November 9, 2019 • 40 mins
Hallucinogenic drugs are currently illegal, but they were once commonly used in psychological treatment. In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the rise and fall of psychedelics in treating mood disorders -- and why they're starting to gain favor again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen can we treat
mental illness with psychedelics? Spoiler alert The answer is a big,
big yes. This is one of those neat pieces of
history where things just kind of fell out of place
for something important, and we also have the rare luxury
(00:21):
of seeing where it went wrong and exactly who was responsible.
So enjoy this really interesting episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. WHOA and welcome to the podcast.
(00:44):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheek, Bryant Cheech. Yeah, man, yeah,
I wanted to start this one out like a twelve
year old, so that's when I'm going with a twelve
year old on acid maybe maybe, which has happened before
in France. Actually really thanks to our old friends the
c I A. Oh, they dosed kids. They just a
(01:05):
whole town wow to see what would happen. And one
kid came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her.
Really yeah, I can't remember the name of the town.
I can see you would find that funny, but well,
no people were like showing up at the hospital. There
a lot of it was funny and that like, you know,
all these nineteen fifties frenchees are losing their stuff for
(01:26):
no apparent reason, right, right, but you know the suicides
that resulted from that not very funny. Before we get started,
I think we should do like an official c o
A for this one. I think that is a very
good idea because what Josh and I are about to
talk about are illegal drugs. But we just find it
fascinating that they used to be used for certain things
(01:48):
and they're starting to be used again in certain scientific
research labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating, which
is what we're talking about, right exactly. I guess this
could be a follow up to our our mk Ultra cast.
It's a follow up and uh it's an epilogue and
a prologue. Yes, yeah, very nice because we kind of
came into the the c I A L. S D
(02:10):
MK Ultra podcast like right in the middle of the
history of LSD pretty much well towards the beginning, but
um one of the things after when Albert Hoffman, right,
the chemist who created LSD L tried it. Yeah, it
was attempt uh, and tried it on himself intravenously. As
(02:35):
I understand it, he injected it. We always says, first
he took it by mistake, yeah, because it was a
blood thinner. And then he took it for real. Yeah.
After that first bike ride home he was like, I
gotta do some more. And then I read his quote, please,
I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence
of nature. Yes, to create Dr Hoffman. Yeah, and he
was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist. Um. He was
(02:58):
at the first person to come up with a synthetic
hallucin Jim back in nineteen fourteen, a German chemist who
worked for Merk the pharmaceutical company, came up with M
d M A better known as ecstasy that far back. Uh. Yeah,
And here's a tip for you, chuckers Um. Anytime, according
to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug
(03:21):
and use it by its designer name, capitalize it. So
ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking
about the drug, Yes, and not just the euphoric feeling
you get from life. That's different. That's a lower case okay,
but it should be all caps. Yeah. Sure, so it
was nineteen that m d M A was created. Yeah,
(03:44):
and it was. Um, I guess it served as a
it's not a catalyst, because I think it's changed, but
it was to be used in the synthesis of other chemicals.
And it kind of sat on the shelves for a
little while until somebody along the way and then I
wonder what happens if I take this stuff? And they did,
(04:04):
and the CIA again looked at it. I wanted to
see what it could do, passed it up. Um, and
a guy by the name of Alexander Shulgin right, Yes,
he's a dow chemist. And in eight at the age
of seventy four, he published a study on the uthork
(04:25):
effects of m d m A. It was the first
time anyone had ever published a study here. But he
was seventy four and he first noticed the uthork effects
because he liked to take it and go to cocktail parties. Yeah. Um,
so he's like, hey, man, this stuff is the bomb,
and here's my study on it. Here that my findings,
(04:45):
and let's everybody start taking this. So he starts giving
it to his friends, Um, including some psychiatrists. Did he
give out passifiers? Not yet, that's coming though. That's very
very close past fires came about UM. So Shilgin gives
them to a friend who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist some of
(05:08):
the more avant garde psychiatrists UM start giving it to
their patients, and then it gets called ADAM. For a
little while while this is going on, it is being
used by established psychiatrist. A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas
finds out about this stuff and starts taking it, hires
an underground chemist and has it made himself, and then
(05:31):
start selling it at clubs all over Dallas. And so this,
this illicit use of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence
on the club scene and about the mid eighties led
to the outlaw of M D M A. We'll get
into it more, but the point is to this very
(05:52):
long and rambling intro, both of these drugs and others
were legal at one time, were put to good use,
beneficial use, and then outlawed, possibly unfairly, and then now
we're starting to see them come back into use, hallucinogens
(06:12):
being used to treat mental illness and mental harm in
legitimate circles, very legitimate. Quick question was that Dallas person
was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. I don't know. I
don't think anybody knows who it is. Still gotta start
maybe probably, I think to begin with So, Josh, you
(06:32):
mentioned the c I A. I do want to point
out it wasn't just the Americans, Uh, the Canadian government
and British's British's It Works. Britain's m I six also
experimented with LSD and between ninety and sixty five, forty
people all over the world had been treated with LSD
(06:55):
in treatments. Yeah, um, Carrie Grant, Yeah, can we go
back to Hollywood In the nineteen yoursis so, a couple
of guys set up shop. Arthur Chandler. What was the
other guy's name, Oh, Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman, who was
a radiologist, took acid and said, you know, I'm gonna
(07:18):
get into psychiatry. These guys set up a shop called
the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills right in the middle
of Beverly Hills. And this is back in the day
when things were it was clean living going on, aside
from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked, adultery. Probably
some marijuana use going on here there, but that was
(07:41):
among the hopheads, Yeah, exactly. So he sets up a
couple of rooms with a couch and uh starts booking
patients at a rate of like six or eight hours
of session, depending on what was going on with the person,
and five days a week. There were books solid hundred
bucks of pop Hunter, which is a lot of any
back then. And I guess that included the drugs. The
(08:03):
drugs and the time that you were there. So they
would sit with you, they would give you some blinders
to block out distractions, and then you would go into
sort of like the more meditative sort of acid trip.
Essentially you were tripping hard would because you were on
pharmaceutical grade LSD produced by the Sandoz company. We're talking
(08:25):
about Alice Huxley, novelist, and actually he died tripping. Did
you know that? Really? Yeah, he was. He had um
throat cancer, I think, and uh, the last thing he
ever wrote was a note to his wife requesting um
such and such milligrams of LSD or micrograms of LSD
injected intramuscular intramuscularly really, and that was about six hours
(08:50):
before he died. So he died tripping and a grateful
Dead record. That was his last request before the Grateful
der Uh. Screen screenwriter Charles Brackett took it. Director Sidney
Lament as it lay or Lament I think okay. I
always said may, but I think I'm wrong. He took
(09:11):
it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful.
He re experienced his own birth, which apparently a few
people did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either.
And um Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to
Time magazine publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador
and possibly an agent um for the US government, and
(09:31):
they both took acid so much that Henry Loose and
Time Magazine said we need to write about this. This
is awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of good press that
Time Magazine gave LSD in the fifties, um as a
basically a cure. All Um, and again, Carrie Grant got
into it big time. Apparently he had like at least
(09:51):
a hundred trips. I believe. Yeah he was. Yeah, let's
talk about him for a second, because he was one
of these guys that carefully constru truct did his persona.
