Program Notes
Guest speaker: Charles S. Grob, M.D.
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
03:20 Charlie talks about how he got into psychedelic research.
07:47 Charlie: “My interest has always been in studying the potential therapeutic effects of MDMA. I’ve always had concerns about use and abuse of the recreationally drug ecstasy. Now early on in the history of this drug, ecstasy was almost always MDMA, but over the years there has been more and more drug substitutions, to the point where now with ecstasy I think there’s less reliability in regards to it being the drug you think it is than for any other drug I’m aware of.”
09:25 Charlie describes the process of obtaining approval to conduct clinical research using psychedelic drugs.
16:29 Charlie:“If you have some ambition to work in this area you have to develop certain character qualities, like having a lot of patience and persistence.”
18:13 Charlie discusses the relative merits of MDMA vs. psilocybin in the treatment of end stage cancer patients who are also suffering from anxiety.
22:33 Charlie: “So MDMA might turn out to be a very valuable compound to use with a chronic PTSD patient group, but in a medically ill group, over the years I began to question that and decided that psilocybin would be significantly safer.”
20:43 Charlie begins his discussion of the human safety study of MDMA that he conducted.
23:03 Charlie: “A relative risk in regards to recreational use of MDMA is that a lot of people are oblivious to the fact that different drugs can interact with one another, and people who may have medical conditions, on medication, who then take ecstasy, which is often, though not always, MDMA, that there may be a drug-drug interaction which can cause injurious effects.”
28:50 Lorenzo changes the subject by asking, “What do you tell your kids other than ‘just say no’?” … Charlie: “Often the most helpful thing you can do is simply be honest, and to provide the young people with the information we know today.”
29:28 Charlie explains ways that the street drug ecstasy can cause significant medical problems when not properly used.
34:11 Charlie talks about the work done my Humphry Osmand, Abram Hoffer, Duncan Blewett, and others in Canada when they successfully treated and cured alcoholics using LSD as a catalyst that changing their lives.
36:17 Charlie: “It seems to me there are some very interesting implications here for Osmand’s old work with alcoholics as well as some of our more recent observations with the ayahuasca church as well as others who have observed a similar process in the Native American Peyote Church.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:24 ►
While it may not appear to be the case on your end of this podcast,
00:00:28 ►
I’ve actually been spending a lot of time in the salon this week.
00:00:32 ►
To begin with, I recorded the interview with Charlie Grobe that you’re about to hear.
00:00:37 ►
And on Tuesday, I drove up to Long Beach to spend the day with Gary Fisher,
00:00:41 ►
looking at his pictures and poking through his files and recording some of his stories.
00:00:46 ►
And if you don’t know who Gary is, you can learn something about him and his psychedelic
00:00:50 ►
research in next week’s podcast.
00:00:52 ►
But today I’m going to play the recording of a conversation I had with Dr. Charles Grobe,
00:00:57 ►
M.D., or Charlie as he prefers to be called.
00:01:02 ►
Charlie is a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine
00:01:07 ►
and director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor UCLA Medical Center.
00:01:14 ►
He conducted the first government-approved study of MDMA,
00:01:17 ►
and along with Dennis McKenna and Jace Calloway,
00:01:20 ►
conducted an international biomedical psychiatric research project in the Brazilian
00:01:25 ►
Amazon, which focused on ayahuasca use.
00:01:29 ►
He is currently conducting an investigation of the effects of psilocybin with end-stage
00:01:34 ►
cancer patients.
00:01:36 ►
And Charlie’s published numerous articles in medical and psychiatric journals and collected
00:01:41 ►
volumes.
00:01:42 ►
And he’s also the editor of Hallucinogens, a reader, and
00:01:46 ►
along with Roger Walsh, he edited Higher Wisdom, Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact
00:01:52 ►
of Psychedelics.
00:01:54 ►
Charlie is also a founding board member of the Hefter Research Institute, and for full
00:01:59 ►
disclosure, I probably should add that Charlie is also a very close friend of Mary C.’s
00:02:04 ►
and mine.
00:02:05 ►
So why don’t you just sit back, relax, and join Charlie and me here in the psychedelic salon.
00:02:19 ►
What I thought we’d do is we’d talk about your MDMA study and the psilocybin study
00:02:25 ►
and just briefly touch on the ayahuasca thing,
00:02:28 ►
because that one will bring in Dennis and Jace and get the three of you talking.
00:02:32 ►
Okay, sure, sure.
00:02:35 ►
So, well, let me just kind of start off and say that, you know, that as far as I know,
00:02:40 ►
aren’t you about the only at least U.S. researcher who’s actually done human studies with three different psychoactive compounds on human tests?
00:02:52 ►
Am I correct there?
00:02:54 ►
Possibly.
00:02:55 ►
There are so few investigators in this area that that might be possible.
00:03:03 ►
I’d have to give it some thought.
00:03:05 ►
Yeah, I haven’t come across anybody else.
00:03:08 ►
And, you know, you, as I recall the story,
00:03:12 ►
you went into medicine and went through the whole rigors of medical school
00:03:16 ►
because you wanted to do this research.
00:03:18 ►
Am I right about that?
00:03:19 ►
No, that’s correct.
00:03:20 ►
You know, back in the early 70s, I had an epiphany that what I wanted to do was to conduct psychiatric research with psychedelic drugs.
00:03:31 ►
And here we are some 35-plus years later, and it turns out that I’ve been able to do that.
00:03:42 ►
But as the people that know you know, it hasn’t been easy.
00:03:48 ►
It’s taken a long time to get these studies going, right?
00:03:51 ►
It took a very long time.
00:03:53 ►
Back in the early 70s, I very naively thought that by the time I left medical school,
00:03:59 ►
at the end of the 70s, I’d be able to join somebody’s ongoing psychedelic research project.
00:04:06 ►
But by then, of course, everything had been shut down, and nothing opened up for a number
00:04:12 ►
of years, not until the 90s, when Rick Strassman was the first one to demonstrate that it was
00:04:18 ►
still possible to get approval to conduct a Phase I investigation, in his case, was DMT.
00:04:31 ►
About a year after that, I was able to get permission to work with MDMA and normal volunteers.
00:04:36 ►
Now, what did it take to, you say you got permission to do it, but it wasn’t quite that simple.
00:04:38 ►
What all was involved?
00:04:44 ►
I assume even that you started before about the same time Rick was starting starting to get his approvals right yeah yeah
00:04:45 ►
back back around 1990 91 i i wrote up um to help with some colleagues i wrote up my first uh
00:04:53 ►
protocol and then it was a matter of uh submitting to uh to fda and that process took uh took some
00:05:01 ►
time it went back and forth i was in, in fact, invited to Washington, actually
00:05:06 ►
to Rockville, Maryland, to testify at a hearing conducted at the FDA examining the merits
00:05:15 ►
of doing human research with MDMA. They invited a number of experts from around the country, and I was there.
