Joe Rogan Experience #1964 - Rick Doblin

Narrator 0:00 (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Rick Doblin 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Rick. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:13 Good to see you again, my friend. How are you?

Rick Doblin 0:15 Yeah, I'm doing great. It was so nice to be with you a couple weeks ago.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Yeah, it was fun to have you at the club. You were there, like, one of the first days.

Rick Doblin 0:23 Yeah, I think I saw the, um, first event in the small room.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Yes. Yeah, did you see Dave Chappelle?

Rick Doblin 0:30 I did.

Joe Rogan 0:30 Yeah, that, that was the first one. Yeah, we had Dave there. He wanted to do that room. We opened it specifically for him. That was the first time we did a show there. It was very exciting.

Rick Doblin 0:38 Yeah, I really liked having the opportunity to just talk to him a little bit afterwards, and to listen to him. It was, it was hilarious.

Joe Rogan 0:45 Yeah, he's a big fan of what you guys are doing.

Rick Doblin 0:47 Yes. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:47 As is, as is everybody, you know? And I think what you guys are doing at Maps is one of the most important things for society and culture, and just consciousness in general, that's, that's happening today, and I'm very, very happy that you're doing that.

Rick Doblin 1:02 Thank you, yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty e- extremely lucky that, uh, 51 years ago when I was 18, in 1972, and I decided to focus my life on psychedelics, that now I'm 69, all these years later, and it still makes sense. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:17 (laughs) Well, back then it must've been a big risk because in the 1970s, when you focused your life on psychedelics, that was like right after that whole sweeping Schedule One Psychedelics Act was passed, right?

Rick Doblin 1:28 Yeah, that was in 1970. Yeah, things looked grim.

Joe Rogan 1:32 Didn't look good.

Rick Doblin 1:33 Yeah. Well, I was a, um, draft resister. I th- I thought that I would, um, serve my country by going to jail, uh, which is kind of a funny way to say it. But I had felt that I'm, I'm not a conscientious, uh, objector. In order to do that, you have to be a pacifist, and so I, I'm not a pacifist. I think there are some times you need to fight and defend yourselves. Um, so the only options for me, as I studied how to respond to, to Vietnam, was to ... I didn't want to pretend I had bone spurs (laughs) or r- run away to Canada, or anything like that. And I studied, uh, Tolstoy and Gandhi and non-violent resistance and decided that, um, the thing that I would do would be to not register for the draft. And I was paying taxes, I had a Social Security number, I had a driver's license, I was in high school. I figured the government knows who I am, and knows where I am, and knows my age, and so I assumed that I would go to jail and that that would be a way to drain the system of energy and to register my protest that way. Martin Luther King actually said a great thing. He said, "The person that thinks a law is unjust and violates it and is willing to suffer the consequences as an example to others about the unjust nature of the law actually has the highest respect for the law."

Joe Rogan 2:56 Mm.

Rick Doblin 2:57 He was trying to reframe civil disobedience as patriotism, and that made sense to me. And so when I talked to my parents about it, they were like, "Well, okay, you know, we don't think you should go to Vietnam either. We don't think it's, um, in America's best interest, but you're never gonna be a doctor or lawyer," my dad was a doctor, "because you'll be a felon." And I'm like, "That's a price I'll have to pay. What am I gonna do with my life? I can't have a normal job, in a way." So then when I stumbled on psychedelics (laughs) I was like, "Great! I could be a underground psychedelic therapist (laughs) that doesn't need a license."

Joe Rogan 3:31 What ever happened? Did you wind up getting in trouble?

Rick Doblin 3:34 No, it's astonishing. I think a lot of times we overestimate the efficiency of the government.

Joe Rogan 3:39 Mm.

Rick Doblin 3:40 And a- so nothing happened at all.

Joe Rogan 3:44 Wow.

Rick Doblin 3:44 I mean, I turned 18. Later was the lottery. I did have a higher lottery number, but nothing ever happened, and, and I just was shocked by that. And later what happened was that Jimmy Carter on his first day in office he pardoned all the draft resisters, and that made me sort of move from my identification as a counterculture drug-using criminal (laughs) to somebody who wasn't quite a criminal in that same way.

Joe Rogan 4:10 What year was that?

Rick Doblin 4:11 This was-

Joe Rogan 4:11 '76?

Rick Doblin 4:12 Yeah, se- well, as soon as he got inaugurated, '77 is when, when he, he did that, the first day in office. And I later read there was about 60,000 people that never registered for the draft, but enough people were going in that they were able to find enough, uh, bodies and people to send to Vietnam.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Yeah, it's one of the rare, um, military operations in history that's, like, universally regarded as a terrible thing.

Rick Doblin 4:39 Yes.

Joe Rogan 4:41 I mean, nobody today defends the Vietnam War. There's still some people that think it was a good idea that we got Saddam Hussein out of power despite all the col- horrible collateral damage and the million people that are innocent that wound up dying in Iraq because of that invasion, but nobody thinks Vietnam was good.

Rick Doblin 4:59 Right, it was starting to be this, uh, imperial overreach.

Joe Rogan 5:03 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 5:04 And we've had a fair amount of that.

Joe Rogan 5:06 Based on a false flag.

Rick Doblin 5:08 Com- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:09 Yeah, which is very scary. It's very scary that that was just, you know, 1960s, it just happened.

Rick Doblin 5:15 Yeah. Well, one of the people also quite interested and supportive of psychedelic therapy is Daniel Ellsberg, who was the person that released the Pentagon Papers.

Joe Rogan 5:23 Mm.

Rick Doblin 5:24 But the false flag began with the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Joe Rogan 5:26 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 5:27 And so where we, um, were told that our ships were being attacked, and he was, um ... I- I've gotten to spend some time talking to him and he said that he had just started the National Security Administration at, uh, at that time, was, um, looking at some of these cables and realized it didn't make sense, but he thought somebody above him knew more than he did.

Joe Rogan 5:49 Mm.

Rick Doblin 5:49 And he didn't feel like he should say anything about it, and then all these years later when he released the Pentagon Papers-And people think of him as a hero because he was willing to go to jail for decades and decades, potentially the rest of his life, which is what the government was trying to do for him. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and he won the case, or the New York Times also won the case. But, um, he thinks of himself not just as a hero, but that he should've had more courage early on, and if he would've done something early on, maybe more people would've realized that this wasn't the way the government was saying it was.

Joe Rogan 6:25 Mm.

Rick Doblin 6:25 But- but I do think that there is patriotism in, um, civil disobedience.

Joe Rogan 6:32 Yeah, certainly. Es- especially when you feel it's morally wrong to participate in whatever this thing that you're being obligated to do.

Rick Doblin 6:40 Yeah. A- and I think it's really remarkable for me now that because I was not a, um, pacifist, and I was not, um, a conscientious objector, I- I always felt that the freedom that I had was defended by our military, you know, in World War II. If we had lost, and I'm Jewish, I probably would've been killed a- along with others. So, I always felt that the m- military was essential and it was protecting my freedom. And so now all these years later to have so much work to be,

Rick Doblin 7:10 um, done with veterans and w- in the Veterans Administrations and with, um, you know, special operators and all sorts of people with PTSD, um, i- it feels right in a way that- that a draft resister (laughs) should form an alliance with suffering, um, veterans.

Joe Rogan 7:28 Yeah, I think that's one of the best aspects o- at least publicly of what you guys are doing is that you are working with all these soldiers.

Rick Doblin 7:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:38 And so you've got a lot of support from people that traditionally wouldn't be invested in psychedelics, which has really kind of opened up. It used to be that a lot of people on the right thought of psychedelics as a way to waste your life-

Rick Doblin 7:51 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:51 ... and you're gonna be a hippie and a loser. But because of the benefits that it's been showing to people with PTSD and people coming back from, you know, a- all these various foreign conflicts, then you're- you're getting, now you're getting support from veterans, you're getting support from the people on the right, and people that know veterans that have had incredible experiences with psychedelics where it's completely changed their life and sort of reset their mind.

Rick Doblin 8:15 Yeah, just several d- days ago, I was in Nashville with, uh, Shawn Ryan doing, uh, his podcast. And- and he is a, um, former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor, and he was just talking about how much he had benefited from his experience with ibogaine in Mexico and how it's changed his views about things. And we've heard this a lot, but- but he still said that if he were to be attacked, if America was to be attacked, he would defend it. It doesn't turn people, again, into pacifists-

Joe Rogan 8:46 Right.

Rick Doblin 8:46 ... necessarily in that same way, and there's something noble and honorable about willing to serve your co- country and be willing to give your life to protect others. I think it's a problem in some cases when the political leadership makes terrible choices and, you know, you've enlisted to do that. But I- I think the other part, last week, um, I was in Dallas and we had, uh, an event that, uh, Governor Rick Perry attended and, uh, Marcus Capone.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Hm.

Rick Doblin 9:14 And, um, Jeff George, who's the, uh, chair of the board of directors of our MAPS Public Benefit Corp., our, um... And then also Amy Emerson, who's the CEO of that. And we- we have, um, Governor Perry's support because he's heard from so many veterans. He's also talked about, uh, Marcus Luttrell-

Joe Rogan 9:31 Hm.

Rick Doblin 9:32 ... who lived with him at the State House w- when he was very emotionally damaged from his time in the military. And then he saw Marcus, um, get a lot better when he went down to Mexico and got ibogaine. And so Governor Perry... Th- there's people that I have never thought that I would find common ground with, and one of the ones that I thought was the most, um, far, th- that I couldn't imagine building a bridge, I mean, one of our themes is be the bridge, but it was with, um, Ted Nugent.

