0:01

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science

0:03

Versus. Today is the last episode

0:05

for a little bit, just for a little bit. We're

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going to be back in the new year. We

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need a little break to work on some

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new episodes. And while we're finding

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out what our new episodes are going to be, we'd

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love your help. We want to know what you

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want us to versus. What

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have you been curious about? We want to hear it.

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So let us know. All the ways to

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contact us. There's a phone number, there's an

0:27

email, there's social media. It's all in the

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show notes. Now on top

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of just suggesting to us any idea that you

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have, we would also love

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to get voicemails of

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you guys on a couple of topics.

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So we want to know if you

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have questions in particular about sex, diet,

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any questions on that, and also menopause.

0:48

If you've experienced it, menopause, perimenopause, I

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want to know all about your symptoms

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and any questions that you have. To

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get in touch, it's all in the

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show notes. All right, now let's

1:00

let the show begin. Today,

1:04

we are diving into the

1:06

science of what is perhaps

1:08

the weirdest and most mysterious

1:10

psychedelic drug, ayahuasca. If

1:17

you're into late night talk shows, you'll know

1:20

that this drug is the talk of Hollywood.

1:23

You drank ayahuasca tea.

1:26

It's like you can't swing a dead

1:28

cat without some celebrity telling you a

1:30

story about this adventure they went on

1:32

where they took ayahuasca and things got

1:35

wild. There's Miley Cyrus. I

1:37

had a very great ayahuasca experience.

1:39

Prince Harry, Megan Fox. Do you

1:41

guys know what ayahuasca is? Oh

1:44

yes, y'all know ayahuasca. Musicians,

1:47

sports stars, comedians, podcasters all seem to

1:49

be giving it a go. And

1:51

all of these stories start basically the same

1:53

way. You head into the

1:56

jungles of South or Central America. You really are

1:58

in the middle of the jungle. tens

2:00

of millions of frogs and insects. Howler monkey

2:02

is the most useless animal in the world.

2:04

They scream at the top of their lungs.

2:07

Oh my God. And while

2:09

you're deep in the jungle, you sit in

2:11

a circle with a bunch of people that you've

2:13

never met. Someone is brewing

2:15

this tea. You know, there's a guy, a shaman,

2:17

looks like a shaman. And he's old and he's

2:20

got a face like the map of the world

2:22

and he calls you forward and

2:24

you kneel before him. And I remember watching

2:26

everybody go up and take theirs. They had

2:28

one cup, one cup, one cup. Oh man,

2:30

awful taste and stuff. As soon as this

2:33

goes down, I'm gone. You

2:35

might stop spewing a tongue. Purge,

2:38

they call it purge. Vomit everything out

2:40

of your body. So you have a puke bucket too,

2:42

but some people get the shits. I got

2:44

the shits. But

2:49

what's happening on the outside is

2:51

nothing compared to what's going on

2:53

inside your head. It was incredibly

2:55

intense. I went to hell for

2:57

eternity. This was like somebody

2:59

unzipped the universe. And

3:01

I saw like gray, like it would look like

3:03

sand coming from my body. What was that? What's

3:05

that mean? And she reached down my throat and

3:07

pulled out every dead animal I had ever eaten

3:09

and made me sew it up. And is that

3:11

good? Well, apparently

3:13

it is good. Because

3:16

all that hectic stuff, the vomiting, the

3:19

pooing, the mind bending hallucinations, people

3:21

say that it works miracles. It was

3:23

one of the most important things that

3:25

happened to me in my life, that

3:27

the plant was a medicine. Just felt

3:30

wonderful about myself, about decisions

3:33

I was making, about

3:35

the direction I was headed in my life. So

3:39

today on the show, we are entering

3:41

the world of ayahuasca. Because

3:43

while these ayahuasca ceremonies have been going

3:46

on for ages, scientists

3:48

have actually bottled the active

3:50

ingredient in this brew. It's

3:52

DMT. That's the chemical that makes

3:54

you trick balls. And amazingly,

3:56

when you smoke it or inject

3:58

it. You don't

4:00

vomit or sh** yourself. Which

4:03

makes this drug way more

4:05

tantalising as a medicine. A

4:08

medicine that some say might cure

4:10

depression where no other drugs have

4:12

helped. So

4:15

we are going to find out what

4:17

on earth is this drug doing to our

4:20

brains? Can we channel

4:22

its powers to help us feel

4:24

wonderful about ourselves? And

4:26

with all these hectic stories, what

4:29

are the risks here? When

4:31

it comes to Iowaska, there's a lot of... And

4:33

she reached down my throat and pulled out every

4:35

dead animal I'd ever eaten. But

4:38

then there's science. Science

4:42

versus Iowaska is coming up to start the

4:44

break. Have

4:52

you ever told a friend? Oh, I'm fine.

4:55

When you really felt... Just

4:57

so overwhelmed. Or sent a

4:59

text. Can't sleep. Are

5:02

you awake? When you couldn't find the

5:04

words to say. I'm scared to

5:06

be alone with my thoughts right now. Then

5:08

this is your sign to reach out to

5:10

the 988 Lifeline for

5:13

24-7 free confidential support. You don't

5:15

have to hide how you feel.

5:18

Text, call or chat

5:20

anytime. Welcome

5:28

back. Today on the show,

5:30

we are guzzling down the science on

5:32

Iowaska and the chemical inside it, the

5:35

DMT that makes you trip balls. And

5:37

we're going to find out what is up with this

5:39

drug, what's it doing in our brain, and can we

5:41

use it for medicine? To tell us all about it

5:44

is Joel Werner, supervising producer of Science Masters.

