0:00

Hey, it's Steve. And

0:05

this is luminous a podcast series about

0:08

psychedelic from to the best of our

0:10

knowledge. The

0:13

reason I got so interested in psychedelic

0:15

some the first place and why I

0:17

wanted to do this series is because

0:19

I have a particular obsession of really

0:22

want to understand the nature of consciousness,

0:24

what it is, and where it comes

0:26

from. Is

0:28

it all brain based? some other

0:30

product of all those billions of

0:32

neurons and trillions of synaptic connections?

0:34

Or does the mind have some

0:37

other dimension beyond that three pound

0:39

mass of what goo? And especially

0:41

when you enter the truly weird

0:43

states of consciousness? the kinds of

0:45

transcendent and other worldly experiences you

0:47

get with psychedelics? How do you

0:49

explain what's going on? Can

0:52

you. I wanted

0:54

to get to know the neuroscientists

0:56

on the front lines of psychedelic

0:58

research by they got so obsessed

1:01

and now this is shaped their

1:03

own understanding of the mind and

1:05

reality itself. And I also wanted

1:07

to hear about their own psychedelic

1:10

trips which sometimes they're willing to

1:12

talk about. So can psychedelic unlock

1:14

the mystery of consciousness? Can narrow

1:16

science explain what happens during a

1:19

psychedelic experience? Wisconsin

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to the best of our knowledge. I man Dream

2:15

champs and I'm Steve Pulse. And

2:17

this is luminous or series on the

2:20

philosophy and future. As academics. This

2:25

episode your Brain on

2:27

Truman's. So where are you

2:29

taking as this time Steve? Well we're

2:31

going to go down the rabbit hole. Specifically.

2:35

Neural circuits that light up on

2:37

psilocybin and other psychedelics. You

2:40

know, for scientists who study the

2:43

brain, these drugs are tools that

2:45

can open a window into how

2:47

the mind works and possibly into

2:49

the mystery of consciousness itself. For

2:51

some neuroscientists, this it's very first.

3:00

Innocence. I'm grateful. Had this explains,

3:02

but it's it's daily trouble selling.

3:09

You inhale the substance. And

3:13

then within five to

3:15

ten seconds. Everything

3:18

becomes black. The

3:26

visual field. And

3:34

then those hexagonal sort of themselves

3:37

disappear and you go down into

3:39

this tunnel. This black tunnel. And

3:45

the last thing at a mammoth, it's always.

3:59

Interesting to. Of course

4:01

describing his brain on five

4:03

mb audience. Otherwise known as Totes

4:05

and I'm. Risk

4:07

is a pre near and a scientific.

4:09

Investigations Consciousness. For

4:12

years he taught at Caltech and then

4:14

became the Chief scientific officer that the

4:16

Alan Institute for Brain Science. Because

4:19

a striking feature in person. The.

4:21

Former rock climber feet tall and

4:23

skinny and often shows up a

4:25

scientific conferences and red pants and

4:28

brightly colored shirts. recently, he's come

4:30

to believe that psychedelics may offer

4:32

clues about the nature of consciousness.

4:37

We just might also satisfy some of

4:39

his own deep spiritual yearnings. I'm assuming

4:41

there was sort of a personal journey.

4:43

That's part of their say that I'm

4:45

hoping you can even go there. I

4:50

grew up as them. In a

4:52

devout Roman Catholic family and I was

4:54

early on in my life was about.

4:57

it was an altar boy, said all

4:59

the players and Latin all of that.

5:01

but I never had a burning bush,

5:03

I never had a booming voice on

5:05

the sky and I prayed for that.

5:07

I prayed for God to reveal himself

5:09

to me in some way, shape or

5:12

form that never happen. And then over

5:14

the years I lost my Catholic face

5:16

particular being a scientist. But damn I

5:18

never lost that yearning to. Experience

5:20

The absolute. And

5:22

of clause many people claim that

5:24

under various types of substances take

5:26

have so called religious experiences so

5:28

that was probably come to think

5:31

of with the deeper motivation for

5:33

a why did what I did.

5:35

When. Of the things I've always liked

5:37

about Christoph is that he doesn't dodge

5:40

the big existential questions he wants write

5:42

a book called Consciousness Concessions as a

5:44

romantic reductionist where he described his fascination

5:46

with see her, dish or death. The.

5:49

Jesuit priest and paleontologists who believe

5:51

the cosmos is continually evolving toward

5:54

greater complexity and ultimately to the

5:56

omega point when the universe becomes

5:58

aware of itself. What's

6:01

not that surprising that he'd go down

6:03

the psychedelic rabbit hole. And. Yet

6:05

Christoph Clock is in some ways the

6:07

last scientist you'd expect to get interested

6:10

in psychedelic. To explain this, I need

6:12

to go back to the nineteen eighties.

6:18

Justice. had been pretty much a

6:20

taboo subject. Soft

6:23

Lucy for any real scientists to

6:25

touch. But when M Arise and

6:27

other brain imaging technologies came along,

6:30

it was suddenly possible for the

6:32

first time to peer directly into

6:34

the brain. And one of the

6:37

world's most eminent scientists, Francis Crick,

6:39

the Nobel Laureate famous for his

6:41

discovery was James Watson of Dnase

6:44

Double Helix, announced a plan to

6:46

map and neural correlates of consciousness.

6:49

This launched a revolution. And

6:52

Christoph pricks brilliant young proteges from

6:54

Germany was there at the beginning.

6:56

Taking the first crack at this new science.

7:00

It was a match made in heaven. The.

7:05

Accepts while. Couric. Had no

7:07

use for heaven. He was a

7:09

devout dedicated atheist. Practice is very

7:12

famous. story of him to build

7:14

a new college after the war.

