Rick Doblin: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #202

1. 0:00 – 1:39

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, MAPS. He is one of the seminal figures in both the cultural history and the cutting-edge science of psychedelics. He was there along with the biggest characters throughout this fascinating history of psychedelics, and he is here to tell the story. Quick mention of our sponsors: Theragun, ExpressVPN, Blinkist, and Eight Sleep. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that exploring the places the human mind can go can help us understand where it comes from, how it works, and how to engineer mental journeys, whether that's through life experiences, chemical substances, brain-computer interfaces, or interactions with artificial intelligence systems. On a personal level, I think the dissolution of the ego for stretches of time is a powerful tool for understanding yourself. A lot of things can do this, including jujitsu, literature, meditation, but psychedelics is definitely, or at least arguably one of the most powerful, from psilocybin to DMT. I'm excited that people like Rick are leading the scientific research that reveals the efficacy and the safety of these substances so that their proper dosage and usage protocols can be understood and people like me can safely and effectively use them, not just for recreation, but for rigorous exploration of my own mind. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Rick Doblin.

2. 1:39 – 4:54

   Introduction to psychedelics

   1. LFLex Fridman1:39

      Could you give an introduction to psychedelics, like a big, bold, whirlwind overview? What are psychedelics?

   2. RDRick Doblin1:48

      Mm.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:48

      What are the kinds of psychedelics out there? In whatever way you, you think, uh, is meaningful.

   4. RDRick Doblin1:54

      All right. Well, when I started MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, it was very important for me that psychedelic be in the name.

   5. LFLex Fridman2:03

      (laughs)

   6. RDRick Doblin2:04

      And the way in which the original meaning of psychedelic, um, it's mind manifesting. It was created by Humphry Osmond in a dialogue with Aldous Huxley. And so psychedelic means mind manifesting, and so we interpret that very broadly to mean, uh, dreams are psychedelic, anything that kind of brings things to the surface. Um, holotropic breathwork, you know, hyperventilation is psychedelic. So most people think psychedelic is only about certain kind of chemical substances, either natural or synthetic, but we've got a much broader view of that. Uh, meditation can be psychedelic in some ways. But our primary focus is on the drugs, is on the medicines or the, you might call, um, some people might call them, uh, spiritual tools or sacraments. Um, there's sort of two general categories of those. One are what are called the classic psychedelics, and those are the ego-dissolving, um, sort of merge into, uh, unitive states. Those are like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, ayahuasca, ibogaine, DMT, things like that. And then there is MDMA, which some people even argue is not a psychedelic.

   7. LFLex Fridman3:22

      (laughs)

   8. RDRick Doblin3:22

      They'll say it's an empathogen or an entactogen. It's about touching within or empathy. Uh, it doesn't do the same kind of ego dissolution that the, um, classic psychedelics do, but it brings material to the surface, um, and, and it changes the way we process information. And so I, I think w- you can quibble about whether it's a cl- it's certainly not a classic psychedelic, but I think, uh, MDMA is also a psychedelic. Marijuana, I would say, is a psychedelic. Um, marijuana is closer to the classic psychedelics than it is to MDMA. One point I like to make is dreams, because then everybody can relate to that. Dreams are psychedelic. Dreams bring emotions, feelings, um, ideas, concepts, um, in symbolic form a lot of times, or just in raw emotions to the surface. So when people hear the word psychedelic, often they are frightened by it. It's about lo- loss of control. Um, and it is, to an extent, loss of conscious control, particularly with the classic psychedelics, but, you know, and we know with dreams that we can have frightening dreams, nightmares, but I think that, um, anchoring the, the concept of psychedelic in dreams is really helpful for people to know that it's kind of a natural state-

   9. LFLex Fridman4:45

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RDRick Doblin4:45

       ... and that there are other ways that you can catalyze it than by going to sleep, and that for thousands of years, the substances have been used in that way.

3. 4:54 – 17:28

   Psychedelics reveals the inner depths of humans

   1. RDRick Doblin4:54

   2. LFLex Fridman4:54

      So you mentioned this idea of bringing something to the surface. This is really interesting. So can you, can you maybe elaborate the surface, and what is there in the depths of things, and how does ego dissolution fits into that?

   3. RDRick Doblin5:10

      Well, Aldous Huxley talked about, uh, the brain as a reducing valve. That we have an enormous amount of information. So right now, there is an air conditioning sound in the background.

   4. LFLex Fridman5:21

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin5:22

      But that's not crucial to what you and I are doing, talking to each other-

   6. LFLex Fridman5:25

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RDRick Doblin5:25

      ... so we kind of tune that out. You know, there, there is all sorts of sights and sounds. There, there's incoming information in all the different sense modalities, and we have to figure out, um, what's important to us. And so the mind, in a way, focuses a lot on, um, what are our core needs, um, and, and we filter all the incoming information that we get towards focusing on what are our core needs. And we can even get to, um, Abraham Maslow and the hierarchy of needs, about survival needs, belonging needs, esteem needs. You can go on. So I think what-What I mean by bringing things to the surface is that we tend to, um, not focus on a lot of things that are, um, coming, but we also push away things that are difficult emotionally, difficult cognitively. You know, we all know that we're on this very short trajectory from birth to death, but we're not constantly thinking about dying, um, although that can actually be helpful to focus us on what's really important. Um, traumas are often suppressed.

   8. LFLex Fridman6:44

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RDRick Doblin6:44

      Um, conflicts, uh, w- we see in America and around the world, the kind of rise of irrationality, um, where people push away their logic in order for their emotional tribal needs to be met. Um, a lot of people are suffering from early childhood traumas of a different kinds or abandonment issues or anything. So, we, we tend to focus on just, you know, what we need to survive and what we need for work and esteem. And so psychedelics, um, by dissolving this ego control or by with MDMA kind of strengthening our sense of self, um, and our sense of self-acceptance, we can bring in, um, other information that have previously been too complicated or too painful.

   10. LFLex Fridman7:32

       You don't think of psychedelics as conjuring up something new? It is more revealing something that is already there?

   11. RDRick Doblin7:39

       I think that's a very crucial thing. So, um, yes, um, all, um, Sasha Shulgin, who, um, sort of the, um, godfather of MDMA. Um, you know, he sort of rediscovered it and brought it, um, back into use. He talked about his first experience was with mescaline, his first psychedelic experience was with mescaline, and he had a tremendous experience. But what he said about it was he was having a human experience that the mescaline was helping him access rather than that he was having a mescaline experience. So that it's not like you pop a pill and you always have the same kind of experience as everybody else. The, the experience is not contained in the pill. The pill opens you up and you have an experience of yourself. Um, sometimes these are experiences that we've never consciously had, but y- y- we can say right now that we know that, um, our body below the level of our conscious awareness has all these self-healing mechanisms, and we, we don't modulate them to a large extent by conscious control. I mean, eventually, we, we are learning more about the mind body and we learn about the placebo effect, how what we think is the case. But, but I, I think that there's experiences that are below our level of conscious awareness, particularly once we're adults, that are more of these unitive mystical experiences, sense of connection. You know, I think kids are like this a lot. We kind of come from the void, you could say, and you're born and you, you have, um, a different way of processing information. W- what one interesting point about that has to do with ketamine which is, um, you know, been approved as ketamine for depression, but it's used for anesthesia. And roughly one-tenth the anesthetic dose is a psychedelic dose.

   12. LFLex Fridman9:31

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RDRick Doblin9:31

       And when it's used in anesthesia, there's what's called the emergent phenomena. So this is you get enough, uh, ketamine for, um, you can be operated on, you're not in pain, you're not really there, your ego's knocked out, but you can still breathe. But as the operations, um, get over and then people metabolize the ketamine, there's a process that they call the emergent phenomena. It's like as you're emerging from this tranquilized state, and that's where you pass through the psychedelic phase. And they don't prepare people for that, and what we see is that a lot of adults have difficult times with that.

   14. LFLex Fridman10:08

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RDRick Doblin10:09

       But children don't seem to have that, those problems. Children are a little bit more already in this kind of state. And so ketamine is, is used, um, quite frequently in children now for anesthesia. So, all of that is to say to your question that, um, I think it, these psychedelics reveal things that are within us. Some things that are f- how we processed information back when we were children, um, other things that we've never thought of before that are sort of baked into our consciousness. Um, you know, there, there's one, um, drug, 5-MeO-DMT. It's this, uh, toxin from a Sonoran toad that many people consider it to be the most powerful of all the psychedelics, and it kind of knocks the ego structures completely out of it, and, um, we experience something different. But it's something I think that's always within us, it's at a deeper layer. So we knock out some of the higher cognitive functions, and then we experience things in a different way. So my, my sense is that, um, these are human experiences that the psychedelics bring us to.