5:46

Hey, Joel. Hey, Wendy.

5:49

Do you know it's so hot and dry in Melbourne

5:51

right now that my

5:53

snot is drying in

5:56

my nose? Is that

5:58

better or worse? than in winter

6:00

where it just like runs out of, you know, I

6:02

don't know. It's

6:05

true. It's convenient. It's more convenient

6:07

in a little hard package. Um,

6:09

so Joel, so you, um, you

6:12

were supposed to do a completely different episode and then

6:15

you started reading about DMT

6:17

and couldn't stop. Uh, why

6:20

were you so intrigued? Yeah,

6:22

look, I think, you know, I studied, I

6:24

studied brain science at uni

6:26

and I've always been fascinated

6:29

with the way that this

6:31

bit of mushy gray stuff

6:34

in between our ears just

6:37

creates this entire sense of the

6:39

world that we have. And

6:42

when stuff gets in there

6:44

and really messes with that,

6:47

like I want to know more, I think

6:49

DMT is a drug that messes

6:51

with our gray stuff in a way

6:53

that like. Not many

6:56

other drugs do. Okay.

6:59

So, so where do we

7:01

begin? So yeah, for centuries, people in

7:03

South and Central America have been drinking

7:05

this ayahuasca brew and have

7:08

been using it for healing ceremonies,

7:10

the spiritual ceremonies, but

7:12

like way more recently in the

7:15

1930s, scientists actually isolated the DMT

7:17

molecule in a lab. But

7:19

one super interesting thing about DMT is

7:22

that it's not just found in the

7:24

plants that they use to make the

7:26

ayahuasca brew. Right? Like DMT is found

7:29

in thousands of plant species.

7:31

Oh, wow. And it's not just

7:33

found in plants, right? DMT is

7:35

like found in mammals. So we

7:37

looked in the lung of a

7:39

rabbit, for example, and we found

7:41

DMT there. And we've

7:43

also found DMT occurring in humans,

7:45

like naturally occurring in humans. Like

7:48

we produce DMT inside

7:51

our bodies. It's in our brains. It's

7:53

in our placentas. Really?

7:55

But it's a big mystery, right?

7:57

Like we don't really know what

7:59

it's doing. doing there. Wow. So

8:02

there's been some speculation that DMT might

8:04

play a role when we're dreaming, for

8:06

example, or that like when people have

8:08

near-death experiences that maybe DMT is wrapped

8:10

up in that. But we don't know.

8:12

We don't know. It's so weird.

8:14

So what do we know about DMT? So

8:17

yeah, what we do know, we do know

8:19

that if you give the body a big

8:21

dose of it all at once, well then

8:23

that's when sh** really kicks off. Right,

8:25

yes. That is when you unzip the

8:27

universe or whatnot. You unzip the universe,

8:29

you throw it off and it crumbles

8:31

in a pile in the corner. Of

8:34

course. Okay,

8:36

so let's dive into the brain of

8:38

someone on this weird molecule DMT and

8:40

see what happens as their universe unzips.

8:44

I want you to meet Anya. Anya

8:46

is a psychedelic researcher based in London.

8:48

She's originally from Russia. And

8:50

she's been a volunteer in a few

8:52

DMT experiments being run out of Imperial

8:54

College London. So she's sitting

8:57

in the lab there when the team

8:59

injects DMT straight into her arm. You

9:03

feel the liquid going inside. So

9:05

it's kind of this cold

9:08

slush going inside. And

9:10

then you start feeling DMT effects, which

9:13

is tingling or a rush

9:15

going through the body and this feeling

9:17

of acceleration of going somewhere. And

9:20

then very, very fast after that

9:22

come very, very strong

9:24

visual hallucinations of like

9:26

geometric patterns of something that's

9:29

moving. I

9:33

start to have the sensation that I've

9:36

been observed or

9:38

proved through skin sensing. I'm

9:40

not sure I'm okay with, you know, the I'm

10:00

checking out every single cell of my body.

10:03

After the aliens examine every cell

10:05

in Anya's body, they take her

10:08

to what she describes as some

10:10

sort of intergalactic hub. And

10:12

I was going through different parts

10:15

of this space hub, absorbing all

10:17

the aliens that are there. And

10:19

that really felt like I'm in the episode of

10:22

Rick and Morty in one of those planets. Then

10:24

I wandered off to the slightly dodgy

10:28

part of that space hub and

10:30

then maybe I was like, oh, let's make

10:32

this space virus. And

10:36

that broke the illusion of how

10:38

real it was. And I started to laugh.

10:41

And then I thought, oh, only my brain

10:43

can come up with space virus here. And

10:47

with that, I realized like, oh, I'm not.

10:51

That representative, of course, who was

10:53

sent to this space hub, I'm

10:56

actually taking part in a DMC experiment

10:58

and my brain just came

11:00

up with space virus. And

11:03

so is that when you started to come out

11:05

of the trip then? Is that like when you...

11:07

That's when I started to come out of

11:09

the trip. Saved by the space virus. Exactly,

11:13

exactly. Wow,

11:15

that is a drug that makes

11:17

you triples. This is... I

11:20

was wondering if like the Rick and Morty fan

11:22

base in her trip is just as toxic as

11:24

it is in real life. I

11:27

don't think we have a way of testing that. What's

11:30

really wild about Anya's experience? There's two things.

11:32

There's two things that make these DMT trips

11:34

like kind of bizarre, even in

11:36

the bizarre world of psychedelics. The

11:38

first one is just how

11:41

quickly they happen. Right. So

11:43

like Anya's experience, like how

11:45

long do you reckon that trip would have taken?

