WHOOP Podcast - Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris: An Expert’s Guide to the Medicinal Potential of Psychedelics

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, a distinguished professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is one of the leading researchers in the study of how psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, and DMT can change the human brain and in doing so, be used to successfully treat various mental health challenges such as major depression, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addiction. Kristen and Robin discuss the etymology of psychedelics (2:30), researching altered states and altered consciousness (6:35), recreational use of psychedelics (12:53), how attitudes around psychedelics are changing (16:00), the most promising and exciting aspects of psychedelic research (19:11), physiological markers impacted by psychedelics (24:20), the optimal time to explore psychedelic treatment (31:00), what it means to biologically “let go” (35:35), the performance-enhancing possibilities of psychedelics (39:57), legality in the U.S. (45:11), what Robin is obsessing over (50:20), and the biggest benefits of psychedelics (51:35).Resources:Psychedelics and the Impact on Veterans and PTSDDr. Carhart-Harris on TwitterSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we're on a mission to unlock human performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP. All right, this week's episode, WOOP VP of Performance Science, our principal scientist. Kristen Holmes is joined by Dr. Robin Carhart Harris, a distinguished professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is one of the leading researchers in the study of how psychedelics, such as psilocybin, LSD, and DMT, can change the human brain,

and in doing so, be used to successfully treat various mental health challenges, such as major depression, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD, and addiction. Kristen and Robin will discuss the etymology of psychedelics, His research on altered states and altered consciousness. It's all about self-discovery and the potential to cure mental health. Recreational use of psychedelics, which should be done in a controlled environment with supervision. The potential of psychedelics as a medicinal treatment, mental health, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders, what it means to biologically let go and the performance-enhancing capabilities of psychedelics.

reminder if you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcast at whoop.com call us 508-443-4952 and we'll answer your questions on a future episode without further ado here are Kristen Holmes and Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris first of all Robin I want to thank you for all the work that you have done and are doing in the space of psychedelic consciousness research This topic is likely pretty vague to a lot of our listeners. They might, you know, they might kind of heard about it. But I think it would be super helpful to start the conversation with just basically an overview of what falls into the category of psychedelics. And what is the difference between, you know, clinical use and recreational use?

Hopefully that's a good place to start. And we're so pumped to have you and to be able to have this conversation. conversation with you today. Yeah, it was. Thanks for having me on, Kristen, and this should be fun. Yeah. Yeah. So psychedelic, it's good to start with the etymology of it. Where does the word come from and know what it means? So coined in in 1956 by a psychiatrist called Humphrey Osman, who struck up a conversation with the famous author Aldous Huxley. of Brave New World and the Doors of Perception, which was his essay on his mescaline experience. But these two individuals wanted to come up with a better term to refer to this class of compounds

that included and includes drugs like LSD, most famously, mescaline, psilocybin in the Solosophy mushrooms, otherwise known as magic mushrooms. Yeah, DMT and Iowaska, an Amazonian tea. The DMT is the psychedelic component in that, and some others. But anyway, they wanted to find a term that would speak to the key property, psychological property of what these drugs do, and they came up with psychedelic. It was Humphrey Osman, who sort of won this battle of neologial.

or new words to capture this category of compound. And psychedelic marries to Greek words, ancient Greek words for soul, psyche. And delic means to reveal or make manifest or to make visible. So soul revealing drugs is what the term refers to. and so I gave some examples of psychedelic drugs I would say that we can talk about classic psychedelics which would include the compounds that I listed and there's a certain way they work in the brain that can help us to arise these compounds but I would say that you know that original reference to these being drugs that reveal aspects of the mind or soul, if you want,

that are ordinarily not visible or accessible to conscious awareness remains a key property. And the drugs I listed are drugs that I believe can do that. And I think that matters. So if these are drugs that do that, and that's a thing that can happen, Meaning there's aspects of our minds that are ordinarily not fully accessible to waking consciousness, then that means that there could be other states in which material of the mind that isn't ordinarily accessible can become more accessible. So these would be psychedelic states. So we talk about psychedelic drugs in a sense as the classic inducers,

