Joe Rogan Experience #1121 - Michael Pollan

Joe Rogan 0:02 That quickly? Two? One? Boom, and we're live. Mr. Pollan, how are you?

Michael Pollan 0:08 Hey, good.

Joe Rogan 0:09 Poor sucker.

Michael Pollan 0:09 Good to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:10 Put the fist away. There you go.

Michael Pollan 0:11 Okay.

Joe Rogan 0:12 What's happening, man? How are you?

Michael Pollan 0:13 Uh, good. Good to be in LA.

Joe Rogan 0:14 Uh, good to have you here.

Michael Pollan 0:16 Thanks.

Joe Rogan 0:16 I've been a fan of your work for a long time, man, and I got really excited when I found out that you were writing a book on psychedelics. And, uh, um, I'm just, uh, I think it's a, an amazing subject, and I'm, I'm glad someone who's respected like yourself-

Michael Pollan 0:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:30 ... is getting it. It's a q- crackpot subject, right? It's one of those subjects where like, "Oh, no, Michael Pollan found drugs."

Michael Pollan 0:35 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:35 Like, "What's he doing?" (laughs) "He's having a crisis."

Michael Pollan 0:38 You know-

Joe Rogan 0:39 "He's out there doing mushrooms."

Michael Pollan 0:40 ... it was a bit re- it is a bit of a departure, I think, that there are people who were expecting another book on food or agriculture.

Joe Rogan 0:45 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 0:45 And, uh, were a little surprised. Um, but so far, people have been following me, you know, uh, who cared about food and ag, and they're, there's more overlap than I ever would've guessed.

Joe Rogan 0:54 I think you caught the perfect wave. I think your book is coming out right when John Hopkins Research Center-

Michael Pollan 1:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00 ... is starting to put out these, uh, studies on it. People are starting to recognize that MDMA has amazing results for post-traumatic stress disorder from veterans, and marijuana is becoming legal in more and more states. It's like you're catching this wave.

Michael Pollan 1:13 Yeah, and I didn't know that. I, you know, you never know where the culture's gonna be 'cause you start a book years before. And-

Joe Rogan 1:18 How long, uh, did you start it?

Michael Pollan 1:20 Well, I started the research in, uh, 2014. I wrote a piece for The New Yorker called The Trip Treatment, uh, which is online, um, and it was, um, my first foray into this work. I went down to Hopkins and spent a lot of time at NYU, and at the time, they were doing this really interesting trial where they were giving psilocybin to people with cancer diagnoses, many of whom were terminal. And that seemed like such a weird idea to me that I, I was curious to explore it, and I spent a lot of time talking to patients, many of whom were dying, uh, about how this single psyl- high-dose psilocybin experience, a guided psilocybin experience, and we should talk a little bit about how the guided changes things for, you know, it's not ... The, the image people have is popping some mushrooms in your mouth and maybe going to a concert or going to the beach, but this is a very d- controlled internal experience. Uh, completely reset these people's attitude toward death, and, and-

Joe Rogan 2:13 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 2:13 ... allowed them to die with equanimity, and, um, uh, and when these results were published, um, just last year, they found that, um, that th- in 80% of the people who had the session, uh, they had statistically significant reductions in standard measures of depression and anxiety. It was one of the most effective psychiatric interventions that these psychiatrists had ever seen, uh, which is amazing, a single experience, and that a molecule could change the contents of your head to the, to the extent that you would rethink your mortality. Uh, and so as I began talking to these people and hearing their stories, w- many of which were just remarkable, I realized, you know, this is not just an article. There's a book here, and there's so much, uh, you know ... There are two kinds of articles you write as a journalist. One is you f- you, you're sick of the topic by the time you finish and you can't wait to be done, and the other is, "God, I just scratched the surface," and this was one of those.

Joe Rogan 3:12 Did you have any experiences personally with psychedelics before you wrote this book?

Michael Pollan 3:16 Very limited. Um, I, for some peculiar reason, never did psychedelics in college. They just weren't around. I went to the-

Joe Rogan 3:23 They weren't around?

Michael Pollan 3:24 No, I went to the wrong school.

Joe Rogan 3:25 (laughs) Which school did you go to?

Michael Pollan 3:26 Uh ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:27 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 3:27 And I, it was like-

Joe Rogan 3:27 (clears throat)

Michael Pollan 3:27 ... a very kind of progressive, hippie school. I went to Bennington College in Vermont.

Joe Rogan 3:31 Oh.

Michael Pollan 3:32 And there were, there was LSD there before me and there was LSD after me-

Joe Rogan 3:35 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 3:35 ... but I was in this little wrinkle in time where there was only alcohol. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:39 I need a cup. There you go. Thanks, Jamie.

Michael Pollan 3:41 So, um-

Joe Rogan 3:41 That's crazy, only alcohol in college.

Michael Pollan 3:44 And I had n- so I had no experience with psychedelics, uh, until I was in my late 20s, and then it was, um, pretty mild. I had a couple mushroom experiences that would, I now describe as aesthetic experiences, right? Ones wh-

Joe Rogan 3:58 Small doses, one gram-

Michael Pollan 3:59 Yeah, they were-

Joe Rogan 3:59 ... or something like that?

Michael Pollan 4:00 Yeah, I d- I never even measured. It was probably one gram. Um, so I'd never had a big trip, and, um, and there was another reason. I was, I, I didn't feel psychologically sturdy enough.

Joe Rogan 4:10 Mm.

Michael Pollan 4:10 And I came of age just when the, the, the scare stories about psychedelics were everywhere in the culture, you know? They would scramble your chromosomes. You'd stare at the sun till you went blind. Um, you know, the person who, that took all the orange sunshine and thought he was an orange for the rest of his life. You know, these stories were out there.

Joe Rogan 4:28 Right.

Michael Pollan 4:29 And I was afraid to. I was just afraid.

Joe Rogan 4:31 Yeah. Well, that's, it's, it's not an unfounded fear.

Michael Pollan 4:37 Oh, no. Um, no, people can really get into psychological trouble. I think it's-

Joe Rogan 4:40 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 4:40 ... really important that people understand that, uh, it's a, it's a profound, powerful, destabilizing experience. And depending on your mindset and your, and the situation in which you take it, set and setting, it can be, um, ecstatic or horrific. And, um, and, you know, there are many people who had a series of very good trips and then they have that one bad trip.

Joe Rogan 5:03 Hmm.

Michael Pollan 5:04 And, uh, so yeah, I, and I had heard enough stories about that, um, to, to stay away. Uh, so, so discovering this kinda later in life, uh, you know, I was th- uh, certainly not something I planned on or expected.

Joe Rogan 5:19 It's a great tragedy, in m- in my opinion, that our culture has demonized these substances and put them in this category of forbidden fruit to the point where you, y- you're, you're so nervous about doing them. You have to get them from some shady character. You have to-

Michael Pollan 5:35 And you don't know what you're getting.

Joe Rogan 5:37 Yeah, you have to do them in the, you know, in secrecy. You have to be-

Michael Pollan 5:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:40 ... really careful. But we also, at the same time, are aware of all these incredibly positive benefits from them.

Michael Pollan 5:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:46 And that if we just had professional places where we could go to, I mean, we have these rehab facilities that are available for people trying to kick opiates and people-

Michael Pollan 5:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:55 ... trying to get their life together, but if we had something similar, like a psychedelic facility with registered professionals who understand this and who could evaluate you psychologically, understand if you're perhaps taking medication that would adversely affect your trip.

Michael Pollan 6:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:12 Try to find out who you are, like where, what state you're at in your life. Have you had any experiences before? Maybe we should put you on a low-dose THC-

Michael Pollan 6:21 Right, let's-

Joe Rogan 6:21 ... edible-

Michael Pollan 6:21 ... let's ramp it up, uh, slowly.

Joe Rogan 6:22 Let's, yeah. Let's try something small-

Michael Pollan 6:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:24 ... and see how you react to it.And then I think... I don't think people, uh, like myself or s- pot smokers, or people who have done psychedelics, I don't think we do it any favors either, because we're always trying to pretend that there is no adverse effects. And that there's like... You know, people, when they get into something, they want everybody to do it, and I've been guilty of this myself. They push it.

Michael Pollan 6:43 Yeah, people tend... There's a, there's a occupational hazard of, uh, of irrational exuberance when-

Joe Rogan 6:49 Yes.

Michael Pollan 6:49 You know, this is what happened to Timothy Leary, right?

Joe Rogan 6:51 Yes. Yes.

Michael Pollan 6:51 I mean, people s- they... People have an amazing experience and the first thing they think is, "Everybody's gotta do this."

Joe Rogan 6:56 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 6:57 But it isn't for everybody. And I think you're absolutely right. I think that... Look, there are risks, but these are not drugs of abuse.

Joe Rogan 7:04 Right.

Michael Pollan 7:04 They're non-addictive. They're anti-addictive. The first thought after having a big psychedelic trip is not, "When can I do this again?"

Joe Rogan 7:11 Right.

Michael Pollan 7:11 Uh...

Joe Rogan 7:12 It's, "Whoa."

Michael Pollan 7:12 It's, "Whoa." Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:13 I mean, the last one I had, I was like, "I don't know if I can do that again."

Michael Pollan 7:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:16 That was my experience.

Michael Pollan 7:16 I've felt that way every time.

Joe Rogan 7:17 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:17 It's like childbirth or how, uh, how we hear tri- childbirth is.

Joe Rogan 7:20 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:20 You, you can't imagine doing it again, and eventually you do, you do do it again. Um, so I do think that we have to find the proper context in which to do it, and I, I think your point is really important. We need trained guides. Um, the experience is completely different when it's guided.

Joe Rogan 7:38 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:38 Um, because you have a sense of safety. There's someone looking out for your body while your-

Joe Rogan 7:43 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:43 ... mind is traveling. And this allows you to essentially surrender to the experience. And most bad trips, in my experience, are the result of people resisting what is happening. Their ego is dissolving and it's scary.

Joe Rogan 7:57 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:57 It feels like a death.

Joe Rogan 7:58 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 7:58 And they try to stop it, and that can make you very anxious. And so all the guides I worked with and interviewed, they were all like, "Relax your mind and float downstream. If you see a door, open it. If you see a staircase, go down it. Um, uh, surrender. Trust and let go." And this kind of advice changes everything. And the chances of a bad trip, I think, in a guided situation are substantially less, because they know how to help you deal with it and, and what to tell you when it's happening. Um, so I, I do think that, um, by, by forcing these drugs underground and into this very kind of unregulated use, um... There were not... Uh, reports of bad trips were much fewer before the moral panic about LSD in 1965.

