WEBVTT

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I have been standing in front of audiences

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for 30 years talking about drugs.

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And I often start my
presentations with an apology.

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Specifically, I apologise for the lies
of past drug educators,

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including myself.

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And I acknowledge we've told three lies.

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We've exaggerated the harms of drugs,

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we've never acknowledged
the benefits of drugs,

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and we've never talked about

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the dominant model
for controlling drugs in our society,

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which is drug prohibition,

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which has failed us all so badly.

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(Applause) (Cheering)

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Now, for much of my career,
I've talked about that last point,

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the failure of the war on drugs,

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but today I'm going to talk
about the benefits of drugs.

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Specifically, I'm going
to talk about psychedelics.

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Now, psychedelics have been
around in human culture

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since before recorded human history.

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And we can see at least four
communities, cultures today,

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that have woven the psychedelic experience
into the fabric of their culture:

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there's the curandero's use
of psilocybin mushrooms,

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there's the ayahuasca use
in the Amazon basin,

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there's the Huichol use of peyote,

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and the shamanic use
of Amanita muscaria in Siberia.

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Now, on the surface,

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how the container of safety is created
with these cultures

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with this psychedelic
experience is all different.

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But if you look at how the experience
is integrated into the culture,

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that is actually quite similar.

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They're used for healing,

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everything from psychological
to physical issues.

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They're used for
a celebration of transitions

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everything from seasonal changes
to puberty rites.

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And they're used for spirituality

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to connect the individuals and the culture
to the cosmos as a whole.

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If I wanted to use one word
to describe that,

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what I would say is
the word would be 'pro-social'.

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Psychedelics have
always been used to connect

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people to their culture
and to the universe.

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So it was historically unprecedented
what happened in the 1960s

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when psychedelics got linked
to an antisocial message.

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It had never happened before.

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Tim Leary said, 'tune in,
turn on, and drop out',

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and the subsequent social backlash
has caused immense human suffering,

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and it goes on today.

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And admittedly, there were some other
cultural issues going on at the time,

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but certainly, that disconnect
message was profound.

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And the media participated
in the spinning of the web of illusions:

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'LSD-Fed Ape Rapes TV Actress';

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(Laughter)

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'LSD Made Me a Prostitute';

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'Girl Gives Birth to Frog'.

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(Laughter)

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Even the science of the time
was suppressed.

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For 40 years, scientists couldn't do
what they needed to do,

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which is measure stuff.

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Now, can I think of any other time
in human history

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when science is either being
suppressed or criminalized?

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Well, as matter of fact, I can.

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In 1616,

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and then for the subsequent 143 years,

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the science of the telescope was banned.

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It was illegal for people to report

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what they saw through
the lens of the telescope,

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specifically that the earth was not
the centre of the universe.

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LSD is to the study of the mind,

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what the telescope is to astronomy
and what the microscope is to biology,

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according to Stanislav Grof.

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Well, psychedelics are back.

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(Laughter)

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This is the Canadian
Medical Association Journal,

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the conservative voice
of Canadian medicine,

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with a number of articles,
exploring the psychedelic renaissance,

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the explosion of research
that has happened in recent years.

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That's really what I want
to talk to you about.

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But to be really clear,

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what I'm talking about here is
skilled, trained, competent professionals

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using pure substances
in ways that are well supervised.

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I'm not talking about impure street drugs

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used by unsupervised,
irresponsible adolescents.

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So how do researchers think
about psychedelics these days?

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Because they break them
into three categories.

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The first are the classics:

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LSD,

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mescaline,

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dimethyltryptamine,

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and psilocybin.

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And these offer researchers
a variety of attributes

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that are worthy of investigation.

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For example, spirituality.

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Now, it's kind of neutral spirituality

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because Buddhists find the Buddha,

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Christians find Christ,

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and atheists and agnostics
find the entire universe.

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And this particular aspect
of these medicines is quite useful

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for situations like end-of-life anxiety.

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When we are dying, and we're anxious
about the experience,

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and we take a dosage of psilocybin,
and we meet our maker,

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and we're told, it's okay, we can relax.

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We're just coming home.

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It tends to reduce
the stress of that transition.

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The classical psychedelics also offer
a disorientation of the ego,

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which can be very helpful in things
like treatment for alcoholism.

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They also increase the permeability

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between the unconscious
and the conscious mind;

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they allow us to have access
to our unconscious

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in a way that we don't normally.

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Now, if you really think
about the human experience,

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a lot of our lives
are lived unconsciously.

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For example, driving a car.

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Our conscious mind
is thinking about the radio,

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and what we're going to have for lunch,

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and the conflict we had
with our spouse, or whatever.

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We don't think about our feet.

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Our unconscious mind is driving the car.

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We live our lives with lots of tape loops
that just happen automatically.

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And if something bad happened
to us in childhood,

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and it's replaying itself
consistently in our adult life,

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and causing problems for us,

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it’s very hard to access
because it's unconscious.

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Psychedelics can help with that.

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Psychedelics also offer -
the classic psychedelics offer

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what I call 'the portal effect',

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which is the 'Wow,
that was incredible!' effect.

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It's a bit like climbing Mount Everest
or graduating high school;

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you have a sense of
accomplishment and transition.

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And that's very helpful
in many conditions.

