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406 - Psychedelic Research Discussion Panel

Jul 10, 2014, 55 min read

Program Notes

Guest speakers: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes

This program features a recording of a panel discussion and Q&A session that took place at the 2013 Burning Man Festival with three people who are currently on the front lines of psychedelic research: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes. This is an overview session covering a wide range of psychedelic research currently underway. Their detailed talks about their work is available in earlier podcasts.

Dr. Roland Griffiths
Johns Hopkins University Psilocybin & Spirituality

Current Psilocybin Research Projects

Q&A with Roland Griffiths
Dr. Alicia Danforth
MDMA-assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults
Gabrielle Agin-Liebes
NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study

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Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic

00:00:22 ►

Salon.

00:00:25 ►

is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon. As I mentioned recently,

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before this year’s Palenque Norte lectures take place at the 2014 Burning Man Festival,

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well, I thought that it would be appropriate for me to play the remaining talks that I have from the 2013 lectures. Unfortunately, a few of them didn’t get recorded last year, but I do understand

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that a first-rate recording team has already been assembled for this year.

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Now, you may think that this is no big deal, recording a few lectures, but if you’ve ever been to a burn, you know better.

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Not only does the poor audio team have to cover over 40 lectures, they also have to find ways to keep their equipment from being totally

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destroyed by all the dust.

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And on top of that, there are times when their own personal survival actually becomes something

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that, well, they have to focus on when a whiteout occurs or something like that.

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Anyway, thanks a lot to all the guys who have worked so hard to put on these lectures and

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get them recorded for us.

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So let’s get on with the show,

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here in more comfort than the audience at the lectures enjoyed.

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The talk that I’m going to play for you right now is of a panel discussion

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and a Q&A session with three researchers

00:01:36 ►

who are currently on the front lines of psychedelic research.

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And we’ll begin with a little surprise

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in that this panel was introduced by our late dear friend, Daniel Jabbour,

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whose 2013 Palenque Norte lecture, titled Coming Out of the Psychedelic Closet, can be heard in podcast number 376.

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Hi, everybody. We’re going to get started.

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Sorry for the slight delay.

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We’re going to get started.

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Sorry for the slight delay.

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So my name is Daniel Jabbour.

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I’m here to introduce the speakers to you guys and read you their bios.

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Most of them have pretty long ones, so if I mispronounce anything, bear with me.

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First, all the way to your left, is Dr. Roland Griffiths.

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Dr. Roland Griffiths is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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His principal research focus in both clinical and preclinical laboratories has been on the

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behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. His research has been largely supported

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by grants

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from the National Institute on Health,

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and he has offered over 300 journal articles and book chapters.

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He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health

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and to numerous pharmaceutical companies

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in the development of new psychotropic drugs.

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He is also currently a member of the Experts Advisory Panel

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on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization

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He has an interest in meditation and is the lead investigator of the Psilocybin Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins

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which includes studies of psilocybin, occasioned mystical experience in healthy volunteers and cancer patients

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and a pilot study of psilocybin facilitated smoking secession.

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Next in the middle, we have Dr. Alicia Donforth. Dr. Alicia is a research associate at the Los

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Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center. Her work as a study

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coordinator and co-facilitator on the Dr. Charles S. Grob’s

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clinical trial with psilocybin for existential anxiety related to the advanced cancer inspired

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her to become a clinical psychologist. She currently is a psychology intern at a non-profit

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organization that specializes in the treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect. At the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Alicia co-developed and co-taught

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the first graduate level course on psychedelic theory, research, and clinical considerations

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for therapists and researchers in training. Since 2004, she has volunteered as a Black

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Rock City Ranger and CARES Services Peer Counselor at Burning Man, Boom, and other festivals and events.

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Her area of focus is supporting individuals who are experiencing challenging altered states of consciousness.

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Welcome.

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Thank you.

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And finally, all the way here on your right,

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is Gabriela Egan-Levis,

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Research Project Manager for the NYU Cancer Anxiety Psilocybin Study and clinical recruiter for a clinical trial

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examining the analogistic effects of Cetivax,

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a cannabis-derived oral spray for cancer-related pain.

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She is pursuing her master’s in psychology at NYU with plans to pursue a degree in clinical psychology.

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Her research interests are in the therapeutic application of plant-based medicines.

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All right.

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So, I think what we’re going to do today is just start off with a quick research update from our panelists.

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And then we’ll just go into a big Q&A so you guys get to answer lots of questions.

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We’ll have two mics running around.

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So just capture one of them and you can ask a question.

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So I guess we’ll go down the line.

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Start with you, Roland.

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Thank you very much.

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And I want to thank the organizers of this event for the invitation.

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This is the first time I’ve been to Burning Man.

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And as we say about the primary mystical experience,

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this holds true, I think, of Burning Man.

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It’s really ineffable.

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There’s no good way to describe it other than experience it.

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So I’m scheduled to talk at 6 o’clock, at which time I’ll go in more detail about some of the studies that we’re doing.

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What I’ll do now is just give a very brief overview of the lines of research that we’re doing,

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and then we’re going to open it up to Q&A.

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And so if there’s something of particular interest, I can address it now.

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something of particular interest, I can address it now. So we initiated the psilocybin research project at Hopkins in 1999

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at a time where research with these compounds,

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approved research with these compounds,

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had really ceased for a period of decades.

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And I think ours was probably the first approved study by FDA

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in, I’m guessing, about three decades

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that would allow administration of a significant dose

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of a serotonergic psychedelic, in this case psilocybin,

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to hallucinogen-naive volunteers.

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psilocybin to hallucinogen naive volunteers.

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And so we’ve conducted a series of studies,

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published three or four major studies in healthy volunteers looking at psilocybin,

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characterizing the primary mystical experience, and I’ll

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go into more detail at the six o’clock talk about that, and the persisting changes in

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attitudes, moods, and behavior that occurs after someone has such an experience.

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We’ve also conducted a couple of really interesting survey studies. These were

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just internet-based surveys in which we queried people about deeply personally meaningful

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experiences. That was one survey. And then another survey in which we queried people about the most difficult experience they’ve ever had with psilocybin,

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the so-called bad trip survey.

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And those results are both really interesting

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and providing convergent information that we can incorporate into our clinical trials.

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our clinical trials.

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Along the lines of the interest we have in the primary mystical experience or the transformative experience, we’ve just recently completed, although the data analysis is still ongoing,

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a major study of psilocybin in beginning meditators.

00:09:04 ►

a major study of psilocybin in beginning meditators.