Joe Rogan 10:04 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 10:04 (laughs) And I thought, you know, "H- h- how would I, you know, build a bridge with Ted Nugent?" Well, uh, Rocco Moon, his son, connected us, and Rocco is interested in being a psychedelic therapist, and he's been doing a lot of work educating his dad. And we had a really remarkable conversation. Um, and Ted actually said that, um, he could be extremely effective for helping us because he's known as being so anti-drug.

Joe Rogan 10:34 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 10:35 A- and yet he can see, even he can see that in a therapeutic setting for veterans, that's h- what he cares about the most, but others, that these things can be helpful. So this idea of building bridges. Um, there- there was one point in time, one of the most important, uh, lessons I learned was actually, um, from a Supreme Court Justice where I was sitting next to him at a Passover Seder, a- and Passover, this is Stephen Breyer, and I had, um, accepted a donation from Rebekah Mercer. Now, Rebekah Mercer, um, her father, and she, they own Cambridge Analytica, they own Breitbart, you know, she's very much a supporter of Republican causes. And she gave us a million dollars and said that it was, uh, restricted to use in veterans. And I thought, "This is really a good thing to do to take this." But I've gotten more criticism from taking that donation from Rebekah Mercer than most anything I've done in the entire 37 years of MAPS. And so at this Passover Seder, I was si- my wife and I got there late, our friends were somewhere else. There was this old couple sitting next to us. And, um, I didn't know who they were and I thought, "Oh, this will be boring," you know? And- and so I- I talked to this guy and I said, well, everybody else was pretty much scientists. And I said, "Are you, um, a scientist?" He said, "No, I'm a judge." And then his wife started talking about how she had written a book about, uh, grieving parents wh- who have, um, illnesses that their kids have fatal illnesses and- and how to handle grief. And so we had this incredible conversation about, um, MDMA therapy and about how it can be helpful for grief and all. And then w-After hours, the Passover Seders take hours (laughs) and hours, I finally realized that there was something more going on. And I, I, I thought, "This guy is not just a judge, I think he's s- Stephen Breyer the Supreme Court judge." And I, I, I said, "Are, are you Stephen Breyer?" And he said yes. And I said, "Well, I have a m- uh, an ethical question to ask you. You know, I have taken this, uh, resources from Rebekah Mercer, and she's very much supporting Trump and supporting Bannon and, and others." And I said, "What, what do you think about that choice ethically? Was that, um, a wise idea?" And he said that the essence of democracy is trying to find common ground with people with whom you may disagree on everything else. And he said in our hyper-partisan, polarized world, there's not nearly enough of that.

Joe Rogan 13:06 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 13:06 And so, he supported that. And so, I felt that that was like a, the judgment of the Supreme Court. (laughs) It was okay what I did.

Joe Rogan 13:13 (laughs) At least one.

Rick Doblin 13:14 At least one. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:15 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 13:15 But, but I like that concept is that we need to find common ground. Uh, uh, I mean, I thought that was one of the things that Dave Chappelle was saying in-

Joe Rogan 13:22 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 13:23 ... you know? I thought it was very interesting.

Joe Rogan 13:25 Dave is, he very much is in tune with that and speaks about that all the time. It's very important to him. Because there's just, it's just too easy to just dig in your heels and, uh, uh, embrace the conflict and, and push away any ideas that are connected to, uh, uh, the other side. If you can get someone who's a Republican, who's a Trump supporter to engage in psychedelics, understand the benefits of psychedelics for, whether it's for soldiers or whether it's for grieving parents or anyone, if that can make it into their life and perhaps they can have an experience, I think a psychedelic experience is one of the greatest ways that someone can relax any ideological, dogmatic ideas that they might have that restrict them from taking in some of the opinions of the left.

Rick Doblin 14:12 Yeah. W- w- would you, um, feel comfortable sharing some of your own experiences?

Joe Rogan 14:17 Well, sure. Well, I've never been a right-wing person. I'm very left-wing, for the most part.

Rick Doblin 14:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:21 Other than, um, support for the Second Amendment and some, some other things, and just a general distrust of, of government.

Rick Doblin 14:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:31 I j- I, uh, you know, I was raised by hippies.

Rick Doblin 14:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:36 You know, I, I lived in San Francisco during the Vietnam War when I was a little kid. I mean, we were, you know, m- my stepdad has long, uh, or had long hair when I was a kid.

Rick Doblin 14:46 Hm.

Joe Rogan 14:47 So, I was, you know ... But then I also grew up and I was a fighter, so I was always around these, like, hard-nosed, like, very tough, you know, no-nonsense people.

Rick Doblin 14:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:58 And a lot of them were very right-wing. And, you know, I knew a lot of cops from martial arts.

Rick Doblin 15:03 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 15:03 And, you know, people have these ideas about what, you know, what drugs are in that blanket term, which I really don't like the term drugs.

Rick Doblin 15:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:11 And drug users, what drug users are. And one of, you know, one of the things that I'm kind of proud of is that if anybody wants to say that, uh, people who enjoy psychedelics or people that, uh, enjoy marijuana are lazy and they don't contribute or they don't ... you know, like, like, what about me?

Rick Doblin 15:29 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:30 Like, what about me? Like, I work hard and I work a lot and I work out a lot. And I have a lot of friends that are very much like me, and they're very open-minded people that are ... th- they embrace all cultures and ideas and all kinds of different things. But they're also, you know, these hard-nosed, determined, very disciplined people that you would sort of automatically, maybe callously lump in with people who are, uh, cruel or unkind or not embracing, uh, you know, other ideas. And I just think that these ideas that we have of people, that we, it's so convenient to push people into one category or another. And it's also very convenient to embrace one category, uh, and adopt their sort of pre-determined pattern of ideas.

Rick Doblin 16:25 Yeah. But, but w- would you be comfortable sharing some of your own psychedelic experiences?

Joe Rogan 16:30 Sure, sure. I mean, um, the DMT experiences are f- by far the most profound. And those are the ones that have really made me ... Uh, every time I've done it, it's just completely made me rethink how I interface with people, what, what life is, and what that experience ... What is that? Is that a well of souls you're entering into? Is it another dimension? Is it some sort of parallel, uh, dimension of, uh, disembodied consciousness that you seem to be engaging with life forms-

Rick Doblin 17:08 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:08 ... with things th- that know you, that can see your thoughts and see resistance and see bullshit in you? I mean, it's, um, every time I've done it, it's sort of just, like, in one way or another, just removed one layer of the onion. You know, one layer of bullshit-

Rick Doblin 17:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:27 ... that keeps you from just embracing the great mystery of this existence-

Rick Doblin 17:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:33 ... whatever it is.

Rick Doblin 17:34 Yeah. I think we're built on these layers and layers of billions of dollar- billions of dollar- billions of years-

Joe Rogan 17:39 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 17:40 ... of evolution and, and sort of from the single cellular organisms, it's all in a still.

Joe Rogan 17:45 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 17:45 And that, uh, our prefrontal cortex, our brain, has kind of helped us focus on what we need as humans in our transition from birth to death. But that when you sort of ... Well, we, we talk about the default mode network, which is sort of the part of the brain that's identified as the sense of self.

Joe Rogan 18:01 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 18:02 And the classic psychedelics weaken that part, and then more information floods. So, I think we can get back through all of the intercellular knowledge that is stored in our bodies-

Joe Rogan 18:11 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 18:12 ... and, uh, and connect with this deeper unitive sense. It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 18:17 Yeah, it's also, uh, they help so much to abandon preconceived notions. And, and just sort of-

Rick Doblin 18:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:23 We don't realize how much of the way we sort of see ourselves and see the world is, is, uh, kind of a convenient-... set of armor that we put on-

Rick Doblin 18:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:34 ... to try to protect us from uncomfortable thoughts, and protect us from, you know, just, uh, just mystery. The, the mystery of ev- But, but there is a lot of mystery in life. Like, it's mostly mystery.

Rick Doblin 18:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:47 You know? And I think psychedelics are the greatest mystery. And there's something about them that's just ... The idea that it exists, that you can smoke a thing and then 15 seconds later be transported into an impossible realm, and that that exists w- and no one's discussing it. That you're-

Rick Doblin 19:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:06 Every day on the news, they're talking about a m- a million different things that seem so trivial once you've had a DMT experience.

Rick Doblin 19:14 Yeah. You're reminding me of my 5-MeO-DMT experience-

Joe Rogan 19:17 Mm.

Rick Doblin 19:17 ... that I had. And, uh, uh, it felt like, um, I went sort of back to the moment of creation.

Joe Rogan 19:23 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 19:23 And, but the, I realized that so much of our life is patterns, like you were saying, that, that we have these habits and we have these patterns, and we take them as fixed, but they're not actually fixed. We have put them into motion.

Joe Rogan 19:36 Mm.

Rick Doblin 19:36 And this 5-MeO, by bringing me back to this moment of creation, it, it helped me realize that the new can enter at any moment, that there's a way.

Joe Rogan 19:45 Mm.

Rick Doblin 19:45 And so I've, I've actually felt that that experience has, which I had one time back in 1985, has been a, a big part of our, um, success to get to the place that we're at now, uh, with psychedelic research, with, with MDMA therapy, because it helped me to realize that whenever I felt blocked or stuck, that I could try to find something new to enter into the picture, that there's this perpetual ability to connect with creation, to connect with the new. And, and so much of our life is on cruise control.

Joe Rogan 20:18 Mm.

Rick Doblin 20:18 Is on these patterns.