11:48

I guess it felt

11:50

like she would have been under for maybe

11:52

half a day or something. Exactly right. Like

11:54

Ayahuasca ceremonies go on for like four to

11:56

six hours depending on the strength of the

11:58

dose. In this... particular study

12:00

that Anya was part of, they were

12:02

experimenting with longer than usual DMT trips.

12:04

And so she was probably under for

12:06

about 30 to 45 minutes

12:09

here. But typically, if

12:11

you smoke or inject

12:13

DMT, the peak would have

12:15

happened about two or three minutes into

12:17

the trip. Whoa! Two

12:19

or three minutes. Yeah. And the whole thing

12:21

is done and dusted inside 15 minutes on

12:24

a DMT trip, right? So it's this super

12:27

intense, but also super short

12:29

acting psychedelic drug. Wow. Wow,

12:31

wow, wow. And that's why it's sometimes

12:34

been given this nickname of the businessman's

12:36

trip. So like the idea is you

12:38

could have this psychedelic experience in your

12:40

lunch break and then still

12:42

be back for the meeting with Harold

12:44

from HR at 2pm. Joel,

12:48

our work days are about to get

12:50

so much more fun. Look,

12:53

don't tell Harold from HR, he's a bit of

12:55

a stickler for no psychedelics in the lunch break.

12:57

No, no, no. Okay, so can I ask?

13:00

Okay, so super short trips. That

13:02

is one of the things that

13:04

makes DMT unique. The other thing,

13:07

the fact that she felt like

13:09

it was really real, like what's

13:13

going on there? Because I feel like with most

13:16

sort of psychedelics, they're sort

13:18

of imprinted on the world. Like you kind

13:20

of know that you're tripping,

13:24

but she didn't. 100%,

13:26

100%. So like the

13:28

DMT experience is like fully

13:31

immersive. And people also

13:33

report that you don't necessarily feel

13:35

high, that it still feels like

13:37

you in your like sober brain

13:39

and you're just like she felt

13:41

like she was in that intergalactic

13:44

space port. And that was just

13:46

her life. And that was what

13:48

she was doing until the space

13:50

pirates saved her from the trip.

13:53

Like at the point of most

13:55

intense experience, it felt absolutely real.

13:58

Like absolutely real. When

14:01

you talk to people who have done DMT

14:03

and done other psychedelic drugs, they

14:06

really talk about like how immersively

14:08

real the DMT trip experience is

14:10

and that nothing really compares to

14:12

how much you feel like you're

14:15

there in the intergalactic space hub

14:17

or whatever and it feels just

14:19

like your real life. It's so

14:21

weird. And this has

14:23

led a lot of people to think

14:26

that these dimensions that they're visiting

14:29

or these aliens or other entities

14:31

that they're encountering aren't just like

14:33

your brain on an intense psychedelic

14:35

drug but are actually real

14:38

dimensions and real aliens. So

14:41

for example, here's what Joe Rogan said about this.

14:43

I think it's some sort of a chemical gateway.

14:47

That's what I think. I think there's a

14:49

gateway in your mind that can lead to

14:51

some other dimension that's probably there all the

14:54

time. Wait. Oh,

14:56

right. Sorry, sorry,

14:59

sorry. So he

15:01

thinks the drug is literally a portal

15:04

into another alien world

15:07

that exists. It's opening this

15:09

gateway. Number

15:12

one podcast on Spotify. Do

15:14

you know, like, one

15:17

way in which I can tell whether I'm going to be friends

15:20

with someone or not is

15:22

whether they understand that drugs are

15:24

chemicals that do s*** your brain

15:27

and people who think drugs are

15:29

portals into alien worlds. So...

15:33

It's a very good yardstick, Wendy. I think

15:35

I have a similar kind of following. But

15:38

I do. So,

15:43

but I do want to know why DMT

15:46

does feel so

15:49

immersive and realistic because that is

15:52

super interesting. Yeah, so like on this

15:54

show, we don't jump straight

15:56

to portals opening to

15:58

alien dimensions. talk about like

16:00

the impact that molecules have on our physiology,

16:03

right? So that's why we're the number 25

16:05

podcast. Proudly,

16:09

proudly 25th. Yeah, 25th is the US.

16:13

Okay, so to find out like what DMT is

16:15

doing to our brains, I caught up with one

16:17

of DMT Sciences top

16:20

nerds. I'm the head

16:22

of the DMT research group. You sure

16:24

did. Who's the king? Dr.

16:26

Chris Timmerman is the king. He's

16:28

the guy running a lot of these DMT

16:31

experiments at Imperial College London, including the one

16:33

we just heard about from Anya. He

16:36

also ran a study where he

16:38

got 20 volunteers to slip on

16:40

an EEG cap and then slide

16:42

into the cramped noisy tube of

16:44

an fMRI machine where he'd inject

16:46

them with DMT and watch what

16:48

happened to their brains. Cool.

16:51

So what did he see? So

16:53

when Chris started analysing the brain

16:56

data, it's pretty

16:58

apparent that like DMT just gets inside

17:00

your brain and messes everything up. Like

17:02

it's knocking over the furniture in there,

17:05

right? And he could see that. I mean,

17:07

it's cool that he could just like see

17:09

it in his data. Yeah, so he

17:11

compares like the brain activity

17:13

without DMT and then watches what happens

17:15

when the DMT gets in there. Right.

17:17

And what he saw

17:19

was that there are a couple of

17:22

brain networks in particular that are really

17:25

massively affected by this dose

17:27

of DMT. Now, what a

17:29

brain network is, is like as we

17:32

grow up, as our brains develop, different

17:34

parts of the brain become interconnected with

17:36

each other in a really structured way.