of these psychedelic states in which there's a broader awareness of the nature and content of the mind or soul, if you want. You've done, you've written some really beautiful papers just trying to elucidate this concept of altered state, altered consciousness. You know, what are maybe some of the highlights of things that you found? You know, what has been surprising as you've investigated? kind of what is really possible in terms of understanding our consciousness and what does what do some of these experience reveal about our consciousness and and how does that help perhaps help us

you know in terms of our day to day yeah well it in a sense it's sort of self-discovery and i suppose what we're discovering is that improvements in mental health can be be carried by improvements in self-discovery, understanding ourselves better. And I guess a classic thing, a kind of theme that you would find in certain schools of psychology, like psychoanalysis, would be that there are, you know, behaviours that we do and ways of thinking that we fall into, even ways of feeling that happen and we don't really know why, you know? So we get depressed, we fall into a depression or we've got this trigger-specific anxiety when we encounter X, Y or Z, we get overwhelmed by fear and we just want to escape and run away.

or we fall into an addiction and we can't help it and we get stuck in this spiral down and we don't really know why and you know psychoanalytic psychology might say that maybe on some level we do know why we've just buried it, we've repressed it and so in that sense there are things of the mind that are really important that we bury that yet have shaped the way we behave and you know higher level have shaped our lives we've gone down a road a path because of stuff in the past and we don't fully know why we did but we did and so what psychedelics seem to do and the honest answer is we're just scratching the surface in terms of answering why they do this, why

they're psyche revealing, but they do seem to do it. So when we apply drugs like the ones that I listed, let's take salocybin, for example, where there's most research on, if we apply them as a mental health intervention, we do it with psychological support before, during, and after. You look after people throughout the process. And then they have the drug experience in a very controlled and supportive environment with music listening and usually two people, mental health professionals, looking over the person on the drug. And then when we do that, commonly people will go back to the origin of the paths, the sort of, you know, the splitter. of bath's points where something's happened or a series of things have happened that have

led them down a certain path and they realize they have this sometimes like an epiphany about things that have happened in their lives and it can come with an overwhelming amount of emotion not invariably they break down into tears particularly people coming in as patients, you know, seeking care, there's a backstory more often than not. Almost, you know, universally, there's always a backstory, but, you know, quite often there's a, there's some themes, some experiences that are obviously really important, that were really pivotal in causing them to go down the path that they went down. And so then, you know, having insight and realization about this can bring a kind of clarity.

And there's something almost, well, it depends, but I was going to say there's something sort of pleasing about the realization is that, oh, now it makes sense, you know. and often there begins the healing yeah it's not always as simple as that and it can stir things up and in a sense open wounds that require further psychotherapy and processing

it's one of the complications of this treatment is what makes it so powerful and potentially beneficial is actually the same thing that could make the intervention harmful or dangerous so it's about getting it right it's about having the drug experience in the right kind of environment with the right kind of support where if you open a wound so to speak you're going to be helped towards healing it might sort of set you back but it's a it's a path back or a step

back to take you know more steps forward yeah you know it seems there are obviously really powerful compounds. And they, and you described a kind of a clinical therapeutic setting, I suppose, where there's lots of support and analysis of, of, and kind of help in interpreting whatever is surfaced. Where have, because I think, you know, psychedelics are obviously used recreationally. Maybe just describe just from your experience and being in the space where maybe that goes right and where it goes wrong. I don't want to place any judgment. I'm just trying to, I think, help people understand that these compounds are used in two different ways. And one is probably a better path toward, I think, you know, promoting kind of

health and wellness and one might not be as ideal. I would just love to hear your kind of thoughts on that. Yeah, well, it's true. I mean, a lot of people think of psychedelics, at least you know, historically, times are changing and attitudes are changing in a positive direction, I think. But, you know, a few years ago, and if people think of the 60s, perhaps in particular, you often think of LSD at, I don't know, Woodstock or some, you know, festivals or or hate Ashbury and people tripping hard on LSD and getting into trouble and having psychotic breaks or doing self-injurious things or yeah and so that's a side of this that although it may have been inflated as part of the drugs war it's not without validity like

