Greetings, my beautiful friends. I'm excited. I'm very excited. I don't know what I'm not excited. I hate that term. By the way. Excited. I'm excited. It's a very Western thing to say that you're excited and that's a good thing to refer to yourself. Like you're a can of Diet Coke that somebody shook up. I'm happy. Is that a better way to say it? I'm enthusiastically invigorated.
By today's guest Hamilton Morris.
A true luminary in the Psychedelic universe who has created an amazing series called Hamilton's pharmacopoeia. For those of you familiar with it. You probably are aware that he now has a third season which is available on Amazon. And if you haven't had the Good Fortune to see it yet. You'll be thrilled to hear that. It's as far as I'm concerned. The best season yet.
He's so funny and so brilliant and so good at capturing different facets of psychedelic culture, and also sort of shotgunning just random interesting facts throughout every single episode.
And on top of that, the show has insane production quality. It's just a beautiful show. It's got amazing animation. It's got just they spent a lot of time on their setups and their lighting and all of it just combines to make it a beautiful gift to the planet. And I'm not just saying that because he took an hour and a half out of, what I'm sure is very busy schedule. Because on top of being a TV personality.
Leti a producer and a writer. He is also a working chemist, which is incredible to think about the fact that he's a TV star who probably also knows how to make LSD.
Does that make him? The coolest person on Earth? Definitely makes them one of them and he's here with us today. We're going to jump right into this episode, but first some quick business.
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And now an excerpt from the way of the bodhisattva. Bye Shanti Deva. If with mindfulness is rope. The elephant of mind is gathered all around. Our fears will come to nothing, every virtue drop into our hands.
Tigers lions elephants and bears snakes and every hostile. Fo those who guard the prisoners in Hell ghosts and Ghouls and every evil wrath. By simple binding of this mind alone. All these things are likewise Bound by simple. Taming of this mind alone. All these things are likewise Tamed.
Floral anxiety and fear and pain in boundless quantity, their source. And Well, Spring is the Mind itself. That's way of the bodhisattva. It was translated by the Dalai Lama and read by woolston. Fletcher. It's available inaudible. You should definitely listen to it. Not just because the narrator sounds like a character out of Demon Souls, but also because it presents a variety of compelling Arguments for the possibility that the you that you
I think you are is not you at all. And that's what I always loved about LSD. That's what I always loved about psychedelics. Was that moment where the identity is?
Annihilated by the tsunami of the Psychedelic and somewhere in that Annihilation. An entire new universe appears, as though, whatever that you, you thought you were, was actually some kind of blindfold that the Universe was wearing. And the way of the bodhisattva has a lot of chapters that you might find useful. If you're somebody like me, and you have anger problems. If you're tormented by anger. It's got an entire chapter.
And how to deal with that on the antidote for anger, which is patience. And also, just because I love horror movies and I love the Hellraiser movies. It's got some amazingly vivid descriptions of the hell Realms, and it mentions more than once the janitors of Hell, which is an interesting idea. Like I had no idea how had janitors, but I guess it would need. Somebody would have to be there to like, clean up the blood and mop up the
Sizzling guts speaking of sizzling guts. I would like to invite you to head over to patreon.com forward slash d, tfh and a big thank you to all the people who have recently subscribed to the patreon because I'm doing a kind of paternity leave. You have not experienced the full glory of the DTF H patreon, which you will begin to experience again. Next week, starting Monday. I'll be back to
Guiding our weekly group meditation journey into boredom and on Friday. We'll resume our Friday, family, gatherings. And then starting again in March will be our book club. We have yet to pick that title. But if you want to jump into the DTF, H Community, if you want piles of Glorious, fragrant Vivid, beautiful powerful slightly pungent.
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Turning to the DTF, H the host of Hamilton's pharmacopoeia, welcome, Hamilton Morris.
Hamilton, welcome back to the D. Tfh, it's so great to hear your voice. Thanks for having me.
I always love talking with you and I really am grateful to you for the sending me all the episodes of season 3 of Hamilton's pharmacopoeia. Now, available on Amazon. What was the service it was on prior to Amazon, Hulu. It's, you know, it's hard show for people to find. It's very frustrating for me, the majority of the messages that I get are from people, trying to figure out how to watch it. Yeah. It's and I can't help people.
In that way because I don't even know. It depends on where you are. The easiest way. If you're in the u.s. Is to just watch it on Amazon. You can also buy it for, I think two dollars an episode on YouTube. And people have been have been like, pirating, it, and putting it on YouTube, which I think is great. Like I just want people to watch it. The only issue is the people that pirate, it do a terrible job and cut out pieces and like, lice in soccer games and do things to get over whatever copyright bots. So that, all right, just on the level.
Evil of people not seeing the entire episode. I really discourage people from watching. Those pirated ones, but it's also on iTunes. I hope it will be on Hulu at some point. I have no idea when no one will tell me and it's on TV as well for people that I don't have a TV, but I guess if you have a TV it's available on Vice TV and sent in some people packages.
Not to start off with a pretty mundane technical question. But are you producing these yourself or whose? Whose who are you making these with? Yeah, I mean, I am the writer and director of the show and I make it with a wow, small closely, knit, group of people who help with every facet of the editing and the photography and the sound mix and the color correction and things like that.
It's, it's made by a very small number of people considering.
And doing this over the pandemic, as well was you know like a really bizarre.
Filmmaking exercise, but but yeah, this is it is something I'm doing myself sometimes with people, I think people are actually right now, very confused by how things are made like, yes, like they are very detached from the act of creation. And so they often attribute creative agency to corporations that are like, yeah. They're like, why did Vice make this or what? Why did Vice do this? It's like vices a logo. Vice doesn't exist.
Why are you getting angry at a logo or why are you praising a logo? Like these are not like they're human beings that create these things and their names are in the credits. But then on top of that I feel all these streaming services like Netflix and Amazon actually cut the credits out of a lot of episodes now, which I think exacerbates this problem of people not even being aware of the Act of Creation. They don't ya on some level even think about what it means to
To make something. I just, we'll, listen. I Want To Praise whatever logo or non logo has, you know, been part of making this show because it is so good. The animation is amazing. The, you know, some people who maybe haven't seen Hamilton's pharmacopoeia, you might think that it's monolithic and subject matter. It's that, it's just about drugs.
Something it isn't. It's like a shotgun scattering of fascinating facts and it's just so you've done such a good job editing. It. It just looks so pretty. So thanks for making it. I love it. Yeah, thank you. And the reason I even bring up this credit thing, which I understand may sound like a weird pedantic note to begin the conversation with is because yeah, it was insanely difficult to make and I can't name all the people that were involved but their names are in the
Credits and it was a real labor of love to do it. I mean, this was not a job for many of the people. I had to work for right chose to work for, you know, for months, unpaid to get it done. And it's because a lot of the people are just very passionate about the subject matter and getting these stories told.
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You know, I have a kind of Sentimental Feeling when it comes to shows with the subject matter of Hamilton's pharmacopoeia specifically psychoactive substances.
Which is that? Anytime a show revolving around that subject?
Is against it. I mean instant hate of the thing because it's embarrassing to watch. It feels like some kind of, you know, throwback to the War on Drugs, but when it's Pro the subject matter and it's made poorly, then you get that effect of like well, I mean there whatever Stoners are acid heads or their people who are Psychonauts or whatever you want to call it. And because of that there show sucks.
