Psychedelics Playlist: The Manifested Mind, Part 4

What are psychedelics? How have these substances influenced human minds and culture? What exactly do they invoke in the brain and how could a renaissance of scientific study into their properties improve our lives? In this series of Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes, Robert and Joe explore the world of entheogens.

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Episode Transcript

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(01:52):
a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Part four of our exploration of psychedelics. Robert, have we
ever made it to a part four on any series
on this show before? Oh? I don't think we we

(02:16):
have really. I mean there have been cases where we've had,
like an informal series where each episode is more or
less self contained. So uh, yeah, I don't know. I
can't think of one off hand that that has been
a four partner. On the other hand, we could have
gone to eight parts on Dune maybe well may yeah, certainly,
they're they're there's so many topics that we could have
divided up more, or we could have uh dwelt on

(02:40):
in greater length. Uh you know this one though, I
mean the curious things. I feel like we've gone in
fairly deep, but we still are are only providing like
basically a surface outline and everything you know, and and
leaving lots of room for listeners to then to go
out and explore topics and portions of this topic and
greater depth. Well yeah, with rich subjects like psychedelics, I guess,

(03:00):
especially anything dealing with the mind, you run into the
problem that the deeper you go, the more you uncover
that you should you know, like you're always just opening
up more cases instead of closing them. Right. It's it's
like saying we were gonna we're gonna do an episode
on consciousness. Yeah, yeah, it's you could sort of do
an outline episode of it, and I imagine we've probably
done episodes that are essentially that in the past, but

(03:23):
ultimately consciousness is an ongoing series on this show, and
the same we said for a number of different topics.
But hey, if you're just jumping in, you should probably
go back listen to those other episodes. First, we did
uh Psychedelics Parts one through three before this, where what
do we talk about, Robert, Well, we talked about what
psychedelics are and also what what drugs are. We talked

(03:43):
about how psychedelics factor into traditional societies, how they factor
into ancient and modern history, and ultimately how they factor
into both the hopes and fears that individuals and groups
of individuals have had for humanity's future. Yeah, and so
in the last episode in part three, we focused a
lot on the twentieth century and how there was research

(04:05):
in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties looking into how
psychedelics could be used in say, psychedelic assisted therapy for
treating conditions like alcoholism. How a lot of psychiatrists in
the nineteen fifties saw its potential as what they considered
a psychoto memdic, meaning that it would mimic the conditions
of psychosis that would allow them to empathize with their patients.

(04:26):
But then, of course it turned out to be something
rather different than just mimicking the effects of psychosis. And
then we talked about sort of in the in the
mid sixties to about nineteen seventy, where the wave of
crashed psychedelic research encountered a lot of backlash and for
several decades it's sort of was was forced into the underground,
and it's only in recent years that it's experienced a resurgence.

(04:49):
And that's what we're going to focus on today. Yeah. Now,
I do want to throw into a quick note that
I don't want to leave anybody with the idea that
all psychedelic research ended with Nixon's Control Substance Is Act
of nineteen seventy and then didn't pick up at all
until after the nineties. Right. We've made that point in
previous episodes, I think, but that most of it had
been driven underground. Right. I was actually found a good

(05:11):
source and this has a nice visual for you know,
the ups and downs of the research with the Beckley
Foundation at Beckley Foundation dot org. They have a nice overview,
a nice graphic. Now, this uh, particular organization was founded
in by Amanda Fielding. I don't know if you remember
Amanda Fielding. Oh yeah, she uh. I think she talks
to Michael Pollen in his book How To change your mind,

(05:33):
which we've been referring to throughout the past few episodes.
I'm sure we'll refer to several times again today. But
she talks to him, I think at some point and
says something like, look, I understand I have an image problem.
I'm a druggy with a hole in my head. Right,
she underwent Trepid Nation. We have an episode in the
that we did in the past Entrepid Nation. But but
the Foundation itself is a UK based think tank, you

(05:55):
and accredited ng O, and it's dedicated to global drug
policy reform its parchedelic research anyway, as they point out,
the Control Substances Act of nineteen seventy effectively ended all
government sanctions psychedelic research and brought everything down to a
mere trickle um. But you still had some research going
on that the lowest point identified um um on this

(06:17):
website is seemingly in the mid nineties. That it was,
you know, it was also very low in like the
mid eighties, and now we're at the point where the
research is even surpassing the previous high point, the previous
heyday of the late nineteen sixties. I've got an informal
theory that you will see an almost perfect correlation in
in the twentieth century timeline between the quantity and quality

