0:00:01.267,0:00:06.339 MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies 0:00:06.339,0:00:07.507 "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century" 0:00:07.507,0:00:12.445 Presented by MAPS in collaboration with: the Heffter Research Institute, The Counsil on Spiritual Practices & The Beckeley Foundation 0:00:12.445,0:00:25.592 Sponsor a video from Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century and have your name appear here. 0:00:25.592,0:00:32.832 Andrew Weil M.D. The future of Psychedelic and Medical Marijuana Research 0:00:32.832,0:00:34.267 Hello, good afternoon 0:00:34.267,0:00:37.067 and hi to all you folks in far away Rhode Island 0:00:37.067,0:00:41.908 It's a pleasure to be here. I thought I was gonna be here virtually, 0:00:41.908,0:00:47.038 but Rick Doblin arranged to get me a ride down from 0:00:47.038,0:00:50.483 St. Rafael and a ride back to the San Francisco Airport immediately after my talk 0:00:50.483,0:00:52.986 so I'm happy to be here in person 0:00:52.986,0:00:55.889 Now, I should say at the beggining that I'm 0:00:55.889,0:00:58.625 in some ways not the best person to give you any 0:00:58.625,0:01:02.562 prognostications or thoughts about where things are going because 0:01:02.562,0:01:07.434 when I did human esperiments with marijuana in 1968 0:01:07.434,0:01:11.171 I thought that marijuana would be legalized in ten years 0:01:11.171,0:01:17.844 I thought it was just a matter of getting truthfull information out to people because the 0:01:17.844,0:01:21.915 laws and attitudes were based on such wrong assumptions 0:01:21.915,0:01:24.918 about marijuana and about psychedelics 0:01:24.918,0:01:27.052 but I quickly learned that's not the case 0:01:27.052,0:01:31.858 In fact people believe what they wanna believe and don't believe what they don't want to 0:01:31.858,0:01:34.928 despite what the facts are and what the evidence are 0:01:34.928,0:01:40.133 and I've seen the same thing again in trying to change the medical paradigm 0:01:40.133,0:01:42.735 and trying to change medical education 0:01:42.735,0:01:47.034 there are many people that believe that the way to change things 0:01:47.034,0:01:49.476 is by doing research and producing data 0:01:49.476,0:01:51.911 I can tell you in medicine that's not the case 0:01:51.911,0:01:56.116 we even have very good data showing that doctors don't change their practices 0:01:56.116,0:02:01.387 based on the results of randomized control trials 0:02:01.387,0:02:07.066 The Integrative Medicine center that I founded and directed in the Arizona 0:02:07.066,0:02:10.697 in the University of Arizona College of Medicine 0:02:10.697,0:02:13.566 is now a center of excellence at the University of Arizona 0:02:13.566,0:02:17.003 and a world leader in training physicians and health professionals 0:02:17.003,0:02:18.371 in a new model of medicine 0:02:18.371,0:02:20.707 I'll talk to you about that in a moment 0:02:20.707,0:02:24.777 and the reason that we were able to do this was the support of one man 0:02:24.777,0:02:27.814 Jim Dolan who was the dean of the college of medicine 0:02:27.814,0:02:33.062 who was the first medical school dean to go out and support something of this kind 0:02:33.062,0:02:35.655 he retired a few years ago and said that 0:02:35.655,0:02:38.358 his proudest accomplishment was the Integrative Medicine Center 0:02:38.358,0:02:42.896 and he also said that, and I think this is a lesson for all of us 0:02:42.896,0:02:49.536 the way doctors and medical scientists react to new information 0:02:49.536,0:02:52.572 is more a function of it's source than it's content 0:02:52.572,0:02:56.543 that if information comes from an unfamiliar source the instinctive reaction is 0:02:56.543,0:02:59.646 one of defensiveness, exclusion and reaction 0:02:59.646,0:03:05.251 against it. And the example that he liked to use, which I think is very apt 0:03:05.251,0:03:09.255 is that the observation that aspirin was 0:03:09.255,0:03:12.358 an anticoagulant and might be useful on preventing heart attacks 0:03:12.358,0:03:15.128 was first made on the 1950's 0:03:15.128,0:03:17.063 by a general practitioner in southern California 0:03:17.063,0:03:20.266 this was the time when tonsillectomy was universal 0:03:20.266,0:03:23.097 you couldn't make it through adolescence with your tonsils and adenoids 0:03:23.097,0:03:26.539 if you were in a middle class family 0:03:26.539,0:03:32.412 and it was common practice to give kids aspergon to chew, a chewable form of aspirin 0:03:32.412,0:03:38.051 and this doctor noticed that kids that chewed aspergon had more and longer bleeding than kids who didn't 0:03:38.051,0:03:40.954 so he though maybe aspirin is a blood thinner and he began 0:03:40.954,0:03:45.858 taking it himself and noticed that when he cut himself shaving that the cuts bled longer 0:03:45.858,0:03:51.097 so he gave this to a number of his patients, satisfied himself that this was a reasonable 0:03:51.097,0:03:54.534 hypothesis, which he published on a journal of general practice 0:03:54.534,0:03:59.105 with the suggestion that aspirin might be usefull as a preventer for heart attacks 0:03:59.105,0:04:04.811 it took 30 years for cardiologists to recognize the validity of that hypothesis 0:04:04.811,0:04:12.318 and test it. The reason was that it was proposed by a general practitioner, not by a cardiologist 0:04:12.318,0:04:15.355 and was published in a Journal that cardiologists don't think much of 0:04:15.355,0:04:20.159 now that's within the realm of medicine, imagine when information about these things 0:04:20.159,0:04:22.829 comes from more distant and more foreign sources 0:04:22.829,0:04:27.267 like shamans in exotic cultures 0:04:27.267,0:04:30.937 And I think this is what we really have to understand 0:04:30.937,0:04:34.641 that the reason that the drugs that we're interested in 0:04:34.641,0:04:37.031 provokes so much controversy 0:04:37.031,0:04:39.779 the reason that they've stimulated the kind of backlash that 0:04:39.779,0:04:43.316 has forded research and clinical use 0:04:43.316,0:04:47.042 is fundamentally emotional and irrational 0:04:47.042,0:04:53.086 it's not something you can deal with through argument and scientific information 0:04:53.086,0:04:57.363 It's a matter of changing the culture and attitudes 0:04:57.363,0:05:04.007 The problem with marijuana is that it has still not 0:05:04.007,0:05:07.074 outgrown its associations in this culture 0:05:07.074,0:05:14.213 with ousiders, deviants, subcultures that are not considered part of the mainstream 0:05:14.213,0:05:18.084 it entered north american society through two routes 0:05:18.084,0:05:22.622 through black jazz musicians in the south, New Orleans 0:05:22.622,0:05:26.292 through mexican migrant workers that came in through the southern border 0:05:26.292,0:05:32.465 in the 1950's it was associated with beatniks 0:05:32.465,0:05:36.135 then in the 60's with this massive counterculture that grew up 0:05:36.135,0:05:44.077 it's those associations of marijuana that cause mainstream America to react against it 0:05:44.077,0:05:47.447 and this continues to persist 0:05:47.447,0:05:52.485 I'm delighted to see that there is now opening in the world of psychedelic research 0:05:52.485,0:05:54.354 I mean something clearly has changed there 0:05:54.354,0:05:56.756 it hasn't yet changed with marijuana 0:05:56.756,0:05:59.392 that's unfortunate. I'm very disappointed that our president 0:05:59.392,0:06:06.899 has not done more to support the change in the medical marijuana list 0:06:06.899,0:06:09.802 applause 0:06:09.802,0:06:12.305 but we have an opening at the moment with psychedelics which 0:06:12.305,0:06:18.144 