it's not untrue that things can go this way. So when people take psychedelics, perhaps in particular, in a sort of recreational way, they often have a rude awakening. Like, it's not the, if they're new to this, it's not the fun that they were anticipating that they might get from, you know, having some alcohol, for example,

rather than the kind of escapist state that you can get into with some alcohol it's more like a frightening confrontation with life and death and and your past and it's not kids play it's not party stuff and that's where people can get into trouble so that's why when we do the research and we think of the clinical applications it's a particular kind of application it's quite different from you know a big dose of LSD at Burning Man that can go awry to, you know, some deep soul searching with mental health professionals who are, you know, holding your hand through this experience. You mentioned just attitudes are changing and there's no question. I think, you know,

places like Imperial College of London and John Hopkins and UCSF are doing just this incredible research And I think that has, I think, cemented the use of these compounds as a potential pathway to kind of therapeutic wellness, is, you know, has been incredible. One of the documentary that you were on recently, Michael Pollan's Netflix documentary on how to change your mind, how do you, you are obviously featured in that documentary. Like, how do you feel like that show in particular maybe is kind of helping people understand this space a bit better and understanding the potential and the need for more research and funding, maybe just a quick comment on just how attitudes are changing and how things have

shifted. Yeah, well, they certainly are. Michael Pollan wrote how to change your mind in 2018, I think it was. And, you know, we talk about a Michael Pollan effect that it was, it was like, you know, some kind of rocket fuel to the field. And it's just really taken off since then. Just a few weeks ago, we had the big psychedelic science conference in Denver with 12,000 people there, you know, rivers of people walking from room to room. It was quite something. Yeah, so this is mainstreaming and that show on Netflix.

Yeah, it's pretty prime time now. I think, you know, with all that comes a responsibility that we get it right, that we don't dumb it down to a point where people miss the message and think, for example, they just need to get their hands on a bunch of magic mushrooms, you know, eat them in their bedroom and they're going to be healed of whatever serious psychiatric disorder they might have. It's just, it's not that simple. And so thankfully, the way it's being communicated by the likes of Michael and others were pretty

true, you know, generally speaking, we're pretty true to the intricacies and the subtleties and we try and communicate that. So, yeah, I would say that the public education right now is pretty good. There's also a critical and skeptical commentary that's coming in more and more, which is really healthy. When a space grows like this, it will complexify naturally. And so it's important to hear the other angles. And there certainly are other angles, you know, no intervention is risk-free.

And psychedelic therapy, psychedelics certainly have their own risks. But psychedelic therapy too has its own risks and limitations. And so people are hearing about those as well, which I think is good. And I just think for, you know, audiences, the general public, to be willing to be willing to listen and take in a diversity of messages and not necessarily be swept up with any one particular message is quite important to be able to kind of hold it all and consider it all is healthy.

And I think generally speaking, that's where we find ourselves. It is still an upward trajectory in terms of public interest and optimism about this. So let's see where that goes. but it's it's exciting times yeah what have you found to be most promising in the research so far you know what has made you the most excited about the potential yeah well it's a few things that speaks to how psychedelic therapy could be superior potentially superior to current treatments and and that's where we find ourselves right now in terms of mental health is that current treatments aren't really good

and they haven't really improved or advanced for several decades. And so a breakthrough is needed. And unlike other domains of health, where if you have a problem, like you contract a virus, there's typically a treatment. And we can focus in, find the target, and solve the problem. We're pretty good at that in other domains of medicine, but not so mental health.