(06:41):
of action movies produced by Hollywood and the lack of
psychedelic research being done. It's like the year Speed came out,
there can't have been much psychedelic research going on. That's
that would be interesting to compare those timelines for sure. Now,
I thought maybe the first thing that would be good
to get into today is a question neurochemistry, the question

(07:02):
of what's actually happening in the brains of people who
take psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin. We've talked a lot
about the the anecdotal phenomenological reports people have. You know, what,
what do people commonly say about their experiences on these drugs,
But what's causing them to have those experiences chemically in
the brain? Right, Because it's all obviously going to come

(07:24):
down to neurochemical um in a situation. You know, the
magic mushrooms are not actually magic h the machine, They're
not actually working on your mind. Uh, there's something going
on chemically inside the brain. Yes, But to go back
to another point we've made repeatedly already is the importance
of set and setting uh psychopharmacology should acknowledge that, especially

(07:47):
with some drugs, psychedelics being some of them, that the
context is going to highly influence what the chemicals due
to the brain, and that in many ways these chemicals
should be thought of as um not necessary really the
cause of particular experiences, but facilitators of experience of varying
degrees of intensity. Uh So, these psychoactive compounds are, of

(08:11):
course different from one another. LST is not exactly psilocybin,
psilocybin is not exactly d MT, and so forth. Uh
So what's found about one doesn't necessarily apply to all
of them, but there do appear to be some important
chemical similarities in the brain. And so I want to
talk about serotonin and serotonin receptors. On the neurochemical level,

(08:31):
there appears to be this really important connection between certain
psychedelics and the endogenous neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin is also known
as five hydroxy trip to ME and the role of
serotonin in the brain and the body is fantastically complex
and still not fully understood, and I think partially because
of its role in the history of research on mood

(08:54):
and depression, Serotonin is often thought of as an internal
chemical that creates happiness sort positive mood, such that if
you don't have enough of it you get depressed. But
I think it turns out that this is a monumentally
oversimplified and largely incorrect view. The most commonly prescribed antidepressant

(09:14):
drugs these days are s s R EYES, which stands
for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and what they do is
they block the reabsorption of serotonin in the brain, increasing
serotonin levels overall. But we shouldn't draw the wrong conclusions
from this. It is not simply a case that more
serotonin equals more happiness or more serotonin equals less depression.

(09:38):
In fact, ending up with too much serotonin due to
drug interactions can cause a potentially fatal condition known as
serotonin syndrome. Right. One key interactive interaction of where it
can occur is is with ayahuasca and certain antidepressants. Yeah,
which is a reason that is often stated like you
should be very careful if you are engaging in know

(10:00):
and what's some code called freelance um therapeutic psychedelic use. Well, yeah, exactly.
I mean that's one of the things that we alluded to.
And I guess we'll talk about more as the episode
goes on, is that even though we've established that psychedelics
have relatively low recognized risk when compared to many other drugs,
it's not impossible for them to represent risks, especially when

(10:21):
you think about how they may interact with existing psychological
conditions or other drugs that you might be taking. Right. So,
back to serotonin. While serotonin does seem highly involved in
the internal regulation of mood, it's mechanism is somewhat complicated,
and it's also involved in a number of other processes
throughout the body and brain that aren't directly related to mood,

(10:43):
at least as far as we know. For example, digestion,
the like the vast majority of the body, serotonin is
found in the gastro intestinal tract, and it has something
to do with the regulation of bowel movements. I'm sure
some comedian out there has a great joke about like
their depression slash owl movements serotonin thing. I don't know,
I haven't put it together in my head, but run

(11:04):
with it somebody. Uh. But serotonin also has a lot
of other uses in the body. It apparently, somehow seems
linked to the regulation of sleep, to bone metabolism, so
you know, like the creation of the osteoblasts and osteogenesis, uh,
sexual arousal, blood clotting. So there's a lot of stuff
going on. And according to the psychedelic researcher Robin L.

(11:25):
Carhart Harris, who's going to show up in research that
we will talk about later, quote, a compelling unified theory
of brain serotonin function has not yet been established. This
is likely due to the exceptional complexity of the serotonin system,
with its fourteen plus receptors, over twice the number identified
for any of the other major neuromodular systems. So there

(11:48):
are a lot of different basically holes in the body
and the brain for that molecule to put its peg into,
and they probably all do slightly different things or maybe
largely different things. Never unless it is clear that serotonin
plays some important role in psychiatric disorders like depression, and
one recent theory I thought this was pretty interesting. It's

(12:09):
probably not conclusive. Again, we don't have a agreed upon
the theory of serotonin yet, but one recent theory is that,
in Carhart Harris's words, seratinergic processes are important for quote
mediating an individual's sensitivity to context. So you know, serotonin
might play this important role in the brain for like

