Program Notes
Guest speaker: Dr. Charles Grob
A talk by Dr. Charles Grob in July 2005. The topic was his current FDA-approved research project using the active ingredient from “magic mushrooms” to treat anxiety in cancer patients.
Previous Episode
012 - Witches Ointments and Aphrodisiacs
Next Episode
014 - Medical Marijuana On The Offensive
Similar Episodes
- 088 - Status of Psilocybin Study at Harbor-UCLA - score: 0.89882
- 131 - A Model for Sustainable Psychedelic Therapy - score: 0.85710
- 148 - Grand Rounds_ Psychedelic Psychotherapy - score: 0.85251
- 005 - Psychoactive Drug Research - score: 0.84603
- 087 - MDMA Before Ecstasy - score: 0.84063
- 039 - Mind States Sound Bites and Lorenzo in Venice Beach - score: 0.83882
- 096 - Psychedelic Research, MDMA Safety Issues, and more - score: 0.83821
- 557 - Updates on Psychedelic Research - score: 0.83727
- 252 - How Do Psychedelics Heal_ - score: 0.82114
- 487 - Mainstreaming Psychedelics - score: 0.82075
Transcript
00:00:00 ►
3-Dimensional Transforming Musical Linguistic Objects
00:00:10 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space. I’m Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
Today’s program is a talk Dr. Charles Grove recently gave
00:00:27 ►
at the monthly gathering in the L.A. area
00:00:29 ►
that we kind of affectionately call Kathleen’s Salon.
00:00:33 ►
I’m sure many of you have either heard or even been to
00:00:37 ►
one of Kathleen’s famous gatherings over the past seven years now.
00:00:42 ►
I think it was sometime over seven years ago, actually,
00:00:45 ►
maybe close to eight years now,
00:00:46 ►
that she first offered to host a potluck dinner to,
00:00:51 ►
I guess it’s a sort of a fundraiser or gathering
00:00:53 ►
for the Albert Hoffman Foundation.
00:00:56 ►
After the Hoffman Foundation transitioned
00:00:58 ►
most of its activities to the Internet,
00:01:01 ►
Kathleen just kept on having the Friday night potlucks,
00:01:05 ►
and today it’s actually, I think, grown into one of the best salons on the West Coast,
00:01:10 ►
if not in the whole country.
00:01:11 ►
Over the course of the years, I’ve been to some of Kathleen’s salons where the Gnostic
00:01:16 ►
Bishop of L.A. has been there, department heads from universities, celebrities, filmmakers, producers, scientists, DNA researchers, and
00:01:27 ►
people like Dr. Grobe.
00:01:30 ►
And these aren’t just the speakers.
00:01:31 ►
These are the people that come to kick around ideas once a month.
00:01:36 ►
It’s just a really wonderful, open evening.
00:01:39 ►
It’s sort of an intellectual free-for-all, sort of reminiscent of what I’ve read about Chicago’s famous Dill Pickle Club,
00:01:47 ►
and that evolved into the College of Complexes.
00:01:50 ►
And I think, in a way, I guess that sums up Kathleen’s salon.
00:01:53 ►
It’s a really highly complex mixture of people, ranging from serious artists to transient musicians to whoever.
00:02:02 ►
Everyone has an equal status there at Kathleen’s,
00:02:05 ►
which really makes for some very long evenings,
00:02:08 ►
but quite exciting discussions,
00:02:10 ►
just like the one you’re about to hear.
00:02:12 ►
I recorded this one at Kathleen’s salon in July of 2005,
00:02:17 ►
just a few weeks ago.
00:02:19 ►
And as you will hear,
00:02:21 ►
the legendary elder Myron Stolaroff was in the crowd that night.
00:02:24 ►
So we’ll hear a few words elder Myron Stolaroff was in the crowd that night, so we’ll hear a few words
00:02:25 ►
from Myron even. In all, this
00:02:28 ►
discussion, I understand, lasted until well
00:02:30 ►
after two in the morning. I was
00:02:31 ►
gone by then, and of course you’ll
00:02:34 ►
also be happy to hear that I’ve edited
00:02:36 ►
considerably the amount
00:02:38 ►
of discussion that was taped
00:02:40 ►
when I was there. But the core of the discussion
00:02:42 ►
that night is here, and
00:02:43 ►
that’s the update that Dr. Grobe gave on his psilocybin research study
00:02:48 ►
with advanced stage cancer patients.
00:02:52 ►
And at the end of this program, I’m going to give you more information about Dr. Grobe.
00:02:56 ►
But for now, just kind of sit back and relax
00:02:58 ►
and see if you can picture yourself sitting on the floor next to a friend of mine
00:03:03 ►
who is holding my old tape recorder and see if you can capture some of the magic of being in Kathleen’s salon
00:03:10 ►
on this cool summer evening on the edge of the West.
00:03:18 ►
Anyway, I’m thrilled to have such a great crowd here tonight. We have such an amazing
00:03:22 ►
program, which you all know, and this just shows, I mean, how much
00:03:25 ►
interest and support, you know, there is
00:03:28 ►
in, I mean, this is the cream of the
00:03:30 ►
crop, tonight’s program. This is what it’s all about.
00:03:32 ►
This is, we’re going to hear something
00:03:34 ►
before the rest of the country does.
00:03:36 ►
But if there is such a thing as a
00:03:38 ►
real psychedelic salon on this planet,
00:03:40 ►
it’s Kathleen’s.
00:03:43 ►
And there are, there’s more than one writer and film person
00:03:47 ►
writing Kathleen’s salons into their work right now.
00:03:51 ►
So this is going to be a very, you know, this is…
00:03:55 ►
Be careful of who you sleep with.
00:03:56 ►
That’s right.
00:03:58 ►
But, you know, we’ve been coming for a number of years
00:04:03 ►
and it just blows me away every time.
00:04:06 ►
And for your dad and brother,
00:04:07 ►
I want you to know this is not really that exceptional a night.
00:04:10 ►
I mean, every night here is an exceptional night.
00:04:12 ►
So tonight, of course, we have Myron Stoler off here,
00:04:16 ►
and when Myron and I were talking, he said he’s coming,
00:04:21 ►
I said, oh, boy, everybody’s going to be excited to see you.
00:04:23 ►
And he said, oh, I don’t think anybody even knows who I am. So, Myron has a new book
00:04:32 ►
that I’m going to, well, it’s an updated book that is a really important book. And he’s
00:04:37 ►
going to talk about it. But I thought, I want to make sure everybody knows who Myron is.
00:04:40 ►
And for those, the one or two of you that might not know, Myron was an engineer that helped develop the videotape
00:04:49 ►
that we all know and love so well at Ampex.
00:04:51 ►
And then I won’t go through the whole story
00:04:54 ►
because there’s not a month to do it,
00:04:57 ►
but Myron is one of the real psychedelic pioneers in the whole world.
00:05:00 ►
And a friend of ours stayed with us recently and left this book.
00:05:03 ►
He says, you can have this, and I’ve been hearing about it, called What the Dormouse Said.
00:05:07 ►
That’s right. That just came out.
00:05:08 ►
Yes. And so I’m going to only read like five sentences out of here to kind of put Myron
00:05:13 ►
in perspective and to really embarrass him. But, you know, I started out, and in the first
00:05:19 ►
20 pages, they’re already talking about Myron. And I get to this sentence. It was a song
00:05:24 ►
about a phone call Myron got.
00:05:25 ►
It said, it was a phone call that would
00:05:27 ►
completely change Stolaroff’s life
00:05:29 ►
and ultimately have a remarkable
00:05:31 ►
impact on America, playing
00:05:33 ►
a role in the creation of the 60s
00:05:35 ►
counterculture. Now that’s a phone call.
00:05:38 ►
Now the end of this first chapter
00:05:39 ►
says, as the 60s began,
00:05:42 ►
the three separate threads of each man
00:05:44 ►
profiled in this chapter
00:05:46 ►
represented came together. Doug Engelbart had a clear vision of using computing to help
00:05:50 ►
mankind by augmenting human intelligence. Myron Stolaroff was wandering around Johnny
00:05:56 ►
Appleseed style with a new drug he believed would enhance engineering creativity as well as human spirituality.
00:06:11 ►
And Fred Moore had set out on a pacifist crusade to end war by putting his body on the line.
00:06:16 ►
Engelbart was a prophet, largely unsung until much later,
00:06:20 ►
and both Stoleroff and Moore became true believers who each in his own way touched off momentous events that still reverberate.
00:06:23 ►
Moore shared Engelbart’s belief that computing could change the world,
00:06:28 ►
and Stolarov shared the notion that it was possible to expand the power of the human mind.
00:06:33 ►
And that, you know, he’s been doing this for 49 years,
00:06:36 ►
so I would ask you all to really give Myron a warm welcome.
00:06:41 ►
Go Myron!
00:06:47 ►
Now they know who you are, Myron.
00:06:51 ►
Well, thank you, thank you.
00:06:56 ►
I tell you, we’re really fortunate to have Charlie Grobe with us tonight,
00:06:59 ►
and it’s going to be a great presentation.