So anytime you get like a kind of a great show meeting, something that is not anti, psychoactive substances. I think it benefits everybody because it shows. Yeah, you can. I mean, you know, there's an the opening of the xenon gas episode, you are inhaling a balloon of a gas that I'd only vaguely heard of and had no idea. It was psychoactive. The incredible. Do you have to ever feel like you're putting yourself?
Danger doing this.
No, and I think that's it. That is sort of an interesting question is, there's often at least in terms of the consumption of the psychoactive substances. There's often this idea that it's very dangerous. There are very dangerous things that happen in the show, but the consumption of the psychoactive drugs is not one of them. I would say, you know, there may be in the Xenon Clinic, there were some things that were questionable. I mean, that's a whole long story. I don't know. Like it's a bit of a tangent we can get into that but
but you know, the consumption itself is often something that's done very carefully because, you know, I think for so long, people have Associated drug use with self-destruction like they consider even people that enjoy drugs, even people that are in favor of drugs that think that they should be legal, the think they should be researched many of those people still on some level believe that the use of a psychoactive drug is self-destructive, and I think that one of
Of the major things that I try to communicate is it doesn't need to be that way, and you can use these things in a way that is not only, not destructive, but constructive, it actually will help you. It will make you better than you were. And and I think that that's an important lesson, of course, not all uses like that and it requires an enormous amount of discipline and research and Care in order to achieve the best effect from these experiences, but I think it's just important to keep
I didn't mind that this is not something that people need to be ashamed of or think is inherently bad for any reason. I love psychoactive substances. They have been a huge benefit in various parts of my life, but Hamilton I cannot get the effect of growing up during the War on Drugs out of my head. There's always some
Underlying sense of doing something wrong of, you know, that this is somehow getting off the track of what a life should be. And these are things that I passionately love. Can you do you have that and you at all? Yes, or do you have? Oh, I do. Absolutely, I think and I don't think it's even just the War on Drugs. I think that it's also capitalism and also it's not an entirely unreasonable idea to have
Because we are taught that not even just taught. We live in a capitalist Society For Better or Worse. Where productivity is prized Above All Else and anything that interferes with productivity is not good in our society regardless of how it makes you feel so. Right, you know my own I would say the thing that I struggle with the most is cannabis. I
Without question, enjoy smoking it, but I have never been able to fully overcome a sort of shame or guilt associated with using it. And for that reason, I use it in frequently because no matter how much I enjoy it, no matter how beneficial or relaxing it is for me. I still can't entirely shake this sense that it would be better if I were.
Sober reading. It would be better if I were studying. It would be better if I were writing. Is this really? Oh, is it truly permissible from? You just to feel good and just relax and have a conversation or watch a movie?
Yeah, that's it. I think we're hopefully some of the last generations to be poisoned in that way and I'm hoping that my by the time my kids are old enough to you know, safely use any of these substances that the propaganda mechanism will have worn down and we'll have the data available to show that it's beneficial. But yeah, wow, so, I guess that's just something we're going to have to deal with and for the rest of our lives ended.
The Experience itself, I mean, people often think of the placebo effect is something that exists entirely independently from the pharmacological action of drugs, but the sense of those drugs that we have impacts the experience. So if you grow up in a culture that says using LSD is therapeutic and beneficial and may actually make you a better person, you can be sure that that user will have a better LSD experience.
Then someone who calls it acid conceptualizes the experiences frying, their brain calls, the experience frying thinks that it's a poison of some kind. I mean, even even if you're having the best experience of your life, if that's in the background, you can't fully enjoy it in the same way that I can't. You know, I could eat the most delicious meal from McDonald's in the world, but I am still thinking about it as a like unethical poisonous material regardless of what it actually is.
You know, I haven't let you know done, deep personal Research into the nutritional value of fast food, but my intuitive sense of it is that it's bad and should be avoided. And so regard, I could, you know, maybe someone could sneak in extra healthy, ethically raised piece of meat into my McDonald's hamburger with like a carefully baked bun, but I would still feel ashamed eating it, because of this sense that it is bad and should be avoided.
Yep, I can't do it. I can't pull off a. I can't have a Happy Meal. Like, no matter what's happening. I've always disgusted with myself. If I'm eating McDonald's matter, how good it tastes.
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It's our thing about what the questions I have for you. Now that you're three seasons in to this incredible show. And I know that you are a person who is constantly researching and like you get literally into the atomic.
Depths of these substances and the way they affect our Consciousness. And I've been Loosely following some of the research that's happening, currently regarding implanting memories in creatures and the implications of that to me are one wonderful on one level and the sense of learning and Expediting certain kinds of training or guidance.
It goes on and on, but on another level. It's the first time I've really sort of had an inner shutter. Like, Aldous Huxley sense of like, oh my God, is this the next wave of psychedelics that we're going to have memories implanted and removed meaning that this entire War on Drugs problem. Theoretically could somehow be pharmaceutically softened or altered. Anyway, the question is
if you and I'm sorry, I know this is a terrible thing to ask people especially in these days of technological acceleration, but do you have any
Prognostications regarding what types of psychedelics might be in our future.
Yes, the the final episode of my show aired last night and it profiled a brilliant pharmacologist named Brian Roth. Are you heard his name before? I have not, he's a really interesting guy and he's one of these scientists who has done a lot of work that
If you didn't know better, you'd think it was science fiction. He was crucial in developing a technology called dread D. Re add that stands for designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs. And his idea was, you know, in traditional pharmacology. One of the most important goals is to develop drugs that are selective for one receptor and only one receptor.
Because when you look at a drug, like ibogaine, or DMT, or mescaline, or many of the drugs that people are aware of, they often are promiscuous and they're binding. They have activity at a variety of different receptors. And it makes it hard to study the causal relationship pharmacologically because if a drug is acting on several different receptors, how do you know what receptor is responsible for? What? Physiological neurological effect? So if you
can come up with a drug that is exclusively binding to one receptor. It's a very useful pharmacological tool but it's hard. I mean, there are people that spend their entire careers trying to develop a drug. That exclusively binds to the serotonin 2A receptor or the serotonin to be receptor are so on and so what are those receptors responsible for? One is considered the primary site of psychedelic action. That's the serotonin 2A receptor. The to be receptor is considered an
Revolt target of some drugs that causes excessive growth of heart valves actually, so. But anyway, so this guy Brian Roth, his idea was okay. What if we sidestep this entire issue? And instead of trying to develop High selectivity drugs, we develop High selectivity receptors receptors in a brain that exclusively are activated by one drug and only one drug and we reverse-engineer.
Near the basically, reverse engineered the brain for the drug instead of the drug for the brain. Whoa. Yeah, and this is not, this is something he's actually done that scientists are currently using. I it's not an entire brain of neurons. It's one receptor, but this is the, the idea. So, there are these amazing things that are being done, and then he's taken that a step further.
where if you know the molecular structure of a receptor, you know, every amino acid residue and how it is three-dimensionally arranged, you can then based on the charge of those residues and their shape you can
Using a i generate artificial drugs and bind those artificial drugs to the artificial receptor. So you're doing basic pharmacology research, but it's entirely in silico. There's no actual proteins and there's no actual drugs. You're just docking virtual drugs onto a virtual receptor, but because you don't have to go to the trouble of synthesizing. A drug or isolating a receptor protein.