Joe Rogan 20:19 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 20:19 And-

Joe Rogan 20:19 It's easier to do it that way.

Rick Doblin 20:21 It, it is.

Joe Rogan 20:21 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 20:21 And, and there's advantages to that, so we don't-

Joe Rogan 20:23 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 20:23 ... have to rethink things all the time, but it also narrows our vision.

Joe Rogan 20:27 Yeah. It very much so does. It's just so easy-

Rick Doblin 20:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:30 ... to fall into patterns. You know, you fall into the patterns of the group that you hang out with, you fall into patterns of accents, and, you know, dress, and the way people behave and think about things, and the concepts that they adopt. And when you have, like, a real breakthrough psychedelic experience, it just makes all that seem so trivial. My, my DMT experience, my first 5-MeO experience, I d- I've done both multiple times, but the, the first 5-MeO experience, I thought I fucked up.

Rick Doblin 20:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:58 I thought it's over, 'cause I, I kind ... There was a moment when you're entering into whatever that great white field of geometry is, you know-

Rick Doblin 21:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:11 ... where, where you go, "Oh my God, am I dying?" Like, it v-

Rick Doblin 21:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:14 It feels like, "There's no way I'm coming back from this." Like, like, "I've gone so far," and then that fear w- that fear subsided once the experience just fully kicked in. Like, the fear-

Rick Doblin 21:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:28 ... was at the begi- the, the doorway to the experience, like-

Rick Doblin 21:31 Oh.

Joe Rogan 21:32 ... "Oh no, what have I done?" And then (imitates air blowing) .

Rick Doblin 21:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:35 You go into that. But the weirdest thing about 5-MeO too is the lack of visuals.

Rick Doblin 21:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 21:41 It's just this great white pattern, this thing where you don't have any memory, you don't have any f- You're, you're barely a conscious entity, and you're experiencing what seems to be like the source code of-

Rick Doblin 21:58 Yes.

Joe Rogan 21:58 ... the universe.

Rick Doblin 21:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:59 I mean, it's just a ga- It's like, I felt like I was shot through a, a rocket to the center of everything.

Rick Doblin 22:05 And yet, there is an aspect of memory, and there is an aspect of us paying attention.

Joe Rogan 22:11 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 22:12 There, there's still this observer in some ways.

Joe Rogan 22:15 Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's pre- it's pretty compromised, but-

Rick Doblin 22:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:18 ... there's something that you come back with. But it's also very difficult to hold onto, right?

Rick Doblin 22:22 It, it is, and that's this process of integration that's necessary. But also for the 5-MeO, it's so brief.

Joe Rogan 22:28 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 22:28 So that's where the ibogaine experience can be 12 hours or more, or the MDMA experiences, we make them into eight-hour sessions.

Joe Rogan 22:36 I haven't done ibogaine.

Rick Doblin 22:37 Oh. Oh.

Joe Rogan 22:38 Yeah. I've, I've heard on, really great things from people that have, uh, addiction problems, like people that are addicted to pills in particular, who've gone to Mexico, and-

Rick Doblin 22:47 Yes.

Joe Rogan 22:48 ... one of them was my friend, uh, Ed Clay, who, who went down to Mexico because of a pill problem he had, and then he wound up opening up an ibogaine center down there once-

Rick Doblin 22:56 That's great.

Joe Rogan 22:56 ... he'd been cured of it.

Rick Doblin 22:57 There, there is that phenomena where people, once they get healed, they wanna help others.

Joe Rogan 23:01 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 23:02 And in particular, in the military, you're trained to leave nobody behind.

Joe Rogan 23:05 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 23:05 And many people have said that, th- that they, once they've gotten help, now they wanna bring all their brothers to, to have help as well, that there's something about, um, this feeling that, that it can help not just them but, but many other people.

Joe Rogan 23:19 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 23:19 And I think the other part, there's been about why Governor Perry is so interested, in a sense, is that there's been now, um, around 800, uh, Navy SEALs and others that have gone down to Mexico for ibogaine, for both, uh, PTSD, depression, traumatic brain injury-

Joe Rogan 23:34 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 23:35 ... addiction.

Joe Rogan 23:35 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 23:36 And he's heard just remarkable stories. But, but now that you mention, um, or that we're talking about ibogaine, I just would like to say, um, a bit of ... We have a mutual friend, Aubrey Marcus, and I've been, um, texting him this morning, and, and it's, um, a bit s- sad. His father died.

Joe Rogan 23:52 Mm.

Rick Doblin 23:53 And so, um, he's sitting shiva, which is this Jewish tradition where for a week after someone dies, um, people come over to the house, and you, you just mourn for a week. So I'll be there tomorrow morning. But his father, Michael Marcus, actually helped start ibogaine research. And so I'd like to explain that just a tiny bit. So Michael had, um, studied, uh, a bit of holotropic breath work with Stan Grof. So Stanislav Grof is the world's leading LSD researcher. He's, um, almost 92 years old, um, but he worked at Johns Hopkins. He was, uh, did LSD research in the Czech Republic, and when the Russians came in in '68 to crush their rebellion, he escaped and came to the US. Um, and, but Michael got to know, um, Stan and did work with him, where once psychedelics were criminalized, Stan realized that you can f-... catalyze similar experiences through hyperventilation, without a drug. And that it- oh, I mean, it is like a drug. It changes the chemistry in your brain. Um, and so I got to know Michael, and, um, at one point he was a, a stock trader, and he felt like he was losing his edge. And this is probably, you know, 15 more years ago. And what he said was, um, he wondered maybe a psychedelic experience could be helpful for him. And I suggested ibogaine. And he went down to Mexico for an ibogaine experience, and it, it helped him. And then he felt like he regained his confidence, and then he, um, bet that there was gonna be a massive, uh, stock crash. He shorted the market and then it, there was a major crash. Um, and then he, he contacted me and he said this ibogaine really helped him and he would like to know, um, how he might pay it back. And I said, "Well, we've got this project we're trying to start for a long time." It's the first project where we're gonna look at a clinic in Mexico and test people, do before and after, just how are they doing? It'd be a long-term follow-up, because ibogaine, for no good reason at all, other than the drug war, is illegal in the United States. But it- and, and it's not a drug of abuse. It helps treat drug of abuse, but it is legal in Mexico and in Canada. (clears throat) And so just the day before, I'd gotten an, uh, a matching grant offer of, uh, $10,000 for a $20,000 study. And, uh, I said, "Michael, would you be willing to match this?" And, um, he said, "Sure, yeah." I said, "Great, now we're gonna have this first ibogaine study." And then he said, um, "What else do you have?" And I was like, "Well, okay, if you wanna know more, I'd say the most difficult thing for us to fund, the most, um, idealistic thing we're doing..." This was at the time was, we were trying to start research in Jordan. You know, we have research in Israel, we have research in Canada. We have research, but we've no research in the Arab countries. And I thought, if we could do something in Jordan, uh, and I had incredible connections in, in Jordan with the, uh, mayor of Amman, whose, um, son-in-law actually had found, uh, LSD helpful for cluster headaches. And anyway, I went to Michael, I said, "The, the most idealistic thing, the most far-reaching is, at this point would be to do this study in Amman." And he said, "Well, how much does that cost?" And I said, "Well, it's about, um, 85,000." Something like that, 90,000. And, um, he said, "All right, I'll do that too." And so that started the first project with ibogaine, and then we eventually did another long-term follow-up in New Zealand, and now there are people now, we're- we're- there's this project in Spain to, with, uh, a group called iCEARS, and it's to take, um, increasing amounts of ibogaine to help people withdraw from methadone. There's projects in Brazil with ibogaine. Um, there's, uh, a company, Atai, uh, that's one of the for-profit psychedelic companies that's working with, uh, Deborah Maas from, uh, Demyrx. They've merged, and they're interested in ibogaine. So ibogaine is one of the classic examples of a disastrous drug policy. It turns out that there were, um, LSD dealers in the '60s who got busted, and they happened to have ibogaine. And so the government made ibogaine illegal.

Joe Rogan 28:01 Mm.

Rick Doblin 28:01 But these LSD dealers, Howard Latzoff was also, uh, experimenting with opiates, and when they tried ibogaine, they felt no desire for opiates and they went through the withdrawal without any pain. It's just remarkable what opiates, um, do for you when you go through th- withdrawal. It's terrible. But if you have ibogaine, you can go through it in a couple of days and you have a lot of psychological experiences about why you might wanna run away from your problems into opiates.

Joe Rogan 28:26 Isn't there something that happens with ibogaine where it, uh, like, literally rewires?

Rick Doblin 28:33 Yes. Now, that's true with other psychedelics as well. It's called neuroplasticity. And so what that means is that there is this, um, ability for our neurons to have new synaptic connections. And that's what we mean is neuroplasticity. Our brain is constantly being rewired. E- every time we have a, every time we do anything, we have memories, and the memories are encoded. And sometimes they get encoded in, um, harmful ways, like with trauma, with PTSD. They, the memories are so painful that they never really get fully processed, they never really get put into long-term storage. Um, there's, there's a lot of, um, changes in your brain whe- when, when you have PTSD. Um, but that this idea that you can then rewire your brain once you experience them. And so th- there's researchers at, uh, Gül Dölen is at, uh, Johns Hopkins. She's done studies in mice with MDMA and showed that, um, it releases oxytocin, which is the hormone that we have for love and connection, nursing mothers, but it also promotes this new neural growth. So ibogaine does that, LSD does that, psilocybin does that. And what Gül has found, which is really interesting, is that the longer you're in the psychedelic state, the longer afterwards this period of neuroplasticity lasts, where you can do more integration work, where you have this, uh, uh, enhanced ability to reroute patterns in your brain. And so ibogaine, uh, opens up this, uh, period of neuroplasticity for several weeks after, because the experience can last for more than a day or two.