00:07:00 ►
We’re all eager to hear it. So I’ll be very, very brief.
00:07:02 ►
And I just want to announce that my book, The Secret Teeth, has been republished.
00:07:09 ►
It’s been renamed.
00:07:11 ►
It’s now called The Secret Teeth Revealed.
00:07:17 ►
Yes, this is Leo Zepp.
00:07:20 ►
He’s the one that did all of this wonderful work.
00:07:23 ►
Some 3,000, 4,000 people he put through
00:07:26 ►
LSD and other compounds. Well, I’ll just very briefly say that the major part of the book
00:07:33 ►
is the same, but there’s been a fresh introduction and a little fresh information there. There
00:07:38 ►
are more interviews with people who went through the procedure with Leo.
00:07:46 ►
And there’s a response from Leo’s son and daughter.
00:07:51 ►
And there’s an update of some of the better books that are available.
00:07:55 ►
So that’s all in here.
00:07:57 ►
$12.95.
00:08:00 ►
After this is all over, I’ll be here waiting in case anybody wants to.
00:08:03 ►
And you’ll autograph them, I’m sure.
00:08:06 ►
Yes, indeed.
00:08:08 ►
Thank you.
00:08:12 ►
Thank you very much for being here.
00:08:14 ►
Speaking of new books, our main speaker tonight, Dr. Charles Grove.
00:08:19 ►
Charlie, where is Charlie?
00:08:20 ►
There he is, buried in the crowd.
00:08:23 ►
Charlie’s got a new book coming out, too, that maybe before you get started you could tell about that, too. But Charlie is here
00:08:30 ►
to give one of the very first public updates of his psilocybin study that’s been going
00:08:36 ►
on for a little while. And I’m going to just turn it over to Charlie. So it’s really great
00:08:41 ►
being here again. I think this is the second time I spoke here, and good to see a lot of people I’ve met before,
00:08:47 ►
and nice to meet some new faces.
00:08:50 ►
And it’s always been a really great coming here
00:08:53 ►
because people really share an interest and a passion in many ideas.
00:09:00 ►
And so anyways, what I was asked to talk about tonight is a study we’ve got going.
00:09:05 ►
We have approval at Harbor UCLA Medical Center down in Torrance to treat people with advanced stage cancer who have a lot of anxiety.
00:09:17 ►
They have permission to treat them with psilocybin.
00:09:20 ►
And the genesis for doing a study like this really comes from the 60s,
00:09:25 ►
when such pioneers as Stan Groff and Eric Cass and Bill Richards and Walter Pankey
00:09:32 ►
had extraordinary studies where they were working with individuals with metastatic cancer
00:09:39 ►
who had a lot of anxiety, had a lot of mood dysregulation, were quite overwhelmed, treated them with
00:09:46 ►
psychedelics, and had extraordinary responses.
00:09:50 ►
I remember when I was in my early 20s, and I had not as yet decided to go to medical
00:09:58 ►
school, I went and heard Groff speak about his work, and it was very inspiring.
00:10:03 ►
I was just blown away away and it really gave me
00:10:07 ►
a vision as to what I wanted to do. And here it is, 33 years later, I’m finally doing it.
00:10:13 ►
So having a stubborn personality can sometimes pay off.
00:10:17 ►
So anyways, I’m just going to speak for a few minutes because tonight we have someone else really special who I’d like
00:10:26 ►
to share the
00:10:27 ►
podium here to speak with
00:10:30 ►
you all. That’s Pam who was
00:10:31 ►
the last subject that we treated.
00:10:34 ►
And I’d like
00:10:35 ►
Pam to share with you some of
00:10:38 ►
her experiences and
00:10:39 ►
her thoughts about the study.
00:10:41 ►
But, you know, the bottom line is
00:10:43 ►
these are extraordinary tools to heal.
00:10:48 ►
And they were, at one point, the cutting edge of psychiatric research many, many, many years ago
00:10:54 ►
when the culture became very turbulent.
00:10:57 ►
It had some challenges as to integrating these compounds into society.
00:11:03 ►
They fell out of favor.
00:11:06 ►
They became taboo.
00:11:07 ►
And they literally weren’t touched by researchers,
00:11:13 ►
professional researchers, for a good 20, 25 years.
00:11:18 ►
We’re slowly getting things up and running again.
00:11:21 ►
We’ve got our psilocybin study.
00:11:23 ►
There’s a psilocybin study at Arizona treating
00:11:27 ►
refractory obsessive compulsive disorder patients. There’s an MDMA
00:11:32 ►
study at the University of South Carolina at Charleston using MDMA
00:11:36 ►
to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. So we’re hoping
00:11:39 ►
in the near future that other people will be coming forward with good protocols
00:11:44 ►
and willing to submit them to the regulatory agencies and go through that whole process.
00:11:48 ►
I mean, it takes years.
00:11:50 ►
It’s a long, arduous task.
00:11:52 ►
But the really beautiful thing about plugging away and doing this work is that one doesn’t do it all alone.
00:11:58 ►
There’s a whole community.
00:12:00 ►
And, you know, it may take a community or it may take a village to raise a child.
00:12:07 ►
It also takes a village to get a psychedelic study up and running.
00:12:11 ►
So having the support has really been critical to things moving forward.
00:12:19 ►
This particular study has been developed and funded with the Hefter Research Institute.
00:12:26 ►
That’s a group really dedicated with myself, Dave Nichols, George Greer, Dennis McKenna.
00:12:33 ►
We’re really dedicated to getting state-of-the-art methodologies employed
00:12:39 ►
to look at the potentialities of psychedelics, particularly in the realm of treatment and healing.
00:12:47 ►
We’ve also got some studies going over in Switzerland also
00:12:51 ►
where they’re doing really quite extraordinary work
00:12:54 ►
using some of the most advanced brain scanners,
00:12:58 ►
PET scanners,
00:12:58 ►
to look at the acute effects of the brain under the influence.
00:13:02 ►
My personal interests are more in the realm of
00:13:04 ►
how can we use these compounds to facilitate healing.
00:13:08 ►
I mentioned one other area that I’ve worked in,
00:13:11 ►
which is ayahuasca.
00:13:12 ►
Dennis McKenna and I were down in Brazil in the early, mid-90s.
00:13:17 ►
We conducted fairly comprehensive evaluations
00:13:22 ►
of members of a Brazilian ayahuasca church,
00:13:26 ►
the União do Vegetal,
00:13:27 ►
published our work, and later we
00:13:30 ►
testified on behalf of the União do Vegetal
00:13:32 ►
in their case in federal court
00:13:34 ►
in this country. The UDV
00:13:36 ►
has been working to
00:13:38 ►
establish a
00:13:39 ►
viable, legitimate
00:13:42 ►
branch up here
00:13:44 ►
in the United States.
00:13:45 ►
And in 2001, the case was heard in federal court in New Mexico,
00:13:50 ►
and to my amazement, because it was a very conservative judge, the case won.
00:13:55 ►
The Justice Department then appealed predictably.
00:14:02 ►
It went to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, was heard by a panel again,
00:14:06 ►
to my surprise, this conservative court voted in favor of the Ayahuasca church,
00:14:10 ►
in favor of supporting their freedom of religion rights.
00:14:16 ►
Appealed again predictably, went to the full appeals court,
00:14:19 ►
and again, it was won by an 8 to 5 margin.
00:14:23 ►
So inevitably, it got to the Supreme Court,
00:14:26 ►
and a couple months ago the Supremes agreed to hear the case.
00:14:29 ►
So ayahuasca will be heard at the Supreme Court this coming October.
00:14:34 ►
From when we were doing the study in the early 90s,
00:14:37 ►
when virtually no one even had heard of it,
00:14:39 ►
it’s now fairly mainstream in the press.
00:14:42 ►
The New York Times had an article, so stay tuned.
00:14:45 ►
It’s been a very interesting process.
00:14:48 ►
And again, the potential that a compound like ayahuasca has to heal, I think, is just remarkable.
00:14:54 ►
And we’re also, at Hefter, we’re talking about developing some new protocols
00:14:59 ►
using ayahuasca to treat alcoholism and drug addiction.
00:15:04 ►
We think there’s tremendous potential.
00:15:06 ►
And keep in mind that these are areas for which modern medicine
00:15:09 ►
has really advanced minimally in the last 50 years.
00:15:12 ►
In fact, I challenge you to find any other area at all in medicine
00:15:15 ►
which has advanced as minimally as the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction.
00:15:20 ►
Treatment of choice back then, we’ve heard of a 12-step program.
00:15:23 ►
If it’s a good fit, maybe it’ll work, if not, you’re out of luck
00:15:26 ►
that’s basically the same thing today
00:15:29 ►
as an aside, some of you might be aware
00:15:32 ►
that the founder of AA, Bill Wilson
00:15:35 ►
heard about Sidney Cohen’s LSD research
00:15:38 ►
in the late 50s at UCLA, volunteered to be a research subject
00:15:41 ►
had a couple of sessions, was just blown away
00:15:44 ►
by the experience.
00:15:47 ►
Wilson went to the board of trustees of AA and said,
00:15:50 ►
we’ve got to incorporate this into our model.
