#385: The World's Largest Psychedelic Research Center

This is something I’ve been working on for ~1.5 years and something diligent scientists have been working toward for 20+ years. This episode features a recording of the press conference announcing the launch of the world’s largest psychedelic research center and the U. S.’s first psychedelic research center -- The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/ at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Among other things, they will be investigating the effectiveness of psychedelics as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (formerly known as chronic Lyme disease), anorexia nervosa and alcohol use in people with major depression. The researchers hope to create precision medicine treatments tailored to individual patients’ specific needs. I couldn’t be happier, and it wouldn’t have happened without generous support from Steven and Alexandra Cohen (@cohengive https://twitter.com/cohengive), Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt https://twitter.com/photomatt), Blake Mycoskie (@blakemycoskie https://twitter.com/blakemycoskie), and Craig Nerenberg. Many thanks also to Benedict Carey of the New York Times (@bencareynyt https://twitter.com/bencareynyt) for investigating and reporting on this https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/health/ferriss-psychedelic-drugs-depression.html from multiple perspectives, as he’s done for many years. As some of you know, I shifted most of my focus from startup investing to this field in 2015, and it’s incredibly important to me that this watershed announcement helps to catalyze more studies, more ambitious centers, more scientists entering the field, and more philanthropists and sources of funding taking a close look at psychedelic science. To that end, it’s critical that more people realize there is much more reputational upside than reputational risk in supporting this work in 2019 and beyond. To broadcast this as widely as possible, I have one offer and one sincere ask: THE OFFER — If you’re involved with media and would like to learn more about the center or speak with the key scientists involved, please visit this contact page https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/#contact. THE ASK — Please share the New York Times articles (here is one tweet https://twitter.com/tferriss/status/1169302397753147394) or the announcement. Whatever you can do to spread the word is most appreciated! The short link tim.blog/nyt http://tim.blog/nyt will also forward to one of the NYT articles. On this press conference, I am joined by Roland Griffiths, Ph. D. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/1311852/roland-griffiths, who initiated the psilocybin research program at Johns Hopkins almost 20 years ago, leading the first studies investigating the effects of its use by healthy volunteers. His pioneering work led to the consideration of psilocybin as a therapy for serious health conditions. Griffiths recruited and trained the center faculty in psychedelic research as well. Also participating is Matthew Johnson, Ph. D. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0800020/matthew-johnson, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, who has expertise in drug addictions and behavioral economic decision-making, and has conducted psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins since 2004 (with well over 100 publications). He has led studies that show psilocybin can treat nicotine addiction. Johnson will lead two new clinical trials and will be associate director of the new center. The conference was moderated by Audrey Huang, Ph. D https://twitter.com/DrAudreyHuang., a media relations director at Johns Hopkins. Additional resources: Johns Hopkins Opens New Center for Psychedelic Research https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/science/psychedelic-drugs-hopkins-depression.html (New York Times) Tim Ferriss, the Man Who Put His Money Behind Psychedelic Medicine https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/health/ferriss-psychedelic-drugs-depression.html (New York Times) Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research https://hopkinspsychedelic.org (Official website) Johns Hopkins Launches Center For Psychedelic Research https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/johns-hopkins-launches-center-for-psychedelic-research (Johns Hopkins Newsroom) Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research Contact Form https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/#contact *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to a very exciting edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-between-isode, and that means that the format is a little weird. It's not a long-form interview, but it's a very, very important announcement. This is something I've been working on for around a year and a half, very intensely, and something diligent scientists have been working toward for 20-plus years, multiple decades. This episode features a recording of a press conference that I did last week, announcing the launch of the world's largest psychedelic research center and the first psychedelic research center in the US. It is called the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research,

• 1:09Tim Ferriss?

  or "research," if you prefer, at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Among other things, they'll be investigating the effectiveness of psychedelics as a new therapy for opioid addiction, Alzheimer's disease, specifically the depression that often accompanies Alzheimer's disease, but they'll be looking at secondary outcomes, which will track cognitive effects, which is of great interest to me, post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, formerly known as chronic Lyme disease, anorexia nervosa, which has the highest mortality rate, i.e. fatality rate of any psychiatric disorder, and alcohol use in people with major depression.

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  The researchers hope to create precision medicine tailored to individual patients' specific needs. It's super exciting. I couldn't be happier and it wouldn't have happened without generous support from Stephen and Alexandra Cohen, @cohengive, C-O-H-E-N-G-I-V-E on Twitter, Matt Mullenweg, @phoToMatt on Twitter, Blake Mycoskie, @BlakeMycoskie on Twitter, and Craig Nerenberg. Many thanks also to Benedict Carey of the New York Times for investigating and reporting on this from multiple perspectives, as he's done for many, many years. He is

• 2:28Tim Ferriss?

