Office Hours: The Psychedelics Industry — with Ronan Levy

Ronan Levy, the co-founder and executive chairman of Field Trip Health, joins Scott to discuss the state of play in the legalized psychedelics space. He also answers listener questions on the possible negative externalities of the industry under capitalism, the long-term growth potential of these companies, and how to hold on to feelings of wonder after a psychedelic experience is over. Follow Ronan on Twitter, @RonanDLevy. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic 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.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:49Speaker 01

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• 1:23Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prop G Pod's Office Hours. We're mixing it up today and bringing on a special guest to help us answer our questions and your questions regarding the psychedelic space. With us today is Ronan Levy, the co-founder and executive chairman of Field Trip Health, a global leader in the end-to-end development and delivery of psychedelic therapies. Ronan, where does this podcast find you?

• 1:42Speaker 02

  This podcast finds me in Toronto, Ontario, hometown and where Field Trip is based.

• 1:47Scott Galloway?

  Got it. So let's bust right into it. Walk us through the state of play in the emerging psychedelics industry.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Sure. So we are in the midst, right at the beginning, actually, of a psychedelic renaissance. You know, in the 50s and 60s psychedelics were front and center in the counterculture and in society, and then went dormant for about 50 years following a crackdown by the government. But over the last 10 years psychedelics have really blossomed with research coming out of Johns Hopkins and NYU and Imperial College. And we're going to see, we're already seeing access to psychedelic therapies coming online with ketamine assisted therapy, and we expect MDMA assisted therapy and psilocybin assisted therapy to be approved by the FDA and Health Canada sometime in the next 18 months to four years or so.

• 2:34Scott Galloway?

  So tell us a little bit about Field Trip. What is the, Field Trip Health is the official name of the company. What is, what is the value proposition, the business model, and how you are delivering against that, that value proposition?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Sure. So Field Trip is what we call one of the largest integrated psychedelics players in the industry. And what that means is that we have two operating divisions, one called Field Trip Health, which is actually building the clinical infrastructure to deliver psychedelic therapies at scale. What makes psychedelic medicine so interesting and so unique is that it's experiential medicine, which means the preparation you bring into a psychedelic experience, as well as the physical location that you actually do it at, has an impact on the therapeutic outcomes. And so as we were researching the space, we realized that the company is focused only on developing drugs. In the psychedelic industry, we're missing an essential component of the overall therapeutic protocol. They weren't focusing on the therapy or the set and setting that goes with it and that leads to these

• 3:31Speaker 02

  incredible outcomes. Certainly, the drugs matter, but everything that goes around the psychedelic experience actually matters probably just as much as the drug itself. So we started by building out clinics. Field Trip Health Centers work currently in Toronto, New York, LA, Chicago, Vancouver, Atlanta, Houston, and continuing to expand where we're providing ketamine assisted therapy in preparation ultimately for the availability of MDMA assisted therapy and psilocybin assisted therapy. But we're also developing the next generation of psychedelic molecules. One of the biggest challenges associated with psychedelic assisted therapies is It's a long experience with psilocybin. It's four, six hours. MDMA could be eight to 10 hours. Makes it really expensive. And so with our first molecule in development within Fieldtrip,

• 4:15Speaker 02

  we've got something that's almost identical to psilocybin, both subjectively and objectively, but in half the duration. So it's just going to be that much more accessible, just as safe, just as effective, we believe. But with half as much time, half as much space, half as much doctor and therapist time, it just becomes much more accessible. So much more meaningful medicine in terms of the administrative considerations.

• 4:36Scott Galloway?

