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calm what’s up folks it is so good to be
back we took a few weeks off and
everyone needed some time off and
by everyone I mean it’s great to be back
and we have an amazing episode for you
guys in this episode we spoke to dr.
Rick Doblin the very tenacious Rick
Doblin the founder of the
multidisciplinary Association for
psychedelic studies in this episode we
cover a vast range of topics from Rick’s
personal journey to the political
atmosphere of prohibition and the
medical use of these compounds to treat
PTSD and other ailments in mrs. so the
conversation is pretty far-reaching and
you should stick through it there is
something about Rick’s personality his
persona that just makes you believe that
this is possible this will happen and
it’s it’s really amazing the experience
and wisdom that that comes through in
this conversation
also in this conversation my friend
Damiano are helped me co-host and you’re
going to be hearing more from him it was
it was good because I noticed
damiana is war in the psychedelic field
and I really respect what he’s doing for
the community so he did great very proud
of him for his first co-host otherwise
there are some major changes coming
Podcast and some overhauls that were
we’re doing but they’re all good things
and necessary I think you guys will
enjoy them the DMT molecule spirit
molecule contest will go up I’m still
manicuring that and finishing touches on
that I’m actually setting up a
membership section for you guys where
you will have access to a whole other
level of content so that’s what I’ve
been working on we also picked up a
sponsor for this episode very happy
about that this is a company that I
personally vetted and I would never put
anything in front of you my listeners
that I didn’t feel comfortable using
myself these companies that that may
sponsor us are going to be companies
that we personally that you can rely on
that level of consistency from us and
we’re never gonna put something out
there that is questionable so thank you
guys so much for all the support the
Facebook messages telling us how amazing
the podcast is I love those send more of
them they definitely helped the ego
boost it helps but all joking aside and
without much further ado here’s our
episode with mr. Rick Doblin
thank you guys so much for listening the
human experience is in session
my guest tonight is mr. Rick Doblin
damiano our is going to be helping us
co-host for this conversation Rick my
good sir welcome to hxp
yeah thank you for inviting me I’m
really glad so Rick I mean you have
founded this institution can you tell up
we can you please tell the audience who
you are and what you do please okay well
dr. Rick Doblin you could say I got a
PhD from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard on the regulation
of the medical use of psychedelics in
marijuana
so that was my dissertation the PhD is
in public policy so I have a
simultaneous training in
working as a therapist I’ve been trained
with Stan Grof and the holotropic
breathwork the hyperventilation for
producing experiences similar to LSD and
another of the classic psychedelics and
then my public policy training is about
helping our culture it’s had a bad trip
with psychedelics get over that
so I started maps in 1986 and the DEA
had previously criminalized MDMA in 1985
and before that I’ve had another
nonprofit in 1984 that we used with the
psychedelic therapy community to sue the
DEA to try to keep preserving the
therapeutic use of MDMA around half a
million doses had been used in
therapeutic settings personal growth
settings quietly under the name Adam and
so this was at the time of Nancy Reagan
and the just say no program and the
escalation of the drug war and the
culture wars and it felt like at the
time but the only way that there would
be possible to bring the therapeutic use
of MDMA and other psychedelics back was
through the FDA used science and
medicine for healing purposes and
particularly trying to do it for healing
purposes of people that the mainstream
had sympathy for and and so it’s now
been almost 30 years next year is the
30th year of maps and we’re we’re close
actually a lot closer than we’ve ever
been there’s to moving through the FDA
system we’re about to complete an
international series of Phase two pilot
studies with mdma-assisted psychotherapy
for post-traumatic stress disorder we
started these in 2000 the first one was
in Spain for two years and then it got
shut down by the Madrid anti-drug
Authority after there were some really
positive media and then we were able to
start our first study in the u.s. in
2004 and so we’re now anticipate
that we can make MDMA into a
prescription medicine by 2021 that’s our
your attitude towards this is pretty
remarkable considering the sort of
opposition that you are facing with the
American government and legislation that
you have to go through to get this type
of research regulated and done I mean
how did you find yourself in a position
to do this and how do you maintain this
great question well I first decided what
I wanted to do when I was 18 years old
in 1972 I didn’t know how but I knew
what what and over the last decades you
know now 61 I figured out a lot more
about how but what led me to that
