Angry Planet - Can Psychonauts Win America’s Wars?

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Drugs and war go together like peanut butter and jelly. American soldier boys smoked the reefer in Vietnam, the Wehrmacht ran on amphetamine, and Viking Berserkers were probably on something. Soldiers have enhanced and altered perception using chemicals for centuries, but in the annals of getting fucked up and going to war you don’t hear a lot about psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA.But that might be changing. With us today is Marine Corps officer Emre Albayrak. Albayrak is an Expeditionary Ground Reconnaissance officer and has served as an intelligence officer for 12 years. He’s also the author of an interesting article in the February issue of the Marine Corps Gazette—a professional journal published by the Marine Corps Association. It’s titled Microdosing: Improving Performance Enhancements in Intelligence Analysis. It suggests, very basically, that military intelligence operations could get a boost if Marines dropped a little acidYou can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Because I don't know for a fact, but I can almost guarantee that there are other near-peer competitors out there that are experimenting with stuff like this. you know if eastern block Germany was impregnating power lifters and giving them abortions in order to increase females of testosterone in their bodies to compete at a higher level at the Olympics

I don't know wouldn't you think that there's certain unsavory characters out there that are experimenting with all sorts of cognitive enhancers right now you're listening to war college a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front minds. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to war college. I'm Matthew Galt.

And I'm Derek Cannon. Drugs and war go together like peanut butter and jelly. American soldier boys smoked the reefer in Vietnam. The Wormox ran on amphetamine and Viking berserkers were probably on something. Soldiers have enhanced and altered perception using chemicals for centuries, but in the annals of getting fucked up and going to war, you don't hear a lot about psychedelics, such as LSD and MDMA. That might be changing. With us today is Marine Corps officer, Emory Albuyric. Albuyric is an expeditionary ground reconnaissance officer and is served as an intelligence officer for 12 years.

He's also the author of an interesting article in the February issue of Marine Corps Gazette, a professional journal published by the Marine Corps Association. It's titled, Microdosing, Improving Performance Enhancements and Intelligence Analysis. It suggests, very basically, that military intelligence operations could get a boost if Marines dropped a little acid. Major Albuyrak, thank you so much for joining us. Gentlemen, thank you for having me. Appreciate it. So I just want to state up at the top that what we're going to be talking about today and the views that are going to be expressed are your own.

They do not represent official policy or opinion of the Pentagon or U.S. Marine Corps. And I also want to say that our producer, Kevin Nodale, brought us this story and did a lot of the original reporting on it for The Daily Beast. So let's get some basics out of the way, because I think most people hear LSD, and there's some immediate connotations that come up. But microdosing is different. What exactly is microdosing?

So when I talk about microdosing in the article, and I highlight this, it's a subperceptible dose that's given. So essentially, you know, the walls aren't melting. You're not seeing dinosaurs and monsters and you're not entering into another dimension. It's a subperceptible dose that gives you a sort of a boost, almost as if, you know, when you drink your coffee in the morning, you get a little bit of a boost from that. And some people would say that they feel normal or they don't feel normal until they have that morning coffee. The microdosing is basically on the same level with psychedelics and doesn't necessarily have to be LSD.

It could also be psilocybin as well. And again, all of this is just based on the research and the reading that I've done. I have no firsthand experience with psychedelics. Okay, so it doesn't per se get you high in any way, or at least that's not what the literature says. Correct. The literature and, you know, the people that do have extensive experience with psychedelics. and the anecdotal evidence is that microdosing does not cause any perceptible change that you would think that, you know, it's not causing sensory changes like visual hallucinations, and it's not strong enough to debilitate the subject. Okay, well, then what are the benefits? Why would you do this?

So based on some of the research that I've done, which is highlighted in the article, and some of the research that's been done by the Imperial College in London by Robin Carhart Harris, who's one of the leading researchers in the field of psychedelics right now, the subperceptible or the micro dose still gives you heightened alertness. creativity, and helps with problem-solving skills that induces a flow-like state, basically in the mind that aids in the lateral thinking that you would need for things such as complex problems, which intelligence analysts are dealing with almost on a daily basis. Now, tell us what flow is a psychological term, right? It has a very specific definition. What is that? Correct. So the flow state, and I guess I should kind of go back as to give the background history on how I even got myself into writing this article.

