432 - GAPS, MAPS, and PTSD

Program Notes §

Guest speakers: Katie Tomlinson & Rachel Hope

Today’s podcast features two of the Palenque Norte Lectures that were given at Burning Man in 2014. The first talk is by Katie Tomlinson, founder of GAPS, the psychedelic student organization at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. For anyone interested in establishing student groups on other campuses this talk has some great pointers for you . Following Katie’s talk we hear Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, introduce Rachel Hope, a participant in one of the MDMA studies sponsored by his organization. Rachel tells her amazing story of a very long struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how the treatment being perfected by Dr. Michael Mithoefer and his wife Annie has cured her of PTSD.

The Evergreen State College
The Secret Chief Revealed
By Myron J. Stolaroff
MIT scientist links autism to Monsanto’s Roundup and predicts HALF of U.S. children will be autistic by 2025
“Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate”

Previous Episode §

431 - That Voice In Your Head

Next Episode §

433 - Consciousness Browsers

Similar Episodes §

• 614 - Meditation and Psychedelics - score: 0.80101
• 471 - Healing For PTSD Is Available - score: 0.79610
• PODCAST 694 – The Art of Dying - score: 0.79079
• 040 - MDMA for PTSD - score: 0.78583
• 013 - Cancer Anxiety Study Tests Psilocybin - score: 0.78416
• 007 - Listening to Ayahuasca - score: 0.78284
• 462 - Psychedelic Advocacy - score: 0.78004
• 044 - The Big Three - score: 0.76862
• 131 - A Model for Sustainable Psychedelic Therapy - score: 0.76818
• 029 - Treating PTSD with MDMA - score: 0.76396

Transcript §

00:00:00 ► §

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ► §

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

00:00:24 ► §

I’d like to begin today by suggesting that you listen to another podcast.

00:00:29 ► §

No, not right now, but the leprechaun in me thought that that would be a funny way to start the podcast today.

00:00:35 ► §

However, I do have no problem with you switching over right now if you want,

00:00:39 ► §

because I think that the information in the podcast that I’m about to recommend is of critical interest right now,

00:00:46 ► §

particularly if you live in the United States.

00:00:49 ► §

Many of our fellow slauners, of course, have no doubt already listened to it.

00:00:53 ► §

I’m talking about Joe Rogan’s podcast, number 593, which he posted at the end of last year.

00:00:59 ► §

It’s an interview with Josh Fox, the man behind the groundbreaking Gasland documentaries.

00:01:06 ► §

I thought that I was up to speed on fracking and other anti-earth practices of the oil industry,

00:01:11 ► §

but I learned significantly more by listening to that podcast.

00:01:15 ► §

And the reason that I’m mentioning it on my own podcast today is that

00:01:18 ► §

one of the topics I’ll be touching on is the importance of getting yourself involved

00:01:23 ► §

in whatever issue happens to be your biggest hot button.

00:01:27 ► §

Should you ever think that you aren’t in a position to make a change in this world, a big change,

00:01:32 ► §

well, Josh Fox’s story should be an inspiration to you.

00:01:36 ► §

His first documentary was nominated for an Academy Award, and he shot it on a $5,000 budget.

00:01:43 ► §

So, if you’re running behind on listening to Joe’s podcast,

00:01:46 ► §

I suggest that you skip ahead to number 593.

00:01:49 ► §

It’s not to be missed.

00:01:52 ► §

Now today, as you listen to the talks that follow,

00:01:55 ► §

one of the things that I hope you’ll keep in mind is that

00:01:58 ► §

these are stories about people who decided to stand up and be counted.

00:02:03 ► §

Both of these talks, by the way, were originally given at last year’s Palenque Norte lectures,

00:02:08 ► §

which were held at Burning Man.

00:02:10 ► §

Now, before I introduce the first of these talks,

00:02:13 ► §

I’d like to say a few words about the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

00:02:18 ► §

And this is something that I’ve thought about for a long time,

00:02:21 ► §

which is, if I was back in high school today,

00:02:24 ► §

or if I was the parent of a student who was thinking about pursuing a long time, which is, if I was back in high school today, or if I was the parent

00:02:25 ► §

of a student who was thinking about pursuing a higher education, then there’s only one

00:02:30 ► §

college that I would be considering if I were you, and it’s Evergreen.

00:02:34 ► §

I’ll put a link to their website in today’s program notes, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us,

00:02:40 ► §

and you can check it out for yourself.

00:02:43 ► §

It’s not perfect, no institution of higher learning is, but when compared to other U.S. Thank you. with the children of great wealth, but when it comes down to simply getting a good education,

00:03:06 ► §

then Evergreen is the very first place I think you should be looking.

00:03:10 ► §

And now, after an overly long build-up,

00:03:13 ► §

I’m finally about to introduce our first speaker of the day,

00:03:17 ► §

namely Katie Tomlinson.

00:03:19 ► §

Katie is the founder and coordinator of the student group

00:03:22 ► §

Greeners Association for Psychedelic Studies,

00:03:26 ► §

also known as GAPS.

00:03:29 ► §

And get this, the group meets weekly to help facilitate the creation of a psychedelic community on campus,

00:03:36 ► §

spread information relating to harm reduction,

00:03:39 ► §

and, most importantly, I think, to help students with integration after psychedelic experiences.

00:03:45 ► §

Katie’s going to be receiving her degree in integrative health by the end of this year

00:03:49 ► §

and then plans on continuing her academic study of psychedelics in the Bay Area.

00:03:54 ► §

Now, after we listen to Katie’s talk, I’ll be back with a few more of my thoughts about

00:03:58 ► §

the courageous path that she’s undertaken in the pursuit of increasing awareness about

00:04:03 ► §

the various aspects of the

00:04:05 ► §

psychedelic experience.

00:04:07 ► §

Welcome back, everybody.

00:04:10 ► §

It is my great pleasure to introduce Katie Tomlinson.

00:04:14 ► §

She’s the founder and coordinator of the Greeners Association of Psychedelic Studies at the

00:04:21 ► §

Evergreen State College.

00:04:24 ► §

With that, I’ll turn it over.

00:04:26 ► §

Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming in today.

00:04:28 ► §

My name’s Katie. I also go by Grace on the playa.

00:04:33 ► §

So today I wanted to talk to you guys about my student group

00:04:38 ► §

and how the work with my student group ties into psychedelics and mystical experiences.

00:04:47 ► §

So the first thing I kind of want to go into is I actually kind of want to just

00:04:51 ► §

kind of briefly define what I mean when I say a mystical experience,

00:04:55 ► §

because that’s a very vague term that has a lot of different meanings.

00:05:00 ► §

So some of you guys might be familiar with the psychedelic researcher Walter Pankey.

00:05:07 ► §

So back in around the 70s, Walter Pankey was going around and he was doing research,

00:05:14 ► §

looking at mystical experiences, and he was interviewing people not involved with the psychedelic community.

00:05:21 ► §

And while he was doing that, he was able to kind of find

00:05:25 ► §

that there were nine persisting traits

00:05:27 ► §

that he was seeing over and over again

00:05:29 ► §

when he talked to people who had had a mystical experience.

00:05:33 ► §

Or rather, you could also define it as a unitive experience,

00:05:37 ► §

primary religious experience,

00:05:39 ► §

an enlightenment experience, and so on and so forth.

00:05:43 ► §

And what eventually he ended up meeting

00:05:46 ► §

Timothy Leary and what he was surprised by

00:05:49 ► §

was that Timothy Leary was

00:05:52 ► §

using a lot of the same language

00:05:55 ► §

that these other people who were involved with

00:05:58 ► §

mysticism were using but he was coming

00:06:01 ► §

from a psychedelic path.

00:06:06 ► §

So with that they ended up doing the research

00:06:09 ► §

with the Good Friday experiment

00:06:11 ► §

and with the Good Friday experiment they gave

00:06:14 ► §

10 divinity students psilocybin

00:06:17 ► §

and were able to locate that they had a mystical experience

00:06:21 ► §

so the nine

00:06:24 ► §

traits as they were,

00:06:27 ► §

the first trait is unity.

00:06:30 ► §

And when one has a mystical experience,

00:06:32 ► §

there’s this overarching feeling that all is one.

00:06:38 ► §

This kind of oneness is known as the hallmark.

00:06:43 ► §

The second is the transcendence of time and space.

00:06:47 ► §

And this can range anywhere from just time speeding up,

00:06:52 ► §

time slowing down, to losing all sense of your body

00:06:56 ► §

or having experiences of eternity or affinity.

00:07:01 ► §

The third trait is a deeply felt positive mood.

00:07:08 ► §

So joy, blessedness, peace, love,

00:07:14 ► §

ecstasy. Love varies from intensity to tenderness to deep concern to others to love or union with God. There may also be feelings of sexual ecstasy that are more spiritual than erotic.

00:07:21 ► §

The fourth is a sense of sacredness, which is a sense of reverence or feeling

00:07:25 ► §

that one’s experience is holy or divine

00:07:27 ► §

feelings of profound humility, awe, wonder

00:07:30 ► §

or fear in the presence of the infinite

00:07:32 ► §

the next quality is the noetic experience

00:07:38 ► §

and the noetic experience is really interesting

00:07:41 ► §

because I think that the noetic experience

00:07:43 ► §

carries over once the experience

00:07:45 ► §

has ended and what noetic translates to is seeing things through the eyes of a child or to see

00:07:53 ► §

things in a new light so the example that I have of this is when I had my first mystical experience

00:07:59 ► §

I had an experience of heaven and that the term heaven took on a whole new meaning because I had an experience of heaven. And the term heaven took on a whole new meaning

00:08:07 ► §

because I had this whole different context and understanding of it

00:08:09 ► §

because I was having a direct experience of it.

00:08:13 ► §

And the reason that I say that it ends up carrying over afterwards

00:08:18 ► §

is that being able to have that new interpretation of the world around you stays.

00:08:25 ► §

And this can be seen when we interpret sacred texts, for instance.

00:08:30 ► §

I’ve known in my experience is that after having that experience,

00:08:33 ► §

sacred texts had a whole new meaning,

00:08:35 ► §

and I could see that it was directly referring to that peak experience

00:08:41 ► §

or that mystical experience,

00:08:43 ► §

or also working as a road map

00:08:46 ► §

to how to obtain that experience.

00:08:49 ► §

The next trait is paradoxicality

00:08:51 ► §

which is feeling that things are simultaneously true

00:08:55 ► §

and not true at the same time.

00:08:57 ► §

So this could be anything from feeling as though one has died

00:09:01 ► §

yet knowing that they’re still alive.

00:09:04 ► §

Experiencing the empty unity or void,

00:09:06 ► §

but feeling this is the place that contains all of reality.

00:09:10 ► §

Feeling as though one has a body while still in it.

00:09:15 ► §

Oh, feeling as though one has left their body while still in it.

00:09:18 ► §

And the next trait is a legend of ability.

00:09:20 ► §

And a legend of ability means that it’s really difficult to explain this experience

00:09:24 ► §

to other people, especially if they haven’t had the experience um and there’s two more um so the

00:09:31 ► §

next trait is transiency which means that the experience doesn’t last forever um aldous huxley

00:09:36 ► §

had a quote that was the mystic is swimming in the rivers that the schizophrenic is drowning in

00:09:43 ► §

i think that that holds up here with that trait.