Joe Rogan 30:14 Is there any headway, uh, that's being made on bringing ibogaine to the United States?

Rick Doblin 30:20 Um ... (sighs)

Joe Rogan 30:20 'Cause if you think about the opiate crisis that we have here-

Rick Doblin 30:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:23 ... that seems like one of the ver- very best sort of remedies for that.

Rick Doblin 30:27 It is. And, and this is where if you were to look back over the last, um, 50 years, um, I doubt that there's more than five cases that the government has about anybody abusing ibogaine.

Joe Rogan 30:40 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 30:40 If, if at all.

Joe Rogan 30:41 Well, it's a 24-hour drug, right?

Rick Doblin 30:43 And, and, and it knocks-

Joe Rogan 30:44 Some people haven't done it, but I'm-

Rick Doblin 30:45 It knocks you down. I, I would, um, highly recommend it.

Joe Rogan 30:48 Yeah?

Rick Doblin 30:49 But, but I would rec- I, I, I've had, um, I'd say one of the most important experiences of my whole life was, was ibogaine.

Joe Rogan 30:56 Yeah?

Rick Doblin 30:57 Yeah. Um-

Joe Rogan 30:58 What happened?

Rick Doblin 30:58 Well, um, so...There's a fellow named Leo Zeff, who is the, um, we called him the secret chief. So he was the leader of the underground psychedelic therapy movement, and he worked closely with Sasha Shulgin. And Sasha Shulgin was the chemist that invented hundreds of psychedelics. He, he, he worked for Dow in the '60s, and he devel- inv- invented a, um, biodegradable insecticide, and they rewarded him with his own lab to do whatever he wanted. And so Sasha tried to do more psychedelics, and they're like, "Well, maybe these are not (laughs) gonna lead to products."

Narrator 31:32 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 31:33 So, so he realized he had to leave, and he set up a lab at home, and he taught. But they would have this process of, um, inventing new drugs, new psychedelic drugs, looking for new therapy drugs. And they would then, um, Sasha would take it into himself, and then if he thought it was okay, he would give it to his wife, Anne. Uh, they were-

Narrator 31:52 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 31:52 ... now both, and they would do these together. And then if they, then they had a group of 12 people that would meet, like, once a month, and they would try these new drugs. Sasha, by the way, did go to the Bohemian Grove, where he was a musician there, and so he was able to go. But he would test new drugs with people at Bohemian Grove.

Narrator 32:08 Oh, my God.

Rick Doblin 32:09 And, and-

Narrator 32:10 So, like, presidents and bankers and-

Rick Doblin 32:12 Different kinds of people like that, yes. They would-

Narrator 32:14 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 32:14 ... try these new things. They'd go for walks in the woods. They, 'cause you go to Bohemian Grove for a week or two, and so it's not like you're there for a day or so. But, um, so this small group of 12 people decided that, uh, MDMA had incredible potential. This is in the middle '70s. And they gave this to Leo Zeff, and Leo said, "Wow." He was, uh, about to retire. He was a clinical psych PhD, and he was, um, getting up there in years, and he was about to retire. He, he trained a lot of people with LSD and other things. And so he did not retire in order to bring forth MDMA. And so he really pioneered the use of therapeutic use of MDMA. And this is now MDMA being a therapy drug before it became ecstasy as a party drug.

Narrator 32:59 Mm.

Rick Doblin 32:59 And, and that lot happened in Dallas at the Star Club, which is, you know, a public place where, you know, incredible stories of Star, uh, the Star Club. There's gonna be a documentary by, uh, Michael Cain is working on a documentary about the Star Club.

Narrator 33:12 Really?

Rick Doblin 33:13 But, but, but, um, but that attracted Lloyd Bentsen, the senator from Texas. He heard about this, and then he complained to the DEA. And then the DEA moved to criminalize... We, we knew that this public use of, um, MDMA was gonna eventually result in DEA crackdown. This is Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan-

Narrator 33:30 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 33:30 ... and all of that. And so w- we had a jump start in a sense that, that we... The DEA didn't know we were there. They, they only knew the party drug. They didn't knew the therapy parts. But we knew that the DEA was there, and they were coming after us. So I started a nonprofit before MAPS in '84, and, and that was to prepare and gather this community together in order to, um, defend MDMA once the DEA moved. And so Leo Zeff came to me, and he said, "Y- you're starting to be an advocate, and I'd like to offer you an ibogaine experience, because we need to, um, own our own shadow, own our own weaknesses, own, own our own, um, things that we're, we're not comfortable with, and, and, and also, you know, have spiritual connections and things like that." And he said, "If I can help you, this might help i- in your political work, because then you'll see that we're mixtures of good and bad, everybody is, and that you won't demonize the DEA, and that you may be able to find a way to, you know, build a bridge." And so he offered me this ibogaine experience. And I said, "Great, I would, I would love to do this." Um, and so we had this whole long day to, uh, set aside to do this, and ibogaine in plant form takes a while to take in effect. So, uh, Leo said, um, "I'd like to give you a bunch of LSD at the same time." (laughs)

Narrator 34:48 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 34:48 It was, uh, 350 micrograms of LSD, which is a pretty hefty dose. Um, the first LSD experience that we know of, Albert Hofmann, uh, April, uh, 19th, uh, 1943, was, um, an amount that he thought would have no real effect 'cause it would be so small, 250 micrograms, which is a, a major existential challenge. So 350 micrograms is, is pretty good as well. And so I actually, um, got administered ibogaine, a bunch of it in plant form, and then also the LSD at the same time. And I could tell the differences between the drugs. I could tell coming up on the LSD and the moving towards this, um, kind of ego dissolution and opening up and different my emotions, and how am I gonna do this political work? And, and who am I? And, you know, am I qualified in all of this? Um, and I sort of had a lot of experience with LSD, had never done ibogaine before, and I was able to, to open up pretty well for the LSD. But then this sort of low guttural rumble started from the ibogaine. The LSD peaks around three hours or so. And, and I could feel this ibogaine building and building and building. LSD is also very much in your head, very ethereal, m- more so than psilocybin mushrooms, which are more embodied. Um, and so this ibogaine started coming up, um, this experience, and I started feeling like if I could just let go, if I could just fully have this, uh, experience, and if I didn't have these fears and anxieties, then I would be a better advocate, and, and I needed to, and so much was at stake. But then I felt I couldn't let go 'cause I was too scared, and, and then I would be, um, hating myself. Uh, so I, I felt that there was this, uh, cycle of, oh, I'm, I'm not as good as I should be. I, I wish I could let go. I do have these emotions of fear. Um, and then I would feel that and get nauseous, and then I would vomit. And, and then I would feel relief for, like, a minute or so, and then the swirl would begin, and each of them is, like, 15 or 20-minute cycles and stuff. And then I would get to this peak, and then I would, uh, vomit again and over and over and over. And for, um, for a Jewish person, the, the imagery that I had was that I was being crucified on the cross of self-perfectionism.... that I didn't wanna be human in a way. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be more than I was, and that this idea that I was, um, not perfect, that, that, um, you know, it, it just was this connection between self-criticism and self-hatred. And I could see that, and, and that just made me sick, and I, I wished I could do more. But I couldn't get out of it, and I had like a 12-hour cycle of that-

Narrator 37:33 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 37:33 ... over and over and over. I mean, I, I, you know, I was like dry heaving. I had nothing left to throw up anymore. And I just so, um, saw this connection between wanting to be perfect, not wanting to be human, being super self-critical, leading to s- self-hatred, and shutting myself down. And so, at the end of that day, I was so exhausted, um, I, I called it, um, transcendence through exhaustion. You know, I just gave up. Uh, I just beat myself up so much, uh, I just gave up, and I had the most blissful night. It was so beautiful. It was like no struggle, completely open, everything. And I realized that what I needed to do was keep the self-criticism 'cause that is the drive for quality. You need access to the self-critical part of your mind.

Narrator 38:17 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 38:17 But if it's connected to self-hatred, you don't listen as much because then you're a bad person.

Narrator 38:23 Right.

Rick Doblin 38:23 So, I, I sort of severed the connection between self-criticism and self-hatred. I accepted myself as a flawed human being that had a lot of room to grow, and that I had made friends in a way, I made an ally out of the self-critical part of my brain. And it, I think, has helped me to, uh, learn and grow because we're doing things that I've never done before, we're doing things I've never done before, nobody's never done before, bringing this through the FDA, psychedelic psychotherapy, and we've constantly making mistakes. Uh, uh, I like to say that, um, I'm just a fuck-up who just keeps on trying.

Narrator 38:57 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 38:58 (laughs) You know, and, and so this, and then, but I told myself this story. This was the most beautiful night. All night, I was just super alert, didn't sleep at all, and just saw the stars. But I, I told myself a story, uh, and so much is governed by stories, uh, as you know. But the story was, that I was telling myself is that, that I had not earned this. I, I hadn't had a breakthrough. I just exhausted myself. So I said, "When the sun comes up, I'll be back stuck in this nauseous space." Uh, I don't know why I told myself that story, but, but I did. And the sun comes up, and then I was like stuck and nauseous again, and I couldn't move for a day. I actually had to sit there in a f- or lie there really in a fetal position. A friend was supposed to come pick me up. I said, "I can't move."

Narrator 39:38 Do you think you brought that on yourself?

