Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Dr. Cole Marta

Episode Date: March 14, 2018

Dr. Cole Marta is running the MAPS stage 3 clinical trials for MDMA in Los Angeles. We talk about the process of MDMA therapy and it's breathtaking potential to treat PTSD.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty, little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Feral audio. Back together after going to Burning Man. And, wow, yeah, it, you know, over the last few days,

I've been trying to record an intro to this podcast and to try to encapsulate my experience at Burning Man. And it's quite challenging because no matter what, you end up spewing out these ridiculous cliches that are some serious eye rollers. And I know that ultimately I'm not supposed to be concerned with the perception of others, but, wow, you know, I'm really having to push down my ego a little bit

because I guess I don't want to admit or to say the following sentence because in the past, I've heard this sentence many times and have had seizure level eye rolls in response to this sentence. But I'm going to have to say it. Blah, Burning Man changed my life. And I know that saying that Burning Man changed your life

is possibly one of the least cool things that a human can utter on this planet. There's a few things you can say that are less cool, but not many. I've compiled a few of them here that are probably less cool than saying Burning Man changed my life. You could say I'm joining ISIS for real. I'm really going to join ISIS.

But then that's kind of cool because if you hear one of your friends say that, you've never heard that before, whereas you've probably heard many a soul rave about the great spiritual transformation that happened to them out there on the Playa. So maybe saying I'm going to join ISIS is actually a few notches cooler,

at least on the originality scale, than saying Burning Man changed my life. You could say dogs are wonderful to have as pets, but they're even better as meals. That is less cool for sure than saying Burning Man changed my life. So on the spectrum of coolness, on the spectrum of cool utterances,

saying Burning Man changed my life is above saying I like to eat dogs, but below saying I'm going to join ISIS. So before I proceed with my obligatory Burning Man rant, I'm just going to play a tiny clip from a YouTube video that went viral by the brilliant Kevin Ocer called How Is Burning Man? And I'm just going to play it to try to avoid

getting the inevitable stream of tweets telling me that this is what I sound like. So here it is. This is a really funny parody video about what it's like to get an ear beating from someone who just got back from Burning Man. It's just a tiny little clip. I'll have the link to the YouTube video

in the comments section of this episode. Cool. So how was Burning Man? How was Burning Man? What's wrong? It's just a fundamentally absurd question. That's all how was Burning Man? You should be asking me how wasn't Burning Man. How was Burning Man?

That's cute. I don't understand. It's OK. Don't beat yourself up. Let me say this. The burn was everything I needed it to be. Everything I wanted it to be. Plus, none of that. It was spiritual, physical, mental.

It was everything. It was literally everything. It's true, man. It's everything out there. As we were coming back from the festival, we passed our neighbor who knew that we were going to Burning Man. And she told us that when she returned

from her first Burning Man, she gave up everything that she had and moved to Paris to study baking pastries for a year, which is pretty amazing. It's such a powerful experience that they have a saying, which is, don't divorce your parakeet. The idea is that when you get back from Burning Man,

you are not allowed to make any serious life decisions for three weeks. Because if you're not careful, you can end up moving to India, shaving your head and becoming a monk. Or you can end up making radical life decisions. You might marry somebody that you met out there. You might decide to sell your house,

get a divorce, quit your job. But why? Why is this festival such a powerful event for so many people? So I promised myself that I would keep my Burning Man rant under 10 minutes. And I'm at five minutes now. So there's no way to answer that question.

Everyone's going to have their own reason for it. But I will tell you one experience that I had out there and what it did for me. So there's a structure out there called the temple. And when you're approaching any structure at Burning Man, you're probably riding your bike. And you're going to spend some time peddling in the direction of whatever the particular thing is

that you've decided to go in the direction of. And so you get to have all these mini pilgrimages out there. And so the temple, as you approach it for the first time, it, it was just, it's just beautiful. It's a $600,000 sculpture. The architect who built it had a $600,000 grant. And people had told us the temple is very powerful, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was.

So as you get closer and closer to this beautiful structure, you think, my God, this is just an incredible thing. And then when you get to the perimeter and you park your bike and start walking towards it, then the, the mood of the festival just shifts and suddenly things become a little more quiet. You're no longer hearing the cacophony of the varying types of music that are being blasted out of the insanely psychedelic art cars

that are riding throughout the playa. Things get a little quiet and you notice that people are hugging each other in front of this structure and that people are sitting and meditating in front of the structure. And when you walk into the structure, you are greeted with thousands upon thousands of images of people who have died and of articles of clothing, baby clothes, dog collars, pictures of pets, letters, inscriptions,

just an endless array of varying depictions and testaments to people who've passed away. And you feel as though you have walked into some kind of energetic field of sweet grief and it's overpowering and almost everyone in there is crying. You cannot avoid it. And when my mom passed away, I don't know that I really had like a funeral for her

in the way that I would have liked to have a funeral. Even like when we scattered her ashes, it was, I don't know, I just didn't achieve, it wasn't, it didn't feel right. And that is what I got to do in this temple, because all of my grief, all of my personal grief and the grief that comes when you lose a parent was suddenly held by a community of people who are equally suffering. And you're reminded of the fact that you are not the only person

carrying around whatever grief you have, whether it's for your dog or for a loved one or a relationship. And that, that interaction, you know, this sort of ongoing funeral, this ongoing mourning that's happening in this festival filled with life is so, it was so powerful for me that I was able to release a lot of grief there. And I mean, I'll be indebted to that community forever for that,

because it felt like something got pulled out of me into that place. And then the last thing they burn is this temple. So I don't know how many people were left at the festival at this time, 50,000, 40,000, I'm not really sure, but everyone sits around this temple as it burns to the ground. And you look up and all of the pictures and all of the letters and notes and all of the testimonials have been transformed into embers

that are being carried on the desert winds above the crowd that's silently watching this temple burn. Dust storms are kicking up. It was amazing. It was amazing. And then once the temple burns, the entire group starting from one side, moving to the other begins to howl like dogs.

It was really one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had in my life. Also, it didn't hurt that I ended up camping with a group of some of the coolest people on planet Earth. And they gave me a crash course class and how to be a human being again. So fuck being cool, man. It's an expensive addiction.

And thank God for whatever mystical force it is at Burning Man that turns cool people into burning people. So I'm just going to end this rant by dedicating this song to my beautiful camp, the Enchanted Booty Forest, and to all of those souls who are out there with me at the 2016 burn. This is Bootyman by Tim Wilson.

Casey, I got your cup. What a booty, shaking that booty. I saw the booty. I want the booty. Lord, what a booty. Bring on the booty. Give up the booty. Loving the booty.

Round booty. Down for the booty. I want the booty. Hunting the booty. Chasing the booty. Casing the booty. Getting the booty. Beautiful booty.

Smoking booty. Talk to the booty. More booty. Fine booty. Friends, we have a truly stellar episode of the DTFH for you today with Dr. Cole Marta, who when I recorded this interview, I had no idea it would actually be in my camp at Burning Man.

So a true synchronicity, and I am immensely grateful to the force that made that happen, as well as to the force that made this interview happen, which is actually the same force that made me meet Cole in the first place, my wonderful friend Shelby. So thank you for all of this, Shelby.

You can follow him on Twitter, at G-N-O-T-S. Okay, sweetie pies, we're gonna dive right into this episode, but first, some quick bivv-nuff. The mental institutions of our countries are filled with the broken-brained humans that destroyed their psyche by attempting to learn the various arcane codes

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to some chain store to buy rolls of toilet paper when you could simply go through our beautiful Amazon portal located in the comments section and any of these episodes are on the front page of our website. You don't need to go down to Target and have some child pop one of their festering boils all over your face so that a few days later, minnow-like parasitic worms begin exploding

from your nipples and slither off into your home, attacking your animals and crawling into your lover's ears, possessing her by wrapping around her cerebral cortex and driving her to plunge a knife deep into your heart. You can simply go to amazon.com through our portal and have the very thing you are going to risk your life to go pick up delivered to your house by a freshly cleaned, sweet-smelling employee

of the United States Postal Service or some other delivery service. Go through our portal, won't you? I know many of you wake up in the middle of the night screaming, how can I support the DTFH? Well, this is one of the best ways because if you go through our Amazon portal and buy anything from Amazon,

they give us a very small percentage of whatever it is that you buy and it costs you nothing. Bookmark that portal, won't you, sweeties? We also have a wonderful store with lots of beautiful merchandise posters and shirts and we just got some badass pens that should be up for sale by Thursday,

if you're listening to this on Wednesday. So that's Thursday, September the 15th. Check them out, won't you? I've got a couple of really cool events coming up that I'd love for you guys to attend. One of them is the Psychedelic Stories Benefit and After Party presented by Symposia. I'm gonna be telling a psychedelic story

along with guests like Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. So if you're in New York on October 8th, I'm gonna be at Lot 45 in Brooklyn. Lot 45 Bushwick and I hope you guys will come by. There's gonna be a lot of great people telling their psychedelic stories.