  So let's break down what is the difference medically and also in terms of the types of indications or treatments that they're best used for between ketamine, MDMA and psilocybin?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Sure. There are delineations that exist right now, but my sense is they're more artificial than practical or scientific, which is they reflect where the research has gone, not necessarily the utility of the actual drug. So with ketamine assisted therapy, the focus has been on the treatment of depression and suicidality. And it's been profoundly effective. You know, with suicidality, it reduces it significantly. With depression, even in our clinics right now, we're seeing patients who after, after a couple of ketamine assisted therapy sessions can go 120 days or more with depression symptoms going from severe to mild and continuing on. So as far as I know, we are offering the single best therapeutic

• 5:33Speaker 02

  option for the treatment of depression that's currently legally available in Canada and the US, because I've never heard of anything else working along those lines, with the exception of psilocybin assisted therapy. And there are studies that suggest a single psilocybin assisted therapy session can provide antidepressant effects for, in some studies suggesting up to five years. Of course, psilocybin is not legal or approved yet. That's just a matter of time, in my opinion, but that's the kind of impact we're talking about. MDMA assisted therapy so far has been focused on the treatment of PTSD. And again, the results we're seeing are profound. MAPS, which is conducting its second phase three clinical trial with MDMA assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD, showed an effect.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  70% cure rate. So 70% of the participants who on average experienced chronic severe PTSD for 17 years, 70% of them after treatment with I think two or three MDMA assisted therapy sessions, no longer met the criteria to have PTSD anymore. They were effectively cured. These are remarkable when you consider that current treatment options for PTSD seek to have a 30% improvement in symptoms versus a 70% cure rate, effective cure rate. It really is remarkable. But we're talking about each one of these in isolation because that's how our research paradigm works. We pick an indication, we look at the drug, and if it works, then we say, okay, MDMA for PTSD. It's almost certain that MDMA assisted therapy will help treat

• 7:00Speaker 02

  depression as well, because trauma underlies many instances of depression. It's very likely that psilocybin will be effective for the treatment of PTSD as well. It's just that the research hasn't caught up to the potential of each of these drugs.

• 7:12Scott Galloway?

  And this might be the wrong way to be thinking about it, but I think if it is playing defense, not as you've had a traumatic event or period in your life, or struggling with depression, and there's almost, this is almost like a, I don't know, medicinal or a therapy intervention. And then there's offense, maybe this is the wrong way to think about it, where you're thinking, okay, there's nothing getting in the way of me getting on with my life, so to speak, but there are some things I'd like to explore or address, almost like what a lot of privileged people do with therapy, I would argue, and, and use this as a new means of trying to not, not repair my life, if you will, but improve it. Take it from, instead of addressing a problem, seeing if there's any unlocks or realizations I might have under, under this

• 7:57Scott Galloway?

  type of treatment. Is that a fair way to categorize as one? Is, is, do you not recommend it for, for the latter? Or, and how does it break down in terms of where the consumer demand is and what you, what market you are trying to address?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think I think that's one of the most exciting things about psychedelic assisted therapies. The way I tend to analogize it is you can go to the gym and you can work out. You're going to improve your fitness and get stronger. But if you go to the gym and work out with a trainer, you're going to get that much more out of it. And so to the extent that I believe therapy is something that everyone would benefit from, whether you're suffering from severe depression or you just got the normal everyday anxieties of modern life, doing it with psychedelics are just going to have that much more impact and giving you resilience. So, so I think there's an incredible amount of potential to use psychedelic assisted therapies from an integrative medicine approach, which is focusing on not only fixing what's wrong, but optimizing and enhancing what's right with what's going on in your life.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  It's just the nature of modern medical research that we need to have an indication. We need to have the wrong associated with you to prescribe medicine. And that's been the allopathic approach to medicine, which has been very effective for the last hundred years. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it. But what we're seeing more and more is that taking a functional or integrative approach to medicine, preventative medicine, proactive health, all this kind of stuff, going to the gym, eating well, meditation, mindfulness, hopefully psychedelic assisted therapies in the future, are really going to prevent a lot of the things that tend to go wrong. And it's going to be meaningful because what we see, for example, is that people with major depression tend to consume up to 40% more conventional medical resources than someone without depression.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Psychedelics, right now, the research is on trying to fix what's wrong. But the potential, I think the real impact is going to come when we can do both fixing what's wrong, also enhancing what's right. And I think if you talk to most doctors and practitioners in the psychedelic community, it's only a matter of time before psychedelics, as they get approved, start to be used off-label. So the requirement to have treatment-resistant depression will sort of start to slow down or get easier. And so just the everyday foibles of life will find medical need. And even within our clinics right now, we started off as only treating treatment-resistant mental health conditions. But now, you know, most people in life are experiencing something of sufficient medical need,

• 10:22Speaker 02

  even if it doesn't meet the level of treatment-resistant depression to warrant treatment with this. And again, we're seeing incredible results with it.

