The Tim Ferriss Show - #385: The World's Largest Psychedelic Research Center

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to a very exciting edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-betweenisode and that means that the format is a little weird.

Starting point is 00:00:36 It's not a long-form interview, but it's a very, very important announcement. This is something I've been working on for around a year and a half, very intensely, and something diligent scientists have been working toward for 20 plus years, multiple decades. This episode features a recording of a press conference that I did last week, announcing the launch of the world's largest psychedelic research center and the first psychedelic research center in the US. It is called the Center for Psychedelic Research Center and the first psychedelic research center in the U.S. It is called the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, or RESEARCH if you prefer, at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Among other things, they'll be investigating the effectiveness of psychedelics

Starting point is 00:01:16 as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer's disease, specifically the depression that often accompanies Alzheimer's disease, but they'll be looking at secondary outcomes, which will track cognitive effects, which is of great interest to me. Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, formerly known as chronic Lyme disease, anorexia nervosa, which has the highest mortality rate, i.e. fatality rate of any psychiatric disorder, and alcohol use in people with major depression. The researchers hope to create precision medicine tailored to individual patients' specific needs. It's super exciting. I couldn't be happier, and it wouldn't have happened without generous support from Stephen and Alexandra Cohen, at CohenGive, C-O-H-E-N-G-I-V-E on Twitter, Matt Mollenweg, at Photomat, M-A-T-T on Twitter, Blake Mycoskie, at Blake Mycoskie, M-Y-C-O-S-K-I-E on Twitter, and Craig Nirenberg.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Many thanks also to Benedict Carey of the New York Times for investigating and reporting on this from multiple perspectives, as he's done for many, many years. He is at Ben Carey, C-A-R-E-Y-N-Y-T on Twitter. As some of you know, I shifted most of my focus from startup investing to this field around 2015. And it's incredibly important to me that this watershed announcement helps to catalyze more studies, more ambitious centers, more scientists entering the field, and more philanthropists and sources of funding taking a really close look at psychedelic science. To that end, it's critical that more people realize there is much more reputational upside, much more reputational reward than reputational risk in supporting

Starting point is 00:03:06 this important work in 2019 and beyond. And my hope is to broadcast this as widely as possible. And there are a few different ways to do that. One is to share the New York Times pieces that have come out. And there are a few different New York Times pieces that have come out covering this. One of them can be found at tim.blog forward slash NYT or New York Times, spelled however you want, will forward to one article. So I would sincerely ask that if you're interested in this space, or if you find value in exploring this space, which I think holds the potential to treat what are considered untreatable or intractable conditions, then please share that URL and the announcement itself. I'm joined in the press conference with Dr. Roland Griffiths, and you'll hear intros later, so I'm not going to get into

Starting point is 00:03:56 it right now, but Dr. Roland Griffiths, who is incredible, Dr. Matthew Johnson, who is incredible, and then also Audrey Huang, PhD, who is the moderator. And I will keep it short for now. A couple of time markers. This is maybe a little drier than some of my interviews that bounce around and can be very kind of fun-loving. This one's pretty serious, but a couple of time markers. So if you want to skip the initial introductory remarks, you can jump to about four minutes and 30 seconds from when this intro ends. If you want to go directly to my comments, if you're interested in why I would focus so much on this space, my personal reasons, my kind of macro level, big picture reasons, you can jump to about 11 minutes and 10 seconds after I stop talking in this intro. And then if you want to get straight to the Q&A, where we're fielding questions from people in attendance, then you can go to 15 minutes and

Starting point is 00:04:49 30 seconds after I stop talking. So without further ado, please enjoy this incredibly important, incredibly exciting announcement of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today. My name is Dr. Audrey Huang. I am Director of Media Relations at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Today we're announcing a new research center at Johns Hopkins, the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Joining us today are Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Matthew Johnson, and Mr. Tim Ferriss. Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Matthew Johnson, and Mr. Tim Ferriss. Dr. Roland Griffiths is a professor of behavioral biology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and he is founding director of this new center.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Dr. Griffiths is one of the nation's leading psychopharmacologists whose research focuses on better understanding the effects of mood-altering drugs. He directs the Psilocybin Research Initiative here at Johns Hopkins, which has run many studies over the years, including examining the mystical experience imparted by psychedelics on healthy people and how psychedelics might decrease depression and anxiety. Psilocybin, the active compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, or shrooms for those more familiar, will be one focus of the new center. It was first purified and then made synthetically in the 1950s. At the time, psilocybin was legal and was among the psychedelics that rose to the center of the 1960s counterculture. In 1971, however,

Starting point is 00:06:24 with the signing of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances Treaty of the United Nations, psilocybin was listed in the United States as a Schedule I drug, defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. It was because of Dr. Griffith's leadership that Johns Hopkins was able to gain regulatory approval in the year 2000 to reinitiate studies that help us better understand the effects of psychedelic drugs in healthy people. And now, nearly 20 years later, we're dramatically expanding the testing of psilocybin as therapy for serious health conditions, including major depression.

