Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson - A "Trip" with Dr. Matthew W. Johnson

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

This week, Kate and Oliver are joined by Dr. Matthew Johnson, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, who is one of the world’s most published scientists on the human effects of psychedelics. They talk about his research and the potential of psilocybin to treat opioid dependence, PTSD, smoking addiction, cancer distress, and more.Executive Producers: Kate Hudson and Oliver HudsonProduced by Allison BresnickMusic by Mark HudsonThis show is powered by Simplecast.This episode is sponsored by Coors Light, Sakara (PROMO: SIBLINGEARLYACCESS), Honey, Article, and Helix.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. September is a great time to travel, especially because it's my birthday in September, especially internationally. Because in the past, we've stayed in some pretty awesome Airbnbs in Europe. Did we've one in France, we've one in Greece, we've actually won in Italy a couple of years ago. Anyway, it just made our trip feel extra special.

So if you're heading out this month, consider hosting your home on Airbnb with the co-host feature. You can hire someone local to help manage everything. Find a co-host at Airbnb.ca slash host. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time,

as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The Moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the IHeart Radio app, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kate Hudson. And my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship. And what it's like to be siblings. We are a sibling rivalry. No, no.

Sibling rivalry. Don't do that with your mouth. Sibling, revelry. That's good. Oliver Hudson. I'm back. I'm back. I'm back.

In your house, in your house. One of the great moments that I had in this whole election week was when Ed Helms sent a green map of the United States. Of all of the places that have. legalized marijuana yeah and then on top of that the places

that are looking at psilocybin and psychedelics as also and so Oregon I love that Oregon just went from okay we're not going to go from weed to mushrooms we're just going to go from weed to fucking special

K meth let's just let's just knock them right off I was shooting a movie in Bend Oregon and and we had our hair and makeup trailer stolen and they found with all our wigs and everything in it and they found it in out in a field because these guys were meth guys stole it to go cook and so they found it and they were cooking meth in our and the trailer that's a score for them they were probably like this is sweet like dude we could wash our hair and cook mad and there's wigs there's wigs there's wigs

And then, like, they, like, they, they was all still there. They just left everything. They left everything. But we were sort of like, yeah, we probably should just, like, throw it all out because, you know, who knows what, you know. No, but you're right. The map is pretty green right now. Yeah. I just, I think that's a great thing.

And, and, and we've always had fascination with psychedelics and what they can provide for people in terms of healing. and looking deeper into their psyche. So what did we do, Oliver? We talked to Dr. Matthew Johnson at Johns Hopkins. This was a really exciting interview for us. It was fun. We recorded this back in February, and we're releasing it now. So Dr. Johnson, he's a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins.

He's been published, I think he's one of the world's most published. scientists on the human effects of psychedelics. Yeah. The world's most. I mean, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center of Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. I mean, if that doesn't get you excited.

I don't know what does. But he conducts basic research and therapeutic studies with psilocybin and other psychedelic psychedelic compound. So we kind of got into with him what he uses, how he does it, what he's looking for. And this isn't about tripping out, you know, and it's also not about microdosing, which by the way is the big thing right now, mushroom chocolates and all that. We asked him about that and he says, we don't know. We don't do that kind of research. Right, right. He goes, remember he goes, my favorite patients are the mushroom heads, basically, who come and they're like, give me what you got. Yeah. And he just.

rocks their world. That's how much he gives to really take you into a place because, you know, there's, through his studies, he's trying to find treatment, you know, for opioid addictions, PTSD, anxiety, depression, depression. Well, I think the thing is, stopping smoking. Look, look, we all know the thing about my job is, as we all know, okay, those of us who have taken copious amounts of mushrooms. By the way, I'm watching this documentary.

It's called The Fantastic World of Fungi. No. Oh, it's beautiful. Fungi, you mean? No. Fungi. This is why I said it like that. Everyone's saying fungi.

In the documentary, I'm like, I've been saying it wrong the whole time. It's not fungi. It's fungi. I think it's fungi. Fungi. Fungi. Fungi. Something like that.

It's not fungi. Like Fuji? But it's beautiful. And basically. Fugee's fungis? It's, it's, it's, it's. It talks about just mushrooms in general and how every step that we take on the earth, we are stepping on fungi and how incredible it is in sort of the makeup of this world of this earth.

I love eating them. I love tripping with them. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. There's a big difference between, like, I'm just going to be real open, honest here, because who cares? I I went through this moment in my life

where I was very scared to have a psychedelic experience and when I finally did for me it's like I didn't I wasn't interested in taking seeing what my friends used to do they would like take a mushroom and go to a concert

and they'd be laughing and like tripping or whatever to me that looked kind of I was like I don't want to be at a concert if I'm going to do this I want to get weird you know And so I remember the first time I did it. I was 21 years old and I just couldn't believe that something was available that could, it was like, to me, it was like seeing the other side.

Like to me, I remember looking at the light and the way that the light was hitting the trees and the house that we were at in Woodstock. and I was like oh oh oh oh oh oh okay and for me I wanted to go deeper there wasn't just like oh yeah I want to laugh and I was like no I want to get I want to keep going where does this go yeah and and and you're everything's breathing and everything is connecting and you feel so connected right and you do it's unreal I mean it's truly And to me, it's like, I don't look at that as like, okay, now I just want to like do that all the time and be there all the time. And now I'm right. I actually look at that and I go, wow, that's fascinating.

I'd love to know more about this. And so when I'm talking with someone like Dr. Johnson, to me, it's not, it's not flippant. It's not funny. It's not just about like, you know, hey man, peace, shrooms. Like, yeah, okay, whatever. This is really about how there are things that, that, that, direct. arrive naturally that can change how our brains can process and deal with trauma. Cilocybin can actually...

Well, this isn't about, basically, it's not just about tripping, it's just about how these derivatives from this earth can actually heal trauma. We medicate people on drugs. They affect the way that our systems work. They're man-made chemical drugs that people. that people take for depression, that people take for... By the way... I do.

I'm fucking... I'm not saying... I'm not saying... No, I take Lexapro. No, I take Lexapro. Thank God that we have these things. But there are alternatives. But there are alternatives.

And the fact that there's men like Dr. Johnson and Johns Hopkins doing research on psilocybin as a treatment is to me just so exciting. The other thing, too, that I loved, um, that this is. This isn't necessarily a cure for, you know, an opioid addiction or depression or anxiety. In some way, yes, but he also deals with patients who are terminal and their fear of death and how they're not able to sort of live the rest of their days in a good, happy place. That's right. Not that it's easy to do. But what he's been experimenting with as well is dosing these patients and watching them come out without that fear.

Yeah. Being able to live the rest of their years, months, whatever, present, with their family and not have that sort of just suppress the rest of your life, which is pretty cool, too. And there's been, and, uh, that's what happened to me with ayahuasca. We got to, we got to interview someone that's like an ayahuasca. I want to do ayahuasca. We got to interview someone that. Can we do ayahuasca and then do a podcast in the middle of ayahuasca?

No, that would be terrible. Oh, it could be amazing. Don't forget. I was there the first time you did take mushrooms. I'll be throwing out there. everywhere. And you're going to have a full on, it's going to be intense for you.

Great. Okay. Anyway. So, have fun, man. He's been working since, on psychedelics. He's been working since 2004. He published psychedelic safety guidelines in 2008, helping to resurrect psychedelic research.

