Joe Rogan Experience #1661 - Rick Doblin

1. 0:00 – 1:56

   Why MAPS Focused on PTSD: From Soldiers to Police (and the case for prisons)

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Very good to see you, my friend.

   4. RDRick Doblin0:15

      So, so great to be here again.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Your tireless work-

   6. RDRick Doblin0:18

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      ... has not gone unnoticed. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm beyond thankful that you and MAPS are out there, and that you've done this incredible job. And we were just describing the genius of, first, doing it with, uh, people that e- no one can deny need help, and n- like, with, with soldiers with PTSD, using psychedelics to help them get over their, their, their horrible, y- you know, issues. That it's one of the best ways to sort of ingratiate or-

   8. RDRick Doblin0:51

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:51

      ... let people know the, the powerful benefits of psychedelics. And do it to people that you wouldn't expect to be connected with psychedelics ordinarily, right?

   10. RDRick Doblin0:59

       Well, the, the most, uh, unusual people are police officers.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:03

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RDRick Doblin1:03

       And so we've actually had police officers in our studies. And we even have a police officer, full time, who's also a psychotherapist, and he's going through our program to learn how to give MDMA therapy to other police officers.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:17

       Wow.

   14. RDRick Doblin1:17

       And I met, um, his police chief several times, and persuaded the, um, and, and told him about our full training program. And one of the steps is where we have a protocol from the FDA where therapists can volunteer to receive MDMA themselves as part of the training. And so the police chief gave his police officer permission to volunteer to take MDMA.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:40

       Wow.

   16. RDRick Doblin1:41

       So we're actually helping give MDMA to police officers to give it to other police officers with, with trauma.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:47

       That would be amazing. You know what we really need to do? Get it to prisoners.

   18. RDRick Doblin1:51

       Exactly, and prison guards.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Yeah.

   20. RDRick Doblin1:53

       I mean, they're also very traumatized. And so-

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       Oh, yeah, I can imagine.

2. 1:56 – 5:21

   Timothy Leary’s Concord Prison Experiment: What went wrong and what it taught

   1. RDRick Doblin1:56

      Yeah. There was a 35-year followup study I did to, uh, Timothy Leary when he was at Harvard. He did the Concord Prison Experiment.

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:05

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RDRick Doblin2:05

      And that was to give psilocybin to prisoners who were getting ready to be released, and the goal was to see if they could produce prosocial, um, experiences that would then help reduce recidivism.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin2:19

      And the study was unfortunately, um, it was promoted as very, very successful. I thought I was gonna do a followup to, um, bring light to one of the most important e- psychedelic studies ever. But as I got more into it, it turned out that, um, Timothy Leary had fudged the data.

   6. JRJoe Rogan2:37

      Oh, no.

   7. RDRick Doblin2:38

      (laughs) Yeah, it was really disappointing.

   8. JRJoe Rogan2:40

      What did he do?

   9. RDRick Doblin2:41

      Well, for example, um, the longer you're out of prison, the more likely you are to go back. So his group, on average, had been out of prison 10 months, and he compared it with a group of people that had been out of prison 24 months.

   10. JRJoe Rogan2:56

       Hm.

   11. RDRick Doblin2:57

       And that was published in this obscure British criminology journal. And nobody had bothered to check to see if he was doing a fair comparison. And so when I started doing this followup, I was just like, "How could he have done that?" And the, the data that was from the prior prisoners from Concord Prison up to two years, it also showed how they were at different time points, including at the 10 month, 10-month time point, and the results were the same at the 10-month time point.

   12. JRJoe Rogan3:26

       Oh. That's, that's unfortunate.

   13. RDRick Doblin3:28

       So it's, it's obvious if you compare people who've been out of prison longer with people who've been out of prison shorter, it, you know, it's, it's just not a fair comparison. The other thing he did, not to rag on Timothy Leary, but I think he did a lot of great things. But the other thing he did was he said that a lot of these people were, um, going back to prison because they had minor parole violations, and that they were supervised more carefully because they had done psilocybin in prison, and that they were just, um, recidivism because of minor things. And so when I got into the prison system records, it turns out that they did have their parole violated, but that's because they had committed new crimes for which they were later convicted.

   14. JRJoe Rogan4:07

       Oh, Timothy.

   15. RDRick Doblin4:09

       So... But the, what, what he realized is that you can't just help people have these experiences and then let them out of prison and assume that they'll just be fine. You need aftercare.

   16. JRJoe Rogan4:21

       Yeah.

   17. RDRick Doblin4:21

       You need support groups. And so he had started to create that, and that's when he got kicked out of Harvard, and then they fell apart. So my conclusion of the followup study was that he had, um, basically committed scientific fraud, and it wasn't really true, what he had said. But it didn't mean that it doesn't work. It ma- means that you can't rely overmuch on just the psychedelic experience. You have to have supportive aftercare and group support. And if you do that, I think it could potentially work. So we have been talking to various people who wanna do work with prisoners. And I think, uh, or recently released. It's hard to get permission to do work inside prisons because of the question whether prisoners can give informed consent, whether there is-

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:05

       Hm.

   19. RDRick Doblin5:05

       ... pressure on them to do it, or if they do it, they think they'll get out sooner or something. But, but it would be perfect when you're in prison to, to be doing this inner work to f- explore how you ended up in prison and, and the traumas that maybe made you commit certain kinda crimes.

3. 5:21 – 8:43

   Integration and the ‘Ctrl-Alt-Delete’ metaphor: Why people revert to old habits

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:21

      Yeah. I think that same argument about, uh, prisoners and psilocybin and aftercare, you could apply that maybe to a lesser extent to j- just the general public. Like one of the arguments that I've had... Not, not the arguments I've had, but the conversations I've had with people, the argument about psychedelics not being life-changing.

   2. RDRick Doblin5:41

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:41

      People will say, "Well, I know a lot of people who've done psychedelics and they're basically the same person."

   4. RDRick Doblin5:45

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:45

      You know, they have one experience and they get back to it. And the way I've, uh, described it is that I think that a, a real profound breakthrough psychedelic experience is like pressing control, alt, delete for your brain. And when you reboot, you have a fresh desktop. It's clean, but you have one folder on the desktop that says "My Old Bullshit."

