0:00

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve

0:02

camera. It's ready. Are you welcome

0:06

to stuff you should know from

0:08

houseff works dot com?

0:15

Whoa, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:18

Josh Clark. There's Charles

0:20

Cheek Bryant Chee. Yeah,

0:22

man, yeah, I wanted to start this one

0:25

out like a twelve year old, So that's what I'm going

0:27

with, a twelve year old on acid. Maybe

0:29

maybe it just happened before in

0:33

France actually really thanks to our old

0:35

friends at c I A. Oh, they

0:37

just kids. They just a whole town to

0:40

see what would happen. And one kid came

0:42

at his grandmother and tried to strangle her. Really

0:45

yeah, I can't remember the name of the town. Funny,

0:48

but well, no, people were like

0:50

showing up at the hospital. There a

0:52

lot of it was funny in that, like,

0:55

you know, all these nineteen fifties French chees

0:57

are losing their stuff for

1:00

no apparent reason, right, right, but

1:03

you know the suicides

1:05

that resulted from that not

1:07

very funny. Before we get started, I

1:09

think we should do like an official c o A for

1:11

this one. I think that is a very good

1:13

idea because what Josh and I are about to talk

1:16

about are illegal drugs, and

1:18

we are not endorsing the use of these and

1:21

they are illegal after all. We'll probably say this

1:23

later on too, but we just find

1:25

it fascinating that they used to be

1:27

used for certain things and they're starting to be used

1:29

again in certain scientific research

1:31

labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating,

1:34

which is what we're talking about exactly. I

1:36

guess this could be a follow up to our our mk

1:38

Ultra cast. It's a follow up

1:41

and uh, it's an epilogue

1:43

and a prologue. Yes, yeah,

1:45

very nice because we kind of came into the

1:48

the c I A l s D MK

1:50

Ultra podcast like right in the middle of

1:54

the history of LSD much

1:56

well towards the beginning. But um,

1:59

one of the things after nineteen forty

2:01

three when Albert Hoffman,

2:03

right, the chemist who

2:06

created LSD

2:09

tried it. Yeah it was attempt uh

2:12

and tried it on himself intravenously.

2:15

As I understand it, he injected it.

2:17

It says, first he took it by mistake, yeah,

2:20

because it was a blood thinner. And then he took it for

2:22

real. Yeah. After that first bike

2:24

ride home he was like, I gotta do some

2:26

more and then I read uote I

2:28

became aware of the wonder of creation, the

2:30

magnificence of nature. Yes, to

2:32

create Dr Hoffman. Yeah, and

2:35

he was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist.

2:37

Um. He was at the first person to

2:40

come up with a synthetic hallucin Jim

2:43

Back in nineteen fourteen, a

2:45

German chemist who worked for Merk the pharmaceutical

2:47

company, came up with M D m A,

2:50

better known as ecstasy. Yeah.

2:53

And here's a tip for you, chuckers. Um,

2:56

anytime, according to the Associated Press,

2:58

you write about a designer

3:00

drug and used it by its designer name,

3:03

capitalize it. So ecstasy is

3:05

always capitalized the

3:07

word ecstasy when you're talking about

3:09

the drug, guest, and

3:11

not just the euphoric feeling you get from life.

3:14

That's different. That's lower case,

3:16

okay, but it should be all caps. Yeah.

3:19

Sure, So it was

3:22

m d m A was created. Yeah, and it

3:24

was. Um. I guess

3:26

it served as a it's

3:28

not a catalyst, because I think it's changed, but it

3:30

was to be used in the synthesis

3:33

of other chemicals, and it

3:35

kind of sat on the shelves for a little while until

3:37

somebody along the way, and

3:39

then I wonder what happens

3:42

if I take this stuff? And they

3:44

did, and the CIA

3:46

again looked at it. I wanted to see what it

3:48

could do. Passed it up. UM,

3:51

and a guy by the name of Alexander

3:54

Shulgin, right, yes,

3:58

he's a dow chemist and a night seen seventy

4:00

eight. At the age of seventy four, he published

4:03

a study on the Ufork effects of M

4:05

D M A. It was the first time anyone had ever published

4:07

a study here. But

4:10

he was seventy four and he first noticed

4:12

the Ufork effects because he liked to take it

4:15

and go to cocktail parties of yeah.

4:18

UM. So he's like, hey, man, this stuff is

4:20

the bomb, and here's

4:22

my study on it. Here that my findings,

4:25

and let's everybody start taking

4:27

this. So he starts giving it to his friends, um,

4:30

including some psychiatrists.

4:32

Did he give out passifiers? Not yet

4:35

that that's coming though, that's very very close. PASSI

4:38

fires came about night um.

4:43

So Shilgin gives some to a friend

4:45

who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist

4:48

some of the more avant garde psychiatrists

4:51

UM start giving it to their patients,

4:53

and then it gets called adam for a little

4:55

while. For a. While this is going

4:57

on, it's being used by established psychiatrists.

5:00

A mysterious financier

5:02

in Dallas, Texas finds out

5:04

about this stuff and starts taking it, hires

5:06

an underground chemist and has

5:09

it made himself, and then start

5:11

selling it at clubs all over Dallas.

