah, that's a pretty huge thing to understand

and pretty jarring way to come to terms with that, right. Yeah, but that's what they're finding out now though, is that these people are having these breakthroughs in the throes of their final days of let's say cancer, and they have these epiphanies. So LSD is outlawed. We're following a timeline here. Yes, LSD is outlawed in I think sixty five something like that. UM at the very at the latest nineteen seventy they

shut down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah, and Sandos stopped making it and it got it was outlawed and pushed underground. M D m A made it until and M D m A story is linked very closely to a guy named Dr George Quarte, who is JOHNS. Hopkins researcher. This floored me so in about the time the UM D e A is reeling from being caught totally unaware

by the crack epidemic. Uh and basically a lot of people think looking for a whipping post um they they start considering outlawing M D m A. At that moment, this guy, Dr George roccarde Um publishes a study that he says, this drug deplete your serotonin levels permanently, causing brain damage. Right, it can kill you. Yeah, Well that that didn't that came. So this guy, who is unknown at the time, publishes the study, starts to get UM National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically this is

his job. He starts a career UM creating scientific evidence in favor of banning drugs leads to the outlaw of m d M. A right. That wasn't quite enough. They scheduled it. Uh. The FEDS went after m d M A even harder, and in two thousand two they came up with this thing called the Rave Act. It's um, what does rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy? I wonder how long they sat around looking at the word rave, saying we've gotta make it fit, Yeah, to

make it fit Yeah. So um, the the Rave Act basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club, we're going to shut down your club. It was a huge, huge law, and it was bolstered by another UM another study by Dr George rocquarde Um that found that he tested on ten monkeys one he injected them with m d M a UM, A bunch of them went psychotic.

Some of them UM showed early signs of Parkinson's all of a sudden, and two of them died almost immediately after being injected. So people started asking questions about this, like, what what are you talking about? People have been taking this drug forever and this has never happened. So they started kind of going after recording and UM, they found

out that he had actually injected him with methamphetamine. The first thing that tipped them off as he injected him, because people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy, so that's kind of a weird way to do it. And then they found out it was methamphetamines, which he blamed on a mislabeling of a drug shipment which they traced back and they went the label right here. Yeah, the

drug providers like, don't blame must, it's pretty clear. So this is by this time, the Rave Act has already passed her and the Rave Act didn't get past but something that included that UM was passed by that time. The study that recorded a produced was pretty was published in Science, the journal Science. Like that's as hyebrow as you get as far as scientific journals. Um, And finally he gets beaten up and up that he he prints

a full retraction came clean. The Science runs this retraction saying the whole, the whole study that I produced just forget it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much, No, it doesn't. That's very unusual. So record A I get the impression is kind of this. Um, well, it just kind of seems like the scientific community views him largely as a shill to the government. Yeah. Um. There's a couple of articles that he shows up in on a

Reason and Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And you know, the other interesting thing about that whole story about the big fake study he did with meth amphetamines as ecstasy is that the Parkinson's Foundation, the people Parkinson's researchers, said, I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much sense to us either, that they would show signs of Parkinson's right, so they looked into it. People went about

reproducing his study. Yeah. Um, and the people who run the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying ecstasy does not do this, So they basically came out in favor of ecstasy. It's kind of neat to watch from the outside because there's this guy who's again kind of viewed as a shill for the government who's beating up on this drug that a lot of people who are also in the scientific community feel is being unfairly outlawed, and so there's kind of beating up on him in retaliation.

It's kind of neat to see eggheads beat up on one another, NERD fights and the n I d A. It went so far that the n I d A just kind of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy and I was like, Um, let's just take this down off the website. After the retraction, we'll rewrite it. I'm sure it's back up now as something else. Yeah, but it doesn't include immediate death and Parkinson's disease. I would imagine that's right. So Timothy Larry dies, he gets shot

into space, he's out of the picture entirely. Everybody gets sick of hippies generally. Yeah, Um, George Record is basically the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy outlawed. His work comes into great, great question, and people start going back and looking at M D m A again, and they start looking at LSD again, and that's where we find ourselves right now. Slowly but surely, people are starting to run studies on whether or not you can use these

hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And the results are pretty astounding actually, and you know where they're leading the charge in Switzerland, in Los Angeles all these years later, same place, Yes, hippie freaks. Yeah, so yeah, Josh, they are I think in Switzerland. Uh, in Solo then Switzerland. They have been experimenting with lsd um psilocybin, which you might know his magic mushrooms. Yes, ketamine you might know, a special k. That kind of surprised me that that was in there. Yeah,

