Program Notes
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Guest speaker: David Nickles
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/About.aspxDate this lecture was recorded: October 8, 2018
Today’s podcast features David Nickles, whose work may be found at the DMT-Nexus Website. The program is actually a recording of last week’s regularly scheduled live version of the Psychedelic Salon, which takes place every Monday evening from 6:30-8:00 pm (Pacific) via a Zoom conference available to all of Lorenzo’s supporters on Patreon. In this conversation, David provides some alarming details about the intersection of politics, psychedelic research, and big money.
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
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Salon.
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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And special thanks go out to fellow salonners Justin E., Ian W., and a great big thank you also to Anita L., all of whom made donations directly to the salon so as to cover some of the expenses for this month’s podcast.
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So thank you one and all.
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I also would like to thank my 118 supporters on Patreon who have been as well
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essentially providing me with some ideas about how to keep these podcasts from the salon coming on
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for, well, maybe another decade or so. You see, since I’m now in my 77th year, I’ve decided to
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become proactive in figuring out how I want to spend what time I have left,
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particularly since I’m so healthy right now.
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You know, there’s an old joke in which a guy says that if he knew he was going to live so long,
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he would have taken better care of himself.
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Well, in my case, thanks to a good diet and exercise and by avoiding all prescription medications,
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well, I’m in excellent health,
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better in fact than I was 20 years ago. However, that raises another question, and that is how am
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I going to support myself for what I foresee is at least another decade or more. And additionally,
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next year is going to be a bit more challenging because my wife is considering taking a position with a cannabis clinic in Mexico where she’s going to have to live during the week.
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And that means we’re going to need to support two households.
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Her small salary plus our two social security checks are unfortunately not going to be enough.
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So it’s come down to you, my extended family here in the salon.
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So, it’s come down to you, my extended family here in the salon.
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Over the past 14 years, there have been downloads of these programs from tens of millions of unique IP addresses.
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So, I know that there are a lot of our fellow salonners here in cyberdelic space,
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and what I’m hoping to find are the 1,000 fellow salonners who form the actual core of the salon. And so I’m in the process of
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consolidating these Psychedelic Salon podcasts with my current Patreon feed, and I’m calling it
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Psychedelic Salon 3.0. Now beginning in November, all of my podcasts from the Salon 1.0 are going to
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first appear on my Patreon feed, and will only be previewed here
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on the Salon’s original feeds. Now, once the core of the Salon has been identified, or my immediate
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financial crisis is solved, well, then these podcasts will also begin to be played here
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in full on the original feeds. Now, actually, I wish I didn’t have to do this, but it’s the
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best shot I have for continuing my life with as few major interruptions as possible.
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So here’s the deal. On my Patreon feed, there are only two levels still available.
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5 a month. Of course, you can pledge more if you like.
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pledge more if you like. But no matter what level you choose, you’ll have access not only to the first listen to the Salon 1.0 podcast, but also to the live version of the Psychedelic Salon,
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which takes place every Monday evening from 6.30 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time. And, well, a small group
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of us have been testing this since January, and most of the bugs have been worked out.
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So, to give you an idea of what these
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salon conversations are like, I’m playing a recording of last Monday’s live salon in today’s
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podcast. And as you’ll hear, the audio isn’t perfect. And again, well, that’s my fault. When I heard the
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little glitches in David’s audio, I should have asked him to turn off his video feed because
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it seemed that his
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computer wasn’t keeping up well enough. But I didn’t do that, and so I’ve now tried to edit
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out all of the longer glitches, and it shouldn’t be too much of a distraction. But now that I’ve
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learned this lesson, any future Monday night conversation I record should be improved.
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In case you’ve never thought about this before, you should know that in addition to
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all of the give and take between the psychedelic research community and government regulators,
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there are also serious investors who are spending millions of dollars so as to get ahead of the game
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once the psychedelic medicines are given broader permission to be used. In other words, just like
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what has already begun taking place in the legal marijuana markets,
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the same maneuvering is taking place already in the world of psychedelic medicines.
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However, if you aren’t aware of all that’s going on, well, don’t feel like you’re alone.
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I’ve been in the same situation myself up until now.
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And like you, I have noticed an occasional story here and there about a couple
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of companies that are entering the field of legal psychedelics. But to be honest, those stories never
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interested me enough to read more than just a headline or so. However, after speaking with
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David Nichols a few days ago, my eyes have been opened. And now I realize how important it is for all of us to begin paying a little closer attention to how the market on psychedelic medicines is already being staked out by some big money people.
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And from what I’ve learned, all is not well at the intersection of big money and powerful psychedelic medicine.
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medicine. So now I’m going to play a recording of last Monday evening’s live version of the psychedelic salon and let you get a little feeling for what it could be like if you joined us each
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Monday. Now, Mark, do you want to tell us a little bit more about the other Dave Nichols?
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Yeah, sorry. I could tell you a little bit about him again. So long story short, he runs the Nexian.
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He does articles for them. I know he’s been a speaker at at least seven or eight psychedelic conferences, very passionate
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about the, um, you know, again, the fact that, um, we’re a, you know, he considers this,
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we’ve talked about this, I guess, a couple of calls ago where we talked about, is this
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a religious right?
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Is this a, um, medical right?
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Or is this a human right?
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And he’s the one that brought that topic up, you know, and he’s look this is a human right we don’t have any you know again and so I
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you know a lot of the stuff that you’ve been hearing from me it’s because of some of the
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things that I’ve actually read from him in some of the past or whatever and so that’s that’s again
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that’s part of the reason why I thought he did this yeah you know and and it’s really a tricky
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question because uh you know back in the 50s when it was Albert Hoffman and Aldous
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Huxley and a few others you know they they were keeping it in the laboratory and and then along
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came Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey who busted it out to everybody and then the government squashed
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everything then Terrence McKenna came along and and along with the Grateful Dead and a few
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others and started bringing it all back again. And so we’ve kind of come full circle now.
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But, you know, originally when psychedelics were first being reintroduced, it was all in the
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laboratories. And this latest podcast with Dr. uh sue it was really fascinating to me to hear somebody
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being so forthright about uh uh the fact that you know this is this could become a
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class issue again too because of the cost involved if they if they do that
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so i’m anxious to hear some other people’s opinions about what can we do going forward if psychedelics get legalized for clinical use?
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How does the rest of the world, the people who either can’t afford psychiatrists, psychologists, or really don’t need one and want to work in small groups on their own. How do we integrate all this into our society?
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I don’t have any idea myself. Anybody else?
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That was one of my questions from your podcast today.
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The guy was saying how expensive this might be, you know,
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because you might need 60 hours of therapy and however much that could cost, 10 or 15 grand, something like that.
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But what I was wondering is, when other drugs became legal, they didn’t advertise them as assisted therapy drugs.
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They just had trials and tested them and made sure they weren’t, you know, or they passed the test so they weren’t bad for people.
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So I was wondering if after they’ve made MDMA assisted therapy legal, if they’ll continue to just try to make the drug legal in and of itself.
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So it may be able to be prescribed once or twice a month as a take-home therapy.
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And then if you want more involved assisted therapy,
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then you could go maybe the more expensive route with higher success rates.
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I don’t know.
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Well, you know, as I understand the way the study has been going,
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the MAPS study has been going,
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study has been going the MAPS study has been going is is uh they probably wouldn’t be in favor of any uh protocol that allowed a prescription or you know taking it once or twice a month
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their therapy seems to be like probably no more than three administrations of the self
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but with the assisted therapy and uh you, if you listen to like Rachel Hope,
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people like this who have gone through that study, it’s been amazing what they’ve done
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and without the dependence on a follow-through drug. So that’s one track, but that’s the MDMA
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track, which really isn’t even a psychedelic track. Now you’ve got a lot of people interested
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in magic mushrooms. And of course, LSD therapy has been around for decades. And there’s, you know,
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thousands of papers about it. But how do we go about legalizing it? And then like the podcast
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today talked about, you know, if you do it in association with therapy, it can be quite
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expensive. And then so you have the issue of class issues and monetary issues. And I’m more
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interested in instead of psychedelic clinics, and how do we integrate psychedelics into a culture,
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integrate psychedelics into a culture, not necessarily where everybody’s doing it, but where it’s more accepted by most of the people. So I need to quit talking. Hey, David, welcome.