He worked very hard apparently he was the The line
he always gave was a lot of people want to
be carried grant, and I'm one of them, indicating that
this suave, Mr cool persona was completely fabricating, created by
(10:15):
himself so he could get you know, the fame and everything,
but deep down he suffered as a human until he
started taking acid, right, and then he had um, well,
he had some pretty interesting revelations, one of which I
read one of the somebody thought to write down the
(10:36):
stuff that he Some of the insights he had, um,
some were kind of deep. Others were like, if I
have to look at a man, he should be required
to comb his hair and brush his teeth and wear
a clean shirt. Yes, it was interesting, so it kind
of ran the gamut. But yeah, he um he became
(10:57):
a real devotee of l s D. He's yeah, and
um well she got him into it, right. I think
who wrote that We're we're part of this. We're basing
this part on a Vanity Fair article art. Yeah. Um,
it's called the Carrying the Sky with Diamonds. But he
was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only one, um,
(11:20):
but he lived to see it outlawed and public sentiment
turn against it, right, just like m D, m a UM, pilocybin, magic,
mushrooms and part of the well really one of the
You could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led
to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who
(11:42):
might otherwise have been helped by LSD with his his
naive bravado of you know, the establishment just needs to
get over its hang ups and we should all take acid.
Whether or not you agree that that's a good idea,
it's a stupid thing to say. Leary was originally a
Harvard side chiatrist, right, yes, and he started taking I
(12:03):
think mushrooms and then he eventually started taking LSD and
was fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. Yeah,
and um, that was pretty much the beginning of the
end of LSD. Yeah, they may have continued to use
LSD as treatment for mental patients, mental illness and depression
(12:24):
if not for Timothy Leary, who was trying to spread
the word about acid. That's right. Uh, back to carry
Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh. He
had a couple of stories written about him in nineteen
fifty nine and Look magazine, the Curious Story behind the
New Carry. Grant gave a glowing account of LSD and
then this is the best the following year the Good
(12:47):
Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval
in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it the
Secret of Grant's Second youth. I want to get a
copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah?
And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast
is so weird that these things were considered incredibly wonderful
and benign um and now they're they're just viewed as
(13:11):
just so they're evil and their outlaws simply because they
were made illegal right prohibited um. And again there's kind
of a movement toward saying, hey, you know, maybe Timothy
Leary did give this a bad name. Maybe that that
um underground chemist in Dallas, uh really kind of put
(13:32):
a terrible spread on this, and we should look at
these again, right, she cannot tell one more story? Yes?
From Hollywood of the nineteen sixties. Yes, Esther Williams, famous
UH diva actress from the n g M studio friend
of Carrie Grants, called Carrie Grant up after these articles
and said, Hey, can you introduce me to your doctor,
Dr Hartman? He did so. At the time, she was aging,
(13:54):
just had gone through a divorce, Her husband left her
with huge debt with the I R S. And she
was still struggling with the death of her sixteen year
old brother. She goes in the office, she takes acid,
does her session, goes home to her parents, still on acid,
has dinner with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror,
(14:18):
says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror,
and I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled by
a split image one half of my face, the right
half was me, the other half was the face of
a sixteen year old boy. The left side of my
upper body was flat and muscular. I reached up with
my boys hand to touch my right breast and felt
my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I
(14:42):
understood perfectly in that moment. When my brother died, I
took him into my life so completely he became part
of me. Yeah, that's a pretty huge thing to understand
and pretty jarring way to come to terms with that, right. Yeah,
but that's what they're finding out now though, is that
these people are having these breakthroughs in the throes of
their final days of let's say cancer, and they have
(15:05):
these epiphanies. So LSD is outlawed. We're following a timeline here. Yes,
(15:29):
LSD is outlawed in I think sixty five something like that.
UM at the very at the latest nineteen seventy they
shut down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah, and Sandos
stopped making it and it got it was outlawed and
pushed underground. M D m A made it until and
M D m A story is linked very closely to
(15:50):
a guy named Dr George Quarte, who is JOHNS. Hopkins researcher.
This floored me so in about the time the UM
D e A is reeling from being caught totally unaware
by the crack epidemic. Uh and basically a lot of
people think looking for a whipping post um they they
(16:15):
start considering outlawing M D m A. At that moment,
this guy, Dr George roccarde Um publishes a study that
he says, this drug deplete your serotonin levels permanently, causing
brain damage. Right, it can kill you. Yeah, Well that
that didn't that came. So this guy, who is unknown
(16:37):
at the time, publishes the study, starts to get UM
National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically this is
his job. He starts a career UM creating scientific evidence
in favor of banning drugs leads to the outlaw of
m d M. A right. That wasn't quite enough. They
(16:59):
scheduled it. Uh. The FEDS went after m d M
A even harder, and in two thousand two they came
up with this thing called the Rave Act. It's um,
what does rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy?
I wonder how long they sat around looking at the
word rave, saying we've gotta make it fit, Yeah, to
(17:20):
make it fit Yeah. So um, the the Rave Act
basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody
gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club,
we're going to shut down your club. It was a huge,
huge law, and it was bolstered by another UM another
study by Dr George rocquarde Um that found that he
(17:43):
tested on ten monkeys one he injected them with m
d M a UM, A bunch of them went psychotic.
Some of them UM showed early signs of Parkinson's all
of a sudden, and two of them died almost immediately
after being injected. So people started asking questions about this, like,
what what are you talking about? People have been taking
(18:04):
this drug forever and this has never happened. So they
started kind of going after recording and UM, they found
out that he had actually injected him with methamphetamine. The
first thing that tipped them off as he injected him,
because people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy, so
that's kind of a weird way to do it. And
then they found out it was methamphetamines, which he blamed
(18:28):
on a mislabeling of a drug shipment which they traced
back and they went the label right here. Yeah, the
drug providers like, don't blame must, it's pretty clear. So
this is by this time, the Rave Act has already
passed her and the Rave Act didn't get past but
something that included that UM was passed by that time.
The study that recorded a produced was pretty was published
(18:50):
in Science, the journal Science. Like that's as hyebrow as
you get as far as scientific journals. Um, And finally
he gets beaten up and up that he he prints
a full retraction came clean. The Science runs this retraction
saying the whole, the whole study that I produced just
forget it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much, No,
(19:12):
it doesn't. That's very unusual. So record A I get
the impression is kind of this. Um, well, it just
kind of seems like the scientific community views him largely
as a shill to the government. Yeah. Um. There's a
couple of articles that he shows up in on a
Reason and Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And you know,
the other interesting thing about that whole story about the
(19:35):
big fake study he did with meth amphetamines as ecstasy
is that the Parkinson's Foundation, the people Parkinson's researchers, said,
I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much
sense to us either, that they would show signs of
Parkinson's right, so they looked into it. People went about
reproducing his study. Yeah. Um, and the people who run
(19:57):
the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying ecstasy does
not do this, So they basically came out in favor
of ecstasy. It's kind of neat to watch from the
outside because there's this guy who's again kind of viewed
as a shill for the government who's beating up on
this drug that a lot of people who are also
(20:18):
in the scientific community feel is being unfairly outlawed, and
so there's kind of beating up on him in retaliation.