00:09:46 ► §

The last trait is persisting positive changes

00:09:49 ► §

in attitude and behavior.

00:09:51 ► §

So for something to be a mystical experience,

00:09:54 ► §

this means that one benefits from it,

00:09:58 ► §

and the benefits end up carrying over

00:10:00 ► §

into their day-to-day life if they’re properly integrated.

00:10:04 ► §

So some of the things that could happen

00:10:06 ► §

is that people may have relaxed ego defenses,

00:10:08 ► §

renewed self-worth, and increased

00:10:09 ► §

self-acceptance. Loss of

00:10:12 ► §

the fear of death.

00:10:14 ► §

They may also have more

00:10:16 ► §

compassion, love, and tolerance for other.

00:10:18 ► §

Their sense of purpose in life may also change.

00:10:21 ► §

So I bring

00:10:22 ► §

up the nine traits

00:10:24 ► §

first and talk about the mystical experience first

00:10:26 ► §

because ultimately the student group was designed

00:10:30 ► §

so that students who have a mystical experience

00:10:33 ► §

would be able to find one another

00:10:34 ► §

or at least that is the intention that I have

00:10:37 ► §

the deepest intention I have behind it

00:10:39 ► §

because when I had my first mystical experience

00:10:41 ► §

there was this sense of isolation

00:10:44 ► §

and of wondering who else has had this experience.

00:10:48 ► §

I felt like I had just come onto this whole new world

00:10:51 ► §

and didn’t really have the support available for it.

00:10:57 ► §

And kind of like,

00:10:59 ► §

saying that, I kind of want to talk about

00:11:01 ► §

just my personal story

00:11:02 ► §

and how I came to be running

00:11:05 ► §

the student group and how I had the mystical experience. So when I was younger, probably like

00:11:12 ► §

many of you, I thought that all illegal drugs were addictive. I thought all illegal drugs were bad.

00:11:18 ► §

And I ended up meeting someone who was very intelligent, who used psychedelics and kind of

00:11:22 ► §

opened my mind to the possibility. And i learned that they weren’t addictive um and from that point i started i did

00:11:31 ► §

start to take them after after researching them for some time um and i went through a pretty

00:11:37 ► §

i would say pretty intense recreational phase with psychedelics um and during that time, I didn’t want to mix my spirituality

00:11:45 ► §

with my use

00:11:48 ► §

of psychedelics because

00:11:49 ► §

I didn’t want to feel like I was

00:11:52 ► §

relying on it.

00:11:54 ► §

So what ended up happening is I

00:11:56 ► §

tripped nearly

00:11:58 ► §

probably close to about a hundred

00:12:00 ► §

times before I ended up having a

00:12:02 ► §

mystical experience.

00:12:04 ► §

I feel really lucky that I did

00:12:06 ► §

end up eventually having a mystical experience because I realized that’s what I had been looking

00:12:12 ► §

for the whole time. And that’s really why I was using substances. My substance use decreased

00:12:17 ► §

after that as well. I kind of want to talk about the experience that I had. I was at an event called Go-A-Girl,

00:12:30 ► §

which is an event that is designed to bring out these specific experiences

00:12:33 ► §

if people go into it with the right mind frame.

00:12:36 ► §

The setting is designed to be able to bring that out.

00:12:39 ► §

It’s one DJ.

00:12:40 ► §

He plays music for 24 hours,

00:12:43 ► §

and the BPM range is between 150 to 180.

00:12:46 ► §

Just to give you an idea.

00:12:47 ► §

The music’s pretty intense.

00:12:49 ► §

When the experience started,

00:12:51 ► §

I had a death experience.

00:12:54 ► §

And I was on LSD.

00:12:57 ► §

And when it started,

00:13:01 ► §

I became another person

00:13:03 ► §

and I was on a um I was on a cliffside and I was

00:13:08 ► §

screaming out to someone and I wasn’t able to reach out to them and I fell and I died and I

00:13:14 ► §

didn’t feel any physical pain associated with this but I did feel all of like the emotional turmoil

00:13:18 ► §

um but kind of coming when I started to come out of that that stage, I could hear the music.

00:13:26 ► §

And I asked myself, well, what’s happiness anyway?

00:13:29 ► §

I don’t know why that question popped into my head.

00:13:31 ► §

But the music started to sound like happiness.

00:13:34 ► §

And it was a divine, blessed happiness.

00:13:39 ► §

And from that point, I think the thought that popped into my head

00:13:42 ► §

is that I had died and been reborn in the kingdom of heaven. While I was also in that point, I think the thought that popped into my head is that I had died and been reborn in the kingdom of heaven.

00:13:47 ► §

While I was also in that state, there was this feeling of extreme privilege.

00:13:54 ► §

And kind of this question of, well, why me?

00:13:59 ► §

Why do I get to have this experience?

00:14:02 ► §

What about everyone else that doesn’t get to have this experience?

00:14:04 ► §

And that ended up creating a lot of grief in that experience. have this experience? What about everyone else that doesn’t get to have this experience? And

00:14:05 ► §

that ended up creating a lot of grief in that experience. And I remember just really holding

00:14:10 ► §

that sadness. As I’ve integrated that experience more, I’ve come to realize that that pain that I

00:14:17 ► §

felt was the wound that has delivered me to my life’s purpose, which is to create spaces where people can have those sorts of

00:14:26 ► §

experiences with or without substances.

00:14:30 ► §

And I’m hoping that through the work that I’m doing with the student group and kind

00:14:34 ► §

of my eventual path that I’ll be able to work that in a legal framework.

00:14:37 ► §

But if not, there’s also other modalities that I work in to bring about those experiences

00:14:42 ► §

without substances.

00:14:43 ► §

to bring about those experiences without substances.

00:14:48 ► §

So from that point, after that experience, I ended up having an experience about a year later

00:14:54 ► §

about creating community.

00:14:56 ► §

And from that experience of wanting to create community

00:15:02 ► §

within kind of that mystical consciousness state,

00:15:06 ► §

I started the Greeners Association for Psychedelic Studies,

00:15:10 ► §

also known as GAPS, at Evergreen.

00:15:14 ► §

And the student group has been taking my life in directions

00:15:19 ► §

I did not quite expect, but in wonderful ways.

00:15:24 ► §

So this is kind of just a basic rundown of what we do.

00:15:26 ► §

We have weekly meetings.

00:15:28 ► §

Different students give presentations on psychedelic substances when they do

00:15:32 ► §

or just different, like, history.

00:15:35 ► §

We have discussion topics.

00:15:36 ► §

Sometimes we show documentaries.

00:15:38 ► §

One of the things we’ve also been able to do is that we run integration circles.

00:15:42 ► §

And the integration circles that we run,

00:15:44 ► §

we have a woman who, her name is LaLorian,

00:15:47 ► §

and she comes twice a quarter to Evergreen,

00:15:51 ► §

and she just kind of holds space to let the students come

00:15:54 ► §

and talk about their different experiences that they’ve had

00:15:57 ► §

in all their states of consciousness, with or without substances,

00:16:00 ► §

which has been really helpful for the students

00:16:03 ► §

to kind of gain more support and be able to talk to an adult

00:16:06 ► §

that may have been through something similar.

00:16:11 ► §

We also bring speakers.

00:16:13 ► §

We brought Rick Doblin recently.

00:16:15 ► §

Rick Doblin started the Multidisciplinary Association

00:16:17 ► §

for Psychedelic Studies.

00:16:20 ► §

We have harm reduction workshops.

00:16:22 ► §

We’ve also gone to different conferences.

00:16:27 ► §

We went to the Women’s Visionary Congress last year,

00:16:30 ► §

and then we went to Psychedelic Science the year before that.

00:16:32 ► §

Or, excuse me, we went to Women’s Visionary Congress this year.

00:16:39 ► §

And one thing I want to note with that is that the school funded us going to all of those conferences.

00:16:50 ► §

And the reason I kind of wanted to talk more about the format of what the group does is that I’m really hoping that more colleges step up and do these works. Because I think we are kind of on, we’re on a paradigm shift right now where this work is starting to be more well accepted.

00:16:56 ► §

There’s documentation to show that, you know, these substances do have benefits and that they are worthwhile.

00:17:02 ► §

And that there is a growing interest.

00:17:07 ► §

And I think that there’s a lot that we can do within that. Along with that

00:17:10 ► §

I feel as though

00:17:11 ► §

the student group itself is a form

00:17:13 ► §

of psychedelic activism

00:17:15 ► §

because in that way we’re

00:17:17 ► §

able to reach people we wouldn’t normally

00:17:19 ► §

reach. For instance

00:17:21 ► §

when I’m running the student group we often have

00:17:24 ► §

bake sales to raise money,

00:17:31 ► §

and then people walk by and they’re like, psychedelic bake sale? What’s that? This isn’t dosed, is it? We get asked that question so many times. But, you know, that creates a dialogue.

00:17:38 ► §

I’ve had several conversations with people who are saying, like, well, why do we have a student

00:17:42 ► §

group like this? Like, what are you doing? And you doing? And we’ve actually been able to kind of reach out to the people

00:17:48 ► §

that we wouldn’t normally be able to reach out to.

00:17:51 ► §

Because it’s one thing to kind of be that lone voice in the forest

00:17:55 ► §

being like, well, we have the answers,

00:17:57 ► §

but if we can’t reach out to the rest of society,

00:18:00 ► §

this work isn’t going to go anywhere.

00:18:02 ► §

So I think that the student groups add legitimacy to the

00:18:05 ► §

psychedelic experience and

00:18:07 ► §

also bring about awareness

00:18:10 ► §

and like I was saying before, it also

00:18:11 ► §

creates a meeting place

00:18:13 ► §

for individuals who

00:18:15 ► §

are using psychedelics

00:18:18 ► §

whether or not that they’ve had a mystical

00:18:19 ► §

experience, because I think

00:18:21 ► §

it’s really important for students

00:18:23 ► §

to have access to harm reduction

00:18:25 ► §

about these substances, because they’re going to do them anyway.

00:18:29 ► §

But one example that I have from the student group is that there was, we had a student

00:18:34 ► §

come who had never used substances before, and she was trying to educate herself before

00:18:40 ► §

using them, and the meeting she ended up coming to was me giving a presentation fully on psychedelics

00:18:46 ► §

and the mystical experience.

00:18:48 ► §

And so she goes off

00:18:48 ► §

and then a week later

00:18:49 ► §

has her first mystical experience

00:18:51 ► §

with psychedelics.

00:18:52 ► §

And she kind of reported back to me

00:18:54 ► §

that when she was coming down,

00:18:56 ► §

she was trying to describe

00:18:57 ► §

the experience she was having

00:18:58 ► §

to her friends.

00:18:59 ► §

And her friends kind of

00:18:59 ► §

just made fun of her,

00:19:00 ► §

being like, oh, that’s great.

00:19:02 ► §

It sounds like you’re

00:19:03 ► §

pretty out there.

