Program Notes
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Date this lecture was recorded: November 16, 2020
Guest speakers:
Pat Murphy and Charlie Grob
Today’s podcast features an interview in the Live Salon with filmmaker Pat Murphy and psychedelic researcher Dr. Charles Grob. During the course of the conversation the conversation drifted into several interesting tributaries. However, the main focus of our conversation was to discuss Pat’s new film, Psychedelia.
PSYCHEDELIA is an hour-long documentary film about psychedelic drugs and their ability to induce mystical and religious experiences. The film chronicles their use in controlled research studies prior to the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, when LSD was regarded as a promising medical breakthrough, as well as their recent re-emergence in psychiatry.
Featuring leading experts in the field of psychedelic research, the film tells the story of medical professionals who have re-introduced these compounds into a legal and growing field of study. First-person accounts from a study on end-of-life anxiety explore the profound, life-altering insights psychedelics induce in participants and what these insights might mean for society at large.
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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 ►
And in this past Monday night’s live salon, our guests were Pat Murphy and Charlie Grobe.
00:00:30 ►
And while the focus of our discussion was Pat’s new film, we kind of strayed from that a bit every once in a while.
00:00:36 ►
But his new film is titled Psychedelia, the History and Science of Mystical Experience.
00:00:42 ►
and science of mystical experience.
00:00:45 ►
Now, this coming Saturday, November 28th, there’s going to be a 45-minute live question-and-answer session
00:00:49 ►
at 2 o’clock Eastern Time,
00:00:51 ►
and this event is being hosted by Fluence
00:00:54 ►
and is going to include Pat,
00:00:56 ►
along with one of the participants in a recent psychedelic research study.
00:01:00 ►
Now, a small fee is being charged for this,
00:01:02 ►
but it’s also going to provide you with access to watch the film for a full week after the Q&A session.
00:01:08 ►
One of the takeaways from this conversation with Pat and Charlie that I got is how persistence can pay off even if you don’t have access to significant resources.
00:01:19 ►
As you’ll hear, Pat began this project when he was still a student at NYU.
00:01:23 ►
Pat began this project when he was still a student at NYU.
00:01:28 ►
But it’s taken him nine years to get to where this first virtual live screening is going to take place this Saturday.
00:01:31 ►
Now, when I watched a pre-release edit of this film,
00:01:34 ►
I had no idea about what went into its making.
00:01:37 ►
I just assumed Pat was a seasoned old documentary filmmaker.
00:01:42 ►
But as I watched it, my impression was that a large and well-funded
00:01:46 ►
crew had made it. You can’t imagine my surprise when I heard the full story, as you will in just
00:01:51 ►
a moment. In my opinion, this is an excellent film, and if you want to introduce somebody to
00:01:57 ►
the psychedelic community, somebody who has no idea about what psychedelics are all about,
00:02:02 ►
well, I can’t remember seeing a better film to show them
00:02:05 ►
than this one. It takes you from the ancient use of psychedelics right up through today’s
00:02:10 ►
impressive medical research projects, along with testimonials from people who participated in these
00:02:15 ►
programs. So even if you can’t join the Q&A program on Saturday, I think it’ll really be worth your
00:02:21 ►
time to watch this impressive film. I put a link to that event in the program notes for this podcast,
00:02:27 ►
which you’ll find at psychedelicsalon.com,
00:02:30 ►
and under that link is a discount code that you can use
00:02:33 ►
should you decide to support this young filmmaker.
00:02:37 ►
Now, please join me and a few dozen other saloners
00:02:40 ►
while we visit with Pat Murphy and Charlie Grobe.
00:02:50 ►
…turn them into podcasts, which is what i plan to do tonight so that we can get some publicity for this new movie so let’s start with with you pat and uh sure we’ll get
00:02:57 ►
into the the ways that you’re promoting it and stuff like that in a bit but but uh tell us a
00:03:04 ►
little bit about how this thing came about i mean this
00:03:07 ►
first of all let me tell you guys i i i’ve seen a uh a early cut of this movie and it’s it’s really
00:03:14 ►
amazing because you know i’ve seen like you guys have seen so many of these things that uh this one
00:03:20 ►
actually uh held my attention the whole way through and it’s a very high quality so uh uh let me just
00:03:26 ►
how did you get into all this pat yeah that’s a good question uh believe it or not i started
00:03:32 ►
making this film uh just about nine years ago and i was a student at nyu film school
00:03:39 ►
um and i was looking for a senior project know, a film to make for my senior project.
00:03:47 ►
And I heard about a study at the NYU School of Medicine using psilocybin with people with cancer
00:03:55 ►
who were experiencing end of life anxiety. And just kind of a light bulb went off in my head
00:04:01 ►
because, you know, I was 21 years old at the time.
00:04:11 ►
The way I’d been introduced to this topic was not through, you know, an institutional means.
00:04:17 ►
And all this was kind of new to me. So from there, I started learning about, you know, how it was originally used by psychiatrists in the 50s and 60s before, you know, Timothy Leary left Harvard
00:04:25 ►
and Ken Kesey had his acid test and all that.
00:04:28 ►
So it was all new to me, and I felt like it was, you know,
00:04:32 ►
an important story that needed to be shared.
00:04:35 ►
And so that started me on the process of making the film.
00:04:39 ►
And, yeah, that was about nine years ago, if you can believe that.
00:04:46 ►
Well, you know, the film is very high quality.
00:04:49 ►
You know, first of all, what kind of equipment did you use to shoot that?
00:04:51 ►
It’s like high def and all.
00:04:53 ►
I love it.
00:04:54 ►
Yeah.
00:04:55 ►
Well, it was all done on a very low budget because, you know, I was a college student.
00:05:00 ►
So we had access to the cameras that they provided us.
00:05:03 ►
So we had access to the cameras that they provided us.
00:05:08 ►
And then honestly, I shot a lot of it on a Canon T2i,
00:05:10 ►
which is a little DSLR camera,
00:05:13 ►
cost about 500 bucks at the time.
00:05:15 ►
It’s probably worth 200 bucks now.
00:05:20 ►
So all, yeah, all done very on the cheap,
00:05:23 ►
but trying to pay attention to lighting and that sort of stuff
00:05:24 ►
to kind of
00:05:25 ►
bring up the production value well well the nyc uh film school definitely gets some
00:05:30 ►
accolades there because you’re lighting and all that you know the interviews that you did were
00:05:35 ►
really impressive uh uh the quality of the interview the the film and all and the questions
00:05:41 ►
asked but i i have to ask you uh you know i remember when when charlie was
00:05:45 ►
writing this book that was a collection of stories about a whole bunch of different psychedelic
00:05:51 ►
elders important ones uh i asked him one time how he got all those people together and he said well
00:05:57 ►
it’s sort of like herding cats uh what was your experience of getting people like charlie to sit
00:06:02 ►
down for an interview yeah well i i was lucky lucky. Charlie was one of the last experts I interviewed. And so I had sort of built trust
00:06:12 ►
among the doctors that I interviewed. And I had a pretty good idea of the story at that point.
00:06:19 ►
But early on, when I approached these NYU doctors, you know, I was treated with a good degree of skepticism.
00:06:27 ►
Because they were like, who is this kid? And like, what story is he trying to tell?
00:06:32 ►
And, you know, I really didn’t, I didn’t really know a lot about the filmmaking process.
00:06:37 ►
I didn’t really know much about the story. I just knew that, you know, it was a story I wanted to tell.
00:06:42 ►
And I was sort of figuring it out as I went along.
00:06:45 ►
So it took a long time to build the trust.
00:06:49 ►
And, you know, I think I interviewed Charlie maybe three or four years into the process.