   6. RDRick Doblin6:05

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:07

      A- and most people-

   8. RDRick Doblin6:08

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:08

      ... open up that folder and just get comfortable with their old bullshit. So after the experience, this, this thing where you sort of have to...... you have to rethink how you view everything. And you have this renewed perspective. You have this completely different view of the world, but it's confusing. You don't have scaffolding, uh, i- to travel on. You don't have like a, a, a ... y- you don't have a, a clear pathway, but it's real easy to slip into your own thing, and then start doing all the same dumb shit that you were doing before. And I think for prisoners, it's probably profoundly more difficult, because not only are you outside, not only, uh, have you been incarcerated, which has got to be incredibly traumatic-

   10. RDRick Doblin6:54

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan6:54

       ... you've been locked into a cage, you t- they take away all your freedom, they tell you what to do. But then you become accustomed to that way of life, and there's comfort in the fact that you are told what to do, and you know what every day holds for you. Then you go out in the world, you're out in the free world, and you don't know how to get by. And it's really hard to get an apartment, because you're a felon-

   12. RDRick Doblin7:17

       Yeah. Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:17

       ... and it's really hard to get a job, because you're a felon. And then someone who you know from the old life is doing something illegal, and they invite you to join in, and you say, "Well, this is my chance to score. I can get a little b- money. Maybe then I can get an apartment. Maybe then I can get back on track."

   14. RDRick Doblin7:32

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:32

       And the next thing you know, you're living a life of crime again.

   16. RDRick Doblin7:35

       Yeah. We make it so hard for people to reintegrate into society.

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:38

       Yeah.

   18. RDRick Doblin7:38

       And, and I think one of the problems from the '60s was this idea of, you know, one-dose miracle cure, that's all you need.

   19. JRJoe Rogan7:45

       Yeah.

   20. RDRick Doblin7:46

       And I think what we've come to understand is that it's not that way. Occasionally, it can be, but mostly-

   21. JRJoe Rogan7:51

       I think- (laughs)

   22. RDRick Doblin7:51

       ... it's not, and you need this support afterwards, and you need to integrate it. And what we've also learned from neuroscience is that you're actually, um, neuroplasticity, that these psychedelics help you rewire your brain in new ways. But you have to reinforce that. It's just not-

   23. JRJoe Rogan8:06

       Yeah.

   24. RDRick Doblin8:06

       ... automatic. It's not about the drug. It's about the therapy that the drug helps make more effective. And people have placed undue, um, confidence, you could say, in the drug itself.

   25. JRJoe Rogan8:17

       Yeah. You need a new pathway. Once you've gotten off of your old pathway, the psychedelics jolt you into this new realm. But if you don't have a new pathway, then you, you panic, and people fall back into their comfort zone. And if your comfort zone is alcohol abuse, and doing the same things you've done before, and ruining your life, and taking pills, then you're gonna go right back to that.

4. 8:43 – 16:14

   A rare one-session PTSD resolution: Tony Macy’s MDMA breakthrough

   1. RDRick Doblin8:43

      Yeah. There, there's one example of o- one person where it was like a one-dose miracle cure. It's really rare, but I'll, I'll just explain a bit. He was a veteran, and, uh, had PTSD. I talked about, uh, Tony Macy during my, uh, TED Talk. But he had this sense that he had been disabled with PTSD for years because of friends of his that had been killed, all the violence that he saw when he was in Iraq. And under the influence of MDMA, he had this realization that there was something good about the PTSD. He was getting a benefit from it, which was, it was the way that he showed loyalty to his friends who had died-

   2. JRJoe Rogan9:20

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RDRick Doblin9:20

      ... that he was connected to their memory, and that he was suffering, and it was a way to be bonded still with them. But then he was able to kind of see himself from the eyes of his friends who had died, and to realize that they wouldn't want him to squander his life. They didn't have life anymore. They would want him to live as fully as possible, and he realized there's another way to honor his friends, which is to, to live.

   4. JRJoe Rogan9:44

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin9:44

      And he thought, "What am I gonna do with the rest of my life?" And in that moment, he cured himself of PTSD.

   6. JRJoe Rogan9:50

      Wow.

   7. RDRick Doblin9:50

      Then he said, "I'm taking, um, opiates for pain, but I don't really think I'm taking it for pain. I'm thinking more about it as an escape. I don't need the opiates anymore." And then he said, "I don't need this MDMA anymore either. I'm done. I wanna drop out of the study." This was his first of what was gonna be three MDMA sessions.

   8. JRJoe Rogan10:09

      Wow.

   9. RDRick Doblin10:10

      And he dropped out. And we said, "Sure, it's all voluntary. But if you will just do the outcome measures, that would help us." And he agreed to do that. And at the two-month follow-up, no PTSD. And then around 11 months, when we have the 12-month follow-up, he started thinking, "Well, maybe I'd like another MDMA experience." And I said, "Well, we, we can't quite do that. It's, you're out of the protocol. You've dropped out. But at least it's only for PTSD, this study. Let's see what your scores are at, uh, the 12 months." And no PTSD.

   10. JRJoe Rogan10:41

       Wow.

   11. RDRick Doblin10:41

       And that was about nine, 10 years ago. Um, I've been in touch with him recently. He's doing great. But it was this realization that he was able to make under the influence of one experience of MDMA that enabled him to reinterpret the way he could be loyal to his friends who had died.

   12. JRJoe Rogan10:59

       That's amazing, and it makes sense. It completely makes sense that that would be one of the reasons why a soldier would have PTSD. As you talk to soldiers that experience combat duty, one of the things they say is that there's this insane profound connection with their fellow soldiers.

   13. RDRick Doblin11:15

       Yes.

   14. JRJoe Rogan11:16

       And when one of them is killed and they survive, they have this, uh, survivor syndrome-

   15. RDRick Doblin11:22

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JRJoe Rogan11:23

       ... this survivor's guilt.

   17. RDRick Doblin11:24

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan11:24

       And it, it haunts them, you know? And if they could honor the fallen soldiers by living their best life, and not being in constant trauma, it'd be better for everybody.

   19. RDRick Doblin11:36

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan11:36

       And that is what their brothers and sisters would want.

   21. RDRick Doblin11:39

       Exactly. Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan11:40

       Yeah.

   23. RDRick Doblin11:40

       And then they also have this sense that, um, many of them feel like now that they've found healing with psychedelics, that they have this sense of guilt in a sense that their, so many of their, um, comrades have not had that opportunity for healing.

   24. JRJoe Rogan11:56

       Yeah.

   25. RDRick Doblin11:56

       So, many of them have now become more advocates-... for helping others from the military who've traumatized in that way get access to psychedelics, to kind of bring them all back home.

   26. JRJoe Rogan12:07

       That's amazing. It makes sense. I, I learned a lot from the one MDMA trip that I had. The one MDMA trip I had made me realize how insecure I am.