   16. LFLex Fridman11:15

       Yeah, it's really profound but... And that's a... DMT is a really interesting example. So, uh, Terence McKenna has talked about these machine elves, right?

   17. RDRick Doblin11:24

       (laughs)

   18. LFLex Fridman11:24

       And there's this, um... I think f- from the people I've heard speak about the experience, there's a sense that you are traveling elsewhere, uh, to meet entities-

   19. RDRick Doblin11:35

       Yeah.

   20. LFLex Fridman11:35

       ... whether they're elves or not. So, in your sense, you're not traveling elsewhere; you're just revealing something that's within or maybe it's a, a particular mechanism of revealing what's already within.

   21. RDRick Doblin11:50

       Yeah. And I, and I knew Terence, I spent a lot of time talking with Terence, and I, I do not, um, ascribe to a lot of things that he was saying. He, he was tremendous entertainer and I think he did a lot of really good things and focused us on, you know, the power of psychedelics, but I think, um... (clears throat) I've never seen these "machine elves".

   22. LFLex Fridman12:09

       Okay.

   23. RDRick Doblin12:09

       Um, I think culture is m- more determinative of what people experience under psychedelics, your preconceptions than, um, than we give it credit for.And so, I think there's a lot of, um, priming that you could say, that people receive by stories from their culture. Um, you know, with ayahuasca, it's about jaguars and Amazonian animals. And so, I, I think these machine elves are this, uh, construct of, um, herons that, that other people have, do see. Um, there, there's actually some people that, um, are very interested in doing a study and that they're, they're well-funded and moving toward it, to, um, keep people on an IV infusion of DMT-

   24. LFLex Fridman13:00

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RDRick Doblin13:00

       ... for them specifically to see, do they contact machine elves or aliens, and what kind of information do they bring back from these other-

   26. LFLex Fridman13:08

       Yeah.

   27. RDRick Doblin13:08

       ... selves, uh, other places, or other entities. Um, i- i- one question is, you know, who are we? Are, are we, um, connected to everything in the universe? Uh, we certainly know, in many cases, you talk about waves or particles, you know, w- w- the quantum approach. So, I don't interpret, um, experiences that we have of some entity that's, you know, somehow or other deep in our consciousness that's not us. It's a part of who we are, so I tend to interpret it in that way.

   28. LFLex Fridman13:43

       The, the question is, how big are we? (laughs)

   29. RDRick Doblin13:47

       Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman13:47

       I mean, th- that, that's, uh... And how many ideas are within us that can be revealed by changing the perspective? You mentioned physics. One of the... What physicists, especially m- mathematical physicists or mathematicians do is, the, they reveal truths by looking at a... by taking a slightly different perspective on a problem that reveals the simplicity, uh, uh, of how it actually works in totally new ways. That's what Einstein did, that's what like, uh, e- every progress in physics, and certainly every progress in mathematics, requires you to take a different perspective, and then perhaps that's exactly what, um, psychedelics are doing. It's not that they're contacting aliens that are elsewhere, it may be revealing the connection between us and other living life forms, or actually might be revealing a, a totally new perspective on what life is or what consciousness is, uh, and giving us a glimpse at that, even though our cognitive capabilities are limited in, to fully grasp and understand it. So, it's just giving us an inkling of that smile. And it seems perhaps a little ridiculous, not from a scientific perspective, in the sense that we don't have a good physics of life or a physics of intelligence or physics of consciousness, but getting a glimpse of that is giving us a little bit of, um, maybe an intuition of, uh, which way to head to, uh, to build such a physics.
4. 17:28 – 24:53

   Differences between psychedelics

   1. LFLex Fridman17:28

      What are the interesting differences, would you say, between, um, the various psychedelics that you mentioned? Ayahuasca, DMT-

   2. RDRick Doblin17:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman17:37

      ... acid, LSD, marijuana, mescaline, PCP, psilocybin, MDMA. All... You mentioned a few of them that are really interesting.We'll, we'll talk about scientifically some of the, the different studies that have been conducted on each, but sort of at the high level, what are some interesting differences?

   4. RDRick Doblin17:54

      Well, one of the big ones that people make a big deal of that I think is completely misplaced-

   5. LFLex Fridman17:59

      Mm.

   6. RDRick Doblin17:59

      ... is some are from nature, some are from the lab.

   7. LFLex Fridman18:02

      Right.

   8. RDRick Doblin18:03

      So, there's this kind of like romantic thought that if it's from nature, it's good. If it's from the lab, it's somehow tainted by humanity.

   9. LFLex Fridman18:09

      Right.

   10. RDRick Doblin18:10

       And, you know, therefore, some people are, are like all for plant psychedelics. What we see the policy changes that have been happening in a couple cities, uh, Cambridge, Somerville, right, not far from where we're at now, where they decriminalize plant medicines. So, they call it decriminalizing nature.

   11. LFLex Fridman18:29

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RDRick Doblin18:30

       Um, so I, I think that there is, um ...... from my perspective, certain, certain things from nature are poison. Certain things from the lab are, um, spiritual-

   13. LFLex Fridman18:44

       Hm.

   14. RDRick Doblin18:44

       ... even if they don't show up in nature, like LSD. Now, there is something, LSD is lysergic acid diethylamide, there is lysergic acid amide, LSA, which comes from morning glory seeds. So it's very similar, um, but at the same time, I'd say I don't buy into that distinction that there's some fundamental preference. One, one of the things that Terence McKenna, since we talked about him, he talked about how if it's from nature, it's good. And if it's not, you know, we should be suspect. Um, of course he had a lot of great LSD experiences. But actually, Terence, in 1984, we were at Esalen with a bunch of other people, this was before the crackdown on MDMA, and, um, this was some of the underground therapists and the aboveground researchers were trying to talk about, uh, how to protect MDMA from this eventual crackdown. And Terence was like, "Forget about it, you know, it's from the lab. You know, it's dangerous. We have thousands of years of history," all these other things, and you know, "What do we know about MDMA?" And blah, blah, blah. And I was like, "Terence, you're so, um, unscientific-"

   15. LFLex Fridman19:54

       (laughs)

   16. RDRick Doblin19:55

       "... full of shit. Another-"

   17. LFLex Fridman19:56

       Yeah. (laughs)

   18. RDRick Doblin19:56

       "... way to say it is," and, and I just said, "You know, we need a study of, uh, the safety of MDMA." And so then Dick Price, who started, um, Esalen, I said, "I'll put a thousand, Dick Price..." He put a thousand. So Terence was actually the catalyst for the first study with MDMA.

   19. LFLex Fridman20:11

       Wow.

   20. RDRick Doblin20:12

       Um, just 'cause he was so frustrating about how plants are okay and-

   21. LFLex Fridman20:16

       (laughs)

   22. RDRick Doblin20:16

       ... you know, if it's from the lab, it's bad.

   23. LFLex Fridman20:17

       Yeah. (laughs)

   24. RDRick Doblin20:18

       Um, so that's one distinction. Um, the, the other distinction is this, um, sense of, uh, classic psychedelics versus things like MDMA. So to what extent do they, uh, dissolve the ego? And you could say to what extent do they cause visions, uh, the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor subtype, um, which is responsible for a lot of that, uh, where these drugs are activating. Um, now, mescaline, of all the psychedelics, chemically, it's the most similar to MDMA.

   25. LFLex Fridman20:50

       Mm-hmm.

   26. RDRick Doblin20:51

       It's a phenethylamine, which is, um, MDMA. So in the '50s there was the, um, '53, I think it was, the Army Chemical Warfare Service wanted to look at, um, drugs for interrogations, mind control, non-lethal incapacitants. They did, um, a study in, um, eight substances. These were now toxicity studies in animals. And on the one side was methamphetamine, on the other was mescaline, and MDMA was in the middle.

   27. LFLex Fridman21:18

       Mm-hmm.

   28. RDRick Doblin21:18

       Chemically. So, um, mescaline, of the psychedelics, tends to have the, um, warmth that MDMA has. Um, it's not as ego-dissolving quite as some of the others.

