1 00:00:01,267 --> 00:00:06,339 MAPS - Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies 2 00:00:06,339 --> 00:00:07,507 "Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century" 3 00:00:07,507 --> 00:00:12,445 Presented by MAPS in collaboration with: the Heffter Research Institute, The Counsil on Spiritual Practices & The Beckeley Foundation 4 00:00:12,445 --> 00:00:25,592 Sponsor a video from Psychedelic Science in the 21st Century and have your name appear here. 5 00:00:25,592 --> 00:00:32,832 Andrew Weil M.D. The future of Psychedelic and Medical Marijuana Research 6 00:00:32,832 --> 00:00:34,267 Hello, good afternoon 7 00:00:34,267 --> 00:00:37,067 and hi to all you folks in far away Rhode Island 8 00:00:37,067 --> 00:00:41,908 It's a pleasure to be here. I thought I was gonna be here virtually, 9 00:00:41,908 --> 00:00:47,038 but Rick Doblin arranged to get me a ride down from 10 00:00:47,038 --> 00:00:50,483 St. Rafael and a ride back to the San Francisco Airport immediately after my talk 11 00:00:50,483 --> 00:00:52,986 so I'm happy to be here in person 12 00:00:52,986 --> 00:00:55,889 Now, I should say at the beggining that I'm 13 00:00:55,889 --> 00:00:58,625 in some ways not the best person to give you any 14 00:00:58,625 --> 00:01:02,562 prognostications or thoughts about where things are going because 15 00:01:02,562 --> 00:01:07,434 when I did human esperiments with marijuana in 1968 16 00:01:07,434 --> 00:01:11,171 I thought that marijuana would be legalized in ten years 17 00:01:11,171 --> 00:01:17,844 I thought it was just a matter of getting truthfull information out to people because the 18 00:01:17,844 --> 00:01:21,915 laws and attitudes were based on such wrong assumptions 19 00:01:21,915 --> 00:01:24,918 about marijuana and about psychedelics 20 00:01:24,918 --> 00:01:27,052 but I quickly learned that's not the case 21 00:01:27,052 --> 00:01:31,858 In fact people believe what they wanna believe and don't believe what they don't want to 22 00:01:31,858 --> 00:01:34,928 despite what the facts are and what the evidence are 23 00:01:34,928 --> 00:01:40,133 and I've seen the same thing again in trying to change the medical paradigm 24 00:01:40,133 --> 00:01:42,735 and trying to change medical education 25 00:01:42,735 --> 00:01:47,034 there are many people that believe that the way to change things 26 00:01:47,034 --> 00:01:49,476 is by doing research and producing data 27 00:01:49,476 --> 00:01:51,911 I can tell you in medicine that's not the case 28 00:01:51,911 --> 00:01:56,116 we even have very good data showing that doctors don't change their practices 29 00:01:56,116 --> 00:02:01,387 based on the results of randomized control trials 30 00:02:01,387 --> 00:02:07,066 The Integrative Medicine center that I founded and directed in the Arizona 31 00:02:07,066 --> 00:02:10,697 in the University of Arizona College of Medicine 32 00:02:10,697 --> 00:02:13,566 is now a center of excellence at the University of Arizona 33 00:02:13,566 --> 00:02:17,003 and a world leader in training physicians and health professionals 34 00:02:17,003 --> 00:02:18,371 in a new model of medicine 35 00:02:18,371 --> 00:02:20,707 I'll talk to you about that in a moment 36 00:02:20,707 --> 00:02:24,777 and the reason that we were able to do this was the support of one man 37 00:02:24,777 --> 00:02:27,814 Jim Dolan who was the dean of the college of medicine 38 00:02:27,814 --> 00:02:33,062 who was the first medical school dean to go out and support something of this kind 39 00:02:33,062 --> 00:02:35,655 he retired a few years ago and said that 40 00:02:35,655 --> 00:02:38,358 his proudest accomplishment was the Integrative Medicine Center 41 00:02:38,358 --> 00:02:42,896 and he also said that, and I think this is a lesson for all of us 42 00:02:42,896 --> 00:02:49,536 the way doctors and medical scientists react to new information 43 00:02:49,536 --> 00:02:52,572 is more a function of it's source than it's content 44 00:02:52,572 --> 00:02:56,543 that if information comes from an unfamiliar source the instinctive reaction is 45 00:02:56,543 --> 00:02:59,646 one of defensiveness, exclusion and reaction 46 00:02:59,646 --> 00:03:05,251 against it. And the example that he liked to use, which I think is very apt 47 00:03:05,251 --> 00:03:09,255 is that the observation that aspirin was 48 00:03:09,255 --> 00:03:12,358 an anticoagulant and might be useful on preventing heart attacks 49 00:03:12,358 --> 00:03:15,128 was first made on the 1950's 50 00:03:15,128 --> 00:03:17,063 by a general practitioner in southern California 51 00:03:17,063 --> 00:03:20,266 this was the time when tonsillectomy was universal 52 00:03:20,266 --> 00:03:23,097 you couldn't make it through adolescence with your tonsils and adenoids 53 00:03:23,097 --> 00:03:26,539 if you were in a middle class family 54 00:03:26,539 --> 00:03:32,412 and it was common practice to give kids aspergon to chew, a chewable form of aspirin 55 00:03:32,412 --> 00:03:38,051 and this doctor noticed that kids that chewed aspergon had more and longer bleeding than kids who didn't 56 00:03:38,051 --> 00:03:40,954 so he though maybe aspirin is a blood thinner and he began 57 00:03:40,954 --> 00:03:45,858 taking it himself and noticed that when he cut himself shaving that the cuts bled longer 58 00:03:45,858 --> 00:03:51,097 so he gave this to a number of his patients, satisfied himself that this was a reasonable 59 00:03:51,097 --> 00:03:54,534 hypothesis, which he published on a journal of general practice 60 00:03:54,534 --> 00:03:59,105 with the suggestion that aspirin might be usefull as a preventer for heart attacks 61 00:03:59,105 --> 00:04:04,811 it took 30 years for cardiologists to recognize the validity of that hypothesis 62 00:04:04,811 --> 00:04:12,318 and test it. The reason was that it was proposed by a general practitioner, not by a cardiologist 63 00:04:12,318 --> 00:04:15,355 and was published in a Journal that cardiologists don't think much of 64 00:04:15,355 --> 00:04:20,159 now that's within the realm of medicine, imagine when information about these things 65 00:04:20,159 --> 00:04:22,829 comes from more distant and more foreign sources 66 00:04:22,829 --> 00:04:27,267 like shamans in exotic cultures 67 00:04:27,267 --> 00:04:30,937 And I think this is what we really have to understand 68 00:04:30,937 --> 00:04:34,641 that the reason that the drugs that we're interested in 69 00:04:34,641 --> 00:04:37,031 provokes so much controversy 70 00:04:37,031 --> 00:04:39,779 the reason that they've stimulated the kind of backlash that 71 00:04:39,779 --> 00:04:43,316 has forded research and clinical use 72 00:04:43,316 --> 00:04:47,042 is fundamentally emotional and irrational 73 00:04:47,042 --> 00:04:53,086 it's not something you can deal with through argument and scientific information 74 00:04:53,086 --> 00:04:57,363 It's a matter of changing the culture and attitudes 75 00:04:57,363 --> 00:05:04,007 The problem with marijuana is that it has still not 76 00:05:04,007 --> 00:05:07,074 outgrown its associations in this culture 77 00:05:07,074 --> 00:05:14,213 with ousiders, deviants, subcultures that are not considered part of the mainstream 78 00:05:14,213 --> 00:05:18,084 it entered north american society through two routes 79 00:05:18,084 --> 00:05:22,622 through black jazz musicians in the south, New Orleans 80 00:05:22,622 --> 00:05:26,292 through mexican migrant workers that came in through the southern border 81 00:05:26,292 --> 00:05:32,465 in the 1950's it was associated with beatniks 82 00:05:32,465 --> 00:05:36,135 then in the 60's with this massive counterculture that grew up 83 00:05:36,135 --> 00:05:44,077 it's those associations of marijuana that cause mainstream America to react against it 84 00:05:44,077 --> 00:05:47,447 and this continues to persist 85 00:05:47,447 --> 00:05:52,485 I'm delighted to see that there is now opening in the world of psychedelic research 86 00:05:52,485 --> 00:05:54,354 I mean something clearly has changed there 87 00:05:54,354 --> 00:05:56,756 it hasn't yet changed with marijuana 88 00:05:56,756 --> 00:05:59,392 that's unfortunate. I'm very disappointed that our president 89 00:05:59,392 --> 00:06:06,899 has not done more to support the change in the medical marijuana list 90 00:06:06,899 --> 00:06:09,802 applause 91 00:06:09,802 --> 00:06:12,305 but we have an opening at the moment