  @BenCareyNYT, C-A-R-E-Y-N-Y-T on Twitter. As some of you know, I shifted most of my focus from startup investing to this field around 2015, and it's incredibly important to me that this watershed announcement helps to catalyze more studies, more ambitious centers, more scientists entering the field, and more philanthropists and sources of funding taking a really close look at psychedelic science. To that end, it's critical that more people realize there is much more reputational upside, much more reputational reward than reputational risk in supporting this important work in 2019 and beyond. And my hope is to

• 3:11Tim Ferriss?

  broadcast this as widely as possible. And there are a few different ways to do that. One is to share the New York Times pieces that have come out, and there are a few different New York Times pieces that have come out covering this. One of them can be found at tim.blog/nyt, or New York Times, spelled however you want, will forward to one article. So I would sincerely ask that if you're interested in this space, or if you find value in exploring this space, which I think holds the potential to treat what are considered untreatable or intractable conditions, then please share that URL and the announcement itself. I'm joined in the press conference with Dr. Roland Griffiths, and you'll hear intros later,

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  so I'm not going to get into it right now, but Dr. Roland Griffiths, who is incredible, Dr. Matthew Johnson. Who is incredible and then also Audrey Huang, PhD, who is the moderator. And I will keep it short for now. A couple of time markers. This is maybe a little drier than some of my interviews that bounce around and can be very kind of fun-loving. This one's pretty serious, but a couple of time markers. So if you want to skip the initial introductory remarks, you can jump to about four minutes and 30 seconds from when this intro ends. If you want to go directly to my comments, if you're interested in why I would focus so much on this space, my personal reasons, my kind of macro-level, big-picture reasons,

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  you can jump to about 11 minutes and 10 seconds after I stop talking in this intro. And then if you want to get straight to the Q and A where we're fielding questions from people in attendance, then you can go to 15 minutes and 30 seconds after I stop talking. So, without further ado, please enjoy this incredibly important, incredibly exciting announcement of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Dr. Audrey Huang. I am Director of Media Relations at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Today, we're announcing a new research center at Johns Hopkins, the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Joining us today are Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Matthew Johnson, and Mr. Tim Ferriss. Dr. Roland Griffiths is a professor of behavioral biology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Neuroscience here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and he is founding director of this new center. Dr. Griffiths is one of the nation's leading psychopharmacologists, whose research focuses on better understanding the effects of mood-altering drugs.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  He directs the Psilocybin Research Initiative here at Johns Hopkins, which has run many studies over the years, including examining the mystical experience imparted by psychedelics on healthy people, and how psychedelics might decrease depression and anxiety.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Psilocybin, the active compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, or shrooms, for those more familiar, will be one focus of the new center. It was first purified and then made synthetically in the 1950s. At the time, psilocybin was legal and was among the psychedelics that rose to the center of the 1960s counterculture. In 1971, however, with the signing of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances Treaty of the United Nations, psilocybin was listed in the United States as a Schedule I drug, defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. It was because of Dr. Griffith's leadership that Johns Hopkins was able to gain regulatory approval in the year 2000 to re-initiate studies that help us better understand

• 6:47Speaker 03

  the effects of psychedelic drugs in healthy people. And now, nearly 20 years later, we're dramatically expanding the testing of psilocybin as therapy for serious health conditions, including major depression. To our left, we have Dr. Matthew Johnson, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences here at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the associate director of the new center. Dr. Johnson is an experimental psychologist and an expert on psychoactive drugs and in psychology of addiction and risk behavior. An underlying theme of Dr. Johnson's career has been to understand and facilitate human behavioral change, particularly that which is fundamental to addiction recovery.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Dr. Johnson also studies the behavioral and psychological effects of psychoactive drugs. He was lead author on the safety guidelines for human psychedelic research in 2008, which has helped to more safely usher in a new era of psychedelic research. Doctors Johnson and Griffiths together have studied the use of psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction, in treating depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer, and in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices in generating positive psychological functioning.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  And on the end there, we welcome Mr. Tim Ferriss, one of the philanthropists who is making possible this Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Mr. Ferriss has been listed as one of Fast Company's most innovative business people, and, a number of years ago, one of Fortune's 40 Under 40. He is an early-stage technology investor and advisor, and has been involved with numerous startups, including Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Duolingo, among many others. Mr. Ferriss has authored five number-one New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling books, including The Four Hour Work Week and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  The Observer and other media have called him "the Oprah of audio" due to the influence he has had with the Tim Ferriss Show podcast, the first business interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads, which I'm sure now is at a much higher number. Thank you all for joining us today. So why don't you each say a few words about this new center, and then we'll open it up to questions. Dr. Griffiths, would you like to start?

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Yes, thank you, Audrey. So we're very pleased to announce the establishment of this Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, which we believe to be the first such center in the United States and the largest in the world. Psychedelics are a fascinating class of compounds. They produce a unique and profound change of consciousness over the course of just several hours. For almost 20 years, we've been investigating the effects of psilocybin, which is the naturally-occurring psychedelic found in the so-called "magic mushrooms," and we've done so in studies with more than 350 participants and healthy volunteers.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Remarkably, even months after study completion, roughly 80% of participants have rated their psilocybin experience to be among the most personally meaningful experiences of their entire lives, on par with the birth of a firstborn child or death of a parent.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  The establishment of this center will build on our past research that's demonstrated the therapeutic effects of psilocybin in people suffering from a range of challenging conditions, including studies we've conducted in anxiety and depression and cancer patients, nicotine addiction, and debilitating depression disorder. The center will also allow us to expand this research on psychedelics to develop new treatments for a wider variety of psychiatric and behavioral disorders, and Matt will be telling you some about this next. In addition, the center's going to allow us to extend our past research in healthy volunteers