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Glad to see you here. Yeah, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:10:58 ►
Listen, I apologize. I’m the one that kind of messed everything up tonight. But,
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you know, it’s fascinating that you at least have a name that’s confused with a guy who’s a hero.
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My college classmate’s last name was Kavanaugh.
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I’ve been wondering how he’s been taking the last few weeks.
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But on the other hand, we went to Notre Dame and he quit talking to me when I left the Catholic Church.
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So he’s probably got his karma biting him back right now. So I’m not crying for him, but I love him.
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Anyhow, David, welcome. Listen, I apologize for a little confusion. But, you know, Mark has
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graciously asked if you would come and you would accept it. So what I’d like to do, you know, we, we have a relatively small group here each week, but on the other hand,
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I’ve been recording these things. And so you need to know it’s being recorded.
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So far, I’ve not done nothing with it. I’ve done saving it.
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My long-term thought is that probably it’s,
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it’s all about blackmail, isn’t it? Yeah.
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My long-term thought is maybe, you know, 15, 20 years from now, some some Ph.D.
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students will want to read all these tapes to find out what were people really thinking back then when psychedelics were still illegal and they were talking about these things.
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So if nothing else, it’s an audio history that I’m trying to compile.
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But more than that, we’re trying to get some answers to things that you’ve been spending a lot of your time thinking about.
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So let me kind of turn it over to you and see if you want to lead our conversation.
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I’m sure you’re going to have a lot of questions coming your way.
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Sure. Yeah. And I think that’s probably that’s probably go about it.
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Yeah, and I think that’s probably, that’s probably to go about it.
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I recognize that at this point, at least around some of the commercialism and compass stuff and things like that,
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I’m kind of so deep in it that it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.
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And so like things that seem sort of common or things that I at this point sort of take for granted,
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I’m realizing or I have realized through numerous discussions that many people are simply unaware of. And so I guess as far as where the
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group is at and what sort of interests folks, I guess sort of the starter is how familiar or are
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people familiar with Compass? Is that what people want to start talking about?
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Is there a more general area that you all have been discussing
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that would tie in as a sort of lead-in or something?
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Well, I can say for myself, until Mark started pointing this out,
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I really wasn’t familiar with Compass.
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So that may be a good point to start,
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unless everybody else is more familiar than I am with it.
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Okay.
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Let’s start there.
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So, yeah, so I guess the short version would be that Compass is a venture capital-backed for-profit entity that is looking to get into psilocybin treatments for depression.
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As their initial endeavor, They’re looking at treatment
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resistant depression, but the main, let’s see. So the main backers at this point, or initially,
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it was Peter Thiel, Christian Angermeyer, and I think Mike Novogratz was also involved. And these
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are folks who, you know, each sort of have their own histories, but are all tied
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to each other through the cryptocurrency arena.
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Peter Thiel, people may know, gave a speech in 2009 to the Cato Institute where he decried
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women getting the vote, democracy.
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He pined for the 1920s as the last time in which there was real, real political optimism
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in this country because,
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you know, the robber barons were having their heyday. And so he’s also the main person behind
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Palantir, which is a CIA funded or was funded in part by the CIA’s venture capital fund in QTEL.
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And basically it’s one of the more disturbing surveying apparatus that
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currently exists. It’s been used extensively by ICE in the deportation of immigrants. It’s been
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used against drug-using communities. I know there was an article on New Orleans. And in that case,
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I’m pretty sure the city council wasn’t even made aware that this deal was going on and it’s questionable who knew
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what within the policemen. And so there’s some really interesting ties between the funders and
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the company itself. Now, the company itself has some sort of, appears to have some interesting
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background in that they presented as a for-profit in 2016. However, for two years prior to that, they were operating as a non-profit.
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And while they were a non-profit, they reached out to a number of psychedelic researchers,
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organizations such as MAPS. And essentially, it appears that they struck up relationships in
00:16:00 ►
order to get information about protocols and approaches, what different effective routes might be for some of these therapies.
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And really, I would contend it appears that they kind of mined the community
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for as much information as possible,
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and then all of a sudden announced that publicly they couldn’t make it work as a nonprofit,
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so they had to go for profit.
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They couldn’t make it work as a nonprofit, so they had to go for profit.
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The 990s for the nonprofit are available online, and that’s the document in which they publicly asserted that it just wasn’t working out. Now, there have been several people who were kind of vocal about the way that Compass was operating in the space.
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way that Compass was operating in the space. And the thing that caught my attention was an article that was published by Herb questioning whether or not psychedelics might go a similar route as
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cannabis once we started to see medical move to recreational, you know. And in that article,
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there was discussion about concerns that various people in the community or communities or psychedelic spaces,
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whatever your preferred term may be, had about their operations.
00:17:09 ►
And for me, the thing that cropped up was I come essentially from an underground background.
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I help moderate the DMT Nexus.
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We’ve carried out a whole bunch of underground research efforts on everything from extraction methodologies to
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phytochemical analysis of plants used in ayahuasca and a wide variety of other ethnobotanical
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preparations. And all of that research has required an open science approach. We don’t have
00:17:38 ►
any budgets. So our research has involved extensive amounts of piracy of peer-reviewed papers.
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The actual analytical database that we used for our…
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And so we sent off our samples to a sanctioned lab who then provided us with the raw chromatography
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files.
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So we downloaded an open source chromatography program.
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We pirated the 2006 version of the NIST database.
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And we ran all the analysis on our own computers,
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on our own times, on our own budgets.
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And basically, without having sanctioned researchers who were interested in and willing to sort
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of help us out, share their resources in very discrete ways, we wouldn’t have been able
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to put that information out.
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And it’s fascinating to my mind, just from the pure
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research angle, but because a lot of these plants were popping up on the global ethnobotanical
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marketplace, it actually had harm reduction value as well, where we found a few vendors
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who were selling random jungle vines that when we analyzed them, we couldn’t find any compounds present, at least that weren’t,
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that were listed in the 2006 NIST database. So that was alarming to us because we were seeing
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some peaks, but didn’t know what they were. We couldn’t tell people whether or not they were
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safe. For at least two of the plants, the only people who were having reports of actual psychedelic
00:19:01 ►
or psychoactive experiences appeared to be tied to those companies that were
00:19:06 ►
selling the vines. And so it seemed important to let people know, hey, these may not be safe to
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ingest. We don’t know. However, these companies are selling them as not for human consumption.
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So they’re covering themselves. And you all should probably consider what steps you might
00:19:22 ►
want to take to cover yourself, namely avoiding those vines. So for me, right, seeing that all of these different researchers and organizations had
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signed on to this statement on open science that Bob Jesse had put together, and a statement that
00:19:36 ►
I felt really passionate about, I didn’t sign it because I didn’t see any need to sign it.
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And personally, I don’t consider myself to be someone in the space that
00:19:45 ►
would add any visibility or merit to that statement. I was kind of alarmed to see that
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MAPS and Bill Richards were engaging with Compass to the degree that they were. As I understood it,
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initially, Bill Richards was helping to train therapists
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that were going to work for Compass.
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Rick Doblin was having meetings with George Goldsmith.
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And in the IRB article, it mentioned that he shared all of the FDA protocols with Compass.
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Now, I know that Rick and Matt share everything with everyone, but to my mind, open science
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isn’t about unquestioningly sharing information with everyone.
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It’s about maintaining the material conditions necessary to secure open science.
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And so if you know that sharing information with someone is going to result in them taking steps to interfere with that terrain in such a way that we can no longer carry out open science, then to me that seems to be a problem.
00:20:54 ►
So, for example, if there is a venture capital backed for profit entity, we understand that they have to respond to shareholders and investors in very specific ways,
00:21:07 ►
namely maximizing profits. So that comes with a whole bunch of different strategies for
00:21:13 ►
interference, for ways to get competitive advantages over your competition. And even
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if there are people on that terrain, such as the nonprofit company, USONA, that may not want to operate in
00:21:26 ►
those ways, by having that venture capital back for profit present, it roads the terrain. It means
00:21:34 ►
that if USONA comes up with something that appears to be interesting, it is now in their
00:21:40 ►
best interest to keep that from Compass so that Compass doesn’t utilize that to engage
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in further developments that might allow for additional interference.