with psychedelics which 92 00:06:12,305 --> 00:06:18,144 which is both surprising, welcome, is something we wanna work with and 93 00:06:18,144 --> 00:06:24,217 and I'm very pleased to see the kinds of research that have been done 94 00:06:24,217 --> 00:06:30,022 I also have to tell you that over the years as I've looked at the potentials and dangers 95 00:06:30,022 --> 00:06:34,026 of psychedelic drugs and their possibilities for clinical applications 96 00:06:34,026 --> 00:06:37,053 I've been somewhat puzzled by several things about it 97 00:06:37,053 --> 00:06:40,266 first of all, in purely medical terms 98 00:06:40,266 --> 00:06:43,302 these drugs, specially the indol psychedelics 99 00:06:43,302 --> 00:06:50,476 have probably the least toxicity of any pharmacological agents that we now 100 00:06:50,476 --> 00:06:57,075 as you know, there have been no deaths reported with LSD, directly caused by it's 101 00:06:57,075 --> 00:07:04,724 pharmacological action, except in one elephant. I'm sure most of you know that horrible story 102 00:07:04,724 --> 00:07:06,325 if not you can look it up 103 00:07:06,325 --> 00:07:13,966 The striking absence of toxicity of these agents 104 00:07:13,966 --> 00:07:23,743 combined with their tremendous power to alter perception, and the mind-body access 105 00:07:23,743 --> 00:07:26,446 certainly recommends them for research in clinical use 106 00:07:26,446 --> 00:07:30,095 but I have to tell you that I've been puzzled, by the way I should say that the other category of 107 00:07:30,095 --> 00:07:33,853 psychedelics, the phenetilamines, have somewhat greater toxicity 108 00:07:33,853 --> 00:07:37,089 because of their adrenergic stimulant properties 109 00:07:37,089 --> 00:07:41,026 that puts them into a somewhat different class, but still these are quite safe agents 110 00:07:41,026 --> 00:07:47,066 compared to most of the drugs that are routinely prescribed in medicine today 111 00:07:47,066 --> 00:07:53,773 What puzzles me about psychedelic research over the years 112 00:07:53,773 --> 00:07:56,509 in contrast with my own experience with them 113 00:07:56,509 --> 00:08:02,014 is that almost all of it has focused on psychological potentials 114 00:08:02,014 --> 00:08:10,289 initially with things like helping people with end-of-life issues, or with PTSD 115 00:08:10,289 --> 00:08:18,064 my interest has always been in what we call the psychosomatic potential of these drugs 116 00:08:18,064 --> 00:08:22,034 that is their potential to change bodily processes 117 00:08:22,034 --> 00:08:28,441 and physical disease as a result of, or taking advantage of the mind-body connection 118 00:08:28,441 --> 00:08:35,515 so, let me say a word about integrative medicine and the philosophy of medicine that I teach 119 00:08:35,515 --> 00:08:37,045 and have always practiced 120 00:08:37,045 --> 00:08:40,052 in the popular mind integrative medicine is 121 00:08:40,052 --> 00:08:43,389 the intelligent combination of conventional and alternative medicine, 122 00:08:43,389 --> 00:08:49,962 but really that's a very narrow definition of it, the much broader way of looking at it 123 00:08:49,962 --> 00:08:55,301 which I firmly believe represents the future of medicine and a solution to our current health-care crisis 124 00:08:55,301 --> 00:09:04,677 it's working fore some very big changes in conventional medical thinking 125 00:09:04,677 --> 00:09:08,614 the first is to restore the focus of medicine on the health and healing 126 00:09:08,614 --> 00:09:14,887 and to acknowledge, respect and take advantage of the human organism tremendous 127 00:09:14,887 --> 00:09:20,493 potential for self-diagnosis and self-regulation, regeneration, repair, adaptation 128 00:09:20,493 --> 00:09:24,597 to me that's the most wonderful feature of human biology, that our 129 00:09:24,597 --> 00:09:30,536 bodies have the ability to know when they have suffered injury or damage 130 00:09:30,536 --> 00:09:34,941 to repair themselves, and this is not mystical, this is biology 131 00:09:34,941 --> 00:09:39,445 you can observe this on any level of biological organization, from DNA on up 132 00:09:39,445 --> 00:09:44,951 the DNA is a huge macromolecule that's on the border between life and non-life 133 00:09:44,951 --> 00:09:51,057 has the potential within it to know when it has been injured by an ultraviolet ray 134 00:09:51,057 --> 00:09:55,161 and immediately begins to elaborate specific repair enzimes to repair the damage 135 00:09:55,161 --> 00:10:01,467 and that same potential you can see whetter you look to organeles, cells, tissues, organs and 136 00:10:01,467 --> 00:10:04,067 the whole organism, and that's where good medicine should start 137 00:10:04,067 --> 00:10:09,075 The second broad principle of integrative medicine is our insistence that 138 00:10:09,075 --> 00:10:11,544 human beings are more than physical bodies 139 00:10:11,544 --> 00:10:13,412 we are also mental-emotional beings 140 00:10:13,412 --> 00:10:15,481 spiritual entities, community members 141 00:10:15,481 --> 00:10:21,187 those other dimensions of human life are incredibly relevant to understanding health and illness 142 00:10:21,187 --> 00:10:25,091 if you cut them of and only look at the physical body 143 00:10:25,091 --> 00:10:32,832 not only do you cut yourself of from an understanding of the real causes of health and illness 144 00:10:32,832 --> 00:10:35,534 but you also limit your treatment interventions 145 00:10:35,534 --> 00:10:39,605 to those directed at the physical body which are the ones that tend to be most expensive and 146 00:10:39,605 --> 00:10:44,877 most invasive and most productive of harm and often quite limited in their ability to change 147 00:10:44,877 --> 00:10:49,548 physical conditions. The third principle of integrative medicine is that 148 00:10:49,548 --> 00:10:52,652 we pay attention to all aspects of lifestyle 149 00:10:52,652 --> 00:10:54,153 to understand health and illness 150 00:10:54,153 --> 00:11:01,494 and I think this is where integrative medicine really shines in delivering true preventive care 151 00:11:01,494 --> 00:11:05,798 and health promotion, something that's very relevant to the health-care debate 152 00:11:05,798 --> 00:11:08,034 that we're looking through 153 00:11:08,034 --> 00:11:14,273 and also integrative medicine places great emphasis in the practitioner-patient relationship 154 00:11:14,273 --> 00:11:19,178 which has suffered horribly in the present era for-profit medicine 155 00:11:19,178 --> 00:11:22,782 throughout history and in most cultures 156 00:11:22,782 --> 00:11:26,852 that relationship has been recognized as special, even sacred 157 00:11:26,852 --> 00:11:31,657 something magical can happen when a medically trained person 158 00:11:31,657 --> 00:11:35,594 sits with a patient and simply allows that person to tell their story 159 00:11:35,594 --> 00:11:41,001 that alone can initiate a healing response before any specific treatment suggestions are given 160 00:11:41,001 --> 00:11:46,839 and also over the years that has been the source of the greatest emotional reward of practicing medicine 161 00:11:46,839 --> 00:11:52,778 and it's complete undermining in the era of manage caring for-profit medicine 162 00:11:52,778 --> 00:11:56,749 is one reason why so many physicians today are unhappy and so many are leaving 163 00:11:56,749 --> 00:11:58,818 or have left the practice of medicine 164 00:11:58,818 --> 00:12:03,456 and then finally integrative medicine is willing to look at all therapeutic options out there 165 00:12:03,456 --> 00:12:07,793 specially those that don't cause harm and show reasonable evidence of efficacy 166 00:12:07,793 --> 00:12:11,764 there's so much that's not even on our radar screen of conventional medicine that we can bring in 167 00:12:11,764 --> 00:12:16,235 among them the targeted use of psychedelic therapy 168 00:12:16,235 --> 00:12:20,673 Now, what has puzzled me in looking at 169 00:12:20,673 --> 00:12:26,245 this focus of psychedelic research on the psychological 170 00:12:26,245 --> 00:12:28,481 and the omission of the physical 171 00:12:28,481 --> 00:12:34,032 is that in my own experience, both in my personal life and working with patients 172 00:12:34,032 --> 00:12:39,792 and discussing this with great many users of psychedelics 173 00:12:39,792 --> 00:12:46,398 I have observed, seen, experienced, collected many individual case reports