TrueLife - The Art of THE HIGH 2 - Dr. Sebastian Marincolo

Episode Date: December 9, 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 Marincoloaka 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.https://www.sebastianmarincolo.de/en/home/ 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, furious 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 I got my pen, some paper

Here's doors for you. Ladies and people are Today, Sebastian hosting the podcast we have over here I'm going to turn it around, man. I have so many questions for you. Oh, man. That's a whole other show, man.

But we'll go back and forth. Don't worry about that. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the special nighttime edition if you're in Hawaii of the Two Life podcast. It is mid-morning, if you're where Sebastian is over there in Germany, I think. Are you in Germany or the Netherlands? Yeah, I'm in Germany.

It's 9 o'clock in the morning here. Perfect. And so for, excuse me. For those who may not know, I would like to introduce my esteemed guest for today, Sebastian Marincola, a true Renaissance soul whose journeyed through the realms of philosophy, linguistics, and the intricacies of the mind has illuminated new paths of understanding. Dr. Sebastian Schultz, as he's academically known, earned his magna cum laude PhD through a critical analysis of neural philosophical 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. We're going to get into some interesting stuff today. Sebastian, welcome back to the show, my friend. How are you? I'm great, and I'm really glad to be back. Yeah, me too. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm hopeful that we'll make this our, you know, a once-a-month endeavor into exploring some new ideas. I think it's a great way to. I love that. Yeah, me too. Let me just start off with this one. I was talking to a grower friend of mine here in Hawaii that used to grow large amounts of cannabis in California. And he kind of grew at a time when things were getting into dispensaries and he got to see the landscape change. And one of the things we were talking about

is the way in which soilless mediums have fundamentally changed the high, have changed the way in which the high the high is. Maybe you could speak on that a little bit. What's your thoughts there? About how soil, how the quality of the soil changed the high? That's what you were talking about. I would say like not only that, but they've used soilless mediums in some ways. Like they'll just put them in a cube, put them on a wall.

And it's mostly because of testing that came in and all these ways that they needed to have everything right for a dispensary. But yeah, that was the main question. Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting question because, I mean, I had the privilege to work in the pharmaceutical industry in Germany. We imported for the first company that imported Canadian cannabis. And so they set up a, I'm not going to name the company, because I don't stand for it anymore. But they built a production facility in Denmark, and they have a zero pesticide policy. And I remember we had discussions there that the problem is really to, if you have testing for the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, it's very rigid, of course. And it's hard to get the pesticides out because, of course, the pesticides already come with the nutrients. you give the plants because the nutrients come from plants that probably haven't been

or have been harvested in places where, you know, you have some pets there everywhere. I mean, that's how you see how the pollution in the world comes back to us. And so it's interesting to see in an environment, a pharmaceutically controlled environment, how even with extremely rigid SOPs, which is standard operation procedures that are defined for the process of harvesting, for growing cannabis, for what you put in there, for how you walk in there. And I remember as a communications director, I was responsible for bringing the BBC into that facility in Denmark.

And, you know, we walked in there like in a nuclear plant or something. fully covered and they had to swipe the cameras with alcohol, et cetera. Because in Denmark, they have a zero pesticide policy. So they had a huge book. I like to have that. They had a huge book for with for little insects that would eat away, whatever the predators are for cannabis. And that in the plants,

you could see them all like with color like tea bags, hangings, et cetera. All growers know that. you use various kinds of insects. So it's an interesting, it's really an interesting angle to look at how the plant grows, what goes in there, and what are the factors that determine what kind of chemicals come out of the plant and go into your system? Because, of course, we know in cannabis now that it's not only the THC that acts on your mind,

but there is an entourage or ensemble effect or synergistic effect that is determined by other compounds present, terpenes, terpenoids, flaminoids, other cannabinoids, alcaloids, et cetera. And so we know that, and I think the best evidence for the entourage effect is that we have an industry now. In Germany, you have, I think, in the pharmaceutical realm, We have hundreds of different varieties of cannabis that can be obtained.

And that's, I mean, why would we have that if THC would be enough for people? So, yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. How does the soil affect the quality or whatever the plant builds? I've seen studies also on how the lighting effects, the terpenes and the canarymen. abinoids that are built in the plant. And I remember talking to Saincy Seeds, the CEO back then, like that must be eight, 10 years ago or so that they already thought about, you know, giving the plants if they grow them indoor, the lighting spectrum of, which is matched to the genetics of the plant.

So if the plant comes from the equator or if it comes from the northern hemisphere more, then they would think about, you know, how do we match the lighting profile to the plant so that it does its, it gets its perfect environment. And we know that sunlight is probably still the best. And of course, now with LEDs and all that coming in, it's, it's really interesting. Once you get into the professionalization of all that in the pharmaceutical realm, but also in other realms. And I always thought that it's a pity that. It's a pity that. of course in the pharmaceutical realm, the good thing is that a lot of things get controlled and you can be sure that there's no mold in there and no pesticides maybe and no heavy metals.

But then the problem is that they are only looking for CBD and T.HC content. They don't really give a shit about anything else in Germany. So they don't, you know, they don't check if in your Jack Herrera or whatever you call it differently. medical realm, if you're in your variety, if there is a certain amount of turpene, they don't check that anymore. So, or not anymore, they've never checked. So, so I have a feeling that if you look also in old cultures and how they produce cannabis, and they treated it more like a, like a vine or like, yeah, like a pro, like a, like a, like a, piece of art to produce the product. And they came up with production methods that then

ended up in way better material that then you would find in the pharmaceutical market because some of that stuff is, I mean, I remember when I went down and looked at our, at the cannabis, at the quality, it was too dry. Right. Because, of course, the long way it had come and it had been stopped at customs, et cetera. And so, so that's an interesting thing to look in. to in the pharmaceutical realm. You have great controls and you have you have cannabis where you can be more or less sure that you know there's no pesticide or heavy metals in it. But it's not produced in the best way you probably would like to have for your high. And so soil is a really interesting thing to look into. But if you'd ask me

Now, how does it affect the high? I haven't seen any studies on that. I mean, that would be difficult. But I'm pretty sure it does affect. I mean, think about that. I mean, a plant, here's a story about the Mexican, about the Mexican squash, for instance. It builds, it's attacked by insect.

or by what is it, ladybugs, then it pours out proteinase inhibitors that disable the insect to digest the leaf material. Now, if it's attacked by more animals, by one animal, it does that. If it's attacked by more animals, it pours out another substance that make that effect even stronger. The ladybugs have learned that. That's a story by Ronald K. Siegel, by the way. I really can really suggest that on your reading list. If you haven't read it, Intoxication, the book by Ronald K. Siegel. And so the ladybugs have learned that the plant defends itself intelligently.

not only pouring out that substance, but pouring out more of it if it's attacked by more at Ladybug. So what do they do? They take a leaf. They fly on the leaf and they kind of cut a circle in the leaf with like, they bite a circle. And then they let the inner part of the leaf sit on only a few bridges, so to say, hang. And then they go in the middle of the leaf.

They eat it up. Why do they do that? Because they have learned that the plant pours out the proteinase inhibitors. And so they cut out a part where the plant cannot really pour out the inhibitors anymore. And then what do they do afterwards? They fly away for six, they fly away like six meters to attack the next plant because they have also learned that the plants intelligently communicate with each other, the plants that are touching each other and standing in a group. And they tell the other plants, hey, there's an attack.

There are some insects coming now. pour out whatever substances you have to defend yourself against this predator. And so the predators have learned that to some degree. So there is, and if you look in our evolutionary history, there is a lot of going back and forth between herbivores and plants and how the plants build bitter substances, for instance, to defend themselves. And then the herbivores manage to digest those substances. And so it's a back and forth.

And so all that plays a role when it comes to the plant substance. So if, for instance, you walk through a field of, there are stories about hemp fields that people would walk through them with a stick and beat the cannabis plants in ancient times or in India, I think it was because then the plant would produce more of various substances, TFC or whatever. And that's what's happening. If you attack a plant, it builds different chemicals. So it's not only this, it is the soil, but it's also other substances.

And I'd like to look into, I mean, I would like to see people looking into what the effect is on plants. Both, I mean, you could look into A in really controlled environments. How does the plant react to music? how does it react to attacks by or injuries, how does it react to different soil, kinds of soil, different kinds of lighting. And some of that stuff has been done. And you can look at the spectrum of chemicals that are built then or that are higher or lower in a certain variety.