• 10:58Speaker 04

  to now investigate the effects of these compounds on creativity and well-being with an ultimate aspiration of opening new ways to support human thriving. I want to express my gratitude to the many research participants and patients who, over the years, have volunteered their time, and without whom we wouldn't have been able to advance this work. I also want to thank our funders, so the center's launching with $17 million in support from the Stephen and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and private philanthropist Tim Ferriss, who's with us today, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, Blake Makowski, the founder of

• 11:43Speaker 04

  TOMS, a shoe and accessory brand, and investor Craig Nurnberg. This funding will support a program of psychedelic research for five years and includes positions for six faculty-member neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and clinicians, as well as five postdoctoral scientists. The stable funding provided by the center will allow a quantum leap in psychedelic research, as well as the ability to train a new generation of graduate and medical students who want to pursue careers in psychedelic science.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  That is so exciting, Dr. Griffiths. Thank you. Dr. Johnson, would you like to say a few things?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Sure, thanks, Audrey. I'd like to talk about the new clinical studies that we plan to do in our new center. We plan to focus on how psychedelics affect behavior, brain function, learning and memory, the brain's biology, and mood. We plan to explore the mechanisms by which psychedelics can contribute to general wellness. Our past research has demonstrated therapeutic benefits in people who suffer from depression and anxiety caused by cancer. This study has paved the way for our ongoing study that tests psilocybin as a potential treatment for major depression in people without cancer. I've led our past and present work using psilocybin to treat nicotine addiction, and results so far have been wildly successful.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  After two and a half years on average, sixty percent of our participants remain smoke-free, which appears to be more effective than all other available treatments. This then laid a foundation for the next two trials I'll lead in the new center. One looking into psilocybin as a treatment for opioid addiction, and the other for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Our colleague Fred Barrett will lead the trial for treating alcohol abuse in people with major depression. He'll also continue his brain imaging studies to determine how psilocybin affects the brain's activity. Fred also plans to identify genetic and other biomarkers in the blood that can predict

• 13:50Speaker 01

  the brain's response to psychedelics. Dr. Albert Garcia Romeo will lead two clinical studies. The first trial will test psilocybin in treating anxiety and depression in people with Alzheimer's disease. This study will be in partnership with the Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Al's second trial will partner with the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center to treat emotional and behavioral symptoms of post-treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome, what was formerly known as chronic Lyme disease. Dr. Natalie Gukasian will lead the study using psychedelics as a therapy for anorexia nervosa.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  This study partners with the Johns Hopkins Eating Disorders Program. And finally, Roland will lead two fascinating studies, not focused on treating illness, but exploring the betterment of well people. One study will examine the effects of microdosing, or taking extremely small doses of psilocybin, and the other study will examine the effects of psilocybin on creativity. Overall, I see psychedelics as a paradigm shifting game changer in the treatment of mental health disorders and as tools for understanding the brain's connection to mind and behavior. Our nation is experiencing an absolute crisis in mental health with depression and addiction

• 15:16Speaker 01

  causing staggering numbers of deaths. We need to follow the data on psychedelics, but the funding of this center will allow us to actually produce those data, permitting us to cautiously bring the power of psychedelics to bear on mental health. So I'm extremely grateful to the center funders for making this possible. After Tim speaks, Roland and I are happy to answer questions about these studies, too.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. And let's hear from the funders. Mr. Ferris, can you tell us a little bit about your motivation for helping us launch the center?

• 15:51Tim Ferriss?

  I can. It's a real honor to be involved, and the motivations are multiple. And I'll start with the personal, and then we'll zoom out and look at the data, so to speak, and the macro level case. So on a personal level, I have, for instance, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. I have major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression on both sides of my family. And as it relates to opioids, I've seen my best friend, growing up on Long Island, die of a fentanyl overdose. My aunt died of percocet plus alcohol last year. And that's my personal experience with a number of these conditions, which are largely thought to be intractable or have very few treatment options.

• 16:35Tim Ferriss?

  On the macro level, I really look at it the same way that I would look at investing in startups or businesses. And I stopped doing that in 2015 to push all my chips into this. And it's not my first time at the scientific rodeo. I've funded other types of scientific studies. But if you look at the criteria I would use, so let's just say if this were for profit, and I don't have any for-profit bets in the space, but I'd be looking for a large market, I would be looking for an uncrowded bet, and I'd be looking for a clear path to progress. Well, it just so happens that if you're looking at, say, effective altruism, you have More or less the exact same checkboxes. You have an important problem, so we were just talking about the prevalence of many of these issues.

• 17:17Tim Ferriss?

  As one example, we have roughly 20 veterans per day who commit suicide in the United States. We lose more at home than at war. Many of those involve opioid addiction and/or depression, PTSD certainly. And therefore, the market size is large. You just have to open any newspaper to see that, certainly as it relates to opioids, as one example. Then you have uncrowded bet. This entire field has been largely neglected in the sense that there's been a near-complete lack of federal funding. So that's exciting to me in the sense that you can get a hugely disproportionate outcome, not to say confirming or disconfirming, but you can have a large impact with a relatively

• 18:02Tim Ferriss?

  small amount of capital. I mean, with tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or single-digit millions, you can have a huge impact. And that reminds me of a number of people I've studied as models for this type of philanthropic giving to science, including Catherine McCormick, who may not be familiar to most folks, but she almost single-handedly helped fund the development of oral contraceptives. And she did that after it had been dropped by a for-profit company that didn't see profit in sight. And she, over the course of several years, with, I believe, a biochemist named Gregory Pincus, put in $2 million. So that's, you know, I'm putting in between 2 and 3 here. And in today's dollars, that's roughly 23. So there's a comparable, right? We have 17, 23.