So there's major room for improvement. And the exciting thing about psychedelic therapy is that maybe it hits the target, you know. And what's the evidence for that? Well, there's a number of trials that have been done now in major psychiatric disorders, like depression, anxiety, addictions. We're going to see eating disorders published on soon, chronic pain disorders, addiction disorders, if I didn't, mention that. I mean, the largest swath of mental illness is, we're seeing signal with psychedelic therapy, not all of it, but a lot of it are maybe the principal component of it, like maybe the main signature of mental illness is targeted by psychedelic therapy.

And so that's exciting. That suggests what we call a trans diagnostic potential that the same intervention treat a lot trans across diagnoses across mental illness the same intervention seeming to work and and how does it work well you know the evidence suggests that it works rapidly and so we see improvements in many people days and weeks after the intervention so that rapid action is important because say in depression antidepressant typically have a long run-in period before they start to be effective. Same with psychotherapy. It takes time for it to begin to really change people. And then we also have often just few interventions like one or two doses and we get a long

window of response as well. So months out. And in some people they find health and stay there. so they stay in remission and so that rapid action the enduring action is transdiagnostic action an action with few interventions so that's good for side effects because you know you're only having to take the actual drug once or twice in in probably most cases but not all of them and let's see well those are some pretty important things yeah yeah I guess that was kind of surprising I mean I came into this as a basic scientist asking questions just inquiring of it so I didn't come in as an advocate thinking psychedelics are going to you know save the world and revolutionize mental health care and so I've kind of learned

on the job about their promise. And if I think about it, there's any good scientist would. Right, they should, yeah, yeah. And so that's been, that's been a major learning for me. It's like, oh, wow, this really can work. I'm interested, or I'm wondering if you have looked at markers of sleep, any kind of physiological markers like heart variability and heart rate

and kind of have, you know, do you have a base sign and kind of after treatment? to see changes. I guess I wonder, you know, I've seen in our data, and we've done just a couple small case studies of veterans who have gone through therapeutic psilocybin treatment and have seen huge changes in sleep architecture and, and autonomic nervous system functioning. And it seems to, you know, there's a huge boost after the treatment, you know, deeper stages of REM, deeper stages of slowly of sleep or they're spending more time in these stages of sleep. We see huge boosts in hearty variability, big decreases in resting heart rate. And this, you know, a month after treatment, it seems to, it levels out, but it's definitely

much higher than baseline. So I guess I'm wondering to what extent, you know, does do these treatments potentially help improve markers of sleep and kind of autonomic functioning? and that is kind of what's happening mechanistically in terms of enabling a lot of these improvements. Yeah. Well, I'd love to say that we've got more data on that. We don't have a ton. You know, we've got a lot on the psychometrics, so the psychological measures before and after where we see the improvements.

Right. Just the qualitative. Yeah, qualitative, quantitative as well, albeit subjective, so rating scales. You know, either done by the patient or done by a clinician. Let's say, you know, in anorexia, it's done by a clinician. They do an interview and then they score it. And it's quantitative. It's a number.

But it is through their eyes, you know, so there's a degree of subjectivity. So we do all that and we do brain imaging. But what we're missing is, in a sense, what you've captured with Woop. And I think that's a really exciting fertile. place to go into, with more and more people wearing wearables and collecting these data in that sort of passive, pretty easy way. I think it's such valuable data. And so it makes a lot of sense. It adds some, you know, biological objectivity to the improvements. And there's that fascinating complexity around the causality like are they doing so well now because they're sleeping so well

or are they sleeping so well because they're doing so well now and it's right exactly it's a complex mix I think it's sort of both which is you know bi-directional probably yeah bi-directional absolutely and but it's fabulous and we are seeing it in in other outcomes like lifestyle self-reporting of lifestyle changes. We see some positive changes, people drinking less, doing more exercise, eating better. So, yeah, and I think that's part of the secret for staying well as well. I mean, it's sort of sounds pretty obvious, but, you know, taking the psychedelic, even with psychedelic therapy isn't going to cure you forever unconditionally, but it might, you know, lower a hurdle that you can surmount and then with the right intention you can improve your