00:05:26 ►
And I think it had a fairly good outcome.
00:05:28 ►
At that point, I had put in a protocol asking to work with a patient population,
00:05:34 ►
and their response was that we were a little ahead of the game by wanting to work with patients,
00:05:41 ►
that we would first have to conduct a study with normal volunteers
00:05:45 ►
and establish safety parameters there.
00:05:49 ►
And so I was happy to rewrite a protocol for normal volunteers.
00:05:52 ►
Initially, I had questioned whether they would even allow that because of the so-called
00:06:01 ►
neurotoxicity issue, which, at least back at that time,
00:06:05 ►
had questioned whether the drug would be safe for anyone to take at any time under any circumstance.
00:06:14 ►
But I thought the FDA hearing went well, and I thought the people in charge were quite fair and judicious, and they did encourage us to take it back to the drawing board and bring back to them a normal volunteer protocol, which we did.
00:06:31 ►
And then that was approved in November 1992.
00:06:35 ►
So you actually began your submission of your protocol back during the Reagan administration. Is that right?
00:06:43 ►
No. No, it would be the Bush 1.
00:06:45 ►
Oh, Bush 1.
00:06:46 ►
Okay.
00:06:46 ►
Right, Bush 1.
00:06:47 ►
Still not necessarily a drug-friendly regime.
00:06:51 ►
No, not at all.
00:06:52 ►
And actually, I’ll add that I had been told over the phone
00:07:00 ►
in the early autumn of 92 that we had permission.
00:07:05 ►
I asked for something in writing, which I needed for our hospital committees,
00:07:10 ►
but I did not get anything in writing until the day after Election Day in 92.
00:07:14 ►
So I don’t know if that was coincidence or someone up there in the bureaucracy
00:07:20 ►
was waiting to see how the new political realities would play out, but that’s what happened.
00:07:28 ►
That’s an interesting coincidence, anyhow.
00:07:31 ►
First of all, let me clarify that we’re talking about MDMA, which on the street a lot of people call ecstasy,
00:07:37 ►
but most of what they find on the street today under ecstasy is probably not MDMA, at least a lot of it. Is that right?
00:07:43 ►
That’s absolutely correct.
00:07:42 ►
Probably not MDMA, at least a lot of it.
00:07:43 ►
Is that right?
00:07:44 ►
That’s absolutely correct.
00:07:55 ►
You know, my interest was always in studying the potential therapeutic effects of MDMA. I’ve always had concerns about use and abuse of the recreational drug ecstasy.
00:08:01 ►
Now, early on in the history of this this drug ecstasy was almost always MDMA
00:08:07 ►
but over the years there’s been more and more drug substitution to the point
00:08:12 ►
where now there’s with ecstasy I think there’s less reliability in regards to
00:08:18 ►
it being the drug you think it is and any other drug event I’m aware of you
00:08:23 ►
know more you know many surveys show that more than 50% of what’s sold out there on the streets is ecstasy.
00:08:29 ►
It turns out to be a drug other than MDMA.
00:08:33 ►
Yeah, that’s pretty amazing.
00:08:35 ►
That’s quite sad.
00:08:36 ►
That’s one of the problems of prohibition, of course, is you don’t know what you’re getting
00:08:40 ►
out on the street.
00:08:41 ►
So we’ll get back into the clinical area here. As you mentioned, the psychological properties of these materials are quite interesting.
00:08:50 ►
And before it hit the streets, as most people now know, Leo Zeff trained a bunch of people
00:08:57 ►
like George Greer and Riqua Talbert were two of the people he trained.
00:09:01 ►
Did you ever get to meet the secret chief and talk to him?
00:09:05 ►
I’ve heard many stories about him,
00:09:07 ►
but when he was active, I was actually living on the East Coast.
00:09:11 ►
And by the time I got out here
00:09:13 ►
and had developed some interest in that area,
00:09:17 ►
Leo Zeph had essentially exited the stage.
00:09:23 ►
I never got to meet him.
00:09:24 ►
I guess we ought to go through the process of getting approval for doing this
00:09:28 ►
so that some of our listeners can kind of go through the pain and agony.
00:09:34 ►
But when you write a protocol, you just don’t sit there by yourself and make up,
00:09:38 ►
hey, I want to do this.
00:09:39 ►
You consult with colleagues.
00:09:40 ►
How does the process work before it even gets to, say, the FDA?
00:09:45 ►
Well, at first you want to come up with a good effort.
00:09:49 ►
I mean, I’ll start off the process, and then I’ll send my drafts to colleagues
00:09:54 ►
who have some expertise in this area and some background with research protocols
00:09:59 ►
and the regulatory process, and there’s a lot of back and forth,
00:10:03 ►
and I pull ideas from a variety of sources,
00:10:06 ►
and then I essentially complete the best protocol I can come up with
00:10:10 ►
with all the input I get, after which I do submit to the federal regulatory agencies,
00:10:18 ►
starting with the FDA.
00:10:20 ►
Now, at that point, do you have money lined up for a study?
00:10:24 ►
No.
00:10:25 ►
No, every study I’ve ever run has been run on a shoestring.
00:10:30 ►
Essentially, I’ve always had the approach to what’s on the old movie,
00:10:37 ►
I think it was called Field of Dreams,
00:10:39 ►
where Kevin Costner is building a baseball field for the great old stars to come and play at,
00:10:48 ►
and he says, if I build it, they will come.
00:10:52 ►
So I’ve always felt if I can get a protocol written that competently addresses the issues at hand,
00:11:00 ►
and if I can get it approved by all the regulatory agencies and hospital committees,
00:11:04 ►
that the funding will arrive.
00:11:06 ►
And it always has, although I will add not very much.
00:11:09 ►
And we tend to run very lean budgets, especially compared to other kinds of medical and psychiatric
00:11:16 ►
drug research budgets.
00:11:18 ►
Yeah, that’s always a problem is that you’re almost like a U.S. politician out there begging
00:11:23 ►
for money more time than actually doing your work sometimes, it seems like.
00:11:28 ►
It’s been challenging.
00:11:29 ►
I will say that we’ve had a few people who have been invaluable in helping us get off the ground and keep our momentum going.
00:11:39 ►
So we have had a few people who have made very important contributions.
00:11:44 ►
So we have had a few people who have made very important contributions.
00:11:54 ►
And now when you have a protocol into the FDA, they look at it and they come back and say, well, we don’t like this or that or the other things.
00:11:55 ►
Right.
00:12:06 ►
So there was a lot of back and forth with actually every regulatory agency and every committee we went through. And I thought their input was often right on the mark,
00:12:09 ►
and they gave us some helpful recommendations.
00:12:14 ►
So we modified our protocol further going through the regulatory process. Well, let’s go ahead and just take this process in a generic sense,
00:12:19 ►
because the most recent one probably is the psilocybin study,
00:12:23 ►
and that would be the most current information
00:12:25 ►
as to how it happens.