   29. LFLex Fridman21:30

       Mm-hmm.

   30. RDRick Doblin21:30

       I mean, it's the main active ingredient in peyote, it's v- it is very psychedelic, very visual. Um, another distinction with these different drugs is how long they last, and a lot of that has to do with the route of administration. So for example, um, if you smoke DMT, it takes 10, 15 minutes and you're, within seconds, you're off in another world. Um, similarly, 5-MeO-DMT, um, very rapid. Um, when you take DMT in the form of ayahuasca where it's mixed with, um, another substance that makes it so that it's orally active, then it's a couple hours.
5. 24:53 – 33:37

   The future of psychedelics

   1. RDRick Doblin24:53

      happening too.

   2. LFLex Fridman24:53

      That's really fasc- I mean, uh, there's a lot of doors you've opened, and we're gonna walk through all of them-

   3. RDRick Doblin24:59

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman24:59

      ... including the research and so on. But, uh, on this one little tangent of, um, the future of psychedelics, so engineering new psychedelics, can you comment on maybe the, the chemistry and the biology of how psychedelics work? And where's the space of possible engineering of psychedelics and what kind of things might they unlock in terms of, um, the possible places our mind would be able to go, and the, the effects of that of improving health? But maybe at the basic level of chemistry and the space of what could be engineered.

   5. RDRick Doblin25:39

      Well, you, you reminded me, it's not... I'll get to exactly what you said, but you reminded me of a, um, talk I heard by Buckminster Fuller, um, shortly before he died.

   6. LFLex Fridman25:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RDRick Doblin25:49

      And what he talked about is how technology was making things, um, ever smaller. You know, that, that we are able to pack more and more information into smaller and smaller spaces.

   8. LFLex Fridman26:02

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RDRick Doblin26:02

      And that we're developing technologies of communications with people. You know, we now know the internet and things like that. But what he said is that he thought the eventual, um, evolution of this sort of research would move from this miniaturization to telepathy.

   10. LFLex Fridman26:20

       Hm. Yeah. (laughs)

   11. RDRick Doblin26:22

       And, and that was like a shocking thing for somebody, like, scientific like that to say that.

   12. LFLex Fridman26:26

       Yeah.

   13. RDRick Doblin26:27

       Um, so will we unlock those parts, that, where I talked about the collective unconscious? Will, will we be able to more consciously explore those areas? So, I think that that's a possibility.

   14. LFLex Fridman26:41

       That's fascinating.

   15. RDRick Doblin26:42

       There was, um, Stan Grof, who's, um, you know, the world's leading LSD researcher and, um, has been my mentor. His wife, Brigitta, um, they were talking about stories that they had heard about, um, MDMA that, um, people take. And then on top of that, they do 5-MeO-DMT. And so you get this ego dissolution, but underneath it, you have this sense of s- um, ego sort of, um, sense of self, of safety, of self-acceptance, kind of grounds it. So-

   16. LFLex Fridman27:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RDRick Doblin27:16

       ... Stan was like, "That's the future of psychiatry."

   18. LFLex Fridman27:18

       Mm-hmm.

   19. RDRick Doblin27:19

       That, that you can watch without the terror of the ego dissolution, the sense that you're losing your mind, or you're going crazy, or you're dying, or, you know, that, that you have this grounded sense of safety while you're dissolving your normal sense of how you see things.

   20. LFLex Fridman27:33

       And being able to engineer in, in a fine-tuned way that, that exact experience may be fine-tuned to the person.

   21. RDRick Doblin27:40

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman27:41

       As opposed to sort of this manual potion that's, uh, through, through, um...

   23. RDRick Doblin27:45

       Well, I don't... Yes.

   24. LFLex Fridman27:46

       ... experiment.

   25. RDRick Doblin27:47

       Although, I don't know about fine-tuning things to the person, in the sense that, um, we believe there's this inner healer, this kind of, you know, inner-healing intelligence. You know, we talked about it, the body repairs itself, you know. So, um, I think that w- we more need to create the safety for people.

   26. LFLex Fridman28:03

       Mm-hmm.

   27. RDRick Doblin28:03

       And then, then what emerges will be customized to what they need to be looking at-

   28. LFLex Fridman28:07

       Yeah.

   29. RDRick Doblin28:07

       ... from this inner-healing intelligence. At the same time, we will move to, uh, you know, we, we, we hear so much about, um, the new approaches to, um, oncology, where, you know, you, you do, um, genetic analysis of different kind of tumors, and then you have certain kind of chemotherapy agents, and you do, like, personalized chemotherapy. I think we will have more, like, personalized psychedelic therapy, but it'll be more like a sequence of different drugs that people go through over an extended period of time. And then you kind of customize what's next. And sometimes you'll combine different drugs together, like this 5-MeO-DMT and MDMA, or a lot of times people do, um, LSD-MDMA combinations or psilocybin-MDMA combinations. Um, chemistry and, um, you know, it's not my strength. Um, I'm, I'm more into, um, clinical applications and policy. But, but I can say that, um, from what I've learned from reading from others, and research done by others, that, you know, d- different psychedelics have an impact on, uh, different neurotransmitters, different other parts of energies in the brain. Um, the default mode network is what's considered to be like our sense of self, you know. And, and it's this, it's part of the brain that sort of is what I described before, scanning the world and, and filtering information for what's really important to us. And both, um, focusing us on things and also helping us to ignore a lot of things.

   30. LFLex Fridman29:39

       Mm-hmm.
6. 33:37 – 39:34

   Epigenetics

   1. RDRick Doblin33:37

      will we one time develop drugs that would even be specific to certain kind of memories? Uh, we're working with a woman, Rachel Yehuda, who is, um, at the Bronx VA, and she's done some studies that are with the epigenetics of trauma. So she's worked with Holocaust survivors and their children, and she has identified, um, epigenetic mechanisms by which trauma is passed from generation to the generations.

   2. LFLex Fridman34:07

      Wow.

   3. RDRick Doblin34:07

      Sort of like set points for anxiety, fear, certain things like that. But the question is can you actually transmit memories from one generation to the next? Now, this is not, um, DNA, um, changes which happen over a very long period of time in this evolutionary scale.

   4. LFLex Fridman34:28

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin34:28

      But within one lifetime, within some experiences, your epigenetics, what turns on the genes or turns off certain genes-

   6. LFLex Fridman34:35

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RDRick Doblin34:35

      ... that can be impacted, and that's what we know now can be transmitted from generation to generation, either by the father or the mother through the sperm or the egg. So it's, it's pretty r- um, remarkable. So what, what Rachel's gonna p- try to do is MDMA research for PTSD, and look at these epigenetic markers before and after and see if they change-

   8. LFLex Fridman34:57

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RDRick Doblin34:57

      ... as an consequence of therapy. So, will we develop one day certain kind of chemicals that will be able to bring certain kind of memories to the surface? Um, that, that's not inconceivable.

   10. LFLex Fridman35:12

       The epigenetic, uh, angle is fascinating, that there would be these epigenetic perturbations that lead to memories living from one generation to the other, and then bringing those memories to the surface and using, um, using that as signal to understand what exactly the psychedelics bring to the surface and not.

   11. RDRick Doblin35:34

       Yeah. Yeah. Now, the other port- portion of that though is culture. I mean, culture is where-

   12. LFLex Fridman35:39

       Yeah.

   13. RDRick Doblin35:39

       ... we store all these memories and-

   14. LFLex Fridman35:41

       Right.

   15. RDRick Doblin35:41

       ... and the stories that we get passed down.

   16. LFLex Fridman35:44

       Especially with a lot of shared... You, you talk about the Holocaust or World War II-

   17. RDRick Doblin35:48

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman35:48

       ... wha- where it is, um... it's deeply ingrained in the culture, the impact of those events, and sort of in aggregate the different perspectives on that particular event create a set of stories that you can plug into.

   19. RDRick Doblin36:02

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman36:03

       And then, uh, they kind of resonate with some aspect of you that creates a memory that's connected to... Like, when I think about World War II and the Holocaust, I think about my own family, but in some sense, it's also resonating with stories of many others. So it's like somehow the two echo each other, and I'm just providing my own little flavor on top. The, uh, the meat of the stories are probably those that are shared with others. It's-

   21. RDRick Doblin36:29

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman36:29

       ... plugging into the collective unconscious. That, that, that's, um, that's really fascinating, really plugging into... Like-... precisely plugging into particular memories as a way to, uh, to, to, um, deal with dr- uh, trauma and, uh, and PTSD, that kind of thing.