(12:29):
increasing the salience of contextual things in the environment. But
where does psychedelics come in. So what happens is the
classic psychedelics appear to bind to a specific subclass of
serotonin receptor known as the serotonin to A receptor, and
these receptors are found concentrated in the human cortex. The

(12:52):
cortex is the outer layer of the cerebrum the brain,
which is associated with a lot of higher brain functions
like sensation. Uh, you know, the visual cortex, the auditory cortex,
it's associated you know, it's where you have centers for
speech and language, for voluntary action and stuff like that.
So when you take a psychedelic like LSD R psilocybin mushrooms,

(13:13):
the active compounds make their way into the brain and
they sort of play act as serotonin binding to these
serotonin to A receptors. Now, because we have such a
limited grasp of the role of serotonin to begin with,
we don't fully know how to interpret the neurochemistry here,
like what's happening with the serotonin too A receptors that's

(13:34):
associated with or creating this psychedelic experience. But Robin Carhart
Harris hypothesizes something really interesting. So Carhard Harris says that
quote serotonin differentially encodes behavioral and physiological responses to uncertainty.
So under this model, you have like another serotonin receptor,
a different one, the serotonin one A receptor, and Carhart's

(13:57):
Harris says, quote that provides bay soul control during normal
conditions be a moderating emotion and anxiety and promoting a
generalized patience. But the two A receptor, which psychedelics have
these agonist properties for you, the psychedelics go in the
two A receptor. Quote is hypothesized to engage more during

(14:18):
conditions of crisis when the above mentioned default mechanism becomes
suboptimal e g. When an individual's internal and or external
milieu become so changeable and or inconsistent with his or
her prior beliefs and behaviors that significant revisions become mandated.
In other words, Carhart Harris is hypothesizing that psychedelics provide

(14:41):
a neurochemical hyper stimulation two receptors in the brain that
normally work during situations of crisis and change to quote
relax prior assumptions or beliefs held at multiple levels of
the brain's functional hierarchy perceptually, emotionally, cognitive, lee, and philosophically
e g. In terms of biases. In so doing, it

(15:04):
opens a door to heighten sensitivity to context, an ideal
precondition for effective change. So that was really interesting to me. Like,
to be clear, we still don't know if this hypothesis
of what's happening is correct, but it seems informed by
what we do know about serotonin receptors and about the
neurochemistry of psychedelics, And I guess the idea is that

(15:25):
they sort of mash frantically at buttons in the brain
that naturally, when pressed, caused the brain to break internal habits, associations,
and traditions at every level, from the senses to the beliefs.
Interesting so in the same way that a basically like
a traumatic experience can change or alter our our our

(15:48):
preconceptions about the world, or in the same way that
glimpsing something marvelous like seeing the Grand Canyon for the
first time might have some at least minor change the
way you think about about the natural world, Like the
the psychedelic state is kind of um, like leaning into

(16:08):
those uh uh, those kind of experiences though that the
facilitate change. I think that's right according to this hypothesis
at least, And this does seem to ring true to
me based on everything else we've read. Uh, it's kind
of like how I think we've talked about this on
the show before, how it really seems like it's easier
to break habits or make changes in your life while

(16:29):
you're on vacation or we in in any other kind
of It doesn't have to be just vacation. While you're
external contextual circumstances are different. You know, you're faced with
a different environment, different stimuli, maybe you're meeting different people,
you're facing different challenges or problems. That seems to give
rise to processes in the brain that makes us better

(16:50):
at changing what we've done and how we've been before.
And it makes sense, right because if we as an organism,
we change location, we change what, we change set, and
you know, we we end up having to update our
priorities and our our judgments about where we are and
ultimately who we are. And so it seems like under
this hypothesis, psychedelics maybe doing something like that, but in

(17:14):
an even more intense and chemically focused way right, And yeah,
it's interesting and in a way that does not necessarily
require an experience of trauma, um or or some sort
of you know, tremendous physical travel. Well, but there are
interesting parallels to trauma. I mean, again, this is something

(17:35):
that's very common in the report, so that, like we've
read about with the participants of the March Chapel experiment, Uh,
people very often report having some kind of experience of
dying or going through some great trauma during their trip,
and yet after their trip on the whole, they report
positive effects and changes in their mindset and in their life.