And it all goes back to a friend of mine who is a former Marine helicopter pilot. He's now out of the Marine Corps, suggested that I read a book called Stealing Fire by Stephen Cautler. and when I began reading the book, Cautler talks a lot about ecstasis and flow and this heightened alertness, this heightened state of thinking and being that you can achieve and that people have been pursuing for years to achieve, whether it's, you know, what people might call maybe some adrenaline junkies doing high-stakes sports, such as base jumping, cliff diving, you know, big mountain skiing, some of that stuff that creates this type of whole body experience where things are happening and you know they're happening, but you're not necessarily thinking about the things that are happening.

You're just reacting. You're therefore in the flow. It's like a meditation. state almost, right? Exactly. As a matter of fact, flow has also been exhibited in Zen masters that have tens of thousands of hours of dedicated meditation time, guided meditation time, people that are really able to

slow down the default mode network of their brain, to slow down the chatter, and to really enter this state of being that a lot of people described it as being one with themselves or, you know, those of us that have done yoga, you start chanting, ohm, and it kind of gives you this nice, warm feeling of being one with yourself, being one with the people around you. Just this very deep sense of being.

And I'm wondering what the benefits of that are to intelligence, work. Right. So the benefits of that to intelligence work, intelligence analysts are usually dealing with problems that are created by other human beings. Problems can be varied. Problems can be of different sizes and scopes. But there's this great quote by Albert Einstein, and I use that in the kind of the opening

of the article that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. The analysts that are working on problems and issues, they really do need to be in a flow state. They really do need to be on another level of consciousness when they're engaging with whatever it is that they're doing. And some really good analysts can do this. They can really put themselves in their work. They can really calmed out everything else that's going on in the back of their minds. and this is not just with intelligence analysts.

You know, I think this applies to everybody across a wide spectrum of jobs, whether in the military or not. But you can really concentrate and you can really dive down and drive down deep into the heart of the problem and try to fix the issues or these wicked problems from a level that you necessarily consciously are not at. now what I'm positing in this article is that through the use of microdosing we can get other analysts that are you know still just as smart still just as capable but get them to this level of flow without the thousands of hours of meditation that these yoga and zen masters have to be able to get into flow without the thousands of hours of meditation that these yoga and zen masters have to be able to get into flow. flow or the thousands of reps that professional athletes have when they get into their flow, like Olympic level athletes, that they can just kind of turn that flow on and turn it off. My suggestion is that by utilizing LSD, by increasing certain connections in the brain, by heightening the alertness, the creativity, and the problem-solving portions of the brain,

and inducing this flow state that's going to aid in lateral thinking, analysts would be able to connect something that might seemingly be unconnected when you're looking at it from one level of consciousness. You can all of a sudden start making the connections and solving the problems that seemed extremely difficult or maybe even unsolvable. Have you yourself ever experienced a flow state, obviously unaided by chemicals? Sure. I think that at some point all of us experience a flow state. If we do something for long enough, you know, I mentioned in my article that you'll see season CQB teams, so close quarter battle teams that are clearing rooms and buildings. After doing so many hundreds of reps of clearing a room, they achieve a flow state. They achieve group flow. And Stephen Cotler talks about this in his book as well of how certain teams can achieve group flow as well.

And that, I have experienced that, whether it was with shooting where you're just, you know, you're just letting the body take over, a part of the mind take over that wouldn't necessarily be taking over. and all of a sudden the target seems like you can't miss it. And experienced it with skydiving and military free fall, you achieve a certain level of flow. I think maybe more so there, the danger and the fact that your mind knows that everything in that act is do or die. I think it forces you into a type of flow state. And I also think that it's why in high adrenaline sports, you tend to see athletes in more of a flow state or in ecstasis.