But then also you'd have to look at because this is the problem also with the entourage effect We know that the many compounds in the plant modulate the high, but we are not, there's a lot of marketing around, yeah, you know, this one has limine and therefore it makes you happy, et cetera. The evidence there is sparse and it's still not. So a lot of the marketing claims we have from companies in the cannabis space are just plain, you know, not bullshit, but they're over-examinated. So it's hard to say, you know, you. might have a plant that builds more limine because of a different kind of soil. But then it's another way to really look into how does that affect your height. It does affect your high for sure. Yeah. But it's, you'd have to look into that and you have to make more studies with people or let

them, you know, try it. Because then, of course, it's always another question. If some people consume that plant, how does it, how much of that comes into the system? How much is bio, available because then it depends on what kind of vaporizer are you using or are you using a joint? Are you eating it? If you're eating it, it goes to the first pass effect. It's broken down by the liver. So some substances get, you know, altered. If you, if you vaporize it, it depends on the temperature of your vaporizer. What kind of cannabinoid and what terpenes end up in your system more because they have different boiling points, etc. So, it's not an easy thing to study.

But in the future, there's a lot to explore. Yeah, it's fascinating. When talking with my friend, both of us had come from California and coming to Hawaii and trying the cannabis out here at first patch, like, oh, this is not very strong. But then you wait a little bit, you feel it all through your body. And it's like, whoa, what is this? You know, and so we're just speculating, like, you know, of course, with a handful of other friends, It's like, ah, it's the soil, man.

You freaking guys in California and your soilless mood. You guys don't know anything, you know? But it's interesting to think about it. It's a full different style. And it just got us thinking about that idea of like, yeah, you know what? Whenever you isolate life, you keep it from some of the things that make it the most wonderful, whether it's a plant or a person that's got to be similar, right? On some level.

Absolutely. And I have a great story for you because I have a great story for you because I have a, So I had a really similar experience. I went to Amsterdam and in a great coffee shop, the media coffee shop in Amsterdam. It's in Depeep. I highly recommend it. Run by Cherun, Reufeld and Keogers. And I bought some or Shurun gave me some.

We worked together. I have my art hanging there, my art pose, and they bought some of my art. And they gave me some hashish. And I'm usually here in Germany, I'm very careful with hashish because traditionally it's much easier to lace hashish with whatever shit you put in there, you know, rubber pieces. And so hashish is by most of us, I think we consider like an inferior material because or really not great. material because most of the quality that you get on the on the black market is or used to be bad so unless you really have a great source so now I got it took it home and I tried it here and I was I was blown away I mean it was an amazing experience and

it was I felt like I remember when I drank my first great wine at the age of 24 or so red wine 1986 porto It was such an experience, not knowing, not being an expert, but then having that experience and being like, okay, this is like a symphony. This is like a piece of art. This is really something different. And I understand that I just ran into something big, you know. And I thought, I thought there's something, the interesting thing about it was that I thought there is a component in this high. that I never, that I had never experienced before.

And I had really, I'm not, I'm not using a lot of cannabis. So I'm really not a guy who's a daily consumer. But I had tried a lot of varieties because of my research. And so I thought, wow, that's interesting. There must be something in it. Or there must be a way of production that, That is different. And I started to research a little bit.

And I found an article from 2016 on Hashishin. And it said that in Morocco, they have a tradition of putting, when you harvest and dry cannabis, usually you put it in a dark place. So you don't want to have it exposed to light or to heat too much. And so for the fermentation process. for the curing process. And it seems like they put it on their roofs in the blazing African sun. And then researchers found a degradation product of,

they don't know what it is, maybe of Mercin or some other terpen. And they called this terpen hashishine, because they only found it in that type of form. hashish. So maybe, I guess so, it could be that this high was so different and so balanced and different than whatever I had experienced before because in their tradition, in their long tradition of producing hashish, they had found a way to cure or to, to, to bruise in a way that gives you that kind of high. So I think it's an interesting, it would be an interesting journey really to look into

the cultures of the world, African cultures, Indian cultures. And I mean, some people have done that to some degree, like the strain hunters or others, but to really look into how was cannabis produced. I mean, if you look into, for instance, Japanese tea production and there are some some teas where they, before they harvest the tea, they put it in a shade because that it doesn't become too bitter, et cetera. So I think in our old cultures, we really have a lot more knowledge, cultural knowledge about how to treat a plant, be it like a banana or be it a tea, sort of tea or something,

kind of tea, how to treat it so that it creates a great taste experience. And also when we talk about cannabis or other psychoactive substances, I mean, we have to be aware that these cultures didn't only look for a taste experience. They looked, they really looked for what does, what can this substance do to my, to my mind? And how can it help me as a healer or how can it help me to obtain a great mental state? So I think there is a lot to be found and combining that with new methods of analysis to look into like what I just said. I mean, we can now look at the chemistry of the plant and we can find some things like hash machine that are new compounds.

So I think it's a fascinating time to live in and it's a problem, of course, that we still have regulations that hinder us to do all the research. I mean, we have so many tools now and so many great people and minds who could do that, but it's all slowed down by the regulations we have still. It's interesting. On some level, the cannabis industry is a fascinating

business to watch. It's got all these highs and these lows in some ways it mirrors cannabis itself. But one of the things that I see is this, all these regulations, be it for pharmaceutical grade or for pesticides or all these things.

And it also seems to be like a, like a centralization. Like a lot of the small places can no longer really compete. And I was thinking maybe that one of the one of the things our conversation brought us to when I was talking to my friend is that how can you get some of these small people that grow outdoors you know to compete like what if there was an asterisk involved like this plant was grown outdoors boom asterisk you know and and there was some research behind the type of high you could get from that that might be able to shake things up

with the with the centralization model and everyone thriving to grow indoors for potency for maximum them this. What do you think about on shaking up the industry by marking things that were grown outside? Obviously, it might only play for boutique people, but it might be something that shakes up the industry. Do you have some other ideas to shake up the industry? Yeah. I mean, I've predicted that for a long time that the craft cannabis market is going to grow and is going to be there. And it's because of what we just talked about. Because we We underestimate, I think, that many people are looking for the effects that I've been talking about with the cannabis high, that you have enhanced creativity, pattern recognition,

enhanced ability to associate or freely associate to enhance ability for empathical understanding and for insights, et cetera. and many people use it for lovemaking and sex. And they want those side effects and they want the difference and some want it to be more on their buddy and some wanted to be more of a mental high. So I think that there is a huge potential for the craft grow market there. Of course, the regulations are still a problem.

And the problem is that in general, people look at the medical market and then I think those people who are in the medical market, they understand that cannabis can be used for, I mean, for literally dozens or hundreds of various indications. Even in Germany when we had only a thousand patients in 2017, I remember statistics that these patients, these 1,000 patients had licenses for, to obtain licenses, exemptions from the narcotics agency for, I think, more than 50 indications. So even back then, we already had the spectrum of people using it for Tourette's, for epilepsy, for whatever kind of.

And so in the medical market, people understand that cannabis can have, like, effects on all kinds of medical problems and can help with all kinds of medical problems. But on the recreational market, I think you have a complete misinterpretation of what people are using cannabis for. And there is some truth in it. I think there are a lot of people who are using cannabis in a more or less one dimensional way. We talked about that, like the days and confused part, or I call it the happily dazed and confused thing, which is, you know, you smoke cannabis and you're happy and you're laughing and everything is hilarious. And you are fragmented. And you forget about what happened today and you forget about the problems you have tomorrow that you have to solve.

And then you're in the moment, which is a great thing. You know, you can. But it also helps you. It also can enhance your, can be a problem for your escapism and to just, you know, run away from problems. So it definitely helps you with stress. And stress relief, of course, is the most, but that's a problem of the society we're living in. Many people are just, you know, they're stressed because they live in a horrible system. And political system and economic system and moral system.