He's currently president of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics. If there is anybody to talk. to about psychedelics, it is Dr. Matthew Johnson. So I hope you enjoy this episode because we really loved it. Peace. Dr. Matthew Johnson. Hi. That's me. Hi. First of all, we're so excited to talk to you. I can't even tell you just because of the upswing and the psychedelics and especially in the psilocybin world you know it has been taken now in ways that i never took them before meaning it was before it was eating mushrooms like just stems and caps and now it's chocolates

and everything else and i'm super pumped to sort of get all of just to download we just were talking about microdosing and and all over we just said all over is only macro dose So it'll be interesting to talk about all of the stuff you're doing. But I think there's a lot of people who don't even know what mushrooms or psilocybin is. So I'd love for you to just talk about, first of all, how you got involved in the whole world of psilocybin and mushrooms. Yeah. So I became interested in psychedelics when I was. About 19 years old. So I was sort of on a hiatus from college. I sort of had an early midlife

crisis, you know, trying to really figure out what the heck I wanted to do. I had dropped out of an engineering program and eventually landed on, oh, I wanted to go into psychology and everyone told me all was crazy. And during that break, I discovered a number of things, including the earlier era of psychedelic research and reading books by folks like Ram Dass, Richard Alpert, who passed away recently, and became that that was part of what got me interested in psychology in general. And I recognized early on that this was this fascinating area of research

that had been at the forefront of psychiatry and neuroscience. science, but it was completely dropped and not for good scientific or medical reasons. It was really purely political and cultural. You know, that was just fascinating that there were all these threads left dangling. It seemed clear that this was going to be picked up. So I was able to jump in to fast forward a few years. I finished my PhD in experimental psychology with a focus on it's called different things, but psychopharmacology, which is the study of drugs and behavior, the study of drugs and the mind. I like to call it the good, the bad, and the ugly of drugs, psychoactive drugs, including

addiction. But one of the areas of deep interest to me were the potential positive effects of psychedelics. So I got into that in 2004 when I started my postdoctoral fellowship. and I've been studying psychedelics ever since and it's been 15 years and it's really it's like black and white I mean back then everyone was like wow you're on such a great career trajectory you know what the hell are you doing you're good luck ever getting funding in that good luck ever having a career in that and now it's like yeah the world has caught up and it's been very it's been very good to me and it's still the most

fascinating thing I'm I'm involved with. In psychedelics, do you mean LSD, psilocybin, peyote, any kind of psychedelic, ayahuasca, DMT, those kinds of every, okay. I think all the ones, if my working memory is good enough, all the ones you just listed are all called classic psychedelics. Okay. So that's the, to be nerdy, they're in the same drug class. They hit the same main brain receptor. It's kind of like the downers, the benzos, like Xanax, Valium, Ativan, they're all variations on a theme. They have the same basic mechanism in the brain. So all of the classic psychedelics also have the same basic mechanism. It's serotonin 2A.

They have... Okay. And there are other drugs that are called psychedelic that have similar effects by different primary mechanisms. So, like, ketamine, MDMA, ibogaine, there's a number of them. Even more so back in the day, cannabis was often called a minor psychedelic. So speaking, you know, oftentimes I'll speak with more specificity about classic psychedelics because there's a lot of things about those that are unique that don't necessarily apply to the others. Like a robust body safety, you know, it's very, very, very difficult to die.

on a classic psychedelic because of its effects on your body. You could do something stupid, like wander into traffic or panic and do something stupid. But so that's one of the things that's true of the classic psychedelics that doesn't necessarily translate. I have a question actually. I read Michael Pollan's book. And so I learned a little bit about it. And it was just fascinating to me how in the 50s when this was being studied and researched and advances were actually being made. made to see it sort of crumble because the counterculture got a hold of it and exposed

the sort of party element to it. Because they were all gone on the bus, man. Right. Is that essentially is that what happened? And is Timothy Leary a part of that problem? It was really Ken Kesey that was more responsible for the club. He turned on more people, the psychedelics, by far. And the Mary pranksters.

And he really, it's funny because like, the. associations now are like, you know, the Bay Area, tie-dye color, Grateful Dead, all these associations. That all was Ken Kese and his pranksters in the Bay Area back in the day. And so the question about either one, I mean, really, it was much larger than that. I mean, if Leary wasn't around, I mean, his special place was he was a legit researcher. So kind of the story became, oh, you can't even trust the scientists, the doctors with this stuff. But, you know, you look at his pat, he was kicked out of two universities long before he ever took a psychedelic or studied psychedelic. So he was kind of had a wild man streak. And there were lots of like

figures that were, your researchers that aren't an everyday name like Sidney Cohen and Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond that were like, you know, big fans of the potential psychedelics and were studying them. In fact, many of them long before Leary. And they were begging Larry to tone it down. Like, oh my God, you're going to freak people out. You're going to make this whole thing collapse, which is what happened. But I really think if it wasn't for Leary, it would have happened anyway. It was such a, there was so many forces at play. So you're saying it was really the Grateful Dead that was responsible for the collapse of the research. They just blew that shit right out of the

water and fucked everybody because they were all just so high all the time. Well, I mean, There were, I mean, one bit of info is here. The average dose of LSD back in the day in the late 70s, or late 60s, early 70s, was 300 micrograms. Today, that the average dose is around 40 to 50 micrograms. That's a big difference. There were a lot of people going to the ER on bad trips, and that was a real thing. And so these are very powerful tools, and there were casualties.

There are also plenty of people that say it changed. their life for the better, and they can point to examples of how their life was improved, and, you know, I think there's truth to both. Heelics! In the wonderful world of beds, it's

Heelix, one of the most beautiful place to put your hair about. Oh, that was good, Ollie. I'm home. I'm on my, I'm in my helix. You're on my helix. I'm on my helix. Does it feel weird, to know that your friend slept on your helix. Do you think that it was good energy when Mark Rose was there?

Yeah. All right. He made love in the helix and added to it. He rocked. Right. Good. You know, it's great. You know, it's great too.

Is, you know, Mark, as I said before, does a lot of hotels. He's opening up a hotel in Big Bear in February. And I was with him yesterday watching football. And he goes, I need to get in touch with Helix because I would love to put helix throughout all of my hotels. Whoa. So, I have to put in a call to Helix. But anyway, yes, I'm very happy to be home on my relics.

I know. Let me explain Helix to you very quickly. You take a quiz. It just takes two minutes to complete. It matches your body type and your sleep preferences with the perfect mattress for you. Okay, so say you like really soft or firm or you sleep on your side or your back or your stomach, Helix will, you put those in and it will spit out the perfect mattress. Yeah, it gets you a specific mattress. for your unique taste.

That's right. That's exactly right. GQ awarded it. GQ and Wired magazine actually awarded it. Best overall mattress pick number one in 2019 and 2020. Yeah. So what do you got to do? You got to go to helixleep.com slash sibling. Take their two minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a customized mattress

that will give you the best sleep of your life, 10 year warranty, 100 nights risk-free. You might as well take. Just do it. A hundred nights, risk-free. 100 nights. So Helix is offering up to $200 off of all mattress orders and two free pillows for our listeners at Helixleksleep.com slash something. Pillows are great.

Pillows are great. Yeah, by the way, that's not something to sort of slough off there. You're right. I apologize. I sloughed it. The pillows are amazing. So one for you and one for your partner, or if you don't have a partner, it's waiting for a new partner.

Waiting for a little one-night stand. And after the vaccination comes out. So that's Helix, H-E-L-I-X-Sleep.com slash sibling for up to $200 off. Corslight. Tap the Rockies. You know it's fun that we get to do these cores lights as is, I see billboards and stuff and it's like,

like, what's your moment to chill? And I'm like, yeah, I do that. Like, I say that. That's me. I'm a part of this whole ad campaign. I take pride. I take pride in it when I see other things. You know what? I was, I was, where was I was I? Oh, I was going downtown and there's a big Coors, like, on the side of a building.

And it had the Blue Mountains. And I was like, yeah, I know all about those Blue Mountains. I'm the same. It's like, yeah, that's me. It's like I almost own a company. I'm like, yeah, that's us. I feel like we should. Coors, we got to talk.

We love this beer. We're Colorado folk and made to chill. That's what I see. And we are made to chill. We're all family is made to chill. Sometimes. Although lately it's been a little weird. I've been angry. We'll talk about that. Is there another ad? All he yells at everybody. Yeah. But not when you're not, look, you were, you and Danny were drinking a Coors Light of a Pine Creek Cookhouse. Beautiful day. We went, we took a hike. You guys had a Coors. You weren't yelling at anybody then over. Because when I drink a course, I don't yell. You chill out. Let me explain it to you really quickly, okay?

It's a three-step cold process, cold loggered, cold filtered, and cold package. So it's actually made to chill. Literally. Literally made to chill. The mountains on the Coors Light, they're cold-activated bottles, so the can actually turns blue when it's the temperature it's supposed to be, which is kind of my favorite thing. So that's why Coors Light is the one that we choose when we need a moment of chill. And right now, we're in chill mode. No doubt about it.

So when you want to reset, reach for the beer that is made to chill. And you can have Corslight delivered by going to get.corslight.com. Deliver that shit. Deliver that shit. Get.com. Local, local, local. And please remember. Celebrate responsibly.