00:06:54 ►
So you really started out with more of an outline than a script.
00:06:58 ►
Is that true?
00:06:59 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:07:00 ►
Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:00 ►
And it was, I had all sorts of early ideas about how I was going to film all, me and my friends and in the woods doing stuff. And it went through many, many iterations before sort of arriving at the thing that you see now.
00:07:18 ►
Well, yeah, because creating B-roll for a project like this, that just sounds like wild amounts of fun.
00:07:27 ►
roll for a project like this that just sounds like wild amounts of fun yeah exactly no i had some fun which you know some of that footage didn’t make it in um but yeah it was just you
00:07:32 ►
know it was just a long slog i mean just many many years and you know just just chipping away at it
00:07:40 ►
over you know and then i’m going to be careful here to not you know be a spoiler alert or
00:07:45 ►
anything like that because uh i really really want you all to see it it’s it’s you know all
00:07:50 ►
of us have seen you know dozens of these films and this one uh is something that uh should be
00:07:56 ►
shown in schools for one thing and uh you know in all the psychedelic societies, I’m going to help promote it out on Discord. But the thing is that it’s both a history of the ancient history, then the modern history, and then the current medical history.
00:08:16 ►
And that’s why I don’t want to give the ending away, but I thought you did a perfect ending.
00:08:21 ►
It was just really the right trajectory of the story. And I’ll just tell you,
00:08:28 ►
the ending has to deal with current patients. And that’s why I think it was so powerful, because
00:08:32 ►
it built up to how we’ve had thousands of years of experience with this, and now it’s really coming
00:08:39 ►
to fruition. So was that one of your objectives in the beginning, or did it just kind of come?
00:08:44 ►
So was that one of your objectives in the beginning or did it just kind of come?
00:08:53 ►
Yeah. So I, you know, I originally wanted to just focus on the current research, which was that study that was going on at NYU at the time.
00:09:02 ►
That was kind of my original idea. But it took a long time to gain access to those participants that I interviewed. So that’s where I sort of started as a history piece. But in the
00:09:08 ►
process of making the film, I got access to participants in these recent studies. And so
00:09:14 ►
that wasn’t as intentional. But it’s more that I had to, in the beginning, I started with what I
00:09:20 ►
had, which was just archive and narration and a few interviews. So I started
00:09:26 ►
piecing together that history and then sort of that more modern stuff came at the end of
00:09:31 ►
the process. So it was all kind of, you know, put together as the film was being made.
00:09:38 ►
So Charlie, do you remember how Pat approached you, you know, how you got involved?
00:09:44 ►
Do you remember how Pat approached you, how you got involved?
00:09:53 ►
Oh, well, I think I was first contacted by Steve Ross at NYU,
00:10:03 ►
who urged me to respond to Pat, who was planning to contact me. And Steve said he thought Pat was a good guy and was going to,
00:10:07 ►
had the makings of what was going to be a really nice, nice film.
00:10:12 ►
And, and Pat just happened to catch me when I was in New York for a meeting.
00:10:17 ►
So it just, the timing just worked out and we had a,
00:10:20 ►
we had a really good conversation.
00:10:24 ►
I think it was in the NYU treatment room.
00:10:26 ►
So it was a really nice setting.
00:10:29 ►
And I’ve seen a couple iterations of the film.
00:10:32 ►
I think it’s great.
00:10:33 ►
And in fact, Lorenzo, if you recall, I think I was the one who sent you the link to it.
00:10:38 ►
You are.
00:10:39 ►
That’s how I first found out about it, from Charlie.
00:10:41 ►
Yep, exactly. from charlie yep exactly i particularly appreciated the the emphasis you gave to
00:10:47 ►
the indigenous use and the ancient history because i think that’s often lost in the shuffle if you
00:10:54 ►
look at some other uh efforts to look at this topic the field either started in the 50s or
00:11:02 ►
even worse yet just started 10 years ago there’s nothing else we’re
00:11:07 ►
talking about and i think it’s important to acknowledge really the uh the extraordinary
00:11:13 ►
contribution of um indigenous people throughout the ages of preserving the uh you know the
00:11:20 ►
mysteries of of these uh extraordinary plants so exactly i think you did a great job
00:11:26 ►
with that part as well as the rest but let me also mention the visuals that you use were
00:11:31 ►
were wonderful you know i i don’t know what archive you you did a deep dive into be you
00:11:36 ►
came up with some priceless uh visuals to back the uh the dialogues yep yeah yeah thank you and um yeah a lot of that was you know i went
00:11:48 ►
to uh nature and um doing a lot of time lapses and um making things out of focus that would then
00:11:56 ►
come into focus and um you know fiddling with like time and space as it pertains to nature
00:12:03 ►
seemed to kind of communicate the experiences that these
00:12:07 ►
people were were describing um so that was just yeah out in the woods filming a lot of
00:12:13 ►
nature footage over many different seasons and many years and and you know it gave it a feeling
00:12:21 ►
a sense of the psychedelic experience that wouldn’t scare
00:12:25 ►
people off. You know, people have never had one. I would say that probably 20% of the people that
00:12:33 ►
listen to my podcast from the salon have never used psychedelics, and most of them really aren’t
00:12:38 ►
sure they ever will, but they’re so curious about it. And your film is really, it’s sort of like MDMA is to psychedelics.
00:12:48 ►
It’s an easy way to get into it.
00:12:51 ►
And I think that right now the fastest growing segment in cannabis use is age 65 and older.
00:13:02 ►
And I think this is a film that will touch a lot of the baby boomers
00:13:08 ►
uh I I’m part of the uh forgotten generation I’m older than a boomer so I can speak uh poorly about
00:13:15 ►
the boomers you know but uh they it’s something that they can show to their grandkids they might have to skip their children who might be a little more conservative but uh I think it’s something that they can show to their grandkids.
00:13:27 ►
They might have to skip their children who might be a little more conservative.
00:13:31 ►
But I think it’s a way to kind of do a cross-generational thing.
00:13:42 ►
And the other direction is where some of our young people who are really engaged in beginning exploration of psychedelics can take this film to their grandparents and say,
00:13:45 ►
hey, were you involved? What do you know about this?
00:13:48 ►
It’ll get some family dialogues going, I hope.
00:13:52 ►
Exactly. Yeah. And that was really one of my intentions in making the film.
00:13:57 ►
You know, I kind of the audience I had in mind were people who were new to this story and to maybe associate, you know, LSD with,
00:14:07 ►
you know, bad trips they read about in the 60s and 70s in the newspapers or people ending up in
00:14:13 ►
insane asylums and, you know, all the sort of rhetoric that was going on at that time.
00:14:20 ►
And I think, you know, people would be really fascinated to learn that before all that
00:14:25 ►
happened it was being used you know by psychiatrists and at Harvard University
00:14:31 ►
you know with theological students and and I just felt like yeah I wanted to kind of
00:14:37 ►
it’s almost psychedelics 101 the the film you know it’s like assuming people have no knowledge of this topic and sort of trying
00:14:46 ►
to encapsulate the whole story in one hour.
00:14:50 ►
Well, you know, the subtitle of your film really captures it, too.
00:14:53 ►
It’s the mystical experience that we’re talking about.
00:14:57 ►
And, you know, that moves the whole discussion into a different area for a lot of people,
00:15:01 ►
too.
00:15:02 ►
And you didn’t avoid the negatives.