   23. RDRick Doblin36:48

       Yeah. I'll just add that the, um, most important dream of my life ever was of a Holocaust survivor telling me that, um, he was miraculously saved from death, um, and he knew that he was saved for a particular purpose, but he never knew what that purpose was. So, in the dream, I'm seeing him on his deathbed and, um, and then he's shows me whatever happened to him during the Holocaust and w- you know. And then, um, we're back in the room on his deathbed and he says, "Well, I know what my purpose was now." And I'm like, "Oh, great. What, what was it?" He said, "It's to tell you to be a psychedelic therapist." (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman37:24

       (laughs)

   25. RDRick Doblin37:24

       "And study psychedelics and bring back psychedelic research."

   26. LFLex Fridman37:27

       Mm-hmm.

   27. RDRick Doblin37:28

       And, um, I thought to myself, "I've already decided to do this. You can lay this on me. I can say yes, and then you can die in peace." And then he died in front of my eyes, in the dream.

   28. LFLex Fridman37:37

       Wow.

   29. RDRick Doblin37:38

       So, I, I think that that kind of cultural, um, transmission that I got from when I was really young, you know, then manifested in this dream, and that was this story about how people can be, um, incredibly vicious and can be very motivated by, um, irrational factors. And so, I, I just feel that this, this kind of multi-generational transmission of this story of the irrational, you know, being a murderous factor, um, and something I needed to respond to, um, was deeply ingrained. And I, I, I would say my guess is, you know, more culturally than this epigenetic mechanism.

   30. LFLex Fridman38:22

       Yes. Yeah, but y- your sense is that whatever stimulated a certain part of human nature in, uh, World War II, especially Nazi Germany, but also in, uh, Stalinist Soviet Union-
7. 39:34 – 47:00

   DMT

   1. RDRick Doblin39:34

      But yeah, and, and I'd say one of the most important psychedelic experiences of my life was a DMT experience. Also, Terrence was there, um, Ralph Metzner, um, Andy Weil, a few others. And we were, um, sitting around, um, at Esalen smoking DMT, and under the influence of DMT, which n- now this was the first time I've ever smoked DMT. Um, I had this super rapid fraction of a second, like, uh, dissolving of everything that I... Well, first off, I saw a horizontal line, then I saw a vertical line, then it turned into a color red, then it was red, then it turned into cubes, then it turned into like an M.C. Escher kind of like, I don't know, you know, didn't make logical sense, and then I was gone. And then it was just this period of, uh, five, 10 minutes of just feeling part of this, uh, enormous w- wave of, um, billions of years of evolution. How-

   2. LFLex Fridman40:30

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RDRick Doblin40:30

      ... I had this sense that in my innermost sense of who I am uniquely individually, this inner voice that's talking to me, that I didn't develop English, that, that it's like a gift to me from millions of people that... So that even in my most innermost, uh, sense, it's not just me, it's, it's the product of everything that came before me, I'm part of this bigger system. And then I just thought, "Wow, just how many billions of years does it take to reach this point, uh, self-awareness and all this?"

   4. LFLex Fridman40:59

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RDRick Doblin40:59

      And it was glorious, beautiful. And then I had this thought, um, and, and this is where this kind of, um, intellectual honesty, I guess you could say. I just thought, "Well, if I'm part of everything and everything's part of me, then it's not just the good parts, that Hitler's part of me too."

   6. LFLex Fridman41:14

      Yeah.

   7. RDRick Doblin41:15

      And that was just this shock, like a stone sunk, you know, and, and I just was very moody for the whole next day. But it was that acknowledgement that each of us carries these potentials, and what we activate is what matters, but what, what our potential are is the whole full range of things.

   8. LFLex Fridman41:34

      I don't know if you can comment about the DMT trip itself and what it's like starting from the very basic-

   9. RDRick Doblin41:41

      (laughs)

   10. LFLex Fridman41:41

       ... geometric shapes and then launching yourself into the context of the enormity of space and time-

   11. RDRick Doblin41:48

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman41:48

       ... and the human history. Is there anything else to be said about that kind of, um, visually or physically or emotionally about that journey? What it's, wha- what it's like, that brief journey that reveals so much?

   13. RDRick Doblin42:08

       Well, I was with a group of people. The way we were doing it was, um, you know, each of us would smoke DMT, have 10, 15 minutes experience while we closed our eyes and, you know, everybody else was just chatting, and then the person who did the DMT would come back and tell their story, uh, what happened. And, and then we'd think about it-

   14. LFLex Fridman42:25

       (laughs)

   15. RDRick Doblin42:25

       ... for a bit, and then pass the pipe to the next person. And so this was like a whole-

   16. LFLex Fridman42:28

       Wow.

   17. RDRick Doblin42:29

       ... evening, you know? And, um-

   18. LFLex Fridman42:30

       So even the... Sorry to interrupt. Even the conversations themselves then is part of the experience?

   19. RDRick Doblin42:35

       Y- exactly. Yes, yes, because it's also what you bring back.

   20. LFLex Fridman42:39

       Right.

   21. RDRick Doblin42:39

       I mean, I think that's... Particularly for therapy.You know, it's not so much about what the experience is, but it's what you bring back, and what do you integrate. And then also, um, how do you learn how to do these things on your own without the drugs? Th- there is this way because we're saying it's- it's sort of a core human experience, the drug is the mediator, but can we do this on our own? And once you've seen it and feel- felt it, then you have a little bit better sense to recreate it on your own. Although, you know, I've had dreams where I've been doing LSD and tripping.

   22. LFLex Fridman43:12

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RDRick Doblin43:13

       And it was just incredible. It was... I was tripping in my dreams-

   24. LFLex Fridman43:16

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RDRick Doblin43:17

       ... but I had not taken LSD.

   26. LFLex Fridman43:19

       (laughs)

   27. RDRick Doblin43:19

       So th- there's this way in which we do that. So, I- I would say that from the DMT experience, uh, the sense of safety, that's what I was trying to get at with this, um, this group of us and this group of friends trying to do this common exploration, that if you have this sense of safety, you're- you're incredibly vulnerable because you are giving up your, um, awareness, really, of what's happening around you. I- I think there's... W- what we're finding is that in our psychedelic research for PTSD, um, and what we see with the vaccines, that- that even African-Americans are reluctant to volunteer for vaccines because they haven't had that sense of safety from the medical establishment. Um, they don't volunteer for psychedelic therapy even as much. So, the overlay has to be this sense of safety as you become vulnerable and looking inside you're- you're not... Um, I- I was just actually told about how, um, there's a lot of work being done inside prisons to teach mindfulness.

   28. LFLex Fridman44:25

       Mm-hmm.

   29. RDRick Doblin44:25

       And, you know, th- so o- one of the, um... Charlene, who's my assistant is- is trying to do work on, um, helping people in prison with trauma, potentially one day with MDMA or meditation or mindfulness. But one of the exercises was, you know, teaching people to, "Okay, here's how you deal with stress, you know, just close your eyes and deep breathe." And what- what Charlene was saying is, people don't close their eyes in prison.

   30. LFLex Fridman44:50

       (laughs) Yeah.
8. 47:00 – 50:17

   Ego dissolution

   1. RDRick Doblin47:00

   2. LFLex Fridman47:00

      So in that, uh, place of safety and vulnerability in that fascinating group of people, w- when their egos dissolved in this way, did they have similar experiences? Is there different places that their minds went?

   3. RDRick Doblin47:12

      Y- yeah. So, you know, once I had this kind of shattering experience that Hitler's part of me-

   4. LFLex Fridman47:18

      Yes.

   5. RDRick Doblin47:19

      ... you know, no one else in the group had that. Probably a lot of them have maybe had that before or they- they realize that they're not just, you know, the good... f- the white hat, good people and that they're-

   6. LFLex Fridman47:31

      Yes.

   7. RDRick Doblin47:31

      ... all good and they're... you know, we've got to fight against the bad people.