• 18:45Tim Ferriss?

  And it was initially approved, as I understand it, for menstrual disorders, and then additional applications came in, or indications. And that fundamentally bent the arc of history in a positive way. And looking at the data, looking at the results, the rapid onset, the duration of effect, as Matt said, even though it's an overused expression, I mean, this truly could be paradigm-shifting and lend to not just a better understanding of these conditions, but the mind itself and consciousness. And then I would say, you know, last, tractable, right? Is there a clear path to progress? Yes, you have one of the most productive teams in the world, who now with multi-year salary support,

• 19:28Tim Ferriss?

  can get incredible economies of scale with sharing resources across different studies, and you can unlock their full productive potential. So I hope that this will also act as a proof point that people in the field can increase the level of ambition that they have to hopefully also bring in an entire new wave of scientists who want to pursue this as a career. So those are a few of the reasons why I'm exceptionally excited and committed to this.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Amazing, thank you so much. So, let's take some questions, shall we? Why don't we start with a question that we collected earlier to Doctors Griffith and Johnson. So you have an impressive lineup of studies that you'd like to do, ranging from anorexia nervosa to PTSD to post-treatment Lyme. They seem so wide-ranging. What is the evidence that psilocybin's gonna help such a vast group of conditions?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Well, we don't know, but we're very hopeful that psilocybin offers this opportunity for a trans-diagnostic intervention. So what we know is from our studies with healthy volunteers and some of our patient populations, that a single or a couple of sessions with psilocybin produce enduring positive changes, be it in reduction of addiction or reduction of anxiety or increased well-being in healthy volunteers. So this doesn't fit into any classic therapeutic model, at least in psychopharmacology, where you have a specific receptor target

• 21:14Speaker 04

  aimed at a very specific disease entity. And the potential promise here is to start with depression and some of these very defined conditions, and then explore the generality of this effect. It's unknown, but it's a very exciting prospect.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  And I'll add that I really see psychedelics as inducing a mental and behavioral plasticity. So people should kind of look at these, all these disorders we're looking into and think, "Okay, does this sound like snake oil? You know, how could it potentially treat this wide range of disorders?" And as Roland said, we need to look at each one carefully. So we're going to be data-driven the entire way. But the exciting thing is, there's evidence for these nominally different classes of disorders: depression, addiction, and addiction to different types of drugs. And that's the really exciting thing. And I really think of all these different disorders, whether it's depression in cancer or without cancer,

• 22:16Speaker 01

  addiction to this or addiction to that, as addictions broadly defined, a way of being stuck about a certain way of thinking about yourself and the world. The mind and behavior are stuck in a rut, and psychedelics are a powerful way to blast people out of that that can have a lasting effect.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  That's amazing. That's an interesting way of thinking about it. Kayla, do we have any questions? Our question comes from Christopher Wanjak with Live Science. Please, go ahead.

• 22:43Speaker 05

  Yes, hi. I'm wondering what lessons he might have learned from the 50s and 60s. It's kind of like, "Here we go again." I mean, what did Timothy Leary do wrong? What, why was it made illegal in 1970s that the whole world came together and questioned the practicality of this natural substance?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, this field is chock-full of lessons from the past, and we've been studying those lessons for a couple decades here and taking them very seriously. One, these substances do have risks, and none of our research should encourage, you know, "Do it yourself at home." And one of Leary's mistakes, he did some brilliant research too, but one of his mistakes is more widely encouraging use. So that's something we've never done and never planned to do. And, you know, one is a, another was a lack of being very clear about what the risks are.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Fortunately, the classic psychedelics like psilocybin aren't drugs of addiction, but they can be abused, which is to mean used in a dangerous way. They can cause lasting harm in people with schizophrenia and disorders like that. The bad trip can happen in anyone, a panic reaction essentially that can lead to harm, especially in an unsupervised environment. Sometimes in recreational use, never in research, interestingly, but in recreational use you see lasting perceptual harms, pretty rare, but it shows up. So fortunately, we can mitigate all of those risks in research. We could squarely screen and monitor and follow up with people to make sure we absolutely minimize those. So that's really the strongest lesson for me.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  It's like we have to study the good, the bad, the ugly, and, you know, call it out. You know, these aren't for everyone, there are risks.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  If I can just add to that. So when we initiated our research program, it was unknown to us what the real risk profile was. We had read the literature, but none of us were proponents, and frankly, for myself, I became astonished at the therapeutic potential. So we had been data-driven through empirical studies, and we were very interested in adverse events, and we've done a lot of work on challenging the so-called bad effects, of which there are a number, and they're substantial.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  But so we were very focused on that, and then we were very focused on, could we administer these compounds safely, reliably, to produce effects? And I think we've shown that, and as Matt says, we're going to be data-driven on this. But I think there's an opportunity here to rewrite the cultural narrative that was so skewed by the events of the 1960s, which had some peculiar historical antecedents.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  We have a question via Twitter from Chris Letheby. Does transdiagnostic efficacy force us to revise our conception and taxonomy of mental disorder? And if so, how? Dr. Griffiths?