00:15:04 ►
You know, I was pleased with that. different area for a lot of people too uh and and you didn’t avoid the negatives you know i was i
00:15:05 ►
was pleased with that and uh unlike so many of these other things uh documentaries i’ve seen you
00:15:10 ►
you seem to get everything right at least right according to me you know and i’ve been wrong about
00:15:15 ►
things so i don’t want to say it’s absolute but i think you did your research was really solid
00:15:19 ►
did you feel the same way charlie because you and I are probably the only two that have seen this thing. Right. I thought it was very well done and, you know,
00:15:28 ►
factually accurate and it had just the right tone.
00:15:33 ►
So how have you been, you know, when did you finish it?
00:15:37 ►
What have you been doing since it’s been done?
00:15:40 ►
Yeah.
00:15:41 ►
So it’s kind of a funny story.
00:15:43 ►
So I actually finished a version about five years
00:15:46 ►
ago. And that played at film festivals. And it won Best Documentary Award at one of those film
00:15:54 ►
festivals. And it was picked up by what’s called a sales agent, which is somebody that represents
00:16:00 ►
the film and tries to get it, you know, on television or to a streaming platform or something like that. And not really knowing anything about like the business of film distribution, I signed
00:16:11 ►
the rights over to this guy. I didn’t know very well. And nothing materialized with that. But he
00:16:19 ►
had the rights for three years. So from around 2016, I think is when i signed it over to 2019 the rights were
00:16:26 ►
tied up with this sales agent who wasn’t producing results and wasn’t really giving it the care that
00:16:32 ►
i think it needed um and then uh pollan’s book came out i think in 2018 michael pollan’s book
00:16:40 ►
and people were coming to me and being like did you know that psychedelics are we’re being used
00:16:46 ►
at NYU like while we were still saying I’m like yeah I spent like forever making a movie about
00:16:51 ►
this and so I just realized you know I gotta get this thing out here um so I I did a new version
00:16:57 ►
um and I I interviewed Rick Doblin um Julie Holland, and one of the researchers at Hopkins named Catherine McLean.
00:17:07 ►
And I found some new archival material to incorporate and just kind of tighten
00:17:12 ►
the story. And so this is really a new version,
00:17:15 ►
a new revised version of that film festival version from a few years ago.
00:17:20 ►
And yeah, it’s just in the beginning stages of being rolled out now.
00:17:28 ►
And how are you going about doing that? Uh, I guess, you know,
00:17:30 ►
things like this interviews like this.
00:17:34 ►
Yep. Um, so we’re doing a virtual screening event, um,
00:17:39 ►
with, uh, an organization called Fluence. They do, uh, education training.
00:18:04 ►
Um, so starting on Saturday, if you purchase a ticket to this event, you can watch the film, uh, on your own time for about a week long period. And then we’re going to be doing a virtual Q and A, um, on the 28th of November. And that will be with, uh, Jeff Gus from the NYU research team. Uh, and one of the participants of the East Hill Simon study.
00:18:08 ►
Have you sent me links to those, those events already?
00:18:09 ►
Yes, I think I have.
00:18:13 ►
Okay. I’ll double check because I want to put those in the program notes for.
00:18:17 ►
Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. Yep. So yeah, that,
00:18:21 ►
that’s the first kickoff event. And you know, my goal is to partner with other organizations and psychedelic societies,
00:18:25 ►
um, to, you know, put together a bunch of these events, you know, probably start hopefully
00:18:31 ►
starting next year.
00:18:33 ►
Well, you know, you might want to go out to our discord server.
00:18:36 ►
Uh, you go to psychedelicsalon.com and at the top of the page, there’s a link to it.
00:18:40 ►
It’s free.
00:18:41 ►
You don’t even have to put your email address in there.
00:18:43 ►
And it’s a gamer’s been using it for years. We started it after the pandemic
00:18:47 ►
started. There’s always 60 or 70 people live
00:18:51 ►
online there. There’s 700 or 800 that have joined up and participating.
00:18:56 ►
There’s a real active community of
00:18:59 ►
local psychedelic societies from several organizations.
00:19:03 ►
In fact, the person who’s
00:19:05 ►
really doing all the moderation on on our discord channel is uh the head of i are involved in the
00:19:13 ►
minneapolis psychedelic society and has helped uh get some of our uh interviewers here uh you know
00:19:20 ►
speaking engagements and some of the psychedelic society. So I’d suggest you go out there and don’t be bashful.
00:19:26 ►
Just introduce yourself and say, Hey,
00:19:29 ►
you want to get some screenings going here because you know, this is,
00:19:32 ►
I have to admit, I get approached for things like this fairly often.
00:19:37 ►
And it’s, it’s not very often.
00:19:39 ►
I get really struck by one that you grabbed me with this one.
00:19:42 ►
It’s very, very good.
00:19:44 ►
You know, it’s kind of difficult. Everybody here hasn’t seen it.
00:19:47 ►
So does anybody have any, any questions about this from out of the blue here?
00:19:53 ►
Chris, is that you? Go ahead, Chris.
00:19:56 ►
Sorry. I’m, I’m completely unfamiliar with the work and I don’t mean to like
00:20:01 ►
rehash this, this like public knowledge. But I’m just curious,
00:20:04 ►
like before
00:20:05 ►
you started making this movie like how involved were you in the world of natural medicines and
00:20:11 ►
psychedelics in general and and feel free to not answer this last part but like what degree
00:20:16 ►
of personal use history do you have and how do you feel it’s impacted your life um yeah so i i was not um when i started making the film was not very involved
00:20:28 ►
uh in the community um you know i had had uh my experiences um but um yeah this was a sort of new
00:20:38 ►
world to me and you know i was only 21 years old too so i was was only, you know, senior in college. Um, and then, you know, I’d say, um,
00:20:46 ►
I had, I’ve had, you know, fair amount of, uh, personal experiences. Um, and those have kind
00:20:54 ►
of stuck with me, um, so much so that I don’t really feel a need to, um, repeat, um, because,
00:21:02 ►
you know, they were quite profound and I feel like the, the insights that, you know, they were quite profound.
00:21:05 ►
And I feel like the, the insights that, you know, I gained from those,
00:21:09 ►
I’ll sort of carry with me for forever, you know?
00:21:13 ►
Yeah. I can definitely appreciate the whole, like, you know,
00:21:16 ►
once you get the message, you can put it on the phone.
00:21:20 ►
Yeah. There’s a great,
00:21:21 ►
I think Alan Watts made the comparison of the microscope. And, you know, the scientist doesn’t, you know, the microscope opens up whole new worlds, but you don’t spend all your time looking through the microscope. You take what you’ve learned, and you bring it back to the real world. And that’s kind of something I relate to.
00:21:47 ►
I relate to. Well, I think an interesting extension of the metaphor is that an old scientist doesn’t throw away her microscope. She keeps it in the back of her closet, you know, and every once in
00:21:54 ►
a while, kind of when the time is right, pulls it out. Sure, sure, sure. Well, you know, like,
00:22:01 ►
like my friend Bill Radiziski used to say is that, and he said this about ayahuasca, he says, ayahuasca is the only medicine that gives homework. And that’s the story, you know, it’s something you can’t keep doing it because you got so much homework to do before you can get back to class.
00:22:27 ►
Pat, you mentioned that for this version of the film that you’re currently putting out,
00:22:31 ►
you found new material and sort of put out a new version.
00:22:39 ►
I’m curious, how much of the film did you have to change in order to be able to release it as a new version and for it to not be just the version that was tied up with the promoter?
00:22:44 ►
Yeah, I would um roughly about 20
00:22:47 ►
percent um yeah and i would you know i would say it’s kind of that 80 20 rule it’s like i i changed
00:22:54 ►
20 of it and i think it made it 80 better um but yeah mainly uh new interviews you know, with Rick Doblin and the other two. And then he had just some really nice new archival material too that,
00:23:11 ►
you know, one of which I think reemphasizing the role of the CIA
00:23:15 ►
in, in,
00:23:18 ►
in sort of the huge role they played and really ironically starting the
00:23:23 ►
counterculture.