which is both surprising, welcome, is something we wanna work with and 0:06:18.144,0:06:24.217 and I'm very pleased to see the kinds of research that have been done 0:06:24.217,0:06:30.022 I also have to tell you that over the years as I've looked at the potentials and dangers 0:06:30.022,0:06:34.026 of psychedelic drugs and their possibilities for clinical applications 0:06:34.026,0:06:37.053 I've been somewhat puzzled by several things about it 0:06:37.053,0:06:40.266 first of all, in purely medical terms 0:06:40.266,0:06:43.302 these drugs, specially the indol psychedelics 0:06:43.302,0:06:50.476 have probably the least toxicity of any pharmacological agents that we now 0:06:50.476,0:06:57.075 as you know, there have been no deaths reported with LSD, directly caused by it's 0:06:57.075,0:07:04.724 pharmacological action, except in one elephant. I'm sure most of you know that horrible story 0:07:04.724,0:07:06.325 if not you can look it up 0:07:06.325,0:07:13.966 The striking absence of toxicity of these agents 0:07:13.966,0:07:23.743 combined with their tremendous power to alter perception, and the mind-body access 0:07:23.743,0:07:26.446 certainly recommends them for research in clinical use 0:07:26.446,0:07:30.095 but I have to tell you that I've been puzzled, by the way I should say that the other category of 0:07:30.095,0:07:33.853 psychedelics, the phenetilamines, have somewhat greater toxicity 0:07:33.853,0:07:37.089 because of their adrenergic stimulant properties 0:07:37.089,0:07:41.026 that puts them into a somewhat different class, but still these are quite safe agents 0:07:41.026,0:07:47.066 compared to most of the drugs that are routinely prescribed in medicine today 0:07:47.066,0:07:53.773 What puzzles me about psychedelic research over the years 0:07:53.773,0:07:56.509 in contrast with my own experience with them 0:07:56.509,0:08:02.014 is that almost all of it has focused on psychological potentials 0:08:02.014,0:08:10.289 initially with things like helping people with end-of-life issues, or with PTSD 0:08:10.289,0:08:18.064 my interest has always been in what we call the psychosomatic potential of these drugs 0:08:18.064,0:08:22.034 that is their potential to change bodily processes 0:08:22.034,0:08:28.441 and physical disease as a result of, or taking advantage of the mind-body connection 0:08:28.441,0:08:35.515 so, let me say a word about integrative medicine and the philosophy of medicine that I teach 0:08:35.515,0:08:37.045 and have always practiced 0:08:37.045,0:08:40.052 in the popular mind integrative medicine is 0:08:40.052,0:08:43.389 the intelligent combination of conventional and alternative medicine, 0:08:43.389,0:08:49.962 but really that's a very narrow definition of it, the much broader way of looking at it 0:08:49.962,0:08:55.301 which I firmly believe represents the future of medicine and a solution to our current health-care crisis 0:08:55.301,0:09:04.677 it's working fore some very big changes in conventional medical thinking 0:09:04.677,0:09:08.614 the first is to restore the focus of medicine on the health and healing 0:09:08.614,0:09:14.887 and to acknowledge, respect and take advantage of the human organism tremendous 0:09:14.887,0:09:20.493 potential for self-diagnosis and self-regulation, regeneration, repair, adaptation 0:09:20.493,0:09:24.597 to me that's the most wonderful feature of human biology, that our 0:09:24.597,0:09:30.536 bodies have the ability to know when they have suffered injury or damage 0:09:30.536,0:09:34.941 to repair themselves, and this is not mystical, this is biology 0:09:34.941,0:09:39.445 you can observe this on any level of biological organization, from DNA on up 0:09:39.445,0:09:44.951 the DNA is a huge macromolecule that's on the border between life and non-life 0:09:44.951,0:09:51.057 has the potential within it to know when it has been injured by an ultraviolet ray 0:09:51.057,0:09:55.161 and immediately begins to elaborate specific repair enzimes to repair the damage 0:09:55.161,0:10:01.467 and that same potential you can see whetter you look to organeles, cells, tissues, organs and 0:10:01.467,0:10:04.067 the whole organism, and that's where good medicine should start 0:10:04.067,0:10:09.075 The second broad principle of integrative medicine is our insistence that 0:10:09.075,0:10:11.544 human beings are more than physical bodies 0:10:11.544,0:10:13.412 we are also mental-emotional beings 0:10:13.412,0:10:15.481 spiritual entities, community members 0:10:15.481,0:10:21.187 those other dimensions of human life are incredibly relevant to understanding health and illness 0:10:21.187,0:10:25.091 if you cut them of and only look at the physical body 0:10:25.091,0:10:32.832 not only do you cut yourself of from an understanding of the real causes of health and illness 0:10:32.832,0:10:35.534 but you also limit your treatment interventions 0:10:35.534,0:10:39.605 to those directed at the physical body which are the ones that tend to be most expensive and 0:10:39.605,0:10:44.877 most invasive and most productive of harm and often quite limited in their ability to change 0:10:44.877,0:10:49.548 physical conditions. The third principle of integrative medicine is that 0:10:49.548,0:10:52.652 we pay attention to all aspects of lifestyle 0:10:52.652,0:10:54.153 to understand health and illness 0:10:54.153,0:11:01.494 and I think this is where integrative medicine really shines in delivering true preventive care 0:11:01.494,0:11:05.798 and health promotion, something that's very relevant to the health-care debate 0:11:05.798,0:11:08.034 that we're looking through 0:11:08.034,0:11:14.273 and also integrative medicine places great emphasis in the practitioner-patient relationship 0:11:14.273,0:11:19.178 which has suffered horribly in the present era for-profit medicine 0:11:19.178,0:11:22.782 throughout history and in most cultures 0:11:22.782,0:11:26.852 that relationship has been recognized as special, even sacred 0:11:26.852,0:11:31.657 something magical can happen when a medically trained person 0:11:31.657,0:11:35.594 sits with a patient and simply allows that person to tell their story 0:11:35.594,0:11:41.001 that alone can initiate a healing response before any specific treatment suggestions are given 0:11:41.001,0:11:46.839 and also over the years that has been the source of the greatest emotional reward of practicing medicine 0:11:46.839,0:11:52.778 and it's complete undermining in the era of manage caring for-profit medicine 0:11:52.778,0:11:56.749 is one reason why so many physicians today are unhappy and so many are leaving 0:11:56.749,0:11:58.818 or have left the practice of medicine 0:11:58.818,0:12:03.456 and then finally integrative medicine is willing to look at all therapeutic options out there 0:12:03.456,0:12:07.793 specially those that don't cause harm and show reasonable evidence of efficacy 0:12:07.793,0:12:11.764 there's so much that's not even on our radar screen of conventional medicine that we can bring in 0:12:11.764,0:12:16.235 among them the targeted use of psychedelic therapy 0:12:16.235,0:12:20.673 Now, what has puzzled me in looking at 0:12:20.673,0:12:26.245 this focus of psychedelic research on the psychological 0:12:26.245,0:12:28.481 and the omission of the physical 0:12:28.481,0:12:34.032 is that in my own experience, both in my personal life and working with patients 0:12:34.032,0:12:39.792 and discussing this with great many users of psychedelics 0:12:39.792,0:12:46.398 I have observed, seen, experienced, collected many individual case reports of 0:12:46.398,0:12:51.837 quite spectacular healing reactions of serious diseases 