   27. RDRick Doblin12:16

       Hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan12:16

       Like, I didn't realize it. Like, I always thought that the way... Uh, it's not that I didn't realize that I had insecurities. Like, everybody has insecurities. But I didn't realize how they affect every single interaction that I would have with people, and that kind of everybody does. You're always wary of how someone's gonna view you or how you're communicating with them, and, you know, is this... Like, are we safe talking to each other? Are you gonna be mean to me? Am I gonna be mean to you? Like, there's this weird tension that human beings have when you first meet people. But, uh, these people that I met when we were, were doing MDMA together, like, no one had any b- fear. No one had any... We were all holding hands and talking, and it was ve- It was, uh, a w- This bizarrely free experience, where it made me realize, like, "Wow, like, most of the time we talk to people, we have these guards up, we have these walls up." And you kinda have to, I guess, because some people have nefarious intentions, and you know, sometimes life can be dangerous. But it made me think, "Boy, if you could get this to prisoners, you know, if you g-" 'Cause like, how many of them are products of traumatic childhoods?

   29. RDRick Doblin13:30

       Almost all of them.

   30. JRJoe Rogan13:31

       Yes. Right?
5. 16:14 – 19:25

   Doblin’s early life and ‘the underground’: Russia, the Cold War, and meeting the “other”

   1. JRJoe Rogan16:14

      Yes.

   2. RDRick Doblin16:14

      ... we're ashamed of. We can all be twisted in certain ways. So, I just feel so grateful for my parents, who... I had very loving parents, who supported me to... Even when I broke their, um, hopes for me when I was, um, 17 years old in college and starting to do LSD, and... I'm the oldest of four kids. And in the middle of my, uh, first year of college, I, I called up my parents and said, "I'm gonna drop out of college. I wanna study LSD."

   3. JRJoe Rogan16:41

      (laughs)

   4. RDRick Doblin16:41

      "And I want you to pay for it." (laughs) And-

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:45

      (laughs) What were you in college for?

   6. RDRick Doblin16:47

      Well, this was, uh, 1971 that I started, um, and 1972 is when I had this conversation with my parents. I was studying psychology and Russian. You know, I was very interested in the other, so I'd studied, um, Russian in high school. Uh, actually, I had, um, gone to Russia. My parents sent me to Russia in 1970 for the summer to learn Russian. And that's actually where I first started working in the underground, you could say. My parents gave me some prayer books, because we're Jewish and prayer books were forbidden in Russia. And they gave me these prayer books to give to these guys at the synagogue. And I... When I got there, I was with about 60 high school students, and we could speak passable Russian. And so, a bunch of the young Russian black market kids came up to us. And again, 1970, we had the psychedelic revolution in America, and they just had repression. And so they wanted to buy our shirts, our clothes, blue jeans. Anything that looked like America. They would pay rubles. And rubles were worthless outside of Russia, because they wanted to block anybody from escaping. You'd have to escape with no money.

   7. JRJoe Rogan17:51

      Wow.

   8. RDRick Doblin17:52

      So, we made, um... Me and two other guys, um, gathered all the stuff from all these other high school students, and we made thousands and thousands, thousands of rubles. And we knew that we couldn't...... take it home or anything. And so I went to go, um, meet this guy at the synagogue to give him these books in Moscow, and he said, "We're being watched. Don't do it here, but let me meet you at a subway station at this amount of time at this station." And I said, "I also got all these rubles to give to you." And so we, we had this meeting, and I was just 16, and I was like, "Hey, if they catch me, you know, I'm, I'm a dumb kid. They'll just send me home." I, so I was kind of fearless in that way. And, uh, we made this transfer, and I gave him this, uh, bunch of rubles and the prayer books, and... But it was my parents, kind of, that sent me on this mission. (laughs) And that was my first underground activity, was against the Russians, against the communists.

   9. JRJoe Rogan18:44

      (laughs)

   10. RDRick Doblin18:44

       And it was very enlightening. And, but the, one of the things that was most enlightening for me was I took a walk on the beach with a Russian girl who worked at the, um, school that we were going to. And I just had this conversation with her, you know, primitive, 'cause I wasn't that great in Russian. But I was just like, "You don't wanna kill me. I don't wanna kill you. What does..." you know, 'cause this was the height of the Cold War and all of these, uh, could we destroy the world, not all that long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I just thought, th- "You know, you're just a person. I'm, I'm just..." You know, our governments might be in conflict, but I had this image that all the Russians are horrible and hateful and they all wanna kill us. And it, it was extremely eye-opening in terms of who's the other.

   11. JRJoe Rogan19:25

       Right, right.

6. 19:25 – 25:26

   DMT with Terence McKenna and ketamine’s ‘Hitler’ vision: mass psychology and political strategy

   1. RDRick Doblin19:25

      And, and I found the other was, was me (laughs) was, was just like me. I, I had this other experience I just wanted to share about, um, this was a DMT experience, where I realized that, you know, we all have the capacity for evil if we aren't careful, in a sense. So the DMT kind of dissolved my ego very quickly. It was the first time I ever did DMT. It was sitting in a circle with a group of people at Esalen. This was Terence McKenna and, um...

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:53

      You did DMT with Terence McKenna?

   3. RDRick Doblin19:55

      Yeah, yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:56

      That's-

   5. RDRick Doblin19:56

      And, uh, Ralph Metzner-

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:57

      That's pretty badass.

   7. RDRick Doblin19:58

      ... from Firewire. And, and we would, um... There was about eight of us, and we would... Each of us, it takes about 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes. So we, one person would do it, would then sort of close their eyes, lie down, and come back after 15 minutes or so, and then tell the story about what happened. And then we'd pass the pipe to the next person, and this would... like, a whole evening of-

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:16

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RDRick Doblin20:17

      ... DMT stories. So my DMT experience was this. Um, I saw this, um, horizontal line, then I saw a vertical line, then I saw color, it turned red, then it turned into cubes, like squares, and then it turned into, like, an M.C. Escher painting that was just... and then I was gone. And it was just, it didn't make s- and then I was gone. And then I just had this insight that in the deepest recesses of who I think I am, in this inner voice that's kind of always talking to you, this... that I was using English. And I didn't invent English. I, uh, it's all the product of all these people that came before me. So even in my most inner, private self, I'm intermixed with everybody else and everything that came before me.

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:55

       Oh.

   11. RDRick Doblin20:55

       And I had this beautiful experience of going back to the Big Bang and all this kind of sweep of evolutionary history, and I'm part of everything and everything's part of me, and it was all this beautiful stuff. And then I realized, this sort of logical part of my mind was like, "Well, if everything's part of you and you're part of everything, then Hitler is part of you too."

   12. JRJoe Rogan21:13

       Ooh.

   13. RDRick Doblin21:14

       It's inner. And, and that was very shattering for me, 'cause-

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:16

       That was in the DMT experience?

   15. RDRick Doblin21:18

       That was in the DMT experience.