Rick Doblin 39:40 In a way, I do. Uh, I think the stories we tell ourselves, I mean, I mean that's sort of PTSD or depression.

Narrator 39:46 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 39:46 The story, and, and that's what we're saying about you get in these grooves, and that, that's where this psychedelics can shape things u- shake things up, and the neuroplasticity is what really permits you to see it in a different way. So, I spent the whole next day just curled in a puddle basically. Occasionally they'd bring me a banana to eat or something like that. And then by the, uh, third day finally, I was able to stand up without being nauseous, and a friend came and picked me up, and ended up, um, driving me away. And, and as we were driving, I'd, I'd only been there once. This was at a house I'd never been to before, and we were going back to where I w- familiar ground in the same way. And I had this sense in my mind that, um, I knew what was around the corner, and I would say, "Oh, I think we're gonna see this." And then a couple times we did. And so what I think happened is that I was taking it in peripherally, but I, I wasn't paying attention to it when I was going there. It wasn't like I was, you know, telepathic in a way or anything like that. It was just that, that all these experiences had, had sort of been there but hadn't registered, and I think I'd cleared out a lot of space in my mind from this constant self-criticism. So, I had a more openness-

Narrator 40:58 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 40:58 ... in the space, and I could remember things. Uh, it was the fourth day that I could finally drive, but I felt that ever since then, I've had this increasing ability to, um, to be self-critical without it being so connected to self-hatred and so painful. And, and I really feel that that ibogaine experience, although, um, I've not done it since (laughs) 'cause it was pretty, uh, heavy, um, and exhausting and painful and hor- but, but, um, and I've had other psychedelic experiences since. But, but that I think was one of the pivotal ones of my mind. And so here we have an opiate em- epidemic. Over 100,000 people died last year with o- overdoses connected sometimes with fentanyl and others, and a tool that can be tremendously helpful is something that is not being studied at all in the United States, and we're forcing people to go to other countries. So, Maps is, um, developing what's called an investigator brochure, and what that means is that any time a pharmaceutical company wants to develop a, a drug through the FDA, you have to summarize the world's literature in the peer-reviewed journals, and you look at it from a safety and efficacy perspective. And so, we prepare this brochure for the FDA, and it will bring us to what is the latest science? It'll include the study that ICEERS is doing in, um, Spain with, uh, ibogaine for, uh, helping people withdraw from methadone, or the studies done in Mexico also for, uh, opiate addiction. Um, and- and then we will propose a new study, and ibogaine is, is in some ways one of the most dangerous of the psychedelics in that there are a small group of people that can have problems with the heart. And so some people have died from taking ibogaine. But if you do it under medical supervision, particularly for people who are weaker physical states because of drug addiction, that nobody needs to die, and you can reverse it if something does happen. So, we are probably going to propose, uh, and, and we're- we're working with, um, Joe Barsuglia and, uh, Martin Polanco who have, um, developed, uh, a company to try to make MD- uh, ibogaine into a medicine, and they, they ran a lot of the clinics also in Mexico.Um-

Joe Rogan 43:21 So, a medicine, like a pharmaceutical medicine that'll be available for prescription?

Rick Doblin 43:24 Yes. That, that's the... well, there's two tracks, again. And, and this is, that's one track, but the other track is from a policy point of view. So, MAPS, you know, our nonprofit, we have a policy and advocacy team. So, if ever there was a drug that we could make a strong case that should be removed from Schedule I. Schedule I is a drug, high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use. It's the worst drugs, according to our scheduling system. Um, you know, if we make MDMA into a medicine, what's gonna happen is that the, we'll have what's called bifurcated scheduling, and that means is that our particular product, in this particular capsule for PTSD would move outta Schedule I, potentially Schedule III or Schedule IV. But MDMA itself would still stay in Schedule I.

Joe Rogan 44:11 Mm.

Rick Doblin 44:12 Um, so getting MDMA out of Schedule I so that it's, um, hopefully, you know, more accessible, not just for medicine, i- is part of our goal as well, drug policy reform, post-prohibition world. But ibogaine, there's no reason for it to be in Schedule I or Schedule II. Schedule II is drugs that have a high potential for abuse, but also have a medical use. So, I think we need to have a, um, m- two-pronged strategy with ibogaine. One is to try to work through the FDA to make it into a medicine, but the other is to try to make the case that it never should've been criminalized in the first place, and it's not a drug of abuse. And at a time where we have so many people dying from opiate overdoses and so many other people suffering even if they're not dying from this, that this is something that, um, a logical, rational country would make this available. And we should have clinics right here in Austin and all over the country, um-

Joe Rogan 45:07 Mm.

Rick Doblin 45:07 ... because we have a massive problem, and, and yet it's this remnant of the drug war, which... And again, I would say Nixon... Well, John Ehrlichman, who was Nixon's domestic policy advisor, uh, came out in the late '70s, and he said that the Nixon White House had two main enemies. Those were the Blacks for civil rights and the hippies, the anti-war. And e- th- what Ehrlichman said is, "We realize that if we could criminalize the drugs that they did-"

Joe Rogan 45:34 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 45:35 "... we could bust them up. We could, uh, arrest their leaders."

Joe Rogan 45:37 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 45:37 "We could bust up their meetings." And then Ehrlichman said, "Did we know we were exaggerating the risks of those drugs? Uh, of course, we did." So, I, I think we could make a good scientific and rational case now that ibogaine never should've been criminalized, and it should be legally available but by trained therapists in proper circumstances so that the safety i- i- is found. Um, but I think what has happened and what we've seen with, uh, medical marijuana leading to marijuana legalization, changing people's attitudes, we see that a lot of the psychedelic re- research with MDMA and psilocybin has led to Oregon, uh, decriminalizing drugs and making the Oregon Psilocybin Initiative with a sort of state legal program that they're trying to implement with local guides. Colorado, um, in November, the last election, legalized the natural plant medicines. So, I think with ibogaine, we will see a similar kind of a thing, that there will be a lot of, um, hopefully research over the next couple years, and that will change people's attitudes. And then maybe we can remove ibogaine from Schedule I. And then the bigger question is the l- you're saying like, um, you know, nobody really looks back and thinks Vietnam is, was a good idea.

Joe Rogan 46:52 I'm gonna pause you right here 'cause I have to pee so bad.

Rick Doblin 46:54 Oh. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:54 I'm really sorry.

Rick Doblin 46:55 Okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:55 Just hold on one second. Be right back. So.

Rick Doblin 46:57 Oh.

Joe Rogan 46:58 Vietnam.

Rick Doblin 46:59 Yeah. So, um, nobody looks back and thinks Vietnam was a, a good idea, you said.

Joe Rogan 47:04 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 47:04 But I think it's gonna be the same way for the drug war. That, that peop-

Joe Rogan 47:07 Yeah, for sure.

Rick Doblin 47:08 And, and so I think we will think of it as a massive tragic experiment that has been, uh, exported all over the world, caused enormous violence. And I think the idea of ibogaine, um, removing, it's, getting it removed from Schedule I could be really important. But I have a little pee joke, if I could tell you. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:26 Okay.

Rick Doblin 47:27 Uh, people will know that you just went out to pee and come back, but, but that's what brought this to mind. So, I, um, actually was... I'm very lucky. I had, um, prostate cancer, and I had... It was caught early. And so I, but I had prostate surgery, and, and now I'm fine. But it, it affects your, um, ability to control your bladder for a while.

Joe Rogan 47:45 Right.

Rick Doblin 47:46 Right? So I had to wear and, and still do these, um, sort of basic Depends and pads and all this kind... You know. But there was a time, um, shortly after the operation, this is very short, I was at Burning Man. And, um, we had to... You know, we have a village at Burning Man. We do psychedelic harm reduction there. So, a group of us were in this, um, sort of cuddle puddle in this... You know, I, I was not doing MDMA at the time, but other people were. Um, and it was like 3:00 in the morning, and we'd been there for hours, and we're just, like 14 of us or something just talking. And, and this one woman goes out to pee and comes back, and you know, other people do that. And then she, this woman t- turned to me and said, "I don't understand. You, you just had this operation. You were supposed to, you know, pee more often. And, um, you know, what's up with you? It's like you're just sitting here the whole time." I said, "I've been peeing the entire time." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:35 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 48:35 It doesn't matter. (laughs) So, you know, diapers at, uh, Burning Man is like a new fashion trend. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:41 Jesus Christ.

Rick Doblin 48:42 (laughs) I don't-

Joe Rogan 48:44 Have other people adopted this?

Rick Doblin 48:45 (laughs) People were joking about it. This would be-

Joe Rogan 48:47 Oh my God. You started a trend.

Rick Doblin 48:49 (laughs) Uh-

Joe Rogan 48:50 That seems like it would be uncomfortable.

Rick Doblin 48:52 No.

Joe Rogan 48:52 Like, it would be better to just go pee somewhere.

Rick Doblin 48:55 It, it, it would be, but then you interrupt the conversation flow and stuff.

Joe Rogan 48:58 Right.

Rick Doblin 48:58 But-

Joe Rogan 48:58 Like I just did. Maybe I should do podcasts with a diaper on.

Rick Doblin 49:01 W- well, it wicks it away. It's not even that uncomfortable.

Joe Rogan 49:03 Ugh.

Rick Doblin 49:03 I, I mean, a- anyway. (laughs) I just...

Joe Rogan 49:07 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 49:07 I just had to do the pee joke. I'm sorry. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:08 Yeah. No worries. So, back to, um, this idea that i- in the future we're gonna look at the drug war-

Rick Doblin 49:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:15 ... as being an overall negative thing and a mistake.

