#322 - Priests on Psychedelic Drugs: The Governments Search for a New God | Dr. Matthew Johnson

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Matthew Johnson, PhD, is one of the world’s most accomplished scientists on the human effects of psychedelics and has conducted seminal research in the behavioral economics of drug use, addiction, and risk behavior. Dr. Johnson, an expert in behavioral pharmacology research, has decades of experience. In his most recent role, he served as a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine. SPONSORS https://morning.ver.so/danny - Use code DANNY to save 15% off your first order. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/Drug_Researcher FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Johns Hopkins Religious psychedelic study 12:01 - The dark side of psychedelics 18:10 - CIA's psychedelic "studies" 30:27 - Army's experimental drug warfare 42:02 - Adderall & dopaminergic drugs 49:33 - Why nicotine is so addictive 01:01:39 - Why psychedelics should be allowed in church 01:04:42 - The common core of all religions 01:13:50 - How drugs rewire the brain 01:24:26 - Best psychedelics for for therapeutic use 01:35:10 - Why most DMT users see the same thing 01:39:02 - Hidden human abilities that science can't detect 01:53:12 - Upgrading consciousness with psychedelics 02:00:49 - The science behind alcohol & coke 02:10:56 - Should all drugs be legalized? 02:21:39 - Elon Musk & Kanye drug use 02:29:00 - Psychological drugs & exorcisms 02:34:54 - Cocaine / sex research 02:50:12 - The ultimate goal of psychedelics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I want to get to a lot of that stuff. The stories of like taking the, I know there's a huge DARPA grant to take the stuff out of the psychedelics for soldiers and stuff like this.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, Brian Roth's work.

• 1:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah. And I want to talk also about the cocaine stuff. But this morning, I read that article by Michael Pollan in The New Yorker.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26Danny Jones?

  About the spiritual professionals study at Johns Hopkins.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  The clergy study religious professionals, yeah. So I'm an author on it, yeah.

• 1:35Danny Jones?

  Can you lay out this whole story for us? And like how it started, who was behind it, and then what ended up happening with the whole thing?

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the idea is, so we had a history of doing this work that was first published in 2006, 2008. A series of studies looking at spiritually interested people. What are the basic effects? So this isn't treating disorders, but what are the...

• 2:02Speaker 02

  What are the effects from just people interested in taking these things spiritually? And this is sort of a follow-up to that work. It's also a follow-up, basically, to the old Good Friday study from, was it 1962? That was conducted at Harvard by Wally Pankie. Nothing familiar to them. Who was a student of Tim Leary, who was his PhD advisor. And they were, it's called the Good Friday Study because they were in the basement of the Marsh Chapel in the Boston area. And there was a very charismatic speaker, preacher, delivering the Good Friday service. And they were the people who were on psilocybin or an active placebo, nice. And they were in the basement, listening to the service.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  And yeah, they found that the people who received psilocybin largely had what we call mystical experiences. They were very spiritual, had the sense of unity and these other aspects of the mystical experience. And in some follow-up work that Rick Doblin, the head of MAPS, did 25 years later, he did a lot of digging to find most of these people who were in that study. And these were seminary students, I should say. So that's a key there. They, those were religious leaders in training. And, and these people largely said, yes, they still valued that experience. Many of them said that it had informed their, you know, their life in the priesthood or what have you.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  And so this study had threads from all of that work. Our work with spiritually interested non-clergy, you know, threads to the Good Friday study that found those, you know, subjectively positive effects from those folks. And so it was set up like that, you know, like, you know, getting people from different religious faiths. It ended up being, what was it, 21 Christians and five rabbis and... One Muslim Iman and one Buddhist. I think that's what it, yeah, it turned out to be in terms of, so mostly Christian.

• 4:01Danny Jones?

  So, so who, who was behind the initial idea and to, to get this study done and get it funded and start like, who, who was behind the start of it?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  So, the initial idea was really a convergence of a number of people who had interest. Bill Richards at Hopkins, Tony Bosses at NYU, Roland Griffiths, myself. I, I thought it was a very interesting study. So really, I think all of the investigators had, you know, an interest in it and there were, you know, funders that were interested in the effects. Now, a lot of stuff ended up happening over the course of the conduct of the study that sort of became controversial. And I wasn't aware of all of it. I was aware of some of it during the course of the study, but that's kind of what the, some of the, some of what Michael Pollan wrote about.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  That's what it was all about. Things like funders working on the studies. I knew that. I advised against it, but I wasn't the so-called PI, the principal investigator, so.

• 5:04Danny Jones?

  Funders, people that were funding the study were coming in and participating in some of the?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, not as patients, but as a therapeutic-like role, a so-called session guide. And in doing interviews with people at the, at the end of the study, doing qualitative analysis for interviews. And so what I didn't know is that some of this wasn't even reported to the review board. That, you know, there was someone on there who, who was functioning as a study team member who wasn't, wasn't listed on the IRV protocol, a funder. And the funding relationship hadn't been revealed to the IRB. And this was in the context of.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  That individual, I don't think did anything wrong. It's not their job to scope out these rules as a non-academic and, you know, not a faculty at the medical schools. But NYU did the right thing and asked their review, "Well, you know, can they participate in helping to run the study?" And they said, "No." Well, she ended up doing that at Hopkins, and apparently, as we know now, it wasn't, not only was that relationship not reported, but they weren't included, even listed, as someone working on the study. Oh, wow. And then there were other things. There was Travis, and I know you've talked to him

• 6:32Speaker 02

  about this, I forget the degree, that you focus on this in your interview, but Travis has written about and others, the relationship, some of the funders subsequently funded some of the participants in the study to start organizations to focus on psychedelics in religion, to sort of kindle interest in this area of psychedelics and in their various, you know, faiths. And so, and then there was a retreat that some of the scientists had a role in, but I was completely unaware of after the study to get the participants

• 7:17Speaker 02

  together, to presumably look at paths forward about the implications going forward. So, there were some, I mean, so some of the concern was related to, it ended up appearing, looking more like a mission with the goal in mind to introduce psychedelics, to kindle this interest in religious practice, sort of more explicitly, rather than having just, you know, this scientific question. And so, I think there's good science there, and that's why I remained an author on the paper. And that's, you know, I don't like being in these

• 8:01Speaker 02

  situations where, I mean, if it reaches a certain level where I think, "Well, we can't trust the science," I wouldn't want to be an author. Sure. On the paper. And other situations like that came up with, for example, the cancer study where I caught wind and then investigated, for example, a participant who...

• 8:22Speaker 02

  In an interview with the principal investigator, they described their experience, but then on the questionnaire, ranking how meaningful this was in your life, they gave a certain rating and then a discussion with the principal investigator, oh, well, it sounded like your description was more impressive than that. Are you sure you don't want to change your rating?

• 8:40Danny Jones?

  Oh, interesting.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  And they changed and I prompted, you know, hey, like, concerned about that because have we ever done the opposite? Have we ever said,

• 8:50Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Your rating looks more impressive than what I heard, like, probably not. And so that was, in that study, that was the one case I was aware of and was told, oh, it would be reassessed with the participant, which I never got confirmation of. But again, if it had reached a certain threshold, you know, I would have, you know, made a formal, you know, issue out of it, but it, it, it didn't rise to that level. And the reason I, that some of this is disappointing is, this is something you don't need to fluff up. You know, in the right context, I mean, I'm convinced from not just data, but from the now hundreds of participants that I've talked to, you know, a good number of which

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I've been in the room with them in this so-called guide role, but

• 9:39Danny Jones?

  What was the drug administered?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  That was psilocybin.

• 9:41Danny Jones?

  Psilocybin, okay.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And all, everything I've mentioned so far. And so, you know, why risk, you know, muddying the waters with this type of thing?

• 9:52Danny Jones?

  Hey, guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video. Back to the show.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  When there's a, to me, it looks like there's a real effect there. In other words, that, yes, many people have what they claim to be very meaningful experiences that they hold in a spiritual light, and that they report, you know, positive long-term effects on their life and well-being. But, you know, I'm also concerned that, you know, in some of the studies, like, have we really looked at the negatives? So there was sort of like an explicit rejection of things like

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Assessing the credibility of the blind, or, which is to say, simply asking the person afterwards, "Do you think you got the drug or the placebo?" You know, in the sense that you're gonna get an answer that could be used as ammunition, because most people do correctly identify it. But, you know, we want more data than not. And you could do things statistically, to at least, you know, imperfectly, to, you know, once you had the data, you could look at, in regressions, for example, how much that might have accounted for some of the positive results. But then other things, like, simply asking people at their long-term follow-ups, "Have you used psychedelics again?" And, you know, sometimes, and it's certainly not normative, but sometimes, someone's introduced to a psychedelic in one of these studies, and

• 11:14Speaker 02

  they get really into it. I've even seen cases where, like, they become a neo-shaman, and are doing these things more on a regular basis. And, you know, again, with the concern that, "Oh, this could be used as ammunition against this research." But I just think, one, that's not right. But even strategically, look, if these things are approved by the FDA, like, we wanna know what the outcomes are gonna be. Some that could be on the market, and it could get, plenty of drugs are pulled from the market after they're approved. So it's not just like, you know, once one of these things, like psilocybin or MDMA were approved, then, "Oh, you know, we've achieved the result, you know, the world's gonna be

• 11:56Speaker 02

  a better place." Um, you know, you're gonna get some of these effects, like, you're gonna, you are gonna kindle some interest. My impression is that it's not, you know, that it's a small minority, but you're gonna introduce psychedelics to people who are using, and, whatever you wanna call it, unsupervised, whatever. Someone scores some mushrooms, they go hiking with it, this type of thing, you know, and then there's questions about that. Not all, most of that is not gonna be harmful, as we know. You know, most people that use psychedelics aren't harmed by it, but some are. But we just have to understand the full landscape, the good, the bad, the ugly. And we shouldn't be afraid to kind of, we shouldn't be operating

• 12:39Speaker 02

  under a context in which we are, um, just have this mission in mind to kind of mainstream psychedelics, no matter what. Because, one, it's not right, and, two,

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Just even if that was your goal to mainstream say like it's gonna backfire. Like the best policy is transparency and.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  You know, learning as much you can, including about the dark side. There's plenty of dark side with these compounds, which. You know.

• 13:07Danny Jones?

  What, what is the dark side?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, more at the superficial level. Yeah, the bad trip is a very real thing. I've been in the room with plenty of people like having a real existential. You know, cry, you know. I'm sure I'm not, you know, telling you anything you don't know, but like your soul's being shredded. You've gone permanently insane. You're never gonna come out and. In a safe environment, when you've prepared the person as much as possible and you're. At, you know, when need be holding their hand through the experience and keeping them safe. Yeah. The effects subside and you can keep them safe. Uh, but you know, out in the wild, sometimes that leads to. Dangerous effects. I mean. Pretty rare, but sometimes people freak out and, you know, they run across the street, get hit by a car or, and even though there's. It was definitely overplayed in the sixties with some of the propaganda, but.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  There have been cases where people have been so far out there, it really appears that they thought they could fly. You know, and we don't know how.

• 14:02Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Common that is. But. It has happened. And anyone with enough experience or who's been around enough people with psychedelics. They should know that at least sometimes some crazy stuff like that can happen. That's how powerful these drugs are. And I always kind of think people should take Bill Hicks rule. I don't know if you remember it like, if you think you can fly on psychedelics, just test that on the ground.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Not on the fifth floor.

• 14:32Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  But there are some interesting cases in the popular press where that looks pretty.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  You know, you never of course know what's going exactly through someone's mind, but someone take one of the colleges in Boston, I remember a story, uh, might've been in Rolling Stone. Years and years ago, but some kid that just goes to the big, uh. University library with this, you know, I don't know how many floors it was, but this big kind of atrium where you could. And just sort of took a swan dive right seemingly.

• 15:00Danny Jones?

  Jesus.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  And there was a case at Hopkins where. Someone, um, and I saw the video. I wasn't in the room, but I saw the video where someone.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Tried to jump through the painting on the wall. And my kind of take from that, and it looked like from the video that this person, again, you don't know what's in their head, but it looked pretty credible that it seemed like this person was expecting to go through the painting.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Into another dimension, I don't know. And they were fine, had a little bump in their head, it was reported. But even that, I've conveyed that before, on I think it was on the Huberman podcast and got some pushback from a college, oh, that's gonna scare people, that's It's the truth, if you treat a few hundred people with this, every once in a while, you're gonna get something like that.

• 15:54Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  And thankfully, that wasn't. And who knows, maybe they wouldn't had it been a window.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  But it is, you know, cautionary tale. It's like, oh, that's a good reason not to do this on the A floor with a wide open window. You know, that's kind of a bad idea. And I've even heard.

• 16:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it's like, if it's your first time surfing, you shouldn't go surf Pipeline the first time.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:16Danny Jones?

  It's just like, it's not like up anything.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Right, right. And there's, I've heard stories in like, say, Oregon, and I went to college in Eastern Oregon. My first thought with the Oregon psilocybin program was, oh, that's some of the natural beauty out there. That must be incredible. And then the second thought is like, oh, there's some mountains there, and I hope folks are.

• 16:35Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  But a story of someone just being kind of too close to the, I don't, it wasn't that they, you know, thought they could fly or anything, but the story I heard was that they just kind of almost fell off the edge because they were just intoxicated, which happens all the time with any intoxicating drug.

• 16:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Um, you just gotta be careful if you're impaired on something.

• 16:54Danny Jones?

  Yeah. So when it comes to that John Hopkins study, what was the ultimate question?

• 17:01Danny Jones?

  Of, of, what was the connection that you hoped to find between all of these different people of different faiths?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  So, the real, and there's really a number, it wasn't one singular question, but generally the, the primary questions related to were, are they gonna have experiences like have been seen in these other, either the healthy, normal, spiritually interested populations, or in the people seeking treatment for depression, or addiction, cancer distress? Are you gonna have the same type of spiritual experiences, you know, including mystical experience? Are you gonna, are, are those experiences gonna be similar even in these religious professionals? And then, again, like those other populations, are there gonna be long-term positive attributions?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  And, and for this population, that takes on us, an additional flavor of, oh, you know, what kind of impact did that have on your, your, your work as a priest, rabbi, etc.? And so, to me, that, now, that's, those are very interesting questions. I always thought that it seemed very likely. It would, it would be... One thing we had to keep in mind is that, you know, you can't randomly plug people off the street. So, some, a religious professional willing to be in an experimental study of a psychedelic...

• 18:23Danny Jones?

  They have to be somewhat open-minded to that.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Right. With a focus on explicitly, even in the advertisement, referring to sacred experiences. And, so, this is not a random sample, so, a religious professional willing to do this, it'd probably be different if it was a random sample, which is not ethically possible. Again, you can't force someone to do this, but...

• 18:45Danny Jones?

  It'd be funny if you could force them to do it.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would be, it would be an interesting experiment. My guess would be, you'd get much lower rates of people. And anecdotally, there are some stories from the 60s where there were skeptical religious professionals who tried it, and some of which said, "No, this is a false..." like, and there's people, I mean Buddhists and Christians and stories of this nature.

• 19:03Danny Jones?

  I wonder if there's any Catholic priests who've been locked up that we can do, test it on, like prisoners against their will?

• 19:10Danny Jones?

  You know?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  I wouldn't wanna, you know, I wouldn't wanna dose anyone without their

• 19:14Danny Jones?

  It wouldn't hurt them, you know, they'd be safe, they'd be in a safe environment. But it'd be, it would be really interesting to see, like, I'm not saying, like, whatever your ethics and morals are, to do it to somebody against their will, you know, knowing they're not gonna be harmed.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  And there were some studies done like that at the, I mean, call them studies, whatever, but the CIA did plenty of that.

• 19:34Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  And, and you tend to get people thinking they're going crazy.

• 19:39Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Having extremely dysphoric, in other words, people hating it. Experiences not highly valuing it.

• 19:45Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Um.

• 19:46Danny Jones?

  Was it Ted Kaczynski, one of those at Harvard? Or was, did he know about, did he know about it? I don't know. I don't remember what he was given.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I don't know that story in depth, but I believe you're right that one, and I don't think this was Leary, but someone else, another project, but, um, that he, yeah, was.

• 20:04Danny Jones?

  Steve, find out who drugged Ted Kaczynski and what drugs he was given.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  But there were certainly plenty that the CIA was doing, um, both through money funded into universities, but also, um, just, I mean, in one classic example, I think it was called Project Midnight Climax, where they took a, yeah, sex worker, and then the, the client, you know, would, he was dosed. And then they're watching behind a mirror, like, and just imagine these freaks watching, you know?

• 20:33Danny Jones?

  The Johns, they gave the Johns drugs, and then they would put them in a room behind a glass mirror and see how they would, well, you know, what kind of secrets they would tell them, right? Ted Kaczynski, blah, blah, blah, blah, expressed concerns about the use of drugs like LSD in psychological experiments. Specifically, it was noted that Kaczynski was a subject of a psychological experiment involving LSD at Harvard, under supervision of Henry Murray.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Right, I knew it wasn't yet.

• 20:55Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  It wasn't Leary.

• 20:58Danny Jones?

  Interesting. Imagine a society, the subject, subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, and even gives them, uh, the drugs to take away their unhappiness. What?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  And so there's, I mean, I'm a really interested in the Charles Manson case and psychedelics played a what appeared to me a big role there and and you're probably familiar with the book Chaos.

• 21:23Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and seems highly suggestive that there was a whole lot of connections with the CIA there, whether they were

• 21:34Speaker 02

  allowing him or whether he was a direct agent, I'm guessing probably not, but that he was they were kind of letting him do his thing and sort of kind of using him as a naturalist experiment to see how a charismatic figure could use this.

• 21:49Danny Jones?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting that Haight Ashbury Clinic, they were doing research on LSD and amphetamines, both simultaneously.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  I know amphetamines really did that whole scene, it shifted from LSD to it to amphetamines, methamphetamine, and that just kind of just kind of ruined the whole scene.

• 22:09Danny Jones?

  Yeah, and and Jolly West was a huge part of that, and he's a fascinating figure. I don't know how much you've looked into Jolly West.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have.

• 22:19Danny Jones?

  But yeah, he's, he's been had his hands in so much during the Cold War, you know, especially like if you want to talk about like Jack Ruby, when he went to prison, was visited by Jolly West and then

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Went insane like that?

• 22:31Danny Jones?

  Insane, automatic, and then there's a crazy in Errol Morris's documentary on the Chaos book. He has a clip of Jolly West walking out of his prison cell after and basically talking to the press. We've determined that he is unfit for whatever, for like undergoing a trial or anything like that, like he was, he said basically he was clinically insane.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  And it make, I'm always mindful that what that stuff that the foyer released MKUltra information, which was released in, it was the mid 70s, might have been 75, but it was really outlined in the classic Lee and Schlein's Acid Dreams book, which was the first kind of like public dumping of that information and making the all the details known. What I'm always mindful of is that there was a lot that disappeared.

• 23:20Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Files and even amongst what was released, a lot of blacked out and you're like, okay, the stuff we learned about?

• 23:26Danny Jones?

  Hypothetically.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Is the lightweight stuff.

• 23:28Danny Jones?

  Yes, exactly.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  I mean, there was nothing that was beyond like 1960s and 50s like CIA. I mean, every, I mean, they were at basically at war with Kennedy, completely trying to like subvert his policy in Vietnam and Laos and just and then the stuff with Cuba where

• 23:53Danny Jones?