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Well, that's a great question, and I think very possibly it may. So, the very fact that there can be interventions that cut across these different diagnostic categories suggests that they shouldn't be viewed as narrow domains, but they're interconnected in some way that we don't fully understand, but we're committed to understanding the basic neuroscience and the resulting psychology and psychological changes that occur with

• 26:48Speaker 04

  administration of these compounds in ways that profoundly alter human research attitudes, moods, and behaviors in very positive directions.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  And I'll add to that. This is not inconsistent with the direction of science outside of psychedelics. In fact, a number of years ago, the National Institute on Mental Health dropped the psychiatric bible, or the DSM, as being required for being a part of their, you know, the research that they're funding. And the rationale was that, really, unlike every other area of medicine, the psychiatric bible, or DSM, is largely descriptive. These nominally different disorders may not be different, and in fact, you see huge overlap. Comorbidity is the rule rather than the exception. And so...

• 27:44Speaker 01

  I view psychedelics as one of the most powerful tools to actually investigate this idea that there are more fundamental underlying commonalities, both in terms of the neuroscience and in terms of the behavior. So, again, we're going to be data-driven the whole way, but we hope this could actually inform the scientific conversation about the nature of mental disorders broadly, completely outside of psychedelics themselves.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Excellent. Kayla, do we have any questions from our callers? Our next question comes from lineup Olivia Goldhill with Quartz. Please go ahead.

• 28:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, I have two questions. First of all, are you able to provide a breakdown of which donor gave which amount? And secondly, in terms of the research, is there any particular condition that you think you might focus on for a bigger study or for kind of gearing up to eventually, if the results go well, get FDA approval for treatment and if so, which? And is there, I believe Alzheimer's and Lyme disease are fairly new conditions for pharmaceutical treatment, so what's the reasoning behind those conditions?

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Okay, so why don't we start with the first one? Mr. Ferris, you want to tackle the dollar amounts?

• 29:03Tim Ferriss?

  The dollar amounts? I actually couldn't make up the specifics.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  The breakdown of who gave how much?

• 29:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I think that would require the buy-in of all funders. I can say that personally, I can speak for myself. Speaking for myself, I would just say that I would not have felt comfortable assembling some of the funders who were brought in to help support the center without having a lot of personal skin in the game. So this is the largest, I put in between two and three million, and that for me represents the largest financial commitment I have ever made to anything, for-profit or nonprofit.

• 29:40Tim Ferriss?

  So that is non-trivial for me. And required a very careful examination of the team, the data, the risk profile, both for the compounds themselves, but also for the entire center itself, which required looking back at the lessons from the past, the cultural differences, what were primarily politically-driven decisions versus scientific decisions, the way that study design has changed, placebo control, for instance, and so on. So the short answer is, I can only speak for myself, because I would want to get permission from everybody else to share the split. But the weight is pretty evenly distributed, I would say, in some respects.

• 30:19Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, the Stephen Alexandra Cohen Foundation came in with quite a large portion of that, and then the remainder is pretty evenly split. So I'll leave it at that for now.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Fair enough. And then the second part of the question was, is there any particular study of the many that you're doing that maybe you're more hopeful about leading to eventual FDA approval?

• 30:45Speaker 04

  So I think the lead indication right now for FDA approval of psilocybin is either treatment-resistant depression or major depressive illness. And there are two entities that are moving forward with FDA trials that if they turn out successful, could result in medical approval of psilocybin as a first indication. But then there are a number of these very interesting other therapeutic targets, and

• 31:23Speaker 04

  we're interested in, as the questioner asked, in anorexia, and Alzheimer's, and PTSD, and post-treatment Lyme disease. All of those have their own unique rationales behind them, but they're aiming at the central thought that these experiences can produce these enduring positive changes and really rewrite personal narrative that's around...

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Being stuck with whatever the condition is, be it addiction or depressive symptoms or whatever.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And I'll add that, you know, the new center is certainly going to contribute to that question about treating depression because in fact we'll have Fred's study that's looking at the combination of alcohol use disorder or alcoholism and depression and then a couple of other studies, the Alzheimer's study and the chronic Lyme study are going to be looking at the depressive symptoms among other symptoms that are part of those, the cluster that comes with those disorders. And our previous work has very much provided one of the strongest foundations for those

• 32:46Speaker 01

  two entities that Roland mentioned, you know, in moving forward with the depression indications. So we hope that sort of continues and our research, particularly in the center, will, you know, drive an entire field of research with this.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, just one further comment. So we actually just recently completed a trial in depression and that, and those data are looking very favorably. We expect to go to press with those later this fall. So we have contributed significantly to this database that is moving forward these forays into medical approval. But undertaking those phase three trials is a hugely expensive effort and that needs to be driven by groups other than ourselves. But we're pleased to pass the baton to them.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  And grateful that they've taken it.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Great. Well, we have another question from Twitter from Tom Angel. Is Mr. Ferris hopeful that this research that he's funding will ultimately lead to federal reclassification of psilocybin or other psychedelics and if so, how soon?

