Program Notes
Guest speakers: George Greer and Requa Tolbert
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
06:30George talks about how they began to use MDMA in their work.
07:37 “We didn’t want it to get in the newspapers, because we knew that because it felt good it would eventually get out on the street and be made illegal … as it was.”
08:30 How people were screened before they could be treated with MDMA… . “Where are you pointed?”
10:01 “The purpose for taking it [MDMA] really is the most important thing, more important than the drug even.”
12:41 Requa describes the formal structure of a therapeutic MDMA session as developed by Leo Zeff, “The Secret Chief”.
16:30 George reads the 18th century prayer that Leo Zeff recommended using before a healing MDMA session.
23:57 “My idea is that MDMA decreases fear, the neurological experience of fear. So if you have a thought that would normally be frightening to you that would make you anxious and tense up and be defensive and push it away, that reaction just is blocked.”
30:47 “Women seem to be more sensitive [to MDMA] independent of size … actually some research has been done showing women are more sensitive milligrams per kilogram. In Switzerland they found this.”
32:33 George describes the work of Dr. Arthur Hastings who used hypnotherapy with former MDMA users to bring back the experience of their medicine session.
33:52 A discussion of beta-blockers.
34:43 “I think that MDMA would be excellent for people who are afraid of dying and afraid of death.”
Abstracts of papers by Greer and Tolbert
“Subjective reports of the effects of MDMA in a clinical setting”
“A method of conducting therapeutic sessions with MDMA”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:21 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:26 ►
So, how are you doing today?
00:00:29 ►
After listening to Michael Mithoffer in last week’s podcast,
00:00:33 ►
I’ve picked up that old Burning Man fever once again,
00:00:36 ►
and I’ve been checking out some of the pictures of last year’s burn that can be found all over the Internet.
00:00:42 ►
of last year’s burn that can be found all over the internet.
00:00:46 ►
And in fact, if you want to see a few of the pictures that I took during the Blanque Norte lectures last year,
00:00:50 ►
you can find them through the link on the front page
00:00:52 ►
of the MatrixMasters.com site.
00:00:55 ►
In addition to my Burning Man photos that you’ll find there,
00:00:59 ►
there are also quite a few pictures that Bill Radds has taken
00:01:03 ►
at various events held at Alex and Allison Gray’s gallery in Manhattan.
00:01:09 ►
And Bill has also posted some of his pictures from the last Mind States Conference, which was held in San Francisco.
00:01:16 ►
And also the Mind States Conference in Oaxaca, which you might remember was where Bruce Dahmer gave the talk that you heard in podcast number 85. This is number 87 by the way, just in case you’re wondering. Anyway,
00:01:31 ►
since I’ve been thinking about Burning Man so much, I figured that is about time
00:01:35 ►
I podcast the rest of last year’s Planque Norte lecture series that we held
00:01:41 ►
in the big tent there in Theon Village.
00:01:50 ►
As you know, last week I played the talk in which Michael Mithoffer gave a report
00:01:55 ►
about the then-current state of affairs and the study of MDMA for the use in curing PTSD that he and his wife Annie are conducting.
00:02:01 ►
And we’ll be hearing more from the Mithoffers in a few weeks
00:02:04 ►
when I
00:02:05 ►
do a telephone interview with them to get an update. But today I’m going to follow up
00:02:11 ►
on the topic of MDMA, or ecstasy as it’s sometimes called, and our speakers are Dr. George Greer
00:02:19 ►
and his wife slash nurse assistant, Requa Talbert,
00:02:25 ►
who together administered MDMA over 100 times to 80 people
00:02:31 ►
as part of his clinical psychiatric practice from 1980 to 1985.
00:02:38 ►
And according to the Hefter Research Institute, of which George is the medical director,
00:02:46 ►
the Hefter Research Institute, of which George is the medical director. George and Riqua’s review of their work remains the largest published study of the therapeutic use of MDMA. George and Riqua
00:02:53 ►
have dedicated considerable effort to the process of bringing psychedelic agents into medical
00:02:59 ►
practice, and George was also involved in an extensive hearing process with the DEA to keep MDMA available for medical research.
00:03:09 ►
And he coordinated a lobbying campaign in Congress to prevent restrictions on research with new psychedelic drugs.
00:03:18 ►
And whenever I think of George, though, my first thought isn’t about all of his many honors and achievements.
00:03:23 ►
What first comes to my mind is the very first time I met George.
00:03:28 ►
And it was at the 2002 Burning Man Festival.
00:03:32 ►
Might have been 2003, and I can’t remember for sure, but if my
00:03:36 ►
memory of it is that he was wearing what I took to be a
00:03:40 ►
toga, and he appeared to be a rather serene Roman senator.
00:03:44 ►
Actually, I think he later told me that his costume that night and he appeared to be a rather serene Roman senator.
00:03:50 ►
Actually, I think he later told me that his costume that night was something other than a toga,
00:03:55 ►
but my memories of the playa that year have now become a little dusty.
00:04:01 ►
So now let’s fast forward to the 2006 Burning Man Festival and join George and R Requa in the big tent at Entheon Village
00:04:06 ►
for a talk they titled MDMA Before Ecstasy.
00:04:13 ►
I’m Dr. George Greer.
00:04:15 ►
This is my wife, Requa Talbert.
00:04:18 ►
Hey.
00:04:23 ►
That’s nursery class.
00:04:25 ►
Nursery class, yeah.
00:04:27 ►
And we did psychotherapy.
00:04:31 ►
We did MDMA sessions together in the 1980s.
00:04:34 ►
So I thought if everybody knows what ecstasy is,
00:04:38 ►
and has anybody here not had ecstasy or MDMA?
00:04:46 ►
Wow. Okay. not had ecstasy or MDMA wow okay
00:04:47 ►
well then
00:04:48 ►
you’ll probably
00:04:49 ►
learn something
00:04:49 ►
and the rest
00:04:50 ►
of you
00:04:50 ►
I hope
00:04:50 ►
you’re just
00:04:51 ►
entertained
00:04:52 ►
but
00:04:53 ►
the world
00:04:55 ►
when we
00:04:56 ►
did this
00:04:57 ►
work
00:04:58 ►
was in
00:04:58 ►
1980
00:04:59 ►
to 1985
00:05:00 ►
and
00:05:02 ►
nobody had heard of MDMA.
00:05:06 ►
The word ecstasy did not exist.
00:05:08 ►
There was a psychologist in the Bay Area who gave MDMA to people.
00:05:14 ►
He called it ADAM.
00:05:15 ►
His name was Leo Zeff, and he had been doing LSD research,
00:05:20 ►
LSD sessions since the early 60s when Aldous Huxley told him he needed to do this.
00:05:25 ►
So Leo was our teacher, and he thought this would be a good thing to do.
00:05:33 ►
So we read a paper by Sasha Shulgin, first paper on people taking MDMA with Dave Nichols,
00:05:42 ►
and he said it was a good thing.
00:05:45 ►
It could help people.
00:05:46 ►
We took it together
00:05:46 ►
and we were kind of ripe for marriage at the time
00:05:54 ►
and it just made it even riper
00:05:56 ►
and cleared a lot of baggage out of our relationship
00:06:01 ►
very quickly
00:06:03 ►
and, you know, within like five minutes.
00:06:09 ►
And then
00:06:10 ►
she said something like,
00:06:12 ►
I’m going to marry you.
00:06:14 ►
I said, you and me are going to have babies.
00:06:17 ►
I said, you and me are going to have babies.
00:06:19 ►
And George said, well, let’s, you know,
00:06:20 ►
come down a little first.
00:06:24 ►
Yeah, we had rules.
00:06:25 ►
Don’t get on the phone.
00:06:28 ►
Things like that.
00:06:30 ►
But at that time,
00:06:31 ►
the only people we knew that were using MDMA
00:06:34 ►
were using it for therapy
00:06:37 ►
or for personal growth in the Bay Area.