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Now, I know I’ve been talking about interference for a moment, and I think it probably makes
00:21:57 ►
sense to point to at least some of the concrete things that have happened.
00:22:01 ►
And the first thing that I became aware of that went from, okay, Compass is troubling
00:22:07 ►
because of the way these entities act within capitalism, was finding out that Compass had
00:22:15 ►
signed an exclusivity agreement with a pharmaceutical company called Onyx. Now, Onyx was producing, or Onyx was contracted to produce GMP psilocybin for Compass.
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GMP means good manufacturing processes, and it’s a designation that’s necessary
00:22:39 ►
now under the FDA guidelines for these studies. And it becomes necessary when you’re manufacturing
00:22:49 ►
pharmaceuticals that are tracked towards being for human consumption in a,
00:22:59 ►
sorry, I’m spacing on the best way to phrase this. Essentially, when you know you’re taking things to market, FDA has stricter regulations.
00:23:08 ►
So in the case of university say, Johns Hopkins University research,
00:23:25 ►
there was no real indication that these drugs were being taken through these studies in order to do mass distribution or pharmaceutical-style approaches, like big pharma-style approaches.
00:23:48 ►
style approaches. However, in the case of Compass or in the case of the amount of promise that the FDA was seeing from these compounds, they felt it was important to make sure that they were more
00:23:55 ►
than covering their masses and essentially that they were doing everything to the highest standard
00:24:00 ►
because if these compounds are so effective, if they’re seeing results that, unlike many pharmaceuticals, if psychedelics are in some cases capable of presenting significant improvements in one or two interventions, well, a novel approach to treating certain mental illnesses. And so I think one of
00:24:28 ►
the concerns may have been if something were to go off the rails, say a decade down the road,
00:24:34 ►
that lawmakers do some sort of inquiry into what happened here. Did the FDA make sure to take all of these things through appropriately
00:24:45 ►
rigorous trials and do their due diligence, FDA wants to be able to show that, yes,
00:24:53 ►
we did our due diligence and then some. So whereas many research studies have operated at least phase
00:25:00 ►
one and phase two studies using research grade material up to this point, including material that was manufactured by like Dave Nichols,
00:25:09 ►
the other Dave Nichols. And I’m forgetting who else was out there at the moment.
00:25:14 ►
Sorry. And for example,
00:25:18 ►
like the UCSF team that’s currently doing phase two trials on AIDS
00:25:24 ►
patients,
00:25:27 ►
they’re grandfathered in essentially.
00:25:29 ►
Their study started at the point
00:25:30 ►
where they had already gotten approval
00:25:32 ►
to use research grade psilocybin rather than GMP.
00:25:37 ►
But the FDA made these changes
00:25:39 ►
to their enforcement around these issues.
00:25:50 ►
their enforcement around these issues. And so Compass went off in search of GMP psilocybin.
00:25:57 ►
There was initially a company called Sterling that USONA was using. MAPS was using Sterling for GMP MDMA, but due to numerous problems on Sterling’s part, there were extensive delays, perhaps price increases, cost increases, and it wasn’t working out.
00:26:11 ►
So Compass approached MAPS for recommendations of pharmaceutical suppliers.
00:26:19 ►
MAPS sent them to Onyx at a point where USONA was fed up with Sterling. They approached MAPS as well. MAPS
00:26:31 ►
said, hey, you know, we sent Compass to Onyx. Why don’t you check out Onyx? And when USONA
00:26:37 ►
approached Onyx, Onyx informed them that they had an exclusivity agreement with Compass.
00:26:48 ►
had an exclusivity agreement with Compass. So there’s a whole lot of hearsay and back and forth and questions about what times, who reached out to who and in what manners and whether or not
00:26:55 ►
USONA at some point may have denied some request by Compass to have psilocybin, there’s a lot of murkiness around some of that.
00:27:06 ►
I would contend none of that murkiness really matters because if USONA had provided material
00:27:14 ►
to Compass, Compass would still be incentivized to act in ways that keep other people off
00:27:20 ►
the terrain.
00:27:20 ►
And I would contend that their exclusivity agreement with Onyx, which we’ve never seen in the notion of trying to hamstring someone, particularly given that Compass wasn’t ready to
00:27:32 ►
go ahead with their trials. So the entire endeavor seemed less about Compass doing anything in particular with that psilocybin in that moment
00:27:48 ►
and more about preventing other organizations who are already farther ahead from getting even
00:27:54 ►
farther ahead and essentially an attempt for Compass to buy some time to try to catch up.
00:28:03 ►
That’s perhaps one of the more significant instances of interference
00:28:07 ►
at the moment. However, looking at some of the potentially available
00:28:14 ►
processes around turning these things into medicines, looking at Compass’s desire to bring in wearable technology, looking at some of their partners, such as
00:28:27 ►
MindStrong and Seven Cups and these other tech firms, like Calm, they’re a meditation app,
00:28:39 ►
right? They’re looking to get into partnerships with wearable technologies and applications in ways that could potentially
00:28:47 ►
give them interesting patenting strategies. And to go back to structural components just for a
00:28:56 ►
moment, right, it appears that Compass wants to set themselves up as a vertically integrated
00:29:02 ►
company. That is, they want to have control over their supply
00:29:06 ►
chain from synthesis
00:29:07 ►
through therapy. Assuming that
00:29:10 ►
they can do that, that gives them potential
00:29:12 ►
options to block other
00:29:14 ►
folks from entry, to essentially
00:29:15 ►
create a monopoly where
00:29:18 ►
they can use what’s called
00:29:20 ►
value-based pricing
00:29:21 ►
to dictate their own price
00:29:24 ►
due to lack of competition.
00:29:25 ►
So one of the questions that comes up around making psychedelic medicines is get insurance
00:29:32 ►
companies to pay for the treatments.
00:29:37 ►
So if you imagine a situation where, say, current therapy for treatment resistant depression might cost an insurer $10,000 per year,
00:29:48 ►
if Compass is able to, or if any vertically integrated company is able to sell psilocybin
00:29:55 ►
therapy for 8,000 a
00:30:03 ►
year. They could approach the insurer and say, hey, we can make this available for $8,000 a year. They could approach the insurer and say,
00:30:05 ►
hey, we can make this available for 2,000
00:30:12 ►
cheaper than their current options. It benefits the insurer. It benefits Compass. But at the end
00:30:19 ►
of the day, we’re all left out of it. As the people who pay insurance premiums, it seems pretty simple to contend that a therapy that costs $2,000 a year will have lower premiums than one that costs
00:30:30 ►
$8,000 a year. And so we end up bearing that socialized cost while Compass basically takes
00:30:38 ►
that additional profit and puts it in their own pockets. So between that and we’ve seen Compass currently has applied for a methods patent
00:30:49 ►
on psilocybin for their, it would be their GMP form of psilocybin. There’s hearsay that they’ve
00:30:58 ►
got other patents in the works. And while some folks have expressed little to no concern over the enforceability of
00:31:09 ►
that patent, patent lawsuits take time and money. And so should other people find themselves on the
00:31:16 ►
receiving end of patent lawsuits for junk patents, it still creates problems for anybody else who’s trying to enter the space.
00:31:26 ►
Additionally, the reason that a company would do something like venture capital funding,
00:31:32 ►
right, the reason that venture capitalists or other investors will fund a company is
00:31:37 ►
because they’re looking for a return on their investment.
00:31:40 ►
And so the structure implies that at some point, Compass will want to sell itself, whether it goes public, whether it attempts to sell itself to a big pharma or other life sciences company.
00:31:53 ►
It stands to reason at that point, all of the intellectual property, junk patents, exclusive agreements, anything else, right? Say internal studies. So say rather than releasing
00:32:05 ►
peer-reviewed papers, they could do in-house studies that they never make public because
00:32:10 ►
making those things public would give, it would put them in the public domain and it would give
00:32:14 ►
information to their competition. Now, even if they were never going to do anything with any
00:32:20 ►
of that information, why provide it to a partner? Or sorry, why provide it to a competitor?