00:12:27 ►
Right.
00:12:27 ►
Also, most currently in my memory.
00:12:29 ►
This is from some time ago.
00:12:31 ►
So with psilocybin, we went through the same kind of process.
00:12:35 ►
And here we were asking for permission to work with advanced-stage cancer patients,
00:12:41 ►
and we put in for permission to work with a fairly high dose,
00:12:47 ►
0.3 milligram per kilogram.
00:12:49 ►
And the FDA got back to us and said they thought, given this was the first time in many years
00:12:55 ►
this kind of patient population was going to be studied with a psychedelic drug, that
00:13:00 ►
they thought the first study should approach it more cautiously with a modest
00:13:06 ►
dose.
00:13:07 ►
So after some discussion and consideration, I accepted that this was actually good advice.
00:13:13 ►
So here we are establishing our treatment process and establishing feasibility that
00:13:20 ►
we could actually get this work done and also looking to establish safety parameters.
00:13:23 ►
So starting with a more modest dose, I felt did make sense.
00:13:29 ►
So we rewrote the protocol, and one thing we changed was the dose, which was 0.2 mg per kg.
00:13:36 ►
And I’ve actually felt that, although I will, you know, in the not-too-distant future,
00:13:42 ►
resubmit as we’re finishing our pilot study, and I’ll resubmit to do a larger-scale study,
00:13:49 ►
I will apply for a higher dose.
00:13:52 ►
I think it was a good idea to have done the pilot investigation with the more modest dose.
00:13:57 ►
We’ve had some good results, even with that.
00:14:00 ►
Now, once you get FDA approval, it’s not over there, though.
00:14:03 ►
No, not at all.
00:14:04 ►
No, we had to go through the DEA, and that involves a visit, it’s not over there, though. No, not at all.
00:14:09 ►
No, we have to go through the DEA, and that involves a visit from a local DEA agent who really is primarily concerned with the security of the drug.
00:14:15 ►
So he wants to see where it is stored and how secure that arrangement is.
00:14:21 ►
You have to have a special safe that needs specifications to store Schedule I drugs,
00:14:30 ►
and it has to be within a locked room, and that locked room has to be within another locked room.
00:14:34 ►
And, you know, so they’ve got fairly, you know, clear specifications as to what needs to be accomplished
00:14:46 ►
before they’ll allow you permission to store the drug.
00:14:50 ►
But we got through that, you know, all right as well.
00:14:53 ►
And then after the FDA and after the DEA, we went through the –
00:14:59 ►
California has its own in-state regulatory committee.
00:15:05 ►
It’s kind of like an in-state FDA or in-state review for Schedule I research,
00:15:09 ►
and that’s the California Research Advisory Panel.
00:15:12 ►
And they also made some comments, and they had some good input as well,
00:15:16 ►
and we did some further modifications.
00:15:18 ►
And then we had to go through two hospital committees at Harbor UCLA.
00:15:23 ►
One was the IRB, or the Human Subjects Committee,
00:15:27 ►
and the other is the Research Committee that oversees all research on the research unit,
00:15:35 ►
which is where we conduct our study.
00:15:37 ►
Now, if one of those organizations makes some changes,
00:15:41 ►
do you have to go all the way back to the FDA and start over again?
00:15:43 ►
Well, you submit your final version, although no changes were made in any of the areas that
00:15:49 ►
each of the prior committees had been emphatic that we ought to make some modifications.
00:15:55 ►
By the end, all the regulatory groups seem more comfortable with the final version.
00:16:01 ►
You know, some of the people who I know are grad students and medical students that are
00:16:06 ►
thinking about this as an area of work for their life’s work, probably ought to keep
00:16:11 ►
in mind the fact that the glory part where you’re actually working with a participant
00:16:16 ►
who’s using the substance, those hours are pretty minimal compared to all of the bureaucratic
00:16:23 ►
hours, right?
00:16:24 ►
It takes a long time before you get to that point of actually treating somebody.
00:16:28 ►
So if you have some ambition to work in this area,
00:16:32 ►
you have to develop certain character qualities like having a lot of patience and persistence.
00:16:39 ►
Two things that would eliminate me from doing psychedelic research, I can assure you.
00:16:45 ►
You’ve exhibited a great deal of that over the years.
00:16:48 ►
I know it took, for your psilocybin study, it took quite a few years to get that approved, right?
00:16:54 ►
Absolutely.
00:16:54 ►
In fact, the first version was actually our first protocol we sent to FDA back in 1991, I think.
00:17:01 ►
It was actually written for MDMA.
00:17:04 ►
We initially thought of using MDMA for patient population with advanced cancer.
00:17:09 ►
But then because of the turmoil in our culture with the ecstasy fad
00:17:16 ►
and the questions over central nervous system damage,
00:17:21 ►
and really just how sensationalized it had become,
00:17:26 ►
we felt it would be very hard to get permission in that political environment.
00:17:29 ►
So we rewrote the protocol in the late 90s for psilocybin.
00:17:32 ►
And I’ll say that that decision was made in concert with my colleagues at the Hefter Research
00:17:39 ►
Institute, who strongly urged me to resubmit a cancer treatment protocol
00:17:48 ►
but substituting psilocybin for MDMA.
00:17:51 ►
Just as the, since there’s really not been a study that I know about MDMA in cancer,
00:17:58 ►
but you are working right now with cancer patients and psilocybin,
00:18:02 ►
just I know there’s no way you can have a professional opinion,
00:18:06 ►
but your gut reaction right now about the two different substances
00:18:08 ►
for somebody that’s an end-stage cancer, which do you think is preferable?
00:18:12 ►
Sure. I’ve actually given it some thought.
00:18:15 ►
I’ve come to the determination that psilocybin, I believe,
00:18:19 ►
would be a safer and possibly more efficacious drug to use.
00:18:24 ►
a safer and possibly more efficacious drug to use.
00:18:32 ►
One reason being that with MDMA, what we observed and what others have observed is even with normal volunteers, you can get some very, very robust blood pressure changes.
00:18:37 ►
You can get some very significant increases in blood pressure after you administer MDMA. And my view is that with people who have advanced cancer,
00:18:48 ►
they very well may have multiple organ system failures,
00:18:53 ►
and they may have a very vulnerable cardiovascular system,
00:18:57 ►
and a rapid precipitous rise in blood pressure may lead to catastrophic consequences.
00:19:05 ►
We felt psilocybin with much more modest effects on cardiovascular function
00:19:09 ►
would be a safer compound to use in that regard.
00:19:14 ►
And your Phase I study is about safety,
00:19:16 ►
so you are measuring blood pressure, those kind of things, right?
00:19:19 ►
Right, absolutely.
00:19:20 ►
Yes, we do throughout the experimental treatment session.