00:06:41 ►
It was completely legal.
00:06:44 ►
We actually made a bureaucratically legal supply of MDMA.
00:06:49 ►
I actually made it in Sasha Shulgin’s laboratory,
00:06:52 ►
so I could say, I made this, I’m giving it to you.
00:06:55 ►
There was no underground manufacturer,
00:06:58 ►
no underground anything.
00:06:59 ►
It was completely above ground.
00:07:02 ►
People could know exactly
00:07:05 ►
what their dose was they know where it came from it dispensed with this whole
00:07:09 ►
level it’s been things are mostly people that were novices with any kind of
00:07:15 ►
psychoactive material so they didn’t have to be afraid of anything but
00:07:21 ►
but us
00:07:25 ►
so it’s hard for us to imagine what what that would. So it’s hard for us to imagine what that would be like.
00:07:29 ►
It’s hard for me to imagine
00:07:30 ►
that people could take this medicine
00:07:33 ►
and talk about it freely and openly.
00:07:36 ►
And we kept it quiet.
00:07:38 ►
We didn’t want it to get in the newspapers
00:07:39 ►
because we know because it felt good
00:07:41 ►
it would eventually get out on the street
00:07:42 ►
and be made illegal as it was.
00:07:47 ►
People came and had great experiences.
00:07:50 ►
We wrote two papers on it, which are still the only papers on an MDMA study for therapy.
00:08:01 ►
Then Michael Mithoper’s paper will be a real scientific study on using MDMA for treatment
00:08:07 ►
when his work is done.
00:08:09 ►
So he’s taking it to the next level here 25 years later.
00:08:16 ►
So let me say a little bit about how we prepared people,
00:08:20 ►
just how we went through, and you might compare it to how you’ve taken MDMA or XC but we
00:08:28 ►
did a lot of preparation people heard about our work word of mouth and they called us up and they
00:08:34 ►
said I want to take MDMA and I think it might be helpful to me and we gave them a long questionnaire
00:08:39 ►
and asked them everything we could think of and And the most important question was, what is your purpose for taking MDMA?
00:08:47 ►
What do you hope to accomplish?
00:08:49 ►
What’s your direction?
00:08:51 ►
Even if you don’t know what you want to accomplish,
00:08:53 ►
why are you doing this?
00:08:54 ►
Because this, in our mind,
00:08:56 ►
is the most important variable
00:08:58 ►
in taking any psychedelic mind-altering drug
00:09:02 ►
is where are you pointed?
00:09:08 ►
Are you pointed toward I want to stop eating bad I want to learn something I want to fulfill some fantasy I’ve had I mean there
00:09:18 ►
can be all sorts of purposes you know I want to I want to dance I want to experience the divine. I want to experience the divine.
00:09:26 ►
And when I first had psychedelics in college,
00:09:29 ►
my roommate, I thought psychedelics just sort of got you high
00:09:32 ►
and killed your brain cells.
00:09:33 ►
And he said, no, I take mescaline to learn things.
00:09:37 ►
And I said, I’m in college.
00:09:39 ►
That’s what I’m here for.
00:09:40 ►
So learning was my whole background of taking psychedelics. I’d go home to Fort
00:09:46 ►
Worth for summer vacations and all the jocks would say, yeah, man, we took some acid and
00:09:53 ►
had a six-pack and drove around town and looked at the colored lights and it was really cool.
00:09:58 ►
And they didn’t learn anything. So the purpose for taking it really is the most important thing
00:10:05 ►
more important than the drug even
00:10:07 ►
and then we ask them all about their background
00:10:13 ►
have they ever had any medical
00:10:15 ►
psychiatric problems
00:10:16 ►
if they had any serious problems
00:10:19 ►
psychiatrically
00:10:21 ►
we wouldn’t let them do it
00:10:22 ►
because if they really needed more help
00:10:24 ►
we couldn’t provide that.
00:10:27 ►
If it’s medical conditions, heart conditions, diabetes, liver problems, pregnant people.
00:10:33 ►
And then after all of that, if there was just any kind of a gut feeling that led us to think that this might not be a good time or place for this person,
00:10:43 ►
we would just say, you know, we’re going to have to walk away.
00:10:47 ►
Every now and then there was just a feeling that somebody wasn’t ready
00:10:51 ►
or that we just didn’t know.
00:10:54 ►
So if everything else seemed okay, but we had a bad feeling about it,
00:10:59 ►
we would just decline.
00:11:01 ►
Yeah, even if we couldn’t explain it,
00:11:03 ►
it’s just, you know, there’s just a gut feeling.
00:11:05 ►
It just doesn’t feel right, and i don’t know why that’s our our teacher leo said you know just
00:11:10 ►
don’t do it i mean there’s very little what our conscious minds are aware of so then we got all
00:11:18 ►
that information and we met with them and we went over their whole life with them and then we told
00:11:22 ►
them our backgrounds uh not quite
00:11:25 ►
so much detail but our history of getting involved with with psychedelic medicines and mdma so that
00:11:30 ►
they knew who we were completely and answered all their questions about us so that that we as their
00:11:39 ►
sitters were they knew who their sitter was and they knew that they felt comfortable in us being in control of their environment.
00:11:48 ►
And if they didn’t feel comfortable with that, well, then they wouldn’t do it.
00:11:52 ►
And we gave them a lot of information about all the possible negative things we could think of
00:11:57 ►
that might happen with MDMA.
00:11:59 ►
And if that scared them off, that was great.
00:12:01 ►
And they just feel like they’re not ready for it.
00:12:04 ►
them off that was great and they just feel like they’re not ready for it and one of the things we told them was if they should be prepared to experience
00:12:09 ►
absolutely anything worst experience of their life confusion you know disruption
00:12:16 ►
of relationships you know anything just willing to face absolutely anything that
00:12:22 ►
came up and that both screen people out out who probably shouldn’t be doing it
00:12:27 ►
and made our job easier by screening those people out
00:12:32 ►
and having people be totally prepared so they could totally surrender to the experience of it.
00:12:37 ►
Anything you more want to say about that beforehand?
00:12:41 ►
There was another piece that, well, there was a formal structure,
00:12:44 ►
which Leo had always
00:12:46 ►
told us with any kind of medicine
00:12:48 ►
no matter how
00:12:49 ►
how dissociated
00:12:52 ►
from normal reality people get
00:12:53 ►
if you ask a person
00:12:55 ►
for an agreement to a structure
00:12:57 ►
before you start
00:12:58 ►
if people make a conscious decision to
00:13:02 ►
no I won’t be violent
00:13:03 ►
if they say out loud no I won’t leave the premises, no I won’t leave, I won’t be violent, if they say out loud, no, I won’t leave the premises,
00:13:06 ►
no, I won’t use the phone, whatever,
00:13:10 ►
no, part of our structure was we would not explicitly have sex with our clients or each other.
00:13:18 ►
So that we would say these things out loud and we would ask them to agree to that
00:13:22 ►
and they would agree to that.
00:13:24 ►
And Leo said that, you know, you can invoke this structure and people will remember and they can
00:13:28 ►
honor an agreement a deep agreement that they make consciously even when they’re traveling
00:13:33 ►
we don’t know where and even though MDMA technically is not a major psychedelic
00:13:40 ►
every now and then somebody would insist on having a white light experience it’s just a catalyst
00:13:45 ►
so technically, pharmacologically, no it’s not acid
00:13:50 ►
but every now and then somebody would have a huge experience
00:13:53 ►
and still they would be able to
00:13:56 ►
honor that agreement
00:13:57 ►
so beyond all the structure we’d say these specific things
00:14:01 ►
will you agree to this, yes, will you agree to this, yes
00:14:03 ►
and then at the end of that we’d go
00:14:04 ►
will you turn over all conscious control to us? If I ask you to do
00:14:10 ►
anything, lie down, whatever, will you agree to comply? Will you comply with the structure?