0:12:51.837,0:12:58.043 and these healing reactions were catalysed by a change in perception 0:12:58.043,0:13:06.819 that was triggered by a psychedelic experience, sometimes deliberately by a 0:13:06.819,0:13:09.655 therapist who guided the session in a certain direction 0:13:09.655,0:13:11.357 sometimes quite fortuitously 0:13:11.357,0:13:19.031 and I'll just give you a couple of examples of what I mean 0:13:19.031,0:13:22.868 the first one is something that I have published 0:13:22.868,0:13:29.675 some years ago 60 minutes did an in-depth piece on me which was supposed to be friendly and wasn't 0:13:29.675,0:13:37.917 and I told the interviewer this story which was incidental and in three days of interviewing about integrative medicine 0:13:37.917,0:13:43.255 and they sent out a press release with this as the headline, this was the story that they used so 0:13:43.255,0:13:49.061 and the story was that Dr. Weil claims that LSD cured his cat allergies 0:13:49.061,0:13:52.665 all right 0:13:52.665,0:13:59.872 it did, and here's the story 0:13:59.872,0:14:07.098 I was very allergic as a kid, in all sorts of ways, I had hay fever, I've got hives in response to various drugs and things 0:14:07.098,0:14:14.687 I was allergic for a lot of my life, and one of the allergies I had was to cats and 0:14:14.687,0:14:22.995 whenever a cat got near me my eyes would itch, my nose would run, if I touched the cat 0:14:22.995,0:14:26.732 it's got much worse and if a cat licked me I've got hives where it licked me 0:14:26.732,0:14:31.036 I had in my mind a mindset that I was allergic to cats and therefore 0:14:31.036,0:14:33.973 I didn't want them in my presence, and if a cat came near me 0:14:33.973,0:14:40.045 I would either push it away or withdraw myself, so there was a deep 0:14:40.045,0:14:45.015 ingrained defensiveness in my interactions with cats 0:14:45.015,0:14:49.989 one day, when I was 28, and was making a lot of changes in my life 0:14:49.989,0:14:55.261 I took LSD with some friends, I was living in a countryside in Virginia, it was beautiful springday 0:14:55.261,0:15:00.099 I was in a terrific space, everything was wonderful, the world was magical 0:15:00.099,0:15:04.603 everything was alive, and into this scene a cat bounded 0:15:04.603,0:15:13.545 and jumped in my lap and I had a split-second of the habitual reaction and 0:15:13.545,0:15:19.752 suddenly I decided this was silly, why did I have to do this? 0:15:19.752,0:15:25.858 so I started petting the cat, playing with the cat, the cat licked me, I had no reaction to the cat 0:15:25.858,0:15:29.228 I have never had a reaction with cats since! 0:15:29.228,0:15:34.466 and that was almost fourty years ago 0:15:34.466,0:15:36.669 applause 0:15:36.669,0:15:39.038 Now, that's pretty spectacular 0:15:39.038,0:15:42.474 As a physician I would love to know what happened there 0:15:42.474,0:15:46.378 and I would love to know how to make that happen in another people 0:15:46.378,0:15:50.382 Anyway, I'll tell you one that's even more spectacular which I haven't written about 0:15:50.382,0:15:56.288 and this was roughly in the same time period. Another mindset that I had grown up with all my life 0:15:56.288,0:16:00.125 was that I had fair skin and that I couldn't get tann 0:16:00.125,0:16:02.962 and I was always told this, you have fair skin 0:16:02.962,0:16:08.634 so, whenever I went to the beach my experience was a second degree sunburn 0:16:08.634,0:16:12.538 completely red and then going home and putting nazimo all over my body 0:16:12.538,0:16:15.024 and then sheets of skin would peel off several days later 0:16:15.024,0:16:20.746 that was how I reacted to the sun and I had accepted in my mind this is the way I react to the sun 0:16:20.746,0:16:26.118 so also in this same period when I was doing this experiments, I guess I was also 28 and 0:16:26.118,0:16:31.123 this was also in Virginia and another time I took LSD and there was a wonderful space 0:16:31.123,0:16:37.529 and I was running around without any clothes on and I was decided that it was such a nice day 0:16:37.529,0:16:41.367 I was going to lie out in the sun, and I remember thinking 0:16:41.367,0:16:44.003 why should I think that the sun is my enemy? 0:16:44.003,0:16:48.054 why can't I simply enjoy the sun and be in it 0:16:48.054,0:16:50.376 I got tann instantly! 0:16:50.376,0:16:52.911 and I have ever since 0:16:52.911,0:16:56.648 I now live in southern Arizona, I've spent 30 years in the desert 0:16:56.648,0:17:02.454 I develop wonderful tanns, I've never had sunburns like that. An instant change 0:17:02.454,0:17:07.493 in a pattern that had lasted 28 years, that's pretty spectacular 0:17:07.493,0:17:10.396 How did that happen? What's the mechanism of this? 0:17:10.396,0:17:17.077 I don't think this is magic, it's wonderful, but there has to be a physiological mechanism for that 0:17:17.077,0:17:23.709 which is in some ways, to me, a little more interesting and harder to understand than 0:17:23.709,0:17:25.477 the disappearance of an allergic reaction 0:17:25.477,0:17:32.384 Allergies come and go and I've always taught patients that allergies are learned reactions 0:17:32.384,0:17:34.653 and anything that's learned can be unlearned 0:17:34.653,0:17:37.322 and that to me is the most interesting thing about allergies 0:17:37.322,0:17:43.195 There's very interesting stuff in the mind-body literature about allergies 0:17:43.195,0:17:48.007 you can show a person who has a strong allergic reaction to roses 0:17:48.007,0:17:52.237 a plastic rose and they'll have an allergic reaction 0:17:52.237,0:17:58.243 so that shows that the higher brain is involved in this process 0:17:58.243,0:18:03.649 and there may be many ways to produce these changes or to break that 0:18:03.649,0:18:09.088 but the potential for psychedelics to be used in this way are great 0:18:09.088,0:18:14.059 I can imagine in some era when psychedelics are available for medical use 0:18:14.059,0:18:19.631 maybe you can open an allergy clinic and you can have ten structured sessions 0:18:19.631,0:18:23.769 an on the first session a person would take an ordinary dose of one of these things 0:18:23.769,0:18:28.373 and if necessary they could come back and each time the dose would be cut down 0:18:28.373,0:18:30.509 until at the last session they wouldn't take anything 0:18:30.509,0:18:39.451 but the pill would look like the same. And then you tell them they're not taking anything active and they go without the allergy 0:18:39.451,0:18:43.322 Now, even extending this further, I've also collected over the years 0:18:43.322,0:18:48.393 some very dramatic cases in sum that I have been personally involved 0:18:48.393,0:18:53.465 people with chronic autoimmune disorders, specially rheumathoid arthrithis, 0:18:53.465,0:18:56.902 also lupus, also multiple sclerosis, 0:18:56.902,0:18:59.271 in which the same kinds of things have happened, 0:18:59.271,0:19:05.544 where there was a dramatic shift related to the psychedelic experience 0:19:05.544,0:19:08.313 sometimes a single use, sometimes a multiple use 0:19:08.313,0:19:11.035 in which the condition disappeared 0:19:11.035,0:19:16.054 it seems to me, and I just can't imagine anything of greater interest 0:19:16.054,0:19:20.058 and that puzzles me that researchers have not looked at this aspect of psychedelics 0:19:20.058,0:19:27.266 and one thing that would be useful would be try to collect case reports of this kind 0:19:27.266,0:19:31.027 So one thing that I would ask you and for you to ask your friends, if you know 0:19:31.027,0:19:40.512 anyone that has had experiences of this sort, send them at MAPS for example, 0:19:40.512,0:19:44.116 so