So, but there still are many other people out there, and they're going to be more as we liberalize the regulations around cannabis, the people will find out more and more, oh, no, cannabis cannot only make me happy. And it's not only the state of being a little confused and being able to watch, you know, being focused on a movie or something, but I can also appreciate art more. and I can go out and personally grow and I can go out and have a better understanding of my kids or my wife when I'm thinking about them high, or I can relate to other people better or, et cetera, et cetera, you know. So if you, I think those people who are growing, who are going into the craft grow idea should look into that crowd. But also they shouldn't forget that we are in a different time now. And of course, the market regulations are not strict enough to protect people still. I mean, I see that here on the CBD market in Germany where you have CBD, for instance,

it's still not, there are still no clear regulations around it. So what's happening? There are people who are selling CBD flowers. They're selling flowers from CBD varieties. and they spray them with synthetic cannabids or whatever kind of shit. They're pesticides, and they're all kind of shit in there. Yeah. So even if you're a craft grower who emphasizes growing organically and, you know,

using the right soil and growing outdoors, I think you should to some degree make sure, A, that the, A, from a standpoint of the society, we should make sure that, there are market rules so that no, you know, people enter the market who are producing just bullshit and calling it organic or calling it whatever. And the growers should make sure that even if those regulations aren't there, they should just, you know, be very careful in what they sell and make sure that it's controlled right for pesticides and for mold.

because for instance, mold is a different problem now also because if you're using a vaporizer, mold can be a real problem for your allowance. If you're using a joint, it's maybe a different story. It may still be a problem. So there are issues. And even from that side, I think, so you should combine, if you are in the craft growth field, you should combine the technology, the abilities, you have to produce clean material, I mean, to make sure that there are no toxins in it,

but then to focus on what you can give to people and to market it that way. And that, I think it's going to be big. I think it's not going to be 50% or so, but it's because not everybody can afford that, but I think, and watch that, but I think there's a good 15% of the market that could go in that direction or 10 to 15% I just an estimation but but I think in the long run it depends on education that's the problem with the prohibition and with the consequences of the prohibition that we still don't have enough knowledge around the whole plant and the process and you know what goes into it and you can see people still using their cannabis and they you know they have

their little back and they leave it in the sunlight they leave it in the heat because for them they don't understand that it's a plant. It's a plant. They just consider it as it's there's in that material there's THC and this kind of stays in there or not, but that's not. I mean, you wouldn't leave your yogurt around for four weeks and think that, you know, after three weeks in the sunlight, it's going to be the same experience. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way. look at it, yeah. You know, I'm fascinated by the way in which altered states can give us different insights into the way we live our lives. And you have an incredible background in that. I'm wondering, this is kind of a, for those listening to this question, I'm sure you're a fan of

Sebastian here. So I'm sure you may know his work, but after those questions, I might be kind of big for some people, but maybe you can, can you, Sebastian, see any potential for synthesis in the neurophilosophysical theories and your work on alter states of consciousness through cannabis research? What do you mean by synthesis? Like, I'm just, I think I understand the question, but I'm just want to make sure that I understand you correctly. So it seems to me that there's evolving ways in which we're understanding consciousness.

Yeah. Right. And if we look at cannabis research, we're looking back, we've already spoken about how they would come through and they would beat the plans to produce a different type and the way in which they looked at the high was much different. You know, is there a synthesis there? Are we looking back on, on, hey, this particular research is showing us how we can model reality in the future with these theories? I would put it this way. Okay. I think that my research, research draws information from various sources. And it's funny how I wasn't in the beginning, I wasn't aware of the fact that my research is to some degree anthropological. Or I wasn't too much into the anthropological research, but it turned to be, and then I anthropological to some degree, because I'm talking to people who are users. I'm trying to find out their stories

and what they tell about, what they say about the effects, but also to growers and to the whole subculture to those who are, those who came up with new varieties, et cetera. And that to some degree is an anthropological component in there. But I also drew knowledge from, of course, from the new rules, basically from all the sciences, the cognitive sciences, the neurosciences,

neurophilosophy that are trying to come to a better understanding of how cognitive abilities like creativity or empathy or introspection, how do they work? I mean, we must be aware of the fact that today we have a very limited understanding. I mean, we are really far in neuroscience and we are really far in the mental sciences. But when it comes to a really deep understanding of what happens in the brain and how does it manage to what shapes us creative processes or empathic processes, we have hypotheses and we have theories based on models of the human brain and about how neurons are connected. Connectionist network models, etc. But we're learning at the beginning. So I use some of that knowledge,

and I try to use it to characterize the effects of cannabis on the human brain and try to import some knowledge. But I think that my hypotheses could then become really important for those who are looking into the architecture of the brain, how it works, because if we find out how cannabis can, for instance, enhance empathic understanding of others, we might learn something about how empathic understanding works in general. So what, because I believe, and in my new book, elevated cannabis as a tool for mind enhancement, which is more of a scientific enterprise.

It's a deeper investigation of that. I have the hypothesis that the endocannabinoid system might be deeply involved in the architecture of higher cognitive abilities, providing not only balance, but maybe other functions for systems like empathic understanding, pattern recognition, et cetera. So that would be something to look into. So to make a long answer short, I believe that, so I drew on the knowledge that is there from the neurosciences, not only on cannabinoids and from pharmacology on what we know about the receptors

and the endocannabinoid system, but also from, I drew on the research, the neurophilosophical and neuroscientific research on all those cognitive abilities that I think are affected by the cannabis high. But then I came with that knowledge and with the knowledge that I added from myself, my own experiences, but also from my anthropological research, from my research of literature, of what people like Baudelaire or Walter Benjamin or Carl Sagan or Billy Holiday or Louis Armstrong, who all reported on their cannabis use and in detail what they had to say about it.

And then I tried to come up with hypotheses that and to import that back into neuroscientific theories of the human mind. Because I think, and that's not only about cannabis, but that's about psychedelics, of course. The psychedelics are an amazing source and cannabis also. I once called it the Alice in Wonderland route to understanding the human, understanding human consciousness is that we take that route not only to understand what altered states of consciousness are, but what consciousness itself is. I mean, we are at the beginning.

I mean, we are really, we know a lot, we know a lot, and we are in the century, that has brought about the most, I mean, an avalanche of knowledge about, and in the last century new knowledge about the human mind, especially once we understood, and that came late. I mean, only in the 50-60s in the world, people started to import the insight that our mind has, our consciousness has evolved, You know, it's a process that comes out of evolution.

And Darwinism, I hit the world much earlier, 50 years earlier. So people understood that, oh, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe we had an evolution. Maybe it was not a God who created everything. But it took a while for people to understand in the sciences of consciousness, that it took them a while to take it serious how, you know, that we have to look at the human mind as a process that has. has undergone evolution and the outcome of a long evolution and biological evolution. So I think we are now learning more and more about it and it's an acceleration.

And we should use the science and we should use the knowledge that we have on psychedelics and on consciousness. But the problem is, of course, that in the last, if you look at psychedelics, many smart minds in the last 40 years didn't get the funds anymore to research. You know, they were kind of these are more, they all had to work somewhere on the fringe and they are considered more. And a lot of them are considered as, you know, kind of lunatics. and like myself. I mean, I couldn't pursue an academic career. I knew I was done with my academic career

when I chose to research cannabis. So now I wrote several books, but I don't have, I have my credentials, academic credentials until I was, until I finished my PhD, but later on, you know, I was outside the field. So now people,

I think it's going to be tough for the research to come back. I mean, we are seeing it now. But it's a tough comeback because, of course, the buddy work that has been done is looked at with a lot of, you know, with a very critical attitude by other researchers because they're like, oh, yeah, you know, but he's not a professor. He doesn't come out of that institution. And so I think we should spend a lot more money on. researching psychedelics, not only to find out about the psychedelics and other psychoactive

substances, not only to understand their therapeutic potential, not only to understand also the risks and how we have to deal with the risks, and not only to understand how in the recreational field, and I always emphasize that as re-hy-3, how we can use. use those substances for creativity and other purposes, but also to understand the human mind itself. And the human mind, it's, we always talk about consciousness and altered states of consciousness, but that's built in. We very often believe most of us, I call this, I think we talked about that last, I'm not sure, I call this the rational reconstruction era.

We usually, when we model our minds, we do that in a state of consciousness that is very rational. So when we're talking about what is human consciousness, we do that, we are verbalizing it, we're talking about it in our language. We do that in a state of our mind that is very rational and logical. but that's not the state of this renal time. We're sleeping every night. We are, every night we are dreaming and we are in a psychedelic state for a longer time. During the day, we're going through, hopefully some of us still do, going through phases of ecstasy

or phase of we're half asleep or daydreaming. We're going through states of high. or when we are in an almost aesthetic trans, when we are in our trans states, dancing or orgasm, which is also a different state of mind, an altered state of consciousness. So that's part of who we are.

And our brain has its own mechanisms to change its chemistry during the night, et cetera, to induce those states also. So these are, these are states that we're using also and that are useful for us to perceive the world, to interact with the world.