7:16

Church or college in their Cambridge

7:18

in honor of Winston Churchill was

7:20

all supposed to be forward facing

7:22

based on science and engineering and

7:24

mathematics. Amended decided to build a

7:26

chapel and he vehemently objected to

7:28

this plan publicly in a let

7:31

us Sir Winston Churchill himself or

7:33

back and said well no one

7:35

would be forced to go to

7:37

It would be privately paid. and

7:39

it would be open to everyone then

7:41

he sent in very famous episode he

7:44

sent him a check for twenty guinness

7:46

saying he proposed established a boss off

7:48

at at the to a certain call

7:51

it it would be open to anyone

7:53

it wouldn't be discriminatory and it would

7:55

be paid by privately mean some that

7:58

endless the that public conversation Francis

8:02

Crick died in 2004, but a few years

8:05

before that, I talked with him about his

8:07

work in this new science of consciousness. He

8:10

just published the astonishing hypothesis, the

8:12

scientific search for the soul, and

8:15

he was pretty clear that, in his view, there

8:17

was no such thing. The mind

8:19

is just a whole bunch of neurons and

8:22

synaptic connections and nothing more. Essentially

8:29

it's a very old idea. It goes back to the

8:31

Greeks. It says

8:33

essentially that all the feelings

8:35

you have and what you see and how

8:37

you feel pain and what you think about

8:39

yourself and your emotions and ambitions

8:42

and so on, basically the

8:44

behavior of the enormous number

8:46

of nerve cells in your head firing

8:49

away and interacting, and

8:51

of course the molecules associated with them. I

8:54

suppose to put it into focus, you

8:56

could contrast that with the view that

8:58

Descartes put forward that there was something

9:01

immaterial, some sort

9:03

of immaterial soul, which was necessary for

9:05

you to be conscious

9:07

and for you to be a person. Do

9:11

you think scientific knowledge will

9:13

gradually replace religious beliefs?

9:16

As we know more and more about how

9:18

our brains work, will

9:20

there be less reason to believe

9:22

in spiritual things? Well, first

9:24

of all, I wouldn't accept the word spiritual, but let's

9:27

forget that for the family. I don't want

9:29

to. Well, I think what you

9:31

call spiritual, I think, is various activities of

9:33

the brain, whereas when people use

9:35

spiritual, they like to think it's something very

9:37

special outside in some way, but let's forget

9:39

that. But

9:41

it sounds like a very kind of physical

9:44

description of what's going on, but it doesn't

9:46

really get at the mystery of what happens

9:48

in the mind. Well, of course,

9:50

it's the mystery we want to get at. The

9:52

problem is, is it approachable scientifically,

9:55

and if it is, how you go

9:57

about it? Mr.

10:00

O'Connor, I have taken this, maybe

10:02

we have some tools and at least we can answer,

10:05

if not every question, about

10:08

ourselves much more than most people

10:10

would think. He knew at the time

10:12

we were still going to church, but we

10:14

got along fabulously well. Actually

10:16

Christophe's views were not quite as

10:18

reductionist as Crick assumed. We sort of

10:21

had this mental mentee, father-son relationship.

10:23

We got up famously well and we

10:25

decided sort of the implicit understanding

10:27

is not to go there. So

10:30

you can kind of agree to disagree. Yes. But

10:32

you said that as you became a

10:35

scientist, as you learned about the way

10:37

the brain works, the way consciousness works,

10:39

that essentially your old faith, your old

10:41

beliefs just didn't hold up. Yeah,

10:44

I don't think you need a supernatural

10:46

explanation in the sense an explanation that's

10:48

outside space and time,

10:50

like the conventional conceit of God.

10:54

I grew up with the idea of a

10:56

soul, that's a soul and the real Christophe

10:58

is the soul and once Christophe's body dies,

11:00

then the soul is going to be resurrected

11:02

in the Ash-O-Tone at the end of time.

11:04

Well, that doesn't really make any sense where

11:06

the souls were, where they were before. It's

11:08

only a finite number of souls. How does

11:10

the soul actually communicate with the body? How

11:12

does my soul make me do something or not

11:14

do something? None of that really coheres.

11:17

And so we don't think, I mean, scientists today, if

11:19

you think about consciousness, you don't think in those terms

11:21

anymore. Francis

11:32

Crick's reductionist views have shaped the

11:34

field of consciousness for the past

11:36

four decades. It's probably what

11:38

most neuroscientists believe today. In

11:41

fact, there's a mantra I've often heard. The

11:43

mind is what the brain does. And

11:46

for the scientists to study psychedelics, that

11:48

tends to be the starting point. And

11:50

yet, psychedelics are

11:52

famous precisely for conjuring up more

11:55

expansive views of consciousness, what

11:57

all the talk's like, of mind at large. Carl

12:00

Jung called cosmic consciousness. I

12:03

mean, you might be able to map the brain

12:05

activity during a psychedelic trap, but

12:07

does that really explain someone's mind-blowing

12:09

experience? It's a question

12:11

Christophe Koch wanted to understand, and

12:14

he knew the only way to do it was

12:17

to go tripping himself. I

12:20

know that you've used psilocybin.

12:22

I know you've used 5MeoDMT,

12:25

coded venom, or probably the synthetic version

12:27

of that. I'd love

12:29

to have you talk about your experiences

12:32

with each of those. I mean, psilocybin,

12:35

what happened when you had that? It's

12:38

a magical experience. In

12:40

both cases, I was outside in

12:42

nature. You

12:47

have this remarkable confirmation. It takes some

12:49

time, one or two hours, and then

12:51

suddenly, the

12:55

world just looks fundamentally different. Ah.

13:03

There's still a tree there, but the tree now

13:05

is, its colors

13:07

are enhanced, the motion is enhanced, you see

13:09

these motion trails, et cetera, but

13:12

everything is so much suffused with a

13:14

sense of connectedness, with

13:16

a sense of beauty, with a

13:19

sense of meaningfulness. Ah. You

13:23

can get totally lost, your attention, focus that

13:25

usually constantly shifts around, goes to your iPhone,

13:28

my site with my boss, and the thing I

13:30

had with my wife, and all of that. All

13:32

of that is gone. Your

13:34

sort of ego doesn't dissolve, but is greatly

13:36

reduced, so it's certainly an ego reduction, and

13:39

you're just focused on the outward world, and

13:41

you discover, or you rediscover, the

13:43

deep beauty of it. Particular

13:46

sort of organic, fractal patterns.