You can look at the pharmacology of 10 million drugs a day. So using this technology, he has and he hasn't published it for to a yet, but he claims to have developed entirely new scaffolds for psychedelics. That is traditionally, the psychedelics are Fallen to a couple of structural classes, or gleans tryptamines fin Ethel and means. But hypothetically, they could have totally different.
Rent structures that haven't been discovered yet. So he's using computers to discover new drugs on a virtual receptor. And and you know, that's that's one of these things. It's just, you know, what is that going to do in the future? Who knows? But it's very exciting and I think we are on the precipice of a lot of great discoveries. This matches, one of Nick bostrom's predictions for how a superintelligence might come to the planet, which is some interaction with an AI and
Some kind of genetic shift and like the human nervous system to increase amplify, whatever type of intelligence you want to amplify so that is wild to think about but just to jump back for a second you said in silico, isn't it's okay. So that's that means just, it's just happening in a computer. It's a it's like the what they're doing with protein folding right now, but with psychoactive chemicals, yeah.
Well, that is wild. This is this, this is one of the much. Like, I mean, even though everyone, you know, people are talking about a AI as being the future. They're just can never be enough emphasis on how it, how it's going to transform culture. But the addition of AI interacting with the genetic engineering of the human brain, do you meet? So you're saying there's the possibility of having a open brain surgery or How would
if you change your own brain in a way that it would become receptive or receptor to these artificial chemicals. Nobody has done that yet. But I think hypothetically, you would probably inject a virus into the brain, that would cause a transcriptional change that would cause the receptors to produce these new designer proteins.
so, what you're talking about, there is also like a nightmare bio-weapon, which is a virus that
Causes a change in the human brain that pairs with a chemical weapon that induces States Of Consciousness. I mean, yes, there are certainly potentially nefarious uses for this technology, assuming that it could even work that way. I mean, that's that's the problem with a lot of these things like the, you know, implantation of memories and a snail or dread technology being used as a weapon or things like that. Is that often
And it's just hard. It's much harder to do these things. And people realize you know on one hand, you have the nick bostrom's of the world that are talking about super intelligence. And then on the other hand you have an iPhone in 2021 that can't autocorrect. I am too I ' and
Right, but you know what, you know, but just thinking in terms of like steam engines to the bullet trains in Japan, you know, and in the span of time between them is, you know, based on universal time not that long at all. But on inhuman time, what is it's like almost a lifetime between those two transformations in a technology, but still this thing even if it is 50 30 years into the future. It's
We're talking about a kind of Apocalypse. I mean, sometimes I think about the amount of the amount of time that gets put into anyone, getting good at anything, and how the compression of that time is going to create.
Genius like we've never seen before mixed in with a kind of terrible hubris. You know, it the there's some humiliation that has to happen in any path towards learning. Something. It fucks with your ego enough that hopefully by the time you get good at anything, you have some humility, but remove that gap of time, via some pharmacological technology and suddenly we're going to have a planet filled with
He's?
Piper talented beings that never have expected encountered the learning curve. I don't mean to get to like weird and into the into and I don't know why I'm getting so negative Without You Hamilton, but do you know what I read? These? I'm saying is when we think about on the horizon of History, what's coming, our way?
It is so bizarre to imagine that we are potentially 10 years. 15 years away from consuming, a substance, that transforms the way that we see. We see ourselves by implanting memories that are healthy memories or even analyzing past memories and correcting them enough that they no longer that we're not beating ourselves up anymore do.
You ever like worry about that, that there is some potential for a dystopian pharmacological future for our species. I mean, I think we were already in a dystopian pharmacological future. So I think you know, I think that there's a lot of room for improvement where we currently are, you know, there's some enormous percentage of the American population taking SSRI antidepressants. I think it's something like fifteen percent of American women.
Close to that seems like it's a lot more in New York. It's in New York. It seems like it's a solid third of women that I meet take ssris. And I of course, understand that for some people. It's beneficial. I'm not going to sit say that no one should use ssris. I don't think that. But I think that very few people that use ssris are extremely happy about it. You know, I don't it's very rare for me to meet someone who says. Yeah, I take Prozac and I love it. It's fantastic. I'm so happy.
That Prozac entered my life. I am so grateful for Prozac. I want to take it forever. It's been the best thing that ever happened to me. It's usually a kind of begrudging. Well, it's better than the way I was before. It's a necessary evil. And you know, I think that we can do better. I think we can do a lot better and I have hope for that. In terms of dystopian futures of implanted memories. I don't know, you know, it's very easy to look at the headlines of these articles.
Owls. And then and not look at what's actually being done. And what's actually being done. It's like, you know, they're doing some, it's not a memory in the sense that you or I think of a memory. It's some like extremely minimal impulse and a snail that that is very different from what we would call memory. That's not to say that it's impossible. It probably is possible and probably will occur at some point.
I imagine not in either of our lifetimes. But but when it happens, I hope that we are mature enough to use these things. Constructively.
What are your thoughts regarding ketamine in the treatment of depression as compared to the SSRI? Well, yeah, I mean related to what, I was just saying, you know, there's a little bit of a crisis in psychiatry in that there have been so many years where we haven't had a dramatically new treatment for depression. And I think the FDA started to liberalize its criteria a little bit because actually, the clinical
Data for ketamine were not all that, impressive compared to Placebo. It wasn't, it wasn't the at least in terms of the clinical trials that were done. It was not a miracle cure for depression. And really the only way that they were able to get it approved was by making it a fast track, breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression, which is justifiably considered a life-threatening disease like cancer.
Answer. And so there are special designations available for diseases that are life-threatening where they can liberalize the criteria slightly to allow new therapies, to be introduced to the market. For conditions that could really benefit from them and ketamine is a complicated one. Yeah, the I haven't been following every new piece of clinical data that emerges. But, but
It's it seems like it. Anecdotally does help a lot of people. I certainly also know people who haven't been helped and have been. I think have been harmed by it. And it's a I think that because it's a psychedelic, it might require a different strategy than is typically used for antidepressants, and one, that is not really part of our current medical framework because we're so used to this idea of an antidepressant.
Pressing is a drug that you take every day or in the case of ketamine. I think, typically every week or every second week and we're and we associate one-off use of a psychoactive drug with non-medical recreational use but I do wonder if that type of strategy makes the most sense for ketamine. I think it's funny the way that like so-called abuse or non-medical use is converging with medical Orthodoxy, where, you know,
Four years ago, if you told a medical doctor, I snort ketamine to treat my depression. They would say, you know, that's irresponsible. That's not the way that you use ketamine. It's not okay, to snort it. You it's not a recognized antidepressant. Now Johnson, & Johnson sells a nasal spray of ketamine to treat depression, but you know, in my own use of ketamine as an antidepressant, which I haven't done in years, but in 2008,
He knows I was very depressed and use it three times that year and I think that the way that I used it was actually very beneficial which wasn't to use it as a daily antidepressant or a weekly antidepressant, but to use it as a kind of one-off tool to break out of a ingrained thought pattern, that was disrupting my functioning.
If you had to describe the k-hole, how would you talk about it? What is that place? Huh? Huh. I mean it's it's not it's not easy to describe and it's not easy to remember and it's not something that is analogous to anything in normal Consciousness. It's not analogous to a Dream. It's may be somewhat close to a waking.