It's kind of neat to see eggheads beat up on
one another, NERD fights and the n I d A.
It went so far that the n I d A
just kind of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy
and I was like, Um, let's just take this down
(20:38):
off the website. After the retraction, we'll rewrite it. I'm
sure it's back up now as something else. Yeah, but
it doesn't include immediate death and Parkinson's disease. I would
imagine that's right. So Timothy Larry dies, he gets shot
into space, he's out of the picture entirely. Everybody gets
sick of hippies generally. Yeah, Um, George Record is basically
(21:02):
the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy outlawed. His work
comes into great, great question, and people start going back
and looking at M D m A again, and they
start looking at LSD again, and that's where we find
ourselves right now. Slowly but surely, people are starting to
run studies on whether or not you can use these
(21:23):
hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And the results are pretty
astounding actually, and you know where they're leading the charge
in Switzerland, in Los Angeles all these years later, same place, Yes,
hippie freaks. Yeah, so yeah, Josh, they are I think
in Switzerland. Uh, in Solo then Switzerland. They have been
(21:46):
experimenting with lsd um psilocybin, which you might know his
magic mushrooms. Yes, ketamine you might know, a special k.
That kind of surprised me that that was in there. Yeah,
I hadn't heard much about that one either. And getting
these uh, these studies published in Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, and
other you know, leading industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah, it's
(22:10):
not all under the table back room experiments. Oh no,
these are very heavily um overseen. You have to be
a very legitimate researcher to get government approval. They're not
funded though still there's they say they're still having a
hard time with funding, and they're just they're sort of
looking to get some restrictions loosen. They're not saying make
all this stuff legal, right, They're not battling a legalization
(22:33):
on the legalization front at all. But what they're one
of the reason why so many people are kind of
starting to put their reputations on the line. Um, it's
because the results that they're seeing. So we have antidepressants, right, UM,
they take weeks to kick in, they have all sorts
of side effects. And what they're what we're seeing in
(22:55):
these studies now, are that the the things like ketamine,
uh m d m A, LSD are having like a
huge impact right out of the gate. There's one study,
um that came out in July, I believe, UM, and
it found it was a study of twelve people who
were diagnosed with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's
(23:16):
one of the big ones. Yeah, that's huge that they're
looking at. UM. That's where you well, it's what we
used to call shell shock. You go through traumatic experience
and you relive it over and over again. UM, and
it's it's debilitating. Um. They found that of the twelve
people in the study, ten of them, after going through
(23:36):
the study, UM, after taking M D m A no
longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterwards.
Ten of the twelve. Yeah, and for my understanding, and
most of these studies is it's not like you have
to stay on ecstasy your whole life, Like a lot
of people have these epiphanies and they quit taking it
and they have changed their outlook and that right, Yeah,
(23:57):
that's the impression I'm getting to. Um, Ketamine's good for
depression in the same way. Um, just a very tiny
dose I can get you over severe clinical depression. Or
that's the results, the early results, we should say, yeah,
um and everything from quitting smoking two suicidal thought, Yeah,
(24:17):
cluster headaches Harvard studying. Those are migraines for men, right,
what they called my migraines. I think I know they're
so debilitating that you consider suicide or you know not
everyone does obviously, but it's just this awful, awful pain.
You can't leave your house, you get to sit in
a dark room, and so it's helping there. And um,
what I thought was interesting Johns Hopkins, you might have
(24:40):
heard of them, a little reputable institutions required is from
was it they did an experiment where they gave psilocybin
too emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even people that
were mentally ill, people that had never taken hallucinogens before,
which is interesting that you would be. I think they
had a sixty four year old that signed up for this. Yeah,
(25:01):
it's crazy, and they said a sixty four and they
said the experiment. A year later, they said the experience
is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences of
their entire lives, and that those were mentally stable folks,
And this is a year on it's still had an
impact on them. UM. They're also finding that UH O,
(25:24):
c D and basically mood disorders are the primary target
of hallucinogenic treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment, and the reason being,
we think, is because they target serotonin in the brain.
This is another reason why they're not addictive. They don't
they don't employ the reward circuit in the brain, which
(25:45):
is how we become addicted to things were flooded with dopamine. Member,
it just affects the mood circuits in the right serotonin.
And we don't really have a very good grasp on
serotonin and exactly how that works, but we do know
that UM, there's correlations between uh high levels of serotonin
or low levels of serotonin and depression, right, and we
(26:09):
know that UM using antidepressants which block the reuptake of
serotonin UM reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people. So
we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We know that
the more serotonin you have, the better generally or low
serotonin's bad. Uh. And then we also know that hallucinogens
(26:29):
target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands
right now. It makes you wonder where would we be
if LSD and m d m A hadn't been in
the wilderness for the last few decades. Well, yeah, they
may have a pill, like a low dose pill, because
a lot of these studies, just so you know, back
in carry Grand State, that mean it was full, full
on acid trips. But a lot of these, like the
(26:51):
psilocybin pills, they will give you be very low dose.
So I don't I get the feeling that it's not
like this huge mushroom trip that a lot of patients
are going through because it said I think of the
people recognized when they did not have the placebo. So
if it wasn't then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes,
(27:11):
it would be. My guess, um, would you if if
everything was legalized UM and M D m A came
to be prescribed for just happiness, right, would you take it?
Would you take a happy pill that was legal and
(27:32):
didn't have side effects? Not to say m d M
A doesn't have side effects, there's a um like basically
the three days after a depression that follows when your
serotonin levels are repleting themselves. I don't think I would
because there are quote unquote happy pills now. And I
mean it's not like I'm against anti depressants or things
(27:52):
like that, because people definitely benefit from those who need them.
But I just I don't need that kind of thing,
so I would not. Uh, I would not, sir, you
are not alone, Chuck. There is a survey conducted for
this BBC series on Britain of British people that found
that seventy of them said that they would not take
(28:14):
a happy pill it was legal and had no side effects.
It's interesting, yeah, because it kind of I think that
for a large segment of the population there's just the
idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, you know, yeah,
it's it's a little weird. I mean that's not to
say I'm a square and I don't like to get
(28:35):
down another aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right
now about literally the effect it has on your brain
and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've also found
that patients cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens, or
people with just um traumatic events from earlier in their life,
(28:58):
they have the ability to relive some of these memories
and events from their past. They can unlock buried traumatic episodes,
deal with them psychologically, put them to rest, and come
out the other side with a new understanding free from
these demons. Right. Um. You remember when in the hypnosis
episode where we were talking about how the way it's
(29:22):
viewed now is that you you are You're accessing the
subconscious eesah more easily. It's like popping open a control panel.
That's what this. This is what they're seeing with M
D m A. Apparently, Uh, you are able to access
things UM from a very empathetic way. I think the
(29:42):
term I've heard for it is called UM a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Yeah,
kick starts right things And I think one researcher called
it it's psychotherapy sped up. The psychiatrists call them. Yeah,
it's like psycho arap on acid L s D. Specifically,
(30:25):
hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's ever taken it.