13:50

Blades of grass, the canopy of

13:52

the tree, I was, there was a

13:54

bench with moss, and it was moving about, and

13:56

it was just the most beautiful thing, and

13:58

it became totally overwhelming. by the beauty of

14:01

it. You

14:03

cry but you cry out of joy. You can

14:05

hear sort of the heartbeat of

14:08

the universe. You can actually hear it. You can actually listen

14:10

to it. It's right there. Boom,

14:13

boom, boom, boom. It's the most amazing thing

14:15

ever and the world is just transformed. It's

14:18

one of the most meaningful experiences I've ever had in

14:20

my life. So

14:25

this is the psilocybin experience you're talking about?

14:28

Yeah. So then, I think more

14:30

recently, you've tried 5Meo

14:33

DMT, this very powerful,

14:35

fast-acting psychedelic.

14:38

What happened there? That's

14:41

very different. In

14:44

a sense, I'm grateful I had this experience but

14:47

it's totally terrifying. I

14:57

had this remarkable experience. Some

15:00

people call it the non-dual experience. So I ended up

15:03

in this space. There

15:05

was a bright light of a warming

15:08

blue intensity and I don't know whether

15:12

space had disappeared, collapsed, sort of like

15:14

in a singularity. I couldn't

15:18

look away because there was no away. There

15:20

was no left, right. There was no up,

15:22

down. There was just this point

15:24

of unbearable lightness. There

15:26

was no ego. There was no

15:28

memory. There was

15:31

no Kristoff. There was no dreams. There was

15:33

no fear. There was no desire. There

15:36

simply was no I. I was

15:38

gone. I

15:42

was sitting there with eyes, you know, lotus feet, with eyes wide

15:45

open, being totally blind,

15:47

not seeing anything, not feeling anything, not

15:49

hearing anything. And

15:51

then the other thing, so there was a bright

15:54

light of a warming intensity, there was terror and

15:57

there was ecstasy. There Were three things.

16:00

I'd like tell Em Ecstasy. And

16:02

if you think about it, if you

16:04

go back and read fuck some of

16:06

the knowing cloud some of the mystical

16:08

literature when you think of what the

16:10

word awful full of off, when you're

16:13

supposed the in the presence of something

16:15

overwhelming you're full of off but all

16:17

itself is his combination of Tell I

16:19

and an. Ecstasy to

16:21

very strange thing. I

16:27

like it's last. There

16:30

was no time. It wasn't to

16:32

shock, it wasn't too long, wasn't it

16:34

off of was the first and scan

16:36

about how long as it can last

16:38

know that there was no time for

16:40

that sense. Time had come to start.

16:42

Complete stop so as know space, no

16:44

time know well nobody was just pure

16:46

consciousness. No

16:49

object of leave home and outside

16:51

point of view because I put

16:53

on this beautiful music by this

16:55

Estonian composer. am opt out spiegel

16:57

Him Speeder and this last awfully

16:59

nine minutes and the first thing

17:01

I realized about the external world.

17:04

I heard the ending of that caught. And.

17:14

How long does that lasted Eight and a

17:16

half minutes Weight this whole this whole experience

17:18

objective late was eight and have me from

17:20

the outside bothered with yes and then you

17:22

very quickly you know within five minutes at

17:24

me of cause you're completely confused I said

17:26

what I did I stripped naked I don't

17:29

I had a desire to get fed of

17:31

all my clothes I cried you know you

17:33

going to fetus position and cause it's so

17:35

you know. You've. Just Die is

17:37

psychologically speaking. I know you'll v bond you're

17:39

giving back to the host of her

17:41

living. So it's you. Know it's there are

17:43

two tabs you profoundly. In fact, that isn't

17:46

a single day. I don't think about this

17:48

experience which you strip naked, just stripped of

17:50

all your clothes. A. Yacht mean

17:53

after i came so because the first

17:55

you completely confused yeah I'm even not

17:57

use now contests coming back you realize.

18:00

There. Is an external world present? Yeah. And

18:02

then somehow it was oppressing me so I

18:04

just slipped off with and twenty second my

18:06

tie close into Solas lies and then you

18:08

know you're going to see to isn't you

18:11

cry And you tried. Oh it's it. You

18:13

try to reconnect. I'm I'm as indeed. Someone.

18:15

Gave me something to eat because he says

18:17

this is good, this helps you center does

18:19

to eat something conceal the taste of it

18:21

it's. Would.

18:24

You wanna do this again? No. No,

18:27

I. Mean it as it's a

18:29

it's a near death experience. It's totally

18:31

terrifying and sometimes I'm glad I did

18:33

it because it's an experience. Sets of

18:35

coffee near death experiences pretty I don't.

18:37

typically happens on the battlefield are operating

18:39

table when people us about to suffocate

18:42

a down or something. Yeah.

18:44

It's it's not something you wanna

18:46

experience again now. Do.

18:48

You feel like you came to some

18:50

new understanding of what tests means or

18:52

how you might sort of approach deaths

18:55

in a teacher. A totally

18:57

lost my fear of death. Which. Was

18:59

never suitably pronounced. Yeah. Nine, I'm gonna die

19:01

And I'm gonna. I don't wanna die at

19:04

I'd Now I've when expense life but once

19:06

it will happen. Jordan. That's. Okay,

19:09

So. When it come back to where

19:11

we started by talking about your your

19:13

religious upbringing, the search for the divide

19:15

among you. Wanted to see the burning

19:17

bush which never happened earlier. Is this

19:19

a burning bush Bill and I know

19:22

it's more like a naked singularity and

19:24

the burning. Of course there was no

19:26

booming voice so I did not have

19:28

what some people have a nice when

19:30

a minute see Jesus. Oh on the

19:32

experience. Whatever their religious upbringing is, I

19:35

did not have that. Your whole life

19:37

you've been yearning for. Something.

19:39

Larger, larger, meaning, some sense of the order.

19:41

The universe did any that come through for

19:43

you. Know what?

19:45

I guess what? What you realize it's

19:48

of it comes time says is in

19:50

his Tuck Taco logo. Philosophical said: once

19:52

you understand the meaning of life, you

19:54

don't talk about it anymore. Because.

19:57

you will understand the meaning of

19:59

life in living life, that is

20:01

the meaning of life. There's

20:11

a reason we call experiences like

20:14

these, mind-blowing. They're outside our normal

20:16

understanding of how the mind works.