• 10:29Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's I like your analogy of fitness. There's physical therapy or rehab, and then there's trying to be just more fit. And you're where do you see the growth in the market? Is the former or the latter?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  I think, I mean, the growth is going to occur on both levels, but you're going to see insurance coverage come. And I think the greatest access be enabled by focusing on treatment resistant depression, PTSD, anorexia, all those conditions, because it fits into the current insurance paradigm a lot more. There are certainly, I think you use the word privileged people, and I think it's already happening to quite a significant extent, who are using psychedelics to enable what's better and to improve, right? And the science backs it up. I mean, we see a lot of studies, admittedly, they're probably from the late 60s and early 70s. So not necessarily by modern standards, but we see that psychedelic assisted therapies increase creativity, improve creativity, increase empathy,

• 11:22Speaker 02

  and openness to other people's viewpoints, have increased regard for the planet. So all of these wonderful characteristics and qualities, we look for people psychedelic insisted therapies enhance them across the board, whether you're sick or whether you're healthy. They do seem to elevate most people. It's important to note, though, that what we're talking about is psychedelic assisted therapies. This is not taking LSD and going to a concert. This is working with these drugs in a set and setting with a therapist to really make the most of the experience. It involves putting on eye shades, putting on noise cancelling headphones, and going inward for the journey as opposed to dancing all night at a rave, which, don't get me wrong, there's all sorts of reasons to think

• 12:04Speaker 02

  that's a great experience, and it is. But when we talk about these therapeutic outcomes, these improvements in one's life, it really comes in the context of psychedelic assisted therapy, not just taking psychedelic drugs.

• 12:16Scott Galloway?

  So Ron, we met at the Code Conference where we were on a panel together and Rick Smolin, who's a friend and a photographer and is kind of famous for the 24 Hours and the Life of the Internet, kind of coffee table books, and a really thoughtful guy. I thought he had the best question of the panel. And he brought up the notion that, I think he's a little bit older than us, that when he was in college, a lot of people did LSD and for most it was fine or a good thing, but for some, it was a terrible thing. And they were never the same. And he brought up the notion that there is no free lunch, whether it's diabetes medication or antibiotics, there's a downside, there are side effects. There's very few medical interventions that don't have some sort of downside.

• 13:00Scott Galloway?

  What are the downsides or the risks of this type of therapy or this type of intervention?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Sure. And totally agree. And everything, it's a double edged sword, there's going to be good with the bad. What we're seeing right now is that, at least in the two most advanced clinical trials, there are very few severe adverse effects from psilocybin and MDMA. I'm just talking about those two because they're the most top of mind and the most recent studies came out. There were a couple of incidents in the Compass Pathways trial, looking at psilocybin, where people reported suicidality and intention to do harm to themselves following the treatment. While that's, I mean, that's not a great outcome ever, it's also not a complete picture because that probably existed also beforehand.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  So it's not necessarily a result of the psilocybin, but that was one of the things that was reported after the fact. The truth of the matter is that with most of these molecules, they're actually quite safe. The biggest risk associated with them is the so-called notion of the bad trip. But the current consensus is that there's no such thing as a bad trip per se. There's challenging trips and there are easy trips. Easy trips speak for themselves. Challenging trips can become bad trips if not supported with the proper therapeutic protocols. But they can also be the most therapeutic and cathartic and lead to the best outcomes when properly supported. When not supported, then those bad trips can create their own instance of trauma. And so that's the story we heard at the Code Conference.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Is that people who took it without the right support had a very bad experience and it became traumatic. But what we've seen is that in the right context with the right support, the likelihood of that is incredibly low. And certainly in our clinics, we haven't seen any bad trips. We've seen some challenging trips, but properly supported those people actually had some of the best outcomes that we've seen because we were able to take the insights and awareness and the trauma it brought up and help them work through it as opposed to leaving them on their own, which would often happen at a party or a concert or anything along those lines. But beyond that, there aren't too many, you know, with psilocybin and LSD, there's no LD50, which means the risk of overdosing is virtually nonexistent.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  For the risk of addiction when it comes to psilocybin and LSD and DMT is virtually zero. In fact, a lot of the studies seem to show that these psychedelic molecules that are tryptamines can help people break addictions, including some with opioid addiction. There is some risk of addiction with ketamine and MDMA when taken for too long and those through chronic addiction uses can create some physical ailments. But used episodically, like we see in psychedelic assisted therapies, the physical harms are almost negligible associated with most psychedelics.