  Yeah, Bay of Pigs.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Where his brother was like, basically CIA was funding the mafia to and then the Justice Department under his brother, they were basically at war, you know, with like they were trying to stop these attacks by the Cuban exile mafia funded folks attacking Cuba and then, yeah, the Bay of Pigs and just, you know, whether it's with psychedelics or with Kennedy's policy and just, it's humbling what the, you know, a lot of that's in the realm of like people just think like,

• 24:32Speaker 02

  that's not possible, like that's so beyond the pale, it's so unspeakable. That it's just hard to believe that, you don't want to believe it. I think in just,

• 24:44Speaker 02

  and you know, like, did the CIA have a hand in killing Kennedy? I think, and I don't think we're ever gonna have the smoking gun. I think there's a lot of very interesting suggestive evidence pointing in that direction, but um, you know,

• 25:02Speaker 02

  I think that is, for a lot of people, it's just, it's hard to come to that point to think, like, my God, a part of the government may have, like, actually killed our president. Like, that's just, I think that there's something very, very deep and psychological where it's hard to come to grips with that, even when there's some evidence pointing to it. And it, once you kind of like, um, for certain things like the MKUltra program included. You start to have a more open mind.

• 25:38Danny Jones?

  No, can you imagine being teleported back to 1959? And being a chemist contracted by the CIA with a blank check? And being allowed to do whatever the fuck you want? Or even being told to do things that you might think are not moral? Or maybe against your ideals, but you know, this is for national security. You can, we're gonna do this crazy shit. And there, there's no consequences for any of it. And you have unlimited money.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  And I could speak as a professional scientist for decades that just the funding alone? Like, you know, everyone's desperate for funding to do the work. And then, I mean, back then, I mean, this human subject protections just were in their infancy anyway, but nonetheless, the idea that like you could just,

• 26:29Speaker 02

  it was a wild west, you could do whatever. Oh, you're interested in like, brainwashing people?

• 26:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Like, oh, you get to try that. And if you don't have a moral compass, um, and, and, and if you add to that, hey, this is actually

• 26:45Speaker 02

  for the country as part of this fight against global communism. Like the, the fate of humanity is literally at stake here. So you add that as the backdrop and you get this really strong ends justifies the means mentality? That could, I'm sure, nudge people. I'm sure if you, well, my strong guess is if you ask someone like Charlie West, if you resurrected him and, you know, they'd say, yeah, well, yeah, there, this is dirty stuff, but like, welcome to the dirty world where it's like, did you want the Soviets taking over the planet?

• 27:19Danny Jones?

  Right. And the, and the CIA knows how to contract people or, or recruit people who are on that sociopathic spectrum.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  And I think they look for those people.

• 27:30Danny Jones?

  Of course they do, yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:31Danny Jones?

  That's why they do all those extensive interview, that huge extensive interview process with those people.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  And with certain people, I think they pick wacky people that they could just easily discredit.

• 27:40Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Afterwards, if they're already. Into whatever, any number of things.

• 27:46Danny Jones?

  I think you're totally right about that.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:49Danny Jones?

  I think you're, yeah. We could, that's a thread that we could go down a deep rabbit hole, but I don't want to get lost in the weeds.

• 27:57Danny Jones?

  There's a, there was even in, I think it was the early 90s. I don't know if you've heard about this, like the, the most sinister aspect of the, this experimentation that we've been known to do is on the stuff that we did on kids with, there was a program, Steve, we've talked about this before, but there was a program they had where there was a hospital for mentally disabled children and we were injecting them with plutonium.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I'm not familiar with this.

• 28:21Danny Jones?

  And they were trying to understand like the effects on these nuclear materials on human beings. And I think Clinton is the one who shut it down. But this really happened, Steve. I don't know if you can find the name of it or when it was shut down, but we pulled this up many times before. And it was only recently shut, like during Clinton's presidency, I think it was shut down.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the reason, see, as you're describing it, that's shocking to me. Cause of course we know about Tuskegee and.

• 28:46Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Danny Jones?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Between 46 and 56, no, that's too early. Massachusetts were subject, uh, children, uh, at a school in Massachusetts were subjected to radioactive nutrition experiments sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission and conducted by researchers from Harvard University and MIT. The children were fed Quaker oats breakfast cereal containing radioactive traces and absorption of plant material and calcium. Parents were not informed that radioactive elements were involved in these tests. Additionally, in a separate experiment, 73 children at the

• 29:27Danny Jones?

  Fertile State School were spoon fed oatmeal that contained radioactive isotopes over, over several years. The children were blah, blah, blah, the parents were never talked about, but there was a, there was a, it was, there was one that was recently shut down.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Couldn't it have been the follow up of this? Because like, for example, Tuskegee, the plan was to just follow these guys for the next 50 years, for the rest of their life. And so maybe it was the following up of these people that Clinton finally, I'm just, I'm just hearing about this, that's just speculation.

• 29:54Danny Jones?

  It could have been. The one that I, that I read about was a shut, shut down in like the late 80s or early 90s, I think.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Wow. But again, it it it gives you humility about.

• 30:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Like, there are some dark forces in the world.

• 30:07Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  And when you get into things like psychedelics, like, you've got to keep that in mind.

• 30:12Danny Jones?

  Well, we're talking about like MKUltra, this is the declassified stuff that's been confirmed, which is likely just 1% of what was really going on, because it's a, they're obviously gonna get rid of all of the evidence of the serious sinister stuff that they were working on. And it always makes me wonder, what are they doing now? What kind of stuff is DARPA doing now? You know, they're publicly funding $40 million to, uh, what's the guy's name again? And that's doing the psychedelic.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Oh, Brian Roth.

• 30:39Danny Jones?

  Brian Roth. So they're giving him, what is it, like $40 million to take the psychedelic

• 30:42Speaker 02

  trip? Yeah, it was huge.

• 30:43Danny Jones?

  That's that's public, above board. What are they, what are they doing right now?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Right, very respected, nice guy, yeah, good scientist, yeah.

• 30:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah. I wonder what they're doing that's still black and not not revealed to the public. It's, I can only, I can't fathom what that would be.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Well, you look at other areas, like, for example, the UFO, you think, and there's this whole history of like, oh, we shut down all the, you know, Blue Book and, you know, like, it's done. And then you find out later, and, oh, no, well, we had this other program, that then, then that was revealed, like, like the Maurice Arrow.

• 31:16Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  You know, and so regardless, not to take us down that rabbit hole, but just as a demonstration that often there's this, oh, we've shut it down.

• 31:25Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  No, you haven't. Um, and I remember a guy that, um, what was his name? Jim Ketchum, who had an interesting book released about 20 years ago. Um, and he had been a leader at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, the US Chemical Warfare Department or Agency, I forget the exact name, but they're basically testing a lot of it under the guise of, like, we need to test things.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  To know what we're dealing with in defense of the Soviets doing it to us. So you see, I mean, it's the same kind of thing with the Covid, Covid, um, uh, what do you call it?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Gain of function. So same rationale. It's like, we need to do, and there is a rationale there. You know, we need to do the thing that we think the enemy is gonna do to us. Even in the context of knowing what, how to defend against it. But then, of course, you can also play offense. I mean, it was the same thing with like the Star, Reagan Star Wars program. Oh, nukes in space to knock out the other nukes, but oh, you could also use those nukes. You know, first strike, you know. So this, you know, these types of like, the logic, you know, plays out. So he was doing this, uh, chemical, and they were doing stuff, as far as I've seen, like ethical work, you know, giving soldiers LSD and all kinds of interesting things.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  This wasn't, as far as I know, part of the CIA, but this is under the Department of the Army and, um, again, that I know of, nothing nefarious. But he gave a, he was giving a tour and giving some talks when that book came out. I forget the name of the book, about, about fifteen, twenty years ago. But I remember in the conversation, him saying that. Leave that up, Steve. I want to go back to that eventually. He, he wouldn't be surprised if the, uh, what was it? The Russians and the Chechen rebels back in, was it the late nineties? I might have the dates. Think so, yeah. Wrong, that he thought that when they were, had a bunch of kids hostage in a big school or something. But they finally ended it and had, there was, they came in and

• 33:32Speaker 02

  there was a siege and he, he was a member speculating that there were some, some of these exotic drugs that they used as part of that. And of course, like, the Russians are kind of known for intoxicology, like, you know, like, you know, all these, like exotic, you know, like, people have been done in with these kind of. Yeah, poisons and, but, but that, that some of this stuff might have been used. Um, like, for example. The US Army tested on its own soldiers a BZ cloud. So BZ is short for a super long, like, I don't know, like, a word that has like 25 characters. I can't remember the name. But it's BZ is a super potent,

• 34:17Speaker 02

  kind of on the level of LSD, but super potent analog of the of the class of drugs like scopolamine.

• 34:24Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  And atropine, so the anticholinergics, which Sasha Shulgin, I remember saying, he's the psychedelic chemist that developed hundreds of psychedelic compounds. But he said, you know, those anticholinergics were the true hallucinogens. You know, the the classic psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin aren't really hallucinogens because people rarely truly hallucinate. But on the anticholinergics, they do.

• 34:49Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  So the US Army was testing and like had an aerosolized bomb. So you drop this on the battlefield, this is the idea. And instead of having a, and there's a rationale here, you know, like rubber bullets, like instead of killing it, can we just make them into delirious?

• 35:06Danny Jones?

  Make everybody trip their balls off.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Right, and especially with that drug class where it's not like people are having mystical insights. They're just like zombies, like out of it. Like scopolamine in Colombia, that people call it the zombie drug because there's this, take American tourists, drop it in their drink. And I actually met one of these guys, a Danish guy. He had his laptop stolen. They apparently spiked his drink and they approached him outside of the bar or whatever. And they said, oh, is your hotel here? Yeah, that's right, you know, go get your laptop. Okay. And he goes, he got his laptop and just like handed it off to these guys. He was just in the zombie-like state. So that's the side, you know, he was a good friend of a good friend of mine.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  And it was a very credible story and consistent with what we know about the drug class. So anyway, another type of wild thing. But but but the reason I brought that up is because Kitchum, you know, bleeped some of this. You know, a lot of this work continued, at least in other countries. And it was about the United States, probably. You know, this experimental warfare stuff with these drugs, you know, probably hasn't stopped.

• 36:16Danny Jones?

  No, no, especially with a government like ours who has unlimited amounts of money that they're spending on warfare stuff and technology for warfare. Like, that's, that's the biggest bucket, bucket of money. That's, I mean, there's $21 million missing from the frickin Pentagon, from the DOD. Like, they're, they're gonna spend their money on, we've been spending money on drugs since the beginning, since after the World War II, figuring out how to win wars and how to maintain dominance in the world. So the idea that we're not doing that now is naive. And,

• 36:50Danny Jones?

  you know, just, you know, going back to that DARPA stuff, I wonder, you know, where that could possibly go or where it's going. And if we're, we're probably, we'll never find out. But the idea of, um, the idea, which I think Travis alluded of creating not just psychedelics that can treat things like PTSD or get people back in the state where they can actually get back out in the battlefield, but making more badass soldiers with psychedelics is a crazy idea. Like, making people that can have better edge detection or kill more people or make them more productive in combat. That's a crazy idea to me.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and we already know that we use drugs all the time for these things, like amphetamine, drugs, uh, like amphetamine itself, d- amphetamine is used, the go pills, like, and it, it makes sense. And they can kind of hand them out, like, you know, and, and I'm not disagreeing with it, but like, you know, you need the pilots to go up on a sortie and like, they need to be on and it's, they haven't slept in 20 hours. And it's like, yeah, like, these are perform, it works.

• 38:03Danny Jones?

  There's a drug that, uh, Joe Rogan used to talk about on his podcast that I think he said that he used to take. That was a, a drug that fighter pilots ate. Uh, gone.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Be medafinil?

• 38:15Danny Jones?

  No, it wasn't that. It was something, I forget what it was, but it was a.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Like a stimulant?

• 38:19Danny Jones?

  It was a stimulant, uh, pill that he would take, that he said that fighter pilots took it. And he's talked about it. He used to talk about it years ago. I haven't heard him talk about it since.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I'd be interested. I don't recall.

• 38:31Danny Jones?

  I'd have to, I'd have to find out what that was. Uh, Steve, maybe you can, maybe you can do some searching. Oh, by the way, here is, uh, Steve found what I was talking about with Clinton. It was in 1996, the US federal government agreed to pay 4.8 million as compensation for injecting 12 people with radioactive materials in a recent Cold War experiment. So the, so it was a settlement to make amends for the unethical experiments conducted by the government doctors and scientists.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  So there's two sides of this story. There's that. And yes, those experiments for between 44 and 74. And then I, I got more information here specifically on what you were talking about, which includes these experiments directing plutonium and other radioactive elements directly into patients. Some of these were kids.

• 39:11Danny Jones?

  That didn't know about it. Right. A five year old. Jesus Christ.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  God. I mean, levels of depravity that, I guess it's hard to wrap your head around like. But history tells us time and time again, like, like there's kind of no bottom to the pit of hell. Like, I mean, you know, the human animal is capable of anything.

• 39:38Danny Jones?

  Yes. The, the way I think, the way they think about it though, which is the way every country has to think about this kind of stuff is what's worse? Are we willing to do this terrible thing to save something way worse from happening?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Right, right. Which I get. I'm not saying I agree. And a lot of this is going to depend on.

• 39:56Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Like, I'm glad we have an intelligence, you know, the intelligence aid, you know, a country needs to, I mean, the original mission was like, collect intelligence to inform the president and before it kind of devolved into their own agenda that the president sometimes doesn't even know, know about, but.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  You know, it's gonna come down to these and, and yeah, we need secrecy. You can't have everything being public, but the government obviously way overdoes secrecy and confidentiality. And they have every incentive to do that.

• 40:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  So it comes down to the nuances of like, ultimately it took human beings to do this. And then, and just like the, um, I mean, the torture stuff and Abu Ghraib and, you know, enhanced interrogation. I think we're still coming out of this amnesia where it's like, we didn't want to admit at the, it's hard for the American, the average American that like, we were involved with straight up torture. Stuff that we had executed people for, like waterboarding.

• 40:59Danny Jones?

  Right. And we tortured also innocent people.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, because with anything, there's gonna be false positives. And one of any number of reasons why you shouldn't torture people. Even if you were a hundred percent accurate, you shouldn't do it. It's like, not right. It's not, it's not, it doesn't work. But also like, yeah, you're gonna have some poor, poor dudes that are just caught up and,

• 41:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  I mean, worse than death.

• 41:28Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  I mean, people being tortured. Um, but yeah, we're capable of all of this.

• 41:35Danny Jones?

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• 42:19Danny Jones?

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• 43:04Speaker 02

  Oh, that is modafinil. That's the trade name for modafinil, which is an amphetamine like stimulant. So it's in the the general, it's chemically not, not the same as the amphetamine structure, but it's in the broader class of dopaminergic stimulants like cocaine and amphetamine and methamphetamine and pathogen.

• 43:27Danny Jones?

  He said he used it for, it's incredible effectiveness for focus and mental clarity, but he eventually stopped because he didn't like the idea of depending on it.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  So it's, it's sort of, and I think it was Michael Baumann at NIDA Intramural that put it this way one time, you know, sort of amphetamine, in the amphetamine class in general, sort of like, you know, pounding your cocaine and, you know, or I'm sorry, your dopamine, you know, and really pushing it strong. Modafinil is like you're massaging your dopamine system. So it's a, it's a, it's a pretty mild stimulant of the, with dopaminergic effects, like cocaine and amphetamine, but much milder and it's approved for,

• 44:16Speaker 02

  what's it approved for? So like certain things like shift work and jet lag.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  So it's, it's,

• 44:27Speaker 02

  The term there is like it's a wakefulness enhancer.

• 44:29Danny Jones?

  Do you know I could score some of it?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  It's so it's very common for people to order the I'm not making any recommendations, but it it is very common.

• 44:38Danny Jones?

  I'm making a menu over here.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  It's schedule four, so it's not it's so it's illegal to have without you can get a prescription, number one. Um, but a lot of people get it without prescription. They order from these Indian pharmacies.

• 44:49Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 44:50Speaker 02

  So it's way easier to get. Again, I'm not telling anyone. There's definitely a legal risk to that, but lots of people and just shouldn't do illegal things. Um, but a lot of people do that, um, order it because it's relatively low on the schedule. There's not as many controls and they're just, how are you going to stop it?

• 45:08Danny Jones?

  How similar is it to Adderall?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  It's similar. It's milder.

• 45:12Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  A lot of people prefer, um, modafinil or Prodigial to Adderall. And, you know, similar drugs like Ritalin, which is methylphenidate, but they prefer it because they don't, they say it gives you that kind of focus and that wakefulness of being on in the flow on task without the the jitters.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Um, it's so it's it's not as forceful.

• 45:38Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  But it's, um, with some of the same effects. In fact, with some of the, there's some, uh, data that was collected in the military. Um, suggesting that it's even better than amphetamine at

• 45:53Speaker 02

  reversing the cognitive detriments that you get from keeping people awake. So for insomnia, because you get a lot of cognitive detriments, very measurable and stimulants in general, caffeine, the amphetamine compounds, modafinil will to some degree reverse that or attenuate that, make it not as bad or, you know, get it back to normal state or something at least closer to normal state. Um, but modafinil, as I recall, looked even better than amphetamine.

• 46:22Danny Jones?

  So it's it's mechan- mechanism of action is totally separate, totally different from Adderall.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  It has an overlap. It's a it's a so it has that similar effect on increasing extracellular dopamine, which is the same general effect that in different ways cocaine and amphetamine. Cocaine more so blocks the reuptake, amphetamine is more more so a release or so. All of these drugs, they the important thing is they all ultimately kind of increase dopaminergic function, which means.

• 46:51Danny Jones?

  You're gonna pay for it later.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Transmission, yes. And I always like to quote Terrence McKenna, I quote him on several things. It's like amphetamine, it's like it just leaves your your axles flopping.

• 47:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Sort of like, there's a, uh, they're very hard on the body. And especially people that chronically use stimulants, it just, they are rough on people. And so it can deplete your dopamine reserves, basically.

• 47:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  And so an answer to that is, well, taking it the next day and then of course you know where that like, yeah.

• 47:28Danny Jones?

  The thing I hate about Adderall, I've taken Adderall before, um, very rarely do I take it. If I really need to get something done and I haven't slept, I'll take one, like a little bit, like a quarter of one. But I hate the fact that it sucks every drop of creativity out of me.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Really?

• 47:44Danny Jones?

  I can't be creative, I can't carry a conversation, I just turn into a robot, like a mechanical robot that can complete tasks, that's it.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Right, so it's like a trade off. Um, now, some people will say these drugs can enhance their creativity.

• 47:58Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  And other, but I've heard plenty of people say what you're saying.

• 48:01Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Um, so if you have something to do that everything is defined, um, and yeah, as I think of it, there's some experimental evidence for this. Like, you know, if you have your task before you and you know what you, especially if it's a more mundane task, like, yeah, that's where.

• 48:17Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  This is really effective, but.

• 48:20Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I took one when I had to clean out my garage a few months ago and it was perfect.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Well, which is a classic stimulant thing, like people cleaning.