Starting point is 00:07:01 To his left, we have Dr. Matthew Johnson, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the associate director of the New Center. Dr. Johnson is an experimental psychologist and an expert on psychoactive drugs and in psychology of addiction and risk behavior. An underlying theme of Dr. Johnson's career has been to understand and facilitate human behavioral change, particularly that which is fundamental to addiction recovery. Dr. Johnson also studies the behavioral and psychological effects of psychoactive drugs. He was lead author on the safety guidelines for human psychedelic research in 2008,

Starting point is 00:07:43 which has helped to more safely usher in a new era of psychedelic research. Doctors Johnson and Griffiths together have studied the use of psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction, in treating depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer, and in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices in generating positive psychological functioning. And on the end there, we welcome Mr. Tim Ferriss, one of the philanthropists who is making possible this Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Mr. Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company's most innovative business people and, a number of years ago, one of Fortune's 40 under 40. He is an early stage technology investor and advisor and has been involved with numerous startups including Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, among many others. Mr. Ferris has

Starting point is 00:08:39 authored five number one New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books, including The 4-Hour Workweek and Tools of Titans, the tactics and routines and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers. The Observer and other media have called him the Oprah of audio due to the influence he has had with the Tim Ferriss Show podcast, the first business interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads, which I'm sure now is at a much higher number. Thank you all for joining us today. So why don't you each say a few words about this new center, and then we'll open it up

Starting point is 00:09:13 to questions. Dr. Griffiths, would you like to start? Yes. Thank you, Audrey. So we're very pleased to announce the establishment of this Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, which we believe to be the first such center in the United States and the largest in the world. Psychedelics are a fascinating class of compounds.

Starting point is 00:09:33 They produce a unique and profound change of consciousness over the course of just several hours. For almost 20 years, we've been investigating the effects of psilocybin, which is the naturally occurring psychedelic found in the so-called magic mushrooms. And we've done so in studies with more than 350 participants and healthy volunteers. Remarkably, even months after study completion, roughly 80% of participants have rated their psilocybin experience to be among the most personally meaningful experiences of their entire lives, on par with the birth of a firstborn child or death of a parent. The establishment of this center will build on our past research that's

Starting point is 00:10:19 demonstrated the therapeutic effects of psilocybin in people suffering from a range of challenging conditions including studies we've conducted in anxiety and depression in cancer patients, nicotine addiction, and debilitating depression disorder. The Center will also allow us to expand this research on psychedelics to develop new treatments for a wider variety of psychiatric and behavioral disorders, and Matt will be telling you some about this next. In addition, the Center is going to allow us to extend our past research and healthy volunteers to now investigate the effects of these compounds on creativity and well-being with an ultimate aspiration of opening new ways to support human thriving. I want to express my gratitude to the many research participants and patients who

Starting point is 00:11:13 over the years have volunteered their time and without whom we wouldn't have been able to advance this work. I also want to thank our funders. So the center is launching with $17 million in support from the Stephen and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and private philanthropist Tim Ferriss, who's with us today. Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress. Blake Makowski, the founder of Tom's, a shoe and accessory brand, and investor Craig Nurnberg. This funding will support a program of psychedelic research for five years and includes positions for six faculty member neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and clinicians, as well as five postdoctoral scientists. The stable funding provided by the center will allow a quantum leap in psychedelic research, as well as the ability to train a new generation of graduate

Starting point is 00:12:13 and medical students who want to pursue careers in psychedelic science. That is so exciting, Dr. Griffiths. Thank you. Dr. Johnson, would you like to say a few things? Sure. Thanks, Audrey. I'd like to talk about the new clinical studies that we plan to do in our new center. We plan to focus on how psychedelics affect behavior, brain function, learning and memory, the brain's biology, and mood. We plan to explore the mechanisms by which psychedelics can contribute to general wellness. Our past research has demonstrated therapeutic benefits in people who suffer from depression and anxiety caused by cancer. This study has paved the way for our ongoing study that tests psilocybin as a potential treatment for major depression in people

Starting point is 00:12:57 without cancer. I've led our past and present work using psilocybin to treat nicotine addiction, and results so far have been wildly successful. After two and a half years on average 60% of our participants remain smoke-free which appears to be more effective than all other available treatments. This then laid a foundation for the next two trials I'll lead in the new center. One looking into psilocybin as a treatment for opioid addiction and the other for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Our colleague Fred Barrett will lead the trial for treating alcohol abuse in people with major depression. He'll also continue his brain imaging studies to

Starting point is 00:13:40 determine how psilocybin affects the brain's activity. Fred also plans to identify genetic and other biomarkers in the blood that can predict the brain's response to psychedelics. Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeo will lead two clinical studies. The first trial will test psilocybin in treating anxiety and depression in people with Alzheimer's disease. This study will be in partnership with the Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Al's second trial will partner with the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center to treat

Starting point is 00:14:18 emotional and behavioral symptoms of post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, what was formerly known as chronic Lyme disease. Dr. Natalie Gucasian will lead the study using psychedelics as a therapy for anorexia nervosa. This study partners with the Johns Hopkins Eating Disorders Program. And finally, Roland will lead two fascinating studies, not focused on treating illness, but exploring the betterment of well people. One study will examine the effects of micro-dosing, or taking extremely small doses of psilocybin, and the other study will examine the effects of psilocybin on creativity.