It looks like it's gonna be a super fun night. I'm also gonna be in the Multiverse on September 29th, doing a live podcast in AltSpaceVR. So if you have a VR headset or even if you don't have a VR headset and you wanna come hang out with me in virtual reality with some folks from Singularity University, then come see the historic first virtual reality recording

of the DTFH. I will have links to that at DuncanTrussell.com. Okay, pals, let's get this show on the road. Today's guest is Dr. Cole Marta. He's working with the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies on their phase three trial where they're seeing if MDMA is a potential treatment for PTSD.

He is a psychiatrist. He is also the supervisor of the Zendo Project, which is a wonderful thing that MAPS does where they create a safe space for folks at festivals who are having too weird a time. He's a super cool guy. I got to spend about a week with him at Burning Man and I feel really lucky that that happened.

And also, when we recorded this podcast, I had no idea that that was in store for me. So, Cole is an amazing human being. I will have links for where you can go if you wanna support the Zendo Project or if you wanna support the phase three trial of this very important MDMA study that is happening in Los Angeles.

So, friends, wherever you may be, please open up your heart chakras and send rainbow level blasts of pure and sweet love in the direction of my friend, Dr. Cole Mardin. Welcome, welcome on you that you are with us shake hands, welcome to you blue welcome to you

welcome, welcome on you blue It's the Dougie Trousel family. Dougie Trousel, Dougie Trousel, Dougie Trousel, Dougie Trousel Dougie Trousel, Dougie Trousel, Dougie Trousel Cole, welcome to the Dougie Trousel family art podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I've been a big fan for so long. It's so excited to be here.

The fact that you listen to the podcast is an incredible honor. You are a doctor and you're doing research and what I consider to be one of the most important fields right now, which is studying the therapeutic benefit of psychedelics. Exactly, yeah. And can you talk a little bit about where we're at right now?

I know that there's a lot of news that's been popping up about ketamine and it being hailed as the next breakthrough treatment for depression. Right, right. So with ketamine in particular, there's been a lot of study already done that has shown that it is beneficial

for treatment resistant depression, which is not your typical depression and there may even be a reason that people who suffer from treatment resistant depression who are responding to ketamine aren't necessarily suffering from the same thing because it's like depression is most likely many things. And with good two thirds of them

responding to the typical treatments available, but still a lot of people falling through the cracks. So ketamine has been shown to be effective in 60% of cases in reducing depression by 50% on these scales that they use in studies to measure depression and severity. One thing has been trying to extend the benefit. Most of the studies initially were done with a single dose

and what repeat dosing has shown is that you can extend that benefit by repeat dosing, but the overall safety of that isn't entirely established. And hopefully that they're going to be establishing that with this. I just got this news myself that S ketamine, which is an enantiomer of ketamine, is getting breakthrough designation, I believe, and getting basically pushed through the process

of possibly being brought to market more rapidly, which is huge. What I don't understand about it is people have been using ketamine for years as a party drug. I never did it. Right. I know people who I know have used it. It's actually sounded really terrifying to me.

Right. Not interested in it at all as a fun psychedelic, but I never heard people reporting an alleviation of depression from using it recreationally. So what's the difference? Yeah, that's interesting. Well, of course, set and setting is important. What people are getting on the street is very different.

And I think it's interesting that even though it does sound like a not terribly fun experience, people keep doing it. So my sense is that it is doing something of benefit for those people. And maybe it is making those people who did enjoy using it over and over feel better. There are a lot of people who believe that addiction start that way, that most people don't, with all of the negative consequences of experimenting with drugs, people seem to do it anyway.

And some people tend to repeat doing it after their first time. That saying that I think it'd be a mistake to think that getting ketamine off the street and taking it in that kind of way is a good way to go about treating your depression. I'm sure a lot of people are trying that right now, though. And the method that it's currently being administered to treat depression is intravenously, correct? Primarily, that's what the studies have been done to date.

There are a couple of smaller studies that have been done looking at different routes of administration, like intranasal, intramuscular injection, even oral. Why would it make a difference if I were injecting ketamine or I was snorting ketamine if I wanted to use it as a treatment for depression, if I wanted to self-medicate? Let's say I somehow managed to obtain pharmaceutical grade ketamine. Why would it make a difference in self-medicating

or trying to treat my depression if I were injecting it or snorting it? Well, I wouldn't recommend doing that, but I would recommend finding a doctor. There are doctors all over. This is already legal. That's the great news about ketamine. Ketamine can already be used to treat depression. If the patient or the participant is meeting criteria for treatment-resistant depression,

I would recommend talking to one of these doctors who do that. As far as there are some pharmacokinetic differences between intranasal, intramuscular, and IV, so IV, you have the greatest control over how much is in the bloodstream at any given time. Intranasal, it's absorbed at about 45 to 50%, so you'd have to double the dose. It's also absorbed more slowly. It goes through the liver.

The liver turns it into norketamine. It's not entirely clear how much a role ketamine versus norketamine is causing this antidepressant effect that people are noticing, how big a role the dissociative effects are. That subjective experience is helping with the experience of the ketamine, which would be expected to be higher if you get the higher concentrations in the blood, the way that the studies have been designed so far has been to try to minimize that as an unwanted side effect by giving it IV over 40 minutes.

You're slowly getting a little bit of ketamine over 40 minutes, as if you give that same dose, intramuscular, intranasal, then all of that is being absorbed relatively quickly compared to taking an IV. Gotcha. You're getting these higher peak concentrations in the blood. So don't go snorting ketamine to cure your depression. There's plenty of clinics around, at least in LA. I have a friend who just went to one and reported incredible results.

But this, now you're talking about untreatable or different, what did you call it? Treatment resistant. Treatment resistant depression. Now, okay. And I know that you're in a position where you have to be very careful about what you say, because you're a doctor and you don't want people to, but I'm not in a position where I have to be that careful. What about just the blues, man?

What about just feeling a little off, going to get some intravenous ketamine? It's probably going to help that too, isn't it? Isn't it just in general going to create a kind of positive benefit for people regardless of the type of depression they might be experiencing? Most likely, but we can't say anything with any certainty unless we show that. Right. And I'm all for doing that kind of research and showing that, so that we can make those kinds of statements in a way that,

if ultimately you just score some stuff off the street and you're like, oh yeah, I heard this is going to help me with my depression and you try that, and it doesn't work, you can't hold the drug dealer accountable. Whereas if we do it through the rigorous study and the route that I'm an advocate and a fan of, then I'd like to be able to tell you what I'm doing to you. I'm going to give you this medicine, and right now, if I were providing that for your average blues, or not to even to play that down, like if I'm giving that to you for suffering in any way, of course I want that to work,

but I don't want that to work at the expense of some failing kidneys down the line, which is like that's in the abuse population with ketamine, that's what we're seeing. And we don't know where that line is. We know that people who abuse ketamine like hardcore, I think the literature that has described this lower let's, it's called lower urinary tract syndrome, the literature that's described that is people who are taking like a grandma day for weeks or months or years, polysubstance users, so they're not just taking ketamine, so we don't know the significance of it.

We haven't seen it in any of the studies that we've done, even repeat dosing studies, but we don't know if do we start causing serious damage to someone's bladder, at the 15th time that we give it to them, or at the two billionth time that we give it to them, and we don't even have to worry about it. But I don't want to be, I would never want to make that recommendation to somebody who there might be other options for, meditation might work, cognitive behavioral therapy techniques might work for their average blues, if they're just having a rough day keeping things in perspective, spending time with family, hanging out with friends, like there's all these other

things that I would recommend before ketamine. Boring! We want to shoot up kids, man! Maybe one day that will be proven safe and effective. But you know what you're doing is the Lord's work, of course, and you're saving a lot of people from destroying their kidneys, and so, and I hope I don't, I know I'm being a little flip about the whole thing, but I do think we have to be incredibly careful with this, but anytime I hear about something like, where people are saying, oh this is a breakthrough, and it's not just coming from one source, but it seems like it's sort of everyone is getting

quite excited about this, as someone who's suffered from depression and has been in the grips of depression, I'm not in it currently, but if you've been depressed once, really depressed, it's awful, and you live in a kind of, you don't, I don't live in fear of it, but you know, well that says to happen once, it can happen again, and it's exciting to know that if I do find myself sucked into that place again, there's an option. 40 minutes going to a nice clinic of getting a ketamine can actually somehow loosen the grip. Within hours. Insane.