   16. JRJoe Rogan21:19

       Did you see Hitler in the experience?

   17. RDRick Doblin21:20

       I did, and-

   18. JRJoe Rogan21:21

       Like a million golden Hitlers floating around you?

   19. RDRick Doblin21:24

       Well, that, that, that we all have that capacity, that, that if we wanna claim that we're connected with everything, that it's, it's not just the evil out there, that it's potentially in, in me. And it was very shattering. And the next day, um, we did ketamine. And so this is where I did more see Hitler. So thi- this is actually an experience that has, um, helped me with my political strategy, in a way, of what Maps is doing, is both drug development and drug policy reform. So under this experience, the next... It was very depressing and shattering to realize that I couldn't just say all the evil's out there, that I have this capacity that Hitler's inside me. So the next day, under ketamine, um, I was hovering above and behind Hitler as he's giving one of these speeches, like the Nuremberg Rally kind of things. And the ketamine gave me a bit of remove so I didn't freak out. I was, I was there, but I was not there, so I didn't feel vulnerable in that way. And I saw him doing this speech, and I'm thinking, "How do I get into, uh, his head? How do I help him not wanna murder and kill?" And, you know, "What can we do to, you know, undo this evil?" And then I saw this, um, the Heil Hitler salute near the end of his speech. And he would go, you know, he'd put up his hand like that, and then everybody in the crowd would do it back to him. And I felt like it was the one pushing out this energy and then the many pushing it back to him and giving him... and they would go back and forth, and the intensity was kind of increasing. And at that point, I was just realizing there's no way to get into his head, that, that he's d- it has to be voluntary, and that he was getting so much from it that he wouldn't... Uh, and I felt this panic rising above me, and I felt that if I were to panic, I would never be able to be effective in the world, that I would just h- turn away from that. And then with ketamine, you can still breathe, and so I realized that if I just breathe, that might help me deal with this fear, and I started deep breathing. And then came this idea that ironically, rather than trying to change the mind of the one, we need to change the mind of the many, and that they don't get as much out of it as Hitler did, that they're giving away their power to him. And so that's where we need mass mental health. So you hear a lot of people... I, I had a chance to talk to Steve Jobs for an hour-

   20. JRJoe Rogan23:48

       Oh.

   21. RDRick Doblin23:48

       ... a long time ago, and, um, but he was like, um, stuck in the '60s in a way. He was like, "God, if we could just give all these politicians LSD..." And I was like, "Yeah, that might be good, but they might resist it." But really, we have to base this new compassion and spirituality in the masses, in-... millions, tens of millions of people.

   22. JRJoe Rogan24:06

       This, this Hitler thing, can I-

   23. RDRick Doblin24:07

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan24:07

       ... a- ask you, like, when, I've never done ketamine, so when you're having this experience, what is, what is it like? Do you realize that you are in a psychedelic experience, that you're in some sort of a hallucination? Or does it actually feel like you are there? Like, what is-

   25. RDRick Doblin24:24

       It felt like I was there, but I had this sense that I was somehow or other also not there and removed. And I-

   26. JRJoe Rogan24:31

       But you knew that you were tripping-

   27. RDRick Doblin24:33

       Well, I c-

   28. JRJoe Rogan24:33

       ... at the time, do you think?

   29. RDRick Doblin24:34

       I, I lost that for a while.

   30. JRJoe Rogan24:36

       Mm-hmm.
7. 25:26 – 31:12

   War, stimulants, and propaganda: drugs in the Third Reich and beyond

   1. JRJoe Rogan25:26

      Well, you know Hitler was on all kinds of drugs.

   2. RDRick Doblin25:29

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan25:30

      Yeah.

   4. RDRick Doblin25:30

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan25:30

      Um, there was, God, I, I keep forgetting who told us that story, Jamie, but there's a story about Hitler convincing Mussolini.

   6. NANarrator25:39

      Oh, yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan25:39

      Do you remember?

   8. NANarrator25:40

      I've tried, I've tried to look it up and find it. I can't, I can't find it either.

   9. JRJoe Rogan25:44

      I, it might not have even had a, happened on a podcast.

   10. NANarrator25:46

       Yeah, no.

   11. JRJoe Rogan25:46

       That's the problem-

   12. NANarrator25:47

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan25:47

       ... is I have so many conversations, and my memory is just so full.

   14. RDRick Doblin25:52

       (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan25:52

       It just, there's no room. There, I got, like, folders stuffed all over the place.

   16. RDRick Doblin25:56

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan25:56

       I don't know where anything is, but the story was that Hitler was in the middle of campaigning, and he was completely exhausted, and he was supposed to meet Mussolini, and he was gonna not meet Mussolini 'cause he was so exhausted. But then, they shot him up with testosterone and liquid cocaine.

   18. NANarrator26:13

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JRJoe Rogan26:14

       And when they did that, he was just bouncing off the walls, and he cornered Mussolini and talked to him for five hours and convinced him not to leave the effort, not to leave the war effort. And he sort of, one of the, the, the things that this, uh, story was basically pointing to was that much of Hitler's m- mania and much of this, uh, rabid a- attack that he, uh, had put on the rest of the Western world was fueled by amphetamines-

   20. RDRick Doblin26:45

       Yes.

   21. JRJoe Rogan26:45

       ... and cocaine and testosterone, and that they just kept injecting him with all this shit that gave him this insane confidence and insane maniacal aggression. And it completely makes sense if you think about what he did. And then, we also know that the kamikazes were on amphetamines-

   22. NANarrator27:05

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan27:05

       ... and many of the Nazi soldiers-

   24. RDRick Doblin27:07

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan27:07

       ... were on amphetamines.

   26. RDRick Doblin27:08

       Well, the Blitzkrieg, how they would do that, this kind, they were days and days on amphetamines.

   27. JRJoe Rogan27:13

       Yeah.

   28. RDRick Doblin27:13

       And then, that promotes aggression as well.

   29. JRJoe Rogan27:16

       And just psychotic delusions.

   30. RDRick Doblin27:18

       Yeah.
8. 31:12 – 45:17

   Carl Hart, MAPS culture, and ‘smokable tasks’: drug policy reform meets workplace reality

   1. JRJoe Rogan31:12

      Yeah. Carl Hart is, uh, one of my favorite people to talk to.

   2. RDRick Doblin31:14

      Do you know that, uh, Carl Hart, we've invited him to join the board of directors of MAPS.

   3. JRJoe Rogan31:18

      Amazing.

   4. RDRick Doblin31:19

      He's going through this, uh, six-month process of getting to know us, and we're getting to know him. He's gonna come to our board of directors meeting in a couple weeks. Yeah, Carl Hart is fantastic.