I mean, there's still a huge debate about what dreaming is good for. But so we need to understand that altered states of consciousness are part of who we are as part of our nature. And the research of altered states of consciousness is, in my view, is one of the most profound ways to understand the human mind better and the whole spectrum of consciousness states that the human mind has to interact with the world. So it's really about us.

I love that. It's basic science. Yeah. It's too bad. This is from a guy, like I don't have any science background whatsoever, but it seems to me that it's a problem that we got away from people self-experimenting. And we still do it. Like I do it. Most people do it, but it's not really accepted in the scientific field on some level.

But it seems to me that that's a great way for people to have insights about what's going on in their own brain. Like that's a pretty interesting research, right? Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, if you look at introspection, the term comes from intra-speaker, which means literally in Latin to look inside yourself. We basically, when you ask yourself, how does that work? The metaphor suggests that you turn around your eyes. So you just look at me and you'd see my eyes go white.

and I'm looking inside. So now what would I see if I would do that? You know, I'd see some gray matter blubbering probably very dark. If I have a torts, you know. I wouldn't see much. So how does it work? How do I actually monitor my own state? So cognitive science has found that to some degree,

we are relying on our beliefs and our inferences when we think about ourselves. I mean, of course, it's different whether I want to introspect my pain, whether I have a pain experience right now, and that's in philosophy, the term introspection, the technical term, is very often restricted to, to that of sensory experience or it's a very narrowly restricted term. When I talk about introspection, I mean more the term that or I mean more the concept that we're using in our everyday language, which would also include what I have called in my book's reflective contemplation.

If you add me, Sebastian, are you a courageous person? I cannot just look inside myself and look at a feeling of myself being right now. I'm very proud of, I don't know, I've seen my five-year-old daughter yesterday performing for the first time in her kindergarten. I'm very part of that. Congratulations. So, yeah. But so what do I do? What do I have to do to be able to introspect or to come up with an answer when you're asking me, are you a courageous person?

And it's interesting because when we spell it out, we know that memory plays a huge role. We know that pattern recognition plays a big role. For instance, I would probably go through situations in my life where I would have to act courageously or not. Did I jump in the lake when the others did in the cold lake from, you know, that high whatever from this place? place in the woods or did I, you know, did I say, nah, you know, did I, did I go on, did I dive with sharks or didn't I when I had the ability? Did I go, did I get on the plane, etc. So I'm going through situations in my past and maybe comparing myself to others, but to go through situations in my past, I mean, there are millions of situations or a thousand situations. So I have

to, I have to apply some kind of pattern recognition. What are situations that, match the question to a degree that I would find out something about my behavior, my decision making, whether I'm a courageous person or not. I could also, I could also answer the question or come to an answer for the question additionally, probably, by imagining situations. If you're asking me, are you courageous person? I'd be like, okay, let me, let me think. Would I, would I jump from the balcony if there would be a fire here and I would have to save myself or my kids. And if I if my imagination, if I'm coming up with yeah, of course, you know, easy. Then I would probably answer or if I if I'd be like, no, I'd rather burn in here, you know,

because I'm just, you know, that hate like those five meters. No, I can't do that. So I'd be like, okay, no, I'm not courageous. And it's probably combination. of those things that I'm going through my memory and I'm going through maybe also judgments of what other people said about me, et cetera, et cetera. Now, if you look at, it's interesting. If you look at the effects of a cannabis high, I wrote extensively about how a cannabis high can help you to retrieve epistemories. So during the high, you were suddenly able to better go or to really, almost relive memories from your past.

Very often, if you're confronted with such a question, you're able to associatively mind race through your past. So suddenly you have like all kinds of situations coming up. faster than you'd usually have where you were in situations that had to do with courage. Your imagination is enhanced. So your pattern recognition might be enhanced. So it seems like you're better able to pick out the pattern

courageous or non-corrace behavior. And we know that pattern recognition is enhanced in other ways too when you're high. then your ability to imagine things is enhanced. And so I believe that because of some of the more basic enhancements, cognitive enhancements, which would be the enhancements of episodic memory, the enhancement of the associated mind racing, going fast through memories, this enhancement of imagination,

probably because of that, I have what many, many, many people describe, during a high enhancement of the ability to introspectively see themselves or to come to introspective insights. So this is a big part of what I've been doing was to look at the whole spectrum of cognitive abilities that are affected, not only in hand, some of them can be negative. It depends also on the doses that you're taking with cannabis. And it's always a question of balance, but they are all affected to some degree. And some of those cognitive abilities add up or are implied in more complex cognitive abilities

like empathic understanding or introspection. And so you can explain to some degree that introspection might be enhanced during a high in various conditions because of the enhancement or the alteration of other or the way other cognitive abilities are affected. But to understand that, of course, you must understand what introspection is. You must understand a little bit more about the architecture. And again, we have the import.

You can take that I've drawn a lot from the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of consciousness and the cognitive science is about the term introspection and the nature of introspection, but then there's an import back, And I think there's an interesting, there are interesting hypotheses about introspection coming from my research that researchers there could look at and say, hey, maybe the end of cannabinoid system is involved in some of these processes. Maybe we better understand how those things are related at the architecture level. Thank you.

It's, it blows my mind to think about that. On a follow-up question, like let's say there's someone that uses cannabis on the regular. or psychedelics on the regular, and they do find themselves having this new way in which to thoroughly navigate the landscape, be it introspection or they have a heightened sense of imagination. Do you think that it becomes even able to get to that state of awareness without the agent afterwards or in might and atrophy if you don't have it afterwards? Does that kind of make sense?

You know what I mean by that? No. I'm not sure about the question. Can you restate? Okay. So say for me, like I do a lot of psychedelics. I eat a lot of mushrooms. And I find one thing that I really love about it is the fact that it does give me deep in introspection on myself, on my relationships.

And it allows me to navigate this space. Like, oh, okay, here's me and my wife for having this conversation. This is clearly a negative feedback loop. Wow, I can notice it. That's interesting how that happens. Now I know how to fix that. And now I know what it looks like. You know, and I had this interesting perspective.

If I don't take psychedelics for a while, I kind of feel, even though I can get back to that place, I don't feel like I can really get there. And I'm curious if that's something that you have found in your use with cannabis or psychedelics, does that state of awareness begin to atrophy if you don't have the agent to help get you there? Okay. I got it. That's a really, really good question. Thank you.

There are a lot of interesting aspects in there. It was a really good question, as usual, coming from you. And by the way, you have a scientific background. You've probably read more scientific books than I have. I read a lot, man. I don't care about your diversity degrees. So I, here's the thing. I believe that, or let me talk about my experience first.

I had the experience that, for instance, with imagination, that in the beginning especially when I used cannabis in my early mid-20s, I could visualize, I could really trip on cannabis. And they were not high doses, but that's probably also because I'm a very imaginative guy. And I've worked as a creative director. So I could see, I could lay down behind Justin Cannabis and see a swarm of birds flying into the cage. And then it was like a camera movement around the cage. The cage would open.

The birds would turn into a different feature. Like, I mean, I could, and I could see the whole thing in an animation that I had seen three years before in a movie from a friend of mine who used to hand draw animations. And that was, I was totally stunned. When I was laying down like this, I was absolutely stunned that my brain could produce such a thing. And I was sure it was not a memory of that move. It was made up in real time.

And it was made up in the style of the animation because she would hand draw each and every frame and the whole frame with not only the moving parts, Like if somebody would walk through a landscape, she would draw the trees and everything. So everything, if you're coming out of animation movie making, you know that everything then will move a little bit. You know, everything goes like, it's a very psychedelic style. She made a five-minute movie and she hand drew every frame. I remember that what I came up with during my high was looking like that.