00:32:26 ►
It wouldn’t be to their benefit. And if they sell to a big pharma company or a large life science
00:32:32 ►
company, all of that intellectual property would now be property of that larger company.
00:32:38 ►
And I think I would assume most people in this chat have a pretty decent sense of how big pharma
00:32:43 ►
and life sciences Company wield those
00:32:45 ►
intellectual property rights. So me, even if there weren’t any of the specifics, I think just the
00:32:52 ►
structures are pretty alarming, but we’re already seeing specifics that seem to indicate a pretty
00:32:58 ►
clear desire and willingness for interference with non-compass entities on the part of Compass.
00:33:07 ►
And recently, Christian Angermeyer, who’s one of the main funders, I think there was just a
00:33:14 ►
Business Insider piece published this past week. I haven’t had a chance to read it in depth,
00:33:19 ►
but he referred to psychedelic medicines as a virgin industry and seemed to imply that there is tons of money to be made.
00:33:32 ►
As I understand it, I think they’ve sunk about $25 million into Compass and have like a 20% stake in the company.
00:33:54 ►
and looking at some of the statements that they’re making now about psychedelic medicines as a whole,
00:34:01 ►
it seems that in their minds, ideally, psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, with the hopes of treating 100 to 200 million patients
00:34:05 ►
and ostensibly making quite a bit of money in the process would simply be the first step
00:34:09 ►
in a much wider coverage of the psychedelic terrain, I believe, in the detriment of the
00:34:16 ►
rest of us.
00:34:18 ►
So that’s sort of a general initial download.
00:34:22 ►
There’s quite a few additional specifics that I’m spending this week,
00:34:27 ►
hopefully trying to finish the majority
00:34:29 ►
of the first comprehensive write-up
00:34:33 ►
that I’ll be doing on this.
00:34:35 ►
There’s so many strong components.
00:34:38 ►
I mean, this gets into issues of regulatory capture
00:34:41 ►
that is evolving door between industry and regulators,
00:34:45 ►
the sort of networks that exist in pharmaceutical companies, but also financial industry, histories of business
00:34:52 ►
and partnerships. There’s questions about some of the individual players in these companies and who
00:35:02 ►
they know. For example, one of the Compass board members’
00:35:05 ►
name is Thomas Longren. Thomas Longren used to be the head of the EMA. That’s the European
00:35:11 ►
Medicines Agency. Now, he was the head of the EMA. He started a consultancy while he was still
00:35:18 ►
employed. And he ran that for about two months before voluntarily leaving the EMA.
00:35:26 ►
However, a watchdog agency basically said, we think there’s a problem here.
00:35:32 ►
It appears that there might be some sort of conflict of interest if Tom Longren is simultaneously running the agency and the EMA.
00:35:41 ►
They did an initial investigation and then declared, oh, no, no, it’s not really
00:35:45 ►
that big a deal.
00:35:47 ►
But then something like six months later, two independent watchdog agencies wrote a
00:35:52 ►
report that said, actually, this is pretty significant for all of these reasons.
00:35:56 ►
Unfortunately, there’s no real enforcement mechanism.
00:35:59 ►
So all we can do is point out that this is a problematic behavior, but we have no way to deliver any sort
00:36:07 ►
of punishment or, you know, bring this before anyone in a way to get any sort of addressment
00:36:14 ►
of these concerns. Now, this is somebody who’s on the Compass board and looking throughout
00:36:18 ►
the way that Compass is structured, again, it seems like they’re positioned within and around Europe
00:36:25 ►
in such a way that I have a hard time believing engaging with regulators in very intimate
00:36:30 ►
manners isn’t part of their overall strategy. And I can understand why that might be appealing to
00:36:40 ►
RIC and MAPS, especially if they’re looking to make MDMA a medicine, not just in the U.S.,
00:36:47 ►
but elsewhere. And I have concerns about what that ultimately does to the broader terrain.
00:36:54 ►
And I also have concerns about a single individual or institution making decisions that affect all
00:37:03 ►
of us in really significant ways and ultimately acting
00:37:06 ►
as though they’re not accountable and that they have that we have no reason to be concerned and
00:37:12 ►
should just trust people like Peter Thiel and George Goldsmith, one of the founders of Compass,
00:37:17 ►
and these other folks who, as far as I can tell, have never appeared to have our interests at heart or at mind.
00:37:31 ►
David, I’ll have to tell you, I am just totally fascinated by everything you’re saying.
00:37:41 ►
I have to, this is a long kind of a prelude to a question, but, you know, it’s interesting.
00:37:47 ►
We really have a generational divide because I had kind of stopped even paying attention to some of the things you’re talking about. Because, you know, I come from the
00:37:52 ►
generation where we weren’t allowed to say the word psychedelic out loud at work. And, and now
00:37:58 ►
that you know, we’ve been making progress in our studies, and cannabis is getting legalized. And,
00:38:02 ►
and so I’ve really kind of relaxed and not paid attention. And what you’re telling me, first of all, you know, as a lawyer, I would
00:38:12 ►
love to podcast everything you said, but I want to make sure you don’t get yourself in trouble,
00:38:15 ►
you know. But on the other hand, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, my God, you know,
00:38:21 ►
when I was involved with the phone company, and I moved out here,
00:38:25 ►
and I retired and quit the phone company, I was shocked that everybody out here didn’t know the
00:38:29 ►
names of the top 10 executives in the world’s leading phone companies, because that was the
00:38:34 ►
that was the Malou I was in. And you are in the Malou that’s going to affect the whole psychedelic
00:38:41 ►
community. And yet, it’s really hard to find information about
00:38:45 ►
this. I was about to ask you where to go to find it. And instead, as you kept talking, I’m thinking,
00:38:52 ►
would you be interested in doing like a regular monthly or every six week column on the salon
00:38:58 ►
and just bringing us up to date with the state of the world as far as this is concerned?
00:39:01 ►
the state of the world as far as this is concerned?
00:39:05 ►
Absolutely.
00:39:06 ►
So one of the things that
00:39:07 ►
like I said, I mean, I’ve
00:39:10 ►
been trying to
00:39:12 ►
keep up with the amount of
00:39:14 ►
information that I’ve been taking in
00:39:16 ►
and I really appreciate the comment
00:39:18 ►
that you made, you know, considering
00:39:19 ►
your legal background.
00:39:22 ►
I have a few lawyers in the family
00:39:23 ►
and I’ve been trying to do my best to
00:39:26 ►
keep it kosher. But literally everything that I’m saying, I have primary documents for. I can back
00:39:34 ►
it up with statements that have been made either via emails or documents like public filings or
00:39:42 ►
things that have been stated at psychedelic conferences.
00:39:46 ►
And while there are things that I would contend, you know, I have quite a bit of speculation as
00:39:52 ►
well. And while the speculation gets into some really sort of terrifying dystopian potentials,
00:39:59 ►
and I’m really hoping to get into some of that as purely speculative pieces based on this information.
00:40:07 ►
Initially, I’m going to be sticking just to the facts.
00:40:09 ►
And for a lot of this, I don’t feel that I need to share the speculation in the sense that, like, I have timelines that I don’t necessarily, I can’t say that they indicate certain things happened without any, any, or without a doubt,
00:40:26 ►
but I would very much like to share these timelines in ways that lay out the
00:40:32 ►
timelines that I see,
00:40:34 ►
lay out the documents that support those timelines,
00:40:37 ►
point to the public statements around that and just ask,
00:40:41 ►
does this make sense? What seems valid to the reader?
00:40:49 ►
So like I said, so the first piece I’m working on is just going to be sort of a general sketch of all of these major data points. And then it’s become really apparent that there’s going to need
00:40:55 ►
to be follow-ups because it snakes into so many different arenas. So for example,
00:41:02 ►
you know, I mean, just at the Thomas Lundgren stuff, you know, to me, that was one of
00:41:06 ►
the more disturbing things that Tom, Thomas Lundgren is listed on their board of, or on their,
00:41:13 ►
on their board page. You can then do a search on him and find the articles that were published by
00:41:18 ►
the EMA watchdogs, or, or looking at, you know, the one that’s, there’s going to be several other articles coming out as
00:41:28 ►
well by legitimate professional journalists that I think will detail better some of the things
00:41:33 ►
around, say, the exclusivity agreement, right? So like Rick Doblin and other folks have all
00:41:38 ►
acknowledged that the exclusivity agreement exists, but I haven’t personally seen it.