(17:55):
So I don't think we should necessarily discount the relationship
to trauma there. There may be sort of not physical traumas,
but but emotional and psychological traumas that gets simulated or
run through in the brain during the psychedelic experience. Yeah,
I mean, so many of these accounts that we've read
or you know, acquainted ourselves with, they do involve at

(18:18):
least a challenging portion of the overall trip. Maybe the
trip itself is not a quote unquote bad trip, uh,
because again that's that's kind of disingenuous to get into
the idea of like purely a good trip bad trip scenario.
Um so yeah, so much of the time there is
a you know, for lack of a better word, a monster.
But sometimes you have to defeat a monster, right, I

(18:40):
mean it's it's it's kind of the old hero's journey. Well,
this is one of the things that's commonly reported by
psychedelic guides, people who do psychedelic assisted therapy that Michael
Paulan talks about this and how to Change Your Mind
a good bit about UH. One effective strategy of guiding
people through their meditative experience on psychedelic is to encourage

(19:01):
them to approach challenging experiences in their minds. So if
you know they're faced with something that scares them, don't
run away from it, go toward it. And this actually
tends to cause people to have very empowering experiences of discovery.
I'm reminded of the the original ending to Alan Moore's
v for Vendetta. I don't know if you ever read
the comic book. I don't believe saw the movie, but yeah,

(19:23):
I don't think I don't think this made it into
the film. But in in the book there's an individual
who ends up like taking LSD I believe it was
LSD and visiting the side of you know what is
essentially like like a labor camp or uh, in order
to like fully process, like, you know, the state of
the world and his relationship with it. Really more of

(19:46):
a like a shamanistic um kind of psychedla delic encounter,
but one that is intentionally traumatic because the character feels
that they must they must confront something that is troubling
and traumatic in their life. Yeah, I think there could
very well be uses like that that are that are
legitimate and take best advantage of the psychopharmacology at work here.

(20:10):
All right, on that note, we're going to take a
quick break, but we'll be right back. Today's episode is
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Chronicles podcast and I Heart Radio app or wherever you
get your podcast. Okay, we're back. So we've been talking
about the neurochemical action of psychedelics and and some ideas
about what may be going on in the brain there
with their relationship to a certain serotonin receptor of the

(22:35):
serotonin two A receptor. But there are also ways of
going beyond the neurochemical level and just looking at the
neurological effects of psychedelics through brain imaging studies. Right yeah,
I mean, nothing spells good trip more than getting somebody
on psilocybin and sticking them in an fMRI machine. Right,
But you can't. I mean, I wonder what those subjective

(22:56):
experiences are like. Surely somebody has studied that, Like asking
for the uh, the experiential reports of people have been
in the fm R I, But I mean the studies
are are quite useful looking at where, you know, where
does the blood flow change, what, what's receiving oxygen in
the brain. Pollen talks about this at length in his book.
One of the most interesting things is that psychedelics apparently

(23:18):
tend to reduce activity in one of the most interesting
networks of the brain, which is the default mode network. Well,
normally you'd be thinking, okay, psychedelics must be causing increased
activity somewhere right, But here it's fascinating to see where,
you know, the brain may be empowered by suppressing certain

(23:40):
parts of it. So the default mode network is a
brain subsystem we've talked about before. It involves different regions
all over the brain. So it's not just like one
little node somewhere you know, it's happening all over. But
it's a set of interlinked and and related nodes of
the brain that work together. And it's normally believed to
be most active when we are not engaged in any

(24:01):
other particular task. It seems to be highly associated with
an idol wandering mind. But it is not only active
when we're mentally unoccupied. It's not only when our mind
is wandering or idle, that we use the default mode network.
Activation of the default mode network is associated with many
kinds of deliberate thought processes, especially self referential thought processes,

(24:25):
so like autobiographical and self evaluative thinking. The default mode
network seems highly involved in knowing facts about yourself and
in understanding and evaluating characterizations of yourself. If I give
you a list of adjectives and ask you to think
how they apply to you, we will probably see activation

(24:46):
and regions of the brain that are associated with the
primary activity of the default mode network. Right, and pretty
much anytime you catch yourself thinking, contemplating, worrying over who
you are and how others perceive you. Uh, this is
the network that is in play, right Uh. The default
mode network also seems to be associated with forms of

(25:07):
meta cognition, so like reflecting on your own emotional states
and thought processes, which this in itself, I mean not
to really categorize any of these isn't isn't is good
or bad, but but certainly metacognition in and of itself.
Being able to think about your emotions and be self aware,
I mean, it's a uh, it is worth pointing out,
yeah that even though it's a lot of worrying is

(25:29):
caught up in the default mode network. You can argue
then that a certain amount of our ability to to
stop and uh and think about how we're thinking is
also tied up there. Sure, I mean, yeah, the default
mode network is I mean, it's quite clear we have
it for a reason, right. It probably it does something
useful for us. It probably just comes with a lot
of downsides too. It probably allows us to be philosophical