00:09:08 ►

And I’ll talk about this a little bit more later. We think that there’s this convergence between the domains that one can explore with meditation

00:09:19 ►

and the kinds of insights that occur and experiences that occur with psilocybin.

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And so we’re very interested in that intersection between meditation and psilocybin.

00:09:33 ►

And then we have another study that we’re just about to get underway of psilocybin in long-term meditators.

00:09:41 ►

And that’s going to be really fascinating.

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term meditators and that’s that’s going to be really fascinating uh we’re looking for people there with decades of regular meditation experience and going to query them about the nature of how

00:09:54 ►

the psilocybin experiences interact with their meditation insights and their general spiritual spiritual practices. We also have in the planning stages along these same lines a

00:10:08 ►

study that’s going to investigate the effects of psilocybin in religious

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professionals that is clergy or people who are offering spiritual support or

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guidance within the context of some kind of structured religious organization.

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And we think that’s potentially very, very interesting.

00:10:33 ►

We have two studies that are really therapeutically based.

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For the last, gosh, it’s five or six years now, we’ve been running a trial in cancer patients who are

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psychologically anxious or depressed secondary to a life-threatening cancer diagnosis and the

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basic working assumption here is that the psilocybin experience can be very helpful palliatively in terms of reframing

00:11:08 ►

the existential angst that people have when confronted with life-threatening illness.

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And we could talk some about that. That experiment’s ongoing. Gabby spoke the other day about some of the work being done, a parallel kind of

00:11:26 ►

investigation at NYU. The results are very, although still blinded, are very encouraging

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anecdotally. We’re getting the same kinds of effects that we get in healthy volunteers

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and the appearances that it has incredible palliative effects.

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We also have a pilot study now running in the addictions.

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So we have a study looking at psilocybin facilitation of cigarette smoking cessation

00:12:01 ►

using a cognitive behavioral therapy platform.

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The idea being, and this project’s being led by Matt Johnson at Hopkins,

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and the idea being here that these are potentially reorganizational experiences,

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transformative experiences, and the question is how do you plug this experience in to an intent toward a very specific behavioral outcome,

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that is, quitting smoking,

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in people who have failed multiple times to quit smoking

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and have no idea how.

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And we have very provocative preliminary data there.

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And we have very provocative preliminary data there.

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And then finally, we have a couple of other studies going at Hopkins,

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not with psilocybin, but with other novel hallucinogen-like compounds.

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These aren’t serotonergics, but we ran a very interesting study on dextromethorphan in people with histories of serotonergic and other hallucinogen use.

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And we have run a study with salvia devonorum characterizing those effects.

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So if that’s of interest, we could talk some about that.

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Just before I close, I just want to emphasize I’m a figurehead at Hopkins.

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We have just a remarkably great research team there,

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and I’m one of, we must have almost a dozen people,

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including Bill Richards, Matt Johnson,

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Catherine McLean, who couldn’t be here today and sends her regrets,

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Mary Casamano, Brian Richards, Alberto Garcia-Romeo,

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Fred Barrett, Maggie Kleindienst, and Bob Jesse.

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So there’s a group of talented people who are bringing their efforts together,

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and we feel very honored and gratified to be playing a role in the scientific documentation

00:14:20 ►

of what’s going on with these very interesting compounds.

00:14:34 ►

Good afternoon.

00:14:36 ►

I’m Alicia Danforth, and as I’m sitting here,

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I’m just struck by how many faces are in the room.

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It tells me something about how

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much traction this resurgence in psychedelic research has really gained since I spoke at

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my first Palenque Norte talk in 2007 in a small yurt in a howling dust storm. So this is

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really nice to be here today with so many clean faces.

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At that time, I was providing sort of a midway update on a study looking at existential anxiety

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near the end of life in participants who had advanced stage cancer.

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This trial was being conducted at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

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Dr. Charles Grobe was the principal

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investigator of that study, and we were about midway. The study was a pilot study. We were

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providing sort of a moderate dose of psilocybin to 12 individuals. Everyone in that study functioned

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as their own control, so everybody had an active session with psilocybin and a

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placebo session. The reason being, with someone near the end of life, it wasn’t really ethical

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to have to tell someone, sorry, nothing for you, you’re in the placebo group. And because that

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study wasn’t looking primarily at efficacy, that was the right way to go. What we were looking at was feasibility.

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Does this model work, and is it safe, primarily?

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Is it safe to give psilocybin-assisted therapy treatment to individuals

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who had a prognosis of maybe six months to a year to live?

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When I spoke here in 2007, we were still debating amongst ourselves

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if we would ever be able to publish in any kind of reputable peer-reviewed journal.

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We knew we would be able to publish in a peer-reviewed journal,

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but near the end of the study, we had so much confidence in the strength of the findings

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and the validity of this work that we wanted to give it a shot at getting the very best exposure.

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So kind of on a whim, or, you know, we were optimistic.

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We submitted to the Archives of General Psychiatry,

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which is top of the top, you know, most widely cited, reputable journal.

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And we thought, what’s the worst that could happen?

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They could laugh at us or we could

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get some good feedback about things we needed to modify in our methodology and to our surprise

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that study was published in the archives and got as a result there was a lot of media exposure, and we still had some trepidation at that time.

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Is there going to be a backlash?

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Are we going to be criticized?

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What is the general public going to have to say about this research?

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And happy to report it was overwhelmingly positive.

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We didn’t get any scathing attacks, and it’s prompted pretty robust, healthy dialogue in different communities about, you know, what is the potential of this research?

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Fortunately, the work has continued at both Johns Hopkins and NYU, where they’re working with larger study groups, greater N, looking closer at efficacy

00:18:05 ►

and doing the careful work of refining the protocols.

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What’s the optimal dose?

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You know, gathering more and more and more data to create that substantial foundation

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for this research going forward.

00:18:21 ►

So that’s my sort of retrospective update. What’s happening currently, we published

00:18:28 ►

in January of 2011. And by that time, I was well into my dissertation research. For personal

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reasons, I chose not to write my dissertation about using psychedelic-assisted therapy for existential anxiety with cancer.

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I had enough of that at that point,

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and I started thinking very deeply about other populations

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that might be served well by psychedelic-assisted therapy,

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and I was really contemplating substance, population,

00:19:04 ►

who is out there in the world, which groups of people are suffering unnecessarily, don’t have other good interventions available to them.

00:19:15 ►

And I became inspired to work with adults on the autism spectrum.

00:19:29 ►

spectrum. And as a foundational step, I wanted to do the inductive research that I really want to make a pitch for the value of qualitative research as an essential part of the scientific

00:19:35 ►

method. It often gets undervalued. But as a first step, I wanted to get to know that population

00:19:41 ►

intimately and hear in their own words what were their experiences when they took ecstasy.

