TrueLife - Exploring Altered States: The Journey of Dr. Sebastian Marincolo

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Sebastián Marincolohttp://www.sebastianmarincolo.de/aka Dr. Sebastian Schulz studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He was a student of William Lycan, Simon Blackburn, Gianfranco Soldati, and Manfred Frank, some of the most influential philosophers of consciousness today, and received his magna cum laude Ph.D. with a thesis about a critical analysis of neurophilosophical theories of consciousness.Marincolo has researched the cannabis high and its potential as an altered state of consciousness for more than 25 years, and has published four books and numerous articles on the cannabis high. He was mentored by his late friend Harvard Assoc. Prof. Emer. Lester Grinspoon, one of the most renowned cannabis experts in the world.Marincolo’s expert blog with essays on the cannabis high appeared online in five languages for Sensi Seeds Amsterdam, the largest cannabis seed bank in the world.The highly influential educational platform for cannabis professionals Greenflower Media/Los Angeles produced his online courses on cannabis and the enhancement of creativity and empathic understanding in 2016.As a photographer, he produced the limited-edition macro photo art series The Art of Cannabis,  which helped him to visualize his work for a broader public.His unusual research and work has received positive reviews and attention worldwide, despite the strong taboo surrounding the topic of cannabis use. Marincolo has been featured in international news outlets, and he has appeared as a guest on various international TV and radio shows and podcasts.He worked as a photographer, as a creative director, as well as a communications and marketing consultant for various communication agencies, NGO’s, and other many other clients.In 2017, he took on the position of Director of Communications and Marketing, Germany, for one of the largest cannabis producers in the world. During this time, he helped educate both health professionals and the wider public about medical cannabis.Marincolo currently works as a freelance writer and communications consultant. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. We'll be in like three seconds, probably. Right here. Okay, okay, good. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that you are enjoying your day, your evening, your night,

your wherever it is and where you are listening to this or you're watching this, I hope you're enjoying it because I know that life is short and you only get some random moments to feel beautiful. And I hope you're in the moment because I have a series of moments for you to enjoy. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce our esteemed guest for today,

Sebastian Marancolo, a true Renaissance soul whose journeyed through the realms of philosophy, linguistics, and the intricacies of the mind has illuminated new past. of understanding. Dr. Sebastian Scholl, as he's academically known, earned his magna cum laude PhD through a critical analysis of neurophilosophical theories of consciousness. Mentored by luminaries such as William Lycan and Simon Blackburn, his academic lineage reads like a who's who of influential philosophers. What sets Sebastian apart is his

unparalleled exploration of the cannabis high, spanning over 25 years. As a researcher, he delves into the potential of cannabis. As an altered state of consciousness, and as a philosopher, he weaves together the threads of personal experience and scholarly insight. Sebastian's journey is not just confined to the ivory towers of academia.

He has ventured into the uncharted territories of photography, producing the limited edition macro photo art series, The Art of Cannabis. Through his lens, he brings to life the visual poetry of his unconventional research. A published author, his latest work elevated, invites us to reconsider cannabis as a tool for mind enhancement. This groundbreaking book explores the vast spectrum of mental abilities that cannabis may influence,

challenging preconceptions and igniting a dialogue in the intersection of consciousness and creativity. From being mentored by the late Harvard Associate Professor Emeritus Lester Grinspoon, to taking on roles as Director of Communications and Marketing for one of the world's largest cannabis producers. Sebastian's journey has been marked by a courageous exploration of the uncharted, today as a freelance writer and communications consultant, Sebastian continues to shape the narrative around cannabis. His presence has grace international news outlets, TV shows, and podcast, breaking through the strong taboo that often shrouds the topic of cannabis use. Join me in welcoming Sebastian Marancolo, philosopher, photographer, and trailblazer in the fascinating terrain where consciousness, creativity, and cannabis converge. Sebastian, thanks for being here.

Holy cow, can we stop now? Because from here, it's only going to go downhill, whatever I say. Thanks. Wow. What an introduction. I feel totally intimidated. It's working. Well, I'm stoked to you here, my friend.

I really enjoy our conversations that we've had so far. They've been really rewarding. And I think you have a phenomenal way of putting into words experiences. And so I'm looking forward to sharing that with our audience. I thought maybe a good place to start for people to really get an understanding of what we're beginning with. Maybe you could begin by talking about the master or your PhD thesis. Just kind of get some background on the way you think. Right.

Okay. Well, first of all, let me start over again. Thanks for having me, George. It's amazing to be here and talking to you. It has been a journey already, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today. So, yeah, I was, I started to become interested philosophically in the, in human consciousness, before I knew that philosophy exists. Before I knew that a discipline exists, an academic discipline called philosophy.

And I remember I was so happy when I found that there are people out there who professionally deal with those things. So I was at the age of 15, 16. I started to look into theories of consciousness. And I think I took like we all, as kids, we all ask philosophical questions. And it always amazes me to see like five-year-olds coming up with philosophical questions and ideas where you're like, wow, where does that come from? They have that openness still. And I think for me, that never ended.

So I was very early on, I was really focused on, in my philosophical interests on the consciousness and questions about human consciousness, how does the brain manage to generate whatever we feel is consciousness? Do, could computers generate consciousness or have consciousness? What kind of animals do have consciousness? Are ants conscious or mice conscious or elephants conscious in the way similar to what we believe is consciousness, to have an inner life, to have those sensations? So these were the questions that I was after and my dissertation thesis is dealing with.

maybe the most radical thesis of our time, which is called Eliminative Materialism. And briefly, the thesis says that all of our psychological theories today, all of our language that we're using to describe the inner lives and the behavior of other people, when I say Jim loves Mary, and therefore he does that, or John believes that Rome is a beautiful city, therefore he wants to travel to it, or all that kind of psychological vocabulary. Some neuroscientists said would have to be replaced by a future language based on the neurosciences, based on what we know about the brain, based on the new models of the brain, so-called connectionist models, because up until

the 80s, 90s or 80s. So we had more computational models of the human mind and how the human mind works where we talk about sentence crunching and so to say and where we see the computer model basically installed in our brains. And then people came and said, no, we have to take a closer look at the brain and see how it's actually wired. And we see those neurons being wired together

in certain ways and inhibiting each other, et cetera, et cetera. And based on that, they came up with models of the brain and human thinking that were radically different. And they said, okay, we already see that our explanations of how fear, anxiety, sleep, love, all those psychological states were postulating in our folk psychology, but also in our cognitive psychology, which is built upon the vocabulary. of our folk psychology, that all this will go away and be replaced by a materialist, so it will be eliminated and then replaced by materialist language.

And so this is something I discuss. It's a very radical thesis, and I oppose it. I said, we don't really have all the reasons to believe that. But I also, in my thesis, I argued that, yes, we are going to have a lot of insights coming from the neurosciences and the cognitive sciences, the empirical sciences, material scientists, sciences, which will change our mind about how we function, how our mental states can be explained, how behavior works, et cetera. And I think that kind of defined my journey also because,

I've always been thinking about where to, where do I get my knowledge, where do get my knowledge about the human mind and then later about altered states of consciousness also. And basically the insight from there is to you have to look in all directions. We're going to talk about that later maybe when it comes to my approach. So that was my dissertation thesis called alien minds, investigating Eliminative Materialism and it's called alien minds

because one of the implications of the eliminativist thesis would have been that we usually think that we know our own minds we have introspective access if you ask me, Sebastian, why did you go to the movies yesterday

with Tom or so? I'd say, yeah, I thought the movie is a great one because it has this actor in it. And Tom is a good friend of mine. I wanted to spend more time. And then, you know, the Elimited Freudian maybe would come along and say, yeah, your vocabulary is more or less right, but you forgot about your unconscious desire to see the pretty lady

that works at the reception desk, whatever you know. And the Elimitive Materialist would say something like, whatever you say is just plain wrong. You know your brain. You had all kinds of other reasons. I can't state them in your language. And that's why I called it alien minds, because one of the implications would have been that what we know about ourselves and how we describe our own minds would also be radically wrong. And like I said, I oppose that view.

But as all radical theories, it's an interesting one to discuss. because like when you discuss knowledge and the thesis like everything we know could be wrong, you come up with, you actually have to think about the general nature of knowledge and you have to really defend what kind of knowledge you feel is better than other or what kind of beliefs you hold or probably more something that's, could be called knowledge than others. And so of course, these are philosophical debates, but they are of great importance to how we see the world and how we navigate the world in general. So yeah, so that was my dissertation thesis. It's awesome. I love it. I think it's a great foundation

for the conversation that we're working our way into. And so after writing that thesis, did you have a relationship with cannabis or what began to move you into the world of cannabis from from from this philosophy what was the turn into cannabis from there um yeah so i had experiences with cannabis when i was 24 i think um i i started to uh smoke cannabis at that time and i had a i really had a good few good sessions with friends and and liked it but it didn't um it didn't spark my interest to such a degree that I pursued it. And then when was that maybe a year later or so after I started, I went to a New Year's Eve party.

And that's something that I describe in my book, The Art of the High is where I went to the party and I smoked another joint. was fine and then I took a I got a hashish prallin from a guy who overdosed these things a little I guess and it was a really funky experience to some degree because I couldn't find my ear anymore I remember my ear started to itch a lot and and I remember that I stretched out my hand and I wanted to scratch my ear and I couldn't find relief so I was turned my head and I was like so I was I wondered, you know, I was like, why is that not helping? And I turned my head. I was like, okay, that's ridiculous. But it's very telling also because later in my books, and we haven't

talked about that before, I found that cannabis probably is involved in the, or has an effect on the body imaging system. So we have a body imaging system in the brain that helps us to locate our limbs and to, like if a needle sticks here, then I have a pain feeling and I can locate it exactly where it is and what it is, or I have a feeling of I'm getting burnt here or somewhere or I have an internal feeling. So we have a basically homonculus in our brains that tells us where that control that is also responsible for motor control, but also for the perception of the body. And there are interesting things happening when we use cannabis. actually can enhance the sensation, make it better or more intense, and we feel better where things are and how they feel, like touch sensations, etc.

But also if you have a strong doses, you can also have distortions of your body image perception like it was just reporting. Yeah. You know, you don't know where your ear is located anymore. Right. So that was a little painful because when I had, it was funny at first, but then I was really, I felt really bad and I lost orientation. And I went through, yeah, I was at a party and it was completely mind, I called it fragmented where you're reading. You're like, where am I? I remember walking down the stairs.

and I was like, okay, I'm now at home in front of my parents' house, and I looked up and I was like, no, I'm in Stuttgart. And then I looked up. So it was a feeling like when you know that feeling when you go to a different place, maybe in your vacation, and you wake up and in the first two seconds of waking up, you feel like, oh, I'm in, no, I'm not, I'm worried. For just two seconds, you're completely disoriented and you're like, And I had that all two seconds, you know, like, oh, I'm in, oh, no, I'm not, and so, so that was, it was not a nice feeling.

It was a really hard trip. And so I, I didn't use cannabis for a while. And then I came to the States. And everything now that I'm talking about now is hypothetical, of course, because I don't know. That's right. But anyway, so I started to, or I had started to work on my dissertation. thesis and I got all kinds of stipends from Fulbright and other German research institutions to. I know that was a real blessing to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

because it was such a strong philosophy department at the time, especially for my field. I was lucky because the University of Tübingen in Germany had such strong relationships to American universities, and I could actually also choose. So I was there for the second time for a year of research, and I then stayed in an apartment with another philosopher and a toxicologist, and as I usually say, the lowest common denominator between a philosopher and a toxicologist are psychoactive substances. So we started.

to use cannabis and we went through similar phases and experienced similar effects. And while I was working on my thesis, I thought that is actually a really interesting way to, which I later called the Alice in Wonderland route to understanding the human mind. So my interest in cannabis and the cannabis high was not only the cannabis high to characterize it as an altered state of mind, but also to look at it, to look at consciousness itself and see what we learn from the enhancements. And I look mostly at the positive potential of the cannabis high, which I think makes my research special because I was never interested. or to some degree there are a lot of lessons to be learned from my research about the risks of cannabis also and the downside but also but i was really interested in how cannabis affects higher cognition yeah foods etc and how we can use it as a tool to um as for the as a positive

potential so so that's where where i started to think about about it because I had a lot of really great conversations with that brilliant mind and I can't name him because I'm not sure if in his state he would be fine and working for the institution he does he would be fine with being named in this role right but that that was a very important phase for me and then I was during my dissertation thesis writing my dissertation thesis and work out, I thought, okay, I need to, this is where I need to go next. I tried to get funds for that, and I, you know, I completed my dissertation thesis and with great grades, and I had a lot of professors helping me and giving me letters of appraisal. But, of course, I mean, at some point, even being the naive philosopher,

excited philosopher, excited about the positive potential of cannabis that I was and still am, it began to dawn on me that I was about to ruin my academic career. But then it was a conscious decision. I said, okay, I need to go. You know, sometimes I just have to do things. Sometimes it's just, you know where you have to go. And I knew I had to go down that rabbit hole. And of course, I, it was actually, it was a, I almost got a scholarship for a German, to be part for a year to get a fellowship for a German interdisciplinary research project with artists and business people and scientists would all work on something connected to the concept of memory.

to the subject of memory. And of course, memory is a very interesting subject to talk about cannabis. And I remember the, I still have it in writing, the response of the guy who was responsible for it. He talked to me then, he said, he would have loved to see it. But he was, he said, the money they get from,

comes from a conservative foundation for the program. And without the backing of somebody like the Max Planck Institute or so, or without, you know, if he would be the Max Planck Institute, then he would do it, but he can't, he just politically can't do it. That's what he told me that city wrote. Even though he got a letter because he wrote to the Max Planck Institute, and they said, do it, it's the right guy. They were already involved at that time.