I described that and I think it's the art of the high. and I was really aware of the fact that I did die or my brain came up with it and I thought that's amazing now afterwards a few weeks afterwards I realized or I found that even without taking cannabis or without smoking or inhaling cannabis I was able to to imagine things better So and if you come from meditation, Buddhism or other things, you know that, for instance, it's a great mental ability. If I tell you, visualize a stone hovering in the air or something and try to visualize that for 10 seconds. That's incredibly hard, you know. It's incredibly hard to hold an image for a certain amount of time.

and it takes, if you're going through meditation, visualizations, it takes a long while until you're able to visualize something for a longer time. Now, that's a real cognitive ability. And I feel that if you've done psychedelics or cannabis, that might help you to train it. And I believe that it might have long-term effects, that you are more, once you've done that, might be able, but I agree with you and with your question or with the gist of your question, which is that after a while it might go away. And this is probably connected to what Huxley and others had to say,

which is a very modern perspective on the human mind. I think we talked about that last time. That also, and that is the evolutionary perspective of the human mind, is that our brain is not there to open. up to everything that's out there. Our brain has gone through a process of evolution, and it kind of closes doors of perception to a degree where you see things

that are important for your survival. Example, when I'm walking through a door, and you can measure that. You can look at, there are experience, I think done here in Beelicheld about saccatic eye movements, where you film the eye movements. You can see that on the unconscious level. When you look at a table or let's stay with the door,

when you walk through the door, without making a decision, a conscious decision, you look only at the handle because what are you interested in the shape, the color of the door or no, you want to go through the door. So your eyes are looking at where, do I, what's important for you right now? You want to know where's the door knob, where's the handle, how do I operate it? Do I have to turn it?

Do I have to unlock it? What do I have to do to come through the door? And so your whole perception is narrowed down to the function of the door, so to say, for you to do whatever you want to do. If you're a stone age man and you're running away from an animal, a predator and you see a tree, you're not going to wonder at the beauty of the bananas or the apples that are hanging from the tree. You know, you're looking at the tree like where is where can I grab something that I can, so that I can run and climb the tree so that I get away from the predator.

So your perception is narrowed down extremely. And that is what happens in everyday life. So psychedelic substances or cannabis or other psychoactive substances, to some degree, probably open the doors of perception because they take away those functions or whatever happens is that you suddenly sit there and like, like oldest Huxley said, you're looking at a chair and you don't look at the chair as an object that you want. to manipulate or operate to sit on, but you look at the chair as the thing itself, as he said. You're looking at the chair and you're like, oh, look at the shades, look at the colors, and look at the texture of the wood like an artist. And so your perception that is streamlined by evolutionary processes in turn that is to always keep you on track with the functionality and with the matter of survival. suddenly doesn't work that way anymore and you're looking, suddenly you're like your focus

on different things patterns. And I think in introspection is it's similar. As we navigate through the world, I mean, if you are, let's say, if you're driving a car on the street and you suddenly become introspective and you think about, hey, and we do that sometimes. You know that we do that sometimes. So we're driving on the street and we're like, wow, you know, now I'm I have that insight about my wife and why we're always clashing when the kids do this or that or blah, blah, blah, you know? And then, yeah. But we are still navigating through the world, still navigating and we're still able to manage traffic. And with a psychedelic, maybe we're not able anymore to do that because we're so absorbed by the process,

but we're using so much more energy for the process, so to say cognitive energy, because our full focus is on it. And we all know, you know, if you have the full focus on the process, you're getting further. If you have the full focus eating food, you're going to be able to discriminate so many more tastes. You're going to go so much deeper into the taste experience of food. If you're thinking about the process so much more, I think I heard a talk once about Socrates that said it was basically a talk about what is the concept of a genius. And there was one great idea in it that said maybe a genius somebody who can just concentrate on one thing,

just for a long time. And there are stories or anecdotes about Socrates, the philosopher, who was wandering around and then stopped and just thought about things for hours and was standing there in the rain or something and was just like thinking. And I met philosophers like that. You know, when I was in the States, I met David Lewis, who you would feel would be like this too. And who would just stand there and stop. And you would talk to him in a talk after he's given a talk. And then people would talk would be like, okay, he would think about the answer to a question.

And he would, you know, you could talk to him. I remember, it was amazing. And he was just not there. He was just thinking. It was just thinking about the question. And then after five minutes, which is a really long, long time,

everybody was waiting, you know, it was a talk for, I don't know, 40 minutes, and then 15 minutes section at the University of Chapel Hill at North Carolina.

And then I think it was Jay Rosenthal or so moderating the talk. And then he was like, after no answer came, he's like, okay, so maybe we go to the next question, and then the next guy started to answer, to pose a question. In the middle of this question, David Lewis gave the answer to the next one, just totally ignoring the guy.

I mean, probably it was a little bit on the autistic spectrum. I mean, not a little bit, but probably a lot. But maybe this ability to completely focus on one thing made him also so special. Yeah. I think that explains the absent-mindedness of times, too. Sometimes people who, for me, sometimes, or other people I know that use cannabis,

sometimes it appears this person is pretty absent-minded, but maybe it's just all the focus, the light is on this one thing, so everything else falls to the side. You know, like, oh, yeah. But that could be an evolutionary problem too. You might get eaten by the dinosaur if you're absent-minded, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, but look into, if you look into populations and not only individuals, I mean, then you understand that probably it's great to have one guy in a family or in a tribe that's totally absent-minded and solving problems, maybe thinking about how can I generate a fire or something. That guy alone or the lady alone would be eaten by a predator because she would be too focused, you know, working on a problem. And then the predator comes in the fringe of her experience. She doesn't see it anymore.

And then she gets eaten. So she's not a survival model. But in a tribe where others take care of that task, she might be the one to actually help the tribe survive by managing to invent something to generate a fire you know to work it out with a stick et cetera because she's thinking for such a long time and i love there is a short clip uh from ian mcgilchrist oh i love yeah you know the book the matter of things or yeah and no the master is emissary mass and um from a from a talk he gave and And I think it's illustrated, animated clip about the left brain hemisphere and the right brain

atmosphere and how they, how important it is that we have those hemispheres to some degree working against each other. And he's giving the example of a chicken that needs to have the ability to focus in a certain visual field and keeps the visual focus in a certain visual field to pick up seeds and to motor control exactly where to pick up the seeds. But then if there's no other system that tells the chicken, hey, there is a predator up there or there's a predator, a fox in the wood, or there's a bird predator up there, there needs to be a different system that tells the chicken, hey, wait a second, you stop that. There's something there. Run.

And now you can see in all of us that if it becomes too much, that if you try to concentrate on something and you always have that, oh, I'm hungry. I should, oh, no, oh, somebody, there was a noise. Oh, no. So you become totally ADHDed. And or you are too focused and then you're obsessed with something and you, you know, you don't see other things. And I totally agree with you. and we talked about that last time. I think especially cannabis,

one of the fundamental effects I always talked about is the hyper focus of attention that cannabis can hyper focus you on something. And I think that happens with other substances too, to some degree. And also the redirection of attention. And then we're coming back to introspection again, which is if we are, looking at humans as they navigate the world.

Very often, as we are awake, we're looking outwards. You know, we're looking at what, where's the street, where's, oh, I have to talk to you, I have to do this. And we are only to some degree looking at ourselves. How do I feel right now? Should I, you know, am I, is my back hurting because I'm sitting in front of a computer all the time? You know, I'm like in the visual world.

and I totally forget about introspecting my own state, which is why cannabis and other substances can really reconnect you with your body again. Sometimes you're like, you're like, oh, man, you know, my neck is hurting. It's been hurting for days now. And I should just do my yoga once a day and I'd be fine. So it can turn your, it can, because probably also it enhances your signal from the body because cannabis, I believe that it enhances your body imaging system, body representational system. And so it reconnects here because it turns your attention to your body and focuses you sometimes more on the signals of your body.

But also on your, it might be an introspective process where you're looking at your past. And then you have what you just called the absent-minded syndrome or so. that and if you look into the that's why I mentioned also the philosophers or other academics is that you if you look at academics everybody knows or we we know that they are running around and they have this absent minus in their shirt is buttoned up the wrong way or something but we know that they're thinking about something are intelligently and they're not they just have their attention they just chose or for some other biochemical reason they've streamlined their attention to some other things that are more important to them and um i mean my favorite

story is about norbert weiner did i tell that last time i didn't i don't think so no do you know the nobert winner story he was he was infamous for in the 50s nobert weiner was infamous for being the absent-minded guy i mean he He was a guy who came up with Cyprenatics, a Nobel Prize winner. And he would walk over campus and talk to a student, and then went into a student after talking to student, the student, the winner asked, so where did I come from before we talked? And the students said, oh, you came from there.

And over between the winner, he was like, oh, then I had my lunch. Okay, thank you. But the funniest story about him I read is that, they moved to a different house. And his wife knew that he knew about his absent minorness. So she put a little piece of paper with a new address and gave it to him to put it in his pocket so that when he would come home,

he would drive to the new address. Norbert Wiener went to his university to give a lecture or something. And then he had an idea on the way to his university. He took out the note. or he took out because he had an idea and he wanted to note it down he took he noted on the back of the piece of paper then found the idea not to be worth you know exploring through away the paper and after his lecture he drove home to his old home of course and in front of his old home there

was so that's how the story goes i'm not sure but it sounds like if you listen to other if you read other stories about an over-the-winner it sounds really like that could have happened so there's a little girl standing in front of this home and Norbert Wiener approached the girl and says hey hey little girl I I used to live here but I don't live here anymore to you know where I live so and the girl says yes daddy mom said you would come here and she'd take you look at it so that might be an exaggeration but I Right. But actually, you know, I've seen people like that.