And what's funny in this article that UM that's on
the site. Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? Tom
Sheaf has to go to the sixties psychedelic rock scene
to find examples of people who have had a bad,
(30:46):
bad time on acid. Uh, And apparently, what what the
conventional wisdom is if you are predisposed to mental illness,
LSD can exacerbate that. If you have a bad trip up,
you're going to have a really, really bad trip because
you're already predisposed to mental illness. Yeah, he's Brian Wilson
and Sid Barrett as the two examples, and those are
(31:08):
stellar examples, they really got to say. But they're also
counterintwo to what we're seeing with UM. Like PTSD, you
are already suffering from a mental illness. So here's some
m D m A right, Probably LSD would be horrible
to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, yeah, right, I
would say, so, UM And what else, Chuck, can we
(31:30):
talk about Pamela Secuda? Sure? Yeah, it's a very interesting story.
This was a woman UM aged fifty seven at the
time of this article, who was in the final stages
of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was
anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her husband,
(31:50):
and what they were going to do without her. It
was not a good life. She was living here at
the end and she was prescribed any depressants. Of course,
it didn't work, didn't do a thing for so she
volunteered for an experiment at u c l A in
two thousand five and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom
pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs. Uh.
(32:13):
They brought her husband in at the end of one
of the sessions and he said, there's my Pammy. She
was just beaming with light and I haven't seen her
that joyous and so long. She was totally alive and happy.
And she continued to take it until she didn't need
it anymore. She had these breakthroughs, and then all of
a sudden, her husband and uh, Pamela were going to concerts,
(32:36):
they went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations.
They did all these things that she hadn't been doing
in a long time. Because of these epiphanies she had
under the influence of psilocybin and sadly she died, well,
she had cancer. Yeah, she died. Yeah, that's what she
died from in two thousand six. And her husband said
(32:56):
she died in his arms. But her husband was very
a pre shive and they actually did a benefit about
a week before she died for the institute that was
doing this work at U c l A. So it's
pretty interesting. Yeah, the definitely, And one of the applications
that they're finding is end of life care for UM
using M D m A or LSD R PSILOCYBIN'M sure
(33:18):
we're special, k. Apparently what about this eyeba gain. They're
finding the eyeba gain works really well. Iber gain is
a UM it's from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa,
I believe UM. And they're finding that you go on
a thirty six hour trip. That's a long time. It's
a long time, but they're finding that it's really effective
(33:40):
in breaking UM addiction and like serious addictions to like heroin,
yeah and cocaine. So being on this stuff just for
thirty six hours creates a break in the addiction cycle itself.
But what they're finding this. Most notable about it is
it there's a lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see
in every other type of addiction removal. Yeah, especially with heroin.
(34:05):
Like heroin, you're supposed to have physical withdraw sintom withdrawal symptoms,
and people who are taking eyeba gain are not experiencing
that like they would if if they tried to kick
the habit without it. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is
very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should probably say, I
don't know if we have yet that this podcast is
in no way an endorsement of going out and buying
(34:28):
yourself some street drugs and you know, seeing what happens.
It's a study of what we finally be very fascinating.
The fact that this is there's been a resurgence in
this and these you know, qualified doctors U. C. L. A.
Johns Hopkins, they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah,
and they definitely are, and they're getting some very interesting results.
What about the A A guy, We should mention that
really quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill Wilson
(34:51):
yet one of the co founders of A A. Yeah,
he uh he apparently took LSD in the fifties, wasn't Yeah,
And this is after he was long after he was
sober from alcohol. Yeah, can found ance the thirties? I think, yeah. Um.
And so he takes LSD in the fifties and is like,
this is really helpful. Um, so I think everybody who
(35:14):
comes into a should take LSD. Uh. And they were like,
he should probably not do that, so they talked him
out of it. But the reason why he found it
helpful one is that hallucinogen's part of a twelve step
program is to really reflect on past wrongdoings and then
(35:35):
elucidate them to another human being. And apparently LSD, M
D M A UM, these other drugs help. They serve
as a catalyst for that process, so tap into that.
That's why Bill Wilson I thought this is this is
really helpful because again it'sycho therapy sped up, fascinating, very fascinating.
(35:55):
I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on
a limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh,
you should go out and do these things, I will
say that some chemically created in a lab pill called
an antidepressant, isn't I mean what's the difference. The difference
is I think, in my opinion from what I've seen, Uh,
(36:16):
one's marketed and legal and the other is illegal. Yeah,
it's as simple as that one is made by murk
and one is not made by murk but used to
make this, which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah,
you know, it's the same reason the alcohol. You can
go into a bar and get completely wasted out of
your mind and get in a car, but you can't
(36:38):
walk into a bar and smoke a joint or shoot
heroin or shoot heroin. And we're not labbying for anything.
It's just interesting that the things that society has deemed
acceptable alcoholism is just fine. Well it's not just fine,
but it's it's legal, and you can do it even
though it kills all these people, and this is not acceptable.
It's just it's funny how we've evolved to think things
(37:00):
are evil and some things are just great. I wonder
where the future holds, Josh, I wonder myself. We'll find out, Yes,
we will, if we lived that long. That is about
it for this one. You should probably check out Can
we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? On the site. Be
sure to check out Carrying the Sky with Diamonds Vanity
(37:21):
Fair article type in George Rick Quarte r I C
U A R T e uh into Reasons website that
will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time
magazine article from I think two thousand or two thousand
one um on ecstasy on M D M A uh
(37:42):
it was. That's really It's called the Happiness and a Pill.
I guess it's time now for listener mail, right, Yes,
I have a listener mail Josh from Rhea and this
was about octopus or octopi, but we were corrected octopies
not right, but she says it she worked at high
(38:03):
so right, well, we had all these people see and
actually the Latin thing Jerry just left at that. Hi, guys,
your podcast on Octopi made my day to day. Thank you.
I work as an aquarist at a San Francisco aquarium
and one of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery.
I get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make
(38:26):
sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble.
And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to
open a jar to get his favorite food, which is
live crabs. I'm right there with you fromstr octopus. Uh.
It was great to hear someone besides myself get a
little too excited about these critters. And you know, we've
got great feedback on this. People love the octopus because
(38:48):
they're so freaky. Uh. The story about Lucretia mc evil
especially cracked me up. I work with the g p O.
That's the giant Pacific octopod that might give her a
run for money. For the past few weeks, I've been
walking around with what my colleagues call octopus kisses up
the length of my arms. But I'm afraid my husband
is getting a little suspicious about the number of Vicky's
(39:09):
I've been acquiring. So that's from the little suckers. Those
little suckers clearly. Uh. These were given to me while
I tried to remove the individual from blocking the flow
to his tank and stop his flooding of the entire aquarium.
It's never a boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys.
Thanks for all the great podcast. If you're ever in
San Francisco, one of my favorite places, Josh, let me
(39:31):
know and I'll see if I can't work out some
behind the scenes cephalopod goodness. And that is from Rhea,
and she says, and don't worry, by the way, I
have trouble pronouncing hecto caudless as well and have taken
to calling in the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works, the spermacle.
(39:51):
That's what she says. She says, it's time to rename
that organ. Yes, well, thanks Rhea, right, yes, thank you.