   8. LFLex Fridman47:34

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RDRick Doblin47:35

      You know, so, no, people will go in different places and not only that, if you do it again, you'll go into a different place than you went to the first time unless you have not resolved the issue. So I had a sequence of LSD trips that were very difficult, but it was like coming to the same sort of conundrum, the same challenge, um, that I was unable to overcome, this idea of letting go and really fully dissolving, um, letting the ego fully go and- and I would have this sequence of trips over a couple of months where I would reach this point where I was too scared to move forward and I would just be holding on.

   10. LFLex Fridman48:10

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RDRick Doblin48:11

       Um, so there- there are, there are repeated themes sometimes. W- what Stan Grof has said, which I find very beautiful, is that the full expression of an emotion is the funeral pyre of that emotion. And w- what that means is if you can fully let in something, then the essence of, um, of life is change, is that it moves on, that everything's in motion. Uh, and if you can fully experience it, even if it's a sense that you're gonna be trapped in eternity in this hellish state, if you surrender to that, that's the way out.... you know, this full experience of something is this, um, funeral pyre of that emotion. And so that runs against a lot of what modern psychiatry is doing too, which is to suppress symptoms and to, uh, and to, instead of supporting people to kind of explore these insecurities-

   12. LFLex Fridman49:03

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RDRick Doblin49:03

       ... so that then they can contain them and then they can move on.

   14. LFLex Fridman49:09

       So yeah, resistance is not a way to make progress.

   15. RDRick Doblin49:13

       Right. Right. Um, although, and one of the reasons why we do the supplemental dose during the MDMA or why there's advantages in a 8, 10 hour LSD experience is that you have a lot of opportunities to come up against this resistance that may be too difficult for, to deal with, and then you kind of push it aside, and then a couple of hours later, you come back to it-

   16. LFLex Fridman49:36

       (laughs)

   17. RDRick Doblin49:36

       ... or you come back to it.

   18. LFLex Fridman49:37

       Press snooze every once in a while-

   19. RDRick Doblin49:39

       (laughs)

   20. LFLex Fridman49:39

       ... if you're not ready.

   21. RDRick Doblin49:40

       It's hard to do that. I think, uh, with MDMA, you can negotiate.

   22. LFLex Fridman49:45

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RDRick Doblin49:45

       That's, I think, uh, a part of its safety in a sense. You can have this like, "Oh, I should be talking about this, but I," or, "I'm feeling this, but it's too much for me now," you can push it away. But with the classic psychedelics, this kind of membrane between the conscious and the unconscious, that, um, once you take the drug and it weakens this membrane and things are coming up, um, it's very difficult to negotiate with it. The, the cl- the key to successful, uh, classic psychedelic trips is surrender.

9. 50:17 – 53:17

   One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

   1. RDRick Doblin50:17

   2. LFLex Fridman50:17

      Mm-hmm. You've talked about that you first began to reconsider the negative health myths around psychedelics when you learned that the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-

   3. RDRick Doblin50:27

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman50:27

      ... was written by Ken Kesey when he was in part under the influence of LSD. So, how do you think LSD helped him, Ken Kesey, in writing, uh, that incredible book?

   5. RDRick Doblin50:39

      Yeah. Um, there's a, a process that's called semantic priming.

   6. LFLex Fridman50:44

      Mm-hmm.

   7. RDRick Doblin50:45

      And so what, what that means is that I, I say, um, "Night," you say, "Day." You know? Or there, there's kind of normal patterns of kind of you say one word, what kind of words come to you next. And so they've done some research, they meaning scientists, have done some research where you pe- give people, um, a psychedelic and then you do this semantic priming, and what you find is they have a wider range of associations-

   8. LFLex Fridman51:11

      Mm-hmm. That's fascinating.

   9. RDRick Doblin51:12

      ... than they normally would when they're not under psychedelics. So, I think for Ken Kesey, um, he was able with psychedelics to get like, um, a deeper kind of emotional connection to some of these states of mind that people were in the insti- this mental institution.

   10. LFLex Fridman51:30

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RDRick Doblin51:31

       And that he could explore them more in depth and more eloquently, and, and, and also, o- one of the things he talked about was the fog machine, was, you know, how, um, people's minds were sort of clouded by the people that ran the institution and this, the fog machine would be coming in. So I think the, um, imagery and the metaphors-

   12. LFLex Fridman51:55

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RDRick Doblin51:56

       ... that he used a lot in the book could come to him during LSD experiences and, and then ... Now, he wasn't doing, um, you know, very ... When, when you're writing, you have to be literate, uh, you have to be able to write, you know, so it would be more like beginning and ends of LSD trips instead of at the peak. But I think you would get a lot of these, um, the feeling tones or the images, the metaphors, I think he would get, um, these extend ... Also, LSD lasts so long, you can get these extended focus and you can really elaborate on, um, images and, um, so much of psychedelic experiences are poetic and metaphorical. I mean, you, you could take, um, you know, veterans who've never, um, read a book of poetry in their lives.

   14. LFLex Fridman52:48

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RDRick Doblin52:49

       You know, and under the influence of MDMA, the, just the, what they describe, the imagery and the way they describe their experiences, metaphorical, poetic, it's incredible. Um, and so I, I think that, um, Ken Kesey was able to, to channel these, what LSD did to his mind in a way that most people couldn't do, but he did because he was trying to write this novel and because he was so brilliant.

10. 53:17 – 57:10

    Psychedelics and Creativity

    1. RDRick Doblin53:18

    2. LFLex Fridman53:18

       Yeah, the, um ... I mean, I mean, we'll, we'll talk about psychedelics in treating, in, uh, bringing some of trauma to the surface and dealing with all those kinds of things, but there's something also to the opening up of creativity for, whether it's for writing purposes or for, for, in my wo- world, for engineering-

    3. RDRick Doblin53:40

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LFLex Fridman53:40

       ... for invention. Innovation and invention in itself is a very, is a deeply creative process, and it's fascinating to think with the aid of psychedelics what kind of ideas can be brought to life.

    5. RDRick Doblin53:57

       Yeah. Well, we have the whole phenomena of a lot of the people in Silicon Valley and else microdosing psychedelics in order to have a little touch more of this creative approach to things.

    6. LFLex Fridman54:07

       I would love it to see if it was, um, that's more like Terence McKenna territory, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would love to sort of more scientific to where there, there will be the rigor of saying how to do it effectively. You know, how to sort of understand sort of, um, not just almost, um, you know, (laughs) to take the full journey of a creative exploration and to do it for pro- prolonged periods of time, you know, um, for years, you know, lifelong kind of part of your life of how it de- it, it empowers creativity. I, I think-Of course, you start with, um, helping people, uh, deal with trauma.

    7. RDRick Doblin54:54

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LFLex Fridman54:54

       And then the next step is people who have, uh, moved past their trauma and are trying to do something, uh, create something special in their life. How can then psychedelics empower that?

    9. RDRick Doblin55:07

       Yeah. Now that also, just to not shy away from anything controversial-

    10. LFLex Fridman55:11

        Yes.

    11. RDRick Doblin55:12

        ... um, that has, that gets us to this, um, idea of psychedelics for vision quest, particularly for younger people.

    12. LFLex Fridman55:18

        Mm-hmm.

    13. RDRick Doblin55:19

        You know, when you're sort of moving into this adulting kind of phase, and you have to figure out what are you gonna do with your life, um, there's so many options. Um, a lot of people, of course, feel constrained that they have very few options. But I think this idea of psychedelics as a way to help you find your calling, or find your vision, or find your unique leverage point, um, I think we'll see that more and more as our culture evolves and gets healthier around the use of psychedelics.

    14. LFLex Fridman55:49

        So it's both the science, uh, having the rigor of understanding how to do it safely, and the culture catching up-

    15. RDRick Doblin55:56

        Mm-hmm.

    16. LFLex Fridman55:56

        ... to the fact that this is, uh, both safe and, um, uh, like very useful.

    17. RDRick Doblin56:03

        Yeah. Although I would question this idea of safety. Um, so w- so we can understand physiological risks, and we can, um, minimize them. And I think there's very minimal physiological risks from the classic psychedelics, virtually none, or for even, um, MDMA under safe conditions. Um, psychological risks are, um, harder to address, but we can do that through the sense of safety and support. But I, I think there's, um, a level of risk there that we shouldn't, um, overlook. And so, you know, to, to make a drug into a medicine, what we have to do is prove to the satisfaction of the FDA and other regulatory agencies that things are safe and efficacious.