00:19:05 ► §

But because she had seen the presentation before, she was kind of able to be like, oh, okay,

00:19:08 ► §

I know what happened to me. I know there’s someone I can go and I can talk to about this.

00:19:13 ► §

And we’ve had several other students come in that are really like, well, I didn’t know

00:19:18 ► §

that there were terminologies for this. I didn’t know that there was a community around

00:19:21 ► §

for this. So I think it’s really important, especially because I think a lot of

00:19:25 ► §

the new substance users that come in are primarily

00:19:28 ► §

young people in college.

00:19:30 ► §

So one of the things that I’ve been kind of

00:19:31 ► §

meditating on lately is

00:19:34 ► §

what’s the point?

00:19:36 ► §

Why do we seek out these

00:19:38 ► §

mystical experiences? Why is it important to have

00:19:40 ► §

community around them?

00:19:41 ► §

Why is it, you know,

00:19:43 ► §

why are so many of us compelled to do this work

00:19:46 ► §

to provide people with these kind of experiences?

00:19:50 ► §

So I guess, so let’s look,

00:19:52 ► §

so let’s look, I guess one thing we can look at first

00:19:54 ► §

is like, let’s look at the research

00:19:55 ► §

around these experiences.

00:19:58 ► §

So many people rate this mystical experience

00:20:00 ► §

as one of the top five experience in their life,

00:20:04 ► §

if not the most important experience in their life if not the the most

00:20:05 ► §

important experience in their life this is something that we’ve consistently seen with

00:20:09 ► §

research with with several different studies end of life anxiety so when people are involved in

00:20:15 ► §

end-of-life anxiety research it’s not that they’re taking lsd and having this like you know they are

00:20:22 ► §

having a fun and meaningful trip but it’s not like they’re just getting tripped out what’s happening is that the people who have the end of life anxiety

00:20:28 ► §

are the individuals who have a mystical experience

00:20:30 ► §

because when they have that feeling of all is one

00:20:34 ► §

we’re all connected

00:20:35 ► §

they kind of see themselves as just a small piece in this larger system

00:20:40 ► §

and it’s easier for them to let go of their life

00:20:43 ► §

what’s fascinating though is that these people generally are able

00:20:45 ► §

they have more peace in their life afterwards

00:20:49 ► §

and they don’t need as much pain medication even.

00:20:53 ► §

Addiction.

00:20:54 ► §

Some of you guys might be familiar with Gabor Mate’s research

00:20:57 ► §

and Gabor Mate is an addiction expert

00:21:01 ► §

in Canada. He wrote the book

00:21:04 ► §

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

00:21:06 ► §

And he argues that addiction

00:21:08 ► §

comes from two primary places,

00:21:12 ► §

which is trauma

00:21:13 ► §

and a spiritual void.

00:21:15 ► §

And the spiritual void has been created

00:21:17 ► §

because of that trauma.

00:21:19 ► §

If we look at what’s going on

00:21:20 ► §

with ayahuasca,

00:21:22 ► §

kind of the research that he’s,

00:21:23 ► §

he’s looking at ayahuasca

00:21:24 ► §

primarily for his research.

00:21:25 ► §

And what he’s seeing is that

00:21:27 ► §

people are able to have these deep, profound

00:21:30 ► §

spiritual experiences,

00:21:31 ► §

and that kind of helps to

00:21:33 ► §

fill that spiritual void

00:21:35 ► §

and to kind of make people

00:21:37 ► §

kind of renew their faith in the infinite.

00:21:41 ► §

Along with that,

00:21:43 ► §

the trauma aspect of it,

00:21:44 ► §

ayahuasca has a unique ability to be able

00:21:46 ► §

to work with trauma and to help people move through that. I’m not going to go super into

00:21:50 ► §

that, but if you’re curious, you can look more into it. Along with this too, I think that if

00:21:55 ► §

we look at kind of the different individual benefits of the mystical experiences that happen.

00:22:08 ► §

We see that people have relaxed ego defenses.

00:22:13 ► §

They have renewed self-worth, increased self-acceptance, loss of the fear of death,

00:22:16 ► §

more compassion, more peace, more connection.

00:22:21 ► §

And I don’t know about you guys, but after I had one, I just kind of took life a lot less seriously and was able to just relax more kind of as Bill Hicks says it’s

00:22:25 ► §

just a ride I think also what’s important to look at is how these experiences affect community and

00:22:33 ► §

what and how this helps the individual become a larger part of their community um Charles Eisenstein

00:22:40 ► §

um who is a kind of this new speaker author um who has been kind of writing about the shifts that have

00:22:47 ► §

been happening in our society around spirituality argues that individuals will seek out different

00:22:56 ► §

different substances in an attempt to kind of like have this mystical experience or have this

00:23:01 ► §

initiation which is he argues part of the reason why we have

00:23:05 ► §

people who turn to alcohol or why we have people who, you know, turn to other substances because

00:23:13 ► §

they really, there’s an inherent, there’s an innate need for it. And he argues that once

00:23:20 ► §

an individual has this experience, it allows them to become a fully mature human

00:23:26 ► §

being.

00:23:27 ► §

And once someone is a fully mature human being, they’re able to kind of see how they themselves

00:23:32 ► §

are connected to everything and how their work ties into everything.

00:23:39 ► §

Without that experience, I think it’s a little bit difficult to kind of see how we are unified

00:23:44 ► §

and how my pain or my actions are your actions.

00:23:48 ► §

But once we have that experience, we’re able to kind of work with each other better

00:23:52 ► §

and we’re able to come together in community and see the importance of community

00:23:56 ► §

and see the importance that our relationships have one another.

00:24:00 ► §

I guess kind of just to tie that back into the student group,

00:24:04 ► §

a big part of the reason why the student group exists is to create community and to be able to kind of just ease suffering and to be able to help individuals manage the psychedelic experience.

00:24:24 ► §

student group like kind of kind of similar to this or be able to do the same work the biggest kind of piece of advice that I can give is learn how to be able to talk to people who aren’t

00:24:31 ► §

involved in the psychedelic community without coming off as kind of a my teacher Cynthia says

00:24:38 ► §

hippie woo woo I guess I guess it’d be the best thing yeah yeah um yeah. And so that’s one of the skills

00:24:46 ► §

that I’ve really worked on

00:24:47 ► §

is being able to be a bridge person,

00:24:49 ► §

which is like I try to take those experiences

00:24:52 ► §

and be able to move that language

00:24:54 ► §

and to be able to kind of like talk to people about it

00:24:58 ► §

in I guess we’d say the default world,

00:25:00 ► §

the matrix.

00:25:04 ► §

That’s what I’m putting it um that is hippie google

00:25:08 ► §

because i think one of the things that my advisor for instance has commented on is that i’m i’m

00:25:15 ► §

i’m able to like to talk about faculty and like work with faculty and not see faculty or the

00:25:21 ► §

college the institution as the enemy because even though I have kind of come up against a few walls here and there,

00:25:27 ► §

ultimately I understand why there’s a struggle around accepting these substances,

00:25:32 ► §

and I try to come to it from a place of compassion

00:25:33 ► §

and be able to work with it from that place.

00:25:36 ► §

Along with that, I guess the last thing I wanted to mention too is that,

00:25:41 ► §

and since this podcast is going out to many people,

00:25:44 ► §

the last thing that GAPS or one of the things that GAPS is trying to do this year is to create

00:25:49 ► §

a conference. And the conference is called Generation Psychedelic, but in the logo,

00:25:56 ► §

the Y will be capitalized. And the Y is going to be capitalized because it’s supposed to be

00:26:01 ► §

kind of a platform for the up and coming psychedelic speakers it’s for

00:26:05 ► §

generation Y

00:26:06 ► §

so if you

00:26:09 ► §

are a part of generation Y and you

00:26:11 ► §

feel like

00:26:12 ► §

between the ages of 18 and

00:26:15 ► §

32 possibly

00:26:17 ► §

so if you are

00:26:19 ► §

part of that age range and

00:26:21 ► §

you feel like you are kind of

00:26:24 ► §

one of the people up and coming in

00:26:25 ► §

the psychedelic movement i encourage you to email me um at gaps at evergreen at gmail.com so g-a-p-s-a-t-e-v-e-r-g-r-e-e-n

00:26:39 ► §

at gmail.com um for it to get into the application process because I really want

00:26:45 ► §

us, the younger

00:26:48 ► §

generation, to have a chance to connect

00:26:50 ► §

and relate with each other.

00:26:52 ► §

This conference will be happening

00:26:54 ► §

around mid

00:26:56 ► §

spring quarter, so

00:26:58 ► §

between April and March.

00:27:00 ► §

And the last note that I kind of want

00:27:02 ► §

to say is

00:27:03 ► §

I really feel like the mystical experience ultimately is our birthright.

00:27:09 ► §

And it’s one that’s worth protecting and one that’s worth bringing back into the public sphere and being able to talk to openly.

00:27:19 ► §

I think that it needs to be honored.

00:27:22 ► §

And I think once we’re able to bring kind of those ideas and

00:27:26 ► §

that experience back into the public sphere um it will ultimately be for the betterment of humanity

00:27:31 ► §

thank you um you mentioned that you uh are interested in the potential for psychedelics

00:27:40 ► §

to be worked with to enable more people to have mystical experiences.

00:27:47 ► §

You also mentioned other modalities that you work with.

00:27:49 ► §

Could you tell us about those?

00:27:51 ► §

Yeah, I can.

00:27:53 ► §

I’m a yoga practitioner.

00:27:57 ► §

That’s kind of just something that I do in my day-to-day life for my own practice.

00:28:02 ► §

I’m also a five rhythms practitioner, which is a form of movement meditation.

00:28:07 ► §

Five rhythms has been something that I learned to do through Evergreen.

00:28:10 ► §

I have a teacher there, I mentioned her earlier, named Cynthia.

00:28:13 ► §

And one of the things I’ve kind of realized through doing that practice is that I also want to be a Five Rhythms teacher.

00:28:18 ► §

And the Five Rhythms is really interesting because,

00:28:19 ► §

I’m not going to go super into detail about it,

00:28:22 ► §

but what I can say about it is that it is one of the most psychedelic things I have done

00:28:27 ► §

without substances in a very sober setting.

00:28:30 ► §

And I think that kind of…

00:28:32 ► §

I think one of the things I didn’t mention before, too,

00:28:35 ► §

that I think is important is for us to have a spiritual discipline

00:28:37 ► §

outside of the psychedelic experience

00:28:40 ► §

because the spiritual discipline will ground you.

00:28:43 ► §

It can also provide you with

00:28:45 ► §

community and it can also be a way to reach those states and be a reminder of those states

00:28:50 ► §

without substances but it helps to kind of bring that kind of energy back into your day-to-day life

00:28:55 ► §

without having to go off and do substances all the time and substances are really hard on your body

00:28:59 ► §

so i think it’s very helpful um I’m curious sorry I’m curious more

00:29:06 ► §

of you said

00:29:08 ► §

you that there’s a lot

00:29:10 ► §

of like legal loopholes

00:29:12 ► §

of working with you like your school

00:29:14 ► §

to kind of

00:29:16 ► §

promote this sort of

00:29:18 ► §

act and I’ve been seeing things

00:29:20 ► §

like this woman Emily she started like reset

00:29:22 ► §

me dot something

00:29:23 ► §

and she’s been going like

00:29:25 ► §

live on cnn talking about psychedelics and so i definitely feel like the movement is happening

00:29:30 ► §

and i’ve heard of like students for safe access like through maps but like what other legal um

00:29:37 ► §

loopholes have you kind of found with being able to publicly speak and protect yourself as well as…

00:29:45 ► §

From what I understand, we have three…

00:29:49 ► §

I mean, we have…

00:29:50 ► §

The Evergreen believes in freedom of speech very much so.

