Rick Doblin: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #202

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

Mm.

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

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.

(laughs)

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.

(laughs)

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-