• 15:44Scott Galloway?

  So would you say that MDMA for episodic recreational use is okay?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I probably, I think it would be fine. Again, with MDMA, the risk of having a bad trip or a challenging trip is pretty low. I think the biggest risk associated with using MDMA is that if you're not getting pure MDMA, which you'd be getting in these clinical trials and ultimately upon approval, is that there's a risk you're dealing with a drug that may be cut with cocaine or amphetamines or fentanyl. That's the biggest risk, but the episodic use of MDMA, I think that the harms associated with it are quite low and the potential benefits, or at least enjoyment, probably pretty significant. So I personally don't have issue with it.

• 16:29Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'm sort of asking for a friend here. I did ACTS a couple of times in college and then a couple of times right out of college. And I don't have an addictive personality, I don't think so. I enjoy a lot of different things in moderation. And it's never, as far as I can tell, it's never been an issue for me. X was the first time I thought, I should not do this again because I like it that much. And, you know, I haven't done it in whatever it is, 30 years. And I'm thinking about, you know, we met, I was really interested in what you do. The way I, my kind of Cliff Notes or distillation of Field Trip, based on my limited exposure to you and the concept, is that it's sort of the Williams Sonoma of psychedelics.

• 17:08Scott Galloway?

  That you're trying to incorporate and create an aspirational experience around this type of therapy or this experience. And I don't know if that's accurate or not accurate, but it leads into my question. Walk us through the steps, the process, the benefit, the cost. Walk us through the consumer lens of an experience with Field Trip.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Sure, just before I do that, I'll touch on your experience with X 30 years ago. Odds are, if you had a reaction like that, you were probably experiencing not just MDMA. There was probably something else in what you took. Not to say that people don't have wonderful, positive experiences that they want to do again, but most people find the experience of going through an MDMA assisted therapy process amazing, but exhausting to the point where they're like, I will do that again, but I'm in no rush to do so. And we see that pretty consistently, actually. What an experience is like at Field Trip is, Scott, if you wanted to come in, what we would do is initially, we screen you with a psychiatrist and an ND to make sure that ketamine assisted therapy, which is what we can offer now, is both physically and from a mental health perspective, appropriate for you. By and large, it is appropriate for most people.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  There are some contraindications. People who experience schizophrenia, who have uncontrolled high blood pressure, certainly people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. And, you know, these are going to be contraindications where it's not going to be appropriate. But by and large, if you're experiencing just about most diagnosable mental health conditions, from treatment-resistant depression down to, say, dysthymia or adjustment disorder, it probably is indicated. But we want to make sure that there are no other red flags that may come up. And generally, there aren't. Assuming everything goes ahead, you would meet with your therapeutic team? They would help you prepare for your first experience, set an intention, know what to expect. If you've never experienced ketamine, you come to our clinic, which is, I think,

• 18:59Speaker 02

  near Gramercy Park in New York City. Our clinics are designed to be very bright, inviting, comfortable, warm, really paying homage to the concept of setting. We want people to feel comfortable. We want them to feel safe. We want them to feel welcome. It's really important because when people don't feel that, that's when you increase the likelihood of a challenging or bad trip. We have rooms specifically designed with zero-gravity chairs and weighted blankets, headphones, eye shades, and we use Wave Paths, which is a particular technology that can make music that's adjustable to the experience. So if the therapist finds that's getting too intense for you, they can tone down the music to make it a little bit more soothing and vice versa. The ketamine would be administered. Typically, it's offered by intramuscular injection because