My dad always said life is better with stuffalo pods
in it. Really yeah. Uh, if you have a fantastic
saying that your father, mother, grandfather, some old timing person
told you, we want to hear it, wrap it up
(40:13):
in an email, spank it on the bottom, and then
send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen can we treat
mental illness with psychedelics? Spoiler alert The answer is a big,
big yes. This is one of those neat pieces of
history where things just kind of fell out of place
for something important, and we also have the rare luxury
(00:21):
of seeing where it went wrong and exactly who was responsible.
So enjoy this really interesting episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. WHOA and welcome to the podcast.
(00:44):
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheek, Bryant Cheech. Yeah, man, yeah,
I wanted to start this one out like a twelve
year old, so that's when I'm going with a twelve
year old on acid maybe maybe, which has happened before
in France. Actually really thanks to our old friends the
c I A. Oh, they dosed kids. They just a
(01:05):
whole town wow to see what would happen. And one
kid came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her.
Really yeah, I can't remember the name of the town.
I can see you would find that funny, but well,
no people were like showing up at the hospital. There
a lot of it was funny and that like, you know,
all these nineteen fifties frenchees are losing their stuff for
(01:26):
no apparent reason, right, right, but you know the suicides
that resulted from that not very funny. Before we get started,
I think we should do like an official c o
A for this one. I think that is a very
good idea because what Josh and I are about to
talk about are illegal drugs. But we just find it
fascinating that they used to be used for certain things
(01:48):
and they're starting to be used again in certain scientific
research labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating, which
is what we're talking about, right exactly. I guess this
could be a follow up to our our mk Ultra cast.
It's a follow up and uh it's an epilogue and
a prologue. Yes, yeah, very nice because we kind of
came into the the c I A L. S D
(02:10):
MK Ultra podcast like right in the middle of the
history of LSD pretty much well towards the beginning, but
um one of the things after when Albert Hoffman, right,
the chemist who created LSD L tried it. Yeah, it
was attempt uh, and tried it on himself intravenously. As
(02:35):
I understand it, he injected it. We always says, first
he took it by mistake, yeah, because it was a
blood thinner. And then he took it for real. Yeah.
After that first bike ride home he was like, I
gotta do some more. And then I read his quote, please,
I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence
of nature. Yes, to create Dr Hoffman. Yeah, and he
was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist. Um. He was
(02:58):
at the first person to come up with a synthetic
hallucin Jim back in nineteen fourteen, a German chemist who
worked for Merk the pharmaceutical company, came up with M
d M A better known as ecstasy that far back. Uh. Yeah,
And here's a tip for you, chuckers Um. Anytime, according
to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug
(03:21):
and use it by its designer name, capitalize it. So
ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking
about the drug, Yes, and not just the euphoric feeling
you get from life. That's different. That's a lower case okay,
but it should be all caps. Yeah. Sure, so it
was nineteen that m d M A was created. Yeah,
(03:44):
and it was. Um, I guess it served as a
it's not a catalyst, because I think it's changed, but
it was to be used in the synthesis of other chemicals.
And it kind of sat on the shelves for a
little while until somebody along the way and then I
wonder what happens if I take this stuff? And they did,
(04:04):
and the CIA again looked at it. I wanted to
see what it could do, passed it up. Um, and
a guy by the name of Alexander Shulgin right, Yes,
he's a dow chemist. And in eight at the age
of seventy four, he published a study on the uthork
(04:25):
effects of m d m A. It was the first
time anyone had ever published a study here. But he
was seventy four and he first noticed the uthork effects
because he liked to take it and go to cocktail parties. Yeah. Um,
so he's like, hey, man, this stuff is the bomb,
and here's my study on it. Here that my findings,
(04:45):
and let's everybody start taking this. So he starts giving
it to his friends, Um, including some psychiatrists. Did he
give out passifiers? Not yet, that's coming though. That's very
very close past fires came about UM. So Shilgin gives
them to a friend who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist some of
(05:08):
the more avant garde psychiatrists UM start giving it to
their patients, and then it gets called ADAM. For a
little while while this is going on, it is being
used by established psychiatrist. A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas
finds out about this stuff and starts taking it, hires
an underground chemist and has it made himself, and then
(05:31):
start selling it at clubs all over Dallas. And so this,
this illicit use of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence
on the club scene and about the mid eighties led
to the outlaw of M D M A. We'll get
into it more, but the point is to this very
(05:52):
long and rambling intro, both of these drugs and others
were legal at one time, were put to good use,
beneficial use, and then outlawed, possibly unfairly, and then now
we're starting to see them come back into use, hallucinogens
(06:12):
being used to treat mental illness and mental harm in
legitimate circles, very legitimate. Quick question was that Dallas person
was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. I don't know. I
don't think anybody knows who it is. Still gotta start
maybe probably, I think to begin with So, Josh, you
(06:32):
mentioned the c I A. I do want to point
out it wasn't just the Americans, Uh, the Canadian government
and British's British's It Works. Britain's m I six also
experimented with LSD and between ninety and sixty five, forty
people all over the world had been treated with LSD
(06:55):
in treatments. Yeah, um, Carrie Grant, Yeah, can we go
back to Hollywood In the nineteen yoursis so, a couple
of guys set up shop. Arthur Chandler. What was the
other guy's name, Oh, Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman, who was
a radiologist, took acid and said, you know, I'm gonna
(07:18):
get into psychiatry. These guys set up a shop called
the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills right in the middle
of Beverly Hills. And this is back in the day
when things were it was clean living going on, aside
from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked, adultery. Probably
some marijuana use going on here there, but that was
(07:41):
among the hopheads, Yeah, exactly. So he sets up a
couple of rooms with a couch and uh starts booking
patients at a rate of like six or eight hours
of session, depending on what was going on with the person,
and five days a week. There were books solid hundred
bucks of pop Hunter, which is a lot of any
back then. And I guess that included the drugs. The
(08:03):
drugs and the time that you were there. So they
would sit with you, they would give you some blinders
to block out distractions, and then you would go into
sort of like the more meditative sort of acid trip.
Essentially you were tripping hard would because you were on
pharmaceutical grade LSD produced by the Sandoz company. We're talking
(08:25):
about Alice Huxley, novelist, and actually he died tripping. Did
you know that? Really? Yeah, he was. He had um
throat cancer, I think, and uh, the last thing he
ever wrote was a note to his wife requesting um
such and such milligrams of LSD or micrograms of LSD
injected intramuscular intramuscularly really, and that was about six hours
(08:50):
before he died. So he died tripping and a grateful
Dead record. That was his last request before the Grateful
der Uh. Screen screenwriter Charles Brackett took it. Director Sidney
Lament as it lay or Lament I think okay. I
always said may, but I think I'm wrong. He took
(09:11):
it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful.
He re experienced his own birth, which apparently a few
people did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either.
And um Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to
Time magazine publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador
and possibly an agent um for the US government, and
(09:31):
they both took acid so much that Henry Loose and
Time Magazine said we need to write about this. This
is awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of good press that
Time Magazine gave LSD in the fifties, um as a
basically a cure. All Um, and again, Carrie Grant got
into it big time. Apparently he had like at least
(09:51):
a hundred trips. I believe. Yeah he was. Yeah, let's
talk about him for a second, because he was one
of these guys that carefully constru truct did his persona.