And there's another book about that as well called The Rise of Superman, subtitled Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. And Stephen Kotler talks about, you know, wingsuit, bass jumping and athletes that have done this. There's extensive interviews with Dean Potter who unfortunately passed away, wingsuit base jumping, but just to kind of get into the mindset and explore how these athletes enter flow in a non-chemical way. I think I've experienced the flow before. I was in a CQB team and a SIP team, and we used to practice over and over again, blowing doors going into rooms, clearing as many as times we used to call it. We used to call it free flowing, so much so that you could actually not become tunnel visioned,

but you could almost sense your number two and three man that you always work with around the room and know that he's not going to shoot. Like you just could feel like you could shoot and everything was going to be okay. So I guess that's what you're kind of talking about flow state, yes? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's, so you're essentially seeing things before they happen. Yeah, exactly.

even pying a corner you just get that what 30% low percentage look into a room you feel like okay I know the rest of the room let's just go yeah at that point you know there there's probably and again it's very hard to do brain imaging on a cqb team as they're doing you know as they're clearing but i would say that there is probably a decreased level of default mode network of the brain that's happening which is allowing you to get into that flow state which you know Once you start moving, you're flowing like water through a building. Yeah, that's what we call it, free flow. It just felt like you just felt like you were flowing through every, like nothing could stop you.

Even couches or chairs. It just everything kind of moved out of the way. It was kind of interesting. Although we did use a lot of what you call PEDs, personal enhancement drugs, such as like monsters, Copenhagen. I'm pretty sure monster is kept alive by the U.S. military. I'm pretty sure this too. But I feel like there's an, as a medic, I feel like there's an issue with these specific things that seem to be the big three, which is, you know, caffeine, pre-workout, nicotine. And that's dehydrate, like rabble.

You talked about it in your article with the Marine Times there about rabdomylosis, dehydration. And that's, these guys are using this now. So the offset for that is what? How do we monitor that besides having someone get an IV? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like you said, the supplement use is rabid across conventional units, across soft units. And these all have certain shown positive short-term effects, right? However, what they don't do is they don't or they have not been shown to significantly elevate cognitive activity or enhance neural pathways or disrupt the brain's default vote network.

And that I think is the biggest difference here between conventional PEDs that are in use right now. with the microdosing of psychedelics, whether that be silocybin or LSD. You keep name-checking something I think some psychonauts may know, but the rest of the public might not. What is the default mode network, and why is it important to get it kind of not chattering? Right. So the default mode network of the brain is an area of the brain that's activated when the mind is, wandering, not committed to a task, and you're thinking about your own emotional state during a period of wakefulness, right? And what's generally viewed as the ego. And the research shows

that a person's problem-solving ability is, you know, and again, this is partially my views as well combined with the research is that a person's problem-solving ability is typically constrained by his ability to think beyond this limited set of experiences that are housed within that default mode network or within the ego. And the attempts to find solutions when you're searching for solutions to a problem, what do we do? We go and we look back at our past experiences and we try to find a piece of the puzzle that fits in to this space that we are seeing, right? So if I don't have that experience or if the DMN, as we'll call it, as it's referred to, the default mode network of the brain, is not allowing you to find that solution

or find that puzzle piece that needs to fit into a certain tag, you're going to have a high level of difficulty in attempting to solve any problem or issue or problem set that you may encounter. And again, a good way to kind of go back to other conventional military experiences. If you have been doing CQB, but let's say you haven't ever done a you've been doing homes urban houses but you've never done a for example a gas and oil platform you're going to try to find ways to turn that go plat the gas and oil platform into a house in your mind as you are going through it and trying to clear it right and i'm sure you guys can can kind of relate to that no yeah definitely we did it we did a ship one time and it was that's not what we It was we tried to turn it into a house.

I completely agree with you. Also, you touched on the ego and I'm glad that you said something about that. I feel, and this is just me and my hip pocket observation of special forces and special operations across the U.S. military as a whole. The guys and gals that go and do this, they seem to be on an ADD or ADHD kind of spectrum, right? They're hyper-focused in that job. They're very interested into it. So they dial it down. They dial it into the last of the nuts and bolts, right?