Within hours, like by the next day, and you know, yeah, for anybody who has dealt with depression, they know, like there's this great quote, and I don't want to misattribute it to it, but I'll attribute it to who gave it to me, which is my buddy Mario Grimm, and I have it in my wallet forever, I hope I still do, and it was like to save the universe, or to save a single person is to save the entire universe, so like when you're that person who's depressed, like your entire universe is depressed, like that's your entire perspective, right, like when you're low and depressed, you're not taking into account that, you know, everybody else is feeling fine, other people in your life are feeling fine, or whatever, like

that's the, your entire universe is seen through that veil, you know. Your entire subjective universe is in a kind of froze, it's like the Chronicles of Narnia, everything turns to ice, everything's frozen, so many people don't even realize they're living in an ice world, that's what's so creepy about depression is everything, it slowly can freeze, and before you know it, you're in an ice age, and you don't even realize it, and yeah, it's a terrifying situation. Now, I want, you said earlier that when you administer a psychedelic or a medication, you want to know how it's working, and this I think is one of the most interesting aspects of the field of psychiatry as compared to some of the other fields, which is like, for example,

the human heart, it's a pump, we basically know how it works, it pumps blood, and you know when you're giving certain substances exactly what's happening, but the human brain as compared to the human heart is this tangle of mystery, and so how can you ever really know what a psychedelic or a psychiatric medication is truly doing to that organ? And I'll take it one step further, what you're doing to somebody's mind, like the mind and the brain are not, we may know that SSRIs, for example, increase serotonin in the pres, you know, the synaptic cleft in the brain, like what that does to the mind is, which is really the, you know, the subjective experience of the world is what we're kind of going for, so you're right, it's, you know, it is,

it is a messy world trying to piece together what exactly it is that we're doing to you, and when I said it, I meant what am I doing to your body, like what we can know through study, what kinds of adverse effects tend to arise, and what kinds of benefits we're going for, and whether or not we can measure whether those benefits come true, then on the molecular level of what exactly is happening, and why we're getting those outcomes that we're getting, that is a very complicated, complicated entangled mess, and I would say maybe more so for psychiatry, but equally so for a lot of the medications that work, and a lot of the medications that we give that are successful, I think the attitude of the FDA has been not obsessed with explaining

exactly why, because that can take forever, or may never happen, but is it effective, and is it safe, and to be able to have those two data to look at side by side, like maybe it's not safe in that, you know, people who suffer from migraine headaches may be taking SRIs for whatever reason causes some of those people to exacerbate the migraine headaches, so in those people it's not worth taking, so it's worth trying something different, but knowing that information is really the primary goal of the FDA in assessing these kinds of things. Gotcha, but let's talk about the synaptic cleft a little bit. Can you give me a primer on the synaptic cleft, like a synaptic brief synaptic cleft 101 primer? So the synaptic cleft is the space in between the end of one neuron

and the receptor end of another neuron, and each neuron can extend out several, they look a little like tentacles, they're really interesting if you can actually like see electron microscope pictures of these things, and so they send out their protrusions to send the information to the next neuron or many neurons downstream, and they do that via sending molecules through the synaptic cleft that either create or stop an electrical signal from carrying down the next neuron onto where it feeds, so it's a very, very complicated. And these molecules are stored in things called synaptic vesicles, right? And so these molecules are in limited, they're limited amounts of these molecules in the brain, and they have to, they sort of like replenish at varying rates, correct?

Yes, they're turned over, they're converted into other molecules, there's turnover of everything inside of every cell constantly, like there's, the building blocks are actually not that broad, which is why little things can have big effects across, you know, the entire body, simple molecules can have profound effects and why pretty much every living thing can live off eating the same stuff, because we're all, and every cell is really, it's not as broad a basic, you know, a basic set of molecules as you would hope, or maybe... So it's like letters in some kind of neurological language? Sure, sure. But that you can modify, so like you have tyrosine, you have an amino acid that you get typically from your diet, and that gets, you know, tinkered with by enzymes that stick

in an oxygen group here, put a methyl group there, and now you have serotonin, and now you take that off and now you have dopamine, like it's these base molecules, all the amino acids, all the nucleic acids, that almost everything is really made of, not a whole lot comes from outside of, well, everything really has to come from your diet, which is pretty much all the same stuff. So if the human experience can be said from just a scientific materialist perspective as being the harmonization of these varying neurochemicals or molecules as they move through the synaptic cleft, then is it safe to say that the human experience happens in a place of emptiness, that the synaptic cleft is kind of like a, it's interesting because it's a cleft, it's an empty

space where these chemicals are interacting. So is it woo-woo-wee to say that the human experience happens in the emptiness of the synaptic cleft? I would say it's so much more complicated than that. You have, that is where the communication between one neuron and another neuron occurs, and it's the amalgamation. But they're not touching, right? They're not touching, they're dropping molecule bombs on one another. So they have to launch these things across the synaptic cleft. So is it like- And it takes a threshold level of communication in order to turn that neuron on, the next one on, and sometimes that communication is actually intentionally turning that neuron off. So it doesn't fire. Okay, so we have, you and I have now

completely, we've shrunk down to the point where a neuron is the size of a tree, and we're sitting, looking up a synaptic cleft. Yeah. Describe what I'm seeing as a molecule passes between these two. So if you imagine the receiving end of, you know, if you think about how water moves through a tree, like water moves through the root system up the trunk and out through the leaves through evaporation, if you were thinking about stacking one on the other and the roots sort of interacting with the branches of the other trees, except every tree branch on our first tree is attached to other tree, a different tree, and every single one is plugged into a root of another tree, which is getting information from all other trees and each one of its roots. But the

communication between the one and the other, if we thought about that movement of water as in a movement of charge, of electric charge, then what happens in between one and the other is it stops being charged at the end of the tree branch and the tree branch instead of, in this analogy I guess, instead of it continuing to be water, for some reason it's something else that gets released. It's not a continuation of water, but in this analogy it would have to be water that somehow is now communicated up the next tree. Right. So would you see a thing move? Like would you see like a glob you will go across? Would there be a, if you were small enough to witness a molecule, would you see the action? Yes, inside the synaptic cleft? Yes. Yes, so that's exactly what happens,

is the electric charge coming down causes the release of vesicles, these presynaptic vesicles, full of molecules, and those molecules are, you know, the serotonin for example, the packets of serotonin, the serotonin gets dumped into that cleft, so between the tree branch and the tree root, and the next tree root has receptors for picking that up, and inside of that space also there are things trying to destroy the serotonin, there are things trying to pump the serotonin back into the cell. Who's trying to destroy the serotonin? What shithead's doing that? Manu, monoamine oxidase, it's a enzyme. The party pooper of the brain. The party pooper of the brain, exactly. The party pooper of the gut, it's the reason that, you know, we're not like having,

we're not tripping out every time we need a meal. MAO inhibitors. MAO inhibitors block the MAO. So the MAO, monoamine oxidase, oxidizes the monoamines, and a monoamine is a single amino acid like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. Those are all, like I was saying earlier, like tinkered with tyrosine. And this is why you hear, this is why you hear again and again, if you're on an MAO inhibitor of any kind, don't take, be very careful, watch the fuck out because you need, as much as we would like to think, it would be nice to not have cops in our neighborhood, you need something in there telling your brain, whoa, relax a little bit, man, we don't need this much serotonin. So, you know, I, you know, sometimes I've had friends who've had wretched LSD trips,

but they're taking anti-depressant, you know, they're combining, they're combining very dangerous. The thing is, nobody knows beyond like, nobody, the real tragedy of, or unexpected consequence of making all of these schedule one drugs is, if put back research on these things, you know, we're just getting back on track from 1970. And we don't know, I mean, it's not like making them illegal made them completely unavailable, obviously. So, we have no idea, no one can say anything with any certainty about, you know, what the consequences are, except that there have been horror stories and, you know, it's entirely based on word of mouth. It's the highest level of evidence that we've had for a long time has been, you know, anecdotal. For example, remember this one,

if you take more than two hits of LSD, you will go legally insane. In total, seven in your whole, if you have seven hits of LSD over your whole life, that's when you cross the line. It could be like how legally insane in court or someone can use that against. I love that idea. You just would be. I like the idea of being legally insane. And like, yeah, it's like just that concept is really interesting. That is actually a sanctioned form of insanity, as opposed to illegally insane. Like, I've gone so fucking crazy that I'm breaking the law, but I think it's crazy just by this big map. That's a little bit curious. But yeah, you know, so, yeah, it is, it really is.