• 19:43Speaker 02

  it's high bioavailability, fast onset, and the experience lasts about an hour to an hour and a half when you're in the psychedelic experience. And during that time, people often have a classic psychedelic experience with colors, lights, you know, deep, personal sensations, synesthesia. People often are able to encounter or think about past experiences, past traumas, and see them from a new light and start to let go of them. Same thing you try to get to through therapy, but on a much expedited basis with the ketamine. After about an hour to an hour and a half, the ketamine effects wear off. You'll have some time to decompress with your therapist and share what happened. And then we have a lounge where people can just chill out for as long as

• 20:25Speaker 02

  they want to because it's not always easy to go from a ketamine experience back into the normal hustle and bustle of daily life. Over a course of treatment, you would typically do two ketamine-assisted therapy sessions, and then we do an integration session. So, you know, talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy that you do with your therapist to really start to unpack what happened and turn it into behavior change, mindset change, outlook change, habit change. Because what we do know about mental health is that it's just not a function of your neurochemistry. It's just not your brain happening, that there's a whole bunch of lifestyle aspects that go along with enhancing one's mental health. And so We take advantage of the window of neuroplasticity that follows the psychedelic experience to help you make real changes in your life. You know, if you want to start meditating daily, during that period of neuroplasticity,

• 21:10Speaker 02

  it's a lot easier to adopt that habit.

• 21:12Scott Galloway?

  Trying to make it actionable.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's like kids, like kids are much more neuroplastic than us old folks. And that's why they can pick up language with facility and new skills with facility where it takes us a long time. Following a psychedelic experience, our brain is more malleable, more childlike. And so we're much more able to change how we were once doing something into a new way that's much more productive or conducive to whatever lifestyle we want to live.

• 21:37Scott Galloway?

  So I'd love to ask, and one of the reasons I approached you is that I'm, want to do this and I'm going to do this. And you struck me as an incredibly impressive, competent man. And I thought this is someone who had, whatever concept you're involved in, I would, I just feel better about in terms of taking this, this step. And two of my concerns, and I don't know, it's easy to extrapolate your own concerns to the market, but I'll just give you what my concerns are and you address each of them. My first one was that just the kind of what I'll call medical risk or the one, you know, you become the one three or 5% that has a really bad experience. And I'm not even, I'm not even concerned about the trauma. I just, the few times I've had a bad high where I smoked too much pot and I become paranoid

• 22:21Scott Galloway?

  or whatever it is, you just don't want to go back there. I just don't have a lot of experience with it and I don't like the feeling of being out of control. Now, you have sort of assuaged those concerns. I just get the sense that that is really, really pretty, pretty severe tail risk or unlikely tail risk, so to speak. The other concern I have is more personal. I don't know if it's the, you hear this a lot, but I've talked to some people who've gone through this and they come out and they make huge life-changing decisions. Like, I've decided I'm married to the wrong person. Or I need to change careers. And I look at my life and I think there might be some shit wrong with it,

• 23:03Scott Galloway?

  but I've managed to suppress that stuff and talk myself into believing I'm pretty happy. And even if there are realizations I should uncover, I'm not in a hurry to uncover them. It's like, I'm worried I'm going to come out of this thing incorrectly or correctly with realizations that inspire a dramatic change. Whereas, you know, my sense is I should just keep on keeping on. Or am I, am I overdramatizing the experience here?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Sure. First of all, thank you for the compliment. I do appreciate it. It is quite touching and it means a lot coming from someone like you. So, so thank you for that. In response to your first question about the medical risk, with ketamine assisted therapy, ketamine is actually one of the safest drugs out there. It's been identified by the World Health Organization as an essential medicine. In fact, if you have children and your children, you know, get a laceration or break their arm and you take them to the hospital, it's, odds are the ER doctor, if they're going to give an anesthetic, are giving ketamine. It's that safe in terms of it doesn't depress your central nervous system. So there's no risk of overdose. There's no risk of, you know, stopping breathing, which you get with other anesthetics or opioids. So it's incredibly safe, at least from a physical perspective.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  In terms of a psychological perspective, certainly some people have had challenging experiences in our clinics. But like I said before, when properly supported, when properly prepared, so you know what the experience is like, and I'm happy to share with you what my first experience with ketamine was like. People come out of it, and even if it's challenging, they always report, at least in our clinics, have, I think we have like 100% people report, it's a positive ultimate outcome. Maybe they feel shaky or unstable immediately after, but with the benefit of time and the support of therapeutic work we do, it ends up on a positive note. So I think the, the risks are quite low. But to your point about not wanting to give up control, I think the, the one thing that psychedelics do is force you to give up control.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  And, and so sometimes when challenging experiences come up, it's because people don't let go. There's a, an expression and I'm going to bungle it right now, but it's.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Relax, trust and surrender, like surrender to the process because if you try and fight it, it's going to be exhausting and you're probably not going to have as good of a time or create the therapeutic outcome. But if you can actually let go and go for the ride, people have really positive experiences. The risk that you're going to make a profound, life-changing decision, well, that's one of our things that our therapists will work with you on. So, you know, some people do that. After one of my more recent psychedelic assisted therapy sessions, I went out and bought a $2,000 guitar. Now, that was the extent of like my rash decision that I decided like two days afterwards, but