Horse Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. So can you explain what these. sessions are that you are doing? First, they come in for screening. They're medically screened. We make sure they don't have like severe heart disease risk and a number of other things like that. That's about two days worth of medical screening, about four or five hours worth this or that, check their blood and all of that. And then they have preparation sessions. And the amount varies between studies, but it's somewhere between four and eight hours of contact time between the person

to get the psychedelic and their guide. like the people who are going to be in the room with them. And the most important thing there is really strong rapport development. Like people shouldn't be around strangers. You know, you want to develop that trust and rapport to minimize the chances of anxiety and particularly paranoia and panic. And there's also discussion about what this could be like. It could be like this.

It could be like that. And there's basically a laundry list of, you name it. You know, you can feel like you're dying. You could feel like your heart's about to rip out of it. chest. You know, you go through all this. You also go over its safety profile, like your heart won't rip out of your chest. But we're monitoring your blood pressure anyway. All of that. You tell them, no surprises. You tell them about everything, and you get to know them. And you have these real big picture discussions about the person's life. What was your childhood like? What are your

relationships like? What's your romantic life like? You know, what's your, I call it the big, you know, the big picture questions, whether it's religious or not spiritual or not. What the heck do you think the big picture of reality is? Even if it's like, eh, who knows, you know, whatever, but we'll, you know, we'll chat about that. Because oftentimes in these sessions, people do touch upon the big questions, however one orients towards them. And then someone goes into the session. So they come here, show up and around eight in the morning, eight to nine, answer a few questionnaires, just like 10 minutes worth, check their blood pressure, and we chat with them, make sure they're feeling okay. And then we kind of have

a somewhat of a ceremonial atmosphere where we take it very seriously. We kind of hand them the psilocybin pill in a chalice. And it depends on the study. And in the study I run where we help people quit smoking, we had them go over their mantra or their mission statement for why they're quitting smoking, like they're doing it for their health and whatever happens to be. But we we wish them well and they take it with a glass of water and then it's going to be anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour before the effects start kicking in so during that time we'll we'll have discussion with them there's art books in the room for them to look through and I should say music is playing this whole time and they're not playing DJ so it's not the thing is you don't

want the person to be having make decisions during the whole time there your job is to be a baby trust let go be open we're taking care of you um and so when they start to feel something we invite them to lay down on the couch we put the eye shades on them there's a trick to that without tangling up the hair and whatnot so you kind of do that for them and you basically you tuck them in and you remind them i'm here with you and if the person feels anxious the most powerful thing can be just holding their hand and you've warned them about this in the prep sessions um because you've got to be very mindful in medicine of, you know, boundaries, you know, like hand is okay, shoulder is okay, but we don't go past that. But if someone has anxiety, we tell them, you know, it's like, Kate or Oliver,

we're here with you, you're doing just fine, this is perfectly normal, you're just feeling the psilocybin, you're perfectly safe, trust, let go. And that's a powerful thing. I've even seen it in sort of the bad trip tent setting at Burning Man, where even if you don't know the person and don't have a rapport, just having a calm presence can really turn things around. I have a story about that with my brother once. What brother? You, Oliver, we were at an Aspen at a place called Belli Up, and I saw this guy, and we were just out having a drink and seeing a band, and there's this guy over by the

bathroom, and he was just having, like, a terrible trip. And I knew it immediately just because I've seen them so many times. And I was like, oh, Ollie, look at this guy. So I got to go help him out. And he's like, no, no, leave him alone. I'm like, no, I got to help this guy out. I wanted to go home. So he wanted to go home.

So I go to this guy and I'm like, are you okay? You know, and he went, you know, no. And I could tell. I go, did you take some LSD? And he said, yes. I said, liquid LSD. Did you take a lot of it? He goes, yeah.

And I'm like, okay. And I started talking him through it, telling him that it's all good and fine. I was doing, you know, I was trying to soothe him. And then he looked at me and he goes, and I had this white fur hat on. I was in all white. And I had this white fur hat on and my hair was all curly and he looked. He goes, right, he thought you were an angel. Right.

That's what he said. White halo. He said, you're an angel. And I was like, I've seen this. And I said, yes. And you're going to be fine. You are an Oliver. goes up behind my shoulder and goes

and I'm the devil and I was like Oliver and the guy freaked out I'm like Oliver Jesus I just got this guy calmed down it was one of the great great so how long is the

so we stick to your role not Oliver's role yeah Oliver's not invited well he needed to be punished he took too much and he needs to know he did a bad thing Can you be addicted? Can you get addicted to psilocybin and mushroom? So that's a great point. Or LSD or cannabis? I should have mentioned it with the other thing. So you can't physically overdose and you can't become addicted to the classic psychedelic. So that's true of LSD of psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, which is in ayahuasca. You can't become addicted. Now, I'm using, you know, I'll draw the psychiatric distinction there. You can abuse these. And that's

just means you can use in a stupid way, you know, like a couple teenagers go, you know, driving a car when they're on, you know, after eating a bunch of mushrooms, like, okay, they're abusing it. They're putting themselves and others at risk. That's an extreme example. But addiction really is referring to compulsive drug seeking. You know, no one is Jonzing for their next mushroom fix or their next acid fix. So, yeah, and we know that from every level. The way it affects dopamine and the so-called brain reward center, the Mesolimbic. We know that from the large-scale surveys, from like animal models, like, you know, where rats can be trained to self-administer, pretty much any drug that can be taken addictively in people, you can train a rat to take it. They'll typically

want to stay the hell away from psychedelics. Right. Right. Well, actually, it would be, explain scientifically how it works. Mushrooms or the classic psychedelics. Right. What happens in How does your stomach process it? What happens to your brain? What is what is the science behind it? Well, the really interesting part is what happens in the brain, and we have far more to learn than what we already know, but we've learned a lot. So in the gut, one of the things with psilocybin is that the psilocybin, which is in mushrooms, breaks down to psilocin. It's kind of a trivial thing, but psilocybin is actually a pro-drug. It breaks down to the actual drug in the gut. The mushrooms actually have psilocin and psilocybin.

But anyway, it's psilosin by the time it gets into the brain. And in the brain, it has an effect on serotonin 2A receptors. So neurotransmission, you know, we hear about serotonin and dopamine and all these things. Neurons communicate like a catcher, a pitcher and a catcher. So like someone's like throwing the ball and someone's catching the ball. One cell or neuron is here and the other one's here. And the neurotransmitters go from one to the other. And so normally there are neurons that release serotonin.

They kind of hang out in this gap and they finally end up at the other side. And the kind of the catcher, you know, the post-synaptic side, receives the neurotransmitter. They catch the ball. And then that has some activity on what that neuron does. It activates it. So the way the classic psychedelics work is by mimicking serotonin, but not a direct mimic, they do something slightly different on the catcher. side. So they activate the serotonin to a receptor in a slightly different way than serotonin itself does. So you have other drugs like MDMA, which is not a classic psychedelic. That works by kind of releasing a lot

of serotonin from the other side, from the pitcher side. So you have the pitcher just throwing out balls like left and right. It gets you in trouble. And that's the way into the synony. So these are kind of the nerdy pharmacological differences. But the, but even that that sort of receptor activation level effect that's like the first domino in this incredibly complex like you ever see those demonstrations where there's this room full of dominoes

that like are knocked over and go up bridges and then spin things and all that it's like that you know that's just that first domino and then what happens after that is what we're filling in a lot of pieces probably one of the best areas that's emerged is the effects on brain network dynamics. That's a fancy way of saying how the different brain areas communicate with each other. And so this is not necessarily about, oh, this area is more active, this area is less active. This is more about what's the relationship between the activity

in different areas. Is there a synchronization of activity, which is an index of probably of communication. So what you see across the brain is this essentially communication across brain areas that don't normally communicate very much. And in some sort of local networks, areas that are close to each other that normally communicate a lot, sometimes you see less communication there. So it's like you think of a city and neighborhoods. All of a sudden, you normally have most of your communication with your neighbors, or at least back in the day, that was the case, you know, with your neighbors, the folks in your local neighborhood. Now we scrambled things up.