5:14

And so this, this

5:16

illicit use of this substance,

5:19

simultaneous to its emergence

5:21

on the club scene and about the mid eighties,

5:24

led to the outlaw of M

5:26

D M A. We'll get into it more, but

5:30

the point is to this very long and rambling

5:32

intro, both

5:35

of these drugs and others

5:38

were legal at one time, were

5:40

put to good use, beneficial use, and

5:43

then outlawed, possibly

5:46

unfairly, and then now

5:48

we're starting to see them come back into use,

5:51

hallucinogens being used to treat

5:53

mental illness and mental harm

5:56

in legitimate circles, very legitimate.

5:58

Quick question was that Dallas

6:01

person was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

6:03

I don't know. I don't think anybody knows who

6:06

it is. Still gotta start maybe, I

6:09

think to begin with, so,

6:12

Josh, you mentioned the c I A. I do want to point out

6:14

it wasn't just the Americans. Uh, the

6:17

Canadian government and British's British

6:20

is it works. Britain's

6:23

m I six also experimented

6:26

with LSD and between nineteen

6:28

fifty and sixty five, forty

6:30

thou people all over the world had been

6:32

treated with LSD and

6:35

and treatments. Yeah, um,

6:38

Carrie Grant, Yeah, can we go back

6:40

to Hollywood in in the nineteen

6:43

yours, So

6:46

a couple of guys set up shop Arthur

6:49

Chandler. What was the other guy's name, Oh,

6:52

Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman, who was a

6:54

radiologist too acid Harman

6:57

and said, you know, I'm gonna get into psychiatry.

6:59

These guy set up a shop called the

7:02

Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills

7:05

right in the middle of Beverly Hills. And this is back

7:08

in the day when things were it was

7:10

clean living going on, aside from the rampant

7:12

alcoholism and cigarettes

7:14

being smoked, adultery.

7:17

Probably some marijuana us going on here

7:20

there, but that was among the hop heads. Yeah

7:22

exactly. So he sets

7:24

up a couple of rooms with a couch and uh

7:27

starts booking patients at a

7:30

rate of like six

7:32

or eight hours of session, depending on

7:34

what was going on with the person, and five days a week.

7:36

There were books solid hundred bucks of pop hunter,

7:39

which is a lot of money back then. And I

7:41

guess that included the drugs. The drugs

7:43

and the time that you were there, right, So

7:45

they would sit with you, they will give you some blinders to

7:48

block out distractions, and then you

7:50

would go into sort of like the more meditative

7:54

sort of acid trip. Essentially you

7:57

were hard,

7:59

they would because you were on pharmaceutical

8:01

grade l s D produced by the Sandoz

8:03

company. We're talking about

8:05

Alice Huxley, novelist,

8:09

and actually he died tripping. Did you know

8:11

that? Really? Yeah, he was. He had m

8:13

throat cancer, I think, and uh,

8:15

the last thing he ever wrote was a note to his

8:17

wife requesting UM

8:20

such and such milligrams of LSD

8:23

or micrograms of LSD injected

8:25

intramuscular intramuscularly.

8:28

And that was about six hours before he

8:30

died. So he died and

8:32

a grateful dead record. That was his last request

8:35

before the grateful dea. Uh.

8:39

Screenwriter screenwriter Charles

8:41

Brackett took

8:43

it. Director Sydney laments

8:45

it. Lay or lament I

8:48

think, okay, I always sad may, but I think I'm wrong.

8:50

He took it a few times, went through sessions, called

8:52

it wonderful. He re experienced

8:54

his own birth, which apparently a few people

8:56

did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either. And

8:59

muh Claire Booth

9:02

Loose was a playwright married to Time magazine

9:04

publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador

9:07

and possibly an agent um

9:09

for the US government. And they both

9:12

took acid so much that Henry

9:14

Loose and Time Magazine said we need

9:16

to write about this. This is awesome. Yeah, there's

9:18

a lot of good press that Time Magazine gave

9:21

LSD in the fifties um as

9:23

a basically a cure all um.

9:26

And again Carry Grant got

9:28

into it big time. Apparently he had

9:30

like at least a hundred trips I believe.

9:34

Yeah he was. Yeah, let's talk about him for a second,

9:36

because he was one of these guys that carefully

9:39

constructed his persona. He

9:41

worked very hard. Apparently he was

9:44

the The line he always gave

9:46

was a lot of people want to be Carry Grant,

9:49

and I'm one of them, indicating that

9:51

this suave, Mr Cool persona

9:53

was completely fabricating, created by himself

9:56

so he could get you know, the fame and everything,

9:59

but deep down he's suffered as

10:02

a human until

10:05

he started taking acid, right, and then he had

10:08

um, well, he had some pretty

10:11

interesting revelations, one of which

10:13

I read one of the somebody thought

10:15

to write down the stuff that he Some

10:18

of the insights he had, um,

10:20

some were kind of deep. Others were like,

10:23

if I have to look at a man, he

10:25

should be required to comb

10:28

his hair and brush his teeth and wear a clean

10:31

shirt. Yes,

10:33

it was interesting, so it kind of ran the gamut.

10:35

But yeah, he um, he became a real

10:38

devotee of LSD. He

10:41

yeah, and um, well

10:44

she got him into right who

10:46

wrote that we're part of this we're basing

10:49

this part on a Vanity Fair article art.