David Lewis was when he gave a talk in North Carolina, he was like that. He was amazing. There are some people who, for some reason or other, if it's a mental thing or if their biochemistry is just like that or not, they're completely hyper-focused on whatever they're thinking about, no social interaction during that time. But we can learn from that. And we can learn also that, of course, set and setting, if you are in the wrong environment, and you're taking a psychedelic or cannabis and you're focusing on the wrong thing, you do stupid things. Stupid and maybe dangerously stupid, you know, but you can do really funny stupid things too.

And we went into those stories last time a little bit. But that doesn't mean that you might be. be your that you're only that this effect is only detrimental to your cognition on the contrary it could mean that it helps you to focus on something really hard and that you make progress in insights for instance on your relationship or on scientific matters or and although and we have a lot of we have a lot of reports from people who told us that they had great insights not only Craig and Walter Benjamin. And it's not only that they said that they had those insights.

We don't have to take them by their judgment, but we have to look at what came out. And that's what I tried to do in my article on, for instance, on Walter Benjamin or in my book, what hashes did to Walter Benjamin. I have a long article on Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch in there where I'm trying to reconstruct how they use cannabis, what they said about the effects it had. and how it then helped them probably, highly probably, in my view, to come up with new ideas and theories that really had a huge impact on society. So if we look into absent-mindedness and that phenomenon,

I think we have to see it as a really good case for understanding mind enhancements, because of course, my enhancement, the term is an interesting one because it's very dependent on the context and on the ability of a person to use a certain kind of change in the total in his total or her total cognition to be able to then productively use it or maybe to drive a car into a tree because you're not able to do that. is it an enhancement? I believe you can call it like that, but it's still, like I said, cannabis as a tool for mind enhancement. It's a tool. You need to understand how to use it. So that's an interesting, the absent mind-mindedness phenomenon, I think, gives us an interesting

angle and understanding on mind enhancement, the term itself and the problems and the potential of the alterations of cognition during a psychedelic or cannabis experience. I love it. You know, it brings up a fascinating idea that I've been thinking about for a while, and I'm sure that people have too. You know, right now with all the regulations and the current state of cannabis or psychedelics,

it's in this medical container. And there's a lot of talk about education, and there's a lot of talk about, you know, people finding healing. But it seems to me, and I'm hopeful that this happens, but the next phase may be what you're talking about, a tool for mind enhancement. And wouldn't it be nice to have a classroom where people could show you how to use this tool? Hey, we're all going to get in the car and we're going to go for a drive. Okay, we're going to, and there's going to be people that can do it and people that can't do it.

And that's fine. But there should be actual places where someone who's really experienced sits down with other people who want to learn how to use this. okay, we're all going to consume this today. We're all going to show you. Today you're not going to drive, but maybe next week you might be in the driver's seat. But I could see, and maybe that's happened in the past. Maybe that's what some of the mystery schools were. Maybe that's what some of the the acharams were.

You know, it's like you are going to learn how to use this tool for effective mind and enhancement. Can you see that coming in the future? Are you aware of that happening now? Or would you like to see it happen? Well, I think it's happening to some degree with, you know, People exploring in California, people exploring, for instance, yoga with various, with cannabis were to enhance. I have a connection.

Nick Kara's, is a sex therapist who reached out to me. A great guy, by the way, who integrates cannabis into his therapies. And I see that coming slowly. And there are various subcultures that are really far, you know, in their understanding of how to use cannabis or other substances for various purposes. But it's a long way, you know. And in Germany, we're hoping that we're going to have a change on the law in the next year. Probably it's going to take longer than we're all hoping for.

I mean, we were hoping for full legalization for or regulation where people could actually like, would have something like the defense research. That's not going to happen. But maybe we're going to have social clubs and we're going to have decriminalization of more than like 25 or up to 50 grams. we're going to have people will be able to grow three plants at home. So that's a huge change coming here, hopefully, because government is shaky right now. We don't know if it's going to survive the troubles that are coming, but the liberal green social democratic government.

So we're all, you know, we're all hoping this is really going to happen. But I think there are many people out there who are already experimenting themselves. But for instance, when I look into what's going to happen in Germany, people are, even those who are liberal, are trying to build very sensitive policies around cannabis use and cannabis, the whole market. But here, what's going to come with the social clubs also is a total, So advertising is going to be totally prohibited.

And so which is always done with good intentions, but it kind of pours out the baby with the water because, I mean, I've seen it for example. I give you an example in Amsterdam, I think that cannabis is legal, it's not, and also there are strict advertising laws. I want to sell my cannabis macro photography to sensitive seeds and I did in the end but they had to make sure that the photos of cannabis

and they are just photos of a plant macro photography artistic macro photography they couldn't hang them in their offices that would have windows where the public could look inside because that would be considered advertising for the plant and so so we don't only have those regulations for dealing with those substances or use or home use or growing but we also have those regulations for for advertising and like I said some of them or most of them are done with good intentions so that you don't advertise a substance that also may bring risks to kids etc but a lot of them are I believe overstated and and they hinder us to actually bring educational programs

And so education is a difficult thing. I remember also in Canada, when they introduced cannabis and medical cannabis, the Canadian companies, they could directly talk to their patients. So their patients would call the producers and would ask, okay, what do I use this variety for? And they had experts sitting on the phones telling them, yeah, maybe you use this one if you want to sleep better, this one if you won't have chronic back pain. In Germany, if somebody would call us as a pharmaceutical company, as a producer, cannabis, we would tell them to just talk to their doctors because we were not allowed to talk to them at all.

I mean, we could give them some general information about THC or something, but we couldn't because it's considered still a narcotic here. there are really strict laws about narcotics. And so we could see that education was difficult. And I still think that it's going to be difficult worldwide for people to go out and educate people or to explore those uses because not only of the prohibition of the trade, but also because of advertising laws. So we have to be a way.

that there are hardly visible barriers to the education of the whole field, which if you look at it in a positive way, once that goes away slowly, then we're going to have a lot more possibilities to talk about craft grow, to talk about cannabis, to talk about cannabis and meditation to talk about cannabis and how to use it maybe for instance in psychotherapy yeah i mean i am i i remember um lester greensbourne who became a dear friend to me um and who wrote the forward to one of my books um he had that if he had another life then he would um he would use cannabis in his therapies and i i remember reading in another great where do i have high, I think it's high cannabis or marijuana in the lives of Americans from Bill Novak,

a great book from 1980. There is an anecdote from a psychotherapist, who says that he would have never used cannabis during a session. I'm not sure if it's a psychoanalyst or was a psychotherapist, I think it was a psychotherapist. I think it was a psychotherapist. And he said that he once had an emergency call from a patient, and she would talk to him for, I think, an hour or so. And he was, it was in the evening, and he had just smoked a joint, and he was high. And he said, normally he would never talk to a patient because of his own belief that, you know, you should know that.

And then the next time he saw her, she said, I want to pay. you that hour and he said no you don't you don't have to pay that hour that's fine and she said no I want to pay that hour because you were so receptive you you were special you could hear you listen better and you understood more and I'm not exactly sure about the wording she was she was so impressed by his performance as a psychotherapist that she wanted to pay him in the session and and I think if you look at my research and what I say about empathic understanding and why I believe that you might have empathic insights and why you may be able to better empathically understand. If you have that from both sides, I mean, not only

the patient using cannabis, but maybe also the therapist using cannabis to deeper connect and to come to a different understanding and to come into a completely different flow in the conversation, then I think there is a whole new world to explore there. But the regulations are going to be, even if we allow for the trade, what we are seeing here in Germany will be probably because we allow trade, there will be stricter regulations for advertising,

then it's going to be hard. What is advertising? What is education? Yeah. I'm doing that on the pharmaceutical market here. So yes, I'm hopeful that in the future, there is a whole new world to explore. And a lot of people will explore that because the potential is just huge. It's incredibly huge.