00:23:27 ►
And, you know, a lot of people like to blame Leary and, and the hippies and Ken Kesey, but it was,
00:23:30 ►
it really started with the CIA and that was kind of like a big revelation.
00:23:34 ►
I felt like it was really important to, to fit into this new version.
00:23:39 ►
Yeah, this is,
00:23:40 ►
this is one of the first films that I’ve seen that really makes it really
00:23:43 ►
clear that Ken Kesey had his first trip from the CIA.
00:23:47 ►
Yeah.
00:23:49 ►
You can’t blame Ken Kesey.
00:23:51 ►
Exactly.
00:23:52 ►
Yeah.
00:23:53 ►
And, you know, there’s a clip in the film of Timothy Leary saying, you know, I give complete and total credit to the CIA for launching the consciousness movement of the 60s.
00:24:04 ►
I think he’s being provocative, you know, like, like he liked to do, but,
00:24:08 ►
but it’s true. And also Gordon Wasson, who,
00:24:12 ►
who quote unquote discovered magic mushrooms down in Mexico.
00:24:18 ►
His trips were infiltrated by the CIA and they were interested in mushrooms,
00:24:24 ►
you know, as a mind control weapon
00:24:26 ►
and and I believe they raced with uh Albert Hoffman to figure out what was the ingredient
00:24:34 ►
that made it uh psychedelic and that was psilocybin but I believe that CIA chemists were
00:24:40 ►
were basically racing with Albert Hoffman to figure that out.
00:24:48 ►
So in a lot of ways, they, you know, because it weren’t,
00:24:50 ►
and they sponsored Watson’s trips down to Mexico.
00:24:54 ►
So in a lot of ways, and if it weren’t for the CIA,
00:24:57 ►
Watson never would have went down to Mexico. He never would have written that Life magazine article,
00:24:59 ►
which is what Timothy Leary,
00:25:02 ►
how Timothy Leary first got interested in this,
00:25:04 ►
by reading that Life Magazine article.
00:25:08 ►
You know, there’s been a lot of controversy about whether, you know,
00:25:11 ►
Watson was actually a covert CIA agent.
00:25:14 ►
But from people I know that I’ve talked with that knew him,
00:25:18 ►
at least peripherally and things I’ve read, I think he was taken,
00:25:23 ►
I don’t think he knew about it.
00:25:25 ►
I think he was just too innocent to suspect something. We all were very innocent back then. People don’t realize
00:25:30 ►
how nobody could believe the government would do something like MKL. Charles, you were about to say
00:25:36 ►
something? Yeah, I have a question both for Pat and for Charlie. It seems like over the last
00:25:42 ►
couple of years, we’ve achieved this kind of critical mass of real one on one level information about psychedelics, whether it was Paulin’s book or have a good trip on Netflix and other things.
00:25:54 ►
And I think we’re just starting to see some good, you know, two or three hundred level things come out like the wild kindness by Bet Williams is a great answer to Paul.
00:26:05 ►
Kindness by Bette Williams is a great answer to Paul. And so my question for both of you is,
00:26:11 ►
what are the conversations that we think have been done to death in the psychedelic community that the mainstream still needs to hear? And then the corollary or follow-up to that is,
00:26:18 ►
what are the conversations that need to be introduced to move the understanding of these medicines forward. Do you want to take
00:26:26 ►
that, Charlie? Well, yeah, I could try. Well, I think the mainstream was heavily influenced by
00:26:37 ►
the propaganda wars of the 60s and the 70s, which tarred these compounds as being terribly dangerous and not safe under
00:26:48 ►
any circumstances. So I think just reestablishing that under optimal conditions,
00:26:57 ►
these compounds can be used safely is an important message to continue to convey.
00:27:04 ►
And what was the second part of the question?
00:27:06 ►
What are the next level topics that need to be placed into the world?
00:27:14 ►
Well, you know, the field in the last couple of years, probably catalyzed by the Pollen book,
00:27:23 ►
has really come to life. There’s funding on a level that’s
00:27:27 ►
never been present before. New investigators are wanting to jump into the game. You have the Oregon
00:27:33 ►
initiative. It’s a rapidly changing world. And I think it’s important that
00:27:41 ►
as quickly as we want to move with this, we also exert some caution and just be
00:27:48 ►
careful. And so I think within the field, there needs to be some good discussions on how do you
00:27:57 ►
optimize safety and also discussions on how critical it is to establish strong ethical parameters.
00:28:06 ►
I just, along with Brian Anderson and Alicia Danforth,
00:28:09 ►
I published an article in JAMA Psychiatry last month
00:28:14 ►
on ethical and safety concerns with psychedelic medicine.
00:28:19 ►
So I think that that needs to have really serious attention
00:28:23 ►
by the people who want to do work in this field.
00:28:28 ►
Yeah, and you know, I would add something that, you know, when I started making this film,
00:28:34 ►
it wasn’t really a conversation that was really being had, but now there’s a lot of
00:28:40 ►
sort of contentiousness around, you know know should these stay in the research setting
00:28:47 ►
um you know which is slow and methodical um should they be made widely available for people
00:28:55 ►
and many of whom are suffering um you know and i i don’t know personally to be honest
00:29:02 ►
where i stand on all that.
00:29:08 ►
But, but I’m interested and I’ve noticed it’s a, it’s a big,
00:29:14 ►
seems to be a big rift in the, in the community, which, you know,
00:29:16 ►
and I, I would, in making the film, you,
00:29:21 ►
you do learn the lesson of if the cat gets out of the bag, you know,
00:29:26 ►
you can lose a lot of progress. But I’d be curious what your thoughts.
00:29:31 ►
Pat, do you feel like you’re an ambassador for the medicines? Or do you feel like you’re a journalist coming in with an objective point of view? I would say more of a journalist.
00:29:38 ►
Yeah. And, you know, I’m always been a history buff. And so I’ve always looked at it from a sort of interest of history more so.
00:29:53 ►
Charles, I saw the movie as sort of a neutral.
00:29:57 ►
It wasn’t trying to promote anything.
00:29:59 ►
It was just factual and let you make your own decisions, I think, about it.
00:30:04 ►
But, you know, of course, it presented the facts as we see them.
00:30:07 ►
And, you know, but it did cover some of the dark sides and all, too.
00:30:11 ►
So I would agree with Pat that it was approached more journalistically than anything.
00:30:18 ►
That was one of the things that tripped up Paul in, is that he got cast as an ambassador.
00:30:25 ►
Paulin is that he got cast as an ambassador. And so he ended up doing that, you know, not so fast editorial about legalization right after Denver, you know, passed their decriminalization thing,
00:30:33 ►
which is why I asked the question is that, you know, where, you know, he was certainly coming
00:30:36 ►
in not as an ambassador, but got, you know, painted that way. So that’s, it’s interesting
00:30:41 ►
to hear your point of view on that. And I thank you for sharing all of this.
00:30:42 ►
So it’s interesting to hear your point of view on that.
00:30:44 ►
And I thank you for sharing all of this.
00:30:46 ►
Yeah, yeah, of course.
00:31:15 ►
I guess, you know, my thing is, you know, to me, the big thing I learned and sort of learning about the history and learning about the indigenous use, too, is the importance of some sort of structure for these experiences that, you know, it’s important to have a guide and whether that’s a psychiatrist or whether it’s a shaman or whether it’s a trusted friend, whatever it is.