That's at least what I think. That's also kind of what we are bred to do, right? I mean, people always say, you know, lives are on the line. You are responsible for it. You need to have contingencies for your contingencies. Well, okay, so the thing that I don't like about that, or what, and you wrote it in your article about it, You talked about Adderall, Ritalin, and Providal. These three, and these are amphetamines.

Let's just be honest. These things are synthetically created phetamines. Am I wrong or are they more safer than? No, 100% agree. I think Provisual is on a different spectrum than Adderall. It's the new go-Petamines. Yep, Adderall is absolutely an amphetamine. And, you know, like you said, I talk about the high-risk of addiction, the reptomyelysis,

the kidney failure that comes along with abusing these drugs or when you start mixing other things along with those drugs. Because let's face it, Adderall probably wasn't made for the healthy 24 to 35 year old special operator that's doing all manner of physical things while at the same time, probably having some fun on the weekends, you know, with alcohol and staying up. late and doing other things that basically is burning the candle at both ends. And let's be honest, you know that's what they're going to be doing. I'm not saying their children, but you know that's what they're going to be doing.

So let's switch off the operator for a second, because you know that if you give him a 30-day supply of Adderall, he's like, yeah, sure, I'm going to take one or two for the mission and the weekend's going to be awesome. I'm not being an asshole right now, but there's one or two that are going to do that. Let's switch it to Intel, like Intel analysis specifically, specifically target deck matriculation, where you've got to find, you've got a seed in the matrix is what we used to say to kind of see a pattern of life, right? Absolutely, yeah. Now, in your article, you talked about using LSD and psilocybin for that. Now, I've been out for a while.

LSD, I've taken LSD. It's amazing. If you're in the right mindset, it's, you know, the real. mapping, the MDMA, PTSD, what have you. But talk to me how or what or how LSD could absolutely, and I'm going to use the words of the street, open up the third eye of some intel analysts hunting for a tier one target. How is that? And it's non-addictive, so how is that?

How is that going to be specifically like ephacious for that? Yeah. So again, what my hope is for, you know, and who knows, a study like this may already be in the works and I just might not have the right clearances to know that this was going on, you know, and someone could be off in a corner laughing at me right now and saying, you know, hey, bud, you're late to the party. but what I would like to see to see if this actually would work, right? Because maybe it doesn't work. Maybe this is just a bunch of rah-rah and all that's going to happen is the analysts

that are exposed to an experiment like this or maybe going to get better, deeper insights into themselves, and it's not really going to open up the third eye for them to be able to put together a good target package or solve a complex organization's org chart or figure out who is responsible for certain things

within an organization. And I'm not familiar or not being familiar with the type of experience you've had with psychedelics, but I would venture a guest to say that you were probably macro-dosing. Yes, I was. I wasn't micro-dosing. The majority of the comments that I've seen or the people that have kind of approached me,

they've always, they always talk about their experiences with psychedelics, which I think from what I've read and what I've seen is a very, it's a very personal experience, especially when macrodosing, people have very personal experiences with psychedelics. And some of those experiences are not always really great, and that's why they talk about in the literature

that psychedelics aren't necessarily an addictive drug because no one really wants to have those type of very personal, very deep experiences on a consistently recurring basis. I didn't have a bad trip. The thing is, I'm not trying to steal the microdosing thing. I did macrodose. The thing is what I did was I read a lot. Like I said, being an 18, like a special forces medic, you're wearing the loincloth.

You're looking at alternative medication. alternative, you know, way of treatments. And I've been out. So I wanted to, I wanted to experience a, what they called a mind remapping, right? I wanted to remap my synapses. Absolutely. And you probably had the right setting. I did.