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And my initial intention was to sort of plant a seed, create a bridge,

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and create something that might be foundational for a study five or ten years down the road.

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Maybe someday this spark would catch and someone would take an interest

00:20:05 ►

in investigating this seriously. So this is a bit of an announcement. This is one of the good

00:20:09 ►

things about coming to Burning Man. You get to hear some inside stuff. In May, we received

00:20:17 ►

approval from the FDA to conduct a pilot study providing MDMA-assisted therapy for 12 MDMA-naive adults on the autism spectrum.

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I’ll be a co-investigator on that study with Dr. Grobe,

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and we’re working on putting together the team now.

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It’s a little premature.

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We’re not making an official announcement yet because we still have approvals

00:20:50 ►

from several other regulatory agencies, including the DEA, which can take a little time,

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and the Institution’s Research Board to make sure that we have green light across the board.

00:21:03 ►

But we hope to begin enrollment in January for that study.

00:21:07 ►

Again, that’s at Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

00:21:11 ►

So that’s the status of my update presently.

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And I think I’ll leave it at that because today I’m far more inspired to hear what questions you brought,

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and I want to leave as much time for Q&A as possible.

00:21:26 ►

Thank you.

00:21:35 ►

Good afternoon.

00:21:38 ►

I first have to say I’m so honored to be up here

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with my mentors, my muses.

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It’s amazing to hear, going down the line,

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all of the amazing work that has been done,

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unimaginable work, but with real verve

00:22:06 ►

and effort and it’s not easy

00:22:09 ►

to get these

00:22:11 ►

trials approved

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and there’s a lot of

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consciousness

00:22:15 ►

around this that is

00:22:18 ►

very hard to contend with

00:22:21 ►

so I

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commend my

00:22:24 ►

forebears for paving that path. And I echo what Alicia

00:22:34 ►

said, that it’s amazing to see so many people here and so many young people, which is really, really inspiring.

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And, you know, on both spectrums,

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old and young,

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but specifically the young,

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and I think that there is,

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we’re all, I think the reason

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we all come to Burning Man

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on some level

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is that we all share this,

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I guess this hope that we may be able to change our awareness

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of ourselves, of

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the planet and all these things that we are

00:23:20 ►

going to need to face and I think that this work is

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very much on that vein.

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So I’m so honored to be a part of it.

00:23:34 ►

I was introduced, yes, as a project manager,

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I’m the project manager of the psilocybin research group at NYU, and we’re, you know,

00:23:47 ►

it’s a wonderful, wonderful experience working there.

00:23:49 ►

We started in 2007.

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2007, it predated when I began.

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I’ve been working there for about a year and a half,

00:24:00 ►

but the study itself after,

00:24:06 ►

I think maybe it was before your data

00:24:07 ►

was published, 2010

00:24:09 ►

so it was, but you had

00:24:11 ►

some data, so at that point

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Dr. Grove and Alicia’s

00:24:16 ►

UCLA pilot study

00:24:18 ►

which was showing

00:24:19 ►

really promising

00:24:21 ►

therapeutic effects

00:24:23 ►

and the pilot study is really important

00:24:26 ►

because in our somewhat shared intention

00:24:31 ►

to possibly see this psilocybin rescheduled,

00:24:35 ►

there is a ladder that needs to be climbed.

00:24:40 ►

So that was really important for paving the way

00:24:44 ►

and predicated our study.

00:24:46 ►

So it’s Steve Ross at NYU who is an addiction specialist in the Department of Psychiatry in Bellevue.

00:24:54 ►

He and two other psychologists and psychiatrists there got together and formed their group in 2007.

00:25:05 ►

It took about a year and a half, two years to get all the approvals, FDA, DEA.

00:25:09 ►

I don’t know if you guys all know, but an IRB.

00:25:13 ►

And so they began in 2009.

00:25:15 ►

And we’re close to finishing, actually.

00:25:18 ►

It’s taken a long time.

00:25:20 ►

Our target number is 32, and we’re close to there

00:25:26 ►

so we’re hoping

00:25:27 ►

once we finish

00:25:30 ►

which won’t be for a little while

00:25:32 ►

but our intention is to

00:25:34 ►

after Johns Hopkins

00:25:38 ►

we think with our data

00:25:42 ►

there will be powerful enough

00:25:44 ►

significance to do a next

00:25:46 ►

multi-site trial which would be um hundreds of um hundreds of multi-site trials um but yes for now

00:25:55 ►

we are on top of in addition to the cancer study um we are doing a ketamine study, ketamine for depression, actually, acute depression.

00:26:11 ►

For individuals who present to the ER, very depressed or nearly suicidal,

00:26:18 ►

can be offered a ketamine sort of adjunct to their normal treatment as usual in the ER.

00:26:24 ►

And ketamine, as I think most of you know,

00:26:27 ►

it’s a hallucinogen, but of a different class

00:26:31 ►

than the serotonergic hallucinogens like LSD and DMT and psilocybin.

00:26:38 ►

So that’s an interesting field.

00:26:41 ►

And ketamine is also being studied right now at Columbia University,

00:26:45 ►

which is amazing to think that another powerful institution, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, NYU,

00:26:52 ►

are really taking a very serious scientific look at these medicines or these substances.

00:27:02 ►

And the last thing I want to say about that, and then give you a little bit more

00:27:07 ►

updates, is that I really am honored to be exploring hallucinogens, psychedelics, entheogens,

00:27:17 ►

whatever you want to call them, through the lens of science. And I actually wanted to point out that Roland gave me this wonderful

00:27:26 ►

pendant we were what we were it was like at the threshold of Burning Man at the entrance and it

00:27:35 ►

has some psilocybin mushrooms on the on the front on the back and on the back it has this wonderful

00:27:40 ►

quote and wanted to read it.

00:27:45 ►

It’s a William Blake quote from one of his poems,

00:27:48 ►

and it says,

00:27:48 ►

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

00:27:52 ►

So I am so honored and so happy

00:27:56 ►

that science is taking,

00:27:59 ►

I was going to say taking these,

00:28:03 ►

the inquiry into these,

00:28:05 ►

or the investigation into these potentially very valuable psychopharmacologic tools,

00:28:13 ►

essentially, to really understand how they may be of use.