• 48:28Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  And the way I think about it, and this goes beyond the research, but, um, people tend to go into, are both in conversation and with tasks like cleaning more on stimulants, more likely to go into and complete subroutines. In other words, you clean in the sink. You know, whatever. And, and, um, normally, you know, you do kind of a decent job, ninety percent. But, you know, there's that grime that's kind of like you could, oh, you could get a toothpick and like, start getting that extra thing, you know, and you could, um, well, I can't really get under it. Oh, I'm gonna go get a screwdriver and like, you know, take the faucet off so that I can clean that thing underneath.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Go into those subroutines, complete the task, and then go back to the main task of cleaning the thing. Oh, wow. It's in conversation too. Um, so people will, you know, go into a subparagraph and talk about something without forgetting. And so this is where like very different than cannabis where you're more likely to, you know, go into those subroutines, but then you just don't find your way back. Right, right, right. You're like, then you go off and do another subroutine, other, amphetamines are sort of like, no, you know, um. Wow. Cause they just, they give that energy and that, um,

• 49:45Speaker 02

  and really it's more so of a motivation. Dopamine is, is very much about motivation. I mean, it's very much tied to reward, but some, I, I think the evidence suggests it's really about defining what is rewarding. So making things interesting and nicotine is very interesting like that too. Yeah. Because that the amphetamine type in cocaine has this too, but they, they kind of have this primary reinforcing effect that just, they just make you feel good, euphoric. But then there's also what's called conditioned reinforcing effect, like the things that are associated with it become, you know, the things you do under it become more rewarding. But then there's also this, sorry, this might be too technical, but non-associative rein, uh, uh,

• 50:31Speaker 02

  non-contingent reinforcement. In other words, these drugs and ni, and this is where nicotine has its strongest rewarding effects is making everything else in the environment, not just through a Pavlov's dog bell and whistle through association, but through a direct.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Effect in making everything else in the environment rewarding. Which is why nicotine is just this powerful psychoactive in terms of its addiction potential, in terms of people like really enjoy using it. But you ask someone, and I remember when I was young, I'm like, what's the deal about tobacco? It's like, you know, people try different things and they understand, you know, they, you know, use cannabis and it's like, yeah, they're intoxicated, they feel the effect. You know, tobacco is like very, this very subtle thing. People aren't really high, people don't usually use that language. It's a psychoactive effect, but you kind of think about it. You know, what do people talk about with, you know, smoking, you know? You know, oh, it's great after a meal or before a meal. And the classic, like a cigarette after sex and like it.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And then like with work, you know, making things like writing paper, the great writers, you know, smoking away, skipping lunch and just smoking. And so it has this sort of, it's, and research with rats suggests this, that even like, say, putting a rat on nicotine will make just this random like house light, like a red light coming on, like more rewarding, they'll, they'll press a bar to get that red light to come on more so after nicotine. Not because the light signals the delivery of nicotine, just because just seeing a red light is cooler when you're on nicotine. So which kind of explains why this drug is so addictive, but it doesn't make you high.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Cause it kind of makes just subtly every, the, the world becomes more rewarding. You know, people are kind of, it opens aperture a little bit.

• 52:21Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  And everything else becomes a little tuned in. And it's working through that acetylcholine system, which has a, a big role in focus.

• 52:30Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah, the nicotine stuff is interesting because I've heard that, I've heard multiple things that, you know, A, it's not necessarily bad for you, other than the fact it's a vasorestrictive, it's very addictive. But are there any, are you aware of any other negative effects or downsides of, of using it? Other than, other than obviously?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  The smoking, yeah, yeah. So the, the, the, there's downsides to everything. And people might disagree with me on this because there's no, it.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  You're kind of weighing like all kinds of evidence here, you know, but to me nicotine outside of smoking or even vaping, which is still probably going to be much safer than smoking, but nonetheless, you know, you're inhaling some, there's going to be downsides. But like say in like, you know, nicotine pouches. Any concern, including cardiovascular concern is in the, in the same general category as caffeine. So some people shouldn't use caffeine, especially a lot of caffeine, like if you're at severe risk of heart disease, or if you have anxiety, like the first thing your doctor should ask you before prescribing Xanax should be like, let's talk about how much coffee and soda you drink. Um, and insomnia, if some, again, before you get a script of Ambien or what have you, first question be like, let's talk about your caffeine use, because you, maybe you

• 53:50Speaker 02

  just need to cut out your caffeine.

• 53:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, yeah, the, uh, the, um, nicotine is sort of in that same category where there's downside, you know, but the cardiovascular effects are relatively, they're there, um, but more in the caffeine range. I mean, a good amount of the cardiovascular downside from tobacco smoking comes from the carbon monoxide that you get.

• 54:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  From smoking, which is, uh, nothing to do with the nicotine and something that you don't get with, with vaping either, you don't get the, you know.

• 54:27Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it's the delivery mechanism, right? Especially with those pouches, the nicotine pouches, those things will eat your gums away, from what I understand, pretty bad. There's a lot of people who've had serious issues with their gums, like having too many, having a pouch in their lip all day long.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and some of that is going to be, um, we're going to have, it's such a new thing that we're going to have to wait to see. Um, I mean, to what degrees related to the classic, you know, like cocaine burning out the inside of the nose, another alkaloid, um, which I think someone has to do a lot of cocaine to get that, you know, like, like what was it, Stevie Nicks, I think, was reported to have that, you know, like they were doing a lot of coke.

• 55:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  You have to have a lot of money to do that much coke. That's one of the things about coke, like, most people don't have the money to go that far.

• 55:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  The way a rock star does.

• 55:14Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, like, we'll, we'll see, and I would say though, in general, like, there's a risk to everything.

• 55:20Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  But like, if someone's trying to quit smoking, like.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  I mean, these pouches are basically the same thing as FDA approved, like nicotine gum, nicotine patch, nicotine lozenge.

• 55:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  It's basic, I would say it's probably better technology than the nicotine gum and nicotine lozenges. Um, and, cause it can get, cause of the pouch, it can give you a little more of a quick transdermal administration. Orders of magnitude less risk than smoking cigarettes.

• 55:57Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  And, you know, vaping is still gonna be, again, we're not gonna know the final answer for a few decades, you know, but there's a lot of reason to think that vaping is substantially less risky, not without risk, but compared to smoking. Basically, if someone's smoking cigarettes, any of these things are better options.

• 56:14Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  And, and, you know, nicotine pouches would be the least risky of all, of all of them.

• 56:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Compared to vaping or smoking. So, I kinda think about this when you see some of the regulations in California or whatnot, about, can't have any flavors. And it's like, honestly, you could have a discussion about should we be subsidizing that. I mean, the classic thing is, and I'm not saying we should, but I'm saying that would be a reasonable argument to the degree that it's helping people quit smoking. The classic concern though is like, this balance of, yeah, we don't want kids to use it, we don't want it to be attractive for kids, but we also gotta keep in mind those same properties are things that can make it more attractive to a, you know, 63-year-old smoker that's been trying to quit. Maybe they like that whatever menthol flavor, that cherry flavor, and...

• 57:01Danny Jones?

  You can't buy fucking menthol cigarettes in California? That's what I heard.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  I, that's probably tru, I think that's true.

• 57:07Danny Jones?

  That's so crazy.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so you gotta like, yeah.

• 57:12Danny Jones?

  That's a, I, I, I heard a, I heard a clip of, I think it was Cat Williams talking about it. That's, that's, uh, that's racist, because black people love menthols, black people love Newports, now you're denying them their Newport?

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's big differences there, yeah, yeah, I mean, they're very popular.

• 57:27Danny Jones?

  It's ridiculous, like, what are we, babies? Jimmy's not allowed to have a Newport because it's too flavorful, or you're not allowed to have a, a coffee flavored Zen because, you know, that's gonna be too dangerous. Meanwhile, you have people literally doing heroin on the streets, unregulated, shitting themselves.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:41Danny Jones?

  But...

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 57:43Danny Jones?

  It's like California is so fucking crazy.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Overregulation.

• 57:46Danny Jones?

  We went, me and him.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Virtue signaling.

• 57:48Danny Jones?

  Me and him went to, uh, uh, San Francisco. And we were visiting somebody to do a podcast a couple of years ago. And I wasn't, you couldn't buy nicotine pouches that weren't flavored. They were all just unflavored nicotine pouches.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:02Danny Jones?

  And I, I didn't bring my own unfortunately. So I was like stuck with these unflavored nicotine pouches. Yet we were walking down the street and the guy we were there to meet was like, uh, where's your car? Where's your car parked? Whatever like make sure you, uh, lock your car because every car gets broken into here. And there's, there's no, no repercussions for the people that break into cars. And we were walking down the street right in front of his apartment and there was literally a purse emptied out on the ground, like in front of a car. And the laws there are, oh, they allow people to do that. They can't get arrested for fucking breaking into somebody's car.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Same thing with, uh, and I, I seem to hear that they're, they'd reversed it or were going to, but like with shoplifting.

• 58:39Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Like they're basically, I mean, um, now what I've heard from folks in the Bay area is that their rule is don't lock your car because you can get your window broken out. Like one, don't keep valuables in there, but keep it unlocked. That way like, yeah, I'd rather the person open the door, check for change. And oh, there's nothing here. And you're good. You don't have a broken window.

• 58:59Danny Jones?

  Yes. Yeah, you're right about that. Maybe that, maybe that's maybe I got the story wrong. Maybe he told us to just leave it unlocked and make sure nothing was left in there.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Well, I'm sure there's all kinds of strategies when you're dealing with that type of environment where people just, I mean, it's so pervasive in my understanding that just, you know, and you get this with drug policy in general. I realize not all of that is related to drugs, but it's a general principle that there are unintended consequences everywhere. And you have to be really, really careful about things that like this looks good on the surface. You know, okay, let's play it out. Let's get as much evidence as we can. Like for example, you know, having really high taxes on other nicotine products and eliminating completely all other attractive qualities. Like, you know, you can't get, you know, coffee flavor.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  It's like, okay, yeah, uh, you're trying to make them less attractive to kids, but also we have to weigh that against, yeah, this, the smoker who might've done that as a substitute.

• 59:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  And therefore is, you know, maybe not now going to die from lung cancer or heart disease. So there's, you know, if you go all out on any one side or the other, just with sort of virtue signaling as the goal. There's gonna be harms there.

• 1:00:12Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  I mean, sort of like class, you know, like COVID. It's like, yeah, lockdown, like, if you really only look at the, you know, transmission itself, there's an argument there. But then, as people were warning and they got thrown under the bus, it's like, if we keep kids out of school, there's gonna be, you know, developmental delays.

• 1:00:31Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  If we shut down all these businesses, suicide's going to go up.

• 1:00:36Danny Jones?

  And their suicide.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Alcoholism is going to go up.

• 1:00:38Danny Jones?

  Drug overdoses were hit an all time high, I think, during the pandemic.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And substance use across the board.

• 1:00:45Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Went up in anxiety disorders and depression. And, and so, and now some of those people and like the new NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, he got completely demonized for being one of those kind of voices as part of this great Barrington Declaration that said, hey, hold on, maybe we should consider more of this Swedish model of, you know, shutting down society itself is gonna have consequences. Maybe we should encourage people that are particularly at risk to isolate and take precautions. But, you know, those people in, in just the argument that, they're more concerned about the economy and this is hard, you know. When the economy goes down.

• 1:01:25Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  People kill themselves.

• 1:01:26Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  More so men.

• 1:01:29Speaker 04

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• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Male suicides go up when, and female too, but it's, it's strongly a male effect.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  You can't provide for your family. It's the most demoralizing, one of the most demoralizing things in the world.

• 1:02:42Danny Jones?

  That's one of the things you don't really, that's one of the things that I didn't really understand until we watched it play out. Because at first, I was like, oh, wow, like, the way, the way the media painted it, as if like, oh, everyone's so worried about the economy, not people's lives, but like, play it out. How does that actually end up for you?

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  The economy is people's lives.

• 1:03:01Danny Jones?

  Exactly, yeah, which is what we learned during that whole process.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  So with drugs, the same principle, there's, you know, the immediate thing that protect the kids, yeah, we want to protect the kids, but there's usually a balance to be had there, and we just want those decisions to be as much informed by science as possible, and, and I would say even beyond science, you know, informed by human rights. Like, there's some things you just shouldn't do.

• 1:03:29Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Like, ban people from attending church. Like, it's kind of in our First Amendment.

• 1:03:35Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:03:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  You know, despite the data, you know, which is kind of how I feel about psychedelics and religious use. I think it's very clear, these drugs, many, you know, they're, you know, a number of religious groups, including some that have religious protection, or constitutional protection, the Native American Church, now the UDV, the Santo Daima, for using psychedelics, but, you know, there's genuine spiritual and religious use of these compounds by people that aren't part of those, you know, communities. And the Constitution doesn't say anything about drugs. In fact, there was this whole evolution of when we first started to tinker

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  with drugs, and we had to have a constitutional amendment to really fully ban alcohol, but then when the whole cannabis prohibition came up, it was first justified under the Marijuana Tax Act. The reason it was a tax act, it was like, the justification under, I believe, the Ninth Amendment, that, you know, the federal government... Can't do things that are reserved, certain rights unless they've been outlined in the Constitution, the reserve for the states or the people. So the government, the Constitution doesn't say we can regulate drugs. Um, but the justification was, oh, this is involving interstate commerce. So we can put a tax on it that no one's allowed to actually functionally get the tax act,

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  to get the actual stamp that you need to engage in that interstate commerce.

• 1:05:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  But now, and it's sort of like the president going to war without Congress. Now, it just, at some point, it just became so, such a precedent that no one even like worries about these things. Of course, you could, the federal government can, you know, ban drugs.

• 1:05:18Danny Jones?

  Um, yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  But, you know, but the Constitution doesn't say anything about drugs. It says a whole lot about religion. It's amongst the very first rights that are outlined and.

• 1:05:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, in that First Amendment.

• 1:05:34Danny Jones?

  As well as the separation of church and state.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so, yeah, I think about these things with, uh, with the psychedelics in particular because, yeah, people have, by all measures, legitimate, you know, religious and spiritual beliefs surrounding their use of them. And that's not to say that most psychedelic use is just for fun. That's true too. They're also recreational drugs, but, you know, there's a spectrum there.

• 1:06:06Danny Jones?

  Hmm. Yeah, do you, so, so during that study, did you find that the psychedelic experience that these religious folks were having were amplifying the beliefs they already had?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Yes, there was, yeah, there was some of that.

• 1:06:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, and so.

• 1:06:26Danny Jones?

  And then where they would.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  People re, kind of saying it, they, they saw the lessons of their faith in a deeper way, as well as folks saying that they were more open to other.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, less judgmental of other religions, this type of thing.

• 1:06:42Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Now Travis, when he was on here, he was talking about this idea of perennialism, this common core of all religions.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so that's where the study has been, even years before it was published, there were already folks sort of touting the study as like, oh, this is a, probably not using that word because no one knows what it means, like, you know, a test of perennialism. We're showing that there's a common truth to all religions. So perennialism is this kind of tradition dating back to William James, who was very interested, essentially father of American psychology, who was interested in both mystical experiences. But this idea that the world's major religions have, and it can be viewed in two ways. One is that they actually stem from core human truths. And sort of by analogy, the classic, you

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  know, the blind men all describing different parts of the elephant, the elephant being God, but they don't, oh, no, God is a, whatever, a trunk and one, no, it's a big kind of grabbing the foot, you know, along those lines. But, you know, some people, there's different flavors. One is more of a metaphysical flavor, saying that they're pointing to a metaphysical, all pointing to the same metaphysical truth. Another, you know, saying that the nature of mystical, of subjective experience, like mystical experience, is a common element that seeded, that that mystical experience is sort of more innate to the human and that has seeded all of the different religions. Now, these are ultimately probably impossible

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  questions to really address empirically. It's probably more philosophical. It's sort of, you know, maybe like the stoned ape theory. It's hard to like get, you know, evidence for, I mean, all of evolutionary psychology is like that and evolutionary, or a good chunk of evolutionary biology and psychology. But the, this study can't test perennialism. I mean, so, you know, 22 Christians, five rabbis, one Muslim, one Buddhist.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  You know, even if it did include a hundred of each of those groups, I mean, then you'd actually have the ability, or even thirty in each of the, you'd have more of the ability to compare. So we didn't even have the numbers to compare the experiences of those people. But even if you had a hundred in each group, and they had very similar experiences, that's very different than saying, I mean, that's very different than concluding that therefore the origins of Buddhism and Christianity, Judaism, etc., all have this experience at the core. I mean, after all, it was psilocybin that prompted these experiences. And that's a whole philosophical rabbit hole about, you know, is this a legitimate religious experience

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  or spiritual experience, or is this sort of mimicking a spiritual experience? But it's, again, to me, it's ultimately philosophical. It's like the hard problem of consciousness. It doesn't appear to be something you could really provide any evidence over to say whether all of these religions are pointing to the same core truth, simply because the experience with psilocybin is similar across these different religions. I mean, there have been studies, I mean, the whole, a lot of the excitement or interest in perennialism and the, which has been called the perennial philosophy, Aldous Huxley wrote a, or had an interesting anthology called The Perennial Philosophy, which kind of really explored these ideas

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  in the 1950s. And, you know, the, the, the interest mainly lies outside of drug effects, you know, just the fact that spiritual experiences across these different traditions do share some similarities. So in some sense, you don't need drugs to show that. In fact, it's more compelling if the experiences don't come from drugs. Sure. You know, because that's sort of like, well, of course, they were similar because they all had the same dose of the same drug. So, you know, that's not to say that I'm coming down strong for or against perennialism. I think it's very interesting philosophically, but as a scientist, like, this study can't, certainly can't address it. Right.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  And then there's also questions about, oh, is it a good thing that? Psychedelics get incorporated into religion and you could certainly see a downside to that. You can argue for upsides.

• 1:11:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it seems like there's a movement to incorporate psychedelics into religion to sort of like revive these religions, these monotheist religions like Judaism or Christianity or whatever it is.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, there would probably be both good and bad that comes from that. I mean, I think about as an example with the Roman Catholic Church with the child of sexual abuse, what epidemic, whatever you want to call it, would that have been better or worse had some powerful mind altering drugs been thrown into the mix? There's a decent argument for worse, right? You know, so, you know, and I've known people of, including former and current members of these various, you know, the U D V or the Santo Diame. I mean, there's plenty of critiques of those religions, including folks saying they're very,

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  I'm not saying this, I'm just saying some people say this, that misogynistic.

• 1:12:10Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  You know, people are people.

• 1:12:13Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  And that's also some of my critique against some of the psychedelic enthusiasm, like the extreme version of psychedelic enthusiasm. Like, I've never met an enlightened person. I'm not saying theoretically they don't exist, but I see the same spectrum of humanity amongst people that have used lots of psychedelics and people who have never. This, now can they nudge people? Yeah, I've seen plenty, in terms of actually just being a better person. I think, given someone's existing tendencies, it definitely, it seems like someone can, with that kind of plasticity infused into the system of the experience, one could be nudged in that better direction.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  I think that seems clear, but overall, I mean, I think like Terrence McKenna, again, he-

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  I mean, he was very good about like laying out, I think, the reality of um.

• 1:13:07Danny Jones?

  And the contradictions and all that.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he would say like, look, he's like with these like gurus, like keep one hand over your wallet, one hand over your asshole. Like, I mean, it's a classic, you know, power corrupts, like, and, and he's like psychedelics don't, I'm paraphrasing here, but one of his lectures, like psychedelics don't make you a better person. He said, I just went through a bitter divorce. Ask, ask my ex-wife what a wonderful person I am. Like, I keep this stuff in mind when it comes to some, you know, the sort of saving the human species type talk.