And it's so I think it's really valuable for society to have people going into that field and using it. But also to change society because we are on track. But it's not like, again, It's not like, I'm not Timothy Leary saying it just dropped the LST in the population and it's going to be fine. We've seen it's not. It doesn't work that way, sadly. I mean, it would be nice, you know, if you could just drop it and everybody would be happy. But you have to really look into sensitive policies and you have to also understand those who are careful about it.

And it's not, of course, some of them are, most of them are misinformed. and they overstayed the dangers, but we really have to sit together and think about policies and they will have to be sensitive to get this one on the better path than the last time. It's such an interesting time. And it's fascinating to me to see the way in which different areas and different parts of the world are responding to the legalization of cannabis of this plant. You know, and in the West, over here in the United States, we have some bizarre rules. Like we can, pharmaceutical companies can like, you know, they can tell people on TV to go,

hey, go ask your doctor if you need this pill. It comes with a puppy and it comes with a nice vacation home by the beach. You know, there's like just this incredible ads. And when I hear about legislature, be it in Canada or in Europe or the United States, you know, I sometimes think to myself like, wow, it just, it's so archaic. It's so huge and there's so much money involved. Sometimes it makes sense to think like, and this is my opinion, that a lot of people don't even want to touch it because it means you got to go in and restructure the other laws too. And a lot of people don't want the other laws restructured.

Like they already have them where they want them. So why are you going to open up this new can of worms? You got to fix advertising versus education. What does that mean for the tobacco industry? What does that mean for alcohol? You know, like, there's a lot of people that don't want to, that thing opened up. Do you see that as one of the reasons why it's moving so slow? Yeah.

And I thought about it yesterday because I ran into problems with the hemp industry here. And that's a really interesting case in point there. I'm going to explain that in a bit. I believe that the potential of cannabis, the huge, potential of cannabis, medicinally speaking, but also of the hemp plant for industrial purposes is exactly the problem now to reintroduce, because the plant has been here for thousands of years and use all the purposes abundantly by all cultures, all kinds of cultures. but it's been banned and we can talk for a long time about why the prohibition happened

and who was involved and etc. But one thing is sure if it comes back, we're going to see in medicine and you're already seeing that once it's been introduced in a state somewhere or in the country, the use of antidepressants go down, the use of anxiolytic medications go down, the use of anti-epileptics go down, the use of pain relievers, opioids go down. And the pharmaceutical industry knows that. So there's a huge lobby from a lot of companies who know, wow, once cannabis is introduced, we're going to lose market share big time.

And it's hard for them to enter the market and to just take over the companies in the cannabis field because it's difficult with patents because you cannot. put a patent on it, and it's hard to actually generate medications that are the type of medications we know because of the entourage effect, blah, blah, blah, let's not go into that. But so that's the medical field, but also if you look into the hemp field or in the recreational field, also cannabis would have, if you reintroduce it, it would have such a huge impact on the industry, you know, look at the soy industry. Cannabis is such a great protein. there are so many other competitor markets or, you know, substances that would all be like,

hold on. So, and here we are with the German law. And the German law, for instance, when it comes to hemp, the hemp industry here is really small. And we're talking about hemp plants, industrial hemp that was until last year below 0.2% THHC. now they harmonized it with EU laws. So now it's 0.3% THC that is allowed as industrial hemp. Now, if you're a hemp farmer, for instance, you couldn't sell hemp leaf tea, even the hemp leaves from, I'm not talking flowers, I'm talking leaves,

from industrial hemp because it was considered until quite recently a novel food. So novel food means in the EU, it means that it's something that has come into the EU as a novel, even plant or extract, hasn't been in use before abundantly, so we need to check it. We need to make sure that it's safe.

Quite recently, the EU Commission said, oh, no, it's not, because some people, the AHA came and said, European hemp association came and said, no, no, it's not a novel food. It's been here before, and they've proven that, you know, it wasn't used and it doesn't need to be checked. So now we have that out of the way. But now there's still a law that says, an article that says that hemp farmers have to make sure that even their industrial hemp cannot be abused by consumers.

How would that happen? So now if you're a hemp farmer and you're selling hemp leaves in Germany, somebody could come get you and say, hey, wait a second. If you're selling hemp leaf tea, somebody could use 60 packages of that tea and bake it into one cookie. And then you might have something that is like a high comparable to half a beer or something, which is, you know, it's ridiculous.

And of course, you don't get punished with, like, jail time or something. But people have been, hand farmers have been prosecuted. I just talked to some who have been prosecuted. The police went in with, I don't know, with five hours, police rung at their place. they also sold CBD oils and then they're traumatized and they took away all their products they went to their other business clients they lost 70% of their income in that year they had to go through the process of through they won I think twice in court or so but if they're even winning you know they confiscate all your material then

you're losing all your clients for a while, et cetera. So it's ridiculous. I mean, it's really, and there you see, and I'm wondering, you know, in Germany, very soon, you're going to be able, if that law comes through, and it seems like they will do it, then you can have three plants at home, high T.C. And you can have, if you're a home grower, you can have up to 50 grams of cannabis flowers at home. or if you don't grow yourself, you can have up to 25 grams. And with a lot, which is quite a bit.

But they're not going to change the law around. It seems, from what I heard, they're not going to change the law about hemp. So you still, as a hemp farmer, you can still be prosecuted for selling low, low, low, low, O-THC hemp leaves while others are allowed to have 25 grams of cannabis. And why does that come? And I believe there must be a lobbyism around that. There must be strong industries. And I've seen it.

I mean, I went to Berlin when I worked for that pharmaceutical company. and I was in a group, the cannabinoid group of the biggest pharmaceutical association. And I've seen how lobbyism works to some degree. And I think that I think that this is the problem of cannabis. It's so versatile that it's just endangering many markets. And it's the problem, of course, from the view of those who are using, using cannabinoids or cannabis in the medical realm, it's so much better. For most of them, for instance, in the chronic pain department, they have no alternative.

You know, it's not like you can use an opioid for months and months and expected to be working long-term. In the long-term opioids don't are really not, they're great for acute pain, but chronic pain for some people. They don't work. And of course, they have strong side effects. So many patients wouldn't have an alternative. Epilepsy and other problems, you know, there are so much better to be treated with cannabis.

And then also, if you look into the industry, you know, the car industry in Germany already works with hemp fibers. BMW and Mercedes, they're using hemp fibers in their cars. So you see the industrial use is coming slowly, but the industry is still being hindered. And I believe it is because it is so versatile. It's amazing. I mean, if you look at the material, just one of the strongest fibers, natural fibers in the world, it's great to clean the soil. It doesn't, you don't need pesticides.

The plant defends itself really, defends itself really well. It grows fast. etc etc i'm not going through the whole list so it totally makes sense to use the plant and it would deliver goods uh ropes etc and i if you have to go to amsterdam to the hampton hashes museum there's one picture in there which really blew my mind it's a drawing it's an oil painting and beneath i'm not i'm not sure if i remember everything correctly but it shows a scene of people who are sitting in a bar, I think it's 1,700 or 1800 something. I think it's 17,000 or something.

And there's an oil, a lamp burning like a light, a candle something, an oil lamp, sorry. And the people are drinking and smoking a pipe or something. And the subtitle says, or it says, okay, these people are wearing hemp clothed. They are, the oil lamp is run by an oil from hemp. The painting is drawn on canvas, by the way, comes from cannabis, the word. The canvas was made out of hemp fibers. The oils to draw the painting are made from hemp oil on the basis. And so the people were the clothing.

They're drinking, I think they're drinking or they're smoking hemp also. or cannabis. So basically it's all cannabis. So in that one painting, you see how much we already use it as a society

and it's gone. But so it's going to be a tough comeback because there are so many industries now who are being threatened by it. Yeah. But I'm I hope that people

understand especially what concerns climate change that cannabis can basically save the world. I'm totally convinced. In that aspect, at least. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm hopeful people will on some level get to the point where they, I don't know, maybe it's demographics, maybe old ideas are dying in the resistance to them or kind of being brought in. But Sebastian, I love talking to you, man.

And I'm really excited that we're going to be doing this at least once a month. I love the insights. And again, I think that I got through maybe two of my questions. So, you know, it's always so fun to begin with something. I'm sorry. I really came in there and said, I want to answer more questions today.