    18. LFLex Fridman56:49

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RDRick Doblin56:50

        But even though they use those words, proving safety and ef- safe and efficacious, it's in relationship to the disease that you're trying to treat, and you accept a certain amount of risk. So it's the risk-benefit ratio rather than pure safety.

    20. LFLex Fridman57:07

        Yeah, absolutely. (laughs)

    21. RDRick Doblin57:09

        Yeah.

    22. LFLex Fridman57:09

        Uh,

11. 57:10 – 1:01:49

    MKUltra and the Grateful Dead

    1. LFLex Fridman57:10

       let me ask you about Ken Kesey a little bit longer-

    2. RDRick Doblin57:13

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LFLex Fridman57:13

       ... 'cause he's a fascinating human being. (laughs)

    4. RDRick Doblin57:15

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman57:15

       Um, he was also part of Project MKUltra.

    6. RDRick Doblin57:19

       Yeah, yes.

    7. LFLex Fridman57:21

       What was Project MKUltra, and what, uh, lessons we should, uh, take away from it?

    8. RDRick Doblin57:27

       Well, MKUltra was a, a program, um, by the CIA. You know, what they were looking at was, can you take these drugs, these psychedelic drugs, and weaponize them in different ways? Um, for interrogation, for truth serums, for, um, you know, exposing somebody before they give a big talk to something like LSD, and then they, you know, can't talk or make a fool of themselves.

    9. LFLex Fridman57:53

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RDRick Doblin57:54

        Or can you spray LSD over the battlefield and have everybody tripping and drop their weapons? And then you just walk up and, you know, nobody dies, and you've won, you know, the battle.

    11. LFLex Fridman58:04

        (laughs)

    12. RDRick Doblin58:04

        So, so-

    13. LFLex Fridman58:05

        It's a fascinating concept. (laughs)

    14. RDRick Doblin58:07

        Yeah, they called it non-lethal incapacitance.

    15. LFLex Fridman58:09

        Okay.

    16. RDRick Doblin58:09

        And I think that's how, uh-

    17. LFLex Fridman58:11

        One way to win a war is, uh, to enforce peace. (laughs) To, to get everybody not caring about the war, but yes.

    18. RDRick Doblin58:19

        Well, I think, I think Gandhi said something even better, which is that the true way to win a war is to turn your enemy into your friend.

    19. LFLex Fridman58:24

        Yes. That's a beautiful way to put it.

    20. RDRick Doblin58:26

        Yeah. Um, but MK- MKUltra was really nefarious, and it was part of our military, and it was done in secret. And, um, they would, um, dose people against their will. I mean, one of the most infamous things, uh, uh, was that they had a house of prostitution in, uh, San Francisco, and they would, um, have one-way mirrors in all this stuff. And then they would just, uh, dose people with LSD. Uh, you know, they would have the prostitutes dose these guys with, with LSD and, and observe what they would do and how they would act. And, um, the CIA actually, for a while, was dosing each other secretly.

    21. LFLex Fridman59:01

        (laughs)

    22. RDRick Doblin59:01

        And there, there's a famous case of this fellow, Olson, that, um, either jumped out of a window or was pushed. He might have been killed. Um, he was a CIA guy, and they, they gave him, um, LSD. And then they're trying to see, um, can they break him down and get him to tell secrets? And I think he felt uncomfortable with what happened to him while he was under the influence of LSD. And, um, whether he was pushed or, or not, I don't know if we'll ever know. But, uh, MKUltra was, um, violating people's human rights. It was, um, done in secret. And the irony of it is that Ken Kesey is one of the people, one of the main early people that got LSD in this context, and then he was one of the main people that helped, uh, inspire the hippies to use psychedelics to oppose the Vietnam War. So I think the CIA kind of, um, in many cases, uh, things get out of their control, what they think they can do, and it, it turned into be, um, a disaster for them. I, I think there was some thought that some of the people at the CIA had is that if you can turn people inside, you know, take drugs and they just focus on their internal experience, they're not gonna be involved politically.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:00:18

        Mm-hmm.

    24. RDRick Doblin1:00:18

        It's a way to sort of take people offline. And what I don't think they counted on is that when you're offline and you have these, uh, unitive spiritual experiences, and you realize how we're all connected, then why do you wanna go out and kill these Vietnamese and put a, uh, one dictator over another dictator? Dictators on both sides in North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Why, why are we doing that? Uh, so MKUltra has, um, dis- very disreputable. Uh, we're learning more and more about what they did. And one of the unintended consequences was Ken Kesey, and not only that, but then the Grateful Dead, who began at the acid tests that Kesey was helping to organize. Um, and out of that emerged...... you could say, uh, just this incredible, um, psychedelic culture. And, and you look at the bands that began-

    25. LFLex Fridman1:01:10

        (laughs)

    26. RDRick Doblin1:01:11

        ... in the 60s-

    27. LFLex Fridman1:01:12

        Yes.

    28. RDRick Doblin1:01:12

        ... and which ones have really survived to the, this day?

    29. LFLex Fridman1:01:16

        Mm-hmm.

    30. RDRick Doblin1:01:17

        And, um, you know, the Grateful Dead has survived longer than most any other band. I mean, some of them have died and all, but, but it was like the tightness, the, the sort of telepathy we talked about before, that they could just get so tuned into each other and each other's energies, and they could do improvisations and they could do this incredible work that I think the, the, the sustainability of the Grateful Dead as a group was a testimone- testament to the power of the LSD experiences. And that might have never happened if not for MKUltra.

12. 1:01:49 – 1:07:31

    Ted Kaczynski

    1. RDRick Doblin1:01:50

    2. LFLex Fridman1:01:50

       But, uh, can we talk about, uh, d- darkness a little bit? So-

    3. RDRick Doblin1:01:56

       Yeah, yeah.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:01:57

       ... Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was allegedly part of the MKUltra studies while at Harvard. Uh, do you think this is true? Do you think it had an impact on him psychologically, intellectually-

    5. RDRick Doblin1:02:08

       I, I-

    6. LFLex Fridman1:02:09

       ... and so on?

    7. RDRick Doblin1:02:09

       I do think it's true, and I do think i- it had an impact. So, um, we talked before about are these drugs somehow or other, um, producing a certain kind of drug experience, or do they bring out what's within?

    8. LFLex Fridman1:02:22

       Mm-hmm.

    9. RDRick Doblin1:02:23

       So, we have this experience, yeah, on the one hand, Ken Kesey, and he sort of took positive things out of this. Um, on the other hand, um, you know, we can, um, get this, uh, opposition to the modern world, to technology, and to the point of, uh, creating bombs to try to go after it. So that the experience is not in the drug, it's this interaction between, um, the drug, the person, the context, and so we can heal people with, um, psychedelics or people can be driven crazy with psychedelics. Um, it, it depends, again, on the context. And so I think it's both these things can be true. A- and I think it was really good that you kind of highlighted this, that there is this-

    10. LFLex Fridman1:03:09

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RDRick Doblin1:03:10

        ... um, polarities and that it's not in the drug, uh, it's in the, the other factors and it's who they were beforehand and then how you use that experience. So all that's to say is if we put LSD in the water and everybody were to get it, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden everybody's gonna have a mystical experience and then that's, you know, all we need to do and humanity is spiritualized or end war and all of this. It's, it's not about the drug. Uh, that, that actually is why, for me, um, we've also talked about, um, engineering new psychedelics and all the people that are gonna be trying for profit companies to develop and patent new psychedelics. For me, the most important challenge is new cultural contexts that can create legality, safety, support for the existing psychedelics that we already have.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:04:00

        Mm-hmm.

    13. RDRick Doblin1:04:01

        I mean, we have so much incredible tools in these existing psychedelics that it's more about creating contexts for them to be used in safe medical or personal growth or recreational even with harm reduction, all these different ways. That's more important to me than finding some new molecule that's somewhat similar or somewhat different, but, you know, it can be patented. So it's the social context. So I, I do believe that, uh, Ted Kaczynski was part of MKUltra and I think it affected him in a negative way, and that's a cautionary tale, that it's not in the drug, it's in the context.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:04:38

        The context, the person, still it feels like, um, if viewed from a therapy perspective, perhaps there was a way to use psychedelics to help Ted Kaczynski find a path out of the darkness.