00:14:18 ►
And if they really couldn’t go there, then maybe they didn’t trust me enough to take
00:14:23 ►
medicine with me in the first place. So that was kind of the final level of screening and if you can’t
00:14:28 ►
agree to this structure because we’re just we’re either in our house but we’re
00:14:32 ►
in their house we’re not in a hospital we don’t have medical backup beyond
00:14:37 ►
ourselves so that was that’s like that made all the work kind of happened
00:14:44 ►
before the trip.
00:14:45 ►
That was the huge homework, was these agreements.
00:14:49 ►
Yeah, the four basic agreements were there will be no sexual interaction,
00:14:53 ►
no physical aggression or destruction of property.
00:14:57 ►
We’re all going to stay there at that location until we all agree that the session’s over.
00:15:03 ►
And if we ask them to do anything based on
00:15:06 ►
the structure of the session they agree to do it whatever it is so it basically turns over their
00:15:11 ►
all their ego functions to us so they don’t have to worry about tracking anything or keeping track
00:15:19 ►
of things or remembering to do this or that or you know know, am I being polite or whatever.
00:15:28 ►
They can just let it all go and get out of the ego and go into the depth of whatever the medicine reveals to them.
00:15:35 ►
So on the day of the session,
00:15:38 ►
we told them not to eat food for about six hours
00:15:41 ►
and to help the absorption.
00:15:44 ►
We’d usually give them 100 to 125 milligrams
00:15:48 ►
and give them a choice there.
00:15:51 ►
After an hour and a half or so,
00:15:52 ►
another 50 milligrams if they wanted it.
00:15:56 ►
And at the beginning, we would read them a prayer.
00:16:02 ►
It’s kind of a surrender prayer that Leo Zeff used.
00:16:08 ►
And it’s a Christian prayer, and we’re not necessarily Christian,
00:16:12 ►
but it’s a really good…
00:16:16 ►
We thought it was just a good attitude, good for attitude orientation.
00:16:22 ►
And we would just say, you just say whatever these words are helpful
00:16:26 ►
then you can take them in
00:16:27 ►
whatever is not helpful
00:16:28 ►
you can let them go
00:16:29 ►
but I’ll just read that
00:16:31 ►
this is by Francis Finelon
00:16:35 ►
who was some sort of priest or monk
00:16:37 ►
around 1700
00:16:39 ►
Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of thee
00:16:44 ►
thou only knowest what I ought to ask of Thee.
00:16:46 ►
Thou only knowest what I need.
00:16:51 ►
Thou lovest me better than I know how to love myself.
00:16:57 ►
O Father, give to Thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask.
00:17:01 ►
I dare not ask either for crosses or for consolations.
00:17:04 ►
I simply present myself before Thee. I open my heart to Thee. Or for consolations. I am silent. I offer myself in sacrifice. I yield myself to thee.
00:17:26 ►
I would have no other desire than to accomplish thy will.
00:17:30 ►
Teach me to pray.
00:17:32 ►
Pray thyself in me.
00:17:34 ►
Amen.
00:17:36 ►
So if someone’s able to maintain this kind of attitude,
00:17:39 ►
even for a moment,
00:17:40 ►
they’re really set to just surrender to a very positive experience.
00:17:47 ►
And basically we had them lie down with eye shades and headphones, we didn’t force it
00:17:54 ►
of course, and played instrumental music.
00:17:57 ►
And they just had their session and if they wanted to talk to us, we would listen, we
00:18:01 ►
would support them, hold their hand, we would discourage them
00:18:05 ►
from dialoguing with us in an interpersonal dialogue because we really wanted them just
00:18:10 ►
to experience themselves in this state. And then after a few hours, four or five hours,
00:18:16 ►
they would start to come down and then we would start to talk and interact and over
00:18:20 ►
the next two or three hours, it was more like regular psychotherapy sessions
00:18:25 ►
talking about problems in their lives,
00:18:28 ►
current life or childhood or whatever came up
00:18:31 ►
to help them work through their feelings
00:18:34 ►
and come to integration and closure
00:18:38 ►
and consolidate things they learned,
00:18:40 ►
have new ideas about it.
00:18:42 ►
And the coming down phase actually was more
00:18:44 ►
sort of emotional psychotherapy
00:18:49 ►
seemed to happen more in the latter phase
00:18:51 ►
when the medicine’s wearing off
00:18:53 ►
and they’re integrating
00:18:54 ►
than the sort of the peak phase
00:18:56 ►
where they’re just kind of, you know,
00:18:58 ►
everything’s fabulous, which it is
00:19:01 ►
and then they’re integrating into their life
00:19:03 ►
in the lower phase.
00:19:04 ►
Yeah, it was that transition of coming down, still feeling a little altered,
00:19:09 ►
but normal life starts to come back in,
00:19:11 ►
and that’s that zone where real work can happen,
00:19:15 ►
and that’s usually what did happen.
00:19:18 ►
We chose anybody who asked us to do it who met the criteria and was willing to do it.
00:19:25 ►
Yeah, these were what most people would call normal volunteers.
00:19:28 ►
These were functional people.
00:19:31 ►
Nobody was acutely psychotic or, you know, people have problems.
00:19:38 ►
Yeah, this was started in San Francisco and then ended up in Santa Fe.
00:19:43 ►
And most of the people we knew were involved
00:19:45 ►
in some kind of meditation or spiritual practice. Not all had had psychedelics before, but most
00:19:55 ►
of them had that kind of orientation.
00:20:01 ►
A lot of it’s mostly physical. The only persons that really had what people might call a bad trip
00:20:07 ►
were people that had increased anxiety.
00:20:10 ►
Every now and then somebody would have panic.
00:20:12 ►
If you’re prone to anxiety, you can have panic attacks afterwards.
00:20:16 ►
You’ve got to let people know that’s a possibility.
00:20:20 ►
Yeah.
00:20:21 ►
Yeah.
00:20:22 ►
Yeah, there were some people
00:20:26 ►
three or four people who had a history of
00:20:29 ►
panic attacks in their life
00:20:31 ►
maybe years before
00:20:32 ►
and those were the only people
00:20:35 ►
who had a problem
00:20:37 ►
with severe
00:20:39 ►
anxiety during or
00:20:41 ►
after the session
00:20:42 ►
one of those women
00:20:44 ►
she was in her 50s she was going
00:20:49 ►
through menopause and she had horrible hot flashes and her MDMA session it was
00:20:55 ►
more like an LSD session she said she regressed to the point of being some
00:21:01 ►
life form that crawled from the ocean onto land and sort of went
00:21:06 ►
through evolution of life. And then she said for about a week she didn’t have any hot flashes
00:21:15 ►
at all. And we had another woman who said she would take a little, a small dose just
00:21:24 ►
before her menstrual period
00:21:25 ►
would wipe out the irritability that she experienced with premenstrual moods.
00:21:31 ►
So this woman had no hot flashes.
00:21:33 ►
This older woman, older than us then.
00:21:38 ►
But then afterwards, she had a panic attack or two in the two or three weeks afterwards also.
00:21:46 ►
So she was different in both in what she got out of it and in the color but other
00:21:50 ►
than the panic and in the physical symptoms of jaw tension and tiredness
00:21:54 ►
afterwards or low mood the day or two afterwards that was really it for the
00:21:59 ►
people that we gave it to
00:22:06 ►
yeah I mean we don’t have experience with that so
00:22:09 ►
the question was
00:22:12 ►
what about doing craniosacral
00:22:15 ►
work or intense
00:22:16 ►
body work with MDMA
00:22:18 ►
and I know
00:22:20 ►
we just don’t have experience with that
00:22:22 ►
so I don’t know what to say
00:22:24 ►
I think it can be very useful I know we just don’t have experience with that, so I don’t know what to say.
00:22:27 ►
I think it can be very useful.