00:31:25 ►
And going in with an intention to and and, you know, having sort of reverence for the sacrament you’re taking.
00:31:27 ►
I think that’s super important.
00:31:45 ►
And, you know, I think that should guide, you know, whatever decisions are made, sort of looking forward about, you know, how, you know, which one of these paths, you know, we take, whether it stays in the research or whether these legalization efforts move forward etc i i don’t want any uh specifics here but i’m wondering uh about uh was there any potential uh
00:31:56 ►
contention or competition between some of these people i know that that uh between the psychedelic
00:32:04 ►
community in northern cal and Southern California,
00:32:06 ►
we have sort of a friendly rivalry.
00:32:08 ►
And, you know, my friend Bill Radizinski
00:32:11 ►
used to live in Manhattan
00:32:13 ►
and he really bad-mouthed New Yorkers.
00:32:16 ►
And he spent much time out on the coast.
00:32:19 ►
But, you know, we’re all,
00:32:21 ►
it’s sort of a family thing that we,
00:32:24 ►
it’s not like getting together at Thanksgiving and talking politics. It’s just, you know, we’re all, it’s sort of a family thing that we, it’s not like getting together at Thanksgiving and talking politics.
00:32:27 ►
It’s just, you know, sort of a friendly rivalry.
00:32:30 ►
Did you, without specifics, did you notice that among some of these researchers?
00:32:35 ►
You know, I can’t say I have.
00:32:39 ►
Yeah, I see Charlie laughing, so I don’t know.
00:32:45 ►
He knows something. But see, I know Charlie laughing, so I don’t know. He knows something.
00:32:47 ►
But see, I know Charlie’s feelings on this, so I won’t put him on the spot.
00:32:54 ►
Trying to deflect it to Charlie.
00:32:59 ►
I’m sorry, I just had to ask it, you know. I think it’s important that people, particularly people that are coming into this community new, realize that we don’t all think alike and we’re not all of the same accord. through listening to the two podcasts I’ve done, one in 2012 and one in 2017, interviews with Bill
00:33:27 ►
Raduczynski, who was a close friend of mine that died last week. And he commented on how when he
00:33:34 ►
first got involved in the psychedelic community, it was at Palenque. And he said, you know, it was,
00:33:40 ►
it felt like family, not like, it felt like, where you had family rivalries and stuff like that,
00:33:45 ►
but that you could let your guard down and be who you were.
00:33:49 ►
And, and I think that’s one of the things that I hope that newcomers realize
00:33:54 ►
is that, you know, there’s, there’s no leader of the, the pack, you know,
00:33:59 ►
that I saw people having really, you know,
00:34:03 ►
rabid disagreements with Terrence McKenna and they would argue, you know,
00:34:06 ►
and the chemists would get into various things, but you know, at the,
00:34:10 ►
at the end, everybody’d smoke a joint and sit back and say, okay, well,
00:34:14 ►
that was fun.
00:34:16 ►
Yeah. Yeah. I would say, I mean, I definitely, yeah, I wouldn’t say,
00:34:21 ►
I really sensed between the researchers I interviewed,
00:34:24 ►
I didn’t sense too much of a rivalry.
00:34:27 ►
But I certainly sensed a rivalry between, yeah, the psilocybin groups sometimes talking over the LSD group.
00:34:38 ►
Or the ayahuasca crowd saying they’re better than the others.
00:34:42 ►
And, yeah, it just seems kind of funny to me.
00:34:47 ►
To me, it seems like they’re all kind of generally
00:34:49 ►
on the same side.
00:34:53 ►
So Charlie, I’m wondering, Charlie,
00:34:56 ►
now that there is more money available for research,
00:34:58 ►
does that lessen some of the friendly rivalries
00:35:01 ►
between some of you frontline researchers?
00:35:04 ►
Well, I think as we’ve aged, I think the rivalries have dissipated.
00:35:09 ►
Before I get into it, let me just say,
00:35:11 ►
I’m very sorry to hear about Bill Radzinski.
00:35:14 ►
I knew him quite well for a period of time.
00:35:17 ►
Very, very lovely guy.
00:35:19 ►
Always wanting to help others and fearless and very intrepid.
00:35:23 ►
I remember his stories about climbing Machu Picchu
00:35:26 ►
with I think two or three artificial joints.
00:35:29 ►
I mean, I couldn’t imagine doing that.
00:35:32 ►
You know, a real, you know, a real adventurer
00:35:38 ►
and a very, very lovely, lovely guy.
00:35:42 ►
So I’m sorry to hear of his passing.
00:35:43 ►
He is a loss.
00:35:48 ►
Oh, yeah. I did a tribute thing thursday i i found out wednesday night uh from his brother and thursday morning was our
00:35:53 ►
regular live salon so i did a tribute but i was the only one there that knew him and uh i’m gonna
00:35:59 ►
put that out i told a bunch of stories had a bunch of his pictures uh but i would have put it out
00:36:03 ►
already but the last
00:36:05 ►
podcast I did was a tribute to Timothy Leary, and I didn’t want to follow that with a tribute to
00:36:09 ►
Bill Radicinski, and I was thinking, everybody in the salon’s dying, you know, so I’m going to put
00:36:15 ►
this podcast between now and, but yeah, Bill was really one of a kind, you know, he was a parole
00:36:22 ►
officer in Manhattan, was his final job, but he’d done a lot of things. He was in the military and in Berlin, and that’s where he
00:36:28 ►
became an asset head in Berlin while he was in the army. And his stories in those two podcasts
00:36:33 ►
are incredible. And, you know, I used to tease him about being a cop, and he hated to be called a cop
00:36:39 ►
because he was a parole officer. But in one of these podcasts, he was talking, I think this was
00:36:44 ►
at Lex Pelger, and he says, no, I wasn’t in law enforcement. I was just an armed social worker. He never arrested a parolee for breaking his parole by smoking pot, never in his whole career. So he was sort of an armed social worker. That was sort of a diversion, But I’m glad you remember him, Charlie. You and I had many adventures with him.
00:37:07 ►
We had many adventures with him.
00:37:09 ►
Right, right.
00:37:10 ►
But back to the rivalry issue, I think there’s also,
00:37:13 ►
I think the biggest rivalry back in the day was the MDMA proponents
00:37:18 ►
versus the classic psychedelic proponents.
00:37:22 ►
So I myself would knock heads on many occasions with,
00:37:26 ►
with Rick Doblin who had never given an inch.
00:37:32 ►
On the other hand, neither did I.
00:37:36 ►
Right. And yeah, there’s all that.
00:37:38 ►
There’s a big question of is MDMA a psychedelic and yeah,
00:37:43 ►
people who have, have very strong feelings one way or the other.
00:37:48 ►
I have a question.
00:37:51 ►
And it’s just mostly something that just popped in my mind as you were speaking.
00:37:57 ►
And that is when you said so definitively that the was responsible for uh the news that came out of
00:38:08 ►
mexico and everything else so i was just really curious when henry loose died because henry loose
00:38:15 ►
was a yalie the cia was made up of yales right and uh uh and then i just looked it up and it was like he died of cancer
00:38:25 ►
at the beginning in 1967
00:38:27 ►
which means
00:38:28 ►
his influence may have
00:38:30 ►
gone away at time life
00:38:33 ►
because that’s about the time
00:38:35 ►
in 66 when
00:38:36 ►
time life turned on
00:38:39 ►
psychedelic drugs
00:38:40 ►
and I just wonder if there’s a back story to that at all
00:38:43 ►
or if that’s just me being crazy
00:38:44 ►
I’ve heard that Henry Luce had some affiliation drugs. And I just wonder if there’s a backstory to that at all, or if that’s just me being crazy.