Joe Rogan 8:48 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 8:48 And when it was still legal, um, you didn't hear about bad trips. Um, you started hearing about it when the culture did this 180 and turned against, uh, psychedelics. So I think you can create situations where the, the, the risks are really mitigated.

Joe Rogan 9:02 Well, I think also the fear, like you were talking about right b- right before the podcast of... Or r- right as we started, w- some people were worried that they were gonna turn into an orange or think they're an orange, or... All those fears, if you take something and those things are in the back of your head and you're w- that... You, you can, you know, literally manifest extreme anxiety-

Michael Pollan 9:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:22 ... that might not have been there if you just relaxed and just had the experience alone. You know, o- on its own, without all the cultural hysteria attached to it.

Michael Pollan 9:30 Yeah, or, or episodes of paranoia.

Joe Rogan 9:32 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 9:33 That's, that's, that's common too, so... But a good guide can work you through this.

Joe Rogan 9:37 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 9:37 And, and actually they don't even like the term bad trip. They call it a challenging trip, because often very interesting material comes up that you then can work on later.

Joe Rogan 9:45 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 9:45 Uh, it's like having a nightmare and, you know, analyzing it with your shrink. It actually may be very productive. Um, so, so, you know, I, I was kind of a Nervous Nelly going into this and I really looked at the whole risk profile. And on the, on the physiological side, your body, the risks are remarkably low, and I'm speaking here of the classic psychedelics. I'm not talking about MDMA or even pot. I'm really, I'm talking about LSD, psilocybin, which is magic mushrooms, um, DMT, mescaline. Um, they are much less toxic than many of the over-the-counter drugs you have in your medicine cabinet. There is no lethal dose, which is remarkable.

Joe Rogan 10:26 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 10:26 Um, there was one elephant that was killed with LSD once.

Joe Rogan 10:29 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 10:30 Uh, they wanted to see what it would take and, and it was this... They gave it a massive dose, but to get it to the point where they could administer it, they had to give it a massive dose of tranquilizer. So it isn't actually clear that the LSD killed it. It may have been the, the benzos or whatever they were giving it.

Joe Rogan 10:44 (inhales deeply)

Michael Pollan 10:44 I know, what a horrible thing, right? Go online and look up-

Joe Rogan 10:46 Why?

Michael Pollan 10:46 ... uh, the elephant who died from LSD.

Joe Rogan 10:49 What a crazy idea.

Michael Pollan 10:50 Yeah. Uh, animal cruelty.

Joe Rogan 10:51 I wonder what was going through the elephant's mind before it died.

Michael Pollan 10:54 Well, animals don't like psychedelics that much. Um, we know that if you... You know that classic setup that drug abuse researchers use where they, they put a rat in a cage and they... And there's a lever, and they can administer cocaine or heroin?

Joe Rogan 11:06 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Pollan 11:06 Uh, or they can have lunch?

Joe Rogan 11:08 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 11:08 And they'll press the cocaine lever till they die.

Joe Rogan 11:10 Right.

Michael Pollan 11:11 You put LSD in that setup, they press it once and never again.

Joe Rogan 11:16 (laughs) Well, th- that setup is always screwy, right? Because they, they really shouldn't be in that situation. It's not a natural setup. Like, that's been criticized.

Michael Pollan 11:24 That's right. And they're, uh...

Joe Rogan 11:25 I mean-

Michael Pollan 11:25 They... Somebody in Vancouver did these really cool rat park experiments.

Joe Rogan 11:29 Yes.

Michael Pollan 11:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:30 Yes.

Michael Pollan 11:30 That's what you're referencing.

Joe Rogan 11:31 Yes.

Michael Pollan 11:31 And, um, basically they thought that this was inevitably what happens. But in fact, if you give a rat a beautiful cage with some things to play with, some other rats to hang out with-

Joe Rogan 11:41 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 11:41 ... some nature, you know, some shrubs and things, it will not take the cocaine.

Joe Rogan 11:46 Isn't that interesting?

Michael Pollan 11:47 It, it tells us that environment has a lot to do with drug addiction, that-

Joe Rogan 11:50 Well, I think for sure with human beings too. I mean-

Michael Pollan 11:52 Oh, absolutely.

Joe Rogan 11:53 ... I think human beings in these really fruitless lives that are very, very frustrated-

Michael Pollan 11:56 Or think about the people who came back from Vietnam. I mean, I don't, I don't know if I should say most, but a very high percentage of, of the troops in Vietnam were on heroin when they were there. They were seemingly addicted. They were using it all the time. And they got back and only 10% had a problem. Um, the others were able to kick it really easily. It's very contextual. It's not all biology.

Joe Rogan 12:18 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 12:18 It's about environment.

Joe Rogan 12:19 Now, when you were researching this book, um, did you... Did you start doing your own personal experimentation?

Michael Pollan 12:30 Yeah, um, I had a series of trips for the book. Um, I had become... For a couple reasons, I had become very curious about the people I was interviewing, trying to make sense of how they could have these transformative...... trips on a drug, which seemed implausible to me. Um, and, uh, I also kinda got jealous of the experiences they were having. They were having these big spiritual experiences and I swear, I don't think I've ever had a spiritual experience. I'm kinda spiritually retarded, actually-

Joe Rogan 12:56 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 12:56 ... or was. And, um, so I, I realized at a certain point, I had to see the experience from inside to describe it in a book. It's also kinda my brand as a writer. When I wrote about the cattle industry, I bought a steer. When I wrote about architecture, I built a house. I, I like to get my hands dirty and, and see things from inside.

Joe Rogan 13:16 Mm.

Michael Pollan 13:17 There's a quality of wonder you can capture doing something for the first time. So in a way, the fact that I was psychedelically naive, I saw as a positive, 'cause people who've, who really know the territory are not gonna have quite the same first experience-

Joe Rogan 13:30 Right.

Michael Pollan 13:30 ... that I was gonna have, so that was really helpful. So I, um, I did a few things. I, I went, um, mushroom hunting with Paul Stamets who ... Have, have you ... Has he been on this show?

Joe Rogan 13:40 Yeah. He has. I love that guy.

Michael Pollan 13:41 I saw you had his books out there. Yeah, he's a very cool guy.

Joe Rogan 13:43 He's crazy. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 13:44 He's totally crazy, and he took me to a spot where you can find, um, the strongest psilocybin known to man. That he-

Joe Rogan 13:51 In the Pacific Northwest?

Michael Pollan 13:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:53 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 13:53 It's near the mouth of the Columbia River. Um-

Joe Rogan 13:55 Ooh.

Michael Pollan 13:55 I can't be more specific than that.

Joe Rogan 13:57 Don't. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 13:58 (laughs) Pe- you know people with their mushroom spots.

Joe Rogan 14:01 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 14:01 So, uh, we went hunting. It was like this, you know, uh, forlorn December weather, and, uh, he took me to this place and, uh, we spent a couple of days outside looking for these mushrooms, and we found, uh, uh, Psilocybe azurescens, which he, he found for the first time and named after his son, Azurious.

Joe Rogan 14:20 Oh, wow.

Michael Pollan 14:21 Who in turn, is named after the color of mushrooms when they're bruised, azure. (laughs) So this kind of an interesting-

Joe Rogan 14:27 That's a dude who's committed to fungus.

Michael Pollan 14:29 He is ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:30 (laughs) He's all in.

Michael Pollan 14:32 He is all in with fungus.

Joe Rogan 14:34 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 14:34 And I was very excited when we found a couple, and they're hard. I mean, I would not recommend do, do it yourself with psilocybin.

Joe Rogan 14:41 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 14:41 Just because it's not like looking for chanterelles or morels.

Joe Rogan 14:45 Right.

Michael Pollan 14:46 There are mushrooms that look exactly like psilocybin that can give you a, a just, an agonizing death.

Joe Rogan 14:52 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 14:52 But when you're with Paul Stamets, you feel pretty confident.

Joe Rogan 14:54 Right.

Michael Pollan 14:55 And, uh, so we found these, and, uh, he said to me after we'd found them, we were sitting around the campfire. We were, uh, cooking some dinner, uh, outside our yurt and, uh, he said, "Yes, I ... These, these are almost too strong for me." I said, "Really? Why?" And he says, "Well, they, they have a side effect that bothers some people." I said, "What's that?" "Temporary paralysis." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:15 Oh, I don't know why that would bother anybody.

Michael Pollan 15:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:18 So weird.

Michael Pollan 15:19 Yeah, I know. I know.

Joe Rogan 15:20 Temporary paralysis? (laughs)

Michael Pollan 15:21 Picky, picky.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Oh my God.

Michael Pollan 15:22 So I was a little reluctant to take them, but I, I, I ... So I did. I had, uh, my first psilocybin experience since my 20s was, uh ... And at the time, I was like 60 or approaching 60. Actually, I have to be very vague on where all these things happ- when all these things happened.

Joe Rogan 15:37 Right.

Michael Pollan 15:37 Um, uh, and I had a, a kind of a wonder- I didn't take a lot of them. I made a tea, and I had a, a really powerful experience. Uh, it was very much about being in nature. I was at our house. Uh, we have a house in New England that we've had for many years, and I was in my garden. And, you know, I've written a lot about plants and I've written about plant intelligence and plant consciousness and things like that, and I've always believed intellectually that plants, domesticated plants are acting on us. It's, it's not just ... It's, it's a two-way street. We change plants, they change us. We have been, um, uh, in the same way that say, the apple tree or the flower is manipulating the bee, making it come pay attention to it, offering it nectar in exchange for it picking up pollen on its legs. It b- and doesn't even realize what it's really doing is being tricked by the plant into pollinating it and carrying its genes down the street or around the world. That's happening to us too, and plants work on us. And I ... It's a slightly trippy idea, but it's just co-evolution. That's what, how co-evolution works. So in, during this experience, I felt that in a way I never had. That idea became flesh, and I felt that these plants were kind of looking back at me, uh, and that they were very benign, they had only good intentions, but that there were more subjectivities in my garden than I had thought. You know, we go through the world thinking we're the only thinking subject.

Joe Rogan 17:09 Yes.

Michael Pollan 17:09 Everything else is an object. One of the things that happens on psychedelics is everything becomes ... Has, has life in it.