It's perfect the way it is because I love, I'm a nonlinear guy. And I just love to see where the conversation goes. I think the audience likes it. I love figuring things out and just talking about them. Yeah, of course. But you have all these books, and we didn't even, even though you may have mentioned the titles, we didn't even get to go through them at all. So maybe before I let you go, can you give us the titles of the books and what you got coming up

and what you're excited about? Yeah, I'm horrible advertising. Yeah, here's a quick run through because I hope that people don't, well, this one is not available anymore. This is high insights on marijuana. and this is basically my like a doctoral thesis where I first explored the whole field that came out in 2010 self-published because I couldn't find a publisher back then.

Then I published a book in 2013, which is in German, which is high, in English it would read the positive potential of marijuana. that's the one with a foreword by Lester and my friend Lester Grinspoon and with seven essays and a lot of my cannabis photography and my art photography which made a big splash in Germany and I made it to television and everywhere here

because I had tried to compress messed up into small essays and also have a visual concept of how to introduce people to the plant, you know, under, and not going into all the associations that you would normally have. Then I started to write an expert block for Sensi seeds in Amsterdam, and based on those essays that I prolonged, and then I got back to them, and I put 20 of those essays in my book, what Hashish did to Walter Benjamin, which is also an exploration not only of the individual effects of what cannabis can do to your mind and how it can lead to certain kinds of

enhancements, but it's also about what cannabis has probably done also for societies. And I look for instance, not only at the use at Walter Benjamin, but I look at, I haven't I say in it, on the early evolution of jazz, where I look at how. Billy Holliday, Louis Armstrong, and others used cannabis for its mind enhancements. And it's amazing also to read, for instance, many people don't know that. Louis Armstrong was a great writer. He had his crazy jargon and he wrote a lot of interesting things also about cannabis. And I think he once said that his autobiography could well be titled Gage.

And Gage was the code word for cannabis back then. He was a daily user. And oh, here's another great book recommendation. Really the blues by Milton Mesmez-Mezro, who was also a musician playing with Louis Armstrong, which is an amazing book. Here, here it is. If you're interested in jazz and in the whole story also about jazz and what cannabis did for jazz musicians in the early days.

I mean, this is the book for you to read Rearble by Mitz Mizro. And, yeah, more about that some other time. Then I wrote in German and English, The Art of the High, I published that in 22 here, The Art of the High, your guide to using cannabis for an outstanding life, which is really a short and minimalist guide for those who want to use cannabis for those enhancements that I've been talking about. You can read that in three hours. I think it's quite entertaining and very hands-on.

It's very focused, not on, you know, cannabis for medicine or whatever, but it's really focused on how can I use cannabis for various mind enhancements. and very hands-on. And then recently, I had the privilege to publish, to get published by Hilaritas Press, and this is elevated cannabis as a tour for mine enhancement. So for those who are scientifically more interested in the subject, it's not only, it also contains a chapter on the prohibition

and the stories of prohibitions, but it's mostly also about the cognitive effects and about the mind enhancements, the endocannabinoid system, and also about addiction. So I think that's the one to bring now for those who are more scientifically inclined to get into my cannabis work. Yeah, I would recommend. See my advertising section is short. it shouldn't be like there's so much good stuff in there and i i hope people will take time to go check

them out and you know as as we continue with our talks i'm sure we'll get into more about what inspired those and you know were was each one of those books inspired by a different relationship with cannabis oh that's a good question um I think the dynamics of publication was a bit different. It was not a different relationship to the plant, but probably to society. That was more a factor because my first book, I remember I had a really great, I wrote to more than 200 literary agents in the States for, and I got a lot of good feedback.

They wrote, most of them wrote, hey, that's a great project, but I don't know who I'd sell that to. And one guy was really, he had sold a lot of books, a big agent, and he almost jumped on the train, but then he was like, can't do it because you're writing about your own experiences.

So he came from the side of psychology, and I realized that my, my approach that includes my own experiences is for a psychologist. In philosophy, that's for many who come from the phenomenalist tradition. That's totally fine. They're like, yeah, of course that belongs in there. From this tradition in psychology, they would be like, oh, you're prejudiced. You're also using your own experiences?

Nah. And so that book kind of dropped. I mean, I self-published and never got anywhere. I remember I had great feedback from people like Michael Bucke's and Jason Silva came back to me. He was the first one, I think, to respond. He was like, hey, man, this is awesome. And then since then we've been in contact. But so I thought about what can I do?

And I worked on a book with Lester Grinspoon, which never came out. Sadly, Marijuana of the Blessing would have been the title. That's a long story in itself. But that's what delayed my book, which was to come out earlier. But then I thought about, okay, how can I get my research more into the public mind? And how can I actually get through those and taboos and, you know, go around those prejudices, et cetera. And the outcome is high. That's positive potential in marijuana.

And the images, the imagery is in this book because this book is the new book, elevated is based on the imagery of that book. And so that's how the next book came out was basically, learning from the experience of my first book that I think I came up with with interesting research but nobody was interested or you know nobody would listen and and then the second book was like I said it made a big splash in the media here even in 2013 when we didn't even have medical marijuana with I mean a very provocative title the positive potential of marijuana is like you know it's like well so

So that was, and it came out for one of the biggest publishing houses here in Germany. And then I think the art of the high also was a project where I said, okay, I want to now go directly to. And I wondered why I never published it for that book, because it's really about telling people about the risks and minimizing the risks and being very hands-on on, I'm giving them a guide for how to use cannabis for mine enhancements. And then I have the chance to go back to Elevated with Hilaritas Press, the publishing house of Christina, the daughter of Robert Anton Wilson. They read one guy, one of my readers who read what Hashid did to Walter Benjamin, got me there.

And that was an amazing experience because this book is so well edited. I'm really still amazed by their work, Richard Raza mainly, but also Michael Johnson helping me and Christina enabling the whole project. And what Hashid did to Walter Benjamin, which came out in 2015, was based on my blog where I was able to actually sell my essays to census seats. And that was translated to five languages. So it was more my books trying to, following the course of trying to make my way in a really difficult publishing world than a different relationship. But I think my later books, of course, have benefited from my pharmaceutical, my knowledge in the medical world also. but the relationship kind of stayed very similar, I'd say. I like it.

It's curious to hear the titles of them and then try and see where you are in your life, you know, like the art of the high and then elevated. You know what I mean? And like you, like, it's cool to me to draw my own comparisons and be like, oh, look at this trend, this action right here, this overstory that's happening on top of all the information inside of there, man. I'm super stoked.

I can't recommend it enough. Everybody go, you should be down in the show notes, checking it out, and looking forward to our next conversation coming up next month. And yeah, well, hang on briefly afterwards, Sebastian. But did we, even though we talked briefly about the books, I don't think we mentioned the website.

Where can people find you at? Oh, yeah. You can find me at Sebastian Marinkalo, DE. and I have all my books on there. There are many essays on there. It's a blog also. Book essays and news on whatever is happening and the podcasts I'm on. Some of them, of course, are in German, but most of it also I'm an international podcast.

And so if you want to follow my work and maybe get into some of my work, you can read it all there. If you want to read my stuff in Spanish, you have to go to the Sensi Seeds blog, or other languages. But I think it's a great, my website is a great start to get into my work. And because people have all kinds of interests, some people want to know more about creativity, some people want to know more about how to use cannabis for sex. Some people are more scientifically inclined and some people really want to use it for themselves. and so it's all in there.

You can just check my website. I guess. And also I'm working as a consultant. So if you reach out to me, just write me, drop me a meal. If you want to have, I'm working as a life consultant, also a life coach. And or also for business, for companies, if you want to, for instance, know more about how to build a strategy. around your craft throws, et cetera, just reached out to me. I think I can look back to a very long life of experience with cannabis

and all kinds of areas professionally and personally. Yeah, without a doubt, for anybody listening that may be looking for some consulting or speaking or anyone that just wants to thoroughly understand the relationship between behaviors and tensions and the cannabinoid system, I think there's no better person than Sebastian. Hands down, well,

look, I'm telling you because it's true. It's, it's, it's mesmerizing to talk to you and, like, people should really try and read your thesis and understand the background with what you're bringing here. Because I don't,

I don't think there's anybody that can touch you. Like, intentions, behavior, and the cannabinoid system. Maybe that should be the next book, you know? But you're a question, man. It's anyways, though, I'll keep talking to you, but I'll let you go, man. But hang on briefly after a speech, briefly after you. Everybody, shout up to Ben Palmer. He says, Sebastian, you're a gift.

I love it. Ben, reach out to me, man. Thanks, Aaron. Yep, thank you, my friend. And that's all we got going on. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have a beautiful day, a beautiful evening, and a beautiful tomorrow, and that's all we got. Aloha.