00:15:52 ►
I had a very similar experience to what I had when I went through DTs,
00:15:57 ►
which is very dangerous.
00:15:59 ►
And he said this is a much safer way to give people spiritual, mystical epiphanies.
00:16:04 ►
And he said this is a much safer way to give people spiritual, mystical epiphanies.
00:16:11 ►
AA had heard something about a young assistant professor of psychology at Harvard making waves.
00:16:14 ►
And he said, well, let’s see how this plays out.
00:16:16 ►
They’re still waiting.
00:16:22 ►
So anyways, I think there’s just so much potential these compounds have.
00:16:24 ►
They’ve been neglected for decades now.
00:16:31 ►
But I think we’re finally at that point where we’re going to be able, in an above-board sanctioned setting using state-of-the-art methodologies, be able to move forward with this work. I think there’s
00:16:35 ►
a tremendous dividend to be paid in terms of its capacity to help people who are suffering
00:16:48 ►
help people who are suffering unnecessarily so because these medicines with a capital M are out there for them.
00:16:52 ►
What else?
00:16:52 ►
I have a book.
00:16:54 ►
Lorenzo mentioned my book.
00:16:56 ►
It’s co-edited with Roger Walsh, who’s a psychiatrist at UC Irvine.
00:17:01 ►
with Roger Walsh, who’s a psychiatrist at UC Irvine.
00:17:03 ►
It’s basically a compilation
00:17:05 ►
of 13 interviews with 13
00:17:08 ►
of the most illustrious
00:17:09 ►
of our elders in this field, starting
00:17:11 ►
with Myron.
00:17:14 ►
And it’s called Higher Wisdom
00:17:16 ►
Eminent Elders
00:17:17 ►
Explore the Continuing
00:17:20 ►
Impact of Psychedelics. And this will be
00:17:22 ►
published in early August
00:17:23 ►
by SUNY Press. So
00:17:26 ►
that will be coming out pretty soon.
00:17:28 ►
So look for it at your
00:17:29 ►
local bookstore. My other book,
00:17:32 ►
Hallucinogens, a reader
00:17:33 ►
published a couple years ago. It’s still very
00:17:36 ►
worth seeing if you don’t have it.
00:17:38 ►
Amazon.com.
00:17:43 ►
How is ayahuasca related
00:17:47 ►
either botanically or biochemically
00:17:49 ►
to ibogaine?
00:17:50 ►
oh, very different
00:17:52 ►
ibogaine is the alkaloid from the
00:17:55 ►
iboga plant from West Africa
00:17:57 ►
from Gabon
00:17:58 ►
it’s a very, very potent
00:18:01 ►
knock your socks off experience
00:18:03 ►
they’re using it to treat addiction.
00:18:06 ►
I’ve got some questions about its safety profile.
00:18:10 ►
There have been some deaths reported.
00:18:11 ►
Ayahuasca is basically a concoction of two different plants, indigenous to the Amazon.
00:18:19 ►
The remarkable thing about ayahuasca is, as I’ve found,
00:18:22 ►
how well-tolerated it is physiologically by individuals.
00:18:27 ►
Unless you’re on a particular medication like SSRI antidepressants, which can cause adverse interactions,
00:18:34 ►
it’s got very impressive safety.
00:18:37 ►
And the judge in the case and the Circuit Court of Appeals in the case were very impressed.
00:18:40 ►
I think with the data we presented, because we opened up the books and all of our data from our
00:18:46 ►
studies. The UDV has a
00:18:48 ►
medical section and they
00:18:49 ►
monitor their 10,000 members
00:18:52 ►
very carefully for medical or psychiatric
00:18:53 ►
problems. They’re very forthcoming, very open,
00:18:56 ►
very honest. I think the safety profile
00:18:58 ►
in ayahuasca really can’t be beat
00:19:00 ►
if it’s taken properly.
00:19:03 ►
And again,
00:19:03 ►
remarkable potential find.
00:19:06 ►
Charles, what happened to your MDMA work?
00:19:08 ►
Why did it not go ahead?
00:19:09 ►
Oh, well, I had a study.
00:19:11 ►
In 1993, we were approved to do a study with MDMA and normal volunteers.
00:19:18 ►
We completed that work.
00:19:20 ►
It’s been published.
00:19:20 ►
We did a variety of physiological and psychological measures.
00:19:24 ►
The normal volunteers who came in to our research unit on three occasions
00:19:27 ►
got two different dosages out of placebo.
00:19:30 ►
Everybody tolerated it well, except one guy who says to me,
00:19:37 ►
you know, I’m picking up on all the vibes in this hospital.
00:19:39 ►
I work at a big public sector hospital.
00:19:42 ►
You know, I’m picking up on all the vibes in this hospital.
00:19:44 ►
This is not a cool place to hospital. You know, I’m picking up on all the fives in this hospital.
00:19:48 ►
This is not a cool place to take ecstasy, man.
00:19:55 ►
So I said, well, you know, I’m sorry.
00:19:55 ►
What can I do? But you have to see, look, if you want to drop out of the study after today, you can do it.
00:20:03 ►
Although you have to spend the rest of the day and the night in the hospital because you agreed to drop out of the study after today, you can do it, although you have to spend the rest of the day
00:20:06 ►
and the night in the hospital
00:20:07 ►
because you agreed to do that,
00:20:09 ►
but you could drop out in the morning.
00:20:11 ►
You don’t have to come in for the two other sessions
00:20:12 ►
because this is his first session.
00:20:14 ►
So he stayed in the hospital,
00:20:17 ►
but then dropped out.
00:20:18 ►
So then we could open the blind
00:20:19 ►
and see what kind of dose we had given him
00:20:21 ►
to induce a fairly significant anxiety reaction.
00:20:23 ►
And to our surprise, he had been given a placebo.
00:20:30 ►
Never underestimate the power of the placebo.
00:20:36 ►
Relating to the psilocybin, I’m interested in how it’s metabolized.
00:20:40 ►
My understanding is it’s similar to serotonin.
00:20:42 ►
How similar is that? Well, serotonin is 5-hydroxytryptamine.
00:20:51 ►
Psilocybin is 4-phosphoryloxy-methyltryptamine.
00:20:56 ►
It’s very similar.
00:20:58 ►
It’s metabolized in the liver.
00:21:00 ►
I think the interesting thing about that question is
00:21:02 ►
that our central nervous system is primed to have powerful experiences when we ingest these plants. And who’s to
00:21:10 ►
say that when we’re in a trance state that we’re not having all sorts of biochemical
00:21:15 ►
changes going on? Or what kind of biochemical changes are going on when we’re dreaming?
00:21:20 ►
My colleague who worked with me in Brazil, Jace Calloway, he’s a pharmacologist
00:21:25 ►
in, actually in Finland. I’ve written a number of articles with him. He has this theory that
00:21:31 ►
while we’re asleep, our brain secretes beta-carbolines, which is the chemical class of one of the
00:21:41 ►
plants in ayahuasca, the hermola alkaloids. And the beta-carbolines basically allow the dimethyltryptamine,
00:21:50 ►
which is in the other plant, to be activated.
00:21:53 ►
So that’s what happens in ayahuasca,
00:21:55 ►
and Jace is suspecting that endogenous beta-carbolines,
00:21:59 ►
which we secrete, are allowing for activation of endogenous dimethyltryptamine,
00:22:04 ►
which we secrete as well.
00:22:07 ►
So there’s a whole biochemical mechanism going on
00:22:11 ►
without a drug necessarily being taken.
00:22:14 ►
Just made me think, though,
00:22:15 ►
these are kind of advanced EEG studies,
00:22:19 ►
and some guys from San Francisco, actually, at CIIS,
00:22:23 ►
Frank Eschenhofer is a faculty member,
00:22:25 ►
and David Stuck is a graduate student,
00:22:27 ►
did EEGs of people in Brazil taking ayahuasca.
00:22:31 ►
They’re identifying this phenomenon of gamma coherence,
00:22:34 ►
which they say also occurs in accomplished meditators.
00:22:39 ►
So they’re finding similar patterns with meditation
00:22:42 ►
as they are with ayahuasca.
00:22:44 ►
So we could talk later.
00:22:46 ►
Sorry, I just wanted to talk about this.
00:22:48 ►
What’s it called?
00:22:49 ►
Gamma.
00:22:50 ►
Gamma coherence.
00:22:51 ►
Actually, just this week, I co-edited an issue of the journal Psychoactive Drugs
00:22:57 ►
devoted entirely to ayahuasca, and we have one of those articles in that collection.
00:23:02 ►
So it just was published this week.
00:23:05 ►
So anyways, I think I’ve talked a bit.
00:23:07 ►
I want to introduce Pam.
00:23:09 ►
But let me mention that with our study that we’re doing at Harbor UCLA,
00:23:18 ►
today Mary C., who’s my research nurse,
00:23:21 ►
she and I admitted to the research unit a woman who’s got advanced cancer
00:23:27 ►
who’s going to be our fourth subject.
00:23:30 ►
So we’re moving along.
00:23:31 ►
It’s moving slowly.