17:39

And like those interconnections become

17:41

really set in stone. And

17:43

so what Chris was seeing

17:45

was that DMT completely scrambles

17:48

a couple of these networks.

17:50

So instead of being highly

17:52

organised, they just became completely

17:54

fluid, right? They were able to

17:56

connect with parts of the brain they don't

17:58

usually connect to. Oh, so it's

18:01

like those stairs in Harry Potter, our

18:03

brain, not on DMT, is like

18:05

very thick stairs and then you take DMT and

18:07

it's like, everything's like moving around and parts

18:10

of the brain are chatting to each other that weren't

18:12

before. Totally. And what's really

18:14

interesting is that the two brain

18:17

networks that are most affected

18:19

by DMT are those that

18:22

work to produce our sense of reality,

18:24

like our place in the world. Here's

18:26

Chris. So whenever we

18:28

are thinking about the past, projecting

18:31

ourselves in the future, thinking about

18:33

our relationships, abstract thought, our

18:35

ability to imagine, to conjure

18:37

up things that are not present in

18:39

the here and now, for example. So

18:42

all of this stuff, like our ability

18:44

to imagine things, to project ourselves into

18:46

a scene in the future, like what's

18:48

future, when are you going to do?

18:50

Like all of the brain networks that

18:52

allow us to do this, when DMT

18:54

gets introduced, they get completely scrambled and

18:56

jumbled up. So then why

18:58

does whatever we

19:00

see look so real? So

19:03

one thing I think people don't think

19:05

about a lot, because it probably creates

19:07

like massive existential crisis, right? Is

19:09

that like our idea of the

19:11

external world is mediated by our

19:13

perception, right? So our brain is

19:16

actually constructing our idea of reality.

19:18

And so what happens

19:20

when DMT gets in there is

19:23

that it completely scrambles everything. All

19:25

these networks that are usually like

19:27

set in stone become like really

19:29

loose and fluid. But because our

19:31

brains are used to trying to

19:34

make sense of stuff, they do

19:36

that and they construct these alternate

19:38

realities like the intergalactic spaceport that

19:40

feel quite real, but it's just

19:43

our sensible brain trying

19:45

to make sense of noise and chaos.

19:48

Yes, yes. This is, um, this

19:50

is like when you might

19:53

like see something down a dark street and you're

19:55

like, Oh my God, I just thought I saw

19:57

a person, but really it was just the shadows

19:59

doing something in your brain. brain was like, ah,

20:02

seems like a person to me. So I'll make

20:04

you see a person. It's just that on steroids.

20:06

That's DMT. A hundred percent. There

20:08

is this noisy stream of

20:10

information and we're just trying to put

20:13

it together because our

20:15

minds are meaning making systems. So

20:18

they're immediately trying to make figures out of

20:20

the noise. So yeah, that's

20:22

why it feels so real when you're on

20:24

one of these DMT trips. Cause the parts

20:26

of your brain that are responsible for like

20:29

creating your perception of

20:31

the world have just gone bonkers. And

20:33

in creating that world of

20:35

your trip, remember when I said the brain networks

20:38

get fluid and they're able to start talking to

20:40

bits of the brain that they don't usually talk

20:42

to. Well, they

20:44

start drawing in memories that you

20:47

might have or your pop culture

20:49

knowledge. So it's using things that's

20:51

dragging from other parts of your

20:53

brain to construct this new trip

20:56

reality. And there's even

20:58

this idea that Chris told me that

21:00

because people will go online and, you

21:02

know, write up their trip story for

21:04

other people to read that maybe when

21:06

someone's about to go on a DMT

21:08

trip, they might go and do some

21:10

research and read other people's trip stories

21:12

and information from other people's trip stories

21:15

might get woven into their own experience.

21:19

It becomes this like self fulfilling prophecy. If

21:21

you expect to be on DMT and be

21:24

taken through an alien portal, then that's what

21:26

is going to happen because that's been in

21:28

your head. Oh, that's so funny. And then

21:30

some people might think I saw the portal

21:33

too. Exactly. Really? It's

21:35

the chemicals, bro. Now,

21:44

you know, like whatever

21:46

you think is causing the

21:48

alien encounters and the otherworldly

21:51

dimensions, people

21:53

are having genuinely life

21:55

changing experiences on this

21:57

track. So much so that

21:59

it's. got a bunch of people

22:01

wondering whether DMT could be the

22:04

latest psychedelic to have therapeutic potential

22:07

and that's a trip we're going to go on after

22:09

the break. Could this be a portal to

22:11

your mental health? Welcome

22:26

back today on the show DMT. It's

22:29

a psychedelic 2.0, 3.0, I don't know. It's

22:35

a wild one. And now we're going to

22:37

talk about whether it could be used to

22:39

maybe help our mental health. Joel,

22:41

what's the thinking? Okay, so to

22:43

get into this I caught up with a couple

22:45

of people who are working on one of the

22:47

most recent clinical trials into DMT and

22:50

we caught up for a chat early one

22:52

London morning. I'm hoping that these microphones

22:54

are not so good that they pick up my stomach rumbling.

22:57

I think it's alright. We'll

23:01

get you to breakfast soon Graham, I promise.