• 1:13:41Danny Jones?

  Yes. Yeah, there's definitely, no matter how many of these ego dissolving experiences you have, some of the people that have done most psychedelics still have huge egos, you can tell.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  And, and it would appear that, at least to me, that in many cases, not all, it's worse, not, they had big egos, not just despite having used psychedelics, but they had big egos because of the psychedelics.

• 1:14:04Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Well, the whole ego inflation effect that, and sometimes you see this, like, I've seen, I have the answers, and most of these normal folks don't know.

• 1:14:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it's the Messiah complex.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  It's interesting, Ram Dass in his book Be Here Now had something like this, like, the difference between an enlightened person, I'm paraphrasing, it's been many years since I read it, but enlightened person and a, and a crazy person is that, the, and this is what Ram Dass said, you know, the enlightened person, yes, or the crazy, they both realize that they're Jesus, but the enlightened person realizes that everyone else is Jesus too. The crazy person thinks only they are Jesus.

• 1:14:47Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God, that's hilarious.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Interesting way to look at it, right?

• 1:14:51Danny Jones?

  That is a really interesting.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  The humility is hard with some of these experiences. And a lot of people do a good job with it, I think, you know, I've met a lot of like really good people that have been deep into psychedelics, like solid, solid, good human beings. And I've also met some. Wild egomaniacs and just, yeah.

• 1:15:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it probably makes you more, I think Hamilton was explaining this to me. He was saying, number one, it's a placebo. And number two, it makes you more of who you already are.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  That, that makes sense to me because of that general plasticity, which is, I think, the main thing, which is why it can be used to brainwash Charles Manson's, you know, cult followers. And it was probably successful and to some degree with the CIA's, you know, brainwashing experiments. And with the right intent and with the right, you know, preparation and guidance, it could be incredibly helpful for helping someone change the way they view themselves with depression and with addiction and et cetera.

• 1:15:51Danny Jones?

  Well, now, what about, you talk about plasticity. Like, what specifically can psychedelics do as far as plasticity or rewiring your brain? Or are there any sort of measurable results?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  Yes, unfortunately, most of those or nearly all of those are gonna be in rodents.

• 1:16:11Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  So, because you can cut up brains and

• 1:16:15Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  we don't wanna do that. The IRBs don't let us do that, thankfully.

• 1:16:20Danny Jones?

  I wonder if you could do like an IQ test on somebody before and after like a ton of psychedelics.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  So, it had, that's been looked at. We don't see a general increase in intelligence, although who's to say that, you know, there's, it could be that it wasn't done in the right way, or maybe there's some very narrow, like more particular aspect of intelligence that could be enhanced. But, but it seems to be more of a personality than in, in, um, an intelligence thing.

• 1:16:48Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  But the neuroplasticity, first of all, that's a general term. It can mean different things in the brain. So, what's been shown in, in, in rodents is what's called dendritic branching. So, these, you know, the neuron with the branches, like a tree that come off, so growing new branches. Synaptogenesis, which is the connections between the different neurons often with the branches. So, forming new connections and then probably the least amount of evidence, but some evidence for Neurogenesis, which is the creation of new neurons. And so there's evidence, at least some evidence for all of those from multiple labs, at least the synaptogenesis and dendritic branching.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  But I also remind people that drugs like, plenty of drugs like cocaine have shown neuroplastic effects. Really? Yeah, yeah, so. The same branch building stuff too? Yeah, now research needs to figure out the potential differences, so it may be that this doesn't. And this is where part of my background comes in handy, because I'm from one lens, I had to say I'm a comparative pharmac- behavioral pharmacologist. So I always think, okay, it's the same thing with the thought of the default mode network, the decoupling of the default mode network being the embodiment of the ego and that the decoupling of that under psychedelics is a key mechanism for psychedelics. Well, alcohol does that, amphetamine does that, cocaine does that, THC does that.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  So that's not, you would have to, maybe that's more of a signature of just not feeling like yourself, like feeling intoxicated. Right. So you gotta watch out for some of these stories and you gotta like ask, like, what do other drugs do? Is this truly unique? Now, it may be, there's a guy that Alex Kwan, I think I saw a presentation where he looks like he's figuring out some downstream effects that might distinguish psychedelics from some of these other substances in terms of

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  the network activity that that neuroplasticity results in, but it's very much an active. We're gonna have to figure out a lot more to know for sure whether the neuroplasticity seen in animals is part of what's happening in humans. Well, one, is it happening in humans? Probably is. But two, how important is that for the therapeutic effects? My guess is that it is, but it is just a guess. I mean, there's also the experience that people learn from and has this impact on them. And so there's a lot to unpack there and it's a very. So a lot of, there's a lot of threads about how psychedelics work, you know? They make the brain communicate with itself very dramatically, acutely.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  In other words, when you're tripping. There's a massive change in brain network dynamics, which are communication patterns across the brain. A key question, and I have a study that's, we haven't analyzed the data, but it's looking at people long-term who have quit smoking with psilocybin. The million-dollar question with that stuff is, in terms of the therapeutics, is, is there a change in brain network dynamics long-term? Uh-huh. There may or may not be, you know, because of course, the brain, and it's very important to know what the brain is doing when you're on the psychedelic, but therapeutically, the most important thing is what's it doing six months later when you're still less depressed, or you're still not drinking, or, you know, whatever the therapeutic target of that study was.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  So that, you know, so there's that, the neuroplasticity, the brain network function, and then there's stuff at the psychological level. And I don't think it's one or the other, psychology or biology, unless you're a dualist presumably. These are just different levels of analysis. You know, it's not one or the other, they're just two sides of the same coin. Yeah. And my presumption is that every psychological change or psychological phenomenon has a biological correlate. Yes. And we're probably just at the limits, I mean, you remember what you had for breakfast this morning or whatever. We don't have the technology now to go in and read exactly what those brain, you know,

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  patterns are that pulls up that constitute that memory, but one day we might. Hmm. But presumably, there is that biological side. So with that caveat aside, you know, at the psychological level, I think that's where we have most traction in really understanding how psychedelics are working. It seems that when it works, it's like good psychotherapy. It's not like, oh, I just took this pill, like whether it's, you know, antidepressants or whatever, you know, you take the pill every day and it has, oh, now I'm feeling better, you know? Yeah. People have a story to tell you. Yeah. Like a life experience, like psychotherapy, or probably more commonly, like a life experience. Oh, let me tell you about, you know, the first time I visited another country and knew what it was like to be the only person of my race within a crowd of 10,000 people. Let me tell you the first time was like to fall in love.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or what it was like to have my kid and how that changed everything. Like, it seems like it's an experience.

• 1:21:51Danny Jones?

  Yes, it's a very reflective experience, especially like when you were talking about the bad trips earlier, because sometimes the bad trips can be the most, you get the most out of those. You kind of like learn the most about yourself, or figure out problems, or find ways of looking at problems from a different perspective than you're used to. You get off the, you get off of the normal vibration of waking consciousness, you know?

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  And the research is consistent with that, so in different ways, so scales of mental flexibility afterwards are increased, and then more kind of molar temporal perspective is personality. So openness to experience, multiple labs, including work that I've done, have shown that openness to experience is, it's one of the big five personality traits that that increases. Not all the studies have found that, which is to be expected, I mean, personality is a tough thing to push around, but that's, it strikes me as credible that, you know, so openness to experience refers to thinking of a tolerance for different points of view, and even holding seemingly mutually inclusive points of view at the same time, and appreciation for aesthetics, that's openness to experience. So that, kind

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  of this, the perspective taking, I mean, so people, just countless stories of people having psychedelic experiences, and they look at themselves in a different way. And sometimes it's this aha effect, like, we're just like, we're fish, like, looking at the water. It's like, this is our life for someone who's depressed or addicted, and like, they zoom out, and they're like, holy cow, like, what in the world? And with cancer, it's like, oh my god, I like, this is dominating my life, I'm not dead yet. It's, I'm deciding to react like this, and let this thing, my quality of life is zero, because I'm choosing to view it this way. And so much of the suffering isn't the direct effect, it's like, how I'm

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  choosing my life. Like, I'm not going on vacations, I'm not getting out in the sun with my grandkids, this type of thing. And so even though people had told themselves that stuff before, it's just like with depression and addiction, you could tell yourself cognitively a million times, but people have this, when it works, people can have this deep sense of this- Very visceral change in perspective taking. They're like, my God, I've been doing this for like cigarette smoking for decades. I've been telling myself like, I don't want to do this. Like this isn't who I am. I go to the gym, I do blah, blah, blah. Right. Try to eat healthy. I'm trying to set example for my kids. Like, what the hell am I doing? And it really can hit them like hard. Like this is like, doesn't fit. Right. And somehow, just when you're doing it every day,

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  it's just habituation. And same thing with like depression, like thinking about yourself as this failure. And it's like, you just get so used to this and it's just the normal thing. But somehow psychedelic zoom people out where they could see it for what it is. And they're like, Yeah. What in the world? Right. And it's so, because I think it can touch on ground truth. Like, you know, it's, it's, and that's why it lasts the next day. Yeah, they're not tripping anymore, but they're like, it was so compelling. And it seemed so self validating, which is part of the mystical experience. The self validating aspect of the experience that the next day they're like, yeah, that wasn't just some drug effect. Maybe it opened a window for me or whatever, but like, the way I looked at it then, that was the right way to look at it.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Or people with PTSD who just like, I remember one marine giving a talk about his treatment with MDMA and just saying, like, he just viewed himself as a monster. Because he accidentally blew a little kid up and just like shattered him. And like, like how he finally like stepped outside of that. Like he saw himself as something different. And like, was able to sleep for the first time in like years. You know, like in, you know, it's very, you know, like, I think the real action is that stuff. We just, we're nowhere close to understanding at the brain level. Yeah. You know, in terms of like, how that manifests, like how these dark.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Pits that we fall into like with PTSD and anxiety and depression and addiction. Like how that's so distributed mentally and presumably like throughout the brain.

• 1:26:07Danny Jones?

  Right physiologically, how it affects your body.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's such a top because the brain is tied to everything and just like they're. The way they're existing in the world is just there's the tentacles are everywhere. And how they can when they go to the root of these things like you can have these manifestations like they're broad.

• 1:26:27Danny Jones?

  Now for someone, for example, like that soldier who accidentally blew up a kid and was thought was viewing himself as a monster and couldn't sleep at night. What, how do you determine which type of psychedelic to use for somebody like that, whether it be MDMA or psilocybin or even, I don't know, DMT is ever used? Like, how do you determine?

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  We don't really know and not a single study yet has looked at that. Now that guy was in the study that was MDMA for PTSD, one of the MAP studies.

• 1:26:53Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Um, and you know, my, I, the idea is that MDMA was viewed as sort of maybe for PTSD as um, maybe the right place to start because it's a gentler, you don't have the reality shattering. Effects the full bad trip of just not even knowing one as a person anymore. They got permanently insane like that's the flavor of the bad trip on a, on psilocybin or LSD. Flavor of a bad trip with MDMA is like more of emotional, going to those emotional dark places. And um, and so I think that was the rationale, but I've recently finished a survey study where we,

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  we asked people, have you used psychedelics, any number of them, MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, blah, blah. Like, have you used it intentionally for therapeutic reasons? Not in a clinical trial, but just like whatever, whether it's underground therapy or you just took it with a buddy or whatever.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  And whether you took it to treat PTSD or depression or anxiety. And we actually found similar rates, like if you chalk it up to like, how many say they it helped? And how many said eh, didn't make it worse, didn't make it better, how many said it made them worse? That distribution looked remarkably similar.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  No matter what the psychedelic was and no matter what the disorder was.

• 1:28:15Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's an open question, but that would suggest it's almost like you could play the old Mad Libs game. Like, give me a random adjective, give me a random noun, give me, it's like, pick a random, like MDMA for cocaine addiction.

• 1:28:30Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Probably could make it work. I mean, we needed to test all this, but that would be consistent with these very general mechanisms, though. It's not like, you know, the drugs that are treat these, the typical drugs used to treat this disorder, these disorders, which are treating surface level symptoms. They're treating like these core psychological issues that are really all in common. Like, all of these disorders have one aspect of people being stuck in some suboptimal pattern.

• 1:28:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  And I kind of view it all as an addiction, because therapeutically, most of my work has been with an addiction. But even, you can view depression and PTSD as a form of addiction, like, you're addicted to this suboptimal pattern of thought. So the pattern isn't like grabbing the cigarette, grabbing the drink, grabbing the coke. The pattern is thinking about myself that way. When I'm, you know, when I get some ambiguous data from the world, someone doesn't look happy, oh, it's about me. Rather than, you know, this is negative attribution. It's like there's an addiction, there's a stuckness. That's self-reinforcing too. Once you're in there, it's hard to get out, just like with a drug.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  And I think the same thing with PTSD, there's this kind of stuckness. Robin Carhart-Harris calls it a cannibalization. And so he very much focuses on the brain and the can't, the, the way the brain activity gets entrenched in certain patterns. And psychedelics can.

• 1:29:57Danny Jones?

  Unwind all of it.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  Right, like shake up the snow globe.

• 1:30:00Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  Or the way Mendel Kalin, a Dutch researcher who's done, did work in, in London with Robin. But, so it's like you're sledding or skiing down a slope. And if it's a well-worn track, like you, you fall into the grooves of the previous sleds or skis.

• 1:30:19Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  But like psychedelic experience is like a big blizzard that just blasts the mountain with fresh powder. So now you're like, oh yeah, I kept following those tracks like into the trees there and hit those moguls that like screwed me up, like.

• 1:30:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  And I was, oh, I could just kind of turn more easily and take that fresh powder into this area. And you still have to make the decision yourself, but you're a little bit less stuck. A little more ability to

• 1:30:43Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  Get some traction.

• 1:30:45Danny Jones?

  And what, so it's interesting to me that like one of the key, this is obviously these therapeutic effects that we're discussing now are are effects that you get from psychedelics that last a while, where you're like forced to like be reflective. Now, how do you contrast that with things like DMT where it only lasts?

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  It's like, it's not Five methoxy DMT, yeah.

• 1:31:08Danny Jones?

  I've never had that five methoxy DMT, but like DMT is so much different than those because it's like, it's not, you're not even in your body. You're just, you're gone. You, your soul ejects. And then when you come back, often people don't remember a lot of the things that happened.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's an open question.

• 1:31:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  But it does appear that there are plenty of therapeutic reports from DMT experiences.

• 1:31:34Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  So, um,

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  I think there's, it's such a complex thing psychedelic treatments. In terms of like, what's the mechanism? I think there's a lot of mechanisms. Part of it is that kind of deep reflection during the experience. Where that's where something like even LSD can be better perhaps than psilocybin. You just have more time.

• 1:31:56Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Like hours and hours and hours like to be in the thing.

• 1:32:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Cause sometimes in a psilocybin session, you're like, it's like three in the afternoon and the person says, you know, like being in the room with the person as a guide, like, oh, I think the effect's starting to wear off. I'm getting a little, oh, I'm, I just kind of like, it was rough at the beginning and now I'm just starting to get into it. And the, and you say, oh, don't worry. You know, there's plenty of time. Just sink into it. Just relax.

• 1:32:22Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:22Speaker 02

  But you're thinking like, oh no, they're totally right, man. It's like, I hope the magic keeps happening. Cause like, yeah, this drug's wearing off. You got another half hour maybe. But with LSD, it'd be like, oh man, it's, yeah.

• 1:32:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, keep your seatbelt on, you know?

• 1:32:36Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  We got another five hours. But, so yeah, on the other side, DMT, I You know, to the degree that there's that conscious and get all of this is speculation. It's not there's been, there hasn't been studies comparing DMT to LSD to psilocybin. It's controlling for all the other variables.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  But educated speculation. So yeah, DMT, it's like deep immersion. Just if there's conscious, the conscious thought is like, how do I get through the next micro second without being shredded to bits like just breathe, you know, just there's not the time to contemplate, oh, that thing I said to my wife or girlfriend last week. Was I too insensitive about that? Like, but you know, like, maybe I should call my mom more often. You know, that like, but that stuff can happen in the aftermath of DMT. So we don't know how much the therapeutic impact, like a lot of that comes after psilocybin too. What do you mean the aftermath? Well, just the, it was called afterglow, even the old LSD papers back in the 50s.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  But like the next day where someone feels like, yeah, the drug effect is gone. But like someone's still like, they're psychologically reeling. They can be euphoric. It's not necessarily euphoric, but it can be. But they're just still in there's some sense, like if it is the, the plasticity that's unfolding, that's part of the therapeutic equation. That where me be a lot of the magic is happening and that might be why the so-called integration seems to be important. Like just the idea of like talking with the therapist and we could probably do a lot more with that. Cause that's all it's ever been done is talking like, what if you have homework during that time? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think like, what if the experience was one of empathy and how, okay. All right. Now what if for the next month you volunteer at the nursing home or whatever?

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, let's do like some homework during that time to actually concretize like those lessons, but people.

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  There is this sense of often there is an afterglow, sometimes it's fleeting, sometimes it lasts for several weeks. The aftermath is more visceral. And certainly, people are contemplating the experience. Yeah. You know, about what it means and what, so. I think that happens with any of these, that can often happen with any of these drugs. So, you know, how much is that actual, the thought process during the experience, the trip? And how much of it is that contemplation afterwards? We don't know. My sense is there's value in both. And if DMT has therapeutic impact, which I believe it does. There's probably, it's probably weighted towards, you know, your integration after it. Right.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  But some of the lessons, like, okay, you don't have the time necessarily to have the deep, you know, contemplation about your relationship with your brother. But at this just like mystical experience, unitive level. Just this idea of having your self-identity absolutely shredded. Mm-hmm. And at least having some experience of, of just.

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  Beyond words of existing beyond the story you've told yourself for a lifetime. Yeah. Like, that can be there with DMT. Yeah. And so, just in the aftermath of that, taking that as fuel for looking at things with a fresh lens. Right. And just the sense of the awe of like. Oh, reality can be. Like, I thought reality was this, like, reality is like, I don't even know the edges, like. Right. Like, what, what in the world was that? Hmm. Like, I, some sense, again, there's a lot of speculation here. To some degree, I think part of the value in psychedelics is that sort of existential shock. Just sort of like panning out to be like, dude, like, your problems are here.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  And like, like, you're alive and like, just all of reality is just this big miracle and you're a part of it. I'm feeling a lot of myself, this stuff personally, to like. It's like you can't explain like, like sometimes with these experiences even with DMT, they're like, come out, it's like, this is weird. Like just this kind of like facing this idea of like, we don't even know why this is existing. This is weird and how cool. Like God, thank God, thank whatever.

• 1:36:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  Like, and I don't want to mess it up. Like, you know, like, you know, some people are just so thankful for the miracle of existence. So DMT can do that.

• 1:37:06Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  Um, of just like, yeah.

• 1:37:11Danny Jones?

  There's also the other things that happened in DMT that seem to be consistent across people's experiences, right? Like people see the

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Jaguars or machine elves.

• 1:37:21Danny Jones?

  Yeah, Jaguars or elves or code. Some people say they see specific code.

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Danny Jones?

  And that, that, I think there's a history of that with very, a number of drugs of people seeing specific codes. What do you, what do you make of that?