And so you're talking to those folks less frequently, and you're just randomly talking to people across town, across the city. So it's almost like what the Internet has done. Maybe that's one of those, you know, the Internet is more psychedelic in a way. You just kind of scramble things up. And so you have this massive change in the way the brain talks to itself, which is probably, and I'm filling in, now I'm speculating a bit, but I think it's reasonable speculation. That's probably why people have novel insights. They are thinking their brain is processing information in a way that it normally doesn't have the ability to. People are seeing things from novel perspectives. Sometimes people

will say that they've, things they've told themselves thousands of times. Like I've worked with addictive people and people that are seriously struggling, even terminal with cancer. And they told themselves things like I'm the one destroying my life like I you know I'm letting this thing destroy me or all I have to do is is quit like I'm not you know I don't have to make this choice to keep smoking cigarettes and they can just they can tell themselves these things and it's it's it's it's like the verbalization is not new you know they said those words a million times but now they like feel it in their heart it's the processing right the processing becomes like this this intense understanding of yourself right are we expanding our minds is this

an actual expansion of our physical brain are we using parts of our brain that normally on a sober day we do not so you know that terminology i think there's something like that but the you know the responsible scientist in me wants to kind of draw a line like we can't really say like we really even know what the mind is. Right. We know about the brain, and then it kind of gets more into philosophy in terms of what you even consider. Well, consciousness, I mean, how do you, you know, quantify or what is consciousness, I guess?

Exactly. Yeah. But I think we can say the mind or consciousness, if we want to use those terms, are radically different. Yes. And probably to go to speak loosely, that's my caveat, you know, if there's a, you know, if they're expanded in certain ways they're probably contracted in other ways

like your ability to cross the street and do so successfully is probably reduced I mean we know in a number of like neurocognitive measures that these aren't performance enhancing and so you know someone might be crossing the street

and they stop and they look at their hand and see this unfolding miracle and then they get run over by a Mack truck right which is also a miracle right as it's like you know but you're still dead Yeah, or when I was, when I was 22 at a truck stop somewhere in Nebraska and I walked into the big. Like the convenience store? Yeah, the convenience store.

And I took a popsicle out and I said, oh, to the guy, I said just one popsicle. And I thought, is it called a popsicle? And I turned to my ex-husband. I was like, is it called a popsicle? Right. And why is it called? Poppicycle. Completely unable to, you know, connect. But those experiences that people have, those profound experiences that you have, you have seen, you know, tested in a room clinically tested, once you come out of that, it can forever change the way that you think and feel potentially. in your sober life. So it does have some sort of value there, meaning you can, if you're on the other side, so to speak, when you come back to sobriety, you're still retaining and life can change from these experiences, correct? Absolutely. And that's the heart of the therapeutic use. And the

idea is no matter how you got there, the brain is changing in this profound way. And, And the insights that people come upon oftentimes are held so valuable and true that that's what sticks. Is there science to back that up? Is there like, are there analytics to sort of show that we have measured the brain and we have looked at the brain before a trip and then we've looked at the brain during and then after? and has there been actual physical change? That's at the edge right now. Okay. So we're doing some research, a number of groups are doing research to really look at that.

We know some things about what's happening to the brain when someone's on the psychedelic. We know behaviorally and clinically in a number of ways under the right conditions that people have improvements, less depressed, less addicted, less anxiety. But what we don't know for sure is what has changed, if anything, and presumably there's something, what has changed in the brain that corresponds with that behavioral, clinical improvement. Sakara, Ali, we know this. We love this. We know our Sakara. Everyone who listens should know how obsessed we are with Sakara. And this is a good time to promote this. Food delivery service, this extremely healthy, vegan food delivery service because the holiday season is approaching.

We're going to eat a bunch of crap. There's just no doubt about it. But what a great gift to give after the holidays. It's a good gift. Hey, I'm going to get you Sakara because you ate too much shit. You have a crazy heartburn. You're borderline alcoholic. Oliver, are you talking about your son?

Yes, I am. This is on my list of Santa. It's a perfect gift It's a perfect thing to get somebody But I also do think this is a great time to do it Changing of the seasons We're coming into winter We have Thanksgiving coming up

Clean out your body Let them do the work Because that's what they do best You don't have to think about it And then they support you with more than just food They have teas and supplements Your favorite My super powder

You're very nutrient rich Anyway we love sacchar I couldn't speak more highly of this food service. It's plant-based. It's organic. It's ready-made meals. It's chef-c curated. And it's not just about food, like you said.

It focuses on overall wellness. Just starting with what you eat. It really takes care of your entire day. Good jump-off point, too. And for a limited time, Sakara is granting you early access to their only sale of the year with 25% off-site-wide, with code sibling early access. That's 25% off your entire order when you go to saccarra.com and enter code sibling early access at checkout.

Access has always been a tough one for me to spell. So that's A-C-C-E-S in case, because I get confused. So enter code sibling early access at checkout for 25% off your entire order. That's Sakara, S-A-R-A- dot com. So I'm home. You're home. I'm home. And I walk in my door and it's like a new home.

My article furniture had come while I was away. I had my friend Mark Rose, who was living at my house, put it together because that's what he does for me. And it looked beautiful. I had outdoor furniture. I had a couple couches. This is exciting. It was great. It was really beautiful.

It's got this sort of like modern e-feel to it. I'm about to hit them up and do my office. Oh, great. I'm going to get some pieces from my office. Great. What I love about article is that they're timeless pieces. You've got, it really does across the board, you have things that are very affordable,

and then you have things that sort of are at a more sort of medium price point, but you're getting, because of its sort of direct-to-consumer model, you're getting really great quality at a really great price. And another thing, you know, I love about their site, They have these room inspirations. You go on there, you click on it, then all the products come up. And they're really nice.

Yeah, and their aesthetic. Kind of lends itself to definitely that mid-century, Scandinavian, clean lines, but it can really go in any style of house. But here's the thing. It's quality. It may be inexpensive, but it's quality. And here's why.

There's no middleman. Okay, so you save up to 30% off of, over traditional retail prices. they're able to do this for you by cutting out the middleman and selling it directly to you. So there's no showrooms, there's no salespeople, no markups.

That is why we're able to get better quality at better prices. Affordable shipping is fast and is available across the USA and Canada and is 100% free on orders over $999. So remember that. Go for the thousand.

It's like the price is right. $1. Anyway, we love Article. And all in-stock items are delivered in two weeks or less, which is huge. So Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. So go to article.com slash sibling, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash sibling to get $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Which psychedelic, whether it be the classic or MDMA catamine world, which grouping are you guys seeing the most effective or being is the most effective in terms of any kind of therapeutic use?

Right. So the two big standouts are psilocybin and MDMA. I've worked a lot with psilocybin. I haven't worked directly with MDMA. I would like to. and I'm probably going to be starting some work with LSD soon. But in terms of the state of the science right now, psilocybin and MDMA, MDMA for PTSD and then psilocybin for depression and the treatment of addiction, those look very promising. And they're at about the same level of science, you know. In what capacity? Is it microdose?

Is it very specific? So, yeah, we know that there have only been a few studies on microdosing. Microdosing is very fascinating, but there's very little research. And, you know, it's funny because I see all the time folks will say, all this research with microdosing that's gone on at Johns Hopkins and other places, and you're like, no, no, no, these are heroic doses. These aren't even normal recreational doses. And I've run several studies with where we want the person that has used a lot

psychedelics like the connoisseur study where they could say oh yeah this is like the time i took 2cb on top of like smoking DMT and but sometimes those folks will say like wow you guys aren't screwing around that's the most powerful psychedelic they've ever had right because we do use a a high dose of psilocybin you know mushrooms vary in their potency but the average based on content analysis what we're giving is about equivalent to somewhere between an eighth ounce and a quarter ounce of salosophy cubensis mushrooms. That's the most common type in the U.S. Jeez, that's a lot.

Yeah, like a lot of folks will split an eighth ounce two or three ways and, you know, go to a concert or even hang out in their house and want to stay away. This is like almost a quarter ounce of mushrooms. This is most folks that know psychedelics say, you don't go in public. Like this is, this is not a museum dose. This is you strap yourself down in your house. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, I always felt like I'd never. understood the recreational use of mushrooms. For me, it was an actual experience. You know, self-exploitation. Right. Like, yeah. And in fact, it does seem clinically that that's where most of the interesting content is at. One of the reasons for the using the eye shades in the sessions is that, you know, the first level sort of perceptual, the colors can be absolutely fascinating. and the person will have some time to experience that but you can kind of get stuck there and by kind of directing the attention inward to the self

that's where some of the more profound effects like the insights into self into someone's history about their relationships and then the even more profound stuff the transcendental type experiences what is the how was the duration of the experience five to six hours Matt, it sounds like what you're doing, because ayahuasca, you're just down and out.