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:28

      He's amazing. He's a perfect example of someone who had a c- a certain perspective before he became a research scientist and thought of drugs as being n- all negative connotations, thought of them as being addictive, terrible for you. But then, through actual rigorous study, like actually understanding and studying the effects of drugs, then became to change his perspective based on data. And then realized, like, "Oh, no, no, no. This is, this is... Most of what we think about drugs is incorrect or is propaganda." And to have the courage to be a professor, right? And to be a legitimate scholar, and have the courage to say that he enjoys heroin, and that he likes to sniff heroin, it helps relationships with his wife, and it helps his friendships. And I was like, that is... 'Cause he's just being honest, you know.

   6. RDRick Doblin32:16

      He's being courageous.

   7. JRJoe Rogan32:17

      And he's-

   8. RDRick Doblin32:18

      Incredibly courageous.

   9. JRJoe Rogan32:18

      Incredibly courageous and honest. And also, he's so fucking smart-

   10. RDRick Doblin32:22

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan32:22

       ... that when he says it, you realize, like, okay, this is not some crackpot perspective. This is an actual scholar who's telling you how this stuff works, and you should probably listen. Because he's got the courage to do this in the face of all of the propaganda and the current cultural narrative, which is that drugs ruin lives. And he's saying, "No, no, they don't ruin lives. They don't ruin my life." And you look at his life, his life is great. He's n- not getting ruined by drugs. He's using them, like, w- with responsibly. He's using them like an adult.

   12. RDRick Doblin32:56

       Yeah, one of the things I talked before is this dual strategy of MAPS, the drug development, you know, the pharmaceutical drug development, and, and drug policy reform. And so Carl is one of them leading advocates for drug policy reform, and that's why we're trying to, um, see if he'll come join the board. And one of the things that, um, he asked us to do is to look at our employee manual, our handbook. We've got about 120 people now in the MAPS, and then we also have the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which is our for-profit but benefit-maximizing, not profit-maximizing. And he said, uh... 'Cause we don't do drug testing. It might not be surprising to anybody, but we don't do drug testing for employees. It's all about performance. It's not about what drugs you take. And so Carl wanted us to take a look at how we described, um, that, and we just emphasized that even more, that even if for cause we'll never drug test people, it's about their performance.

   13. JRJoe Rogan33:49

       Yeah.

   14. RDRick Doblin33:49

       And then we put in there that some of the things that I really like to do, I just wanted it to be there, that we call them smokable tasks. So, we permit people to, um, smoke pot or do things, um, during work. You know, some people like to micro-dose. Some people like to do different things. And we just say if it d- if it enhances your performance, fine. If it makes you unable to do your work, that's not good, but it's not about what you do. And then one of my favorite things actually, and we put this in the employee manual, is that, um, one of the smokable tasks for me is strategizing, is getting high and, and meeting with MAPS staff. And some of us will get high, some of us won't, but then we'll just strategize. So, we put that in the employee handbook that it's okay to smoke pot at work if you're doing strategizing or other kind of things. And Carl was really, you know, a big factor in sort of articulating that even more clearly, that-

   15. JRJoe Rogan34:41

       It would be very disappointing if you guys did drug tests.

   16. RDRick Doblin34:45

       (laughs) Wouldn't it be terrible? (laughs) Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan34:47

       (laughs) Could you imagine if MAPS is drug... "Piss in the cup, Wilson." "What? I thought, I thought I was working at MAPS."

   18. RDRick Doblin34:53

       And we will let people, um, work with us who don't do drugs, so... (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan34:57

       Right, but you don't want people just showing up drunk either.

   20. RDRick Doblin35:01

       Unless they think somehow or other that enhances their performance. I mean, again, it's not about-

   21. JRJoe Rogan35:06

       It's about responsibility.

   22. RDRick Doblin35:07

       It's about responsibility, and it's about what particular tasks.

   23. JRJoe Rogan35:10

       Mm-hmm.

   24. RDRick Doblin35:10

       Like s- some people can really do spreadsheets better when they're high, because it helps them focus. Some people, they would just lose track of all the numbers.

   25. JRJoe Rogan35:18

       Right. That's me. (laughs)

   26. RDRick Doblin35:20

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan35:21

       But writing jokes, I feel like marijuana is a superpower. I feel like it gives you these new ideas that I- I don't know where ideas come from, you know. They, they come from the ether, right? You're, you're pulling them out of cultural references. You're pulling them out of life experiences, creativity. It's- there's so many different... And then a jolt of marijuana puts you in a completely different realm of experiences and ideas. It puts you in this different place. And I always feel like other ideas are accessible when you're on marijuana that aren't-

   28. RDRick Doblin35:54

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan35:54

       ... anywhere else. Carl Sagan shared that perspective.

   30. RDRick Doblin35:57

       Yes, yes. He was a daily pot smoker, and he had to hide that because he was worried he wouldn't be part of the space program if it was clear that he was smoking pot all the time.
9. 45:17 – 51:58

   Building psychedelic care infrastructure: thousands of clinics, cross-trained therapists, and education reform

   1. RDRick Doblin45:17

      Yeah. Now, if we were to do a podcast 10 years from now, my prediction is, we can see if it comes true, is that there's gonna be about 5 or 6,000 of these centers throughout the United States, and that there's already hundreds and hundreds of ketamine centers, and that's legal for depression. The ketamine therapists are interested in being cross-trained in MDMA, psilocybin. We think by the end of 2023, that we'll have FDA approval for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. By 2024 or 2025, there should be FDA approval for psilocybin, for depression, potentially for alcohol use disorder, other indications, and they'll be administered in these c- exact kind of centers. And that, that's our long-term goal, is to have these thousands and thousands of psychedelic centers, and they'll be not just an MDMA center or a psilocybin center or a ketamine center, but psychedelic centers. The therapists will be cross-trained in all these modalities. And that, that's the vision that we're trying to establish. But, but I would say about schools, and you talked about your kids, that we overemphasize cognitive education and underemphasize emotional education.

   2. JRJoe Rogan46:23

      Mm.

   3. RDRick Doblin46:24

      And schools don't really prepare people for that. So when kids are hyperactive and stuff, we just give them L- Adderall or something.

   4. JRJoe Rogan46:31

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin46:31

      We're, we're not really looking at the whole human, and there's been a lot of discussion about different kind of intelligences, emotional intelligence, EQ, is, is super important, but in schools, we just emphasize cognitive, and we leave so much untouched, and that causes so many problems. So we really need to reform how we think of education. What do we ... E- e- we need to educate citizens. Um, one of the, um, quotes that I thought was from Albert Einstein, but then I checked it out and it wasn't really, but I thought for a long time it was, but still, it's a great quote, and it is that, um, "Our technology has exceeded our humanity."