20:19

You could say, yeah, this is just

20:21

what the brain does when you ingest

20:23

a psychedelic molecule, to get strange sensations

20:25

and all kinds of wonderful and terrifying

20:27

visions. But for a

20:29

scientist like Christoph Koch, this isn't just

20:31

mental theory. It's

20:34

evidence. Coming

20:37

back to your work as a scientist, then, you've

20:39

been studying consciousness, basically your

20:41

whole professional life, trying to understand the

20:43

science of this. Does

20:46

that change anything about how you understand consciousness

20:48

or how the brain works or anything like

20:50

that? Well,

20:52

so once again reaffirms the primacy

20:54

of consciousness, because in that

20:56

space there was no world, there were no object,

20:58

there wasn't even a body. There was nothing except

21:01

for consciousness. So you have to start with consciousness,

21:03

which is very different from the conventional point of

21:05

view, which is also different from the way I

21:07

used to start, for example, with my work from

21:09

Francis Crick. You assume there's a brain. You

21:12

start with physics or biology or neuroscience. And

21:14

then you point at some feature of the

21:16

brain, 40 hertz or this part of the

21:18

brain or those neurons. You say, well, those

21:20

are the ones that are involved in consciousness.

21:23

Then, of course, you get to this hard

21:25

problem. Why these neurons are not those? Why

21:27

40 hertz oscillation or 30 hertz oscillation? But

21:29

here, once again, this reaffirms the point of view. You've got

21:32

to start with consciousness. Okay, so I'm trying to come back

21:34

to sort of how... What can

21:36

we learn about this from... Well, I

21:38

mean, are you... I mean, of course,

21:40

the standard neuroscience model is the brain

21:43

generates consciousness. Fireworks

21:45

in the brain, that's what creates this

21:47

conscious experience. Are you saying that's

21:49

not what you believe anymore? No.

21:52

I mean, are you slightly different language? Because

21:54

I've learned to be careful. The brain, of

21:56

course, is a physical substrate of consciousness. And

21:59

what this... drug did. It went to

22:01

various receptors such as these famous serotonin

22:04

2A receptor and then it did

22:06

something that we have right now

22:08

absolutely no understanding of. For

22:11

MIMO striking, you have this radical experience

22:13

like I had which is not uncommon

22:16

under this 5-MUR and DMT also called

22:18

the TODE. So you expect some radical

22:20

change in the underlying neural basis which

22:23

so far we haven't quite seen. So

22:26

we're trying to still come

22:28

to grips with this given this radical

22:30

change in your perspective during some of these psychoactive

22:33

substances, you would expect an equally

22:35

radical change at the level of

22:37

the brain. So it sounds like

22:39

you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong here, that clearly

22:42

there is efficacy in psychedelics, psilocybin

22:44

say, to treat depression. There are

22:46

lots of clinical trials that suggest

22:49

that we still don't really

22:51

know why. That's entirely correct. But of

22:53

course, we also still don't know why lots

22:55

of other things like deep brain stimulation. Even

22:57

Parkinson's, one of them, it's a very popular

23:00

technique you put in these stimulators in your

23:02

brain, you know, it's a serious brain surgery

23:04

operation and they seem to

23:06

relieve the trauma. Why does it work?

23:09

There are also some hypotheses but we

23:11

don't know. So typically if you look

23:13

at medical history, therapy almost always comes

23:15

before a detailed understanding of why this

23:18

actually works. That's why I'm so excited

23:20

about mRNA, vaccines, etc. because that is

23:22

based on a rational mechanistic causal understanding

23:25

of molecular biology. We're very far away

23:27

of that in the brain because the

23:29

brain is the most complex piece of

23:31

active matter in the known universe. So

23:34

it's going to take us a while to get to that

23:36

level of understanding. That's

23:46

Christoph Paulson, the pioneering neuroscientist at

23:48

the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

23:56

I'm Steve Paulson. And I'm Anne Strangamps.

24:00

up an unlikely origin story

24:02

of psychedelic research, not in a

24:04

lab, but an ancient Tudor manor

24:06

on the edge of an English

24:08

fen where the daughter of

24:10

an eccentric British aristocratic family grew up

24:13

and later jump-started research into altered states

24:15

of mind. Amanda

24:17

Fielding is in her 80s now. We'll

24:20

have her story next. On to

24:22

the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio

24:26

and PRX. If

24:32

you want to get a sense

24:34

of the current state of research into

24:36

psychedelics, one of the big international conferences is a good place

24:38

to begin. It's

24:49

2022 and I'm in Harlem just

24:51

outside Amsterdam at one of the

24:54

major European conferences on psychedelics. 1,100

25:01

people are packed in here waiting to hear from

25:03

some of the key players in the field. When

25:20

histories of the modern psychedelic renaissance are

25:22

written years from now, Amanda

25:24

Fielding will be one of the more colorful

25:27

characters. She's

25:32

what you might call the godmother of

25:34

the European psychedelic renaissance. An

25:46

eccentric British aristocrat with a

25:48

rich history of self-experimentation, it

25:50

was Amanda Fielding who helped keep psychedelic research

25:53

alive during the long years when it was

25:55

banned. I've

25:57

been into psychedelics for a very long time.

26:00

long time. I was introduced

26:02

to them in 1965 and then in 1966 I

26:04

met a Dutch scientist of exceptional

26:12

insight and we

26:15

became close friends, lovers and

26:17

worked together for the next 30 or

26:20

so years. And

26:23

so actually what we did with

26:25

ILSD, there was whatever the stones or

26:27

the Beatles paying in Hyde Park which

26:29

was half a mile away and we

26:31

were there doing our studies in psychedelics

26:35

and different levels of consciousness and

26:37

that was just so exciting. What

26:40

was it that made you decide that this

26:42

is what you wanted to do with your

26:44

life, to study psychedelics? Well I

26:47

suppose my background was

26:50

very formative. I

26:52

grew up on the edge of a mall

26:55

in an old Tudor hunting

26:57

lodge surrounded by three moats.

26:59

Three moats and three towers.

27:02

Ancient, beautiful but totally isolated.

27:05

So I moved

27:07

around as a child with no one

27:09

to play with. Except for her family's

27:11

friends. My father's family were close friends

27:13

of William James and

27:15

all the suxie used to visit

27:17

my grandmother and stay

27:19

talking all night. Wow.