00:29:54 ► §

I honestly haven’t run into too many.

00:29:59 ► §

I’ve run into a little bit of opposition.

00:30:01 ► §

When we were starting the integration circles,

00:30:02 ► §

mostly it was when I kind of had opposition from the school because the school was like well what are you doing

00:30:07 ► §

like why are we having counseling about this is illegal activity but i was able to kind of work

00:30:12 ► §

with them um other than that there really hasn’t been too much opposition and this is kind of

00:30:17 ► §

one of the gifts of evergreen honestly is that evergreen is a very liberal school. It’s very open.

00:30:27 ► §

Right, exactly.

00:30:29 ► §

And one of the things that we say in the mission statement is that we’re not here to encourage or discourage your substance use.

00:30:32 ► §

We’re just here to create a free flow of information.

00:30:37 ► §

Very good talk.

00:30:38 ► §

Thank you.

00:30:39 ► §

You mentioned briefly…

00:30:41 ► §

Can you speak into the mic more?

00:30:42 ► §

Certainly.

00:30:43 ► §

You mentioned briefly the end-of-life issues as far as the interesting research in that area.

00:30:54 ► §

Can you see that as being a way to legitimize or to bring more to the consciousness

00:30:58 ► §

of non-substance-using population that there is a value in

00:31:06 ► §

particularly in easing this apprehension

00:31:09 ► §

towards end of life issues.

00:31:11 ► §

So you’re asking, do you feel like the end of life anxiety research

00:31:16 ► §

can bring more legitimacy to the psychedelic movement

00:31:19 ► §

to the public sphere?

00:31:21 ► §

Absolutely. I think that’s kind of part of the reason why MAPS is doing the end of life

00:31:26 ► §

anxiety is because

00:31:27 ► §

we all die someday.

00:31:29 ► §

Isn’t it great that we can find something

00:31:31 ► §

that can help ease that for

00:31:33 ► §

hopefully everyone.

00:31:37 ► §

Maybe not

00:31:38 ► §

everyone, but yeah.

00:31:40 ► §

Have you guys been archiving

00:31:41 ► §

a lot of different websites

00:31:43 ► §

that are showing the different researches that have been done?

00:31:48 ► §

If I were to email you, would you be able to send links about,

00:31:53 ► §

or are you guys making a library?

00:31:56 ► §

We do have, we have been slowly building out of the psychedelic library

00:32:02 ► §

and the student activities library of Evergreen

00:32:04 ► §

that has different information on, there’s just of a psychedelic library and the student activities library of Evergreen that has different information

00:32:05 ► §

on many different

00:32:07 ► §

psychedelic books. If you

00:32:09 ► §

were to email me and you wanted information

00:32:11 ► §

on these studies, I would most certainly

00:32:13 ► §

be able to send you that information.

00:32:16 ► §

As far as kind of like archiving it

00:32:17 ► §

for the students, we haven’t quite done that, but that’s a good idea.

00:32:21 ► §

I was wondering if you had

00:32:23 ► §

reports or encounters with people who were absolutely not spiritual,

00:32:27 ► §

did not believe in any of this, but still had an experience like this and understood it as such,

00:32:34 ► §

and maybe changed suddenly and became mystic or spiritual.

00:32:39 ► §

So are you asking have we had people who haven’t had, or skeptic or agnostic skeptic yeah not believe

00:32:47 ► §

or let’s say the opposite do you have to be spiritual to have a mystical experience you know

00:32:53 ► §

um i don’t i don’t believe you do um i think i don’t know if you’re familiar with the story of

00:32:59 ► §

life of pie um but in the story life of Pi the book goes into this more

00:33:05 ► §

but he kind of talks about how atheism

00:33:08 ► §

and spirituality in a lot of ways

00:33:11 ► §

are pretty similar

00:33:12 ► §

it’s just kind of a different lens of looking at the world

00:33:17 ► §

one of the things that I find that the spiritual perspective

00:33:20 ► §

help is that it just gives us a language to talk about these experiences

00:33:23 ► §

but I’ve known many people who have had what i would i would call a pretty

00:33:30 ► §

spiritual or mystical experience but they just don’t use that terminology because they’re not

00:33:33 ► §

comfortable with it but it’s been interesting because when i do meet those people there’s kind

00:33:37 ► §

of a language barrier we have to move through first and then once we’ve kind of moved through

00:33:41 ► §

the language barrier like we’re able to see some kind of just kind of see I kind of moved through the language barrier, like, we’re able to see some kind of similarities

00:33:47 ► §

and be able to kind of see, like, oh, this is similar,

00:33:50 ► §

you’re just using a different language.

00:33:53 ► §

Wow, what a legacy Katie and the other students

00:33:56 ► §

who are involved with GAPS are leaving to their college.

00:33:59 ► §

And to stand up in the face of the school’s authorities

00:34:02 ► §

to argue for the value of helping students integrate their psychedelic experiences,

00:34:07 ► §

well, to me, that shows tremendous courage.

00:34:11 ► §

It’s not very hard for an old guy like me to talk about these things.

00:34:14 ► §

After all, I’ll never have to humble myself and hide who I really am ever again in a job interview.

00:34:20 ► §

My professional life is essentially over.

00:34:23 ► §

But Katie and her compatriots, on the other hand, have their entire adult lives ahead of them,

00:34:28 ► §

and to take a public stand on psychedelics right now, in my opinion, takes a significant amount of courage.

00:34:35 ► §

Also, I noticed that one of the people Katie mentioned, who is from outside the college but supporting the work of GAPS, is LaLaurian.

00:34:46 ► §

college but supporting the work of GAPS is Lelorian. Now, La has been a good friend of mine for many years, and to be honest, I can’t think of any other member of our community that I would

00:34:51 ► §

go to myself for help with a psychedelic crisis of some sort. What I wouldn’t have given to have

00:34:56 ► §

been able to talk with La after some of my own first experiences with these substances.

00:35:01 ► §

Also, if I remember correctly, there was some discussion about whether a mystical

00:35:06 ► §

experience could be brought about through psychedelics if the person was an atheist.

00:35:11 ► §

Well, I can attest to the fact that while it doesn’t happen often, it nonetheless can happen.

00:35:17 ► §

Years ago, one of my friends, who I did acid with whenever we could get some,

00:35:21 ► §

was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. There wasn’t a spiritual

00:35:25 ► §

bone in his body, and when we’d be tripping and I would start talking about the spiritual dimension

00:35:30 ► §

of the experience I was having, he would, well, he’d just laugh at me and say it was all coming

00:35:35 ► §

out of the brain of someone who had been brainwashed by the Catholic Church in his youth.

00:35:40 ► §

But then one day I gave him a bag of salvia divinorum that I thought must be inactive because I wasn’t able to get off on it.

00:35:47 ► §

Well, the next morning he came to me and his hands were literally shaking as he told me that I was right.

00:35:53 ► §

There was an other and there were entities there.

00:35:57 ► §

His two-minute salvia trip had quite literally overturned more than 50 years of denying that there was a possibility of a spiritual dimension in life.

00:36:07 ► §

It was quite a profound experience for him.

00:36:10 ► §

Another thing that I should mention is that if you have a student group at your college or university

00:36:15 ► §

and have an event or some such that you’d like me to pass along here in the salon,

00:36:19 ► §

I’ll be more than happy to do so.

00:36:22 ► §

Let’s face it, without a healthy and growing student movement

00:36:25 ► §

right now, we could once again lose the momentum that has been building for the last 20 years or

00:36:30 ► §

so. Let’s not have a repeat of the 70s and 80s when psychedelics went back into eclipse.

00:36:36 ► §

The student movement, coupled with the global dance community, is what gives me so much hope

00:36:41 ► §

for whatever comes in the future that my grandchildren are going to have to cope with.

00:36:46 ► §

Now, we have just heard from a young activist who is keeping the flame burning at the college level.

00:36:52 ► §

Next, I’m going to play the talk that Rachel Hope gave late on a Thursday afternoon at the 2014 Burning Man Festival.

00:36:59 ► §

Rachel’s story about her recovery after years of suffering with PTSD is, well, it’s quite riveting, as you’ll hear

00:37:05 ► §

in a moment. And as you’ll also hear, she is introduced by Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS,

00:37:11 ► §

the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. But before I play Rachel’s talk, I think

00:37:18 ► §

that it’d be of interest to point out that while MAPS is now the world’s leading institution behind psychedelic research, when I swallowed my first 120 milligrams of MDMA back in 1984,

00:37:29 ► §

there was no such thing as MAPS.

00:37:31 ► §

And there were very few people who were saying anything positive about MDMA in public.

00:37:37 ► §

But one of the tiny cadre of believers in its potential was Rick Doblin.

00:37:41 ► §

I first learned of him through a paper titled,

00:37:44 ► §

MDMA Enters the Global

00:37:46 ► §

Brain, a report on a visit to the World Health Organization. That paper is dated March 2nd, 1985,

00:37:53 ► §

and its author was none other than Rick Doblin. Like Katie Tomlinson, Rick began his mission all

00:37:59 ► §

by himself. But if he’s anything, Rick is tenacious. He simply wouldn’t let go of the idea that MDMA,

00:38:06 ► §

once it was properly understood, would become one of the world’s most significant medicines.

00:38:12 ► §

He took the first steps on his own, just as any other person who launches an organization has

00:38:16 ► §

done. Many great things begin with a single individual. My guess is that something great

00:38:22 ► §

is going to come from you as well, once you figure out exactly what it is you want to accomplish here

00:38:26 ► §

Rick had an idea, now we all have maps

00:38:30 ► §

Katie had an idea, now we have gaps

00:38:32 ► §

Josh Fox wanted to stop fracking in his neighborhood

00:38:36 ► §

he had an old car, $5,000 and a camera

00:38:39 ► §

at the time, hardly anybody outside of the fracking field

00:38:43 ► §

had even heard of it

00:38:44 ► §

now on average there isn’t a day that goes by At the time, hardly anybody outside of the fracking field had even heard of it.

00:38:50 ► §

Now, on average, there isn’t a day that goes by without the publication of another peer-reviewed paper dealing with the dangers of fracking.

00:38:53 ► §

And by banning that filthy practice in the state of New York,

00:38:56 ► §

the equivalent of 58 million cars will not be on the road.

00:39:00 ► §

For many of the people involved in making this happen,

00:39:03 ► §

it all began with Josh Fox’s documentary, Gasland.

00:39:07 ► §

So if there’s an idea bottled up in you that you think could make this world a better place if implemented,

00:39:12 ► §

well, then what are you waiting for? Do something about it.