We probably had the right set, you know. I did. I had the right setting. I, you know, I didn't go into it. I did. There was fear, obviously, because, I mean, I've never done that before. And it's something that you, you hear the horror stories of, like, your face melting. whatever and what have you um but uh the setting was correct and it was absolutely an experience

like i sound ultra hippie i am from portland but you know my parents are going to be super proud of hearing this later but i did have an experience that was positive where other people have it and that's why i'm interested in microdosing because if you can get that i don't want to say alertness like caffeine but just awareness and your ability to think out completely outside of the square. Right. And I think what you're, you know, what you're alluding to there is, is enhanced cognitive function. Yes. So the other pads give us enhanced physical function. Um, increased heart rate, pupil dilation, you know, uh, some of them, uh, certain boosts of strength, et cetera. But the, the, the microdosing, um, has, again, has been shown to enhance

cognitive function, flexibility of the mind, the ability to, especially for a lot of us that are in this business, our egos are unmatched, and sometimes that gets in the way of our ability to problem solve and our ability to take a look from a different perspective because sometimes, a lot of times, I believe, when you start looking at things from a different perspective, you can see that your original perspective was maybe wrong. And not a lot of us like to believe that we are wrong because I think that causes ego degradation. And it hurts sometimes to have the type of lateral thinking, creativity, and elevated mood to be able to see that you are wrong. Because, again, you said you had a positive experience.

I think maybe some of the experiences that people do have is they see that maybe the way that I've been doing things, might not have been the best way for me or the best way for the mission, what have you. And sometimes they can cause a real cognitive dissonance between your ego and what's right. I agree. I mean, it was a good experience. I did challenge myself. Like, you know, the old wives' tales of the don't look yourself in the mirror.

You won't like what you see. So I did all of that. And I did have what they call a spotter. Because I just wanted to make sure I was completely safe. And it was actually an amazing experience. And it's the same, like, you know, everyone goes down and does these, these ayahuasca tours to, you know, do the remapping.

I thought that was a little touch much to go down to Costa Rica to do that. And from what I read, ayahuasca is very physically painful. I also read that. And I don't want to be in physical pain. I want to enjoy what's happening. I want to learn, but everything costs, gentlemen. Everything costs.

Exactly. Everything does have a cost. How do you sell the brass in the public on something like this and avoid the specter of MK. Ultra, you know, famously in case anyone in the audience doesn't know, CIA's literal LSD mind control experiments. You know, that's what people think of when they think of the government's psychedelics now. Yeah, I think the, the sum of the, it was funny as this article kind of started going viral, initially the Marine Corps Times, not the Gazette where I was public. which the Marine Corps times called it a study, which I was pretty proud of. I told my wife, now there's two doctors in the house. She thought that was pretty funny as well.

And then, of course, the reactions on social media were men who stare at goats, M.K. Ultra. Didn't we try this in Vietnam? Hasn't this guy seeing Jacob's ladder? And, you know, any other basically vilified perception of psychedelic. that you can think of. And I think that that has been

the biggest limiter to having these, well, other than the fact that LSD is a Schedule 1 drug, which means that the FDA sees that there is no prudent use for it, no clinical use,

nothing that would be of use from this drug. I think those are the things that have really stood in the way of meaningful psychedelic research. But I do think that that's changing with researchers such as Robin Carhart-Harris. I think that now we're in this third renaissance of psychedelics. And even, you know, Fatimand is having a resurgence. I just recently saw that on PubMed he had published something, an article called Microdosing Psychedelics,

be safe and beneficial and initial exploration. But the way to approach it or the way that I would approach it is by debunking some of the myths that are out there, you know, explaining exactly what happened with these old failed experiments of macrodosing. A lot of people also posted that video of the Army utilizing psychedelics with a formation of soldiers and seeing what macrodosing would do to soldiers. to see if they could either control soldiers or alter their minds. Well, it turned out just as they would expect.