we could begin to collect this kind of information in a systematic fashion 0:19:44.116,0:19:49.621 and if we had a body of this kind of information it might inspire researchers in this area 0:19:49.621,0:19:52.624 to begin thinking how they might set up experiments to do this 0:19:52.624,0:19:56.662 That principle of integrative medicine that I've talked about 0:19:56.662,0:20:04.102 we're not just physical bodies, we're also mental emotional beings, and spiritual entities and community members 0:20:04.102,0:20:09.308 the meaning of that is that all disease, like all health 0:20:09.308,0:20:15.981 is a matter of all of these factors being involved, and in any medical condition 0:20:15.981,0:20:23.355 there is a possibility of using the mind-body connection, the emotional connection 0:20:23.355,0:20:27.726 to change a disease process for the better 0:20:27.726,0:20:35.002 We have lots of potential interventions to do that, there's hypnosis, there's guided imagery 0:20:35.002,0:20:38.047 there are various forms of mindfulness meditation 0:20:38.047,0:20:43.875 there's a whole fascinating area of neuroscience 0:20:43.875,0:20:48.078 that's just come into being with the result of being able to visualize living brains 0:20:48.078,0:20:55.921 an a lot of this have been inspired by the Dalai Lama and a new generation of neuroscientists 0:20:55.921,0:21:03.128 who are looking at tibetan meditators and showing actual changes in brain activity 0:21:03.128,0:21:07.366 and then thinking how can this be taught to other people 0:21:07.366,0:21:16.475 I see this as a great horizon and frontier of medical research 0:21:16.475,0:21:20.912 I've always taught that all diseases are psychosomatic 0:21:20.912,0:21:26.285 but the problem is that word is so loaded that when we talk about psychosomatic conditions 0:21:26.285,0:21:30.922 most people, specially patients, think you're telling them their diseases are unreal 0:21:30.922,0:21:33.492 and that's not what psychosomatic means, the word just mean mind-body 0:21:33.492,0:21:40.499 I've suggested maybe we should use the word somatopsychic, which doesn't have the same connotation 0:21:40.499,0:21:48.106 but the fact is that's how it is and with many conditions we can totally neglect the possibility 0:21:48.106,0:21:53.111 of trying to change things by manipulating the psychic compartment 0:21:53.111,0:21:58.583 the psychedelic drugs, specially, are incredible tools for doing so 0:21:58.583,0:22:04.222 now I think one of the great obstacles to psychedelic research in the past 0:22:04.222,0:22:10.395 that complicated things, is that, as I'm sure all of you know 0:22:10.395,0:22:17.469 the experiences people have with psychedelics are exquisitely dependent on non pharmacological factors 0:22:17.469,0:22:22.941 they're dependent on people's expectations, set, and on the environment, 0:22:22.941,0:22:26.111 in the broader sense the setting in which drugs are taken 0:22:26.111,0:22:31.717 the initial people who did research with psychedelics 0:22:31.717,0:22:37.689 and showed very positive changes, like Stan Grof, like Walter Pahnke 0:22:37.689,0:22:41.293 these were people who understood from their own experiences 0:22:41.293,0:22:47.999 the nature of these drugs, and their dependence on set and setting 0:22:47.999,0:22:53.305 Their belief system and the way that they were able to structure the settings, 0:22:53.305,0:22:55.841 the laboratory settings in which they did research 0:22:55.841,0:22:58.543 shaped experiences in a certain direction 0:22:58.543,0:23:01.078 other researches who did not have those experiences 0:23:01.078,0:23:04.075 did not have that understanding, read the results of the research 0:23:04.075,0:23:07.319 tried to reproduce them and didn't get the same results 0:23:07.319,0:23:10.288 because they thought the drugs were magic bullets 0:23:10.288,0:23:16.495 that the drug contains the experience that would automatically do the thing that's reported in the literature 0:23:16.495,0:23:20.999 and when the results didn't come back that way, they said well, the drugs aren't any good 0:23:20.999,0:23:29.007 So, apart from all the moralistic stuff and all the cultural irrationality 0:23:29.007,0:23:36.615 that forded psychedelic research I think this is in a way even a greater stomping block 0:23:36.615,0:23:44.089 because these drugs don't work in the way that the pharmacological agents most of researchers work with do 0:23:44.089,0:23:53.064 The magic potential is not entirely in the pharmacological action 0:23:53.064,0:23:55.567 and unless researchers understand this 0:23:55.567,0:23:58.087 the likelihood of producing the kinds of positive changes 0:23:58.087,0:24:03.575 that will get more people interested and may lead to a cultural change 0:24:03.575,0:24:07.879 about the potential benefits of these drugs, this is not gonna be realised 0:24:07.879,0:24:16.354 I wanna also say some words about marijuana, which is a very different beast form psychedelics 0:24:16.354,0:24:20.659 this is not related chemically or pharmacologically to the psychedelics 0:24:20.659,0:24:23.261 although it often travels with them in the same company 0:24:23.261,0:24:27.265 but it's a completely different thing 0:24:27.265,0:24:32.971 and it has it's own problems and difficulties 0:24:32.971,0:24:40.212 cannabinoid chemistry is unique in nature, these substances are unlike 0:24:40.212,0:24:43.949 really any other chemicals that we are familiar with 0:24:43.949,0:24:50.655 one of the things that sets them apart from most drugs, both medical and psychoactive that we know 0:24:50.655,0:24:52.924 is that they're fat soluble not water soluble 0:24:52.924,0:24:59.631 that is a big problem, that means these drugs are not absorbed and distributed in the body 0:24:59.631,0:25:04.402 in ways that we are familiar with. It's not easy to predict their metabolic fate and 0:25:04.402,0:25:10.709 their pathways around the body because of their fat solubility 0:25:10.709,0:25:17.082 another problem with marijuana is that there is extreme variation in individual sensitivity to it 0:25:17.082,0:25:26.157 and that is very confounding for people who are looking for substances that produce predictable effects 0:25:26.157,0:25:33.098 on a practical level, in looking at what's happening with medical marijuana around the country 0:25:33.098,0:25:41.139 I think until there's a way of cleanly separating medical use from recreational use 0:25:41.139,0:25:48.613 that it's going to be very difficult to have the medical profession accept marijuana as a therapeutic agent 0:25:48.613,0:25:53.518 the way that marijuana is currently being dispensed in California 0:25:53.518,0:25:56.154 and the way that most medical marijuana is being used 0:25:56.154,0:26:00.959 there's a very fuzzy boundary between that and recreational use 0:26:00.959,0:26:07.966 also I can't imagine most of my medical colleagues being comfortable with recommending 0:26:07.966,0:26:12.571 a therapeutic agent that has to be consumed in the form of smoke to be inhaled 0:26:12.571,0:26:14.172 That just doesn't work 0:26:14.172,0:26:23.348 I would love to see a whole extract of cannabis that was available for medical use in a form 0:26:23.348,0:26:26.851 that was more familiar to physicians and to pharmacists 0:26:26.851,0:26:30.722 as I'm sure you may know there is such a form available in the UK 0:26:30.722,0:26:34.926 called Sativex, this is a whole cannabis extract to be sprayed 0:26:34.926,0:26:38.029 into the mouth under the tongue, it's an oral spray 0:26:38.029,0:26:43.134 it looks like a medical preparation, it's packaged like a medical preparation, 0:26:43.134,0:26:49.341 it would be