• 25:43Scott Galloway?

  So you came to the realization you're having a midlife crisis.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  It wasn't a hard leave.

• 25:47Scott Galloway?

  You're just gonna lean into it.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:49Scott Galloway?

  Good for you.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  But, you know, what, what almost all therapists will tell you is like, don't make any profound decisions for at least a month after you go through a therapeutic protocol because there will be a lot of things that come up that you have to work through. But that's the importance of the therapeutic is like, yeah, you may come out of a session and be like, I am married to the wrong person 100%. But then as you work through it, maybe you start to realize, oh, it's not that I'm married to the wrong person, but we've got these issues and these dynamics in our relationship that we need to fix. And by fixing them, you actually free up your life to be so much more rewarding and your relationship to be so much more freeing and empowering. It becomes a very positive thing. On the other hand, though, it's like, sometimes you do come out, sometimes even after 30 days, you're like,

• 26:34Speaker 02

  I'm in the absolutely wrong relationship, or I'm in the wrong job, or whatever the case may be. And yeah, it can be upending, and there's no doubt about that. But I would argue, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that amazing that you actually got freed up to be honest with yourself? Because I think at the end of the day, what psychedelics do is they let you be honest with yourself, block out all the social pressure, all the social noise, all the familiar, familial considerations, and let you be honest with yourself deep down after having worked through some of the trauma that you may be holding on to that make you make decisions that you don't necessarily personally integrate with. So, you know, I do think it's a possibility that people upend their lives. But I would also

• 27:17Speaker 02

  say, if it's done with proper consideration, after lots of reflection and working through some of the challenges that may make you think that this is true, then go for it. That's kind of what we're working towards.

• 27:28Scott Galloway?

  So what we're going to do is take some listener questions right after this break.

• 27:36Scott Galloway?

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• 28:21Scott Galloway?

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• 28:39Scott Galloway?

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• 29:51Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Literal question number one.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  Hi Scott, thanks for taking my question. I'm a 33-year-old writer and longtime listener from Richmond, Virginia, whose psychedelic experiences helped change my life after a disillusioned and corporate career. My question for Ronan concerned similar cautionary flags that folks like Tim Ferriss have raised about the privatization of psychedelic business models. As mind-altering medicines and treatments become big businesses, a host of unprecedented negative externalities can emerge, like with any disruptive technology or business model. Government regulators are insufficient, in my view, to be at the forefront of these issues. Although Field Trip Health seems to have great intentions in mind, I'd

• 30:35Speaker 03

  like to ask Ronan to speak to ways that his business and industry can self-regulate against the darker forces of capitalism. I think there's plenty of precedent in the pharmaceutical industry for me to be skeptical and concerned about the privatization of these business models. Thanks again for taking my question.

• 30:53Scott Galloway?