Joe Rogan 17:15 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 17:15 Has consciousness in it. And that was a powerful and beautiful experience, and so that was my dipping my toes in. And then after that, I, I sought a, a guide, um, because I was trying to simulate the experience I was hearing about at Hopkins and, uh, NYU where they were doing these studies. Uh, not just with the dying, they were doing it with smokers and alcoholics and meditators, all these different groups, but I didn't qualify to enter into those, so I had to go underground. And one of the things I learned is that there is this thriving network of underground guides all over the country. I don't know how many there are, um, but they're very professional people. Um, they're not drug dealers. They're therapists, and some of them are trained psychologists or MDs in some cases actually, and they're so convinced of the healing value of these medicines that they're willing to risk their freedom, uh, and their livelihood to, uh, work underground. So I found my way into this community, and, um, uh, and, and interviewed a bunch of people, and some of them were not the kind of people you wanna trust your mind to. I mean, and, and no doubt there are lots of charlatans. Everyone I, I, I interview is pretty professional, but some of them were just a little too casual about something I, I was kind of, um, you know, worried about. Uh, there was one guy, I remember this Romanian psychonaut therapist in his 70s who, uh, I said, "Well, what happens if something bad happens? You know, what if, what if somebody dies, you know, while they're with you getting this trip?" And he said, "You bury them with all the other people."... and that, that kinda casualness really troubled me.

Joe Rogan 18:54 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 18:54 So I didn't work with him.

Joe Rogan 18:55 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 18:56 Um, but eventually I found people that I-

Joe Rogan 18:59 (clears throat)

Michael Pollan 18:59 ... uh, I trusted and I had a bond with, and I had some very powerful, uh, experiences with them, and, uh, that did change me, uh, in ways that I'm still kind of, you know, digesting.

Joe Rogan 19:11 Now w- I would like to take you back to the, the garden thing, when you were-

Michael Pollan 19:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:14 ... having these experience with, uh, these plants. I had a, a experience once on a v- very high dose of marijuana edibles, I went into a grow room that, uh, this, um, local dispensary had set up. It's this big room filled with plants and it was the first time a- like, when I walked in, this is the first time I've ever been around pot plants where I felt like they were aware that I was there.

Michael Pollan 19:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:40 It was very strange. It, you, you had this weird feeling of them having much more sensitivity than you imagined, that they, they're aware of you, but as you said, they're benign and they're just sorta sitting there, but it was almost like they were saying hello to me.

Michael Pollan 19:57 Uh-huh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:58 Like they recognized that I could tune into them because I was so barbecued that I was-

Michael Pollan 20:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:02 ... I was on their wavelength. When you're out there with those plants and you said that you felt consciousness from them, now as an intelligent, rational person, did you start pondering whether or not you were just perceiving this-

Michael Pollan 20:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:16 ... because it was convenient and you were hallucinating and a- adding all this contextual-

Michael Pollan 20:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 20:22 ... weirdness to this situation?

Michael Pollan 20:24 I, you know, I'm sure I was projecting things onto them-

Joe Rogan 20:27 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 20:27 ... but, but I've looked at this question and the science of it pretty closely.

Joe Rogan 20:31 Right.

Michael Pollan 20:32 And how you define consciousness, it matters here.

Joe Rogan 20:36 Yes.

Michael Pollan 20:36 But plants are conscious in the sense of they're aware of their environment, they have senses. They're not like our senses.

Joe Rogan 20:43 Right.

Michael Pollan 20:43 But they're picking up on chemicals in the air and in the soil and light in very specific ways, and they're reacting, not just instinctually, but appropriately. There are experiments that show that plants can learn in some primitive way. So we have to understand that we have one kind of consciousness and other animals and even plants have another kind of consciousness. So it's real. It's a real thing. The idea that they're looking back at me, I'm being metaphorical, but-

Joe Rogan 21:10 Right.

Michael Pollan 21:10 ... that I, uh, that they're aware of me, um, in the way that the, um, plant is aware that the bee is nearby and does certain things, sometimes to trap the bee and hold it there for a longer amount of time to, to, you know, load it up with pollen. Um, there are... (sighs) The world as we perceive it is dependent on the particular x- senses we have. We've got the big five senses that you always hear about, and there are some other littler ones. Um, you know, how we locate ourself in space, we're pretty good at that too. Um, but other creatures have a different set of senses, and, and therefore they live in a different world. So the bee, for example, uh, can see ultraviolet light we can't see. So if you could get inside a bee's head, the world would look very different, and you'd see patterns like landing, uh, markings on flowers in ultraviolet colors that they can see that you, you've never seen before. Ditto, they also can experience electromagnetic radiation. We can't. You know, it's all around us, but we don't feel it. They feel it. And the reason they do is a plant that, uh, has a strong electromagnetic field hasn't been visited recently by another bee, so they know this is a good, you're gonna get a lot of nectar here.

Joe Rogan 22:25 Oh.

Michael Pollan 22:25 And, um, whereas if you, if you're going by a, you know, you're flying by a flower and it's got a soft feel, it doesn't have a big field, it's probably just been visited by someone else, so skip it. So they're living in a world where they're perceiving cellphone radiation and all, all the kinds of crap we're putting into the electromagnetic spectrum. Um, so, so we have to realize that this is a very specific world that we're perceiving in our normal consciousness that is the one that we need to perceive that's good for us, that's, we, we're designed for, reflecting our bodies and our upright stance, everything about us. But other creatures are seeing a different world. And one of the interesting things about psychedelics is you get some insight into that. You, you sort of feel it. And, uh, it's, it's real, I think, in the sense of sure you're imagining, you, there's still a leap of imagination to understand bee world or octopus world.

Joe Rogan 23:20 Right.

Michael Pollan 23:20 That's a really weird world.

Joe Rogan 23:21 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 23:21 Their brains are distributed over eight arms, right? And-

Joe Rogan 23:25 Have you seen that recent, uh, paper that was just put out? See if you can find it. Uh, the, where they're, they're hypothesizing that octopus, they might have come here from another planet, literally.

Michael Pollan 23:36 Did not see that.

Joe Rogan 23:36 Might have been seeded by another planet. It's very controversial, but it's from legit scientists. And what they're trying to think of is i- if it's possible that the eggs of these things traveled in comets and somehow they came here hundreds of millions of years ago. And the reason being is that they can alter their RNA and that this is very specific to, uh, octopi or octopuses. Yeah, here it is. "Octopuses came to Earth from space as (laughs) frozen eggs millions of years ago."

Michael Pollan 24:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:03 I don't know if they would put it that way, but it's, it's just a theory, but it's a theory that's being bandied about by legitimate scientists.

Michael Pollan 24:10 That's fascinating. That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 24:11 Because they can do so many things that no other animal could do, like-

Michael Pollan 24:14 That's right.

Joe Rogan 24:14 ... instantaneously change their outside.

Michael Pollan 24:16 Yes, to, uh, to blend into their area.

Joe Rogan 24:18 Yeah, like m-

Michael Pollan 24:19 Also each arm can make-

Joe Rogan 24:20 And their texture.

Michael Pollan 24:20 ... its own decisions, uh, without referring to headquarters. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:23 Really?

Michael Pollan 24:23 Yeah, they have this distributed intelligence.

Joe Rogan 24:25 Wow. And regenerate as well.

Michael Pollan 24:28 Yes. No, they are, they're really, they're really crazy. Um, so this idea that there's something relative about our everyday normal consciousness, that there are other ways to experience the world, is something that psychedelics put you in touch with.

Joe Rogan 24:43 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 24:43 I was just reading this interview with this physicist named, uh, Carlo Rovelli. He's a theoretical physicist from Italy. He wrote this book a couple years ago called Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, very prominent guy. And he was telling this interviewer in The Guardian that-... he got turned onto physics, uh, during an LSD trip he had when he was 15. And the interviewer asked him how, why was that, and he said, "Well, I, I saw for the first time that there could be another way to think about time, in- instead of, uh, you know, past, present and future, that it might all be simultaneous." And that's how it, it appeared to him during this LSD trip. And he s- and when he c- when he was back to baseline, he said, um, "Uh, you know, I was asking myself, why am I so sure this is the real world and that wasn't the real world, and it was just an hallucination?" And he said, "The world as it presents itself to us right now, here, actually physics tells us is not the real world." That there, you know, that space and time are curved, that particles don't exist until they're perceived by a consciousness. You know, all these crazy ideas of theoretical physics. He said, "I, it suddenly seemed like worth exploring, that, that the world as it presents itself to us is not the only world, and, or, or necessarily the accurate world." And I was very interested that a scientist could develop that idea of a beyond in the way you would think of a religious person developing the idea of a beyond.

Joe Rogan 26:11 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 26:11 That there's a scientific beyond and there's a religious beyond.

Joe Rogan 26:15 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 26:15 And psychedelics at least gives us a, a hint that, that those worlds exist. And that was, um, that was a very powerful, powerful idea for me.

Joe Rogan 26:24 Have you looked into any of the-

Michael Pollan 26:26 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 26:26 ... uh, connections between ancient religions and psychedelics, like, uh, any of the John Marco Allegro stuff?

Michael Pollan 26:33 Yeah, I did. I didn't go that deep into it. I went in deep enough to know that there are a lot of very serious scholars, um, and, and he, Allegro is one and Carl Ruck is another, um, and Gordon Wasson, the guy who kinda brought psilocybin to the west, who I write about at some length in the book, really believed that it was, uh, experience of psychedelics, which has been in culture for thousands of years, um, uh, we know, um, whether you're talking about the Amazon or Africa or... And that these, uh, experiences may have nurtured the religious impulse. You know, where do you get the idea of a, of a beyond? Where do you get the idea of a heaven or a hell if not from some altered state of consciousness? You know, people talked about visiting the underworld in Homer's time. Um, so how did they do that? Was it dreams? Uh, dreams don't have the authority that psychedelic experience has. Um, there's something about psychedelic experience that, that, um, has this... It's not just an opinion, it's just not, it's not a fantasy, it's something real, it's objective truth. This is, uh, William James called the, the noetic quality of the mystical experience, um, and that certitude, um, comes from psychedelics. And, and so it seems totally plausible to me that at the very earliest stages of, uh, humanity, if, if people were indeed taking psychedelics, this might explain how they came up with these ideas. Um, there are other alternative theories, and it's not provable. I, I just don't know how we would begin to prove it, but it seems plausible. Um, and, you know, the ancient Greeks had a psychedelic that they used, we think, called e- they called it the Kykeon, K-Y-K-E-O-N, and they had an annual, uh, ritual ceremony, and it was the only time in the year where you could use this drug, and it was a, a ritual to d- and for Demeter and harvest or planting time, and everybody in Greek society did this. And people, it w- you had, it was secret. It was called the mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and you weren't supposed to talk about it, but there's a few accounts around and people talked about visiting the underworld, making contact with the dead. And, um, Carl Ruck, who's a classicist at BU says, well, that was a, um, that was a psychedelic potion. We don't know what they were using, whether it was mushrooms or something else. Um, the, the Greek use of drugs is very obscure. They only talked about wine, but the way they described what wine did to you, there was clearly something added to it, that they were adding other plant drugs to their wine.