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  So I think there's some potential for, for a reality there, but I'm also highly skeptical. I'm sure that a bunch of it, the question is how much, that a bunch of it is placebo effect. Like if you hear, you know, McKenna's machine elves, that kind of nudges the dial up that if you're expecting machine elves, like you may be more likely to see machine elves.

• 1:37:58Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  Um, or, you know, self dribbling basketballs or whatever, or Jaguars. So as a scientist, I always want to test this on a double blind conditions and like test different drugs and, cause I've seen things, I remember one great participant that was in a couple of studies. He was like in a dextromethorphan study, like what Travis was talking about, the robo tripping. It's a ketamine relative. So it's nothing to, you know, um, dismiss. I mean, it's a real hardcore drug experience, high dose dextromethorphan. And he was saying, man, I've done like Yopo down in Colombia and I've taken, you know, ayahuasca and all these places and I've taken like San Pedro and peyote.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  It's like, and it's like, dude, like I've had my most far out psychedelic experience on a couch at a hospital in Baltimore on cough syrup.

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  But I remember some people in that study saying they thought, like, we actually kept them on their toes. Said, oh, it could be one of these, I think it was 14 drugs, including like mescaline. It could be an amphetamine, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:39:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  And I think Travis talked about something about this. I remember some people saying, oh, I had Aztec imagery, like, you know, so I think it was mescaline. So you see examples under double-blind research that kind of

• 1:39:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  makes you be a little bit skeptical of this stuff. But also, I think about the entity thing, which does seem as distinct, like, I bet the flavoring of entities, like whether it's an elf or an alien or a basketball, that probably, I'm guessing is shaped by, you know, what you've heard and what society you're in. If your society talks a lot about gnomes and whatever, if you're in Ireland or if you're in the modern world, or like aliens, like whatever. But it does strike me, and we did some survey work on it, that just entities themselves, no matter what flavor, are just so common with DMT.

• 1:39:55Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:55Speaker 02

  That perhaps that's, and we have no idea how this would be working, but somehow the DMT is tapping into some basic mental, like, brain structures or brain function of the self and the other. Like, the assignment, like, um, that's like, theory of mind is a term for it in cognitive psychology, like, the R modeling of the other. Like, I'm assuming there's a part of my brain that's, like, doing this kind of, like, modeling of, like, you know, what you're thinking, how you're responding. And they call this theory of mind. So my speculation is that DMT probably does something very powerful in terms of tweaking with this machinery we have for sensing the other

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  and for defining the self and object, you know, the self and other.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  Or maybe they are entities and we're open, like Rick Strassman has speculated, like, I'm open, you know, I want evidence, but like, I'm, I'm open. Like, maybe there's other dimensions and there's other, like, I don't see any evidence for that, but I'm just saying, there's a lot of thought out there on this.

• 1:41:03Danny Jones?

  Have you ever heard of Joe Rogan's fart theory?

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  Maybe if you describe it, not off the top of my head.

• 1:41:09Danny Jones?

  He used to talk about this theory he had called the fart theory. Where basically, like, if we didn't have smell or a nose and someone farted, you would have no clue. You would just be sitting there basking in someone's fart.

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• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  Yes, and most of reality is like that. We don't have senses for most of reality.

• 1:41:54Danny Jones?

  Right, that's, yeah, that's the theory. Like, if we didn't have, like, how many other things are out there that we don't have, we haven't evolved senses or organs to detect?

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  Right, and if it's not functional, we wouldn't have evolved it.

• 1:42:05Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  I think about this with the psi phenomenon, which I'm very interested, so the very, you know, whether it's telepathy and whatnot, and intrigued by the research.

• 1:42:13Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  And even informally conducted a little bit of this myself, not as a formal study at university, but just myself having read some of Rupert Sheldrake's stuff and replicated, like, his telepathy, like, can you guess who's calling you on the phone in these controlled trials? And so I, my guess is that there's something there, but my, my, my hypothesis with any of that, okay, if it is real, and we gotta keep our skeptical hats on, but, like you're saying, like, the fart theory, like, we don't know what we don't know, like, we probably are aware of way less than 1% of reality. If some of these extraordinary

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  phenomena exist, if they're real, these are just, ultimately, I would say, they're natural, they're not supernatural, because there's some level of nature we're just not aware of.

• 1:43:03Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I think everything, everything we know about science should point to that humility. I mean, even with, like, color, like, we see this insignificant fraction of the EM. Um, you know, the spectrum of EM.

• 1:43:18Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, like, sound doesn't really exist, it's just our interpretation of vibrations through the air.

• 1:43:25Danny Jones?

  We can't see infrared or near infrared light, right? So that's, that's an interesting thing.

• 1:43:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:29Danny Jones?

  And then there's like earthworms. Earthworms only have a very narrow amount of sensory in, uh, input. So like, you could like touch an earthworm, pick it up, it would never even know you're there.

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. Wow.

• 1:43:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  And then you get into like, I think Daniel Hoffman or, um, is this a, uh, I think it's, it's Hoffman, but he's been on some podcasts, including Lex Friedman.

• 1:43:50Danny Jones?

  Daniel?

• 1:43:52Speaker 02

  I think his last name is Hoffman. His first name, I'm not a hundred percent sure, the Daniel, the D, Douglas, or anyway.

• 1:43:59Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  But his, um, I believe he's a psychologist, but very much is informed by physics. And he's really very much focused on this idea that time, space itself is just this, this illusion. Um, Donald, I had the D right, yeah, sorry. Sorry, Dr. Hoffman, um, Donald Hoffman. But yeah, he is a fascinating, uh, he has a fascinating account, um, that he says the evidence suggests that there's every reason to think that just time and space themselves are just kind of part, are, are the GUI, are the operating, that's the desktop. You know, and what's underneath, we have no idea. It's like ultimately the machine code.

• 1:44:40Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  The countless billions of on off switches that creates this, you know, whatever, the menu that we're, we think we're operating on the Mac or the, or, or Windows. Um, but that we're as disconnected from whatever reality really is as far as possible, even to the degree that time and space are just these kind of functional illusions.

• 1:45:02Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  So I don't know whether that's true or not, but I, I think we need to have this humility with ourselves, like, you know, and, you know, the physicists, I mean, they, you know, talk about the potential existence. I mean, string theorists talk about all these other dimensions that might exist that we're unaware of and, who knows? Um, but we should have some humility that reality might be so complex that we just.

• 1:45:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, I, I think that is one of the downsides in science like that I've tried, probably not, definitely not totally successfully, but to try to stay open, I feel like the more you learn, the more you become a learned person, the more you kind of dismiss things and like unless something's been shown to my sat- to my satisfaction, it definitely doesn't exist. That's definitely bullshit. Whereas I think the right balance is like, okay, I'm not gonna

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  confirm something or I'm not gonna, but I'm also not gonna summarily dismiss it. So I, I, I think we should kind of think more of a kind of a Bayesian framework instead of saying, well, unless-

• 1:46:09Danny Jones?

  Have lots of strong opinions loosely held.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, be open and then kind of think more, okay, like, how likely, what you're in, maybe you're 95% likely to think that, you know, or maybe you're 60% likely to think that the UAP phenomenon is extraterrestrial, but you know, there's another percent that maybe these are advanced military, you know, things, you know, it's like, you don't have to be black or white, you could be open and just say that, we don't know. And I'm interested in more evidence, but not kind of be in this framework that until something's been completely proven, I'm, I'm saying it's complete, you know, malarkey.

• 1:46:47Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Because psychedelics were that way. I mean, the whole idea, I mean, when I started working psychedelics, it's like, it's, it sounded absurd to most scientists, most psychiatrists, psychologists, like, that experiences with psychedelics would help people overcome these mental health disorders. It sounds absurd. Cause people say, oh no, I've seen people in the ER come in tripping on too much acid and like, that's, it's not good for you. What do you mean?

• 1:47:14Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah, yeah, going to like the, the idea of, um, that like Rupert Sheldrake and the morphic resonance stuff and the idea that there's more out there that we can't perceive, you know, that exists. I mean, there's definitely, there's definitely evidence of this stuff, right? Like the telepathy stuff, the, the Stargate, remote viewing stuff, like, there is, there is scientific evidence that this stuff is real to a certain degree. Right? It's been measured and then there's been tons of money that's been dumped on it with the United States to actually do this stuff and use it for spying or- Or all kinds of things. So like

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  I think there's a phenomenon there.

• 1:48:00Danny Jones?

  There is, yeah.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  I think that's very likely. I would put it at ninety, whatever, five plus percent that there's a real. And

• 1:48:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  Because I've I've I've delved into the evidence and I didn't, I didn't take any of this seriously until one day, you're probably like twenty years ago, where a buddy of mine just dropped one of these telepathy papers on my desk coming down the hall. It's like, Johnson, take a look at this. And I thought, oh, that's gotta be bullshit. I wouldn't have learned about it. And

• 1:48:25Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  In graduate school.

• 1:48:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  And it is like, it's just a very

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  yeah, suboptimal way of thinking.

• 1:48:33Danny Jones?

  I think that humans used to be way more, I think, I think it's possible that we way back millions of years ago were telepathic, like straight up telepathic.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  And language has actually gotten in the way.

• 1:48:46Danny Jones?

  Yeah, language and and developing technology like the written word, like being able to offload our memory.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:48:52Danny Jones?

  Like, we've probably had amazing memory. We could probably memorize everything. So we would have had to to survive, right?

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  We've already seen in our own lifetimes, like our dependence on cell phones from back when I was, yeah, uh huh.

• 1:49:02Danny Jones?

  Yup, that.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  You can't remember, I used to know all the phone numbers.

• 1:49:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  Like now.

• 1:49:06Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I think technology is just making our senses atrophy.

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  I think that makes sense. And that reminds me of something I've thought about with these kind of extraordinary phenomenon that may exist, that natural selection is gonna work on whatever works.

• 1:49:25Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  So if there is, whether it's something we're aware of, or whether it's something more subtle, like whatever is behind the telepathy, if it's real.

• 1:49:36Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:49:36Speaker 02

  You know, whether it's some quantum entanglement, I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  But if it can be leveraged by natural selection, as long as there's variation, and there's

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  selective selective advantage. And so in other words, if this critter of whatever type, if it nudged him just a tiny, tiny bit to be more likely to find that food or find the mate, had they not tapped somehow, had that thing that detected the quantum entanglement, that's a random example, to be clear. I do not know. Or whether it's some other dimensions that we exist in that we're not aware of, like the physicists speculate on. We're gonna, we're gonna use it. We're gonna use whatever natural selection is gonna find a way through this seemingly infinite push towards variation.

• 1:50:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  And it's gonna be co-opted. So there may be that like, you know, if it helped us survive and, you know, I mean, my dog does things that just.

• 1:50:45Danny Jones?

  Right, yeah, dogs and cats.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  I can't explain.

• 1:50:47Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  Like, just seems to know, it seems to know when we're about to, to arrive at a destination. She know, and, and even when we make stops in the way where we stop at a stop sign, so it's not about slowing down, but like when we get to the final, like somehow, again, it's not a controlled experiment. I could be fooling myself. But I'm intrigued by it. Like, it seems like there's some, some sense in like knowing when I'm gonna come home.

• 1:51:16Danny Jones?

  Right. Like going back to that fart theory, like there's, you, everyone's heard the story of you walk into a house where there was a murder and like the energy's off.

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:27Danny Jones?

  Or like the, just the general idea of bad energy in certain places. That, that could be something. That could, that could be part of this whole thing.

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  I think we should be open to it.

• 1:51:36Danny Jones?

  Something that we couldn't, can't sense. Or like, like you alluded to, your dog, or, or a cat, like cats always have weird senses and they can, they can smell energy on people and like, sometimes dogs like people, sometimes dogs don't like people for whatever reason. What do we, you know, what is that? What sort of an invisible layer or what sort of fucking energy is there that could be palpable? If you had the senses that they had, that we're completely, we're completely, are invisible to us, you know?

• 1:52:06Speaker 02

  And if you take Rupert Sheldrake's research seriously, and this isn't the morphic resonance stuff, it's like the telepathy. He did, he published like a bunch of variations on this stuff and, and found that, again, unless you just dismiss it all, like what he reported and. Unless he made it all up, like it seems that there's a trait. Some people are good at, like bowling. Some people are really good at it, some aren't even. And no matter how much you practice, some people are just never gonna be that great at bowl, or you name the sport.

• 1:52:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  But some people really have a, that's both practicable, but also there's an innate talent. And so, and the same thing, you mentioned the Stargate, like, you know, stuff like,

• 1:52:46Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  The people that were involved with those programs, they talk, they all talk about this. Like, some people, they find these superstars that seem to be really good at whatever this is. And that we're good at remote viewing, for example.

• 1:52:58Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  And that it's not something everyone, like, maybe everyone

• 1:53:02Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  can do it, but they're not necessarily to the same degree, and not necessarily to something that's gonna be functional for everyone.

• 1:53:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:53:10Speaker 02

  But some people, like, like my wife seems to be one of those people that just kinda knows things.

• 1:53:16Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:53:17Speaker 02

  And she kinda has these things in her fa- I think it, if there's something there, it seems like it runs in her family, like,

• 1:53:23Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  The, they're mountain people, and there's like, just these weird things that have happened that, just these stories that just make you wonder.

• 1:53:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  And she has a sense for people, like, watch out for that dude, like, and that turned out to be right, that I was just

• 1:53:37Danny Jones?

  That's interesting.

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  oblivious to.

• 1:53:39Danny Jones?

  That's really interesting, because there, there actually, there has been people who have studied and done brain scans of people who have been able to witness, like, paranormal phenomena, or people, I think they took groups of people who witnessed paranormal stuff, whether it be ghosts, or spirits, or even UFOs. And they did some sort of study of them, and they found out that their basal ganglia

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Danny Jones?

  had what was dense, really dense with neurons, or the cotapetamin, I think it's a similar.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't remember the particular areas, but yeah, I, I at least, yeah, I was aware of this, the headline level of these findings, yeah.

• 1:54:14Danny Jones?

  I don't remember what the significance of the basal ganglia, or the cotapetamin was. But there was, um, you know, that would be, that would be interesting to, to understand, like, you know, is there any implication to that part of the brain, or is there any way you can affect that part of the brain, or that that part of the brain is affected by psychedelics at all, I wonder? Like, is there, is there a way that if in?

• 1:54:40Danny Jones?

  A thousand years from now, if we're like on the trajectory, human beings are on right now. If the if it is true that we had some sort of more sensory abilities in the past that we've lost now, if you extrapolate that into the future and we lose more of them because of technology and technology is like, you know, we're competent, technology is compensating for all this stuff now. So we're not having it like, I wonder if there's a way to turn the clock back, maybe with psychedelics or or that's not the right, not the right way of putting it or like to to maintain some of that stuff with psychedelics.

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  Well, it reminds me of a title of one of McKenna's books, The Archaic Revival. I mean, he very much viewed them in that sense, that it's sort of like an ability to kind of, you know, Kindle something that we've lost. Um, yeah, perhaps. Um, and

• 1:55:38Speaker 02

  it's, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, it's sort of like, you know,

• 1:55:41Danny Jones?

  It's a way, it's a different way of looking at it because like, like, obviously, the traditional way of studying psychedelics is you have to get funding to treat things like that are are serious issues like depression, PTSD, and yeah, and things like this. But can we, at what point will we be able to study psychedelics and do serious research on it for enhancing the human experience or or upgrading human consciousness?

• 1:56:08Speaker 02

  So that's what I'm most interested in. And we've done, you know, some of that, even the older work with and you would say, you know, with the religious professionals that can be described in that in that fashion. But I'm kind of more interested in a, I think, along the lines that we're talking here. And like, for example, if these are learning enhancers, how how radical can we push that? Like, I've heard some interesting stories about people changing their like in a in a different culture where they speak of a foreign language and that like psychedelics help them.

• 1:56:39Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  Like, adapt to that, like in a single evening on, I don't know, could be, could be baloney. But but I know enough to take that seriously. Like, could you learn a language more rapidly with psychedelics? Could you? And it and I mean, this, if you take any of this sort of, call it whatever you will, the siphon on then seriously.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  Can psychedelics, I mean psychedelics have a history, those basically researchers went two separate ways after the 60s out of mutual self-preservation.

• 1:57:12Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:57:13Speaker 02

  Um, this guy in Britain, David Luke, is very much has been focused on the connection between psychedelics and um, and sci-phenomena.

• 1:57:23Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 1:57:24Speaker 02

  Um, so, I mean, that, you know, these far, and I think Franz Wolenvater, the Swiss researcher, has done some, I think he was doing, I don't know, I don't think he's published anything, but I believe he was doing something with, with whether people could have a shared experience when they're in different rooms. So basically something along these lines of telepathy.

• 1:57:46Danny Jones?

  Oh, really? On psychedelics?

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I believe that, uh,

• 1:57:49Danny Jones?

  Have you ever?

• 1:57:50Speaker 02

  It was the case, and I don't know that it was ever completed, or maybe it's ongoing, or?

• 1:57:56Danny Jones?

  Have you ever heard any anecdotal stories?

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, like countless stories of like-

• 1:58:01Danny Jones?

  Really? Of people like doing DMT together or something?

• 1:58:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and people, even being in different locations and knowing something weird happened, and there was some survey work that suggested that these types of abnormal experiences are really high with dextromethorphan.

• 1:58:19Danny Jones?

  Who?

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Which, which is, the, the, the, Robo-tripping.

• 1:58:23Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay, okay, okay.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  Um, which is really interesting, because again, it's a ketamine relative, and the wild stories, for example, John Lilly with the alien communication, I mean, people get weird. I knew a guy, actually, at university, not at any place I've worked, I don't, I'm gonna keep him squarely anonymous, but, uh, university professor, who I believe started taking dextromethorphan pretty frequently before depression, just on his own. And he, really smart guy, um, really interesting guy, but he started, as he described it, like living in multiple timelines at the same time, like, the dissociatives, you get some wild stuff. So I don't, I don't know how much you know about, like, Lilly with his dolphin research, and his-

• 1:59:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  He started believing like there was a solid state intelligence-

• 1:59:11Danny Jones?

  It was funded by NASA.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he, you get really smart people on really high dose frequent dissociatives, and you get some wild stuff. Like, so, yeah, who knows how much of it is like, you know, is somebody- Is their brain just able to go deep, deep, deep into delusion and create post hoc stories? Or is there something fundamental about how dissociatives can kind of tap you into some?

• 1:59:39Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  Who knows speculative like, you know, other dimension or something that might underlie these abnormal paranormal phenomena?

• 1:59:48Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:49Speaker 02

  I don't know. We always have to keep both in mind. Maybe just like the highly intelligent crazy people are always like very interesting. Cause they're able to go further into like the wild shit.

• 2:00:01Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  Um.

• 2:00:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I always wonder what, what came first, the drugs or that, that personality type? Because the people I know that have done the most psychedelics there, they are, they seem to be the most interesting, intelligent.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:16Danny Jones?

  People.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  To begin with.

• 2:00:17Danny Jones?

  So was it that, was that their first or were the psychedelics part of that?

• 2:00:20Speaker 02

  I'm guessing it's just, it's some of both.

• 2:00:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Like a lot, it's usually the cop out at an interest psychology textbooks and it turns out, it turns out to be both, you know, like, you know, it's both.

• 2:00:30Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, they start out.

• 2:00:31Danny Jones?

  The uninteresting answer.