27:23

It was, she says, a perfect

27:25

atmosphere for developing an interest in

27:27

mysticism. Because as a child in

27:30

a very beautiful setting, nothing

27:33

much to do but dream about a future,

27:36

I had lots of mystical experiences as most

27:38

children do. When you say, I'm just curious about

27:40

what kind of mystical experiences did you have when you

27:42

were a child? Well there

27:44

was a part of the garden which was

27:47

a mound with the moat surrounding it,

27:49

a very secretive part. And then my

27:51

childhood fantasy, I think I was probably about

27:53

five, six, seven, this

27:56

god figure lived. And

27:58

I used to have kind of mystical

28:00

experiences with him. I

28:03

think a lot of children slip in and

28:05

out of mystical-like experiences

28:07

much more easily than we

28:09

think. And

28:11

I was always fascinated by the mystical

28:13

experience. It was always my passion. At

28:20

16, that passion led her to set out

28:22

on a journey to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka,

28:24

where her godfather was a Buddhist monk. She

28:27

hitchhiked as far as the Syrian border and

28:30

spent time living with Bedouin. Then

28:32

back in the UK, she studied

28:34

classical Arabic, comparative religion, mysticism, and

28:37

she discovered drugs. Then

28:40

at 16, I was introduced to cannabis. I

28:43

thought, this is amazing. And then at

28:45

22, I

28:47

was introduced to LSD. And I

28:50

thought, well, this is absolutely amazing, because

28:52

it kind of creates the ground from

28:54

which you can more easily have

28:57

a mystic experience, but it's not a way

28:59

of life, I felt. In

29:03

the 1970s, Amanda Fielding became

29:06

briefly famous, or infamous, for

29:08

her interest in trepanation. That's

29:11

the ancient practice of drilling a hole

29:13

in the skull in the hope of

29:15

inducing a higher state of consciousness, which

29:18

she did on herself. Now I just

29:20

have to clean up and wait and

29:22

see what happens. But then electric dental

29:24

drill while filming the entire process. Making

29:26

the film of a sort of mantra to

29:29

detach myself from the natural reluctance

29:31

I felt. But her real

29:33

lasting interest has always been the science

29:35

of psychedelics. I

29:38

mean, I realized the

29:40

benefits of psychedelics in 1966.

29:43

And that's when I decided I'd devote my

29:45

life to understanding

29:49

their underlying mechanism so that we

29:51

can use them as

29:53

useful tools. So

29:56

prohibition, which one saw closing in

29:58

on one, was... obviously,

30:01

a disastrous mistake which was

30:03

doomed to complete failure and

30:05

immense human suffering. So

30:09

I saw the end of the 60s

30:11

as the only way really out of

30:13

the taboo to overcome the taboo was

30:16

undertaking the very best scientific

30:18

research to demonstrate the advantages

30:21

they had. For those years

30:23

during prohibition, you must have

30:25

felt like this lone voice in the wilderness. No

30:28

one wanted to do these studies. No one wanted to

30:30

pay for the study. And the danger is your children,

30:32

because then I had two children. Parents

30:37

wouldn't necessarily want their children to

30:39

play with people, etc., etc.

30:41

And bank managers wouldn't give you an

30:43

overdraft. One was considered a weirder

30:47

and maybe a dangerous weirder.

30:49

And the Daily Mail later called

30:52

me Lady Mindbender and things like

30:54

that, which I wasn't at all. When

30:59

did that change for you? Very

31:02

slowly. I was

31:04

compelled to follow this because

31:07

I felt it was true. To

31:09

begin with, I tried to do it through

31:12

finding scientists and doctors to work with

31:14

for 30 years. It's a long time,

31:16

from 66 to 96.

31:19

I did it

31:21

trying to influence influences or

31:23

do research with scientists or do

31:26

it through artworks because I was

31:29

an artist. And then I thought

31:32

as a conceptual artwork,

31:35

I need to become a foundation because

31:37

this is a single female without

31:40

letters after my name. How

31:43

can I train global blood policy and

31:45

open the doors to psychedelic research? But

31:48

suddenly I got the idea, well, if I become a

31:50

foundation, which in England is relatively easy,

31:52

equals a thousand pounds. And

31:55

I liked the word foundation. I didn't

31:57

know you were meant to have money if you were

31:59

a foundation. I became a

32:01

foundation. I

32:12

did a job. I dreamed of the

32:15

root of the dead. The

32:18

root of the dead is the

32:20

short break. Thank

32:22

you. This

32:30

means Amanda Fielding. It's worth reading that

32:32

the psychedelic renaissance is usually told as

32:35

an American story, revolving around

32:37

people like Gordon Lawson and Timothy

32:39

Leary, and more recently Roland Griffiths.

32:42

But some of the pioneering research has also been

32:44

done in the UK, and a

32:46

lot of it funded by Amanda Fielding's foundation.

32:49

For example, one of her scientific collaborators is

32:51

another guy at this conference, David

32:54

Nunt. I mean, I'm a

32:56

piece of the story, but the beginning of the

32:58

new science and I can't stand the writing

33:00

of people I've worked with, James. David

33:02

Nunt is the neuropsychopharmacologist who led

33:05

the Center for Psychedelic Research at

33:07

Imperial College, London. He

33:09

sees his work as part of a long lineage of

33:11

scientists who've studied psychoactive substances. Thank

33:13

you, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Thank

33:15

you, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Thank

33:17

you, sir. Thank you, sir.

33:20

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank

33:22

you, sir. Thank you, sir. In

33:25

2009, Nunt created an uproar when he

33:27

told an interviewer that LSD and ecstasy

33:29

are less dangerous than alcohol. If you

33:31

tell them that ecstasy is a class

33:33

A delivery harmful when everyone knows

33:35

it isn't, then why should you

33:38

trust the government on anything? Not

33:40

surprisingly, that got him fired from his

33:42

post as the British government's chief drug advisor.

33:45

But it gives you a sense of his commitment to this

33:47

research. So

33:52

I use drugs to explore brain function, and

33:55

I've probably given more different kinds of drugs

33:57

to human beings and anyone alive. And

34:00

there's a class of drug that is used either

34:02

legally or illegally that I haven't studied in humans.