00:19:27 ►
But another consideration is that many people after an MDMA session report in subsequent days a tremendous drain of energy.
00:19:37 ►
And given the precarious status of people with advanced cancer, we felt that could be problematic as well.
00:19:46 ►
But in a sense, we’re not only looking for, you know, helping to facilitate a very positive
00:19:52 ►
experience during the, you know, four to six hours of the acute drug effects, but we’re
00:19:57 ►
also hoping here, or even speculating, that this treatment model will facilitate significant
00:20:07 ►
improvements in psychiatric status in the subsequent days, weeks, and even months.
00:20:13 ►
And if you’re wrestling with tremendous energy drain, it may detract to what degree
00:20:20 ►
you can come away from that experience with an overall improvement in your psychological status.
00:20:28 ►
We felt psilocybin would, you know, generally after a psilocybin session,
00:20:32 ►
people do not feel that energy drain they do with MDMA,
00:20:36 ►
likely from the amphetamine quality of the MDMA,
00:20:40 ►
that people feel very, very good, very grounded, and do not feel physically and psychologically exhausted,
00:20:48 ►
as you not infrequently see with MDMA.
00:20:50 ►
So there were a few reasons why we felt psilocybin would be a preferable compound to use
00:20:57 ►
with this kind of patient population.
00:20:59 ►
Also, perhaps that it provides, we thought, perhaps a more in-depth experience, an experience that might allow one to explore more the existential dimensions of their current life situation.
00:21:14 ►
Yeah, I can confess to, in my past days having experimented with both of these substances,
00:21:25 ►
substances and I found that the psilocybin gave me a cosmic experience where the MDMA gave me more of a grounded empathy contact with other human
00:21:31 ►
experience.
00:21:32 ►
What I’m saying, I’m not saying that MDMA does not have its place within,
00:21:39 ►
you know, with various, you know,
00:21:43 ►
therapeutic approaches with particular patient groups.
00:21:47 ►
I’m just saying that people with very, very severe end-stage medical illness
00:21:51 ►
may not be the optimal population for a drug like MDMA.
00:21:56 ►
On the other hand, for instance, a group of patients with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder,
00:22:01 ►
such as what Michael Bethofer is working with in South Carolina, that might be an ideal population.
00:22:08 ►
Presumably, these people are physically healthy.
00:22:11 ►
The MDMA might induce a very profound state, a pathogenic state, and also a state where
00:22:19 ►
they feel safe enough to explore with the therapist the prior trauma and to start to work through much of the issues
00:22:28 ►
and, in a sense, the psychic armoring that grew up in response to that trauma.
00:22:33 ►
So MDMA might turn out to be a very valuable compound
00:22:36 ►
to use with a chronic PTSD patient group.
00:22:40 ►
But with a medically ill group, over the years,
00:22:44 ►
I started to question that and felt that psilocybin would be significantly safer.
00:22:49 ►
In your research that you did in the early 90s with humans and MDMA, which we knew was pure MDMA,
00:22:57 ►
did you have any negative or adverse results?
00:23:01 ►
Was everybody the same or what?
00:23:03 ►
Well, we treated…
00:23:05 ►
I’ll tell you a couple of stories.
00:23:09 ►
One is that we had two people who had very
00:23:13 ►
significant hypertensive reactions.
00:23:17 ►
One was our oldest subject
00:23:21 ►
who was, I believe, around 60. He had normal baseline blood pressure,
00:23:26 ►
and within an hour, his systolic blood pressure had gone up to 200, which certainly concerned
00:23:31 ►
myself and my research nurse. But we actually treated it, and it went rapidly down.
00:23:39 ►
Then we had another man, a 27-year-old, and he was coming in for his third treatment session.
00:23:45 ►
And with that study, people came in for three separate experimental treatment sessions spaced
00:23:51 ►
several weeks apart.
00:23:52 ►
Two were different dosages of MDMA.
00:23:54 ►
One was a placebo.
00:23:57 ►
It was his third session.
00:23:59 ►
So we knew that he had received MDMA on at least one other occasion.
00:24:05 ►
It was all double-blinded as well,
00:24:07 ►
so we didn’t actually know what they were getting on each occasion.
00:24:09 ►
But on the third occasion, you know, he’s had it at least once before.
00:24:13 ►
Well, after an hour, his blood pressure went from a systolic of 120 up to 220.
00:24:20 ►
And I looked at the record.
00:24:22 ►
He had had pretty normal blood pressure through his other two sessions.
00:24:26 ►
So I asked him, well, something’s got to be different today than was the case on your previous visit.
00:24:32 ►
And he said, yeah, there was something different.
00:24:34 ►
He had decided not to tell me because he didn’t think it was important, but now he was going to reveal it.
00:24:40 ►
And that was that in order to get to the hospital early in the morning, as we were requiring,
00:24:45 ►
he had stayed at a friend’s house who lives close to the hospital.
00:24:48 ►
His friend had a cat.
00:24:49 ►
The subject turned out to be allergic to the cat and started to develop some wheezing.
00:24:58 ►
So he had some breathing difficulties.
00:25:01 ►
So his friend said, well, well you know I have some asthma
00:25:05 ►
medicine perhaps you could try that could help through wheezing so he took
00:25:08 ►
some of his friends asthma medicine and it turns out that the interaction
00:25:12 ►
between the asthma medicine and the MDMA caused a fairly serious blood pressure
00:25:17 ►
elevation so we again we rapidly treated it we brought it back down to normal but
00:25:22 ►
it also points out a relative risk in regards to recreational use of MDMA
00:25:28 ►
is that a lot of people are oblivious to the fact that different drugs can interact with one another
00:25:34 ►
and people who may have medical conditions on medication who then take ecstasy,
00:25:40 ►
which is often, though not always, MDMA, that there may be a drug-drug interaction which can cause injurious effect.
00:25:49 ►
So it’s kind of a cautionary note in regards to the use of both the recreational
00:25:56 ►
and the controlled, sanctioned therapeutic use of MDMA.
00:26:00 ►
You know, that’s a really good point, one I forget to make sometimes.
00:26:03 ►
I know there’s so many people at raves and parties and gatherings that are doing polydrugging,
00:26:09 ►
which, you know, it’s one thing if it’s something that’s, you know, tried and true and thousands have done it
00:26:17 ►
and you know what the results are.
00:26:19 ►
But what a lot of people forget is just these common over-the-counter medicines are going to interact.
00:26:25 ►
Oh, that’s right.
00:26:26 ►
Absolutely.
00:26:27 ►
Absolutely.
00:26:28 ►
You take a cold medicine with some pseudofedrin in it, and you can cause some cardiovascular symptoms, including a hypertensive episode.
00:26:41 ►
You know, there are other examples in the literature.