That's more than 20 years ago. they were already involved in the research of cannabinoids. And so that was a close call. But anyway, so I pursued it. That's when I decided to finance it myself and work as a creative director, as photographer, idea man. And I went for like this path, which, of course, slowed down my writing and my research. but, you know, I guess I'm a stubborn guy.

Well, I'm glad that you are, and I'm glad you took the path that you did. Yeah, I think maybe this is a good time to open up the idea of the cannabinoid system. You know, it's not a whole lot of people really know it and even less people understand it. Maybe you could give us a little bit of background on that. Yeah, actually, it took me a while to hear. about it myself. So the endocannabinoid system was found in the mid-late 90s when they first found receptors in the brain. And we now know a lot about the endocannabinoid system because there are, as far as I remember, more than 8 to 10,000 scientific articles. If you go on PubMed and put in

endocannobinoids or endocannabinoid system, I think you'll you'll find more than in the league of 10,000 articles on it. And so there's there's a lot of research on this system. We know that it is more than 600 million years old because you find it in sea creatures that are evolutionary, you know, are that old. And it's active in all animals, humans and humans and all other animals. And it has receptors on agonists, like C2-2 receptors, there are anandomide and 2-AGs are the agonists, and they're built by the body to control and to control various

functions in the brain and in the body. The receptors are all over the brain and all over the body. And it has a whole spectrum of functions. So we know now that the endocannabinoid system is involved in the control of stress, sleep, pain, memory, learning, emotional processing, temperature control, nociceception. So pain, various pain functions, the way it controls pain, neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, in the immune. system in the way in our inflammatory responses in eating, so appetite control. And generally, most experts now believe that the endocannabinoid system is involved in home eustasis, which means it keeps an inner balance. Think about temperature.

We need to keep our body temperature stable at a certain point, a certain don't ask me about the Fahrenheit conversion. In Celsius it would be 36.6 degrees or something. But of course, if our body temperature, if it's cold outside, if our body temperature goes down for some reason, somebody needs to observe that and control it and upregulate it or if it goes up too far, it has to go down. And so there needs to be a measurement and there needs to be some kind of control

to keep that in balance. And if you think about our cognitive functions, you see that all over the place. Fears, for instance, or look at pain and fears or anxiety. If you are, let's talk about fears. If you're too fearsome, you won't be able to go out of your house anymore. You're non-functional. You're not a good survival model.

If you have no fears at all, you're going to die very soon because you jump off a cliff and you're going to be like, yeah. It's 100 meters deep, but so what? I see a funky animal down there. You're going to be dead. So also there needs to be a balance with pain the same thing. If your pain sensation is so sensitive that, you know, walking on the floor is painful to you because your feet touch the floor, that's not helpful. If you have a pain sensation, you're going to be dead soon because, you know, at times, you're at,

one day you're going to have your hand on a hot part of whatever and it's going to burn off and you die because you don't feel the pain. So also here you need to have a balance. So this is the mind-blowing thing about the endocannabinoid system. And so endo, go back to that endo means from Greek inner. So again, it has nothing to do with a human or an animal having ever touched or ingested cannabis. Your body and the body of all animals except for insects built endocannabinoids and endocannabinoid receptors and enzymes break down some parts of the, etc. So it's a very complicated system, but it, biochemically speaking, and of course there are

all the mechanisms that built up those receptors, etc. But this system is there to control balance in health, mental health, as well as in physiological health, like keeping your temperature, your appetite, etc. And if you look at the whole spectrum, and we're going to come back to a whole spectrum in many aspects of talking about cannabis, it's amazing to see that maybe one of the most or the most important systems for keeping a healthy balance has been neglected to a degree because it can be modulated by cannabis. And first of all, hasn't been found for a long time and people were not really able to research it. And secondly, we have seen for thousands of years that human cultures have used cannabis, which is the plant that most directly has an effect because TACC and other cannabinoids mimic

or biosimilars to anandamide and to AG, etc., or in that case, anandamide. and can therefore affect that system and can therefore also help us to keep a healthy balance if that system is out of balance or dysfunctional in other ways. And it's actually not amazing, but it's actually horrifying to see that humanity has outlawed

the plant that helps us that's very non-toxic also because THC and other cannabinoids are, they are so non-toxic because they are similar to something that already runs our mechanisms. You know, why would that be toxic to the brain? So it's horrifying to see that humans were so stupid in the last like 100 years to outlaw a plant that can help us in so many ways. And to just give you one little aspect of that in Germany, even before we had the medical law, the medical cannabis law, opening the medical market here that was in 2017. There were only 1,000 patients before 2017, almost exactly 1,000 patients who had managed to get exemptions or to go through the narcotics agency here.

to be able to either grow cannabis themselves or to get some cannabinoids somehow. And it was a horrible pathway. It was really hard for them to get it. But they got it for more than 50 indications, different kinds of indications, medical indications. So, and now there are even more. So if you look worldwide, it's not only used for chronic pain, but or, and then you have uses for epilepsy, for sleep, for stress, for what kind of anxiety, and for tick syndromes, if you look worldwide, what cannabis is used for, of course, the evidence in some arenas is

sparse, in some it's stronger, for instance, when we talk about chronic pain, but but the use of it in terms of indications is incredibly broad. You have a whole spectrum of indications for which cannabis is already in use, and in Germany as well as in other countries. And this, again, reflects the multifunctional nature of the endocannabinoid system. And if you look at that, you're like, how could we be so stupid to outlaw this substance for medical use? like so strictly for such a long time. This is an incredible story and I always feel like here in Germany

or in the last years people have changed their minds maybe a little bit because especially here in the German middle class up until very recently people thought yeah you know history is going like we're going from the dark ages of

of dictatorships. And so we're going into democratic ages. And what the governments do is sometimes may not be the best thing, but it's, you know, and it's scientifically informed. And therefore, if they outlaw something, it must be, you know, they must have more or less reason for it. And now we're seeing in the last years, Europe almost collapsing, you know,

under forces, right-wing forces, France almost collapse. England is kind of swimming away under those campaigns that are the populist right-wing campaigns. And Hungary is drifting away from democratic values. And in Germany, we have right-wing parties coming up to a degree where, you know, we're getting really anxious. So I think people are more open now to the understanding that maybe governments and societies have, acted extremely irrationally towards the whole subject. But before I go more into politics, let's stick to the end of cannabinoid system. So this is the end of cannabinoid system. Let me say

one more thing about it. Yeah. It is something that you need to always tell people in the medical realm, sadly, because most doctors, even the younger generation of doctors, they haven't been informed about this. This is not something they teach at universities. I mean, they've started now, but it's still not, most universities still don't have a strong, don't really teach their medical students about it. So, and I know that because as a communications and marketing director for one of the biggest companies, were the biggest company producing cannabis in the world. in Germany, I had to sit down with doctors and talk to them. I went to the conferences and they had no clue.

They were just like, what are endocannabinoids? And so this is something which is not like in its infancy. Like I said, there are 8, 10,000 articles. We know a lot about how the endocannabinoid system works. I mean, there's still a whole universe to be found out about it and how it interacts with other body signaling, with other biochemically signaling mechanisms. But there's a lot already that we know,

but there's a huge lag in education when it comes to the medical world. And of course it plays a big role for my research also, because you can see how some of the endocannabinoid research to some degree confirms the reports of people about what they perceive in how cannabis and high T.HC cannabis affects their mental states, their cognitive abilities, etc. It's really well said. It's a great background that you've painted. And I think it paves the way for this next question, which is, in the beginning of our conversation,

you spoke about the body imagery system. And if we look at cannabis as a way in which we can achieve higher cognitive function, might it be that under the right circumstances and the right particular use of cannabis, that we can gain hold and thoroughly understand that body imaging system, allowing us to have a higher understanding of what is possible. And in some ways, changing the way we model reality with that. Yeah, absolutely. I believe that if we look at the endocannabinoid system

and look more closely to how it may be involved in various functions, and I think we know about some like thermal regulation, but only punctual things come up there as far as I can see. But we know that it's involved, but I think we don't know the full degree and how it's functionally involved in the body signal, body imaging system, body representational system. Scientifically, we can learn a lot.

Not only in that aspect and many other aspects, we can learn from the end of cannabinoid system about the cognitive architecture of various abilities, cognitive abilities, but also like when it comes to representing the body and controlling the body, this is a huge area where we're going to make scientific progress. Personally, I think it's interesting also only looking at the body imaging system. And there are a lot of many reports from people who say that, you know, they drink. And you know that when you're high and you sit on water, cold water,

and you feel like it's going down your throat. And you feel like, whoa, this is water is life. And you feel your body and you feel how it, how, you know, it's summertime, you're hot. And you feel it going down your throat. And you have a feeling that everything is more intense. the more cute, your sensation of the water, what it means to your body. And very often, I believe, this is something that is very characteristic of the cannabis high is that it takes you back into your body, which is a very important function.

Like, we are all, we all live in the virtual world. Right now, when I'm talking to you, I'm living in the virtual world, looking at a screen and subconsciously controlling my body to sit, not still, I can never sit still. Me neither. But I'm not running around. Maybe probably my body would want to run around now, at least when I was younger.

And so we're all in a way, we're all in a paralysis. And very often when we get high, and you probably know what I'm talking about. When we get high, we feel like, oh my God, you know, suddenly we feel that stiffness in our neck, and we feel like, and it's very strong, and we're like, gosh, I've been sitting in front of a computer for days now, and I need to stretch.

I just need to go outside and I need to breathe and I need to do my yoga and I need to stretch. So cannabis can take you back into your body because you have that redirection of attention. often. And it also depends on the variety. Sometimes this is stronger, sometimes it's less stronger.

There's another interesting story to talk about. But if it happens, it can be extremely valuable to you reconnecting with your body because we usually, especially in the Western culture, not having routines like yoga, routines like going to massages, is not having maybe lots of people not doing sports a lot and sitting in front of computer,

etc. It really can take it back to your body and to understand how it affects your mind also and to understand how you're feeling basically, you know. And so personally looking into how cannabis affects your body imaging system and how it can affect your life by high. It's really interesting. Already there, that's a treasure. It is.

It's amazing to think that we could be on the cusp of beginning to understand higher order thinking and functioning just by reintroducing something that was been in our genetic makeup for generations or for a long time. Like, you could speak to that a little bit. Like, what, in the new book or just in your research or in your life in general, what are some other avenues of higher functioning that, we may be able to understand by using cannabis. Yeah, so this is the big theme in my work has always been the whole, the huge spectrum of effects, cannabis has on cognitive functions. So let me take you through some of them, because it's, it's, really a lot of cognitive functions and abilities are affected.

And generally, before I begin talking about the whole list, let me say this, I see, and maybe we go to that metaphor a layer, but in more detail, I see cannabis as a tool like other psychoactive substances like LSD or psilocybin, mushrooms. And if we take the tool metaphor seriously, we need to understand that we have to have an understanding of the tool. We need to learn how to use the tool. So I'm describing the positive potential of the cannabis high, and that is a potential. So it doesn't mean that necessarily you smoke a joint, you're going to have all the positive effects that I'm describing. You need to understand dosing, you need to understand how you use cannabis. Do you use it in a joint?

Do you use it in a vaporizer? Do you ingest it in what dose and what environment? So you need to be able to think about set and setting. So what is your mindset? What is the setting? What is your context? Or with what kind of group are you? Where are you, et cetera? And under if you are able to manage those conditions and to if you understand better understand the art of the high there it is

then you're going to be better at minimizing the risks and the dangers and there are dangers and risks and you're going to be able to perceive or to experience

certain enhancements, as my friend and mentor Lester also called them. Let me say something. Another thing before I talked about the list, because when we talk about cognitive enhancements, I think that we usually stick to a paradigm that is wrong in that, or that I feel is too narrow. many people when they think about or when they talk about no tropics as they call them or cognitive enhancers um they feel like the paradigm are maybe emphetamins or caffeine like substances that make

that help us to stay awake uh maybe for a longer time so so those substances that kept that help or helped the soldiers in the Second World War, they were really interested in nootropics to stay awake for a long time. And that is not what I'm talking about when I talk about cognitive enhancers. Well, that could be one type of enhancement that you stay awake for a longer time

or that you concentrate better for a short time or for a longer time. But with cannabis, you have all kinds of enhancements or you can get all kinds of enhancements that are not typically this and also with LSD or other substances, depending on the dose also. So this is a very important point because if you take that seriously, look at, for instance, the altered state of sleep. When I'm sleeping, my ability to imagine things and to visualize things is extremely enhanced.