34:05

We started off, and this

34:07

was Amanda's theory that psychedelics would increase brain

34:09

blood flow. And the first

34:11

study we did showed that they didn't think that they

34:13

decreased blood flow, but in one or two specific reasons

34:15

in the brain, which we now know to be part

34:18

of the default blood network. And it was

34:20

completely paradoxical. How could people

34:23

have these wonderful visions, have these experiences

34:25

of floating out of the

34:27

scanner, going to another dimension, going to God?

34:30

How could that happen without the brain being turned on? In

34:33

fact, we were so bemused by that first result

34:35

that we repeated the whole thing, got exactly

34:37

the same results, and then realized we'd

34:40

actually discovered something really important that these drugs don't turn

34:42

on the brain. They actually turn off the brain. But

34:44

they turn off the parts of the brain which keep

34:47

the brain doing what it's always done. And you turn those bits

34:49

of the brain off, the brain can do it. It

34:51

can run free. It can do its own thing. Just

34:53

like taking a conductor away from an orchestra or

34:55

taking a school teacher away from a class

34:58

of kids. And they all do their own thing.

35:00

And from that, some

35:02

interesting observations emerged. You're basically saying you're

35:05

shutting off certain parts of the brain so

35:07

you can access other parts. Yeah,

35:09

you're switching off the control centers of the

35:11

brain so that the brain can do other

35:13

things because the brain is an extremely efficient

35:16

organ. It's 10 times more efficient than any

35:18

known computer. And

35:21

that efficiency comes at a cost. It comes at the cost

35:23

of actually being

35:25

repetitive rather than flexible. And

35:27

what psychedelics do is they break down the processes

35:29

that keep you doing the same thing, thinking the

35:32

same things, and allow connections to

35:34

be made that haven't been allowed since you

35:36

were a baby, really. And

35:38

those connections allow you to see things

35:40

that you've forgotten and to come up with

35:42

solutions to problems that you've not been able to solve and

35:45

think differently about yourself and your life and

35:47

your family. Because it

35:49

turns out when you use them in people with

35:51

depression, people can come out with a different perspective

35:54

on their past and a new way

35:56

of thinking about the future, which is much more positive than it

35:58

used to be. Wonder drugs is

36:00

what you're describing here. I mean, is that fair

36:02

to say? I think the

36:05

use of psilocybin in resistant depression is a

36:07

wonder. I mean, our study showed that

36:09

a single dose of psilocybin is the most

36:12

powerful beneficial effect

36:14

in resistant depression of any treatment that's

36:16

ever been given. Certainly a single dose

36:18

is equivalent to three or four weeks of

36:20

easy to ease over. It is truly

36:22

wonderful, the impact that these

36:24

drugs can have, particularly on people who failed on

36:27

more conventional treatments. So

36:32

it seems like there's some big mysteries as to why psilocybin is so

36:34

effective. Therapeutically, I mean,

36:36

is it changing the brain in

36:39

some way, rewiring? Is it the

36:41

experience, this remarkable experience that then

36:43

people reflect on and somehow it

36:46

changes them? Yeah,

36:50

I think all of the way above. If you're

36:52

at the press conference,

36:56

who's been locked in a set of ruminations

36:58

about your worthlessness and your hopelessness, and

37:01

there's no hope for the future, a

37:03

trip that can show you your brain can change

37:05

in itself can be empowering because you realize

37:07

you are capable of change. That's the

37:09

first thing. But I think there's more to it than that. I

37:12

think for some people, they do get to understand why they're depressed.

37:16

One of the things we're beginning to get clearer is that there's a

37:18

lot of things that are going on in the world. Why

37:21

they're depressed? One of the things

37:23

we're beginning to get clearer is that a

37:25

lot of depressive thinking is about trying

37:28

to stop you dealing with the event.

37:31

It's kind of filling your mind so you

37:33

don't have to confront the problem. You've been abused by

37:35

your father, but you don't want to confront that. So

37:38

you keep thinking about yourself as being a bad person.

37:41

And you know, vividly remember one of our

37:43

patients who said during his trip, he suddenly

37:45

realized why he was depressed because he saw

37:47

his father abusing him, and

37:50

it all made sense. Why would

37:52

the trip kick in that

37:54

memory or that realization? Because

37:57

he has been suppressing that and repressing it.

38:00

you cannot push things back under a psychedelic, because

38:02

the bits of the brain which do the pushing

38:04

back are not working so well.

38:06

So you can access thoughts,

38:08

memories, facts that

38:11

you couldn't access. So

38:13

those kind of insights as to why people at the

38:15

press can be really useful in helping people move on,

38:17

because they can get closure. Can

38:20

you put the current psychedelic renaissance

38:22

in some historical perspective? I mean,

38:25

how does this compare to what we had in the

38:27

60s? I mean, are we on

38:29

the brink of a psychedelic revolution here? No, I think we

38:31

are on the brink of a revolution in terms of therapy.

38:33

This is the biggest innovation.

38:36

It is the most important new

38:40

wave of therapy in psychiatry in the

38:42

last 50 years. Until

38:44

now, everything we've done has been using

38:46

drugs, which are modifications of drugs which

38:48

are discovered in the 50s. So

38:51

it's hugely important for psychiatry. And

38:53

it's even more important now than most

38:56

people might hope for, because most

38:58

traditional pharmaceutical companies have given up on the

39:00

brain. They taste too hard to find new

39:02

treatments. So it's exciting that

39:04

there is help for patients who are getting

39:06

better from traditional medicine. That's up to about

39:09

a third of patients. But of

39:11

course, the sciences move on enormously. And

39:14

science is gonna understand autoconsistence. I

39:17

don't think you can understand autoconsistence without

39:19

psychedelics. So that's a whole new

39:21

dimension of what psychedelics are bringing, not just a third,

39:23

you see, but a country of physicists. That's

39:28

David Nutt, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at

39:31

Imperial College London and

39:33

President of the European Brain Council.