of 174 00:12:46,398 --> 00:12:51,837 quite spectacular healing reactions of serious diseases 175 00:12:51,837 --> 00:12:58,043 and these healing reactions were catalysed by a change in perception 176 00:12:58,043 --> 00:13:06,819 that was triggered by a psychedelic experience, sometimes deliberately by a 177 00:13:06,819 --> 00:13:09,655 therapist who guided the session in a certain direction 178 00:13:09,655 --> 00:13:11,357 sometimes quite fortuitously 179 00:13:11,357 --> 00:13:19,031 and I'll just give you a couple of examples of what I mean 180 00:13:19,031 --> 00:13:22,868 the first one is something that I have published 181 00:13:22,868 --> 00:13:29,675 some years ago 60 minutes did an in-depth piece on me which was supposed to be friendly and wasn't 182 00:13:29,675 --> 00:13:37,917 and I told the interviewer this story which was incidental and in three days of interviewing about integrative medicine 183 00:13:37,917 --> 00:13:43,255 and they sent out a press release with this as the headline, this was the story that they used so 184 00:13:43,255 --> 00:13:49,061 and the story was that Dr. Weil claims that LSD cured his cat allergies 185 00:13:49,061 --> 00:13:52,665 all right 186 00:13:52,665 --> 00:13:59,872 it did, and here's the story 187 00:13:59,872 --> 00:14:07,098 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 188 00:14:07,098 --> 00:14:14,687 I was allergic for a lot of my life, and one of the allergies I had was to cats and 189 00:14:14,687 --> 00:14:22,995 whenever a cat got near me my eyes would itch, my nose would run, if I touched the cat 190 00:14:22,995 --> 00:14:26,732 it's got much worse and if a cat licked me I've got hives where it licked me 191 00:14:26,732 --> 00:14:31,036 I had in my mind a mindset that I was allergic to cats and therefore 192 00:14:31,036 --> 00:14:33,973 I didn't want them in my presence, and if a cat came near me 193 00:14:33,973 --> 00:14:40,045 I would either push it away or withdraw myself, so there was a deep 194 00:14:40,045 --> 00:14:45,015 ingrained defensiveness in my interactions with cats 195 00:14:45,015 --> 00:14:49,989 one day, when I was 28, and was making a lot of changes in my life 196 00:14:49,989 --> 00:14:55,261 I took LSD with some friends, I was living in a countryside in Virginia, it was beautiful springday 197 00:14:55,261 --> 00:15:00,099 I was in a terrific space, everything was wonderful, the world was magical 198 00:15:00,099 --> 00:15:04,603 everything was alive, and into this scene a cat bounded 199 00:15:04,603 --> 00:15:13,545 and jumped in my lap and I had a split-second of the habitual reaction and 200 00:15:13,545 --> 00:15:19,752 suddenly I decided this was silly, why did I have to do this? 201 00:15:19,752 --> 00:15:25,858 so I started petting the cat, playing with the cat, the cat licked me, I had no reaction to the cat 202 00:15:25,858 --> 00:15:29,228 I have never had a reaction with cats since! 203 00:15:29,228 --> 00:15:34,466 and that was almost fourty years ago 204 00:15:34,466 --> 00:15:36,669 applause 205 00:15:36,669 --> 00:15:39,038 Now, that's pretty spectacular 206 00:15:39,038 --> 00:15:42,474 As a physician I would love to know what happened there 207 00:15:42,474 --> 00:15:46,378 and I would love to know how to make that happen in another people 208 00:15:46,378 --> 00:15:50,382 Anyway, I'll tell you one that's even more spectacular which I haven't written about 209 00:15:50,382 --> 00:15:56,288 and this was roughly in the same time period. Another mindset that I had grown up with all my life 210 00:15:56,288 --> 00:16:00,125 was that I had fair skin and that I couldn't get tann 211 00:16:00,125 --> 00:16:02,962 and I was always told this, you have fair skin 212 00:16:02,962 --> 00:16:08,634 so, whenever I went to the beach my experience was a second degree sunburn 213 00:16:08,634 --> 00:16:12,538 completely red and then going home and putting nazimo all over my body 214 00:16:12,538 --> 00:16:15,024 and then sheets of skin would peel off several days later 215 00:16:15,024 --> 00:16:20,746 that was how I reacted to the sun and I had accepted in my mind this is the way I react to the sun 216 00:16:20,746 --> 00:16:26,118 so also in this same period when I was doing this experiments, I guess I was also 28 and 217 00:16:26,118 --> 00:16:31,123 this was also in Virginia and another time I took LSD and there was a wonderful space 218 00:16:31,123 --> 00:16:37,529 and I was running around without any clothes on and I was decided that it was such a nice day 219 00:16:37,529 --> 00:16:41,367 I was going to lie out in the sun, and I remember thinking 220 00:16:41,367 --> 00:16:44,003 why should I think that the sun is my enemy? 221 00:16:44,003 --> 00:16:48,054 why can't I simply enjoy the sun and be in it 222 00:16:48,054 --> 00:16:50,376 I got tann instantly! 223 00:16:50,376 --> 00:16:52,911 and I have ever since 224 00:16:52,911 --> 00:16:56,648 I now live in southern Arizona, I've spent 30 years in the desert 225 00:16:56,648 --> 00:17:02,454 I develop wonderful tanns, I've never had sunburns like that. An instant change 226 00:17:02,454 --> 00:17:07,493 in a pattern that had lasted 28 years, that's pretty spectacular 227 00:17:07,493 --> 00:17:10,396 How did that happen? What's the mechanism of this? 228 00:17:10,396 --> 00:17:17,077 I don't think this is magic, it's wonderful, but there has to be a physiological mechanism for that 229 00:17:17,077 --> 00:17:23,709 which is in some ways, to me, a little more interesting and harder to understand than 230 00:17:23,709 --> 00:17:25,477 the disappearance of an allergic reaction 231 00:17:25,477 --> 00:17:32,384 Allergies come and go and I've always taught patients that allergies are learned reactions 232 00:17:32,384 --> 00:17:34,653 and anything that's learned can be unlearned 233 00:17:34,653 --> 00:17:37,322 and that to me is the most interesting thing about allergies 234 00:17:37,322 --> 00:17:43,195 There's very interesting stuff in the mind-body literature about allergies 235 00:17:43,195 --> 00:17:48,007 you can show a person who has a strong allergic reaction to roses 236 00:17:48,007 --> 00:17:52,237 a plastic rose and they'll have an allergic reaction 237 00:17:52,237 --> 00:17:58,243 so that shows that the higher brain is involved in this process 238 00:17:58,243 --> 00:18:03,649 and there may be many ways to produce these changes or to break that 239 00:18:03,649 --> 00:18:09,088 but the potential for psychedelics to be used in this way are great 240 00:18:09,088 --> 00:18:14,059 I can imagine in some era when psychedelics are available for medical use 241 00:18:14,059 --> 00:18:19,631 maybe you can open an allergy clinic and you can have ten structured sessions 242 00:18:19,631 --> 00:18:23,769 an on the first session a person would take an ordinary dose of one of these things 243 00:18:23,769 --> 00:18:28,373 and if necessary they could come back and each time the dose would be cut down 244 00:18:28,373 --> 00:18:30,509 until at the last session they wouldn't take anything 245 00:18:30,509 --> 00:18:39,451 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 246 00:18:39,451 --> 00:18:43,322 Now, even extending this further, I've also collected over the years 247 00:18:43,322 --> 00:18:48,393 some very dramatic cases in sum that I have been personally involved 248 00:18:48,393 --> 00:18:53,465 people with chronic autoimmune disorders, specially rheumathoid arthrithis, 249 00:18:53,465 --> 00:18:56,902 also lupus, also multiple sclerosis, 250 00:18:56,902 --> 00:18:59,271 in which the same kinds of things have happened, 251 00:18:59,271 --> 00:19:05,544 where there was a dramatic shift related to the psychedelic experience 252 00:19:05,544 --> 00:19:08,313 sometimes a single use, sometimes a multiple use 253 00:19:08,313 --> 00:19:11,035 in which the condition disappeared 254 00:19:11,035 --> 00:19:16,054 it seems to me, and I just can't imagine anything of greater interest 255 00:19:16,054 --> 00:19:20,058 and that puzzles me that researchers have not looked at this aspect of psychedelics 256 00:19:20,058 --> 00:19:27,266 and one thing that would be useful would be try to collect case reports of this kind 257 00:19:27,266 --> 00:19:31,027 So one thing that I would ask you and for you to ask your friends, if you know 258 00:19:31,027 --> 00:19:40,512 anyone that has had experiences of this sort, send them at MAPS for