So I'm dreaming and I'm seeing maybe myself hanging off a cliff in all detail with, you know, or as a painter, I'm dreaming and I dream up an image that I may be able to paint the next day because I remember visual details of the dream. So that's an enhancement, but we wouldn't usually call dream an enhanced state or a cognitive enhancement. So I'd say we need to be a bit more open to the idea of substances, altering our consciousness and bringing us states of consciousness

that bring enhancements, that enrich our experience in our life, but are not typically cognitive enhancers in the sense that an emphetamine is an enhancer. Having said that, let's look at what happens during a high. And so one of the most basic things I think is happening is the hyper focus of attention. So when you're high, your attention becomes more focused. and a lot of people, I remember talking to a lot of people, like for instance, Joe Dolce, the author of Brave New Weed,

an amazing book, by the way, a great guy. And he was, when I talked to him the first time about this, he also has a podcast, Brave New Weed podcast. And he was like, I don't, I'm not sure about this. And the hyper-focus of attention. So I always introduce. two notions, a selective attention and be sustained attention. These are two notions from cognitive psychology. So very often when we are high, we have this kind of selective attention

where we are selectively able, but then we have something that I call also in my book, the art of the high, that we call, that I would call jumpy focus. So I'm focused, let's say, I'm focused on something that I watch in television. I'm totally hyper-focused. on that. But then I become hungry and I'm like, okay, then I switch. I go and eat some. I'm totally focused on what I'm eating, but then I listen to music and my focus switches. So to whatever, I'm listening to a great new indie song, whatever. And then I'm listening to the music. I'm focused on the music. So I have a jumpy, I could have, or also in a conversation, I could have a jumpy focus, which is I'm not staying, my focus is not sustained on one thing, but it's always

selectively focused, even though it's jumpy. So there are means and methods to avoid that by A, not using cannabis that has been degraded for such a long time, et cetera, that probably the CBN and other substances we don't know for sure, but if you use aged cannabis, I think that is what's happening a lot is that you become jumping, that your memory becomes fragmented, short-term memory. So it's not going to stay there. I'm just talking about the temporary effects, right? So there are ways, if you understand the art of the high better, to become really elevated and to become focused and also selectively focused on to have a better focus of attention. With this focus of attention comes the intensification of experience.

Probably something that most people know will get high also is that you eat chocolate with mango sauce and you're like, okay, this is God. I'm the mango sauce. You know that. Another thing that my friend Jason Silva always points out, rightfully so, is the feeling of all. which is really important also because you get high and you kiss somebody, your wife in my case, and you feel like, well, this feels like the first kiss. This is a new star to marvel and to awe at the sensation because it feels so fresh, the freshness of experience comes back to you.

And all, as we know from Aristotle, is the beginning of all philosophy. And there's the beginning of question. If you look at a tree and you're like, hey, yeah, nice apples or something, then you're not going to ask question. But if you look at the tree and you're like, my God, this is so beautiful. And the way the apples are distributed. Or you start asking questions. you start your you start a journey into maybe understanding better what's happening there, maybe looking at the texture, maybe looking at other questions.

So awe is really something that takes you in your experience and that may also start an investigation and interest, etc. Then you have what I talked about briefly before is a meaningful redirection of attention. So very often you direct your attention during the high back to things that seem to be more meaningful, even in, so maybe in your memory, but also you attend to your body or you tend to non-verbal behavior of others more. And that is an interesting thing. We could talk for a while about how it is redirected, but I just wanted to mention that at that point, as I'm going through the list.

You have not only, I talked about, now we're on number five on the list, you don't only have an intensification of experience, but you have a greater acuity in perception, which means, and I think everybody can relate to that, who's been high, when you drink, or let's say you eat a hazelnut,

and you're high, and you have a great, quality from Piedmont, Italy or something, you suddenly feel like you can you can experience all the nuances in the taste. And so it's not only more intense, not only like, oh yeah, nice, nutty. It's really nutty. No, it's like, wow, you know, there are hints of berries and that and that and that and that in there.

And suddenly you feel there's a whole spectrum in your experience of flavors and aromas that you haven't been able to discriminate before. So which probably also comes from you being able to focus and whatever comes into your focus, opens up a tunnel and in that tunnel is there is more to be seen because you screen out other things. You're able to see more in that floor tunnel. Of course, I mean, if you go to a restaurant, to a dark restaurant and you shut up the light and you don't talk, then you're not thinking about your conversation anymore.

you're not seeing anymore, you will experience taste better. And you're not only more intense, but there will be more acuity and perception. You will be able to discriminate flavors and aromas better. And I think this is something that happens during a high. There's an interesting phenomenon during the high, which you have more strongly during LSD trips or other psychedelic experiences. which is synesthetic experiences where you, for instance, if you're strongly high, I had that you, you're listening to sounds and you see I could actually visually trip on it. And there are some, probably it depends also on the varieties of cannabis where you get visual, so to say, and you have something like a mental trip, a visual trip.

And during synesthetic experiences, you, for instance, you can have, this is like the crossover of sensory experiences where you're listening to a guitar solo of Jimmy Hendrix and you may see accompanying colors with it. Now, the full-fledged synesthesia, usually we know more from substances like LSD, but I argue in my books and I started to argue that in my first book, High Insights, on marijuana, that synesthesia, even if it's not full-fledged during a high on a moderate doses or even lower doses might be responsible for an enhancement of creativity and for some effects we see in cognition. But I'm not going to go into that right now. Let's go to number seven, which is really interesting, is also something that you see on psychedelics, which is enhanced episodic memory retrieval. Episotic memory, as opposed to semantic memory here, because this is very pronounced. Semantic memory is what you call, like, your memory of facts,

like that Napoleon was a French, not king. General? General? Yeah, that's called the generals. Right? Yeah, my English is kind of... Anyway, yeah, let's... You remember that Napoleon was something.

But you don't... But the episodic memory is something different. an episode in your life and this is something that many people describe who are on LSD or who are or Rabin on LST or Sala Sliber mushrooms that they remember episodes in their lives

as if they would relive it. And this is a really important effect for all kinds of other effects I'm going to talk about soon because it's so useful for you think about traumatic experiences, but also think about, for instance, empathic understanding. If you tell me now, for instance, you're going through a breakup with your wife or partner, and for me, let's say my last breakup was 20 years ago, and I cannot kind,

I kind of cannot really remember how I felt back then. I'm not going to be able to to empathically follow you right down that, you know, to a full degree because I'm going to be like, yeah, I'm going to get over it. But if I feel like, oh, God, I remember how I felt after my breakup and I, you know, I lost five kilos in the first weeks and then I went through this and that, then I'm going to be able to empathically connect with you better. And we always have to rely on our memory to some degree to empathically connect with others to be able to, oh, yeah, I was in a similar situation maybe. And then you are better to deeply understand what others feel like because you have to search and look for situations that may have been similar to that.

So that's the enhanced episodic memory retrieval. another thing which is very often underrated is intensified imagination. If I say that, everybody's like, yeah, okay, I know what you mean. So you're high and you are better able to imagine. We usually stick to the paradigm of visual imagination, but it could also be auditory or it could be tactile or it could be gustatory, which means that you, for instance, for a chef, he might sit down during the eye and think, okay, what could it be like to combine a peanut with an avocado

and this kind of whatever, rum? And it'd be like, oh, no, that would taste horrible. That is gustatory imagination. And maybe he comes up with something, not even trying it, but generating an idea because the disgustatory imagination is enhanced. He's like, hey, hell yeah, this might be something. I have to put, I have to exchange this for that, and then it's going to work. And so this can help you in your creativity in various ways as a musician composing music or as a chef or, you know.

So, but also very often when we talk about imagination, we think of, yeah, you know, that's kind of useful for creative. people. But no, and that's something that I learned from Michael Gazaniga is that the neuroscientist is that imagination is crucially involved in all our decision making. So if I ask you, George, you want to get on a plane with me and go parachuting next day in a Tesla or something, and you're going to be imagining how is it going to be to go with that nut on a plane and then the door opens up there and then you have that cold wind blowing in your face and you look down and you see the mountains from above and you're going to be like hell yeah or you could go like in your imagination you could come like yeah i i can feel the worm p going down

my pants. It's not a nice feeling for me, so no. So, but that's decision-making or, you know, somebody asks you to marry you and you're going to, you're going to imagine how it's going to be with this person to be for longer and you're going to be like, yes or no, but that's imagination and decision-making. So we all, it's not only a creative thing. Imagination is crucially involved in decision-making in our lives. Every day, we are making a lot of decisions based on our ability to imagine things. And cannabis can be helpful with that, so you can maybe sit down, try to imagine situations where you want to get decisions. So then there's an effect I call mind racing, which is interesting because it happens, interestingly, sometimes it happens

with some varieties and with some varieties it doesn't. Some varieties give you that calm. It also depends on the dose, of course. Sometimes you feel like it's a very calm high. You're extremely clear. You're focused. You're creative. But you're calm.

It's not like sometimes you feel like you're going so fast like a speed train. Your mind is racing. So it's hard for you even to run after that train. a thought or you feel like you just fell off your train of thoughts and you you're losing your thread then you have so that's also something you can control with dosing and with being in the right mood and also with choosing the right variety for you then you have distortion of time perception we all know that you have an enhanced pattern recognition again pattern recognition like imagination we usually think of pattern recognition.

We take the visual paradigm. Oh, yeah, I can see, you know, the checker on the board better. But it's think about patterns also and the role of pattern recognition in empathic understanding. You see somebody walking down the street, maybe even from behind. And you pick up a pattern. He's moving slowly. His head is hanging a little. And you're like, hmm, that guy is sad or depressed.

You know, so that's pattern recognition too. So pattern, the enhancement of pattern recognition is something incredibly valuable for our understanding. All of our thinking is based on pattern recognition and the exact effects on cannabis and other substances on pattern recognition. I'm really interesting to look at. Also, again, here, we need to think about a balance because if you don't have, if you don't see patterns, you're dumb. seriously, I mean, if you don't see any patterns around you, you're going to be just, you're going to be unable to deal with your environment. If you see too many patterns, then you project patterns onto things that don't exist. You may be like, oh, you know, they're all watching me or observing me.

They kind of looked at me. Maybe you over into pre-patterns. So also there needs to be a healthy balance. But having said that, let's move on to the next. Number 12, we have an enhanced ability of language understanding. A lot of people that they listen. And I've seen that happening. All of those things I'm talking about are things that I've experienced myself.

When you listen or when you're talking a different foreign language and for the first time we feel like, oh, you're really in it. You know, you can understand it and you feel like you know what's going on. There are really interesting reports about that language understanding. is a fascinating thing. We talked about the enhanced body perceptions number 13, that the mood modulation is interesting. Usually we think of cannabis as helping us,

you know, as being something like helping us to be euphoric or happy, and that's why also one of the reasons why we call it high. But also it can be anxiolytic. And it's interesting, if you look here, just one comment about that. If you look at how the mood modulation contributes to you being able to cognitively process things differently,

because maybe for the first time because you have an anxiolytic effect or because you're getting out of depression, you start thinking about your sickness or your trauma, and you are able them to approach. intellectual areas that you would normally not approach and to make progress, that's important for healing, that's important for personal development. So the mood modulation is an interesting thing to look at antidepressant effects, anxiolytic effects that can of course go in the opposite direction if you're too high in the wrong environment, you can become incredibly paranoid or anxious. So this is something again, we need to think about the balance and we need to think about employing cannabis as a tool

to actually come to a better balance in a certain situation for a certain individual, but it's an incredibly helpful thing. And then we come to those if or to those phenomena that that have been in my focus for a long time, which are enhanced introspection, incredibly helpful. I also call it because introspection and philosophy is usually more restricted to only states like pain or so, but I call it also reflective contemplation when we're being able during high

to reflect better on who we are and what we do, what are our patterns in life, and how should we maybe break patterns in life, which is also incredibly valuable for, for personal development. Then we have enhanced empathic understanding, one of the most interesting topics during high, not only restrict cannabis,

we see that with other substances called empathogens, but that's something that is very close to, that I feel like we should talk about more, for instance, cannabis as a medicine for autistic children or people on the autistic spectrum. And enhanced sexual experiences, extremely important. It has creativity, which is something that I have, I think, really, I have a new chapter on creativity in my elevated cannabis as a tool for mind enhancement,

where I go deep into how I believe cannabis can affect your creativity and how you can use cannabis as a tool. Always keep in mind again that I, believe that it's not a contradiction that some people come back from using cannabis and say, oh, that didn't help me. You know, that actually with my creative output because I was on stage trying to play a solo on the trumpet and I lost my temporal orientation or, you know, because of the slowdown of time, et cetera.