00:39:16 ► §

Now let’s join our friends at Camp Soft Landing, where they’re hosting the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures,

00:39:23 ► §

and Rick Doblin is introducing the next speaker.

00:39:26 ► §

And I challenge you to not shed tears of joy when you hear Rachel Hope tell the story of how she came to be cured of PTSD.

00:39:35 ► §

When we first started our first MDMA study, it was 2004, and it wasn’t clear, you know, exactly how safe it would be.

00:39:47 ► §

We knew a lot from the underground work.

00:39:50 ► §

But again, we were doing it in a regulated context.

00:39:54 ► §

And so the people that were the first ones to volunteer for that study were especially courageous.

00:40:02 ► §

And it was also people were especially desperate in a way.

00:40:07 ► §

So in our first study, we had 20 people,

00:40:12 ► §

and they had PTSD for an average of over 19 years,

00:40:18 ► §

and they had failed on pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy.

00:40:22 ► §

And so out of that, and Rachel fit that pattern,

00:40:26 ► §

and out of that came the courage to volunteer.

00:40:31 ► §

But beyond that, Rachel has been willing

00:40:35 ► §

to share her experience with other people,

00:40:40 ► §

and with Sanjay Gupta on CNN and with documentaries.

00:40:44 ► §

Rachel has been an eloquent spokesperson.

00:40:47 ► §

And it’s particularly special what she’s done

00:40:51 ► §

because someone else who was in our study,

00:40:54 ► §

when you talk about it, when you have to talk about it,

00:40:57 ► §

sometimes it can be re-traumatizing.

00:41:00 ► §

So one of the people that was cured of PTSD in our study

00:41:04 ► §

was willing to talk to the media.

00:41:08 ► §

And she had had the worry that what had happened to her before, it’s okay to talk about with your therapist.

00:41:19 ► §

But once you sort of tell it to the world, then everybody knows your secrets.

00:41:23 ► §

And that was re-traumatizing to her so I just want to

00:41:25 ► §

honor Rachel for having

00:41:27 ► §

the courage

00:41:29 ► §

to volunteer

00:41:35 ► §

in the first place and also

00:41:38 ► §

to talk and so now I should let her talk

00:41:39 ► §

isn’t Rick amazing thank you

00:41:43 ► §

it’s really an honor to be here

00:41:49 ► §

because without

00:41:51 ► §

Rick making maps

00:41:53 ► §

and having a people power

00:41:55 ► §

raising of money to make this study

00:41:58 ► §

happen

00:41:59 ► §

that actually cured me

00:42:02 ► §

of PTSD

00:42:03 ► §

I would be dead

00:42:04 ► §

I’m sure of that that actually cured me of PTSD, I would be dead.

00:42:07 ► §

I’m sure of that.

00:42:12 ► §

So just, I want to kind of close up our time gap.

00:42:18 ► §

So I had chronic, treatment-resistant, complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:42:22 ► §

I was diagnosed probably in the early 90s.

00:42:24 ► §

I tried everything. Psychotherapy, different medicines, I was in and early 90s. I tried everything.

00:42:26 ► §

Psychotherapy, different medicines.

00:42:27 ► §

I was in and out of hospital.

00:42:33 ► §

Every kind of yoga, meditation, breathing.

00:42:35 ► §

Everything I could do.

00:42:38 ► §

After about 19 years and I think well over a million out of pocket

00:42:41 ► §

because I had pre-existing conditions

00:42:43 ► §

and was not qualified for health

00:42:45 ► §

insurance, I gave up. And I just decided to live. I had enormous amount of chronic pain

00:42:55 ► §

and I still do. And I just, I was one of the desperate ones. I had nothing to lose. I really was anti-drug.

00:43:06 ► §

I seemed like the most unlikely person.

00:43:09 ► §

I was raised in the 70s.

00:43:11 ► §

I saw a lot of drug abuse.

00:43:13 ► §

Totally turned me off from drugs.

00:43:14 ► §

I was one of the last people to think about MDMA,

00:43:18 ► §

especially because I drank the Kool-Aid,

00:43:20 ► §

and I believed it caused holes in your brain.

00:43:23 ► §

But I was desperate.

00:43:24 ► §

How was I going to be scared of holes in my brain

00:43:26 ► §

when I could barely keep food down?

00:43:30 ► §

I had hardly any function for months at a time.

00:43:34 ► §

Some of the symptoms I had chronically that were disruptive,

00:43:38 ► §

like a startle reflex, was completely unhinged.

00:43:41 ► §

So like if a phone rang or someone walked into the room,

00:43:44 ► §

I had no governing

00:43:45 ► §

forces that would keep my body from just jumping and screaming and having this whole panic thing.

00:43:52 ► §

And that was the most, it was very, very painful for my son to watch me go through that. And

00:43:56 ► §

I think that particular symptom, I mean, I had everything from night terrors to panic attacks,

00:44:03 ► §

anxiety, difficulty in relationships.

00:44:07 ► §

But that one was the one that was most visible to everyone else.

00:44:12 ► §

PTSD, there wasn’t even really much talked about back then.

00:44:17 ► §

We were talking many years ago.

00:44:19 ► §

Why did I go into study?

00:44:23 ► §

Besides desperation?

00:44:21 ► §

Why did I go into study?

00:44:24 ► §

Besides desperation?

00:44:28 ► §

Because as I read all the clinical trials that were studying post-traumatic stress disorder,

00:44:34 ► §

actually I was blackmailed by my assistant

00:44:37 ► §

that if I didn’t keep trying to get well,

00:44:39 ► §

that he would leave.

00:44:40 ► §

And I desperately needed my assistant

00:44:42 ► §

to shield me from the world

00:44:44 ► §

because I could hardly leave the house very often and I needed to work. So he said, you have to pick one

00:44:48 ► §

of the studies. He printed like a stack this big off the internet. And when I got to, it

00:44:53 ► §

took me a couple weeks, when I got to the MAP study, it was impossible. The FDA requirements

00:45:01 ► §

for the study, the protocol was so outrageously restrictive and nuts

00:45:08 ► §

that I thought, how are these people even going to accomplish this?

00:45:11 ► §

And I root for the underdog.

00:45:14 ► §

And as I said, I thought, what do I have to lose?

00:45:18 ► §

None of those other pharmaceutical companies ever came up with anything that helped me before.

00:45:23 ► §

So maybe this medicine that people talk about, maybe that will help.

00:45:29 ► §

So I was in the clinical trial.

00:45:31 ► §

I was treated, like you said, with two sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.

00:45:36 ► §

I think they were like two months apart.

00:45:38 ► §

And my symptoms went away.

00:45:40 ► §

90% were gone and never came back.

00:45:43 ► §

So I went from like, I was born.

00:45:49 ► §

Pretty shocking, actually.

00:45:52 ► §

And I went around going, what the hell happened?

00:45:56 ► §

Because after being so sick, I mean, there’s actual file cabinets I’m sure like

00:45:59 ► §

seven different doctors had. They couldn’t fix me. I became more aware

00:46:03 ► §

of why I was broken. But I,

00:46:05 ► §

until I had those sessions where I was given the ability to be, have reduced anxiety and address

00:46:12 ► §

the traumatic experiences. I was raped as a child. I had, was hit by a truck as a child and I had

00:46:18 ► §

massive injuries. Um, be able to address those situations in therapy

00:46:25 ► §

without flipping out and re-traumatizing myself or someone else.

00:46:29 ► §

But at the same time, so having a reduction of anxiety,

00:46:33 ► §

which MDMA gives you,

00:46:35 ► §

but also increasing awareness at the same time.

00:46:38 ► §

So it wasn’t dumbing down my awareness

00:46:40 ► §

like an anti-anxiety medication, something like that.

00:46:43 ► §

So I addressed those issues very productively in the therapy.

00:46:47 ► §

It wasn’t just the MDMA.

00:46:49 ► §

It wasn’t just the psychotherapy.

00:46:50 ► §

It was the culmination.

00:46:52 ► §

It’s like a culmination lock.

00:46:54 ► §

The experience for me was like being my very best self I have ever been

00:47:00 ► §

and getting to be that best self and heal the most wounded and injured

00:47:08 ► §

and hopeless self that I ever was. I got to be my own healer. Well, I thought that was awesome

00:47:16 ► §

to just run around with 10% of my symptoms for like nine years. And I wasn’t, I thought,

00:47:21 ► §

oh, I’m just going to take my, you know to take it and go and didn’t miss with myself.

00:47:26 ► §

I got to go back into the clinical trial on a relapse.

00:47:30 ► §

I had more surgery, my 12th surgery, new titanium part put in my neck,

00:47:35 ► §

and that experience was very, like you said, re-traumatizing,

00:47:39 ► §

remembering my days of recovery and paralysis after the injury.

00:47:45 ► §

I remembered all that four months on bed rest.

00:47:47 ► §

And luckily, I wrote to them and said,

00:47:50 ► §

I’m really kind of sick again.

00:47:52 ► §

And I was able to go into the relapse study.

00:47:55 ► §

Well, I thought I was just going to get better like I was.

00:47:58 ► §

I got cured.

00:47:59 ► §

I no longer have PTSD.

00:48:01 ► §

So that was 10% wrong.

00:48:11 ► §

And it’s heavy. People don’t like to say cured. I still have post-traumatic stress. No one’s ever going to take away my history or my memories, but it’s not a

00:48:17 ► §

disorder that’s taken over my life. So in some ways, I wander around going, I’m born. I’m healthier,

00:48:24 ► §

happier, more adjusted, having my clarity and my thoughts than I ever have in my whole life.

00:48:29 ► §

It’s like being a little kid.

00:48:32 ► §

But anyway, I wanted to tell you what it’s like from a patient standpoint.

00:48:40 ► §

The world of recreational drugs is really foreign to me.

00:48:43 ► §

The world of recreational drugs is really foreign to me.

00:48:50 ► §

And I maintain a lot of my realization drug-free and through ecstatic dance.

00:48:56 ► §

I was introduced into those portals in my brain through the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and realized that I could access them without the drug at all.

00:49:00 ► §

And weekly I do ecstatic dance and I keep myself on a maintenance plan.

00:49:06 ► §

all. And weekly I do ecstatic dance and I keep myself on a maintenance plan. But I wanted to be kind of like an advocate to say, I really do believe what Rick is doing to get this medical

00:49:14 ► §

treatment available through the scientific channel is true. One of the reasons that I go around

00:49:24 ► §

talking about my private life and some of the most humiliating

00:49:28 ► §

and hard things I could talk about

00:49:29 ► §

because a veteran dies every 90 minutes in our country

00:49:33 ► §

from suicide, and I know why.

00:49:37 ► §

I know why, because I would be dead if I didn’t have a kid.