example, 259 00:19:40,512 --> 00:19:44,116 so we could begin to collect this kind of information in a systematic fashion 260 00:19:44,116 --> 00:19:49,621 and if we had a body of this kind of information it might inspire researchers in this area 261 00:19:49,621 --> 00:19:52,624 to begin thinking how they might set up experiments to do this 262 00:19:52,624 --> 00:19:56,662 That principle of integrative medicine that I've talked about 263 00:19:56,662 --> 00:20:04,102 we're not just physical bodies, we're also mental emotional beings, and spiritual entities and community members 264 00:20:04,102 --> 00:20:09,308 the meaning of that is that all disease, like all health 265 00:20:09,308 --> 00:20:15,981 is a matter of all of these factors being involved, and in any medical condition 266 00:20:15,981 --> 00:20:23,355 there is a possibility of using the mind-body connection, the emotional connection 267 00:20:23,355 --> 00:20:27,726 to change a disease process for the better 268 00:20:27,726 --> 00:20:35,002 We have lots of potential interventions to do that, there's hypnosis, there's guided imagery 269 00:20:35,002 --> 00:20:38,047 there are various forms of mindfulness meditation 270 00:20:38,047 --> 00:20:43,875 there's a whole fascinating area of neuroscience 271 00:20:43,875 --> 00:20:48,078 that's just come into being with the result of being able to visualize living brains 272 00:20:48,078 --> 00:20:55,921 an a lot of this have been inspired by the Dalai Lama and a new generation of neuroscientists 273 00:20:55,921 --> 00:21:03,128 who are looking at tibetan meditators and showing actual changes in brain activity 274 00:21:03,128 --> 00:21:07,366 and then thinking how can this be taught to other people 275 00:21:07,366 --> 00:21:16,475 I see this as a great horizon and frontier of medical research 276 00:21:16,475 --> 00:21:20,912 I've always taught that all diseases are psychosomatic 277 00:21:20,912 --> 00:21:26,285 but the problem is that word is so loaded that when we talk about psychosomatic conditions 278 00:21:26,285 --> 00:21:30,922 most people, specially patients, think you're telling them their diseases are unreal 279 00:21:30,922 --> 00:21:33,492 and that's not what psychosomatic means, the word just mean mind-body 280 00:21:33,492 --> 00:21:40,499 I've suggested maybe we should use the word somatopsychic, which doesn't have the same connotation 281 00:21:40,499 --> 00:21:48,106 but the fact is that's how it is and with many conditions we can totally neglect the possibility 282 00:21:48,106 --> 00:21:53,111 of trying to change things by manipulating the psychic compartment 283 00:21:53,111 --> 00:21:58,583 the psychedelic drugs, specially, are incredible tools for doing so 284 00:21:58,583 --> 00:22:04,222 now I think one of the great obstacles to psychedelic research in the past 285 00:22:04,222 --> 00:22:10,395 that complicated things, is that, as I'm sure all of you know 286 00:22:10,395 --> 00:22:17,469 the experiences people have with psychedelics are exquisitely dependent on non pharmacological factors 287 00:22:17,469 --> 00:22:22,941 they're dependent on people's expectations, set, and on the environment, 288 00:22:22,941 --> 00:22:26,111 in the broader sense the setting in which drugs are taken 289 00:22:26,111 --> 00:22:31,717 the initial people who did research with psychedelics 290 00:22:31,717 --> 00:22:37,689 and showed very positive changes, like Stan Grof, like Walter Pahnke 291 00:22:37,689 --> 00:22:41,293 these were people who understood from their own experiences 292 00:22:41,293 --> 00:22:47,999 the nature of these drugs, and their dependence on set and setting 293 00:22:47,999 --> 00:22:53,305 Their belief system and the way that they were able to structure the settings, 294 00:22:53,305 --> 00:22:55,841 the laboratory settings in which they did research 295 00:22:55,841 --> 00:22:58,543 shaped experiences in a certain direction 296 00:22:58,543 --> 00:23:01,078 other researches who did not have those experiences 297 00:23:01,078 --> 00:23:04,075 did not have that understanding, read the results of the research 298 00:23:04,075 --> 00:23:07,319 tried to reproduce them and didn't get the same results 299 00:23:07,319 --> 00:23:10,288 because they thought the drugs were magic bullets 300 00:23:10,288 --> 00:23:16,495 that the drug contains the experience that would automatically do the thing that's reported in the literature 301 00:23:16,495 --> 00:23:20,999 and when the results didn't come back that way, they said well, the drugs aren't any good 302 00:23:20,999 --> 00:23:29,007 So, apart from all the moralistic stuff and all the cultural irrationality 303 00:23:29,007 --> 00:23:36,615 that forded psychedelic research I think this is in a way even a greater stomping block 304 00:23:36,615 --> 00:23:44,089 because these drugs don't work in the way that the pharmacological agents most of researchers work with do 305 00:23:44,089 --> 00:23:53,064 The magic potential is not entirely in the pharmacological action 306 00:23:53,064 --> 00:23:55,567 and unless researchers understand this 307 00:23:55,567 --> 00:23:58,087 the likelihood of producing the kinds of positive changes 308 00:23:58,087 --> 00:24:03,575 that will get more people interested and may lead to a cultural change 309 00:24:03,575 --> 00:24:07,879 about the potential benefits of these drugs, this is not gonna be realised 310 00:24:07,879 --> 00:24:16,354 I wanna also say some words about marijuana, which is a very different beast form psychedelics 311 00:24:16,354 --> 00:24:20,659 this is not related chemically or pharmacologically to the psychedelics 312 00:24:20,659 --> 00:24:23,261 although it often travels with them in the same company 313 00:24:23,261 --> 00:24:27,265 but it's a completely different thing 314 00:24:27,265 --> 00:24:32,971 and it has it's own problems and difficulties 315 00:24:32,971 --> 00:24:40,212 cannabinoid chemistry is unique in nature, these substances are unlike 316 00:24:40,212 --> 00:24:43,949 really any other chemicals that we are familiar with 317 00:24:43,949 --> 00:24:50,655 one of the things that sets them apart from most drugs, both medical and psychoactive that we know 318 00:24:50,655 --> 00:24:52,924 is that they're fat soluble not water soluble 319 00:24:52,924 --> 00:24:59,631 that is a big problem, that means these drugs are not absorbed and distributed in the body 320 00:24:59,631 --> 00:25:04,402 in ways that we are familiar with. It's not easy to predict their metabolic fate and 321 00:25:04,402 --> 00:25:10,709 their pathways around the body because of their fat solubility 322 00:25:10,709 --> 00:25:17,082 another problem with marijuana is that there is extreme variation in individual sensitivity to it 323 00:25:17,082 --> 00:25:26,157 and that is very confounding for people who are looking for substances that produce predictable effects 324 00:25:26,157 --> 00:25:33,098 on a practical level, in looking at what's happening with medical marijuana around the country 325 00:25:33,098 --> 00:25:41,139 I think until there's a way of cleanly separating medical use from recreational use 326 00:25:41,139 --> 00:25:48,613 that it's going to be very difficult to have the medical profession accept marijuana as a therapeutic agent 327 00:25:48,613 --> 00:25:53,518 the way that marijuana is currently being dispensed in California 328 00:25:53,518 --> 00:25:56,154 and the way that most medical marijuana is being used 329 00:25:56,154 --> 00:26:00,959 there's a very fuzzy boundary between that and recreational use 330 00:26:00,959 --> 00:26:07,966 also I can't imagine most of my medical colleagues being comfortable with recommending 331 00:26:07,966 --> 00:26:12,571 a therapeutic agent that has to be consumed in the form of smoke to be inhaled 332 00:26:12,571 --> 00:26:14,172 That just doesn't work 333 00:26:14,172 --> 00:26:23,348 I would love to see a whole extract of cannabis that was available for medical use in a form 334 00:26:23,348 --> 00:26:26,851 that was more familiar to physicians and to pharmacists 335 00:26:26,851 --> 00:26:30,722 as I'm sure you may know there is such a form available in the UK 336 00:26:30,722 --> 00:26:34,926 called Sativex, this is a whole cannabis extract to be sprayed 337 00:26:34,926 --> 00:26:38,029 into the mouth under the tongue, it's an oral spray 338 00:26:38,029 --> 00:26:43,134 it looks like a medical preparation, it's