10:51

Yeah, um, it's called the Carrying the

10:54

Sky with Diamonds. But he

10:57

was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only

10:59

one, um, but he lived to

11:01

see it outlawed and public

11:03

sentiment turned against it. Right, it's

11:06

just like m D M A um psilocybin,

11:09

magic mushrooms and part

11:12

of the well, really one of the

11:14

you could say that Timothy Leary

11:17

almost single handedly led

11:19

to the tremendous suffering

11:21

of a lot of people who might otherwise have been helped

11:23

by LSD with his his naive

11:26

bravado of you know, the

11:28

establishment just needs to get over its hang ups

11:30

and we should all take acid. Whether

11:33

or not you agree that that's a good idea, it's

11:35

a stupid thing to say. Leary

11:38

was originally a Harvard psychiatrist, right,

11:41

yes, and he started taking I

11:43

think mushrooms and then he eventually

11:45

started taking LSD and was

11:48

fired from Harvard because he turned into a

11:50

hippie. And um,

11:53

that was pretty much the

11:55

beginning of the end of LSD. Yeah, they may have

11:57

continued to use LSD

12:00

as treatment for mental patients

12:02

mental illness and depression if not for Timothy

12:05

Leary, who was trying to spread the word

12:07

about acid. Uh. Back

12:09

to Carry Grant real quick. He was so into it,

12:11

Josh. He had a

12:13

couple of stories written about him in nineteen

12:16

fifty nine and Look magazine the

12:18

Curious Story behind the New Carry Grant gave

12:21

a glowing account of LSD, and

12:23

then This is the Best the

12:25

following year the Good Housekeeping

12:27

magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval

12:30

in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it the

12:32

Secret of Grant's Second Youth. I

12:35

want to get a copy of that magazine. How

12:37

awesome would that be? Yeah, And that's kind of like

12:39

the theme of this podcast is so weird

12:42

that these things were considered incredibly

12:45

wonderful and benign um

12:49

and now they're they're just viewed as just so

12:52

they're evil in their outlaws simply

12:54

because they were made illegal,

12:57

right prohibited um. And

12:59

again there's kind of a movement

13:01

toward saying, hey, you know, maybe

13:04

Timothy Leary did give this a bad name, Maybe

13:07

that that um underground chemist

13:09

in Dallas, uh really

13:11

kind of put a terrible spread on this, and

13:14

we should look at these again, right. She kind

13:16

of tell one more story, Yes, from Hollywood of the nineteen

13:18

sixties. Esther Williams,

13:20

famous uh diva actress from

13:22

the MGM studio friend of Carrie

13:25

Grants called Carrie Grant up after

13:27

these articles and said, hey, can you introduce me to

13:29

your doctor, Dr Hartman.

13:31

He did so. At the time, she was

13:33

aging, just had gone through a divorce, her

13:37

husband left her with huge debt with the I R S.

13:40

And she was still struggling with the death

13:42

of her sixteen year old brother. She

13:45

goes in the office, she takes acid, does

13:48

her session, goes home, to her parents,

13:51

still on acid, has dinner

13:53

with them, and then goes

13:55

into the bathroom mirror,

13:58

says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror,

14:00

and I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled

14:03

by a split image one half of my face.

14:05

The right half was me, the other

14:07

half was the face of a sixteen year old boy. The

14:10

left side of my upper body was flat and muscular.

14:12

I reached up with my boys hand

14:15

to touch my right breast and felt

14:18

my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic

14:20

phantasm. And I understood

14:23

perfectly in that moment. When my brother

14:25

died, I took him into my life so completely

14:27

he became part of me. Yeah,

14:30

that's a pretty huge thing to understand and

14:33

pretty jarring way to come to terms

14:35

with that, right. Yeah. But that's what they're

14:37

finding out now, though, is that these people

14:39

are having these breakthroughs in the

14:41

throes of their final days of let's

14:43

say cancer, and they have these epiphanies

14:46

before we get to that. So LSD is outlawed.

14:48

We're following a timeline here. Yes, LSD

14:51

is outlawed in I think st

14:53

something like that. Um at the very

14:55

at the latest nineteen, they shut

14:57

down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah, then

15:00

Sandoz stopped making it and it got

15:03

it was outlawed and pushed underground. M

15:05

d m A made it until and

15:08

m d m A story is linked very closely

15:10

to a guy named Dr George Quarte

15:13

who is Johns Hopkins researcher.

15:16

This floored me. So in about

15:19

the time, the d e A

15:22

is reeling from being

15:24

caught totally unaware by the crack epidemic.

15:27

Uh, and basically a lot of

15:30

people think looking for a

15:32

whipping post um,

15:36

they they start considering outlawing m

15:38

d m A. At that moment, this

15:40

guy, Dr George rocquarde Um

15:43

publishes a study that he says,

15:46

this drug deplete your serotonin

15:49

levels permanently causing brain

15:51

damage. Right. Yeah,

15:53

well that that didn't that. So

15:57

this guy, who was unknown at the time, publishes

15:59

the study starts to get UM

16:02

National Institute of Drug Abuse funding.