00:28:22 ►

And so science is really

00:28:26 ►

if it’s done right

00:28:28 ►

and it hasn’t always been done right

00:28:30 ►

but

00:28:32 ►

it’s

00:28:34 ►

I think we’re entering a really

00:28:36 ►

positive phase of this

00:28:38 ►

research and the last thing I just want to

00:28:40 ►

quickly

00:28:41 ►

also inform you that

00:28:44 ►

we are hoping to start a psilocybin for alcoholism study,

00:28:50 ►

which would be pretty exciting because a lot of the research, about 40,000 participants volunteered for studies with hallucinogens

00:29:05 ►

before the Controlled Substance Act in the United States.

00:29:09 ►

And the largest indication,

00:29:12 ►

so the most studied population for LSD was alcoholics,

00:29:17 ►

and there was a real treatment effect.

00:29:20 ►

And a recent study, a recent meta-analysis,

00:29:23 ►

had also reviewed all the data from this work. In a recent study, a recent meta-analysis that also proved,

00:29:28 ►

reviewed all of these, all the data from this work and determined that there was likely, I think something like 59%,

00:29:33 ►

I’m not sure of the actual number, but had treatment effects.

00:29:37 ►

So we’re hoping to start the first ever psilocybin for alcoholism trial at NYU in a couple months.

00:29:47 ►

It’s in the review process, but that would be very exciting,

00:29:52 ►

especially kind of combining and just comparing data

00:29:58 ►

with Roland’s work and Matt’s work at Johns Hopkins

00:30:04 ►

with the smoking cessation.

00:30:08 ►

Addiction seems to be quite another avenue.

00:30:14 ►

Actually, one last thing, and I forgot to mention this.

00:30:17 ►

I’m very excited.

00:30:18 ►

This is one of my more exciting, of all the exciting things I have going on at NYU. We are initiating a qualitative interview study

00:30:27 ►

as a supplement to our study right now,

00:30:30 ►

the cancer anxiety study,

00:30:32 ►

in which we will interview the participants

00:30:37 ►

after they have their two dosing sessions,

00:30:41 ►

so both a placebo and an active psilocybin dose.

00:30:44 ►

two dosing sessions, so both a placebo and an active psilocybin dose.

00:30:52 ►

And this, you know, this work would hew to this qualitative data format,

00:30:59 ►

but would basically elicit themes through the kind of lived experiences of these patients who have these really, really profound, sometimes mystical experiences,

00:31:02 ►

really profound, sometimes mystical experiences,

00:31:05 ►

and make that into a study,

00:31:07 ►

and make that into, you know,

00:31:13 ►

have qualitative data about these sort of phenomenon that we can’t really quantify in science.

00:31:18 ►

So I’m going to be a co-investigator in that project,

00:31:21 ►

and that’s starting in a couple weeks.

00:31:24 ►

So I think now we’re ready

00:31:26 ►

to open up for questions.

00:31:29 ►

Thank you.

00:31:32 ►

Before we take questions,

00:31:35 ►

I just have one essential point I forgot to make.

00:31:38 ►

It’s probably the most important

00:31:40 ►

takeaway message about the autism research

00:31:43 ►

that I want to convey to this

00:31:45 ►

audience. For this particular study, we’re not looking at autism from a psychopathology perspective.

00:31:51 ►

We’re not trying to treat, cure, change, affect autism. Individuals on the spectrum, because of

00:31:59 ►

their difficulties processing social cues, frequently present for treatment for help with social anxiety.

00:32:08 ►

It’s very difficult to navigate in the neurotypical world when you’re unable to process nonverbal communication.

00:32:17 ►

So we’re not trying to touch the autism.

00:32:19 ►

We’re trying to reduce symptoms of social anxiety.

00:32:23 ►

Just wanted to make sure that’s crystal clear.

00:32:26 ►

And we are not in any way, shape, or form suggesting that MDMA ecstasy is appropriate for children.

00:32:34 ►

We are only working with individuals age 21 and older.

00:32:38 ►

So I want to make sure that that message gets out there in the world, and thank you.

00:32:47 ►

You have questions.

00:32:49 ►

We’re going to start on this side,

00:32:50 ►

and then we’ll alternate side to side.

00:32:52 ►

Has any research been done on the effects of psychedelics

00:32:56 ►

on head injuries or post-concussion syndrome?

00:33:00 ►

Anything like if part of the brain dies,

00:33:02 ►

does psychedelics help in any way?

00:33:05 ►

I’m not aware of any research.

00:33:07 ►

In the course of the research we did in Healthy Volunteers,

00:33:12 ►

we made the interesting observation of a post-psilocybin headache in a dose-dependent fashion.

00:33:22 ►

headache in a dose-dependent fashion.

00:33:26 ►

And it’s curious because when we went into the literature,

00:33:30 ►

there wasn’t any clear literature documenting that.

00:33:34 ►

And experimentally, it comes out just very clear.

00:33:37 ►

The headache is generally mild.

00:33:38 ►

It can be severe.

00:33:39 ►

It’s dose-related.

00:33:42 ►

The duration of it relates to the dose.

00:33:49 ►

Onset is usually post-experience, so onset starting anywhere from six to ten hours after taking psilocybin. But, you know, the nature of what’s going

00:33:58 ►

on there neurologically is unknown, and we certainly wouldn’t interpret the results as indicating

00:34:07 ►

any kind of neurological, persisting neurological impairment.

00:34:11 ►

Thank you.

00:34:12 ►

Yes, I’ve got a question here.

00:34:14 ►

Actually, I’ve got two questions.

00:34:18 ►

First is, Blake talked about experimentation.

00:34:22 ►

You three are in a great situation because as scientists you can show us where experiments

00:34:25 ►

have been proven. Can you tell us about

00:34:28 ►

the most interesting

00:34:29 ►

proven experiment in this area?

00:34:32 ►

And the second question is in the middle.

00:34:34 ►

For your study with

00:34:35 ►

MDMA and autistic adults,

00:34:38 ►

are you looking for a control group that

00:34:39 ►

will take MDMA that doesn’t have autism?

00:34:42 ►

And where do we volunteer?

00:34:45 ►

I cannot tell you how many volunteers attempted to enroll in our cancer study

00:34:51 ►

who did not have any cancer.

00:34:54 ►

So we either need cancer or autism. Thank you.

00:34:58 ►

Yeah, I’ll take a stab at the first question.

00:35:01 ►

This will be a focus of what I’ll spend more time at 6 o’clock.

00:35:01 ►

Take a stab at the first question.

00:35:04 ►

This will be a focus of what I’ll spend more time at 6 o’clock.

00:35:10 ►

You know, I think that far and away the most interesting thing that we have documented and that a community of users has already figured out

00:35:15 ►

is that these kinds of experiences at their core are life transformative.