packaged like a medical preparation, 339 00:26:43,134 --> 00:26:49,341 it would be accepted as a medical preparation, it's very annoying that it's not available here 340 00:26:49,341 --> 00:26:53,745 and this would be a great thing for people working in the area of medical marijuana to concentrate on 341 00:26:53,745 --> 00:27:00,885 an to work to make it available here. I think that would go a long way to increase acceptance of this agent 342 00:27:00,885 --> 00:27:10,462 with marijuana also the tremendous advantage of it and the reason for investigating it's clinical 343 00:27:10,462 --> 00:27:15,233 potentials is it's almost complete abscence of toxicity 344 00:27:15,233 --> 00:27:17,902 you can't kill people with marijuana 345 00:27:17,902 --> 00:27:21,094 there was I remember years ago seeing some experiments in cats 346 00:27:21,094 --> 00:27:27,312 which if you could extrapolate to humans would suggest that the letal dose 347 00:27:27,312 --> 00:27:36,187 might be a pound and a half of marijuana consumed orally at one time 348 00:27:36,187 --> 00:27:42,327 in pharmacology and medicine you calculate the safety of a drug with a quantity 349 00:27:42,327 --> 00:27:50,902 called the therapeutic ratio which is the ratio of the dose that begins to produce toxicicity to the dose that you want 350 00:27:50,902 --> 00:27:54,973 and for many drugs that we use in clinical practice that ratio is not that high 351 00:27:54,973 --> 00:28:00,078 two to three or four or five times the dose that is used to produce a therapeutic effect 352 00:28:00,078 --> 00:28:06,451 is enough to begin to cause toxicity. You can't calculate the therapeutic ratio for marijuana 353 00:28:06,451 --> 00:28:12,157 it's not calculable. So just for that reason alone we should be looking for ways to use it 354 00:28:12,157 --> 00:28:15,927 let alone the fact that throughout history there have been many people who 355 00:28:15,927 --> 00:28:22,233 have testified to benefits that they received for using marijuana for various conditions 356 00:28:22,233 --> 00:28:28,707 Personally I think the frontier of cannabis research that to me is most exciting 357 00:28:28,707 --> 00:28:33,111 is the possibility at looking to these strange molecules, these cannabinoids 358 00:28:33,111 --> 00:28:37,716 an specially looking at analogs of them that may be developed in the future 359 00:28:37,716 --> 00:28:48,793 that can be used both as tools for brain research, for understanding how the brain receives and 360 00:28:48,793 --> 00:28:53,531 interprets information, because to me this is one of the most interesting things about cannabis 361 00:28:53,531 --> 00:28:59,027 how it changes perception, how it can make ordinary experiences appear novel 362 00:28:59,027 --> 00:29:05,061 how it can change focus of attention. I can see great potential here in using these drugs as tools 363 00:29:05,061 --> 00:29:12,015 in mind-brain research. I think the other area that fascinates me is looking at 364 00:29:12,015 --> 00:29:20,658 these compounds or analogs yet to be developed for manipulating appetite, and for pain perception 365 00:29:20,658 --> 00:29:26,831 I think these are two areas in which the therapeutic potential of cannabis looks very powerful to me 366 00:29:26,831 --> 00:29:32,804 the appetite stuff, there has been some efforts in this direction at the moment which 367 00:29:32,804 --> 00:29:41,379 are certainly not there yet, but this is probably the greatest public health-care crisis facing us 368 00:29:41,379 --> 00:29:45,016 in this day and age is the obesity epidemic that we are seeing 369 00:29:45,016 --> 00:29:48,987 the root of this is the nature in which we have changed food 370 00:29:48,987 --> 00:29:54,526 I was just on a panel yesterday with Dr. David Kessler, former head of the FDA 371 00:29:54,526 --> 00:29:56,194 he's written a book called "The end of overeating" 372 00:29:56,194 --> 00:30:03,368 and his main argument is that the foods that we have today are designed to activate the brain 373 00:30:03,368 --> 00:30:10,542 and that we're helpless in face of this. That food has been manipulated in ways that cause brain activation 374 00:30:10,542 --> 00:30:14,679 and that this is what seems to give it so much power over us 375 00:30:14,679 --> 00:30:19,384 so I don't know, maybe we're doomed in this regard. I think that's certainly an argument for 376 00:30:19,384 --> 00:30:24,155 totally banning advertising of these kinds of foods 377 00:30:24,155 --> 00:30:29,394 applause 378 00:30:29,394 --> 00:30:41,105 but you know, another area of possible research is finding ways to increase the brain's defensiveness 379 00:30:41,105 --> 00:30:47,579 against that kind of reactive activation in response to the kinds of food that are out there now 380 00:30:47,579 --> 00:30:52,015 and I think there is potential in the cannabinoids to do something of that sort 381 00:30:52,015 --> 00:30:56,354 and the other area is, as I said, is the modulation of pain perception 382 00:30:56,354 --> 00:31:02,527 There already is a great deal of interesting research showing that cannabis can 383 00:31:02,527 --> 00:31:11,236 enhance the effects of opioids, so that people with chronic pain may be able to take lower doses 384 00:31:11,236 --> 00:31:17,942 of opioids which has great advantage because there are many side effects of derivatives of 385 00:31:17,942 --> 00:31:26,351 opium that are not desirable, among them mental clouding, and to be able to find ways 386 00:31:26,351 --> 00:31:30,421 chronic pain is such an enormous problem in clinical medicine today 387 00:31:30,421 --> 00:31:34,259 it absorbs so many health-care dollars, it's so frustrating to manage 388 00:31:34,259 --> 00:31:39,731 that any new tools that we can get in that area would be extremely welcome, and as I said 389 00:31:39,731 --> 00:31:43,334 I think there is great potential with cannabis to do that 390 00:31:43,334 --> 00:31:48,339 So, I guess in summing up and looking back on all this 391 00:31:48,339 --> 00:31:50,942 although I have not been actively involved 392 00:31:50,942 --> 00:31:55,246 in either psychedelic research or marijuana research for many years 393 00:31:55,246 --> 00:32:01,886 I continue to be struck by the incredible positive potential of these agents 394 00:32:01,886 --> 00:32:08,426 not just for manipulation of moods and emotional states but for 395 00:32:08,426 --> 00:32:15,266 dealing with and changing very real, very severe chronic medical ilness 396 00:32:15,266 --> 00:32:21,105 through changing the way that people interpret 397 00:32:21,105 --> 00:32:25,091 or perceive the symptoms of illness that they experience 398 00:32:25,091 --> 00:32:33,151 and that by doing so free up, or unlock or unblock the body's healing potential 399 00:32:33,151 --> 00:32:37,755 I think the fact that we've got this opening at the moment is terrific 400 00:32:37,755 --> 00:32:45,964 I think we should be careful in the way that we design experiments, the way they're publicized 401 00:32:45,964 --> 00:32:54,305 but I think that looking at conditions which are not responsive to other methods 402 00:32:54,305 --> 00:32:59,644 which involve lots of people, which are very costly and cause human suffering 403 00:32:59,644 --> 00:33:05,516 that there is a great possibility now for getting support for doing this and 404 00:33:05,516 --> 00:33:14,158 to begin to change this very very outdated and unhelpful cultural perception 405 00:33:14,158 --> 00:33:16,794 that we've lived with for far too long 406 00:33:16,794 --> 00:33:23,568 So thank you I'm gonna stop there and I'm gonna continue with you asking some questions 407 00:33:23,568 --> 00:33:25,057 applause 408 00:33:25,057 --> 00:33:30,742 I think that the whole field of mind-body research and mind-body medicine is 409 00:33:30,742 --> 00:33:35,713 coming into it's own in a way that it never has before - there's a novel lot of 410 00:33:35,713 --> 00:33:43,054 close it? Ok right. Bye 411 00:33:43,054 --> 00:33:46,557 That was very satisfying 412 00:33:46,557 --> 00:33:52,563 You know, I have a friend and colleague who is now in his 80's who was 413 00:33:52,563 --> 00:33:56,434 a very eminent endocrinologist and who was one of the founders and 414 00:33:56,434 --> 00:34:02,473 main movers of the field of psychosomatic medicine in the 1950's and 1960's and he 415 00:34:02,473 --> 00:34:08,346 said to me that he looks back and wonders why that field never went anywhere. Now there's 416 00:34:08,346 --> 00:34:14,952 all this tremendous amount of research being done, what happened to field of psychosomatic medicine? 