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The second group of psychedelics
are the empathogens;

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3-MMC, MDA, MDMA are examples.

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And what they do is they bond people
and increase empathy.

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That's really useful to bond a therapist
to somebody who wants some help.

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That connection is really important.

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It could be facilitated
with these medicines.

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They also take away fear.

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So if a soldier who's been
in battle in Afghanistan

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comes back to North America

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and is replaying that trauma
again and again,

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normal therapy can't access it,

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partly because it's unconscious,

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but partly because
anything it gets close to,

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it has a huge fear response.

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And MDMA specifically takes away that fear
and allows the tape to be reworked.

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It appears MDMA-assisted psychotherapy
maybe the best treatment for PTSD,

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post-traumatic stress
disorder, that exists.

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And then there's everything else.

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Things like ibogaine,

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which appear to be incredibly helpful

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for heroin withdrawals,

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opiate addiction,

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this 2C-B, this salvia, and this ketamine
that seems to be helpful for depression.

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Now, my own area of academic interest
is articulating post-prohibition models

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for the regulation and control
of all currently illegal drugs,

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based on public health principles.

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You might have noticed,

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drug prohibition is slowly crumbling

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under the weight
of its own ineffectiveness.

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It does not protect our communities.

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It does not protect our families.

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And it does not protect our children.

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So it will end.

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And I ask the question,
'What are we going to replace it with?'

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peering through the lens of public health.

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So the goal of a public health approach

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is to maximize the benefits
and minimize the harms.

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I've already talked about some benefits,
so I'd like to talk about harms.

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The harms from all drugs
can be broken into three categories:

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dependency, toxicity, and behaviour.

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Dependency -

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I worked for the addiction
services for 30 years.

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Nobody ever walked in my office
saying, 'I can't stop taking LSD'.

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(Laughter)

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It never happened!

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So the dependency potential
for psychedelics is really low.

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Toxicity -

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The last time you took
a prescription drug,

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if you took six times the dosage,
you probably did yourself harm.

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That one to six ratio is very
common for most drugs.

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With LSD, it's in the thousands.

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In fact, Albert Hofmann, who invented LSD,

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said it was one of the least
toxic substances on the planet.

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So dependency is very low,
toxicity is very low,

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so all of the harms from psychedelics
come from one thing,

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which is the behaviour,

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which is essentially lack of supervision.

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Now, indigenous communities
have known this for years.

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They've always provided the experience
in a very tight container of safety,

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where they're highly
supervised experiences.

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How researchers
are thinking about this today

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is they think about the words,
or they talk about the words:

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'set', which is expectations;

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'setting', which is the environment;

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'dosage', which is
what you take and how much;

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and 'safety', which is the umbrella term.

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So set, setting, safety, and dosage

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are carefully structured
by the research community today.

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So in a post-prohibition world,

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if the goal is to maximize the benefits
and minimize the harms of psychedelics,

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people would have access
to the psychedelic experience.

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So long as they were supervised,

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there was a container of safety
built around the experience,

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and somebody was in charge.

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A trained competent, skilled professional,

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who is licensed, would be allowed
to offer the experiences to others

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so long as set, setting, dosage,
and safety were managed.

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And it wouldn't matter
what the environment was:

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It could be indigenous healing circles;

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it could be psychedelic psychotherapy;

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it could be multi-day dance festivals.

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It doesn't matter,
as long as somebody is in charge.

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I would like to reflect
on the human predicament today.

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We're in trouble as a species.

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Global climate change
is affecting all of us.

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There's a concentration of wealth
at the top of the pile

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that is unprecedented in any society,
so few people control so much wealth.

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There's a huge amount of violence
and religious extremism.

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And we live in these
really strange societies

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where somehow we've equated
happiness with buying stuff.

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So if I really think about those problems,
they're problems of disconnection:

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we are disconnected from the earth;

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we are disconnected from each other;

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we are disconnected from a true sense
of meaning and purpose in our lives;

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and we're disconnected
from healthy spiritual experiences.

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The good news is psychedelics
are all about connections.

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These two images are very powerful.

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They're depictions of the human brain
based on neuroscience.

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The one on the left
is the normal human brain.

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The parts of the outside of the circle are
the different parts of the human brain,

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the visual cortex, for example.

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Notice that the visual cortex talks
a lot to the visual cortex,

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and not a lot to the other
parts of the brain.

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The image on the right is the human brain
under the influence of psilocybin.

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Notice the rich range
of new connections that are formed.

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Psychedelics are all about connections:

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connections with self -

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we have access to our unconscious minds

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in a way we do not
normally have access to;

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connections with each other -

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that's the empathogen research;

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connections with a sense
of meaning and purpose to life -

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there's a lot of research done on that;

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and connections with a sense
of true spirituality -

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indigenous communities
have known that for centuries.

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Isaac Asimov said,

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'One of the saddest aspects of life now

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is that science gathers knowledge faster
than society gathers wisdom'.

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We as a human species need to grow up.

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We need to take advantage of

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and learn and work with
the knowledge that we already have.

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And perhaps, just perhaps -

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something that could
help us mature as a species

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and maybe even assist with our survival

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is mature, skillful, wise use
of psychedelic medicines.

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Thank you.

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(Applause) (Cheers)