decision when I was 18 part of it is
that I had decided to become a draft
resister to Vietnam and anticipated
going to prison for that and when I
shared this discussion they had a
discussion about this with my parents
their attitude was that you know I’d
never be able to get a normal job and
they weren’t opposed to what I was
saying they just pointed out that you
know with a criminal record you know I
couldn’t be a doctor or a lawyer or
things like that and so I thought well
if the price of having a normal
mainstream job is being willing to go
off to Vietnam and either kill people or
get killed it wasn’t worth it so I felt
like what am I going to do but what
really did it was the sense that in the
war in Vietnam that that there was a lot
of emotional calls to action by
politicians but that it was
fundamentally you know a terrible
mistake and previously growing up my
earliest influences in a political sense
about the wide world was when I was
pretty young you know 10 12 years old
and really learning about the
Holocaust and I’ve got distant relatives
that are killed in the Holocaust I’m I’m
Jewish I have Israeli relatives and they
were some of them involved in the the
war of 1948 and so I just was starting
to grapple with this idea of cultures
being basically insane and and you know
projecting out their shadows onto others
and trying to destroy and that those
that there were psychological factors
that were really crucial to survival and
so I grew up at a time where in America
was unquestionably the most powerful
country in the world you know my dad was
a doctor so we had more than enough to
eat and to travel and so the survival
needs were taken care of but I was
shaken by the possibility that you know
crazy cultures might want to come and
kill me and you know when you learn
about Jewish history it’s like over and
over and over different kind of people
want to kill the Jews then what
radicalized me even more or not even
more but especially was the Cuban
Missile Crisis and this concept of the
terrible terrible power of nuclear
weapons and how we were facing this
incredible escalation arms race with the
Soviet Union and we possessed weaponry
that could you know destroy everybody on
earth not just Jewish people but
everybody and that again that there was
this projecting the shadow outward not
to say that I would have preferred to
live in Russia which was you know
totalitarian state but that we ended up
I just felt like the the survival of the
human race is really unclear and it’s
based more on psychological factors than
on resource questions
I mean astonishing if you look at it
that you know seven eight billion people
and we have enough you know if we were
equitably distributing them we have
enough food and water we are destroying
the environmental
different ways which is another aspect
of people being blind to certain
externalities so it just felt like first
off the Holocaust secondly of the arms
race and then thirdly the Vietnam War
that that I got very interested in
psychological factors and then also I
started thinking about certain kind of
spiritual questions like you know are we
fundamentally different than people that
have a different color skin or a
different religion or a different
country you know the different ways that
we identify ourselves are usually ways
that we both have our own individual
identity but they also separate us from
other people and so I started thinking
about if we really could understand our
commonality that that would have
political implications and I was sort of
hearing that in the cultural around me
growing up in the late 60s and you kind
of hear about you know the Beatles and
Saoirse peppers lonely heart band and
the influence of LSD and all these
things but I was raised to believe that
LSD made you permanently crazy that if
you took it you know you were basically
gonna have a very difficult time as an
adult making your way in the world
because you’d be off-balance from LSD
and I was you know raised to be scared
of these substances until I read one
floor of the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
and the book was fantastic and a friend
of mine said that some of that book was
written while he was under the influence
of LSD so I really you know couldn’t
believe that and that made me start
questioning what I’d been told and then
as a college freshman in 1971 and then
early in 72 starting to take LSD for the
first time and seeing that what I’d been
taught was bunches of propaganda and
that there was this possibility of
feeling more connected and not just fee
thinking about it but feeling it in a
very deep and profound way
I sort of woke up to the value of
psychedelics as the backlash was coming
down backlash against the 60s and drugs
were criminalized and research was shut
down and I felt like here’s this tool
that does seem to help people have the
sense of connection and then it has
implications for everything you know for
the environmental movement for civil
rights movement for religious tolerance
for women’s rights it just felt like if
you can focus on consciousness change
towards opening towards spirituality I
mean even what you’re talking about the
human experience if we can understand
that the human experience is really of