00:49:43 ► §

PTSD is like living in a prison from within

00:49:46 ► §

being tortured every day

00:49:48 ► §

in a way you have to hide from your loved ones

00:49:50 ► §

because you don’t want them to be traumatized too

00:49:52 ► §

so I feel it’s an emergency every day

00:49:58 ► §

that this treatment is not available

00:50:00 ► §

it’s a body count

00:50:01 ► §

so that’s how I relate to the so that’s how I relate

00:50:05 ► §

to the medicine

00:50:06 ► §

that’s how I think about it

00:50:08 ► §

I get concerned

00:50:10 ► §

that if anybody is harmed

00:50:13 ► §

or is irresponsible

00:50:14 ► §

or not looking out for their friends

00:50:17 ► §

and is harmed using this medicine

00:50:18 ► §

it’s going to set it back

00:50:19 ► §

and more people are going to die

00:50:21 ► §

so that’s why I’m here

00:50:23 ► §

mainly to say

00:50:24 ► §

please support maps.

00:50:29 ► §

Please support harm reduction.

00:50:32 ► §

Please party responsibly.

00:50:34 ► §

Please don’t allow you or anyone else

00:50:37 ► §

to harm the work that’s being done

00:50:40 ► §

to change public opinion and policy

00:50:43 ► §

with having some of those.

00:50:46 ► §

I don’t want anything more in the paper.

00:50:50 ► §

Okay, so that’s that.

00:50:51 ► §

And I love the way Rick does his talk, so I want to open it up to questions.

00:50:57 ► §

And I’m only going to do like a half-hour question,

00:51:00 ► §

so be really efficient with what you want to ask so other people have a chance.

00:51:07 ► §

Can you hear me?

00:51:08 ► §

Great.

00:51:08 ► §

In your therapy session, what was revealed to you that wasn’t revealed to you prior to that session

00:51:14 ► §

and other therapy moments?

00:51:16 ► §

So what happened under the MDMA for you that was sort of the turnkey?

00:51:20 ► §

Thank you for asking that.

00:51:22 ► §

A lot of what I saw during my sessions were things that I did know were,

00:51:28 ► §

I did a lot of work on myself, I did know were kind of misfiring

00:51:32 ► §

and my neurological wiring was replaying

00:51:38 ► §

as if I was about to be hit by a truck over and over again.

00:51:41 ► §

I knew that that was essentially needed to be fixed.

00:51:47 ► §

The MDMA assisted psychotherapy let me go in there like a mechanic

00:51:50 ► §

and actually fix it.

00:51:52 ► §

So it wasn’t like, ah, I really need to,

00:51:54 ► §

I had the empowerment and the ability to literally go

00:51:56 ► §

and do like brain surgery on myself.

00:51:58 ► §

It was unbelievable.

00:52:00 ► §

I mean, to say, okay, I see what’s going on here,

00:52:03 ► §

this belief system, this track, this neurological pattern,

00:52:05 ► §

and you just go, boom, done.

00:52:08 ► §

How simple is that?

00:52:15 ► §

Does that answer it?

00:52:19 ► §

So when MDMA is used in a recreational setting, and the primary, I guess, feelings that someone has is generated…

00:52:29 ► §

It’s off. Back on.

00:52:33 ► §

It comes from the more empathetic and euphoric feelings that someone experiences.

00:52:38 ► §

In the psychotherapeutic setting,

00:52:40 ► §

are you still experiencing that in the beginning stages of the psychotherapy,

00:52:44 ► §

or is that overwhelmed by the therapeutic setting

00:52:47 ► §

and pretty much eliminated during that environment?

00:52:50 ► §

I think that’s a really good question.

00:52:51 ► §

A lot of people ask me that,

00:52:52 ► §

where is it a total buzzkill to be in a clinic with a blood pressure cuff

00:52:58 ► §

and you can’t move around, you have to stay in the bed?

00:53:01 ► §

No, because for me, this is just my experience,

00:53:04 ► §

I was very frightened and scared of the drug.

00:53:07 ► §

And so I felt really like safe having like medical staff right there. And, you know,

00:53:13 ► §

so from a clinical standpoint, as a non-recreational drug user, I don’t know the difference.

00:53:20 ► §

But I will say I did have this experience of connectedness

00:53:26 ► §

that was also essential to the healing of my PTSD,

00:53:29 ► §

and I’m glad you asked that because I can’t think of any other therapeutic process

00:53:34 ► §

that repairs the profound rip that an individual has from everything and everyone.

00:53:49 ► §

everything and everyone. Essentially, what I realize is that PTSD, in a sense, is this catastrophic tear from the web of connectedness. And Judith Herman is a, I think she’s a, I

00:53:56 ► §

think she’s at Columbia, but she’s the chief of, she studies, she wrote a book called Trauma

00:54:01 ► §

and Recovery, which was probably the best model that I’d come up with before the MAPS study,

00:54:07 ► §

where the treatment process was connecting with a trusted individual,

00:54:12 ► §

and I would say that’s similar to the model of the two male and female therapists,

00:54:17 ► §

and then doing a certain amount of telling the story directly,

00:54:22 ► §

because when you don’t tell your story directly

00:54:25 ► §

you tell it somatically it’ll start eating away at your body you’ll have some symptoms you’re

00:54:31 ► §

it will be told so you start telling the story you’re actually telling it and then the third

00:54:37 ► §

model is the healing of the terror so you get into like a group process where other people who have

00:54:44 ► §

shared the same traumatic experiences

00:54:46 ► §

and then you can get back into reconnection.

00:54:49 ► §

Well, that has a whole lot of limitations.

00:54:51 ► §

And in the times that I had been in those group settings,

00:54:53 ► §

we re-traumatized each other.

00:54:55 ► §

It was terrible, actually.

00:54:59 ► §

So I really wanted to do her model,

00:55:01 ► §

but without the healing of a sense of connectedness

00:55:05 ► §

and that this connection is good and this connection is healthy

00:55:08 ► §

and this connection loves me and I love it back

00:55:10 ► §

and that I’m not separate,

00:55:13 ► §

there’s not a whole lot that can be done.

00:55:15 ► §

So I don’t know of any other treatment that helps repair that.

00:55:19 ► §

I mean, just from a basic standpoint,

00:55:23 ► §

even intellectually I had a lot of education,

00:55:25 ► §

so I wasn’t superstitious,

00:55:27 ► §

but on a physical, bodily level,

00:55:29 ► §

I felt God hated me

00:55:30 ► §

and wanted me to die.

00:55:33 ► §

I felt like whatever life was

00:55:34 ► §

wanted me to just be snuffed out,

00:55:36 ► §

squeezed out,

00:55:37 ► §

and that I was just

00:55:38 ► §

this ridiculous person hanging on,

00:55:41 ► §

that it was not love,

00:55:42 ► §

that it was not wanted,

00:55:43 ► §

and that I was just taking up space

00:55:45 ► §

because I was so damaged. And irreparably damaged was something I heard. But I was able to go into

00:55:55 ► §

my brain and say, that actually isn’t true. But the belief structures are, you can’t change them

00:56:02 ► §

without something that really blows your mind. It lit my head

00:56:06 ► §

up like a Christmas tree. Every

00:56:08 ► §

neurological

00:56:08 ► §

potentiality was firing in my brain

00:56:12 ► §

and that left like a

00:56:14 ► §

wonderland of potential for me to

00:56:16 ► §

work on. Now, I’m kind of

00:56:18 ► §

irritated when I hear people go, ah, it took

00:56:20 ► §

X, well,

00:56:22 ► §

maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know if they’re

00:56:24 ► §

testing it. And then

00:56:25 ► §

not do inner work. Because I’m like, what a waste. Maybe you have to open your brain

00:56:30 ► §

up like this and then not do anything to make it better.

00:56:37 ► §

So set and setting, set and setting, intention, intention, intention, intention.

00:56:43 ► §

Here you go.

00:56:42 ► §

Set in setting, intention, intention, intention, intention.

00:56:43 ► §

Here you go.

00:56:44 ► §

Okay, hello.

00:56:48 ► §

So thank you for your talk.

00:56:48 ► §

It’s very inspiring.

00:56:50 ► §

I had the same situation.

00:56:54 ► §

I had PTSD for over 25 years, and I read the studies,

00:56:57 ► §

and I was not a drug user before, and I tried it for the first time.

00:57:04 ► §

So as I know, PTSD has many symptoms, including disassociation, flashbacks,

00:57:07 ► §

panic attacks, anxiety, et cetera. And the first time I tried it, I was dancing as well, listening to very loud music. And the first thing I

00:57:12 ► §

noticed is that my disassociation for, I don’t know, 20 years has like completely gone for

00:57:20 ► §

that period of time. And, you know, I’ve never had that experience before no matter what i did

00:57:26 ► §

any every single healthy practice i’ve tried so i was wondering for you when you had your experience

00:57:33 ► §

um how were the symptoms gradually released and you know what in what order

00:57:37 ► §

and you know just your general reflections on that thank you yeah um i think the disassociation was well like the first one to go

00:57:48 ► §

once i felt could have uplinked back to um sort of like a a greater consciousness that i felt a

00:57:54 ► §

part of that’s what was the first first i was like reconnect now with that energy and intention and

00:58:01 ► §

clarity what else is next and for i think it’s an individual thing

00:58:05 ► §

it’s like i could search myself at that point i went into the sessions with a very clearly

00:58:12 ► §

established intention and inquiries that i developed consciously with my therapist

00:58:17 ► §

so there was a big lead up of a lot of therapy so i would go in with sort of like agenda

00:58:22 ► §

but ultimately the professional

00:58:26 ► §

therapists who do this, they understand the nature of the medicine. You can’t necessarily

00:58:31 ► §

control that. But it was like on a symptom-by-symptom basis. What would show up? It’s almost like

00:58:37 ► §

which ghost wants to get busted first? And panic anxiety the replaying of of of the the traumatic event or

00:58:49 ► §

even the replaying of the sensations of it because at some point i got a very strong mind and just

00:58:53 ► §

would block it out like disassociative but my bodily symptoms would replay it over and over

00:58:59 ► §

again so i think that was the next one i addressed because it was totally impossible to function.

00:59:09 ► §

I had like irritable bowel syndrome for 20 years.

00:59:10 ► §

My hair was falling out.

00:59:12 ► §

I had hardly, I was not absorbing nutrition.

00:59:18 ► §

I mean, that, so I thought, okay, I got to deal with the bodily somatic storytelling first, which led to actually talking about what actually happened.

00:59:23 ► §

And in some of those sessions was the first time

00:59:25 ► §

that I was able to actually talk about it

00:59:27 ► §

without completely flipping out.

00:59:31 ► §

What it was like to be a child being raped and have a voice.

00:59:35 ► §

But it was medicine just in telling the story.

00:59:38 ► §

And that was the next layer of like,

00:59:40 ► §

okay, let’s get my body, let’s rescue my body

00:59:44 ► §

from being just a storytelling instrument of hell.

00:59:48 ► §

So right away, I think in the first session,

00:59:51 ► §

those were like the two really big keys.

00:59:53 ► §

Connected to something bigger that does love me,

00:59:55 ► §

wants me to survive.

00:59:56 ► §

And then that my body is no longer

01:00:00 ► §

just this walking illustration of the story.

01:00:03 ► §

So those were two really big keys.

01:00:06 ► §

What else? Microphone. Hi, thank you. I was wondering if you could maybe point out what

01:00:15 ► §

the role of the therapist, what you found to be most helpful in the therapist’s presence during

01:00:21 ► §

this whole process? I found the role of the therapist to be essential.