Joe Rogan 29:10 Hmm.

Michael Pollan 29:10 Uh, because they would have these tiny little glasses when they'd take these big trips. So we don't know what it was.

Joe Rogan 29:14 Really?

Michael Pollan 29:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:15 Tiny glasses of wine?

Michael Pollan 29:16 Tiny glasses. And they were very careful about when you used it, and, and, you know, people would completely lose control and it was just like, no, this isn't wine. This is something else.

Joe Rogan 29:26 That's crazy.

Michael Pollan 29:26 Yeah, it is.

Joe Rogan 29:26 So some sort of a psychedelic from grapes or-

Michael Pollan 29:29 No.

Joe Rogan 29:29 ... added to it?

Michael Pollan 29:30 Well, I mean-

Joe Rogan 29:31 We don't know.

Michael Pollan 29:32 Some people, Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD or invented LSD, he thought it was ergot, that they'd figured out a way... Ergot is a, is a fungus that grows on grain, and it was, uh, the, the precursor chemical to LSD comes from ergot. And, uh, ergot is responsible for episodes of mass delirium in European history. You get a really wet year, the ergot grows on the rye, people eat bread made from it, and they go crazy. Some people think the Salem Witch Trials was-

Joe Rogan 30:02 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 30:02 ... came after a wet year and people had absorbed, uh, these women had eaten ergot and were having visions and things like that, which was interpreted as witchcraft, which to them was a very-

Joe Rogan 30:13 I thought they were saying that the men had absorbed it and thought they were under spells.

Michael Pollan 30:17 Oh, maybe.

Joe Rogan 30:17 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 30:17 Maybe, maybe that too. I, I just-

Joe Rogan 30:19 Yeah, probably everybody's tripping.

Michael Pollan 30:20 Yeah. (laughs) So, um, anyway, so-

Joe Rogan 30:24 So they think it's somehow or another

Michael Pollan 30:24 The thinking is if you just eat ergot, you're not gonna be... You could get gangrene. It's, it's a m-

Joe Rogan 30:29 Oh.

Michael Pollan 30:29 It's not a clean chemical. And, um, but the thinking of, uh, Gordon Wasson and Carl Ruck, and they were collaborators on this theory, um, was that the Greeks perhaps had figured out a way to derive, uh, a purer chemical from ergot that could be made into something very much like LSD. But again, nobody has succeeded, and they've tried for the last 20 or 30 years to take ergot and make something, you know, through simple processes-

Joe Rogan 30:57 Hm.

Michael Pollan 30:57 ... that the Greeks could have mastered. So it may have been a mushroom. Um, you know, there's a lot of psychedelic plants out there. It's one of the mysteries of evolution that, you know, DMT is like coursing through the, the plant world.

Joe Rogan 31:09 Yeah, thousands of plants.

Michael Pollan 31:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:11 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 31:11 So, so...... I, I do find it plausible that there's some links between psychedelics. I think psychedelics have, have influenced cultural history at various points along the way, and one of those may have been to kind of nurture this religious impulse. But again, I can't prove it.

Joe Rogan 31:29 The, the Greeks spent, uh, some of the great Greek scholars spent a lot of time in Egypt as well.

Michael Pollan 31:34 Don't know anything about that.

Joe Rogan 31:35 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 31:36 Really?

Joe Rogan 31:36 Yeah, I was won- trying to figure... Yeah, those, uh, they, they were trying to figure out what psychedelics, if any, the, uh, the Egyptians took, and they never really figured it out. They made some connections to DMT that are sort of, uh, loosely connected to their worship of the pineal gland-

Michael Pollan 31:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:52 ... which, uh, appears-

Michael Pollan 31:52 Right, where we found DMT in rats.

Joe Rogan 31:55 Yeah, yeah. The, yeah, the Cottonwood Research Foundation.

Michael Pollan 31:57 Yeah. So you did that film about DMT, right?

Joe Rogan 32:00 Yeah, yeah.

Michael Pollan 32:00 Yeah, that's really interesting stuff. Th- there's been very little follow-up on that. I mean, this idea that there might be an endogenous psychedelic like DMT, a- as far as I know, we've only found it in the rat. It's hard to look for it and the amounts are really tiny.

Joe Rogan 32:14 Well, they found DMT in people, but they haven't found it in the pineal gland in people.

Michael Pollan 32:17 They haven't? Oh, is that right?

Joe Rogan 32:18 Yeah, they found it in the liver and the lungs, and-

Michael Pollan 32:20 And that it's being produced there?

Joe Rogan 32:22 Yeah. They know that humans produce it and it's endogenous, but they don't-

Michael Pollan 32:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:25 ... know whether or not the pineal gland does.

Michael Pollan 32:27 I see.

Joe Rogan 32:27 Obviously, the pineal gland represents the third eye of Eastern-

Michael Pollan 32:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:30 ... mysticism, and that was what also they think, what is it? Is it the Eye of Horus that they connected to the pineal gland? Have you ever seen those comparisons?

Michael Pollan 32:38 No.

Joe Rogan 32:38 Pull up the comparison between the Eye of Horus and the pineal gland. It's essentially shaped like a cross-section of the pineal gland and, um, in The Temple in Man. See, if you look at it up there? And they think somehow or another that this is the, the connection between these two. There's a, a bunch of different things have been, uh, written on this, this connection, because this appears in so many different, uh, Egyptian hieroglyphs and they think it might have some sort of a connection between the portal to the afterlife that they think the DMT experience is. And the idea of the DMT-

Michael Pollan 33:13 But how, how would they, how, how would they know?

Joe Rogan 33:16 ... how would they know that? I don't know.

Michael Pollan 33:16 I mean, they didn't... How, what did they know about brains?

Joe Rogan 33:19 How did they know how to build a pyramid?

Michael Pollan 33:19 I mean...

Joe Rogan 33:19 They'd... Well, I don't know. How'd they know how to build pyramids? How'd they know a lot of things? I mean, they-

Michael Pollan 33:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:24 ... they did some pretty incredible shit.

Michael Pollan 33:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:26 We don't know. You know, because of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, we lost-

Michael Pollan 33:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:29 ... almost everything. We, we don't really know what they knew or how they knew it, but we do knew that, know that scholars from around the world would go to Egypt to, to learn, and...

Michael Pollan 33:39 Well, in general, you know, I have a more open mind about many things since I've had these experiences-

Joe Rogan 33:44 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 33:44 ... than I did before. I was a, kind of staunch materialist, you know?

Joe Rogan 33:47 It's normal. I mean most people-

Michael Pollan 33:49 Y- yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:49 ... who see silliness in hippies and, you know, all these people that are out there doing drugs, trying to, air quote, "find themselves," you just, it seems like a foolish venture.

Michael Pollan 33:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:59 And then you do it and you go, "Okay."

Michael Pollan 34:02 That's what that was about.

Joe Rogan 34:03 "There's something there."

Michael Pollan 34:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:04 "It's just being done by morons." (laughs)

Michael Pollan 34:06 (laughs) Or being described by morons.

Joe Rogan 34:08 Yes, yes.

Michael Pollan 34:08 'Cause it's hard to describe.

Joe Rogan 34:10 Well, it's also illegal.

Michael Pollan 34:11 There is that.

Joe Rogan 34:11 So people shy away from it. You don't wanna-

Michael Pollan 34:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:12 ... lose your family and get locked up in jail and all these different things that people are terrified of, so you like, "Look, I'm not gonna... I'll have a glass o' whiskey with dinner."

Michael Pollan 34:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 34:19 That's about it.

Michael Pollan 34:20 And also, uh, you know, there's a kind of embarrassment.

Joe Rogan 34:22 Yes.

Michael Pollan 34:22 I mean, one of the really striking things that... I've, I've been on the road now for... This is my second week out talking about this book, and I have been struck by how many people have had powerful psychedelic experiences they don't talk to anybody about.

Joe Rogan 34:35 Right.

Michael Pollan 34:36 And I come along as a kind of, I don't know, credible person, uh, who's interested, and they, eh, this is journalists too. They turn off the tape recorder and they say, "Can I tell you a story?"

Joe Rogan 34:47 Oh.

Michael Pollan 34:47 And they ha- something happened to them, might've been in their 20s or 30s or earlier, that changed the course of their life. And either because there was a stigma attached to it or it was kind of had this '60s kinda woo-woo thing about it, or there were kids around, um, they didn't feel comfortable. And they, so they kept it in this box labeled weird drug experience. But it's not just a drug experience. This is your mind. These, you know, the, the drug may have started the process, but everything you see and, a- in, in this experience is the, are, those are real psychological facts. They're from your unconscious or from your interpretation or your environment, um, and, you know, the, the... It's not the molecule that, that, that ordered, that foreordained this experience. Um, as Stan- Stanislav Grof, who was one of the pioneering psychedelic psychiatrists in the '60s said, that, uh, LSD is an unspecific amplifier of mental activity.

Joe Rogan 35:41 Mm.

Michael Pollan 35:41 Um, there's nothing packaged with the drug, um, and that's important to understand. So you had this big experience and you put it in this box saying, "Weird drug experience." But when you take it out, sometimes you find that there's, there's real gold there. There's fool's gold too.

Joe Rogan 35:56 There's, it's an interesting quote, that quote you just said, uh, 'cause, because in actual studies of the human mind under the influence of psilocybin, it's actually been shown to shut off parts of the brain.

Michael Pollan 36:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:07 And so the, the, the question is-

Michael Pollan 36:09 I, I'm so happy you brought that up.

Joe Rogan 36:09 ... are we blocking off these, uh, constant f- frequencies that are around us or this experience that's around us? It is our own ego or our own mortality, our own desire to stay alive and protect ourselves, or whatever the, the various blockades that we put up, are those diminished by psilocybin that allows this ever-present experience to manifest itself?