life and death and growth and love and
children that the deaths transcends all
these other ways that we try to divide
ourselves and then you know the other
part was growing up at a time of going
to the moon and then eventually seeing
the Earth from moon those you know the
pictures of the whole earth it just felt
like there was something fundamentally
healing both individually and culturally
and on a planetary basis of that kind of
unit of experience and for me it didn’t
really come from my Burma spa it really
felt like the psychedelics were the way
for me and also for many people and so I
felt alright I’m probably gonna go to
jail for being a draft resister I can’t
have a normal job but these tools have
been demonized like you were right you
were ready you’re ready to go to jail
over the Maps Institute and you you were
ready to do what you had to do to I mean
is that is that an accurate yeah yeah I
mean this is even when I was 18 I mean I
didn’t start maps you know for another
14 years but the the idea was that
through my family I felt like I could
get survival support and that I was a
counterculture drug use
criminal that’s how at age 18 I
identified myself and I was willing to
go to jail and I thought that was
happening but you know sometimes you
project omnipotence on the system when
the system is just enormous ly complex
and incompetent and you know it turned
out 60,000 people never registered for
the draft and you know people would
shoot themselves in the foot or hurt
themselves in any number of different
ways or run away to Canada or do all
sorts of things to get out of going to
Vietnam and the most simple thing if you
just didn’t send in your postcard at the
very beginning to say hey I register for
the draft nothing happened it’s like you
know the emperor has no clothes in that
way and so that was a relief for me and
you know President Carter the first day
in office pardoned all the draft
resisters so I feel like the arc of my
life is trying to move from
counterculture drug using criminal to
being a mainstream drug using legal law
abiding citizen and so so dr. dr. dull
and it seems like if you’ve touched on a
lot on what psychedelics can offer the
society and you’re definitely an expert
and you have changed the face of
psychedelic research throughout your
career and given the current trajectory
of the research where would you see
psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in
five years or 10 years or 20 years down
the line what’s the future for this for
this type of research okay thank you for
that question – so we feel like right
now
20:21 is when we’ll have mdma-assisted
psychotherapy approved by FDA of course
we have to you know raise many many
millions of dollars and we have to train
more therapists and the results of our
studies have to turn out as we
anticipate but in around five years we
think that well six years we think that
we’ll have MDMA approved as a
prescription medicine and also the
heffter Research Institute will have
solace
I’ve been approved for people with
anxiety related to cancer so once you
get some medical permission for use of
psychedelic assisted psychotherapy it’s
not going to be like a normal medicine
it’s going to be only people with
certain training are gonna be able to
prescribe it and then it may also be
limited at least initially to only
certain kind of clinics so like
methadone initially you had to go to
clinics to get it or kidney dialysis
centers because what we’re saying into
the FDA is that it’s not the drugs that
are the healing it’s the drug assisted
psychotherapy combination so we’re gonna
have to create contexts that are like
the research context that combine
pharmacology the drugs and the
psychotherapy so then I think starting
in 2021 we’re gonna be establishing a
network of psychedelic clinics and I
think other people will be able to start
their own clinics it’s not like we’re
gonna have a monopoly on these clinics
and they’ll eventually these clinics
will be not just an MDM a clinic or a
psilocybin clinic they’ll be people that
are cross trained in how to administer
MDMA or administer psilocybin and these
clinics the best model for that so far
in history for me is the hospice centers
so in 1974 was the first hospice where
people could have a different approach
towards dying outside of a hospital
where their pain is taken care of but
they’re now no longer being medicalized
trying to just extend their life one
more day they’re just being permitted to
die in a more graceful way so by 2024
but by excuse me 2004 30 years later
there was 3,500 hospice centers so I
think once we get psychedelics approved
as prescription medicines in 2021 then
there’ll be a period of 10 20 years of
the clinics spreading throughout America
and Europe and elsewhere in the world
and then I think we’re gonna have a
population that’s
really educated properly that
understands the risks and benefits and
then will start moving towards really
fully ending prohibition and ending this
whole concept that the government should
step in between you and whether you take
a certain so yeah I love this vision I
love what you’re talking about I agree
with it and there does seem to be the
sort of ayahuasca movement that I see
happening with psychedelics people who