He worked very hard apparently he was the The line
he always gave was a lot of people want to
be carried grant, and I'm one of them, indicating that
this suave, Mr cool persona was completely fabricating, created by
(10:15):
himself so he could get you know, the fame and everything,
but deep down he suffered as a human until he
started taking acid, right, and then he had um, well,
he had some pretty interesting revelations, one of which I
read one of the somebody thought to write down the
(10:36):
stuff that he Some of the insights he had, um,
some were kind of deep. Others were like, if I
have to look at a man, he should be required
to comb his hair and brush his teeth and wear
a clean shirt. Yes, it was interesting, so it kind
of ran the gamut. But yeah, he um he became
(10:57):
a real devotee of l s D. He's yeah, and
um well she got him into it, right. I think
who wrote that We're we're part of this. We're basing
this part on a Vanity Fair article art. Yeah. Um,
it's called the Carrying the Sky with Diamonds. But he
was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only one, um,
(11:20):
but he lived to see it outlawed and public sentiment
turn against it, right, just like m D, m a UM, pilocybin, magic,
mushrooms and part of the well really one of the
You could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led
to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who
(11:42):
might otherwise have been helped by LSD with his his
naive bravado of you know, the establishment just needs to
get over its hang ups and we should all take acid.
Whether or not you agree that that's a good idea,
it's a stupid thing to say. Leary was originally a
Harvard side chiatrist, right, yes, and he started taking I
(12:03):
think mushrooms and then he eventually started taking LSD and
was fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. Yeah,
and um, that was pretty much the beginning of the
end of LSD. Yeah, they may have continued to use
LSD as treatment for mental patients, mental illness and depression
(12:24):
if not for Timothy Leary, who was trying to spread
the word about acid. That's right. Uh, back to carry
Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh. He
had a couple of stories written about him in nineteen
fifty nine and Look magazine, the Curious Story behind the
New Carry. Grant gave a glowing account of LSD and
then this is the best the following year the Good
(12:47):
Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval
in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it the
Secret of Grant's Second youth. I want to get a
copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah?
And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast
is so weird that these things were considered incredibly wonderful
and benign um and now they're they're just viewed as
(13:11):
just so they're evil and their outlaws simply because they
were made illegal right prohibited um. And again there's kind
of a movement toward saying, hey, you know, maybe Timothy
Leary did give this a bad name. Maybe that that
um underground chemist in Dallas, uh really kind of put
(13:32):
a terrible spread on this, and we should look at
these again, right, she cannot tell one more story? Yes?
From Hollywood of the nineteen sixties. Yes, Esther Williams, famous
UH diva actress from the n g M studio friend
of Carrie Grants, called Carrie Grant up after these articles
and said, Hey, can you introduce me to your doctor,
Dr Hartman? He did so. At the time, she was aging,
(13:54):
just had gone through a divorce, Her husband left her
with huge debt with the I R S. And she
was still struggling with the death of her sixteen year
old brother. She goes in the office, she takes acid,
does her session, goes home to her parents, still on acid,
has dinner with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror,
(14:18):
says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror,
and I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled by
a split image one half of my face, the right
half was me, the other half was the face of
a sixteen year old boy. The left side of my
upper body was flat and muscular. I reached up with
my boys hand to touch my right breast and felt
my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I
(14:42):
understood perfectly in that moment. When my brother died, I
took him into my life so completely he became part
of me. Yeah, that's a pretty huge thing to understand
and pretty jarring way to come to terms with that, right. Yeah,
but that's what they're finding out now though, is that
these people are having these breakthroughs in the throes of
their final days of let's say cancer, and they have
(15:05):
these epiphanies. So LSD is outlawed. We're following a timeline here. Yes,
(15:29):
LSD is outlawed in I think sixty five something like that.
UM at the very at the latest nineteen seventy they
shut down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah, and Sandos
stopped making it and it got it was outlawed and
pushed underground. M D m A made it until and
M D m A story is linked very closely to
(15:50):
a guy named Dr George Quarte, who is JOHNS. Hopkins researcher.
This floored me so in about the time the UM
D e A is reeling from being caught totally unaware
by the crack epidemic. Uh and basically a lot of
people think looking for a whipping post um they they
(16:15):
start considering outlawing M D m A. At that moment,
this guy, Dr George roccarde Um publishes a study that
he says, this drug deplete your serotonin levels permanently, causing
brain damage. Right, it can kill you. Yeah, Well that
that didn't that came. So this guy, who is unknown
(16:37):
at the time, publishes the study, starts to get UM
National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically this is
his job. He starts a career UM creating scientific evidence
in favor of banning drugs leads to the outlaw of
m d M. A right. That wasn't quite enough. They
(16:59):
scheduled it. Uh. The FEDS went after m d M
A even harder, and in two thousand two they came
up with this thing called the Rave Act. It's um,
what does rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy?
I wonder how long they sat around looking at the
word rave, saying we've gotta make it fit, Yeah, to
(17:20):
make it fit Yeah. So um, the the Rave Act
basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody
gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club,
we're going to shut down your club. It was a huge,
huge law, and it was bolstered by another UM another
study by Dr George rocquarde Um that found that he
(17:43):
tested on ten monkeys one he injected them with m
d M a UM, A bunch of them went psychotic.
Some of them UM showed early signs of Parkinson's all
of a sudden, and two of them died almost immediately
after being injected. So people started asking questions about this, like,
what what are you talking about? People have been taking
(18:04):
this drug forever and this has never happened. So they
started kind of going after recording and UM, they found
out that he had actually injected him with methamphetamine. The
first thing that tipped them off as he injected him,
because people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy, so
that's kind of a weird way to do it. And
then they found out it was methamphetamines, which he blamed
(18:28):
on a mislabeling of a drug shipment which they traced
back and they went the label right here. Yeah, the
drug providers like, don't blame must, it's pretty clear. So
this is by this time, the Rave Act has already
passed her and the Rave Act didn't get past but
something that included that UM was passed by that time.
The study that recorded a produced was pretty was published
(18:50):
in Science, the journal Science. Like that's as hyebrow as
you get as far as scientific journals. Um, And finally
he gets beaten up and up that he he prints
a full retraction came clean. The Science runs this retraction
saying the whole, the whole study that I produced just
forget it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much, No,
(19:12):
it doesn't. That's very unusual. So record A I get
the impression is kind of this. Um, well, it just
kind of seems like the scientific community views him largely
as a shill to the government. Yeah. Um. There's a
couple of articles that he shows up in on a
Reason and Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And you know,
the other interesting thing about that whole story about the
(19:35):
big fake study he did with meth amphetamines as ecstasy
is that the Parkinson's Foundation, the people Parkinson's researchers, said,
I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much
sense to us either, that they would show signs of
Parkinson's right, so they looked into it. People went about
reproducing his study. Yeah. Um, and the people who run
(19:57):
the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying ecstasy does
not do this, So they basically came out in favor
of ecstasy. It's kind of neat to watch from the
outside because there's this guy who's again kind of viewed
as a shill for the government who's beating up on
this drug that a lot of people who are also
(20:18):
in the scientific community feel is being unfairly outlawed, and
so there's kind of beating up on him in retaliation.
It's kind of neat to see eggheads beat up on
one another, NERD fights and the n I d A.