00:41:45 ►
agreement exists, but I haven’t personally seen it. I do know that there are other reporters who have. And so painting that picture, to me, there’s been so many moving components. I mean,
00:41:59 ►
just getting the Business Insider story that came out this week, the last documents that I had seen,
00:42:05 ►
it had showed George and Katja each owning 40% of the company.
00:42:10 ►
And then the remaining 20% was split up three ways between Peter Thiel’s company,
00:42:17 ►
between Christian Meyers and the other persons.
00:42:19 ►
And, you know, funny enough, they each had 6.66% of the company at this point.
00:42:27 ►
But obviously, the Business Insider article is now reporting that Atai Life Sciences,
00:42:34 ►
Christian Angermeyer’s VC fund has 20%.
00:42:37 ►
So clearly, those things are shifting.
00:42:39 ►
And I figured as much considering that the papers I had seen were something like 14 or
00:42:43 ►
16 months old.
00:42:44 ►
So I think that we’re going to continue to see quite a few developments. And I would like to
00:42:49 ►
share that as much as possible, because to me, this is all incredibly alarming. And if we’re
00:42:53 ►
on top of it, if we don’t even have information about what’s going on, I don’t know how we could
00:42:58 ►
possibly begin to strategize about is there any way to engage with it? What might it look like?
00:43:03 ►
You know, I completely agree
00:43:05 ►
with you, David. And, you know, this is a conversation we need to be having now and not
00:43:10 ►
five years from now, probably too late. And so I definitely want to give you a platform because
00:43:15 ►
what you’ve done, I’m sure all of us have read bits and pieces of what you’ve said. We’ve read
00:43:21 ►
stories about Compass and this and that and Peter Thiel and all,
00:43:30 ►
but none of, I shouldn’t say none of this. I, for one, have never been able to connect these dots.
00:43:36 ►
And, you know, you and I and the rest of us, we may not agree on everything all the time,
00:43:42 ►
but I think that you’ve really got the insights that we can use to get this conversation going and make it more widespread. So I’d be more than happy to
00:43:46 ►
use the salon as a platform to help you get your ideas out there. Thanks. That would be amazing.
00:43:52 ►
And personally, I want to say, I can’t tell you how many people have said in the last couple
00:43:58 ►
months something similar along the lines of we don’t agree on everything. And to me, I think
00:44:04 ►
that’s great. I think the fact that we don’t agree on everything. And to me, I think that’s great.
00:44:05 ►
I think the fact that we don’t agree on everything makes it so much more interesting. It gives us
00:44:11 ►
so much more to discuss the question, to sort of pick apart. I mean, I certainly don’t think
00:44:17 ►
I’m right about everything. I know, especially like, you know, my own political and intellectual
00:44:23 ►
perspectives are the result of my
00:44:25 ►
lived experiences and my own personal education and interests. And I have tons of blind spots,
00:44:32 ►
I think we all do. And so I find sitting down with folks who are interested in having like
00:44:37 ►
the really difficult questions and having conversations around questions for which
00:44:43 ►
there are no clear answers. I mean, to me,
00:44:45 ►
that’s the stuff that feels stimulating and nourishing and super important. Like,
00:44:50 ►
I was kind of frustrated that at the recent CIIS conference that Chakruna put on,
00:44:56 ►
that I had to take out a few of my systemic questions and instead engage with some of the
00:45:02 ►
more what I viewed as mundane compass stuff. Because, you know, I think it’s fascinating that legitimizing psychedelics in the current paradigm
00:45:11 ►
requires working with the Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services,
00:45:15 ►
right? And people know why DOD is problematic, but DHHS is literally the department responsible
00:45:23 ►
for facilitating the immigrant detentions.
00:45:26 ►
You’ve got forced medication of children, child abuse, all of these issues.
00:45:32 ►
And we’re told this is the necessary department to work with because that’s where FDA is housed.
00:45:37 ►
But also if you look at the Mithoffer studies, they gave DHHS direct access to the medical records of folks involved.
00:45:46 ►
I’m not sure why.
00:45:47 ►
I had asked researchers in a couple other teams if they had similar access.
00:45:51 ►
They said no.
00:45:52 ►
I figured, and this is pure speculation,
00:45:55 ►
I figured it may have had something to do with the military nature of that study,
00:46:01 ►
you know, dealing with veterans.
00:46:02 ►
Not sure by any stretch.
00:46:04 ►
But to me, like, okay, we can all acknowledge, you know, dealing with veterans, not 100%, not sure by any stretch.
00:46:12 ►
But to me, like, okay, we can all acknowledge, I think, that the FDA in this system is absolutely necessary. You need that approval if you want to go through that sanctioned channel. And yet,
00:46:17 ►
right, this is all tied to all of this other really problematic stuff. Is there a way to do
00:46:22 ►
anything about it? Do we feel any way about it? Is there
00:46:25 ►
a line that has been crossed that shouldn’t be crossed? Having that discussion, I don’t know
00:46:31 ►
that any clear, coherent answers come out of it, but it seems important to talk about.
00:46:38 ►
You know, for a long time, I’ve always maintained that the questions are more important than the
00:46:42 ►
answers, because until you start asking questions, you don’t even know what your problems are because you haven’t formulated
00:46:48 ►
them and and what what you can help us maybe do is stimulate questions in everybody’s own mind you
00:46:55 ►
know we we need to all kind of come to grips with this ourselves and like like we both said we won’t
00:47:00 ►
all agree on all the details but uh if we can come to some kind of consensus as far as the directions that are
00:47:07 ►
needed and overall overarching, you know, structure,
00:47:12 ►
we may not have any ultimate say in how it all works out.
00:47:17 ►
But if we bite our tongues and don’t say anything, then shame on us.
00:47:22 ►
I couldn’t agree more.
00:47:27 ►
So anybody else, somebody else want to add to this conversation right now? Yeah, well I’d say David, thank you,
00:47:34 ►
well done. I’m not that informed on the issue but I appreciate you bringing up
00:47:42 ►
so many questions and points about psychedelics going corporate is what I take from it.
00:47:49 ►
And, you know, there’s a lot pretty quickly with that prospect.
00:47:55 ►
But I just want to, Lorenzo, before David came on, you know, sort of as a preamble, you were talking about this general subject.
00:48:07 ►
about this general subject and it seems to me that you know once it is legalized assuming that this is going to be happening legalized therapeutic use it’s
00:48:12 ►
going to be running in parallel with the already established what should we call
00:48:17 ►
it underground and that which is going strong it’s not going to reach maybe the people who,
00:48:26 ►
as you described, David, have some real therapeutic needs
00:48:30 ►
where they need to go into where insurance would cover it and so forth.
00:48:34 ►
But I don’t know if you’ve read the book, The Secret Chief, by Myron Stolaroff,
00:48:42 ►
which he profiles Leo Zeff, who was a therapist, I believe, in Southern California,
00:48:47 ►
who did therapy in parallel,
00:48:51 ►
although it was already illegal to use MDMA and so forth.
00:48:54 ►
He went into the 80s and 90s until his death working with people.
00:48:59 ►
So there probably were others doing that,
00:49:03 ►
but that was who Myron knew,
00:49:05 ►
and Myron was very impressed with this guy.
00:49:07 ►
I never met him myself.
00:49:09 ►
But anyway, I’ll just throw that in.
00:49:11 ►
I don’t have the answers either, but this thing in parallel between already the underground
00:49:16 ►
and people do get therapeutic value from using in that fashion,
00:49:24 ►
although it’s not as – the protocols aren’t there like you’re
00:49:27 ►
talking about, and MAPS is formulated. Thank you. Yeah, totally, and I think the underground is
00:49:34 ►
hugely important. I think that, you know, I mean, my first psychedelic experience was therapeutic
00:49:41 ►
in a way that literally, I mean, the release of existential
00:49:46 ►
angst around death and dying that I’ve literally, I had literally carried from my earliest memories.