are waking up to that but just to bounce
around cuz I I kind of want to explore
your journey and the battles and
internal things for you what do you
think in European was the hardest thing
that you had to overcome in this journey
that you’re on well in a way the hardest
is that I identified being a
counterculture drug using criminal and
so trying to think of myself as not
somebody on the outside you know raising
this issue that everything would be
better if psychedelics were just legal
and available to people but starting to
think of myself as part of the
mainstream because I care and that I see
that a lot now too as circumstances are
changing you know ayahuasca has spread
throughout the society a lot of its uses
technically not religious so it’s
technically not legal but still it’s
being used by people throughout the
culture and people’s attitudes are
changing dramatically and trying to
think about what is the goal I mean I
think part of the 60s was Timothy Leary
the whole counterculture that you know
that there was something essentially
radical about psychedelics and
psychedelic users challenging the status
quo and it could never really be
incorporated into society and so I
bought into that initially you know I
was gonna be an underground psychedelic
therapist and try to bring it back but I
didn’t know that that would be possible
so I think sort of letting go of that
romance
rebellious idea that I’m the one on the
outside that knows the right thing to do
that’s been really difficult the the
other part for me that’s been difficult
is learning how to be patient that
there’s just so much resistance and and
has been for so long to sustain the
focus I’ve had to really do a
fundamental sort of mental trick I guess
to say which is that instead of I first
get really frustrated about things I
would do and I’d be shut down and you
know efforts I would try that would be
blocked and then I had to redefine
success and so success for me became
trying what I thought was most important
and trying my best and whether it worked
or not it’s beyond me it’s it’s a big
cultural issue and it’s dependent upon
so many other factors out of my control
but if my success was dependent upon
actually achieving what I was trying for
I would have been frustrated and burned
out a long time ago so figuring that out
that that just trying hard and trying as
best I could and not so much being
attached to the outcomes and just
thinking at least in my own little life
this is what I’m trying this is what I
value and that’s all I can do and at the
end of the day if I was happy of what I
did that day then whether the work was
on something that was being blocked or
not that it was still a successful day
that there was one time about 15 years
ago where I was so frustrated that I
just had to stop work for a week and
paint my house and I was just so glad
that I could do something that you know
I could see that I was actually making a
difference and you know I’d go to bed at
night I’d say yeah okay I painted this
wall or I did so after that week of
painting the house I kind of recovered
my mood and was able to go back and
start trying to get permission again for
psychedelic research dr. Delman around
the same around the same lines of what
you
just talking about about wanting to be
an underground psychedelic therapist
when you were younger I’m sure there are
a lot of people in their 20s now that
are also going through that phase with
this resurgence of psychedelic research
but it seems like now you have created
kind of a framework for those people to
be able to actually get careers in those
in the psychedelic research field so
what would you what would you like to
tell the the generation the next
generation of people that want to become
psychedelic researchers and what they
what they would have to do in a way to
to get into that that specific career
path that’s a yes well I think first
time n you realize this but that maybe a
lot of people don’t realize that there’s
been roughly 50 years of work since say
1965 to make it so that the young
generation you’re now the first
generation in 50 years that if you want
to have an aboveground career in
psychedelic research psychedelic
psychotherapy that you have that
possibility it’s incredible how long
it’s taken but that you are a generation
that really can imagine an aboveground
career in this field so then the second
thing to say is that in order to make
psychedelics into medicines it’s a very
narrow pathway and the FDA basically is
saying you need to prove safety and
efficacy but you don’t need to know how
it works
you don’t need mechanism of actions to
make a drug into a medicine so we’re
focusing mostly on studies in patients
and other groups as well but there is a
whole area of neuroscience and how these
drugs actually work and how
consciousness is structured so that
there’s many many different ways that
people could become involved if they
wanted to and one of the most important
I think is therapeutic because we have
so many billions of people that are
traumatized at just life itself the
even people that are you know born into
healthy loving families
you know my aunt died of cancer when I
was four years old
you know everybody is exposed to certain