23:05

That is an absolute lie, I know how long your

23:07

interviews go for, Joel. Look,

23:10

it was probably more like high tea by the

23:13

time we got back to Graham and Michelle. So

23:15

I'm Graham Campbell, I'm a psychiatrist. I'm

23:17

Michelle Baker Jones, I'm a therapist. Graham

23:20

and Michelle are running the therapy side

23:22

of this clinical trial so they're offering

23:24

support to the patients like before and

23:26

after they have DMT. But

23:29

because this drug produces such

23:32

bizarre psychedelic experiences, neither of them

23:34

were very optimistic when they first

23:36

started on the trial. To

23:40

be fair, I suppose Graham and I were skeptical

23:42

as to whether DMT would show promise. I

23:44

remember thinking that DMT is just going

23:46

to be too strange. Too

23:49

strange, too intense, too quick. You

23:51

hear this kind of classic

23:53

narrative about hyperspace and

23:55

alien entities and I

23:58

remember thinking it's just going to be a little bit of a struggle. to make sense

24:00

to anybody is just going to actually

24:03

provide experiences which are therapeutic

24:05

and healing. So

24:07

yeah, Graham and Michelle were kind of skeptical about

24:09

whether this would work, but hey, it's a job

24:11

and in this economy. I think

24:14

this is your best joke all

24:16

season. I

24:20

don't know if that's a compliment. Okay,

24:24

okay. So trial, trial. Yes, tell me

24:26

about the trial. So

24:28

this trial had 34 people in it. They

24:31

were all dealing with like moderate to severe

24:33

depression. Everyone in the trial

24:35

had to wean themselves off their antidepressants if

24:38

they were on them before the trial started.

24:40

So it's kind of a big deal for

24:42

people to actually participate. Oh, yeah. And Graham

24:44

has this really vivid memory of the first

24:46

person that they gave DMT to as part

24:48

of the trial. She was somebody

24:51

who'd had four and a half years of

24:53

depression pretty much continuously since

24:55

the birth of her daughter. And

24:59

she'd never had any drug experiences

25:01

before, but she

25:03

was incredibly tearful and distressed. It

25:06

was very, very clear that her mood was incredibly low.

25:10

And you know, that led her to sort of

25:12

feel a bit disconnected from her role as a

25:14

mother. So when

25:16

she had the DMT experience for her,

25:18

it was incredibly intense and

25:21

it felt very visceral. And

25:24

as it was intensifying, you know, over the

25:26

first 10, 15 minutes, she

25:29

got to a point where she felt

25:31

that she was reduced to something

25:34

very, very small, just a sort

25:36

of fragment of herself was remaining and

25:39

that she was going to disappear

25:42

into some kind of void. And

25:46

she suddenly realized that she liked herself

25:49

and that she didn't want to disappear. And

25:53

that was very, very profound for her to

25:56

actually come to that realization and

25:58

her depression, you know, she He was free of depression for

26:01

the rest of the trial and all the follow ups. Yeah,

26:05

wow. Yeah,

26:09

but not everyone had this kind

26:11

of shimmeringly beautiful experience.

26:13

Right, right. So one guy, he

26:15

was like a super high achiever,

26:17

went to a top university, had

26:19

this really stressful, high powered job.

26:22

He was dealing with a lot of depression and

26:24

anxiety. And when he had

26:26

the DMT, he had this trip experience

26:28

where this kind of

26:30

weird entity devoured him. But

26:34

in a very indifferent way. And I think

26:36

the thing that was so difficult for him

26:39

was the indifference, the casual indifference

26:41

of this entity. And

26:45

he did experience anxiety in the

26:47

immediate aftermath of the psychedelic experience.

26:50

Being devoured indifferently. Oh

26:52

man. Yeah. Yeah,

26:57

that doesn't sound like a traditional

26:59

medicine. It makes my skin crawl a

27:01

little bit. Just trying to imagine that experience.

27:05

Oh absolutely. So

27:07

zooming out, there were some, what

27:09

did you say, 34 people in the trial all

27:12

had depression. How many

27:14

ended up getting better? Yeah,

27:16

so at the six months follow up after getting the

27:18

DMT, 10 people, including the mum

27:21

that we heard from, were no longer depressed.

27:23

They were in remission. But

27:25

what's a bit disappointing is that nine people

27:28

didn't turn up for the six month follow

27:30

up. So we just don't

27:32

know what happened to them. Okay. But

27:34

still 10 got better. I mean, I

27:36

guess some of them might've gotten better anyway,

27:38

but still it's not

27:40

bad, right? Yeah. And we

27:42

do have some other data, right? So there

27:44

was this other study out of Yale. It

27:46

was very small. So seven people with treatment

27:48

resistant depression got DMT. And

27:51

the next day on average, their depression

27:53

scores dropped as well. Okay.

27:55

So we're getting like sprinklings of

27:57

data here. That's DMT. on

28:00

ayahuasca, like what happens when you take the whole

28:02

brew. Yeah, so there's a

28:04

bunch of studies where people have filled

28:07

out surveys about their ayahuasca experience and

28:09

these surveys suggest that ayahuasca could be

28:11

useful in treating depression and anxiety

28:13

but also substance abuse problems and

28:16

sometimes people report dealing with

28:18

really intense trauma with an

28:20

ayahuasca ceremony. But these

28:23

are all people who have chosen to

28:25

go on these ayahuasca retreats, right? Right.

28:28

So there's a little bit of a selection bias happening.

28:30

Right. And then speaking of

28:32

selection bias, what about our old friend,

28:34

the placebo? I mean, people are

28:36

choosing to go to the jungle, choosing

28:38

to vomit everywhere. You

28:41

know, there's got to be a whole lot of expectation that

28:43

this is going to help them. How

28:45

do we know that's not what's going

28:47

on here? Yeah, so I found one

28:50

randomized placebo controlled trial of ayahuasca and

28:52

this was in treatment-resistant depression. So

28:54

people who had been trying a lot to help with

28:56

their depression and hadn't found anything that worked. They

28:59

had 29 patients who got a

29:01

single dose of either ayahuasca or

29:03

a placebo. I love

29:05

this so much. They brewed

29:08

an ayahuasca placebo that looked

29:10

and pasted like this brew.