16:04

So basically this is his job. He starts

16:06

a career um creating

16:10

scientific evidence in

16:13

favor of banning drugs leads to the

16:15

outlaw of m d m A. Right that

16:18

wasn't quite enough, they scheduled

16:20

it. Uh. The FEDS

16:22

went after m d M A even harder,

16:25

and in two dou two they came up with this thing called

16:27

the Rave Act. It's,

16:30

um, what does rave stand for?

16:33

Reducing Americans vulnerability

16:35

to ecstasy? I wonder how long they sat

16:37

around looking at the word rave, saying

16:40

we've gotta make it fit, yeah, to make it fit

16:42

yeah. So UM, the the

16:44

Rave Act basically said,

16:47

if you are a club owner and

16:49

somebody gets caught taking ecstasy

16:52

or has ecstasy at your club, we're gonna shut

16:54

down your club. It was a huge, huge

16:56

law and it was bolstered by

16:58

another UM. Another study

17:01

by Dr George roccaride UM

17:03

that found that he tested

17:05

on ten monkeys is a big one. He

17:07

injected them with m d M A UM,

17:10

A bunch of them went psychotic, some of

17:12

them UM showed early signs of Parkinson's

17:15

all of a sudden, and two of them died

17:17

almost immediately after being injected.

17:21

So people started asking questions about

17:23

this, like, what what are you talking about? People have been

17:25

taking this drug forever and this

17:27

has never happened. So they started

17:30

kind of going after recording and

17:32

UM they found out that he

17:34

had actually injected him with methamphetamine.

17:39

The first thing that took them off as he injected him because

17:41

people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy,

17:43

so that's kind of a weird way to do it. And

17:45

then they found out it was methamphetamines,

17:48

which he blamed on a mislabeling

17:50

of a drug shipment which they traced back

17:52

and they went, not the label right here. Yeah,

17:55

the drug providers like, don't blame us, it's

17:58

pretty clear. So this is by this time, the

18:00

Rave Act has already passed her and the

18:02

Rave Act didn't get past, but something that included

18:05

that, um was passed by that

18:07

time. The study that record

18:09

A produced was pretty was published

18:11

in Science, the journal Science. Like, that's as

18:14

eyebrow as you get as far as scientific

18:16

journals. Um. And

18:19

finally he gets beaten up enough that

18:21

he he prints a full retraction.

18:24

The Science runs this retraction

18:27

saying, the whole the whole study

18:29

that I produced, just forget it ever

18:32

existed. But that doesn't happen much, No, it doesn't.

18:34

That's very unusual the record

18:36

A, I get the impression is kind of

18:38

this, um, well, it just

18:41

kind of seems like the scientific community

18:43

views him largely as a shill for the government.

18:46

Yeah. Um, there's a couple of articles that

18:48

he shows up in on a Reason and

18:51

Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And

18:53

you know, the other interesting thing about that whole

18:55

story about the big fake study

18:57

he did with meth amphetamines as

19:00

to see is that the Parkinson's Foundation,

19:03

the people Parkinson's researchers,

19:05

said, I don't think that that's

19:07

true. That doesn't make much sense

19:09

to us either, that they would show signs of Parkinson's

19:11

right. So they looked into it. People went about

19:13

reproducing his study um

19:16

and the people who

19:18

run the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a

19:20

statement saying ecstasy

19:23

does not do this, so they

19:25

basically came out in favor of ecstasy. It's

19:28

kind of neat to watch from the outside because

19:30

there's this guy who's again

19:33

kind of viewed as a show for the government,

19:35

who's beating up on this drug that a

19:37

lot of people who are also in the scientific

19:40

community feel is being

19:42

unfairly outlawed,

19:45

and so there's kind of beating up on him in

19:47

retaliation. It's kind of neat to see

19:49

eggheads beat up on one another. NERD

19:51

fights and the n I d A. It

19:53

went so far that the n I d A just kind of quietly

19:56

pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy, and it

19:58

was like, um, let's just take this down the website.

20:00

After the retraction, we'll

20:03

rewrite it. I'm sure it's back up now as

20:05

something else. But it doesn't include immediate

20:07

death and Parkinson's disease. I would imagine

20:10

that's right. So Timothy Leary dies,

20:12

he gets shot into space, he's

20:14

out of the picture entirely. Everybody

20:17

gets sick of hippies generally. Um,

20:20

George, record is that, basically

20:23

the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy

20:25

outlawed, his work comes

20:28

into great, great question, and

20:30

people start going back and looking at m D m

20:32

A again, and they start looking at LSD again,

20:35

And that's where we find ourselves right now. Slowly

20:38

but surely, people are starting to run

20:40

studies on whether or

20:42

not you can use these hallucinogens

20:45

to treat mental illness. And the results

20:47

are pretty astounding actually, And

20:50

you know where they're leading the charge in Switzerland,

20:53

in Los Angeles all these years later,

20:55

same place, Yes, hippie

20:57

freaks. Yeah so

20:59

yeah, Josh, they are I think

21:01

in Switzerland, uh and solo

21:04

then Switzerland they

21:06

have been experimenting with LSD

21:09

um psilocybin which you might know is

21:12

magic much rooms ketamine

21:15

you might know a special k That kind of surprised me that

21:17

that was in there. Yeah, I hadn't

21:19

heard much about that one either. And they're getting these,

21:21

uh these studies published in Nature

21:24

Reviews, Neuroscience, and other you

21:26

know, leading industry peer

21:29

reviewed publications. Yeah, it's not

21:31

all under the table back room experiments.