01:00:26 ► §

And initially I was like,

01:00:27 ► §

why does it have to be a man and a woman?

01:00:29 ► §

And, you know, I started this

01:00:33 ► §

with really a lot of like critical monkey mind

01:00:36 ► §

and I just didn’t understand, you know,

01:00:39 ► §

what the hell this was all about.

01:00:41 ► §

But they were very grounded and wise

01:00:42 ► §

and that was reassuring in and of itself.

01:00:45 ► §

So I even did this study. I mean, I wasn’t completely committed or in for a while. I was

01:00:50 ► §

like skeptical and paranoid, of course. But so the role of being a reassuring guide, I’d say.

01:01:02 ► §

guide, I’d say.

01:01:06 ► §

I think what I mainly relied on with them is I could have just

01:01:08 ► §

gone too hard, too

01:01:10 ► §

fast, and I could have gotten really sick

01:01:12 ► §

because the traumatic memories

01:01:14 ► §

would come on too fast.

01:01:16 ► §

It was very overwhelming.

01:01:17 ► §

I do not recommend going into traumatic

01:01:20 ► §

memories with this medicine without guides.

01:01:22 ► §

There was this huge wisdom in the

01:01:24 ► §

male and female counterpart.

01:01:26 ► §

The yin and yang became very like, whoa, okay, I totally get this now, the yin and yang.

01:01:31 ► §

Also, so the mother-father representation was there for me,

01:01:35 ► §

and I felt very comforted and sort of the sensation of being holistically wanted

01:01:42 ► §

by the energetics of the masculine female.

01:01:44 ► §

So affirming my own sense of purpose for being born, in a sense.

01:01:49 ► §

That’s not what I thought was going to happen from the therapist,

01:01:52 ► §

but it did for me.

01:01:55 ► §

But they would help me close down.

01:01:57 ► §

Once I would start to get too revved up,

01:02:00 ► §

they would monitor my body for me,

01:02:03 ► §

and I would do a closed eyes with the eye shade and

01:02:05 ► §

you know they put headphones on it would be soothing music and they’re like how about you

01:02:10 ► §

just go inside for a while which was great because without that i really could have flipped out

01:02:15 ► §

totally so they were regulators and guides and i touched stone i have realizations and it was

01:02:21 ► §

great to have people who were really really smart and knew what I was going through to talk to them about what I was experiencing

01:02:27 ► §

and have them write things down for me.

01:02:30 ► §

I can remember it later.

01:02:32 ► §

Okay.

01:02:33 ► §

Did that?

01:02:33 ► §

Yeah.

01:02:34 ► §

Thank you for talking to us today.

01:02:36 ► §

My question is, in my experience, people with PTSD are often ruled by their triggers.

01:02:42 ► §

What is your experience when you come across a trigger now?

01:02:47 ► §

That’s a great question.

01:02:48 ► §

I had a lot of triggers that were very somatic, like a smell,

01:02:53 ► §

and I wouldn’t even necessarily be conscious that it was happening.

01:02:55 ► §

I’d just pick up a scent of something,

01:02:57 ► §

and I would go into a full blackout panic attack.

01:03:01 ► §

I mean, the kind where people had to basically you know, basically wrestle me to the floor,

01:03:05 ► §

run off the balcony. So now it just seems like I’m aware. I’m not desensitized. I become actually

01:03:17 ► §

more aware of the triggers. I’m not as unconscious that they’re there. I go, oh, okay, I remember

01:03:22 ► §

that now. And there’s a sense of empowerment. I’m staying with

01:03:25 ► §

my body. I’m staying with my story. I’m staying with my history. And I can think about it in an

01:03:31 ► §

empowered way. All right, that reminded me of this thing that happened in the past. But it isn’t like

01:03:37 ► §

I’m hijacked and I’m in field position on the floor vomiting. You know, this is like, oh, it’s

01:03:43 ► §

a disconnect from the fight

01:03:45 ► §

or flight that was stuck on inside

01:03:47 ► §

me that said, okay, trigger, and then right to

01:03:49 ► §

fight or flight. The fight or flight

01:03:51 ► §

thing got like, okay,

01:03:53 ► §

resting now, and it’s there in case

01:03:55 ► §

something really happens, but we don’t need to

01:03:57 ► §

replay it every second. But I became

01:03:59 ► §

more aware of my triggers.

01:04:01 ► §

That help? Yeah.

01:04:04 ► §

This is more of a comment than a question.

01:04:08 ► §

I was born and raised in Canada,

01:04:10 ► §

but my family ancestry is Serbian,

01:04:13 ► §

and my maternal grandfather fought in World War I

01:04:16 ► §

and was captured by the Italian fascists for four years.

01:04:20 ► §

And when he finally was released and came back,

01:04:23 ► §

my mother met him for the first time when she was four years old.

01:04:26 ► §

And he took to drinking.

01:04:29 ► §

He became a hardcore alcoholic and in 1986 died of cirrhosis of the liver.

01:04:35 ► §

So obviously, looking back, I’m pretty sure he had PTSD.

01:04:41 ► §

But at that time, it wasn’t acknowledged.

01:04:43 ► §

Sometimes it was even just called shell shock

01:04:45 ► §

and as a man he had to suck it up and still provide for his family

01:04:48 ► §

so I just want to say hearing your story

01:04:52 ► §

and knowing what my grandfather went through

01:04:54 ► §

I think we should all support MAP’s amazing work

01:04:56 ► §

thank you

01:04:57 ► §

I’m glad you brought that up

01:05:04 ► §

because self-medicating is a really, really big deal.

01:05:09 ► §

I mean, those of us that have chronic treatment-resistant PTSD,

01:05:12 ► §

it’s a very slippery slope.

01:05:14 ► §

I saw so many people in waiting rooms

01:05:18 ► §

getting treated for the same things I was treated for,

01:05:22 ► §

that had lost themselves to drugs or alcohol.

01:05:26 ► §

And even though I was in excruciating pain, I didn’t want my son to lose me.

01:05:31 ► §

I knew that if I went down that path, it was like a rabbit hole. And I saw, I lost a lot of people

01:05:37 ► §

who went down that rabbit hole. So another advantage to actually having a treatment that works is that you can rescue people from that unbelievably seductive route of self-medicating.

01:05:51 ► §

And it helped me connect a lot more to compassion with that.

01:05:55 ► §

Because if you don’t have something, like my son, I would have.

01:06:00 ► §

I mean, what would be the point of not just shooting heroin until I die?

01:06:04 ► §

I mean, what would be the point of not just shooting heroin until I die?

01:06:07 ► §

So I just never, I couldn’t even start,

01:06:11 ► §

because I knew that if I got a taste of not being in pain,

01:06:14 ► §

I would never not want it for the rest of my life. So I was lucky in that sense.

01:06:17 ► §

But for many people, that’s not the case.

01:06:18 ► §

And I think that marital problems, depression, drug addiction, alcoholism,

01:06:24 ► §

are all masquerading as PTSD untreated.

01:06:28 ► §

So you experienced your trauma as a child,

01:06:30 ► §

but you went through this form of therapy as an adult.

01:06:33 ► §

Do you think this is something you could have appreciated

01:06:35 ► §

had you gone through it as a teenager or as a young adult?

01:06:39 ► §

That’s an interesting question.

01:06:41 ► §

I’ve thought of that before because, course when I got well, I was extremely

01:06:46 ► §

pissed off that I lived most of my life with barely no life and that the treatment did exist

01:06:56 ► §

and people knew about it and I and other people were not given that. So I went, wow, that’s a complete waste. And, um, what, when, at what point was,

01:07:08 ► §

would I have been able to get that medicine? Had I known about it or had somebody given it to me,

01:07:13 ► §

or had I been lucky enough to, to be in a trial then I’d say by the time I was probably 14,

01:07:22 ► §

I think that I was ready for a treatment like that.

01:07:26 ► §

And it would have probably prevented a lot of the deepening

01:07:30 ► §

and more systemic symptoms.

01:07:33 ► §

Because the symptoms, when I hit puberty, of course,

01:07:35 ► §

they hit really hard because of the sexual abuse.

01:07:38 ► §

And that would have been a really good time to unlock the structures

01:07:43 ► §

that kind of set up shop in my psyche and validated,

01:07:47 ► §

I would create, unconsciously create, recreate situations that would validate that. And we know

01:07:52 ► §

a lot of these, a lot of us are psychologically savvy. So yeah, I think it would have interrupted

01:07:56 ► §

a deepening and a rooting of the PTSD that happened had I got treatment right around puberty.

01:08:02 ► §

Thanks for asking. We’re done?

01:08:06 ► §

No?

01:08:06 ► §

Yeah?

01:08:07 ► §

Good.

01:08:07 ► §

Okay, good.

01:08:10 ► §

That puts us back on schedule.

01:08:13 ► §

Thank you.

01:08:14 ► §

Support maps.

01:08:14 ► §

Support maps.

01:08:15 ► §

Support maps.

01:08:19 ► §

Yeah.

01:08:22 ► §

One thing I want to say is I don’t really know of anything else you can better do with your time and energy and resources

01:08:24 ► §

than the support maps because

01:08:25 ► §

it’s maybe the only way

01:08:28 ► §

that the

01:08:29 ► §

reconnecting and like save

01:08:31 ► §

the planet one mind at a time.

01:08:33 ► §

You know?

01:08:35 ► §

But the reconnecting to our

01:08:37 ► §

connectedness like Rick was saying is

01:08:39 ► §

probably the answer to

01:08:40 ► §

ignoring

01:08:41 ► §

environmental issues or

01:08:44 ► §

war issues or, you know,

01:08:47 ► §

disconnectedness is probably the most important therapeutic process that we need.

01:08:51 ► §

We as a society, as a world, suffer from PTSD.

01:08:56 ► §

And that can, I don’t know of any other cure.

01:08:59 ► §

So if we really want to address what almost everything that you think is wrong

01:09:04 ► §

or that needs a cause to support, it all tracks back to this.

01:09:09 ► §

So please support MAPS.

01:09:10 ► §

Please support MAPS to have more people like me.

01:09:12 ► §

Thank you.

01:09:16 ► §

Thank you, Rick.

01:09:22 ► §

I’d just like to tie into that.

01:09:24 ► §

I’m John Gilmore.

01:09:25 ► §

I’m one of the board members at MAPS.

01:09:27 ► §

One of the most important things Richard Rockefeller did for me

01:09:31 ► §

in helping MAPS over the last few years until he died this year

01:09:35 ► §

was to explain why he was helping us.

01:09:39 ► §

And he’s a grandson of John Rockefeller.

01:09:44 ► §

He grew up in a rich family with a tradition of trying to cure the world,

01:09:49 ► §

trying to make the universe better in ways by curing diseases, whole hog and things like that.

01:09:55 ► §

And his theory is that a lot of the conflict in today’s world is caused by undiagnosed and untreated PTSD among all of us.

01:10:07 ► §

Whether it’s religious conflict, warfare, sexual trauma, relationship issues,

01:10:13 ► §

whatever it is that we’re all suffering from traumas that we’ve had in our lives.