00:49:52 ►
You know, my first memories are being three years old, visiting my grandmother in the hospital as
00:49:57 ►
she’s dying from breast cancer. And like, I used to struggle to fall asleep at night as a kid,
00:50:03 ►
trying to understand what would it mean to not exist forward 15 years.
00:50:09 ►
And like, you know, having done an extensive amount of research,
00:50:13 ►
thanks to Arrowhead, thanks to Wikipedia, thanks to, you know,
00:50:16 ►
sort of the digital information age of drugs. Um, you know, I, uh,
00:50:22 ►
had having been largely drug avoidant except for cannabis from 15, like I, you know, I suddenly had an experience where that entire fear and anxiety, it just evaporated.
00:50:36 ►
And for me, I mean, there was also an explicitly political component where, you know, my own understandings of industrial civilization and capitalism and other things kind of stitch themselves together in a really fascinating way. But the ongoing relief
00:50:50 ►
I got from that, I mean, it truly was tremendously therapeutic to a point where, you know, my parents
00:50:57 ►
were on the phone with me, like, look, we know you’re at school. We know you’re on your own
00:51:01 ►
getting to sort of do things your own way. It seems like you’re doing it you’re on your own and getting to sort of uh do things your own way it seems like
00:51:05 ►
you’re doing it really really good like what’s up and that was 2006 it was the same year the
00:51:10 ►
Hopkins study came out and I kind of uh agonized about it for a while but eventually I sent it to
00:51:17 ►
them I was like you want to know what’s up this is what’s up and you know I think that it’s really
00:51:22 ►
important to make sure that there is a vibrant underground even in the context of um you know, I think that it’s really important to make sure that there is a vibrant underground, even in the context of, you know, whether it’s decriminalization or even in the context of institutions push for medicalization in the current context.
00:51:37 ►
I think it’s important to not de-emphasize the underground.
00:51:40 ►
I think there’s a lot that the underground brings to the table.
00:51:45 ►
the I think there’s a lot that the underground brings to the table and at the same time I think it’s important to not sort of um any sort of protective aspect on the underground so like
00:51:53 ►
I’ve heard some people say oh well you know even if still psilocybin goes that’s medicalized and
00:52:02 ►
they reschedule and they make it available, like it’ll be price checked,
00:52:05 ►
or it may be price checked in part by the fact that you could still just walk down the street
00:52:10 ►
and find mushrooms growing in a pasture somewhere, you know, find some dealer to buy them from.
00:52:16 ►
And I would confirm that that’s just not the case. If we look at, I mean, the FDA recently approved
00:52:20 ►
the first CBD medication, they’re saying the price on that is going to be $32,500 a year,
00:52:28 ►
right, for a plant that you can literally grow in a ditch, you know, like, to me, that’s indication
00:52:34 ►
that there is no guarantee that black markets will price level. And similarly, there are noted
00:52:41 ►
in these spaces, such as Ben Sessa, who I think rightly so acknowledges
00:52:47 ►
that many of his patients aren’t interested in being criminals.
00:52:52 ►
They’re not willing to go to the black market.
00:52:54 ►
So if those folks aren’t willing to go to the black market, the fact that there’s a
00:52:59 ►
much cheaper alternative available, if you’re willing to be a criminal, doesn’t really matter,
00:53:04 ►
at least for those people. So I think we have to understand the underground and sanctioned research, also
00:53:14 ►
sanctioned and approved medical approaches, not as antagonistic to each other, but actually as
00:53:19 ►
complementary in ways where ideally I would like to see those as two vibrant trails blazed across
00:53:26 ►
a much broader psychedelic terrain. Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, it’s the only way
00:53:34 ►
to really get that there from here is to have these conversations and thousands of them around
00:53:39 ►
the world and, you know, so that people can kind of raise up their voices when
00:53:45 ►
things get too oppressive.
00:53:46 ►
But, uh, of course, you know, as everybody knows here in the States, things are going
00:53:51 ►
to probably get more repressive for a while.
00:53:55 ►
Yeah, it’s kind of gotten a little, a little real over the last few years.
00:54:00 ►
I mean, not that it wasn’t problematic before, but yeah, I, you know, and looking at some of the issues that are currently popping up in some spaces around questions of misogyny and sexual assault and how are, you know, what are the responsibilities of institutional heads to engage with really difficult questions. And, you know, I mean,
00:54:26 ►
there’s, when we’re talking about issues of psychedelics and consent, the waters can get
00:54:33 ►
really, really muddy. I mean, I would imagine that many people have had experiences. I know
00:54:39 ►
I’ve had psychedelic experiences where I’m, I have no control over my body. Where if so, where I’m like, I think about
00:54:47 ►
many of my DMT breakthroughs where I’m literally not in my body. I can think of, of ayahuasca
00:54:53 ►
experiences where I have such high levels of ataxia that I can’t control my muscles in,
00:55:01 ►
in any significant way. And I’m lying in bed.
00:55:07 ►
Potential, the degree to which people are vulnerable in some of these experiences, like
00:55:12 ►
physically, is huge.
00:55:15 ►
And then beyond that, when we consider integration, when we consider coming back and we see the
00:55:19 ►
effects that some of these experiences and substances have on folks. You know, I think
00:55:25 ►
when we consider what that some folks do in integration circles as trained licensed
00:55:35 ►
physicians and therapists and folks that are doing that work of integration, particularly those who
00:55:42 ►
are facing outward, I know there are resources
00:55:45 ►
like the MAPS integration list. To my mind, just as I think many people would contend about Brett
00:55:51 ►
Kavanaugh, anybody who’s on a psychedelic integration list or running an integration
00:55:56 ►
circle should really be above questioning, right? Like if there’s an issue that appears,
00:56:03 ►
I think it’s important that should somebody raise allegations or questions about the behavior of somebody who’s in a public-facing integration point, there’s no reason why they can’t be delisted
00:56:25 ►
until there’s an actual discussion
00:56:28 ►
to figure out what’s going on here.
00:56:32 ►
Why has this happened?
00:56:34 ►
And I think that to my mind,
00:56:37 ►
it seems like erring on the side
00:56:39 ►
that nobody is losing out
00:56:42 ►
by not being able to do integration work.
00:57:08 ►
There are people who are capable, who are qualified, who are willing to do that work. And I think that it would behoove us as a community or as communities to figure out how can we make sure that people in the more vulnerable positions are being heard, are being engaged in ways that make them feel safer?
00:57:13 ►
I think that there’s been a lot of focus on how do we reintegrate? folks who have acknowledged to some extent their misdeeds or actions and have then
00:57:28 ►
attempted to come back into spaces, saying that, you know, with people saying, hey, like,
00:57:35 ►
they’re not a threat anymore, they’re not problematic, they don’t present the same level
00:57:39 ►
of risk. While I can hear that, I’m more concerned about what those effects are, what their presence
00:57:48 ►
in those spaces is for the people who have histories of trauma, histories of abuse. For me,
00:57:55 ►
I think that especially when we look at some of the power dynamics in psychedelic spaces,
00:58:00 ►
when we see predominantly white, wealthier men in positions of power,
00:58:06 ►
engaging, you know, looking to sort of keep some of their friends in the fold,
00:58:12 ►
it raises questions about who we respect and who we value in these spaces. And for
00:58:18 ►
me, I think the biggest question is, why is it so important to bring some of
00:58:22 ►
these folks back into the space when their
00:58:25 ►
presence makes all of these other people incredibly uncomfortable?
00:58:29 ►
This is a question that I raised recently around the inclusion of Daniel Pankaj at the
00:58:35 ►
funding dinner around Horizons.
00:58:38 ►
I, having had a number of people reach out to me to say, hey, you know, why is this person
00:58:43 ►
being included?
00:58:44 ►
This seems really problematic. This makes me feel this way. Do you understand, given his acknowledgement
00:58:52 ►
of some of his behaviors and considering how, I mean, in his acknowledgement, he said at one point,
00:59:00 ►
and I’m going to clip the quote, but it’s on his Facebook statement, where basically the quote was, behaviors I haven’t engaged in include, you know, things I haven’t
00:59:11 ►
done include having, you know, non-consensual sex, but problematic behaviors I have engaged in
00:59:18 ►
include using substances as tools of seduction. Now, that presents a pretty problematic view of vent. I don’t think it holds
00:59:30 ►
water personally. So to then have major players in these spaces say, oh, I think Daniel has
00:59:36 ►
acknowledged his behavior or, or, oh, like, I don’t think he’s a risk to anyone, I don’t think it makes sense for powerful men in positions of privilege
00:59:46 ►
to be the deciders of those things.