(25:54):
and to you know, to do a lot of stuff
that we value about human culture and human mental abilities.
But it just also tends to be highly involved in
ruminating on what's wrong with yourself and the world and
your life and all that. Right, And the next example
is a key example of this. Well, yeah, so the
defaultment network seems to be highly associated with mental time travel,

(26:15):
thinking about things that happened in the past and episodic
memories of those things and then imagining events in the future,
which is all this is key if we're going to
to navigate the world, be at the world that we've
built for ourselves or even just the natural world. Uh,
you need to be able to we need to be
able to to mental time travel, to to think about

(26:35):
the lessons we've learned and prepare for the challenges ahead.
But of course, as humans, we take this too ridiculous
extremes and we get trapped in the past or trapped
in the future, and uh, everything that is between those
points is just stretched out to the point of writting. Well,
to mention rumination again as a you know, psychological phenomenon,
rumination in a way, a positive version of it could

(26:59):
be thinking about plans for the future, trying to think
through what you should do and figure out the best
thing to do. That's an important skill that we have
with our brains. But also that leads to people just imagining,
you know, like recursive thought patterns of the way all
the ways things could go wrong in horrible ways that
are not actually useful. Right, well, I mean and ultimately too,

(27:22):
it's you know, the idea of pursuit of happiness, the
idea that we should be happy. That's um, you know,
that's that's a that's also a human complication, right, It's
really part of the evolutionary model, right. I would guess
one of the easiest ways to make yourself unhappy is
to try really hard to be happy or to think
about how to make yourself happy. Absolutely, I remember moments

(27:44):
of the purest joy are going to be the times
when we're not actively seeking and grasping for it. Yeah.
Another thing that seems to be associated with the default
mode network is thinking about other people. It's important for
theory of mind, so imagining the mental states of others,
trying I'm thinking, what is Robert thinking? That's theory of mind.

(28:05):
But then also in making judgments and evaluations about other people. Yeah,
and of course this is this. This is one of
those things that's involved in some of the noblest and
most sought after human experiences. You know, this is in
this is tied up in in in love and UH
and and family, but it's also caught up in like
the worst inclinations of humanity as well. Yeah, and so

(28:28):
the default mode network, we've bashed it before, but obviously
it's not bad. And I guess this is sort of
a sidetrack, But I have read somewhere that the concept
of the default mode network is one coherent brain subsystem
has been criticized or challenged by somebody. So no, I
think not all UH neuroscientists would accept that the default
mode network is actually a coherent network, but right, like

(28:50):
a lot of these things, it lends itself to being
used as a mere metaphor for making sense of our
our environmental processes, and in a similar way that serotonin
can be sort of misinterpreted, is you know, but but
perhaps perhaps, but perhaps I think that the default mode network,
if it, if it is being misused as metaphor uh,

(29:10):
some of the times or even a lot of the
times by people, maybe it's a little more useful or
at least less harmful and metaphor. Well, I do think
it's still largely accepted within neuroscience, you know, but I'm
not talking about it like it's not being you know,
a valid theory, but more like when I when I'm
engaging with it, Like to what extent am I engaging
with it as a metaphor for how my mind? Oh? Yeah,

(29:33):
I see, yeah yeah, um, but yeah, yeah. I mean,
it's just so interesting that this would be a major
effective psychedelics on the brain, the suppression of activity in
the default mode network, Like could it be that suppression
of activity in the default mode network, which is so
largely focused on the self and metacognition and thinking about

(29:54):
the past and future and the evaluation of self. That
this suppression is what CAU causes all these subjective reports
of ego loss or ego dissolution on psycho psychedelics boundary dissolution. Yeah,
and again, if you don't remember from we talked about
it in the first episode of the series, ego loss
or ego suppression is one of the most interesting common

(30:16):
reports of people, especially on higher doses of psychedelics. And
the best way to I mean, that's kind of inherently ineffable,
but the best way to describe it, I guess, is
the experience of having experience without a self, to have
the experience or of sort of being without being an
eye or a me. And of course, isn't it interesting

(30:37):
that we also encountered this in dream as well, except
maybe not that first night of sleep in a new location.
I remember study that came out several years ago that
that pointed out that what do you see, uh, with
increased activity on that first night of slumber in a
new location the default mode network. Oh so you're dreaming
with a higher, higher state of awareness of self and

(30:59):
self other distinctions, right, or at least it's too revved
up to allow like a proper night's sleep to take place.
So yeah, so the ego loss thing definitely suffers from
ineff ineff ability. But to whatever extent we can understand it,
it seems to involve a a reduction or loss in
the sense of self as a distinct other, separate from

(31:20):
the rest of the universe or from nature, or from
whatever is being observed. It's kind of ego loss is
pure experience without a me. And so I guess you
can see if if the default mode network is being suppressed,
the default mode network does all the stuff we're just
talking about, that may be what's active there. And it's
also worth pointing out that there are studies showing that
meditation tends to reduce activity in the default mode network. Absolutely.