00:35:23 ►

And I’ve been working, I’ve been at Hopkins for over 40 years,

00:35:27 ►

given dozens and dozens of psychotropic drugs

00:35:30 ►

to any number of kinds of volunteers.

00:35:35 ►

We work particularly with drug users

00:35:38 ►

because some of our funding has come from National Institute on Drug Abuse.

00:35:43 ►

So I’m really familiar at looking at the effects of drugs acutely

00:35:48 ►

and querying people post-experience.

00:35:54 ►

And psilocybin is absolutely unique in our experience,

00:36:01 ►

but of course we have a very unique setting condition here.

00:36:05 ►

But it’s unique insofar as people will have these experiences,

00:36:11 ►

often of mystical type, and we can talk about what that means,

00:36:15 ►

that are rated by them as being among the most personally meaningful,

00:36:23 ►

life transformative, spiritually significant experiences

00:36:27 ►

of their lives, bar none.

00:36:30 ►

And that memory of that experience

00:36:33 ►

remains months and years after.

00:36:37 ►

And I’ve given lots of high doses

00:36:40 ►

of all kinds of different psychotropics to people.

00:36:44 ►

And if you ask them the next day or the next week or the next month,

00:36:48 ►

it’s an experience that’s just embedded in memory.

00:36:51 ►

Yeah, I remember I came on the unit.

00:36:54 ►

I got a high dose of GHB or sedative or stimulant.

00:37:00 ►

And they’ll pull from memory about what that experience was like.

00:37:05 ►

But there’s no meaning for their life going forward,

00:37:09 ►

except that maybe if it’s alcohol, I know better than to drink that much again.

00:37:15 ►

But with the psilocybin experience, there’s this noetic quality.

00:37:21 ►

There’s a sense that people learn something that’s more true and more real

00:37:26 ►

than everyday waking reality. And that’s really interesting. It’s really important.

00:37:35 ►

And that’s why this research needs to go on. And we don’t know how that’s going to play out

00:37:43 ►

scientifically. There are these clinical endpoints that we can shoot at,

00:37:49 ►

and that may or may not work,

00:37:51 ►

but just unpacking the nature of that experience

00:37:54 ►

and the meaning-making that goes behind it is fascinating from any number of levels.

00:38:02 ►

Before we move on, I want to just address kind of a gap on this panel here.

00:38:07 ►

We don’t have any representatives, although there are some on play who may be speaking

00:38:11 ►

about the MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD studies.

00:38:17 ►

I have Burning Man brain right now, so I don’t want to misquote any of the statistics, but

00:38:22 ►

the results that they got from treating refractory

00:38:26 ►

PTSD with MDMA-assisted therapy were pretty phenomenal. And even at follow-up, sometime

00:38:34 ►

after the sessions were conducted, a very high number of the participants in that study did not

00:38:41 ►

meet criteria for PTSD afterwards. So I just want to fill in this

00:38:46 ►

gap in our panel briefly with a plug for that work. So I’ve heard of a study recently that said that

00:38:52 ►

SSRIs cause neuro or promote neurogenesis. Can you talk about that a little bit and maybe what

00:38:57 ►

the implications are for MDMA? I’m going to give you kind of a non-answer. I’m really not qualified

00:39:03 ►

to speak to it. To the best of my knowledge in the literature that I’ve read,

00:39:07 ►

that’s an unresolved question that’s still being debated.

00:39:12 ►

The neurotoxicity debate goes back and forth.

00:39:15 ►

Does it cause damage?

00:39:17 ►

Does it result in neuroplasticity?

00:39:22 ►

That’s one of the things that needs to be investigated in more detail.

00:39:26 ►

So that’s kind of a non-answer.

00:39:29 ►

Hi.

00:39:30 ►

So this is a question for any of you,

00:39:31 ►

but I don’t want to diminish the importance of qualitative research,

00:39:36 ►

but measurement is obviously very important to science.

00:39:39 ►

And could you speak to how you move from qualitative research

00:39:42 ►

and insights in this area into quantitative research?

00:39:46 ►

I can give you an example from the autism research.

00:39:50 ►

When I began investigating, my head was filled with stereotypes.

00:39:59 ►

I kind of had a layperson’s knowledge of autism.

00:40:01 ►

I had been taught that individuals on the spectrum don’t experience

00:40:05 ►

empathy, that they have no sense of humor, that they lack emotion. And as a result of speaking

00:40:13 ►

with representative members of that population in depth over a period of time and listening

00:40:19 ►

deeply to what they really wanted, no one told me that they wanted to get rid of their autistic self,

00:40:28 ►

that that was integral to their identity, it was pervasive, being autistic was part of who they

00:40:32 ►

were, and more than one individual told me that if there were a cure, they wouldn’t want it. If

00:40:39 ►

they could magically have their autism disappear, they valued the gifts that came with it while simultaneously

00:40:45 ►

acknowledging the disabilities. So the focus of the clinical research shifted significantly

00:40:52 ►

as a result of talking with them and hearing, well, what is difficult for you? What would you

00:41:00 ►

want to help clinically with? Because the literature is very scant. Autism in

00:41:05 ►

adults is grossly understudied. And what little is known suggests that conventional anti-anxiety,

00:41:16 ►

you know, pharmacological interventions are ineffective, that there are differences in

00:41:21 ►

receptors in autistic brains. It’s also currently believed that conventional psychodynamic psychotherapy

00:41:29 ►

isn’t particularly effective.

00:41:31 ►

So that became the focus, saying,

00:41:36 ►

I’m not hearing anybody telling me, please get rid of this autism.

00:41:41 ►

They’re saying, please help me as an autistic person navigate in the world.

00:41:45 ►

And without taking that time to listen and do very rigorous applied thematic analysis

00:41:53 ►

to the themes that emerge from the population, I think that’s the piece these days with the

00:41:58 ►

emphasis on cost-effectiveness, expedience, let’s get the answer, let’s solve it, let’s get that grant.

00:42:11 ►

Taking that longer, slower, and I’ll say almost more feminine approach,

00:42:15 ►

that rapport, that listening, that back and forth, that careful construction of that dialogue to really know the population that you want to serve and hear what their true needs are

00:42:27 ►

so you can steer your course when you start applying rigorous scientific method you’re sort

00:42:34 ►

of setting the boat out of the harbor in the right direction to avoid doing harm to truly meet the

00:42:40 ►

needs of the population that you want to serve and as as I imagine, I kind of imagine the yin-yang symbol.

00:42:45 ►

In an ideal world, I think this model works well for psychedelic research.