• 33:59Tim Ferriss?

  It's a really good question, and it's a question I've thought quite a lot about. But for the sake of creating a target for myself that is perhaps a little shorter term or less focused on, right, coming back to the uncrowded bed side, my goal, so yes, the hope would be that there will be at some point reclassification so that at the very least, the funding of science and the speed with which scientific studies can be executed at lower cost will really be facilitated. That's number one. I mean, right now, what we, well, I shouldn't speak, I'm using the royal we here.

• 34:43Tim Ferriss?

  But based on certainly the studies that I've looked at, the data are very, very compelling. But these compounds are still very, very partially understood. And what I would like to do, and the way I think about the funding of this center, is that practically and symbolically unlocking both enthusiasm and ambition within the psychedelic field as a whole, in the U.S. and abroad, providing a proof point so that people dream, meaning people, scientists, dream bigger and ask for bigger things. Because I do think that we are at the beginning of a tide shift where there will be much

• 35:26Tim Ferriss?

  more independent funding coming in from not just individual donors, but smaller foundations than hopefully some of these big, brand-name foundations, when they recognize that there's more reputational opportunity than risk involved with a lot of these compounds. I mean, the problems are so serious and so vast, and granted, there are certainly risks involved with these compounds, but the toxicity profile is very, very favorable. My hope would be that by facilitating this, it helps pave the way for federal funding within the next five years. And...

• 36:04Tim Ferriss?

  That would be a target for me. The reclassification, yes, it's something that I hope for, but it's not something that I can aim for very accurately by myself. Whereas being involved in a hands-on way with this center, I do think could really mark the beginning of a very important, exciting, and new chapter in psychedelic research.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Just to address the specific question, what's the soonest expectation? It really is a crystal ball because there are so many different factors that go into that approval process, and ultimately FDA needs to sift through that data. But I would guess five-plus years before approval for a depression indication. It might become available somewhat sooner if some provisions are opened up for compassionate care. But this is an unknown and uncertain course as to how it unfolds.

• 37:09Tim Ferriss?

  Let me add one more thing that could. So another reason, coming back to the why now question, is that good science takes time. And by unlocking the full-time potential of productive teams, you accelerate the timelines. These problems like opioid addiction are not static. I mean, they are much like, if you're looking at compound interest in investments, it's a good thing. These problems are also compounding. So there is a time sensitivity to addressing these things. And that's another reason why I think that I feel a tremendous degree of urgency with allowing the people who are already committed to this path to dedicate their full time

• 37:50Tim Ferriss?

  to the studies they want to be performing as opposed to seeking salary support through other means, grants, and so on. And then also to invite an entire new wave and generation of scientists to consider this as a very viable and exciting path.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Certainly, yeah.

• 38:10Tim Ferriss?

  There's an urgency. There is a time sensitivity to this.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  This investment will certainly help grow the number of experts that study this problem. Kayla, do we have any questions on the phone?

• 38:22Speaker 06

  Our next question comes from Christopher Wanjek with Life Science. Please go ahead.

• 38:26Speaker 05

  Hi, it's me again, and I absolutely think it's great and I'm totally for research in a very legitimate way to learn new things of what's possible. At the same time, as I write this article, I'm very confused over the messaging. You got this on one side, this is safe and it's, you know, it's the best experience on par with childbirth or whatever you said, but oh, by the way, don't try this at home. And keeping in mind what has happened with marijuana as well, and the legalization. And I was down in Florida just a couple of weeks ago, and it's being sold in tourist

• 39:08Speaker 05

  shops in lodger form for any old thing. And so I just don't understand how I can write a responsible message about the potential use and dangers of this when part of your message is that it's so wonderful and it's been used for so long. Dr. Johnson?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Well, it might be helpful to point to some analogies. I mean, you look at some of the extreme sports, you know, extreme surfing and flying with the wings, jumping off of mountains. I mean, experts, you know, die doing those things. Those are, you know, very risky activities, but you talk to those folks and they're going to tell you, you know, they're in these flow states that are, you know, probably remarkably similar to some of the mystical experiences that we're talking about. You know, we can't ignore what it is. You could say, like, that's fascinating. What is it like for someone to skydive or to, you know, surf a giant wave?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  You can do that with, at the same time, telling folks, hey, you know, don't do this in risky circumstances, you know? For example, if you're not in, you know, one of our studies or in eventual, you know, approved clinical use. So there are plenty of, you know, extraordinary things. I mean, the number of examples I can think of is broad, you know, travel to extreme places, having, you know, many interesting experiences can have both indescribably, you know, wonderful claimed benefits as well as come along with extreme

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Dangers. So, you know, we just got to lay it all on the table and be very clear about both the benefits, when those risks are cautiously mitigated and addressed, and what we are doing, and in hopefully future clinical use if the data leads us there. But also, you know, what the risks are out there, you know, sort of in the wild where those mechanisms aren't in place.