  Ronan, is capitalism the right approach to this? I think is what he was asking.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a question that comes up quite often, and there's no perfect answer. Certainly, there are some negative tendencies built into capitalism which drive a for-profit model, but that's one of the things that actually excites me the most around psychedelics, is that one of the things that is consistently seen with people who have psychedelic experiences is a changed perspective to being a ruthless profiteer. People seem to be more open-minded, considerate, empathetic, and so the neat thing about what's happening right now is that as much as there may be valid concerns about for-profit motivations, taking over good quality of care of psychedelics, even though I don't think it's a risk that exists right now, because everybody I speak to who's in this industry seems to be doing it for

• 31:41Speaker 02

  the right reasons, even though that risk is one that can't be denied, I think fundamentally what starts to happen is that you open people's minds to these potential negative externalities, and it's a self-regulating cycle. That being said, it's something that we're all conscious about. We want to ensure that there are great outcomes. And I think what you're seeing is that the evolution of the psychedelics industry is going to be a lot more integrated than purely medical. We see states like Oregon creating measure 109, the first legal regulated market for psychedelic assisted therapies with psilocybin. You know, you're seeing in Canada constitutional challenges around access and self-growing and all of these kind of things. So while these risks can never be eliminated, I think there are enough counterbalancing

• 32:24Speaker 02

  considerations happening right now that it's not giving me heartburn, but it's definitely something that we're conscious about.

• 32:30Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it also feels like when you take something, I mean, the upside also is that you are legally liable. You are subject to certain regulation and certain liability that encourages you or incentivizes you to create a safe, you know, a safe, reasonable and responsible experience. So I would, I would, I would argue there's a lot more upside to incorporating it into a, you know, the all, the all encompassing for-profit model here. Let's roll the second question.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Hi, Scott. This is Doug from LA and my question is on psychedelic medicine. With both the IPO of Compass Pathways and Oregon voting to legalize psilocybin therapy, we've seen the handful of publicly traded companies in this space all rise three to 10x. But all these companies rely on the current pharmaceutical model of investing hundreds of millions, if not billions, in three plus years of R and D with the expectation of future profits from recurring prescriptions. Given psychedelic medicine often only needs to be taken a few times a year, if even that, how do you see the legalized psychedelic space playing out as these medicines become available, some of them as early as 2022?

• 33:40Scott Galloway?

  Doug's running.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  I think the, the evolution of the psychedelic industry, what we're going to see is two parallel paths, kind of like what we see with cannabis. One, that's purely medical with specific indications and a purely synthetic format. So, you know, just GMP production, exactly like medicine, delivered exactly like medicine, subject to the unique considerations of it being psychedelic assisted therapy. And I think you're going to also have a wellness system emerge, exactly like we see in Oregon, which is going to be accessible to much Many more people and it will be built on natural products. So the actual mushrooms themselves, if we're talking about psilocybin, I think those are gonna go hand in hand. And even though the results we see from psychedelic assisted therapies are profound and, you know, some people joke about whether we're gonna cure depression.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  And the truth is, is if we cure depression and put ourselves out of business, I think that's the legacy we could all live with and just about everybody in the industry is on board with that. Truth is, life is complicated and people have traumas and different experiences and different anxieties and stresses and all of a sudden you have a global pandemic happen. And so the need for psychedelic assisted therapies is going to be ongoing. And I think eventually it just becomes incorporated into people's lifestyle. You know, we go to the dentist every six months for dental hygiene. I can definitely foresee a future where we go to the psychedelic therapist every six months for mental hygiene as well. And so I think it just becomes incorporated into our lives. And when you consider the number of people suffering with mental health challenges, which

• 35:08Speaker 02

  is estimated in the hundreds of millions, and when you consider that all roughly 10 billion people on this planet have some trauma to work through, I think there's no doubt that this is gonna be a robust, healthy industry and the valuations you see right now are gonna pale in comparison. I really do believe that psychedelics are not only going to revolutionize psychiatry and mental health, I think they're gonna be the most significant social and cultural impact on our society over the next 25 to 50 years as well. Because once people have these shifts and start to heal and move past trauma, their lives change and they make different decisions. That's borne out in the evidence across the board. So I think it's a really exciting time and I think it's gonna be a really significant

• 35:49Speaker 02

  industry, provided, you know, we address some of the negative externalities that go with for-profit businesses like we touched on in the first question.

• 35:59Scott Galloway?