29:14

Like right

29:17

down to the bitter sour taste and

29:19

the brownish color. They

29:21

even added in some zinc

29:23

sulfate to produce quote low

29:26

to modest gastrointestinal distress. Yes,

29:28

yes, yes. Okay. Okay.

29:31

So how did it go? So they followed up

29:33

one week after receiving the dose and they

29:35

found there was a very strong

29:38

placebo effect. So tick

29:40

to the scientists, the little placebo brew they

29:43

made did the job. But the

29:45

people who got the real stuff, the people who

29:47

got the ayahuasca did better. So about

29:49

two thirds of those who got ayahuasca felt

29:51

the severity of their depression dropped by 50%

29:54

or more. Two thirds? That's

29:56

not bad. It's pretty good because in the

29:58

placebo group, there's only a quarter. could say the

30:00

same thing. Great. That

30:02

is promising. Yeah, totally. It's quite

30:05

promising. But what none

30:07

of these trials get at is

30:09

how it's having this effect. I

30:13

wanted to know what was going on in the

30:15

brain. Of course you did. You're bringing the trial

30:17

results. I want to know too because it

30:19

doesn't make sense. You see some aliens even

30:21

you see yourself get smaller and your depression

30:23

heals. Totally. To figure that out, I caught up with

30:26

this guy. My name is David

30:28

Orson. I'm the director of the

30:30

Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics at

30:32

the University of California, Davis. So

30:34

David's trying to figure out how our brain

30:37

cells might be changing when they get

30:40

exposed to DMT and how this

30:42

might be helping people with depression. But

30:45

to do this work, you can't do it

30:47

in people. You've got to give the DMT

30:49

to rats. Okay.

30:52

Okay. So what is a rodent

30:54

tripping balls on DMT look like? Oh,

30:57

snap. Because that's exactly the question

31:00

I had for David. What

31:03

does a rat tripping on DMT

31:05

look like? Well,

31:07

for rats, when you give them

31:09

high doses, they tend to flatten

31:12

their bodies and stare. Have

31:15

you ever encountered an alien rat though? They

31:18

must be having some weird trips. Like if

31:20

the DMT trips, the humans have a weird,

31:22

like rat DMT trips must be out of

31:24

this world. Unclear what those

31:26

are like. You know

31:28

how Anya was imagining the tendrils

31:31

of aliens looking through every cell in

31:33

her body in this case, it's David.

31:35

David's the alien of that poor rat

31:38

on DMT. It's not an

31:40

hallucination, totally. There's no. So the

31:42

rats, the rats like get the DMT, they

31:44

have their little ratty trip. They live their

31:46

life for 24 hours and then they

31:49

sacrifice their lives for science. Well,

31:52

we chop up their brains to see what's going

31:54

on in them. Right. So

31:56

David's taking slices of these

31:59

rat brains. And for the

32:01

neuro nerds out there, the areas of the

32:03

brain he's working in are the prefrontal cortex

32:05

and the hippocampus. And

32:07

he's trying to figure out what's happening to

32:09

the brain cells after they interact with the

32:11

MT. Okay, so

32:13

analogy time. Brain

32:16

cells look like trees. Yes.

32:19

Stick with me. They do, they actually do.

32:21

So like the axon is like the trunk.

32:24

Yes. And then the branches, the bits

32:26

that communicate with the other brain cells,

32:29

those branches are called the dendrites.

32:31

It turns out that neurons look so

32:34

much like trees that we actually use

32:36

the term arbor to describe their dendritic

32:38

branches. It's very poetic. Yeah,

32:42

like sometimes science is super complicated and sometimes

32:44

it's just saying what you see in front

32:46

of you. Yeah.

32:50

So like when some people have,

32:52

say, depression, their canopies, instead of

32:55

being densely filled with lots of

32:57

branches, like bushy, bushy trees, they

32:59

look kind of barren. So

33:02

if you prune back those

33:04

branches and you lose all

33:06

the leaves, so it looks like winter time

33:09

and the arborists has come by, that's what

33:11

a lot of brain disorders look like. And

33:13

what David and his team are doing

33:16

is giving rats either DMT or placebo

33:18

and then counting the

33:20

leaves on those branches. We

33:23

had to do some very

33:25

painstaking experiments where we were

33:27

under the microscope for, I

33:30

don't know how many, hundreds

33:32

of hours tracing,

33:34

manually tracing these dendrites

33:37

and counting these dendritic

33:39

spines. And you're just

33:41

doing this thousands and thousands of times

33:43

over. And

33:46

one of my graduate students basically locked

33:48

himself in a dark closet for weeks

33:50

at a time so that he could

33:52

trace all of these neurons

33:54

manually. And what David and his

33:56

team found is that after they'd been

33:58

exposed to DMT, the

34:01

brain cells were healthier, like there were

34:03

more leaves on the branches of their

34:05

trees. What DMT seems

34:07

to do is

34:09

to act like miracle grow in

34:12

a lot of ways. It promotes the

34:14

growth of the branches and the leaves

34:16

start sprouting again so that

34:18

the canopy can be a lot

34:21

fuller than it was. That's really cool.