Starting point is 00:14:57 Overall, I see psychedelics as a paradigm-shifting game-changer in the treatment of mental health disorders, and as tools for understanding the brain's connection to mind and behavior. Our nation is experiencing an absolute crisis in mental health, with depression and addiction causing staggering numbers of deaths. We need to follow the data on psychedelics, but the funding of this center will allow us to actually produce those data, permitting us to cautiously bring the power of psychedelics to bear on mental health. So I'm extremely grateful to the center funders for making this possible. After Tim speaks, Roland and I are happy to answer questions about these studies too.

Starting point is 00:15:41 Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. And let's hear from the funders. Mr. Farris, can you tell us a little bit about your motivation for helping us launch the center? I can. It's a real honor to be involved. And the motivations are multiple.

Starting point is 00:15:57 And I'll start with the personal and then we'll zoom out and look at the data, so to speak, and the macro level case. So on a personal level I have for instance Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. I have major depressive disorder and treatment resistant depression on both sides of my family and as it relates to opioids I've seen my best friend growing up on Long Island died of a fentanyl overdose, my aunt died of percocet plus alcohol last year and that's my personal experience with a number

Starting point is 00:16:28 of these conditions which are largely thought to be intractable or have very few treatment options. On the macro level, I really look at it the same way that I would look at investing in startups or businesses and I stopped doing that in 2015 to push all my chips into this. And it's not my first time at the scientific rodeo. I've funded other types of scientific studies. But if you look at the criteria I would use, let's just say if this were for-profit, and I don't have any for-profit bets in the space, but I would be looking for a large market, I would be looking for an uncrowded bet, and I would be looking for a clear path to progress.

Starting point is 00:17:05 Well, it just so happens that if you're looking at, say, effective altruism, you have more or less the exact same checkboxes. You have an important problem, so we were just talking about the prevalence of many of these issues. As one example, we have roughly 20 veterans per day who commit suicide in the United States. We lose more at home than at war. Many of those involve opioid addiction and or depression, PTSD certainly. And therefore the market size is large. You just have to open any newspaper to see that, certainly as it relates to opioids as one example. Then you have uncrowded debt. This entire field has been largely neglected in the sense that there's been a near complete lack of federal funding. So that's exciting to me in the sense that

Starting point is 00:17:53 you can get a hugely disproportionate outcome, not to say confirming or disconfirming, but you can have a large impact with a relatively small amount of capital. I mean, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or single digit millions, you can have a large impact with a relatively small amount of capital. I mean, with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or single-digit millions, you can have a huge impact. And that reminds me of a number of people I've studied as models for this type of philanthropic giving to science, including Catherine McCormick, who may not be familiar to most folks, but she almost single-handedly helped fund the development of oral contraceptives. And she did that after it had been dropped by a for-profit company that didn't see profit in sight. And she, over the course of several years, with I believe a biochemist named Gregory Pincus,

Starting point is 00:18:36 put in $2 million. So that's, you know, I'm putting in between two and three here. And in today's dollars, that's roughly 23. So there's a comparable right we have 17 23 and it was initially approved as i understand it for menstrual disorders and then additional applications came in or indications and that fundamentally bent the arc of history in a positive way and looking at the data looking at the results the rapid onset the duration of effect as matt said even though it's an overused expression, I mean, this truly could be paradigm shifting and lend to not just a better understanding of these conditions,

Starting point is 00:19:13 but the mind itself and consciousness. And then I would say, you know, last, tractable. Is there a clear path to progress? Yes, you have one of the most productive teams in the world who now, with multi-year salary support can get incredible level of ambition that they have to hopefully also bring in an entire new wave of scientists who want to pursue this as a career. So those are a few of the reasons why I'm exceptionally excited and committed to this. Amazing. Thank you so much. So let's take some questions, shall we? Why don't we start with a question that we collected earlier to Drs. Griffiths and Johnson. So you have an impressive lineup of studies that you'd like to do, ranging from anorexia nervosa to PTSD to post-treatment Lyme. they seem so wide-ranging. What is the evidence that psilocybin is going to help such a vast group of conditions?