lifestyle, make positive changes, improve your resilience in certain ways to try and remain well. And so, you know, if you're tracking outcomes longitudinally over a long time, you can start to see that and perhaps those who are doing things to their behaviour, behavioural changes, lifestyle changes that they report, you know, through WOOP, for example, and then you see that coming through in their physiological data, then you can feel good that, you know, they're helping to cultivate these positive changes and that really matters. know. Yeah. Yeah. And just too, like what you, I think the, yeah, just your lifestyle kind of going into the intervention, you know, how often are you practicing things like meditation

and mindfulness? You know, what how much are you moving? What kind of activities are you taking part in, you know, obviously what is your sleep behavior look like beforehand? You know, how stable is your sleep wake time? Some of these things that we know are incredibly powerful at fostering resilience, human resilience, both psychological, physiological, So, yeah, I found this, and this is why I reached out to you a few years ago, because I saw the, you know, seeing these data come through and getting all this kind of antedata from folks. And I was just like, this is wild. I mean, the increases that we saw is like an 18% decrease in sleep debt, which is basically how much sleep you need versus what you typically get. We call this your sleep need.

And basically the delta is your sleep debt. So we saw a huge improvements here. sleep consistency is another marker that I think is an amazing proxy for kind of overall mental and physiological resilience. We see it bubble up in all of the research that we do. So basically the degree to which someone has a stable sleep wake time. And this obviously ties to kind of circadian rhythms and circadian synchronization. And we see that this is one of the hardest markers to, it's one of the worst metrics on the Wu platform in terms of at population levels. people are, have very not great stable sleep wake time. It's very unstable, very inconsistent.

But we see that the sleep consistency relate to psychological functioning or strongly associated to psychological functioning in every study that we've done. It bubbles up to the surface. So we saw 9% increases in sleep consistency for one group in this little case study in 6% and another. And some interesting relationships between kind of, integration strategies for the folks who had improvements versus the folks who didn't. So I think there's a lot here in terms of being able to kind of incorporate some of these data to just better understand, you know, just from a behavioral standpoint, kind of what's contributing to big improvements versus medium improvements versus not so much improvement.

So I think there's a lot of potential. Yeah, yeah. That's exciting. Yeah. And, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a going to be, if there's not already a compelling evidence base to this, that it is, it is really improving people. Yeah. Of course, there are intricacies and there are, there, it's not a done deal for everyone, but nothing ever is. So, yeah.

Yeah. And what, what's your take? So the, the group that went through this, uh, whose data we ended up looking at, they were, very resistant to kind of typical treatment. So they had, you know, tried all sorts of antidepressant medication and, you know, lots of cognitive behavioral therapy. What, I guess, when would you recommend, based on just the research that you've done and your knowledge of the space, when would it be a good time to explore, you know, this kind of alternative type of treatment? Yeah.

Well, in a sense it's easier to answer when is it not a good time because it seems to, it seems, you know, on average to work well. And so, you know, across the depression trials, we're getting 70% response rates now, which is quite an improvement up on, you know, SSRI antidepressants. what's the response rate sorry for if you can just go through depression yeah yeah hovering around that with SSRI as a course of

and then it's complicated because you also get spontaneous remission meaning on average if you take someone who's depressed solidly depressed the direction of change would be towards less severe symptom severity

it's like a statistical phenomenon almost you call it regression to the mean that it's just not going to be as bad as where you capture them at baseline so yeah i mean uh placebo has a very big effect as well so you have a combination of spontaneous remission that just happens placebo response and then antidepressants on top of that will get about half of people better at the end of a course and that's just not it's not good enough really What other treatments of illness only work in half of cases? It's pretty poor. But it's also a reminder that 17% means 30% aren't responding and what's going on there.