So you need to learn things, but then to be able to use cannabis for creativity. but I think the creativity is a really interesting thing to talk about, and I have a very long chapter and elevated on it. Then spontaneous insights is something that is very close to the subject of creativity, but not the same because I think insights are something more intellectual that happened to you, where you have insights into subject that give you, because you might have creative, push, painting, some using some different colors without having an insight on the conscience level of being like,

yeah, I do this because, or I, but insights are more something, a different phenomenon. That was the first phenomenon I actually looked at, spontaneous insights as in what you have when you have in a high experience, how do these happen? And how can cannabis or some other substances help with those insights? And how is it true that you actually have, can have deep insights during high? I say, yes, it is true. And then the last point I'd like to mention is mental healing, which is also something that is, of course,

an incredibly interesting topic to look at. So I know a long list, but it's important to me to go through that and to talk about it briefly because many people sit on the stereotype that cannabis gives you that days and confused, happy high. A lot of people coming from the psychedelic world also look at a little bit down on the high as if, you know, like it's the dumb little brother of psychedelic substance. But I believe there is something to it because if you use what's coming off the black

market or has been coming off the black market a lot, which was degraded cannabis and a bad shape, bad condition, used in a bad way, used only for the purpose of fragmenting your mind de-stressing, forgetting about things, staying in the moment, but being not really functional, which also helps you forgetting about things, that yes, then this is a daze and confused news, which might be fun sometimes, but which is not what I'm talking about, which is a clear, functional high that you can achieve when you know what you're doing. Yeah, that's wonderful. I think it's also important to, when we talk about the way and

which this list of attributes can can be achieved. In a prior conversation, you and I spoke about why that fragmentation happens. And you gave this very elegant way in which look at the way we used to grow outside. Now we grow indoors. Maybe you could flesh that out for people. I thought that was really well done. And it gave me an understanding of why the fragmented high may be something that people find these days.

Yeah, I compared the recent history of cannabis. breeding with wine, great wines and how they are processed and how they are bred and grown grapes from great wines. And so here's the thing. If I tell you, we know from the 70s that, let's start this way, we know from, we know from When Nixon started to go into the prohibition and make even stricter rules and start, he started to hunt down people for using cannabis. And people had to go indoors with their growing. And the government sprayed parquet on cannabis grown outdoors.

And then they had to start to think about how do we grow indoors. How do we grow the plants that they grow perfectly under artificial light? That they don't grow too high because, you know, there's only limited space indoors. And they used fertilizers and all the artificial environments. And of course, the whole genetics was basically moved towards growing perfectly under those conditions. And there are great varieties that came out of that. So let me say that because there are a lot of great breeders out there who produce

wonderful genetics. But there also, there has been a trend, first of all, just to go for high THC plants and then to go for Indica or I'm going to be careful with the Indica Sativa distinction. maybe we talk about that later, but they use plants that grow shorter, and they use the genetics to make, not to produce a great high that I'm talking about, but to produce plants that bring a lot of yield for the growers to have a great investment and to produce what people were actually looking to, during the prohibition for something that kind of fragments their minds and de-stress, so they looked only for the days

him confused high and the growers gave him exactly that and some of the the breeding went into that direction of being perfect under artificial light now and then it was overstored it was maybe harvested too late because then if it's harvested too late you get bigger butts you get more weight but you don't get probably the perfect state that you want to have or the perfect condition that you want to have to generate a clear crystal clear cognitively functional high Then you because there's no education out there, people, of course, there's all kinds of problems with lacing cannabis, other substances in there, pesticides in there, et cetera. And then people wouldn't know about cannabis. They only thought, you know, there's TFC inside, and this does everything.

And they would leave it around, you know, exposed to air, oxygen, exposed to light, exposed to temperature. It would degrade. and it would give them mostly what they needed, you know, the couch lock high, distressing. But of course, in that situation, you don't get a great cannabis variety. And like I said, I put it to you, like imagine you have a wine, somebody generating a great wine from France, a Bordeaux wine from 86, and it tells you about the soil and about the barrels in which it has been put and about all this knowledge about producing this great wine with the Euro. and flavors. Another guy comes along and says, hey, I produced great wine under artificial lights. We had those fertilizers and we didn't really care about how it tastes, but we wanted

to grow it short and bring a lot of grapes and getting you completely fucked up. With the alcohol, high alcohol contents, here's a bottle for 50 euros. What do you think? The other one is like, my bottle is 50 euros too. What do you think? What do you choose? Yeah. Yeah, I want to be blind. I take your bottle for... I mean, that's an extreme way to put it. As I said, there are great genetics coming out of, even during the prohibition, breeders have done a great job. But if you look at all the factors that were in place during the prohibition, of course, most of them are not very favorable when it comes to producing a great high.

And so the prohibition is kind of a dynamic system in which people produce, don't necessarily produce good quality cannabis. And the consumers are stressed also because of the strong prohibition. And then they're not educated about what they can use cannabis for. so they use it only for that one purpose to take away the stress. And the bad material does that for them. So that generates a system in which we see, of course, a niche where some people say, no, we produce great grass and we produce better varieties.

And you have some consumers who are still in the underground who go for what I'm talking about. But I think the majority of people go when to because of the prohibition, they went to a kind of use or abuse of cannabis, which is very narrowed down to using it for sleep or distressing, which can still be helpful. I'm not, you know, I'm not saying this is all bad, but it's not, it's certainly not the full potential of the plant. Yeah, it's interesting to see it from that angle.

And until you would, in our prior conversation, until you had given me that, the method in which you described it, it's it's interesting to see and it for me it helps clarify like yeah that's that that makes a lot of sense if it's kind of the difference between use and abuse like you said it's funny how that word is in the other word use and abuse and use it that way right I guess yeah I think you'll make a good point um I think and also when we talk about um question of legalization for instance people always ask oh are we going to have more concerns consumption of can our people are usually when governments come along they always say are we're

going to have more abuse of cannabis after we legalize it or or less and um for them abuse is the only word they have for the the concept for consumption cannabis because for them it's a bad drug usually or for many governments and and honestly i believe that we need to ask different questions because if we have more people consuming cannabis after legalization or after decriminalization, I don't think that's a problem. As long as people using cannabis are happy and are not, don't have severe side effects, why would that be a problem if we have more people using cannabis? more abuse would be a problem.

But apart from the point that after a legalization or decriminalization or a new regulation of cannabis, it's a better way to put it probably, there are studies from European agents, governmental agencies or European agencies for drug monitoring that basically say if you look at France, if you look at Germany, if you look at Holland, you had all kinds of approaches in Europe, in Portugal, some were really liberal, Portugal, Holland, whereas decriminalized for a long time. France, very strict prohibition. Germany is kind of like in the middle. If you look at all those regulatory approaches in the last decades,

and you want to know about the amount or you want to know how many people use cannabis, you don't see any relationship. It's not like a prohibition hinders people to consume cannabis. Actually, in France, you have more consumers than in other countries. I'm not sure if it's more than in Holland even. But Holland is not like at the top level of consumers, somewhere below. So, yeah, we know that the legalization or legalization, or allowed adult use, responsible for adults,

we know once that goes out, doesn't necessarily lead to more people consuming cannabis. But like I said, the more interesting question is, how do we avoid abuse? And there is abuse. There is abuse of cannabis and other substances. Abuse in the sense of that it's something that people should refrain of and should be educated to be able to get out of it because it might strengthen their

negative developments. And see, that's a paradox with cannabis and probably other substances as well. You can use cannabis incredibly well for personal development. But you can also use it for or abuse it and stagnate and get stuck because every day you just use it to de-stress and to not deal with your problems because you stay in your moment and you don't necessarily make much progress, which might help you to survive also, but it doesn't really help you then to really get into a process of personal development. That is something, I think, that needs some education and you need to be able to employ that

tool for that reason. So you cannot, that's generally something I'm saying, you cannot just drop a psychedelic substance or psychoactive substance like cannabis on some people and think it's going to help necessarily help them. Probably, yeah, some people where they are will be helped and it will be helpful to, of course, I'm for decriminalization and for fully making psychoactive substances available to people in a regulated field. But we need education around it and we need to, people need to learn how to use those substances as tools to make the best of it and to avoid risks. That's so fascinating to me.

Like, as you're talking about that, the relationship between linguistics, ideas, use and abuse, and what's culturally sanctioned. Like, you're not even allowed to really think about it in a positive way. If it's a criminal act, you're not even given the mental framework to think about how it could make how it could benefit the way you think you're only allowed to be couch locked you're only allowed to think about it in a negative connotation that's kind of mind-blowing to think about it of course it's not it's going to have a stigma of course it's not going to be thought about as higher cognition you're allowed to think like that yeah and think about um i mean this is a general point about

especially the united states where discussions have been shaped by think tanks who and that's a great lesson to learn from George Lachoff, the great American linguist, George Lachauv, who mainly also worked about metaphors, that we underestimate, especially the ultra-right-winged think tanks, because they managed to shape discussions in a way metaphorically to basically install their worldview. And one of his, I mean, best examples, I think, is the notion tax relief, which came out of the Bush administration. So they started to talk about that they would give tax relief to people. And the Democrats, he said, swallowed the bait and talked about how they cannot give tax relief to people to that extent or to business people, et cetera. And he said, well,

you made a crucial mistake because the notion tax relief has a worldview installed in it, which is that taxes are basically are hurting you and are an injury. That injury needs to be a relief. you need to have a doctor to give you relief from that injury. Now, the worldview from those who think we need some taxes, maybe you shouldn't go down with the tax that much, should be that taxes are a good investment in your future because you give your taxes for the state to give you health insurance and to give you roads and to give you infrastructure

and other things back so that's an investment in your future. something you give because somebody wants to hurt you. It's not like the government just does it out of being, you know, being bad, bad ass and wanting to have your money and then, you know, run away with it. So, you know, so you shouldn't take the, you shouldn't even use the metaphor and the tax relief because the metaphor on a subconscious level shapes the debate to a degree where it can rationally, it's hard to argue because if you argue against it, people are only going to feel like you don't want the government to take away my pain. That's bad. So, and the same is with

the war on drugs. The war and drugs is one of the strongest metaphors on the field, which is crucially wrong. There has never been a war on drugs. There has never been a war where we're, where we are shooting at little pills or look at first of a look it's the war on drugs is a metaphor that's wrong in so many on so many levels it's um it's not a war on drugs first of all it's a war on some or it's a military militarily enforced and police enforced repression of certain groups of people using certain kinds of substances it's not a war on all drugs Yes, there's no war on alcohol. There's no war on medical pills.

There's no war on, and all these are drugs. They are drugs by definition, by all kinds of definition we have. By everything we agree on, these are drugs. There's no war on drugs. And we're not killing drugs. We're repressing. We're discriminating. We're putting in jail people who are using substances that we call drugs.

And only some. If you look at history, there were societies that, you know, would kill people who would use alcohol, but they would allow tobacco. There were societies that would kill people that were, you know, if you look at the Incas or Mayas, they would use psychedelic substances, but, you know, not allow for other substances, et cetera. So there was always mostly prohibitions, and this is something I describe, and I have a long chapter on it in my book, Elevated.

It's on the irrationality of prohibitions. And one of the funky examples is the coffee prohibition in Prussia. And here, in Germany, in 700, around 1,140, 50, where Frederick the Great prohibited coffee. And you had even like mostly French soldiers go into the houses as coffee sniffers, sniffing and then, you know, and the prohibition was not there because they wanted to,

I mean, Frederick the Great was famous for drinking his coffee with mustard and pepper. So he drank it himself. But they wanted to prohibit it because the beer industry came and said, listen, all the money goes to Turkey in those areas. And we need the money here. And it needs to go to the beer industry very specifically. So that was the main reason for the prohibition here.

And if you look at alcohol, other prohibitions, they have, it's not only a protectionism, but they have, usually they are motivated to the public with saying it's toxic very often. It's a toxic substance or dangerous substance in some, you know, ways. But the real reasons behind it are different. Let me, here's another point about, and I think this is an important point about what keeps the prohibition in terms of linguistic programming. Because I think once these metaphors are established and once certain ways of using notions like always talking about abuse, not about use, etc. Once that is established, it stays in our minds and in the minds of the society for a long time. Even after there is scientific evidence, even after we see that cannabis isn't as dangerous, even after we see that it's medically so important, even after we,

we learn about the end of cannabinoid system, these things stay with us because our thinking relies on metaphors, relies on ways of using certain concepts, et cetera. So here's another example. When I take my kids, let's suppose I have little kids now, let's say I go to the zoo with them. And every time I go to the zoo, I tell them, today you're going to see elephants and animals.

elephants and animals. When they're later, when they grow up, they will be like, yeah, there are elephants and animals. And at a certain point, they will come back to me and say, elephants are animals too? And I'm like, yeah, of course. Why did you say elephants and animals? This makes no sense.