I mean, we don't, I guess you can say our homeless population is illegally insane. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's right. The largest provider of mental health care in the country is Twin Towers LA County Jail. Really? Yeah. Oh my God, that's the most depressing institution. It's the largest institution of mental health in the United States, last I heard. And this is coming from somebody who, this is their research. And I trust her opinion very much. That's wretched. And, you know, and that's, you know, that's the tragedy is these, they're going to jail because they're breaking all these gentrification rules, like, you know, getting charged with public indecency or because they're exposing themselves exactly like all the urination

stuff or like theft of, you know, grocery carts and record crate or egg crates. I use them for records, but yeah, you know, crates and those kinds of things are getting confiscated by the cops when they were gentrifying Los Angeles downtown LA. This is, you know, when you think about the preciousness of the human nervous system and that from time to time, it just for people, it's just not working out, man. The synaptic, the synaptic cleft stuff, stuff's a little funky in there. And when that happens, your reality tunnel can become a hellscape. And then to imagine that in that hellscape, there are actually armed beings that will come and throw you into a dungeon for peeing. Right. Because there's nowhere to pee.

That goes in against the rules. Fuck. And then when you're in that dungeon, what kind of treatment are you even getting? Like, who's administering the treatment and are they overrun and they're overworked and overburdened and takes a saintly person to do that kind of work too. I mean, it's also a dangerous place for everybody there, the patients. It's dangerous for the patients because they're in a, you know, around people who, you know, there are people who break the law because there are people who, who laws exist for, if that makes sense. There are people for who, you know, for whom they had to be told not to punch people and steal things from people. They had to be told because it didn't, it wasn't intuitive. Those people exist.

As much as I hate to say it, they exist. There are people that exist that that does not come intuitive to them. And the only, the most effective thing we found so far to work with that kind of personality is punitive. Like, you can only attach consequences to actions because there isn't a lack of, a complete lack of ability, capacity for empathy and insight doesn't allow really much other recourse that we found so far. Based on that, let me just throw out a completely annoying question because there's no way anyone could have a quick answer to this. But I just want to throw it out and just, just as a thought experiment off the top of your head, you have been given unlimited resources. You have been given complete authority, like, you know, what do they call it?

Diplomatic immunity, like in movies, like, I've got diplomatic immunity. I can shoot any one of the face I want. So you've been given diplomatic immunity as a doctor by the FDA, by the DEA. You are allowed to use any substance that you want, you have any space that you want, you have unlimited finances. How would you treat the mental illness slash homeless problem that exists in the United States, given this level of freedom? Individualized plan for everyone based on their abilities and goals. And if they are too far down that road of disorganization and, you know, auditory hallucinations, control, you know, their actions and things like that, that if with unlimited resources, give them space

to live that life, you know. What would that space look like? Actual physical space. And meaningful interactions to have that make sense within the context of what they're experiencing. Let's say I've got a pyromaniac rapist. What's the compassionate... That's different from schizophrenia. A schizophrenic pyromaniac rapist. Yeah, what do we do with him? So what do I do with him or her? What is the thing, you know, right now we get a schizophrenic pyromaniac rapist murder. And we might, it depends if you're in Texas, we'll execute you. If you're... But you know... Well, let's separate the schizophrenia from the pyro rapist murder. They don't happen, they don't mix together. Just because I don't want to, like...

Oh, I don't think... There's a stigmatization of mental illness with that. People are afraid of people who have schizophrenia and... Oh, no. I don't... Right. And it's fair to clarify. So yes, just to... Some of my favorite people on Earth are schizophrenics and I don't mean that sarcastically. And I'm glad that they... I mean, I'm sad. If they're suffering, I'm sad that they're suffering. But I think that many schizophrenics actually offer a lot to the world in the most beautiful ways. Artists. Absolutely. So I'm just saying this. You have this terrible nexus of all these awful things. Yeah. What do we do here? Right now, we throw them in a prison where they're around criminals who are probably exploiting them or terrifying them. Maybe they go in solitary

confinement. What do you do with someone? And also, not to complicate the question, what do you do with the thing that we already know? Which is that some people... And I know that there's the insanity defense. But a lot of times, some of these people who are doing the things that they're doing, they really don't know what they're doing. They're lost in this terrible vortex. So what do you do with them? Right. I mean, in the fantasy, given all the resources and all of the space in the world, is create a space and world for those people that's separated until... Unless it becomes clear that they can safely be mingling with others. You know what you just described, my friend? What's that? You just described my explanation for what this universe

may be, which is... We're all in a virtual world given to us to keep us from hurting others. We're godlings. We're gods that perhaps... Like, if I was... Okay, so let's imagine. And again, we're doing thought experiment now upon thought experiment. But let's imagine a fantasy where there are immortal, super powerful beings that have to police each other, right? And one of them runs amok. You know, who knows? They destroy a few planets. They... I don't know. They decide that they attempt to become king of the entire universe. They... Whatever it is. I don't know what... We can't even imagine crimes that an omnipotent omniscient being could commit. You know, let's imagine that. So what would you do? What would you do? What would be a form of incarceration?

Oh, you give them a subjective universe that they experience again and again and again and again until they get it into their head, the importance of compassion and empathy. And that's what we're all in the midst of. Some kind of prison for young godlings where we're forced to reincarnate over and over again until we... Don't learn the lesson of compassion and love. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But what about those people who really don't appear to have a capacity for empathy and love? And they just... They're just... Are they a part of your simulation? Or are they... You see, that's where we get in this terrible... That's a fair question. And an interesting question. No, I like to imagine... I think that... What's it called? Solipsism, right? The moment you start

thinking that now we're dealing with a series of projections. No, I like to imagine that this... If we are in a simulation or as the... You know, that term simulation, I've been using it too much. And I think it reduces the holy H-O-L-Y, the holy quality of this experience by calling it a simulation somehow. Because the word sounds so mathematical and technical and absolutely devoid of any kind of organic... Worldly. Yes. But still, if this is some perfect university, is the term that I've heard, which I prefer, a university, an academy, a Hogwarts for young godlings, then it's nice to imagine that we've been paired with other fellow beings who are also in the same class as us. So anyone you run into in this objective experience of being a human being

is someone who's taking a class and godhood with you. And so it's not a projection of yourself. They're just classmates who upon the end of this particular class or when this semester's up on summer break, I think you're gonna have to deal with them. And they're gonna be like, what the fuck, man? Really? Did you really... You really murdered me? Right. What are you thinking? Why? What are you doing? I think it'll be embarrassing. I'm sorry. You know, I was completely lost in that one. But I don't know. But I do like to fantasize that there are actually other beings in this universe besides me. Sure. Even though I don't act like that all the time. Yeah. So yes, I'm sorry. So again, so cool. Yeah, so you put them in a space. Yes. And you allow them some autonomy

or something like that. Yeah. Or, you know, in given all the resources and all the space, that's I think what would be... That's probably what I would do with somebody who has no capacity for empathy and is only trying to hurt others. I think that that is what that is what sending people to jail and things is but with our limited resources. Let's take Jeffrey down. It is removing people. I mean, you can even take like a moral judgment out of it from like a safety of the herd kind of thing. There are some people who for whatever reason do more harm when... I mean, that's where this term antisocial or sociopath or psychopaths, you know, that's an actual diagnosis of personality disorder. And it's not called antisocial because they would, you know, most

people actually misuse that term and they mean like that they're shy. Yeah. But antisocial means like it's it's anti like what's necessary to have a society. Right. You can't have a functioning society. It is antisocial to, you know, deliberately harm others to steal from others to and, you know, psychopathy is even, you know, another level like enjoying doing those things. Yeah. Yeah. So I forget where we were. Well, no, we're trying to solve the problem of like what to do with these folks. Right. And like the fan, you know, I just think about this a lot like, man, if I like if I was an unethical being and could run any study that I wanted to and I had access to like the current living serial killers of the world, like I just watched this monstrous documentary