Starting point is 00:20:33 Well, we don't know, but we're very hopeful that psilocybin offers this opportunity for a trans-diagnostic intervention. So what we know is from our studies with healthy volunteers and some of our patient populations that a single or a couple of sessions with psilocybin produce enduring positive changes be it in reduction of addiction or reduction of anxiety or increased well-being and healthy volunteers. So this doesn't fit into any classic therapeutic model, at least in psychopharmacology, where you have a specific receptor target aimed at a very specific disease entity. And the potential promise here is to start with depression and some of these very defined conditions

Starting point is 00:21:27 and then explore the generality of this effect. It's unknown but it's a very exciting prospect. And I'll add that I really see psychedelics as inducing a mental and behavioral plasticity. So people should kind of look at all these disorders we're looking into and think okay does it sound like snake oil you know how could it potentially treat this wide range of disorders and as Roland said we need to look at each one carefully so we're going to be data-driven the entire way but the exciting thing is there's evidence for these nominally different classes of disorders depression depression, addiction, and addiction

Starting point is 00:22:05 to different types of drugs. And that's the really exciting thing. And I really think of all these different disorders, whether it's depression in cancer or without cancer, addiction to this or addiction to that, as addictions broadly defined, a way of being stuck about a certain way of thinking about yourself and the world the mind and behavior are stuck in a rut and psych adults are a powerful way to blast people out of that that can have a lasting effect that's amazing that's an interesting way of thinking about it Kayla do we have any questions our question comes from Christopher Wanda with live Science. Please go ahead.

Starting point is 00:22:50 Yes, hi. I'm wondering what lessons he might have learned from the 50s and 60s. It's kind of like, here we go again. I mean, what did Timothy Leary do wrong? Why was it made illegal in 1970s that the whole world came together and questioned the practicality of this natural substance. Sure. I mean, this field is chock full of lessons from the past, and we've been studying those lessons for a couple decades here and taking them very seriously. One, these substances do have risks, and none of our research should encourage, you know, do-it-yourself-at-home. And one of Leary's mistakes, he did some brilliant research too, but one of his mistakes is more widely encouraging use. So that's something we've never done and never planned to do. And another was a lack of being very clear about what the risks are.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Fortunately, the classic psychedelics like psilocybin aren't drugs of addiction, but they can be abused, which is to mean used in a dangerous way. They can cause lasting harm in people with schizophrenia and disorders like that. The bad trip can happen in anyone, a panic reaction essentially that can lead to harm, especially in an unsupervised environment, sometimes in recreational use, never in researchvised environment. Sometimes in recreational use, never in research, interestingly, but in recreational use you see lasting perceptual harms. Pretty rare but it shows up. So fortunately we can mitigate all of those risks in research. We can squarely screen and monitor and follow up with people to make sure we absolutely

Starting point is 00:24:24 minimize those. So that's really the strongest lesson for me. It's like we have to study the good, the bad, the ugly, and call it out. These aren't for everyone. They're our risks. If I can just add to that. So when we initiated our research program, it was unknown to us what the the real risk profile was we had read the literature but none of us were proponents and and frankly for myself I became astonished at the therapeutic potential so we have been data driven through empirical studies and we were very interested in adverse events and we've done a lot of work on challenging the so-called bad effects

Starting point is 00:25:12 with of which there are a number and they're substantial but so we're very focused on that and then we're very focused on could we administer these compounds safely reliably to produce effects. And I think we've shown that, and as Matt says, we're going to be data-driven on this. But I think there's an opportunity here to rewrite the cultural narrative that was so skewed by the events of the 1960 which had some peculiar historical antecedents. We have a question via Twitter from Chris Leatherby. Does trans diagnostic efficacy force us to revise our conception and taxonomy of mental disorder and if so how? Dr. Griffiths?

Starting point is 00:26:05 Well that's a great question and I think very very possibly it may. So the very fact that there can be interventions that cut across these different diagnostic categories suggests that they shouldn't be viewed as narrow domains, but they're interconnected in some way that we don't fully understand, but we're committed to understanding the basic neuroscience and the resulting psychology and psychological changes that occur with administration of these compounds in ways that profoundly alter human research attitudes, moods, and behaviors in very positive directions. And I'll add to that, this is not inconsistent with the direction of science

Starting point is 00:27:07 outside of psychedelics. In fact, a number of years ago, the National Institute on Mental Health dropped the Psychiatric Bible or the DSM as being required for being a part of their, you know, the research that they're funding. And the rationale was that really, unlike every other area of medicine, the psychiatric Bible or DSM is largely descriptive. These nominally different disorders may not be different. And in fact, you see huge overlap. Comorbidity is the rule rather than the exception. And so I view psychedelics as one of the most powerful tools to actually investigate this idea that there are more fundamental underlying commonalities, both in terms of the neuroscience and in terms of the behavior. So again, we're going to be data-driven