00:23:32 ►
So we have some, it’s been a challenge to recruit subjects.
00:23:37 ►
We’ve had a lot of inquiries, but we have a fairly tight inclusion and exclusion criteria.
00:23:41 ►
All of our criteria is listed on the web at www.canceranxietystudy.org
00:23:49 ►
or I’m at Harbor UCLA.
00:23:51 ►
I’m available. I’m listed.
00:23:55 ►
So we’re putting out a call. If you know of anyone who might be
00:23:59 ►
an appropriate subject for a study or you know someone who works
00:24:04 ►
in oncology or cancer support groups,
00:24:10 ►
spread the word.
00:24:11 ►
We’re just trying to get the word out.
00:24:13 ►
There’s been some reluctance among certain elements of the professional community
00:24:17 ►
to even allow us to speak.
00:24:20 ►
We’re willing to talk there, but again,
00:24:22 ►
slowly but surely the word is getting out.
00:24:26 ►
People are hearing about this study.
00:24:28 ►
So, again, we’re
00:24:29 ►
trying to
00:24:32 ►
just disseminate information.
00:24:35 ►
So let me,
00:24:36 ►
and we can take more questions
00:24:38 ►
a little later, but I want to introduce
00:24:39 ►
Pamela Hu.
00:24:48 ►
Pam was a subject about six months ago in our study,
00:24:53 ►
and she did so phenomenally well.
00:24:58 ►
Words that I could express wouldn’t do justice,
00:25:01 ►
so we decided we would ask Pam to speak.
00:25:05 ►
So go
00:25:06 ►
ahead.
00:25:07 ►
Well, you
00:25:07 ►
know, I
00:25:08 ►
didn’t design
00:25:09 ►
this study or
00:25:10 ►
anything, but
00:25:10 ►
we’ve been, my
00:25:12 ►
husband Norbert
00:25:12 ►
and I have
00:25:13 ►
been members
00:25:13 ►
of the DPA
00:25:14 ►
for many, many
00:25:15 ►
years, and
00:25:16 ►
Norbert found
00:25:16 ►
this announcement
00:25:17 ►
of the study,
00:25:18 ►
and he said,
00:25:18 ►
hey, come
00:25:19 ►
here, check
00:25:19 ►
this out.
00:25:20 ►
You know, I
00:25:20 ►
think you
00:25:21 ►
qualify.
00:25:22 ►
And so we
00:25:24 ►
contacted Charlie.
00:25:25 ►
But the gist of it was that I found myself one day diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer.
00:25:34 ►
We had a lovely life planned, and I have a wonderful, loving partner,
00:25:38 ►
and we were looking forward to growing old, maybe not too gracefully,
00:25:42 ►
but together and having a good time of it,
00:25:46 ►
and all of a sudden you find out, oh, you’ve got 16 to 18 months left. Oh, shit. Well,
00:25:52 ►
your life changes very dramatically, and everything you’ve planned and dreamed of and laid out
00:25:58 ►
for yourself is kind of gone, and so you’re left wondering, well, now what? What happens?
00:26:04 ►
And it’s a very, very scary, very scary experience
00:26:07 ►
because there’s all kinds of ways that metastatic cancer can go
00:26:11 ►
and none of them are very pleasant.
00:26:13 ►
So you’re sitting there and you start really obsessing about
00:26:15 ►
what’s going to happen to me and how am I going to feel
00:26:18 ►
and how is it going to affect my family
00:26:20 ►
and how awful is it going to be
00:26:22 ►
and there’s always this thing of how much pain are you going to suffer, how awful is it going to be and there’s always this thing of how much pain
00:26:26 ►
are you going to suffer, how awful is it going to be and when’s it going to happen?
00:26:31 ►
How long can I just be myself and live my life and when’s this horrible thing going
00:26:37 ►
to happen and when’s it going to be like?
00:26:38 ►
You can really get very anxious where you can’t sleep and you don’t know what to do with your life
00:26:45 ►
and you don’t want to make any plans
00:26:47 ►
because you might have to bail.
00:26:51 ►
So you get very tied up in yourself
00:26:53 ►
and you get very fearful.
00:26:56 ►
So I joined the study
00:26:59 ►
and it certainly was run
00:27:02 ►
by a very, very wonderful, supportive team.
00:27:05 ►
I felt like it was going to be a very, very positive experience
00:27:08 ►
because we had a couple of interviews,
00:27:09 ►
and it seemed like it was going to be a very, very good thing.
00:27:14 ►
And I was fortunate enough to receive the psilocybin the first time.
00:27:19 ►
So, you know, you kind of know the difference after that 45 minutes.
00:27:25 ►
It wasn’t 250 milligrams of niacin.
00:27:31 ►
It sort of becomes apparent.
00:27:33 ►
But I really did go into this
00:27:36 ►
with the real intention
00:27:38 ►
of working on some of these fears
00:27:40 ►
and trying to find a path for myself
00:27:44 ►
that was more comfortable and would be better.
00:27:48 ►
And so I really set out to work on it and started to think about some of these things.
00:27:54 ►
And I think the one thing that’s really important, and everybody here probably knows that,
00:28:00 ►
is that the drug doesn’t do anything to you.
00:28:03 ►
It doesn’t give you anything. It doesn’t
00:28:06 ►
create anything. All it does is these substances open, they change your perception and open
00:28:13 ►
the doors to let your own mind find its own way and work with yourself. So whatever you
00:28:20 ►
get from that experience, you already had it somewhere in you. You just couldn’t find it because all of this other junk is in the way.
00:28:28 ►
And so as I worked through it, I realized, well, you know, I have X amount of time.
00:28:33 ►
Who knows?
00:28:34 ►
Because this is a very squirrely disease and nobody really knows how long we have.
00:28:38 ►
And an honest oncologist will tell you that.
00:28:41 ►
They really don’t know.
00:28:43 ►
And so I thought, well, I’m ruining it.
00:28:47 ►
I’m ruining it for myself and for my partner and my family and my friends
00:28:51 ►
because I’m spending so much time worrying and being afraid of what’s going to happen
00:28:55 ►
that I’m not enjoying it.
00:28:57 ►
Damn.
00:28:58 ►
I don’t have to worry about all the stuff today.
00:29:01 ►
Someday it will happen.
00:29:03 ►
And I can worry about it then.
00:29:08 ►
day. Some day it’ll happen. And I can worry about it then. So it allowed me to open those doors and find that place in me where I could resolve that and realize. And another thing
00:29:14 ►
I just totally obsessed with was, well, I can’t leave Norbert by himself. I mean, we’re
00:29:21 ►
bonded. We’re a pair. What’s going to happen? And I thought, well, you know, I can’t worry about that today.
00:29:27 ►
We’re together today and having a good time.
00:29:30 ►
So we’d have a lot better time if I could stop obsessing about this and kind of relax.
00:29:36 ►
And so I guess they tell me I started crying a lot,
00:29:39 ►
and then after a while it got a little easier and I just worked through it.
00:29:44 ►
And can I tell them what you did?
00:29:47 ►
Yeah.
00:29:48 ►
Well, anyway, he was really curious because in order to say,
00:29:53 ►
well, once you find out if it’s the placebo or the real thing,
00:29:57 ►
call me, I want to know.
00:30:03 ►
And so Mary C. called him and told him,
00:30:07 ►
that’s the real thing, she’s really going for it.
00:30:11 ►
Well, at that time, since Orbit was home by himself waiting for me,
00:30:15 ►
he was out working out.
00:30:17 ►
And from what he tells us when he came to pick me up and later in the thing,
00:30:22 ►
he suddenly got this incredible spurt of energy and just went to a place physically where he’d never been before and just was,
00:30:31 ►
I guess there was just a lot of very positive energy going around.
00:30:34 ►
How much?
00:30:35 ►
Very much.
00:30:36 ►
Very much.
00:30:36 ►
And, you know, it was separated by, you know, what, ten miles?
00:30:41 ►
But at the end of the session, and we talked, and Preet and Mary C. and Charlie, and we talked about it,
00:30:50 ►
and there was this great relief, and it certainly allowed me the opportunity to let myself be healed.
00:31:00 ►
And things have been very, very different ever since.
00:31:04 ►
And things have been very, very different ever since.
00:31:11 ►
Everything’s been very, very different because it was this enormous release of just fear.
00:31:19 ►
And being able to let go of it and with the substance’s assistance in just opening that door and letting me let the fear out.
00:31:23 ►
And it certainly changed our lives a lot. And I wish that the rules
00:31:32 ►
weren’t so strict so that more people who find themselves in these situations could
00:31:36 ►
benefit from it. And I think it’s a really great benefit. And certainly a benefit to
00:31:42 ►
the families because this is not a disease that
00:31:45 ►
just strikes the person who gets the illness. I mean, the entire family suffers for it.
00:31:51 ►
I mean, Norbert’s lost as much sleep over it as I have and certainly worried about it
00:31:55 ►
as much as I have. And he’s graciously taken on the task of doing a lot of the research
00:32:01 ►
and the reading so that I wouldn’t have to get depressed over it. But it certainly depresses him.