• 2:00:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, they start out with a little nudge to be more in that, that's part of why they chose to use psychedelics. Cause they're a little more on the edge, a little more interested in the stuff out there, a little higher risk taking.

• 2:00:43Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  And then they go even further. Once they start getting some acid in their system and like talking to the aliens.

• 2:00:50Danny Jones?

  Yeah. What were you saying about John Lilly with the, the solid state?

• 2:00:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he thought he was in communication with, um, like he had this bizarre language. I won't be able to recreate all of it, but like this highly complex alien civilization that was

• 2:01:04Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  sending signals.

• 2:01:06Danny Jones?

  And he was like going crazy on ketamine towards the end.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he almost drowned a couple of times. His wife pulled him out of a pool apparently once he just fell face down and, and dissociatives like Matthew Perry, like died on, in a hot tub on ketamine. Like you gotta watch out with like a lot of drugs, like, but dissociatives, people can drown in like a few inches of water. Cause you're just anesthetized if you take too much and, um, you don't have that basic instinct of. You know, getting jostled up when you need to take a breath of air.

• 2:01:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's that Lily's experience reminds me a lot of, uh, I don't know if you know the author Philip K. Dick.

• 2:01:46Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  So maybe my favorite book ever is Valis of his. So it's like that was, and this was a true story. It was fictionalized, but it was about his life. Experience of thinking that he was contacted by this. Super godlike alien. It's never clear.

• 2:02:08Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:09Speaker 02

  And it's from one dimension. It's clearly he described. It's a psychotic break. From one lens.

• 2:02:16Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  But from his experience, it was like he was. He had this religious sort of. Alien intelligence, um, download of information that just changed the course of his life. And and he actually read. That was a book about the story. It's called Valis. The most psychedelic book I've ever read, but he read. He also wrote something that I haven't read is I think it's called the exegesis of Philip K. Dick where. I think it's thousands of pages, but it's about the actual download. It's the direct information. It's the it's the. Yeah, what he felt like he downloaded from the alien god slash whatever intelligence. Um.

• 2:03:01Danny Jones?

  He was doing tons of coke, wasn't he?

• 2:03:04Speaker 02

  I think he was doing everything. And he ended up being very anti-drug. I mean, a scanner darkly had a very ant like a lot of his work ended up having.

• 2:03:14Speaker 02

  Very much sort of like this is sort of seventies, post sixties, like watch out with for the drugs, kids, like you can go overboard.

• 2:03:20Danny Jones?

  Why are some of the best artists, musicians and writers? Why were? What? What is the connection between them and tons of like alcohol and coke?

• 2:03:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:35Danny Jones?

  Like, there's a, there's an obvious pattern here.

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  The disinhibition from alcohol, like the loosening the bound, and then the, you know, the, the stimulation from the cocaine to kind of counteract the downside of alcohol, you know, like the sedation.

• 2:03:50Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:03:50Speaker 02

  So, I mean, and, I mean cocaine and alcohol together, they actually, they, alcohol changes the metabolism of, of cocaine, so you actually get,

• 2:04:01Danny Jones?

  It changes the metabolism?

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you get another psychedelic, uh, I'm sorry, not psychedelic, but another stimulant common cocaine derivative from the metabolism when you're also consuming alcohol. And so you actually get a synergistic effect.

• 2:04:14Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, sort of like with cannabis for people that take it orally. One of the metabolites that you don't get when you smoke, when you take it orally is, one of the metabolites when it's broke down in the liver is also a cannabinoid that has very potent psychoactive effects, so kind of a similar thing, but, uh, alcohol will, so they go to hand in hand, coke and, and, and, and alcohol, and I don't know that.

• 2:04:40Danny Jones?

  And you have like famous artists, like musicians specifically, that once they go sober, their art just starts to suck.

• 2:04:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think there's some examples to the contrary, but yeah, I think that's a real thing too.

• 2:04:56Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I think there's some examples to the contrary.

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  It's like, the person's burning themselves out.

• 2:05:01Danny Jones?

  Of course.

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  And there's plenty of old rock stars that say like, I finally had to give the stuff up and like, but, you have to look back and you're like, would the, I don't know, these like bands that were just wild, like would they be who they were without wild drug use?

• 2:05:16Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:05:17Speaker 02

  Probably not, and it's not always just the psycho, you know, what you know cannabis and the psycho, sometimes, oh yeah, it's like crazy coke and alcohol. You know, like Metallica, they were really, really, really heavy drinkers in the early days and like, to what, Eddie Van Halen, like all of those classic, like, all of those first several albums, like.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  Coke and alcohol, like he was drunk all the time, apparently, and just like, how could he do it? And is it just that it's amazing that he did it? And wasn't held back by those, or did they actually enhance?

• 2:05:57Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:05:57Speaker 02

  I don't like, you have to be open to it. You don't want people to do these. They're very dangerous doing a bunch of coke and alcohol.

• 2:06:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it just seems like there's an enhancement. It seems like there's some sort of, it seems like it strengthened some sort of a connection to something, to some sort of like, it unlocks some sort of creative thing that may not be inside you, that they could be tap, I don't know, maybe they're tapping into it. I don't know what it is. I'm sure you're familiar with, uh, that, that book, uh, The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, where he talks about the muse.

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Danny Jones?

  It's all this idea that like, you know, if you can meditate and focus on, on writing, or he was a writer, so he would like write for X amount of hours. And then all of a sudden, like this weird sort of consciousness would start to flow through him. And he called it the muse, where just like, everything would start to click, like the creative, like all the creative juices are just flowing instantly. And, uh, you know, it, maybe there's a shortcut to that. Maybe you just do a ton of blow and, you know, get blasted on vodka. You could just immediately tap right into that.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  So maybe part of it, just thinking behaviorally, when people talk about the muse, it's like, well, you gotta be in front of the typewriter or the computer or whatever. I have pen and paper in hand. It's just like, you gotta make yourself available for the muse. So that may be where the coke comes in handy, just like, and alcohol to take the edge off the coke or vice versa. Like, they sort of complement each other. Um, but that, providing that fuel to be just like, okay, now I'm going to sit down and

• 2:07:28Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  Throw some cigarettes in there, that like, and just, you're just spending more time at the typewriter.

• 2:07:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:36Speaker 02

  Like whether it's Hunter S. Thompson or any of these, like, there's all these cases of like-

• 2:07:39Danny Jones?

  Stephen King, who wrote all his fucking books on-

• 2:07:43Speaker 02

  Was that alcohol or coke?

• 2:07:44Danny Jones?

  Alcohol and coke, I think.

• 2:07:45Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, another, yeah.

• 2:07:47Danny Jones?

  I think when he wrote Cujo, he was just doing mountains of coke.

• 2:07:49Speaker 02

  Wow. Um, and bands, I mean, like the MC5 talked about plenty of bands. They just come to mind. I remember reading an article years ago about, you know, them saying coke was a huge part of their creative process, which is, you know, and some people say with stimulants, they're more tunnel vision, it reduces their creativity, but they can focus. But then others say like, no, man, that was- You know, made me incredibly creative.

• 2:08:13Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  Maybe that, and this is all speculative, like, but maybe that's where the alcohol comes in to.

• 2:08:19Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:08:20Speaker 02

  You know.

• 2:08:20Danny Jones?

  Create that synergy.

• 2:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we know very little about like drugs themselves individually. So there's almost no drug, I mean, there's some drug interaction research, but certainly nothing along the lines of creativity for anything. Any, you know, so we don't know that scientifically, I'd love to point to, oh, well, the nineteen seventy nine study by so and so, like, just doesn't exist.

• 2:08:44Danny Jones?

  I was reading this story the other day, this article where they interviewed um, somebody from the Rolling Stones. And he was talking about how back in the day when they would perform their live shows, they're like, like, go to festivals and perform all day, like, do, you know, multiple forty minute sets, that they would just have a giant pile of cocaine behind the, the subs, like the subwoofers and stuff like that, you know, they have massive stacks of speakers and subwoofers. And like just right behind, they wouldn't have to go backstage, they would just walk behind the speakers and they would get cocaine manufactured from merc.

• 2:09:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's one hundred percent pharmaceutical grade.

• 2:09:20Danny Jones?

  So they were, and the way they were explaining it in the article, and maybe you could confirm or deny if this is possible, but they were saying that you would not get the come down from coke because, from this merc cocaine, they're saying like, typically when you do cocaine, just like you do any stimulant that like hammers your dopamine receptors, there's gonna be a price to pay at the end of there, there's like a come down effect where you start to go through hell. And then he was saying that that didn't happen with this merc.

• 2:09:46Speaker 02

  So I'm skeptical because, you know, I mean, just like pure caffeine, like you get a come down from caffeine, you know, and you're gonna get a come down from stimulants. But I'm also open to the idea of just speculating here, maybe to the degree that some of the adulterants, and there's a lot of adulterants in most cocaine.

• 2:10:04Danny Jones?

  What's an adulterant?

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  Oh, just other stuff they throw in there.

• 2:10:08Danny Jones?

  Okay, like to cut it?

• 2:10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:09Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  And sometimes horribly, you know, just, you know, what, it could be anything, I mean, which is kind of scary. Whether it be a nerd or something that has some effects itself, you know, that's thrown in there, um, but. Uh, to the degree that some of those adulterants, those other things they throw in to thin it out, um, could have negative side effects, maybe some of those are accounting for, so there could be some truth. You'll probably get some degree of a come down of even pure cocaine. Right. But maybe it is less so to, you know, depending on what the, you know, street coke is cut with. Right. But it kind of makes sense. I mean, just, I remember not too long ago, I remember watching all of these. I'd seen them before, but I hadn't really focused on these. Um, there's these videos you can see on YouTube.

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  It was in the Rolling Stones, it was called Rock and Roll Circus. So this live studio performance where they had this whole audience there and the Beatles were in the audience and other bands. And I don't know why I bring up just a random like performance, but it's like, you know, end of the day and like, Brian Jones was still alive, so still relatively early days for the Stones. And just, just like Mick Jagger, I mean, he's just,

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  the energy that he put in, I mean, I, it wouldn't surprise me at all. He was totally coked up. Cause he was so just like,

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  like so alive and so just, uh,

• 2:11:36Speaker 02

  on the edge and just such a good performer. And I don't want to send the message, you gotta be on coke. Coke is very dangerous, but I also wanted, it's like, yeah, like, you know, drugs are very powerful tools, people, good and bad. And then like, it just, yeah, it just, it just kind of mind blowing as you hear this, you know, like, oh yeah, Mick Jagger and whatever, he's 80s old now and like, like, there was a reason they became who they were. It's like, it's remarkable, just, you know, the passion and just his performance. He takes his shirt off and he's just like so connecting with it. And it just strikes me that he's like connecting so strongly with the audience and just is like,

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  He's firing on all cylinders.

• 2:12:22Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  But that that seems like a total coke thing.

• 2:12:25Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  Like, uh.

• 2:12:28Danny Jones?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Those guys, I mean, that, I mean, it was just, I think it was just a a normal part of life during probably the seventies and eighties and rock and roll, you know, just rock and roll and drugs were synonymous with each other. And you, you know, I don't think it was, I mean, I, I don't know, because I didn't live through it, but I imagine there wasn't the, the amount of stigma that there's around it today.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Danny Jones?

  But like, you know, there's always an argument that to be had is that's like if coke was, was legal or if heroin was legal, would that be better for society? Would there be less deaths? Would there be less people dying from this stuff being cut with things like fentanyl and, and all this other stuff? And, you know, also on top of that, you have education, people understand what it is, they understand what the downside is, they understand what the upside is.

• 2:13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, regulated doses, so you know exactly, you're not accidentally, whoops, there's a bunch of fentanyl in there you didn't know about.

• 2:13:24Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:13:24Speaker 02

  Now you're dead.

• 2:13:25Danny Jones?

  Right, right. So, so like, what are your thoughts as far as like all drugs being legal or, um, I know there's certain countries where you can do like supervised injections of certain drugs?

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:13:38Danny Jones?

  Is there any, is there any sort of art, like real argument that that would be beneficial?

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's certainly an argument.

• 2:13:46Danny Jones?

  And is there like, um, is there, do you think there should be a limit on like the type of drugs that could be, that should be legal?

• 2:13:55Speaker 02

  It's sort of by analogy, it's sort of like if you believe in the second amendment, you probably don't think

• 2:14:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:14:01Speaker 02

  people should be able to construct nukes in their basement. It's okay. So where is the line?

• 2:14:05Danny Jones?

  Right, right, yeah, totally.

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  You know, like there has to be some line, um.

• 2:14:13Speaker 02

  You're gonna get good and bad no matter what. And so if you, if you, if you legalize and regulate it, and I tend to like to think more in terms of regulation than in legalization, cause, or legal or illegal, because you know, alcohol for kids is illegal, and it's illegal for anyone driving, and many prescription drugs of abuse, they're illegal unless you have a prescription. And even in my studies with psychedelics, they're schedule one, but they're not illegal for us to use in these studies, so. And even, you know, caffeine in the form of coffee or tea, there's no regulation at all. But even in over the counter Viva or Nodos, like, you know, you can't just put whatever you want in there. That's regulated. You can't go over 200 milligrams. So it's like, there's a lot of nuance that we don't normally appreciate.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  And I do think we need more regulation of, like, we should move more towards regulation across the difference, rather than just throwing it in the black markets and pretending it doesn't exist. So there are strong data for various levels of harm reduction, like supervised injection sites and,

• 2:15:19Speaker 02

  you know, especially if you have a known supply. I mean, things like opioids. You can reverse almost all opioid overdoses with naloxone, Narcan. And so it's like, yeah, if you just have a nurse or, you know, medical professional there, like, it's not gonna happen. So there's definitely an argument there. At the same time, if you, I wouldn't want highly addictive drugs easily gotten, you know, at the 7-Eleven. But even if there were steps to jump through, it's like, you know, like a, you know, liquor, well, liquor stores really no, you have to be of age, but, you know, cannabis, you know, stores in legal states, like,

• 2:16:02Speaker 02

  you're definitely gonna get an increase in people that, "Oh, I'm curious to try that," and you're gonna get some harms. You're gonna probably see, and it would probably be one of those things where eventually, if it was to normalize, like, you'd probably end up with...

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Less harm by having everything transparent and regulated.

• 2:16:24Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:16:24Speaker 02

  But you'll probably go through a period where it's gonna get really bad. Because like, yeah, a lot of people are just gonna decide to try opioids or cocaine or methamphetamine. And they're gonna really like it.

• 2:16:36Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:16:36Speaker 02

  And they're gonna do too much and it's gonna destroy their lives. And there's gonna be other, like with all of these drugs, most people who try them don't go on to become addicted. But 10 to 30% do, depending on the drug.

• 2:16:49Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:16:50Speaker 02

  And we can't dismiss that, so I'm definitely for moving away from treating drug use and possession as felonies and misdemeanors. Like, that just seems to me, there's just mountains of evidence that suggests the harms outweigh the benefits.

• 2:17:05Danny Jones?

  And then there's the elephant in the room of cartels and people like smuggling drugs across the border. And, you know, all the violence and killing that happens.

• 2:17:14Speaker 02

  And human trafficking and everything.

• 2:17:15Danny Jones?

  The black market, yeah.

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  Right, and you can't call the cops or sue someone. Yeah, you solve it with murder.

• 2:17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, same thing, we did it with alcohol. We tweaked with our constitution twice in that experiment.

• 2:17:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:31Speaker 02

  It, we created Al Capone and the rest. And I, I, I think it's been a bad experiment, drug prohibition. That's not to say that there shouldn't be levels of control that match the drug. I mean, the, the control you have over a much more dangerous drug is not gonna be what you should have over cannabis. Even where cannabis is legalized, it's like, it's kind of absurd that some states put someone on like this, this list. Yeah, they register you, you know, like whatever. It's like, well, I could go over there and just buy a couple of fists of Jack, enough to kill me.

• 2:18:02Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  To show my ID, but like, you're not recording that I did it.

• 2:18:07Danny Jones?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 2:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Danny Jones?

  You can literally go right across the street and buy enough alcohol to kill yourself.

• 2:18:12Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:18:13Danny Jones?

  But.

• 2:18:14Speaker 02

  Easily, yeah.

• 2:18:15Danny Jones?

  That is not possible by smoking weed, unless, if you're in a room, unless you get in your car and fucking drive off a cliff or get a car accident.

• 2:18:21Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:18:22Danny Jones?

  But, but the, this, the, the substance itself could not kill you, right?

• 2:18:27Speaker 02

  Right, and even with accidents, so it's like, people do not drive, please do not drive intoxicated on any of this.

• 2:18:33Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:33Speaker 02

  But we know through very good behavioral pharmacology research that. Um, the intoxication of alcohol is far worse. So your chances of, of, of an accident are increased at a point of eight alcohol level of about 14 times. It doubles with cannabis, which is not good, but it's, it's nowhere near as bad as, you know, 14 times.

• 2:18:54Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:55Speaker 02

  You know, so, and the nature of the intoxication is different. We get trouble with like alcohol and same thing. The second biggest drug in fatal accidents is benzodiazepines like Xanax, which is the same basic mechanism of alcohol. It's working on the GABA system in the brain, which is the, the major kind of gross, um, motor. It's gross motor impairment. It just slows everything down. Cannabis where people have troubles with things like divided attention. It's like kind of going into the zone on can cannabis, which for certain things, if you're like playing chess or something or like writing, like maybe can be great, but if you're driving, you know, you can be in this zone, but it's,

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  people fail it. Yeah. Divided attention tasks is what they're called. So if a ball comes out of nowhere and a little kid, you know, like whatever.

• 2:19:44Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:19:44Speaker 02

  It's that where cannabis people are screwed up, which is not as bad as the gross GABA impairment. But nonetheless, it's, it's very clear, you know, which is why people can get, I think, on the ground, sometimes people by these comparisons can get over, like, I think it's pretty common in, in cannabis using communities to like, yeah, it's driving is fine. It's like, if you know what you're doing, don't be a novice, but you know,

• 2:20:09Speaker 02

  it's still increasing your chance. It's not, just because it's not nearly as bad as alcohol, doesn't mean it's good.

• 2:20:15Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:20:16Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, if you ever kill someone in an accident, man, you're living with that the rest, rest of your life.

• 2:20:20Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  You know, like,

• 2:20:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:20:22Speaker 02

  So, and I think a lot of people who would never drive drunk or certainly wouldn't, maybe they did once or twice and then regret it, but like, a lot of people who would never routinely drive drunk and think it's okay would, yeah, drive stoned.

• 2:20:33Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:20:34Speaker 02

  And it's like, it's, it's not good. And I think even like a lot of cannabis users were as, as they get older, like, yeah, probably not a good, yeah, like,

• 2:20:42Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  Not so good.

• 2:20:43Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no, I've met, I have, I have, I've met people and I know people who have been smoking weed their whole life or abusing psychedelics their whole life, where when they get older, you notice they're like, they're, Their world seems a little bit more slippery than mine. Like they seems like they're they're a little bit more disconnected from the world. You know what I mean? Where it's like, maybe it's and I've never heard anyone explain to me. I've never heard of any situations where someone has used a psychedelic and like not come back or like stayed perma-tripping. Have you ever heard of anything like this?

• 2:21:22Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I think that's pointing to something real, but it's not that they're permanently tripping. So those are cases of where people where the psychedelic helped to instigate a psychotic break.