kind of traumas and and then we all need
therapy in different ways so I think
trying to become a psychedelic therapist
is the kind of training you should get
is just learning how to do regular
psychotherapy and particularly psycho
therapies that involve emotional
expression rather than emotional
suppression and also so there’s a lot of
value in cognitive behavioral therapy
but and and parts of that are used in
psychedelic psychotherapy but it goes
beyond just changing your ideas so I
think that people who want careers in
psychedelic psychotherapy could look at
the holotropic breathwork
hyperventilation a technique developed
by stan grof Gestalt therapy there’s
there’s a whole range of ways for people
learn about psychotherapy but then
there’s the neuroscience so if people
want to really start piecing apart what
is consciousness and how does
psychedelics help us understand that
that’s a whole area of research there’s
an incredible study ring being done
right now in Switzerland that’s
combining science nurse psychotherapy
and Zen meditation so for people that
are interested in meditation techniques
there’s this research is being done now
where lifelong meditators are being
given brain scans at the University of
Zurich before and after receiving
participating in about a eight-day Zen
meditation retreat during which time
they’ll get psilocybin and then they’ll
be evaluated for compassion altruism how
it affects their meditation practice and
what it does to their brains so there’s
this enormous potential of science and
religion coming together science
religion meditation spirituality so
people who want to even like pastoral
counseling or want to focus on
meditation there’s opportunities to do
that
you know or
even from a business point of view how
do you run these psychedelic clinics you
know it’s not the same as a
bed-and-breakfast but we kind of joke
that our research is like psychedelic
bed-and-breakfast because you know we
have a tower psychedelics therapy
sessions with a male-female Kythera
pused team and then we require the
patients to spend the night in the
treatment facility and then that’s for
them to have time out to reflect to
integrate and then the next day we serve
them breakfast and but then there’s more
hours with the psychotherapist so try to
which should be done so yeah that’s
ideal that’s the way to get the most out
of it and and even if you people are
doing it in recreational contexts if you
can give yourself the next day to rest
and reflect and think it over it’s like
an enormous gift to yourself to focus
not just on the experience but on the
integration of the experience so there’s
going to be thousands eventually of
these psychedelic clinics and they’ll be
all sorts of opportunities for different
careers and and part of this
understanding that psychedelics is
bringing to us is about the mind-body
connection that it’s really not so
separate and that before MDMA was
illegal in the late 70s early 80s there
were people that were doing
MDMA massage and focusing on emotional
expression so they there’s these like
syncretic careers you could imagine of
people that learn about massage and a
lot of times during massage sessions you
know they’ll be tensions in the body
that that when you release them there’s
kind of an emotional aspect to it and
when you do a massage when people are
under the influence of MDMA or you know
medium dose LSD or things like that
people are sort of supported and
nurtured to get deep down into their
psyche and then let out these kind of
feelings so they’ll be that kind of
combination you know mind-body work
that I think there’s opportunities for
people to to get involved in doing that
and even you know people just in terms
of rituals to try to create when people
are under the influence and we’ve got a
lot of thousands of years right where we
are jumping around here and you you’re
you’re kind of a segue artist you kind
of move through with the conversation
this is good
but who would you say in your opinion
and we’re approaching the end so who
would you say in your opinion is the
most influential person for you in your
life well I would have to say my parents
and Stan Grof and why
well my parent well okay I’ll say why
first and Roffe so when I was standoff
for those who are not familiar with his
work stanislav grof is 84 years old now
he’s still alive
he was a born in the czechoslovakia now
the Czech Republic and he wanted to
become a psychiatrist and in the 50s he
was working as a psychiatric resident in
a clinic where Sandoz pharmaceuticals
from Switzerland sent a bunch of LSD and
said hey this is incredible stuff it
could be useful in the training of
therapists because they’ll get a
temporary sense of what it’s like to be
insane
that’s how they saw LSD or it could
possibly have therapeutic applications
and so Stan ended up becoming the
world’s expert on the use of LSD
assisted psychotherapy and he helps
found transpersonal psychology which is
a field that’s an outgrowth of
humanistic psychology humanistic
psychology being about the human
potential and self-actualization and
then transpersonal psychology being
about self transcendence and the more
spiritual aspects and so when I was 17
years old at college and started trying
to do LSD and then I turned 18 and I