21:34

Oh no, these are very heavily um

21:37

overseen. You have to be

21:39

a very legitimate researcher to get government

21:42

approval. They're not funded though still they're

21:44

they say they're still having a hard time with funding and

21:47

they're just the sort of looking to get some restrictions

21:49

loosened. They're not saying make all this stuff legal,

21:52

right, they're not battling a legalization on

21:54

the legalization front at all. But what

21:57

they're one of the reason why so many people

21:59

are kind of starting to put

22:01

their reputations on the line. Um,

22:04

it's because the results that

22:06

they're seeing. So we have antidepressants, right,

22:09

Um, they take weeks to kick in, they

22:12

have all sorts of side effects, and what

22:14

they're what we're seeing in these studies

22:16

now are that the the things

22:19

like ketamine uh M, d M A

22:21

l s D are having like a huge

22:23

impact right out of the gate. There's

22:25

one study, UM that came out in

22:27

July, I believe, UM, and

22:30

it found it was a study of twelve people

22:32

who were diagnosed with PTSD

22:35

post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's one of

22:37

the big ones. Yeah, that's huge at

22:40

UM. That's where you well, it's what

22:42

we used to call shell shock. Is you go

22:45

through traumatic experience and you relive it over and

22:47

over again. UM, and it's it's

22:49

debilitating. UM. They

22:52

found that of the twelve people in this study,

22:55

ten of them, after going through the study,

22:58

UM, after take king M d m A no

23:02

longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD

23:04

afterwards, ten of the twelve. Yeah. And for

23:06

my understanding and most of these studies is it's

23:09

not like you have to stay on ecstasy your whole

23:11

life. Like a lot of people have these

23:13

epiphanies and they quit taking it

23:15

and they have changed their outlook and that right, Yeah,

23:18

that's the impression I'm getting to. UM. Ketamine

23:20

apparently it's good for depression in the same

23:23

way. UM, just a very

23:25

tiny dose I can get

23:27

you over severe clinical depression.

23:29

Or that's the results. The early results, we should

23:31

say, yeah, um, and

23:34

everything from quitting smoking, two

23:37

suicidal thought, yeah, cluster headaches, Harvard

23:41

studying. Those are migraines for men, right,

23:44

what they call my migraines. I know

23:46

they're so debilitating that you consider suicide

23:49

or you know not everyone does obviously, but it's

23:52

just this awful, awful pain. You can't leave your house,

23:54

you get to sit in a dark room, and so it's

23:56

helping there. And UM, what

23:58

I thought was interesting John's Hopkins. You

24:01

might have heard of them, a little reputable

24:03

institutions or required is from was

24:06

it they didn't experiment

24:08

where they gave psilocybin too emotionally

24:11

stable individuals like this wasn't even people

24:13

that were mentally ill, people that had never

24:15

taken hallucinogens before, which

24:18

is interesting that you would be. I think they had a sixty

24:20

four year old that signed up for this. Yeah, it's crazy,

24:23

and they said sixty

24:25

four and they said the experiment a

24:27

year later they said the experience

24:30

is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences

24:32

of their entire lives, and

24:35

that those were mentally stable folks and

24:37

this is a year on it

24:40

still had an impact on them. Um, they're

24:43

also finding that UH, O, c

24:45

D and basically mood

24:48

disorders are the primary

24:50

target of hallucinogenic

24:52

treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment, and

24:55

the reason being, we think, is because

24:57

they target serotonin in the brain. This

24:59

is an other reason why they're not addictive. They don't

25:02

they don't employ the reward

25:04

circuit in the brain, which is how we become

25:07

addicted to things were flooded with

25:09

dopamine re member. It just affects the mood serotonin,

25:13

And we don't really have a very good grasp on

25:15

serotonin and exactly how that works.

25:17

But we do know that UM,

25:20

there's correlations between UH

25:23

high levels of serotonin or

25:25

low levels of serotonin and depression,

25:29

right. And we know that UM using

25:31

antidepressants which block the reuptake

25:34

of serotonin UM reduces

25:37

symptoms of clinical depression in people.

25:39

So we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We

25:41

know that the more serotonin have, the better

25:44

generally or low

25:46

serotonins bad UH. And then

25:48

we also know that hallucinogens target this

25:50

somehow. That's pretty much where the

25:53

research stands right now. It makes

25:55

you wonder where would we be if

25:57

LSD and m D M A hadn't been in the wilderness

26:00

the last few decades. Well, yeah, they may have a

26:02

pill, like a low dose pill because

26:04

a lot of these studies, just so you know, back

26:07

in Carrie Grand State, that mean it was full

26:09

full on acid trips. But a lot of these,

26:12

like the psilocybin pills, they will give you be very

26:14

low dose. So I don't I

26:16

get the feeling that it's not like this huge

26:19

mushroom trip that a lot of these patients are

26:21

going through. Because it said of

26:24

the people recognized

26:26

when they did not have the placebo. So

26:28

if it wasn't, then it

26:30

was probably a pretty low dose. Yes, would

26:33

be my guess. Um, would

26:36

you if if everything

26:38

was legalized UM

26:43

and m d m A came to be

26:45

prescribed for just

26:48

happiness, right, would you

26:50

take it? Would you take a happy pill that

26:52

was legal and didn't have side effects? Not to

26:54

say m d m A doesn't have side effects, there's

26:56

a UM like basically the three days

26:59

after a depression that follows

27:01

when you're serotonin levels are repleting

27:04

themselves. I don't think I would

27:06

because there are quote unquote happy

27:08

pills now, and I

27:10

mean it's not like I'm against any depressants.