accepted as a medical preparation, it's very annoying that it's not available here 0:26:49.341,0:26:53.745 and this would be a great thing for people working in the area of medical marijuana to concentrate on 0:26:53.745,0:27:00.885 an to work to make it available here. I think that would go a long way to increase acceptance of this agent 0:27:00.885,0:27:10.462 with marijuana also the tremendous advantage of it and the reason for investigating it's clinical 0:27:10.462,0:27:15.233 potentials is it's almost complete abscence of toxicity 0:27:15.233,0:27:17.902 you can't kill people with marijuana 0:27:17.902,0:27:21.094 there was I remember years ago seeing some experiments in cats 0:27:21.094,0:27:27.312 which if you could extrapolate to humans would suggest that the letal dose 0:27:27.312,0:27:36.187 might be a pound and a half of marijuana consumed orally at one time 0:27:36.187,0:27:42.327 in pharmacology and medicine you calculate the safety of a drug with a quantity 0:27:42.327,0:27:50.902 called the therapeutic ratio which is the ratio of the dose that begins to produce toxicicity to the dose that you want 0:27:50.902,0:27:54.973 and for many drugs that we use in clinical practice that ratio is not that high 0:27:54.973,0:28:00.078 two to three or four or five times the dose that is used to produce a therapeutic effect 0:28:00.078,0:28:06.451 is enough to begin to cause toxicity. You can't calculate the therapeutic ratio for marijuana 0:28:06.451,0:28:12.157 it's not calculable. So just for that reason alone we should be looking for ways to use it 0:28:12.157,0:28:15.927 let alone the fact that throughout history there have been many people who 0:28:15.927,0:28:22.233 have testified to benefits that they received for using marijuana for various conditions 0:28:22.233,0:28:28.707 Personally I think the frontier of cannabis research that to me is most exciting 0:28:28.707,0:28:33.111 is the possibility at looking to these strange molecules, these cannabinoids 0:28:33.111,0:28:37.716 an specially looking at analogs of them that may be developed in the future 0:28:37.716,0:28:48.793 that can be used both as tools for brain research, for understanding how the brain receives and 0:28:48.793,0:28:53.531 interprets information, because to me this is one of the most interesting things about cannabis 0:28:53.531,0:28:59.027 how it changes perception, how it can make ordinary experiences appear novel 0:28:59.027,0:29:05.061 how it can change focus of attention. I can see great potential here in using these drugs as tools 0:29:05.061,0:29:12.015 in mind-brain research. I think the other area that fascinates me is looking at 0:29:12.015,0:29:20.658 these compounds or analogs yet to be developed for manipulating appetite, and for pain perception 0:29:20.658,0:29:26.831 I think these are two areas in which the therapeutic potential of cannabis looks very powerful to me 0:29:26.831,0:29:32.804 the appetite stuff, there has been some efforts in this direction at the moment which 0:29:32.804,0:29:41.379 are certainly not there yet, but this is probably the greatest public health-care crisis facing us 0:29:41.379,0:29:45.016 in this day and age is the obesity epidemic that we are seeing 0:29:45.016,0:29:48.987 the root of this is the nature in which we have changed food 0:29:48.987,0:29:54.526 I was just on a panel yesterday with Dr. David Kessler, former head of the FDA 0:29:54.526,0:29:56.194 he's written a book called "The end of overeating" 0:29:56.194,0:30:03.368 and his main argument is that the foods that we have today are designed to activate the brain 0:30:03.368,0:30:10.542 and that we're helpless in face of this. That food has been manipulated in ways that cause brain activation 0:30:10.542,0:30:14.679 and that this is what seems to give it so much power over us 0:30:14.679,0:30:19.384 so I don't know, maybe we're doomed in this regard. I think that's certainly an argument for 0:30:19.384,0:30:24.155 totally banning advertising of these kinds of foods 0:30:24.155,0:30:29.394 applause 0:30:29.394,0:30:41.105 but you know, another area of possible research is finding ways to increase the brain's defensiveness 0:30:41.105,0:30:47.579 against that kind of reactive activation in response to the kinds of food that are out there now 0:30:47.579,0:30:52.015 and I think there is potential in the cannabinoids to do something of that sort 0:30:52.015,0:30:56.354 and the other area is, as I said, is the modulation of pain perception 0:30:56.354,0:31:02.527 There already is a great deal of interesting research showing that cannabis can 0:31:02.527,0:31:11.236 enhance the effects of opioids, so that people with chronic pain may be able to take lower doses 0:31:11.236,0:31:17.942 of opioids which has great advantage because there are many side effects of derivatives of 0:31:17.942,0:31:26.351 opium that are not desirable, among them mental clouding, and to be able to find ways 0:31:26.351,0:31:30.421 chronic pain is such an enormous problem in clinical medicine today 0:31:30.421,0:31:34.259 it absorbs so many health-care dollars, it's so frustrating to manage 0:31:34.259,0:31:39.731 that any new tools that we can get in that area would be extremely welcome, and as I said 0:31:39.731,0:31:43.334 I think there is great potential with cannabis to do that 0:31:43.334,0:31:48.339 So, I guess in summing up and looking back on all this 0:31:48.339,0:31:50.942 although I have not been actively involved 0:31:50.942,0:31:55.246 in either psychedelic research or marijuana research for many years 0:31:55.246,0:32:01.886 I continue to be struck by the incredible positive potential of these agents 0:32:01.886,0:32:08.426 not just for manipulation of moods and emotional states but for 0:32:08.426,0:32:15.266 dealing with and changing very real, very severe chronic medical ilness 0:32:15.266,0:32:21.105 through changing the way that people interpret 0:32:21.105,0:32:25.091 or perceive the symptoms of illness that they experience 0:32:25.091,0:32:33.151 and that by doing so free up, or unlock or unblock the body's healing potential 0:32:33.151,0:32:37.755 I think the fact that we've got this opening at the moment is terrific 0:32:37.755,0:32:45.964 I think we should be careful in the way that we design experiments, the way they're publicized 0:32:45.964,0:32:54.305 but I think that looking at conditions which are not responsive to other methods 0:32:54.305,0:32:59.644 which involve lots of people, which are very costly and cause human suffering 0:32:59.644,0:33:05.516 that there is a great possibility now for getting support for doing this and 0:33:05.516,0:33:14.158 to begin to change this very very outdated and unhelpful cultural perception 0:33:14.158,0:33:16.794 that we've lived with for far too long 0:33:16.794,0:33:23.568 So thank you I'm gonna stop there and I'm gonna continue with you asking some questions 0:33:23.568,0:33:25.057 applause 0:33:25.057,0:33:30.742 I think that the whole field of mind-body research and mind-body medicine is 0:33:30.742,0:33:35.713 coming into it's own in a way that it never has before - there's a novel lot of 0:33:35.713,0:33:43.054 close it? Ok right. Bye 0:33:43.054,0:33:46.557 That was very satisfying 0:33:46.557,0:33:52.563 You know, I have a friend and colleague who is now in his 80's who was 0:33:52.563,0:33:56.434 a very eminent endocrinologist and who was one of the founders and 0:33:56.434,0:34:02.473 main movers of the field of psychosomatic medicine in the 1950's and 1960's and he 0:34:02.473,0:34:08.346 said to me that he looks back and wonders why that field never went anywhere. Now there's 0:34:08.346,0:34:14.952 all this tremendous amount of research being done, what happened to field of psychosomatic medicine? 