(31:44):
We've talked about some of the research on the show before,
and as we discussed in previous episodes, there are some
strong parallels between the psychedelic experience caused by drugs and
the you know, the experience of master meditators or people
who achieve you know, like the greatest points of I
don't know what you call it, the peaks of conscious
experience as as sought after by by meditation, like mindfulness

(32:05):
and stuff. Oh yeah, I mean it comes back again
to this idea that metacognition is part of the default
mode network. It's like, yes, you can, you can potentially
turn to pharmaceutical and pharmacological keys to the to the
locks that that imprison you. But also the key is
already in the cell like that, the key is is
present arguably within the default mode network itself. The one

(32:29):
thing at least seems to me, I mean, you're much
more experienced with meditation than I am, is that the
meditation route seems to take a lot of work, right,
Like it takes a lot of practice and people can't
always necessarily get there on their own. Um yeah, I
mean it does. But then again I think I think
one of them I'm not trying to knock it, but no, no, no,

(32:49):
But I think the other side is that, like we
have to drive home that with um, with psychedelics like that,
you know, again the importance of set and setting and
intention that this is not necessarily the easy road either.
I mean, it does seem to be the case that
with with psychedelics you can you can induce a state
like this, uh a lot quicker. But at the same time,

(33:13):
it's not it's it's not easy. It's just not like
hitting the Nirvana switch on somebody's brain. Uh and uh.
And there's gonna be a certain amount of work involved there,
and there's gonna be there're gonna be some risks. Well,
maybe we should talk about what the science says about
those risks when we come back from another break. Hello,
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or wherever you get your podcasts. Than all right, we're back.
So we've We've spoken a lot on this show in
these episodes about like particular examples of individuals taking a
psychedelic substance and having some sort of mind altering experience,

(36:46):
life altering experience. But we haven't really talked about any
of the sort of uh, you know, cautionary tales of
the psychedelic experience, for one part, because those stories are
pretty prevalent in our culture due to the backlash and
the moral panic surrounding psychedelics. But but I but I
did think it would be helpful at this point in

(37:07):
the episode to focus briefly on one example, UM, and
that would be I think one of the more famous
examples of of of of psychosis, schizophrenia, schizzo effective disorder
being linked to the psychedelic experience, to the consumption of
a psychedelic substance, Beach Boys co founder Brian Wilson um

(37:27):
UH brilliant musician, but has also lived with schizo effective
disorder since the mid sixties, with his symptoms reportedly remote
emerging shortly after he took LSD and after after he
had taken it. After these symptoms began to emerge, he
would he ended up having to struggle with auditory hallucinations
from that point on, still struggles with them today, I

(37:49):
understand now. At the same time, it's worth noting that
he's had a lot of positive things to say about
the spiritual and creative influence of psychedelics. But his case
does seem to stand as a cautionary tale of psychedelic
how psychedelics can affect someone with a predisposition for schizophrenia
or schizoeffective disorder, or at least the perception that they

(38:10):
could have played a role there. I mean, because I
think we still don't know for sure exactly what that
interaction is. But it does. It does not, but but
it is. It's certainly it seems real enough that everyone
mentions it and urges everyone to exercise caution in that area.
If you do have a, say, a family history of schizophrenia. Absolutely,
I mean, I'm all for exercising caution. We I think

(38:33):
we've said this in every episode before, but we do
want to reiterate that we are just trying to be
descriptive in these episodes. We're not telling you that you
should take psychedelics. That's a decision you can only make
on your own and hopefully in the with the consultation
of a medical professional and like learning, doing your own
research and all that kind of stuff. So you should
make sure that if you are going to go down

(38:55):
this path, you understand the risks for yourself and you
do all the digging you need to do there. Now,
it does seem to be the case that there are
plenty of reports of of experiences on psychedelics being timed
to make it seem as if they have triggered symptoms
in people with a predisposition for psychosis, and of course
psychosis we should probably define that. I found a good

(39:16):
definition by the National Alliance on Mental Illness that psychosis
is quote disruptions to a person's thoughts and perceptions that
make it difficult for them to recognize what is real
and what isn't um and so so psychosis is a symptom,
not a disease. It's a symptom of conditions like schizophreniaand
schizo effective disorder. But the I think an important thing

(39:38):
to emphasize there is that psychosis is understood as as
causing problems recognizing reality, which is not necessarily the same
as the kinds of experiences the perceptual disturbances that people
might have on psychedelics where you can see things but
you in many cases know that they're not really physically present.