I mean, you know, you're laid out. And that, to me, felt more of what my experience was with ayahuasca, where first of all, the prep sessions and then, you know, having to really let go. And when you feel it coming on, it's so strong. And as you sort of let it take over, you know, it's a very different experience than, say, you know, doing some a handful of mushrooms. Well, not maybe a handful of mushrooms will do for you, but like, you know, doing a cap of a mushroom or a stem or something, you know. Like there's no choice but to fully surrender. Yeah, you have to. Like you're not going to hold your shit during it and like try to like do your taxes or just, I don't know.

No, no. I've never done that before where it's like, I love the way you. put it you don't have any choice but to surrender because in our normal lives in our sober lives we have we have that choice to hold on and squeeze with with something like this when you go that far you don't have a choice you have to sort of you know let go and have this haven't have an experience you know i mean have you encountered a lot of patients who will not let go and are just freaking the fuck out. Yeah, yeah.

And so you don't have to let go, but it's sort of like it nudges it in that direction. And sometimes people come out of it and say it's like they finally got it. It was like quick biofeedback. Oh, when I let go, that's when it became easy. And the most profound kind of big picture things, and gosh, I really remember so many of our 51 cancer patient saying this that um but you see it in in all the studies um people people see that as this lesson as a microcosm of life itself and it's you know it's one of these things it's easier said than done i wish i did it you know we all do you know on a more day-to-day moment-to-moment

basis but the more you can not fight what you're given you know like operate within the range that you can operate. I mean, it's like the serenity prayer. Like, have the wisdom to, you know, know what you basically have no control over and just let go. And the, the, the story in this idea that orienting towards like the, you know, having the obsessive control over things that you cannot control, you know, you're never going to win. You're never going to win. And, and yeah, people drawing that kind of like, oh, that's, that's like life.

You know, you just have to accept it. Like, I mean, we're going to face hellish things like death and the death of loved ones and all of this horror. Yeah. Is cancer? What do you do? When you talk about cancer patients, too, this is about them managing the fear of death pretty much. It's not about cancer itself. And correct me if I'm wrong.

It's more about the fear of death and terminal patients who are just not living the best lives, even if they only have a year or two left. it's getting into that place of acceptance to then sort of live out the rest of their days in some sort of harmony. I mean, is that the idea? Exactly the idea. And we included people who are both, you know, sort of terminal and people who, you know, their prognosis was serious, but they could live, you know, a decade or two or longer more. And that's the real insidious thing about cancer, man. It's like you could be doing fine and then all of a sudden nowhere it's metastasized everywhere and at nowhere you can be told you've got a month and it's just like I mean compared to other illnesses where at least like with heart

disease and other things you have the metrics are pretty you have a pretty good idea if you're on the right path and just cancer just come back out of nowhere and it it really screws with people so strongly and and so you had people that were just suffering and not um I mean so often folks are like I could be playing with my grandkids. I could be planning for vacations. And they won't do any of this because they are so just like bunched up with this obsession over death. Well, scared. They're just so scared.

Yeah. I have a question. I think I can only draw from my own personal experiences. You're talking about therapeutic uses for these things. And I find that sometimes the stigma that, becomes attached to this is because people go and become obsessed and have to sort of constantly get to this place of enlightenment and then I and then I'm looking like oh no you're you're you're just abusing the point right but but but I think it happens quite a bit you know um well there's

an escape aspect which then from a psychological standpoint I guess you just have to look at that I mean if you're doing mushrooms every day to escape your normal life and to live in an alternative universe i mean that can't be like a healthy thing well are people who smoke weed all day every day and say that and say that it's fine because it's medicine it's fine because it's medicine it's like no you're abusing it it's like it's like if i was drinking all day it's not the same as drinking all day but but but but the effects of it can be anything that you do too much of is going to And this, I guess, is a good question. If you are doing too much of something, doesn't it affect your cognitive ability,

your day-to-day ability, like your actual clarity of being able to function in everyday life? Like, if someone is smoking a ton of weed all day long, what? Who would do that? All right. I guess the question is, can it permanently screw up your brain if you're abusing psilocy. cybin or cannabis to the point of complacency or LSD. These are complex questions and they have to do, there's so many factors like vulnerability and age and the one's overall environment.

So I've got to get in all those caveats. You know, there are heavier users of any drug, you name it, that, you know, it has minimal effect on their functioning and others where even a lesser amount totally tanks them. And you have different things going on, like, you know, cannabis, it's, yeah, there are so many concerns that are there, for example, with alcohol that are not going to be there, you know, like you're not going to kill your liver, for example, but it's more in the, you know, the relevant questions of be in terms of your functioning. You know, when you're on it, you're going to have lower, you're going to have impaired divided attention abilities. In other words, in lesser ability to stay on top of multiple tasks at the same time. It's kind of like why in driving simulators, you know, in a simple situation, people actually, there's not much effect on their reaction time, but people actually slow down more than they need to,

so they actually overcompensate, which is the classic thing, like keeping John going like 20 miles now on the interstate. But where you, that's not where the problem is, where the problem is where something unexpected happens. because someone's like kind of in the zone and they're zoned out and on a sudden oh that car's weaving from the other lane and it's like are you going to react as quickly as you need to and that's where you see some and that's where there is some impairment with cannabis and driving nowhere near which you get with high dose alcohol right of course but i think we also have to take into account the body chemistry because we're all going to react to these different cannabinoids and psilocybin differently just based on on our body chemistry and tolerance I mean look at Seth Rogan Seth Rogan is like you know he smokes weed every single day but is a creator he creates he creates that's his that's his happy place how do you don't even know Seth Rogan I did Dawson's Creek with him so he we know each other but I've heard him so there's incredible tolerance to the to these things I I think the relevant questions here a lot of it's played up too much on drugs and like you know brain

damage and whatnot I you know brain damage and what I you know brain damage isn't good, but I think the more relevant questions relate to clinical functioning. You know, like a lot of is made of cocaine, and no one's encouraging, I mean, by the way, I'm not encouraging use of anything, including psychedelics, but no one's certainly encouraging cocaine use. And, you know, you get a lot of stuff, and same with methamphetamine about potential brain damage and all of this. And it's like, yeah, but overall in the big picture, those effects, it's really the, It's really the role that it plays in one's life. You have this powerful reinforcer taken over and kind of warping one's life,

like the attention that's given to this to the exclusion of other things. Like that's far more relevant than, say, I don't know, knocking your IQ down like two theoretical points. I mean, you name the drug, there are plenty of really smart, high IQ people that have used it, and you can have a lot of impairment that has nothing to do with cognition. So I think the cognitive thing is overplayed in terms of the long-term effects of drugs. But I think going back to Kate's original question, like there are, I'm more concerned with the heavy use of psychedelics of people getting into, like, exacerbated. And this is a big unknown, but I think there's something there, like exacerbating personality disorders. Like if someone's on the borderline spectrum, the narcissist spectrum, like if they're really full of themselves and they're really addicted to drama,

Like, they could really go off the rails with psychedelics. Really? And I think if you know enough people, you know, they're into psychedelics. They're definitely people of that type that. And if you ask the people around them, they're not necessarily saying this person is better because of all this. But explain off the rails, though. When you're saying off the rails, like say a diagnosed narcissist, you know, takes a bunch of mushrooms. When they go off the rails because they seek drama, what does that mean?

Does that mean a permanent off the rails, meaning something can actually happen to where now there is a permanence to a new personality? Well, it would probably exacerbate it. I mean, you're all a narcissistic personality. Obviously, you are the expert, but correct me if I'm wrong, but a narcissistic personality disorder is untreatable according to you. I mean, some that can work with narcissists, but it's an untreatable personality disorder. So what it would probably do is exacerbated.

It would make it just more intense and, like, you know, it's like. And this has been talked about in terms of, you know, beyond psychedelics, how people hold mystical experiences in the various, you know, religious and other traditions where it's like you basically have this, ultimately this inexplicable thing that's really hard to. to hold, like, what is the nature? Someone can come out of one of these experiences saying, like, you know, well, I think Ram Dass put it in an interesting way in the book B here now. It's like the, yeah, plenty of people come out of psychedelic experiences recognizing that they're God or come out of mystical experiences saying, oh, they recognize they're part of God.