    15. RDRick Doblin1:04:54

        I w- I think so. And I think that, um, this is where I think MDMA comes in, i- in a way that MDMA is, um, you know, he felt very isolated and very much, um, out of society in some ways. Um, MDMA, um, stimulates oxytocin, which we haven't mentioned, which is the hormone of nursing mothers, of love and connection. It, it provides a lot of the sense of self-acceptance and safety and, and wanting to be in relationship. There's Gul Dolen is neuroscientist at Hopkins, she's given octopuses-

    16. LFLex Fridman1:05:27

        (laughs)

    17. RDRick Doblin1:05:27

        ... MDMA, they're solitary creatures except mating season, which is not very often. And, but you give them MDMA and they become more interested in hanging out with other octopuses.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:05:36

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RDRick Doblin1:05:37

        So I think this, um, for people that have had difficult psychedelic experiences, um, MDMA helps them integrate them. We've worked with people that had, uh, a difficult LSD experience 40 years before-

    20. LFLex Fridman1:05:49

        Mm-hmm.

    21. RDRick Doblin1:05:50

        ... and are still able to get back to that under the influence of MDMA and work out some of the conflicts that they weren't able to resolve all those decades before. So I, I think that psychedelics could have been helpful in a different context for Ted Kaczynski. But the other big part of it is that people have to be willing to cooperate with the experience. We talked about-

    22. LFLex Fridman1:06:14

        Yes.

    23. RDRick Doblin1:06:14

        ... resistance. So people can resist these things. It's, uh, you know, the saying is you can drink a h- bring, bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:06:22

        Yeah.

    25. RDRick Doblin1:06:23

        This is about how people have to be willing to go to these spaces.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:06:26

        Mm-hmm.

    27. RDRick Doblin1:06:27

        So one, the essence of our therapeutic approach is that we help people to heal themselves, that we are not giving them the healing. It's, it's, it's a flip on the power dynamics that existed, um, you would say in the '50s and '60s. My dad was a doctor, and the doctors were gods, and, you know-

    28. LFLex Fridman1:06:46

        Mm-hmm.

    29. RDRick Doblin1:06:46

        ... whatever they said was right and, you know, we d- we no longer, of course, believe that. But, um, for a while psychoanalysis with Freud, you know-

    30. LFLex Fridman1:06:54

        Mm-hmm.
13. 1:07:31 – 1:14:55

    Timothy Leary

    1. RDRick Doblin1:07:31

    2. LFLex Fridman1:07:31

       Let's take a step into the world of studies. Timothy Leary-

    3. RDRick Doblin1:07:36

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:07:37

       Who was he and, uh, what were the most important ideas you've learned from him?

    5. RDRick Doblin1:07:43

       Well, I, I did have the, um, opportunity to get to know him personally and to spend some time with him. Uh, Timothy Leary, um... Well, let's start with Nixon saying he's the most dangerous man in America. (laughs)

    6. LFLex Fridman1:07:58

       (laughs) That's a good place to start.

    7. RDRick Doblin1:08:00

       Yeah.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:08:00

       Yes.

    9. RDRick Doblin1:08:00

       Yeah. And, and why did Nixon say that? It's because of this, uh, tune in... You know, turn, turn on, tune in, drop out.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:08:10

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RDRick Doblin1:08:10

        Um, Timothy Leary was just an incredible advocate for, um, think for yourself, uh, question authority. Those were things he said all the time. Think for yourself, question authority. He was a rebel. Um, he was kicked out of West Point. Um, he was a psychologist who, um, was at Harvard for three years, from '60 to '63. Um, before he got to Harvard, he had an experience with, uh, mushrooms, um, in Mexico. And that, he said he learned more in that experience than he'd had in his entire academic career before that about how the human mind works.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:08:48

        Mm-hmm.

    13. RDRick Doblin1:08:49

        And so he came to Harvard wanting to do, um, research into psychedelics. Um, and he did some very important studies, both of which... Uh, well, one was called the Good Friday experiment, which was whether psychedelics in religiously-inclined people taking psilocybin in a religious setting, whether it could produce a mystical experience, and that took place at Marsh Chapel at the Boston University. Because it's a little bit subjective, or you could say entirely subjective, what people describe happens to them, um, he wanted to do another study which would be a more objective measure, and that was called the Concord Prison experiment. And that was the thought, if you can give people, um, psilocybin mystical sense of connection-type experiences while they're in prison, when they get out, they'll be more pro-social and they'll have reduced recidivism.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:09:42

        Mm-hmm.

    15. RDRick Doblin1:09:43

        Um, so Tim did that. He also did the naturalistic studies of giving loads of people psilocybin and sort of writing down what their experiences were, the range of experiences. Later on, um, in his time at Harvard, he just... They started doing LSD. And, um, LSD is more cerebral, longer-lasting, not as reassuring in a way as psilocybin. Uh, sometimes he used to say that, um, if they'd never got into LSD, they'd still be at Harvard-

    16. LFLex Fridman1:10:10

        (laughs)

    17. RDRick Doblin1:10:10

        ... with, with the psilocybin. Um, so he was a, a great American psychologist, but then he got tired of the, uh, psychology game, you could say-

    18. LFLex Fridman1:10:20

        Yeah.

    19. RDRick Doblin1:10:20

        ... or he would say that. He got more and more interested in, um, cultural change.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:10:27

        Mm-hmm.

    21. RDRick Doblin1:10:27

        And various musicians and artists and all sorts of people started coming to him for the psychedelic experience that they are... In a way, for creativity, for other things. So, he started hanging out with, um, all sorts of, um, famous people or creative people. And, um, he stopped going to classes all, a lot. And, um, Ram Dass, Richard Alpert, you know, had, um, given LSD to a student that, um, Ram Dass was courageous enough to admit that he had a sexual interest in.

    22. LFLex Fridman1:11:01

        Mm-hmm.

    23. RDRick Doblin1:11:02

        Uh, they weren't supposed to give it to undergraduates. That was about the only time that they ever did it. And psychedelics was getting more and more controversial, even in the early '60s. Eventually, he got kicked out of Harvard, and then he became kind of a cultural icon for the counterculture, and, um, was hounded by, uh, the police and Nixon and spent a lot of time in jail. I mean, he's an incredible person. Um, one thing that Ram Dass said is that, um... Richard Albert. Ram Dass said, um, "I'm a rascal, but Leary's a scoundrel." (laughs)

    24. LFLex Fridman1:11:38

        (laughs) What's the distinction?

    25. RDRick Doblin1:11:39

        Um, rascal's like in good fun. A scoundrel is like you can't quite trust them, I think. Um-

    26. LFLex Fridman1:11:46

        Oh, yeah.

    27. RDRick Doblin1:11:48

        I think that-

    28. LFLex Fridman1:11:48

        It's a spectrum of sorts.

    29. RDRick Doblin1:11:50

        Yeah, I think that Leary was someone who a little bit got addicted to media attention, and-

    30. LFLex Fridman1:11:56

        Ah.
14. 1:14:55 – 1:19:30

    Good Friday Experiment

    1. RDRick Doblin1:14:55

       I did follow-ups to the Good Friday experiment, and I did follow-ups, 25-year follow-up to the Good Friday experiment, about a 34-year follow-up to the Concord Prison experiment. What I discovered, in some ways I would say is the key to the '60s, what I just told you, but in the- the follow-up to the Good Friday experiment that I did in the '80s for my undergraduate, uh, thesis at New College in Sarasota, Florida, I- I eventually found 19 out of the 20 people. It wa- it was just, it was, that was an enormous challenge 'cause their names were all lost and it just took forever, years and years and years to find them all. Um, but I discovered that those people that had the psilocybin experience in the midst of, uh, 25 years later with Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan, and if there ever were there a social pressure to disavow the validity of the psychedelic experience-

    2. LFLex Fridman1:15:42

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RDRick Doblin1:15:42

       ... that was then. And instead, they, um, affirmed it-

    4. LFLex Fridman1:15:47

       Wow.

    5. RDRick Doblin1:15:47

       ... that- that they thought with all of this, uh, years of hindsight now looking back, they thought it was a valid mystical experience.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:15:53

       Wow.

    7. RDRick Doblin1:15:54

       But I discovered that, uh, one of the persons who had the psilocybin, um, had this experience during the Good Friday service that, um, Reverend Howard Thurman was the minister. He was Martin Luther King's mentor.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:16:11

       Mm-hmm.