Starting point is 00:28:01 the whole way, but we hope this could actually inform the scientific conversation about the nature of mental disorders broadly, completely outside of psychedelics themselves. Excellent. Kayla, do we have any questions from our callers? Our next question comes from one of Olivia Goldhill with Quartz. Please go ahead. Hi, yeah, I have two questions. First of all, are you able to provide a breakdown

Starting point is 00:28:27 of which donor gave which amount? And secondly, in terms of the research, is there any particular condition that you think you might focus on for a bigger study or for kind of gearing up to eventually, if the results go well,

Starting point is 00:28:43 get FDA approval for treatment, and if so, which? And is there, I believe Alzheimer's and Lyme disease are fairly new conditions for psilocybin treatment. So what's the reasoning behind those conditions? Okay, so why don't we start with the first one. Mr. Ferris, do you want to tackle the dollar amounts? The dollar amounts? I actually couldn't make out the specifics. The breakdown of who gave how much? Oh, I think that would require the buy-in of all funders.

Starting point is 00:29:13 I can say that personally, I can speak for myself, speaking for myself, I would just say that I would not have felt comfortable assembling some of the funders who were brought in to help support the center without having a lot of personal skin in the game so this is the largest I put in between two and three million and that for me represents the largest financial commitment I have ever made to anything for-profit or nonprofit so that is non-trivial for me and required a very careful examination of the team, the data, the risk profile, both for the compounds themselves, but also for the entire center itself, which required looking back at the lessons from the past, the cultural differences, what were primarily politically driven decisions versus scientific decisions, the way that study design has changed, placebo control for instance, and so on. So the short answer is I can only speak for myself because I would want to get permission from everybody else to share the the split but the weight is pretty evenly

Starting point is 00:30:16 distributed I would say in some respects. I mean the the the Stephen Alexandra Cohen Foundation came in with with quite a large portion of that, and then the remainder is pretty evenly split. So I'll leave it at that for now. Fair enough. And then the second part of the question was, is there any particular study of the many that you're doing that maybe you're more hopeful about leading to eventual FDA approval?

Starting point is 00:30:54 So I think the lead indication right now for FDA approval of psilocybin is either treatment-resistant depression or major depressive illness. And there are two entities that are moving forward with FDA trials that if they turn out successful could result in medical approval of psilocybin as a first indication. But then there are a number of these very interesting other therapeutic targets and we're interested in, as the questioner asked, in anorexia and Alzheimer's and PTSD and post-treatment Lyme disease. All of those have their own unique rationales behind them, but they're aiming at the central thought that these experiences can produce these enduring positive changes and really rewrite personal narrative that's around being stuck with whatever the condition is, be it addiction or depressive symptoms or whatever. And I'll add that the new center is certainly going to contribute to that question about treating depression because in fact we'll have Fred's study that's looking at the combination of alcohol use disorder or alcoholism and depression. And then a couple of other studies, the Alzheimer's study and the chronic Lyme study, are going to be looking at the depressive symptoms, among other

Starting point is 00:32:31 symptoms that are part of the cluster that comes with those disorders. And our previous work has very much provided one of the strongest foundations for those two entities that Roland mentioned in moving forward with the depression indication. So we hope that sort of continues in our research, particularly in the center. We'll drive an entire field of research with this. Yeah, just one further comment. So we actually just recently completed a trial in depression. And those data are looking very favorably.

Starting point is 00:33:12 We expect to go to press with those later this fall. So we have contributed significantly to this database that is moving forward these forays into medical approval. But undertaking those phase three trials is a hugely expensive effort, and that needs to be driven by groups other than ourselves. But we're pleased to pass the baton to them and grateful that they've taken it. Great. Well, we have another question from Twitter from Tom Angel. Is Mr. Ferris hopeful that this research that he's funding will ultimately lead to federal reclassification of psilocybin or other psychedelics? And if so, how soon? It's a really good question. And it's a question I've thought quite a lot about. But for the sake of creating a target for myself that is perhaps a little shorter term or less focused on, coming back to the uncrowded bedside, my goal, so yes, the hope would be that there will be, at some point, reclassification so that, at the very least, the funding of science and the speed with which scientific studies can be executed at lower cost will really be facilitated.

Starting point is 00:34:38 That's number one. what we, well I shouldn't speak, I'm using the royal we here, but based on certainly the studies that I've looked at, the data are very, very compelling. But these compounds are still very, very partially understood. And what I would like to do, and the way I think about the funding of this center is that practically and symbolically unlocking both enthusiasm and ambition within the psychedelic field as a whole, in the US and abroad, providing a proof point so that people dream, meaning people, scientists, dream bigger and ask for bigger things. Because I do think that we are at the beginning of a tide shift

Starting point is 00:35:25 where there will be much more independent funding coming in from not just individual donors but smaller foundations than hopefully some of these big brand name foundations, when they recognize that there's more reputational opportunity than risk involved with a lot of these compounds. I mean, the problems are so serious and so vast and granted there are certainly risks involved with these compounds but the toxicity profile is very very favorable my hope would be that by facilitating this it helps pave the way for federal funding with within the next five years and that would be a target for me. The reclassification, yes, it's something

Starting point is 00:36:07 that I hope for, but it's not something that I can aim for very accurately by myself. Whereas being involved in a hands-on way with this center, I do think could really mark the beginning of a very important, exciting, and new chapter in psychedelic research. Fantastic. Just to address the specific question, what's the soonest expectation? It really is a crystal ball because there's so many different factors that go into that approval process, and ultimately, FDA needs to sift through that data.