But look at the press, look at the liberal press, look at whatever kind of press. And you'll find headlines of rock stars dying from alcohol and drugs. That makes no sense. It makes no sense. Alcohol is one of the most dangerous drugs we know. So to say somebody died of the use of alcohol drugs is kind of like elephants and animals. But this is so deep.

And here is especially in our society, in the German society, The use of alcohol is something like, yeah, you know, it's kind of, it's fun. And of course, yeah, it's kind of dangerous. You shouldn't do it too much. But if you tell people, you know, it's a dangerous drug, they're like, I'm not a, or, you know, if I would go and see somebody drinking a vodka or his third vodka at a party, and I'd go like, oh, so you are a drug consumer with a long history of drug abuse. Is that true?

should be like, holy what? I dare you. Come here. Are you looking at me? So, you know, this is mentally, these are things that are very strongly active in our minds. And they keep the prohibition also and they keep fears in the mind of people that uphold the prohibition. So we need to think about our language and our imagery, which is. is why and also if you so I came up with the imagery in my book elevated or actually in the German in the German book that was in the predecessor for the book because this one is the

long version of a German book I published in which became bestseller here which was more of our coffee table book yeah yeah hi that positive potential from cannabis and And so, and this one elevated is really brilliantly edited by Richard Raza from Hilaritas Press mostly. And really an amazing, amazing new edition where I've put three new articles in there, three new chapters, long chapters. But it also has the imagery in there, and it's really well done. I'm amazed by how well they did it and how smart they did it. Hilaras Press is the publishing house of the daughter of Robert Anton Wilson. Of course, it's a great honor to be published alongside with Robert Anton Wilson.

But back to the imagery, I tried to show people cannabis, and my idea was to show it from a different angle. And it's an analog to the linguistic, to our linguistic conditioning. We've also, in images, we've been conditioned to, you know, when you hear cannabis or marijuana, images come up to your mind of syringes. This makes no sense at all.

And other kind of drug-related imagery like the leaf and then Rastas or people who are dying on the street or whatever, you know, all those kinds of bad associations in imagery come up and they are repeated and repeated all over again, even in Germany now where you, I mean, I remember when the medical law here came for cannabis, which is a really innovative law in 2017, the Frankfurt to Algemaina, which is one of the biggest newspapers here, had a title, That was, I'm still, I couldn't believe the title. It was a leaf, a cannabis leaf, but with claws.

And it was titled the green poison. Wow. You know, and that's a mainstream, I mean, it's a conservative, but it's a mainstream newspaper. And they had in the, then they had like seven or three, four articles in there, and some of them were very liberal about it, you know, about being that cannabis. So you could see that they're fighting within their, you know, the crowd, within the group of editors, there's a little fight. But the guy who was going out with that image was guy one probably.

And so I thought about how do I create images and having worked as a creative director, I thought it must be possible to reach. a wider public with a different kind of imagery because one of my fundamental experiences was that it's not enough to have good arguments you have to have a lot of good arguments but but that is not enough so i came up with the imagery here for instance i show you some where don't you like my photos yeah i love them man put them up i think people would love them that book is phenomenal man just That's just making wait. So for instance, this one, cannabis seed.

And I wanted to, so it's an art series, and the big photos are, they're a large frame and with certain backgrounds and certain macro technique that gives you a different type of imagery. But I wanted to go back to the plant and focus on the plan. Then you have a second type of seed where you, where you, that instantly makes you look at the beauty of the plant, but seeing the series, seeing those two seeds, you already understand, oh, there are different genetics, you know, looking at the morphology of the seeds and the structures they show and the colors that you see,

oops, there might be a different high coming out of that one. And so you have, this is how it grows, my little sputnik, and then you have the little duck laying. That was in 2012, by the way, it's all backlit, so it looks a little bit more. It gives you that enhancement of color perception that you sometimes also have during a high, and it gives you more acuity and vision

because of a deep focus stacking technique. And then I go up to, I go through the growth stages, and then I have photos like this in it, where you take a look at the leaf, but you see that now a lot in logo design, what they did in the last decade, that you cut of the leaf and you cut of all the associations of

that you have when you just showed the whole leaf and then all the other images come up. If you look at that, you have a totally, you look at the leaf and you look at the beauty and it's a different, you're in a different realm. And then I have another leaf again where you see the morphology is different.

It's a different type of leaf. It's a different type of variety. It's a different variety of cannabis. And you understand, it makes you understand on the visual level that the high might be different and the medical effects might be different. And so here, and then I used the imagery of the imagery of. the flowers to and also again showed how different the flowers, the tiny little flowers can be. And as I said in a previous conversation with you, I think this also reflects my approach

intellectually. One thought behind it was that usually grow, I mean, we have the old view of cannabis that is misinformed and it's targeted disinformation. And so you have all the bad imagery also in the language, which doesn't really reflect what the plant is. But now you also have the growers imagery was mostly on colas and how big the colas are, how much yield they give. So even if you would look in pro-cannabis magazines, mostly it was shaped by a certain interest, namely to show not the beauty of the plant, the beauty of the plant bringing a lot of yield to growers. And I was like, no, I want to go back from all those interests and just take a closer, more focused look at the plant and show the beauty of it.

And so I think intellectually, that's also what I did because I consider my research as basic science, which is not so much only to look at the therapeutic or medical potential, even though my work has implications for that kind of use, but to look at. more basically how cannabis affects the mind. And so these images, and then I get closer and closer. For instance, here if you look at the so-called stigmas or hairs, here you see it a bit more that's not mature, not matured yet. And so you can see here,

one of those stigmas that looked white And this one is hanging in a lot. This one is hanging in a coffee shop in Amsterdam. So I sold that to collectors. Also, I'm still selling. If you want to have a look at the whole here, you can find it on my website. So this is a little drop of water.

So I wanted to open up the minds of people to take a look back at the plant. You're a lot from the images. It's also here, the trichomies where cannabis builds its chemicals. It's cannabinoids and terpenes, et cetera. So I wanted to give people a fresh look on the plant, and it helps me also to make them understand how different varieties can affect the mine differently and to see it how the trichomes turn brown and how the stigma's turn brown to see it.

When questions like, when do you need to harvest to generate, what kind of chemicals do you get when the plant turns, you know, when the chemicals in the plant change. And so, so like these images help me also to explain a lot about the cannabis high and how it can be different depending on various aspects of harvesting the plant and storing the plant, I think it's it blows my mind to see the images in that book and then the other book that you that you published as well and when I think about those images and what we can learn from them the way the plant is growing and then we can say wow it's interesting how those particular structures grow the turpines and stuff like that and then we take that in conjunction with what you said about metaphors it makes me start thinking about how psychedelics and cannabis have this way of showing us the relationship between visual adaptability and semantic flexibility. And you can fundamentally change the way you model reality with that.

In the U.S., there's this picture of, there's this famous picture, and you've probably seen them in Germany and around the world. It looks like a duck or it looks like a bunny. It looks like an old woman or it looks like a young woman. That is something that I think cannabis and psychedelics allow us. us to flip between. Some people you can only see one thing. But once you see both things, it's like you can see from different perspectives.

And in some ways, I think that that is what cannabis and psychedelics are doing to our brain, is it allowing us to rise above the conditioning, to rise above the abuse and use, to get away and use metaphors in a way in which they help us see the world instead of narrowing our worldview.

What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, and you think about the aspects I talked about before, pattern your, And in your pattern recognition, but also empathic understanding and imagination. Let me put it this way. If you were able to, when you think about other people and if you want to empathically understand other people,

and this is what I've been involved in in the late 90s when I went to North Carolina, and I studied with Simon Blackburn and others, there was a theory coming up called the simulation theory about human understanding where people thought about how do we actually manage to understand how other people feel and tick and how they act. And so there was the so-called theory theory,

which basically, to put it in a nutshell, said, we are using a psychological language, like love and hate, he wants and he has desires, et cetera. So if you go, if you get hit by a stick or something, I have a language and I'm like, oh, yeah, he has been hurt by and so therefore he's angry and then he will probably do this. So this language gives us the ability to describe,

to describe your mental functioning, your state, but also to predict, to explain your behavior and to predict your behavior. So this is what I talk about when I talk about empathic understanding, to be able to describe other people to do, to predict their behavior to a certain degree and to explain their behavior. And another theory came up, which was a so-called simulation theory, which said, no, this isn't true. really what's happening because what's happening much what's much more fundamental is my ability

to simulate your point of view. So let's say you're hanging off the roof and you're screaming, you almost fell off the roof and you're like, ah, you're holding on to whatever part of it. and you're screaming. And so, you know, the theory theorist would say, yeah, you know, I know that you must be afraid of falling down and therefore you and therefore, therefore, therefore. The simulation theorist basically says, no, what you do is you imagine, you put yourself in the moccasins, as the native American Indians would have said, yeah, you put yourself imaginatively in the situation of the guy and you feel similar, you know. of course you have to adjust your your simulation to that person because maybe you are way more

you're an acrobat and you feel like yeah I could jump down for a meters or something that wouldn't hurt me but of course very often and I think there's a very too core to the simulation theory in the end I think we need to have a hybrid theory but let's just

take the simulation aspect we simulate other people and to be able to have those feelings ourselves, like I said before, when you tell me about a breakup with your girlfriend, and I'm able to connect to my memory of a similar situation of a loss or if a breakup, I can feel your pain. Of course, I don't feel your pain. I feel my pain, but because we are in significant aspects probably similar,

I'm like, oh, I think I know what you're going through. And I think this empathic understanding can become extremely enhanced because our ability to imagine is enhanced, because our ability to see patterns is enhanced. And there are many other cognitive enhancements that add up to give us that enhanced, but that enables us very often to look through the eyes of different people and understand the world in different ways. I think that's a really important aspect to it to also look at ourselves from outside, maybe,

you know, not only stay in our mind, but to look at ourselves and to understand. And there are really touching stories, for instance, in Lester Wingspoon, my mentor, he has a website still up, which is called Marijuana-Uces.com, where he collected stories about and essays and reports about people and their enhancement uses of cannabis.

And there are really touching stories of one guy who said that usually when he wouldn't be high, he wouldn't connect with his kids that well, but then one day he had, he was moderately high and he saw, I think, four or five year old playing on the floor. And his son said, hey, Daddy, look at that. There is a brilliant, beautiful reflector. So then he said, usually you would have said, yeah, nice.

But then he said, no, I'm going down to look at what my son found. And he found that the sunlight was going through some kind of glass, piece of glass, and he could see the whole spectrum of colors. And he was like, he felt like for the first time, he felt like to a kid, this must feel like, you know, jumping into a pot of gold or it's amazing, you know. And so I feel like, yeah, we are able to see patterns differently, but also we were able to look through,

to enter different minds and to take their perspective. and this is something very, very forceful, very powerful. And at that point, I'd like to mention the store because you learn a lot from how cannabis can help people on the autistic spectrum or with Asperger's. Yeah. Because I had one guy who produced videos of my first. work and I gave video lectures and he said he's in his he's he's he's been diagnosed with

asper he couldn't be in a relationship without cannabis and he feels like you can connect much better to his girlfriend and he can be in a relationship with his girlfriend only because he has cannabis and one of the most interesting um reports i ever got was after i wrote about cannabis and empathical understanding and the enhancements of empathical understanding, especially on the reports of mothers from mothers about their autistic children, how they start socially interacting during the intake of our doing their cannabis hype. And so a guy wrote to me, a 20-year-old guy from New York, a raving, I think from a family from Saudi Arabia, he said that's a,

a while ago, and he said, I really want to talk to you and you were so spot on and I need to share my experience with you. And he told me that until he was 16, he had felt like he's disconnected from other people, not only disconnected, but he felt like he's alone in the world and other people are, and this is, I quote, other people are an extension of himself. So this is what in philosophy, you'd call solipsism, technically the view that you're the only, you exist and everything else is an illusion, you know, everybody else is an illusion, everybody else is a dream or an illusion or it's in your mind, but not real, you are real. And so this is basically the way he felt, deeply felt, it's not like a theory, but he was like other people don't exist. And then he said, for the first time

in his life he smoked cannabis a joint when he was 16 and then for the first time he had to feel he had the feeling of deep connection with others he felt like he can actually empathically understand them empathically take their view and understand oh what i just said hurt him or her and i can feel how it hurts her and i can feel that she's there that there's somebody else And so I believe that the end of cannabinoid system is deeply, deeply involved in our processing emotional states and in our empathic understanding as it is in other higher cognitive functions. And so I'm convinced that, and this is a thesis that I better describe in elevated. now in my new book is that the endocannabinoid system is probably or might be involved in the architecture of higher cognitive states to a degree that we haven't yet realized. I mean, we know that

is involved in learning, memory processing and another higher cognitive states. But when it comes, of course, to the architecture of pattern recognition, introspection, empathic understanding, how does the brain do that? I mean, there have been theories like the mirror neuron theory, which is not partially falling apart or being, it's still there, but it's probably not as popular anymore, but I talk about that in my book as well. But we must say that we are at the beginning only of understanding

of how our brain manages to, you know, to support these cognitive abilities. And these are, and that's the interesting point, these are the most, these are the core of the human abilities that make us human, creativity, empathic understanding, introspection, insights, you know, as in spontaneous insights, productive thinking. So the endocannabinoid system,

it seems to be crucially involved, I believe, in the architecture of those mental abilities. And that would be something I think to pursue for researchers as they go along and want to explain higher cognition to look at the endocannabinoid system and see how it is involved in that because we can see how cannabis taken, ingested or inhaled, can exogenous cannabis, cannabinoids, plant cannabinoids,

phytocannabinoids, how they can interact with the system and maybe enhance it. Maybe sometimes you are too enhanced or you're too far out. It doesn't work anymore. But I believe we have a strong incentive there from what we know and from maybe my research from that field to look deeper into how endocannabinoids and how the endocannabinoid system is involved in supporting those functions. It's mind-blowing to me. In some ways, I'm beginning to see this thing take shape.