  Okay, let's move into our final question.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  Hey Prof G, my name is Kendall and I'm a Bay Area transplant living in New York City. My question is in response to your tweet regarding psychedelics. So how can we hold on to the powerful feelings of wonder and gratitude from our psychedelic experience once it's over? In other words, how can we keep on truly feeling like life is so rich? As a 25-year-old female, I don't think I'm part of your majority audience, and I do not intend to further inflate your colossal ego with this, but I just wanted to say that I've read almost all of your writing, and I love the insights of honesty, humor, and willingness to be vulnerable. Anyways, looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thank you.

• 36:37Scott Galloway?

  That's a great question. We love that question. That's an outstanding question. Anyways, how do we, how do you hold on? You were talking a little bit how to make, how do you affect change? How do you hold on? Are there practices? Is there a gratitude practice post-treatment?

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. First of all, it sounds like based on that question, you can definitely benefit from some psychedelic-assisted therapy with some ego dissolution, Scott, just saying based on the question alone.

• 37:02Scott Galloway?

  There you go. That has been prescribed across, a number of people have come to the same conclusion. But anyways, go ahead.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  So what typically happens is like, if you can imagine your experience kind of like a rubber band, which is during a psychedelic experience, it's going to be stretched and you're going to feel amazing afterwards, but then you kind of start to revert back to the norm, but you've kind of moved one or two percent. And that's what happens across psychedelic experiences, is that you feel really, you feel the afterglow afterwards, and then you kind of revert back to the norm, but it's always a little bit different and a little bit different. And the secret is really trying to be able to recall the feelings. This isn't about being cerebral, this isn't about logic and thinking, it's about emotions. And so how do you recall those feelings? Gratitude practices are great. You know, my friends Alex and UJ created the Five Minute Journal, that's a great exercise.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Just simple meditation, going back to the feeling at any given time, really, if you take 30 seconds or a minute, close your eyes and go back to what it felt like right after that psychedelic experience, you can call it up. Maybe it's not quite as profound or as intense, but you can go back to it. And that's really the work of integration. It's trying to land it in your brain, but also in your heart. And, you know, I think there's a number of well-established practices about how to call up positive emotions. And so just use any one of those from heart The Five Minute Journal, it's a meditation comm app. We have our trip app. You can go to tripapp.co, which has got tons of meditations and music. Just even listening to the music that you had during the experience can recall it. Sense can be a powerful form too. So if you like essential oils, put on essential oils before a psychedelic experience.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  And then when you subsequently smell that essential oil, it'll help call back those emotions as well. So there's any number of robust techniques to really recall that emotion. It won't be as intense, but it'll still be there.

• 38:47Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. And more basic or more basic practice, just a gratitude practice. Scott Harrison from Charity Water got me doing this. And it sounds so passe, but I find it's very effective just every day. Or, you know, as often as you can, just take pause, still yourselves, clear your mind and think about how blessed and force yourself to articulate all the things that you're grateful for. I find it's really helpful. Ronan Levy is a co-founder and executive chairman of Field Trip Health, a global leader in the end-to-end development of delivery of psychedelic therapies. He's also a partner at Grassfed Ventures, a venture capital and advisory firm focused on the cannabis and biotech industries and is the chief strategy officer of Trait Biosciences, a leading biotech company in the hemp and

• 39:29Scott Galloway?

  cannabis industries. He joins us from his home in Toronto, Canada. Ronan, I will see you at the Field Trip store. I expect you to do this. I expect you to hold my hand and walk me through this, my brother. Congrats on your success and thanks for coming on.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me and an expression of gratitude. I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to join you today.

• 39:51Scott Galloway?

  That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit officehours.profgmedia.com.

• 40:04Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Thursday.

• 40:17Speaker 06

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• 40:47Speaker 07

  I'm Glenn Washington from Snap Judgment, the storytelling podcast from KQED. Imagine an iconic piece of paradise overrun by one of the most horrific fires in recent memory. Everyone flees, everyone, except one person who decides to fight the flames alone. The moment when nature, institutions, and technology fail at the exact same time. That's All Systems Down, a new Snap Judgment mini-series from KQED. Tap to listen now.