Starting point is 00:36:45 But I would guess five plus years before approval for a depression indication. It might become available somewhat sooner if some provisions are opened up for compassionate care. But this is an unknown and uncertain course as to how it unfolds. Let me add one more thing if I could. So another reason, coming back to the why now question, is that good science takes time. And by unlocking the full-time potential of productive teams, you accelerate the timelines. These problems, like opioid addiction, are not static. I mean, they are much like if you're looking at compound interest and investments, it's a good thing.

Starting point is 00:37:34 These problems are also compounding. So there is a time sensitivity to addressing these things. And that's another reason why I think that I feel a tremendous degree of urgency with allowing the people who are already committed to this path to dedicate their full time to the studies they want to be performing as opposed to seeking salary support through other means, grants and so on. And then also to invite an entire new wave and generation of scientists to consider this as a very viable and exciting path. Certainly, yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:11 There's an urgency. There is a time sensitivity to this. Investment will certainly help grow the number of experts that study this problem. Kayla, do we have any questions on the phone? Our next question comes from Christopher Wanjack with Life Science. Please go ahead. Hi, it's me again. And I absolutely think it's great and I'm totally for research in a very legitimate way to learn new things of what's possible. At the same time, as I write this article, I'm very confused

Starting point is 00:38:43 over the messaging. You as I write this article, I'm very confused over the messaging. You got this on one side, this is safe and it's the best experience on par with childbirth or whatever you said. But oh, by the way, don't try this at home. And keeping in mind what has happened with marijuana as well and the legalization. And I was down in Florida just a couple weeks ago, and it's being sold in tourist shops in loggers or form for any old thing. And so I just don't understand how I can write a responsible message about the potential use and dangers of this when part of your message is

Starting point is 00:39:22 that it's so wonderful and it's been used for so long. Dr. Johnson? Well, it might be helpful to point to some analogies. I mean, you look at some of the extreme sports, you know, extreme surfing and, you know, flying with the wings, jumping off of mountains. I mean, experts, you know, die doing those things. Those are very risky activities. But you talk to those folks and they're going to tell you they're in these flow states that are probably remarkably similar to some of the mystical experiences that we're talking about. We can't ignore what it is. You could say, like, that's fascinating. What is it like for someone to skydive or to,

Starting point is 00:40:06 you know, surf a giant wave? You can do that with, at the same time, telling folks, hey, you know, don't do this in risky circumstances, you know, for example, if you're not in, you know, one of our studies or an eventual, you know, approved clinical use. So there are plenty of extraordinary things. I mean, the number of examples I can think of is broad. Travel to extreme places, having many interesting experiences, can have both indescribably wonderful claimed benefits as well as come along with extreme dangers. So, you know, we just got to lay it all on the table and be very clear about both the benefits, when those risks

Starting point is 00:40:56 are cautiously mitigated and addressed in what we are doing and in hopefully future clinical use that the data leads us there. But also, you know, what the risks are out there, you know, sort of in the wild where those mechanisms aren't in place. Yes. So let me just comment further on the risks. I mean, they're very real and we have been absolutely dedicated to communicating about those risks. So when the substance are given to carefully screen volunteers in the laboratory in our situation, we know that we can mitigate risks. But part of that is done by screening people out who shouldn't receive these compounds. So if people have predispositional characteristics towards psychotic illness,

Starting point is 00:41:49 there's concern that some experiences with these compounds might precipitate enduring schizophrenia-like illness, which would be an absolute catastrophic outcome. And so that's a absolute catastrophic outcome. And so that's a very serious outcome. Then there are other serious outcomes that are secondary to the set setting and the support that's provided.

Starting point is 00:42:15 So very commonly, the bad trips of people who are taking these compounds recreationally can, in extreme cases result in engaging in panic or dangerous behavior that put the individual you know or others at at serious risk including for for death so so we absolutely need to underscore that. We did a large survey study with people who had taken psilocybin in unmedically supervised conditions, asking them about their very worst experience.

Starting point is 00:42:59 So this isn't representative of the entire population of all people who've taken psilocybin. But among those people who were describing the consequences of their most challenging experiences, about 10% said that over a year later, they had some kind of enduring psychological difficulty, many of whom sought out professional help for that. And so we need to be very humble about what we don't know and the potential serious side effects and consequences if these compounds aren't administered under carefully supervised conditions. May I add something? And I want the doctor doctor to please jump in and correct me if I mess anything up. But I think there are a few things worth noting.