Michael Pollan 36:35 It's exactly right. The most, uh, the most interesting scientific finding, uh, of this current generation of research is that when they image the brains of people on psilocybin or LSD or ayahuasca, they expected to see fireworks, right? Lots of activity, 'cause the experience has lots of fireworks. But they found something that they didn't expect, which was a diminishment of activity in a very important brain network called the default mode network. This is in the midline and it connects parts of your cortex, which is the evolutionarily most recent part, to older, deeper sources of, uh, emotion and memory. And it's a hub in the brain, and the brain is a hierarchical system, and this, this, this is the orchestra conductor, as one of the neuroscientists put it. It, it, it's a regulator. So what happens in the default mode network normally? Well, it's very involved in, um-... self-reflection, self-criticism, worry. It's where your mind goes to wander. It's involved in time travel, thinking about the future or the past. It's involved in something scientists call theory of mind, the ability to imagine that another person has mental states and is not just a rock. Um, it is involved in what's called the experiential or autobiographical self, the way we kind of take what's happening to us and connect it to the story we tell ourselves about who we are, based on the past and the future. So it's, you know, if the ego has an address, it's in the default mode network.

Joe Rogan 38:00 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 38:00 And what does the ego do for you? The ego kind of patrols the borders, right? It's the, it's what keeps out, um, you know, things that are threatening to you. It keeps, uh, i- it's responsible for the repression of subconscious thought or strong emotion. Um, and it, and it, uh, it's a defense. It's a set of defenses. And psychedelics appear to turn this off, uh, to one degree or another, take the default mode network offline. When that happens, to go back to your metaphor, um, the, whatever is blocking, the valve that's blocking lots of information from coming in from outside or up from below in your subconscious, that's allowed to flow. And so you are getting more information, um, than you might otherwise. And this is a metaphor that, um, Aldous Huxley used in Doors of Perception, that consciousness is, uh, is eliminating more than it's creating. It's, it, consciousness is, is reducing our experience to the thin trickle of information we need to get ahead, to survive. Um, and that you, you open the doors of perception on these drugs by turning off this network and lots more information comes in, which can be overwhelming, uh, but also extraordinary. I mean, there is, that's wonder.

Joe Rogan 39:22 Is there apprehension in writing a book like this and describing these things? Like as you're writing it and you're thinking about all these other people that are sort of cynical, straight-laced, non-drug using folks who might admire your previous work on agriculture or architecture or whatever, and you're sitting there going, "How do I-"

Michael Pollan 39:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:43 "... how do I get this through without looking like a guy who's losing his fucking mind or who's-"

Michael Pollan 39:47 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:47 "... going super woo-woo Deepak Chopra on people?" Right? (laughs)

Michael Pollan 39:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:51 Like, like how do you, how do you do this and maintain your position as a serious journalist?

Michael Pollan 39:56 Yeah. Well, i- I mean, I was nervous about undertaking-

Joe Rogan 39:59 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 39:59 ... this project. Um, but I also came to think it was really important and, um, that there was something here and that ... You know, when I started this process, Stan Grof, the guy I made reference to earlier, he had said in the '60s something I thought was really outrageous. He said that psychedelics would be for the study of the mind what the microscope was for biology or the telescope for aus- uh, astronomy. This is a really outrageous claim to make. Um, but as time's gone on, that idea seems less crazy to me, that we are learning things about the mind that t- and that these drugs are teaching it in a scientific context and in an individual context. Um, so just because some people think it's embarrassing or woo-woo is not a w- is not a reason not to do it. I have to find a way to describe it. And, you know, I'm being a little speculative with you talking about, you know, origins of religion and stuff, but the book stays pretty close to, "Here's what we really know, and here's what I experienced." Um, I'm a science journalist, you know? And, um, uh, so I try to draw the line between now I'm speculating and now here's something we really know with some, with some certitude. But without question, I had some misgivings about describing psychedelic experience. There are legal issues, uh, there. Um, and that, yeah, I have a readership, I have a big readership that, you know, is happy if I just keep writing books on food, but-

Joe Rogan 41:23 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 41:24 ... I had found something too, too interesting to pass up. And I've been gratified that, um, y- you know, I've been talking about this book on, like, network television. I didn't think I would be talking to Stephen Colbert about ego dissolution.

Joe Rogan 41:37 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 41:38 And here we are.

Joe Rogan 41:40 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 41:40 And he actually got the best line off on that whole appearance, though.

Joe Rogan 41:43 What'd he say?

Michael Pollan 41:44 He said, um, uh, he said, "Well, maybe the ego should be a controlled substance." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:50 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 41:50 I thought that was pretty good.

Joe Rogan 41:51 That is a great line.

Michael Pollan 41:52 The man is fast.

Joe Rogan 41:52 He's a clever boy.

Michael Pollan 41:53 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:54 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 41:55 So, um, so I found though that the, if I was willing to talk about these issues and my experiences in a matter-of-fact way, mainstream journalists would respond in kind. And so I've been on, like, CBS Morning Show and, uh, Terry Gross on Fresh Air and, and we've had a kind of, you know, conversation where we're looking at these as tools. What are they good for, what are they not good for, without getting caught up in the usual, um, uh, craziness that's associated with these, with these drugs. And, um, so th- that's what I'm trying to do is take that '60s crust off these things-

Joe Rogan 42:30 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 42:30 ... and take a fresh look.

Joe Rogan 42:31 Well, f- for someone like me who's been a psychedelic advocate for a long time, it was extremely exciting news that a guy like you was stepping into the fray because you're, you're so well-established and well-respected already that I knew your approach on it was gonna be very clean and that I knew that people were gonna have to start looking at this like, "Wait, it's, Michael Pollan's looking at this. Like, this, this might not-"

Michael Pollan 42:56 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:56 "... be completely crazy." But the cultural attitudes about psychedelic drugs, or drugs in general, we're so childlike in our, our view on drugs. I mean, I have a friend, wonderful person, talks all kinds of crazy shit about people smoking pot and takes Xanax every day.

Michael Pollan 43:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:13 He's like, "Do you," like, people don't, "Oh, I just need a glass of wine and Xanax and I'm good. I don't know why you people need drugs." Like, wow.

Michael Pollan 43:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:20 Like, you're fucking crazy. But our cultural attitudes on the substances that are prohibited and that are, that are accepted, they're so strange. And they, they...... because of our social standing, because we don't wanna be perceived as foolish or reckless or in some sort of a mid-life crisis, or what have you, we- we're- d- like these journalists that are shutting the microphones off and wanted to talk to you about these profound experiences that they had that they should be shouting about from the rooftops.

Michael Pollan 43:47 I agree. Look, it's really, to normalize this, people have to come out of the closet.

Joe Rogan 43:51 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 43:51 And some do.

Joe Rogan 43:52 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 43:52 I- I- I was talking to a journalist in Boston who's the local NPR host and he, he, on the air, live, talked about his experiences and how, uh, important they were in shaping his identity, and the experiences he had in college. So, I think we're gonna see more people come out of the closet and, uh, and have this kinda conversation. We'll ... And we can actually look at this experience in a sane way. Now, yes, it's still illegal, but the fact that there is all this legal research going on has created a space where you can talk about it. And I- I'm interviewing all these people and they're describing their trips and they're, you know, they're very straight people.

Joe Rogan 44:25 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 44:26 And, um, and they've had profound experiences. So, I- I think the culture is changing.

Joe Rogan 44:31 Yes.

Michael Pollan 44:31 I really do. Um, I-

Joe Rogan 44:32 I- I definitely think it is.

Michael Pollan 44:33 The speed with which-

Joe Rogan 44:34 And I think your book is helping it.

Michael Pollan 44:35 Well, I hope so. I didn't write it with that idea that I had this authority that I'd earned in talking about food and nutrition-

Joe Rogan 44:41 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 44:41 ... and then I'm gonna apply it now to drugs. I- I don't think that way. I was just like ...

Joe Rogan 44:45 Fascinated.

Michael Pollan 44:45 I was starting from scratch.

Joe Rogan 44:46 Right.

Michael Pollan 44:47 But I do realize that, and people scare me a little when they say, you know, peep- ... Psychedelic people say, you know, "You're gonna do for p- for psilocybin what you did for food." I say, "Oh, it's really different." Um, you know, I mean ... Or this woman ... I- I was speaking at Google in Seattle and this, this woman stands up and she says, "Well, after I read your book, I had to, I had to slaughter a pig. I had to learn how to slaughter a pig. You made me wanna do that. And when I was driving to work today, I didn't think I'd, I'd ever take s- LSD, but now ... Or psilocybin, but now I feel like I need to." I don't wanna do that to people. I don't want them to feel they have to have this experience. You can learn a lot about the mind. This book is as much about the mind as it is about psychedelics.

Joe Rogan 45:29 Right.

Michael Pollan 45:30 This is a book that uses psychedelics to explore this really interesting mystery called consciousness. Um, and it- it's also exploring the nature of addiction, the nature of depression, all the, all the illnesses that psychedelics turns out to be very helpful in, um ... You know, but I- I- I'm not holding a brief that people should do this. Um, I'm not an ad- ... I'm not an advocate for psychedelics. I'm an advocate for the research at this point. I don't know enough to say, "Yeah, everybody should do this. This is what our culture needs." You know, I don't ... I'm not in that Timothy Leary head. You know, I think, I think we have a powerful agent that, that there's good data now that this can help heal people who are really suffering. And the other reason for the openness that's going on right now that surprised me, 'cause I expected to get a lot of pushback from the psychiatric establishment, uh, and I, and I looked for it. I- I called around, you know, "I wanna hear the critical voice on the Hopkins work and the NYU work." And what I kept hearing blew my mind. It was like ... I remember calling the head of the National Institute of Mental Health to get what I thought would be a really negative quote about psilocybin research and he was like, "No, this ... We have to look at this. This is really interesting research."

Joe Rogan 46:41 Mm.

Michael Pollan 46:41 Former heads of the American Psychiatric Association. And the reason they're so open to it is that mental health treatment in this country is just a mess. I mean, we only reach half of the people who are struggling with mental illness at all, have any exposure to the system. If you compare mental health treatment to any other branch of medicine, oncology, cardiology, infectious disease, it's accomplished very little. It hasn't prolonged life span, it's not saving lives. Um, and yet, we have, uh, you know, soaring rates of depression. Depression is now the, the leading cause of disability worldwide. There are 300 million people with major depression or treatment-resistant depression in the world right now. Um, and suicide rates are way up. Um, partly it's the vets, but, uh, in general, uh, the taboo is coming off ... Is come off suicide and suicide is climbing rapidly. And addiction, as we know, is rampant. So, they need some new tools. There hasn't really been innovation in mental health treatment since the early '90s, late '80s, with the introduction of the SSRI antidepressants, drugs like, you know, uh, Paxil and, uh, Prozac. Um, they need some new tools, and that's why they're open to this, and that's why I think it will be embraced eventually by, um, by the medical world.

Joe Rogan 48:00 Well, isn't it on the ballot in 2018 in California?