00:42:49 ►

We would start with big qual with a little embedded quant, and gradually that proportion

00:42:56 ►

would reverse so that you have your big quant with your little embedded qual in there.

00:43:01 ►

So I advocate for finding that sort of masculine, feminine,

00:43:06 ►

yin-yang balance in science and really reconsidering the value of investing in qualitative research

00:43:15 ►

when appropriate.

00:43:18 ►

I just wanted to quickly, really quickly, I thought you said that really beautifully,

00:43:21 ►

really quickly I thought you said that really beautifully

00:43:23 ►

the real import

00:43:25 ►

of qualitative research

00:43:28 ►

especially with this kind of work

00:43:29 ►

because we’re seeing these

00:43:32 ►

quantitative changes you can measure

00:43:33 ►

as we all have done in our studies

00:43:36 ►

we pick something that we hypothesize

00:43:38 ►

may change

00:43:39 ►

so we’re already

00:43:40 ►

kind of picking

00:43:43 ►

a narrow slice to sort of examine and control for all the, you know, other variables.

00:43:51 ►

But, you know, what we’re seeing in our research is this very reliable effect.

00:43:58 ►

We see, you know, positive, really positive outcomes.

00:44:02 ►

But we’re not, we still missing um sort of this

00:44:05 ►

understanding of the phenomenology of that experience and um we have you know some testimony

00:44:11 ►

but there’s still uh there’s still a lot to be or a lot of value and a lot of um like scientific

00:44:18 ►

value um in uh you know doing qualitative uh investigations of of this of these experiences so we can understand

00:44:28 ►

and sort of find patterns and themes that would help, as Alicia said,

00:44:32 ►

sort of steer the research

00:44:36 ►

I guess boats.

00:44:38 ►

So at NYU I mentioned we were doing this

00:44:42 ►

interview study and that’s the intention, is to allow the patients

00:44:48 ►

who have these really profound, mystical sometimes experiences

00:44:54 ►

and have to fill out pretty much multiple-choice questionnaires

00:45:01 ►

to capture what one patient last week said,

00:45:06 ►

I saw infinity in my mind.

00:45:09 ►

Some people have even said I can’t answer these questions

00:45:13 ►

because it’s not their experience.

00:45:16 ►

And we have noticed anecdotally themes,

00:45:20 ►

so the qualitative research is something I’m really passionate about.

00:45:25 ►

Hi, I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit themes. So the qualitative research is something I’m really passionate about.

00:45:31 ►

Hi, I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about receiving grants and things like this from such organizations as NIH, big organizations like that, and also say

00:45:38 ►

something about young scientists coming out of the closet

00:45:45 ►

with studying psychedelics

00:45:48 ►

and not

00:45:50 ►

being flagged for the

00:45:52 ►

science that they are doing

00:45:53 ►

I think this

00:45:56 ►

is I can I’m going to

00:45:57 ►

answer just briefly and then I think

00:46:00 ►

Roland’s is probably

00:46:02 ►

the best

00:46:02 ►

equipped to answer.

00:46:06 ►

It’s surprising.

00:46:08 ►

I mean, the three of us have worked or are currently working at pretty big institutions.

00:46:19 ►

And it is avant-garde research, but it nonethelessFTA organization, research organization, which

00:46:45 ►

funds a lot of this

00:46:48 ►

research, primarily

00:46:50 ►

actually MAPS,

00:46:52 ►

which Alicia

00:46:53 ►

mentioned, and

00:46:56 ►

all that amazing MDMA work

00:46:58 ►

that’s being conducted

00:47:00 ►

is being

00:47:02 ►

initiated by MAPS.

00:47:04 ►

But at HEFTA, we’re constantly receiving proposals for new studies,

00:47:09 ►

and so it’s very, very promising.

00:47:12 ►

The hurdles to then bring that to fruition are still very high,

00:47:19 ►

but it’s encouraging.

00:47:22 ►

It’s encouraging.

00:47:23 ►

I don’t know if Roland wants to speak more about this.

00:47:27 ►

So unfortunately, most funding, 99% of the funding has come from the private sector.

00:47:36 ►

So the Hefter Research Institute has been funding the cancer trials at NYU and at Hopkins.

00:47:45 ►

We have also received funding from the Council on Spiritual Practices,

00:47:49 ►

the Beckley Foundation, the Riverstook Foundation,

00:47:53 ►

Bretzi Gordon Foundation, McCormick Factory.

00:47:56 ►

So a number of private foundations.

00:48:01 ►

There is just beginning to be NIH-funded research in this area.

00:48:10 ►

And so new researchers come in or aspiring researchers come in to me all the time saying,

00:48:17 ►

you know, what are my prospects here?

00:48:20 ►

And, you know, I’m hopeful.

00:48:23 ►

What we’ve done is demonstrated that this research can be done.

00:48:26 ►

It can be done safely.

00:48:28 ►

It can be done ethically.

00:48:30 ►

With the approval process at Hopkins and establishment of a safety database connected with a safety database from Zurich,

00:48:42 ►

we’ve had a number of other institutions come online, so Harbor, UCLA, and

00:48:47 ►

NYU, and New Mexico now, and I think that’s going to continue to grow. So I don’t see that there’s

00:48:54 ►

any impediment to someone at a major medical institution putting together a credible protocol protocol to study these compounds. How long it takes to get the federal agencies willing to take the political risk, which

00:49:13 ►

is there and real for them, to fund this research, we just don’t know.

00:49:20 ►

I mean, it could be that in a couple of years the whole situation is going to break wide open,

00:49:26 ►

and it could be longer than that.

00:49:30 ►

Hi.

00:49:31 ►

So I guess I have two questions.

00:49:33 ►

The first one is, like, could you all comment on the challenges of the approval process

00:49:44 ►

specifically for psychedelic research and like dealing with

00:49:47 ►

the DEA and like how frustrating that is and whether it is frustrating and then the second

00:49:54 ►

one is I’ve heard about a study that I think Timothy Leary did like a tiny one relating to

00:50:01 ►

Harvard Divinity students where right yeah okay yeah, okay. Yeah, so I was like, I figured this must be something.

00:50:07 ►

So could you like comment on the Harvard Divinity School study

00:50:10 ►

as it relates to Rowan’s research?

00:50:13 ►

Thanks.

00:50:14 ►

Yes, let’s see.

00:50:15 ►

So briefly, the regulatory hurdles are formidable, but they’re surmountable.

00:50:22 ►

So when we initially approached FDA back in 1999, I wasn’t entirely optimistic.

00:50:32 ►

I would have given it maybe a 50% chance that we could get approval

00:50:36 ►

because it was at that point in the United States unprecedented.