really didn’t have the emotional
capability to handle it properly I
wasn’t able to let my emotions flow I
had a lot of scary experiences I had an
intimation that this was really
helpful and useful and it was healing a
split that our society was way over
developed intellectually and
underdeveloped emotionally and
spiritually and so was I and so LSD was
kind of this tool of healing and but I
went to the guidance counselor at my
college and said I’m really having a
very difficult time with these trips and
I’m not sure if I want to stay in
college and he said here’s a book by
Stan Grof that I suggest you read and it
was a manuscript copy before it even
been published of a book called realms
of the human unconscious and when I read
that it all came together for me because
this was science this was healing this
was spirituality and it had the reality
testing of therapy our people actually
getting better and so I thought I would
reach out and I actually wrote a letter
to stand in 1972 and here even replied
back to me
and that’s kind of inspires me to try to
answer all my mail as well because Stan
said that there were no opportunities
the research was shut down I took a
workshop with stand in the summer of 72
a five-day workshop and just got really
inspired and then later in the 80s Stan
after the crackdown on LSD happened he
and his wife Christina were able to
develop a non drug technique through
hyperventilation to keep the work going
and to keep explaining about the use of
non-ordinary states of consciousness and
you know I just was with Stan I took him
to Israel for the first time in his life
they had a three-week tour through
Israel where he’s doing breath work
workshops and lectures and he’s just
been through China and through South
America so stan has been my sort of
intellectual spiritual mentor throughout
my life ever since I was 18
and I’d say my parents because when you
know I’m the oldest of four kids that
was the first one obviously to go to
college and then in my middle of my
first year I was like I want to drop out
and study LSD and I asked them to pay
for it and my dad was particularly
impressive because he said I think
making a mistake but I think if I don’t
help you you’re gonna stick with it
longer than you should just to prove to
me that it’s not a mistake and so if I
help you to do this you’re gonna realize
it’s a mistake sooner and then he said
you know and maybe just a shred of doubt
I have maybe you know what’s best for
you and so I found that I had this kind
of unconditional love from my parents
that even though I was going in a
complete different direction that they
didn’t want me to go in they still
helped me and so I feel like you know
both my father and Stan and my mother
you know really helped me forge this
whole direction of my life so it seems
like you’ve really given your life to a
psychedelic research now going back to
the data itself regarding the the
success rate of this type of therapy in
comparison to conventional therapy for
post-traumatic stress or or something
like that would you be able to tell us
what the data tells us about that
success rate yeah I’m psychedelic yeah
well the first thing to say is that we
only because for political and
scientific reasons the only people that
we have studied in our various research
projects around the world for
mdma-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD the
only people we’ve studied are those
people that have already failed to
achieve relief with currently legal
available options so they’re called
chronic treatment-resistant PTSD
patients we start with the hardest cases
because if you can show that you’re
helping the hardest cases that makes an
even stronger argument right so our
first study was 21 people mostly women
survivors of childhood sexual abuse and
adult rape and assault and they had had
PTSD for an average of over 19 and a
half years and they had failed on both
psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy and at
the end of our study over 80% of them no
longer had PTSD it was just remarkable
and people were astonished at
the results our current study now
another part is that the currently
available well we did a three and a half
year follow-up study after so the
question is do people just take
psychedelics the MDMA in particular they
have this beautiful experience and then
for a certain kind of time there’s an
afterglow and you know when that fades
and their problems come back or does
something fundamental happen while
they’re under the influence of MDMA that
really changes their brains and changes
their attitudes and the only way you can
really tell that is through a long term
follow-up so once we completed the study
we did a long-term follow-up and it was
an average of three and a half years
after the last MDMA session and only one
of these people had gone on to do MDMA
on their own and said to us that she
would never do that again because it was
not the safe supportive contact she had
experienced during the therapy and what
we found is that after three half years
on average the PTSD symptoms had even
declined a tiny bit more now some of
those people had relapsed meaning a few
of them had had trauma in their life
that caused them to re-establish these