0:34:14.952,0:34:21.659 and I said to him, I think the time was wrong, it was ahead of it's time and 0:34:21.659,0:34:26.097 things were not ready, the ground had not been laid to the acceptance of that 0:34:26.097,0:34:35.907 and I think that's all being completely swept aside by this new field of mind-body medicine 0:34:35.907,0:34:40.945 which is getting very strong support from the neurosciences. I think the ability to 0:34:40.945,0:34:50.254 visualize living brains has done more to make studies of consciousness and altered states of consciousness 0:34:50.254,0:34:53.758 valid and real than any amount of argument about it 0:34:53.758,0:34:59.831 now you can show that people in certain states of consciousness that brain function is different 0:34:59.831,0:35:03.568 and you can find specific localities in the brain where function is different 0:35:03.568,0:35:08.172 even in an area that I've been most interested in, the placebo responses 0:35:08.172,0:35:11.843 there's a whole new, more juice going into that because 0:35:11.843,0:35:18.015 there's been studies showing that in the placebo responses there are particular areas of the brain that seems to mediate this 0:35:18.015,0:35:22.072 so I think we're on the threshold of a whole new era of mind-body studies 0:35:22.072,0:35:29.026 in which psychoneuroimmunology, psychoendocrinology, this is all part of that knife 0:35:29.026,0:35:38.102 and there is potential for psychedelics to be welcomed as tools to facilitate that research 0:35:38.102,0:35:41.305 Thank you so much for your presentation, I enjoyed tremendously 0:35:41.305,0:35:47.411 One thing, you were talking about pain and different ways to minimize the pain 0:35:47.411,0:35:54.519 physical pain, I studied a lot of mind-body connection, especially the spiritual aspects of it 0:35:54.519,0:36:00.358 and I've had tremendous results, resolving spiritual issues and how it affects you physically 0:36:00.358,0:36:06.264 how I had a horrible pain and I did this meditation, it's ending the pain meditation 0:36:06.264,0:36:10.234 and at the end you connect to your higher self and I could not believe the results 0:36:10.234,0:36:14.772 how just my neck pain that was horrendous got so much better but basically 0:36:14.772,0:36:20.878 the studies that I have been really interested in, it's a guy called Luz Ares 0:36:20.878,0:36:27.018 and I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Louis Hay where basically 0:36:27.018,0:36:31.556 Luz Ares says that a lot of the different pains in the different parts of the body 0:36:31.556,0:36:37.061 it's like coded messages from your higher consciousness that are there to teach 0:36:37.061,0:36:41.999 and to guide you in such a direction where you need healing so he talks about 0:36:41.999,0:36:45.002 regular doctors as opposed to alternative doctors and he says that 0:36:45.002,0:36:50.608 a lot of times alternative doctors essentialy do the same thing, they just go after eliminating symptom 0:36:50.608,0:37:01.319 and, so I guess my question is, sorry, have you thought about the spiritual meaning of 0:37:01.319,0:37:04.655 pain and actually resolving it like you were saying at the beginning, how much 0:37:04.655,0:37:12.063 matters resolving it through the mind rather than looking just to physical resolution 0:37:12.063,0:37:18.402 I have thought about that, there's a lot written about the spiritual meaning of pain 0:37:18.402,0:37:23.274 and the ways that people in chronic pain can learn to reinterpret it, or listen to it 0:37:23.274,0:37:27.578 or see what it has to teach them. Mindfulness based stress reduction training has 0:37:27.578,0:37:33.117 proven very valuable in working with patients in chronic pain, but again I have to tell you since I'm 0:37:33.117,0:37:40.791 really into the somatopsychics of things, the experiences that most interest me 0:37:40.791,0:37:48.332 are not just subjective perception but changes in body reaction 0:37:48.332,0:37:53.337 so, and this is another experience and I think this one I've also written about and this is with MDMA 0:37:53.337,0:38:02.046 that frequently I've had the experience of, in the MDMA state, total relax, walking barefoot 0:38:02.046,0:38:08.085 on sharp stones that would normally hurt, it doesn't hurt. OK, that part it's easy for me 0:38:08.085,0:38:13.758 to explain but what's hard to explain is why there are no impressions on my foot 0:38:13.758,0:38:18.596 normally there would be dense on my foot but there aren't in that state 0:38:18.596,0:38:22.833 so what's happening there? I mean, I can hypothesize about it but I think that when the 0:38:22.833,0:38:30.408 mind leaves the body alone that muscles can very precisely respond to things 0:38:30.408,0:38:37.782 so if there's a point of a rock pressing there the muscle right there can press back to neutralize it 0:38:37.782,0:38:45.022 That stuff really interest me, how you can change reactions, like insects things or 0:38:45.022,0:38:53.397 or being hit by something or being burned, not only does the pain change but the body's reactions change 0:38:53.397,0:38:59.403 and that's something that can be learned, and it seems to me that the commonality here 0:38:59.403,0:39:06.011 is dropping some sort of defensive stands toward the universe, that's the act of 0:39:06.011,0:39:14.085 defending oneself that in some way leads to some sort of rigidity or freezing of body's responses that 0:39:14.085,0:39:21.692 causes injury or allows injury to occur. That's the area that I would love to see research on 0:39:21.692,0:39:28.432 Dr. Weil I'm always in love with what you have to say, I just have one question 0:39:28.432,0:39:36.173 How do we get the ball rolling on legitimizing psychedelics and treatment modalities for people with real pain and suffering? 0:39:36.173,0:39:42.246 I mean, must of the knowledge has been there form the 70's, the 60's 0:39:42.246,0:39:48.085 there has to be some kind of tipping point in society, some point in the structure where 0:39:48.085,0:39:54.458 the power shifts a little bit and I'm wondering how we as ants, worker ants, army ants, little people 0:39:54.458,0:39:58.829 what we can do to see a brighter day? 0:39:58.829,0:40:05.703 In some ways as gloomy as things look out there in some ways, I think the energy 0:40:05.703,0:40:10.574 of the 60's and the energy of that period really has diffused through the culture 0:40:10.574,0:40:19.025 and it is working it's way and it seems to me that in casual conversation today 0:40:19.025,0:40:26.019 I interacted with a wide range of people talking in many different locations, I think those 0:40:26.019,0:40:33.003 attitudes are changing, that there is a greater acceptance of this and I think the ways of 0:40:33.003,0:40:38.669 specially with this kind of, look at the little bit of reports I've seen around this conference 0:40:38.669,0:40:47.077 or the reports I've seen on recent articles about the therapeutic use of psychedelics, there's a different tone than was before 0:40:47.077,0:40:56.042 I see Rick's nodding his head. I think that's true, so I am optimistic. I don't know if we're at a tipping point 0:40:56.042,0:41:01.192 but I think we're moving in the direction of it 0:41:01.192,0:41:08.499 Andrew, I used to know you years ago back in the days of hemperalism in front of the LA federal building 0:41:08.499,0:41:13.027 And in honor of Jack Herer's death yesterday, I wanna to 0:41:13.027,0:41:16.874 Yes I just heard that he died yesterday morning 0:41:16.874,0:41:21.612 yes he died yesterday morning at 11 a.m. and in honor of that I wanna to ask you your opinion 0:41:21.612,0:41:29.653 of Rick Simpson cancer treatment oil as well as Dr. Malamides research on using THC for 0:41:29.653,0:41:34.859 reduction of tumor cells as well as protecting healthy cells 0:41:34.859,0:41:39.697 Actually I did not mention that in the things I talked about, the areas of promising research 0:41:39.697,0:41:48.038 I think the other great interesting area with cannabinoids is the possibility of both preventing and treating cancer 0:41:48.038,0:41:53.244 and that's something that's completely unexpected. These are recent findings 0:41:53.244,0:41:57.648 and even protective against lung cancer and serious forms of cancer 0:41:57.648,0:42:01.151 as well as by the way protection against dementia and memory loss 0:42:01.151,0:42:05.556 Who would had ever thought? 