It went so far that the n I d A
just kind of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy
and I was like, Um, let's just take this down
(20:38):
off the website. After the retraction, we'll rewrite it. I'm
sure it's back up now as something else. Yeah, but
it doesn't include immediate death and Parkinson's disease. I would
imagine that's right. So Timothy Larry dies, he gets shot
into space, he's out of the picture entirely. Everybody gets
sick of hippies generally. Yeah, Um, George Record is basically
(21:02):
the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy outlawed. His work
comes into great, great question, and people start going back
and looking at M D m A again, and they
start looking at LSD again, and that's where we find
ourselves right now. Slowly but surely, people are starting to
run studies on whether or not you can use these
(21:23):
hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And the results are pretty
astounding actually, and you know where they're leading the charge
in Switzerland, in Los Angeles all these years later, same place, Yes,
hippie freaks. Yeah, so yeah, Josh, they are I think
in Switzerland. Uh, in Solo then Switzerland. They have been
(21:46):
experimenting with lsd um psilocybin, which you might know his
magic mushrooms. Yes, ketamine you might know, a special k.
That kind of surprised me that that was in there. Yeah,
I hadn't heard much about that one either. And getting
these uh, these studies published in Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, and
other you know, leading industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah, it's
(22:10):
not all under the table back room experiments. Oh no,
these are very heavily um overseen. You have to be
a very legitimate researcher to get government approval. They're not
funded though still there's they say they're still having a
hard time with funding, and they're just they're sort of
looking to get some restrictions loosen. They're not saying make
all this stuff legal, right, They're not battling a legalization
(22:33):
on the legalization front at all. But what they're one
of the reason why so many people are kind of
starting to put their reputations on the line. Um, it's
because the results that they're seeing. So we have antidepressants, right, UM,
they take weeks to kick in, they have all sorts
of side effects. And what they're what we're seeing in
(22:55):
these studies now, are that the the things like ketamine,
uh m d m A, LSD are having like a
huge impact right out of the gate. There's one study,
um that came out in July, I believe, UM, and
it found it was a study of twelve people who
were diagnosed with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's
(23:16):
one of the big ones. Yeah, that's huge that they're
looking at. UM. That's where you well, it's what we
used to call shell shock. You go through traumatic experience
and you relive it over and over again. UM, and
it's it's debilitating. Um. They found that of the twelve
people in the study, ten of them, after going through
(23:36):
the study, UM, after taking M D m A no
longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterwards.
Ten of the twelve. Yeah, and for my understanding, and
most of these studies is it's not like you have
to stay on ecstasy your whole life, Like a lot
of people have these epiphanies and they quit taking it
and they have changed their outlook and that right, Yeah,
(23:57):
that's the impression I'm getting to. Um, Ketamine's good for
depression in the same way. Um, just a very tiny
dose I can get you over severe clinical depression. Or
that's the results, the early results, we should say, yeah,
um and everything from quitting smoking two suicidal thought, Yeah,
(24:17):
cluster headaches Harvard studying. Those are migraines for men, right,
what they called my migraines. I think I know they're
so debilitating that you consider suicide or you know not
everyone does obviously, but it's just this awful, awful pain.
You can't leave your house, you get to sit in
a dark room, and so it's helping there. And um,
what I thought was interesting Johns Hopkins, you might have
(24:40):
heard of them, a little reputable institutions required is from
was it they did an experiment where they gave psilocybin
too emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even people that
were mentally ill, people that had never taken hallucinogens before,
which is interesting that you would be. I think they
had a sixty four year old that signed up for this. Yeah,
(25:01):
it's crazy, and they said a sixty four and they
said the experiment. A year later, they said the experience
is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences of
their entire lives, and that those were mentally stable folks,
And this is a year on it's still had an
impact on them. UM. They're also finding that UH O,
(25:24):
c D and basically mood disorders are the primary target
of hallucinogenic treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment, and the reason being,
we think, is because they target serotonin in the brain.
This is another reason why they're not addictive. They don't
they don't employ the reward circuit in the brain, which
(25:45):
is how we become addicted to things were flooded with dopamine. Member,
it just affects the mood circuits in the right serotonin.
And we don't really have a very good grasp on
serotonin and exactly how that works, but we do know
that UM, there's correlations between uh high levels of serotonin
or low levels of serotonin and depression, right, and we
(26:09):
know that UM using antidepressants which block the reuptake of
serotonin UM reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people. So
we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We know that
the more serotonin you have, the better generally or low
serotonin's bad. Uh. And then we also know that hallucinogens
(26:29):
target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands
right now. It makes you wonder where would we be
if LSD and m d m A hadn't been in
the wilderness for the last few decades. Well, yeah, they
may have a pill, like a low dose pill, because
a lot of these studies, just so you know, back
in carry Grand State, that mean it was full, full
on acid trips. But a lot of these, like the
(26:51):
psilocybin pills, they will give you be very low dose.
So I don't I get the feeling that it's not
like this huge mushroom trip that a lot of patients
are going through because it said I think of the
people recognized when they did not have the placebo. So
if it wasn't then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes,
(27:11):
it would be. My guess, um, would you if if
everything was legalized UM and M D m A came
to be prescribed for just happiness, right, would you take it?
Would you take a happy pill that was legal and
(27:32):
didn't have side effects? Not to say m d M
A doesn't have side effects, there's a um like basically
the three days after a depression that follows when your
serotonin levels are repleting themselves. I don't think I would
because there are quote unquote happy pills now. And I
mean it's not like I'm against anti depressants or things
(27:52):
like that, because people definitely benefit from those who need them.
But I just I don't need that kind of thing,
so I would not. Uh, I would not, sir, you
are not alone, Chuck. There is a survey conducted for
this BBC series on Britain of British people that found
that seventy of them said that they would not take
(28:14):
a happy pill it was legal and had no side effects.
It's interesting, yeah, because it kind of I think that
for a large segment of the population there's just the
idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, you know, yeah,
it's it's a little weird. I mean that's not to
say I'm a square and I don't like to get
(28:35):
down another aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right
now about literally the effect it has on your brain
and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've also found
that patients cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens, or
people with just um traumatic events from earlier in their life,
(28:58):
they have the ability to relive some of these memories
and events from their past. They can unlock buried traumatic episodes,
deal with them psychologically, put them to rest, and come
out the other side with a new understanding free from
these demons. Right. Um. You remember when in the hypnosis
episode where we were talking about how the way it's
(29:22):
viewed now is that you you are You're accessing the
subconscious eesah more easily. It's like popping open a control panel.
That's what this. This is what they're seeing with M
D m A. Apparently, Uh, you are able to access
things UM from a very empathetic way. I think the
(29:42):
term I've heard for it is called UM a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Yeah,
kick starts right things And I think one researcher called
it it's psychotherapy sped up. The psychiatrists call them. Yeah,
it's like psycho arap on acid L s D. Specifically,
(30:25):
hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's ever taken it.