I hadn't heard much about that one either. And getting these uh, these studies published in Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, and other you know, leading industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah, it's not all under the table back room experiments. Oh no, these are very heavily um overseen. You have to be a very legitimate researcher to get government approval. They're not funded though still there's they say they're still having a hard time with funding, and they're just they're sort of

looking to get some restrictions loosen. They're not saying make all this stuff legal, right, They're not battling a legalization on the legalization front at all. But what they're one of the reason why so many people are kind of starting to put their reputations on the line. Um, it's because the results that they're seeing. So we have antidepressants, right, UM, they take weeks to kick in, they have all sorts

of side effects. And what they're what we're seeing in these studies now, are that the the things like ketamine, uh m d m A, LSD are having like a huge impact right out of the gate. There's one study, um that came out in July, I believe, UM, and it found it was a study of twelve people who were diagnosed with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's one of the big ones. Yeah, that's huge that they're looking at. UM. That's where you well, it's what we

used to call shell shock. You go through traumatic experience and you relive it over and over again. UM, and it's it's debilitating. Um. They found that of the twelve people in the study, ten of them, after going through the study, UM, after taking M D m A no longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterwards.

Ten of the twelve. Yeah, and for my understanding, and most of these studies is it's not like you have to stay on ecstasy your whole life, Like a lot of people have these epiphanies and they quit taking it and they have changed their outlook and that right, Yeah, that's the impression I'm getting to. Um, Ketamine's good for depression in the same way. Um, just a very tiny

dose I can get you over severe clinical depression. Or that's the results, the early results, we should say, yeah, um and everything from quitting smoking two suicidal thought, Yeah, cluster headaches Harvard studying. Those are migraines for men, right, what they called my migraines. I think I know they're so debilitating that you consider suicide or you know not everyone does obviously, but it's just this awful, awful pain. You can't leave your house, you get to sit in

a dark room, and so it's helping there. And um, what I thought was interesting Johns Hopkins, you might have heard of them, a little reputable institutions required is from was it they did an experiment where they gave psilocybin too emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even people that were mentally ill, people that had never taken hallucinogens before, which is interesting that you would be. I think they

had a sixty four year old that signed up for this. Yeah, it's crazy, and they said a sixty four and they said the experiment. A year later, they said the experience is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences of their entire lives, and that those were mentally stable folks, And this is a year on it's still had an

impact on them. UM. They're also finding that UH O, c D and basically mood disorders are the primary target of hallucinogenic treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment, and the reason being, we think, is because they target serotonin in the brain. This is another reason why they're not addictive. They don't they don't employ the reward circuit in the brain, which is how we become addicted to things were flooded with dopamine. Member, it just affects the mood circuits in the right serotonin.

And we don't really have a very good grasp on serotonin and exactly how that works, but we do know that UM, there's correlations between uh high levels of serotonin or low levels of serotonin and depression, right, and we know that UM using antidepressants which block the reuptake of serotonin UM reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people. So we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We know that the more serotonin you have, the better generally or low

serotonin's bad. Uh. And then we also know that hallucinogens target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands right now. It makes you wonder where would we be if LSD and m d m A hadn't been in the wilderness for the last few decades. Well, yeah, they may have a pill, like a low dose pill, because a lot of these studies, just so you know, back in carry Grand State, that mean it was full, full

on acid trips. But a lot of these, like the psilocybin pills, they will give you be very low dose. So I don't I get the feeling that it's not like this huge mushroom trip that a lot of patients are going through because it said I think of the people recognized when they did not have the placebo. So if it wasn't then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes,

it would be. My guess, um, would you if if everything was legalized UM and M D m A came to be prescribed for just happiness, right, would you take it? Would you take a happy pill that was legal and didn't have side effects? Not to say m d M A doesn't have side effects, there's a um like basically the three days after a depression that follows when your serotonin levels are repleting themselves. I don't think I would

because there are quote unquote happy pills now. And I mean it's not like I'm against anti depressants or things like that, because people definitely benefit from those who need them. But I just I don't need that kind of thing, so I would not. Uh, I would not, sir, you are not alone, Chuck. There is a survey conducted for this BBC series on Britain of British people that found that seventy of them said that they would not take a happy pill it was legal and had no side effects.