0:42:05.556,0:42:12.063 But there it is, so again, these are novel interesting, unexpected potentials 0:42:12.063,0:42:16.567 of cannabinoids that certainly should be explored 0:42:16.567,0:42:19.937 I wanna thank you for your speech 0:42:19.937,0:42:26.877 You've mentioned that psychedelics can have psychosomatic effects on real 0:42:26.877,0:42:33.551 physical problems for the body, such as multiple sclerosis. I was wondering if you could enumerate those 0:42:33.551,0:42:39.223 psychedelics and explain a little bit more about how they have those kinds of effects 0:42:39.223,0:42:44.361 All I can tell you is at the moment I have case reports, these are people that I knew, 0:42:44.361,0:42:50.901 that were patients of mine, people that I have met, heard from 0:42:50.901,0:42:57.007 in which I am satisfied of the validity of the reports, and this is something that should be studied 0:42:57.007,0:43:03.013 with the autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, the agents that were used were variable 0:43:03.013,0:43:09.219 but typically they were LSD, I think the most common, sometimes MDMA, sometimes mushrooms 0:43:09.219,0:43:17.227 sometimes the change happened instantaneously, as with my cat allergy or the sun tann thing 0:43:17.227,0:43:22.933 sometimes it was a change that happened after, over a period of weeks or months 0:43:22.933,0:43:30.374 sometimes with repeated use of the agent, but it seems as if 0:43:30.374,0:43:34.345 you know, I don't know the mechanism, I can only speculate 0:43:34.345,0:43:40.985 but I think that the ways that the mind interacts with the body 0:43:40.985,0:43:53.631 are infinite, complex, wonderful, that there are common ways in which the habitual patterns of the mind 0:43:53.631,0:44:01.005 or the habitual patterns of the perception, get in the way of that healing mechanism that I 0:44:01.005,0:44:05.709 talked about in the beginning of the talk 0:44:05.709,0:44:08.779 Hello Doctor it's great to have you here 0:44:08.779,0:44:14.318 My question is, you said there is so much focus 0:44:14.318,0:44:22.076 on the healing aspects of these medicines, but very little to the preventive aspects of it 0:44:22.076,0:44:27.765 Also, going beyond it, to a health optimization 0:44:27.765,0:44:38.409 a lot of people I know who are using psychedelics are yoguis, movement specialists, who are some of the healthiest people I know 0:44:38.409,0:44:41.879 Albert Hofmann for example, lived over a 100 0:44:41.879,0:44:45.349 and attributed that to regular use of LSD 0:44:45.349,0:44:49.753 That's probably something we should not be widely talking about 0:44:49.753,0:44:53.524 at the time when we are trying to produce a cultural change 0:44:53.524,0:45:00.564 I agree with you, I think that's true, I think we all have seen that, we all know people that use psychedelics that way 0:45:00.564,0:45:07.004 I think that many people that I know who have been involved in the psychedelic world 0:45:07.004,0:45:14.178 feel that way. I'm concerned about advertising that widely. I think at the moment 0:45:14.178,0:45:18.115 we should concentrate more on the therapeutic potentials that I talked about 0:45:18.115,0:45:22.686 but I think that's tremendously interesting. I don't think that this culture is yet ready to hear about 0:45:22.686,0:45:33.697 health optimization through regular use of psychedelics 0:45:33.697,0:45:36.767 What prompted you to discover a weilii? 0:45:36.767,0:45:39.087 What prompted you to discover a weilii? 0:45:39.087,0:45:42.074 I did not discover the Psilocybe weilii 0:45:42.074,0:45:49.088 It was discovered by a man in Georgia and the mushroom was named for me by my friend Paul Stamets 0:45:49.088,0:45:59.456 So you don't name things for yourself in science and I was very delighted by that 0:45:59.456,0:46:07.164 but I had nothing to do with this discovery, but I'm very happy. By the way, I don't know 0:46:07.164,0:46:19.376 if you know that the word psilocybe in greek it means bald head, so that seems appropriate 0:46:19.376,0:46:28.018 Dr. Weil, I read an article maybe in Psychopharmacology in some time the past 12 months 0:46:28.018,0:46:35.058 which was concerning the existence of a polymorphism for the protein which produces monoaminoxidase 0:46:35.058,0:46:42.266 and, stated briefly, two forms of MAO one of which is more active than the other 0:46:42.266,0:46:49.339 Individuals who have the less active form are significantly more susceptible to the placebo effect 0:46:49.339,0:46:56.814 An what I'm wondering is whetter the use of monoaminoxidase inhibition in ayahuasca is 0:46:56.814,0:47:02.219 in some way modulating one's susceptibility to the placebo effect 0:47:02.219,0:47:05.756 I'm not familiar with that research, I'll look it up, that's interesting 0:47:05.756,0:47:10.627 and if so, what you say is certainly a possibility, very interesting 0:47:10.627,0:47:14.698 I am a great believer in biochemical individuality 0:47:14.698,0:47:20.537 and that's something that's absolutely ignored in conventional pharmacotherapeutics 0:47:20.537,0:47:27.477 and something that people that use drugs, people that dispense drugs to others should be very aware of 0:47:27.477,0:47:33.584 These wide range reactions, some of which is based on differential ability to metabolize 0:47:33.584,0:47:43.193 pharmacological agents. Very nice idea, I'll check it out 0:47:43.193,0:47:47.631 Dr., this is a question that comes from a little bit of personal experience 0:47:47.631,0:47:54.872 are you aware of any studies regarding the use of tryptamine psychedelics or cannabinoids 0:47:54.872,0:48:01.078 causing physical pain in people who take these compounds 0:48:01.078,0:48:05.549 Acutely at the time that they take them or over time? 0:48:05.549,0:48:06.095 During the session, for example 0:48:06.095,0:48:10.354 the personal experience I had was that I took LSD 0:48:10.354,0:48:14.024 and this is a few months after a joint surgery and 0:48:14.024,0:48:18.962 I sort of had that same feeling of pain that my shoulder was dislocating - Ah - and 0:48:18.962,0:48:25.502 even though, according to my ortho doctor it's completely stable, but I 0:48:25.502,0:48:29.339 could saw the same exact pain sensation of it's sliding out of it's socket 0:48:29.339,0:48:31.975 but it never actually happened 0:48:31.975,0:48:37.948 I have seen occasional people who have experiences like that but I'm not sure 0:48:37.948,0:48:42.786 how I would interpret them. Whether that's just that you became aware of a body memory 0:48:42.786,0:48:49.526 and I think one of the potentials of psychedelics is to help people bring into consciousness 0:48:49.526,0:48:54.932 memories, often painful memories, that have been stored in the musculature of the body 0:48:54.932,0:49:02.205 so that's a possibility 0:49:02.205,0:49:08.245 So, my question comes from second hand experience. It's about friends who are 0:49:08.245,0:49:12.983 suffering from prolonged persistence state of disorder of hallucinations 0:49:12.983,0:49:13.884 Hum-hum 0:49:13.884,0:49:18.655 I've read that the best treatment that is know of is reassuring the person because it can 0:49:18.655,0:49:23.393 go away, but they think they're still experiencing it, than it becomes a vicious cycle 0:49:23.393,0:49:26.763 Are there any new developments in that? Besides antipsychosis drugs? 