00:22:32 ►
Because I think that it’s a very physical experience.
00:22:38 ►
There’s this kind of peripheral anesthesia where you don’t feel surface pain so much,
00:22:40 ►
but you can feel deep work.
00:22:44 ►
I’m more curious because I’m excited about my experience.
00:22:50 ►
You mean that the deep body work would release some blood clot in your veins?
00:22:55 ►
That would be a danger with any deep body work.
00:22:57 ►
That would be you and your body worker.
00:22:59 ►
You’ve got to get down with your medical history.
00:23:07 ►
I can’t think of any reason why MDMA would be more likely to have a clot released from your vein.
00:23:09 ►
But, you know, that’s just theory.
00:23:18 ►
Her question is about, she wanted to know about the chemistry of MDMA,
00:23:21 ►
how it affects your body, if there are any after effects.
00:23:25 ►
Very briefly… You said it was an MDA, but MDA as well.
00:23:27 ►
Do you do a comparison with MDA?
00:23:30 ►
We did not compare with MDA.
00:23:32 ►
They are similar, I believe.
00:23:42 ►
MDMA releases the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine predominantly. I also think maybe some norepinephrine.
00:23:45 ►
So we know it does that.
00:23:49 ►
Why that creates the experience people have is not well understood at all.
00:23:57 ►
My idea is that MDMA decreases fear,
00:24:04 ►
the physiological,
00:24:06 ►
neurophysiological experience of fear,
00:24:09 ►
so that if you have a thought
00:24:12 ►
that normally would be frightening to you,
00:24:14 ►
that would make you anxious and tense up
00:24:16 ►
and be defensive and push it away,
00:24:18 ►
that reaction just is blocked.
00:24:21 ►
So you don’t push it away,
00:24:22 ►
and it just, whatever is scary,
00:24:24 ►
it just comes through, and you don’t push it away and it just whatever is scary just comes through and you’re in you it’s you can’t feel afraid and so that’s why I think
00:24:31 ►
that people are doing talking in their relationship they say things that
00:24:37 ►
normally they would have been too inhibited to say and they can hear
00:24:41 ►
things without reacting to it in a defensive way.
00:24:45 ►
Or old trauma can come up.
00:24:48 ►
You know, things that you may have been blocking for many, many years, not aware of.
00:24:52 ►
When that’s not in the way anymore, lots of old material can come up.
00:24:57 ►
You work through it, that’s it.
00:24:59 ►
That’s why it’s like, oh yeah, five minutes, that’s all it took for us to clean it up.
00:25:03 ►
Yeah, memories can come up.
00:25:05 ►
And MDMA is not the only way to do that.
00:25:08 ►
I mean, there are many techniques to decrease fear and enhance relationships and recover from trauma.
00:25:17 ►
But that’s my theory about it.
00:25:19 ►
And there is some neurochemistry about drugs that boost serotonin or activate serotonin receptors block
00:25:26 ►
the fear response in animals like animals mice that are trained to freeze when they’re shot if
00:25:33 ►
you give them a serotonin agonist drug they forget to freeze so that can that fear conditioning is
00:25:42 ►
eliminated you know which is can have good and bad consequences.
00:25:46 ►
But for therapy, it’s a helpful thing to show.
00:25:50 ►
Yeah?
00:25:50 ►
I have a question.
00:25:51 ►
What was your sample size?
00:25:54 ►
Okay.
00:25:55 ►
He asked our sample size.
00:25:57 ►
We gave MDMA to about 80 people over five years,
00:26:01 ►
about 100 or so sessions.
00:26:04 ►
We published on the first 29 people,
00:26:07 ►
where we sent questionnaires after the fact,
00:26:11 ►
up to two years later,
00:26:11 ►
asking everything we’d asked before, all the details.
00:26:15 ►
So our published statistics was 29 people.
00:26:21 ►
Depression afterwards,
00:26:23 ►
no one had any lasting depressive mood more than a couple
00:26:28 ►
of days in our group. But again, they’re pretty, you know, the walking well, pretty, I mean,
00:26:35 ►
normal neurotic people.
00:26:38 ►
We have hunches. We don’t, there’s no data, but we have hunches that when people overuse,
00:26:43 ►
when they really deplete neurotransmitters, you’re going to see more of those things,
00:26:47 ►
more anxiety, more depression, but that’s just an idea.
00:26:51 ►
We don’t know.
00:26:51 ►
Well, we sometimes use some tryptophan.
00:26:56 ►
Sometimes if people had a lot of muscle tension, we would give them Valium,
00:27:01 ►
and then we learned that we could give them a inderol or
00:27:05 ►
our atenolol which is a beta sympathetic blocker an adrenaline blocker and that helped a lot with
00:27:10 ►
the physical muscle tightness that sort of thing you know a lot of the stimulation people get jaw
00:27:17 ►
tightness when you take a big dose when you you really get tired you really get tired, you really get depressed, that’s a sympathetic nervous stimulation.
00:27:26 ►
So some people are more or less sensitive to this.
00:27:30 ►
If you had a beta blocker, it cuts the sympathetic stimulation,
00:27:34 ►
but not the central effect.
00:27:36 ►
So what your conscious mind is experiencing still happens,
00:27:39 ►
but you’re not grinding your teeth off.
00:27:45 ►
I’d say it’s more your genetics,
00:27:48 ►
because women experience these kinds of side effects on lower doses than men do.
00:27:56 ►
Some people don’t get it at all.
00:27:58 ►
Some people get used to it.
00:28:00 ►
Yeah.
00:28:02 ►
Just to answer his question,
00:28:04 ►
I didn’t really say people had depression here. yeah just to answer his question of the people
00:28:05 ►
I didn’t really say people had depression
00:28:07 ►
here I called it fatigue
00:28:10 ►
23 of the 29 people
00:28:12 ►
had fatigue
00:28:13 ►
lasting a few hours to a few days
00:28:15 ►
for 16 it was less
00:28:18 ►
than 2 days
00:28:19 ►
so it was more sort of tired low energy
00:28:21 ►
than like down mood
00:28:23 ►
you mean healthy from a physical psychological way So it was more sort of tired, low energy than like down mood.
00:28:28 ►
You mean healthy from a physical, psychological way?
00:28:31 ►
You know, that’s really hard to say. I think people are so unique.
00:28:36 ►
Every person is so unique.
00:28:39 ►
It’s what’s healthy or harmful for that person.
00:28:42 ►
healthy or harmful for that person.
00:28:48 ►
And, you know, if you had a thousand people just like you,
00:28:53 ►
we could do a research study with a control group,
00:28:54 ►
and we could answer that question, but we don’t.
00:29:01 ►
Generally, we felt, I feel, that for the therapy, we wouldn’t give people a session more than every several weeks.
00:29:06 ►
And the dose was, the most we would give would be 125 plus 75 for a large man, usually, every several weeks.
00:29:17 ►
The most sessions people had with us was, I think, three, well, five full sessions was a man who had terminal cancer.
00:29:25 ►
And he did great.
00:29:28 ►
But, you know, everybody’s different.
00:29:30 ►
All our brains are different.
00:29:31 ►
Sensitivities are different.
00:29:32 ►
You know, I’ve heard of people, they took, you know, 50 milligrams and had a horrible time and felt horrible afterwards for a long time.
00:29:40 ►
So, everybody’s different.
00:29:45 ►
Did we usually start low?
00:29:47 ►
No, we usually started with, we said, you know, if you want low-medium or high-dose,
00:29:52 ►
you tell us low-medium or high, and we’ll give you the side of the milligrams.
00:29:55 ►
So, we let them child.
00:29:57 ►
We didn’t start low.
00:29:58 ►
We started with what would be a decent dose to get them through that threshold
00:30:03 ►
of not having fear and feeling good without overdoing it.
00:30:09 ►
Well, you know, I’m not at all…
00:30:12 ►
She’s asking, what is the medical dose compared to a street dosage?