If you look at the thesis that you wrote in 2002, and it talked about higher-level functioning on some level, you have this theory about we're going to look back on folk psychology in a certain way. Might it be that we use the endocanabinoid system to start making some of that architecture? In some ways, like I see some of it, I see some of the research you're doing now is echoing back to the very foundation that you wrote when you were interesting. In your research on cannabis high, have you encountered philosophical questions about altered states of consciousness and their implications for our understanding of reality and the self?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's a really good question. Here's one. I think I also came to a deeper understanding of human nature because being a philosopher, you are very much so, especially in that type of philosophy that I was dealing in analytic philosophy of mind. You come from a very rational, logical perspective, and you're trying, I mean, that is something that, started actually in Austria and Germany in the 30s, the analytic philosophy of language,

which was an attempt to set a very strong foundation for philosophy itself, because people like philosophers like Wittgenstein, Rolf Karnup, said that we want to have, we want to rebuild philosophy as a scientific discipline. And to do that, we need to take out the vagueness from, because what we're using is we're using everyday language, but there's a lot of vagueness and there are a lot of misconceptions. So we need to reflect on our language and to look at the structure and the logics and the syntax.

So that became a reflection on language as a tool for thinking to make our thinking about the world more precise and about ourselves and about the nature of everything. So this is where it come from. And I still believe and I still am, you know, somebody who thinks that I'm generating hypotheses that are there to be empirically confirmed. So I want to generate hypotheses where other scientists like neuroscientists can come in and see, hey, is that right what he says about the episodic memory enhancement? You could actually take a look at only that aspect, and you could devise some studies.

So I come from a very rational perspective and from a very rational scientific discipline, but there is something that I call the rational reconstruction era of the self. What is that? that is when we think about and describe ourselves, we think from a state of consciousness that is rational and, you know, rational decision-making, logical thinking, very language-oriented. But that's not who we are. Who we are is defined by conscious states

being modulated by the brain itself into states that are completely weird you know like dreaming and every night we dream or we go in a state you know we we're going through trips of dreaming like for six or eight hours

it's a huge part of our existence during the day we're going through states of we are visually absorbed. We're absorbed in the virtual world sometimes. That's a different conscious state. We are going through states of ecstasy when we're in an orgasm, when we're dancing, when we're listening to whatever kind of music,

when we're going to sports events. That's why people go there. They want to experience a state of ecstasy with other people, which is a different state of consciousness. We're going through states of almost high. hypnosis when we're going to nature and we watch a waterfall or through that or we're going to states of meditation. So altered states of consciousness are not only something that we induce for fun,

but they are built into our nature. That's who we are. We are, our consciousness is something that oscillates between, where we are in now to states of half-dreaming to states of dreaming to states of dreaming to states of being in an even non-dream sleep state to ecstasy to to hypnosis to meditation to all kinds of various states and some of them are are chem chem chem chemically induced by our own brains so for instance and that is when I was studying still I was I was I was I was asked if I could give a lecture or if I could comment on a lecture by an American philosopher,

Owen Flanagan, there was Duke University, who was talking about whether dreams would have do dreams have a function, evolutionary speaking, not only personally speaking, we'd say dreams or the fact that we are dreaming and that we have experience during dreaming might be personally important to us because we find out things about our. subconsciousness, but do they have an evolutionary advantage or are they just happening for some reason that, you know, doesn't really is advantageous? And so, so there are these questions about dreaming also, but I think usually we reconstruct our being, our human nature as one state or, you know, the rational state of thinking and talking, because when we think about that,

that we are in this state of mind. But I think I deeply learned that the human nature is different. And I think about how much value and meaning those states give to us, ecstasy, orgasm, hypnosis, or induced states, trans states of dancing, being in a trans state of dancing between ecstasy and like a trans where you are not verbally thinking anymore, but just like maybe moving with people. And so this is one of the important deep insights that I had into human existence is that we should accept our nature more.

And also when it comes to understanding the, the interplay of the left and right hemisphere brain, where you see that the brain functioning in the left and right hemisphere is really different. And out of this interplay of hemispheres trying to control our thinking and working in competition to some degree, but also in combination, and how everything that we see in cognition comes out of an interplay of two different hemispheres of the brain working differently. And so I have in one of my books,

this is in what Hashish did to Walter Benjamin, which is a book which is not only about how cannabis can affect your mind individually, but also about how cannabis has affected the societies as a whole through the ideas of people like Walter Benjamin or Carl Sagan or others or Louis Armstrong. In this book, I have an essay on a thesis or a hypothesis that was written in a short footnote in The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was Lester Grinston's best friend. he was the one who actually got Lester to change his mind about cannabis because Lester Grinspoon

wanted to write a book about cannabis in, I think it started in the end of the 60s. And he was really as a Harvard professor, associate professor of psychiatrist, he was concerned about the use of cannabis and psychedelics at that time. And he was concerned about young people, you know, getting problems with it. And so Carl Sane came back to him and said, no, no, I should not try this. This is not as dangerous as everybody believes. And then Lester got into researching it and wrote an amazing book. Here's Mirwana Reconsider. I can still recommend it to everybody because even after 50 years, it's still one of the best books ever or maybe best book written on the subject. with his dedication.

I'm really proud of him. He gave it to me when I visited him in his home in Auburndale in 2016. And so,

where was I? You're talking? Yeah, the first second, this is, I'm thinking of Lester. It's always, it's such a, it's such a, It's really a loss to me because I show here very often. We have so many conversations over years and he became such a dear friend to me.

So but his friend, Carl Sagan, many people don't know that, but he used cannabis very often and used it to generate ideas for his public lectures and for his work. And in his book, which is about the nature of human cognition, in his book, The Dragons of Eden, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, he has the hypothesis that cannabis might suppress the left hemisphere to a certain degree and help the right hemisphere to, and therefore to produce insights and to produce creative ideas. And I think that he was on to something, especially if you look at the modern view of the left and right brain hemisphere. Because I think many people and the population still have the very simplistic terms in which people put the left and right hemisphere workings in the 70s or before the 70s saying like language happens in the left side. and emotion the right side and all that is of course not correct. But what is correct is that the right hemisphere, and we know that from a lot of patients with certain brain damages, et cetera,

and from the work of Sperry and others. And I can especially recommend Ian McGilchrist, The Matter of Things. Oh, yeah. Which is, you know, the book to read on that subject matter. where we know that the right brain processes information differently in a more holistic way and abilities like empathic understanding and imagery and imagination and episodic memory, et cetera, are more to be found being processed on a certain level.

It's not just separated, but it's aspects of irony, et cetera. creativity are more to be found there. And so it might be an interesting thing to look at how cannabis affects left and right brain hemisphere activity. I have only one, but I have something to add to Carl's thesis hypothesis, which is that if you look at the left brain hemisphere, it is crucial. important for it to it's it's very much involved also in the focus of attention. So this is a very beautiful way in which Ian McGilchrist describes how how our

cognition works on the level of attention when you have a hen picking for seeds for food. The left hemisphere is more there to to control in a in a restricted visual field. The picking on the motor control so it keeps you on that. that field and gives you the precision to do that. But the right brain hemisphere is where in your peripheral vision, you might the animal might see a flying predator or a fox. And then the right brain hemisphere interferes with that obsessive, you know, picking and says, hey, stop it.

There's something you need to run away from. And you understand that there, you have to have to have two competing systems. The one controls that you stay there and you have a very close focus. And the other one says, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait here is another signal. This is getting too strong. The fox. There is a pair vise there. You should run.

This is staring at you. That's not good. So competing systems and the output is something that helps you to survive. But I think when it comes to cannabis, you have to also consider that it also gives you hyperfocus. This is something where I think, yes, many and most of the cognitive abilities that I've quoted before, introspection, empathic understanding, pattern recognition, those are very much right hemisphere, more right hemisphere-based. But when it comes to focus, this seems to be something.

that cannabis can also do, and this is more left hemisphere-based. I looked into the studies. I looked into what's there. That's a while ago when it comes to the right and left hemisphere processing and cannabis or the endocannabinoid system. But so far, I couldn't find enough evidence for either. There's not a lot. So I think this is still a hypothesis that's very interesting and to look into how the endocanaminoid system.

is involved or if it's hemispherically different or what's going on there. But I think Carl Sagan was on to something. And if you look at Carl Sagan's research that he had done at that point, I mean, he was on the level. He was even though he didn't come from that academic field, he had read everything that was really basically the state of the art of knowledge at that point about the left and the right brain hemisphere and about human cognition in evolutionary terms.

So it was an interesting thesis at that point already, and very informed a thesis because he knew that kind of research and he, being the smart guy, he was, he already had experiences with cannabis. So this was one where he was talking about that. And of course, he wrote an essay which I highly recommend to everybody, which was called Mr. X because he was still, he still published it anonymously in the Lester's book, Marijuana Reconsider, Reconsider. you find it online, I think it's published. He also talks about pattern recognition and other cognitive enhancements. An amazing, one of the best essays on the subject matter. So Carr's saying a really interesting point in case

when it comes to enhancement uses in the States. He's like the one to look at for many Americans. In Germany, this has been translated really late, is the work of Walter Benjamin, the philosopher, the story that I tell also. And in my book, because Benjamin, I mean, if we look at what Sagan did and also how cannabis inspired him, and then he was responsible for the message of humanity,

you know, to go out with Voyager out of the solar system, you know, you can see how maybe cannabis ideas and maybe cannabis affected, you know, what humanity signal to other aliens. I mean, think about that, if there is some out there. And Walter Benjamin, for instance, to just go back to the matter of or to the subject of how the enhancements of cannabis may have brought ideas or may have helped creative luminaries and how that affected their societies. Think about Paul McCartney, who said that the Beatles would have never made the music they made without their LSD or cannabis experiences.

He literally said that in a quotation. And think about John Lennon's song, imagine how that affected humanity, how the Beatles had an effect on humanity and on societies. And Walter Benjamin, for instance, it's a really interesting story intellectually. in the history of philosophy because he came up with a very, I mean, one of his really influential essays was on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. I think that's the title. Where he described in the 20s, I mean, that was in the 20s or 30, he wrote that I think in the early 30s. I have to look that out, but he was, he experimented with cannabis. in the late 20s and he wrote protocols about those and experiments and he also described a lot of or most of

the enhancements that I describe and and he came up with ideas about how modern art changed when technologies came where we could copy photos or when film came which are incredible which were incredibly influential for the whole art history sector, for how we look at art, for how we look at how people change, how societies change under the influence of mechanical reproduction techniques, the film and photo, photography. And these are, I argue in my book, what Hashish did to Walter Benjamin, which is a collection of essays,

not only in Benjamin, but I argued that this had a huge image, on how we think about art today and how it had a direct impact on society. And then there's, for instance, I have another essay on the early evolution of jazz with jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong and basically all others, not all those, but many others using cannabis and how that probably had an impact on the lives of people, of people on their work and get like on the background of my research and I think that's really underestimated so so I think my my work also is interesting for historians and for people who want to know about how psychoactive substances had an impact also a positive

really positive impact on societies and I think that's an open-ended question but we're only beginning to have an understanding of how luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday, Lester Young, and many, many others who used cannabis.