34:24

That's really cool. And so if this plays out

34:26

in people, people with

34:28

depression, it's the idea that if

34:31

they have this like, their canopy

34:33

with now more leaves in it,

34:35

they themselves will be healthier. Totally,

34:37

totally. Buschier trees, healthier brains is

34:40

the idea, which is really interesting

34:42

because the ages scientists have been

34:44

trying to figure out whether like

34:46

the subjective experience of going on

34:48

one of these psychedelic trips, like

34:50

all of the weird stuff that

34:52

you see, whether that was what

34:54

was really doing the heavy lifting

34:56

in terms of these drugs being

34:59

therapeutic, or if something

35:01

else was going on. But then,

35:03

when we saw that there was physical changes

35:05

in the structure of the brain, we

35:07

thought that there might be this

35:09

alternative explanation. And so

35:12

even though David's study was being done

35:14

in rats, he's pretty confident that like

35:16

what he's seeing in these rodents is

35:18

happening in humans as well, because like,

35:21

this mechanism of growing leaves, it doesn't

35:23

just happen with DMT, it happens with

35:25

other psychedelics as well. And

35:28

it even happens with antidepressants like

35:30

SSRIs, because they have this effect.

35:32

So they cause the leaves, new

35:34

leaves to grow on the branches

35:36

of the brain cells. But

35:39

if anyone has taken antidepressants would

35:41

know, they're no businessmen's trip, right? Like

35:43

they take weeks or even months to

35:45

kick in. But a psychedelic, you can

35:47

take a single dose and see large

35:49

changes in growth within 24 hours. And

35:52

then that effect can be sustained for several

35:54

weeks. And that is really the

35:56

difference between psychedelics and more

35:59

traditional antidepressants. your process. That's

36:04

great. That's exciting. So a super interesting

36:06

part of David's research is that he

36:08

also found that DMT could promote what's

36:10

called neuroplasticity, so this growth of new

36:13

branches, at a dose of

36:15

DMT that was sub-hallucinogenic. And

36:18

so this kind of suggests that

36:20

maybe you don't need the whole

36:23

psychedelic experience to get the benefit

36:25

from psychedelics, which is

36:27

like exciting from a research point of view,

36:29

but also like totally no fun at all,

36:31

right? Right. Yeah,

36:34

I guess it depends how fun it is to

36:36

be prone by aliens. Yeah.

36:40

So speaking of no fun

36:42

at all, I think my last question is

36:45

like, can DMT or

36:47

ayahuasca, I don't

36:49

know, like all this brain plasticity

36:52

shaking up the snow globe between

36:54

my ears, can that

36:56

cause harm? Can you shake it up in a

36:58

way that is bad? Can you

37:00

end up worse after you

37:03

take these trips? Look, for such a

37:05

hectic drug, a bunch of

37:07

the scientists I spoke to told me that it's

37:09

actually pretty safe. So one review

37:11

paper looked at some people in Brazil who'd

37:13

been using ayahuasca in their religious ceremonies over

37:15

a long time. And

37:18

that review didn't find any evidence that it

37:20

was harmful to those people. There

37:22

are a few things to watch out for. So with

37:25

DMT, the big risk is your

37:27

heart health. So that initial rush

37:29

of the drug, it really increases

37:31

your heart rate. And in studies

37:33

of DMT and ayahuasca, there's the

37:35

odd case where people get hypertension.

37:38

But for Chris, his biggest concern

37:40

was to do with people's minds.

37:43

The main risks are psychological.

37:47

So people can have extreme anxiety and

37:49

fear responses. When

37:51

you go in the higher doses of DMT,

37:54

people can have very, very extreme

37:56

experiences that can be extremely confronting

37:58

for some individuals. individuals. Some

38:01

people do need to go to therapy

38:03

to deal with like the visions that

38:05

they saw when they were on their

38:07

trip. So one survey of 10,000 ayahuasca

38:09

users found that 12% got

38:11

professional help after going on one of

38:14

these retreats. Oh. There are

38:16

even stories of people experiencing psychosis

38:18

after taking ayahuasca, which can be

38:20

pretty full on. Yeah. Right?

38:23

But it's also quite rare. So of the

38:25

estimated hundreds of thousands of users of ayahuasca,

38:28

I could only find some case

38:30

reports of this. Has anyone ever died from

38:32

taking ayahuasca? Because like every

38:35

now and then you do read these stories of

38:37

people going to these retreats and

38:39

not coming back. It

38:41

is rare for this kind of thing to

38:43

happen. Like one report looks through more than

38:45

20 years of media articles from around the

38:47

world and found 58 deaths

38:50

that had been attributed to ayahuasca during

38:52

that time. 58 deaths over 20 years.

38:56

But in a lot of cases, it's

38:58

not clear if ayahuasca or DMT is

39:00

to blame because like during an ayahuasca

39:02

ceremony, there's other stuff that's mixed into

39:04

the brew. It's not just the drug.

39:07

And then sometimes people mix ayahuasca

39:09

with completely different drugs. So there's

39:12

one case study of a

39:15

guy from Australia who used

39:17

ayahuasca and died with a

39:19

quote, perforated esophagus from vomiting.

39:22

Oh, gosh. Yeah. It's

39:24

really full on. But that

39:26

same night, he'd also ingested the poison

39:29

from an Amazonian tree frog. So it

39:31

can be hard in cases like this

39:33

to determine what the exact cause of

39:35

death was. Hmm.

39:38

Okay. So Joel,

39:40

it's time to wrap up this

39:42

DMT adventure we've been on. Let's wrap

39:44

it. It's funny. I came into this

39:48

episode, I don't

39:50

want to say skeptical, would

39:53

you believe, about ayahuasca. You

39:55

get people in this

39:57

economy. I

40:02

mean, the fact that it has this very

40:05

long tradition makes

40:07

it very interesting, but then this

40:09

celebrity retreat vibe around it is just, it's

40:12

hard not to roll your eyes. But

40:16

the science is, it is really

40:19

intriguing. Where are you at

40:21

with CMT? Yeah, I

40:23

mean, influences are going to influence, right?