00:38:52 ►
No, I’ve heard that Henry Luce had some affiliation with intelligence. Yeah, yeah, and that may have catalyzed his interest in what Wasson was trying to undertake. But I also think,
00:39:02 ►
as Lorenzo was pointing out out some of wasson’s early
00:39:06 ►
funding may have come through foundations set up by the cia unmasked as educational foundations
00:39:14 ►
oh that’s a special like your foundation was one a number of the researchers in the 50s either
00:39:20 ►
knowingly or unknowingly did receive funding from uh from intelligence by the way
00:39:26 ►
there’s a really good book out now recently published written by stephen kinsler called
00:39:31 ►
the poisoner in chief it focuses on sydney gottlieb who was uh mk ultra’s chemist and who
00:39:39 ►
really uh was involved in some rather nefarious activities. It’s a well-written book, and I’m learning a lot from it.
00:39:49 ►
If Henry Luce, though, was associated with the CIA,
00:39:53 ►
why would he, do you think, I’m just wondering, I’m just thinking out loud,
00:39:57 ►
why would he encourage Wasson to write the article?
00:40:01 ►
That was in the 50s. I mean, it was an old boys network.
00:40:04 ►
You know, I think he encouraged wasson’s uh
00:40:08 ►
explorations you know wasson had her you know wasson was fascinated with how
00:40:12 ►
different cultures around the world utilized mushrooms he had a russian
00:40:17 ►
born wife who was a mycophile you know he lost himself at british
00:40:22 ►
origins he considered himself a mycophobe. And he heard a rumor,
00:40:31 ►
actually, it was in a letter sent to him by Robert Graves, the great British novelist,
00:40:36 ►
saying that he had heard that there was an extant mushroom cult in the highlands of central Mexico.
00:40:41 ►
So that’s when Wasson got the idea of going off to explore this. And I
00:40:46 ►
think Luce encouraged him, may have helped him with really funding the whole expedition.
00:40:53 ►
Now, in terms of the more direct CIA involvement, that was on the second expedition Wasson made
00:40:59 ►
a couple of years after the first, where he had met Maria Sabina. And he brought in a chemist who didn’t reveal himself as CIA,
00:41:07 ►
but somehow tagged along on the expedition.
00:41:11 ►
And, you know, Maria Sabina invited the group to partake
00:41:15 ►
and participate in a velada, a healing ceremony.
00:41:19 ►
And evidently the CIA chemist had a terrible experience because he was holding on to a lie. He was there
00:41:29 ►
under false pretense. And to go into a psychedelic experience, knowingly deceiving others can perhaps
00:41:37 ►
set you up for a very rough ride. And somehow or other, the truth of who he was came out either then or somewhat later
00:41:48 ►
but they didn’t find that out right until quite a bit later the 70s maybe at the time yes
00:41:56 ►
look it may actually not have been revealed until the church hearings in the mid-70s
00:42:03 ►
until the church hearings in the mid-70s.
00:42:08 ►
Frank Church, the senator, chaired congressional hearings revealing the CIA and military intelligence involvement
00:42:13 ►
with early psychedelic research
00:42:15 ►
and described some of the terribly unethical and dangerous things
00:42:19 ►
they did to unwitting subjects.
00:42:22 ►
The church hearings were really something else. What? The church hearings were really something else.
00:42:26 ►
What?
00:42:26 ►
The church hearings were really something else.
00:42:29 ►
And hardly anybody ever talks about them anymore.
00:42:32 ►
But, man, in real time, that was something.
00:42:36 ►
Yeah.
00:42:37 ►
The revelations were shocking.
00:42:39 ►
Sure.
00:42:39 ►
At the time.
00:42:41 ►
What year was that?
00:42:44 ►
Mid-70s, I think.
00:42:45 ►
I would say
00:42:46 ►
74, 75.
00:42:50 ►
After Nixon got sacked.
00:42:53 ►
I mean,
00:42:53 ►
they opened up all sorts of
00:42:55 ►
investigations.
00:42:58 ►
Well, I don’t need to get
00:42:59 ►
off on that. What was the substance
00:43:01 ►
of them as relates to this topic?
00:43:05 ►
Oh, they were
00:43:07 ►
certainly revealing of CIA and intelligence involvement
00:43:12 ►
in some pretty nasty stuff. I mean, there
00:43:16 ►
is actually a couple books I recommend on this. One is
00:43:19 ►
Marty Lee and Bruce Schlain, Acid Dreams.
00:43:24 ►
The other is Storming Heaven by Jay Stevens.
00:43:30 ►
Outstanding books, both written in the late 80s, that open up a lot of this history.
00:43:36 ►
You know, one of the interesting things, Charlie and Pat, is this information you’re emphasizing about the CIA being involved with Gordon Wasson creates a new dimensions of
00:43:45 ►
the suffering that Maria Sabina experienced in Maria Sabina, rather in her late life,
00:43:51 ►
there’s the issues of her house being burned, there’s the issue of, you know, the children
00:43:55 ►
being angry with her and the children, you know, the mushrooms being angry with her and cutting off
00:43:59 ►
contact. And the fact that, you know, this infiltration occurred, you know, in her open
00:44:04 ►
heartedness just adds dimension to that story in a very interesting way.
00:44:08 ►
I think her father, her husband or her son was murdered directly as retaliation for her opening up the secrets, opening up the mysteries.
00:44:17 ►
It was really looked askance by, you know, her neighbors, people who, you know in in that culture that she was opening
00:44:26 ►
the secrets up to to to westerners to gringos yeah not just gringos the cia
00:44:32 ►
not just gringos but the the secret police of the gringos yeah although the cia element probably
00:44:39 ►
didn’t get revealed till later but just having you know people traipsing through their remote village
00:44:45 ►
really disturbed the the cultural equilibrium they had
00:44:49 ►
is she also not quoted as it um talking about how the proliferation and use of the mushrooms
00:44:58 ►
especially by um you know americans uh influenced and affected the spirit of the mushrooms and the like felt
00:45:07 ►
presence of the experiences for the local yeah i yeah i think she has a quote saying um you know
00:45:13 ►
when westerners started going down to mexico you know taking the mush looking for god through the
00:45:20 ►
mushrooms the the mushrooms lost their power and can never be returned.
00:45:31 ►
She did feel that Westerners going down there sort of polluted the space, basically.
00:45:34 ►
I always heard that as well.
00:45:37 ►
And I’m sorry to kind of tangentially move the conversation, but that’s my exact same qualm with a lot of the decriminalization and legalization movements.
00:45:47 ►
Yes. And I know that’s very controversial with peyote right where uh it’s a very very rare plant and it’s obviously
00:45:53 ►
sacred to the indigenous people um and yeah there’s a lot of concern about sort of over
00:45:59 ►
overuse of that harley isn’t it sorry pat oh Pat. I was just going to say off Maria Sabina,
00:46:07 ►
the encouraging thing is that
00:46:09 ►
when Albert Hoffman
00:46:10 ►
presented her a pill of psilocybin,
00:46:14 ►
she’s reported
00:46:15 ►
to have said the spirit is
00:46:17 ►
in the pill.
00:46:19 ►
Whether or not that’s confirmed,
00:46:21 ►
we don’t know, but that’s hopefully
00:46:23 ►
a light ending to that otherwise tragic, tragic story.
00:46:28 ►
A question for Charlie that builds off of this discussion.