But the difference between a crazy person and the person is not crazy is the same person. is the same person recognizes that everyone else is God as well. So, and I'm not trying to be religious or, you know, advocate for any, but just as one way of expressing it, like the holding of that thing, like is one can come out of a psychedelic experience realizing the depth of consciousness, if you will, or the of their own mind is so absolutely overwhelming and beyond anything that they ever thought was possible. If one comes out and then holds that as something special about them that they're not extrapolating to other human beings, that's probably – and again, I'm speculating here because we're kind of beyond the frontier, but my – educated speculation based on what I've seen is I think people can get in that terrain where they're failing to hold this thing and this mysterious experience in a balanced way. And they can kind of go off the rails. How would that affect a borderline personality? Yeah, so someone, I mean, I think a borderline as being, you know, sort of this someone who is really sucked into their own drama. They're addicted to their own drama.

And gosh, like psychedelics can come with a lot of drama. I mean, you know, they, someone can create a narrative where they, they had an experience that was beyond what mere mortals are. are capable of they can be kind of sucked into their own i mean they can basically go the messianic route like i had the vision you know i had the vision about the the you name it like the the ending of the world about the deciphering of it's so wild because as i'm hearing you like i've never i've heard that before but then i've have people that i know that have had that are like that that have had experiences and come out of it and it's like they realize they have

some like purpose. This Billy Crudup in Almost Famous That's true. Yeah when he stands up on the golden god. I'm a golden God. He's on acid. Yeah, that was LSD right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So funny. Yeah, we don't have our sessions

on the rooftop. That's a good thing. No pools to jump into. Is the is the room itself sort of tranquil, you know, that these patients are in? And do they get up and walk around and trip out? I mean, I'm so curious. I mean, you must deal with so many, I guess, I don't know, bad trips, and then you can sort of talk them off ledges. But, I mean, how is that, number one? And the second part is, does everyone benefit from it? You know, in the studies that you've done have you had a lot of people who said well that was just fucked up that just fucked

my brain up i i don't ever want to go back to that place again the room is basically really nice it doesn't look like a research lab you know the blood pressure machine is stuck under an end table and it's sort of hidden but it looks like you know a posh yoga studio i mean it's like beautiful artwork you know rug everything nice furniture um and we do about a third of the at the highest dose we use, which is the dose I described before. It's about 30 milligrams of pure psilocybin body weight adjusted. About a third of the people will have an experience that I call a challenging experience. And I use that word instead of bad trip because in this context, a experience that's difficult isn't necessarily a bad one. In fact, a lot of people, most people who have a challenging

experience, will say that it was an incredible learning experience that they valued in retrospect. Now, not everyone is in that category. Some people will say, I would never want to do that again, and I don't think I benefited from it. But we haven't had anyone out of hundreds of volunteers say that they've been harmed long term because of it. So, you know, I think that's a credit to our, you know, screening people. And something I should get in here is that we do think that people coming in with a schizophrenia type. disorder or a recognizable predisposition to a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia. Those are the cases of people that supposedly trip and never come back. I mean, that's kind of loose wording,

but we have those stories. I always think of Sid Barrett, the first singer of Pink Floyd. He showed all the signs of, you know, before, you know, he was using a lot of LSD. And a lot of times people explore drugs at the time of the typical first break of schizophrenia. But it seems pretty credible that people can be worsened who have that predisposition. So there's screening for that. There's the preparation. There's the monitoring. But could psilocybin or an LSD help someone who might be borderline or who might be bipolar if given different dosage? You know, I mean, can you bring, I wonder if you could bring anyone back through a psychedelic? So that's, you You know, I don't want to say, and some people will say, these should never be given to people with psychosis.

And so, you know, that's not the thing we should be looking at now. If that is ever done, that needs to be even more, like, we're always cautious. But probably after a lot more is learned with, you know, healthier populations and to proceed super cautiously. because it does seem clear that, you know, people can, from the clinical picture, that people with that, particularly when we're talking about mania, as in bipolar or psychotic disorders, that it could exacerbate illness. Now, that said, you know, we're seeing improvements in depression in patients, but I've done some survey research where some people under not ideal settings, their depression is worsened. So that's just an example that I can think as you were alluding to Oliver, the thing that causes an effect in one direction could theoretically, if you tinker it in a different way, maybe dose dependent,

maybe depend on other factors, you can push it in the other direction. So scientifically it's possible, but we just want to be very cautious and we probably need to learn a lot more first. What Honey does is make sure Life. Really sweet. It is a free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes and then it automatically applies the best one available at checkout. Amazing idea. Shopping online is a part of our daily lives, especially during this COVID time period. And this to me is where honey comes in. It's your online best friend. Okay, great. Should we explain in detail sort of how it works?

Go for it. You get Honey on your computer for free and two easy clicks by going to joinhoney.com slash sibling. Then when you're checking out on one of its over 30,000 supported sites, honey pops up and all you have to do is click apply coupons. You wait a few seconds as Honey searches for the coupons for that site. If Honey finds those working codes, it'll apply the best one to your card. You don't have to do anything.

It's the best. Honey has found it's over 17 million members over $2 billion in savings. I'm going to repeat that again. 17 million members over $2 billion in savings. Again, I'm just upset that I did not come up with this idea. Honey supports all kinds of retailers from tech, gaming sites, fashion brands to even food delivery. It's simple. If you have a computer, honey should be on it.

It's free and works with whatever browser you use. You can get Honey for free today at joinhoney.com slash sibling. That's joinhoney.com slash sibling. What's the difference between the pill and an actual mushroom? As far as we know, none, although there could theoretically be a fact. So I would say just, I mean, no one has compared head-to-head psilocybin at the, when you you adjust for dose compared to mushrooms. The psilocin, as I explained earlier, the psilocybin and the salocin that are present in the

mushroom all break down to psilocybin. So that is likely not going to contribute to any difference. You do have some other tryptomines like bayocysteine nor beocysteine that theoretically could add to the coloring of the effect, so to speak, like with cannabis in a cannabodial and other cannabinoids in addition to THC. I think there's a more credible case that that's going on with cannabis. It's we need the research. You know, these other things aren't there in very high amounts.

So we should test these. It's plausible. But I think my bets are it's probably about the same thing. As a researcher, as this is clearly your passion, you know, what are you looking for? What are your hopes in all of this? My biggest hope, really beyond even the treatment of disorders, is that these could be tools to, I mean, you guys, I could go big here, like, be, and I'm not holding my breath for it, but, I mean, could they, could they be used as tools to, to address the hard problem of consciousness? They're like, what ultimately is the nature of subjectivity and how does this hunk of meat all of a sudden at some level of complexity, there's an inside, there's an experience that has a first person experience of everything else. I don't know that that's ever going to be possible.

That might be more of a philosophical question than an empirical question. but I think certainly in terms of what is realistic is using these psilocybin and other psychedelics and we have hundreds of psychedelics to explore to be clear it's not just psilocybin and I think to get the full picture you really need a lot of probe the brain in different ways so I mean there's tons of work to be done but to use these as tools to understand the nature of the mind like how even if it's not the so-called hard problem of consciousness that we're talking about, just understanding how biology is translated into behavior and mental function.

I think these are incredibly powerful tools. And so I think the potential to transform psychiatry, that is to say, help people with disorders is a game changer. But even bigger than that is just, you know, really understanding the nature of the mind. You can say it in different ways. But that's the real interest here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really amazing. I mean, I want a question going back to sort of the analytics, okay, or sorry, not the analytics, the science. How, when you were talking about the synapses and the pitcher and the catcher, how different is that from like an SSRI, from antidepressants? Because essentially what it sounds like is we're dealing with serotonin, you know, we're dealing with some of the same qualities. here. From a science

standpoint, how is like taking a, you know, Calexa different from taking some mushrooms? So the typical antidepressants release a lot of, they block

the re-uptake of serotonin so that there is more serotonin hanging out. It's like in the pitcher and catcher analogy, there's a bunch of balls hanging out between the pitcher and the catcher. And so it increases the amount of serotonin between those two, those two ends. And that has a more, that's a more broad-based effect that's going to have

effects on different serotonin receptors. The classic psychedelics are more specific in that they, they are fitting into the catcher's glove at only a specific type of serotonin receptor, the serotonin 2A receptor. And there's a lot that we need to learn about what the heck that serotonin 2A receptor, like what that does in the healthy person. So kind of like what I was saying before, like the most interesting stuff is not even like what psychedelics do. It's like what can they use like serotonin 2A, like whatever psychedelics do, like it's something that the human animal can do. And one of the fascinating things is the so-called mystical transcendental states that have been recorded throughout human history, it's extremely plausible that there's a

biology going on that's a lot like maybe very closely related to what we're seeing with psychedelic administration. So what are those serotonin 2A receptors for in the brain? We barely, we know that they are major computational units in the brain. They probably have a very strong role in regulating what we call consciousness or subjective experience. So, yeah, yeah, there's, this is in the area of where we have so much more to learn. I would love to do one of those sessions. Oh, me too. That's like right up my alley, like a real, like intensive.