00:30:15 ►
I’m no expert at all on street doses.
00:30:18 ►
I’ve heard that street doses are supposed to be 100 milligrams.
00:30:23 ►
So we would give a little more than that.
00:30:26 ►
But that’s, you know, some people take four or five street dozens.
00:30:31 ►
Do you look at milligrams per kilogram or is it just kind of eyeballs?
00:30:37 ►
We, it was more a general way.
00:30:41 ►
We said, you know, you’re a man, you man. Well, men are bigger, so it’s size.
00:30:46 ►
Women seem to be more sensitive independent of size.
00:30:50 ►
We decided we don’t know why.
00:30:52 ►
Actually, some research has been done that shows women are more sensitive milligrams per kilogram
00:30:56 ►
in some parameters.
00:30:58 ►
In Switzerland, they found this.
00:31:00 ►
And we would just say, if you’re a woman low dose is 50 medium is 75 high is 100
00:31:09 ►
I think that’s right and for me it was 25 milligrams more something like that
00:31:14 ►
and then the booster would be yeah but then there’s kind of you know okay so
00:31:19 ►
these are people that have never had it before if you’re a person that wants to
00:31:24 ►
use a particular medicine it’s like because this one it really does have more toxic effect than
00:31:29 ►
say mushrooms or psychedelic I mean the idea is you want to clear the threshold
00:31:34 ►
so that you can work because if you take big big doses they will catch up with
00:31:39 ►
you and you know some people are sensitive and get tired so so there’s
00:31:43 ►
and the more you take the more grandiose, the more grandiose you’re going to get.
00:31:47 ►
You’re going to get a big rush, and you’re going to have a bunch of ideas,
00:31:50 ►
and you’re going to do some work.
00:31:52 ►
But if you really want to work with the material over time, off and on,
00:31:56 ►
you want to find what the threshold is and take basically as little as possible.
00:32:01 ►
Yes, man in the hat.
00:32:03 ►
Potentially getting us as cinematic as possible. Yes, man in the hat? Potentially getting us into this.
00:32:07 ►
Yes, the question is
00:32:09 ►
he said
00:32:11 ►
he can go into a situation
00:32:13 ►
without MDMA
00:32:15 ►
where he had taken it before and he gets
00:32:17 ►
what he called a Pavlovian response
00:32:19 ►
and experiences, I think, meaning some
00:32:21 ►
MDMA effects
00:32:23 ►
just from being in that situation.
00:32:26 ►
There, in fact, was a small research study done using hypnotherapy.
00:32:34 ►
And Dr. Arthur Hastings published this study.
00:32:36 ►
I’m not sure where.
00:32:38 ►
But this was all people who had had MDMA.
00:32:41 ►
And then he did a hypnosis and reminded them of their experience.
00:32:47 ►
And I think some they did in a group of people.
00:32:50 ►
And they did some measurements measuring parameters of experience
00:32:53 ►
and people did experience a lot of the effects that they had on MDMA
00:32:58 ►
from this sort of hypnotic induction.
00:33:02 ►
And so I believe that’s valid, what you’re saying.
00:33:07 ►
And it’s because it’s not just the drug.
00:33:10 ►
You know, the drug is just a chemical.
00:33:13 ►
It’s inert.
00:33:15 ►
It’s inert as fly dust.
00:33:17 ►
It’s what we do with it and where we are
00:33:21 ►
and who we’re with and what they want.
00:33:24 ►
And it’s, you know, the setting and drug are the three variables.
00:33:29 ►
And the mindset includes what’s our mindset as the sitters,
00:33:33 ►
what’s the person’s mindset, you know, what is the physical environment,
00:33:37 ►
what are we going to do after it’s over.
00:33:40 ►
All that is very important.
00:33:42 ►
So the drug is just part of it.
00:33:45 ►
Yes?
00:33:46 ►
Beta blockers, did that have a cardiogenic or respiratory effect as well?
00:33:52 ►
He’s asking if beta blockers had a cardiogenic or respiratory effect
00:33:57 ►
in addition to muscles.
00:33:59 ►
Beta blockers basically prevent adrenaline from doing what it does.
00:34:07 ►
Adrenaline makes your heart speed up when you’re anxious.
00:34:10 ►
It makes your muscles tense.
00:34:12 ►
It can lower your blood pressure sometimes, which usually was not a problem.
00:34:19 ►
And it does not affect respiration at all.
00:34:25 ►
As far as prescription drugs go,
00:34:28 ►
it’s fairly safe.
00:34:29 ►
I mean, the worst that would happen with Inderol,
00:34:31 ►
assuming you had a normal heart,
00:34:33 ►
would be that if you stood up quickly,
00:34:35 ►
you might faint if your blood pressure got low.
00:34:39 ►
Yes?
00:34:43 ►
Have I given MDMA to diabetics?
00:34:45 ►
No.
00:34:46 ►
Because MDMA affects the sympathetic nervous system,
00:34:50 ►
which affects insulin secretion,
00:34:52 ►
which could be a problem for diabetics.
00:34:54 ►
At the moment, I can’t explain which way,
00:34:59 ►
but I think it promotes insulin secretion, but don’t quote me on that.
00:35:07 ►
It would not be good for a diabetic.
00:35:08 ►
We excluded diabetics for that reason.
00:35:13 ►
Yes?
00:35:14 ►
Do you know how to manage it?
00:35:15 ►
Oh, the question is, has any work been done with end-of-life care in older people?
00:35:21 ►
You know, we had one man who had terminal cancer,
00:35:26 ►
and he was really the most amazing benefit we got.
00:35:30 ►
He was not really afraid of dying.
00:35:33 ►
You know, he had dealt with that.
00:35:35 ►
He had four years of this horrible pain from multiple myeloma,
00:35:39 ►
and it really impacted his lifestyle.
00:35:46 ►
impacted his lifestyle but I think that MDMA would be would be excellent for people who are afraid of dying and afraid of death because it’s fear and
00:35:53 ►
and and those of you who read the maps both a newsletter you’ve heard stories
00:35:59 ►
of people who have terminal illness who’ve used MDMA and found it very helpful.
00:36:07 ►
And the stimulation can be euphoric.
00:36:10 ►
It can feel really good and that can
00:36:11 ►
open up all kinds of things.
00:36:13 ►
And there is a study planned to
00:36:15 ►
use MDMA for dying people at Harvard.
00:36:19 ►
Yes?
00:36:20 ►
Can I ask, do you see diabetics
00:36:21 ►
who use the same?
00:36:23 ►
The question is, are there any diabetics here who have used MDMA?
00:36:26 ►
Raise your hand.
00:36:28 ►
There you go.
00:36:29 ►
See, people are different.
00:36:32 ►
You know, if you go to medical school, you’re trained to deal with the worst possible outcome
00:36:37 ►
because if you’re a doctor, sooner or later it happens.
00:36:40 ►
And it’s really unpleasant.
00:36:43 ►
So, you know, we just like to avoid negative
00:36:47 ►
things it’s it’s if it’s one in 10,000 that’s like you know we don’t want that
00:36:53 ►
yeah so that’s one reason that people would come to us and ask to have the
00:36:57 ►
experience with it it’s so experimental especially at that point we couldn’t
00:37:02 ►
advocate it we couldn’t say this would be good for you or you
00:37:06 ►
should do this it was like no you want to do this okay I’m going to tell you everything I can think
00:37:10 ►
of and then you’ll have to decide about your medicine for yourself out there he’s asking
00:37:21 ►
about a study out of Switzerland on the shortening of the dendrites in MDMA.
00:37:26 ►
I’m not familiar with that particular study.
00:37:28 ►
I know of a lot of the studies on MDMA and brain damage.
00:37:32 ►
I’m really not very qualified to comment on them.
00:37:36 ►
I’m not an expert on translating animal research to human research.
00:37:42 ►
It’s very controversial.