00:46:33 ►
As somebody that’s really done a lot of research and advocated for the medicalization, how do you feel about the issues that Chris brings up about kind of letting loose the sacred secret, you know, into the materialist
00:46:48 ►
world? Well, it’s already there. All you need to do is walk in the woods. Now you have legal
00:46:55 ►
sanction in various cities and one state, maybe other states will follow. You know. I think one lesson you’ll learn from whatever
00:47:07 ►
indigenous culture you look at is these compounds have to be treated with great
00:47:11 ►
respect and if you don’t you may end up paying the consequences. So as
00:47:18 ►
it proliferates out into the world and more and more people are hearing about
00:47:22 ►
it and getting interested in having an experience.
00:47:28 ►
You know, it’s got to be approached with respect and humility,
00:47:33 ►
whether it’s in a research setting or in your friend’s living room.
00:47:46 ►
There needs to be a structure that facilitates, you know, the process and, and, and keeping in mind at all times that these are, um, you know, it’s, it’s not, uh, you know, it doesn’t adhere to our scientific, uh,
00:47:53 ►
perspective, but, um, you know, these, as Maria Sabino would say, the, the, there are actual
00:47:59 ►
spirits in these compounds and, uh, and, and they should not be trifled with or there will be consequences
00:48:07 ►
and those are some hard lessons some people seem to need to learn yeah
00:48:13 ►
you know there’s another issue which is uh of more recent origin which has some people concerned, which is the increasing involvement of business
00:48:25 ►
in this field. There are some businesses that are setting themselves up as for-profits,
00:48:33 ►
others as not-for-profits, and it’s a real dilemma how to regard these. On the one hand,
00:48:41 ►
they’re pouring funds in, and it’s moving the field forward on the other hand should um you know wealthy individuals exploit this area to uh to to to
00:48:54 ►
garner more profit for themselves that that that’s problematic and we’ll i think we’ll need more
00:49:01 ►
attention as uh as we move forward in time.
00:49:06 ►
Yeah, I was shocked.
00:49:11 ►
I read an article just recently, and I had no idea.
00:49:15 ►
There were like 12, 13, 14 different companies,
00:49:20 ►
many of which have gone public, many of which have big funding.
00:49:22 ►
Huge funding, yeah.
00:49:25 ►
Yeah, and I’m just – I don’t know what to make of it.
00:49:33 ►
It’s a concern. And one thing I’m concerned about is, and I’ve seen some evidence of it, is that in order, you know, the need to optimize profit, you reduce costs. And
00:49:41 ►
what does that mean? You downgrade the number of preparatory sessions and integrative
00:49:48 ►
sessions. You lower whatever standards you are working with. This could create a scenario
00:49:56 ►
where individuals are more vulnerable to having some difficulties with the experience.
00:50:07 ►
having some difficulties with the experience right yeah there’s a great um article about that uh by a guy named andrew penn who’s at uh uc san francisco and um it was out on the chacruna
00:50:14 ►
newsletter recently um but it’s he he calls for keeping the human element of in you know
00:50:22 ►
psychedelic psychotherapy right where he kind of talks
00:50:25 ►
about this like strange new world where like you say it’s made cheaply available
00:50:31 ►
maybe through an app some sort of electronic means and you know he argues for like the
00:50:39 ►
importance of keeping of the therapist right in the experience. And that’s enormously important.
00:50:46 ►
And how is that going to be integrated into this business model?
00:50:49 ►
Right.
00:50:50 ►
You know, another challenge is, you know, we have a pandemic going on.
00:50:54 ►
A lot of the studies have been suspended temporarily.
00:50:58 ►
But as we go back into the treatment room, there’s some kind of troubling suggestions, such as no therapist present, just a therapist on a Zoom.
00:51:15 ►
And I would really, I think there’s something about that human presence, the human contact. And sometimes there’s a need for a gentle touch on a shoulder if someone
00:51:26 ►
is starting to angst out, starting to kind of get an obsessive loop, just some gentle reassurance
00:51:33 ►
with the gentle appropriate touching. You can’t do that with a patient all alone in a room with
00:51:38 ►
an internet hookup. I think these laws should require that all therapists be 3d people yeah and have a heart and
00:51:49 ►
a soul yeah and the other weird thing is like i guess um the the only way you can make money in
00:51:57 ►
pharmaceutical industry is to patent something you know so they’re creating these like sort of hybrid medicines
00:52:05 ►
where it’ll be like ketamine mixed with something else
00:52:08 ►
or psilocybin mixed with something else.
00:52:10 ►
And I don’t know.
00:52:12 ►
I just, you know, they have to create something new, right?
00:52:15 ►
You can’t make money off of psilocybin.
00:52:19 ►
Commercialization of psychedelics,
00:52:21 ►
I think particularly psychedelic therapy
00:52:23 ►
is going to be a disaster.
00:52:25 ►
I was involved in the internet for a number of years before the web came around. And when the
00:52:30 ►
web came around, it was the first year the web was there, we were under the old laws, old rules,
00:52:35 ►
no commercialization. And us old timers really fought it. Now, picture the web today, if there
00:52:41 ►
was no spam, no advertising, and nobody tracking you.
00:52:47 ►
That’s the old Internet.
00:52:48 ►
Now, commercialization has brought all of the stuff that we have right now that we don’t like.
00:52:55 ►
This kind of technology would have developed without commercialization in various ways, I’m sure.
00:53:10 ►
One of the arguments in the old days that the big corporations had against commercialization is that, no, who, how are we going to pay people to build these websites?
00:53:13 ►
Nobody realized that people would do this for free.
00:53:17 ►
You know, there’s something strange goes on there.
00:53:21 ►
And then when you commercialize it, then all the worms come out and everything. And I’m afraid that with psychedelics, the same things might be there.
00:53:23 ►
worms come out and everything. And I’m afraid that with psychedelics,
00:53:26 ►
the same things might be there. So part of what I think our,
00:53:30 ►
our role should be is to kind of push back a little bit and to make sure at least they’re ethical in, in these therapies and, and really not just going
00:53:35 ►
after the buck, like you’re saying, you know, that, that, you know,
00:53:38 ►
MAPS at least has shown that you should never have more than two or three
00:53:41 ►
sessions. So that’s, you know, they’re, they’re, you know, so far, that’s what
00:53:45 ►
their studies have shown, as far as I know. But, you know, you can’t keep selling a pill every day
00:53:50 ►
to people with psychedelic therapy. So there’s gonna be some strange stuff happen, I’m afraid.
00:53:56 ►
Well, this is where resisting the internal rivalries that Pat was describing within the
00:54:01 ►
community is going to be really important as we progress.
00:54:05 ►
You know, it’s one thing to call attention to issues and manage things within the house.
00:54:11 ►
It’s another thing to have, you know, internal power struggles and bickering when there’s
00:54:15 ►
this larger structure that’s, you know, trying to inch its way in.
00:54:20 ►
Right.
00:54:21 ►
That’s right.
00:54:22 ►
There should be a united front at least around the issues
00:54:26 ►
of safety and ethics
00:54:28 ►
Maybe we should inform
00:54:32 ►
a consumer reports organization
00:54:35 ►
staffed by people like Charlie
00:54:37 ►
and other people
00:54:38 ►
who have been around for a long time
00:54:40 ►
that can say, I wouldn’t buy a pill
00:54:43 ►
from these people, but these people
00:54:44 ►
are okay, I don’t know.
00:54:46 ►
Before that it needs a manifesto. It doesn’t need an organization yet.
00:54:51 ►
It needs people like Charlie and, you know,
00:54:54 ►
40 other well-respected experts to basically put out, you know,
00:54:58 ►
like John Perry Barlow’s manifesto about the sovereign rights of the internet
00:55:02 ►
about, you know, what our expectations are for the next 20 years of, you know, psychedelics. That’s a good idea. A really good idea.