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Yes, so let me just comment further on the risks. I mean, and they're very real, and, and we have been absolutely dedicated to communicating about those risks. So, when the substances are given to carefully screened volunteers in the laboratory, in our, our situation, we know that we can mitigate risks. But part of that is done by screening people out who shouldn't receive these compounds. So if people have predispositional characteristics towards psychotic illness, there's concern that experience, some experiences

• 41:54Speaker 04

  with these compounds might precipitate enduring schizophrenia-like illness, which would be an absolute catastrophic outcome. And so that's a very serious outcome. Then, then there are other serious outcomes that are secondary to the set, setting, and the support that's provided. So very commonly, the bad trips of people who are taking these compounds recreationally can, in extreme cases, result in engaging in panic or dangerous behavior that put the individual, you know, or others at, at, at serious risk, including for, for

• 42:39Speaker 04

  death. So, so we absolutely need to underscore that.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  We did a large survey study with people who had taken psilocybin in unmedically supervised conditions, asking them about their very worst experience. So this isn't representative of the entire population of all people who've taken psilocybin. But among those people who were describing the consequences of their most challenging experiences, about 10% said that over a year later, they had some kind of enduring psychological difficulty, many of whom sought out professional help for that.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  And so we need to be very humble about what we don't know and the potential serious side effects and consequences if these compounds aren't administered under carefully supervised conditions.

• 43:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I want the Dr. Doctor to please jump in and correct me if I mess anything up. But I think there are a few things worth noting. From a personal perspective, if someone were to ask or insist that I put a million dollars into lobbying for or against psilocybin or mushrooms being available at every CVS, I would be against. And at the doses that we're considering, the way that I think about it, again, is almost if you were to consider something that is innocuous enough to be available over the counter as, say, some type of Bengay or ointment that you rub on an achy knee, compared to

• 44:26Tim Ferriss?

  many of the studies that are being conducted, which I would consider closer to, say, a very, very fascinating and effective, in many cases, form of knee surgery. You don't want to DIY your knee surgery, as useful as it might be. And the therapeutic wrapper around which these are administered are incredibly important. So if, as Dr. Johnson was mentioning... If there is a window of plasticity, the means of administration determines, to some extent, how that Play-Doh gets molded and how does that plasticity then manifest itself.

• 45:05Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm very optimistic and excited to fund and support research. But I would be certainly in the against camp for the foreseeable future of having this available over the counter because there are so many other conditions that are important to get right. So it's definitely impatient, not outpatient, from my perspective. And one more thing, and I want you guys to chime in on this. My understanding of these compounds is that if you try to use them too frequently, they lose their efficacy.

• 45:40Tim Ferriss?

  So there is sort of a self-regulating aspect to these compounds that make them less likely, on some level, to result in sort of compulsive addictive use.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, our strong suspicion is exactly that, that the more frequent use, the less salience. All of our evidence suggests it's the nature of the experience, not just hitting brain receptors. It's the nature of the experience someone has during the session that predicts whether you quit smoking, whether you have less depression and anxiety six months later, a year later. So that's going to be different if someone is taking it every weekend. So I absolutely agree. And another point related to what you said and what the question was, it's just this comparison to cannabis. I think one of the most important things that's understandably not often seen when writing about this area of research is that

• 46:40Speaker 01

  This research that we and others have done has gone along a completely different trajectory in comparison to the medical cannabis movement. In fact, we've done things and are continuing to do things exactly the way that the federal authorities have always wanted cannabis and cannabinoids to be developed. Not encouraging local initiatives, not encouraging medical use on your own outside of approval by the FDA, but going through the FDA pathway, phase one, two, and three trials that may lead to approval.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And in fact, the FDA deserves a lot of credit here in being extremely open to this research and following the data like we have been doing.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Great. I want to get back to the phone. Kayla, are there any questions waiting for us? Our next question comes from Olivia Goldhill with Quartz. Please go ahead.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  Hi, just to check, I believe the anorexia study is the first of its kind looking at psilocybin to treat anorexia. Are any of the others going to be the very first of its kind looking at psilocybin to treat a particular condition?

• 47:58Speaker 04

  Yes. Most of our studies are looking at targets that haven't been investigated previously with psychedelics. So anorexia is one, the Alzheimer's disease is one, PTSD hasn't been systematically investigated in modern times, opiate use disorder has not been investigated, post-treatment Lyme disease has not been investigated. So the range of studies that we're going to undertake are all looking at novel interventions.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Great. We have a question from Twitter from Kyle Jaeger from Marijuana Moment, which is syndicated by the Boston Globe. Is this a new facility or an expansion of an existing department? Can you talk a little bit more about how your program is growing?

• 48:53Speaker 04

  So, we have been conducting research with Psilocybin at Johns Hopkins for now almost 20 years. We're located within a group within the Department of Psychiatry, the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit. And we've been doing that, splicing together resources from some small number of federal sources, but mostly from philanthropy. But all of the center faculty, in fact, are individuals who came through our postdoctoral training program, are committed to this area of research

• 49:38Speaker 04

  and have moved on to faculty appointments within our department. So, the center exists within the framework of the existing Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Johns Hopkins, with a lot of support from our director, Dr. Jimmy Potash. But yet, it's a new center, a configuration within that department. So, we do have a center. We are the Stephen and Alexandra Cohen Foundation are providing funds to renovate our areas, so we'll be centrally and co-located.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  So, we will hold the status within the university as a center, which is significant within the organization of university structures. So, it's both completely new and more of the same.

• 50:37Speaker 03

  And remodeled.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  And remodeled.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Excellent. Kayla, are there other questions on the phone?