00:37:44 ►
There’s evidence. It’s like global warming, you know,
00:37:47 ►
there’s evidence to support your opinion. So, I’m sure other researchers might have
00:37:55 ►
better comments on that later on, but it’s hard to…
00:38:01 ►
What’s your personal feeling about it?
00:38:03 ►
Well, my personal feeling is the those as we used in the frequency
00:38:06 ►
used and the people used and we were healthy people and screen and with
00:38:09 ►
medical supervision did just fine and and the people you know that Leo’s F
00:38:19 ►
worked with back then you know we’re in touch with some of those people and none
00:38:22 ►
of them have ever heard of any of those people ever having any problems with MDMA I’ve never
00:38:28 ►
heard of any person who got into you may in a medical setting and there are quite
00:38:32 ►
you know quite a number now I mean in the dozens or so I guess have any I mean
00:38:37 ►
maybe other people know if I’m wrong had any serious problems with it so that’s the best
00:38:45 ►
answer I can
00:38:45 ►
give you there’s
00:38:46 ►
just so little
00:38:47 ►
known
00:38:48 ►
most studies
00:38:50 ►
are with animals
00:38:51 ►
and it’s hard
00:38:51 ►
to translate
00:38:52 ►
animal to
00:38:53 ►
human models
00:38:55 ►
especially when
00:38:55 ►
you’re talking
00:38:56 ►
about consciousness
00:38:56 ►
but even
00:38:57 ►
toxicity
00:38:57 ►
it’s
00:38:58 ►
yes the
00:39:01 ►
yellow shirt
00:39:01 ►
so I’m not sure to answer totally but you’ve seen Yes, in the yellow shirt.
00:39:12 ►
So, I’m not sure, totally, but you’ve seen brain scans that show pictures of like holes,
00:39:17 ►
which are called holes in brains of people who had MDMA, and you want to know if that is a concern.
00:39:17 ►
Is that correct?
00:39:31 ►
Again, that’s a complicated, controversial area. I do know that one study later was methamphetamine.
00:39:33 ►
I don’t know if that was a hole-in-the-brain study.
00:39:35 ►
Also… Yeah, one of the really scary studies, this is really bad,
00:39:39 ►
then not that long ago, a couple of months ago, it was like, whoops,
00:39:43 ►
it was actually methamphetamine that was used.
00:39:47 ►
Also, brain scans, you know, it’s not like an x-ray.
00:39:50 ►
Brain scans are tweaked and enhanced to bring out what the investigator is looking for.
00:39:57 ►
Because it’s like setting the controls on your TV, the brightness, the contrast, the color.
00:40:02 ►
I mean, they set all that because they’re looking for fine differences.
00:40:06 ►
And, I mean, I don’t want to get political about it,
00:40:09 ►
but it really takes an expert, I mean, a major expert,
00:40:14 ►
to really interpret a brain scan in the context of brain scan technology,
00:40:20 ►
methodology, all the marker chemicals used in brain scans.
00:40:25 ►
It’s incredibly complex.
00:40:26 ►
And again, like global warming, it’s subject to subtle bias in any and all directions.
00:40:33 ►
So I think for us here, even the experts, I don’t know that we’re brain scan experts.
00:40:39 ►
It would be hard to judge.
00:40:41 ►
I don’t.
00:40:42 ►
Oh, yes.
00:40:43 ►
No, when we did it,
00:40:45 ►
tryptophan was available,
00:40:47 ►
which is in 5-HTP
00:40:48 ►
as a precursor to tryptophan.
00:40:50 ►
So sometimes we would use tryptophan
00:40:52 ►
to sort of, you know,
00:40:54 ►
the theory that tryptophan
00:40:56 ►
is a serotonin precursor.
00:40:58 ►
Actually, just recently,
00:41:00 ►
I read,
00:41:02 ►
this is an animal study again,
00:41:04 ►
that boosting
00:41:06 ►
animals with
00:41:08 ►
either 5-HTP or tryptophan
00:41:11 ►
cause some negative
00:41:12 ►
effect or increase neurotoxicity
00:41:14 ►
but there’s probably 12
00:41:16 ►
other variables in that experiment
00:41:18 ►
that I can’t tell you about or explain
00:41:20 ►
but it made me think
00:41:21 ►
not necessarily
00:41:24 ►
a totally harmless thing in every case to use 5-HTP or tryptophan with MDMA.
00:41:31 ►
So it’s just, you know, we’re all differentdose SSRI antidepressants,
00:41:48 ►
like in the Prozac family, after MDMA to mitigate side effects.
00:41:53 ►
I have heard of people doing this, and I have heard that it is helpful.
00:41:59 ►
This is word of mouth.
00:42:01 ►
I do know that generally giving an SSRI before the session attenuates
00:42:06 ►
or reduces a lot of the
00:42:08 ►
MDMA effects based on how
00:42:10 ►
it works neurochemically
00:42:11 ►
but afterwards just like you
00:42:14 ►
I’ve heard stories that you’ll say
00:42:15 ►
this helped me with my
00:42:17 ►
after effects and I have not heard
00:42:20 ►
I have not heard negatives
00:42:22 ►
on that
00:42:23 ►
yes
00:42:24 ►
she asked if they have any more
00:42:29 ►
experience with MDMA affected with anxiety it was anxiety is a big class of
00:42:34 ►
disorders which includes sort of constant anxiety panic disorder which
00:42:41 ►
are sudden overwhelming panic attacks they’re like different animals so this was just people who had sudden overwhelming panic attacks not people who were just sort of
00:42:51 ►
anxious in general or anxious about a certain situation in their life that’s a different
00:42:56 ►
a different animal and it involves the brain in different in different ways that i couldn’t
00:43:02 ►
explain but statistically there are different groups of people with the ongoing anxiety.
00:43:07 ►
Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder,
00:43:11 ►
and anxiety is one of the common symptoms.
00:43:13 ►
But there’s people who’ve reported that it helped them recover from their trauma,
00:43:19 ►
and Dr. Mithoffer here is doing a study now on post-traumatic stress disorder,
00:43:23 ►
using it for treatment.
00:43:25 ►
It doesn’t mean people aren’t going to get anxious during the session
00:43:27 ►
and might have panic attacks
00:43:30 ►
during or after the session.
00:43:31 ►
But overall, their lives
00:43:34 ►
could be improved overall
00:43:35 ►
even with that, because panic attacks is a
00:43:37 ►
brief thing.
00:43:39 ►
Yes, right here.
00:43:47 ►
Okay.
00:43:47 ►
She says,
00:43:48 ►
are we sitting
00:43:48 ►
currently,
00:43:49 ►
meaning giving
00:43:49 ►
MDMA currently?
00:43:50 ►
No,
00:43:50 ►
we have not
00:43:50 ►
given it since
00:43:51 ►
July 1st,
00:43:53 ►
1985 when it
00:43:54 ►
was declared
00:43:55 ►
illegal by the
00:43:55 ►
DEA.
00:43:57 ►
And one last
00:43:58 ►
question.
00:44:00 ►
Yes,
00:44:00 ►
you in the
00:44:00 ►
back there.
00:44:05 ►
Were the doses always administer thoroughly?
00:44:07 ►
Yes.
00:44:09 ►
Okay, well, this is a great audience.
00:44:14 ►
I’m surprised many people are here.
00:44:15 ►
We’re happy to answer other questions that didn’t get answered afterwards.
00:44:19 ►
Thanks for coming and enjoy the rest of the day.
00:44:23 ►
Thank the two of you so much.
00:44:25 ►
We really appreciate it.
00:44:26 ►
Thank you.
00:44:28 ►
If it hasn’t already hit you by now,
00:44:36 ►
just try to imagine how many tens of thousands of people
00:44:39 ►
could have already been healed from all kinds of mental illnesses
00:44:44 ►
had the U.S. government not begun its persecution of people
00:44:48 ►
who were obviously working with a wonder drug.