Michael Pollan 48:03 They haven't quite got it on ... They're doing their petition drive right now.

Joe Rogan 48:06 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 48:06 And in Oregon, too. And, um ... So, I don't know that it'll get through this time. It's a weird item to put on the ballot 'cause actually, a- a small minority of people know what psilocybin is. When I ... On this show, you're the first person who's said the ingredient in ma- ... Didn't say the ingredient in magic mushrooms.

Joe Rogan 48:24 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 48:25 You have some confidence that your audience knows what psilocybin is. But, but it's a v- unfamiliar word to most people. So, I don't know how people vote on that.

Joe Rogan 48:32 Right. Yeah, um-

Michael Pollan 48:33 It may be premature, is what I'm suggesting.

Joe Rogan 48:35 Well, it's all dependent upon getting the word out.

Michael Pollan 48:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:38 I think if people understand what ... Like, the John Hopkins research or just the anecdotal research that some of these people have, uh, uh, had these incredibly life-changing experiences. But I think one of the things that you're saying is I think d- very important is that this isn't for everybody, and that if you have problems with normal consciousness, this is likely not for you.

Michael Pollan 49:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:00 If you're one of those people that has schizophrenia in your family, perhaps, or-

Michael Pollan 49:03 Forget it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:04 Yeah. Don't do it.

Michael Pollan 49:05 And, and, and in fact, those people are screened out of this research very carefully.

Joe Rogan 49:08 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 49:08 Um ...

Joe Rogan 49:08 Schizo- schizophrenia, it's, it's a real issue with people with, uh, psilocybin and ma- and many psychedelics, right?

Michael Pollan 49:14 Yeah. What happens with schizophrenia is if you are at risk for it, um, either for, uh, because of, uh, inheritance, um, a psychedelic trip can set you off, can be the trigger for, uh, a life of it. And other things can, too. A divorce, your parents getting divorced sets people off.

Joe Rogan 49:33 Parents? (laughs)

Michael Pollan 49:33 Going to graduate school sets people off. Uh, if you're someone who's probably gonna get schizophrenia, any kind of mental trauma, if it happens at that window, which is in your early 20s and your late 20s, I think, um, and that's, that's why we did see some cases, 'cause that's the age people were using psychedelics in the '60s.... of having their first psychotic break. So, yeah. So if you're at risk for that or, or bipolar-

Joe Rogan 49:57 And marijuana as well, by the way.

Michael Pollan 49:58 That's right.

Joe Rogan 49:59 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 49:59 Oh, yeah, marijuana can do it also. Um-

Joe Rogan 50:01 And I think the, the, the numbers though mirror the numbers, uh, in standard populations, when in terms of like, I think it's one out of 10. Like, one out of 10 people have some form of schizophrenia and that's mirrored in marijuana use.

Michael Pollan 50:16 I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 50:17 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 50:17 That's really interesting.

Joe Rogan 50:17 I think it's the same. I think the problem is, you know, it can exacerbate it or it can trigger it or, you know, depending upon... I mean, everyone's biology is different and everyone's, uh-

Michael Pollan 50:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:29 ... the, the way they absorb these, these chemicals is different.

Michael Pollan 50:33 Yeah. And, you know, if you are at risk, something's gonna do it eventually.

Joe Rogan 50:38 Right.

Michael Pollan 50:38 Um, so, you know, we, we don't have any evidence of someone thrown into a, a situation of schizophrenia or other serious mental illness as a result of, uh, strictly because of a psychedelic experience. It may have been the trigger, but there might have been, it was gonna happen anyway.

Joe Rogan 50:55 Right.

Michael Pollan 50:56 We just don't know. But in general, if you've got serious... If you have personality disorder, if you have bipolar, if you are at risk for schizophrenia, they will not accept you into these trials and you should stay away from these drugs.

Joe Rogan 51:07 Yeah. Um, that, pff, that, that is a real problem with it being prohibited. The, the prohibition has really set back research and understanding decades. I mean, we should have been studying this stuff since the '60s.

Michael Pollan 51:19 We had 30 years of hiatus in the research. Uh, I don't know of another time where you had a promising line of scientific inquiry all through the '50s and early '60s that's just choked off. And for 30 years, nothing happened. I mean, think of what we would know if we had 30 more years of research with these drugs.

Joe Rogan 51:36 It's crazy.

Michael Pollan 51:37 So now, we're picking up the thread and all that research is being resumed. But your, but your point about prohibition is really important. When you have prohibition, you can't regulate something. It's a free for all. Um, whereas if you did legalize psilocybin, let's take as an example, you could set rules. You could say that it can only be administered by licensed guides or in a medical context or that no one under a certain age can have it. I mean, it gives you a chance to regulate. And that's why it's saner to, to legalize, not in a free for all kind of way, but in a, in a very considered way than to, uh, have the system we have now, where people are gonna take the drug whether they should or not without any kind of clearance. Uh, and by the way, who knows what you're getting? You, you know, you can also regulate the, the strength and the, um... And in the case of LSD, you know, in the '60s, there was this period where there was a lot of pure LSD around and then the mob got in- interested in it and they started cutting it with speed and all sorts of things and people got into a lot of trouble.

Joe Rogan 52:42 It's also the issue with scheduling, like Schedule 1s for things that have zero medical value. And that's where a lot of these drugs find themselves in, including-

Michael Pollan 52:49 Psychedelics are all Schedule 1.

Joe Rogan 52:51 Yeah, which is just bananas.

Michael Pollan 52:52 E-

Joe Rogan 52:53 Especially DMT with the old Terence McKenna line, uh, everyone's holding.

Michael Pollan 52:57 Yes. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:58 'Cause we all, we all have DMT in our bodies.

Michael Pollan 53:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:00 We all have a Schedule 1 substance flowing through our veins, which is, it's the most asinine thing in the world to make your body a Schedule 1 substance.

Michael Pollan 53:09 Yeah, it is. And the fact is that Schedule 1 means that these drugs have a high potential for abuse, which isn't really true with psychedelics because they're non-addictive, and that they have no accepted medical use, which is now no longer true either because these studies have shown that they do have a medical use.

Joe Rogan 53:26 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 53:27 So, you know, what I hope happens and what, and what we're on track to see happen is that these, these trials, these drug trials will expand. There will be now phase three drug trials, which is the last step before FDA approval. If the results of those trials are anywhere near as good as the phase two trials, um, the FDA will then approve psilocybin as a medicine and MDMA, which there, which will probably happen first. They're looking at that too, uh, for use in treating people with trauma. Uh, and then we will be in a world where they'll have to reschedule it, uh, to two or three. Um, you know, the opiates are two. I mean, actually the, the drug causing most suffering in our country right now and death is not a Schedule 1, it's a Schedule 2. I think it's two, it might be three. Um, and so that we may see this in the next five years or so, which is kind of amazing.

Joe Rogan 54:22 Well, we gotta get someone like Jeff Sessions out of there. Uh, that-

Michael Pollan 54:25 You know-

Joe Rogan 54:25 ... that guy has some really archaic ideas about marijuana and-

Michael Pollan 54:27 I agree about marijuana. You know, I thought that, okay, in this administration, we're gonna have another backlash. But one of the things that surprised me is that there are voices on the right, uh, supporting this research. Um-

Joe Rogan 54:40 You're seeing more of it, sure.

Michael Pollan 54:42 Rebecca Mercer has given money to MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies, for their work on, uh, MDMA. Um, and Steve Bannon has spoken out in approval of this research. So, and Peter Thiel is, um, you know, is investing in a psychedelic pharmaceutical company that's getting started in England. So I don't think it... It may not break down in the usual right left way that we're so accustomed to.

Joe Rogan 55:08 Hmm.

Michael Pollan 55:08 Um, and that may give it some protection.

Joe Rogan 55:10 Well, I think one of the things that'll help is anyone who has a loved one that's going through a terminal illness-

Michael Pollan 55:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:16 ... and experiences these things and sees the profound alleviation of anxiety and this just lessening of the worry of passing on. And Larry Hagman was once on, uh, like a real straight television show, like CBS or Fox News or something like that, and they asked him about his life and like what, what makes him so happy and he said he had a profound acid trip. And you could see the host going, "What?" He goes, "Yeah. Well, I, I took a, a really powerful dose of LSD and, uh, it completely alleviated my worries about dying."

Michael Pollan 55:49 Amazing.

Joe Rogan 55:50 And, you know, I remember seeing him on television going, "Wow, they didn't know this was coming." (laughs)

Michael Pollan 55:54 No. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:55 And see- seeing this straight interviewer just trying to uncomfortably move past this subject. "Okay. Well, the guy from Dallas is a fucking drug addict." (laughs)

Michael Pollan 56:03 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:03 And it's like they didn't know what to do with it, but he was so warm and smiling and...... I believe it was a piece on his house, 'cause he had some crazy off the grid sort of life and some eco-friendly house, and all solar powered and used a well and all these different things. And, uh, you know, they were asking him what made him so happy, and I'll never forget that. He was saying, "Well, I did acid once, a really powerful experience that changed his life."

Michael Pollan 56:26 You know, Cary Grant also, uh, had 60, um, guided, uh, LSD trips in the-

Joe Rogan 56:33 Wow.

Michael Pollan 56:33 ... late '50s. And he gave an interview in 1959 to a, uh, a goss- a very famous, Joseph Hyams, who was the gossip columnist at that time, saying this had changed his life. Uh, he was using a low dose. They were, uh, there were a lot of psychiatrists in LA who were giving, uh, low dose LSD to people in their normal talk therapy sessions to... Essentially it was called psycholytic therapy 'cause it was mind loosening therapy and, and it would give you more access to your unconscious and, and make you be able to talk about things that you w- might otherwise feel very defensive about. And he had 60 of these sessions and he said he was born again. And he said that it had made him a much better actor because he no longer had an ego. Uh-

Joe Rogan 57:13 Wow.

Michael Pollan 57:13 ... he wasn't crippled by his ego. But then he also said, "And it made me irresistible to women."

Joe Rogan 57:18 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 57:18 Which, which sounds a little egotistical. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:21 Have no ego, but chicks love me.

Michael Pollan 57:23 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:25 (laughs) That's hilarious. Are you aware of any of the research they're doing now with ketamine and depression? And there, there... There's a lot of people that are getting administered pretty high doses of, uh-

Michael Pollan 57:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:37 ... intravenous and intramuscular ketamine for depression, including one of my good friends, uh, Neal Brennan. He's gone through it several times and talked about it on the podcast and said it was a real game changer for him.