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:09

      Who is that quote? I thought it was Einstein too.

   7. RDRick Doblin47:11

      I- I don't ... I never could actually track it down to Einstein, but, but-

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:15

      Jamie'll track it down. (laughs)

   9. RDRick Doblin47:16

      Okay. Th- there's another quote fr- from Einstein (laughs) that is from Einstein, that is, um, "The splitting of the atom has changed everything except our mode of thinking, and hence we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe. What shall be required if mankind is to survive is a whole new mode of thinking."

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:36

       Mm.

   11. RDRick Doblin47:36

       And what is that new mode of thinking that Einstein was talking about? And, and I think it's a more universal, spiritual, we're all in this together, we're not primarily defined by how we're different from people, but we're primarily defined by how we're the same from other people, and also the same as animals, and the same as the environment, that we're all part of this planet Earth, life on Earth, and that if we can have that sense of connection like that, we're not likely to bomb people into oblivion or to commit genocide or to be racist or, you know, throw masses of people in prison for mass incarceration. So-I think that that kind of spiritual and emotional education, along with cognitive, is what we need. We, we have technology that's miraculous. I mean, just think how many people can be watching this podcast, or how many people survived on Zoom during the pandemic.

   12. JRJoe Rogan48:27

       Yeah.

   13. RDRick Doblin48:28

       I mean, it's miraculous.

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:29

       Well, also, let's look at it this way. Uh, we're, we're talking about, uh, an education outside of traditional education when you're talking about these psychedelic centers that you plan on having open in 10 years. Look at physical education. Look at the physical education you get from high school, and look at how many people leave school and take yoga, and start going to CrossFit gyms, and take martial arts. And there is a mass movement of incredibly physically healthy, super aware people that are taking care of their body through n- d- no... There's, there was no education about this in high school.

   15. RDRick Doblin49:12

       Right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan49:12

       There's n- They, they didn't get this from college. They got this from pursuing it. So many people who have degrees and careers in completely non-related fields are very physically active and very tuned into their bodies, because they've recognized the benefits of that through external sources outside of the traditional education system. We could have that same type of movement with mental health and psychedelics, and with learning, outside of these traditional, w- m- radically underfunded places. Like, when you look at how much a high school teacher makes-

   17. RDRick Doblin49:50

       Yes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan49:50

       ... it's embarrassing. And it's, it's no wonder why they're under-motivated, no wonder why they're, they're, they're, they're, you know, depressed and not enthusiastic about this job. And also, how the fuck do you connect one on one with 50 people when you have them for 45 minutes, or whatever it is, uh, classes, an hour, whatever? It's not possible. It's y- you can't do it. And that, that is one of the reasons why so much emphasis is paid to forcing these children to sit still-

   19. RDRick Doblin50:20

       Yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan50:20

       ... and pay attention. I, I don't know if I have ADHD, uh, but I know that if I was in school today, and if I think about how I was when I was a child, and if I had parents that were so inclined, I would 100% be medicated, 100%. But it wasn't because... I th- always thought there was something wrong with me.

   21. RDRick Doblin50:40

       Hm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan50:40

       But it wasn't that there was something wrong with me. It's that I was bored.

   23. RDRick Doblin50:44

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan50:45

       I was not interested at all in what they were teaching. I was interested in comic books, and I was interested in, you know, uh, martial arts, and I was interested in space travel, and I was interested in... W- if you, if you talked to me about something that was interesting to me, then I was locked in and tuned in. But if you were talking to me about some boring shit, I was just staring at the sky and looking at my fingernails and I just couldn't pay attention. But it wasn't because my mind was incapable or my mind needed medication. It's because I wasn't interested in what they were talking about. And that turns out to be very valuable in life if you're a person who finds what you're interested in and ignores the things you're not interested in, because you can really get far just paying attention to what you're interested in and focusing on that obsessively. The, some of the most successful people in this world are that type of person. And as a child, they're taking those people and stifling them-

   25. RDRick Doblin51:46

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan51:46

       ... and forcing them to be a square peg. They're taking their roundness of whoever they are and they're compressing it and shoving them into this square hole with medication. And it's a tragedy. It really is.

10. 51:58 – 1:08:38

    How Doblin committed to psychedelics: Grof’s manuscript, primal therapy, and learning integration the hard way

    1. RDRick Doblin51:58

       Yeah. I was so lucky. I went to a college in, uh, when I was 17, in 1971, and it was an experimental college. It should be kind of the way all colleges are. But what it said was, the principals of this college, called New College, it's in Sarasota, Florida, it's the honors college of the state of Florida, but when I went to it, it was private. But it said, "The student's curiosity is the most important thing."

    2. JRJoe Rogan52:22

       Mm.

    3. RDRick Doblin52:22

       And that they weren't gonna put anything in the way of that curiosity. So, there was no distribution requirements. You could just do general studies. Y- if you wanted to major, you had to do a certain number of classes. But you could... You didn't have to major. A lot of schools say you gotta do a language, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. This was, "The student's curiosity is the most important thing, and we will do everything to foster that." There was no grades, all written evaluations. Everybody had to do a senior thesis, a big project. And so, this school, when I started... Now, this was sort of, people say the '60s really continued into the early '70s, and so it was very much like that. But the school had this tradition of, um, all-night dance parties with psychedelics till the sunrise. They didn't put that in the brochure. Um, but they also had this unusual situation where, uh, there was a woman who had actually, a professor who had studied with Carl Jung. And, um, her husband was wealthy. They donated this big Olympic-sized swimming pool to the college, and it had turned into a nudist colony for the students and the faculty. And so here I was, a shy guy, I come to this school with this tradition of psychedelics, with this tradition of sort of bringing sex and drugs into the open from being suppressed, this nudist colony at the pool, and I started doing a lot of psychedelics, but I wasn't prepared. My education up to that point had been so cognitive. I was really emotionally stunted. My bar mitzvah s- didn't turn me into a man. (laughs)

    4. JRJoe Rogan53:50

       (laughs)

    5. RDRick Doblin53:50

       It was, you know, uh, you know, the traditional rituals didn't work. And when I first started doing psychedelics, I thought, "This is the... It's helping me a- answer existential questions." Or at least ask them, not answer them, but ask them. I said, "This is what my bar mitzvah should have been." But I was jumbled up, and I went to the guidance counselor at school, and today if this happens, you know, you'd be in big trouble. But I went to the guidance counselor and I said, "I need help with my LSD trips and my mescaline trips and my mushroom trips." (laughs) "And I n- uh, I, I don't have the ability. I get scared. I get stuck. I can't move forward. And this is now more important to me than my studies 'cause I'm..."... unbalanced. I'm overdeveloped intellectually, underdeveloped emotionally and spiritually, and the guidance counselor took me seriously.