00:44:51 ►
Now, while I’ve used MDMA both in small groups and at large gatherings,
00:44:56 ►
I sometimes forget that it was first and foremost
00:45:00 ►
a medicine that can almost work miracles when in the hands of a skilled therapist.
00:45:06 ►
After listening to Michael Mithoffer last week and then hearing about the work that went on before MDMA was scheduled,
00:45:13 ►
I find it hard to believe that we are still living in such a dark age that this important medicine has been banned.
00:45:21 ►
You might recall that the last dark ages descended upon the Western world just after the
00:45:27 ►
fall of the Roman Empire. My guess is that one day historians will look at these times and call
00:45:34 ►
them a Dark Age as well. The Dark Age after the fall of the American Empire. I still find it
00:45:41 ►
amazing how deeply ethical the early MDMA healers were.
00:45:46 ►
Just think about this for a moment.
00:45:48 ►
George Greer went so far as to synthesize the MDMA himself
00:45:53 ►
so he could tell his patients that he knew without any doubt that it was 100% pure.
00:45:59 ►
Now that is the path that our best healers were on
00:46:02 ►
when the fascists in Washington took away their right to use this powerful medicine in their work.
00:46:09 ►
A thousand years from now, this insane war on people who want to alter their consciousness with something other than alcohol will be looked upon as barbaric, which it actually is, of course.
00:46:20 ►
In many ways, it is simply a continuation of the Christian persecution of people they called pagans.
00:46:28 ►
But let’s not get into that today.
00:46:30 ►
Getting back to George and Riqua, I found abstracts of the papers that they wrote about their work,
00:46:37 ►
and I’ll put links to them with the program notes for this podcast.
00:46:41 ►
And if you haven’t been to our program notes blog yet, I hope you’ll find the
00:46:45 ►
time to do so sometime soon. I’ve just about got all of the podcast notes transferred to this blog
00:46:51 ►
now, and it’ll make it a lot easier to find particular programs in a number of different
00:46:56 ►
ways. And you can get there from links on our main matrixmasters.com and matrixmasters.com slash podcast pages,
00:47:05 ►
or you can go there directly by typing www.psychedelicsalon.org
00:47:12 ►
in your browser’s address box.
00:47:15 ►
Don’t even need the www, I don’t think.
00:47:19 ►
Getting back to today’s talk,
00:47:21 ►
at around the ten-minute mark of this podcast
00:47:23 ►
is where Riqua
00:47:25 ►
described the importance of a formal
00:47:27 ►
agreement by the participants
00:47:29 ►
before their session began
00:47:31 ►
and if I remember
00:47:33 ►
correctly, Ann Shulgin
00:47:35 ►
also talked about this in her
00:47:37 ►
discussion of psychedelic
00:47:39 ►
psychotherapy in the shadow
00:47:40 ►
which you can hear in podcast number 21
00:47:43 ►
and for what it’s worth I highly recommend doing this even for recreational get-togethers.
00:47:50 ►
Knowing where the boundaries are before you begin is a big help later on, particularly
00:47:54 ►
when your personal boundaries have melted away.
00:47:59 ►
And if you all agree ahead of time that there will be no violence, no sex, no leaving before
00:48:03 ►
an agreed-upon time, well, things like that violence, no sex, no leaving before an agreed upon time,
00:48:05 ►
well, things like that. If you all agree on those things before beginning your journey together,
00:48:10 ►
I think you’ll find both the set and setting are greatly improved. And like Rick was said,
00:48:16 ►
even someone who is deeply altered can somehow pull themselves together when reminded about their
00:48:22 ►
prior agreement and then settle back
00:48:25 ►
down into the rhythm of the group.
00:48:28 ►
And speaking of rhythm, I got an email the other day from Shen, who told me about the
00:48:33 ►
Ethno Super Lounge, which is a network of musicians based in Australia, Japan, and India
00:48:40 ►
who come together to share their songs and sounds in the spirit of unity, healing, and transcendence.
00:48:48 ►
Their website’s at www.ethnosuperlounge.com
00:48:55 ►
and I’ve listened to some of the music there and really liked it.
00:48:59 ►
If you’re a lover of world music, you might want to check it out.
00:49:04 ►
Shen also wrote,
00:49:06 ►
It was last year when I was staying with Chris,
00:49:08 ►
Chris, by the way, is a mutual friend of ours,
00:49:11 ►
when I was staying with Chris that he played a Terrence video.
00:49:15 ►
I think it was called Machine Consciousness and Psychedelic Consciousness.
00:49:19 ►
It completely captured my attention, and from there I soon found your podcast.
00:49:23 ►
Speaking of machine consciousness,
00:49:25 ►
I know you can download or maybe buy the video online, but I wonder if it’s possible to put
00:49:31 ►
just the audio into a podcast. That remains one of the most fascinating Terrence Talks I’ve heard.
00:49:37 ►
So you might want to take a look for that video. I’m sure it’s on the net somewhere. I’ve got so
00:49:43 ►
many things scheduled right now. I don’t know if I’m going to have the time to do that myself, but some of you
00:49:48 ►
might want to go out and check that out, and we’ll put it up on the blog somewhere if you
00:49:51 ►
find it. And a special thank you, by the way, goes out to my friends, Carol and Chris, who
00:49:58 ►
have been on the road for, well, I guess it’s going on three years now. I’m not sure where they are right at the moment,
00:50:06 ►
but when they were here visiting us a couple of weeks ago,
00:50:10 ►
they said they were detaching from the net and heading to the desert for a while.
00:50:15 ►
So I loaded up their laptop with all of the previous podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:50:20 ►
and told them that maybe they’d find something interesting to listen to some cold night on the desert. Thank you. They enclosed a very generous donation. So, Carol and Chris, wherever you are,
00:50:46 ►
when you finally reconnect to the net and download this podcast,
00:50:50 ►
I want you to know that your donation is greatly appreciated.
00:50:54 ►
Thank you so very much.
00:50:56 ►
And I look forward to seeing you guys again on your next swing through Southern California.
00:51:02 ►
Another surprise came when a donation came in from Chiba.
00:51:07 ►
And I noticed that he had a website named Chibacabra.com.
00:51:13 ►
That’s C-H-E-E-B-A-C-A-B-R-A dot com.
00:51:18 ►
I hope I’m saying that right.
00:51:20 ►
And so I checked it out and discovered even more musicians here in our midst.
00:51:24 ►
I listened to a couple of their demos and wrote to thank them
00:51:28 ►
and asked if I could play one of their songs at the end of a podcast.
00:51:32 ►
And here is Chiva’s answer.
00:51:35 ►
About two years ago, I typed Terrence McKenna in iTunes and found your podcast.
00:51:41 ►
I’ve been a loyal listener ever since.
00:51:43 ►
It’s something I really look forward to every week. My donation is just a way for me to thank you and to offer a little support for all
00:51:50 ►
the work you put into it. Thanks for checking out the music on my website. You have no idea what a
00:51:55 ►
thrill it would be for me and my friends if you mentioned the Chibacabra on your podcast. Even
00:52:01 ►
more, play the song. Well, Chibacabra,
00:52:06 ►
I thank you for your kind words,
00:52:09 ►
and I’m looking forward to playing some of your music in the weeks ahead,
00:52:10 ►
once we can work out the details
00:52:12 ►
and make sure your copyright’s protected, etc.
00:52:15 ►
Now, I got another email from Michael,
00:52:18 ►
who you might remember goes by the handle
00:52:21 ►
of Dime Short.
00:52:22 ►
And I can tell you one reason Michael goes by that handle
00:52:25 ►
is that he’s also our most frequent contributor to the salon.
00:52:30 ►
But now he has also volunteered some time
00:52:33 ►
and is going to help complete the back program notes
00:52:36 ►
that we haven’t finished up yet.
00:52:39 ►
Now here’s what Michael says.