00:32:06 ►
And so at least having me not be as afraid and say,
00:32:11 ►
well, let’s not worry about what’s going to happen.
00:32:13 ►
Let’s make all these lot of plans.
00:32:15 ►
Let’s plan a European trip six months from now.
00:32:17 ►
I’ll be okay.
00:32:19 ►
We can always fail if we have to, and we’ve been able to do that.
00:32:23 ►
We’ve been able to make plans and move ahead and have a really much better time of it.
00:32:30 ►
So for whatever it is and for whatever comes in the future,
00:32:34 ►
I can leave it in the future and be here living today
00:32:38 ►
and live in joy and light and love and just enjoy it.
00:32:43 ►
So I can’t even…
00:32:46 ►
It was just a very, very positive experience in general.
00:32:50 ►
And anything I could do to help you get more people…
00:32:52 ►
I would like very much to have these studies succeed.
00:33:05 ►
And I know this is a Phase I safety study,
00:33:08 ►
but I’d like to see it proceed to the point where we can unschedule these drugs
00:33:13 ►
and make them available for people to be treated for whatever kinds of conditions that they can help,
00:33:18 ►
because I think they really do.
00:33:20 ►
I think opening, literally, to quote, the doors of perception is a wonderful thing for anyone to be able to do.
00:33:28 ►
How did you know what dosage to use?
00:33:31 ►
Was it based on some of the previous experience in the 50s?
00:33:34 ►
I guess that’s a question for…
00:33:35 ►
That’s a question for them.
00:33:37 ►
Yeah, well, no, the dose was after some negotiation with the FDA.
00:33:42 ►
Our original protocol had a significantly higher dose.
00:33:46 ►
They responded with a significantly lower dose.
00:33:49 ►
And then we found a middle ground where…
00:33:52 ►
And I was, you know…
00:33:56 ►
Was it ever based on some of the older studies?
00:33:59 ►
Yeah, there’s a lot of data from the 50s and 60s
00:34:02 ►
on dosing with psilocybin.
00:34:03 ►
But, you know, the subjects we’ve given the psilocybin to so far at the dose we’re allowed to give
00:34:11 ►
have all had, you know, good responses.
00:34:15 ►
Not overwhelming, you know, but, you know, fairly deep, profound experiences.
00:34:22 ►
We encourage subjects to go deeply into the experience.
00:34:26 ►
We encourage them to lie down, put on the eye shades,
00:34:29 ►
put on the headphones.
00:34:30 ►
We have a nice CD player going and go deep.
00:34:33 ►
Every hour we check in with a blood pressure,
00:34:35 ►
see how they’re doing.
00:34:37 ►
But we feel that a lot of the healing occurs
00:34:40 ►
when people go deeply into that space.
00:34:46 ►
Do people feel fear?
00:34:47 ►
I will tell you something.
00:34:48 ►
It’s very disconcerting once an hour to take the eye shades off, walk up,
00:34:52 ►
and everybody is staring at you.
00:34:57 ►
They’re all staring at you going, how are you doing?
00:35:02 ►
We were waiting a long time.
00:35:04 ►
We were waiting a long time.
00:35:14 ►
The dose is 0.2 milligram per kilogram, and our sense is this is equivalent to 2 to 3 grams of mushroom.
00:35:22 ►
How much does it actually dose?
00:35:23 ►
0.2 milligrams per
00:35:26 ►
kilogram. For body weight.
00:35:27 ►
For body weight, right.
00:35:30 ►
And how do you qualify for this?
00:35:33 ►
Well,
00:35:34 ►
you
00:35:35 ►
have to.
00:35:37 ►
You have to be ill.
00:35:41 ►
Are you hoping in the future to work at
00:35:44 ►
like a single overwhelming type of dose or a smaller?
00:35:48 ►
Not too overwhelming.
00:35:48 ►
What I’d like to do is perhaps have the option to bump up the dose a bit,
00:35:53 ►
but what really would be important on subsequent studies would be to get permission to have follow-up sessions,
00:36:00 ►
repeat sessions a month later, maybe another one a month down the line. We really feel that they could reinforce the power, the therapeutic potential
00:36:10 ►
if we would have the opportunity to do follow-up repeat sessions.
00:36:15 ►
But right now we’re approved only for one session of each subject.
00:36:20 ►
Do you have any dietary considerations?
00:36:22 ►
No, no.
00:36:23 ►
Do you have any dietary considerations?
00:36:24 ►
Well, in the morning.
00:36:25 ►
Well, just don’t eat in the morning.
00:36:28 ►
No dairy, no caffeine, no…
00:36:29 ►
Yeah.
00:36:30 ►
What’s in the headphones?
00:36:31 ►
What’s in the headphones?
00:36:33 ►
You said…
00:36:33 ►
Is there ever any guidance?
00:36:37 ►
So it’s purely there’s no person interacting with the person that’s taking the dose?
00:36:41 ►
You know, our feeling with psilocybin…
00:36:43 ►
We’re there to talk.
00:36:50 ►
I had one subject who had a lot of trouble lying down and putting, you know, and she just,
00:36:52 ►
and I said, you know, look,
00:36:53 ►
you know, it’ll be plenty of time later to chat.
00:36:55 ►
Now, we’re happy to, you know,
00:36:57 ►
if something, an insight comes
00:36:59 ►
or a powerful vision comes,
00:37:00 ►
it’s fine to take off the eye shades
00:37:03 ►
and the headphones, sit up,
00:37:04 ►
and talk with us for a bit,
00:37:06 ►
but then we’ll urge you to go back deeply
00:37:08 ►
into the experience. Now, a drug like
00:37:10 ►
NDMA, that would be a different
00:37:11 ►
kind of experience altogether.
00:37:14 ►
You suggest more of a guiding
00:37:16 ►
situation for NDMA?
00:37:17 ►
With NDMA, I think there’d be
00:37:20 ►
more, I think,
00:37:21 ►
for people to sit up and start talking
00:37:24 ►
through what they were
00:37:25 ►
going through.
00:37:26 ►
Not like a therapist and a client.
00:37:29 ►
Well, there is a
00:37:30 ►
therapist and a client.
00:37:32 ►
You’re saying it might be more for couples?
00:37:35 ►
No, no, no. I’m saying
00:37:35 ►
even if you would work with a similar population,
00:37:39 ►
the qualities
00:37:40 ►
of the drug are quite
00:37:42 ►
different.
00:37:43 ►
I think you’re getting a research suggestion here.
00:37:45 ►
Yeah, no, no.
00:37:47 ►
What are the criteria for success?
00:37:49 ►
How do you quantify, I had a wonderful experience.
00:37:52 ►
Okay, we have a lot of rating instruments.
00:37:54 ►
The primary variable we’re looking
00:37:56 ►
at is anxiety. So we have anxiety
00:37:58 ►
rating scales.
00:37:59 ►
Secondarily, we’re also looking at mood.
00:38:02 ►
So we have mood rating scales.
00:38:04 ►
We’re looking at quality.
00:38:05 ►
That’s the paperwork.
00:38:06 ►
Yeah.
00:38:07 ►
Every month.
00:38:08 ►
It was like one week, two weeks, six weeks, and then once a month,
00:38:14 ►
and I still fill it out.
00:38:15 ►
So primarily anxiety, but then also we’re looking at depression.
00:38:19 ►
We’re looking at quality of life, a quality of life instrument
00:38:24 ►
that’s specific for people with cancer. We’re also looking for those who are having a lot of life instrument that’s specific for people with cancer.
00:38:26 ►
We’re also looking for those who are having a lot of pain,
00:38:29 ►
the level of pain, their need for narcotic pain meds.
00:38:33 ►
That was one thing that really impressed me so much
00:38:35 ►
was Stan Groff’s work and Eric Kass’ work.
00:38:39 ►
People who had a lot of pain were getting fairly dramatic alleviations of pain
00:38:44 ►
and significant reductions of need for narcotics.
00:38:48 ►
Where could this go? If all the people say this is very positive
00:38:51 ►
and all the criteria that you’re measuring, is there
00:38:54 ►
proof for use in this one? No, well, this is a pilot study.
00:38:59 ►
From a pilot study, there needs to be a larger study.
00:39:04 ►
Well, we hope it moves in that direction where this will be possible to legally access this treatment
00:39:13 ►
for people who need treatment for whatever they’re suffering from.
00:39:20 ►
And we feel there are particular conditions which would be I think particularly interesting to
00:39:25 ►
use this model treatment
00:39:27 ►
and mostly
00:39:29 ►
conditions that don’t necessarily
00:39:31 ►
do well with conventional
00:39:33 ►
treatment. First and foremost
00:39:35 ►
alcoholism,
00:39:37 ►
drug addiction, serious obsessive
00:39:39 ►
compulsive disorder, serious
00:39:41 ►
post-traumatic stress disorder.
00:39:43 ►
What about personality disorders?
00:39:45 ►
It’s all open. Once the door is open disorder, serious post-traumatic stress disorder. What about personality disorders like serious personality disorders?
00:39:47 ►
It’s all open.
00:39:50 ►
Once the door is open for legitimate research the possibilities are
00:39:52 ►
truly endless in terms of what you could look at.