(39:58):
But I guess the question is, is there any empirical
evidence about whether the use of psychedelics actually causes psychosis. Uh,
there's a little bit. So I was reading a news
feature for the journal Nature by Zoe Cormier which pointed
to two different studies from recent years finding no link
between psychedelic use and symptoms of psychosis or other mental

(40:21):
health complaints. So these studies are not necessarily definitive, but
this is what the evidence, at least as measured here,
seems to indicate. So the first study was published in
the Journal of Psychopharmacology and by Johansson and Crebs called
Psychedelics not Linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior
of population study. Here the authors reviewed survey data from

(40:42):
a huge population study comprising more than a hundred and
thirty five thousand adults in the United States, and the
cross checked the use of LSD, psilocybin, and mescalin. So
the study only applies to those three drugs, not necessarily
to others. Uh. Those three drugs versus reports of mental
health problems. Uh. And I should know that almost twenty

(41:03):
thousand of the roughly a hundred and thirty five thousand
adults in study had to use psychedelics, so that's about
fourteen percent. They found no correlation. Quote after adjusting for
sociodemographics other drug use in childhood depression, we found no
significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics and increased likelihood
of past year serious psychological distress, mental health treatment, suicidal thoughts,

(41:27):
suicidal plans, and suicide attempt, depression, and anxiety. We failed
to find evidence that psychedelic use is an independent risk
factor for mental health problems, so that's one thing now.
On the other hand, Coromier's article also cites an interview
with Charles Grobe, a pediatric psychiatrist at the University of California,
Los Angeles, who is also an advocate for some use

(41:49):
of psychedelics in certain clinical settings, and Grobe seems generally
encouraged by these findings, but warns that we shouldn't conclude
that there are no risks and says that individual cases
of negative effects from psychedelic use do occur. One example,
he gives his hallucinogen persisting perception disorder or hp p D,

(42:09):
which is sometimes described as like the never ending trip.
It involves like repeated or incessant or invasive disturbances of
the visual field or shimmering lights or seeing dots or something.
Also known as acid flashbacks if you will, Uh, Grob
gives a quote saying, quote, I've seen a number of
people with the symptoms following a psychedelic experience, and it

(42:31):
can be a very serious condition. Right. Uh. You know,
we have an older episode from years back on this
that I think was based in part of a two
thousand thirteen study, and if I remember correctly, that study
found that, you know, it's that it was extremely rare,
uh and in a large part blown out of proportion
by anti drug messaging, because of course that was part

(42:51):
of the moral panic, because that everyone's going to take
LSD then they're going to You're either gonna force yourself
through a keyhole or you're gonna deal with acid flashbacks
the rest of your life. Uh, or it's going to
be the Blue Sunshine scenario. Right. But oh man, Blue
Sunshine has got to be the best and ugliest psychedelic
exploitation cinema. Yeah, and thoroughly not like non psychedelic really,

(43:12):
but still worth seeing. If that movie, that movie is
a tan shag carpet it is just hideous starring Zalman King.
But I I do have to to mention too that
I remember when we aired this episode and this was
I think an episode I did with Julie Douglas back
in the day. We did hear from a couple of
listeners who insisted that they had experienced acid flashbacks at

(43:32):
some point in their life. So, I mean, the the
accounts are out there, there is, uh, you know, at
least they're at least accounts of people dealing with these
and and you know, claiming to deal with the reality
of of acid flashbacks. So um, you know, perhaps more
studies needed. Well, I mean, according to grow Is, it's
not like that they're serious doubt that some versions of

(43:55):
these things exist. The evidence seems to show that if
to whatever extent these problems do exist, they're rare enough
that they don't really show up statistically right. Well, then
you know, and also wonder too, like what other factors
are involved there, Like if if you have had a
psychedelic experience and it was meaningful, as a lot of

(44:16):
them end up being, they ended up being something that
stick with you and they give you a glimpse of,
you know, something that is in some way hallucinatory, and
then later on you have some sort of hallucinatory uh
experience that is tied to another uh situation, like you
might have a tendency to interpret it as being linked

(44:37):
to that original use. Well exactly, yeah, there's a correlation
causation issue here. I mean the authors of the first study,
Crebs and Johansson I mentioned, they point out that these
symptoms of hpp D also occur in people who have
never taken psychedelics that you know, so there could be
there could be a causality issue there. Decide another study.
There was a study by Hendricks at All in the