on one of these beings, you know, and like, God, I can't remember. It's on Netflix. I can't I think he was like a strangler who was was really bad because he he actually was incarcerated but got some kind of plea deal and then was released and then murdered some more. But I can't remember which guy it was. Maybe that some some strangler somebody who does this is what they do. He got the term. Yeah. And it's an interview with him. Okay. And so the interviewer asked him a question and he's emoting a kind of callousness, but his whole face, every single question, his whole face ticks up and crumples. He's got a tick like this tick that manifests that to me, from a non psychiatrist perspective,

from a non doctors like I treat it felt like you were witnessing an ocean of suffering, like smashing up against this like fixated callousness to try to seem like he didn't care. I was so terrible to sad. It was just so sad to think like God, the suffering inside this being. So you imagine if I could take that being and I had a world sized laboratory or I had some laboratory to put him in, could I theoretically heal that being on the assumption that what you were seeing was an inkling of an emotion, a capacity for emotion and internal suffering, even even no like like, like, let's imagine that that's just he's just got a tick, you know, he's got just some kind of skipping record inside of whatever causes his ability or side

effect of an antipsychotic medication. Oh, that's probably what it was. That's almost certainly what it was. Oh, that's so cool, man. That's a tardive dyskinesia causes facial ticks. Well, you know, as I was watching it, I did think initially that must be some form of tardive dyskinesia. But hopefully he was feeling emotion, hopefully for his sake. But let's say, okay, let's imagine this is a, this is, but it's the operating system he's running. Should I have these headphones on? Oh, no, I just keep them on in case some buzzing starts because, so let's imagine that he's, okay, he's running, it's the same motherboard. Yes. Same hard drive as all human beings, you know, maybe running a weird operating system or maybe the motherboard has some, I don't

know, some wires out of place or something like that. The question is, are some beings neurologically unredeemable? Or what I would hope if we have the sufficient technology or the sufficient healthcare, aren't all beings, isn't it potential? Aren't all beings healable psychologically? Aren't all beings transformable? Can't couldn't there theoretically be some transformation that could happen with Jeffrey Dahmer? I hope so. I hope so. But a lot of research being done into that field with, with psychopaths has been that actually trying to do psychotherapy, for example, with them can make them that it can be more dangerous to actually do psychotherapy with them because they become more sophisticated at carrying out whatever they're trying to do. Like they

become more sophisticated at understanding human emotions and interactions. Like a true, a true sociopath typically is able to pull off, like they're actually like known for their superficial charm. Yeah. Like because they study the way that people interact in order to achieve their goals. Okay, so this is interesting because it's almost as though you're discussing like an artificial intelligence here. Like you're, you're, you're talking about a thing that is just a, a, a mimicker or something. Like isn't even a sociopath isn't somewhere underneath all the sophisticated mimicry that they're using to manipulate their environment to produce some malicious result. Isn't underneath at all some human, I don't want to use the words human for

sure. And, and if you take the value judgment away, they're just as much a human as anyone else. Yeah. Like you're putting the value judgment, I guess, in a way in that that that's not an acceptable way to have a life also. Oh, fuck. That is also an acceptable way to have a life in the myriad of ways to have a life. It's just not acceptable and having him as your neighbor. Holy shit. So he so far needs to be removed until we have a better way removed from other people if they are outwardly predatory and actually acting on these things. You're saying I'm putting a value, I'm, I'm looking at the serial killer. I'm looking at Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, skull fucking street prostitutes at night that he's found and putting their heads

on altars. And I'm, I'm saying, you know, that's not, that's not on any level an acceptable way to experience being a human. And you're saying actually, if you look at the spectrum of potential human experiences, that is a human experience. Correct. Oh, wow. This is a different conversation that I'd planned, but I'm excited that we're going. I love it. But so, and I'm not saying I'm a fan of that. No. And in no way do I think that that's an okay thing to do. But I don't think it's an okay thing to do because I'm also a human who can't imagine doing such a thing would, you know, you know, would shiver at the concept of being like a wrap knowing I lived near the sky or, you know, whatever. It's terrifying because his prey was human beings. And he's off. And that's

awful. But that's all like putting a value judgment on don't we need value judgments aren't valued. Isn't it? I mean, I know I love what you're saying. And I like I'm like, I'm scrolling through in my mind all of the value judgments that I'm placing on everything and the moral sort of the weird moral map that I put over the world. And but it and then I'm thinking, oh, shit, am I some kind of secret fascist and that I would want to take all the Jeffrey domers of the world. And I would want to like, touch their hearts and transform them and place within them something or find the thing within them that was pure love. And because this is what I believe, Cole, I believe inside every single human being, there is a spark of love.

And I think for lack of a better word, I think there's better words for it. We don't have the words in the English language or any human language. But I think if you can find that place, and then there is the potential for completely melting all of the layers of permafrost that we are calling insanity or psychotic behavior, that's what I like to believe. And but now I'm thinking again, that's separate though, insanity and psychotic behavior is different than a psychopath. Okay, a psychopath. I believe in the heart of a, even the heart of a psychopath, underneath all the whatever. I mean, God dammit, I want you to shoot this down. And I feel like some hippie fascist by saying, I think that I could go in there or theoretically,

some technology or some as of yet non existent substance, could access that place, wake them up, shift the entire whatever the, I don't know, the subjective computer program that's running this awful series of behaviors and turn them into a saint. Yes. And, and I hope so too. But I also do not need that to be the truth, I guess, in order to still make sense of things. Right. Like, I think that that's the reason we have prisons instead of just, you know, giving everyone the death penalty, who repeatedly demonstrates an inability, like, we're all holding out this hope for these guys who are living and dying in prison for their whole entire lives, because of repeated demonstration of an inability to kind of demonstrate hope in that way that we all hope that they have.

Yeah. And that we can find and, and maybe that's there, but maybe it isn't too. Maybe there are, if, if someone, there are, there are other similar complicated and mercurial, like, psychic functions that people, that we know people, like, live healthy lives without having or, you know, without developing a capacity for empathy is not so off the table. Like, Christ almighty, though, man, like, okay. So in my verse, let's talk about our different, you know, not only that, how evolutionarily adaptive would that, like, it's almost expected to be in our gene pool, like this combination of, you know, to take the, like, materialist, like, to the extreme. Yes, yes, please do. I'm not, by the way, but I'm happy to play the

role, play the role of the conversation. But to be as a rationalist, materialist, materialist perspective, like, how advantageous is it in the early hunter-gatherer that you don't care about, like, getting those resources, right, whatever that takes. Oh, yeah, right. Similarly, like, you know, we're talking a little bit about the politics and then we'll go too far into it, but like similarly, you know, the governments and countries survive by being, by rationalizing and being aggressive and rationalizing warfare, rationalizing mass murder, rationalizing, you know, whatever it takes to do that. I think if early, early on in evolution, and even through other species, other species, lack, if they lack any remorse for grossly

violating the rights to life and happiness of the others in the species, huge at, like, from a passing down your DNA, which is all evolution is about, the endpoint, the, the, the field goal, like, all you need to do to win at evolution is make it to sexual maturity. Nothing after that makes any difference at all. You could be the worst neighbor. You could be the greatest poet. As long as you, if you're a human being, as long as you make it to 15 and you can, and make a baby, and you can make it the baby, whether that's, make it the baby, whether you're making the baby because you, like, clubbed the other person over the head and that's the way it's going to go to, or because you became charming and intelligent and have a sweet ass of your

system. Yes. Like, whatever it is, and kids are the babies. Yeah, no, no, no, I know. And, and, and, and what, I mean, but when we look at things from this perspective, let's talk about our different versions of fascism here. My version of fascism is, I want to transform, if I can, if there is some kind of, for lack of a better word, soul inside of human beings, and I'd like to remind them that they have that soul, connect them, or rather, once you remember that you have that thing, usually the next connection that happens is with the rest of your community or with the rest of the universe, which creates a kind of mystical experience that can have profound, it can create really profound shifts in a human being's life. Yeah. And so I would like to do that for everyone,

right? Yeah. If I could, I would like that to happen to everyone because I think that if that happened to everyone, then this planet would upgrade, so to speak. I agree. So this is what I, but if it's true that we don't know, well, that's all well and good, you fucking hippie. Eat some more mushrooms and go, go to a fucking Rom-Doc retreat because here's the real deal, man. We are all biomechanical machines being driven by, like what you're saying, an innate desire just to replicate ourselves genetically, and that's it. If that's the case, then the technology that we need is to do a scan on people. We don't have it yet, but theoretically, if that's all we are, there could be some technology that we will have. And it's a terrifying thing to imagine,

where you could do a scan on a human being, check out the way they're wired, look at the wiring, and think, oh, unredeemable, unredeemable. We're not going to keep you in a prison. Sure. You're unredeemable. You are just a mimicking machine, a kind of semantic replicator who's just tricking your fellow machines into thinking that there's something worthwhile about you. And there isn't, because we've done the scan. You're a machine. I'm going to use your kidneys, though, and I'm going to put them in somebody who actually is functioning in the way that somebody who needs to be, functioning in the way that works for our society of transmitting DNA, where DNA is what we are, DNA transmitters. That's kind of terrifying, man. That is terrifying. That's absolutely terrifying.