00:39:54 ►
And then should we be
00:39:55 ►
in chemotherapy?
00:39:57 ►
What are the side effects and the experience
00:40:00 ►
that people go through?
00:40:01 ►
Well, people who are in intensive chemo
00:40:03 ►
we’ll take them during a time when they’re off the chemo, when they’re a little stronger.
00:40:09 ►
I’m saying compared to chemothera treatment, like how much crap people have to go through.
00:40:16 ►
Compared to this, this is like the Royal Road.
00:40:21 ►
And again, it’s the most ancient
00:40:25 ►
of treatment models
00:40:26 ►
I think we also need to really acknowledge
00:40:29 ►
our predecessors
00:40:30 ►
not only the people in the 50s and the 60s
00:40:33 ►
but those going back over centuries
00:40:35 ►
over millennia
00:40:36 ►
the indigenous cultures of the world
00:40:38 ►
that had intimate knowledge
00:40:40 ►
of the realm of effects of these plants
00:40:43 ►
and knew how to utilize that for purposes of healing.
00:40:47 ►
But I think, you know, it’s like, I think in the 60s,
00:40:49 ►
sometimes people made the mistake of figuring this is the most modern treatment.
00:40:54 ►
But, you know, the ancients, you know,
00:40:57 ►
those who worked with these compounds over God knows how long period of time,
00:41:02 ►
they knew how to use them.
00:41:04 ►
They knew what the safety parameters are.
00:41:05 ►
There’s a tremendous degree to which we could learn
00:41:08 ►
from the so-called primitives.
00:41:10 ►
We’re primitive compared to their level of knowledge.
00:41:14 ►
So in this situation,
00:41:16 ►
maybe it could be said that you’re treating
00:41:18 ►
situational anxiety and situational depression.
00:41:22 ►
Yeah, this would be specific.
00:41:24 ►
Versus organic. Specifically, we’re looking, anxiety and situational depression versus organic
00:41:25 ►
specifically
00:41:25 ►
we’re looking, I mean the criteria
00:41:27 ►
are for anxiety
00:41:30 ►
conditions or depression
00:41:32 ►
that has come in the wake
00:41:34 ►
of the
00:41:35 ►
medical illness
00:41:37 ►
so it’s a reactive to the medical illness
00:41:40 ►
so have people tried anything
00:41:42 ►
with people that have
00:41:43 ►
a more organic depression
00:41:46 ►
that’s not because of the situation?
00:41:49 ►
Well, I mean, there was certainly a lot of work that went on in the 50s and the 60s
00:41:54 ►
where they looked at more, you know, garden variety depression.
00:41:58 ►
And again, you know, many of these studies, if they were properly run
00:42:03 ►
and had, you know,
00:42:05 ►
qualified personnel who knew what they were doing, did get good results.
00:42:09 ►
But, of course, the methodologies are relatively weak compared to what’s acceptable today.
00:42:14 ►
So these are all areas which need to be looked at.
00:42:17 ►
But I think, you know, strategically…
00:42:19 ►
Does your study exclude that, or can you include? No, no.
00:42:30 ►
It has had very serious psychiatric illnesses in the past.
00:42:34 ►
This particular study excludes, because we’re focusing only on that,
00:42:37 ►
which comes in the wake of the medical illness.
00:42:38 ►
Thank you.
00:42:41 ►
And were there things that maybe in your experience,
00:42:42 ►
or if you look back on your experience,
00:42:48 ►
that you were able to anchor or places you can go back to in your meditation?
00:42:48 ►
Definitely. Do you have a meditation process?
00:42:49 ►
Definitely.
00:42:50 ►
So further along this empowerment of taking the energy away from the anxiety
00:42:54 ►
and putting it in towards directly fighting…
00:42:58 ►
Very much.
00:42:59 ►
…from that path to grow.
00:43:01 ►
I think so.
00:43:02 ►
And, you know, it’s one of those things that you can’t explain.
00:43:06 ►
And I really do believe that your mind has some level of control over your body
00:43:12 ►
and that you can affect yourself in a positive way.
00:43:17 ►
But you need to work on that a little.
00:43:18 ►
I’m curious.
00:43:20 ►
Did you incorporate any form of ceremony into the experience?
00:43:25 ►
And Charlie, especially, because you’ve had more patients than…
00:43:28 ►
Yeah, I think that this is medicine that really comes out of the context of ritual.
00:43:35 ►
So I think it’s important to include that to some degree.
00:43:38 ►
So at the beginning of the session, we do a little meditation, a little ritual.
00:43:43 ►
Call in the spirits.
00:43:44 ►
I didn’t write that in the protocol, but we do a little meditation, a little ritual. Sure. Call in the spirits. I didn’t write that in the protocol,
00:43:46 ►
but we did.
00:43:49 ►
Call in the spirits.
00:43:49 ►
Please do.
00:43:50 ►
Please add that to the protocol
00:43:51 ►
because it directly involves that.
00:43:54 ►
Whether people think it’s hokiness or whatever,
00:43:56 ►
the participant will…
00:43:58 ►
Okay, the one thing that they did
00:44:00 ►
is Mary C. brought this beautiful arrangement of flowers.
00:44:04 ►
And she said,
00:44:04 ►
this is for you to take home
00:44:06 ►
and for you to take the energy with you.
00:44:08 ►
And it did.
00:44:09 ►
And we had the flowers.
00:44:11 ►
And, of course, we had one really fun moment
00:44:13 ►
because right in the middle of it, it was.
00:44:17 ►
Charlie knocked the flowers and spilled water all over at the base.
00:44:23 ►
So in the middle of this, we had a little moment of levity
00:44:25 ►
and a good giggle over it.
00:44:27 ►
And it was,
00:44:28 ►
I thought it was wonderful.
00:44:29 ►
It was great.
00:44:33 ►
But truly,
00:44:39 ►
after the session,
00:44:41 ►
we took the flowers home
00:44:42 ►
and we had them sitting on the table.
00:44:44 ►
And they lasted like a whole week.
00:44:47 ►
Every time I went by there, there was just this little lovely, you could go back there.
00:44:53 ►
There was this lovely energy from it.
00:44:54 ►
One of the other things that Mary C. was the one who was really responsible for setting that all up,
00:44:59 ►
she helped to make certain that the entire hospital room was totally decorated.
00:45:03 ►
The walls were decorated with curtains.
00:45:04 ►
They’re just beautiful. And hanging were placed around the entire hospital room was totally decorated. The walls were decorated with curtains. They’re just beautiful.
00:45:05 ►
And hangings were placed over the entire place,
00:45:07 ►
plus the flowers.
00:45:08 ►
When you walked into the place,
00:45:10 ►
you did not think it was a hospital room.
00:45:12 ►
And more importantly,
00:45:13 ►
and there was one other thing too,
00:45:14 ►
was also the three people involved in it
00:45:16 ►
was Mary C., Charlie, and Preet over here.
00:45:20 ►
And the positive energy that each one of these people
00:45:22 ►
gave Pam during it,
00:45:24 ►
this was not a clinical session.
00:45:25 ►
This was not totally detached.
00:45:28 ►
This was a positive feeling that these people were here to help you feel better
00:45:34 ►
and to deal with something.
00:45:36 ►
And I think that’s really important also when you go into something like this.
00:45:39 ►
We talk about the ritual.
00:45:41 ►
We talk about the setting.
00:45:42 ►
Well, this is exactly what they also did in this clinical research setting
00:45:45 ►
is they reduced some of that clinical aspect.
00:45:49 ►
And I think it’s very important.
00:45:51 ►
So I wasn’t troubled by the vibes in the hospital.
00:45:54 ►
Okay.
00:45:57 ►
Charlie, I’ve got a question.
00:45:59 ►
I gather this whole thing is being recorded for podcast?
00:46:02 ►
You know, I’ll edit out anything you don’t want to.
00:46:05 ►
Are you going to run into either IRB problems or problems from the journals about pre-publication?
00:46:10 ►
I mean, if I put this on my blog, is that a problem?
00:46:13 ►
Sure?
00:46:15 ►
Okay.
00:46:16 ►
Run it by me first.
00:46:18 ►
Tell me what you want to play.
00:46:19 ►
Okay.
00:46:20 ►
Just be safe.
00:46:21 ►
I had a question on the ayahuasca, which seems to be more of a substance of medicine you can turn to heal,
00:46:28 ►
like the work I’ve been doing for several months now,
00:46:30 ►
just for blood cleansing, lung healing.
00:46:33 ►
But it would never occur to me to turn to LSD for healing,
00:46:38 ►
like physical healing that I’m getting from the ayahuasca.
00:46:41 ►
And I wonder if you know a little bit about that.
00:46:44 ►
That’s a thing that… Could there be separate wonder, do you know a little bit about that?
00:46:49 ►
Could there be separate studies on the healing properties of doing things like that?
00:46:50 ►
Have there been?
00:46:55 ►
Well, there have been very minimal studies, only what was done in the 60s.
00:46:58 ►
And at that point, ayahuasca was really not being studied at all.