• 2:21:35Danny Jones?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:21:37Speaker 02

  So I think all the all the evidence points to the the notion that the people that that happens in are people who have either active psychotic disorders and schizophrenia is one type of psychotic disorder. It's the major class of psychotic disorders. Um, or they have an identifiable predisposition. So like people, because the first break typically happens in adolescence or young adulthood, when the people play with drugs for the like adolescence and young adulthood. And so you get cases like Sid Barrett, the first singer of Pink Floyd. Seems pretty clear. I don't think his family ever admitted it because these are, you know, difficult things, but he showed all the he seemed like he was schizophrenic.

• 2:22:21Speaker 02

  And he did a lot of acid.

• 2:22:23Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 2:22:23Speaker 02

  And it seems, but he he seemed like he it seems this is all I'm not whatever. This is just from the record and you know, I'm not wasn't wasn't alive. I was born in seventy four, wasn't alive when but like that he showed those signs and he was the type of person that the acid pushed him over the edge.

• 2:22:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:45Speaker 02

  And so I think in that's the kernel of truth and there's other cases of less famous people, you know, where that happened. Um, I mean, I put it this way, if you're if you're kind of dangling, if you're if you're tethered to reality with a dangling thread, the last thing you need is a strong psychedelic, which at least the whole point is at least temporarily is to obliterate that thread and disconnect and to to the consensus world to explore the mind, to explore ideas, to whatever, explore consciousness, but.

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we've never seen a person so far, there could always be a first, but in the hundreds of trials of psychedelics in both the older era, 50s and 60s, and in the modern era for the last 20 years or so, of someone who's been screened out where we do look, and there's pretty easy ways with the psychiatric screening to identify people with that predisposition.

• 2:23:45Speaker 02

  Through like structured psychiatric interviews by clinicians. There hasn't been a case so far of people being, you know, becoming psychotic because of, of being in one of these psychedelic trials. It's not to say it's impossible, maybe if we, we approved them and we're treating thousands and thousands of people, it could happen every once in a while, we don't know.

• 2:24:06Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:24:08Speaker 02

  Certainly not common.

• 2:24:10Danny Jones?

  What is going on with Elon?

• 2:24:14Danny Jones?

  Are these videos of him, is he just like in a K-hole or something?

• 2:24:17Speaker 02

  I haven't seen, so someone said the other day, and I've been out of town on another trip before I was here, and someone mentioned the stuff with Elon, which I, apparently there's talk about bladder issues, and I haven't caught up on the recent Elon news. Normally I'm a pretty, pretty up on the Elon stuff, but I know, of course, for a while now, people have been saying he does a lot of K, I don't know, you know.

• 2:24:35Danny Jones?

  Yeah, he apparent, well, there's been people that are saying he's like on ketamine and other psychedelics, and then there's like these videos of him, one of the inauguration, another one like last week, where he's in, in the Oval Office with Trump, and he's just sitting there and he's like, there's like, his eyes are rolling back in his head, and he's like moving his head around like this, and, you know, the, the public speculation is that he's just fricking blasted on ketamine.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  Could be, I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't want to defame Mr. Musk.

• 2:25:10Speaker 02

  Lots of great research you could fund, Mr. Musk.

• 2:25:16Speaker 02

  Joke aside, I have no idea. I, I do think people need to keep in mind that, I don't know, especially for public figures, like, there can be a lot of reading into, like, you know, like, he's also not your average person, so.

• 2:25:32Speaker 02

  You know, there may be some awkwardness there.

• 2:25:34Danny Jones?

  I mean, those people are already so much different than us because they're, you know, their life is under a microscope. So, so you can't go anywhere without people chasing you down, taking photos of you. Imagine, and when you introduce psychedelics into that, I wonder what the fuck that. I mean, look at Kanye, Jesus Christ.

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 2:25:52Danny Jones?

  You know?

• 2:25:53Speaker 02

  So would you have interviewed Kanye? I know he kind of went on a podcast circuit. Yeah, that's one of these interesting questions about.

• 2:26:01Danny Jones?

  Okay. Yeah, I would have interviewed him.

• 2:26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and what about now?

• 2:26:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:05Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, so you really are like all conversations.

• 2:26:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I'm not, I mean, I'm not like, I'm not like actively pursuing it, but yeah, of course, if the opportunity arose, I would fucking love to talk to him.

• 2:26:15Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 2:26:15Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no, I mean, he's, he's, uh, there's something going on with him where I think, I think he's just trying to push the boundaries as far as he possibly can with like this performative.

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:27Danny Jones?

  I don't think a lot of the things he said, he's saying, I don't even think he understands what he's saying, nor is he genuine.

• 2:26:31Speaker 02

  He's a performance artist with his life.

• 2:26:33Danny Jones?

  He's trying just to push the boundaries of, of the human mind and seeing how far you go, you know?

• 2:26:40Speaker 02

  But it's interesting, like the Lex Friedman interview with him, it seemed like he was like bending over backwards to get him to like, whatever, provide some content, or you don't really mean, you know, like. I think even when Alex Jones interviewed, same thing. And so then he, you get like Alex Jones begging him.

• 2:27:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no amount.

• 2:27:01Speaker 02

  To not say the crazy thing.

• 2:27:02Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, there's no, there's no amount of reason you could present to him that would persuade him to think about it differently, which is.

• 2:27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:13Danny Jones?

  You know, it feels like it's just an art project for him.

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:16Danny Jones?

  To me.

• 2:27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:18Danny Jones?

  You know? I think I was, uh, his interview, Gavin Mcginnis did an interview with him and he stated in the beginning of the interview, he was like, I'm going to try to persuade him to, to drop the idea of antisemitism. He's like, and his whole thing was like, it's just a rut. He's like, you want to blame the Jews because it's raining on your birthday? That's just a pattern that you can get in.

• 2:27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:42Danny Jones?

  To make excuses for everything in your life. You know, it's like, and Gavin's like, this is like the people, the black folks in the inner city blaming whitey for all their problems. Now you're gonna blame the Jews for all your problems. And, you know. Statistically, our Jewish people, they're more high IQ, low testosterone, they're better at systems, they're better at, at, uh, operating systems, you know, managing money, building big businesses. Okay. So just because that they're better at you, just because they're better at doing these specific things, and maybe a little bit of, maybe some of that has something to do with the fact that they went through a Holocaust, they were almost

• 2:28:24Danny Jones?

  extinct, so maybe they're more motivated to succeed and propagate their race. You know, that can't, you can't just blame them for, for all of your problems because of that, you know, that, that's just a, he, and Gavin did a great, better job of explaining this than I, than I am, but

• 2:28:42Speaker 02

  Jealousy is a real thing.

• 2:28:44Danny Jones?

  It's a rut, it's a rut, you can get in, and that's a pattern that you can get stuck in for, with, with everything in your life. Um, but yeah, anyways, that was a, that was an interesting time. That was an interesting time when Kanye was going through all that stuff.

• 2:28:58Speaker 02

  Probably no, no drugs needed.

• 2:29:00Danny Jones?

  No, he was on a lot of drugs, bro.

• 2:29:03Speaker 02

  Oh, he was, okay.

• 2:29:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:29:05Danny Jones?

  Yeah, he was doing, uh, I mean, first of all, he was put on a lot of antidepressants, I think.

• 2:29:11Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, medications.

• 2:29:13Danny Jones?

  Yeah, lots of medications, and then he was, uh, really hooked on nitrous.

• 2:29:17Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 2:29:20Danny Jones?

  Yeah, he was doing lots of nitrous oxide.

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  Ooh, that's rough. I mean, that can have some of the, that's, has some effects like ketamine and dextromethorphan.

• 2:29:29Danny Jones?

  Oh, does it really?

• 2:29:30Speaker 02

  Really, yeah, that's an MDA antagonism in the brain. But also just, um, side effects, man, the neuropathy, that's something people don't want to get hooked on hippie crack. You start getting nerve damage.

• 2:29:42Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, something to do with like, I think, absorption of, uh, yeah, B12 vitamin, um, that you get nerve damage, and it's a real thing. Um.

• 2:29:53Danny Jones?

  There was another, there was another gas that Hamilton was explaining to me. It wasn't nitrous.

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  It was xenon?

• 2:29:58Danny Jones?

  Xenon, yeah.

• 2:29:59Speaker 02

  I saw that. I think that was one of the, not the first.

• 2:30:03Danny Jones?

  You're saying Jordan Peterson did xenon, I think.

• 2:30:04Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:30:06Danny Jones?

  I think he said that when he went to, I could be wrong.

• 2:30:09Speaker 02

  So that was not the first, but one of the first Hamilton episodes. I'd seen clips online and stuff from Vice, but in terms of his show, that was the first one. And I remember thinking. He's in a roll, he's take, about to take like, you know, essentially an anesthetic and he's on a rolling chair on a concrete floor in some garage.

• 2:30:32Speaker 02

  You're an expert.

• 2:30:35Speaker 02

  Lay out a mattress, just get on the ground. It's just like, he's just like rolling to, and then he breaks out a condom. He's like, I couldn't find a balloon, so he's got a condom. I mean, filling the tank with a condom. It's just like, I would just think from having run all of these countless like, you know, drug administration studies. So like, I was thinking like, you know, like, just safety. It's like, my god.

• 2:30:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:57Speaker 02

  You're on a rolling chair on a concrete floor, dude. That guy is wild.

• 2:31:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah, man. He's a fucking renegade. Some of his early buy stocks are crazy, like going, going in the middle of the Amazon and, and getting, uh, that toad venom put on him.

• 2:31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:13Danny Jones?

  Went to, uh, where did he go? He went to Haiti and he met with the, the zombie cult. There's a zombie religion in Haiti.

• 2:31:20Speaker 02

  Okay. Do they use like scopolamine?

• 2:31:22Danny Jones?

  Scopolamine, they, they get, they get the drugs from the puffer fish that paralyzes you. And they had this powder, this zombie powder where, I mean, Hamilton went out there and there was this guy, I forget that what they used for the name of the guy who's the head of the, the zombie cult. But he was basically like, I have this powder. He's like, if you just touch it, you will be zombified. And if you, if you, if you put too much of it on you, it can kill you. And then, uh, Hamilton's like, okay, let's try it. And then he like puts a little bit of it on his arm. He's like, I'm not feeling anything. Then he does a little bit more. He's like, the zombie powder's not working. And then the guy got mad and he like stormed off and like kicked him off because it seemed to be more of like a psychological thing.

• 2:32:01Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. That's fascinating.

• 2:32:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah. It's like when you grow, uh, the, the idea of it is, is that when you, when you are grown, raised and indoctrinate, indoctrinated into this belief system that zombies are real. And this kind of stuff works, then these drugs will start to have an effect that bolsters your, that, that works with your belief system. So your belief system and the drugs reinforce each other and they're so intertwined. You don't even know what the difference is between the two.

• 2:32:32Speaker 02

  To some, to, to some degree, it's like the faith healing effect where I think people legitimately, they get up on the stage with the televangelist and they, he touches your head and you're just like, you pass out.

• 2:32:42Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:32:43Speaker 02

  And I don't think people are in snake handling and people aren't faking that. That's a real.

• 2:32:49Speaker 02

  If you wanna believe, if you really believe something and, you know, so I could imagine with this, uh, you know, zombie drug that there's some effect there that.

• 2:32:58Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:58Speaker 02

  Or, or like the same phenomenon as the old, like nineteen eighties, the karate masters to doing all the crazy stuff that would just like, barely touch you and you'd go down and all the students, I, they're, I think most of the students aren't faking that.

• 2:33:10Danny Jones?

  I think exorcisms, I think exorcisms are the same thing.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:33:15Danny Jones?

  Yeah. There's, there's tons of videos online that we were, we were watching a couple, a couple of weeks ago, these exorcists doing stuff and then they're like, "I command you from, from Jesus Christ." They put the cross on their head and these people start like twisting, bleh. They like convulsing and their eyes are rolling into the back of their heads, talking like a demon.

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  I wonder if the phenomenon of exorcism has changed it all pre and post nineteen seventy-three, The Exorcist, which I watched again recently. That, what a wild film. But like, I wonder if that helped to flavor, like if it's a cultural phenomenon.

• 2:33:47Danny Jones?

  Hmm, right.

• 2:33:48Speaker 02

  Like you said, yeah, like, that might have helped to change the flavor of, like people say with aliens, like once the kind of the prototype.

• 2:33:56Danny Jones?

  That's interesting.

• 2:33:56Speaker 02

  Nineteen fifties UFO, like then everyone's experienced.

• 2:34:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I wonder if there's any videos or recordings of exorcisms before that movie came out.

• 2:34:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause the whole like, yeah, the talking like that, the bleh.

• 2:34:09Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:34:12Speaker 02

  The heads.

• 2:34:13Danny Jones?

  I had an exorcist on the podcast once.

• 2:34:15Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:34:15Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And, uh, I was out, we were, we got into a, a big argument about drugs because he, he thought that, uh, drugs basically were the devil. He's like, if you use drugs, you're going to hell, like any kind of drug. And then, you know, I was kind of asking him like, well, what if it's your prescribed cannabis by a doctor? And then he was like, oh, well, in that case, it's, uh, you know, it's different. You know what you're doing here. Stop trying to play these games with me. He's like, only if you're on the street and you're using these drugs in a, in a bad way to get high, then you're gonna go to hell.

• 2:34:49Speaker 02

  So if in your living room with a couple of buddies and.

• 2:34:52Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 2:34:52Speaker 02

  Just kind of having a deep conversation, where is that at on the?

• 2:34:55Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 2:34:56Speaker 02

  You're not on the street.

• 2:34:57Danny Jones?

  You know, it's just, it's just a complete ignorance of the drug, right? Obviously, the guy's never experienced it. He's just, you know, came up with his understanding of the Bible and, and he's monetized being an exorcist because he charges money for it. He charges like. Two hundred fifty bucks, I think, for an exorcism. He does them on Skype.

• 2:35:15Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. That is serious grift, like.

• 2:35:18Danny Jones?

  Oh dude, next fucking level.

• 2:35:20Speaker 02

  That's like, exorcising by Skype is pretty.

• 2:35:23Danny Jones?

  Yes, it's.

• 2:35:24Speaker 02

  Was that a long time ago, or is he just like, old school? Like, he's got Yahoo, not Gmail. He's like, I'm, no, I'm doing Skype.

• 2:35:30Danny Jones?

  He still does Skype. He still does Skype. He charges, I think, a premium for the in-persons, but he does, uh, I think he says he's done. How many exorcisms did he say he's done?

• 2:35:40Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure it was ten thousand.

• 2:35:41Danny Jones?

  Over ten thousand exorcisms in his lifetime?

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  So that's fascinating as a personality, because he's obviously, like, even within religious folks, like, exorcism is pretty open. He's pretty wild. He's pretty out there. But then.

• 2:35:53Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:53Speaker 02

  You know, he's like, you do any drug and you're, like, going to hell.

• 2:35:57Danny Jones?

  He would be one of the people that I would like to hold down and get him high.

• 2:36:02Danny Jones?

  You know? Because I was explaining to him, I was explaining, like, like, one of the biggest revelations I have when I get high are things that are like, for example, one of the most common things that happen, that ideas that I have when I get high is that, like, I need to spend more time with my kids. Everything else is bullshit. You know what I mean? Like, how is that the devil?

• 2:36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:25Danny Jones?

  You know?

• 2:36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:26Danny Jones?

  It's looking at, like we talked about already, it's, it's, it's looking at the, everything from a different perspective and finding that ground floor base reality of what's most important to you.

• 2:36:38Speaker 02

  And you get that with.

• 2:36:39Danny Jones?

  And it's clarity.

• 2:36:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, with psychedelics and also with cannabis, people will, you know, um, will talk about a perspective change.

• 2:36:47Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:36:48Speaker 02

  Where it's kind of just more obvious what their priorities are, that zoom out effect, um, things like that, like, or realizing, I don't know, you're contemplating the times, like, oh, like, I, I shouldn't have talked to so-and-so like that. I should have, like, done, I should have been more patient and this, you know, like. You know, probably less likely, people are like, I should have been more of an alpha and just like, punch that guy out for that, you know, it's like the opposite.

• 2:37:17Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:37:20Danny Jones?

  One, one thing I wanted to talk to you about earlier, but we kind of like got off track, but I wanted to, I wanted to learn more about your actual studies that you did in regards to cocaine. And was that before the psychedelic stuff, or did that lead up to it?

• 2:37:36Speaker 02

  That was concurrent.

• 2:37:37Danny Jones?

  That was concurrent with the psychedelic stuff?

• 2:37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I always like did the psychedelic, sort of like, the psychedelic research on the side, um, because like there's hardly any funding for it. So I kind of kept my day job, so to speak, by getting these, these grants to do research with cocaine, which I also found very interesting.

• 2:37:56Danny Jones?

  How do you get a grant to do research for cocaine?

• 2:37:58Speaker 02

  You apply to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And so what I was, I did some research when I was a postdoc, after I got my PhD on like the interactions between cocaine and nicotine and caffeine, but the more interesting stuff was the stuff that I,

• 2:38:14Speaker 02

  I conducted as principal investigator, got my own grant, I had a line of research where I took behavioral economic models. So a lot of my work has been using like economic concepts and studying human decision-making to understand drug use, like and addiction. And so I developed these, I took this model from behavioral economics called delayed discounting. So offering people a choice between smaller sooner versus larger later amounts of money. And people who are addicted to whether it's cocaine or cigarettes or anything, tend to be more immediate focused. They tend to take the smaller sooner at the expense of the larger later.

• 2:38:54Speaker 02

  And so I applied that to cocaine and sexual risk. I did this with methamphetamine and alcohol too. Drugs are associated with risky sex, like which can lead HIV and all kinds of whatever unintended consequences, unintended pregnancy. But,

• 2:39:13Speaker 02

  Asking people hypothetical decisions about if you were in this

• 2:39:19Speaker 02

  this content, you met this person at a get whatever somewhere. And first they they pick out amongst these, all these like 60 photos. What person they'd have casual sex with. As long as they're getting along, you know, and so it's kind of fun for people. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, whatever. Gender is something there for everyone. You could pick. One gender, two genders, all of the above, you know, whatever. Whatever you into and and then from that. We do these tasks of like asking them, okay, so let's say they're down. Would you use a condom or not, just like your likelihood on a scale? And they make the rating and typically even like high risk people like cocaine addicted people. Would say, you know, there's some exceptions, but they'd say, no, I'm very likely to use a condom. But then you say, okay, now you got to wait five minutes.

• 2:40:05Speaker 02

  You're having unprotected sex now or waiting five minutes. And then different delays, like sometimes it's an hour, it could go up to like next day, you got to get together tomorrow. But you could see that. As you should, you had to wait to use sex with a condom, you would see that would drastically change. Is this Their their function, they would shift towards unprotected sex. And then we got people loaded on cocaine, so we administered cocaine to them. And it didn't touch those money decisions. So whether they'd want the $50 now or $100 in a month. But for these sexual decisions that had a strong effect, they'd be like, no, I'm down now. Like they're on cocaine. And so which to me, it opened up a lens of like, this is where.

• 2:40:47Speaker 02

  It's not just this association of cocaine with it's like if you talk to people. Like they're, you know, heavy cocaine users and they'll just do like wild stuff. Like I remember stories of like one guy in a treatment study I was running. Was a. We'd have them talk about contexts in which they would use cocaine. He's like, okay, a lot of times I hang out with my my female cousin, this is a guy. And it's like, we'd get, you know, we'd get, you know, we'd get high. And. Let's just say we'd move from the kitchen into the bedroom and she wouldn't be my cousin anymore. If you hear me like. Things like this, like there's all kinds of things that people.