Sort of lucid type dream sometimes. But even then it's hard to say it's a it seems like a very random and it's a very random rearrangement of your Consciousness that has elements that feel like what I imagine. Schizophrenia feels like where there's a sort of grandiose sense of privileged understanding of the mechanism of the universe that other people don't.
Preciate ya or a privileged understanding of?
Genetics. And
Inheritance and genealogy, and all these kinds of you start thinking about, you know, connecting wires of your life and your lineage and Society. In these very abstract, weird ways that if you describe them to another person, it would sound like a sort of typical schizophrenic delusion and that I don't, I don't know if that is the beneficial aspect of it. I think, what is really interesting about ketamine?
is that I think that when you're depressed and you've been depressed for a while, you can get locked into a certain type of thinking that is
pessimistic basically. And one that has a very limited view of the world, where you think this is, this is who I am on this guy. This is what I do. This is what I'm good at. This is what I'm bad at. And I don't do these other things and I don't have any hope of doing those other things because this is who I am, and it didn't. And what today was like is what tomorrow will be like, and the day after and that's just my lot, and when you take ketamine it,
Give you a delusional sense of possibility, the aperture of possibility, expands dramatically, and suddenly all of the restrictions that you once thought, existed disintegrate and you can feel that, okay. Oh, I want to be a politician. I guess. I guess I'll be a politician then. Oh, I I should write a novel tomorrow. I guess I'll be a movie star. I'll be a medical doctor. I'll be whatever. And, and if you're depressed.
That sounds delusional. Be a politician. How on Earth could I be a politician? That makes no sense. But then, in that state, you think why not? Well, every politician had to begin with the thought. I can be a politician. So the first step of becoming a politician is to think that you can be a politician. And so I actually think that that, you know delusional or potentially delusional, self-image can be very therapeutic for people.
That have a.
Overly restrictive, view of themselves, and what is possible because you do need, you do need that moment of thinking, I can do this in order to do something. And so, even if it is delusional, that's the first step in expanding yourself when this becomes problematic is, when you do it all the time, because I think, as a one off thing every now and then, it can be tremendously beneficial to expand the scope of possibility of yourself, but if you're doing it,
The time then you can just end up having a totally distorted self-image. That is not therapeutic or beneficial in any way. And that I think is the, is the both, the therapeutic psychological component of ketamine, and what makes it dangerous. Yeah, it's, you know, it's so interesting here, you say this because I never considered that facet of it, which is, it's not like the cocaine confidence. It's something entirely different.
Me artistically. It was one of the most inspiring psychoactive substances I've ever encountered, and it informed, a lot of the show. I made called the midnight gospel, but I got addicted to it. I had to fly. I couldn't, I got habituated to it, ended up having to flush it down the toilet. I, you know, it stopped working, you know, to me that that's the main problem exactly what you're saying, which is, you know, the it's you can't just live a life of thinking that your
Enlightened or inspired you need to go through revision. You know, you need to go through the work part 2 but that's interesting to hear you say that. You know, I the delusional part that this is and we've had this conversation before and I love how rational you are and we need it. And I love how logical you are. And also I love how you know, you you know how to create these things. You're an actual.
Wall chemist, which is, which is incredible, but I was just reading some, you know, I don't know a blog or something regarding people who are researching psychoactive chemicals currently. And if they if they announced that they've been using them, then their research is kind of Route not looked upon in the same light or even worse if these people are using the chemicals.
That they're studying. And having these experiences that are, you know, when I think of ketamine, I think of Buddhism, I think of the dissolution of the identity and some kind of experience of the gap between thoughts or something, you know, that's as far as I've gotten with it or a Bardo state, but I'm allowed to do that because I'm a podcaster. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about any brushes, you've had with what people would call the mystical and how your mind integrates that into into into your
Yeah, I mean I think people often get confused when I say that I am a materialist or that I don't believe in or that I'm not spiritual and I'm not saying that I don't have amazing experiences that I cannot describe. I'm not saying that I live in some kind of, you know, sterile reality. That is free of any astonishment. It's all I'm saying is that I don't feel the need.
The need to invoke the supernatural to explain things. I'm also not saying that I feel those things are at this time, sufficiently explained by science. It's really just my way of saying, of trying to communicate. That sometimes there is no explanation and and I would prefer not to use the supernatural to explain things that way, but there are all kinds of, you know, back to the ketamine example. I mean, I remember the last
Time I used it may be through a three years ago. I believe I had this sort of immersive vision of myself at the Telluride Mushroom Festival and it was this very boring memory. It was, it was, you know, it's strange to simultaneously have this, you know, basically, an out-of-body experience where you're dropped into a memory that you thought you'd forgotten that is so immersive. It feels like
Reality, but that is also a boring memory. Not so it's not a memory of, you know, some kind of extremely important moment in your life. It's totally mundane or so, it seemed and I came out of it and I thought, wow, that was so mundane, just a memory of myself walking down a road in Telluride, Colorado after going mushroom hunting. Why would I even think of that? And then the more I thought about it, it started to sort of unfold and the importance of it.
Started to become apparent emotionally. And I thought, how is that even possible? How is it possible that by antagonizing this protein in my brain? I relive a memory. So boring that even, I don't recognize its significance at the time that I'm experiencing it or re experiencing it and then subsequently, I'm able to recognize that. It carried some kind of implicit message that was valuable to me. Like, you know, these are very strange experiences.
It's very strange and, and how, you know how, like for it. You know, if I use DMT one thing that's totally remarkable to me, is how good the things that I think are like, they are so good that I am puzzled by how good they are. Like, you know, the importance of love, the importance of kindness, the importance of generosity, the importance of gratitude. Where why? Why on Earth would dimethyltryptamine binding to this subtype of
Tonin receptor, cause me to death, suddenly feel these extremely positive values of all things, you know, you could think it could just as easily be that I like salty foods or you know that like, I need a new couch or like whatever. But instead. It's like love your family. One day, they'll be gone. You know, like how does that happen? I don't know. Science is not explained it. I don't think spirituality explains it either. I think it's unknown and I would
I would love to to learn even the smallest morsel of how that comes to be. Well, you know, I'm, I've gotten so into meditation lately and I've gotten so into Buddhism lately that the best spiritual explanation I have for it. Forgive me any anyone listening who disagrees or is a Buddhist? Or I'm totally wrong because you I'm just going jogging in the woods and listening to like audible Buddhist books, but there's an idea in Buddhism. That humans are
Mentally good. That's a controversial idea. But that's the idea that that sort of that, everything else everything, a human does that involves hurting other people as of just an ignorance of what we really are, which is sort of an interconnected Matrix of energy that doesn't have any lasting or integral self and somehow the there's a reality that that's just, you know, for lack of a better.
Better word and is a lazy thing to call it just good. I'm sure there's some Tibetan word that
Would make more sense. So the answer could be if we're looking at it from a spiritual ends. They these substances are kind of, you know, wiping off the windshield or something enough that what you actually are starts coming out and that, you know, maybe gets sort of animated or you know, configured based on the substance itself, but it's the reason that's the message. These things seem to keep giving us isn't necessarily that it's the substance that has encoded in it.