There's a long list. I mean, if you look at the Hashes Club, Alexander Dumas, Erejean de la Croix, Albo de la Cres, Archevonne, Artur-Romboe, Lord Byron, Lairsel Proust, William Butler, yeast. They all used cannabis and they wrote about it. Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Book,

used cannabis, Carl Sagan, Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, Oliver Sacks, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Bill Maher. And basically, somebody sent me a clip of George Carlin two years ago or so, a big George Carlin fan, where George Carlin talks about cannabis being a tool. And I was like, wow, yeah, he was spot on. And probably because of the influence of Robert Anton Wilson on him, he wrote about cannabis a lot and thought about cannabis as tool. And so I was like, okay, that's interesting to know because I had never heard him using that metaphor. And so, but if you look at all those people, and I'm not even, you know, I'm not even close to what's happening now or what happened. hip-hop or rap music or in Rasta music or in the Rastafarian movement or in all those kinds of musical scenes.

Raggy, et cetera, with Bob Marley saying really interesting things. Bob Marley is, for me, it's just like Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong, we carried a typewriter and he, it's really interesting to read this stuff because he was very verbal and verbally articulate about his cannabis use and about a lot of things. Very smart guy. He's using a jargon, of course, that kind of sounds funny, but he's amazing. I mean, and if you're interested in, let's see, in the whole jazz story also, you should read really the blues by Milton Mez-Mezro, amazing book also.

So, but so I think that is, that is a really interesting field to look into based on my research and the new image and the new understanding of cannabis as a mind enhancing tool to see how people use it. Like Marcel Proust and others and Oliver Sachs and others and how it may have affected their ideas and through their ideas society as a whole. Yeah, just just that list of people speaks voicembrose. volumes of the way in which people think and elevated thought and higher cognition. You know, when you talk about Ian McGillcreston, the master in his emissary, or he's got a, his new book is like a double set of a tome of like a matter with things or something, you know? Yeah. I'm curious, have you, what, have you given any thought to Julian Jane's idea about a corresponding

area to, to Broca's area and Broca's area on the opposite hemisphere of the brain? And might that be where auditory hallucinations come from, you know, and how do auditory hallucinations, which you can get on cannabis or psychedelics? And there are so many luminaries that heard voices or the logos or, you know, what is the connection there? Have you thought about that particular aspect of it? Not in terms of locating it in the brain. And in terms of Julian Jane's ideas, which I still have to get into more.

I have to admit. But I think it's a, what I started thinking about more recently is about also when you look at psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin, helping you to assess your subconscious states and how cannabis relates to that and how cannabis could also help you. I work more on how cannabis can give you really great insights and how it helps your reflective contemplation and give you the ability to see patterns in your lives. And I guess it does also help you to assess your subconscious states,

but in a different way. And so it might be interesting, and I'm just in contact with a friend who told me about her use of psilocybin mushrooms in connection with cannabis, and which brings me to another point that I touched on in the art of the high where I talk about cannabis and meditation. And I talk about the question, is a cannabis high good for meditation or not?

And I believe we should look at the whole spectrum of possible altered states of consciousness out there as states that can potentially help us to gain knowledge. Gain knowledge about ourselves, about our unconsciousness, about the nature of the brain, about our individual problems or needs. And I very often see purists, you know, saying like, I know, pure, you know, if you do a meditation, you shouldn't have that. You shouldn't have LSD or whatever because that's going to. And yeah, you know, maybe that's true.

Maybe the meditation or some states, there are various kinds of meditations, but maybe some sort of substance doesn't really help to achieve what you want to achieve with it. But I think we should be more open to the idea that we can combine those substances to achieve. to achieve whatever is out there. And, you know, I recently listened to another podcast episode with a therapist. I was working in Switzerland who also worked with various, you know, and if you talk to people who tell you,

I mean, I talked to a clubber, that's like 10 years ago, who told me how he uses first cannabis and then he uses speed and then they go out and they go dancing, then they use a little LSD, and then use this and this and that to come down and get up. You know, and I was like, holy gall. And I'm such a naive person when I comes to that. But it's also an interesting field to get into how people use those

a variety of substances or techniques to alter your purposes like hypnosis. And so I think we should be more open to the idea of combined. I mean, if it makes sense, also toxicologically speaking, We need to be careful with all that, of course. But I think cannabis has an incredibly incredible potential for also psychotherapists and others. And of course, microdosing LSD could be, you know, you can think about how to combine LSD with MDMA, et cetera, and other states to achieve what you want to achieve for certain purposes. And I think people are out there now who are exploring that realm. but that's that's a lot of space there to go into but so much potential and so many you know ways to go

to go which so far haven't been explored because it was prohibited and I think it's going to take a long time until we get the regulations to go there in a legal setting but but I encourage everybody to be a bit less religious or less purist about it, because you may have good reasons. I mean, I really listen to people, well, if they come from a background, yoga background, they're very knowledgeable, and they tell me that this kind of meditation

shouldn't go with cannabis or so, or cannabis doesn't even help you or even stop you from going deeper into your meditation. That could well be true, but it could well be also that they have prejudices. So I think we should approach this, as scientists and as researchers of the mind

with an open attitude and just see what helps us or what doesn't. Yeah, I think the idea of layering different substances together could open up whole new realms of thought and schools of thought and open up our imagination in a way. You know, here's an idea.

On some level, doesn't it see, we spoke a little bit about about, um, like typography and different modalities and how they gave us the idea of exact repeatability. You know, when you tell the story, boom, that's the first time. It wasn't that long ago that Marshall McLuhan was writing the Gutenberg galaxy, and they're talking about these ideas of how it changed the way we model reality. On some way, and I think he went on to make the claim that what happened there was a shift in sense ratios.

Might it be possible that that's what cannabis and some of these psychedelics are doing, for us is it's shifting our sense ratio so we experience everything different? Really good question. I just wondered. You know what I just wondered about? What? Somebody who's never tried any of those substance sits there. He's like, oh my God, I smoke a joint and everything is going to be different.

And I'm going to see like the birds are going to look like Dracula or something and clouds are going to be. like green and no I don't want that. Yeah, so there's this kind of vagueness in your question. Totally, totally. Yeah, I believe that it doesn't, it will not change your, hopefully it doesn't change your sensory systems in a way that you are not able to orient yourself in the real world anymore. but yes, it might give you, at least, I can say that it might give you insights. Yes. For instance, about yourself, where, and this is something people report all the time, that they say,

oh, I had an insight into the world, into myself, into other people, the nature of how other people functioned, that changed my perception of others of myself. forever. And of course, we know that psychedelics and cannabis can be very powerful substances to change, for instance, to get you out of depression, for instance. Some people have various anxiety depression disorders and they take cannabis or they take LST and then suddenly they are like, okay, that's done, you know, I'm over it. Some of them went through. years and years and years of psychosy therapies and they couldn't go there. And so, yeah, it can change your, it can change everything for you.

But that, having said that, it doesn't mean that you take all the senior and you're going to come back to the functioning in the real world. You know, that's hopefully not the case. Yeah, without a doubt, there's always risks. And when I mean shifting your sense ratio, you know, I had a chat with our friend chat GPT on this exact idea. And I had asked the large language model, what would the world look like if humankind were to have a subtle shift in the ratio in which they comprehend information? And what it gave back to me was this long list of like empathy and compassion. And obviously it was just like a hypothetical.

But the way it sent it back to me is like, wow, I feel like that's what's happening in my life a little bit. Maybe my relationship with cannabis and psychedelics has on some level. Or maybe it's the great conversation with people like you. But it's allowed me to have that perspective change and see the patterns in nature that are happening in my life. And you get like this grand sense. I'll give you an example. I have this vine that climbs up a tree. And isn't it interesting that that vine knows to produce a fruit that,

that drops at a 47 degree angle on August 3rd at 3.37 p.m. You know, so too, is that how our life unfolds? Are we part of this master plan as well? But those are the kind of insights I get on a higher, when I'm in a higher state of consciousness or in an altered state of consciousness. I never would think about that in my daily life where I get up, go to work, come home,

have dinner, take a shower. But in these altered states, you can really begin to see the patterns that are there. And I like to believe that those are, patterns in our life. It's fractal in some way. But I mean, I can't prove that. I can't prove someone else of that. But what do you think about those? Like we spoke a little bit about pattern recognition, but that's what I mean by the, that's what I mean by the shift in ratios, I guess. Yeah. I do think that, for instance, I give an example with imagination.

and during early highs, I had more visual highs where I was almost tripping. And I remember that after that a while I could still imagine, I felt like I'm better able to imagine things, even not taking cannabis, because it seemed like I had trained my ability to imagine to a certain degree that still stays with me for a while. And I do believe also that the patterns we see doing a high or doing an altered state of mind induced by whatever kind of psychoactive substance can, of course, change our view, but it can also change the way we view things and we look at things, seeing different patterns, attending to different things, maybe attending more to nonverbial behavior, maybe seeing, looking more broadly at what. what happens, what's happening in the world, opening our view for the suffering of other people, you know, opening our view to the suffering of animals. I mean, a lot of people may be under the impression of having a more extended empathic understanding, being able to connect with their own bodies or to others are later able to have a better, and see differently, you know, start vegetarian diets or what's happened with me,

also because they're more empathetic about other things. And there is an interesting question about how, and I went to a conference of Albert Hoffman, when he turned 100, that was his celebration, and he was alive. In Basel, in Switzerland, there was a conference on Albert Hoffman's work. And it was really fascinating because there were all kinds of people, scientists and from scientists to artists to ravers to young people to business people etc and

what happened there was there was a discussion a podium discussion it was in a conference center that's usually there for whatever kind of conferences uh huge auditorium with like almost a thousand people space for like 800 people or so and and there was this podium discussion on how cannabis and psychedelics and LSD affected society in the 60s. So the question was, were the 60s? Was there a big movement? And because there was this kind of liberation from old values, therefore the substances came in and they started to experiment,

or did the substances themselves start the revolution? So what was the relationship? Well, how did the whole thing evolve? And that was a really interesting debate With an open end Some people being more critical Some people being more yeah These substances helped a lot

To change the perspective of a lot of people And the interesting thing is After the discussion was over There was I think it was the Akasha project By also Christian Rich took part the great who recently tragically died. And they start to make music like kind of ethno-trans, tribal, electronic, something, danceable music,

wonderful stuff that they played on stage. And I remember, it was in the evening after all those discussions, who was in the auditorium, everybody was sitting in chairs, and they played their music, and after a while I saw some young people starting to dance, like a group of five people. And, you know, everybody was sitting, you know, it was a scientific conference. And I remember my own feeling about them. It was like, oh, come on, you know, it's kind of, it's not really the place to dance here.

Or it's kind of, yeah. And half an hour later, everybody danced in that room. And you could see like a very strict grid, you know, of held by beliefs, held by certain conventions that are in our mind. You could see that very strong grid being in place and then suddenly here's a movement and the grid goes like a little bit like and then suddenly moves there. And at a certain point, everybody goes dancing. Everything. There's a new wave. Everything breaks up. And people are happy and are, you know, are talking to each other in a different way. And, you know, the whole scene break. And, you know, like I said, there are scientists. There are old people, young people, artists, all kinds of different. Suddenly everything goes together. And the inhibitions break down and something completely new emerges out of that. And I thought that's, there's such a, a forceful metaphor for what happened in the 60s. And I'm sure that substances like LSD and others played a role in that.

In this room, the music played the role. And I think, yeah, it really can change not only our perception of things and how we see patterns, but are the way we act, the way we relate to others, way we see our society evolving, the way we, and now I'm with Ernst Bloch, who interesting, the philosopher Ernst Bloch was writing his books in the 50s about, and he was the one to sit down with Walter Benjamin in the 20s, taking cannabis in, or hashish, high dose of hashish in the 20s. And interestingly, Ernst Bloch was a professor in Germany at my University of Tübingen and became very famous because he became friends with Rudy Dutsche, who was like

the revolutionary guy in Germany, who would be like the leading figure in the 68 revolution. Now, Ernst Bloch, under the impression probably also of cannabis was considered a neo-Marxist. And Marxists believed basically that the human mind and human existence very much shaped by the environment, You know, so they thought in classes and they thought that the humans are shaped by what they believe. Ernst Bloch, in his main work, wrote a passage where he said, humans are not only shaped. Also, he wrote a book called Agaist Otopi, the spirit of utopia. I think the translation is different in English.

But he, something utopia. But anyway, he thought that what defines us as humans is not only our environment and how we're educated and where we live and in which class we live. But interestingly, and he writes about that, that under the impression of a cannabis high, he feels like his imagination is enhanced. And therefore, he can think about a utopia which frees him to be a different being. And that's what his point was about humans was that they are characterized not only by their environment and by who they are now, their history, and their education, but they are defined by who they want to be, what their dream is, what their utopia is, what they can dream up, what their proficiency is to dream up something that they want to live towards. And this is something also, you know, that inspired the whole generation. And so cannabis and other substances might help us to enhance our creativity, our imagination as a society, to get over our problems, to get over our fears, and to reconnect with others empathically. So I think it's all in there.