And there are a few clues in data and in sort of anecdote and intuition. I would say that capturing people at a time of serious life stress, can be problematic as in there's just there's no firm foundations under people's feet at this time I'm not sure if it's wise then to come in with a big dose of a of a psychedelic another one would be if you're sort of in a sort of relatedly in a period of intense agitation and instability I mean when someone is depressed and anxious then you can't say that they're stable as such

but it's really where there's intense acute stress going on I get a sense that that's not a good indicator but there's also a very very strong relational component around trust so there you start to see this as in a sense not so much where someone is within themselves but where they are when they're with the personal people who are looking after them for this experience and so if there's a scenario where someone yes is in a very difficult place right now, yet they are with some supportive people who they just fully trust and really feel comfortable with, then they might be ready.

And we do see in the data that trust is a very strong predictor of the kind of experience someone has under the drug and then how they do afterwards as well. so it's a complex well it's sort of as complex as you want it to be there may be some very strong components that are predictive of

response like trust and then within the individual it's a kind of readiness you know and then that you can see how that would interact with trust if they're trusting they're going to become ready oh now I'm ready I'm ready to what

and the answer there is to to let go with an inquiring mind into this experience. And knowing it could be hard by letting go to that, trusting the process. And that seems to be a key, the mindset factor going in. What does like letting go like biologically mean? Well, that's a fab question. It's one that I'm hoping to address in a study that we've just started recruiting for. I mean, the honest answer is we don't know yet because we haven't mapped it.

I don't think anyone has. But we do have some hypotheses and they'd be around, you know, there's a fascinating thing about the mind, which is that it can push back on nature if you want. Like it has its own causality in my view. We're not just at the mercy. of some like one way, you know, driving causality from body, for example, you can have top-down control. And so the intuition is that that top-down control is actually, in a sense,

can be a problem in the psychedelic experience because the sort of natural arrow of effect is one of, breaking things down. I call it this centropic brain effect. Things disintegrate, structure in the brain. Not so much literally, but organizational structure in the activity breaks down. And that's scary as hell.

You know, it feels like you're losing your mind. It feels like you're dying. And you want to rage against that. And you do that with the top-down control. I don't want this. make it stop, you know, and that with that often comes distress because it's hard to make it stop and a distraction in a sense from what might happen if you were to let go to all this strangeness and unfamiliarity and just trust the process with ideally someone at your side

saying, you know, your body's okay. You can let go. And then go into the experience and see what you can find out. So I didn't answer your question, but, you know, there are certain circuitry and processes in the brain that we would associate with top-down control. You know, I guess the classic one people would think of is engaging the prefrontal cortex, a high-level aspect of the brain projecting down hierarchically, projecting down into emotional circuitry to try and control emotional circuitry. And so that we can map with brain imaging, where we would see a directed information flow from the top of a hierarchy to a lower aspect of an organizational hierarchy, so frontal cortex

down to, say, limbic brain, we can map that. And that would be what would be happening if someone's fighting a trip. And so if they're letting go to the trip, we would predict less of that. What we do see with psychedelics in the data is that the drug naturally flips the direction of information flow from a predominant top down in normal waking consciousness. there's a lot of top-down in normal waking consciousness to more bottom-up flow. And what I mean by that is from a low end of a functional hierarchy

upwards, yeah, from more rudimentary systems and structures to more high-level systems and structures. So that's the general flow. And in a sense, letting go would look like that, would be letting go to that basic flipping the directionality the information flow towards more of a bottom-up information flow. What would you say for folks who, you know, are traveling okay, you know, feel, feel good, mentally, physically, emotionally, what place does kind of, you know, psychedelics have and

for folks like that? Is there a kind of a performance enhancing possibility? Yeah. I think there is. And we see that in the data. again. So, you know, if we recruit healthy samples of healthy individuals whose well-being is sort of bumping around the average or just a little bit below,

then we do see big changes in the group average towards improvements in well-being. So that's, you know, positive psychology is what it's sometimes called. Themes like flourishing, not just being sort of well enough, ordinary

neurotic someone like Freud might call it but like actually saying I feel good I feel well I'm loving life and loving friends and family and you know that positive aspect is something that we can see improvements in we do see improvements in in the data and so that can come with with a similar model as we do in the clinical trials meaning big doses and the psychological support. But there's also this open question as to whether you can get it with lower doses and there's a lot of buzz around microdosing.