unhealthy patterns of PTSD which meant
that the rest of the group got even
better and so we’ve gone back to the FDA
and we said could you give us permission
to give an extra MDMA session of these
people that were traumatized and they
said yes and 200 OHS three got better
again without having PTSD so that’s the
results from our first study and the
normal treatments for PTSD but the non
drug therapies cognitive behavioral
therapy
prolonged exposure cognitive
reprocessing therapy there’s there’s a
series of non drug psychotherapies and
they have a pretty good success rate of
40 50 percent or so but they have very
high dropout rate to a large number of
people again somewhere in the
neighborhood of 44 50 percent can’t do
the therapy because when you start
talking about the trauma it’s just reach
it’s too painful so we’ve now just
finished a new study the first study as
I mentioned mostly in women this study
now mostly in men it’s 24 subjects and
it’s veterans firefighters and police
officers with chronic
treatment-resistant PTSD we didn’t think
that we would actually get any
firefighters or police officers we knew
he could get veterans because there were
so many veterans coming back from Iraq
and Afghanistan with PTSD but for
political reasons we said okay we’re
gonna say it’s also for first responders
firefighters and police officers in the
end we did get 20 veterans three
firefighters including one who was from
New York who was involved in 9/11 and
one police officer and we only had two
people drop out of the study and so
that’s a much much lower dropout rate
but the reason that one of them dropped
out is that after one session and this
was even 75 milligrams they felt so much
better they didn’t need to be in the
rest of the study so they dropped that
because they were cured and then the
other person that dropped out was
somebody who got the low dose so we’re
comparing high dose medium dose and low
dose and this person got the low dose
and what we found is 25 or 30 milligrams
has an anti therapeutic effect you kind
of get activated a little bit but your
fear of difficult emotions is not
reduced so we have a tremendously low
dropout rate and more and more what
people are using scientists and
statisticians are using a measure called
effect size and so that’s the because if
you have a very small effect but a very
large number of subjects you can get
statistically significant results so
statistical significance has been the
measure that has been mostly used and a
lot of people know about
oh this was statistically significant or
not but that doesn’t tell you the the
depth of the experience of the
therapeutic benefits when effect size is
a new measure so we’ve looked at all of
our studies and now we we’ve come
studies in Switzerland – in the US we’ve
got two more going in or one more going
in the US and Canada and Israel and our
effect size is over one which means it’s
a very large effect size so the
statistics are great and we’re we’re
about to in early 2016 go to FDA and say
we would like you to consider this a
breakthrough therapy and breakthrough
therapies are for serious or
life-threatening diseases for which
there’s a patient population that other
available techniques have not helped so
that’ll be both science and politics
whether we’ll get breakthrough therapy
but the the the clinical results that
we’re getting justify in our view
breakthrough therapy and the effect
sizes are large and the safety profile
is great so I should add that you know
we hear stories about people overheating
at raves they take MDMA they overheat
and they die and sadly that does happen
and it’s fundamentally different though
the risk profile in a clinical setting
so doctor Dublin around those lines you
know there are people that you know
hearing about this research will go out
and try to engage with these experiences
in a non clinical setting what would you
say is the best way to equip those
people to better engage with those
experiences using psychedelics in a non
clinical setting well we have what’s
called the treatment manual that
describes our therapeutic approach and
tries to standardize it and that’s
posted for free on the maps website so I
think if people can understand how these
drugs are used in therapy that will be
really effective the other thing sadly
to say is that our our government
approach our system of prohibition which
is falling apart but it’s still in
existence is a harm maximization system
the design the the purpose of these war
on drugs is to make life worse for the
drug users so people won’t want to do it
and one of the main ways is that people
no longer can have any
that if something is sold as MDMA or
ecstasy or Molly it may have no MDMA in
it at all and so I think that people
have to be equipped with a healthy
degree of skepticism and doubt about
what it is that they’re actually getting
and what they think they’re getting may
be completely different so ecstasy data
org is a project run by erowid yarrow wi
d org and dan safe Maps help start it so
there’s a way to send in pills to be
analyzed
so I think that’s a big part but the
other part to equip people is to really
recognize that what your attitude is
makes a big difference so that if you
look at these experiences as just a