Compassion, but it, we're fundamentally compassionate. That's just my current thinking on it. But who knows? Yeah. No, I agree. I agree that the substance does not contain information. It's not the substance and I would hope that you're right. That were fundamentally compassionate. I mean that would that would really be good if that's what's behind it all inside. Each of us. Yeah. I mean, yes, that is well, it's good. But then also, it's the I
The beautiful thing about me is good, but the beautiful thing about, like, I'm reading, I'm getting into these super obscure Buddhist scriptures and their wild, man, they're wild. But it's so unwanted Nyla Tori on one level, you know, so much of like a human suffering. And I think this answers the ketamine depression question to some degree. It's like so much of us are suffering, is just what you were saying. We're all wound up in our self and our bodies, you know, where it's in. It's a bummer. When you get to a certain
Certain age, your body starts hurting you look weirder and weirder every year. And so at least I do not now, maybe not. You actually you all right, man, but like, you know what I mean, so it disassociative it like sort of temporarily takes off this thing, or at least loosens it a little bit that we call our identity, which if you really think about it, it's really interesting that, you know, whatever that thing is is really just what we tend to pull out of the environment and notice you
And so, maybe there's just in just in suddenly no longer pulling out the same constant, you know, aspects of reality that we've become habituated to pulling out, you know, maybe there's just some relief in suddenly seeing the world just as it is, you know, or a warped version of the world. There's freedom in it. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that that, you know, I don't know that this has ever been studied or even
Looked at very carefully, but and a very large number of people that I know who are transgender have also used a lot of ketamine, and they have felt the ketamine was something that like helped them loose in the boundaries of their gender self-image. And I think that that's another example of what I was talking about is, you know, maybe maybe you're unhappy and every single day, the reason that you're unhappy as you think
It's because I'm a man or whatever and then you take ketamine and you realize oh, I'm not anything. I can be whatever. I can be. I can be a medical doctor and I can be a woman and I could be 50 other things. If I want to, you know, John Lilly toward the end. I think it was, it was sort of he was kind of an early adopter. But I'm under the impression that toward the end of class. You had breast implants. Yeah. Yeah, I yes. I mean, definitely, that's I think one of the, you know evolutionary qualities of
Of that particular drug, and the reason that like when people take it, some people dislike it because it has this sort of sci-fi quality to it, you know, it has a weird technological aspect to it and that some people, you know, people like that sort of Warm Glow of mushrooms, but sometimes the ketamine you go really go into the void. And, yeah, I think something in that melting down of the self, it's not just yet. It's not just like suddenly you realize like holy shit. There's no reason. I can't.
Become a poet or a doctor or learn to fly an airplane, or, you know what? It's also you realize like why am I so fixated on my gender being the thing? You know, I'm I so fixated on any quality of myself, you know, being like, who I am and that makes it a very controversial substance in that regard, but, you know, I want not, I want to swing around for a moment just because and
I'm sorry, if this makes you feel uncomfortable, but you are like, in the Psychedelic Universe. You're a rock star, man. And I was like, one of my favorite things that you do on Twitter. I love, I love your social media presence. But sometimes you like, show someone's tattoo of a, of like DMT or whatever. They think it's DMT and you're like, actually, and then you'll say, you say what it is. It's some either like completely benign.
Something or like aspirin or something like that, but and I love that, I love the way you interact with people in the Psychedelic world, but not to be scandalous. I wonder if you could maybe tell a story of some weird interactions. You must have had with people out there who are, you know, tweaking out and have decided that you're Jesus. Oh, I mean I have them on a daily basis. I have them too frequently. In fact, and it's because over the last couple months.
My show has been airing. I'm getting, you know, a hundred messages a day. And there's a lot of really strange people out there, as, you know, and, you know, I've gotten the, the full, the full spectrum of people, you know, someone telling me that they their girlfriend is pregnant with the second coming of Jesus. And what can they do? How can I help to spread awareness? So that the world know?
Was, you know, you get that sort of thing. You get people to think they are Jesus. Of course, you have people that are convinced that various psychoactive. Substances are having some kind of, like, transhumanist Ultra positive effect on them, but they actually seem to be in the throes of one of these sorts of delusions, that we've just described, that's actually a pretty, a pretty common one. And, and that goes to show how the I
That actually represents one of the central problems with psychoactive drugs is you can think that they're helping you, but that's very different from them, helping you. And I think that's actually, one of the most important reasons to try to use them as infrequently as possible. Is it will Aid that self-assessment because if you're constantly in the throes of it, you can easily lose track of who you are and how you relate to who you used to be and where you're going. So
you know, it's yeah, it's yeah, it's very tricky and I
And Hamilton, when I told my wife, I told my wife at one point after I had like, gotten out of the ketamine's grip, I was like, but you know what? It was helping me make music and the look on her face said, everything ha ha. Psych was helping you make music, it. Did. I went back and listened to some of the music. I was making a horrible horrible, but in the midst of that, hey,
He's always in it. I was like, this is Cutting Edge and it was not. So, yeah, I hear you met. I've experienced it, and it's a, I'm lucky I this, it's just embarrassing, you know, but it can get much worse. So, I didn't even know this that this has happened with you, and maybe you've probably talked about this in past podcasts. So, I don't know if it's something you want to rehash, but I'm just sort of curious, because I've actually been hearing about a lot of people, especially over the pandemic, who have
Gotten very seriously into dissociatives, both Katha me and and nitrous oxide. I used to never hear about nitrous oxide addiction among just like, you know, my acquaintances and in the last few months, I've casually heard people reference having to have multiple nitrous oxide. Interventions. Was this something that you were going through during the pandemic or is this more distant past? It was, it was in the past more? But, yeah, it just, it's classic addiction, it just snuck.
By me, you know it started off just like what you're like it with a I was just excited because because it does to me it is a kind of visionary substance and wildly alien and it sort of checks all the boxes in what I love about psychedelics. And also it's 45 minutes, you know, so you're not committing to six or eight or 12-hour trip, which is really delightful. But then, you know, just, it's nothing new, just a classic story like it's
It wasn't even working anymore. But I was doing it all the time. All day long. It was embarrassing. I was getting that like I do. I've been addicted to a few things in my life. I got physically addicted to benzos a long time ago when I was on a long comedy tour because I was taking him to go to sleep. But then I also started taking them in the day and I was, and I only had maybe a four week Supply, but I wasn't aware of how they can. I wasn't quite aware of how they can get their hooks into you.
So I just went it was a went through withdrawals. It was the most fucked up. I got lucky. It was just like 24 or 48 hours but and then Academy and it was it was more nefarious and that it doesn't seem to be fit. I don't, it's not physically addictive, but you get really like lace like cigarettes, which are physically, they did, you just, I just got habituated and it wasn't working. You know, the last time I did it.
Over over a year ago. Last time, I did it longer the last time I did it, it took me for like four and a half hours to do a commercial for my podcast. And I just realized like you, this is not only is this not inspiring you anymore, but it's coming up your ability to create something. You love creating. So I just got like, I was able to kick it. I'm just lucky in that way that I can just flush the thing, down the toilet and then it's
Over. We know now with Kate took a few flesh, has to be honest cop. But yeah, yeah, but it's scary in that way. I think that's the big problem with it is that it's, it is a treatment for depression. It does it. And I think I was using it to cope with, like, a lot of, like, my dad's and my mom passing. And, you know, I think it was legitimately keeping me out of a long depressive episode, but just like what you're saying, you know, it's you.
it's
You can't isolate and do these things. This is why I think you know, when people talk about psychedelic therapy. It seems like they forget that that involves a therapist, you know, it involves an expert, who's there to be the person who can hopefully help, you avoid all the sand traps that are out there. When it comes to any of these substances. I mean, we all love Bliss, who can blame us.