You know, the setting wasn't right. There were no spotters, so to speak of. They just gave these soldiers massive doses of psychedelics, sent them on their way without really telling them anything, and tried to make them do drill, which I don't even like to do drill when I'm completely sober. So I could only imagine what drill and psychedelics would be like. and then you know the mk ultra experiments again done on unsuspecting mostly subjects i think at the time

at the cia people were closely guarding their coffee mugs because their peers would come by and just slip some lSD in your in your mug and you know that that bad case of the mondays that's a totally different you know different way to have a bad case of the mondays But from the perspective of, you know, explaining it to, I guess if I had to kind of defend this like a thesis or if I had to go and ask for money or for the resources from headquarters Marine Corps or the intelligence department to be able to turn this type of thing into a reality, you would, and everyone that I've come in contact with that has read my article from all different ranks, they've all been very interested in it. And they've all said that this is the type of divergent thinking that we need. Because I do believe that there's a certain amount of stagnation right now that's happening with creative thinking within the military. But I would just explain to them this what psychedelics really are, how they have been used, how they've been used in the past, and how they would be used in an experiment such as this. and I think that the military is a perfect incubator and a perfect petri dish for experiments like this.

And what I mean by that is you have a healthy, intelligent, screened population that you can utilize that are already volunteers and they can further volunteer for other studies. You can hand-select and you already know that they have a certain level of education or a certain level of experience. Additionally, we are screened, you know, physically all the time. Those of us that have been in the military or that are in the military know, you know, if you need your teeth cleaned, your chain of command is going to tell you about it. If you need to go get your flu shot, you're going to hear it from six different people if you're on a hit list. So we are pretty healthy population under constant.

or consistent, I would say maybe not constant, but consistent medical care. So it's easy to do experiments like this because you essentially have not complete control, but as complete as control can get when it comes to experiments like this. I completely agree because what you're talking about is you physically fit men and women who already volunteered once. And then there's also like what you, I think you mentioned it in your article, special access programs. They can volunteer for these SAPs or SAP programs, special access programs, and be under, you know, under the, I guess the watchful eye of folks that are going to be monitoring

this microdosing and everything else like that. But what I found interesting was that you think that this should be a like almost a double-blind, co-dependent with DARPA. Do you think DARPA should should take the reins for this or this should stay specifically in the five-sided puzzle palace? I think that I don't think that they're mutually exclusive. I think both could happen. I think DARPA has a lot of very intelligent individuals that works for it. And I think that it could be a co-study. They could be done. And I only say that because they have a lot of resources and they have a lot of a lot of money when it comes to stuff like this, but just experimentation in general.

So I think that that's where you can kind of gain the advantage. And it definitely, you need to have a double blind. A friend of mine suggested to me when I was writing this article, well, you know, you need to have a third set with a placebo. And I kind of thought about that for a little bit, but then didn't necessarily agree with that because I didn't want to complicate the study even further because I don't think, I think that might have, again, I think it just would have complicated things if you've got a, quote, placebo group,

and, you know, they're not, because they're going to know after a while, my assumption is that they're not, they're not feeling any true effects of whatever it is that they're taking. But I think it's absolutely sufficient to have two groups, one microdosing, one not, closely monitored, closely monitored with additional drug tests as well to make sure that they aren't using this study to maybe circumvent the DOD's drug policy and taking other drugs because they're thinking, oh, well, you know what? I'm being given drugs, so I'm going to use this to go and experiment with other drugs. because I think that's very important to isolate

microdosing in a clinical setting from other recreational drug use. Well, the placebo is kind of, it's already happening if you think about it. Let's even look at the intelligence community. You already have groups of fusion cells that are compartmentalize. You might have just put, give.

And I don't know, I know that you're not trying to get money from the Marines right now, but if you were, I'd say put one group in with the, microdosing and make two compartmentalized fusion cells work on the same problem set and see what happens. Right. And I think that, you know, that would be great. But as I mentioned in the article, I would have something a little bit more controlled than a problem set because what happens with problem sets is if you're working on real world problem sets or you're working on past problem sets, what can happen is you can have an analyst that has experience with that problem set or somehow has seen something like that before, which could happen. could give one group over the other an unfair advantage, which could obviously tip the scales for one group over the other. Whereas I would rather have them doing something like playing a game of Go, which is an incredibly simple game to learn, but an incredibly difficult game to master, which is being used by Google as a benchmark for their AI. So I would because the game tests lateral thinking, creativity, all the things that that are