27:13

Or things like that, because people definitely benefit from

27:15

those who need them. But I just

27:17

I don't need that kind of thing, so I

27:20

would not Uh, I would not serve

27:22

you are not alone, Chuck. There was a

27:24

survey conducted for this BBC series

27:27

on Britain of British people

27:30

that found that seventy of them said

27:33

that they would not take a happy pill

27:36

it was legal and had no side effects. It's

27:39

interesting, yeah, because it kind of I

27:41

think that for a large segment of

27:43

the population, there's just the

27:46

idea of synthesizing happiness

27:49

is untoward.

27:52

Yeah, you know, yeah, it's it's a little

27:54

weird. I mean, that's not to say I'm a square and I

27:56

don't like to get down another

28:00

aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right now

28:03

about literally the effect it has on your brain

28:05

and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've

28:07

also found that UH patients,

28:10

cancer patients in particular, who

28:12

consume hallucinogens, or

28:15

people with just um traumatic

28:18

events from earlier in their life, they have the ability

28:20

to relive some of these memories and

28:22

events from their past. They can unlock

28:25

buried traumatic episodes, deal

28:27

with them psychologically, put them

28:29

to rest and come out the other

28:32

side with a new understanding, free

28:34

from these demons. UM. You

28:37

remember in the hypnosis episode

28:40

where we were talking about how the

28:42

way it's viewed now is that you

28:45

you are you're accessing

28:47

the subconscious scies. Yeah, more easily.

28:49

It's like popping open a control

28:52

panel. That's what this. This

28:54

is what they're seeing with M D M A. Apparently,

28:57

Uh, you are able to access

28:59

things UM from a very

29:01

empathetic way. I think the term I've

29:03

heard for it is called UM a

29:06

psychotherapeutic catalyst like

29:10

kick starts things. And I

29:12

think one researcher called it it's

29:15

psychotherapy sped up. The

29:18

psychiatrist called it it's

29:20

like psychotherapy on acid.

29:25

So this hasn't LSD

29:27

specifically hasn't been the greatest

29:29

friend to everybody who's ever

29:31

taken it. And what's

29:34

funny in this article that UM that's

29:36

on the site, can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens?

29:39

Tom Schif has

29:41

to go to the sixties

29:43

psychedelic rock scene to

29:45

find examples of people who

29:48

have had a bad, bad time on

29:50

acid. Uh. And apparently,

29:52

what what the conventional wisdom

29:55

is is if you are predisposed to mental

29:57

illness. LSD can exacerbate

30:01

that. Yeah, if you have a bad trip, you're

30:03

going to have a really, really bad trip because

30:05

you're already predisposed to mental illness.

30:07

Yeah, he's Brian Wilson and Sid Barrett as

30:09

the two examples, and those are stellar

30:12

examples, they really got to say. But

30:14

they're also counterintuitive to what we're seeing

30:16

with UM. Like PTSD, you

30:19

are already suffering from a mental illness.

30:22

So here's some m D

30:24

m A. Probably LSD would

30:26

be horrible to give to a PTSD survivor.

30:29

Yeah, right, I would say, so, UM,

30:32

and what else can we talk about? Pamela

30:34

Secuda, Sure, Yeah, it's

30:36

a very interesting story. This was a

30:38

woman UM aged fifty seven at

30:40

the time of this article, who was

30:43

in the final stages of colon

30:45

cancer. She had outlived her prognosis.

30:48

She was anxious and depressed. She was worried

30:51

about her family, her husband

30:53

and what they were gonna do without her. It was not

30:56

a good life. She was living here at the end and

30:59

she was prescribed any depressants. Of

31:01

course, it didn't work, didn't do a

31:03

thing for so she volunteered for an experiment

31:05

at u c l A in two thousand five and

31:08

started taking psilocybin, the

31:10

magic mushroom pill in pill form.

31:13

She had a lot of breakthroughs.

31:16

They brought her husband in at the end of one of the sessions

31:19

and he said, there's

31:21

my Pammi. She was just beaming with light and

31:23

I haven't seen her that joyous and so long. She

31:25

was totally alive and happy. And

31:28

she continued to take it until

31:31

she didn't need it anymore. She had these breakthroughs

31:33

and then all of a sudden, her husband

31:36

and uh, Pamela were going to concerts,

31:39

They went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations,

31:41

They did all these things that she hadn't been doing in

31:44

a long time because of these epiphanies she had

31:46

under the influence of psilocybin, and

31:49

sadly she died well,

31:52

yeah, she died. Yeah, that's what she died

31:54

from in two thousand six, and

31:56

her husband said she

31:59

died in his arms. But her husband

32:01

was very appreciative and they actually

32:04

did a benefit about a week before she died for

32:06

the institute that was doing this work at U

32:08

c l A. So it's pretty interesting.