It's interesting, yeah, because it kind of I think that for a large segment of the population there's just the idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's it's a little weird. I mean that's not to say I'm a square and I don't like to get down another aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right now about literally the effect it has on your brain

and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've also found that patients cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens, or people with just um traumatic events from earlier in their life, they have the ability to relive some of these memories and events from their past. They can unlock buried traumatic episodes, deal with them psychologically, put them to rest, and come out the other side with a new understanding free from

these demons. Right. Um. You remember when in the hypnosis episode where we were talking about how the way it's viewed now is that you you are You're accessing the subconscious eesah more easily. It's like popping open a control panel. That's what this. This is what they're seeing with M D m A. Apparently, Uh, you are able to access things UM from a very empathetic way. I think the

term I've heard for it is called UM a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Yeah, kick starts right things And I think one researcher called it it's psychotherapy sped up. The psychiatrists call them. Yeah, it's like psycho arap on acid L s D. Specifically, hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's ever taken it. And what's funny in this article that UM that's on

the site. Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? Tom Sheaf has to go to the sixties psychedelic rock scene to find examples of people who have had a bad, bad time on acid. Uh, And apparently, what what the conventional wisdom is if you are predisposed to mental illness, LSD can exacerbate that. If you have a bad trip up, you're going to have a really, really bad trip because

you're already predisposed to mental illness. Yeah, he's Brian Wilson and Sid Barrett as the two examples, and those are stellar examples, they really got to say. But they're also counterintwo to what we're seeing with UM. Like PTSD, you are already suffering from a mental illness. So here's some m D m A right, Probably LSD would be horrible to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, yeah, right, I would say, so, UM And what else, Chuck, can we

talk about Pamela Secuda? Sure? Yeah, it's a very interesting story. This was a woman UM aged fifty seven at the time of this article, who was in the final stages of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her husband, and what they were going to do without her. It was not a good life. She was living here at

the end and she was prescribed any depressants. Of course, it didn't work, didn't do a thing for so she volunteered for an experiment at u c l A in two thousand five and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs. Uh. They brought her husband in at the end of one of the sessions and he said, there's my Pammy. She was just beaming with light and I haven't seen her that joyous and so long. She was totally alive and happy.

And she continued to take it until she didn't need it anymore. She had these breakthroughs, and then all of a sudden, her husband and uh, Pamela were going to concerts, they went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations. They did all these things that she hadn't been doing in a long time. Because of these epiphanies she had under the influence of psilocybin and sadly she died, well, she had cancer. Yeah, she died. Yeah, that's what she

died from in two thousand six. And her husband said she died in his arms. But her husband was very a pre shive and they actually did a benefit about a week before she died for the institute that was doing this work at U c l A. So it's pretty interesting. Yeah, the definitely, And one of the applications that they're finding is end of life care for UM using M D m A or LSD R PSILOCYBIN'M sure we're special, k. Apparently what about this eyeba gain. They're

finding the eyeba gain works really well. Iber gain is a UM it's from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa, I believe UM. And they're finding that you go on a thirty six hour trip. That's a long time. It's a long time, but they're finding that it's really effective in breaking UM addiction and like serious addictions to like heroin, yeah and cocaine. So being on this stuff just for thirty six hours creates a break in the addiction cycle itself.

But what they're finding this. Most notable about it is it there's a lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see in every other type of addiction removal. Yeah, especially with heroin. Like heroin, you're supposed to have physical withdraw sintom withdrawal symptoms, and people who are taking eyeba gain are not experiencing that like they would if if they tried to kick the habit without it. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is

very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should probably say, I don't know if we have yet that this podcast is in no way an endorsement of going out and buying yourself some street drugs and you know, seeing what happens. It's a study of what we finally be very fascinating. The fact that this is there's been a resurgence in this and these you know, qualified doctors U. C. L. A.