• 2:41:29Speaker 02

  And there's a good number of folks that would, you know, they identify as straight.

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  But once coke's in the system, it's like, yeah, that story doesn't hold up.

• 2:41:40Danny Jones?

  And they they start divulging this stuff when they're on cocaine?

• 2:41:44Speaker 02

  Well, those stories come from people, you know, not when they're on cocaine. But I they seem like very credible because they're not like, I see. These aren't things to brag about, like, right? Yeah, just people I've been able to talk to in the context of these studies. Because I always like, whether it's cocaine or psychedelics, like, I've really valued sitting down and really talking to people. Like, and and a lot of scientists that do the type of thing I do, there can be a judgment. And like, oh, these are cocaine users, these are, you know, like, it's like, no, like, you tell me how, like, how do you score coke in Baltimore? Where do you go? Oh, you call it like Ready Rock? What's that? Oh, yeah, it's like, it's a Baltimore thing, you know, like, okay, you sell like, five dollar mounts, like, you know, how do you do it? Like, what would you say, you know, just wondering, you know?

• 2:42:26Speaker 02

  Oh, the different types of heroin on east side, west side, Baltimore, like, I want to know. Like, all these things that people, you know, like, you know, and understand, like, what people are, what's motivating them and like, how, like, just the the so- the sociology of of the drug use environment and what's motivating people. And so I've really valued that aspect. So I'll usually take the time to, you know, really get to know people and um, try to understand these things. And and some of it is in the context, like the guy with his cousin, that was in the context of, yeah, we're as part of the study, we're having them talk about the environments that they normally use in.

• 2:43:07Speaker 02

  But um, but yeah, so cocaine and sex, though, go like, and same with methamphetamine, they go hand in hand. You ask any

• 2:43:13Danny Jones?

  Oh, with methamphetamine, same thing?

• 2:43:15Speaker 02

  Meth and sex, so any psychomotor stimulant and sex, they are like, strong.

• 2:43:20Danny Jones?

  How do you explain that?

• 2:43:21Speaker 02

  People get randy, and so, and I showed for the first time, um, even though, you know,

• 2:43:28Speaker 02

  Anecdotally, like anyone could have told you this, it's been around cocaine a lot, but we showed under double-blind conditions that just cocaine increases sexual arousal to a substantial degree. So people get horny when they're on cocaine or methamphetamine. Sometimes, more so with ma- uh, cocaine, sometimes, not always, it interferes with the ability to perform.

• 2:43:50Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  So for the male.

• 2:43:51Danny Jones?

  Viagra.

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:43:53Danny Jones?

  Have you heard the story of Dan Bilzerian? I don't know if you've heard the story of this dude named Dan Bilzerian? He was like a, like a Playboy-type guy who was always running, riding around on yachts with like

• 2:44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:02Danny Jones?

  tons of women.

• 2:44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:03Danny Jones?

  And he had a heart attack in his twenties. And he explains he was in Vegas doing coke for like three days straight. And he said that like he went to go, uh, have sex with this chick and he couldn't get it up. So he ate like four Viagras and he started to have a heart attack and he needed to go to the ER. And he had like, he ended up having like two heart attacks or something crazy.

• 2:44:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:44:20Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:20Speaker 02

  Not a good combination.

• 2:44:22Danny Jones?

  Especially in your twenties.

• 2:44:24Speaker 02

  And a lot of people have used it. Same thing could happen with MDMA, but like, so Viagra, I think about 25 years ago, at least it was in some headlines, people call it sextacy, like the combo of like MDMA ecstasy.

• 2:44:36Danny Jones?

  So does that have the same effect?

• 2:44:37Speaker 02

  Viagra. Well, yeah, like what just counteract, yeah, MDMA can cause impotence.

• 2:44:42Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 2:44:42Speaker 02

  So it's like, one might feel more romantic and cuddling up and everything, but if they want to seal the deal, right? So same with coke, not always, but it just.

• 2:44:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:52Speaker 02

  It's like heavy alcohol, like

• 2:44:54Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 2:44:54Speaker 02

  The will might be there, but things may not function totally.

• 2:45:00Danny Jones?

  Sure.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  But nonetheless, it's enough of, it's not a, a black or white thing, you know? Cause there's plenty of, that's one of the issues. That's how I got the grant funding to look at these drugs, both meth and coke.

• 2:45:09Danny Jones?

  So hypothetically.

• 2:45:10Speaker 02

  There's a lot of HIV because of, with heroin, it's more of injecting. With coke and meth, it's more of like, no, I just, you know, got loaded and did some crazy stuff. And a lot of it's like, like men on the, you know, there's a thing that was called, it was on Oprah decades ago, brothers on the down low.

• 2:45:26Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:45:27Speaker 02

  Like, probably because of stigma, it was like, um, amongst African-American men that didn't want to admit that they occasionally, or more than occasionally. Um, uh, had male partners, but then they didn't tell their, they kept it from the females. So there was a transmission of HIV.

• 2:45:43Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:45:44Speaker 02

  Because they were having anal sex with males, but then.

• 2:45:47Danny Jones?

  Which is higher, more chance of getting HIV that way?

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  Much.

• 2:45:51Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:52Speaker 02

  Dramatically, which is like, and sometimes I think we, we don't do the public a service because it, you know, we're too prudish. It's like, no, like, yeah, unprotected anal sex is like.

• 2:46:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:46:01Speaker 02

  That was always the issue.

• 2:46:02Danny Jones?

  So if you're gay, doing cocaine, you're more likely to get AIDS because you're gonna take the, you know, roll the dice and buy not, if you don't have a condom.

• 2:46:09Speaker 02

  So the answer is have a condom on you.

• 2:46:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:46:12Danny Jones?

  Especially gay coke heads out there. Keep condoms on you.

• 2:46:17Speaker 02

  It's not a, because.

• 2:46:18Danny Jones?

  This is Pride Month. We're doing them a service.

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, because, you know, you don't know where things like, people I worked with, you know, it's like, yes, you meet someone at the laundromat, one thing, you know, like, whatever, like, just, you know, having, I was actually wanted to do some research on, um, didn't get the funding for it, but just, trying to encourage people to carry condom on, like, high-risk populations, men have sex with men who have a history of sex that they regret, you know, with novel partners, unprotected, but just to like reinforce them, like, um, if you, if we text you like a few random times a week and you happen to have a condom in your wallet, we'll give you 10 bucks, like, just to get them in the habit of just like, just carry a condom on you.

• 2:47:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:47:05Speaker 02

  Um, which would really help because, you know, you could be moralistic and puritan and say, oh, no, you shouldn't, but like, okay.

• 2:47:14Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:47:14Speaker 02

  Like, whatever, at least, because what my research showed me was that, not always, but most of the time, when these supposedly high-risk populations, when they had the choice, they would say they'd use a condom if they had it there.

• 2:47:29Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:47:29Speaker 02

  But when they're rolling, like, and when, it's not just the coke, but also just the. You know, breaking the action.

• 2:47:36Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:47:37Speaker 02

  You know, biology is happening and it's like someone's got to stop and say, hold on, do you have a?

• 2:47:41Danny Jones?

  Right, right. What's the phrase? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush or something like, what is it? Two in the hands were, no.

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, yeah.

• 2:47:49Danny Jones?

  Exactly. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna risk this opportunity right now.

• 2:47:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, maybe she or he will, whatever, second guess and just, once things are going, you don't want to put the brakes on.

• 2:48:00Danny Jones?

  Exactly.

• 2:48:02Speaker 02

  And you add coke to that.

• 2:48:03Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:04Speaker 02

  And it's like even.

• 2:48:05Danny Jones?

  Gas on fire.

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 2:48:08Danny Jones?

  So hypothetically, uh, not that me or anyone I know would ever do such a thing, but in a, in a purely scientific, uh, laboratory setting, if somebody was on cocaine and their pee pee didn't work, what drug would they use?

• 2:48:23Speaker 02

  Well, they would use Viagra.

• 2:48:25Danny Jones?

  That's, that would be.

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  Or the other, or Cialis, um.

• 2:48:28Danny Jones?

  But those aren't, those are not safe combinations.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, cocaine's not safe.

• 2:48:34Danny Jones?

  Right, well, if you, if you.

• 2:48:35Speaker 02

  So this is all a relative conversation, so there, and there will always be, well, there's some exceptions, but.

• 2:48:42Danny Jones?

  Everything's in moderation.

• 2:48:44Speaker 02

  Combination of two things is almost always riskier than taking one thing.

• 2:48:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:48:48Speaker 02

  So two drugs.

• 2:48:49Danny Jones?

  Exactly.

• 2:48:50Speaker 02

  Is usually.

• 2:48:51Danny Jones?

  You're compounding the risk.

• 2:48:52Speaker 02

  So, yes, there's risk, um, but most toxic drug effects are dose and frequency dependent. Meaning, yeah, the guy taking four Viagra is like, one thinks, well, couldn't he have tried one?

• 2:49:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:49:11Speaker 02

  Um, maybe he wouldn't have had a heart, heart attack. He still could have, still a risk, but.

• 2:49:16Danny Jones?

  But with the, I don't understand though, so the Viagra, Viagra is just like a, it's like a vasodilator, right? So like, how would that cause, how would that hypothetically, mixed with cocaine, cause a heart attack? Do you know?

• 2:49:29Speaker 02

  I don't know. Cocaine can be a vasoconstrictor.

• 2:49:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:49:34Speaker 02

  I'm not even sure a cardiologist wouldn't, cardiologists probably would know something about how Viagra calls a cardiac event, but no one probably knows specifically about the combination together.

• 2:49:46Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:49:47Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, we know cocaine, I mean, simply at the level of increasing, uh, blood pressure and pulse, like, you do that with anything, which is why even to a mild degree, psilocybin can be a risk for a heart, uh, cardiac event in people at severe, uh, heart disease risk.

• 2:50:05Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 2:50:06Speaker 02

  Um, because it has a modest effect on blood, but these are the same people that they could have a cardiac event going up a couple flights of stairs, or it's actually pretty common, like, people having sex, guy shows up to the ER, like, having sex with his wife or whoever.

• 2:50:22Danny Jones?

  Totally.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  Like, anything that raises your heart up, like, you know, heart rate up and your blood pressure for people at severe risk can push them over the edge, so even psilocybin can be a risk and very, which you weed people out and research easy to check their blood pressure.

• 2:50:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  But, um, yeah, yeah, um.

• 2:50:41Danny Jones?

  Wild.

• 2:50:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a...

• 2:50:44Danny Jones?

  It must be hard being a drug researcher in America. This is, I want, I bet you this is probably one of the most difficult countries to get that kind of shit done and funded.

• 2:50:57Speaker 02

  I don't know, I mean, we're just, we're bigger on research, I know there's, there's been a cutback in the current administration, but we've traditionally been kept, conducted more research than other countries, like...

• 2:51:09Danny Jones?

  Oh, have we really?

• 2:51:10Speaker 02

  But, yeah, yeah, I mean, the NIH in the US is a big, so, for example, in terms of drug abuse research, NIDA, which is part of the NIH, National Institute on Drug Abuse, is the biggest funder of research globally.

• 2:51:21Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  So, um...

• 2:51:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, uh, and you know, America is always this like interesting mix because like, yeah, you have all kinds of opinions and we start at the war on drugs, but we've also, like, we twisted everyone's arm and the rest of the world into it. And then we start like legalizing cannabis state by state and the rest of the world's like, "Hold on, dude. We've been doing this for a hundred years because he told us we had to."

• 2:51:49Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 2:51:49Speaker 02

  "Or she'd block us from all the trade agreements and everything and now..." So, but you also get, I mean, I think, you know, America is the best place to be. I mean, whether it's business, science, I just, the level of creativity and I'm biased, I'm an American, but just, you know, the openness and just that kind of spirit of going into the unknown is kind of, it's a human trait, but I tend to think culturally it's something that America has an extra dose of. And so in terms of science, I mean, yeah, like, we've been killing it like for a long time,

• 2:52:31Speaker 02

  relatively speaking, I mean, certain areas of, you know, science have definitely gotten stagnant and, but relatively speaking, I mean, we've, you know,

• 2:52:41Danny Jones?

  Where do you think-

• 2:52:42Speaker 02

  We've been a powerhouse.

• 2:52:43Danny Jones?

  What is your like ultimate view of like where all of this psychedelic research could take us? Do you have some sort of like ideal goal in your mind to where, where it could take humanity? Or like what, or like what kind of problem, like what is like the ultimate problem you think we could solve with it?

• 2:53:06Speaker 02

  This is a big one and I don't know whether it's ever solvable, but psychedelics could be leveraged to help solve the hard problem of consciousness. The words explaining why phenomenal consciousness, the awareness itself, like, there's no scientific explanation for why that exists. Why is this not just one big system?

• 2:53:29Speaker 02

  That's behaving, you know, it's doing its thing like billiard balls and that includes me like there could be a robot me, you know, we essentially are like we're biological, we're mechanisms, we could we seem to be able to explain all the parts, none of that explains why there's an inside experience. So it may be unsolvable by science, but we should be open, but if there's any class of drugs that might play a role in that psychedelics seem a good bet.

• 2:54:02Speaker 02

  Understanding how and you know, as far as I'm concerned, there's all, it's all speculation in terms of like, you know, as some of the theories suggest, maybe there's some level of complexity in the brain computationally that all of a sudden then creates consciousness. I'm skeptical of that because that seems kind of magic and other more panpsychist theories are about, you know, perhaps it's baked into the nature of reality itself. Right. Like some of the, the basic forces in, in physics. I don't know, but perhaps something, you know, if it's anything we can get a foothold in mechanistically, maybe these experience, these very altered conscious experiences with psychedelics can be used to help us figure that out.

• 2:54:47Speaker 02

  But you know, maybe not. And then I don't, ultimately I see psychedelics going down. I, I think we're going to look back and see basically pharmacology, drugs in general is like so crude, like we dump things into our blood system, we eat them, inject them. Yeah. And there's a like countless off-target effects, like eventually I think it's going to be replaced by brain technology. Where we're going in, we're stimulating these specific neurons in these specific ways. And even before, yeah, like it may be like much more directed pharmacology, like these compounds don't just like flood our system, but they go, no, they go to, somehow we're able to make them have effects just in this brain region, just on this subtype of neurons. And, and had this particular.

• 2:55:34Speaker 02

  Affect this receptor and have this particular post receptor signaling effect. I, I, I just think it's going to get more and more specific and that in combination with brain technologies to, because ultimately just affecting the brain, whether it's through putting in a chemical that has effect on brain receptors, or if it's something like, you know, these days like TMS or using magnets, which is just, that's going to look very crude one day as we, I mean, you have like what, you know, we mentioned Eli, you know, Neuralink. Technologies like that are obviously going to go, I mean, they're going to advance and probably, so I, I kind of see drugs in that mix, you know, like as merging with or being

• 2:56:15Speaker 02

  one type of, or being a more specific form of technology that is able to, you know, change conscious experience in desirable or undesirable ways through this biological manipulation.

• 2:56:33Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:56:34Speaker 02

  And everything we're doing now is just very crude.

• 2:56:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:37Speaker 02

  With drugs or with whatever you have.

• 2:56:40Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Cancer treatments and things like this.

• 2:56:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, the history of cancer treatments. So I sat through a talk a few years ago of like, it was amazing. They were describing all of these drugs that were thrown out years ago. And I were like, oh, now that we genotype people and realize like, for this 13% of people, this is a miracle drug.

• 2:56:56Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  And like, now we know, like, it's toxic in these other people, these people, it saves their life. And so, I mean, we might be able to, you know, go in and say, like, with your genotype and with your general history, you need exactly like, you know, this number of milligrams of this drug and this amount of this other drug to like, more tailor, maybe in combination with some of these other technologies like brain stimulation.

• 2:57:23Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:57:24Speaker 02

  Um, but you know, I think it's going to be kind of a race between that and AI and which might make all of this a moot point. And, um, uh, uh, like genetic engineer, like I think when we think about where we're going in terms of our minds and bodies, like, it's pretty clear, like, very, very, very soon, like, we're just going to be editing our genes and we're going to be engineering the course of our evolution.

• 2:57:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  Like, if that doesn't have, if we put mandates in prohibiting it now, like, we can't go through the next.

• 2:58:00Speaker 02

  Couple hundred years, maybe the next hundred, maybe the next twenty years, like, that's gonna happen. You outlawed some crazy dude, there's already been some of this in China, where the guy wasn't supposed to do it and supposedly they put him in jail, like, Yeah. We're gonna be doing that. And there's every reason to believe, one of the most fascinating talks I've ever seen is this guy that focuses on intelligence and genetics and said that the same number of genes that code for height, code for intelligence, I think it was something like 5,000. Really? And there's every reason to believe that through, uh, you know, artificial insemination and selecting the right fertilized egg, that we are gonna be able to move this out five standard deviations and everything we know through artificial selection with, you know,

• 2:58:44Speaker 02

  everything from horses to dogs to, like, there's every reason to believe that we can move IQ up five standard deviations through selective breeding. And he was saying, if you think that there's moral qualms in the people you know about, he's like, and he was ethnically Chinese, he happened to be, he said, let me tell you,

• 2:59:05Speaker 02

  there's no Chinese family in China, you know, we're talking culture, not race, clearly. Right. Um, there's no family in China that would turn this down, the opportunity, it was like, so I think about stuff like that, how do drugs affect that, like, if we're already moving to this environment where there's gonna be this, we don't even know what that means to have an IQ that's five standard deviations above Mm-hmm. normal. Right. Like, and what that will result in, I mean, it's literally, um, Khan from Star Trek, The Ratic, that was his story, he was a genetically modified, super Right. intelligent human and they ended up trying to take over the world and every, you know, so like, how do drugs interact with all of these other things, like AI?

• 2:59:49Speaker 02

  And editing the hu- the human genome for intelligence and whatever, maybe for alter, maybe you want your kids to have, yeah, I don't want my kid going through life without mystical experiences, we're gonna, we're gonna edit the genome to have more openness and mystical experience, oneness with God, whatever. Wow. In the gene, you know, like, you know, I don't know, like, um...

• 3:00:15Speaker 02

  Because there certainly, there seems to be genetics to like religious susceptibility and interest and, you know, like many human traits. And so, why not code that? And so then how's that going to interact with psychedelic drugs?

• 3:00:29Danny Jones?

  Right. Wow.

• 3:00:31Speaker 02

  Are psychedelic drugs going to be a moot point with all these other changes?

• 3:00:35Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah. Matt Johnson, thank you for doing this, man.

• 3:00:40Speaker 02

  Thank you, Danny.

• 3:00:41Danny Jones?

  Super fun. Three hours flew by like nothing. Tell people where they can learn more about what you're doing or get in touch with you. Any of that stuff?

• 3:00:50Speaker 02

  Probably best way on X is drug underscore researcher.

• 3:00:55Danny Jones?

  Nice. Love it.

• 3:00:57Speaker 02

  Is it far enough long? I'd say like formerly Twitter. I could just say X.

• 3:01:01Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, X. Everyone knows what X is. Sweet, bro. I'll link it all below. Thanks again, bro.

• 3:01:05Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks for the opportunity. I've enjoyed it.

• 3:01:08Danny Jones?

  All right. Good night, folks.

• 3:01:10Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country

• 3:01:49Speaker 00

  who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.