00:46:59 ►
It was hardly even known.
00:47:04 ►
But, you know, LSD, it’s a very potent synthetic compound.
00:47:11 ►
You know, in terms of psychiatric studies, they got some very positive results.
00:47:16 ►
In terms of physical healing,
00:47:19 ►
it never really was utilized primarily directly as an agent for physical healing,
00:47:26 ►
but although you would hear anecdotal accounts, you would hear
00:47:27 ►
those from other
00:47:29 ►
compounds as well.
00:47:32 ►
My gut sense is that once we’re
00:47:34 ►
allowed to fully investigate
00:47:36 ►
the potentials of ayahuasca,
00:47:38 ►
that very likely
00:47:39 ►
its healing
00:47:41 ►
capacity, I think,
00:47:44 ►
would be very impressive.
00:47:46 ►
You can actually feel it actually working on different parts of your body.
00:47:50 ►
Like, you know, there will be times where you don’t have any of the mental activation or trips or acknowledgements,
00:47:56 ►
but you feel it working in areas.
00:47:58 ►
That’s right.
00:47:58 ►
And so it’s…
00:47:59 ►
No, I think that’s great.
00:48:00 ►
I see it actually as a medicine.
00:48:01 ►
And there’s certainly a great deal of healing in the Amazon basin,
00:48:07 ►
where mestizo healing in particular, where ayahuasca is the agent and minister.
00:48:12 ►
Now, interestingly, sometimes the ayahuasquero takes it and the patient doesn’t take it.
00:48:18 ►
Sometimes the patient takes it and the ayahuasquero doesn’t.
00:48:22 ►
But my colleague, the anthropologist Marlene DeRios,
00:48:26 ►
who I co-edited the journal Psychoactive Drugs Issue about ayahuasca,
00:48:31 ►
she’s done a lot of work down in the Amazon basin
00:48:33 ►
looking at ayahuasca healing among the Mastuto population.
00:48:38 ►
She’s got books out about this.
00:48:40 ►
They’re accessible.
00:48:42 ►
What’s it going to take to, like, you were doing a program that’s still scheduled, right?
00:48:46 ►
But then you were able to do your pilot, starting the definition of a schedule,
00:48:50 ►
is that it has no medical…
00:48:51 ►
Well, but it’s possible, and if nothing else, we’ve demonstrated feasibility
00:48:56 ►
that it’s possible to do legitimate sanction, above board, high quality research
00:49:02 ►
with Schedule I drugs.
00:49:03 ►
You’ve just got to go through, you’ve got to have your credentials in order,
00:49:06 ►
you’ve got to go through a very laborious procedure.
00:49:10 ►
It takes years, but it’s possible.
00:49:13 ►
What would it take to get unscheduled?
00:49:15 ►
Unscheduled?
00:49:16 ►
A lot more research and an evolution of our current political system.
00:49:23 ►
Rick Funds in South Carolina. Michael Mithoffer said it started off as an indication only for PTSD from personal assault.
00:49:31 ►
This has now been expanded to include other kinds of traumas, including war trauma,
00:49:36 ►
and I believe they got a referral of a policeman from 9-11 who was traumatized from that experience.
00:49:44 ►
Well, the interesting issue, I mean, you’re right,
00:49:47 ►
because the pharmaceutical industry in the last few decades
00:49:50 ►
has wielded enormous power and control within all of medicine.
00:49:55 ►
The interesting issue about psychedelics is,
00:50:00 ►
let’s say you develop a compound which might be administered on only one occasion
00:50:04 ►
and be effective, or a handful of occasions within the context of an ongoing psychotherapy.
00:50:11 ►
Where’s the profit margin for a drug company?
00:50:13 ►
They’re not going to clean up like they would for drugs,
00:50:15 ►
which you prescribe for people to take on an everyday basis for weeks, for months, for years.
00:50:21 ►
In fact, if this works, it could be a threat.
00:50:23 ►
So the drug companies are not
00:50:25 ►
beating down the doors.
00:50:27 ►
Well, okay, at least the doctors.
00:50:28 ►
There are some great ones out there, possibly. You never know.
00:50:31 ►
Yes, yes, let’s band together. Let’s band together
00:50:32 ►
and just say that we want to relieve
00:50:35 ►
the suffering of all of our parents.
00:50:37 ►
And everybody, you know. Everybody knows.
00:50:39 ►
It doesn’t always come back. Everybody will go for it
00:50:41 ►
if you just get it in the right, like, yes.
00:50:43 ►
There’s always hope.
00:50:44 ►
And if you know any of those people.
00:50:46 ►
I think Rick likes to call his vision the people’s pharmaceutical company.
00:50:51 ►
The people’s pharmaceutical company.
00:50:54 ►
No such thing.
00:50:56 ►
How about the shower company?
00:50:57 ►
I don’t know why you chose to assign them to LSD.
00:50:59 ►
Oh, good question.
00:51:00 ►
Yeah, that’s LSD.
00:51:03 ►
We have a lot more data on LSD from the 60s, for sure, but there are a few reasons.
00:51:10 ►
One is shorter duration. It’s 4 to 6 hours compared to 8 to 12 hours.
00:51:17 ►
We felt it was more easily controlled.
00:51:21 ►
We felt it would be, we felt on an intuitive level, be more appropriate for this
00:51:27 ►
patient population. But also, most importantly, psilocybin does not carry the political baggage
00:51:34 ►
that LSD does. And I don’t think we would have gotten a first base submitting an LSD protocol
00:51:39 ►
to the regulatory agencies. You know, psilocybin, it’s an exotic name. It’s a bit under the radar.
00:51:45 ►
You know, people kind of know what it is,
00:51:46 ►
but still it doesn’t have that knee-jerk response.
00:51:50 ►
Oh, we’ve been through that before.
00:51:52 ►
We’re not going to go down that road.
00:51:54 ►
I mean, they both work on a serotonergic system.
00:51:57 ►
Psilocybin is structurally much more similar to serotonin.
00:52:04 ►
LSD, though, the strange thing about LSD is its potency.
00:52:09 ►
There’s no other drug that’s potent on such a small dose,
00:52:13 ►
it’s just on a microgram level, which is astounding.
00:52:16 ►
So if you look at evolution, I mean,
00:52:19 ►
why is it that our central nervous systems are so primed
00:52:22 ►
to be receptive to these compounds?
00:52:24 ►
Why is it that our central nervous systems are so primed to be receptive to these compounds?
00:52:29 ►
Obtaining the material for the study,
00:52:33 ►
was that a result that LSD would have to be manufactured and psilocybin occurs?
00:52:34 ►
No, no, no.
00:52:36 ►
This is purely synthetic.
00:52:39 ►
The FDA would insist that it must be. So it’s made by a company in Massachusetts that has a license with the government
00:52:45 ►
to make Schedule I drugs for research purposes.
00:52:48 ►
And they have this powder in the capsule?
00:52:52 ►
It comes as a powder.
00:52:53 ►
It’s kept in the most secure safe I have ever seen in a research pharmacy.
00:52:59 ►
They had to buy a safe and then bolt it into the floor to meet the DEA specifications.
00:53:04 ►
So I’ve got this enormous safe.
00:53:06 ►
You’ve got to go through, you know,
00:53:08 ►
several padlocks, locks to get in there.
00:53:11 ►
You open it up.
00:53:12 ►
There’s this big space with one little bottle.
00:53:17 ►
And the pharmacist weighs it out, you know,
00:53:20 ►
on a milligram per kilogram basis.
00:53:23 ►
We give the weight.
00:53:24 ►
And then the morning of this session,
00:53:26 ►
tomorrow morning when we treat
00:53:27 ►
the woman we met
00:53:30 ►
today, the pharmacist will come up at
00:53:32 ►
9 o’clock with a capsule.
00:53:34 ►
It may be a placebo.
00:53:35 ►
It may be 0.2 milligrams
00:53:38 ►
per kilogram. Sounds like a reality show.
00:53:40 ►
What’s behind
00:53:41 ►
the screen?
00:53:43 ►
Yeah, everybody gets one of these, so you kind of know what will be.
00:53:50 ►
What do you think about the designer analogs that there’s been a couple of cases recently
00:53:55 ►
because there were supposedly some deaths related to the designer chemistry analogs.
00:54:00 ►
What do you know about the toxicity of this?
00:54:02 ►
I’m aware of, I don’t know if we’re aware of the same case,
00:54:05 ►
but I’m aware of a very recent, very sad, very sad case.
00:54:11 ►
There’s a lot we don’t know, and it’s really a shame,
00:54:14 ►
because young people in particular are very adventurous.
00:54:18 ►
They want to experiment.
00:54:19 ►
They want to push the envelope,
00:54:21 ►
but sometimes they may be pushing it with compounds about which
00:54:25 ►
we know very, very little because they haven’t been subjected to rigorous examination. So
00:54:31 ►
the kids kind of sometimes go in blind with insufficient data. It’s really sad. I mean,
00:54:39 ►
unfortunately, it should be that the data should be there, safe access,
00:54:46 ►
should be safe, monitored, if necessary.
00:54:50 ►
Perhaps people should be screened.