Right, of course, and I mean, this is another one of the complicated aspects of psychoactive, drugs, and addiction is. Sometimes someone who has no experience. They'll look at a news report of somebody who's freaking out after having consumed so-called bath salts or spice or something like that. And they think, oh, I never want to do that. What would drive a person to do that? Why on Earth would the person do that? But what they're not recognizing is that was the worst.
Time for that person, but previously it was probably good. That's why they were doing it. It starts out good often and then there can be a slow change that occurs where you either stop responding to it or in addition to the good things. There's a bad thing or it becomes entirely bad and tracking that is yet something that a therapist or a friend is really helpful for or I think the easiest way is just to try to do these things infrequently. That way you can track yourself.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's always better if you do it in frequently. Anyway, that it just it's so much better to like, I know that somewhere around the corner in a few years. I'll it's not like I won't do ketamine again, but I also know that when I do it it'll be wonderful because it's been a long time in between. And I think that, you know, that's a, you know, our whole way of looking at it. Diction seems somehow, you know, tainted by the prohibition. I don't think people understand that there's a, there's
Actually, a way that these substances can be used with very infrequently and successfully, and it doesn't mean that your whole life is going to fall apart after that. But I'm sure you must have had moments where you worried about the effect that your show is having. I mean, do you have that? Do you have some sense of like, you look like you're a disciplined person, you're able to modulate the way you use these substances, but sometimes with my podcast and especially earlier,
That's when I was I think very irresponsible in my bugling, the benefits of psychedelics. I worry that, you know, I wasn't cautionary enough and that I might have, you know, I don't know. And even in a small way, I would hate to think that I led someone into a place they couldn't get out of
Yeah, I think that I've been pretty good about.
Specifying the dangerous aspects or if not, I tried to implicit Lee communicate that. So sometimes people will say. Hey man, I watched your show and you showed this this person who there are a weirdo, they do ketamine and they're weird. That that's not going to end prohibition. You need to show Silicon Valley micro do sir is who are using it to empower, their High productivity career. That's the way you change the narrative. And
And one reason that I include people who are weird or who have beliefs that maybe, you know, from like a drug policy or advocacy perspective. These beliefs would not be the ones that most people would want to elevate. And say, this is what happens when you use a drug, but one reason in addition to just I like talking to weird people as you do as well. Yes, and and so I'm not I'm not you know, like making advertisements for
A Telex I'm making documentaries about psychedelics, and in doing that. I want to show people who sometimes have strange beliefs partially because I find it interesting. But partially to show ya, you know, these things do open your mind and sometimes that's beneficial and sometimes that might promote a type of thinking that maybe is undesirable to you. And this is what it looks like, you know, I got it. A lot of people criticized me for showing
You know, this this guy that smoked DMT and believed in Pizza gate and saying, how could you possibly do that? You're going to undo any progress. But, you know, if you only talk about Johns, Hopkins, University and academic research with psychedelics, you're neglecting to acknowledge the reality of psychedelic drug use for many people. So that's, that's the way I try to handle it. Is to show that, you know, just to show honestly how these things exist in society and let people draw their own conclusions. So if you
Be somebody who is that, you know, strange artist living alone in the desert, who has a lot of outlandish, beliefs, about angels and UFOs and dolphins who uses a lot of ketamine and you think love that episode and you think that's terrible. Well, then, there you go. Then you then you have it. But if you think that's fantastic, then there you go as well, you know, that's, that's kind of my, my take on it
and fell in. Love with that guy. Me too. What was his
name? Timothy Wiley.
Wow, what a scene.
Ain't that guy was he had a to me and maybe it was just the lighting. He really seemed to have this
ethereal
glow about him. Like he really seemed like a some kind of I don't know awakened being or
something. Oh, you know, he was like a spiritual leader, you know, the process Church. Yeah, he was a big part of the process church. He was behind the scenes in a lot of different things, you know, Genesis
Pure image.
Yes,
like her transformation was because of Timothy
wildly. Wow.
Yeah. Giving her Academy and and helping her like,
Transform. So he was, he was part of a lot of different things and he was a really, you know, he was a true artist, a true weirdo, a true independent strange thinker and I love that. You know, I think that I don't want a reality that is so sterile that people only talk about these things as you know, psychiatric medications for treatment of disease. I think that they're useful for expanding, thought, interactions? That are strange.
And artistic and poetic and weird. Why not? You know, it's yeah, this is all beautiful and good. And in the finale of my show last night, I profiled this woman, Amanda Fielding who reminds me of Timothy Wiley. In a lot of ways, you know, she's brilliant. She's truly heterodox thinker. Who has spent her life in this. Quixotic quest to
Demonstrate. The trepanation is a medically, valid procedure. And and while I don't think that trepanation is likely to be medically validated. Although I'd be happy to be wrong. I think that part of it comes from a certain insecurities that many people have that they need medical validation. When I see this as a sort of artistic decision that she made a sort of body modification that is valid, whether or not it has any
Impact on her Consciousness. Is something symbolic is truly opening her head opening her mind, you know, I think that there's something amazing about that regardless of what physiological effect it may or may not
have listen if you if anybody who has watched a documentary on trepanation and hasn't had at least a fleeting thought.
Of like shit, maybe I should try that. That sounds awesome. I think you're not looking into it. Deeply have it trepanation, is one of those things. The problem with it is like, how do you go back? You know, what, if you're wrong, but any time I've seen these documentaries, I would never be. Is it trepan, ated? Is that how you'd say it? Your trap and I would never be trippin don't. But come on. Aren't you curious about? Like what the effect is it? This wasn't. It's not just like this is something body modification people are doing. This was a like a cultural.
Movement at one time, right? That this was something that was being practiced for centuries. Right? Like, we're still finding skulls with it, have been
trapping. Oh, yes. It's one of the oldest known surgical procedures.
Yeah, and it's some form of what like neurological bloodletting or something. Like well, what is the idea? It relieves pressure on the brain or it enhances mystical States. I have yet to see the finale. So sorry if I'm making you repeat something.
That's no, no, no in the finale actually doesn't even go into the science of it because I don't want to take a public stance on trepanation, you know, for the record. I know, I do not imagine that it has. I don't predict that it has major therapeutic effects, you know, people routinely have holes drilled in there.
Skulls for surgical procedures, you know, correct craniotomy, so, it's not as if it's not done in the 21st century. And it doesn't seem to have a major effect. But, you know, and historically in these, you know, various artifacts that have been uncovered. And these ancient skulls that have been trapping. It makes a lot of intuitive sense. If you have a headache, where's the pain? It's in your head, right? So, where are you going to?
Direct your medical intervention to the head. You gotta get out that demon. That's in your head. You're insane. There's something in your head. There's a problem in your head. You got to get it out. So it makes sense in this, you know, intuitive. Understanding of the way the Body Works, especially from a spiritual framework where you're attributing disease to malevolent
spirits.