Starting point is 00:43:54 From a personal perspective, if someone were to ask or insist that I put a million dollars into lobbying for or against psilocybin or mushrooms being available at every CVS, I would be against. And at the doses that we're considering, the way that I think about it, again, is almost if you were to consider something that is innocuous enough to be available over the counter as, say, some type of Bengay or ointment that you rub on an achy knee, compared to many of the studies that are being conducted, which I would consider closer to say a very, very fascinating and effective, in many cases, form of knee surgery. You don't want to DIY your knee surgery, as useful as it might be. And the therapeutic wrapper around which these are administered are incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:44:46 So as Dr. Johnson was mentioning, if there is a window of plasticity, the means of administration determines to some extent how that Play-Doh gets molded and how does that plasticity then manifest itself? So I'm very optimistic and excited to fund and support research. But I would be certainly in the against camp for the foreseeable future of having this available over the counter. Because there are so many other conditions that are important to get right. So it's definitely impatient, not outpatient from my perspective. And one more thing, and I want you guys to chime in on this. My understanding of these compounds is that if you try to use them too frequently, they lose their efficacy. So there is sort of a self-regulating aspect to these compounds that make them less likely on some level to result in sort of compulsive addictive use.

Starting point is 00:45:56 Yeah, our strong suspicion is exactly that, that the more frequent use, the less salience. All of our evidence suggests it's the nature of the experience, not just hitting brain receptors. It's the nature of the experience someone has during the session that predicts whether you've quit smoking, whether you have less depression and anxiety six months later, a year later. So, you know, that's going to be different if someone is taking it every weekend. So I absolutely agree. Another point related to both what you said and what the question was, it's just this comparison to cannabis. I think one of the most important things that's understandably not often seen when writing about this area of research is that this research that we and others have done

Starting point is 00:46:42 has gone along a completely different trajectory in comparison to the medical, you know, cannabis movement. In fact, we've done things and are continuing to do things exactly the way that the federal authorities have always wanted, you know, cannabis and cannabinoids to be developed, you know, not encouraging, you know, local initiatives, not encouraging medical use on your own outside of approval by the FDA, but going through the FDA pathway, you know, phase one, two, and three trials that may lead to approval. And in fact, the FDA deserves a lot of credit here in being extremely open to this research and following the data like we have been doing. Great. I want to get back to the phone. Kayla, are there any questions waiting for us? Our next question comes from Olivia Goldhill with Quartz. Please go ahead. Hi, just to check, I believe the anorexia

Starting point is 00:47:47 study is the first of its kind looking at psilocybin to treat anorexia. Are any of the others going to be the very first of its kind looking at psilocybin to treat a particular condition? Yes. Most of our studies are looking at targets that haven't been investigated previously with psychedelics. So anorexia is one. The Alzheimer's disease is one. PTSD hasn't been systematically investigated in modern times. Opiate use disorder has not been investigated. Post-treatment Lyme disease has not been investigated. Post-treatment Lyme disease has not been investigated. So the range

Starting point is 00:48:29 of studies that we're going to undertake are all looking at novel interventions. Great. We have a question from Twitter from Kyle Yeager from Marijuana Moment which is syndicated by the Boston Globe. Is this a new facility or an expansion of an existing department? Can you talk a little bit more about how your program is growing? So, we have been conducting research with psilocybin at Johns Hopkins for now almost 20 years. We're located within a group within the Department of Psychiatry, the Behavioral

Starting point is 00:49:08 Pharmacology Research Unit. And we've been doing that, splicing together resources from some small number of federal sources, but mostly from philanthropy. But all of the center faculty, in fact, are individuals who came through our postdoctoral training program, are committed to this area of research, and have moved on to faculty appointments within our department. So the center exists within the framework of the existing department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins with a lot of support from our director, Dr. Jimmy Potash. But yet it's a new center, a configuration within that department. So we do have a center.

Starting point is 00:50:08 We are the Stephen and Alexandra Cohen Foundation are providing funds to renovate our areas. So we'll be centrally and co-located. So we will hold the status within the university as a center, which is significant within the organization of university structures. So it's both completely new and more of the same. And remodeled. And remodeled. Excellent. Kayla, are there other questions on the phone? Our next question comes from Melissa Healy with Los Angeles Times.

Starting point is 00:50:46 Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wonder if you would expand a little bit on the proposed clinical trial regarding opioid, the use of psilocybin for opioid use disorder, and maybe address some of the often raised ethical issues of using drugs that are associated with abuse for the treatment of addiction. I mean, since the two are, after all, generally linked.