Rick Doblin 49:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:18 For sure. Well, I think the biggest thing is gonna be this blanket definition of drugs, you know, that there's-

Rick Doblin 49:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:27 ... especially things, when you have things like psilocybin in Schedule I where it can help people in so many ways, and we're denying that help. And I think one of the keys, just like Rocco was the key-

Rick Doblin 49:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:41 ... to get to TED-

Rick Doblin 49:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:43 I think that someone's son having a bad experience with opiates, someone in a great position of power, or someone who's-

Rick Doblin 49:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:50 ... a politician, or a governor, or someone like that, who sees a big turnaround from someone using ibogaine or using psilocybin, like, that's gonna aid us.

Rick Doblin 50:00 It, it's when people see members of their family, or somebody that they care about that's suffering, that gets better, that's when change really happens.

Joe Rogan 50:09 Yes. Yeah.

Rick Doblin 50:10 And I think it, it's sad that it takes that, that you can't sort of look at-

Joe Rogan 50:14 It is sad.

Rick Doblin 50:14 ... look at the world and think, you know, "Those might not be me or my friends, but, but something new should change."

Joe Rogan 50:20 Well, it's just, uh, uh, n- not having an understanding of what it actually is, and it's because of that term drugs.

Rick Doblin 50:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:27 The term drugs is almost always associated with someone being s- foolish, wasting their life, doing something dumb.

Rick Doblin 50:35 W- a- and the word hallucinogen too.

Joe Rogan 50:37 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 50:37 I mean, it's a delusion. It's fake. It's not real.

Joe Rogan 50:40 Right. It's a hallucination.

Rick Doblin 50:40 It's like p- pink elephants when you're-

Joe Rogan 50:42 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 50:42 ... you know, on alcohol or something. It's, it's not real. And so, I think w- it's very pejorative, the language that we use about it. We try to talk about these things as medicines-

Joe Rogan 50:51 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 50:51 ... instead of drugs. And I think that the way in which we have... D- drugs, um, have become scapegoats. So, you know, w- they become the shadow. They b- they become the c- source of all the problems. And the fundamental mistake, I would say, of the drug war has been to say that certain things themselves are good or bad. These are bad drugs, and they have to be illegal. These are okay drugs, or these are good drugs. Uh, of course, good drugs have included tobacco (laughs) and alcohol, but, but we make the thing itself good or bad, and what we miss is that it's about the relationship that we have with the thing, and that it's not the, the substance, it's the relationship. And so, by focusing on the thing, then we say, "Oh, we gotta reduce the supply. We gotta, you know, do all this, kind of, um, work to make it so d- difficult or expensive for people to get to, and then we have to threaten them." That there's a, um, a man named Carl Hart, who is on our-

Joe Rogan 51:50 Yeah, I know Dr. Carl Hart.

Rick Doblin 51:52 Yeah. He's on our-

Joe Rogan 51:53 Yeah. He's great.

Rick Doblin 51:53 He's fantastic. He, he's on our board of directors. And he's a neuroscientist, um, f- uh... (inhales deeply) And he is, um, you know, in New York City, and h- and he's a drug policy reformer. And, and one time we were talking and, uh, uh, we were, we were talking about drugs and I said, "You know, I, I think that the, the more dangerous the drug, the more important it is that it be legal." And he, he said he'd like to say that, and that, that he believed that also. And, and what I mean by that is that the, the dangerous drugs are ones which, when people get into problems with them, we need to offer them help as soon as possible. And then we stigmatize them and drive them away. The more, more dangerous drugs also get mixed with other things, so like fentanyl mixed with, um, opiates, and that's where you have the overdoses. So people don't get pure drugs. They don't get support. They don't get, um, help. They're not treated as humans. Th- they don't get really access to treatment as much. We, we just punish, punish, punish. So our goal is to make drug users, particularly these people, feel worse off, so that they're an example-

Joe Rogan 53:00 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 53:00 ... so nobody will wanna do it. But that's-

Joe Rogan 53:02 Right.

Rick Doblin 53:02 ... not a really good example. People won't do that. So I think this idea of the more dangerous the drug, the more important it is that it be legal, I think makes a lotta sense, and we need to really offer treatment on demand, and peer support. And, and when we think about drug policy too, you know, people don't understand as much lost opportunities. You can see things that have gone wrong, but lost opportunities are like invisible. But when I think about MDMA having been criminalized in 1985, eh, by the DEA on emergency basis for bogus rea- reasons about neurotoxicity, but they used that as a, a rationale. Then the hearings that we had going on with the DEA administrative law judge, they said that it should stay as a medicine. And, um, the DEA overruled them, and we sued them twice in the appeals courts and won, and on the third time, DEA lawyers figured out how to satisfy the courts, um, to keep it illegal. And that's why w- again in '86, I started maps to go through the FDA. But that when I think of the number of suicides that have happened in both veteran communities and everywhere since 1985, hundreds and hundreds of thousands, I think, of, of lives.

Joe Rogan 54:16 We should talk about this while, while we're being brought up, 'cause there's a common misconception about MDMA that has been, uh, proven to be false. And i- it was that, that it g- l- makes holes in your brain.

Rick Doblin 54:28 Well, yes, y-

Joe Rogan 54:28 You know?

Rick Doblin 54:29 Yeah. Um, Oprah is a big, uh, person responsible for that, actually. Um, so, um, there was... Uh, it started on MTV and went to Oprah. This is around 2001. So what had happened was that there was a young woman who, um, her, her mother worked at a drug abuse treatment center, and she had problems with cocaine. She had problems with marijuana. She had problems with ecstasy, other things. And so they arranged, uh, and this was for, uh, this MTV show, that, that this woman would go and do a brain scan, a SPECT scan, which is blood flow in the brain, and then they would reveal the results to her live on TV. And, um, this was at this, uh, drug abuse treatment center that, that their, her mother worked at. And they, they revealed the results, and the results showed these holes in the brain. And w- it was a graphically manipulated image. So SPECT scans show blood flow through the brain, and there's certain areas that light up when you have more blood flow than others. And so they took an arbitrary cutoff. Any place that had lower than a certain amount of blood flow, they showed as a hole.And it was just complete propaganda. It was to scare this young woman to supposedly do it. She'd done all these other drugs and ecstasy anyway. So, short time after that, Oprah decides that she's gonna do a show, and she contacts me a- and us 'cause we are now, you know, advocates, and she, she knew about what we're doing, and we were trying to start MDMA research. She, she says, uh, she, her team says that, uh, they wanna do two shows on ecstasy. It's such a big thing. They wanna do one on the risks and one on the benefits. I'm like, "Great. Sounds great." And they said, "Well, we're gonna do the one on the risks first." And they, they brought this woman who had all these holes in the brain supposedly to be, um, on the show. If you had all the holes in the brain that they showed, you wouldn't be walking and talking (laughs) . You would be... It was just big holes in her brain. So, nobody seemed to put it together. Here, this woman, she seems fine, but this is her damaged brain. And we told Oprah's team, "Don't show this. This is fake. This is not real." And, um, and they did it anyway. And they had one woman who was th- um, a 24-year-old woman that was a raver, but she had, um, positive experiences about MDMA. So they said, okay, she would be the one that would sort of, um, say something positive about MDMA. And, and then Oprah said to her, um, "Do you know what you might be doing to your brain with all these holes in the brain? Um, we'd like to offer you a brain scan, and if your brain scan looked like hers, um, would you..." I think it was Lynn Smith was her name that, that had the holes in the brain. Um, "Would you stop using if your brain looked like that?" And, and she said, "Well, I'd be willing to do a brain scan." But the very next day, she contacted MAPS. She contacted us and said that, um, should she do this brain scan? And I said, "You definitely should do it, but do it with different people. Don't, (laughs) don't do it with the people that they're... But definitely do this brain scan, and, and then you'll be on the show again, and you can show what the, what the results are." So, she did the brain scan, and, um, then she wrote me back, and she said, "Well, no holes, and, uh, they've canceled the next show. There's (laughs) no show on the benefits, and they're not bringing me back." (laughs) And I'm like, "God."

Joe Rogan 57:45 They tricked you.

Rick Doblin 57:46 They did. And then years-

Joe Rogan 57:48 That's kinda normal Hollywood producer shit.

Rick Doblin 57:50 It was just, and yeah, no show on the benefits. Um, but then years later, over a decade later, when, uh, Oprah was just a, a short time from closing her, um, her show, uh, but she had O Magazine. So, she decided she would do a story on, um, she would assign a senior editor to do a story on ex- on MDMA and the therapeutic use. And it was, it was like Oprah doing atonement. I said, "Would you be willing, though, to do another show on your TV show and bring this woman back who had all these holes in the brain, and let's see what she's doing now?" And, and she actually did show some si- some signs of brain damage in that she was working for the Partnership for a Drug Free America. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:31 (laughs)

Rick Doblin 58:31 And she was, as the exhibit of, oh, you know, MDMA is terrible. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:35 So do you think they scared her with the holes in the brain to the point where she thought that drugs were ruining her life and she wanted to save other people?

Rick Doblin 58:42 I think s- I think there was that, yeah. And I think that, uh, she wanted to get back in the good graces with her mother.

Joe Rogan 58:46 Oh.

Rick Doblin 58:46 And that, that then she gets support-

Joe Rogan 58:48 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 58:48 ... and then she gets a job and this whole thing. And so, um, Oprah said n- no, she's not willing to do another show, but this article would go forward in O Magazine. And the article was great. And the woman, um, who was the reporter ended up, um, going for, um, an underground MDMA experience, whi- which I helped arrange, and it was very successful. And that's how the article ends. But it's great 'cause it didn't, like, make a big deal about, oh, this is illegal underground. It was just like here's what happened to her tour with the MDMA.