40:25

But I'm super pumped by the science. The

40:29

idea that psychedelic drugs are

40:32

helping these little leaves on

40:34

the branches of our brain trees grow after

40:37

just 24 hours. That's

40:40

super exciting. But

40:42

then I think about DMT as

40:44

a therapy. And it's

40:48

like, our societies

40:50

tend to be so uptight about

40:52

drugs generally. Like if you think

40:54

about the path that weed has

40:57

taken, and like weed is such

40:59

a smaller deal than DMT, it

41:01

just makes me wonder like if

41:04

and when this idea

41:06

of having a kind of businessman's lunch

41:08

where you deal with some in this

41:10

really short acting psychedelic experience,

41:13

like when will we as a

41:15

people be ready? So I'm kind

41:17

of like, I'm struggling

41:19

to see how these therapies

41:21

breaks through into the mainstream.

41:23

Yeah. You know, I am

41:26

really curious if I would ever take this, if

41:29

I would start to believe that this

41:31

was an alien portal. Totally. I've

41:34

been thinking about like what my brain

41:36

would choose to turn into this super

41:38

immersive trip. And you know,

41:40

like I'd probably want some like mystical sci

41:42

fi experience, but I'd probably end up getting

41:44

like, like a Google

41:46

Doc with one of our scripts coming to

41:48

life. Yeah,

41:51

exactly. I reckon you'd get

41:53

all of the citations that you've

41:55

ever put in a science versus episode. Just

41:58

devouring me in differently. Thanks, Charles.

42:00

Thanks, Wendy. How's this? Your worst nightmare.

42:03

I have one more question, it turns out.

42:05

How many citations are in this week's episode? We had 79 citations. And

42:08

if people want to see them in all of their glory, where should they go? Well,

42:17

each week we put

42:19

a link to a website

42:21

where we can get citations from

42:23

you. And so if you

42:25

follow that link, you can read along while you listen and you

42:28

can deep dive into

42:45

all the extra information that we put there

42:47

for you. Yes. And while you're looking

42:49

at the show notes, you're also going to see ways

42:51

to get in touch with us while we're

42:53

on a break. So if you have an

42:55

episode that you think we should do, what

42:58

should we versus, please tell

43:00

us. And also we really

43:02

want to hear your thoughts on, remember there's three

43:04

topics, sex, diet, any questions you

43:06

have about diet, how much protein should you

43:08

be eating every day? I don't know, whatever

43:10

you're thinking, we want to know. And also

43:12

your questions about menopause. You can email

43:14

us, send us a

43:16

voice message to scienceversusatgimletmedia.com.

43:19

And there's a phone number in the show notes too. And

43:22

then finally, Joel, there was

43:25

one fact in this episode that you

43:27

were like, we cannot put an ayahuasca

43:29

episode down the feed without

43:31

this. And Blythe and I

43:34

were like, nah, I don't know. Tell

43:36

us now, tell us now what is this

43:38

fact? So when

43:40

you make the ayahuasca brew,

43:43

like the way that the

43:45

brew is brewed is super

43:47

cool, right? You get

43:49

the DMT by crushing up the leaves of

43:51

this particular plant. But if you

43:53

just ingest the leaves, like so if

43:55

you eat them or if you drink

43:57

them in this brew by themselves. then

44:00

the BMT gets broken down super

44:03

quickly by an enzyme and Not

44:06

enough of it gets absorbed to give

44:08

you this psychedelic experience So what you

44:10

have to add into the brew is

44:12

a vine, right? And so you put

44:14

the leaves in you put the vine

44:16

in and there's a secret ingredient in

44:18

the vine that inhibits the action of

44:20

that Enzyme which allows you to absorb

44:22

all the BMT and gets you high

44:24

on ayahuasca I just think that's such

44:26

a super cool idea that like it's

44:28

not just Getting the BMT out

44:30

of the leaves that you need to

44:32

like have this like interactive Relationship between

44:34

the leaves and the vine to make

44:36

the ayahuasca brew super potent Yes,

44:39

but if you get it from the scientists inject

44:41

it straight in you you can bypass that whole

44:43

system Yeah, choose your

44:46

own adventure Thanks

44:48

so much and we will see all of

44:50

you guys in the new year. Thanks so

44:53

much for listening to us. Thanks Bye

45:01

This episode was produced by Joel Buena

45:03

Which helped me, Wendy Zuckerman, Michelle Dang,

45:05

Rose Rimmler and Nick Del Rose We're

45:08

edited by Blythe Terrell, fact-checking by Diane

45:10

Kelly, mix and sound design by Bumi

45:12

Hidaka Music written by

45:14

Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord

45:17

Thanks to all of the researchers that

45:19

we spoke to for this episode including

45:21

Dr. Rick Strathman, Dr. David Errico Dr.

45:24

Jimo Borijin, Dr. Steven Barker,

45:26

Dr. Brandon Weiss, Dr. Pascal

45:29

Michaels, Dr. Michael Gatt Professor

45:31

Jerome Sarat, Professor Deepak

45:34

D'Souza, Sean Chidi and David Nichols.

45:36

A special Thanks to Jack

45:38

Weinstein and Hunter, Katie Vans, Finn

45:40

and Zules, Christian Dario

45:42

Vasquez Valentina Powers, Zach

45:44

Schmidt, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle

45:47

Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman and we will

45:49

fact you in a couple of months

45:52

I'll see you then, bye! Thank

46:00

you.