00:59:50 ►
I think that when we’re looking at people who have used their positions of power to
00:59:55 ►
engage in problematic behaviors, to put it mildly, we need to figure out ways of addressing or raising questions around these really difficult, messy discussions that make space for the survivors, that make space for the victims, that try to amplify some of the voices that are constantly getting pushed to the margins.
01:00:31 ►
Yeah, and then, I mean, it just seems to me like it’s not like learning to, it’s not like the psychedelic community is different than like the society at large, right?
01:00:38 ►
So it’s like if there’s some like sketchiness in it, it’s like a microcosm of the society as a whole.
01:00:39 ►
I agree.
01:00:45 ►
We’ll just try to not be too surprised by it, but like try to deal with it in a good way.
01:00:50 ►
Yeah. You know, we have divorces and fights and disagreements and, and vendettas and everything else, you know, just on the same scale,
01:00:55 ►
probably, you know, percentage wise as any other community. And, and, you know,
01:00:59 ►
the thing is, we just have to find a ways to, you know,
01:01:04 ►
pour oil on those waters without coming to blows.
01:01:08 ►
Totally. And I think, you know, it’s exactly that, right?
01:01:11 ►
Like we are a microcosm in all these ways. And then, um, you know,
01:01:15 ►
one of the things that kind of catches me off guard from time to time is that
01:01:21 ►
it’s not just that we’re a microcosm,
01:01:24 ►
like we’re a microcosm that has groups
01:01:25 ►
of people that have uh right this notion about like the cause or a cause right like depending on
01:01:31 ►
on what that is right that oh we can’t make noise about that because this this might interfere with
01:01:37 ►
medicalization or this might get in the way of legalization and so you know do we want
01:01:42 ►
does it problems if broader society sees this as like
01:01:45 ►
a sex-crazed weirdos because, oh my God, there’s a sex scandal within these psychedelic, you
01:01:51 ►
know, communities.
01:01:52 ►
And like, you know, that to me, like, I guess the same way, sort of similar to how I feel
01:01:58 ►
about a lot of the compass stuff and the potential for extreme commodification and
01:02:02 ►
corporatization is like, what’s the point of getting these things legalized or more widely available
01:02:07 ►
if in the process we sort of turn ourselves into the same cesspit as, you know, as we
01:02:13 ►
see these things as potentially being antidotes to it, right?
01:02:16 ►
I don’t think that psychedelics necessarily generate outcomes that are antithetical to
01:02:23 ►
dominant culture.
01:02:28 ►
I believe that they can facilitate those experiences.
01:02:31 ►
I think that it depends a lot on, you know,
01:02:35 ►
set and setting intention and context, but you know, to me,
01:02:41 ►
one of my larger concerns around this project of mainstreaming is that in the process of mainstreaming,
01:02:43 ►
there’s going to be an attempt to sort of domesticate psychedelics, to tame them in a way where they’re no longer challenging
01:02:52 ►
some of those systems of power that I think certain people look to them as catalysts for.
01:03:00 ►
You know, it’s really interesting to look at LSD and microdosing and the fact that, you know it’s really interesting to look at lsd and microdosing and the fact that you know
01:03:06 ►
if we look at what it took to make lsd palatable um to dominant culture right it was like at the
01:03:14 ►
point where it was no longer presenting not no longer but when it could be repackaged
01:03:19 ►
as a microdose that you give to your coders, you give to your engineers,
01:03:25 ►
and suddenly they’re much more creative
01:03:27 ►
and capable of coming up with new solutions
01:03:31 ►
and generating a profit for your company,
01:03:33 ►
or at least this is like the marketing that goes with it,
01:03:36 ►
that’s palatable in a way that,
01:03:39 ►
ooh, macro doses for boundary-dissolving experiences
01:03:43 ►
that challenge the socioeconomic order didn’t
01:03:46 ►
really seem to be.
01:03:48 ►
And so seeing the reverence that microdosing seems to be taking on within some of the tech
01:03:54 ►
communities and seeing the folks that are buying into that and really pushing it, I
01:03:59 ►
think it really presents an interesting chance to look at some of those dynamics and look at the cultural
01:04:05 ►
containers around these things and question, you know, how do we want to present these things? And
01:04:11 ►
to what extent does the discussion and the discourse and cultural container around them
01:04:20 ►
actually matter? And does that, you know, matter potentially as much, if not more,
01:04:26 ►
than the substances themselves? You know, David, as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, that
01:04:32 ►
for a long time, I’ve been really kind of more focused community-wise inward, you know, to
01:04:40 ►
theme camps and festivals and stuff like that. And you bring a neat dimension to this whole thing
01:04:47 ►
as a potential window into our world
01:04:50 ►
or an interface between these worlds
01:04:52 ►
because you’re actually thinking about ways
01:04:54 ►
to present what we feel and believe in
01:04:57 ►
and like to do to sort of through the default world
01:05:01 ►
that doesn’t have a great opinion of us
01:05:04 ►
because of the propaganda so far. At least that’s the way it kind of seems to me. I mean, to me, it seems
01:05:10 ►
really important. I mean, for me, like I said, I don’t think psychedelics inherently, you know,
01:05:16 ►
have a specific outcome. But when I look at my own experiences, particularly my first one,
01:05:21 ►
since then, I mean, psychedelics have always struck me as having this
01:05:26 ►
radical political potential. And, you know, if we look through the literature, right, we can see
01:05:31 ►
that there are certain themes that exist over time. I mean, I’m on the younger side of things,
01:05:35 ►
so I’m sure some people have lived through these histories. I know some people have lived through
01:05:39 ►
these histories. But when I look through the literature, right, I see themes of love, of interconnection, of sense of ecological, the importance of ecological integrity.
01:05:50 ►
And one of the things that I realized is even if we take what some folks in the default world or outside of these communities might view as sort of most hippie, dippy messaging from these, right, something like all there is is love or all you
01:06:05 ►
need is love or love is the most important thing in the universe um i would contend that when you
01:06:10 ►
have that unitive all-encompassing loving experience and then come back to a world in
01:06:16 ►
which there are like trillion dollar industries predicated on telling you that you’re unlovable
01:06:21 ►
and that you know that’s why to buy the right deodorant and the right toothpaste and, you know, oh, well, you know, your friends won’t,
01:06:29 ►
won’t think you’re good unless you drive a nice enough car, have the new iPod or whatever, iPhone.
01:06:35 ►
Right. I would contend at that point, having that all encompassing loving experience and then
01:06:41 ►
figuring out how to apply that into the default world is an inherently
01:06:45 ►
radical act and that like your what i think it was banksy who said right like every time you walk
01:06:51 ►
into public space and you’re confronted with advertising for from everywhere with advertising
01:06:57 ►
you had no say and you had no no no choice in confronting it’s somebody throwing a rock at
01:07:04 ►
your head and so like suddenly, right,
01:07:06 ►
you’ve been given this insight into a way of being, into a way of experiencing the world that
01:07:11 ►
is so fundamentally at odds with what most of us encounter in day-to-day life,
01:07:17 ►
that I think it raises really significant questions about how we live, the choices we make,
01:07:22 ►
what sort of intentions we want for not only ourselves,
01:07:25 ►
but our communities and the world around us, that putting those experiences into practice,
01:07:32 ►
I don’t see how, if you find those experiences meaningful and worth putting into practice,
01:07:38 ►
how they could do anything other than challenge some of those dominant systems.
01:07:43 ►
Oh, I agree.
01:07:45 ►
Anybody else
01:07:46 ►
would like to join in here?
01:07:48 ►
Go ahead, Rod.
01:07:50 ►
I mentioned
01:07:52 ►
in the introduction
01:07:53 ►
I started a tiny
01:07:56 ►
psychedelic society in a tiny country
01:07:58 ►
called Slovenia of 2 million.
01:08:01 ►
Exactly
01:08:02 ►
what you’re saying, David, is
01:08:04 ►
obviously psychedelics do empower us to see through much of the bullshit that’s around us.