And what's funny in this article that UM that's on
the site. Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? Tom
Sheaf has to go to the sixties psychedelic rock scene
to find examples of people who have had a bad,
(30:46):
bad time on acid. Uh, And apparently, what what the
conventional wisdom is if you are predisposed to mental illness,
LSD can exacerbate that. If you have a bad trip up,
you're going to have a really, really bad trip because
you're already predisposed to mental illness. Yeah, he's Brian Wilson
and Sid Barrett as the two examples, and those are
(31:08):
stellar examples, they really got to say. But they're also
counterintwo to what we're seeing with UM. Like PTSD, you
are already suffering from a mental illness. So here's some
m D m A right, Probably LSD would be horrible
to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, yeah, right, I
would say, so, UM And what else, Chuck, can we
(31:30):
talk about Pamela Secuda? Sure? Yeah, it's a very interesting story.
This was a woman UM aged fifty seven at the
time of this article, who was in the final stages
of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was
anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her husband,
(31:50):
and what they were going to do without her. It
was not a good life. She was living here at
the end and she was prescribed any depressants. Of course,
it didn't work, didn't do a thing for so she
volunteered for an experiment at u c l A in
two thousand five and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom
pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs. Uh.
(32:13):
They brought her husband in at the end of one
of the sessions and he said, there's my Pammy. She
was just beaming with light and I haven't seen her
that joyous and so long. She was totally alive and happy.
And she continued to take it until she didn't need
it anymore. She had these breakthroughs, and then all of
a sudden, her husband and uh, Pamela were going to concerts,
(32:36):
they went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations.
They did all these things that she hadn't been doing
in a long time. Because of these epiphanies she had
under the influence of psilocybin and sadly she died, well,
she had cancer. Yeah, she died. Yeah, that's what she
died from in two thousand six. And her husband said
(32:56):
she died in his arms. But her husband was very
a pre shive and they actually did a benefit about
a week before she died for the institute that was
doing this work at U c l A. So it's
pretty interesting. Yeah, the definitely, And one of the applications
that they're finding is end of life care for UM
using M D m A or LSD R PSILOCYBIN'M sure
(33:18):
we're special, k. Apparently what about this eyeba gain. They're
finding the eyeba gain works really well. Iber gain is
a UM it's from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa,
I believe UM. And they're finding that you go on
a thirty six hour trip. That's a long time. It's
a long time, but they're finding that it's really effective
(33:40):
in breaking UM addiction and like serious addictions to like heroin,
yeah and cocaine. So being on this stuff just for
thirty six hours creates a break in the addiction cycle itself.
But what they're finding this. Most notable about it is
it there's a lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see
in every other type of addiction removal. Yeah, especially with heroin.
(34:05):
Like heroin, you're supposed to have physical withdraw sintom withdrawal symptoms,
and people who are taking eyeba gain are not experiencing
that like they would if if they tried to kick
the habit without it. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is
very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should probably say, I
don't know if we have yet that this podcast is
in no way an endorsement of going out and buying
(34:28):
yourself some street drugs and you know, seeing what happens.
It's a study of what we finally be very fascinating.
The fact that this is there's been a resurgence in
this and these you know, qualified doctors U. C. L. A.
Johns Hopkins, they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah,
and they definitely are, and they're getting some very interesting results.
What about the A A guy, We should mention that
really quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill Wilson
(34:51):
yet one of the co founders of A A. Yeah,
he uh he apparently took LSD in the fifties, wasn't Yeah,
And this is after he was long after he was
sober from alcohol. Yeah, can found ance the thirties? I think, yeah. Um.
And so he takes LSD in the fifties and is like,
this is really helpful. Um, so I think everybody who
(35:14):
comes into a should take LSD. Uh. And they were like,
he should probably not do that, so they talked him
out of it. But the reason why he found it
helpful one is that hallucinogen's part of a twelve step
program is to really reflect on past wrongdoings and then
(35:35):
elucidate them to another human being. And apparently LSD, M
D M A UM, these other drugs help. They serve
as a catalyst for that process, so tap into that.
That's why Bill Wilson I thought this is this is
really helpful because again it'sycho therapy sped up, fascinating, very fascinating.
(35:55):
I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on
a limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh,
you should go out and do these things, I will
say that some chemically created in a lab pill called
an antidepressant, isn't I mean what's the difference. The difference
is I think, in my opinion from what I've seen, Uh,
(36:16):
one's marketed and legal and the other is illegal. Yeah,
it's as simple as that one is made by murk
and one is not made by murk but used to
make this, which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah,
you know, it's the same reason the alcohol. You can
go into a bar and get completely wasted out of
your mind and get in a car, but you can't
(36:38):
walk into a bar and smoke a joint or shoot
heroin or shoot heroin. And we're not labbying for anything.
It's just interesting that the things that society has deemed
acceptable alcoholism is just fine. Well it's not just fine,
but it's it's legal, and you can do it even
though it kills all these people, and this is not acceptable.
It's just it's funny how we've evolved to think things
(37:00):
are evil and some things are just great. I wonder
where the future holds, Josh, I wonder myself. We'll find out, Yes,
we will, if we lived that long. That is about
it for this one. You should probably check out Can
we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? On the site. Be
sure to check out Carrying the Sky with Diamonds Vanity
(37:21):
Fair article type in George Rick Quarte r I C
U A R T e uh into Reasons website that
will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time
magazine article from I think two thousand or two thousand
one um on ecstasy on M D M A uh
(37:42):
it was. That's really It's called the Happiness and a Pill.
I guess it's time now for listener mail, right, Yes,
I have a listener mail Josh from Rhea and this
was about octopus or octopi, but we were corrected octopies
not right, but she says it she worked at high
(38:03):
so right, well, we had all these people see and
actually the Latin thing Jerry just left at that. Hi, guys,
your podcast on Octopi made my day to day. Thank you.
I work as an aquarist at a San Francisco aquarium
and one of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery.
I get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make
(38:26):
sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble.
And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to
open a jar to get his favorite food, which is
live crabs. I'm right there with you fromstr octopus. Uh.
It was great to hear someone besides myself get a
little too excited about these critters. And you know, we've
got great feedback on this. People love the octopus because
(38:48):
they're so freaky. Uh. The story about Lucretia mc evil
especially cracked me up. I work with the g p O.
That's the giant Pacific octopod that might give her a
run for money. For the past few weeks, I've been
walking around with what my colleagues call octopus kisses up
the length of my arms. But I'm afraid my husband
is getting a little suspicious about the number of Vicky's
(39:09):
I've been acquiring. So that's from the little suckers. Those
little suckers clearly. Uh. These were given to me while
I tried to remove the individual from blocking the flow
to his tank and stop his flooding of the entire aquarium.
It's never a boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys.
Thanks for all the great podcast. If you're ever in
San Francisco, one of my favorite places, Josh, let me
(39:31):
know and I'll see if I can't work out some
behind the scenes cephalopod goodness. And that is from Rhea,
and she says, and don't worry, by the way, I
have trouble pronouncing hecto caudless as well and have taken
to calling in the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works, the spermacle.
(39:51):
That's what she says. She says, it's time to rename
that organ. Yes, well, thanks Rhea, right, yes, thank you.
My dad always said life is better with stuffalo pods
in it. Really yeah. Uh, if you have a fantastic
saying that your father, mother, grandfather, some old timing person
told you, we want to hear it, wrap it up
(40:13):
in an email, spank it on the bottom, and then
send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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