00:26:47 ►
episode. There are other examples in the literature. For instance, some years ago, a report from San Francisco General Hospital of a man who was being treated for HIV disorder with a
00:26:53 ►
protease inhibitor. He came in looking as if he had taken an overdose of ecstasy or MDMA, and he alleged to have taken only one pill.
00:27:05 ►
And after some investigation, the treating physicians realized that the protease inhibitor,
00:27:13 ►
which he was taking, had impaired the capacity of this man’s liver to metabolize the MDMA.
00:27:20 ►
So he was not clearing the MDMA and was left with a rather alarming situation with high blood pressure and palpitations and the like.
00:27:31 ►
He eventually was able to clear the drug and left the hospital healthy, but it caused some alarm among the treating personnel for a while.
00:27:42 ►
cause some alarm among the treating personnel for a while.
00:27:48 ►
And, of course, that adds to the records and the literature saying, oh, here’s another emergency room of MDMA, which, of course, it was, but it’s complicated because of other
00:27:57 ►
substances.
00:27:58 ►
That’s right.
00:27:59 ►
In that first study, did you have anybody that just absolutely had a horrible trip or
00:28:04 ►
a bad trip?
00:28:04 ►
Oh, good. I’m glad you asked that.
00:28:06 ►
One of our subjects comes in for his first session, and he becomes acutely anxious, quite agitated,
00:28:21 ►
and told me that he was very upset that he had volunteered for the study,
00:28:27 ►
that he felt taking a drug like, he called it ecstasy,
00:28:31 ►
allowed him to pick up all of the, as he put it, negative vibes in the hospital,
00:28:36 ►
and it was distressing him.
00:28:38 ►
So, you know, I told him that, according to what he had agreed to,
00:28:43 ►
he needed to stay in the hospital for the rest of the day and through the night.
00:28:47 ►
But in the morning, he could leave,
00:28:49 ►
and he did not have to come back for the following two sessions.
00:28:53 ►
But in a sense, he could elect, after he left the hospital,
00:28:57 ►
to drop out of this study, which he did.
00:28:59 ►
Now, following his dropping out of the study,
00:29:01 ►
we decided to break the blind to see how much MDMA we had given him
00:29:06 ►
that had caused this fairly serious anxiety reaction.
00:29:10 ►
So we broke the blind, and to our surprise, it turned out that he had received a placebo.
00:29:16 ►
So the take-home message there is never underestimate the power of the placebo response.
00:29:24 ►
So essentially essentially he had
00:29:25 ►
simply psyched himself out now that being said we had 18 subjects who
00:29:30 ►
received MDMA on each on two occasions none had an adverse psychological
00:29:37 ►
experience they all had positive psychological experiences and you know
00:29:43 ►
top tolerated you know being in the hospital without a problem.
00:29:47 ►
So I guess my Irish comment would be, beware the placebos.
00:29:52 ►
Right, right.
00:29:53 ►
Now, you had a range of people there.
00:29:56 ►
You said somebody who’s near 60 and somebody 27.
00:29:59 ►
So was there any difference in the physiological reactions in the age group, or is it pretty much…
00:30:06 ►
Well, I’d say I think the lesson from the 60-year-old was that as we get older,
00:30:13 ►
we tend to have somewhat more vulnerability in our cardiovascular responses.
00:30:21 ►
So I’d have to say most of our subjects were on the young side, but our older
00:30:26 ►
ones, no one had a hypertensive reaction like the 60-year-old man, but we had a couple of
00:30:32 ►
others who had some elevations of blood pressure, but it was the 60-year-old who seemed to have
00:30:38 ►
just came into that session with significant vulnerability to experience just what happened.
00:30:48 ►
One of the reasons I ask that is, off and on I read about the brain development
00:30:53 ►
and that it’s still going on while we’re in our teenage years and all.
00:30:58 ►
And then, of course, there’s all these rumors about Suicide Tuesdays coming down off of MDMA.
00:31:05 ►
I was just wondering about the
00:31:07 ►
relative
00:31:08 ►
merits of, you know, what do you tell your
00:31:11 ►
kids other than just say no?
00:31:13 ►
Because, you know, there are some risks, some dangers.
00:31:16 ►
It’s hard to
00:31:16 ►
just protect a child
00:31:20 ►
and yet you don’t want to just say no
00:31:22 ►
because, you know, some of these things can be
00:31:23 ►
also very positive materials as well.
00:31:26 ►
Well, that’s a very tricky issue.
00:31:30 ►
I mean, you’re right.
00:31:31 ►
Just sweeping prohibitions often are not effective.
00:31:35 ►
I think often the most helpful thing you could do is simply to be honest
00:31:40 ►
and to provide young people with the information that we know to date.
00:31:45 ►
For instance, caution them that when they purchase ecstasy,
00:31:50 ►
that there’s a great possibility that it may be a drug other than ecstasy.
00:31:55 ►
That’s to describe to them what some of these other drugs might be,
00:31:58 ►
and some might be fairly toxic and dangerous to users.
00:32:04 ►
I think we should also talk to them about the danger of mixing medications or mixing
00:32:10 ►
these kinds of compounds with other recreational drugs as well as, you know, medically prescribed
00:32:19 ►
medications.
00:32:21 ►
I think we also need to talk with them about the setting where it’s taken,
00:32:26 ►
that in fact it turns out that the most common venue for taking a drug like MDMA is a big
00:32:33 ►
dance scene, and we need to help them learn that that might be dangerous in and of itself. There have been a number of cases of malignant hyperthermia
00:32:45 ►
where people start to heat up,
00:32:50 ►
so their body temperature can go up to 105, 106 degrees,
00:32:54 ►
which can cause a very, very serious blood condition
00:32:59 ►
called disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC,
00:33:04 ►
where blood vessels start to clot off.
00:33:08 ►
It could lead to liver failure.
00:33:09 ►
It could lead to kidney failure.
00:33:11 ►
It could lead to seizures.
00:33:12 ►
And there have been deaths reported.
00:33:15 ►
Now, these are far more likely to occur in a setting where individuals are exercising,
00:33:21 ►
such as dancing at a rave, where it may be crowded and stuffy, just crowded, poor ventilation.
00:33:32 ►
The ambient temperature may be too warm.
00:33:36 ►
Also, there was an example in England of two young men dying on consecutive weekends at the same dance club. When authorities went to investigate,
00:33:47 ►
they realized that the establishment was in the practice of turning off the tap water in the bathroom,
00:33:55 ►
thereby forcing people to buy water over the counter at the bar for the price of the beer.
00:34:02 ►
Here were two young men who died of malignant hypothermia
00:34:06 ►
and who seemingly were placed at greater risk
00:34:12 ►
because of the deprivation of available fluids.
00:34:17 ►
Yeah, you know, it’s really a tough call
00:34:20 ►
because I do know how much fun it can be to take that and dance all night.