32:11

Yeah, the definitely and one

32:13

of the applications that they're finding is end

32:15

of life care for UM

32:18

using m D, m A or LSD. You're

32:20

psilocybin. Sure, we're special

32:22

k. Apparently what about this eyebo

32:25

gain. They're finding that iba

32:27

game works really well. I be gain is a m

32:29

it's from a hallucinatory root

32:32

plant in Africa, I believe UM.

32:34

And they're finding that you go on a thirty

32:37

six hour trip. That's a

32:39

long time, but they're

32:41

finding that it's really effective in breaking

32:43

UM addiction and like serious

32:45

addictions to like heroin, yeah, cocaine.

32:48

So being on this stuff just for thirty

32:51

six hours creates a break in the addiction

32:53

cycle itself. But what they're

32:55

finding this most notable about it is

32:58

it there's a lack of withdrawal

33:01

symptoms that you see in every other

33:03

type of addiction removal,

33:07

especially with heroin. Like heroin, you're supposed

33:09

to have physical withdraw stom withdrawal

33:11

symptoms, and people who are taking

33:13

eyeba gain are not experiencing that like

33:16

they would if if they tried to kick the habit

33:19

without it. It's pretty remarkable. It

33:21

is very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should

33:24

probably say, I don't know if we have yet

33:26

that This podcast is

33:28

in no way an endorsement of going out

33:30

and buying yourself some street drugs

33:32

and you know, seeing what happens.

33:35

It's a study of what we findly be very fascinating.

33:38

The fact that this is there's been a resurgence in this

33:40

and these you know, qualified doctors

33:42

U. C. L. A. Johns Hopkins, they're saying

33:45

we should look into this stuff. Yeah, and they definitely are,

33:47

and they're getting some very interesting results. What

33:49

about the A A guy. We should mention that really quickly.

33:51

That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill

33:53

Wilson, Yeah, one of the co founders of A A. Yeah.

33:56

He uh. He apparently took

33:58

LSD in the fifties, wasn't.

34:01

Yeah, And this is after he was long after he

34:03

was sober from alcohol since

34:06

the thirties. I think, um

34:09

so, he takes LSD

34:11

in the fifties and is like, this is

34:13

really helpful. Um So,

34:16

I think everybody who comes into a should

34:18

take LSD. Uh. And they

34:21

were like, Nick, you should probably not

34:23

do that. So they talked him out of it. But

34:25

the reason why he found it helpful when is

34:28

that Hallucinogen's part of a

34:30

twelve step program is to really

34:33

reflect on past wrongdoings

34:36

and then elucidate

34:38

them to another human being.

34:41

And apparently lsd M, d M a

34:44

UM these other drugs help.

34:46

They serve as a catalyst for that process.

34:48

So that's why Bill Wilson

34:51

I thought this, This is really helpful

34:54

because again it's like a therapy sped

34:56

up. Fascinating, very fascinating.

34:58

I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say,

35:00

even though we're not saying, oh, you should go out and do these

35:02

things, I will say that some

35:06

chemically created in a lab pill

35:08

called an antidepressant, isn't

35:11

I mean, what's the difference the differences

35:14

I think, in my opinion from what I've

35:16

seen, Uh, one's

35:20

marketed and legal and the other is

35:22

illegal. Yeah, it's as simple as that one

35:24

is made by murk and

35:27

one is not made by murk but used

35:29

to make this, which is ironic. Public

35:32

sentiment counts for everything. Yeah, you know, it's

35:34

the same reason the alcohol. You can go into a

35:36

bar and get completely wasted

35:38

out of your mind and get in a car, but

35:40

you can't walk into a bar and smoke a joint

35:43

or shoot heroin or shoot heroin. And

35:46

we're not labbying for anything. It's just interesting that the things

35:48

that society has deemed acceptable.

35:51

Alcoholism is just fine. Well

35:53

it's not just fine, but it's it's legal

35:55

and you can do it, even though it kills all

35:57

these people, and this is not acceptable. It's just it's

36:00

funny how we've evolved to

36:02

think some things are evil and some things are just great.

36:05

I wonder what the future holds, Josh. I wonder

36:08

myself. We'll find out, Yes, we will,

36:10

if we lived that long. That is

36:12

about it for this one. You should

36:15

probably check out Can we Treat

36:17

Mental Illness with Hallucinogens on the site.

36:20

Be sure to check out Carrying the Sky

36:22

with Diamonds Vanity Fair article

36:25

type in George Rick Quarte R

36:27

I C U A R T e uh

36:31

into Reasons website that will bring up some

36:33

cool stuff. There's a killer

36:36

Time magazine article from

36:38

I think two thousand or two thousand one

36:41

UM on ecstasy on M

36:43

D M A uh it was. That's

36:46

really It's called the Happiness

36:49

and a Pill something like that, Josh

36:51

from the future. We

36:54

are in New York right now, but tonight

36:57

Thursday, the twenty one October. I

37:00

know that our producer and comfitan

37:03

and den mother. Jerry will

37:05

be at a fundraiser for the

37:07

co ED, the Cooperative Cooperative for

37:10

Education right today, Yeah,

37:12

tonight. If you're in Atlanta and you

37:15

are about to pop another

37:17

chef lonely Hearts frozen

37:20

dinner for one and drink

37:22

a bottle of wine for two by yourself,

37:25

and you're looking for love in

37:28

the Atlanta area, stop

37:30

what you're doing, Grab twenty bucks and

37:33

go to the Metropolitan Club in Alpharetta

37:36

from seven to ten pm tonight, Thursday,

37:38

October twenty one. Co ED is holding

37:41

their Fall Fiesta, a t L fundraiser.