    6. JRJoe Rogan54:33

       Really?

    7. RDRick Doblin54:34

       He-

    8. JRJoe Rogan54:34

       Did the guidance counselor have psychedelic experiences to draw upon?

    9. RDRick Doblin54:37

       Well, he didn't share that, but I, I was just-

    10. JRJoe Rogan54:39

        Ah.

    11. RDRick Doblin54:39

        ... so lucky. He, but he said to me, "There's a book that I would like you to read." And he gave me this book, and it was by, uh, Stanislav Grof, who's the world's leading LSD researcher, uh, founder of trans- one of the co-founders of transpersonal psychology, and the book was his first book that he ever wrote. It was, um, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. And the book was not actually published till 1975, but my guidance counselor had a copy of it in 1972, a manuscript copy of it.

    12. JRJoe Rogan55:09

        Oh, wow.

    13. RDRick Doblin55:10

        And it was reading that book that made me devote my life to psychedelics when I was 18, because it was this science. I wasn't so comfortable with religion. I knew that there's a lot of dogma in religion. I kinda knew that, you know, Jews are the chosen people, but that's not really true. (laughs) You know, I mean, we're all the chosen people and, um, but it, it felt to me that it was science looking at the range of experiences that we can have. One group that he called was biographical, Freudian, you know, just what happens in our life and how that affects us. The other is birth trauma, how the process of being birthed, where we're being born, where we feel that we might die, it's, it's, it's imprints on us, certain emotional, um, patterns, according to how our, our birth process actually is. And then beyond that is the spiritual realm and this sense of connection that we talked about. And so it was science that also had this political implications 'cause I was thinking, "Yeah, if you can feel connected to everything, that's the antidote to war and genocide." But it had a reality check, which was therapy. Can we use these states of mind and these experiences to help people have richer lives, to get out of being drug addicts or out of being alcoholics or out of being scared of dying if you're, got cancer, things like that? And so this book changed my life, and the guidance counselor, after he gave me the book, he said that he was in touch with Stan. And I said, "Great, I would like to write him a letter." So I'm this confused 18-year-old writing to this MD PhD at Johns Hopkins, leading psychedelic research, which was being squashed because 1970 is when Nixon and the Controlled Substance Act came in, and all these drugs are criminalized and psychedelic research is being squashed, and Stan, I'm just so lucky, this cha- I wrote Stan a letter, and he actually wrote me back.

    14. JRJoe Rogan56:58

        Wow.

    15. RDRick Doblin56:58

        And he said, "I'm giving a workshop later this summer out in California, and you're invited to come. I'm really glad you liked my book. You know, we're, we're, our research is winding down, and, you know, but come to the research, come to this workshop if you'd like to." So I hitchhiked across America, back when people would hitchhike. Um, I went to the first Rainbow Festival that was in Colorado. I didn't know about it, but I just saw signs as I was hitchhiking. Um, but I did this workshop with Stan, and, uh, Joan Halifax, who he was married to at the time, who's now very much into Buddhism and meditation, and I did primal therapy, I did a three-week primal therapy intensive where you, like scream your birth trauma out.

    16. JRJoe Rogan57:37

        (laughs) Jesus.

    17. RDRick Doblin57:38

        And, um, my therapist permitted me to do LSD one time during this primal therapy, and then I sat for him, and I did a month-long encounter group. Meanwhile, of course, got my parents-

    18. JRJoe Rogan57:47

        You sat, you sat for your ther- therapist while they did acid?

    19. RDRick Doblin57:50

        Yeah. We switched that.

    20. JRJoe Rogan57:51

        Wow.

    21. RDRick Doblin57:51

        And, uh, actually that was kind of, um, a little bit scary because h- he was so used to letting his feelings out. We were in a soundproof padded room. We'd go in there, I was isolated for, um, the day except for, like, one hour of therapy every day and trying to get it... The only thing I could do is have a dream journal, and so, but I couldn't read books, I couldn't write anything. I was just there to get in touch with the sort of primal trauma of, of being born.

    22. JRJoe Rogan58:17

        Hm.

    23. RDRick Doblin58:18

        And, um, but this, um, therapist that I was sitting for, he kind of lost the distinction between what's inside and what's outside, and he, uh, took off his, the classic story, he took off his clothes, and he wants to, like, run outside, and I had to, like, wrestle him down to try to keep him in the room. (laughs)

    24. JRJoe Rogan58:34

        (laughs)

    25. RDRick Doblin58:34

        It was really a bit scary. But, um, at the end of all of this work, I did a month-long encounter group. My parents paid for all of this, which was really kind of them, um, but I wasn't where I wanted to be 'cause I had this, uh, mistaken idea, which was, the more drugs you take, the faster you evolve, and it's about the quantity of drugs. And I completely had missed the idea, it's about the integration. It's about you don't need to do it many times. Sometimes only once, you can learn an enormous amount, and it can enrich you for, you know, months or years to try to integrate it. So I just was super confused. After all this, I tried the strongest things, and, and I'd, I'd seen the idealism of the '60s crash and burn, and now we've got the Vietnam War still and we've got Nixon and psychedelic research is shut down. And so, um, I went home, and I lived, um, back home. I'm the oldest of four kids, so I was a terrible example for (laughs) my siblings, sent off to college and do drugs and drop out. But that's where I got the sense that I needed to do integration work, that I was unbalanced, and I, uh, my parents actually had a, a house built by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright's, designed it, and it was this exquisite structure, and it influenced me a lot. And so, and I was, I was playing handball. I was, in, uh, high school. I was at one of the few high schools that had handball courts. And so I was really good at handball, so I thought this new college, I'll go back to be with my friends, and I'll build this handball court. I'll, I'll get into the physical world, and that's how I'll get integrated. I was super confused, and my parents were willing to buy 3,000 concrete blocks (laughs) and let me, and support me while I built this building, and the school needed facilities, and they let me have some land to build on it.And, um, it was right next to John Ringling's house and, uh ... which is now, um, a state museum. And Charles Ringling gave the building for the library. And this other people, the Caples, who built the New York Railroad and sold the land to the Ringlings, they gave this mansion to, uh, New College when Mrs. Caples died. And, um, I was asked to be the security guard at this mansion on the beach, um, on the, on the Sarasota Bay while I was building this handball court. And that led to a career of 10 years in construction. And it was during that time that as I got more fluid with the real, with the outer world, I would trip every now and again, and I would get a little bit better at letting out the emotions and seeing what was happening. So I had this 10-year period of, um, not doing psychedelics directly, but occasionally and, and being in the construction business. And that was what it took. It took a whole decade of dropping out of college to get balanced. And then in 1982, I went back to school. And the very first semester, I went to the same school, to New College, and the very first semester, um, I went to Esalen in Big Sur and, and did a month-long workshop with Stan Grof again. And it was on the mystical quest, and that's when I learned about MDMA. And that's what changed things, because I learned about LSD after the backlash. But now I learned about MDMA before the backlash.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:40

        Mm.