important for good intelligence analysis, good cognitive work. In a perfect world, in a perfect world, let's say this goes, right? The military, it's 2025, the military is microdosing. What happens when you have a bunch of guys, guys and gals getting out of the military, they're now veterans and they they want to microdose in the civilian world to for X, Y and Z issues or problems or

or or anything. They're technically and it's still a class one. So they so these veterans who have been using microdosing are now criminals like forward think that for me. Give me a hypothesis like what would that be decriminalization afterwards or or what? you know, maybe.

But then again, I think that the things that they're doing in the military, you would kind of be exempt under certain laws or under certain ways of looking at things. If you think about it, some of the things that we already do in the military, other people might see as being illegal. You know, we do go to other countries. We do kill other people. It's all in the name of good and peace. and we follow orders and it's not really up to us at the lower levels to decide whether, you know,

as long as the order is legal and you're not violating any laws, whether that's the Geneva Convention or any other rules that we are bound to as an ethical military. I think that you can't necessarily hold service members responsible for things, that were done under, you know, orders or under a, if you want to talk about the experiment or under a program, which was deemed legal by the government itself.

You know, but now if you're talking about now they are out and they want to continue to do these things. I mean, there's plenty of people out there that are microdosing. There are plenty of resources out there that people can research and find countless Reddits. subreddits, countless forums, I mean, you know, maps, the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic research, right, and a lot of resources that people can go out there and find things about microdosing and psychedelics. And at that point, I think we're all big boys and girls. You can kind of make the decisions with your own life as to what you want to do moving forward. And I think that

psychedelics are becoming a whole lot less taboo just like other drugs which are not we're finding that they're not as demonic as they have been made in these in the past years we're finding that they're not quite as evil as we thought they were and I think a lot of these views are going to continue to evolve and continue to change and who knows 15 20 years down the line some of the things just like prohibition right I mean I'll alcohol was the devil and we had a prohibition in this country. I always remind people of that. And now alcohol is probably the easiest drug to get a hold of in this country.

And also something that causes the most harm, both the users and to others. So the world is a strange place, you know. But I will say that, and I mentioned this in my article as well, war is not fair. And if something gives us the advantage, whether that's physical or cognitive, I think that we need to take that advantage and run with it as far as we can before someone else catches up to us. Because I don't know for a fact, but I can almost guarantee that there are other near-peer competitors. out there that are experimenting with stuff like this. You know, if Eastern Bloc, Germany was impregnating power lifters and giving them abortions in order to increase females' levels of testosterone in their bodies to compete at a higher

level at the Olympics, I don't know. Wouldn't you think that there's certain unsavory characters out there that are experimenting with all sorts of cognitive enhancers right now? So, and, you know, I'm sure either both of you or some of you have read the book, and some of your listeners have probably read it too, a book by Norman Oler, by the name of Blitzed, drugs in Nazi Germany, that essentially talks about pervitin, which was an amphetamine, being the drug that fueled the German Blitzkrieg and that style of fighting. our competitors are out there and they're looking for an edge and I think if we find it before them you know war is not fair and we don't have to play fair there's no world anti-doping association

doping officials waiting for me at the finish line at the end of a phase liner after I clear a house asking me to urinate in the cup even in modern combat right now if you watch some of these documentaries or YouTube videos and stuff like that about what's going on right now in Syria and Iraq and with Daesh and ISIS and those guys are I mean those guys are high and again it's not the type of of cognitive enhancement that is that is beneficial in any long-term manner and not something that I would

recommend for the U.S. military but they're experimenting you know they're trying to see what works I completely well I can tell you for a fact that when I was in Iraq and this was an early in the war around the 0-8-09 era or even in the 03 time that the Madi army and AQI were very much into amphetamines so that they would fight even after being hit a couple times they just kept they would just keep coming at you these I mean it was so the propaganda is these guys are true believers and I definitely know the Islamic State is into it dosing up high doses of amphetamines into their fighters too and like there you go you've been blessed by Allah now go crazy

but with that being said the go crazy you know running a muck type of thing and you look at some of the reporting negative wise of steroid use in the in the Iraq and Afghanistan war and how that kind of does that

I'm going to do you know these kind of road rage from U.S. troops kind of in combat zones committing you know kind of been linking to war crimes you know what happens what because it's it It will happen. I'm not saying it's not going to.