00:54:51 ►
People with underlying medical problems,
00:54:55 ►
some people have underlying cardiovascular problems,
00:54:58 ►
aren’t even aware of it.
00:54:59 ►
We read in the paper about athletes, kids in high school and college,
00:55:02 ►
just dropping dead on the athletic field. Then they do an autopsy and they realize they had a barren cardiac conduction system.
00:55:10 ►
Do you think there are some of these elements in there? I think there’s like two or three.
00:55:12 ►
I do. I consulted on a couple of forensic cases of young women who died from MDMA. But
00:55:18 ►
I know of two cases where young women had cardiovascular problems they were not aware of
00:55:25 ►
because it had never manifested.
00:55:26 ►
They’d never had an EKG.
00:55:30 ►
No one knew.
00:55:31 ►
Same thing, you get the same problem
00:55:32 ►
with high school and college athletes.
00:55:34 ►
No one knew.
00:55:36 ►
But even birth control adds to the problem.
00:55:40 ►
Like if you consider that you might have
00:55:42 ►
one of these heart defects in your own birth control
00:55:44 ►
and then somebody gives you MDMA, then you might really have a problem based on your previous condition.
00:55:50 ►
Well, okay, well that’s all.
00:55:51 ►
My first protocol to treat cancer was with MDMA.
00:55:55 ►
I ended up switching to psilocybin for two reasons.
00:55:58 ►
One was in the late 90s, ecstasy had become so sensationalized.
00:56:04 ►
late 90s, ecstasy had become so sensationalized.
00:56:10 ►
At that point, the regulatory agencies backed off, and I don’t blame them.
00:56:13 ►
Things were too wild, I think, in the press.
00:56:31 ►
And also, to be honest, I felt psilocybin with this patient population would be safer, easier for the body to handle, and perhaps even better for the psychological therapy we were hoping to administer.
00:56:38 ►
So I was not at all adverse at that point to shifting my protocol from NDMA to psilocybin.
00:56:48 ►
A serious problem with psychedelics across the board is if you pay insufficient attention to the set and the setting,
00:56:51 ►
things can get out of hand, and there’s no lack of examples.
00:57:00 ►
We’ve collected several case histories of young college students who committed suicide in the last couple of years on psychedelics in the East Coast. In each and every case,
00:57:06 ►
there was insufficient
00:57:08 ►
attention to the mental set
00:57:10 ►
of the person going in and
00:57:12 ►
the level of support that
00:57:14 ►
the environmental setting had.
00:57:16 ►
Even afterwards,
00:57:18 ►
even two or three days afterwards,
00:57:19 ►
you have a central effect.
00:57:21 ►
Again, it depends.
00:57:23 ►
There are a lot of variables involved.
00:57:25 ►
Maybe I ate too
00:57:26 ►
much.
00:57:26 ►
In moderation
00:57:28 ►
is another issue.
00:57:29 ►
We’ve got this
00:57:30 ►
mental set in this
00:57:31 ►
country that
00:57:32 ►
sometimes if a
00:57:33 ►
little is really
00:57:34 ►
good, maybe a lot
00:57:35 ►
more would be a
00:57:36 ►
whole lot better.
00:57:37 ►
But, you know,
00:57:38 ►
there are safety
00:57:38 ►
lifelines.
00:57:40 ►
You know, with
00:57:40 ►
MDMA, you’ve got
00:57:41 ►
this whole sense
00:57:42 ►
of, well, you
00:57:44 ►
know, the young
00:57:44 ►
people get it, they want to, you know, you develop some tolerance whole sense of, well, the young people get it.
00:57:46 ►
You develop some tolerance, number one, but the young people keep wanting to push the envelope.
00:57:50 ►
You have this macho ingestion syndrome that’s been described,
00:57:53 ►
where people stack five doses at a shot and pop them.
00:57:57 ►
They’re clearly pushing that envelope on the safety parameters beyond which is wiser or prudent, and which is quite at odds with, let’s say,
00:58:08 ►
the early investigators of phenethylamines,
00:58:10 ►
like Myron would have perceived its use.
00:58:13 ►
In the 60s, there was a lot of excitement in psychiatry
00:58:17 ►
that these compounds had extraordinary potentials for healing
00:58:21 ►
and that they could be part of a therapeutic armamentarium.
00:58:24 ►
But at the same time, the counterculture was revving up
00:58:26 ►
and there was a need, I believe, to squash this research.
00:58:32 ►
A major study occurred at the University of Wisconsin
00:58:36 ►
led by a guy named Ludwig,
00:58:38 ►
who demonstrated that LSD was not an effective treatment for alcoholism.
00:58:46 ►
He got the most prestigious award you can get in psychiatric research.
00:58:51 ►
But looking back, if you look at his methodology,
00:58:54 ►
they completely ignored setting issues.
00:58:57 ►
There was no preparation.
00:58:59 ►
They’d give the drug to the patient and tell him,
00:59:02 ►
you know, you just sit in this room and we’ll check on you every now and again.
00:59:07 ►
There was another study where
00:59:09 ►
patients were actually
00:59:10 ►
they were handcuffed to the bed
00:59:14 ►
while they were given the drug.
00:59:16 ►
So what are the results going to be?
00:59:19 ►
Torture.
00:59:21 ►
Well, there was some incredibly unethical
00:59:24 ►
things that went on in the 50s
00:59:25 ►
that do resemble torture.
00:59:27 ►
In fact, military intelligence dove into this as well
00:59:30 ►
with the MKUltra project,
00:59:32 ►
where they were surreptitiously spiking people’s drinks
00:59:35 ►
with high-dose psychedelics and watching them flip out.
00:59:40 ►
Soldiers they thought had given secrets to the Russians
00:59:43 ►
they would bring in for interrogation
00:59:45 ►
dose them, drive them crazy
00:59:47 ►
where they were residually crazy for years
00:59:50 ►
they had one of their own intelligence operatives
00:59:53 ►
they were concerned was going to spill the beans on something
00:59:57 ►
they dose him and the next thing you know
00:59:58 ►
he was flying out of a hotel window in New York
01:00:00 ►
horrible things happened
01:00:02 ►
the prostitutes
01:00:04 ►
they would hire prostitutes, they would hire
01:00:05 ►
prostitutes to give clients
01:00:08 ►
a drink, spike,
01:00:09 ►
with a drug, and then they would
01:00:11 ►
film it through a
01:00:13 ►
one-way mirror.
01:00:16 ►
Yeah, ridiculous stuff.
01:00:18 ►
Anyway, I think
01:00:19 ►
we’re probably…
01:00:20 ►
We’ll wrap this up. Myron autographed a few
01:00:23 ►
books. You can maybe answer some questions.
01:00:26 ►
Sure.
01:00:26 ►
Everybody, no reason to leave.
01:00:28 ►
Hang out.
01:00:30 ►
Enjoy yourselves.
01:00:31 ►
Thank you.
01:00:34 ►
Well, that should give you some idea of what an evening at Kathleen’s salon is like.
01:00:42 ►
It’s definitely not for the closed-minded, I’ll tell you that.
01:00:46 ►
I hope you paid some close attention to Dr. Groves’ words about safety
01:00:50 ►
toward the end of his talk.
01:00:53 ►
We aren’t looking for any more heroes in the war on drugs.
01:00:56 ►
What we really need is a lot of well-informed, safety-conscious survivors
01:01:00 ►
who can grow into the role of our new elders.
01:01:04 ►
If you think that you might have such a calling,
01:01:07 ►
then get serious about your work
01:01:08 ►
and learn everything you can about these extremely powerful substances
01:01:12 ►
before you take any unnecessary chances.
01:01:16 ►
Always remember, the first step of any intelligent journey
01:01:19 ►
is to become as well-informed as possible.
01:01:22 ►
So always begin at Erowid.org. E-R-O So always begin at arrowid.org.
01:01:27 ►
E-R-O-W-I-D dot org.
01:01:29 ►
That’s one website that I’m willing to stand behind 100%.
01:01:31 ►
In addition to my own, of course.
01:01:34 ►
Don’t forget
01:01:35 ►
we’re at matrixmasters.com
01:01:38 ►
and if you’re looking just for the audio
01:01:40 ►
sections of our website,
01:01:42 ►
they’re at
01:01:43 ►
palenque-norte.org all of which can be reached through the homepage at Matrixmasters. Thank you. site, you’ll see links to our podcast, and there you can find more information about Dr. Grobe and the other speakers we’ve had here in the Psychedelic Salon.
01:02:09 ►
And before I go tonight, I want to thank our friends at Shatul Hayuk for their music again,
01:02:16 ►
and especially to Charlie and Pam, Norbert and Myron, for all their words of wisdom,
01:02:21 ►
and a special thank you to Kathleen.
01:02:24 ►
Without you, Kathleen,
01:02:25 ►
these magical evenings just wouldn’t happen.
01:02:29 ►
Also, I want to give my thanks to all of you
01:02:31 ►
for joining us here in the Psychedelic Salon.
01:02:34 ►
For now, this is Lorenzo,
01:02:36 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:02:39 ►
Be well, my friends. Thank you.