Right. Yes. Oh, yeah. Let me also emphasize, I don't don't trap innate yourself or your friends or anybody. It's just a curious thing that has happened in the past. Also, you know, what was the anaesthetic that they were using, or maybe part of the, you know, experienced in the past was, they'll, you know, lack of any kind of an aesthetic as we, at least the ones we have access to. Now, maybe there was some initiate or E pain high that people are getting from it, but do you
You know, this is to me what, you know, I know you get it. Now. I'm hearing that you get it which is like the people who are very protective of what they see is some kind of, you know, flowering psychedelic Renaissance. What do they call it? The third set? I don't know. There's a name for the thing when I forgotten what it is and their people are rightfully protective of it. And I agree with you. It does seem to me to be in right now, maybe necessarily imbalanced towards the medical Universe. Just so that it
Can get to the place where it can, you know, happily be used as a cultural amplifier stimulator and inspiring kind of something that could like, you know, shape movies and art and things like that. But the message I've gotten from people is more along the lines of we don't need any more Tim, you know, gurus. We don't need any more psychedelic Jesus's out there. You know, what do you think is the the weird?
In between psychedelics and the Messianic thing that seems to like happen to people, you know, like we inevitably someone emerges, you get a person who's taken enough acid that they really believe they're the Christ or the matreya or whatever, an alien representative and weirdly they end up with a group of people following them around because you know, there is some kind of actual gravity. These people have, but what are your thoughts on that? Do you do you? Do you have any
Thoughts on like, the many psychedelic Messiahs we've had in the past and certainly will have in the coming years.
Well, it depends on how you define Messiah because if you're including Timothy Leary there, I think Timothy Leary is very widely. Misunderstood. You know, the more I think about Timothy Leary the more I think of him as a comedian. I really, you know, I think more than a psychologist more than a guru more than almost anything. Timothy. Leary was a comedian and he was
One who believed in psychedelics at a time when they were being attacked from every imaginable, Direction, medically, legally socially, and he defended them and the Psychedelic Community does not appreciate what he did, the sacrifices that he made. He's you know, routinely criticized people blame him for the end of psychedelic research. I think a lot of what we have today is not something that exists in spite of Timothy Leary, but because of Tim
A theory and I don't really think he did anything wrong at all. I think that he was a victim of many many. I mean, he was, he was facing life in prison. They were threatening to lobotomize him. Like, can you imagine what he went through? Just because he was interested in the LSD and cannabis
now. Now I can't and I also let me clarify. He I love him. I've read much of his like
Writing and some of his obscure writing is amazing, the circuits of Consciousness. I really I really love him. I could see though why he gets criticized, I could see what I mean. They, you know, you want a scapegoat, you know, and he was, I guess the loudest one that I could think of and in that movement tune in, turn on drop out an invitation to sort of exit. Capitalism. He would have these days, he would have seemed, like, almost like a square. You know, he would he
Have had a podcast, would have seemed cool. But in those days, yeah, he was a culture shatterer. I could see both sides of it. But do you know what I'm saying, though? Like this is something I've noticed specifically with psychedelics, which is that you will meet people who have transformed themselves, legitimately healed themselves. People who have taken Ayahuasca and become peaceful, and people who are just have a kind of sweetness to them that they report being related to
Series of experiences, they had in a psychedelic, but weirdly you run into these like people who somehow the thing is making them into egomaniacs and it's one of the more confusing aspects of these drugs. It's just a bizarre thing to witness these people and also because, you know, there's a, I guess to reduce it to less than a messiah. What are your thoughts on this thing? Where the self-assignment of oneself is a shaman?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's II. Guess I would say I regarded with suspicion and distrust most of the time as one should. And I think that I think again like so many of the problems with drugs or not, actually problems with drugs or problems with prohibition and cultural problems more than they are pharmacological ones. So, you know, if you think about it, in the context of a society that says everything is bad or says a thing is bad. And then you
It. And then you realize that not only is it not bad. It's good. And you think okay. Well, I'll make it my mission to tell everyone that it's good. Actually I think that's that's kind of the basic thing that's operating in a lot of these people is they have some transformative experience and they want to share it. I think it often is happening from a somewhat positive perspective. But then I think where it tends to go wrong is not when people are talking about the positives, but when
People start to try to control Behavior or try to coerce other people into doing things or start creating a rigid set of beliefs that are used to create different types of moral dichotomies where you can criticize other people or, or say that they're doing something wrong. You know, that's I think where you really run into problems and I've spent time with a lot of different religious groups.
Groups that use psychedelics and Indigenous groups that use psychedelics and the ones that I think run into problems are the ones that start to dictate.
Other people's behavior and force people to do things or force people to believe things, you know, there's a big difference between saying I think you shouldn't eat meat because meat is requires violence to an animal and you should try to minimize your, the violence of your existence in any possible way, but it is your choice to eat meat and saying, you know, you're a bad person. You're not enlightened. You're not spiritual, you're part of the problem. If you eat meat, you know, I think
Of using these things constructively and existing in the world constructively is to be permissive of other people's behavior, as long as they're not hurting other people. And I understand that it's like, you know, it all comes into this, this kind of classic Socratic idea that no one knowingly does wrong. And so all these people are always thinking that they're doing the right thing. They're thinking. Oh, no, you know, the problem with eating meat is it's so bad or the problem with being gay is that it's
It's really bad. God doesn't want you to be gay or whatever. They think they're doing the right thing. They don't they're not operating from a perspective of of usually I don't think operating from a perspective of wanting to contribute pain or evil into the world. But that's what happens when they're trying to do good. And you know, I got very close to a psychedelic cult for a while. I was writing a story about call. I am not going to say their name because it went sour.
With them and and like ended with sort of oblique death threats from them, but I was maybe I'll write something about it. At some point, was for an article in Harper's. This was like one of the things that was contributing to my depression in 2018. But anyway, you know, this group had a very strict code of conduct that I think.
I think that you know, their psychedelic advocacy was wound up in control fantasies of the leader. And you know, that's I think that's the the major line. It's there's nothing wrong with being, you know, thinking your own Messiah, but I think there is something wrong with attempting to control other people or trying to
Or trying to make other people feel bad about their actions
unnecessarily.
You know, there's a famous story, Ram, Dass tells because his brother got institutionalized, because his brother thought he was. Jesus, they found him in an apartment. He had six elderly women around him, worshiping him, and he was having a Messianic fan of delusion got institutionalize. Ramdas Tells a Story Goes to visit his brother in a mental hospital and his brother says to ramdas. Look at you, you know, you're dressed.
Jesus, your, you know, your you have followers people, you know, you're a, you're like a guru person. How come you're out there, and I'm in here. And we're on those. His answer was. Well, the difference is, you think you're the only Jesus? And I think everyone's
Jesus. Ha ha! Ha! Ha ha. That's
great. Yeah, it's pretty cool. But yeah, well, I mean, your encounter with this leader, did he demonstrate to you inequalities? That were
Magnetic, or did you feel sort of you know, vacuumed into his social gravity? Well,
my impression was that, you know, again when you're part of a subculture and underground group, you have beliefs that are not only not shared by the majority of people that surround you, they're illegal, you'll kind of go with whoever you can find. So this guy, I wouldn't say that.
Beliefs were especially unusual there. Just at that heat. This is someone who was operating starting in the really in the 60s and continues to this day, and but but really just someone who believed in psychedelics and believed in non-violence and believed in vegetarianism, and believed in a lot of good things. And so that Drew people in not because he was necessarily charismatic or magnetic, but because they thought, oh, okay.
Okay. Well, here's a guy that at least gets what's going on. He understands the value of Health Food. He understands the value of meditation. He understands the value of psychedelics. He has liberal ideas about about the importance of sex, you know, things like that. So I think that for a long time you could cultivate a following just by not hating these things, basically,
right?