    9. RDRick Doblin1:16:11

       And Reverend Howard Thurman was the minister at Boston Marsh- at Marsh Chapel. Um, Martin Luther King got his PhD at, um, Boston University. And Howard Thurman had spent time with Gandhi, and so he was really kind of this hidden person behind the civil rights movement about non-violence as their strategy. But he was interested in the- the political implications of the mystical experience, so he permitted this experiment to take place. And there were 20 divinity students from Andover Newton in the basement and 10 experimenters, all the people on religion and psychology, like Huston Smith and Walter Eason Clarke and Leary and Ram Dass minister, others were there as a support part of it. And the sermon was like three hours later. We- we actually have... Uh, three hours long. We actually have the original sermon from the Good Friday experiment, from Howard Thurman up on our website.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:17:01

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RDRick Doblin1:17:02

        It's incredible. But part of it was, tell people there's a man on the cross. And this one person, uh, um, sort of heard that and he thought, "Okay, I- I gotta do that. I gotta tell..." Howard Thurman was such a dynamic speaker and he said, "I gotta tell people there's a man on the cross."

    12. LFLex Fridman1:17:16

        Mm-hmm.

    13. RDRick Doblin1:17:16

        And so he said, "What am I doing here in this basement chapel listening to this service? I gotta go tell people there's a man on the cross." So he- he went. They thought he was just going to the bathroom, but he ran out the door. He's running down Commonwealth Avenue and, um, Huston Smith and Tim Leary go after him. And, um, he- he had thought that since he should tell somebody, he should tell the president, like of... you know, why not? But then he realized, "Well, the president's in Washington, I'm, you know, here in Boston, I'll just tell the president of the university." So anyway, he's running down the- the street and- and Leary and, uh, Huston Smith go after him, and he doesn't want to go back inside. They finally get him, he's not hit by a car. Um, but they end up giving him a shot of Thorazine.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:17:57

        What's Thorazine?

    15. RDRick Doblin1:17:58

        Thorazine is like a major antipsychotic, uh, drug-

    16. LFLex Fridman1:18:02

        Right.

    17. RDRick Doblin1:18:02

        ... it's a tra- and it's- it's a horrible drug, uh, but it knocks people out, tranquilizes them.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:18:08

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RDRick Doblin1:18:08

        We would never do that today. Um, you know, we don't abort a difficult experience like that.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:18:14

        Yeah.

    21. RDRick Doblin1:18:14

        But in any case, they hid that. That was not part of the, um, write-up of this experiment. So what they did is, in a sense, uh, a little bit exaggerated the benefits. It later became out, three years later after the experiment, or four years in Time Magazine, it said everybody that got psilocybin had a mystical experience-

    22. LFLex Fridman1:18:31

        Mm-hmm.

    23. RDRick Doblin1:18:32

        ... like the things. It wasn't true, not everybody, eight out of the 10 did, but not all 10, not this guy. And they, um, minimized the risks.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:18:40

        Mm-hmm.

    25. RDRick Doblin1:18:41

        So there was a bit of that. I think Tim was reckless in that way-

    26. LFLex Fridman1:18:43

        Yeah.

    27. RDRick Doblin1:18:44

        ... was underplayed the risks and over-promised the benefits. And then the Concord Prison experiment, um, it turned out that, um, Tim had fudged the data completely-

    28. LFLex Fridman1:18:56

        Wow.

    29. RDRick Doblin1:18:56

        ... and it wasn't really successful. So I- I fault him for that. The- the outside world was doing the opposite. It was exaggerating the risks and-

    30. LFLex Fridman1:19:05

        Right.
15. 1:19:30 – 1:30:45

    Forming of MAPS

    1. LFLex Fridman1:19:30

       where you are.

    2. RDRick Doblin1:19:32

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:19:33

       So, the '80s. Let me ask, what is, uh, MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and what, what is its mission throughout the years, throughout the decades?

    4. RDRick Doblin1:19:46

       Yeah. So, uh, MAPS is a non-profit organization. I created it as a non-profit pharmaceutical company.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:19:53

       Hmm.

    6. RDRick Doblin1:19:53

       Um, I created it in '86 after, uh, DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, criminalized MDMA in 1985. And that was after they started trying to do that in 1984, and as I mentioned this, uh, Terence McKenna's sponsorin' it, you know, motivating us to do the safety study.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:20:11

       Yeah.

    8. RDRick Doblin1:20:12

       So, so we did that in preparation for this eventual crackdown because MDMA was called ADAM, used as a therapy drug, but it was also beginning to be sold as ecstasy, as a party drug. And that was taking place in public settings and bars. And so, it was inevitable that the crackdown would happen. And so I had a non-profit connected to Buckminster Fuller, um, Earth Metabolic Design Lab, that we used to support this lawsuit against the DEA to block them from criminalizing MDMA. We were winning in the court of public opinion and winning in the court. The DEA freaked out and they emergency scheduled MDMA in '85. The handwriting was on the wall that, that they were not gonna permit the therapeutic use to continue 'cause it gets in the way of the narrative of the drug war and these are terrible drugs. So, in '86 is when I started MAPS as a non-profit pharma because the, the strategy that I realized is that Americans are open to medicines, you know? That, that tools to ease suffering, that was the opening wedge, the opening door to changing attitudes. And it would be through science. I would say that my religion is more science than anything else.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:21:22

       (laughs) Yes.

    10. RDRick Doblin1:21:23

        And, you know, culture and religion are, um, metaphorical, but often too much they become literal. But, but I felt that through science, through medicine, um, there would be a way to bring these drugs back to the surface. And the mission was always this mass mental health. This idea that what we need is to spiritualize humanity.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:21:46

        Hmm.

    12. RDRick Doblin1:21:46

        Einstein said, 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." So, what is that new mode of thinking? I've, my presumption is that it's more of this mystical sense of thinking that, that we're all connected-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:22:13

        Mm-hmm.

    14. RDRick Doblin1:22:13

        ... and that if we realize that we're all connected, we're not gonna blow up the world. So, a lot of people say that, you know, if we could just give LSD all to world leaders, that would be, you know, then they'd have these spiritual experiences, the world would be better. But I actually had a ketamine experience the day after that DMT experience I described with the inner Hitler.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:22:31

        Mm-hmm.

    16. RDRick Doblin1:22:32

        This ketamine experience was, um, I was above and behind Hitler as he was giving a speech, like in the Nuremberg rallies-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:22:38

        Mm-hmm.

    18. RDRick Doblin1:22:39

        ... kind of thing, and I was trying to think, "How do I get into, uh, his head? How do I undo what he wants to do? How-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:22:44

        Yeah.

    20. RDRick Doblin1:22:45

        ... how can we deal with him?" And, and I, I realized this whole new thing about the Heil Hitler salute and, you know, he would, like, push energy out and then everybody would do the salute back to him.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:22:55

        Mm-hmm.

    22. RDRick Doblin1:22:55

        And so it's like the one to the many and the many to the one, giving, all these people giving away their power, and then how it would just sort of ratchet up in intensity, like these vibrations.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:23:04

        Mm-hmm.

    24. RDRick Doblin1:23:05

        And, and I realized there's no way to get into his head. This idea we've talked about before about you have to be willing.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:23:10

        Yes.

    26. RDRick Doblin1:23:10

        Right. So, what that sort of helped me understand is that the strategy has to be mass mental health. It's not about changing a few leaders. We need to change the mass of humanity to this new mode of thinking, this new spiritual way. So, MAPS was a non-profit pharmaceutical company focused on psychedelics. Big Pharma wasn't doing this work. Government wasn't funding it. So, the only source of funds I thought would be through non-profit donations. And that's been true up until just a couple years ago now that we have the rise of these for-profits. But that's 'cause we've cleared out the regulatory obstacles. We've got more scientific data about the benefits funded through philanthropy. We've changed public opinion. And there's a lot less zeal for the drug war.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:23:53

        Mm-hmm.

    28. RDRick Doblin1:23:53

        So, all of those things have changed, but at the time, it was mass mental health was the goal. Two tracks. One was drug development, the other was drug policy reform.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:24:03

        Mm-hmm.

    30. RDRick Doblin1:24:03

        So that it's not just available to people who have a clinical diagnosis, but people who are, um, personal growth or, you know, they should have access to it as well. I did not know at the time that no drug had ever been made into a medicine by a non-profit.

Episode duration: 2:36:05