0:49:26.763,0:49:33.704 I'm really not the person to ask about that. If you're talking about the general category of flashbacks 0:49:33.704,0:49:40.277 I think the less attention paid to it the better, and then they tend to go away 0:49:40.277,0:49:43.814 These are normal experiences that people have 0:49:43.814,0:49:50.887 If the drug experience was associated with anxiety, then having a memory of it can trigger anxiety 0:49:50.887,0:49:54.057 and then if you hear that this indicates brain damage 0:49:54.057,0:49:56.927 you can imagine that being a vicious cycle of anxiety 0:49:56.927,0:50:01.698 So, I always doubted that by just reassuring people that these are not significant will make it go away on their own 0:50:01.698,0:50:05.168 Thanks very much for your enthusiasm and commonness, and I think part 0:50:05.168,0:50:08.638 of the commonness, you sound sort of apolitical 0:50:08.638,0:50:13.977 but I invite you for a minute to consider the politics, let's say of 0:50:13.977,0:50:20.684 the possibility of California in the legalization of Marijuana 0:50:20.684,0:50:30.193 It almost is because the taxation issue is almost, this could be a possibility and we might have 0:50:30.193,0:50:34.431 legalized marijuana here before we have legal gameness 0:50:34.431,0:50:39.503 or single pair healthcare, amazing it, no? 0:50:39.503,0:50:41.538 Amazing 0:50:41.538,0:50:45.375 I have not been apolitical in my writings or speaking 0:50:45.375,0:50:48.345 and those of you who know my book "From chocolate to morphine" 0:50:48.345,0:50:54.017 The first sentence of that book is that wars against drugs are always lost 0:50:54.017,0:51:01.892 and the strong argument of it is that the criminal law is not an effective and appropriate way 0:51:01.892,0:51:06.163 to try to influence people's consumption of psychoactive drugs 0:51:06.163,0:51:08.465 That's the bottom line. If we have to 0:51:08.465,0:51:13.067 - applause - 0:51:13.067,0:51:20.177 How we get ourselves away from that, I don't know. There has to be a commitment 0:51:20.177,0:51:26.616 from back away from dependence on criminal law as the method of dealing with this 0:51:26.616,0:51:32.489 and that whole superstructure of law has to be dismantled and I would imagine that has to be done 0:51:32.489,0:51:39.996 in a peace meal fashion over time. Starting with the decriminalization of marijuana 0:51:39.996,0:51:44.768 or the legalization of it in appropriate amounts and finding other ways to regulate it 0:51:44.768,0:51:48.438 and eventually extending that to all other substances, and it doesn't work, 0:51:48.438,0:51:52.709 it creates immense damage, and another change that's happening in the world today 0:51:52.709,0:51:56.078 maybe correlated with this opening that we are seeing with psychedelic research 0:51:56.078,0:52:03.587 it's very interesting that there have been heads of state who have said the call for legalization of all drugs 0:52:03.587,0:52:09.126 because that they see that the damage to our societies and current system is too great 0:52:09.126,0:52:15.465 So, it's no just here in California, it's also in Mexico and some south-american countries 0:52:15.465,0:52:19.069 so it will be very interesting to watch that trend 0:52:19.069,0:52:26.376 I wanna to ask actually about the defensive education of our castes in 0:52:26.376,0:52:33.015 the food industry I think that it's been difficult to implement a ban let alone the legal issues 0:52:33.015,0:52:38.355 however I have noticed that heightened awareness and increased sensation of taste has 0:52:38.355,0:52:41.625 helped educate me a great deal about food 0:52:41.625,0:52:47.097 I've been a huge fan of the core of your work from way back to the present day 0:52:47.097,0:52:55.005 could you talk more about the connection between drug to food and medicinal diet in general? 0:52:55.005,0:53:01.978 That's a big question but just looking at the food issue, we are in big trouble with food in this country 0:53:01.978,0:53:06.883 and the only way that we're gonna get out of it is if there is a collective effort to change things 0:53:06.883,0:53:11.788 And that means that the government, private sector and individuals all have to take responsibility here 0:53:11.788,0:53:16.993 you cannot have a government telling us that we should eat better 0:53:16.993,0:53:23.002 and at the same time insuring that the cheapest calories out there are all the horrible stuff made 0:53:23.002,0:53:29.873 with refined soy bean oil and corn syrup, and it's cheap because the federal government artificially drives down the prices 0:53:29.873,0:53:32.375 of those ingredients by subsidizing corn 0:53:32.375,0:53:34.911 And there are no subsidies for fruits and vegetables 0:53:34.911,0:53:37.781 which are the most expensive things you find in stores 0:53:37.781,0:53:45.021 applause 0:53:45.021,0:53:49.096 and are full of health protective elements and are simply out of the reach of most people who 0:53:49.096,0:53:54.331 are poor in this country, including on indian reservations and the inner cities 0:53:54.331,0:53:58.835 You cannot have these big food manufacturers go around freely 0:53:58.835,0:54:03.139 making these products attractive to kids through advertising 0:54:03.139,0:54:07.344 So if we're serious about that it's gonna take changes in those areas 0:54:07.344,0:54:14.417 I think it's a huge problem and something we're gonna be forced to come to grips with 0:54:14.417,0:54:20.357 because the obesity epidemic and the type II diabetes epidemic coming right up behind it 0:54:20.357,0:54:25.061 have the potential to just take us down as a society 0:54:25.061,0:54:26.363 Thank you very much for coming 0:54:26.363,0:54:30.867 In some of your writings you describe the natural form of MDMA 0:54:30.867,0:54:34.938 and I can't remember what dose herbs were, and they were a molecule off 0:54:34.938,0:54:36.306 and I wonder if you could say 0:54:36.306,0:54:41.678 I don't think there is a natural form of MDMA. It's a semisynthetic compound 0:54:41.678,0:54:46.182 and there are various starting materials that 0:54:46.182,0:54:54.057 can be used, one is a compound called safrol, which is a natural constituent of sassafraz root 0:54:54.057,0:55:00.497 MDMA has a peculiar chemical structure called a methylene dioxide bridge which 0:55:00.497,0:55:06.087 is a nightmare to synthesize. And so, when chemists wanna make a structure 0:55:06.087,0:55:11.408 that the synthesis of which would be way too costly, time consuming 0:55:11.408,0:55:16.079 you look in nature to try to find that structure and you build on it 0:55:16.079,0:55:21.418 I remember a synthetic chemist once telling me when you want a methylene dioxide bridge 0:55:21.418,0:55:23.953 you go to god 0:55:23.953,0:55:29.526 So, these plants that contains starting materials that have that are really not psychoactive 0:55:29.526,0:55:33.083 So, I don't know anything out there in the natural world or herbal world that I would call 0:55:33.083,0:55:37.667 natural MDMA 0:55:37.667,0:55:42.939 Andy, on behalf of all the psychedelic science we appreciate you coming out today 0:55:42.939,0:55:44.014 My pleasure 0:55:44.014,9:59:59.000 applause