00:52:41 ►
So I decided, since I’m fortunate enough to make teeth in a dental lab, allowing me
00:52:46 ►
plenty of audio time, that I might as well start taking some notes. I’m starting on linear drugs
00:52:53 ►
slash non-linear societies and will work up from there. I figure it’s mostly beneficial to me,
00:52:59 ►
but I might as well send them your way when done. But for my absence of a biochemistry degree
00:53:05 ►
and a lackadaisical understanding of terms,
00:53:08 ►
such as, and here he types several terms
00:53:11 ►
that I’m not about to try to pronounce,
00:53:14 ►
I may not end up with his descriptive notes
00:53:17 ►
on some of Sasha’s rapid-fire speeches.
00:53:20 ►
I hope to soon change this.
00:53:22 ►
Well, I’ll tell you what, Michael,
00:53:23 ►
your understanding of biochemistry, I’m sure, is far greater than mine.
00:53:27 ►
And so I really appreciate you tackling all these talks, particularly Sasha’s.
00:53:32 ►
And don’t worry, anything you get done along those lines is going to be a big help.
00:53:38 ►
Now, I feel a little uncomfortable even mentioning this, but we’ve received several PayPal donations of exactly
00:53:45 ►
two cents. Now, I’m not sure if this was just a test to see if you were making your payment to
00:53:50 ►
the right podcast or if it was a slip of the decimal point when you entered the amount of
00:53:55 ►
your donation. But in any event, hey, thank you for your kind thoughts. And even though PayPal
00:54:01 ►
takes the entire two cents, they’re still losing money on the transaction.
00:54:06 ►
So if you’ve received a strange entry of only a few cents on your credit card statement, well, that’s probably what caused it.
00:54:14 ►
And hey, I’m not complaining. I’m just happy that people out there are thinking about keeping the salon on the air.
00:54:22 ►
And I guess actually on the air isn’t technically correct for podcasting. Thank you. For keeping us on the light. Actually I kind of like that. Hey thanks for keeping us on the light.
00:54:47 ►
And that also goes out.
00:54:48 ►
To all of you wonderful speakers.
00:54:49 ►
Who have been so kind as to.
00:54:51 ►
Let me podcast your talks.
00:54:54 ►
And while I’m at it.
00:54:55 ►
Hey this goes out to you too.
00:54:57 ►
If you didn’t join me here.
00:54:58 ►
In the psychedelic salon each week.
00:55:00 ►
I wouldn’t have any reason.
00:55:01 ►
To keep these podcasts going.
00:55:04 ►
So thank you.
00:55:05 ►
Thank you for being here. With all of us on the light each week.
00:55:10 ►
And if you’re in the same position that I’m in right now,
00:55:14 ►
now that I’m retired and suddenly find that $20 is a really large sum of money,
00:55:20 ►
well, something you could do to help us all out a little
00:55:23 ►
is to recommend this podcast to a couple of your friends.
00:55:27 ►
Ultimately, what this series of podcasts is all about is helping people who are interested in the never-ending possibilities of consciousness exploration
00:55:36 ►
and helping them get into closer contact with one another and with the information that’s of interest to us all.
00:55:43 ►
and with the information that’s of interest to us all.
00:55:47 ►
And that friend or co-worker that you tell about these podcasts doesn’t necessarily have to be somebody you already know
00:55:51 ►
shares an interest in these matters.
00:55:52 ►
You know, I can remember back to quite a few years ago
00:55:57 ►
when I was still a corporate wage slave.
00:56:00 ►
There were a couple instances where I worked really closely with a person
00:56:04 ►
for a year or more before we discovered that we both smoked dope
00:56:08 ►
so if you’re still working in the belly of the beast
00:56:12 ►
I know how difficult it can be to find like-minded people
00:56:16 ►
all I know for sure is that there are far more psychedelic people
00:56:21 ►
living deep underground than anybody can imagine
00:56:23 ►
you really might be surprised at who comes out of the psychedelic people living deep underground than anybody can imagine. You really might be surprised
00:56:26 ►
at who comes out of the
00:56:28 ►
psychedelic closet when you start
00:56:29 ►
talking about these things.
00:56:31 ►
And if these podcasts can be
00:56:33 ►
a conversation opener for you, well,
00:56:36 ►
that would make me very happy.
00:56:37 ►
So a big thank you to you
00:56:39 ►
for telling people about these podcasts
00:56:42 ►
and particularly
00:56:43 ►
to those of you who are posting links to thepsychedelicsalon.org
00:56:47 ►
on your websites and on your online postings.
00:56:50 ►
Things like that and your emails
00:56:52 ►
keep me going.
00:56:54 ►
Most of all, just thanks for listening.
00:56:56 ►
It’s nice to know you’re out there.
00:56:58 ►
And to let you know that I do listen
00:57:01 ►
to your program requests,
00:57:03 ►
I’m working to pull together several interviews
00:57:06 ►
with some people who know a lot about ayahuasca.
00:57:09 ►
And these interviews actually got set in motion
00:57:12 ►
when I received the following email from James.
00:57:15 ►
Me and some friends are going to Ecuador
00:57:17 ►
for a couple weeks beginning in May.
00:57:20 ►
And we’ve been planning this trip for several years now
00:57:23 ►
and have arranged to spend a lot of time with some very reputable shamans.
00:57:27 ►
Some of us have a moderate to high level of experience with psychedelics,
00:57:32 ►
while others are brand new and quite nervous about the whole endeavor.
00:57:37 ►
Listening to the psychedelic salon the other week,
00:57:40 ►
me and my friends were impressed with what you had to say regarding ayahuasca
00:57:44 ►
after the
00:57:45 ►
Matt Palomary talk and decided that we would all benefit greatly, as I’m sure many other
00:57:51 ►
listeners would as well, if we could hear more before our trip. Pun intended. And James isn’t
00:57:58 ►
the only one who’s been asking for more information about this important sacred medicine.
00:58:03 ►
I’ve been asking for more information about this important sacred medicine.
00:58:10 ►
So, in a couple of days, Matt Palomary is stopping by here to record an interview about ayahuasca from the point of view of the indigenous people who use the vine.
00:58:15 ►
Also, Charlie Grobe has agreed to give us an interview about the research project he participated in,
00:58:22 ►
along with Dennis McKenna and several others,
00:58:25 ►
where they conducted the first formal study
00:58:27 ►
of the regular ayahuasca users in the UDV church in Brazil.
00:58:33 ►
Now, try to get these interviews podcast in the near future,
00:58:36 ►
definitely before your trip, you guys.
00:58:39 ►
But next week’s program is going to be the Flanque Norte lecture
00:58:43 ►
that Dr. Preet Chopra gave at Burning Man last year.
00:58:47 ►
And if all goes well, I’ll have Matt Palomary’s ayahuasca stories out to you the following week.
00:58:53 ►
So I guess I’d better cut this off for now and get working on some of these future podcasts.
00:58:58 ►
But it sure was good being here with you again today.
00:59:01 ►
Good being here with you again today.
00:59:04 ►
Before I go, I should mention as always that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:59:07 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution
00:59:10 ►
non-commercial share-like 2.5 license.
00:59:13 ►
If you have any questions about that,
00:59:15 ►
just click the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
00:59:18 ►
which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.
00:59:23 ►
If you still have questions, just send them to me in an email.
00:59:27 ►
The address is lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:59:31 ►
Thanks again to my friends at Chateau Hayouk
00:59:34 ►
for the use of your music here in the salon,
00:59:36 ►
and also to George and Riqua,
00:59:39 ►
not only for braving the challenges of the playa
00:59:42 ►
to give a Blanque Norte lecture,
00:59:44 ►
but also for your wonderful research.
00:59:47 ►
And so, until next time,
00:59:50 ►
this is Lorenzo, signing off from cyberdelic space.
00:59:55 ►
Be well, my friends.