417 00:34:14,952 --> 00:34:21,659 and I said to him, I think the time was wrong, it was ahead of it's time and 418 00:34:21,659 --> 00:34:26,097 things were not ready, the ground had not been laid to the acceptance of that 419 00:34:26,097 --> 00:34:35,907 and I think that's all being completely swept aside by this new field of mind-body medicine 420 00:34:35,907 --> 00:34:40,945 which is getting very strong support from the neurosciences. I think the ability to 421 00:34:40,945 --> 00:34:50,254 visualize living brains has done more to make studies of consciousness and altered states of consciousness 422 00:34:50,254 --> 00:34:53,758 valid and real than any amount of argument about it 423 00:34:53,758 --> 00:34:59,831 now you can show that people in certain states of consciousness that brain function is different 424 00:34:59,831 --> 00:35:03,568 and you can find specific localities in the brain where function is different 425 00:35:03,568 --> 00:35:08,172 even in an area that I've been most interested in, the placebo responses 426 00:35:08,172 --> 00:35:11,843 there's a whole new, more juice going into that because 427 00:35:11,843 --> 00:35:18,015 there's been studies showing that in the placebo responses there are particular areas of the brain that seems to mediate this 428 00:35:18,015 --> 00:35:22,072 so I think we're on the threshold of a whole new era of mind-body studies 429 00:35:22,072 --> 00:35:29,026 in which psychoneuroimmunology, psychoendocrinology, this is all part of that knife 430 00:35:29,026 --> 00:35:38,102 and there is potential for psychedelics to be welcomed as tools to facilitate that research 431 00:35:38,102 --> 00:35:41,305 Thank you so much for your presentation, I enjoyed tremendously 432 00:35:41,305 --> 00:35:47,411 One thing, you were talking about pain and different ways to minimize the pain 433 00:35:47,411 --> 00:35:54,519 physical pain, I studied a lot of mind-body connection, especially the spiritual aspects of it 434 00:35:54,519 --> 00:36:00,358 and I've had tremendous results, resolving spiritual issues and how it affects you physically 435 00:36:00,358 --> 00:36:06,264 how I had a horrible pain and I did this meditation, it's ending the pain meditation 436 00:36:06,264 --> 00:36:10,234 and at the end you connect to your higher self and I could not believe the results 437 00:36:10,234 --> 00:36:14,772 how just my neck pain that was horrendous got so much better but basically 438 00:36:14,772 --> 00:36:20,878 the studies that I have been really interested in, it's a guy called Luz Ares 439 00:36:20,878 --> 00:36:27,018 and I don't know if you're familiar with the work of Louis Hay where basically 440 00:36:27,018 --> 00:36:31,556 Luz Ares says that a lot of the different pains in the different parts of the body 441 00:36:31,556 --> 00:36:37,061 it's like coded messages from your higher consciousness that are there to teach 442 00:36:37,061 --> 00:36:41,999 and to guide you in such a direction where you need healing so he talks about 443 00:36:41,999 --> 00:36:45,002 regular doctors as opposed to alternative doctors and he says that 444 00:36:45,002 --> 00:36:50,608 a lot of times alternative doctors essentialy do the same thing, they just go after eliminating symptom 445 00:36:50,608 --> 00:37:01,319 and, so I guess my question is, sorry, have you thought about the spiritual meaning of 446 00:37:01,319 --> 00:37:04,655 pain and actually resolving it like you were saying at the beginning, how much 447 00:37:04,655 --> 00:37:12,063 matters resolving it through the mind rather than looking just to physical resolution 448 00:37:12,063 --> 00:37:18,402 I have thought about that, there's a lot written about the spiritual meaning of pain 449 00:37:18,402 --> 00:37:23,274 and the ways that people in chronic pain can learn to reinterpret it, or listen to it 450 00:37:23,274 --> 00:37:27,578 or see what it has to teach them. Mindfulness based stress reduction training has 451 00:37:27,578 --> 00:37:33,117 proven very valuable in working with patients in chronic pain, but again I have to tell you since I'm 452 00:37:33,117 --> 00:37:40,791 really into the somatopsychics of things, the experiences that most interest me 453 00:37:40,791 --> 00:37:48,332 are not just subjective perception but changes in body reaction 454 00:37:48,332 --> 00:37:53,337 so, and this is another experience and I think this one I've also written about and this is with MDMA 455 00:37:53,337 --> 00:38:02,046 that frequently I've had the experience of, in the MDMA state, total relax, walking barefoot 456 00:38:02,046 --> 00:38:08,085 on sharp stones that would normally hurt, it doesn't hurt. OK, that part it's easy for me 457 00:38:08,085 --> 00:38:13,758 to explain but what's hard to explain is why there are no impressions on my foot 458 00:38:13,758 --> 00:38:18,596 normally there would be dense on my foot but there aren't in that state 459 00:38:18,596 --> 00:38:22,833 so what's happening there? I mean, I can hypothesize about it but I think that when the 460 00:38:22,833 --> 00:38:30,408 mind leaves the body alone that muscles can very precisely respond to things 461 00:38:30,408 --> 00:38:37,782 so if there's a point of a rock pressing there the muscle right there can press back to neutralize it 462 00:38:37,782 --> 00:38:45,022 That stuff really interest me, how you can change reactions, like insects things or 463 00:38:45,022 --> 00:38:53,397 or being hit by something or being burned, not only does the pain change but the body's reactions change 464 00:38:53,397 --> 00:38:59,403 and that's something that can be learned, and it seems to me that the commonality here 465 00:38:59,403 --> 00:39:06,011 is dropping some sort of defensive stands toward the universe, that's the act of 466 00:39:06,011 --> 00:39:14,085 defending oneself that in some way leads to some sort of rigidity or freezing of body's responses that 467 00:39:14,085 --> 00:39:21,692 causes injury or allows injury to occur. That's the area that I would love to see research on 468 00:39:21,692 --> 00:39:28,432 Dr. Weil I'm always in love with what you have to say, I just have one question 469 00:39:28,432 --> 00:39:36,173 How do we get the ball rolling on legitimizing psychedelics and treatment modalities for people with real pain and suffering? 470 00:39:36,173 --> 00:39:42,246 I mean, must of the knowledge has been there form the 70's, the 60's 471 00:39:42,246 --> 00:39:48,085 there has to be some kind of tipping point in society, some point in the structure where 472 00:39:48,085 --> 00:39:54,458 the power shifts a little bit and I'm wondering how we as ants, worker ants, army ants, little people 473 00:39:54,458 --> 00:39:58,829 what we can do to see a brighter day? 474 00:39:58,829 --> 00:40:05,703 In some ways as gloomy as things look out there in some ways, I think the energy 475 00:40:05,703 --> 00:40:10,574 of the 60's and the energy of that period really has diffused through the culture 476 00:40:10,574 --> 00:40:19,025 and it is working it's way and it seems to me that in casual conversation today 477 00:40:19,025 --> 00:40:26,019 I interacted with a wide range of people talking in many different locations, I think those 478 00:40:26,019 --> 00:40:33,003 attitudes are changing, that there is a greater acceptance of this and I think the ways of 479 00:40:33,003 --> 00:40:38,669 specially with this kind of, look at the little bit of reports I've seen around this conference 480 00:40:38,669 --> 00:40:47,077 or the reports I've seen on recent articles about the therapeutic use of psychedelics, there's a different tone than was before 481 00:40:47,077 --> 00:40:56,042 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 482 00:40:56,042 --> 00:41:01,192 but I think we're moving in the direction of it 483 00:41:01,192 --> 00:41:08,499 Andrew, I used to know you years ago back in the days of hemperalism in front of the LA federal building 484 00:41:08,499 --> 00:41:13,027 And in honor of Jack Herer's death yesterday, I wanna to 485 00:41:13,027 --> 00:41:16,874 Yes I just heard that he died yesterday morning 486 00:41:16,874 --> 00:41:21,612 yes he died yesterday morning at 11 a.m. and in honor of that I wanna to ask you your opinion 487 00:41:21,612 --> 00:41:29,653 of Rick Simpson cancer treatment oil as well as Dr. Malamides research on using THC for 488 00:41:29,653 --> 00:41:34,859 reduction of tumor cells as well as protecting healthy cells 489 00:41:34,859 --> 00:41:39,697 Actually I did not mention that in the things I talked about, the areas of promising research 490 00:41:39,697 --> 00:41:48,038 I think the other great interesting area with cannabinoids is the possibility of both preventing and treating cancer 491 00:41:48,038 --> 00:41:53,244 and that's something that's completely unexpected. These are recent findings 492 00:41:53,244 --> 00:41:57,648 and even protective against lung cancer and serious forms of cancer 493 00:41:57,648 --> 00:42:01,151 as well as by the way protection against dementia and memory loss 494 00:42:01,151 --> 00:42:05,556 Who would had ever thought? 