My sense is that even though the evidence isn't super compelling right now, there probably is signal in those mostly anecdotes. There's a bit of data coming through that is more promising now. But my view is that even with microdosing, you still need to twin it with something. some kind of practice or some kind of self-development like psychotherapeutic work.

If you twin it with that, you're going to get the most out of it, as my sense. That's a hypothesis. Very cool. Yeah, we wonder, like, I guess have you seen, when you say just improvements kind of relative to the group, improvements mainly in just perceptions of kind of emotional well-being and psychological well-being, psychological functioning, any markers of kind of performance, like, from a standpoint of like better exercise capacity or improved endurance, you know, I guess I'm just wondering how it might impact kind of those type of performance variables or if that's

you've been studied? It's a great question to address in a study. And I can't think of one that's really nailed it yet. I mean, with some friends and associates and colleagues, there's an idea of doing something with microdosing and training to improve performance. And that principle might apply across a broad rate. of domains, you know, sport, maybe, you know, it applies across domains of, it's really a learning principle, you know, and so if you're improving performance physically, that might entail

some kind of, well, holistic action where maybe you're getting more into your body, more appreciative of your body and your body's health and so taking care of your body but also perhaps getting out of your head let's take a sport like golf, very heady game easy to get stuck in one's head and not be able to just swing that club

and hit the ball nice and true so there's interesting ideas around that you know I would love to get a study going on that yeah okay I feel like there's going to be a collaboration here in the very near future. I know, we definitely, yeah. I mean, I just think sleep, sleep, wake time, like, yeah, I just feel like there's, yeah,

I wonder if that is kind of part of the entry point here in terms of, yeah, if there is improvements in performance and just kind of what you're seeing or what you're hearing from from folks kind of who are microdosing and seeing maybe elevations and improvements in performance. I'm wondering if they're also seeing in parallel improvements in sleep and more restorative sleep, right? Because that, in theory, would increase capacity, you know, to increase your ability to put effort toward whatever activity is that you're doing. Yeah. So, yeah. It's curious how that all ties together. Yeah, sort of a virtuous cycle, isn't it? Well, then a vicious circle, virtuous circle, virtuous circle, yeah.

So in what are, and just maybe just educate us quickly on what is, what is legal in the U.S.? Are psychedelics legal in the U.S.? Like what, you know, for folks who are microdosing, like, how are they getting those substances? Like what, you know, what's the, where are the laws right now? Yeah, I think microdosing is illegal if it's psilocybin, LSD, some form of ayahuasca or even vaping, DMT, that's not legal anywhere, to my knowledge. now under the Oregon 109 initiative a ballot initiative the state of Oregon has legalized adult supervised psilocybin experiences and that means that a broad cross-section of people can legally have psilocybin experiences at various doses and often it is it is the mushrooms I think mostly it will be mushroom material and they can take lower doses in which case the rules are that those experiences would be supervised for a period it's not long actually it's it's just something like an hour and a half but they do have to come in somewhere a service center a licensed service

center with licensed providers who will supervise them when they ingest the mushrooms and look after them for a period and they've got to remain there. So there are rules and then if it's higher doses they would the it's a longer duration of supervision that they have to be in for. None of this is covered by any insurance at the moment so it's all private access. and it looks like it's probably not going to be that cheap. So that's prohibitive of many people. And so it's a tricky time. And you have similar initiatives opening up some legal access in Colorado.

It's a fascinating ballot initiative in California to try and root state funds to psychedelic research, and that research would go alongside access. So in my mind, I envision research clinics providing access, but also honoring the need to continue to collect data on this. So we'll see if that is successful, treat California is the name. What else is there? You know, people are knocking on the door. Then you have MDMA therapy that's gone through two phase three trials. This is the max.

clinical trial research and that's works completed and being I think it's ready to be submitted to the FDA if it hasn't been already so the medicine regulators who will then take I don't know six 12 months to decide whether they would give a license to the providers to provide you know medically indicated MDMA therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. So that would be a federal thing across the U.S. People would legally be able to access MDMA therapy, but only if they're suffering from PTSD. So it's a complicated time.