And I think that value judgment is necessary before you get to that point from the rationalist, materialist perspective, is giving the value judgment that you're worthless as an existence, because of this. Your organs are worth something, but you're... Right, right. But your experience is worthless because of that. There's nothing, I think, from a pure rationalist, materialist perspective that would come to that conclusion, because that is one of... That life experience is no less valid. It's just less palatable to the rest of the group. Okay, but it's... I mean, right. But in that sense, it's like, look, if you're an unredeemable sociopath, and there's no... Hope. We all hold out hope that there is, I guess. I guess so. That's what we want.

And I mean, from... If I were the materialist, I would still hold out that hope. As far as... That's why we keep them... I would understand from that perspective why we must keep them separated from society, whether that's... I think it's a lack of resources that is a jail cell that could be an island, anything that separates in time and space, right? For the purpose of safety of the group. You said earlier you're playing the part of a materialist, but you're not. No. So how does that play into your... Is it being a doctor, a psychiatry? So how would you define that not being a materialist? Is there some metaphysical component to your life philosophy or some sense of... There is. I think I am a biologist.

I do believe in evolution and biology, but I don't believe that that is everything. I think that yes, getting to the age of sexual reproduction is all it takes to continue to continue the biological process, but I also don't assign any value necessarily to that. That is a demonstrable fact if you have the time to look at the data, right? But I don't think that that is everything. I think the rest of the experience, perhaps having the experience you want everyone to have, which I think is important for everyone to have and a lot of my heroes have been important for everyone to have and a lot of the people doing the psychedelics research believe very much. It's very similar to Bodhisattva mentality. There is an important

experience that people should have and it's fantastic that, for example, a lot of the psilocybin research is being done specifically with people with end-of-life anxiety because you know, a big fear of people who believe that these are important lessons and important experiences is that someone would make it out of here without having had them, you know? So I think that that is also happening and that the more people are, you know, that you can be in pursuit of something higher than that biological thing, but you can't ignore that that biological thing is happening around us and I think it's still, I think it still provides even if there isn't something that happens after somebody dies

and transitions into whatever that is. What's your personal opinion on that? I don't have an opinion on it. What do you think? You don't have any, you don't speculate? I speculate all the time and I love hearing all of the all of the conversation about it, but I don't have one that I have been, I'm not entirely convinced on any one, like I do, like it's, there's no like language for the thoughts that come up when I think about that stuff. I think of like, we got to come up with a language, I mean that's our job, we got to come up with a language because, you know, this is all a matter of quantification here and it's such an important thing to quantify and something I'm very excited to ask you about, Cole, because

as somebody who is far more versed in the way the human organism works, particularly to process reality, you're going to really have a lot more to say about this and that's more authoritative than anything I could come up with. And so my question is this, and this is why I started asking you about the synaptic cleft. When I started asking about the synaptic cleft, it was actually, I was trying to lead into this question, which is, where does consciousness come from? And is it limited to a body? Is consciousness limited to a body? It's the same thing as asking, what happens after you die in a different way? Right. And that's the eternal question. Like, there are materialists who would say that it is, that is all it is. It is the firings

of your brain and your neurons and that you're awake because of the actually serotonergic neurons in your brain, stem, and launch. Do you feel that? Is that your experience? Do you feel that after someone who no doubt is, and maybe can't? It is. And I think the descriptions, there's this guy, Carthart Harris, who's done some really amazing work with neuroimaging of people who are on psychedelics. He did psilocybin and he did MDMA so far. Maybe he's done more since I last looked, but the profundity of the mystical experience seems to correlate with the decrease activation of a particular neural circuit in the brain called the default mode network. And so, which is also, what you're sort of quieting down when you do meditation, the same network, the default mode

network. It's a network of neural circuits and regions of the brain that are hyperactive when you're in deep self-contemplation, when you're feeling guilty about things that you've done in the past. Yes. Something I've never experienced. When you're feeling anxious about how tomorrow's show is going to go, when you're mulling over yourself, who you are, who you are going to be, who you've been in the past, how you messed this thing up, or how that went really well, or this is going, you know, self-reflection and self-criticism all is sort of more active in this default mode network and it sort of flips to when you're doing something where you're in a flow state, or even when you're meditating, or when you're playing a game, when you're playing video games,

and you've loosed all track of who you are, where you are, what time it is, like all of that. Yeah, that is when the default mode network is off and you have the more like, I forget the name of the converse network, but it is the more like action-oriented, like executive kind of regions. So what's interesting is when you turn off the default mode network, but you're also not doing things, then you have these profound mystical experiences and these experiences of loss of sense of self, a disintegration of the ego, ego death, and all of these things that people talk about with mystical experiences and also talk about with profound psychedelic experiences, which that, to me, is why the psychedelic experience was based on the Tibetan book

of the dead. I think there is some hunch that having that kind of loss when you lose yourself, consciousness is not gone, that there is something else. And whether or not that's right, I'm not sure, but people believing it certainly makes them profoundly, it seems to have profound healing potential that people have that experience. And I don't mean like that people believe it, like I'm trying to trick them into something I don't think is true, I hope it's true, you know. If people have that experience, I think that that is as close as I get to believing I know and answer those kinds of mystical questions. Well, the experience is real. I mean, there's no question about it.

Right. The profound authenticity, and they've talked to people who, you know, from the Good Friday experiments that they've gone back and talked to those. The Good Friday experiment, for those of you who don't know, you tell them. Sure. So it was done by, with seminary school students, it was students of the School of Theology, I believe, at Harvard University, and on Good Friday, this is back before everything was banned, obviously. And tell everybody what Good Friday is, for those who don't know, Good Friday is. Do you know what Good Friday is? Good Friday, it's associated with the resurrection. I'm not totally sure.

The curiosity about Good Friday is that they call it good, because it isn't good. But here, let me just read the, I've always thought, like, why the fuck do they call this Good Friday? Okay, so I'm just going to read, I mean, I get in the end result, but for, let's say, for the person it's about, they weren't having a great Friday. Good Friday is a Christian religious holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holidays observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Tritim on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, in May coincide with the Jewish, Jewish observance of Passover. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday. It's a better name for it.

Friday? Yeah, because Friday, because, you know, and Jesus was crucified on the third day, he rose again in accordance with Scripture. So this is when he died. This is the day he dies. So I don't know that I, I mean, I think if I was Jesus, and I knew people were calling that Good Friday, be like, fuck you, man, that was like the worst Friday ever happened. No way, that's like that necessary day. That's like... It's a Black Friday! Because what did Jesus say? He said, what's the last thing Jesus said?

The second to the last thing Jesus said? I don't know. So the second to the last thing Jesus said is, Father, why have you forsaken me? To me, this is why I will eternally and perpetually love Christianity. Because my God, if anything sums up the existential horror of being a human being, it's the second to last thing that Jesus Christ said. And it's also what all of us say in the midst of a challenging psychedelic trip.

Where the fuck are you? Give me the fuck! And then the second, and the last thing Jesus said, which I think is actually the, one of the perhaps antidotes to a terrible psychedelic trip is, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And that, the surrender, like, okay, okay, okay. I'm dying. I don't think you're there, but if you are, I give myself to you. Because a critical, a critical concept to grasp in the psychedelic experience also. The surrender is certainly something that is talked about in preparing people in this kind of

research. And by the way, really quickly for all those Christian nerds out there, I forgot. I think the very last thing Jesus said was, it is finished. So three, three, three, two, one, three, two, one. There you go. So yes, please. So, so Good Friday Experiment, this is the day that Jesus dies on the cross and they take these seminary students who, for them, this is a big fucking day, man. I mean, something to them.