37:44

It's gonna be awesome, right. The twenty bucks buys

37:46

you that wine that you're going to drink by yourself, better

37:48

wine, probably asked, and you get to

37:50

drink it amongst friends, meet Jerry. There's

37:52

also going to be food, better food, entertainment,

37:55

and all sorts of chances to win

37:58

or auction bid. Right,

38:01

that's the that's the proper verb. Yeah, they're

38:03

auctioning off cool prizes like African

38:06

safaris and uh signed

38:08

sports memorabilia and stuff like that, and

38:11

you never know, you could find love

38:13

there. We're making zero guarantees

38:15

whatsoever, but It's worth a shot, isn't it.

38:18

Yes, And if we weren't out of town right now, we would

38:20

be there tonight, Yes we would. So. Um again,

38:23

if you don't remember who co ed is. Co ed

38:25

are the is the great nonprofit that

38:27

took us to Guatemala and we did a two

38:29

part podcast on it which is awesome. Um.

38:32

And they pull money together to

38:35

buy books for schools in Guatemala,

38:38

which then in turn rent the books. Uh.

38:40

And that that rental fee is is

38:42

put into an escrow account which after five years

38:44

is substantial enough to buy all

38:46

new textbooks. So what they start as a

38:49

self sustaining system um

38:51

of ownership of textbooks, and it has a huge

38:53

effect. It's not just textbooks. They do computer

38:56

labs too, So um, if you want more

38:58

information on coed or the Fall Fiesta

39:00

a t L tonight, go to their website

39:02

www dot c o E d

39:05

UC dot org. Right, that's

39:08

right, all right, let's do this. So that that's

39:10

it man, Nice job, buddy. I guess it's

39:12

time now for listener mail, right,

39:15

Yes, I

39:17

have a listener mail, Josh from Rhea and

39:20

this was about Octopus or OCTOPI.

39:23

We were corrected the octopis not right, but she says

39:26

it she worked at high is so right.

39:28

Well, we have these people seeing actually the Latin thing

39:30

the Jerry

39:33

just left at that. Hi, guys,

39:36

your podcast on OCTOPI made my day to day.

39:38

Thank you. I work as an aquarist at a San

39:40

Francisco aquarium and one of my favorite

39:42

responsibilities is our cephalopod

39:45

gallery. Nice. I get

39:47

to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods,

39:50

make sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of

39:53

trouble. And I'm currently teaching a

39:55

two spot octopus how to open a

39:57

jar to get his favorite food, which

40:00

live crabs. I'm right

40:02

there with you fromstr octopus. Uh.

40:04

It was great to hear someone besides myself get

40:06

a little too excited about these critters. And you know, we've

40:08

got great feedback on this. People love the octopus

40:13

because are so freaky. Uh. The story about

40:15

Lucratia mke evil especially cracked

40:17

me up. I work with the g p O. That's

40:19

the giant Pacific octopod that

40:21

might give her a run for money. For the past few

40:23

weeks, I've been walking around with what my

40:26

colleagues call octopus kisses up

40:28

the length of my arms. But

40:30

I'm afraid my husband is getting a little suspicious

40:32

about the number of hickys I've been acquiring. So

40:35

that's from the little suckers. These

40:37

little suckers clearly, Uh, these

40:39

were given to me while I tried to remove the individual

40:41

from blocking the flow to his

40:44

tank and stop his flooding of

40:46

the entire aquarium. It's never a boring

40:48

day with cephalopods in your life. Guys, thanks

40:50

for all the great podcast. If you're ever in San Francisco,

40:53

one of my favorite places, Josh, let

40:55

me know and I'll see if I can't work out some behind the scenes

40:58

cephalopod goodness. And

41:00

that is from Rhea, and

41:02

she says, and don't worry, by the way, I have trouble pronouncing

41:06

hecto caudles as well

41:08

and have taken the calling in the sperm

41:12

tentacle. Sperm tentacle

41:14

works. The spermacle is what she says.

41:17

She says, it's time to rename that organ. Yes,

41:20

well, thanks Ria, right, thank

41:23

you. My dad always said life is

41:25

better with steffalo pods in it. Really. Yeah,

41:28

Uh, if you have a fantastic saying

41:31

that your father, mother, grandfather,

41:33

some old timing person told you we

41:36

want to hear it, Wrap it up in an

41:38

email, spank it on the bottom, and then

41:40

send it to stuff podcast

41:43

at how stuff works dot com For

41:50

more on this and thousands of other topics, does

41:52

it how stuff works dot com. Want

41:55

more how stuff works, check out our blogs

41:57

on the house stuff works dot com home page. M

42:00

hmm. Brought

42:02

to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry.

42:05

It's ready, Are you