00:34:24 ►
But the young people that I’ve convinced to give it a try and, you know,
00:34:29 ►
back off the dance floor, get together in a small group,
00:34:32 ►
and not that I’m advocating this because you legally can’t,
00:34:36 ►
but I’ve been thanked many times by people who say,
00:34:40 ►
gosh, I never knew it could be so interesting with a group of four or five people
00:34:44 ►
and what we learned about each other.
00:34:46 ►
And so, you know, that all of these medicines are, you know, it’s like anything else.
00:34:53 ►
Too much of a good thing can kill you.
00:34:55 ►
Oh, absolutely.
00:34:56 ►
Absolutely.
00:34:57 ►
The ancient Greeks used to like to say that, you know, the difference between a medicine
00:35:02 ►
and a poison is the dose.
00:35:06 ►
And you might also say that in a case like this, you know, another difference might be
00:35:11 ►
the frequency within which one has the experience and the amount of the drug used.
00:35:18 ►
I think one concern I have with MDMA is that a lot of people will report that over time the positive effects attenuate or diminish.
00:35:27 ►
So they start to increase the dose.
00:35:30 ►
They start to mix it with other drugs, including methamphetamine.
00:35:34 ►
And in those kinds of situations, I think there’s some implicit dangers.
00:35:39 ►
Right. Most definitely there are.
00:35:41 ►
Right. Most definitely there are.
00:35:50 ►
Well, wouldn’t you know it, but right about here, my good old Dell computer crashed.
00:35:58 ►
And so I rebooted and called Charlie back, and we talked for about another ten minutes, and it crashed again. And that ten minutes is lost forever, I’m afraid.
00:36:02 ►
But I tried one more time, and Charlie was very, very gracious and patient.
00:36:08 ►
But we finally did get about another ten minutes of our conversation recorded, and I’ll play that right now.
00:36:17 ►
Okay, well, before we just got so rudely interrupted by the computer crash, we were talking about the work Humphrey Osmond did in Saskatchewan with alcoholics.
00:36:29 ►
And you were talking about that a little bit.
00:36:30 ►
Well, no, Osmond had a fascinating project.
00:36:34 ►
He treated with one dose of either high-dose LSD or mescaline.
00:36:50 ►
or mescaline. He treated very hardcore chronic alcoholics who had been refractory or non-responsive to other treatments. And he found that an appreciable proportion were able to maintain
00:36:59 ►
sobriety for some time. When he went back to look at what the strongest predictor was for those patients
00:37:05 ►
with a positive outcome, he found that these individuals during their one session had what
00:37:13 ►
was described as a religious or psycho-spiritual or mystical experience, a mystical mimetic
00:37:21 ►
experience as it were. So he found that those individuals who had this kind of spiritual epiphany
00:37:26 ►
were the ones who were able to sustain sobriety for the longest period of time.
00:37:33 ►
And this kind of harkens back to what William James,
00:37:36 ►
the founder of American psychology more than 100 years ago,
00:37:40 ►
once said about alcoholism, which he called dipsomania.
00:37:44 ►
He said the best treatment for dipsomania is religiomania.
00:37:49 ►
And that’s also consistent with our observations in Brazil when we did our ayahuasca study
00:37:53 ►
with the Unidad de Vegetal.
00:37:55 ►
I was going to ask about that.
00:37:56 ►
Wasn’t that also involved with a lot of alcoholics in that study?
00:38:00 ►
Well, a number of the people I interviewed for the study and just also spoke informally with outside of the study were people who had had fairly serious problems with alcoholism and drug addiction and high social behavior prior to their entry into the UDV where they had access to ayahuasca ceremonies twice monthly. And, you know, these were people who, after their entry into the ayahuasca religion,
00:38:30 ►
were able to abandon their destructive use of alcohol and other drugs altogether.
00:38:36 ►
So it seems to me there are some very interesting implications here for Osmond’s old work with alcoholics,
00:38:44 ►
for Osmond’s old work with alcoholics,
00:38:49 ►
as well as some of our more recent observations with the Ayahuasca Church, as well as others who have observed a similar process with the Native American Peyote Church.
00:38:57 ►
Yeah, you know, it would be interesting to compare some of Osmond’s results
00:39:00 ►
with, like, the Peyote Church and the UDV,
00:39:04 ►
because they seem to have a monthly reinforcement
00:39:08 ►
whereas the osman group didn’t sound like he did follow through with them that’s correct and i think
00:39:15 ►
the i think looking at these uh religions these actually these you know organized legal religions that are sanctioned to administer plant psychedelics to their practitioners,
00:39:32 ►
that the value of, in a sense, these booster experiences every couple of weeks or every month seem to be quite significant. So I think, honestly, that the ideal model putting all this together to treat alcoholics
00:39:48 ►
would be an initial treatment program followed by sequential opportunity for follow-up booster
00:39:57 ►
sessions.
00:39:57 ►
I think that would be far more likely to reinforce the positive effects and create a greater likelihood of extending sobriety.
00:40:11 ►
Well, right now I don’t see any real treatments for alcoholism other than, you know,
00:40:16 ►
go to a program for every day or something like that.
00:40:19 ►
Well, honestly, if you look, you know, just very openly and honestly at the situation of how we treat alcoholics,
00:40:28 ►
I think you’d have to acknowledge that we really haven’t advanced much over the last 50 or 60 years.
00:40:35 ►
I mean, 50 years ago, if an alcoholic came into your office asking for help,
00:40:40 ►
probably you’d suggest that they find a 12-step group,
00:40:46 ►
and if they’re lucky and if it was a good fit, they could get some help.
00:40:49 ►
But if it wasn’t a good fit, they might be out of luck.
00:40:51 ►
This would be the same kind of treatment approach you might recommend 50 years ago
00:40:57 ►
that you might recommend today with an alcoholic.
00:40:59 ►
So I think especially with a condition like this
00:41:02 ►
where there is extraordinary damage done to the individual,
00:41:06 ►
to families, to the whole social fabric,
00:41:09 ►
and where we have very, very limited effective treatments
00:41:12 ►
where the field of medicine has evolved so minimally over the last half century.
00:41:17 ►
I think there’s tremendous need and even opportunity here
00:41:21 ►
to develop new novel treatment programs involving optimal structures to utilize psychedelics.
00:41:30 ►
Of course, that being said, it would have to be done in an entirely legal sanctioned context.
00:41:36 ►
And, you know, I wonder if the times are maybe starting to, the pendulum swinging,
00:41:41 ►
because now you just gave a presentation at the American Psychiatric Association talking about psychedelics,
00:41:48 ►
which you probably couldn’t have done 10 years ago.
00:41:50 ►
Well, actually I did.
00:41:52 ►
You did, huh?
00:41:53 ►
I talked at the APA going back to the early 90s.
00:41:57 ►
There’s always been some interest.
00:42:00 ►
You’ve been the thorn in their side that long?