So, yeah, there, there, it's a, it's a much bigger day to them than to me, obviously. And, but they gave them psilocybin and they spent the day in the church. And basically just talk to them about their experience afterward. And some of these seminary students went on to be like world-renowned theologians. And, you know, I'm sure if we, if we had Wikipedia, we could look up there. There are a couple like serious heavy hitters that came from that experiment. Houston Smith. Houston Smith.

Houston Smith. Houston, whatever. Houston Smith. Yeah. Houston Smith sounds like a Texan stripper, like a Texan dude stripper, but yeah, he wrote, Houston Smith is one of the more famous people that was involved in that experience. And one of the people who trained me, who trained me in ketamine therapy, actually, that was his, Houston Smith was his supervisor.

Wow. For his, for his, he did like an independent bachelor's degree. Anyways, cool. So, and one thing that actually Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, did for, I don't know if it was his PhD thesis, but it was, it was one of his, one of the things he published, which was a 30-year follow-up to the Good Friday experiment. And everybody who answered this questionnaire that he gave them said that it was among the top five, I believe, most mystical experiences of their entire life.

And these are people who went on to have an entire life and career in, you know, religious studies or, you know, in a particular faith. And with a significant number of them ranking it as number one. And all, if I recall, reported it as, you know, indistinguishable and authentic, indistinguishable from other similar mystical and profound experiences that they had. So that was, that was big deal, you know, to like get this sort of stamp of approval for that experience, because there is a lot of, there is a lot of concern and criticism, even, that having that kind of profound experience using these kinds of substances, even in,

you know, in the medical context, is, is cheating in a way, is cheating compared to like a lifetime of asceticism. Yeah, isn't that amazing, that prejudice against it, that to me is really a mess. And also, you know, I think that, and I, you know, who knows, this is pure speculation, but there is a book called The Sacred Mushroom in the Cross, the, the idea being that actually early Christianity was a mushroom cult and that what accidentally happened in the Good Friday experiment was they stumbled upon true Christianity and they actually did. That's a fun idea.

They actually did an authentic Christian ritual, which involves consuming psilocybin and, and, and, and doing a Christian ritual while under the influence of psilocybin. And so this is, this is to me where I think that a lot of, a lot of people end up getting hog-tied accidentally by the semantics of the conversation because when you are under the influence of psilocybin, you don't want to use scientific terminology to describe what you're experiencing because what you're experiencing is I think summed up quite nicely in altered states when they're doing experiments with psychedelics in the very beginning of the movie, and this actually was a line that got taken by ministry

in one of their songs, but the line is a schizophrenic is being given, I don't know, psilocybin LSD in the beginning of altered states and the, I think she is saying, I feel like my heart is being touched by Christ. And I think that that is a, yeah, those are the right words for it because when we are under the influence of a psychedelic, I'm not experiencing a release of serotonin in abundance across the synaptic cleft, I'm experiencing a connection to the divine that is replenishing me and reawakening me to the actual, to the actual cosmology of my subjective experience, which is very similar to the geocentric, the shift from the geocentric to the, what's it called, you know, and we used to think

that the, everything revolved around the sun and then it shifted thanks to Copernicus to the realization of everything. So we used to think everything went around the earth, this was called geocentricity, and then we realized, oh yes, actually everything goes around the sun, right? So in the same way, the psychedelic experience reminds us that the world does not revolve around you, but then in fact you are part of a vast cosmology consisting of this, of all consciousness. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You are encapsulated wave blip of that source. Yes, that's right. And god damn it man, I think that's quantifiable. And I think that when we get to the point where we can quantify it, that will be actually the same moment that machines wake up, because,

To quantify what exactly? So I think this, the experience of, the experience that you called, or that I really love, which is the shutdown of the, what's it called? The defomal network? Yes, the mystical experience. The mystical experience. And we do have ways, and we do try to measure that, but it is still ultimately not as quantitative as like, weight. A tool used to measure the length of this table. You weigh 165 pounds. It's still relying on people answering the questions, but it's a validated measure, there is a tool used to measure that. And they've looked at it in, one of the most awesome studies was psilocybin used for smoking cessation. They actually published a paper with the title, psilocybin

occasioned mystical experience for smoking cessation or some other, which, which, and they showed that it wasn't psilocybin itself, it was the experience that was occasioned by the psilocybin, which for, you know, varied between person and how much, you know, but basically the higher the mystical score that predicted their success in their smoking cessation. Well, they were healed by Jesus, that demons were driven out of them. And I mean, that is the, that, that, that, I mean, of course it doesn't have to be Jesus. They may have had a different religious system, but the, the, I'm really interested in this right now, man, because I think that the, there's an argument, and you're probably aware of this, the idea that we'll never have what's called strong AI. If you

ever heard this before, machines are never going to wake up. And the reason the machines are never going to wake up is because machines can be nothing more than semantic devices. And weirdly, which is why when you were talking about the sociopath, it reminded me of what I would, people are saying, that's all a computer can really do is just the very best become a master at mimicking human interaction. But underneath it, there can never really be what humans have consciousness that will never exist inside a machine. This is the argument against strong AI. And so I'm really interested in, in this concept because I, I feel like from my own subjective experiences, and God knows that is not a way to understand the universe. If it was, we'd be burning

witches, you know, we need to, we need to quantify these things. But from my own subjective experience, I don't feel like consciousness is localized within the body, but the body is some kind of receiving device for consciousness, the way a sale is a receiving device for wind. And so in that same way, I think that the work that psychiatrists are doing in the field of psychedelics is one hippie hope I have, it is, is it's actually going to reveal that consciousness can be tuned in. If the system is adequate, consciousness can be tuned in, which means that the moment that the thing we call the singularity happens will actually be very close to the moment when consciousness is shown to be non-localized. Because once you, and that the waking up of an intelligent machine

will be the proof of how consciousness is actually a thing tuned in, not, not a by-product, but a God, I don't know the word for it. Like, when you listen to music on a radio, that's not a by-product of the radio. The radio is tuning into that frequency. So anyway, sorry for that ramble, the rant. Blow it out of the water, doctor. Blow it out of the water. Blow it out of the water. That sounds fantastic. So in this though, well, you, but in the context of the singularity and non-localized consciousness, then as the ego dissolved then? Well, the ego is the Kool-Aid in the water, man. The ego is the, so like, if I listen- Like, will Duncan and Cole get together and go swimming someday there? After our bodies no

longer exist? Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Because the idea is that, and it's not so interesting, like you look at the, like, there's a really wonderful documentary, and it's kind of sad, but they took some molten metal. I think it was aluminum, and they dumped it into a, I believe it was an ant's nest somewhere in the cod. I'm ruining everything. I don't know. You know what, have you seen that? I've seen that. Well, they make the casts? Yeah. Yeah, aluminum casts. And you pull it out, and it's this incredible network, and you feel so sorry for those beings that were burnt alive down there when you realized it. Yeah, just the worst death ever, but it was for science, and god damn it, it's an amazing thing. So, in the same way I think that,

based on this idea of non-localized consciousness, then a human incarnation could be compared to a kind of tunnel system of decisions through time, which means that the consciousness could actually, in the same way a river flows through a riverbed, theoretically, if this is a thing that is transcended to time and space, which I don't understand time and space, but I do think it is transcended to time and space, then our consciousness, or the unified whole, can fill up the specific riverbeds that any human life has burrowed through time. So, the answer is this moment that we're experiencing right now could be theoretically relived if that thing that we're talking about, and if it could desire. So, yes, the answer is yes. Most certainly,

if you have existed, and this is one of the most mysterious and cool verses in the Bhagavad Gita, which is that anything that has been always will be, and nothing that has never come into being, ever will come into being. So, if you're here, you're here forever, if you're not here, you're never where. Yeah, exactly, right. You never will. You never will. Yeah, that's it. If you're not here, you never will. Yeah, and then the phenomena of deja vu, which by the way, I'm sure you have a neurological explanation for, becomes really interesting based on that idea, which is that actually the consciousness that you are, the transcendental untouched by time thing, we can never age, or be burnt, or withered by water. This is in the Bhagavad Gita too. That