495 00:42:05,556 --> 00:42:12,063 But there it is, so again, these are novel interesting, unexpected potentials 496 00:42:12,063 --> 00:42:16,567 of cannabinoids that certainly should be explored 497 00:42:16,567 --> 00:42:19,937 I wanna thank you for your speech 498 00:42:19,937 --> 00:42:26,877 You've mentioned that psychedelics can have psychosomatic effects on real 499 00:42:26,877 --> 00:42:33,551 physical problems for the body, such as multiple sclerosis. I was wondering if you could enumerate those 500 00:42:33,551 --> 00:42:39,223 psychedelics and explain a little bit more about how they have those kinds of effects 501 00:42:39,223 --> 00:42:44,361 All I can tell you is at the moment I have case reports, these are people that I knew, 502 00:42:44,361 --> 00:42:50,901 that were patients of mine, people that I have met, heard from 503 00:42:50,901 --> 00:42:57,007 in which I am satisfied of the validity of the reports, and this is something that should be studied 504 00:42:57,007 --> 00:43:03,013 with the autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, the agents that were used were variable 505 00:43:03,013 --> 00:43:09,219 but typically they were LSD, I think the most common, sometimes MDMA, sometimes mushrooms 506 00:43:09,219 --> 00:43:17,227 sometimes the change happened instantaneously, as with my cat allergy or the sun tann thing 507 00:43:17,227 --> 00:43:22,933 sometimes it was a change that happened after, over a period of weeks or months 508 00:43:22,933 --> 00:43:30,374 sometimes with repeated use of the agent, but it seems as if 509 00:43:30,374 --> 00:43:34,345 you know, I don't know the mechanism, I can only speculate 510 00:43:34,345 --> 00:43:40,985 but I think that the ways that the mind interacts with the body 511 00:43:40,985 --> 00:43:53,631 are infinite, complex, wonderful, that there are common ways in which the habitual patterns of the mind 512 00:43:53,631 --> 00:44:01,005 or the habitual patterns of the perception, get in the way of that healing mechanism that I 513 00:44:01,005 --> 00:44:05,709 talked about in the beginning of the talk 514 00:44:05,709 --> 00:44:08,779 Hello Doctor it's great to have you here 515 00:44:08,779 --> 00:44:14,318 My question is, you said there is so much focus 516 00:44:14,318 --> 00:44:22,076 on the healing aspects of these medicines, but very little to the preventive aspects of it 517 00:44:22,076 --> 00:44:27,765 Also, going beyond it, to a health optimization 518 00:44:27,765 --> 00:44:38,409 a lot of people I know who are using psychedelics are yoguis, movement specialists, who are some of the healthiest people I know 519 00:44:38,409 --> 00:44:41,879 Albert Hofmann for example, lived over a 100 520 00:44:41,879 --> 00:44:45,349 and attributed that to regular use of LSD 521 00:44:45,349 --> 00:44:49,753 That's probably something we should not be widely talking about 522 00:44:49,753 --> 00:44:53,524 at the time when we are trying to produce a cultural change 523 00:44:53,524 --> 00:45:00,564 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 524 00:45:00,564 --> 00:45:07,004 I think that many people that I know who have been involved in the psychedelic world 525 00:45:07,004 --> 00:45:14,178 feel that way. I'm concerned about advertising that widely. I think at the moment 526 00:45:14,178 --> 00:45:18,115 we should concentrate more on the therapeutic potentials that I talked about 527 00:45:18,115 --> 00:45:22,686 but I think that's tremendously interesting. I don't think that this culture is yet ready to hear about 528 00:45:22,686 --> 00:45:33,697 health optimization through regular use of psychedelics 529 00:45:33,697 --> 00:45:36,767 What prompted you to discover a weilii? 530 00:45:36,767 --> 00:45:39,087 What prompted you to discover a weilii? 531 00:45:39,087 --> 00:45:42,074 I did not discover the Psilocybe weilii 532 00:45:42,074 --> 00:45:49,088 It was discovered by a man in Georgia and the mushroom was named for me by my friend Paul Stamets 533 00:45:49,088 --> 00:45:59,456 So you don't name things for yourself in science and I was very delighted by that 534 00:45:59,456 --> 00:46:07,164 but I had nothing to do with this discovery, but I'm very happy. By the way, I don't know 535 00:46:07,164 --> 00:46:19,376 if you know that the word psilocybe in greek it means bald head, so that seems appropriate 536 00:46:19,376 --> 00:46:28,018 Dr. Weil, I read an article maybe in Psychopharmacology in some time the past 12 months 537 00:46:28,018 --> 00:46:35,058 which was concerning the existence of a polymorphism for the protein which produces monoaminoxidase 538 00:46:35,058 --> 00:46:42,266 and, stated briefly, two forms of MAO one of which is more active than the other 539 00:46:42,266 --> 00:46:49,339 Individuals who have the less active form are significantly more susceptible to the placebo effect 540 00:46:49,339 --> 00:46:56,814 An what I'm wondering is whetter the use of monoaminoxidase inhibition in ayahuasca is 541 00:46:56,814 --> 00:47:02,219 in some way modulating one's susceptibility to the placebo effect 542 00:47:02,219 --> 00:47:05,756 I'm not familiar with that research, I'll look it up, that's interesting 543 00:47:05,756 --> 00:47:10,627 and if so, what you say is certainly a possibility, very interesting 544 00:47:10,627 --> 00:47:14,698 I am a great believer in biochemical individuality 545 00:47:14,698 --> 00:47:20,537 and that's something that's absolutely ignored in conventional pharmacotherapeutics 546 00:47:20,537 --> 00:47:27,477 and something that people that use drugs, people that dispense drugs to others should be very aware of 547 00:47:27,477 --> 00:47:33,584 These wide range reactions, some of which is based on differential ability to metabolize 548 00:47:33,584 --> 00:47:43,193 pharmacological agents. Very nice idea, I'll check it out 549 00:47:43,193 --> 00:47:47,631 Dr., this is a question that comes from a little bit of personal experience 550 00:47:47,631 --> 00:47:54,872 are you aware of any studies regarding the use of tryptamine psychedelics or cannabinoids 551 00:47:54,872 --> 00:48:01,078 causing physical pain in people who take these compounds 552 00:48:01,078 --> 00:48:05,549 Acutely at the time that they take them or over time? 553 00:48:05,549 --> 00:48:06,095 During the session, for example 554 00:48:06,095 --> 00:48:10,354 the personal experience I had was that I took LSD 555 00:48:10,354 --> 00:48:14,024 and this is a few months after a joint surgery and 556 00:48:14,024 --> 00:48:18,962 I sort of had that same feeling of pain that my shoulder was dislocating - Ah - and 557 00:48:18,962 --> 00:48:25,502 even though, according to my ortho doctor it's completely stable, but I 558 00:48:25,502 --> 00:48:29,339 could saw the same exact pain sensation of it's sliding out of it's socket 559 00:48:29,339 --> 00:48:31,975 but it never actually happened 560 00:48:31,975 --> 00:48:37,948 I have seen occasional people who have experiences like that but I'm not sure 561 00:48:37,948 --> 00:48:42,786 how I would interpret them. Whether that's just that you became aware of a body memory 562 00:48:42,786 --> 00:48:49,526 and I think one of the potentials of psychedelics is to help people bring into consciousness 563 00:48:49,526 --> 00:48:54,932 memories, often painful memories, that have been stored in the musculature of the body 564 00:48:54,932 --> 00:49:02,205 so that's a possibility 565 00:49:02,205 --> 00:49:08,245 So, my question comes from second hand experience. It's about friends who are 566 00:49:08,245 --> 00:49:12,983 suffering from prolonged persistence state of disorder of hallucinations 567 00:49:12,983 --> 00:49:13,884 Hum-hum 568 00:49:13,884 --> 00:49:18,655 I've read that the best treatment that is know of is reassuring the person because it can 569 00:49:18,655 --> 00:49:23,393 go away, but they think they're still experiencing it, than it becomes a vicious cycle 570 00:49:23,393 --> 00:49:26,763 Are there any new developments in that? Besides antipsychosis drugs? 