00:50:41 ►

The whole landscape is totally different now, 13 years later. So a number of institutions

00:50:48 ►

have done this. It’s time consuming. It’s aggravating because you need to go through

00:50:53 ►

the Food and Drug Administration. You need to go through your local IRB. You need to go through

00:50:59 ►

DEA. All those organizations kind of interact with one another and so the approval process can drag out for months and months if not years.

00:51:10 ►

But it’s doable.

00:51:13 ►

With respect to the Good Friday experiment, just very briefly,

00:51:17 ►

that was a remarkable study in divinity students.

00:51:23 ►

Walter Pankey, who was an advisee of Timothy Leary at the time,

00:51:28 ►

gave seminary students a high dose of psilocybin or niacin as a control.

00:51:35 ►

A number of them reported mystical-type experiences

00:51:38 ►

that had long-lasting meaning to them.

00:51:41 ►

And so the work that we have been doing at Hopkins in one sense

00:51:47 ►

is a very rigorous and systematic follow-up

00:51:50 ►

to those initial observations from the Good Friday experiment.

00:51:57 ►

Are you each going to comment on regulatory hurdles?

00:52:02 ►

I’m frequently approached by people who tell me they start off with the assumption like,

00:52:07 ►

oh, it must be impossible. The government must be harassing you and causing all sorts of problems

00:52:11 ►

and putting barriers in your way. That hasn’t been the case. And I think that’s because of

00:52:16 ►

the good work that was done in the earlier recent studies. we did not encounter undue pushback from the FDA.

00:52:28 ►

We submitted, and they came back with a very small handful of safety considerations.

00:52:32 ►

They wanted some more dialogue with us about have we considered this and that,

00:52:37 ►

and we addressed those changes, and the approval process was smooth.

00:52:42 ►

So I’d like to dispel any myth out there that the evil FDA is somehow trying to

00:52:48 ►

thwart our efforts. As long as you’ve got your ducks in a row in terms of, you know, are you

00:52:55 ►

conducting this study safely? And have you considered, you know, how you’re going to

00:53:00 ►

conduct this research responsibly? That hasn’t been difficult. I understand that the DEA

00:53:08 ►

can be a little bit more difficult, but we’re going into that phase right now, but we’re really

00:53:13 ►

not anticipating a real long delay. I’ll give you a brief anecdote about what it’s like to

00:53:19 ►

deal with the DEA. My understanding is that they really care about the proper care and handling of

00:53:25 ►

the substance and want to make sure that there’s no impropriety there. Dr. Grobe was in his office

00:53:30 ►

one day and two DEA agents showed up in suits looking all very official and serious and said,

00:53:36 ►

we want to take a look at the psilocybin. You know, we want to weigh it out. And they went over

00:53:40 ►

to the research pharmacy in the hospital and the research pharmacist opened the safe and the psilocybin was gone.

00:53:47 ►

And an employee in the pharmacy had just quit

00:53:52 ►

a week before and everybody thought, oh, he absconded with the psilocybin.

00:53:56 ►

But they called the pharmacist. She came back in and looked

00:53:59 ►

and there was a little shelf where the vial had rolled under a little shelf in the safe.

00:54:04 ►

They weighed it all out and they said, thank you very much.

00:54:07 ►

That’s all we needed to know.

00:54:08 ►

So as long as the researchers handled the substance properly, I’m not aware.

00:54:14 ►

Maybe some of the other teams have had more challenges that they’ve faced with the regulatory agencies,

00:54:21 ►

but we have not.

00:54:22 ►

with the regulatory agencies, but we have not.

00:54:30 ►

So yeah, quickly about my experience with the regulatory aspects.

00:54:34 ►

With our project, there are about seven different committees and boards from which we need approval to do this work, FDA, DEA.

00:54:40 ►

I guess I’ll speak specifically about those because, yes,

00:55:10 ►

I guess I’ll speak specifically about those because, yes, it’s actually pretty accurately said, as one that is demonstrated to be safe,

00:55:13 ►

have safeguards to basically protect,

00:55:16 ►

especially with IRBs,

00:55:20 ►

which are review boards for the research institutions, they are primarily concerned with human safety,

00:55:23 ►

human subject safety.

00:55:24 ►

they are primarily concerned with human safety, human subject safety. So beyond really just needing to conduct this research

00:55:31 ►

and present it as one that is legitimate and circumspect,

00:55:40 ►

it’s more just the bureaucratic hassle that we’ve had to deal with.

00:55:49 ►

Sorry, do you want to say something?

00:55:51 ►

Two other points to consider that need to be attended to before you can launch a study like this.

00:55:57 ►

It’s usually the principal investigator, someone, leadership on the team,

00:56:02 ►

needs to have a license to work specifically with Schedule I substances.

00:56:07 ►

You need to have that in place.

00:56:09 ►

And also sometimes, you know, procuring the substance that’s manufactured to a standard that’s acceptable to the regulatory agencies can be a challenge.

00:56:20 ►

I know there are some studies that could potentially launch in Europe,

00:56:25 ►

but they’re having difficulty getting the research drug manufactured to the level of purity required.

00:56:33 ►

So I’ll just throw those out there.

00:56:35 ►

Okay.

00:56:35 ►

Unfortunately, we only have time for one more question.

00:56:39 ►

But the middle has been neglected here, so we’ve chosen this.

00:56:43 ►

But it’s your birthday.

00:56:48 ►

All right, two more questions.

00:56:52 ►

You probably will be back.

00:56:54 ►

But just to mention, Dr. Roland Griffith will be giving his talk in about another hour,

00:57:00 ►

so you’ll have more opportunities to conversate with him.

00:57:02 ►

And then Dr. Danforth will be speaking at 9 p.m. tonight.

00:57:06 ►

Hello. It’s my birthday. I’m really excited to speak to all of you.

00:57:10 ►

I want to know what’s your opinion with the DSM-5 that’s coming out

00:57:17 ►

and the fact that the National Institute of Health has taken away their approval of it

00:57:23 ►

and the APA as well, that they don’t want to.

00:57:27 ►

There’s too much disorders being signaled out.

00:57:29 ►

Too many people are falling into symptoms.

00:57:31 ►

Where do you think research will go if the DSM-5,

00:57:37 ►

which is basically the Bible to everything, is getting their approval?

00:57:42 ►

The approval is just taking away.

00:57:43 ►

That’s something that’s been established for the last 40 years and now we’re taking away

00:57:48 ►

its power and the research funding.

00:57:52 ►

Okay, I’ll start.