Michael Pollan 57:48 Yeah, there's a lot of excitement in psychiatry about ketamine. Uh, ketamine is an anesthetic. Uh, it's a dissociative. Uh, it, it makes you feel separated from your body and that helps with pain. Um, so it's... I don't know if it's strictly speaking a psychedelic. It's certainly not a classic psychedelic. It doesn't work on those brain networks. Um, but, uh, it is legal 'cause it's been used as an anesthetic for years and it's relatively safe as an anesthetic compared to some of the others that are used. It's the one they use if, if, um, you know, you come into the trauma center and you've been shot or something, you need surgery and they don't have time to check whether you're allergic to any other drugs. That's the safe one to give you in a crisis.

Joe Rogan 58:25 They also would carry it around during times of war and-

Michael Pollan 58:27 That's right.

Joe Rogan 58:28 ... administer it to people in the field.

Michael Pollan 58:28 That's right. Yeah, they al- yeah. Um, and, uh, this... Uh, they don't really understand how it works, but they give people what is kind of a psychedelic dose. They go way out there. It's fairly brief, I believe. And many people with depression have found relief. It- it's not permanent. Um, they need to... It looks like they need to do it again every six months or something like that. Uh, but it seems to kind of reset the brain in a way that, um, many people are finding helpful. And this is all legal. I mean, you can... There are ketamine clinics, uh, where you can go, uh, and psychiatrists who are, who are administering it to people. Um, so for people who are struggling with depression and can't wait for psilocybin therapy to be approved for depression, which is still several years away, ketamine is, is worth exploring.

Joe Rogan 59:20 What about ibogaine? Did you look into that at all?

Michael Pollan 59:23 A little bit. Um, ibogaine is a psychedelic from a root of a tree that grows in Africa and it has been used specifically to treat opiate addiction. Um, and that's... God, if we need something now, a tool-

Joe Rogan 59:36 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 59:36 ... to deal with opiate addiction. There are clinics in Mexico where they, they-

Joe Rogan 59:39 I have a friend who has one down there.

Michael Pollan 59:40 Really?

Joe Rogan 59:41 Yeah. He opened it after he had his own personal problems with pills. He had a back injury, got hooked on pills, was really struggling to get off them. Went to Mexico to do ibogaine, got completely off of it, felt amazing, realized like, "Oh my God, I have to help people." And then opened up his own clinic.

Michael Pollan 59:56 It's amazing. I mean, there's a bunch in Guadalajara. I don't know where he is, but there is, um, there is a... You know, people doing it. I don't know exactly what the legal status is in Mexico, whether it's legal or just tolerated.

Joe Rogan 1:00:05 Well, I think most drugs have been decriminalized in Mexico, including LSD and mushrooms and a lot of other things to try to do something to curb the violence-

Michael Pollan 1:00:14 Oh, that's interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 ... that they're experiencing from the drug cartels.

Michael Pollan 1:00:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 At least keep it non-local.

Michael Pollan 1:00:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:18 You know, a lot of the violence is coming from the drug cartels getting money to ship everything to the United States.

Michael Pollan 1:00:24 Right. And we are-

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 Which is-

Michael Pollan 1:00:24 ... driving that violence-

Joe Rogan 1:00:25 Yeah, it's-

Michael Pollan 1:00:26 ... with our use. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:00:27 Well, it, it is very strange that our insistence on prohibition is actually funding one of the largest drug and violence epidemics-

Michael Pollan 1:00:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:36 ... we've ever seen in terms of like what's happening south of the border.

Michael Pollan 1:00:38 Well, yeah. And think about Columbia too.

Joe Rogan 1:00:40 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:00:40 The civil war in Columbia-

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:00:41 ... was funded by our, our-

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Cocaine.

Michael Pollan 1:00:43 ... our cocaine interest. Um, so ibogaine is a very intense drug. It is, um-

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 Did you do it for this?

Michael Pollan 1:00:50 No, I didn't. I didn't. Uh, and I wouldn't do it, I don't think, because it has big implications for your heart.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Really?

Michael Pollan 1:00:57 And... Yeah-

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Hm.

Michael Pollan 1:00:57 ... and in fact when you... So it is more toxic to the body than the so-called classic psychedelics and it can last like 36 hours. It's a very long trip.

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:01:07 It's really intense. In these clinics, they s- you have to be on a heart monitor while they're... while you're doing it. Um, and that was like... I had a, I had a, I have a minor heart issue that, that made me stay away from MDMA, which is an amphetamine.

Joe Rogan 1:01:20 Mm.

Michael Pollan 1:01:21 Um, and, uh, you know, I mean, I, I'm the kinda guy who goes to his cardiologist before he has six psychedelic trips to check it all out and make sure-

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 What's wrong with your heart?

Michael Pollan 1:01:30 ... it's okay. I have something called AFib, a- atrial fibrillation, which, um, you know, is ma- you can manage with, uh, with medicine, uh, or there's a procedure you can get. It's just a kind of, uh, occasional or regular-

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 Irregularity?

Michael Pollan 1:01:42 Yeah. It just happens sometimes. Um, but my cardiologist warned me off of MDMA because it can raise your heart rate. Although I've subsequently learned if you take a beta blocker, uh, it's okay. Um, so anyway, I ha- I've never, uh, experimented with that. Um, but anyway, g- in light of that...... uh, I, uh, I would stay away from ibogaine. But I'm really curious about it just 'cause th- we have such a crisis with addiction.

Joe Rogan 1:02:07 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:02:07 Uh, but psilocybin is, is being used successfully for addiction. I talked to, uh, smoking, uh, people, lifelong smokers who broke their addiction with a single or two psilocybin journeys, and they, they had extraordinary stories to tell. Um, I didn't understand how you could t- have one trip and then give up a lifelong habit, and I asked people about this. And, uh, I talked to this one woman, she was about 60, and she was an Irish book editor, and she, uh, she said on her s- I said, "So what happened? How'd you, how'd you stop?" She said, "I, uh, well, I, first I grew wings and I flew through European history and I visited, you know, the site of the Shakespeare's Globe Theater and I saw the Salem Witch Trials and, and I, I died three times and I saw my body, uh, rising from a funeral pyre on the Ganges, and I realized the universe was so amazing and there were so many incredible things to do, that killing yourself with cigarettes seemed kinda stupid."

Joe Rogan 1:03:02 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 1:03:03 (laughs) I was like, "I coulda told you that."

Joe Rogan 1:03:05 Wow.

Michael Pollan 1:03:06 But, see, it goes back to that, that noetic quality, that the ... She had a perspective on her life she'd never had, or on the universe, and that she believed that smoking was stupid in a way she knew before, but it didn't have that conviction, that rock hard rev- uh, you know, revealed truth conviction. And I heard that from many people. And I asked the doctor about it. Uh, the psychologist who was running the study says, "Yeah, everybody has these 'duh' moments on their-"

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 1:03:35 ... "on their psychedelic trips that end up being transformative."

Joe Rogan 1:03:38 Did you have a duh moment?

Michael Pollan 1:03:40 I had a lot of insights. Um, I don't know if I ... Yeah, I did actually. I-

Joe Rogan 1:03:45 How many different trips did you have while you were doing this?

Michael Pollan 1:03:46 I had, uh, six or seven. I, I, so I just, uh, a couple, two psilocybin trips, one guided, one not, an LSD trip, guided, uh, a couple ayahuasca circles, and then, um, I had a really weird psychedelic called 5-MeO-DMT, which is the smoked venom of the Sonoran Desert toad. Who figured that out, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:04:08 ... should get some kinda prize. Um, but, um-

Joe Rogan 1:04:10 That's a pretty, pretty potent one.

Michael Pollan 1:04:12 Very potent, and thank God, short-acting, um, short-lived.

Joe Rogan 1:04:15 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:04:16 Um, it was, it was actually a horrible experience. That was-

Joe Rogan 1:04:18 Really? You had a bad experience?

Michael Pollan 1:04:18 ... that was my worst. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:19 I had a great experience on it.

Michael Pollan 1:04:20 You did?

Joe Rogan 1:04:20 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:04:21 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 What was y- what was wrong with it?

Michael Pollan 1:04:23 So I, you know, you take, like, one puff, and before you exhale, um ... I was ... I mean, there's a synthetic version too, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:04:31 I was taking the venom. Um, you're shot out of a cannon. There's no lead-up.

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:04:36 It's no warmup. It's like foom. And I felt like I was actually, like, strapped to the outside of a rocket, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:04:44 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:04:44 ... going through space and through clouds and, like, the g-forces pulling down my cheeks, and it was just this mental storm-

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:04:51 ... without any, uh, nothing to orient myself.

Joe Rogan 1:04:55 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:04:55 There was no space. There was no time. There was no self. And, um, it was just unendurable, this punishing roar in my ears. And someone who had done it said eventually it's like a takeoff and you get into orbit and it, and it's, it's very nice at that point.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:05:12 But what happened with me is I had the, I had the storm. I mean, I felt like it was like ... The metaphor I use in the book is like ... I said, "I can't explain this." You can't tell a story without place, time, and character, right?

Joe Rogan 1:05:26 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:05:26 I had none of those.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:05:28 Um, it was just this inchoate energy. And I said it was, it was like the before the Big Bang. You remember that? Well, obviously nobody does. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:05:36 But, but there was pure energy and no matter yet, and no time yet. I mean, that's where I was. And, um, it was horrible. It was terrifying. And I thought I was dying. But then you, uh, you come down. It was kind of a suborbital flight. And, and then I started coming down, and suddenly I could feel, oh, I got a body, you know? I was touching my legs. I have a body and, like, oh, there's a, there's a floor, there's p- there's space, and then there's time. And the, and the universe kind of reconsolidated, and I had this feeling of incredible gratitude.

Joe Rogan 1:06:07 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:06:08 Not just for being alive, which all of us have had at one point or another, but that anything existed. I was, I was grateful for the fact that there is something and not nothing-

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:06:18 ... 'cause I'd seen what nothing was like. And so in that sense, it ended up kinda positive, but you wouldn't wanna go there to have that experience. So subsequently, somebody said to me, a very experienced psychonaut who I was telling this story to, he said, "You didn't have enough." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:34 That's what I was just gonna tell you.

Michael Pollan 1:06:35 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 Yeah, 'cause you only took one hit. You usually take three. You take three and the rocket li- the rocket ride leads you somewhere. It takes you-

Michael Pollan 1:06:43 Wait-

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 ... to the center of the universe.

Michael Pollan 1:06:43 ... to me you take three, three, three? I mean, three-

Joe Rogan 1:06:46 Three in a row. Three in a row. Take a big one-

Michael Pollan 1:06:47 ... at the same time?