(45:00):
Journal of Psychopharmacology and called classic psychedelic uses associated with
reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population.
So this study looked at an even larger sample, about
a hundred ninety thousand survey respondents. It also found that
the use of those three psychedelics was not and again

(45:21):
I mentioned earlier it was LSD, psilocybin, and mescalin, so
not not necessarily applying to the others. Those are the
classic psychedelics I guess, so the psychedelic classic not to
be confused with your classical psychedelics, not new psychedelics. Anyway,
this study found that those three psychedelics were not associated

(45:42):
with any adverse mental health outcomes. The study actually found
some evidence to the exact contrary. People who had at
some time used LSD or psilocybin had a lower lifetime
risk of suicidal ideation or suicide attempts, though it's not
clear that the psychedelics paws these lower rates of suicidal
thoughts and behavior. Maybe there's some factor not controlled for

(46:06):
that makes people both less prone to these problems and
more likely to try psychedelics at some point. But it
is worth noting that the use of other non psychedelic
illicit drugs was mostly associated with increases in risk for
past months, psychological distress, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The
psychedelics appeared to be the exception. They were the drugs

(46:26):
that that did not cause increase mental health problems. And so,
to go back to Cormier's article, this was written up
with a with a quote from one of the authors
of the paper saying quote the author was Matthew Johnson,
saying quote, We're not claiming that no individuals have ever
been harmed by psychedelics. Anecdotes about acid casualties can be
very powerful, but these instances are rare. Uh And he

(46:48):
says that the population level, that the data about the
harms of psychedelics have been overstated. So again we're not
advising any particular plan of action or telling people to
take psychedelics. I would say the bottom line from my
reading on the risks of psychedelics is that there do
appear to be some risks, but the risks are rare.
There are risks to any drug. Any drug you're going

(47:10):
to take, you should research from science based sources and
and if possible, get medical advice before embarking on um.
But then also those risks that do exist seem to
be relatively low and relatively rare compared to the risks
of lots of other known drugs. Yeah, ultimately, basic decisions
on science and not on whatever the last horror movie

(47:34):
you saw have or or or comedy. You know, you
could go either way, right, depending on what you're watching.
You can get a very skewed view of what a
psychedelicy is and what kind of experience you can expect
from them. Aren't Psychedelic comedy is generally more horrifying than
psychedelic horror. I'm trying to think of what a good side. Well,
you know, you're talking like the monkeys movie like head

(47:55):
and and so forth, or Yellow Submarine horror comedy. Okay,
did we did we run into the problem we envisioned
we might, which is that we thought this was going
to be the last part and then we only got
halfway by the time we're what like fifty minutes now. Yeah, yeah,
I think we're gonna need to cut this episode off.
There's gonna be one more. So for everyone out there
who is enjoying this, uh, this ride of psychedelic episodes,

(48:18):
well then rejoice because we have one more for you.
Um for the rest of you, well, just bear in
mind there's only one more. I mean, you can't get off.
You gotta go all the way to the endpoint, right right. Yeah,
And our next episode, we're gonna we're gonna discuss some
of what's been going on in the twenty one century,
where we are now in the psychedelic renaissance, and where
we might be going in the future. Sounds great. In

(48:38):
the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes
of Stuff to Bow your Mind, head on over to
stuff to Blew your Mind dot com. That's where you'll
find them all. Uh. You also, of course can support
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way to do it is to tell your friends about
Stuff to Blow your Mind. Uh. To make sure you
have subscribed to this show as well as our other show, Invention,
which is an exploration of human techno hit Stree and

(49:01):
UH and I think we're planning to do an episode
soon or have already done an episode on penicillin, depending
on when you listen to this. Yeah, we will not
have already done it. We will have done it. We
will do it. I'm not sure where we will have
agreed to do it. We will have agreed to do it.
It sounds to me like you're struggling with mental time travel.

(49:22):
It can be difficult with a two podcast schedule at
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or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at

(49:44):
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
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listen to your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Robert sex Reese,

(50:56):
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But hell is real. We're all trapped here and there's
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(51:19):
Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or
wherever you get your podcast. Hello, I'm Mini Driver and
on my podcast Many Questions, I put together a little experiment.
I ask trailblazers across different disciplines the same seven questions.
Questions about the inflection points in their life, what they
like least about themselves, and what relationship has to find

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It was at CBGBs. As a matter of fact, I
was waiting for the audience to give it to me,
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make them. I have to command them artists and creative Juggernaut.

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Goldie and I walk up to the mountain on high
cop just being in that environment and seeing life and
death in front of you, right in front of you.
And I got there and scream and crying and laugh
and I find that being the happiest. And many more
join me as we continue this exploration on season two
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