is, it's moving through the riverbed of the human incarnation. A deja vu is like a quick realization of the fact that this is a repeating pattern in time, that your actual life is a kind of never-ending, repeating pattern in time. That's a rather horrifying idea, if you feel like you're stuck to repeat your life over and over again, which I don't. Right, right. Or everything is stuck to repeat itself. But my, I always pictured that this, which I've heard people describe in intense psychedelic experiences, and near-death experiences of the unified kind of, the unified gone consciousness that happens after, you know, there's a death experience, and then it typically follows a sense of a death, and that's the death of that ego. That's Duncan

like dissolving, that's called dissolving, and actually experiencing a sense of experience of being God consciousness, for lack of a better word, all consciousness, unified consciousness that always was and always will be. And this being, and then, you know, where then this is a manifestation, almost like a game, like a, and then, you know, something that's being played out. And I think, so in that way, I think that's where the description of like what happens after the singularity, I think like, I still find, I feel a little saddened by that idea, because of a loss of all of these egos that I have come to know and love, not just my own, but everybody that I love. Like that, you know, though, if it were all to be then God consciousness,

we won't be having the fun and games here anymore. We won't, you know, even if that is a blissed out brother, we can't go play games. Yes, you I think that it's this is why I love virtual reality is a spiritual technology, because it the experience of putting on VR goggles, and going into a fully immersive reality is a kind of training program for death, I think, because what's really cool when you put on VR goggles and pop into an alternate world is that you and you experienced it very quickly, you lose track of where walls are, and the whole very quickly feel you're there very quickly, almost instantly, and then you're at the body of fuck, my, you know, my physical body and the whole Cole and Duncan trip. Yeah,

it's like it was great and all. Yeah, but onto the onto the next one defend my asshole. Yeah, right. Yeah, and I think that that's kind of the, you know, the death experience that we're all dreading secretly, or maybe not if you've taken mushrooms is it's just like, right. Well, that's where I think is actually, you know, maybe more of a preparatory thing is having had that ego death experience. You know, confronting that ego death experience, people really feel when people have that, they really feel they're dying, dying, you know, yeah, and if and if they're terrified of that, then that's it can be a really awful experience. And they can resist it and they can fight it. But if they have sentence number two, yeah, then they can and surrender to that and

come back to then, then they have that that experience of the of of a, you know, unified consciousness kind of experience. And I think, I think that that is that is actually practicing for death, because in that moment, they really believe they are dying. And if they can get to the that that's gone, that's an inevitability, that's a part of this thing. And then when we get there, we got to surrender, then it becomes like the Jacob's ladder thing, right? Like you've got, you know, those things coming to pull you apart and tear you in pieces are demons. But if you realize that you they're actually angels, they're actually angels coming. I'm glad you said Jacob's ladder. Yeah. And because that that's what turned me on to Meister Eckhart, because there's that brilliant

Meister Eckhart quote, which is the part of the soul that burns in hell is the part that clings to life. And so yeah, it's just different ways of saying the same attachment and suffering. Yeah, yeah, that's it. And this whole thing, our egos and being coal and being Duncan, it's a blast. And it's important, right? And it's valid. And we're doing work here, and we're learning and we're loved in even these limited forms. So it's not to like reduce it to some kind of, you know, pointless thing that we're, a trip that we're on here, it's a beautiful thing. But I love what Ram Dass says, which is that death is like taking off a shoe that's too tight. And that it's, and another thing he says that I really love is dying is safe. There's nothing

safer than death. That's incredible. It's the safest thing ever. People have been doing it from millennia. Don't worry about it, man. No one screws it up. No one. You can't fail at death. And I'll tell you, man, when you realize that, and you, and I don't think you need a full blown psychedelic experience to understand that, I think that you could intellectually reach that place. I think there's a lot of different ways to reach that place. But you know, you could just do the thought experiment right now, which is like, listen, this thing that you're in right now, it's heaven. It's glorious. And you've been given it as a gift. And it's a thing for you to be having to be, you can experience joy in the simulation, and you can start experiencing it right now.

I think that you could just run that thought experiment, just imagine that this thing you've, you have voluntarily entered into this dimension and that you've done it maybe it's like you were at some benevolent friend's house. And he, and he was like, Hey, check it this out. Have you seen this new technology? You're going to experience a whole life. But to really like, enjoy it. When you come out, you can pick what level of you wanted at. But if I put it on full amnesia, you're going to have the best time because you won't remember. You know, I think that's what it is. Some weird thing. I grew up in a household with like, originally, there was my stepfather was Buddhist and then

Hindu. And I'm pretty sure he told me the story of Brahma's game. I'm not sure if I, I, I don't remember if it was Brahma, but based on what I understand of the trimerty and, you know, and Brahma, it has to be Brahma anyway. So yeah, so Brahma's game is like starting this whole game into process and then forgetting that he started it. And the whole point of the game is to remember he's that it's just a game. And that's when Brahma wakes up. And then he like starts the game over again, because there's nothing, you know, what is there to do with all of everything and time and consciousness? It's funny to think that Brahma probably is dating somebody who's like,

come on, let's watch Netflix together. Why do you keep incarnating a universe? It takes forever. Dinner. It's dinner time. Come eat some young kids. But, but I'll tell you, man, I think all of those are very useful tools to try to, if you can just create a little space in between the seriousness of being a Duncan or being a coal or being whatever your name happens to be, just a little space where you just get a little bit of relief from the whole thickness of the game or, you know, like, you know, to feel profoundly blessed to like even feel suffering. Yes. Like everything, everything about, you know,

experience is, you know, the odds of it not having happened are so good. And it's so sweet. The suffering is so sweet. And, and, and that's this. I mean, once, and it's kind of the problem is once you figure out that part of it, then the whole thing really does start to unravel the moment you uncover that big secret of the sweetness of it all, no matter how bad it gets. Right. And you don't get, you know, that with the suffering comes the sweetness and you don't have the sweetness without the suffering and all of the whole, the whole bag. It's a blessing. Cole, I'm glad we got you fighting the good fight over there on this, on that side of things. I'm really glad that you're doing this work. And it's exciting to me

that you're part of this movement to, in some way, legitimize the psychedelic experience instead of keeping it in the closet because people really do need that Good Friday experience. They really do. And the, and the interesting thing is so far, you know, someone said this about mindfulness. And I think it goes beyond this, but it's like, you know, it's, it's fun to aim that experience at these outcomes, like stopping smoking and, and of life anxiety. And, you know, hopefully onto, you know, there's been something recently published about depression. But it's like, you know, where this experience can be so profound, so transformative, it's like, it's like shooting a cannon at an ant, you know, it's like, it's gonna, this is, this has the,

this experience has the potential to, you know, clearly meet all of the necessary parameters for just about anything mentally suffering that we aim it at. Yes. And that's an, that's an amazing thing. And you're part of it. How cool is that? So excited. So excited. Dr. Cole, Marta, everyone, all links to reach Dr. Marta will be there. You're actually, is it, is it okay to say that you are a pract, you're a clinician that people in LA can come see you if they. Yes, I'm a psychiatrist practicing in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. And, and I do a lot of work with maps. And I would say if you support this kind of work, check out maps. And they're funding the study that I'm going to be doing next year, which is the MDMA, MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD, which is a whole

another topic we didn't even get to talk about. We didn't even get into. So another time. And next time I hope you'll come back. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. You'll come back. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for listening everybody. That was Dr. Cole Marta. I'll have links to get in touch with Dr. Marta and the comments section of this episode. Thank you guys for listening. Big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. If you go to squarespace.com and use offer code Duncan, you'll get 10% off a brand new website. Don't forget to use our Amazon portal and don't forget that it's better to be burning than it is to be cool. I'm just going to close this episode out with a track from the galactic effects upcoming

album. It's called Augmenter. And this track came to me in the most incredible way. I was just wandering through the playa and was lucky enough to run into Billy, who is the creator of this music. And we had a wonderfully long conversation about a great many things. And at the end of it, I gave him my email and he was kind enough to send me his entire, an entire album. And he said, I could use any track I wanted off of it. So if you like what you're about to hear, you can get the whole album by going to the galactic effect.bancamp.com. And I'll have a link to that in the comments section of this episode. But now everybody, please enjoy Elysian from the album Augmenter by the galactic effect.

And I'll see you in the next one.