Johns Hopkins, they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah, and they definitely are, and they're getting some very interesting results. What about the A A guy, We should mention that really quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill Wilson yet one of the co founders of A A. Yeah, he uh he apparently took LSD in the fifties, wasn't Yeah, And this is after he was long after he was

sober from alcohol. Yeah, can found ance the thirties? I think, yeah. Um. And so he takes LSD in the fifties and is like, this is really helpful. Um, so I think everybody who comes into a should take LSD. Uh. And they were like, he should probably not do that, so they talked him out of it. But the reason why he found it helpful one is that hallucinogen's part of a twelve step program is to really reflect on past wrongdoings and then elucidate them to another human being. And apparently LSD, M

D M A UM, these other drugs help. They serve as a catalyst for that process, so tap into that. That's why Bill Wilson I thought this is this is really helpful because again it'sycho therapy sped up, fascinating, very fascinating. I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh, you should go out and do these things, I will say that some chemically created in a lab pill called

an antidepressant, isn't I mean what's the difference. The difference is I think, in my opinion from what I've seen, Uh, one's marketed and legal and the other is illegal. Yeah, it's as simple as that one is made by murk and one is not made by murk but used to make this, which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah,

you know, it's the same reason the alcohol. You can go into a bar and get completely wasted out of your mind and get in a car, but you can't walk into a bar and smoke a joint or shoot heroin or shoot heroin. And we're not labbying for anything. It's just interesting that the things that society has deemed acceptable alcoholism is just fine. Well it's not just fine, but it's it's legal, and you can do it even though it kills all these people, and this is not acceptable.

It's just it's funny how we've evolved to think things are evil and some things are just great. I wonder where the future holds, Josh, I wonder myself. We'll find out, Yes, we will, if we lived that long. That is about it for this one. You should probably check out Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? On the site. Be sure to check out Carrying the Sky with Diamonds Vanity Fair article type in George Rick Quarte r I C U A R T e uh into Reasons website that

will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time magazine article from I think two thousand or two thousand one um on ecstasy on M D M A uh it was. That's really It's called the Happiness and a Pill. I guess it's time now for listener mail, right, Yes, I have a listener mail Josh from Rhea and this was about octopus or octopi, but we were corrected octopies not right, but she says it she worked at high so right, well, we had all these people see and

actually the Latin thing Jerry just left at that. Hi, guys, your podcast on Octopi made my day to day. Thank you. I work as an aquarist at a San Francisco aquarium and one of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery. I get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble. And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to open a jar to get his favorite food, which is

live crabs. I'm right there with you fromstr octopus. Uh. It was great to hear someone besides myself get a little too excited about these critters. And you know, we've got great feedback on this. People love the octopus because they're so freaky. Uh. The story about Lucretia mc evil especially cracked me up. I work with the g p O. That's the giant Pacific octopod that might give her a run for money. For the past few weeks, I've been walking around with what my colleagues call octopus kisses up

the length of my arms. But I'm afraid my husband is getting a little suspicious about the number of Vicky's I've been acquiring. So that's from the little suckers. Those little suckers clearly. Uh. These were given to me while I tried to remove the individual from blocking the flow to his tank and stop his flooding of the entire aquarium. It's never a boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys.

Thanks for all the great podcast. If you're ever in San Francisco, one of my favorite places, Josh, let me know and I'll see if I can't work out some behind the scenes cephalopod goodness. And that is from Rhea, and she says, and don't worry, by the way, I have trouble pronouncing hecto caudless as well and have taken to calling in the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works, the spermacle. That's what she says. She says, it's time to rename

that organ. Yes, well, thanks Rhea, right, yes, thank you. My dad always said life is better with stuffalo pods in it. Really yeah. Uh, if you have a fantastic saying that your father, mother, grandfather, some old timing person told you, we want to hear it, wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, and then send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's

How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.