01:10:19 ► §

And if we had a cheap cure for PTSD, we could give it to everybody

01:10:24 ► §

and we would all get along a whole lot better.

01:10:26 ► §

And that was his theory, which may well turn out to be true.

01:10:31 ► §

So that was what motivated him to help us to get this treatment approved.

01:10:38 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:10:41 ► §

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:10:45 ► §

What John Gilmore just said is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

01:10:50 ► §

The fact that a significant number of people walking around on this planet right now are

01:10:55 ► §

suffering from post-traumatic stress, stress that ranges from light symptoms to the full-blown

01:11:01 ► §

disorder of PTSD, well, I can’t imagine that there’s a single

01:11:05 ► §

person left in the Middle East who isn’t suffering from this. When a woman in the audience just now

01:11:10 ► §

mentioned her Syrian background, I immediately thought of one of our fellow salonners who is

01:11:15 ► §

living in Syria right now, and is raising his young children among all that chaos.

01:11:20 ► §

And I remember a woman I knew long ago who was a German war orphan and was pulled out of a drainage ditch by an American GI when she was 11 years old.

01:11:29 ► §

And I think of another friend who watched as her mother was blown apart by a U.S. bomb during World War II.

01:11:35 ► §

And I think of my dear Vietnamese friend who was 8 years old when he returned home from school one day

01:11:41 ► §

to find a crater where four generations of his family had been living.

01:11:46 ► §

Over 60 of them, all dead, all but him and one brother.

01:11:50 ► §

When is all this madness going to end?

01:11:53 ► §

Well, that’s not something that we can do anything about here in the salon,

01:11:57 ► §

but there is one thing that perhaps we can help with,

01:12:01 ► §

and that is to find someone among all of our friends and relatives who will

01:12:05 ► §

take the financial lead and raise the funds for a very large-scale study of these successful

01:12:10 ► §

treatments for PTSD and center that study here in Southern California, where the number

01:12:16 ► §

of military veterans suffering from PTSD is by far, by far the highest in this country.

01:12:23 ► §

Somebody listening to this podcast is in a position to move this along.

01:12:27 ► §

And the next step is to directly contact Rick Doblin at maps.org.

01:12:33 ► §

Rick and several doctors have been working on the details of a major study like this for a long time.

01:12:39 ► §

Now, there are some things that have to take place before a large-scale study can actually begin,

01:12:44 ► §

but the main hang-up right now is that it’s going to take place before a large-scale study can actually begin, but the main hang-up

01:12:45 ► §

right now is that it’s going to take a significant amount of money to get the new study underway,

01:12:50 ► §

even before government approval. However, right now, MAPS has to use its very limited resources

01:12:56 ► §

to continue funding the preliminary studies that are necessary before a large-scale study is going

01:13:03 ► §

to be approved by the government. So what’s needed, and right now, in my opinion, is a major new source of funding for MDMA studies.

01:13:12 ► §

The reason I think that we need to find someone with very deep pockets

01:13:15 ► §

is that us little guys can only contribute a very small amount to these causes.

01:13:20 ► §

And right now, most of us small donors are sending their money to efforts to legalize cannabis,

01:13:25 ► §

which I think is equally important, since 75% of the war on drugs consists of arrests for marijuana offenses.

01:13:33 ► §

Now, getting back to Rachel Hope’s story, although I can’t say for certain who her therapists were,

01:13:40 ► §

when she mentioned that it was a man and woman team, my guess was that she was speaking about Michael and Annie Mithoffer,

01:13:47 ► §

the two amazing people who were at the heart of the MDMA study in which Rachel participated.

01:13:52 ► §

And I’ve been somewhat remiss in not having the Mithoffers back here in the salon.

01:13:57 ► §

You have to go all the way back to my podcast number 86 to hear Dr. Mithoffer’s 2006 Planque Norte lecture.

01:14:07 ► §

86 to hear Dr. Mithoffer’s 2006 Planque Norte lecture, but it may be interesting to re-listen to that talk as it was given not too long after the study began and they didn’t yet know what a

01:14:13 ► §

spectacular study it was about to become. Anyway, we all owe Michael and Annie Mithoffer our deepest

01:14:19 ► §

gratitude for seeing that this study not only took place, but was conducted with the highest degree of professionalism imaginable.

01:14:28 ► §

I also have to say that when Rachel quoted the horrible fact that

01:14:32 ► §

in the United States, every 90 a veteran dies from suicide,

01:14:38 ► §

well, I had to turn off my MP3 player for a moment just to regather my composure.

01:14:43 ► §

As a veteran myself, I have long been aware of the

01:14:46 ► §

significant number of vets who commit suicide each year. It’s shocking, and it’s a disgrace,

01:14:51 ► §

a really black mark on this nation. PTSD has actually become an epidemic in this land, and

01:14:58 ► §

yet the one percenters in Washington even make it extraordinarily difficult for organizations like

01:15:03 ► §

MAPS to conduct desperately needed research into this extremely painful disorder.

01:15:09 ► §

Now, Rick mentioned that before MAPS’s first MDMA trial,

01:15:13 ► §

the only thing that they had to go on was work in the underground.

01:15:16 ► §

And should you want to learn more about that work,

01:15:19 ► §

I highly recommend the book titled The Secret Chief Revealed by my dear friend Myron Stolaroff.

01:15:26 ► §

His widow, Jean, called a couple of days ago,

01:15:28 ► §

and we were both a little surprised when we figured out that it’s now been over two years since Myron died.

01:15:34 ► §

And if you haven’t already heard some of his stories, you may want to go to our Program Notes blog,

01:15:39 ► §

which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us,

01:15:42 ► §

and click on Myron’s name in the right sidebar list of categories.

01:15:47 ► §

He is one of the most important men of the last century,

01:15:49 ► §

and in more than only the field of psychedelics, I should add.

01:15:54 ► §

Anyway, Myron’s book describes the work of Leo Zeff,

01:15:57 ► §

whose pioneering work is the foundation for everything that’s now taking place

01:16:01 ► §

in the realm of the medical uses of MDMA.

01:16:10 ► §

In addition to the significant work of Dr. Zeff and the legion of therapists that he trained,

01:16:17 ► §

there are also thousands of stories about people who, in ways sometimes small and at other times quite significant,

01:16:21 ► §

brought about some kind of a healing to themselves by taking MDMA and then engaging in some intense conversations with their partners and other close friends.

01:16:27 ► §

I’ve already spoken about my own experiences in other podcasts,

01:16:30 ► §

but if you’re new to the salon and interested in how an Irish Catholic Republican lawyer

01:16:35 ► §

living in Dallas, Texas, a Vietnam vet who had never even smoked pot,

01:16:40 ► §

actually wound up at what we now know was ground zero

01:16:43 ► §

for the introduction of MDMA as a major street drug,

01:16:47 ► §

well, you can watch the 30-minute interview that I gave, and it’s titled Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate.

01:16:53 ► §

And I’ll link to that in the program notes as well.

01:16:57 ► §

Now, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that in medicine MDMA can only be used to treat PTSD.

01:17:03 ► §

that in medicine MDMA can only be used to treat PTSD.

01:17:07 ► §

In another study that’s currently taking place on the West Coast at the Harbor UCLA Medical Center,

01:17:11 ► §

Drs. Charlie Grobe and Alicia Danforth are investigating the potential for using MDMA

01:17:16 ► §

to help ease the social anxiety that is sometimes experienced by autistic adults.

01:17:23 ► §

Note this isn’t about curing autism, but about easing the social anxiety that high-functioning

01:17:29 ► §

autistic adults sometimes experience.

01:17:32 ► §

And as just a little aside, Dr. Charlie Grobe stopped by for a visit this past weekend,

01:17:37 ► §

and while he isn’t at liberty to pass along any specific details, all indications are

01:17:42 ► §

that this is also going to be another milestone study.

01:17:46 ► §

When I was in my 30s and raising my own children, I can’t even remember hearing about autism.

01:17:52 ► §

Today, most of us know at least one family who has someone faced with the challenges that autism

01:17:58 ► §

presents. Is this just because there’s more publicity about autism in the press, or is it

01:18:03 ► §

actually on the rise here in the U.S.? Well, studies show that instances of autism in the United States are increasing at an alarming

01:18:11 ► §

rate. The reasons for this are yet unclear, and I say reasons in the plural, because it seems

01:18:18 ► §

doubtful to me that a single reason alone can be the cause of such widespread reports of autism.

01:18:23 ► §

But one of the reasons may have been identified recently by Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research

01:18:29 ► §

scientist at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

01:18:34 ► §

In the program notes, I’ll link to a story about her study, but after analyzing records

01:18:38 ► §

going back to 1990, Dr. Seneff has identified Monsanto’s Roundup as one of the primary toxins that is causing an increase

01:18:47 ► §

in instances of children who are diagnosed at birth with autism

01:18:51 ► §

and are you ready for this?

01:18:54 ► §

She predicts that by 2025

01:18:55 ► §

that’s just 10 years from now my friends

01:18:58 ► §

Dr. Seneff predicts that by 2025

01:19:01 ► §

every other child born in the United States will be diagnosed with autism.

01:19:08 ► §

Did you hear that?

01:19:09 ► §

So if you’re pregnant now, or plan to become pregnant,

01:19:12 ► §

then unless you are eating only organically grown food,

01:19:15 ► §

you’re going to be pumping some very serious toxins into your fetus,

01:19:19 ► §

and the chances of your child being born with symptoms of autism are increasing each year,

01:19:25 ► §

if you aren’t eating exclusively organic food. Basically, the non-organic food supply in the U.S. is rapidly

01:19:32 ► §

becoming toxic. So even if you aren’t thinking about having a baby, you may want to look into

01:19:37 ► §

this for yourself. So what if Dr. Seneff is correct and 10 years from now, one half of all the children born in the U.S. are autistic?

01:19:46 ► §

What if it’s only 10% of the new births?

01:19:49 ► §

Isn’t that still a significant enough portion of our population that we should, right now, today, be looking into ways to treat them?

01:19:58 ► §

Sure, of course we should get rid of the toxins in the food supply as well, just like we did with DDT.

01:20:05 ► §

rid of the toxins in the food supply as well, just like we did with DDT. But companies like Monsanto are chartered for one purpose, to make as much money as possible for their shareholders.

01:20:10 ► §

That’s why they also control subsidiaries that make anti-cancer drugs. They get you coming and

01:20:16 ► §

going, no pun intended. Now, couple the rise in autism with the spread of PTSD and then give some

01:20:24 ► §

thought to how important it is to do

01:20:26 ► §

whatever we can to keep these MDMA studies in the public eye. The Just Say No crowd is going to

01:20:31 ► §

continue filling the media with horror tales about molly or ecstasy or whatever adulterated substance

01:20:37 ► §

is being peddled under those names. And so it’s up to us to rebut those stories and talk about the unlimited potential that pure MDMA has

01:20:47 ► §

to heal large segments of our population in every corner of the world

01:20:51 ► §

we’re all in this together you know

01:20:54 ► §

and for now this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space

01:20:58 ► §

be careful out there my friends. Thank you.