39:42

So we've heard from some of the pioneers who

39:45

helped launch the psychedelic renaissance. But if

39:47

you noticed, we began with a question that

39:49

we still haven't answered. For

39:51

all the reasons we've been talking about, we

39:53

began with a question that we still haven't answered. For

39:56

all the research, all the therapeutic promise,

40:00

exactly happens in the

40:02

brain when it's tripping. In

40:04

a minute, British researcher Robin Carr-Harderas

40:06

explains his theory of the entropic

40:08

brain. You're listening to

40:11

Luminous, our series on the history and

40:13

philosophy of psychedelics. I'm Steve

40:15

Paulson. And I'm Anne Strain-Champs. You'll

40:18

find more interviews in our Luminous podcast

40:20

feed and on our website at

40:24

ttbook.org-luminous. And

40:26

that's for the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin

40:29

Public Radio and

40:31

PRX. We

40:36

asked a question at the beginning of this hour. Can

40:39

neuroscience explain what happens in a

40:42

psychedelic experience? I

40:44

mean, if you could somehow peel back

40:47

the skull and look at someone's brain

40:49

while they're on acid or mushrooms, could

40:52

you watch the trip happening in real time? The

40:55

answer is yes. That's

40:59

what British neuroscientist Robin Carr-Harderas has been doing

41:01

for the past 15 years. He

41:04

got into psychedelic science after meeting Amanda

41:06

Fielding, who introduced him to David Knott

41:09

at Imperial College London. And

41:11

since then, Robin has done pioneering

41:13

studies of psilocybin using brain imaging,

41:16

which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.

41:20

I'm just trying to imagine your test

41:22

subjects in an fMRI machine. I

41:25

mean, you have to be absolutely still, and

41:27

they're having this mind-blowing experience as you are

41:29

looking at what's happening in their brain while

41:31

all this is going on. Sounds

41:33

crazy. Well, it

41:36

does. But it can be quite a

41:38

thrill. And you know, we're safeguarding against

41:40

anyone freaking out, having their first psychedelic

41:42

experience and then having it in such

41:45

a... A

41:47

confined environment. Yeah, yeah. And

41:49

so it worked. So

41:51

were there any big surprises as

41:53

you started looking at this brain

41:56

imaging? Yes, Because

41:58

there wasn't much to go on at that time. Hi

42:00

that been some early positron emission

42:02

tomography another son see term pet

42:04

imaging but not much and the

42:06

message with Hannah crude so he

42:08

would seem checked in our psilocybin.

42:11

with the scanner running we would

42:13

look subsequently look at takes in

42:15

the brain blood flow and see

42:17

that it was dropping was dropping

42:19

whose trust and some other was

42:21

actually reduced brain activity. that was

42:23

reduce brain blood flow because it

42:26

isn't quite the ones who on

42:28

relationship between blood flow and brain

42:30

activity. I know it sounds like

42:32

to add detail but it's not

42:34

really a minor one. it's had

42:36

sick quite important. And so

42:38

is one way to think about.

42:40

This is the way our prefrontal cortex

42:43

works. Extent of it acts like a

42:45

filter in a way, so it's

42:47

blocks out certain things that we might

42:49

otherwise sense from our unconscious and others.

42:52

this phrase, the executive function. For

42:54

taxes what allows us to move around

42:56

the world and sort of acts out

42:59

and I guess the question is what

43:01

happens when that system is not know.

43:04

It's not, it's Holly knocked out,

43:06

but it is this regulated so

43:08

the scrambled in it's functioning. It

43:10

is reasonable. What You say that

43:12

this is. The. Locus of

43:14

this is cortex and it's high

43:16

level cortex in the prefrontal cortex

43:18

is typically a part of the

43:21

brain that we think of is

43:23

massively expanded. In humans, people has

43:26

a certain clarity. A vision under

43:28

psychedelic is sort of suggests that

43:30

may be siemenses over shots. And.

43:33

we did to Moss analytical thinking

43:35

and if he just relax that.

43:38

There. Can be this

43:40

broader clearer season. So.

43:42

You've come up with this theory.

43:44

What you call the and tropic

43:47

brain that psychedelic so sort of

43:49

activates this tendency towards I guess

43:51

what you call less regulation, more

43:53

disorder? Is it fair to set

43:55

yet? Psychedelic. seemed

43:57

see increase the already.

44:00

Very complex quality of

44:02

brain activity. During normal

44:04

weight and consciousness, they

44:06

lifted up and say

44:09

another synonym for entropy.

44:11

These are all synonyms:

44:13

complexity, diversity, richness, even

44:16

his information. More information,

44:18

More information. Which. Is

44:20

fascinating because you would think that again.

44:22

going back to the cortex. You think

44:25

that this very analytical part of the

44:27

brain that that's the information processing partners

44:29

are saying actually may be that keeps

44:31

out. And from Asia. Is.

44:34

Sort of suggests that. Although.

44:36

Our information processing during

44:38

normal waking consciousness seems

44:40

very impressive than are

44:42

analytical skills or impresses.

44:45

There. Can be a sort of.

44:47

Compression. As other aspects

44:49

of information held within the

44:51

system things like memory emotion.

44:54

I'm referring to these things

44:56

because these are the things

44:58

that seem see a rise

45:00

in the much under under

45:02

a psychedelic that people have

45:04

insights. Emotion when sites Person

45:07

when sites. Remember.

45:09

things sometimes very remote and

45:11

then shouted. You've. Described as

45:13

as a reset like the brain gets

45:15

jumbled up, it's knocked out of it's

45:18

all way of thinking and it's i

45:20

don't know new neural pathways or or

45:22

or end up. Does. Pretty

45:24

good evidence for that Now

45:26

concrete evidence in terms of

45:29

anatomy of the sprouting as

45:31

new components as neuro, no

45:33

communication, fire, exposure to psychedelics

45:35

something refer to sum up

45:37

the genesis. Is the brain

45:40

actually getting rewired than. Yes,

45:42

it is likely is at

45:44

least as an opportunity for

45:46

rewiring. And there is this

45:48

paradox around plasticity that in

45:50

and of itself it's not

45:52

necessarily a good thing. you

45:55

could use that window of

45:57

malleability or plasticity for sort

45:59

of. Ethically questionable ends

46:01

we could think of things

46:04

like the history of military

46:06

uses, psychedelic surround things like

46:09

mind control. But in psychedelic

46:11

therapy it's about opening of

46:14

creating this openness, this opportunity

46:16

for realize a sin self

46:19

realization done in a very

46:21

nurturing context. So there's some

46:24

fascinating evolutionary questions here. Me

46:26

one is just why would.