We could use that. But again, I'm not, I don't agree with people like Timothy Leary who thought that you just drop it on the population. It's going to work. You know, the seeds are going to grow and it's going to work because some people might just be, get anxious and paranoid. And others might say, hey, see, this is what happened. This guy jumped out of the window or, you know, got on the bus. And therefore, we need to shoot all these people who distribute the substances. So we need to really think about intelligently, A, how to how to build that.

regulations about those substances, how to reintroduce them into medicine and into society, how to give people access, but also education, to use those substances. And if we do so, I believe that they can make a huge, they have a huge impact on on actually, on not changing our perception, decoupling us from, from, from, bad habits as society, as humans, and from really changing our direction, because the direction we're seeing right now is frightening in society. Yeah. If past relevant behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, does it seem to you that,

like, we are on the cusp of change again? If we look at the late 50s where psychedelics were in this medical container, and then it moved from the container out into more of a public arena. It seems that now we are sort of like in a medical container, but there's all this education that's beginning to build up around it. Do you think that maybe this particular wave can be different than the last wave? Maybe some of the authority figures were afraid of breaking out of the power structure or afraid of people becoming their higher cells.

I know speculation is just speculation, but do you see some similarities to the past wave versus this wave and might education be different this time? We definitely see, I mean, if you look at the states in the 70s, you already saw that the liberalization taking place in regulations. A lot of states were a lot of it was kind of decriminalized. And I remember Lester telling me that Carl Sagan reading his manuscript, his very liberal book then coming out in 71, I think it was, or exactly marijuana reconsidered, where he said it's probably going to take 10 years or so for

legalization to take effect. Carl said to him, that's the only thing where I really think you're wrong because it's not going to take up. It's only going to be a few years from now. It's only the thing that's going to be legal. Now, 40 years later, 50 years later, it's still not legalized. not in the sense we'd like it to. So I do think there are some similarities.

Yes, there were already efforts to make it more accessible or legal to use it. And we had a lot of great studies up until the 70s, 60s, and people who worked on it. And then there was a 40-year-long. Nothing, not nothingness. Some people working the underground, but the problem is, of course, that it left people like me working in a space where there's, for me, there's, it's, it's hard to come back. I'm not working for an institution, so nobody takes you serious, you know. You work for 20 years and you write several books on the subject and you have your academic credentials,

but you're not in an institution. So everybody's like, yeah, you know. And so, and a lot of other people, I think, are in that space because they're, considered outsiders because, of course, the system didn't allow their research or didn't give them money for their research. So there are some similarities. There are, but there are things that are really different. And when you look at cannabinoid medicine, I mean, for instance, we know a lot more about the end of cannabinoid system. That knowledge is not going to go away. We have a lot of different tools now, like medical vaporizers to use cannabis.

And we have the knowledge in the field already of like, look at Canada. The last time I looked, there were 450,000 patients. I think it must be maybe 500,000 now. I'm not sure. And, of course, you have experience from the recreational space. But in terms of patient population, you now have a lot of experience. You have new technologies coming up. I just heard a German pharmacist really interesting, giving a really interesting talk about topicals where he said that maybe the new German, because here we're going to have a new German law soon taking effect.

It's still not ratified. We're still waiting for the big decriminalization to take place, but it's probably going to take effect and be effective in January. And I said once that happens, maybe we get closer to being able to explore how topicles work, because, for instance, we know that the endocannabinoid system is active in all five layers of the skin functional layers. And one of the problems right now is that for CVD topicles or TTC topicals to enter the skin and to get to the deepest layer, which is important for, for instance, no seception or for pain treatment or for anti-inflammatory,

for an anti-inflammatory effect, people with arthritis or other things. So you need to, maybe you can come up with formulations that have transporter molecules that bring the cannabinoids deeper into those layers. And so you can see how technologically we have evolved from the 70s.

We have gained a lot of knowledge in medicine. What we also have now, and I think this is not to be underestimated. You mentioned chat GTP. And I think

artificial intelligence is going to change the way we retrieve knowledge from the whole medical field because we are looking at a lot of we're still looking at RCTs at randomized controlled studies.

as a gold standard in the medical field. In my belief, from what I've seen as a philosopher and as somebody who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry selling or as a marketing communications director for cannabis, natural cannabis. And real world evidence, what's called real world evidence, how we actually consider evidence that comes from the experience of doctors in the field,

patient feedback, from other feedbacks from observational studies, etc. is underestimated. And I think once we apply artificial intelligence on that kind of real-world studies, experiential reports, but also it's going to help us to understand how a complicated compound like cannabis with its more than 140 cannabinoids, with its more than 200 terpenes and dozens of flavonoids, how it's going to really affect and target receptors in our brains and bodies. That's an incredibly complicated equation.

And artificial intelligence and computational power will help us to better understand how this affects us individually. Also with genetics, you know, and giving us the important information about how we're individually different, how we might respond differently to those. substances also medicine now finally finding a bit more or looking a bit more into how women and men react differently to medications and how they have different symptoms that will play a role so I do think we could and as again I'm careful right we are at a different point and this could propel our knowledge and this could propel societies.

But of course, you know, we're seeing the United States struggling not to become a fascist state, country. And I'm meaning that coming from Germany and knowing the history. Yeah. I'm dead serious about that. This is something that is a possibility. We're seeing in Germany, like we have the AFD party, which is really right-winged and under observation of secrets, etc. I mean, they have very radical elements.

They are up to 20% almost nationwide now. We're seeing radicalization. I mean, we don't need to talk about what's happening in Russia, what's happening in China. So we're seeing democracies collapse. We're seeing people running after authoritarian leaders again and thinking about all this doesn't work. We need another big guy. We're seeing that not only in the States but in China. You see that in Hungary.

We see that in other places. And so, yeah, you know, it's going to be a battle and it's going to be a fight. So in that larger context of what's happening in modern societies, everything can happen. But I think we are totally at a different point as to what means we have to study those substances as to what we already know about those substances and what they can do. So I think it's worth really standing up for it. And one thing which is really important to me is to tell people that it's not about, because here, especially in Germany, is portrayed as like the legalization or full,

giving people adults, responsible adults, full access to cannabis as a substance. I always tell them it's not about recreational use as in use it for fun. I always say it's about re-hyphen creational use. We need to recreate ourselves, not having fun, not just chill out and relax. People, and if you look at how people are using cannabis, many of them, and they've started that, and other psychoactive substances, of course, they're using it to find, to get back into their bodies, to get back to relating to others, to see new patterns. to have a different perception of music, to go on a voyage, to personal travel,

to elevate their whole being. And this is what my book elevated is all about, that people are struggling, the ways in which this elevated is a deeper exploration, by the way, which is for those who are interested more into the psychology, It has more than 180 references, scientific references, and it's opposed to The Art of the High,

which is a book that I wrote, a minimalist book, which is a guidebook for people to more practically understand how they can use cannabis to experience those enhancements. It's a book that you can read in three hours. The elevator is a book for readers who want to go a bit deep, a bit deeper and understand a bit more about enhancement uses like the enhancement of ethical understanding introspection or empathy or insights and also about the history about the prohibition. And so it's important for me to state that usually when we talk about the prohibition,

some of us understand how the prohibition has caused epic suffering. But I think we need to think about the prohibition and about legalization also in terms of what potential we are missing by not allowing people to using cannabis and other psychoactive substances in an educated way. I come to using it therapeutically, but also when it's not. it comes to use it inspirationally for all kinds of enhancement uses. Because this bears for us as a society, I think, bears the chance to really help us to get away from bad habits

and to get away from negative perceptions of others to reconnect and to move us to a different place and to basically to survive as humanity and to survive in a human way, humane way. This is such a wonderful conversation. You know what? I wish you could see what I'm looking at. I have like four pages of questions, and I think I got through two of them.

Like, it's so fun to talk to you, man. We're going to have to come back. Maybe we can do like a once-a-month thing because I think there's so much information. And maybe can you hold up the book again, the elevated book, your newest book? So for people that are watching, this is the newest book.

And has it already been released on all the major platforms? Yeah, yeah, I guess so. And you can go through Helaritas Press, the website, or you can go on my website, which is Sebastian Marinkolo, in one word.de, and then you find the links to other places. And yeah, it's been released this summer. And like I said, it's a marvelous edition, and I'm really happy that Hilaritas Press put so much work

at it because especially Richard Raza and my agent Michael Johnson who brought me to that it was basically a fun story because this was one of my readers. He read my book what Hash is did to Walter Benjamin in the States. He's a really great guy,

Michael Johnson and a lovely guy. And he wrote to me and he said that he just wanted to express that this is an amazing book, et cetera. And then I told him, hey, and that he encouraged me to publish that in the States or to find a publishing house.

And then we talked, we went back and forth in our organization. And I said to him, hey, if you find me a publisher, I'm going to make you my agent. That's awesome. And he tried a few. And then he's friends with Richard Raza, and he brought me to Hilaras, Press. And when they, when Richard Rosa from Hilaras Press, who was a friend of Robert Anton Wilson, when he received the message from Michael Johnson, he had, he said that he just put one of my quotes in one of the addition, new editions of Robert Anton Wilson's books. And I'm not sure,

but I think it was this quote, which is in the art of the high, where I say, a marijuana can enhance core human mental abilities. It can help you to focus, to remember, to see new patterns, to imagine, to be creative, to introspect, to empathically understand others, and to come to deep insights. If you don't find this amazing, you have lost your sense of wonder, which, by the way, is something that I can bring back too. So, yeah, and he had just put that in the book and said, oh, that guy, Marinkalo.

Yeah, that sounds interesting. And, yeah, I'm really happy because working, because I had to self-publish some books or, you know, two books. And self-publishing isn't fun. And it's always great to have an editor, especially such a great editor at it and people giving you responses. and on your writing and to be blessed with such an environment. And so I also encourage people to take a look at Hilaritas Press and at the work of Robert Anton Wilson. I am very ashamed to say that it took me a while to discover it

because my readers came back to me, said, you need to read Robert Anton Wilson. But I think I was a bit a victim of the public image or a widespread image of Robert Anton Wilson here in Germany because he made an impact, he had an impact here, but I think people looking at the Illuminati series they kind of looked at him as not having, because he was a letter editor for Playboy,

and then he got all those conspiracy theories and he made those in his books, he talked about them, but of course he was aware of them and he was smart enough to play with all that in the Illuminati series. But I think he was a bit more considered here as a conspiracy theory, whatever or not. And so I was like, ah, do I really want to be, you know? And I recently read his Ishtar Rising book, which was originally called The Book of the Breast. And it's just, and other other things, other books by him.

And it's just amazing to see the density. of ideas and to so i highly encourage everybody to not read my book elevated forget about it it's not even worth it no but but seriously take a look and go to hilarious press to the website and um and if you after looking at robert anthony wilson books you don't find anything and still you might want to consider reading elevated But yeah, because these are beautiful additions, new editions of his books. He also published two books with Timothy Leary, and he was amazing, not only amazingly smart, but if you look at, for instance, I mean, the book of the breast, or Ishto Rising,

he was given the task to make a book on breasts from the Playboy magazine. And he wrote, this is like a very early feminist manifesto in a way where he talks about breastfeeding and how it affected societies to suppress breastfeeding and how to go through various, yeah, what kind of personality can. came out, personalities came out of that and how it influenced whole societies. Unbelievable insights and incredibly informed. It's really interesting to see his sources and where he got information from. And I think both, if I can compare myself to his approach, because I didn't know his approach when I was doing that, we were both very guerrilla in the way

we looked at our sources and where we took our information from. So I found a lot of parallels in our approaches and thinking. And so, so yeah. So I think it's a great place to be in and to be, so really for me an honor to be published alongside with this work. Yeah. And I would say that you echo those sentiments with an incredible list of insights and a unique way of looking at the world

and an incredible vast drawer of knowledge that you have that strings everything together. It's really, it's amazing. And people should get a certificate. If they read all your books, you should send them a certificate in, and sometimes it should be a class, man. There's so much in there.

You're officially a nut now. A drug not. Well, Dr. Sabat, this has been amazing. I really, really appreciate it. And I'm going to talk to you briefly afterwards, but to the people watching and listening to this, I hope you had as much fun and you are as stoked about it as I am. And I would encourage everybody listening to watch you to pick up the book, pick up all of them, whether it's the book about photography, whether it's the new book elevated or you can't go wrong.

I think you'll come away with a whole new understanding and perspective. It's kind of like, you know, being an altered state of consciousness just by reading them. So ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes, check. out Dr. Sebastian and that's all we got for today. One more time where can people find you at Sebastian? It's Sebastianmaricolo.de is my website. Sebastian Marincolo with C, the Marinkolo. Nice.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that's all we got for today. I hope you have a beautiful day. Aloha. Thank you.