What happens when the U.S. goes too far with this? You know, that's a great question. In hindsight, it's always 2020. And I don't think that right now I have the answer for something like that because I don't,

I don't know what too far looks like right now, especially with cognitive enhancers, which is kind of what I'm advocating for, you know? So, because again, my expertise is in the field of intelligence and I've spent time with reconnaissance units, but what I want is a smarter, more adaptive, more mentally lethal, and cognitively flexible and creative intelligence analysts within the Marine Corps intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance enterprise that's going to allow. allow us to get to the next level. I guess you're right, because steroids, they enhance the fight syndrome instead of the

fight, fight, they enhance that. It increases aggression, whereas what you just, you kind of just explain it, you're looking at microdosing as a cognitive, becoming cognitively lethal. If you go too far, you're experiencing ego death. It's not the same thing. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's pretty much the exact opposite of steroids.

if you will in a way and and one of the so one of the things that has been brought up to me again by my friend the former marine helicopter pilot that's that's he's very into into psychedelics and research is a lot and very intelligent on it he said you know one thing that I could see said from this is what's going to happen when and this might not happen with microdosing but everyone reacts differently and it may happen he said what's to happen when the cognitive abilities of these Marines or sailors or airmen or soldiers start to become so enhanced and expanded that they get a look inside of that total connectivity, you know, the psychedelics, the whole movement of the psychedelics being about love and peace

and that we are all connected. And he said, what starts happening when if they get a taste or a feel of that, and they start to realize, I'm using this as a war machine. And he says, is that going to cause them to step back from what they're doing and not want to do, you know, not want to, as I've mentioned, said to a friend, you know, expand your mind, expand the targets. But if you expand your mind, what if you don't want to expand the targets? That's the one drawback that I could see. I guess it would have to come down to the psychology of the of the individual. I think you're right.

You know, it's taken, I hate doing this, but let's take in 9-11, like the psychology of being attacked that you would think that if you could microdose to expand, and we're going to talk about target decking, it would have to, it would almost kind of kind of break down to the morals and ethos of the individual operator or intel analyst or soldier or airman or marine, right? It would break down to what he thinks. Okay. Exactly. And of course, and I mentioned this in the article, you really have to, the research for the subjects is just as important as the research itself, because you have to be able to not only have analysts that know what it is that they're doing and are very well versed in the basics of intelligence, right, because it's not going to immediately make them

the best intel analysts in the world. And they're not going to, you know, this isn't the limitless pill. That's what I want to kind of be clear out there. You're not going to take the pill and go to sleep on MCDP2 intel analysis and wake up and know everything that's in it. So you need to choose wisely there. and you also need to screen because even though there are a lot of healthy individuals in the military, there's also a lot of individuals that have some issues, whether issues caused by early childhood or development or issues caused by what they've seen in war or what they've experienced in training

or what they've seen their friends go through. So you also need to make sure that there aren't any sort of sub-cognitive issues that may be also enhanced by cognitive. of enhancers. I think that that is the perfect note to go out on. Major, thank you so much for coming on to the show and telling us all about microdosing in the military. Gentlemen, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And I hope the message gets out far and wide, because really that's all I'm here for. Thank you so much for listening. War College is me, Matthew Galt, Kevin O'Dell, and Derek Gannon. It was created by myself and Jason Fields, who doesn't want a party, please stop asking.

Follow us on Twitter at war underscore college and on Facebook at Facebook.com forward slash war college podcast. If you like the show, please rate us on iTunes and leave a comment. We will talk to you next week. Until then, stay safe.