• 50:42Speaker 06

  Our next question comes from Melissa Healy with Los Angeles Times. Please go ahead.

• 50:48Speaker 07

  Hi, thanks for taking my question. I wonder if you would expand a little bit on the proposed clinical trial regarding...

• 51:01Speaker 07

  Opioid, the use of psilocybin for opioid use disorder and maybe address some of the often raised ethical issues of using drugs that are associated with abuse for the treatment of addiction, I mean, since the two are after all generally linked. And just a quick follow-up, I wonder also whether in addition to any clinical trials linked to or using psilocybin as the agent and question whether you will be looking into any therapeutic uses of other psychedelics, including MDMA or LSD or others.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Right, so your question is a great one and it's one of the most widely, it's a common question and there's a really good answer to it. The first part about, you know, using a drug of abuse to treat addiction, you know, sounds dangerous. The most important thing to realize is that psilocybin is not a drug of addiction, you know, that means that it does not lead to compulsive drug use. No one is jonesing for their next psilocybin fix.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  There are people that use it in ways that are dangerous and using psychiatric language, we would call that abuse, use in a dangerous way. A really obvious example is driving while on the substance or use in a way that's interfering with their, you know, their family responsibilities, et cetera. But we know squarely it's not a drug of addiction in terms of its effects in the brain reward system, in terms of the large-scale surveys, in terms of very reliable animal models of drug self-administration. So it's not. A so-called substitution treatment, which in fact is one of the biggest forms of addiction medicine. So thank methadone in treating opioid addiction,

• 53:06Speaker 01

  or thank the nicotine patch in treating cigarette smoking. Nothing against those treatments, those are important tools in the toolbox, but in fact, even though they help some people and do better than placebo, they leave far more room for improvement. You know, they don't help the large majority of people who initially engage in those forms of treatment. So, it's nice that psilocybin is not going to be used in a compulsive addictive fashion by people who are exposed to it one or a few times in these types of studies. And we have never seen evidence of people being exposed to psilocybin in studies who

• 53:51Speaker 01

  go on to have some sort of compulsive, you know, drug use pattern in using psilocybin. So, we actually think compared to things that are commonly done in addiction medicine, methadone itself is addictive, nicotine itself is addictive, and other psychiatric med— there are all kinds of addictive psychiatric medications, from the sleeping drugs to amphetamine, which is Adderall and other ADHD drugs. It's really nice that psilocybin is in fact not an addictive drug.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  And if I can just address the question about other substances. So, the center application as it was conceived is focusing in on psilocybin, because that's the compound that we know. But, indeed, there are variations in psychedelics that are of deep interest to us. We actually have also run studies with salvinorin A, which is a kappa opioid short-acting hallucinogen. We've also looked at dextromethorphan, which is an NMDA antagonist similar to ketamine.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  We envision a future of this research, be it in our center or other academic centers, which will absolutely explore the range of these compounds. Because psilocybin is simply the opening pourée here. And if we really think about the opportunity to explore radical behavior change and investigation of the nature of conscious experience, we should look at all the tools in the toolbox.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  And the really cool thing about this field is that thanks to chemists like David Nichols and Alexander Shulgin, there are literally hundreds of psychedelic compounds, all of which have slight variations in terms of which receptors they hit, and then how strongly they hit, and different receptor profiles in the brain. So we have an absolute library that can be tested, you know. But we're moving cautiously with the one that we know most about and the most safety data on.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  All right, we have one from Twitter from Boca Can. What other similar research is happening in the United States currently?

• 56:20Speaker 04

  Well, there are, since we initiated this work, there are a number of academic centers now that have gone online, and it's just very gratifying to see this whole area of research expand. So New York University has studies going on. They conducted a key study along with us in cancer patients. They're doing a study now in psilocybin treatment of alcohol use disorder. University of Alabama is doing a study on psilocybin treatment of cocaine dependence.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  A group up in University of Wisconsin, Madison, is undertaking early studies of looking at interactions between psilocybin and buprenorphine, treatment for opiate dependence.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  There's a group out in San Francisco, UCSF, that's investigating palliative effects of psilocybin in individuals who are under psychological distress because of HIV diagnoses. And I've probably left off a few centers, but this is a burgeoning field of study, but it's limited in each of those cases by lack of resources and lack of funding. And I just want to return to that. So our work and much of this work has been historically funded by the private sector.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  The Hechter Research Institute, which is a group that was founded by Dave Nichols, has been foundational in providing some of this support. But it's usually relatively minor level or small level of support. But they're seeding these projects at different academic institutions. But with that seeding then becomes excitement and commitment on part of those investigators. And I don't doubt that that's going to continue to expand.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  And all, you know, the folks that Roland mentioned along with Charlie Grove at UCLA, who's also done work in this area, these are, you know, great collaborators that, you know, we learn from each other and there's been a number of collaborations. But important, you know, also that all of those groups are, you know, have operated the way we have in sort of cobbling together resources and, you know, unfortunately haven't had center-level funding, so they haven't constituted, you know, centers. So our hope is that in the future that, you know, true centers will be disseminated in these and other groups. Great.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  So I think we're just about at time. I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in. Thank you to our guests today for coming together and telling us about this exciting news. And we'll call it a wrap. Have a great day, everyone.

• 59:28Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:00:10Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.