01:08:10 ►
So I have the privilege of living in a tiny country where potentially we can just do stuff and nothing much will happen. happen you know and so my primary goal really is just enabling people to have a first truly
01:08:28 ►
psychedelic experience and then i mean if if it touches them anywhere close to you know the
01:08:36 ►
intensity that i felt they’ll find a way through either the dark web or a friend or, you know, some mushrooms in the forest,
01:08:46 ►
you know, and then hopefully join us in thinking about these larger issues
01:08:54 ►
of commercialization and patents and that sort of stuff.
01:09:02 ►
Totally.
01:09:03 ►
And that’s one of the reasons why I think it’s really important to
01:09:05 ►
try to tie these things into the larger systemic questions, right? Because to me, it’s almost like,
01:09:13 ►
you know, I was talking with Emmanuel Spirios a couple weeks ago, and he was pushing real hard on
01:09:21 ►
medicalization, and how, you know, if we just get enough people into
01:09:25 ►
psychedelic therapy, it’ll change the world. And one of my questions was, you know, how is that
01:09:31 ►
any different than dosing the water? Like to me, it’s like dose the water 2.0. If we medicalize to
01:09:37 ►
mainstreaming, then suddenly things just change. And I think that absolutely things can change,
01:09:42 ►
but I think we have to also be engaged in discussions, right?
01:09:46 ►
Like about why things are the way they are.
01:09:49 ►
Like I found it really interesting.
01:09:51 ►
You know, a friend of mine was reading to me
01:09:52 ►
from Pollan’s recent book
01:09:54 ►
and reminded me of the fact that, you know,
01:09:57 ►
there was a point where Rick sent
01:09:59 ►
to a bunch of the world’s spiritual leaders
01:10:02 ►
in the hopes of ending sectarian crises well
01:10:05 ►
it’s like don’t have war because people dislike each other like economic incentives to war um
01:10:12 ►
you know we don’t like capitalism is set up to incentivize certain things if if you were to show
01:10:18 ►
the ceo of apple that oh my god look there’s all this really terrible stuff that you’re making your products and can’t you see, can’t you have a little sympathy, you know, you may be able to convince
01:10:29 ►
him and he goes back to the board and says, oh my God, you guys, you won’t believe the terrible
01:10:33 ►
things that are going on. And the board will laugh and get rid of him. They’ll find somebody
01:10:38 ►
else who’s capable of stepping into that position. So maybe you take the whole board and you show
01:10:42 ►
them and let’s say they all, you know, they all recognize it and they’re like oh my god this is so terrible and they start talking about
01:10:47 ►
well it’s a public company right so the shareholders say ah we can find a new board we can we can you
01:10:52 ►
know um vote ways that will maximize our profits like the way that these systems cut through it’s
01:10:59 ►
not just about us having experiences that like help us you know like it’s so important to see through
01:11:06 ►
the bullshit and then like when we see through the bullshit we have to ask okay how is the
01:11:10 ►
bullshit structured how is it you know shit flows downhill right so if we still have this hill and
01:11:16 ►
we’re living at the bottom of it we’re constantly going to find ourselves covered in all of this so
01:11:20 ►
how do we start you know engaging in ways that get into these systemic components that don’t just view psychedelics as personally emancipatory or liberatory, but start to get into those larger questions of social liberation? who know me and like you know be able to operate like i can only imagine right like the police
01:11:46 ►
state and mass incarceration in this country the way that it operates um i mean you’ve got ties
01:11:52 ►
between the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex where you know these
01:11:57 ►
two incredibly profitable industries are are piggybacked on each other and relying on so-called population you know incredibly lucrative and
01:12:08 ►
simultaneously incredibly destructive industries in ways where these are huge sticks you know in
01:12:15 ►
the sense of the proverbial carrot and the stick to get people to act in certain ways within this
01:12:20 ►
social context and so you know back to that notion of really difficult, potentially
01:12:25 ►
unanswerable questions, like, how do we begin grappling with, with deconstructing some of that?
01:12:31 ►
I mean, I’ve heard a number of military veterans who have had really successful MDMA-assisted
01:12:38 ►
psychotherapy sessions talk about, you know, finding ways to dismantle the military industrial complex so you know as as
01:12:46 ►
psychedelically engaged folks like are there things we can do to help provide them the resources are
01:12:53 ►
there ways we can support them i mean similarly you know why don’t we see more um psychedelic
01:12:59 ►
prison abolition groups you know like these are these are projects that, to my mind, tie in as much as their components
01:13:08 ►
of dominant culture and the default world.
01:13:12 ►
These are things, in my mind,
01:13:13 ►
should be part and parcel of our engagement
01:13:16 ►
as psychedelically interested folks.
01:13:21 ►
Well, it’s always nice to find the others, hey?
01:13:24 ►
It is, it is. know tonight uh this is the
01:13:28 ►
very first night we’ve had somebody from slovenia and rock i appreciate you being here and travis
01:13:33 ►
travis who has come quite a few times from wellington and like i said laura’s here tonight
01:13:39 ►
good to see you again laura and mally and sean and and uh specialist, Ed. So, oh, Kevin.
01:13:45 ►
Kevin’s still driving.
01:13:46 ►
Yeah.
01:13:47 ►
But anyhow, you guys, hey, thanks.
01:13:48 ►
I think this is the best one of these we’ve had so far.
01:13:51 ►
So, Mark and David, thank you for organizing this.
01:13:55 ►
And the rest of you, thanks for being here.
01:13:57 ►
And I look forward to next Monday night.
01:13:59 ►
It’ll be fun.
01:14:03 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:14:06 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:14:11 ►
So, here we are, faced with yet another uncomfortable situation.
01:14:17 ►
However, as they say in Texas,
01:14:20 ►
well, sometimes you just have to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
01:14:26 ►
And, well, it seems to me that this is one of those times,
01:14:29 ►
because if we put off talking about this until after the classifications of most psychedelic medicines are lowered,
01:14:36 ►
so as to become more easily available for research and treatment,
01:14:39 ►
well, by then I suspect that it’ll be too late for us common people
01:14:44 ►
to wrest control of these powerful substances away from the big money people.
01:14:49 ►
You know, back in the 60s, men like Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were able to break the hold that science held over these substances
01:14:56 ►
and to help more of us gain access to these important medicines.
01:15:00 ►
Well, today it’s up to you, me, and some of our friends to keep big business interests from locking them down as well.
01:15:09 ►
Just now you heard Dave Nichols talk about the importance of maintaining a robust underground of people outside of the big business enterprises who, well, people who do what has been done in the underground for ages, namely keep the flame alive.
01:15:24 ►
And guess what? You are a part of that
01:15:26 ►
underground. And I’m not talking about an illegal underground of people selling illegal substances.
01:15:32 ►
No, our underground is even more important, because what we’re about is keeping information
01:15:38 ►
about psychedelic medicines free of corporate and government influence. Our memories are long, and we clearly
01:15:46 ►
recall the horrors of MKUltra, and we aren’t about to let them get away with that again.
01:15:52 ►
At the very least, well, I think this is something that we should continue to discuss among ourselves.
01:15:58 ►
But don’t worry if this conversation isn’t what you’re looking for right now,
01:16:03 ►
because in the next couple of weeks I’ll also be playing more talks from this year’s
01:16:07 ►
Palenque Norte lectures at Burning Man,
01:16:09 ►
and then in November, which will basically be my fun drive month,
01:16:13 ►
it’s going to be some new talks from Terrence McKenna.
01:16:16 ►
So there’s a lot more fun in store for us in the months ahead.
01:16:20 ►
And tomorrow evening, on our regular Psychedelic Salon live Monday night session,
01:16:25 ►
I think, well, maybe we should pick up this conversation a little bit more about big
01:16:30 ►
businesses attempt to corner the marijuana and psychedelic medicine markets. And I hope that
01:16:35 ►
you’ll join us. You know, it only costs a dollar a month to participate in these live versions of
01:16:40 ►
the salon. And I hope to see you there. And by the way, details are delivered to
01:16:45 ►
my patrons via email each week in case you’re interested. So for now, this is Lorenzo signing
01:16:51 ►
off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.