00:42:02 ►
Well, I’m a thorn in their side.
00:42:02 ►
So you’ve been the thorn in their side that long?
00:42:04 ►
Well, I’m a thorn in their side. I think I’ve been involved with seven or eight applications to the APA to do presentations,
00:42:15 ►
about half of which have been accepted.
00:42:18 ►
So half the time we’re able to give the talk we’d like to, and half the time we get shot down.
00:42:23 ►
We have the talk we’d like to have the time we get shot down. And generally speaking, we got a fairly modest but fairly good turnout.
00:42:31 ►
This year we maybe had about 60 people.
00:42:35 ►
Previous years probably had upwards to 100.
00:42:39 ►
We’re generally given an out-of-the-way location and a suboptimal time slot.
00:42:45 ►
But generally, we pull in enough people to feel that it’s been worthwhile to have made the effort to do it.
00:42:54 ►
Are you finding better acceptance among your colleagues now?
00:42:59 ►
It’s hard to say.
00:43:02 ►
When I give this talk, there’re generally one of two responses. Either people come up
00:43:07 ►
afterwards and say, this is really great. It’s about time that people started to study
00:43:14 ►
these compounds again. That’s one kind of response. And the other kind of response was,
00:43:18 ►
this isn’t very interesting. It has nothing to do with what psychiatry is all about these days, so I’m not going to waste my time here.
00:43:26 ►
But we generally don’t get the kind of hostile response that I think I had some concern might be the case when I started this years ago.
00:43:37 ►
Well, let’s hope that the pendulum is swinging.
00:43:40 ►
We’re probably going to have to cut this off, but I really appreciate your time right now
00:43:44 ►
and look forward to talking to you and Dennis and Jace about your ayahuasca research
00:43:49 ►
because that’s something that’s near and dear to the hearts of a lot of people in the world these days.
00:43:54 ►
Thanks a lot for your time today, Charlie,
00:43:56 ►
and I look forward to having you join us here in the Psychedelic Salon again.
00:44:01 ►
Do you have any parting words you’d like to say to all of your fans out there in cyberspace?
00:44:08 ►
Be careful
00:44:09 ►
and
00:44:10 ►
don’t be in such a rush.
00:44:14 ►
There are fascinating
00:44:15 ►
possibilities out there and
00:44:17 ►
sometimes it makes a lot
00:44:19 ►
of sense to be patient
00:44:21 ►
and wait for opportunities
00:44:23 ►
that allow for optimal safety
00:44:26 ►
and optimal outcome to what you’re trying to succeed.
00:44:32 ►
Well, I’ll definitely second that.
00:44:34 ►
So thank you very much, Charlie.
00:44:35 ►
Okay.
00:44:40 ►
After listening to my conversation with Charlie just now,
00:44:44 ►
I was struck by what he said about compromising our cardiovascular systems as we get older,
00:44:49 ►
and how the 60-year-old in his MDMA safety study experienced some elevated blood pressure.
00:44:57 ►
What struck me was how my own relationship to MDMA has changed over the years.
00:45:02 ►
I won’t recount here my early experiences with it during its heyday in Dallas as ecstasy,
00:45:09 ►
but what I want to mention is how my desire to use it began fading away several years ago
00:45:14 ►
to the point where whenever I think about it now, my body says,
00:45:19 ►
are you really sure we should do this?
00:45:21 ►
And now the answer always seems to be no.
00:45:27 ►
What I’m getting at here is that by listening to my body, so to speak, I may have actually avoided an episode of elevated blood
00:45:33 ►
pressure, which now that I’m in my 65th year is something I’d like to avoid. So for what it’s
00:45:39 ►
worth, my advice in these matters is to always follow your instincts and not what your friends or your
00:45:45 ►
ego may be saying. You know, deep down you always know what’s right for you at any given moment,
00:45:50 ►
and I found that when I trust those feelings over what my rational mind might be saying,
00:45:55 ►
I seldom go wrong. I was also taken with Charlie’s comments about the scarcity of funding for
00:46:01 ►
psychedelic research. Fortunately, there have been a few individuals
00:46:05 ►
who are in a position to make significant donations
00:46:08 ►
to keep this research going.
00:46:10 ►
Quite frankly, without the very small number of big donors
00:46:14 ►
who fund this research,
00:46:15 ►
it probably would have come to a complete halt long ago.
00:46:19 ►
But for those of us who don’t have any disposable income
00:46:23 ►
to help with this research,
00:46:24 ►
there are other ways we can help.
00:46:27 ►
And my way is to do it through these podcasts and try to spread the word about the importance of these sacred medicines as best I can.
00:46:34 ►
One of the things you can do if you feel so motivated is to tell a friend about the Psychedelic Salon and encourage them to take a look at the list of programs, of which, by the way, this is my 96th.
00:46:46 ►
And maybe they can see if there’s a talk or two that would be of interest to them.
00:46:51 ►
And also, though you are small in number, I want to give a special shout-out to the 28 wonderful people
00:46:58 ►
who have made donations to keep the Psychedelic Salon going during these past two years.
00:47:04 ►
This coming Sunday, June 10th, is the second anniversary of this series of podcasts,
00:47:09 ►
and during that time, over tens of thousands of people have downloaded
00:47:13 ►
close to a million copies of these podcasts,
00:47:16 ►
not to mention the people who hear these programs through one of the mirror sites.
00:47:21 ►
So you wonderful 28 souls out there who sent contributions that range from 150
00:47:28 ►
during the past two years, well, each and every one of you can rest assured that you have had a
00:47:34 ►
much greater impact in keeping these podcasts coming than you might really believe.
00:47:40 ►
Your generosity moves me deeply and your encouragement is what keeps me going.
00:47:44 ►
Your generosity moves me deeply and your encouragement is what keeps me going.
00:47:49 ►
And to all of you supporters of psychedelic research, on behalf of all of us,
00:47:53 ►
I want to thank you for keeping the psychedelic campfire burning.
00:47:57 ►
You know, unlike other areas of scientific interest,
00:48:02 ►
there aren’t any big government grants going to the women and men who are called to investigate what may well be the most important class
00:48:05 ►
of chemical compounds we humans will ever encounter.
00:48:09 ►
It really makes you wonder what’s so threatening about these substances to the keepers of the
00:48:14 ►
status quo that they go to such great lengths to keep them away from us.
00:48:19 ►
You know, just this morning I was listening to KMO’s interview with Jacob Sullum on the Sea Realm podcast,
00:48:26 ►
and they were talking about how the U.S. Supreme Court has now approved two psychoactive sacraments for use in religious ceremonies,
00:48:34 ►
but that both of these syncretic religions involved aspects of Christianity.
00:48:39 ►
And that reminded me of a conversation I had with John Henna a couple podcasts back,
00:48:44 ►
That reminded me of a conversation I had with John Henna a couple podcasts back where he told us about the law prohibiting any reference to mind-altering properties
00:48:49 ►
that may be associated with energy drinks.