Starting point is 00:51:18 And just a quick follow-up. I wonder also whether, in addition to any clinical trials linked to or using psilocybin as the agent in question, whether you will be looking into any therapeutic uses of other psychedelics, including MDMA or LSD or others. Right. So your question is a great one and it's one of the most um widely it's it's a common question and and there's a really good answer to it the first part about you know using a drug of abuse to treat addiction you know know, sounds dangerous. The most important thing to realize is that psilocybin is not a drug of addiction. You know, that means that it does not lead to compulsive drug use. No one is jonesing for their next psilocybin fix.

Starting point is 00:52:21 There are people that use it in ways that are dangerous and using psychiatric language we would call that abuse, use in a dangerous way. A really obvious example is driving while on the substance or use in a way that's interfering with their family responsibilities, etc. But we know squarely it's not a drug of addiction in terms of its effects on the brain reward system, in terms of the large-scale surveys, in terms of very reliable animal models of drug self-administration. So it's not a so-called substitution treatment, which in fact is one of the biggest forms of addiction medicine. So think methadone in treating opioid addiction or think the nicotine patch in treating cigarette smoking. Nothing against those

Starting point is 00:53:11 treatments. Those are important tools in the toolbox but in fact even though they help some people and do better than placebo they leave far more room for improvement. You know they don't help the large majority of people who initially engage in those forms of treatment. So it's nice that psilocybin is not going to be used in a compulsive, addictive fashion by people who are exposed to it one or a few times in these types of studies. And we have never seen evidence of people being exposed to psilocybin in studies who go on to have some sort of compulsive, you know, drug use pattern in using psilocybin. So we actually think compared to things that are commonly done in addiction medicine, methadone itself is addictive, nicotine itself is addictive, and there are all kinds of addictive psychiatric medications from the sleeping drugs to amphetamine, which is Adderall and other ADHD drugs.

Starting point is 00:54:21 It's really nice that psilocybin is in fact not an addictive drug. And if I can just address the question about other substances. So the center application as it was conceived is focusing in on psilocybin because that's the compound that we know. But indeed, there are variations in psychedelics that are of deep interest to us. We actually have also run studies with salvinorin A, which is a kappa opioid short-acting hallucinogen. We've also looked at dextromethorphan, which is an NMDA antagonist similar to ketamine.

Starting point is 00:55:07 We envision a future of this research, be it in our center or other academic centers, which will absolutely explore the range of these compounds, because psilocybin is simply the opening foray here. And if we really think about the opportunity to explore radical behavior change and investigation of the nature of conscious experience, we should look at all the tools in the toolbox. And the really cool thing about this field is that thanks to chemists like David Nichols and Alexander Shulgin, there are literally hundreds of psychedelic compounds, all of which have slight variations in terms of which receptors they hit and then, you know, how strongly they hit and different

Starting point is 00:55:59 receptor profiles in the brain. So we have an absolute library that can be tested, you know, but we're moving cautiously with the one that we know most about and the most safety data on. All right, we have one from Twitter from Boca Can. What other similar research is happening in the United States currently? Well, there are, since we initiated this work, there are a number of academic centers now that have gone online, and it's just very gratifying to see this whole area of research expand. So New York University has studies going on. They conducted a key study along with us in cancer patients. They're doing a study now in psilocybin treatment of alcohol use disorder. University of Alabama is doing a study on psilocybin treatment of cocaine dependence.

Starting point is 00:56:59 A group up in University of Wisconsin-Madison is undertaking early studies of looking at interactions between psilocybin and buprenorphine treatment for opiate dependence. There's a group out in San Francisco UCSF that's investigating palliative effects of psilocybin in individuals who are under psychological distress because of HIV diagnoses. And I've probably left off a few centers, but this is a burgeoning field of study, but it's limited in each of those cases by lack of resources and lack of funding. And I just want to return to that. So our work and much of this work has been historically funded by the private sector.

Starting point is 00:57:58 The Hefter Research Institute, which is a group that was founded by Dave Nichols, has been foundational in providing some of this support. But it's usually a relatively minor level or small level of support, but they're seeding these projects at different academic institutions. But with that feeding then becomes excitement and commitment on part of those investigators. And I don't doubt that that's going to continue to expand. And all, you know, the folks that Roland mentioned, along with Charlie Grove at UCLA, who's also done work in this area, these are great collaborators that, you know, we learn from each other and there's been a number of collaborations. But important, also that all of those groups have operated the way we have and sort of

Starting point is 00:58:54 cobbling together resources and unfortunately haven't had center level funding. So they haven't constituted centers. So our hope is that in the future that true centers will be disseminated in these and other groups. Great. So I think we're just about at time. I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in. Thank you to our guests today for coming together and telling us about this exciting news. And we'll call it a wrap have a great day everyone hey guys this is tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet friday do you want to get a short email from me and would you enjoy getting

Starting point is 00:59:38 a short email from me every friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend and five bullet friday is a very short email where i share the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that,

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #385: The World's Largest Psychedelic Research Center

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #385: The World's Largest Psychedelic Research Center

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.