Right. Wow. Yeah. Well, you know congratulations on getting out of that thing, you know, I think there's something to be said, I think it's a good sign if you have gotten vacuumed into a cult and if you know, that's a that means you're living life. If you ask me, you know, importantly that you've got also got
now, but I should say I was not although I actually did try to join this cult as a freshman in college. I was never a member of this called. I was involved with them via a strange series of
Actions and was ultimately trying to write a story about them because I at the beginning felt very sympathetic toward them. I felt that they had been that they'd gone through horrible horrible adversity in order to, you know, believe in psychedelics for decades and they did. They, you know, that's like so many of these things. It's complicated. They really did fight for psychedelics at a time when very few other people were and they did, they were both.
Cicuta Dand prosecuted by the government and they, you know, understandably developed a number of different complexes as a result of it, but right. But yeah, so I was trying to write a story about it. This was a not as a member of the cult.
Thankfully. Well, you should get into a
Cole Hamels. Haha.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me tend on what kind of mundane question, what? A wonderful conversation. I'm so grateful to you for being on the show, but I, what are
Thoughts on this is, by the way. Speaking of, like people who have gone through hell, because of the War on Drugs, who had the initial understanding, that these things were medicines that they had great potential and got arrested had their lives destroyed. I fee, I am so exhilarated by the reality that right now you can buy stock in companies that are you know, synthesizing LSD and you know, doing legal research on
It. But I feel a little bitterness too. You know, it's like, oh great. Now you're, you know, I can literally buy stock in a company doing experiments with LSD. When not that long ago, if I had it in my pot. Well, to this day, if I had it, I have. I'll go to jail, but do you, do you feel that kind of bitterness? We wait for me? There's like I said, I don't know how to put it. There's just this feeling of like, yeah, we knew this, you know, we knew how many lives have been destroyed, how many people have lost
Their children, how many people have you know, been like completely ostracized from society for, you know, just doing a thing that is ultimately like very beneficial to a person's life. Do you ever do? You get that feeling like how you doing? I'm talking about like a kind of twinge, of
course, of course. And you know, it's this is what you're describing.
Is a feeling you should have because it's deeply contradictory. It's deeply disturbing. And at the same time, it's good. It's weird. It's a weird feeling and it's, you know, of course, it happened first with cannabis. You have people becoming multi-millionaires from Cannabis at the same time that there are. People locked in cages isolated from their family, their lives destroyed for cannabis. This is happening right now as we speak. So yeah, there's a deep and painful hip.
Accuracy in that. And we're seeing it happen with psychedelics. And the weirdest thing about it is that it's a good thing, you know, that you look at this and you think this is deeply unjust, but it's even weirder to think this is actually the right thing to be happening because this is progress. This is how things change, and this is the rate of change in our society. It doesn't happen overnight. In fact, it's happening. A hell of a lot faster than I or almost anyone else thought it would. You know that yes, there are publicly traded psilocybin stocks.
That you can invest in on Robin Hood, right now that's mind-boggling and that, you know, like, for example, I've done chemistry research for over a decade at the small pharmacy school in Philadelphia. And and in the past that there was a little bit of money from the University. I would, you know, self fund the research, a few nice people like, you know, Tim Ferriss gave me some money at one point for research, but, you know, for the most part we were just
We barely had enough money for solvents to do this chemistry. And now, there are so many pharmaceutical companies trying to hire me to do research to be on their Board of advisors. And, yeah, it's like it's a weird feeling, but I am also aware. Wow. This is how things are going to change. Now. This isn't going to be a question of, oh, can I afford, you know, this reagent now, people are are going to be able to do so much research that they never could do before.
For so many of these, you know, multi-decade lasting questions about the potential of psychedelics, both positive and negative are on the precipice of being answered. And it's it's going to be great. You know, I'm so excited for what's happening. I really am. I'm not in if you know, I'm not in a specially optimistic person. I am usually somewhat pessimistic person actually, but this force is a tiny bit of optimism out of me and will, of course, see how it all plays out. But, you know, I think that
Is a lot of good things that can come out of it. Even if every pharmaceutical psychedelic fails, then maybe, at least in this process. We will have taught people that these things do have at least medical potential or that they shouldn't be illegal and that would be tremendous progress that we will see in our lifetime. So I am, I'm really excited. I'm excited to be a part of it. You know, I pretty much planning to, you know, I have a podcast and I'm going to continue doing that. I'm going to continue writing but
I'm planning to do a lot less of this documentary work in order to focus on chemistry because the resources are available. Now, you know, now is the first time that this could be a full-time job and it's so
exciting. Wow. You but wait, you can't close saying that you're not going to do another season. Is that what you're saying?
Well, it's funny. It's, you know, at the same time that all these resources are being made available for scientific research. The season was, I don't want to like close on.
Negative. But it was a Herculean task to finish it. Right, you know, for me, and for the many people that worked on it. It was, you know, the, the consensus among most of the group as we could do it this time, you know, working 13 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, sacrificing everything to finish it working unpaid, but that's not sustainable. You can do that, right? You can do that for a year. You can't do that for the rest of your life. And so if some you know, offer emergency
Urges that would change that, they would make it a reasonable thing that people wouldn't have to, you know, there was someone on who is working on the show who had, you know, how to break down from the, the level of stress working on it. You know, it's I think it's hard for people to Fathom what went into that. So when people contact me and they say like, oh, why didn't you show, you know, you really should have shown Xenon, distillation. Why didn't you do that? It's like, well because it was a pandemic and friend and I wanted to and it was impossible and we were already
Out of money and like filming things on our iPhones. So but, you know, so it was, it was really, really hard and I'm proud of a lot of what we all created. But I think now the time has come to do some chemistry and I'm excited to do
that.
Hamilton Morris, I love you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Everybody Hamilton's pharmacopoeia season 3. It's on Amazon, please watch. It is a beautiful show and I could tell that y'all sweated blood to create it. But thank you for making it. What's the name of your podcast
Hamilton? It's, it's my patreon. Patreon.com slash Hamilton Morris. It doesn't have a name. It's really just a chemistry, mostly chemistry and psychoactive drug science podcast.
And and then some other assorted little projects. So yeah, people can check that out. And and oh, and one final thing is I just republish this small book that I should send you a copy Duncan, but it's a cool book about bufo. Alvarius. It was written by this guy Ken Nelson and it also has information about the synthesis of five Meo DMT and all of the profit from that goes to the Michael J, fox foundation, and spend this kind of amazing.
Fundraising success where it's now raised like a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for Parkinson's research, and that's still available. So if anyone wants to check that out, www.sec.gov toad of the Sonoran Desert.com,
wonderful. All the links you need to find. That will be at Duncan, Trussell.com Hamilton. Thank you so much. And you're just the
best. You're the best. Let's talk again soon.
Okay, great. How did Krishna? Thank you. That was Hamilton Morris, everybody. I hope that you will download.
And three of Hamilton's, pharmacopoeia a tremendous. Thank you to our sponsors. Remember by supporting them, you support us and much things to my dear patreon family. All right Pals. I'll see it next week. I hope you have a great weekend, and don't forget starting Monday. I'll be back to our weekly meditation group Journey into boredom at patreon.com forward slash D tfh, I hope to see you there. Thanks for listening today, Krishna.
ah,