00:48:53 ►
You know, it’s becoming more clear to me every day that what the screwheads in Washington are afraid of
00:48:58 ►
is losing their male-dominated Calvinist Christian grip on the reins of power.
00:49:04 ►
And maybe they’re right to see that if these psychedelic medicines were used in a conscious way by a culture
00:49:10 ►
such as the one Aldous Huxley described in his brilliant novel Island,
00:49:16 ►
a little of his Moksha medicine might go a long way to nudging us humans up to a slightly higher level of awareness,
00:49:23 ►
particularly about what a mess some of our fellow humans are making of things on our dear little spaceship Earth.
00:49:30 ►
But hey, the news isn’t all bad.
00:49:32 ►
You just have to dig a little deeper to find the good news.
00:49:34 ►
But there actually are a lot of reasons to hold on to our dreams of a global, sustainable, cooperative human culture.
00:49:43 ►
And if you’re lucky enough to get to Burning Man this year
00:49:46 ►
we’ll have more to say about that
00:49:47 ►
when we meet again in the big tent on the playa
00:49:50 ►
before I go
00:49:52 ►
I want to mention that this and all of the
00:49:54 ►
podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:49:55 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons
00:49:58 ►
attribution non-commercial share-like
00:50:00 ►
2.5 license
00:50:01 ►
and if you have any questions about that
00:50:03 ►
just click the Creative Commons link
00:50:05 ►
at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon web page,
00:50:08 ►
which you can find at www.psychedelicsalon.org.
00:50:13 ►
And if you have any questions, comments, complaints,
00:50:15 ►
or suggestions about these podcasts,
00:50:17 ►
well, just send them to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:50:22 ►
Thanks again to Chateau Hayuk
00:50:24 ►
for our theme song here in the salon.
00:50:27 ►
And thanks again for being here.
00:50:29 ►
You know, it was nice to be with you again.
00:50:32 ►
And since I’m not quite ready
00:50:33 ►
to leave this nice vibe right now,
00:50:36 ►
I’m going to do something a little different.
00:50:38 ►
And as soon as I sign off,
00:50:39 ►
I’m going to play a song
00:50:40 ►
from my new favorite rock group,
00:50:43 ►
Vav Ohm.
00:50:44 ►
V-A-V-O-H-M.
00:50:46 ►
Who, by the way, happen to be fellow salonners.
00:50:50 ►
You know, about six months or so ago, I guess,
00:50:52 ►
they very kindly sent me their new album, and it really captured me.
00:50:57 ►
So a while back, I recommended them to Queer Ninja for one of his music programs,
00:51:01 ►
but right about then is when the Ninja began his sabbatical.
00:51:05 ►
So if you want to hear a little of the kind of music I like, I guess I’m going to have to play
00:51:09 ►
it myself. And now they’ve given me permission to use any of the songs on their new CD. And by the
00:51:16 ►
way, on the program notes for this podcast that you can find at psychedelicsalon.org, I’ll put a
00:51:22 ►
link to the VABOM site where you can find out a lot more about them.
00:51:26 ►
And although I asked if they had a preference for a song that I could play at the end of a podcast,
00:51:31 ►
they’ve pretty much left that up to me.
00:51:33 ►
So I’m not sure if they’ll consider the song I’m about to play representative,
00:51:38 ►
but it’s one I really enjoy.
00:51:40 ►
So I’m going to sign off now and let you see if you can figure out what Vav-Om’s
00:51:46 ►
song titled Drifting Away
00:51:48 ►
might be about.
00:51:50 ►
So for now, this is Lorenzo
00:51:52 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic
00:51:54 ►
Space. Be well, my
00:51:56 ►
friends. And now
00:51:57 ►
here is Vav-Om
00:51:59 ►
Drifting Away. Drifting Away. I am sitting in the center of the floor.
00:52:27 ►
There’s the teeth and the song and then you came along and on the floor is where you found me.
00:52:39 ►
Yeah, I’m headed for the Iskartoro.
00:52:50 ►
Take a seat, come along, drink the tea,
00:52:54 ►
Sing a song, the great track, turn the weights, Feel me, I’m drifting away.
00:52:59 ►
Yeah, I’m drifting away.
00:53:03 ►
Yeah, I’m drifting away I’m drifting away
00:53:06 ►
I’ve gone and drifted away
00:53:09 ►
I swear I’ve seen that face somewhere before
00:53:20 ►
This isn’t easy
00:53:24 ►
Your way I can see What you say is what it easy? I can see what you say
00:53:26 ►
As your text reads before me
00:53:29 ►
Yeah, we’re sitting in the center of the fall
00:53:35 ►
Yeah, we’re sitting in the center of a dream
00:53:43 ►
But you, young man, are falling In the center of a dream, a teardown man.
00:53:45 ►
Oh, I’m drifting away.
00:53:49 ►
Baby, drifting away.
00:53:53 ►
Oh, we’re drifting away.
00:53:56 ►
I’m drifting away. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Yeah, we’re drifting away
00:54:25 ►
Though there’s pieces of a tear that’s broken heart
00:54:33 ►
I’m sure you can feel your feet
00:54:40 ►
When you say you’re not happy This is God’s love, I do
00:54:45 ►
A word, a phrase, be it anything he says, I love it.
00:55:06 ►
What blues, what girls, be it any hue she sings, I love it.
00:55:13 ►
Oh, how I love it all.
00:55:19 ►
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:55:33 ►
Well, the bindings of the night in your head Let your dreams go free, a pop in your bed
00:55:37 ►
Dismatches your prisons of your waking
00:55:44 ►
A lot of folks don’t feel nothing compared you’re waking A lark of a song
00:55:46 ►
in a overcome bed
00:55:49 ►
With my head
00:55:51 ►
in a calmness dread
00:55:53 ►
Those same rhythms
00:55:54 ►
in me quaking
00:55:57 ►
Oh, and though
00:56:01 ►
the voice ain’t the same
00:56:03 ►
Oh, and though the voice ain’t the same, oh, and though the faces may change, these homely rhythms of voices sing again. guitar solo I say DMT, I say DMT
00:57:08 ►
So go for swimming on the fire mountain ocean breeze
00:57:13 ►
You’re drinking tea now you’re looking at me
00:57:16 ►
Can’t believe what I see
00:57:19 ►
You’ve got your eye lock on mine
00:57:24 ►
You’ve got us singing, singing tunnel between you and me
00:57:29 ►
My will shall be the hole in the floor
00:57:33 ►
My will shall be the port in the door
00:57:37 ►
And it’s not to be perished
00:57:40 ►
My master’s a-torn and it’s so lonely
00:57:45 ►
I’m running from you, yeah, yeah
00:57:49 ►
And now I’m out. Thank you.