00:57:56 ►

As a result of doing the dissertation research, I sort of got pulled into

00:58:00 ►

the controversy about the changes in DSM. They’re so new, it was just published in

00:58:04 ►

May of this year,

00:58:05 ►

and so the dust really hasn’t settled yet.

00:58:08 ►

But there’s been enormous controversy

00:58:10 ►

amongst the broader autistic community

00:58:12 ►

because there are different factions

00:58:15 ►

that are very much in favor of collapsing.

00:58:17 ►

For those of you who don’t know,

00:58:19 ►

the distinction of Asperger’s, high-functioning,

00:58:21 ►

all these levels of autism have been collapsed

00:58:25 ►

into one diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder.

00:58:30 ►

And some people are very much in favor of that change,

00:58:33 ►

and some people are very much opposed.

00:58:35 ►

So that’s not really a consideration for the research that we’re doing

00:58:40 ►

because we’ll do an assessment if someone qualifies as autistic by a third-party assessor,

00:58:48 ►

you know, they’ll meet criteria. So it isn’t really affecting us directly at this time,

00:58:53 ►

but Roland, you’re probably more qualified to speak to how this might affect funding or, yeah.

00:58:59 ►

Happy birthday. Let’s see, I don’t have a strong opinion about this.

00:59:06 ►

I know that in terms of billing charges, they’re using the WHO nomenclature.

00:59:12 ►

But, you know, functionally, I don’t think that changes anything.

00:59:17 ►

You know, DSM has always been, and these diagnostic frameworks have always been part of a partly scientific, partly political process.

00:59:27 ►

I was actually very involved in DSM-5 with respect to caffeine.

00:59:32 ►

That’s an area that I’ve actually done an awful lot more research with than psychedelics.

00:59:40 ►

And there was huge debate about whether caffeine withdrawal should be recognized as a disorder.

00:59:45 ►

I mean, it’s a real phenomenon that occurs, but there are kind of these political concerns that get raised about whether we’re going to over-diagnose the American public.

01:00:10 ►

Functionally, it’s going to make any difference in terms of the way mental health and drug research proceeds.

01:00:12 ►

At least that’s my understanding currently. Hi. I’m interested in the mind-body-spirit relationship,

01:00:17 ►

and I’m curious with the terminal patients that you studied with regards to the psilocybin,

01:00:26 ►

was there any trends when these patients would have these experiences

01:00:32 ►

actually affecting their lifespan and having these sort of mystical experiences?

01:00:39 ►

Did that extend their lives or have any, if you could just discuss the impact on them, on the patients.

01:00:46 ►

So our study is not designed and we haven’t hypothesized impact of that sort.

01:00:55 ►

It’s an interesting question, but I think it would be unsettling to propose that as a primary outcome measure. I think the value of these experiences

01:01:09 ►

in terms of the palliative care and quality of life that people lead after the experience is

01:01:15 ►

more than enough to justify them. But you’re right. It’s an interesting question. There are

01:01:21 ►

kind of anecdotes along that line. You know, I could share anecdotes, but that’s an interesting question. There are kind of anecdotes along that line.

01:01:30 ►

I could share anecdotes, but that’s all they are is anecdotes,

01:01:35 ►

and I’m in the business of science, so I’d prefer not to.

01:01:41 ►

We had to be very careful when we were recruiting for our psilocybin assisted therapy study for advanced cancer

01:01:46 ►

anxiety

01:01:46 ►

I had to listen very carefully

01:01:49 ►

to hear if

01:01:51 ►

prospective participants were looking for a miracle

01:01:54 ►

cure and

01:01:56 ►

frequently I had to state

01:01:57 ►

explicitly this is not

01:01:59 ►

a study looking at the potential

01:02:02 ►

of psilocybin to extend

01:02:03 ►

lifespan. I had to

01:02:05 ►

be very clear this is for anxiety,

01:02:08 ►

quality of life,

01:02:09 ►

and I would echo

01:02:11 ►

what Roland said, that there’s

01:02:13 ►

anecdotal

01:02:14 ►

accounts that popped up,

01:02:18 ►

but there’s nothing that

01:02:19 ►

can really be concluded

01:02:21 ►

from that.

01:02:23 ►

Some people were hoping that psilocybin would miraculously rid them of cancer,

01:02:29 ►

and that was kind of a screening criteria to make sure that we didn’t enroll anyone

01:02:34 ►

that had unrealistic expectations.

01:02:37 ►

Okay, well, thank you very much to our researchers.

01:02:44 ►

You’re listening to the Psychedelic

01:02:45 ►

Salon, where people are changing their

01:02:48 ►

lives one thought at a time.

01:02:51 ►

Well, I’m glad that you’re still with

01:02:54 ►

me. Even though both

01:02:55 ►

Dr. Griffith’s talk and

01:02:57 ►

Dr. Danforth’s talk were podcast

01:02:59 ►

by me a while back, I thought that

01:03:01 ►

there was enough new information in the

01:03:03 ►

recording of this panel discussion that it was worth our time to listen to it.

01:03:08 ►

And if you want to listen to Dr. Griffith’s 6 p.m. Planque Norte talk, you can listen

01:03:13 ►

to my podcast number 385, and Dr. Danforth’s 9 p.m. talk that was at least advertised as

01:03:21 ►

6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

01:03:22 ►

Well, that talk is in my podcast number 392,

01:03:26 ►

which also includes my phone conversation with Alicia and Dr. Grobe

01:03:30 ►

about the current status of their new study investigating potential therapeutic uses of MDMA.

01:03:37 ►

And I want to remind you just one more time that the panel discussion we just listened to

01:03:41 ►

took place in August of 2013, almost a year ago. So that number

01:03:46 ►

392 podcast gives you a complete update on the status of that study with the MDMA and the autistic

01:03:53 ►

community. Now in one of my next podcasts, I hope to be able to give you the lineup of speakers for

01:04:00 ►

this year’s Palenque Norte lectures, which of course will take place at Burning Man beginning on August 25th of this year, which I guess I should say for those who come across this

01:04:10 ►

podcast in some distant future, this year is 2014, at least by the calendar that I’m

01:04:16 ►

currently using.

01:04:17 ►

And like more than 7 billion other people who are walking this planet right now, I’m

01:04:23 ►

not going to be able to make it to Burning Man myself this year.

01:04:27 ►

But for our fellow Saloners who are able to make it,

01:04:29 ►

I hope that you’ll stop by Camp Soft Landing

01:04:32 ►

and sit in on one or two of the Planque Norte lectures

01:04:35 ►

that are hosted in that wonderful camp.

01:04:37 ►

Who knows, you may even meet your next best friend there.

01:04:41 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.

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