571 00:49:26,763 --> 00:49:33,704 I'm really not the person to ask about that. If you're talking about the general category of flashbacks 572 00:49:33,704 --> 00:49:40,277 I think the less attention paid to it the better, and then they tend to go away 573 00:49:40,277 --> 00:49:43,814 These are normal experiences that people have 574 00:49:43,814 --> 00:49:50,887 If the drug experience was associated with anxiety, then having a memory of it can trigger anxiety 575 00:49:50,887 --> 00:49:54,057 and then if you hear that this indicates brain damage 576 00:49:54,057 --> 00:49:56,927 you can imagine that being a vicious cycle of anxiety 577 00:49:56,927 --> 00:50:01,698 So, I always doubted that by just reassuring people that these are not significant will make it go away on their own 578 00:50:01,698 --> 00:50:05,168 Thanks very much for your enthusiasm and commonness, and I think part 579 00:50:05,168 --> 00:50:08,638 of the commonness, you sound sort of apolitical 580 00:50:08,638 --> 00:50:13,977 but I invite you for a minute to consider the politics, let's say of 581 00:50:13,977 --> 00:50:20,684 the possibility of California in the legalization of Marijuana 582 00:50:20,684 --> 00:50:30,193 It almost is because the taxation issue is almost, this could be a possibility and we might have 583 00:50:30,193 --> 00:50:34,431 legalized marijuana here before we have legal gameness 584 00:50:34,431 --> 00:50:39,503 or single pair healthcare, amazing it, no? 585 00:50:39,503 --> 00:50:41,538 Amazing 586 00:50:41,538 --> 00:50:45,375 I have not been apolitical in my writings or speaking 587 00:50:45,375 --> 00:50:48,345 and those of you who know my book "From chocolate to morphine" 588 00:50:48,345 --> 00:50:54,017 The first sentence of that book is that wars against drugs are always lost 589 00:50:54,017 --> 00:51:01,892 and the strong argument of it is that the criminal law is not an effective and appropriate way 590 00:51:01,892 --> 00:51:06,163 to try to influence people's consumption of psychoactive drugs 591 00:51:06,163 --> 00:51:08,465 That's the bottom line. If we have to 592 00:51:08,465 --> 00:51:13,067 - applause - 593 00:51:13,067 --> 00:51:20,177 How we get ourselves away from that, I don't know. There has to be a commitment 594 00:51:20,177 --> 00:51:26,616 from back away from dependence on criminal law as the method of dealing with this 595 00:51:26,616 --> 00:51:32,489 and that whole superstructure of law has to be dismantled and I would imagine that has to be done 596 00:51:32,489 --> 00:51:39,996 in a peace meal fashion over time. Starting with the decriminalization of marijuana 597 00:51:39,996 --> 00:51:44,768 or the legalization of it in appropriate amounts and finding other ways to regulate it 598 00:51:44,768 --> 00:51:48,438 and eventually extending that to all other substances, and it doesn't work, 599 00:51:48,438 --> 00:51:52,709 it creates immense damage, and another change that's happening in the world today 600 00:51:52,709 --> 00:51:56,078 maybe correlated with this opening that we are seeing with psychedelic research 601 00:51:56,078 --> 00:52:03,587 it's very interesting that there have been heads of state who have said the call for legalization of all drugs 602 00:52:03,587 --> 00:52:09,126 because that they see that the damage to our societies and current system is too great 603 00:52:09,126 --> 00:52:15,465 So, it's no just here in California, it's also in Mexico and some south-american countries 604 00:52:15,465 --> 00:52:19,069 so it will be very interesting to watch that trend 605 00:52:19,069 --> 00:52:26,376 I wanna to ask actually about the defensive education of our castes in 606 00:52:26,376 --> 00:52:33,015 the food industry I think that it's been difficult to implement a ban let alone the legal issues 607 00:52:33,015 --> 00:52:38,355 however I have noticed that heightened awareness and increased sensation of taste has 608 00:52:38,355 --> 00:52:41,625 helped educate me a great deal about food 609 00:52:41,625 --> 00:52:47,097 I've been a huge fan of the core of your work from way back to the present day 610 00:52:47,097 --> 00:52:55,005 could you talk more about the connection between drug to food and medicinal diet in general? 611 00:52:55,005 --> 00:53:01,978 That's a big question but just looking at the food issue, we are in big trouble with food in this country 612 00:53:01,978 --> 00:53:06,883 and the only way that we're gonna get out of it is if there is a collective effort to change things 613 00:53:06,883 --> 00:53:11,788 And that means that the government, private sector and individuals all have to take responsibility here 614 00:53:11,788 --> 00:53:16,993 you cannot have a government telling us that we should eat better 615 00:53:16,993 --> 00:53:23,002 and at the same time insuring that the cheapest calories out there are all the horrible stuff made 616 00:53:23,002 --> 00:53:29,873 with refined soy bean oil and corn syrup, and it's cheap because the federal government artificially drives down the prices 617 00:53:29,873 --> 00:53:32,375 of those ingredients by subsidizing corn 618 00:53:32,375 --> 00:53:34,911 And there are no subsidies for fruits and vegetables 619 00:53:34,911 --> 00:53:37,781 which are the most expensive things you find in stores 620 00:53:37,781 --> 00:53:45,021 applause 621 00:53:45,021 --> 00:53:49,096 and are full of health protective elements and are simply out of the reach of most people who 622 00:53:49,096 --> 00:53:54,331 are poor in this country, including on indian reservations and the inner cities 623 00:53:54,331 --> 00:53:58,835 You cannot have these big food manufacturers go around freely 624 00:53:58,835 --> 00:54:03,139 making these products attractive to kids through advertising 625 00:54:03,139 --> 00:54:07,344 So if we're serious about that it's gonna take changes in those areas 626 00:54:07,344 --> 00:54:14,417 I think it's a huge problem and something we're gonna be forced to come to grips with 627 00:54:14,417 --> 00:54:20,357 because the obesity epidemic and the type II diabetes epidemic coming right up behind it 628 00:54:20,357 --> 00:54:25,061 have the potential to just take us down as a society 629 00:54:25,061 --> 00:54:26,363 Thank you very much for coming 630 00:54:26,363 --> 00:54:30,867 In some of your writings you describe the natural form of MDMA 631 00:54:30,867 --> 00:54:34,938 and I can't remember what dose herbs were, and they were a molecule off 632 00:54:34,938 --> 00:54:36,306 and I wonder if you could say 633 00:54:36,306 --> 00:54:41,678 I don't think there is a natural form of MDMA. It's a semisynthetic compound 634 00:54:41,678 --> 00:54:46,182 and there are various starting materials that 635 00:54:46,182 --> 00:54:54,057 can be used, one is a compound called safrol, which is a natural constituent of sassafraz root 636 00:54:54,057 --> 00:55:00,497 MDMA has a peculiar chemical structure called a methylene dioxide bridge which 637 00:55:00,497 --> 00:55:06,087 is a nightmare to synthesize. And so, when chemists wanna make a structure 638 00:55:06,087 --> 00:55:11,408 that the synthesis of which would be way too costly, time consuming 639 00:55:11,408 --> 00:55:16,079 you look in nature to try to find that structure and you build on it 640 00:55:16,079 --> 00:55:21,418 I remember a synthetic chemist once telling me when you want a methylene dioxide bridge 641 00:55:21,418 --> 00:55:23,953 you go to god 642 00:55:23,953 --> 00:55:29,526 So, these plants that contains starting materials that have that are really not psychoactive 643 00:55:29,526 --> 00:55:33,083 So, I don't know anything out there in the natural world or herbal world that I would call 644 00:55:33,083 --> 00:55:37,667 natural MDMA 645 00:55:37,667 --> 00:55:42,939 Andy, on behalf of all the psychedelic science we appreciate you coming out today 646 00:55:42,939 --> 00:55:44,014 My pleasure 647 00:55:44,014 --> 99:59:59,999 applause