    27. RDRick Doblin1:01:41

        But it was called Adam as an underground ... uh, it was legal, but it was kept quiet as an underground therapy drug. And it was gentler than the classic psychedelics. It had incredible therapeutic potential. But it had escaped from those circles, and it was being used as ecstasy as well. So it was very clear that it was doomed. This was during Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan and escalation of the drug war, and so that's where I said, "I gotta get political." And I could start introducing MDMA to various people who would take it, like Lester Grinspoon. Um, he and his wife had had a tragedy of a son die of cancer when I think he was about 13 years old.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:21

        Mm.

    29. RDRick Doblin1:02:21

        And they, um, they took MDMA together and said that they're ... Lester said that they were able to talk about the loss of their child in ways that they had never been able to talk about with each other before.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:34

        Yeah.
11. 1:08:38 – 1:21:36

    Psychedelics, spirituality, and research integrity: the Good Friday Experiment follow-up

    1. RDRick Doblin1:08:38

       Yeah. There, there is a way a little bit, one historical parallel to, to what Brian is gonna be looking forward to, and that's Walter Pahnke. So, I described at the very beginning this, uh, Concord Prison experiment that, that Leary did when he was at Harvard. But the experiment that he did before was called the Good Friday Experiment, and that was in 1962. And it was designed to see if religiously inclined people in a religious setting taking psilocybin would have a mystical experience.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:09:08

       Oh.

    3. RDRick Doblin1:09:08

       And so Walter Pahnke was a doctor and a minister and working on a PhD, and Timothy Leary became his faculty sponsor. There was also a fellow named Reverend Howard Thurman, who was, um, the reverend at the Boston... Marsh Chapel at Boston University. But he was Martin Luther King's mentor. So, Martin Luther King had, um, got a PhD at Boston University in the '50s, and Reverend Howard Thurman had studied with Gandhi and had studied non-violence and was kind of the main influence on having the civil rights movement be focused on non-violence. And like we know with John Lewis and getting beaten up on the bridge when they were trying to get voting rights, that they didn't respond, that... And that was very effective, this non-violent approach. So, Reverend Howard Thurman was really interested in this relationship between the mystical experience and, um, political action. And so he agreed to be the minister for this Good Friday service. And if, if people are interested, we have the actual sermon from Reverend Howard Thurman, um, several hours on our website under the Good Friday Experiment. And it took 20 divinity students from Andover Newton Theological Seminary into church on Good Friday in the basement chapel and half got psilocybin, half got a placebo. Ten experimenters, uh, Huston Smith, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Ralph Metzner, Walter Huston Clark, others that were very involved in sort of the science of religion, were the helpers. They were divided into groups of four, five groups of four students. Half would get psilocybin. Half would get the placebo. And then two of the experimenters were with them, and one of the experimenters would also get psilocybin, and one would get the placebo. And as it turned out, um, nine out of the 20 people had a mystical experience, and eight out of those nine had the psilocybin.

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:11:04

       Mm.

    5. RDRick Doblin1:11:04

       And this experiment was considered to be, and still is, one of the best experiments ever in the history of the study of psychedelics and spirituality. And the questionnaire of what is a mystical experience that Walter Pahnke developed for this is still being used in the research today. It's called The Mystical Experience Questionnaire. But Walter Pahnke decided that he didn't want to take psilocybin until after the study was over for fear that people would say that he was biased.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:11:31

       Ah.

    7. RDRick Doblin1:11:32

       Now, he-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:11:32

       Brilliant.

    9. RDRick Doblin1:11:33

       And then he went with Bill Richards, who's the longest living psychedelic therapist right now. He's sort of the center of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research, and he's trained a lot of other groups there, researchers with psilocybin. He's actually gonna go through our training now to learn about MDMA. Um, that's Bill Richards is. But, um, he was in Germany studying, and Walter Pahnke went to, um, visit with him, and that's where Walter Pahnke had his first psilocybin experience after the experiment was over and published.

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:12:04

        Ah.

    11. RDRick Doblin1:12:05

        And had this illuminating psychedelic mystical experience, and-

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:12:09

        His first of his life.

    13. RDRick Doblin1:12:10

        First of his life-

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:12:11

        Wow.

    15. RDRick Doblin1:12:11

        ... after he'd done the experiment. Now, when I did... At New College, I said, "You have to do this senior thesis." And so this was during the '80s, and I wanted to do something with psychedelics, but there was...... no legal permission. It was all shut down. And I realized that in the mystical research, the most important thing is called the fruits test. So you can describe an experience, and that's what they do initially, but what are the fruits of the experience?

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:12:37

        Mm-hmm.

    17. RDRick Doblin1:12:38

        How does it affect your life? If it's a genuine mystical experience, it will make you feel connected, it will make you feel there's love woven into the universe. It will have certain kind of long-term benefits, and that's the way that people evaluate the validity of the experience. So Walter Pahnke unfortunately, um, died in 1971 in a scuba diving accident.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:12:59

        Oh, wow.

    19. RDRick Doblin1:13:00

        It's, uh, his body was never found.

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:13:02

        What?

    21. RDRick Doblin1:13:03

        And it was like he dissolved into the ocean of consciousness almost. Uh-

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:13:07

        Or fish ate him.

    23. RDRick Doblin1:13:08

        It was-

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:13:08

        More likely fish ate him.

    25. RDRick Doblin1:13:09

        Something, yeah, something happened.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:13:11

        Yeah.

    27. RDRick Doblin1:13:12

        Um, Stan Grof actually said that Walter was a little bit, uh, cheap and he might have boughten secondhand equipment or something that-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:13:18

        Oh, no.

    29. RDRick Doblin1:13:18

        ... d- didn't, didn't work.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:13:19

        Scuba equipment?
12. 1:21:36 – 1:48:01

    From MKUltra to ‘non-psychedelic psychedelics’: military interest, policy, and bipartisan momentum

    1. RDRick Doblin1:21:36

       America where we have ayahuasca, their main thing was kill these people, kill the leaders, kill the shamans, you know, because they're a source of power for their cultures. And so that was suppressed. And it was only around nine... in the late 1950s when Western people discovered the mushrooms. That's-

Episode duration: 3:15:32