party drug just for fun the same is you
know whether it’s MDMA or LSD or
anything like that that part of the
psyche is working through difficult
issues that it’s not like when people
have what’s called people sometimes
called a bad trip you know and think
they just got unlucky it’s inevitable
and people that are working with their
psyche with psychedelics you will
inevitably have challenging difficult
things and that’s actually to be welcome
that’s instead of suppressed now it’s
coming to the surface but if your
attitude is I only want to have a good
time I’m only doing this for fun when
something difficult comes if you try to
suppress it it makes it worse that’s
very much the difference between a bad
trip and a hard trip right that’s
exactly one of the things that we say
about our so we have a zendo project
that works at Burning Man and other
festivals around the world to try to
help people who have difficult
experiences with psychedelics and we
said one of our principles is difficult
is not the same as bad right and so if
you go to our website and look at the
zendo project of the psychedelic harm
reduction there’s a lot of principles
there that apply to therapy but also to
taking these out of therapeutic settings
yeah Rick I think sincerely appreciate
your time sir you are a very cool person
where can where can people find more
about maps and and find find you well
one of the ways is through our website
maps org and you know what’s pretty
hilarious is around nineteen ninety-four
maps was about I think it was like
number six six hundred website in the
whole world
and this this fella called me up and he
said that he’d had this tragic situation
of his son dying in a motorcycle crash
and the only way he could work through
that he found MDMA pretty helpful and he
wanted to donate and give back and he
wanted to give maps a website and my
first response was once a website so so
we’ve been accumulating information on
our website you know for more than
twenty years so we have an enormous
wealth of information on maps org and I
suggest to people go to that there’s
also a list of conferences and events
that are taking place we’ve had large
international conferences that we call
psychedelic science in 2010 and 2013
we’re gonna have another big one in
April of 2017 where we bring psychedelic
researchers from all over the world and
this will be in Oakland California and
you know I make various public talks
around the country and around the world
and all of that people could learn about
on the maps website and we also have a
free email newsletter that comes out
about once a month that you could sign
up for or our Facebook page and we have
an incredibly talented social media team
so there’s all sorts of information
available on our Facebook page and our
Twitter and you know we try to really
recognize that while the therapy is
crucial and we’re trying to you know
make MDMA and other psychedelics in
marijuana into prescription medicines
the public education part is really the
most crucial because the attitude of the
public either will produce support for
politicians who want to suppress this or
support for politicians and regulators
who want to open the door and I think
that there’s just as an example though
Marie Claire the women’s magazine we’re
particularly reaching out to women and
Mo
and Families because they have a lot of
fears about their children and this
September issue with Miley Cyrus on the
cover it’s just starting to hit
newsstands it has a terrific article
about our MDMA PTSD reasons amazing yeah
yeah I think you know we’re breaking
into these sort of mainstream media
outlets and they’re actually saying
positive things instead of you know
let’s suppress all of this so the
culture is changing but I really think
it’s in the hands of young people as to
whether this is really going to produce
a society where we’ve integrated
psychedelics and the experiences that
they produce because really it’s not
about psychedelics it’s about ourselves
and psychedelics are just doorways into
ourselves and into our deeper spiritual
selves and the world is coming together
it’s a time of globalization it’s a time
where we need global spirituality we
need to replace fundamentalism with
mysticism and if and it’s clear that my
generation we’ve made some openings but
we’re not going to be able to see it all
the way through and so that’s where I’m
so encouraged that younger generations
will come to appreciate this and maybe
some people will also devote their lives
to psychedelic psychotherapy and and to
these kind of nurturing experiences to
help our human race you know find a way
to survive on this planet rather than
Israel yeah a lot to think about and I
think that anyone listening to this
program is in the direction of what
you’re saying Rick I truly appreciate
your time damiana do you want anything
to stay here at the end man well just
thank you so much I actually got to meet
you in San Francisco at the Stanislav
Grof
book launch and it was yeah it was a
pleasure so it’s great to spend an hour
with you thank you so much for for
giving us this opportunity oh yeah no
I’m so glad that you gave me this
opportunity to reach out to all the
group this is the human experience my
name is Xavier and we will see you guys
next week