Sulocybin is probably, I don't know, four years off from federally approved solosybin therapy for depression. So these state initiatives are sort of jumping the gun a little bit and bringing in access in specific states. So interesting time. Otherwise people have to travel for legal access, you know, to areas where it is allowed.

I think places like Costa Rica and Jamaica. Mexico for certain substances so yeah it's a complicated time and it's it's somewhat problematic because you have all this demand and all this promise and yet no well very little opportunities legal access so it's it's actually quite tragic in some cases because people know they can benefit and they can't get the treatment yeah yeah yeah That is tragic. So we always ask our podcast guests, a couple of questions. The first question, what are you obsessing over right now?

Oh, go. Well, why not say? I'm like, love people's reaction. It's just like, oh, my God. It's an most amazing question. Because maybe what first gave to your mind is like, I actually can't say, I'm excited. I'm excited about our first big study at UCSF, which is this deep dive into psychedelic substates. So I think about that quite a lot and how, you know, and so certain themes that I brought

up in this conversation are probably coming in because of obsessing a little bit about that study. And the high level is a kind of decoding approach to the psychedelic experience. how can we, you know, decode the content and quality of someone's trip from what's happening in their body and brain. So that would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck with that. I don't know. It seems really complicated. I think, I think, you know, it's like, I keep it simple. And even though the challenge is immense. Totally. if we keep it simple we could do it and we could predict certain aspects of the experience

absolutely yeah all right another question uh what do you believe are the three biggest benefits to psychedelics and i know we kind of touched with them but this is like for our sound bites yes self-development understand know know thyself yeah that'd be number one and we need two more scientific discovery no reality no the universe okay

yeah and the third one has to be yeah we can go to health because it's different it's a little bit different to self-discovery so yeah heal thyself

keep thyself well I love that. It's perfect. Know thyself, feel thyself, and scientific discovery. I feel like that's a really solid top three. Oh. Well, Robin, it's been so lovely to reconnect with you and to talk with you today. Yeah, just as I said in the beginning,

I just really grateful for kind of this hero's work that you're doing. and I know you stand on the shoulders of lots of other folks, but yeah, I mean, what you've done is just absolutely unbelievable and super excited for this new research that you're about to embark on. Thanks, Kristen. The results.

Yeah. So where can folks find you, Robin? Yeah. I'm working towards launching a new website for my lab, which I'll be launching late this year, which is exciting for me. That's the recent development. It's not there yet.

So I'd say just follow me on Twitter until there's something else you can do with your time. Yeah. And I can do with my time. Are you on Instagram? Yeah, but not really. Just, I don't go into it that.

I just go to Twitter. So it's only if I'm taken there by something. It's just bandwidth. It's why I can only do one platform, I feel. So I do, yeah, I know. I know, it's a real, it's a challenge to keep up with it all. Okay, well, perfect. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you, Kristen. Yeah, it's been fun. Hopefully we can connect to one just some potential collaborations. Yeah. I just feel like we've got a really amazing data set. And we've never really asked some of these questions around psychedelics. So it could be. Well, let's do a call on that.

and get stuck in yeah yeah yeah it'd be uh yeah pretty low lift you know just really analysis cool yeah yeah i'll be reaching out oh good i'm looking for thank you all right awesome thank you to robin for sharing his insight on psychedelics and recovery if you enjoyed this episode of the woo podcast please leave a rating or review check us out on social at woup at will omid if you have a question what's the answer on the podcast email us podcast at WOOP, call us 508-443-4-9-5-2. Thinking about joining the WOOP, you can visit our website and try WOOP for free. That's a free trial membership at WOOP.com, and new members can use the code Will to get a $60

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