Oh, do a quarter of mushrooms and with, with a doctor nearby? I mean, does it get better than that? When it's best done is where someone could totally let go at every level. And that's why I kind of tell participants, it's like a, even though it is for most people, unless you have a very severe susceptibility, like high, like, one of the few people that has ever died after mushrooms was a person, a heart transplant patient. You know, it's like, yeah, don't take mushrooms if you had a heart transplant. Right. Not the best idea. But nonetheless, even after the screening and end with it being pretty robustly safe at the bodily level, nonetheless,

We're taking the blood pressure regularly. If it did go up a certain level, we'd give them a little bit of nitroglycerin under the tongue, which would knock the blood pressure down. No big deal. You know, we have all these. And then at the interpersonal level, you're never left alone. There's a human being there who's trained, who, you know, who knows how to respond. Is there an anti-trip, like a drug where it's like, here you go, take this, you're sober now?

Yeah, like the psychedelic Narcan, basically. there is and it's not basically it's not available for clinical use the one that directly goes into the receptor and could theoretically knock it out of the receptor like Narcan does with opioids.

It's not approved for clinical use. What works really well is just a high dose of Valium. It's not as specific as something like an antidote or a Narcan type drug, but it works really well. In fact, that's what is often what will be given or a drug

like that another benzate azapine will be given in the in the ER but in fact we've had to do that very few times out of hundreds of participants the best recipe is just hold their hand and say I'm with you you're going to be okay I find that it's probably just so liberating to have that kind of security in in an experience like that like that just because I you know letting go is it's the ultimate isn't it that that's that's everything we're trying to do you know um And even at the legal level, you know, like just, it's like in this setting, it's not even an illegal drug. Right. It is an approved use of a schedule drug.

You know, like the DEA is on board and is 100% approved of what's going on here. It's like, it's extreme. It's like at every possible level, when you're having an experience that can increase the possibility of paranoia, it's like even if one thinks they're in a pretty safe situation, you're like, oh, man, what if the neighbor's here? What if like, you know, what if the cops come Vargy? Even at that level, it's like, boom, you know, you can totally let go at this fundamental level. It's amazing. But it's but Kate's, but Kate, you're right. I mean, essentially what we're all trying to do in our daily lives is just let go.

Let go of the stresses. Let go of the sort of some of the response, not actual responsibilities, but let go of just the pressures of life, which just makes every day so much. much better. That's what we're trying to do through psychology, through Hoffman Institute, through all the shit that I've done. Every time you go that deep and eternal, always everything boils down to mortality. The fear of death is at the center of all of all of all of it. I mean, that's how I that's that's how I see it. I mean, I could be totally wrong. But when you can actually like let go and and open open up like that, it just all of that. It just all of that. fear goes away because you're you're connected to something that's so much bigger than than just

this sort of like you said you called it the vastness or consciousness you know for lack of like I guess of a better of a more scientific term you know the simplest form of learning that even you know single cellular organism exhibit is called habituation it's basically getting used to stuff yeah you know like you're you don't respond to things we can't respond to the world as it's new, and that's kind of the biggest, we, and as we get older as adult humans, we basically jump through life from heuristic to heuristic. This is the basis of prejudice and biases, and there's bad sides and good sides. You couldn't cross the street unless you relied on biases.

Like, you're just following these simple heuristic rules. Like, again, you'd be crossing the street, like, staring into the unfolding miracle that is your hand and he'd be run over by a truck. Well, like, you have to, but there seems to be something that, like, that these experiences do where people let go, they dishabituate. And these things that people get tied up when, they're sort of like the end of life experience, like when people are on their deathbed, they never say, you know, like, yeah, I wish I had worked more on this little problem I was obsessed with all of these things.

They have those types of experiences, like, what's important? Family is important. Like health is important. Forgiveness. Helping people is important. Empathy. Like these are the things that when, and I was going to say, it's so interesting we talk about narcissistic personality disorder or borderline because when you're having an experience,

there's so much empathy usually that is being poured out. There's like sort of this collective, like you said, understanding of, you know, that we're all connected or united in some capacity. And it's just so funny that a narcissist would come out of that thinking, I am the Messiah. Right. Yeah. Well, this is also why I'm not as successful as I probably could be because I live a deathbed mentality. I live, what am I going to remember when I'm on my deathbed?

Am I going to worry? Am I going to remember like some movie or some television show or some this or that? No, I'm going to remember sort of living in Colorado with my family, you know, moving out of L.A. or being with Kate on some adventure. Like, that's the cool shit, you know? I mean, that's what I'm going to remember in my life. I like to try to live that deathbed mentality at the detriment maybe to other things, you know. But I have a quick question. I wanted to know about like the visuals, okay, when you can look at, when you look at grain of wood and it starts moving or you see a fucking dragon that's like eating your ball sack like where does that come from

scientifically do we know did you have an experience with a dragon yes we don't have enough time to get into it yeah but do we do we know do we know what's happening when that happens in our brains so as much as we can say the visual cortex is the the part of the brain that that that processes visual information is very active and it appears that when people report visuals that there are, there is activity there. So beyond that we don't really know. I mean, the idea like, okay, what, I mean, it's sort of like it's we're in the same place we are with dreaming. It's like we know some, you know, visual, when one has visions, so to speak, in their mind's eye, there's something going on in the brain related to visual. processing but what is the nature you know why it why is it the dragon eating the ball sack

versus like you know what anything else you know why that that probably has more to do with something about you right you know or maybe something random I remember I remember my very first mushroom trip my ex-husband

said whatever you do don't look at yourself in the mirror oh it's crazy I love doing that though I remember looking at myself in the mirror because, of course, he said it and I did it. And I went and I thought like, I felt so, I loved the vessel being like unimportant. Like I saw like every vein and the blood circulation and I felt so like just a this like working being. I age. I literally, every time I, every time I do mushrooms and look in the mirror, I age.

It's like Benjamin Button, I'm like, I go to a hundred years old like this. And I love it. I'm like, this is fucking crazy. Sometimes people morph into their people they know, like their relatives and whatnot. Yeah. Matt, and I know I'm going to ask this, but I know you're probably going to have a very diplomatic answer. Yeah. But I know the answer.

Just so you know, I know the answer. Is this where science and spirituality start to connect? Interesting. So, gosh, the problem is we don't know what spirituality is. So I always like to say, like, you ask one participant, was it spiritual? And they say, well, no, I didn't see any, like, angels or crystals or anything, dream catchers or whatever. And then you ask another person that just described, like, feeling connected, the love for their entire family and empathy for humanity. and then you say was it spiritual and they just look at you like uh didn't you hear me like

what I just said and so you know on the one hand some people hold spirituals meaning something supernatural and the other hand people view spiritual is basically something that any good clinician would hope for anyone to feel like there's meaning in your life that you're connected to other human beings nothing supernatural at all so it really kind of depends on what of those definitions you have. If you're talking about the latter one about meaning and about connection. Then I think, yeah, absolutely, this sort of like, it seems a really good way to access that, you know, those experiences. When it comes to the supernatural, that's an interesting area because my impression is it kind of works with what you bring to it.

You know, people who come in, you know, believing in Jesus, they're more likely to have Jesus experiences. If you believe in plant spirits, you have, you know, you might have a plant spirit experience. If you're a plant spirit. If you're an atheist, you're probably not going to come out with, you know, believing in God. But maybe you'll have one of the, you know, you feel connected to humanity and the universe is this miraculous thing that's a new connecting. did and all of that. That's kind of where I'm at. Or you are God.

Right. And then it kind of goes, what is God? I am God. And like, if God is just everything, and it's all connected. I think there, for me, speaking personally, there's a connectedness

that I feel. There's nothing that's big as far as, oh my God, there is a God. There's a human connection that I get to experience with my, you know, friends and family when we're all on mushrooms.

And we're all dancing and we're all just having an experience together. And there's like a oneness. You know what I mean? And that sticks with me. I mean, that that is a forever thing. Even when, you know, the night is over, you know, you wake up and feel it, still feel it. It's actually usually only Oliver on mushrooms. Nobody else is.