46:29

The. Human brain even respond

46:31

to psychedelic substances. let's

46:34

say, mushrooms place with

46:36

psilocybin. We find nature.

46:39

Them. In studies coevolved the human brain

46:41

with mushrooms with this is an accident

46:43

that are ancient ancestors happened to eat

46:45

these and they had these remarkable experiences

46:47

and in you think about that can

46:50

thank you. I do a bit and

46:52

there are theories about sits. Terence Mckenna

46:54

my same asleep had the Circles Stone

46:56

Dates Theory of Consciousness in the Evolution

46:59

of Consciousness This talk about that her

47:01

mom I mean his theory was that.

47:04

Actually consuming mushrooms and maybe

47:06

some other psychedelic substances that

47:08

essentially. Jump. Started human consciousness

47:10

yeah, modern him and then it's

47:13

a it's a fascinating idea. Really

47:15

exciting, spine chilling. Yet.

47:17

Some I'm not sold as I

47:19

just think that it's a bit

47:22

see psychedelic centric, even though it's

47:24

appealing and kind of fun. I

47:26

think probably what's more common is

47:28

the Earth was in a particular

47:31

climactic sort of state or or

47:33

mode. That was hard and it

47:35

required some serious. Ability

47:37

to deal with this hardship. In.

47:39

A thoughtful and fall seeing in

47:42

pubs inventive way. And it was

47:44

days early human see managed to

47:46

ride that period of high stress

47:48

and challenge that have survived. and

47:50

maybe they were the ones. he

47:53

had a bit more of the

47:55

serotonin to a or A services.

47:58

which is what psychedelic Exactly,

48:01

yeah. We know that with a

48:03

high degree of confidence now that these particular

48:06

receptors that kind of locks

48:08

that sit on neurons, brain

48:11

cells, and then the key comes

48:13

in which could be serotonin, an important

48:15

brain chemical, or it could be a

48:17

drug that hijacks and mimics

48:19

serotonin and works in the same

48:22

way as a key. And that's what psychedelics

48:24

seem to do. They're a kind of magic

48:26

in the broad sense key that comes in

48:28

and turns the lock. Why

48:31

are psychedelics so powerful?

48:34

Why can one trip literally

48:37

change someone's life? So to

48:39

answer that, I would feel again to

48:41

the serotonin system and these magic locks,

48:43

the 2A receptors. I

48:45

think that they're special receptors. Humans

48:48

have a lot of them. They

48:51

are disproportionately expressed

48:53

in cortex that humans have so much

48:56

of. And these 2A receptors

48:58

are especially prevalent at the highest level

49:00

of the already

49:02

high level aspect of brain, the cortex.

49:05

And so they're in these

49:08

regions of brain associated with

49:10

consciousness and species specific functions

49:12

like self-reflection, self-consciousness.

49:16

Why are they there is a really crucial

49:18

question and that can help us understand why

49:20

psychedelics are so profound in their action. And

49:23

my feeling is that they're there

49:25

for profundity in a sense. They're

49:27

there for fundamental shifts in

49:30

perspective. And it's only really with

49:32

fundamental shifts in perspective that you

49:35

can have fundamental shifts in behavior.

49:38

I think that's why they're there. That's

49:48

neuroscientist Robin Carhartt Harris,

49:50

previously At Imperial College London

49:52

and now director of the Psychedelics

49:54

Division at UC San Francisco. So.

50:03

After I'd done all these interviews, I thought

50:05

I had a pretty good sense of the

50:07

latest, thinking about the narrow sides of Psychedelic

50:09

Six. And then I started looking into the

50:12

work of Gould Dolan under a scientist at

50:14

Johns Hopkins University and it turns out she

50:16

has a very different idea of how psychedelic

50:19

change the brain. I

50:21

don't want it. looks the

50:23

entire Cecile does neuro imaging.

50:26

That you know just to mail it down

50:28

with. The problem is we're. Going

50:30

to a brain region and saying

50:32

oh, the lights up when we

50:35

get psychedelic now we understand that

50:37

this brain region. Where the set

50:39

of brain regions is responsible for

50:41

the psychedelic experience. I think the

50:43

main problem with that is revealed

50:46

if it's any. If we did,

50:48

It take. So. Here's an

50:50

organism that doesn't have a default.

50:53

Mode network. It doesn't have the

50:55

hypothalamus. It doesn't have. An

50:58

image gilad. it doesn't get. Any rain

51:00

region. And yeah, when you

51:02

give them and be a

51:05

me, it produces the same

51:07

prosocial behaviors. As when

51:09

you give it to a human rights

51:12

and says. What? That's telling

51:14

her is is that there

51:16

is a serotonin transporter. In

51:18

an Octopus brain And that

51:20

Sarah Times function. As a

51:22

in kotor of Sociology is so

51:24

old that even though our last

51:27

common ancestor with an octopus was

51:29

like six hundred and fifty million

51:32

years ago, right like we are

51:34

more closely related to a starfish.

51:37

Me: I to an octopus

51:39

and guess. Who

51:42

Americans and be A. Psychedelic

51:45

say is that been. Binding sites

51:48

which comes down to the molecular

51:50

level. So

51:52

many questions right? she gave em

51:54

Dia may to an octopus. Listen.

51:56

Octopus and ecstasy. even like the.

51:59

Arms. Well

52:01

you'll have to wait to find out

52:03

because that's in an upcoming episode and

52:05

are purchased. You're

52:12

Listen to Luminous Steve series on the

52:14

Science and Philosophy as second Alex. And

52:17

while we're waiting for the

52:19

lowdown on octopuses, there is

52:21

more online at Tt. Book

52:24

that org/luminous. To

52:26

the best of our knowledge is

52:28

produced in Madison, Wisconsin by Shannon.

52:30

Have three Kleiber Charles Monroe came

52:32

Antelope artist is years. Or

52:34

technical director and sound designer his

52:36

job Hart Kids with help from

52:39

Sarah Hopeful Additional music this weekend's

52:41

from High Angle not term, Psychedelic,

52:43

Pedestrians and Arvo Part additional footage

52:45

courtesy of Idea News and Demand

52:47

to see As and. I'm

52:50

Steve Paulson. And I man strain

52:52

champs.