Joe Rogan 1:06:47 ... blow it out, take a big one, blow it out, take a big one, and as you're taking the third one, you're already seeing the world crystallize in front of you. It already starts turning into geometric patterns. You put the pipe down, lay back in the chair, and mmm-chumm, you just-

Michael Pollan 1:07:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:02 ... shoot off to the center of the universe. The, the terrifying thing is you cease to exist. Like-

Michael Pollan 1:07:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 ... it's the one drug that I've ever taken where you don't ... you're not there anymore.

Michael Pollan 1:07:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 Uh, even N,N-dimethyltryptamine, which is-

Michael Pollan 1:07:13 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:07:13 ... the difference between 5-methoxy dimethyltryptamine is just an oxy- oxygen molecule attached to it.

Michael Pollan 1:07:19 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 But N,N-dimethyltryptamine is incredibly visually stimulating. Uh, 5-methoxy is not.

Michael Pollan 1:07:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 It's just white.

Michael Pollan 1:07:26 It was white.

Joe Rogan 1:07:27 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:07:27 It was definitely w- I don't know how I coulda taken three hits, because I hadn't exhaled-

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 You just gotta do it.

Michael Pollan 1:07:31 ... the first one when I was gone.

Joe Rogan 1:07:33 You just ... Well, I don't know what your d-

Michael Pollan 1:07:34 I was ta-

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 I only did the synthetic version of it.

Michael Pollan 1:07:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 You're doing this frog version.

Michael Pollan 1:07:37 And the person I know who did the synthetic version had a very different experience, and they felt-

Joe Rogan 1:07:41 Mmm.

Michael Pollan 1:07:41 ... like they were installed in the firmament as this happy star.

Joe Rogan 1:07:45 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:07:45 But I didn't get there, so it-... who knows, I did something wrong. Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:07:48 I don't think you did. I just think you, you had a different experience. And I mean, obvi- obviously, there's gotta be some sort of chemical difference. You're probably getting other things in that frog venom as well as pure DMT.

Michael Pollan 1:07:59 P- that's right. That may be it.

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 Yeah. I mean, it's all-

Michael Pollan 1:08:01 I don't, I don't know the answer to that.

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 It's fucking frog spit. I mean-

Michael Pollan 1:08:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 ... (laughs) I mean, do you know how many you get it to-

Michael Pollan 1:08:06 By the way, no harms were ... No, no frogs-

Joe Rogan 1:08:08 No.

Michael Pollan 1:08:08 ... were harmed in the making of this drug.

Joe Rogan 1:08:09 Well, you ... It ex- it's excreted on the outside of their body-

Michael Pollan 1:08:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:08:11 ... and what most people do is they-

Michael Pollan 1:08:12 You can milk them.

Joe Rogan 1:08:13 Yeah, you, you rub them on a glass and then let it dry off, and then you scrape it off the glass-

Michael Pollan 1:08:19 That's right. It crystallizes.

Joe Rogan 1:08:20 ... and then you smoke it. Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:08:21 Yeah. I heard-

Joe Rogan 1:08:21 Good luck with all that.

Michael Pollan 1:08:22 ... you just kinda squeeze them and, and then it sprays the glass-

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 1:08:24 ... and overnight, it turns into ... It looks like brown sugar.

Joe Rogan 1:08:27 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:08:27 It's an amazing thing. You're the first person who knows anything about it that I've ... uh, that who has interviewed me.

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 Well, you used to be able to buy it. You used to be able to buy it. I bought-

Michael Pollan 1:08:32 It was legal till recently, 2011.

Joe Rogan 1:08:35 ... a fucking jug of this shit-

Michael Pollan 1:08:36 Oh, my God.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 ... off- offline. Uh, I bought it from some company, American Chemical Company or something, and they send it to you. And I had enough to get the entire state of California high for several days.

Michael Pollan 1:08:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:47 'Cause it doesn't take much.

Michael Pollan 1:08:48 It doesn't.

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 But it's not something you wanna do very often. It's more-

Michael Pollan 1:08:50 And I don't think it has the same kinda healing properties 'cause you're not bringing back information that's usable.

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Oh, I brought back a lot.

Michael Pollan 1:08:57 You did?

Joe Rogan 1:08:57 Yeah, I brought back, uh, a lot about myself. And one of the things that I realized, like, as I was ... I recorded ... Uh, what I would do is post-trip, I'd hit a tape recorder right when I became conscious again and start talking about the experience. And (clears throat) what I remember saying about the 5-Methoxy-DMT experience is, like, as I'm trying to recount what happened, I feel my ego trying to retake hold of the situation and even use words in a way that might impress you with my ability to describe things, or as ... You know, as a professional comedian too, I was aware that, like, a lot of what you're doing, you're saying things in a way that's pleasing to people so that they get excited about hearing you talk.

Michael Pollan 1:09:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:39 And I was very aware of that while I was doing that. I'm say- I'm saying, "I'm trying to explain things that are not possible to explain because the words that we're using were all invented for a world that doesn't exist in the DMT dimension." And as once, once you break through, it is so profoundly alien that any words-

Michael Pollan 1:10:00 And liberating?

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 Yes. Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:10:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:02 Well, in a way. I mean, it made, it made me really, truly realize that we are in a soup of, of atoms and that it's not ... Yeah, there's not, like, Michael Pollan, Joe Rogan, and Jamie Vernon in a room, here's a wood table, there's oxygen-

Michael Pollan 1:10:15 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 1:10:15 ... between us. No, there's ... We're in a, a, an universal stew-

Michael Pollan 1:10:19 Yeah, diffused. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:20 ... of particles. Yeah, and it breaks those particles down, or at least it gives you a view into that. And you cease to exist, which is the most bizarre thing because it's so similar to N,N-dimethyltryptamine chemically, but so different in-

Michael Pollan 1:10:34 In experience.

Joe Rogan 1:10:34 ... the fact that you're not there.

Michael Pollan 1:10:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:36 While you're doing regular D- ... Like, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, which is the active ingredient in ayahuasca. Have you done that, the pure version of it?

Michael Pollan 1:10:43 Yes. No, not the pure version.

Joe Rogan 1:10:44 The pure version is like a very short, much more intense ayahuasca experience. I've never done ayahuasca. I've only done-

Michael Pollan 1:10:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:10:52 ... the D- DMT version. But the-

Michael Pollan 1:10:55 By injection or ...

Joe Rogan 1:10:56 No, smoking it.

Michael Pollan 1:10:57 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 But when you ... What you get out of it is, you're there while all this is happening.

Michael Pollan 1:11:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:02 And you're just-

Michael Pollan 1:11:02 You're present.

Joe Rogan 1:11:02 ... blown away, and you're like, "I can't believe I'm seeing-"

Michael Pollan 1:11:04 And that's true in ayahuasca too. You're present.

Joe Rogan 1:11:06 But there's all these entities that are trying to calm you down.

Michael Pollan 1:11:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:08 "Relax, relax, take it in. Settle down, settle down." They're all trying to calm you down and, and, and, and alleviate.

Michael Pollan 1:11:17 That's helpful.

Joe Rogan 1:11:17 Yeah, it's, it's, it's weird, you know?

Michael Pollan 1:11:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:11:20 And they're also fucking with you, like, they give you the finger. Like, I had a bunch of jokers that were, like, dancing around me giving me the finger.

Michael Pollan 1:11:25 Did you have machine elves too?

Joe Rogan 1:11:27 I don't believe in that thing.

Michael Pollan 1:11:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:28 I don't know what that is. Like, McKenna had those experiences of machine elves. I never saw ... I saw it ... What I described is complex geometric patterns that are made out of love and understanding. They, they seemed to me to be like the building blocks of the soul all around you all the time.

Michael Pollan 1:11:44 Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:11:45 Like, some just gigantic, impossibly large infinite well of souls, just these things dancing around you. And they were, they were never one thing. They would be one thing for a second, then they'd change into something else, and then they'd change into something different. And the more profound the experiences got, the more profound the next one would be. And they kept saying like, "Look at this, look at this."

Michael Pollan 1:12:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:10 Like, the ... But the words weren't real words. That's the other thing. It's like I'm saying the words, "Look at this," and I would have that in my head, but I never heard anybody say it. It was almost like it was triggering those, the, the concept of those words in my mind.

Michael Pollan 1:12:23 Right, right. It, it, it's-

Joe Rogan 1:12:25 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:12:25 ... it's pre- or post-linguistic, some of these experiences. So when you ... You, you asked about dumb moments though, but, um, you know, I had one where I had this, like, cascading sense, flood of love toward ... And I was thinking about my family, I was thinking about my son and my wife and my parents. And, and, you know, it sounds, like, so banal. And one of the things that happens is that these platitudes, that love is the most important thing there is, okay, take that for example. That could be on a Hallmark card.

Joe Rogan 1:12:55 Right.

Michael Pollan 1:12:55 But suddenly, it's infused with like, yes, that is so profound.

Joe Rogan 1:13:00 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:00 And you know what? It is profound.

Joe Rogan 1:13:02 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:02 But we have these defenses against seeing it that way because we've heard it so many times. You know, a sense of banality is just from repetition.

Joe Rogan 1:13:11 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:11 Um, but you're put back in touch with ... You know, a platitude is a truth that's been drained of all emotion.

Joe Rogan 1:13:19 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:19 And the emotion comes back and it becomes really powerful. So I, I, I, uh, there's a whole riff in the book about platitudes. I'm like, "Oh, we have to rethink these platitudes." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:13:27 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:28 So it can make you sound like an idiot. Um, but is that right or is that right? You know?

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Well, it makes you sound-

Michael Pollan 1:13:34 And I, and I actually-

Joe Rogan 1:13:35 ... like an idiot.

Michael Pollan 1:13:35 ... think the experience is more truthful than the ironic, cynical perspective that we bring to it in our everyday lives, which is a defense against powerful emotion and being overwhelmed every day by, wow, love.... you know?

Joe Rogan 1:13:48 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:13:48 Whatever it is. So, y- y- you, you end up revaluing those kinda things, and that... So, that was a really important takeaway for me. The other was having an experience of ego dissolution. That... Which can be scary, can also be very blissful if it's then followed by a merging with nature or other people. And I do think that is the therapeutic agent in these, in the people who are healed, that our ego does keep us from perceiving certain things, and it enforces really destructive stories we tell ourselves, like, "I can't get through this day without a drink."

Joe Rogan 1:14:24 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:14:24 "I c-... I'm, I'm unworthy of love." Uh, you know, the voice of self-criticism. All... And we get trapped in