He's filling in the rest that they were never there. it's me alone in a white room rubber walls I mean it's interesting though in your description I mean there are wall like cave cave paintings that depict a similar scene from as far back

as we can tell even like 9,000 years ago I mean so this stuff dates back people have apparently by the evidence been using psychedelics and you know for ecstatic Yeah. Presumably sacramental like reasons beyond recorded history. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is where all religion came from psychedelics.

Because you think about a tribe or a group of people who are just going to eat a bunch of whatever they're eating and they are having visions and seeing things and are going to be creating, you know, something more mystical or mythical, you know, from that experience. So Jesus did mushrooms. I just want to make that clear. So this has all been speculated. I would say that more broadly, though, even if one doesn't buy that, that it does seem that indigenous societies tend to be pretty focused on achieving altered states of consciousness through whatever means, like these intense sound experiences, fasting, you know, finding some crazy cave with weird acoustics that, like created. otherworldly experiences, you know, kind of you name it. There seems to be, and little kids, I have an almost three-year-old, he just spins all the time.

Like, there seems to be this human thing where folks, like, it's built into the human condition where folks want to profoundly change the nature of their subjective experience. So interesting. Kids love to get dizzy. What's that about? What does that mean? The kids love to get dizzy. I want to know what it means.

We're all tripped and everything. means. You know, psilocybin or mushrooms are illegal in Denver, I think, and a few other places to actually not sell, but to have on you. And you guys at Johns Hopkins are finally getting this money again to research, to research and understand what this is all about. I mean, this is relatively new, correct? All this money sort of pouring into the research for you guys. So the money hasn't been from the government yet. That's sort of the last leg to go. I mean, the FDA and the DEA had been on. board for a long time. The last government leg to be on board is the money side. It's NIH, National Institutes and Health. God. I think that's going to change in the next couple of years, but they have yet to fund still all of the work on therapeutic, all of the therapeutic work with psychedelics has been funded by philanthropy. Well, especially with like a lot of our veterans and soldiers coming back with PTSD. You know, I have a friend actually who this is his life. He works with veterans with ayahuasca psilocybin and MDMA and, you know, just reading some of his papers and talking to

him, you know, about how incredible it's been for some of these guys. They can get off these fucked up drugs and actually do something that can help them from the earth, you know? I'm sure that's probably a big part of your studies as well. There's a lot. So we haven't started yet, but I'm leading a study on using psilocybin to treat PTSD and it would be great to really focus on veterans. And so MDMA certainly looks very promising in that category. I'm told by some folks that, you know, the classic psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca have even more potential. We'll see, you know, we need to do the research. But I mean, there's so many promising anecdotes of soldiers. I'm also, I'm really curious

about ayahuasca and addiction um one of the things that i know that i've seen is that people who had suffered from addiction a couple of people that i knew that went and and did uh multiple iawasca experiences was able to get sober it kind of shifted their brain in the way that they i mean how i don't know yeah talk about that for a second actually because you know everyone has addicts in their family and you know how is how is this affecting you know, some of these addicts, and is it bringing them back? I mean, where does psilocybin sort of fall into that category? So my presumption is that given the way they work in the brain, and there's anecdotes with both that, that this anti-addiction potential is there for not only ayahuasca,

but psilocybin, and for LSD. There was older work on alcoholism in LSD. We've done a lot of work with tobacco, nicotine addiction. There's, there's modern work with psilocybin. to treat alcoholism. We've got funding to use psilocybin to treat opioid addiction. So I'm going to be running that study. We don't have data on that yet. But there was some older research with LSD treating opioid addiction, heroin addiction. So I think there is, I think there's more in common than there are differences between these. And I think one of the reasons, that's one of the reasons why this can be such a game changer for psychiatry, I think there's far more in common between addiction and depression and other psychiatric disorders, not all, but a lot of them,

than we've normally assumed. And the way we categorize them is kind of superficial in psychiatry. It's not really based on a mechanistic understanding. I think these are different ways of being stuck in a very deeply, very deep rut, whether it's being stuck with a certain type of substance use, where it's harming other aspects of your life, or whether it's stuck in a certain way of thinking about yourself, that you lose all the self-persecretory thoughts that come with depression, and being stuck in this single-minded focus on the trauma, and that defining your entire life and your self-worth. I think these are all ways where people are stuck in this really suboptimal way. And psychedelics, loosely speaking, seem to be a powerful way to blast

people out of that. And once someone's out of it, it's like once they bounce out of those ski ruts from a, you know, well-worn tracks on a ski slope, you know, where it's, you know, you just fall into the tracks that are normally there. And psychedelics are like a blizzard going over the mountain where it's like, oh, now there's fresh powder anywhere. Now I could see. I could just avoid, I always hit those trees. I can avoid that. There's this kind of agency where someone could see the pitfalls and have this greater ability to have a flexibility to move outside of these stuck patterns. That's so great. And do we understand why that's happening or do we just know that it is at this point? That's what he's trying to uncover. Yeah, we're trying to figure that.

I think it has something to do with the brain communicating with itself in this radically different way and some research I'm doing now with smoking cessation where we're imaging people long term. Hopefully we'll have some answers like have you basically shaken up the snow globe and things have settled down in a more, in a healthier way in terms of ongoing brain communication patterns. But I think so much even with even forgetting the biology, we know so much psychologically, it just seems clear that people have insightful experiences where they have learned from these experiences in the same way that people learn from very good therapy that takes a lot of time. And certainly with certain things like with PTSD, it's hard to keep going to it because it's exposure to the thing that, you know, it's causing you problems.

You've got to keep talking about the horrible thing that happened to you. But the potential is there to have this kind of experience that can radically shake someone out of that. And that can have a power where someone just lands in a different spot and reestablish a new normal. Yeah, it's like a loop. I had a guru once. He's a kundalini guru guy.

And he said to me, and I thought it was a really interesting thing, He goes, you know, it's like you have a television set right here on the right side of you up here. And you're just, you haven't yet turned off the same channel. You just need to turn off the television. It's the same sitcom, you know, running over and over and over again. I think that's kind of what you're saying. Like it's a similar metaphor of like the loop that we can get stuck in.

I mean, there's so much that we could talk about. Oh, God, it's crazy. One more quick question. I love, I wish I could talk for a hundred years. This is so exciting. I hope you come back. I know. But if you are on sort of some psychiatric medication, you know, are you allowed to take part in the study?

It depends on what the medication is. If someone's on antidepressants, it's likely they're going to have a very blunted response to psychedelic. So like rat research even shows this. And it's their serotonin receptors aren't going to have the same effect. So it's, you know, you're going to have a dud session, basically. if someone's on antidepressants. But other medications, it kind of depends on what the medication is. Anything involving the serotonin system,

it's safer to just, you know, kind of make sure they're not on it in case there's some interaction. And there's some other meds, but some medications are okay. Okay, one more question. Do you get high on your own supply? Ah, you save that one until the end.

I know you can't answer it. I know you can't. Lower my defenses. So I'll give you the politician's answer. If I said, I've had experiences like this, then a whole lot of people out there would say you're completely biased and have no right to do this. And if I said I hadn't, then a whole lot of other people would say, oh, how dare you do this to people and not know what this is like yourself? You have no right to do this. Right, right.

You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. I will say I and my colleagues highly, we deeply value. how meaningful this can be for people. And I think that's the more important question is, you know, do you, you know, take the greatest care to hold these opportunities with people very seriously and, yeah, and have a deep empathy for them? So that I can't answer. Good. I love it.

Well, I'm going to see you next week. I'm flying out there. Matt, if someone wants to know more, if someone wants to be a part of this, Yes. How do they reach you? So we have a website, Hopkins psychedelic.org, and I post about our research at my Twitter, drug underscore researcher. But it's not hard to find us, even if you forgot the website, you know, Google Johns Hopkins psychedelic, and it'll be the first thing that pops up. And you can find out about the current studies, apply for studies online, see what we have

coming up in the future and what we've already done. Great. This is fun. Thanks for sitting with us. It's enlightening, man. I think this is the future. You know, I'm biased a little bit, but I do. I think it's just a beautiful thing that if done correctly, yeah, I've really enjoyed the question and having

the discussion with you guys, so thanks very much. All right, brother. Okay. Take care. Sibling Revelry is executive produced by Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. Producer is Alison Bresnick. Music by Mark Hudson, a.k.a. Uncle Mark. I'm Jorge Ramos.

And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists, to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space. for the conversations we've been having as father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos,

on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack. Available now.

Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row. How does someone prove that they deserve to live? We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike. Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.