Joe Rogan 59:19 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 59:20 Um, but it was, in some ways, propaganda in the positive way. It was like, can a single pill save your life?

Joe Rogan 59:28 Right.

Rick Doblin 59:29 You know, before it's like-

Joe Rogan 59:30 Simplistic.

Rick Doblin 59:30 ... this is gonna, like, cause holes in your brain. Now, one pill is all you need, a magic pill, and then you're gonna be better for everything. Ignores the whole point that it's about the therapy and the context and the relationship.

Joe Rogan 59:41 It seems like, unfortunately, because of those kind of television shows and because of, uh, up until podcasts and the internet, you, you had a, a limited sort of ability to fully express the pros and the cons-

Rick Doblin 59:59 Yes.

Joe Rogan 59:59 ... and explain the nuance of what these experiences are about. And you're, you're instead dealing with this sensationalist perspective where they're just trying to, you know, f- just trying to highlight whatever the most, uh, wildest aspects of the experience, pro or con, would be so they can get a lot of people to pay attention to it. It's like it's becomes prostituted.

Rick Doblin 1:00:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:22 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 1:00:23 Yeah, and, and I think the, like, long-form podcasts where you can have the whole story.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 1:00:27 Y- you can get the whole story out unedited by people-

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 1:00:30 ... that are wanting to do it. But I will say in terms of educating people about psychedelics, what we're doing is, um, a lot of MAPS is about public education. And so, we're hosting the world's largest conference on psychedelics ever. And it's gonna take place June 19th to the 23rd.

Joe Rogan 1:00:47 How many DEA agents do you think will be in the audience? (laughs)

Rick Doblin 1:00:50 Well, I think, um, some. We also have some police officers who are f- we have one. Sarko Gragarian is a full-time police officer in Winthrop near, uh, Boston, but he's also a psychotherapist. And he's been through our training program.

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 Oh, wow.

Rick Doblin 1:01:07 In order to give MDMA therapy to other police officers.

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Mm.

Rick Doblin 1:01:11 We, we just had a, a incredible, the first psychedelic conference in Iceland, and Sarko came and also did his, uh, police chief came. And we met with the Minister of Justice in Iceland. The conference was phenomenal, this, the psychedelic conference in Iceland. And now, the Minister of Justice is interested in having Iceland fund a study to give MDMA to, uh, prisoners to work with them to see about dealing with their traumas to reduce recidivism, also with victims of crime to help them deal with their PTSD, and also with prison guards and police.

Joe Rogan 1:01:46 Mm.

Rick Doblin 1:01:47 So, we have this, um, opportunity in Iceland to potentially make it a, uh, example of a countrywide approach. Our- our new big vision, and I'll- I'll get back to the Psychedelic Science Conference in just a second, but our new big vision is a world of net trauma by 2070. So this idea of every year, we're adding to the burden of trauma that people are experiencing, and, um, and then it lasts. There are some people that get better, but the- there's many people that get stuck in PTSD. And then there's multi-generational PTSD. There's, uh, what's called epigenetics, which is, um, you know, biological evolution takes place over long periods of time, but what turns the genes on and off is epigenetics, above the genes. That can change from your own experience. And there's a woman, Rachel Yehuda at the Bronx VA, that has done studies with Holocaust survivors and her- and her children, and has identified an epigenetic mechanism by which this is passed on from, um, parent to child. And it could be either from the father or the mother line. It's- it's in either of our genetics. So this idea that we are increasing the burden of trauma by, um, there's some estimates that by 2050 that if climate change continues as it does, that there will be about a billion climate refugees from, um, droughts and poor crops and, you know, lack of water and- and- and all of this. So that it feels like the humanity is gonna be burdened more by trauma. We have incredible problems with mental health because of both the COVID and- and- and other things, so that what we wanna do is reduce the burden of trauma every year and get to net zero trauma. And that- that's... and it will take multi-generations. And the end goal is mass mental health and a spiritualized humanity, and- and that's the hope for the- for the future. And we will be talking about this at the Psychedelic Science Conference. So it's gonna be at the Denver Convention Center. We have the entire Denver Convention Center. We already have, um, yes, be part of the breakthrough.

Joe Rogan 1:03:53 June 19 through 23?

Rick Doblin 1:03:54 Yeah. And it's, uh, or we got over 5,000 people coming. We hope there'll be about 10,000. And we'd also like to say that we have, um, a special discount code (laughs) for people who are listening. So it's psychedelicscience.org, and if you just put in Rogan20, it's a 20% discount.

Joe Rogan 1:04:12 All right.

Rick Doblin 1:04:13 And so we- we- we think if people really want to get involved in this field in any way, to be a therapist or to run clinics or to manufacture drugs or start new companies or just, um, how do you blend this with meditation? Anything. There's gonna be over 300 speakers. We- we have, um, incredible, uh, opportunities for people to- to learn and grow and get involved. We have this, uh, the Denver Convention Center. We have enormous number of exhibits from, you know, probably 150, 175 different ex- exhibits. And, um, you know, Deepak Chopra will be there. Um, you know, I mentioned Aubrey Marcus, he's coming with Aaron Rodgers, the- the football player who's used ayahuasca, which is DMT in tea form. Um, Michael Pollan is gonna be there. Paul Stamets is gonna be there. You know, pretty much the research community from around the world doing psychedelics research, uh, and also drug policy reformers. And Denver was the first city that made mushrooms the lowest enforcement priority.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 Mm.

Rick Doblin 1:05:15 So we're gonna have, uh, experiential opportunities for people that will be, um, federally legal.

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 I think Denver was also the first city that decriminalized marijuana.

Rick Doblin 1:05:24 They've, yeah, they have done, um-

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Because it was a long time ago when marijuana-

Rick Doblin 1:05:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 ... was not state legal.

Rick Doblin 1:05:30 Yeah. I think Ann Arbor might have been one of the very first.

Joe Rogan 1:05:32 Oh really? Michigan?

Rick Doblin 1:05:33 Yeah. Well, just because of the college there.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 Oh, interesting.

Rick Doblin 1:05:36 (laughs) Yeah, but- but Denver, uh, and Colorado is very progressive.

Joe Rogan 1:05:39 Yes.

Rick Doblin 1:05:39 The mayor's gonna help us open the conference. We've got the support of the governor. We're actually doing a- a project with the Denver Police, because mushrooms are the lowest enforcement priority and we want to educate police on what happens when you encounter somebody with a difficult trip. You know, you could make it worse for them or you could sort of treat them in a certain way so that you calm them down and, you know, they don't need to be tased or, you know, however.

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 1:06:05 So- so we're trying to educate police on how to deescalate people with difficult psychedelic experiences. So the- the conference is gonna be, um, the theme, we've- we've had... this is our fourth Psychedelic Science Conference that we call, that where we bring everybody together. The first was in 19- is 2010, and there, we had about 400 people, something like that. (laughs) But that was enormous for us. Um, the s- and that was in San Jose. The second one was in 2013 and we had, um, at this point, about 1,000 people, and that was in Oakland. And then in 2017, we had another one, and that was, um, over 2,000 people. And that now is still the, uh, world's largest, uh, conference. We had like 2,500. And now this one we think is gonna be way more. So i- and- and the theme of it, why we've waited so many years between 2017 to now is that we are now at, uh, the doorway to a new world. And- and what I mean- what I mean by that is that we are at an incredible moment in time where there have been, um, probably two and a half or more billion dollars have gone into for-profit psychedelic companies. They haven't done so great (laughs) in the stock market. A bunch of them have gone broke.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 What is the idea behind these companies? What are they trying to accomplish?

Rick Doblin 1:07:21 Well, some of them were trying to develop new drugs. A lot of them were trying to set up networks of clinics. Um, we also have ketamine, which has now been... S-ketamine, a- an isomer of ketamine has been approved for treatment of depression. Um, you know, we ended up, um, in, uh, November 29th, 2016, we had what's called an end of phase two meeting with the FDA about our research with MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. So it took us 30 years from the start of MAPS 1986 to, um, 2016, um, where we presented our data to the FDA and they said, "Yes, you can go into phase three."... phase three is the final stage of research, where you need to do, um, uh, safety and efficacy. And if you prove that to the satisfaction of the FDA, you get permission to market. So some of the new for-profit companies, Compass Pathways is one, i- and Usona is a nonprofit, are trying to develop psilocybin into a method, uh, of- a treatment with therapy. Um, Compass for, uh, treatment-resistant depression, Usona for, um, major depressive disorder. And so, a bunch of these companies are trying to develop new drugs. And- and I think some of them are thinking, well, the classic psychedelics like, uh, LSD, MDMA, psilocy- well, MDMA, we wouldn't say classic, but the classic psychedelics like, uh, you know, ibi- ibogaine, uh, mescaline, uh, psilocybin, LSD, uh, DMT, all these are in the public domain. And so there's no patents on them. So people have tried to say, "Well, we'll patent the manufacturing process," or will do something. But there's also use patents, but the use of psychedelics for therapy and different conditions is also in the public domain. So a lot of these companies are going to try to, um, develop new molecules that they can patent. So that's sort of a classic pharma strategy. But-

Joe Rogan 1:09:13 That sounds horrible.

Rick Doblin 1:09:14 Well, it- I think that-

Joe Rogan 1:09:15 The good thing is that it'll be legal. The bad thing is it'll be owned by pharmaceutical companies.