00:55:14 ►
And at the same time, regardless of what goes on at the high levels of, you know, the marketplace,
00:55:30 ►
the marketplace. One of the just mind blowing transitions that I feel so elated to have lived through in the last decade or so is the fact that now your average person can grow a pot plant in
00:55:37 ►
their backyard. And, you know, we’re getting closer to the day where if people want to have
00:55:44 ►
an organic relationship with these things on their
00:55:46 ►
own terms with these plants on their own terms nobody’s going to be kicking in the door because
00:55:52 ►
you know someone saw a leaf peeking up over the top of a fence in your backyard like that nonsense
00:55:58 ►
like we have we have made a lot of progress in pushing that back from the, you know, distinctly unsettling
00:56:08 ►
progress that it’s made into our lives over the last few decades. But, and so in that space that’s
00:56:15 ►
opened, that there is also room for companies and companies behave the way companies are programmed
00:56:20 ►
to behave. And we shouldn’t be surprised when they do that.
00:56:38 ►
You know, but regardless of what goes on in the market, you know, there is also space coming along with this stuff, the space for people to grow it on their own and have a relationship with it that is on their own terms and free of paranoia.
00:56:46 ►
And I think that is a massive thing that we shouldn’t lose sight of, you know, as the giant companies come tromping into the landscape.
00:56:55 ►
Another thing that I would like us all to keep sight of is the good news from this election. There’s no question this country is divided down the middle.
00:56:58 ►
But every single marijuana and psychedelic issue on every ballot in every state passed overwhelmingly and that’s
00:57:06 ►
with this divided country so there is something afoot here and i think that that you know there
00:57:11 ►
there’s a lot of good stuff going on and and films like yours pat are really going to help a lot
00:57:17 ►
because here we have a case tonight with several dozen of us charlie and you and i are the only
00:57:22 ►
three that have seen your film and look at the discussion that it prompted without even seeing it. So, you know, wait until
00:57:29 ►
sometime when you guys can all see it, we can get together and talk about it. And that’s really the
00:57:34 ►
value of what your work is here. And this is a nine year project with basically a lot of your
00:57:40 ►
own money, mainly your own money. Yeah., that’s what psychedelic community can do.
00:57:46 ►
We don’t need huge corporations, but when they come around,
00:57:50 ►
there are some, you know,
00:57:52 ►
wealthy people who are very conscientious about this and are supporting
00:57:56 ►
research and, you know, they’re finding their inroads.
00:58:00 ►
They’re not publicity hounds. And so you don’t hear about them, but,
00:58:03 ►
you know, we don’t want to just totally shut them out,
00:58:06 ►
but I think we need to look at who’s behind some of these corporations,
00:58:09 ►
who the ownership is, and that way you can figure out a lot more
00:58:12 ►
about the mission statement that they have.
00:58:14 ►
But circling back to how we began tonight,
00:58:17 ►
I’m excited that your film that nobody has seen has sparked so much of a difference.
00:58:24 ►
That’s a very good point. I feel so good about it. And I mean,
00:58:28 ►
that’s really what I want to do with the film, right? I want to screen it.
00:58:32 ►
It can be in a virtual format,
00:58:34 ►
has to be in a virtual format because of the pandemic. But, you know,
00:58:39 ►
my other thought is maybe I should create some sort of discussion guide,
00:58:43 ►
perhaps with some of your help and um you know lay out a couple of these issues that we’ve been talking about
00:58:50 ►
um and use the film as a catalyst for discussion um well you’ve got a couple of screening coming
00:58:58 ►
up and all uh there’s some information on your website right and I’m gonna put that in the
00:59:02 ►
program notes why don’t you tell us how people can go about seeing this now yeah so um the event uh hosted by fluence
00:59:10 ►
is starting uh this saturday which is the uh 21st i believe um so you’ll you’d be able to
00:59:18 ►
watch the film between the i think the 21st and the 29th so about an eight eight day period um and then there’s a virtual q a on the
00:59:26 ►
28th uh with myself and uh jeff gus and a participant in the psilocybin study um so they
00:59:34 ►
can go to the fluences website uh to find that event and sign up i think their website’s fluence
00:59:40 ►
eight like the number eight dot com uh and you And you’ll see the event on the homepage there.
00:59:46 ►
It must have been in something that you posted, Lorenzo, because I knew all that.
00:59:52 ►
Yeah, I did send you – I believe I sent you links to all that.
00:59:57 ►
Yeah, you sent a link to your own website, and I sent them the link to the About page where you can find a lot of that too.
01:00:03 ►
Okay, gotcha.
01:00:04 ►
Yep. Yeah. So you can sign up through my website,
01:00:07 ►
but it’d be easier to just go direct to Fluence for this particular event.
01:00:13 ►
If you begin to, if you begin to come back,
01:00:15 ►
I bet a whole bunch of us would love to chat about it with you sometime next
01:00:18 ►
month. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I’d love to. And yeah, you know, my,
01:00:23 ►
my goal is to find other organizations, you know,
01:00:25 ►
that want to host screenings you know,
01:00:28 ►
and I can work with, with these organizations, you know one by one to kind of
01:00:32 ►
find out what they want to do. But it’s honestly exactly what we just did here.
01:00:37 ►
Just, we would watch the film on our own time and a set, you know, period,
01:00:40 ►
and then have a, have a discussion on zoom.
01:00:45 ►
I think that’s a great idea.
01:00:47 ►
And Charlie, for a long time, I’ve been wanting to get you to come into one of these Thursday night discussions,
01:00:53 ►
or Monday night discussions, but I know what your schedule has been like.
01:00:57 ►
Have you slowed down any because of the pandemic?
01:00:59 ►
Oh, I’m working entirely from home.
01:01:02 ►
So, yeah, I don’t have my long commutes.
01:01:04 ►
That gives me some extra time.
01:01:05 ►
I’d be happy to come back.
01:01:07 ►
Well, I’ll talk to you offline about that.
01:01:10 ►
And we’ll definitely set that up in the near future
01:01:12 ►
because I really want to catch up.
01:01:14 ►
You know, I got used to seeing you every month
01:01:16 ►
for a while there and now that doesn’t happen.
01:01:18 ►
So yeah, we need to catch up.
01:01:22 ►
But listen, I’ve really enjoyed the discussion tonight.
01:01:25 ►
I hope that we can all help promote this film because it’s really worthwhile.
01:01:30 ►
And Pat, I’ll get together with you offline.
01:01:32 ►
We’ll see if we can arrange a screening just for one of these Monday night sessions or something like that.
01:01:38 ►
Yeah, that’d be great.
01:01:40 ►
We’ll have a long one or a two-parter or something like that and then have Q&A afterwards.
01:01:45 ►
So get Charlie and maybe Julie Holland and Rick Doblin and a few others in
01:01:49 ►
here that I can try to – a few other cats I can herd.
01:01:53 ►
Yeah.
01:01:54 ►
No, that would be awesome.
01:01:56 ►
Well, listen.
01:01:57 ►
Yeah, I feel like I could keep talking for hours.
01:02:01 ►
There’s so much here.
01:02:03 ►
We’re definitely going to have you back.
01:02:04 ►
I’ve really enjoyed it. And, Charlie, I appreciate you being here tonight we’re definitely going to have you back i’ve really
01:02:05 ►
enjoyed it and and charlie i appreciate you being here tonight we’re going to have you back too
01:02:10 ►
my pleasure good to see you again been a while and uh everybody else a lot of you guys i’ll
01:02:15 ►
see thursday or monday and until the next time keep the old faith and stay high. And for now, this is Lorenzo
01:02:26 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:02:28 ►
Namaste, my friends. Thank you.