Rick Doblin 1:09:20 W- well, I think they're make- it's true. Uh, it will eventually, these new drugs, but- but these-

Joe Rogan 1:09:25 No one should own them.

Rick Doblin 1:09:27 I-

Joe Rogan 1:09:27 That doesn't make any sense, that- that- that anybody should get a patent on... I understand that we're trying to undo 53 years of l- you know, what dec-

Rick Doblin 1:09:35 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:35 ... of criminalization, but I- I just think that that's a bad strategy, and you're getting in bed with some demons.

Rick Doblin 1:09:41 W- well, there- there is that tendency, and then you see what pharma does to try to protect the patents.

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 Exactly.

Rick Doblin 1:09:46 And- and- and-

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 It's just not-

Rick Doblin 1:09:47 And on the other-

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 We- we don't-

Rick Doblin 1:09:49 I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 It deserves to be legal.

Rick Doblin 1:09:51 W- well, the cl- the classic ones that are off patent do. I- I mean, I am supportive of people patenting original ideas.

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 Sure.

Rick Doblin 1:09:59 And so if somebody develops some new molecule-

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 Sure.

Rick Doblin 1:10:01 ... and- and, you know, for us, it's gonna cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to make MDMA into a medicine. And so we've done that. The- the- so we've done that in an incredible set of ways, and- and I think this is why, um, what- what I explained to you just a couple weeks ago and- and why you were so gracious to invite me back now is 'cause I- I talked about this, um, crossroads that we're at.

Joe Rogan 1:10:25 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 1:10:25 And so, MAPS has raised about $145 million in, um, grants, uh, and- and most of it donations in our history. And we have, um, gotten enormous value in people's donated time, expertise of all sorts, and it's hard to even put a dollar number on that, but it's been tremendous. Um, and so we have used that to do this MDMA research. A couple years ago, um, with the rise of all these for-profit psychedelic companies, it became more difficult for us to raise donations, because people are like, "Why should I donate now?" You know, "You can- I can just invest over here, and you've got a story now. Your story is that it looks like you're moving into phase three. Maybe you can get investors." Um, and so we didn't want to sell, um, equity a- at the time, and so we- we do have, as I said, about $145 million in grants and donations and- and a lot of free donated time, but we also have $43 million in what's called, um, a royalty share. So it- it is money from investors. They're mission-aligned investors. Ryan Zur, uh, organized it as the lead one called Vine Ventures, and they have about 3.8% of North American revenues once, uh, from MDMA once we make it into a medicine for about eight to ten years afterwards. And if we don't give them a certain amount of money back, then it continues. But they don't have ownership, and they don't control what we do, and we can end up, you know, prioritizing public benefit, um, over profits. So we- we also have, uh, around $20 million in a, um, in a loan that's, um, potentially convertible into equity if we don't repay the loan. And we've got a couple years there, but we have reached this spot where we have the nonprofit MAPS, which has about, uh, 35 people, is the 100% owner of the MAPS Public Benefit Corp., which is about 135 people, something like that. And so, we have this situation. We- we also tried to do something new with pharma so that qu- and something new with capitalism. So that capitalism, when you have for-profit companies, you're supposed to maximize profits, and if minority shareholders don't like the fact that the management isn't maximizing profits, they can try to throw them out. And so that- that produces a prioritization of profits over people, profits over, um, social benefit. And so capitalism has been modified in a way with the public benefit corporation. So that's a new corporate structure, maybe 20 years old, but- but relatively new, and there's thousands, you know, not hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands, I don't think, but there's thousands of these public benefit corporations. And what you do is you can maximize public benefit over profit so that you cannot be sued by minori- majority- by- uh, by minority shareholders to try to force out the executives because you're not maximizing profits 'cause your goal is public benefit over profit. So we want to create a new model for how pharma drugs can be distributed. So we have this remarkable moment where we have the nonprofit is 100% owner of a for-profit but public benefit pharmaceutical company, but we need to raise additional capital. We are now at a place where we recently announced that our second phase three study was, uh, successful and was confirmatory. Our first phase three study was incredibly successful. Um, and to give you a sense of how successful, um, and we published this in Nature Medicine, th-The FDA looks at statistical significance. So there's efficacy and safety. So efficacy is determined by basically statistical significance. And you have to have .05, which means one in 20, chance that it's random, that it's not from what you think it was. You know, that your intervention, your experiment said, yes, it's statistically significant, that means, uh, it's one in 20 or lower chance that it's, your finding is random. And you have to have two of those. And the f- um, and so if you have one in 20, and then you multiply them another one in 20, it's one in 400 chance that, that these two independent studies have produced results that are random, and then the FDA will approve it. Our first study was one in 10,000 chance that it was random. It was just incredible. Now, how do you do that? How do you get such great statistical significance? You get it because you have, um, a, a big difference between the two groups, and you also have not that much variability. So what it means is, the people that got MDMA, pretty much of them got major benefits, and the people that got the therapy without MDMA ... So I should say, the people who got therapy with MDMA did great, uh, pretty, not very much variability. It doesn't work for everybody, but we had 88% responders. We had 67% no longer had a diagnosis of PTSD. These are severe PTSD patients that, uh, had PTSD an average of 14 years, one-third over 20 years.

Joe Rogan 1:15:48 Wow.

Rick Doblin 1:15:48 And then we had, um, just, uh, another 21% had, uh, what's called clinically significant response. And, uh, they still have PTSD, but over time, they might get better. If they could have had a fourth session, they might get better. So, and we had a great safety record. We had nobody atten- ... We had actually nobody in the MDMA therapy group tried to kill themselves, tried to hurt themselves. We enroll people that have previously attempted suicide. We did have one woman try to kill herself twice during the study, but she was in the placebo group. She got therapy without MDMA. We had another woman, it was so difficult for her to confront her trauma, that she checked herself into a hospital to not self-harm. She also was in the placebo group. So the results were phenomenal. And, uh, Science, the journal Science, one of the most important, uh, journals in, in the world in science, at the end of every year, they publish a list of what they think are the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year. And they chose our study in Nature Medicine as one of the world's top 10 breakthroughs of the year. It was, it was phenomenal. And we had, um, special, um, appreciation for what Science was willing to do, because y- you talked about beforehand about the holes in the brain.

Joe Rogan 1:17:08 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 1:17:09 So 20 years before, Science had published this article that they never should have published, um, and this was by researchers at Johns Hopkins that had been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and what they claimed is that MDMA could hurt dopamine. This was a study in primates. And they said, "Oh my God, MDMA can hurt dopamine, and it could cause Parkinson's, and that this could be real danger." Now, this was around 2002, 2003, and they had, um ... since 1985, it had all been about MDMA supposedly hurting serotonin and causing holes in the brains from serotonin. And we had done studies in primates before with these same researchers where none of the primates died from overdoses. The, there didn't seem to be any problems with dopamine. Um, but the, the narrative of the, the anti-drug people and the National Institute on Drug Abuse about serotonin neurotoxicity was sort of diminishing. Uh, people weren't showing problems. And so what they were saying was, "Well, you're reducing your cognitive reserves. And so you don't show problems now, but when you get older, you're gonna show problems." So the time bomb theory.

Joe Rogan 1:18:17 Did they have evidence of this?

Rick Doblin 1:18:18 No. And not only did they not have evidence, but a lot of older people took MDMA, and they were fine. So if they had had this, you know, decline of aging, age-related decline, they, they were great. So, so, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:18:27 But it does drop your dopamine levels, right? Or serotonin levels?

Rick Doblin 1:18:31 No. I- i- in a short term, yes.

Joe Rogan 1:18:33 Yeah.

Rick Doblin 1:18:33 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it does. But it doesn't do this kind of damage to the brain in that way. They recover within a day or so.

Joe Rogan 1:18:39 And there's mitigation, uh, techniques, like with 5-HTP.

Rick Doblin 1:18:43 W- w- w- we don't use those, but people do use those. So-

Joe Rogan 1:18:45 Why don't you use those?

Rick Doblin 1:18:46 Because we don't think it's necessary. So what we, what we, we first proposed, we ... in 1992 is when we got permission for the first study with MDMA.

Joe Rogan 1:18:55 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 1:18:55 And people had been using 5-HTP after MDMA. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:18:59 But there's, there is a benefit to using 5-HTP. It boosts your serotonin levels quicker, correct?

Rick Doblin 1:19:04 I- i- i- yes, yes. It, it can be helpful. But what we do in a therapy context ... So the FDA, we said, "Should we try administering with 5-HTP or something like that?"

Joe Rogan 1:19:12 Mm-hmm.

Rick Doblin 1:19:13 They said, um, they said, "Don't do that." You know, "Let's do everything under observation and see what the problems are. And if you need, if you see problems, then we should figure out how to mitigate the problems." So the key thing that we do is to say to people that "When you take MDMA, it's a two-day experience. It's not a one-day experience, and the second day is for rest and for reflection. And they have no obligations, no appointments, nothing that you need to do. Just take the second day and, and rest." And that's where people would take 5-HTP if they wanted to. But we don't see this, uh, dip in mood any more in the MDMA group than in the group that gets therapy without it. So this, people talk about Suicide Tuesdays or, you know, this, this, the depression after you've used up serotonin. Um, but I think the rest part is part of the therapeutic process, and it ... so we have never felt the need to recommend that people do 5-HTP. I don't think it's a bad idea to do-I mean, if people wanted to do it, it can be helpful. But we just feel that the rest is just as helpful and it's more therapeutic. So, what-

Narrator 1:20:22 But w- but they're not mutually exclusive?

Rick Doblin 1:20:23 No.