Psychedelics Playlist: The Manifested Mind, Part 1

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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(01:32):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and stay. I wanted
to start with one of those great naval gazers. Are
you ready, Let's do it? Okay? So the question is
we know how to describe what we see when we
look at things. You know, you can look at the
room you're in right now and write down the features,
or you can try to describe a great landscape that

(01:55):
you remember from some trip you took. But when somebody
asks you to look inside yourself, how do you begin
to describe what you see in your own mind? I mean,
in a way you are forced to resort to metaphors.
You know, we talked about this a lot. They are
like concrete metaphors for abstract mental properties and so maybe

(02:15):
you think of your mind if you you try to
examine it as something like a uh, you know, like
a castle or building, a solid landscape you can walk
through that has features you could describe. Or maybe you
think about it like a weather pattern that's constantly transient
and changing, or maybe you can't really think of it,
uh in in comparison to any physical object at all,

(02:37):
in which case, how would you ever even be able
to describe what you're looking at? And how different of
a person would you be if you have the tools
to see more clearly what's inside your own mind. Well,
even in this we're using terms of about about seeing
and visualization and uh and certainly I think a lot
of us fall back on cinematic interpretations of the inner

(03:00):
mind states and you know, identity and who we are.
But but there's you know, there's more going on there.
Like I I sometimes when I'm more self conscious of
what says going to say is going on in my
you know, default mode network, it we won't even be visual,
Like my visual world will be just wrapped up in
whatever I'm doing, say, driving down the road. But it's, uh,

(03:22):
it's this non visual world that is wrapped up in
like voices of the past and perceived you know, possible future.
Would you like to think about death and about all
the ways in which you have failed? Yeah, exactly that
sort of thing, you know, and that and they may
be flashes of visualizations in there, but but but often not,
at least in my case. Uh. And of course, in

(03:43):
all the things concerning the the inner mind, this is
going to change from individual to individual. Yeah, totally. And
so today we are embarking on a multi part episode
series that we're gonna be doing here on stuff to
blow your mind, looking at the general topic of psychedel
alex and most specifically, I think, with it with a
strong focus on the fungal domain there on, on psilocybin,

(04:07):
mushrooms and related species and compounds. Yeah. Yeah, not only
about you know, to our point earlier, not only about
what they seem to change in human perception and cognition,
but what they reveal about human perception and cognition, how
they factor into our past, how they factor into our present,
and how they may well factor into our future. Yeah,
that's right now. I think maybe one thing that has

(04:29):
pushed us in this direction is some books we've been
reading recently. So maybe we should mention them at the top.
I know we've both been reading, uh, Michael Pollen's most
recent book, How to Change Your Mind, which is all
about psychedelics and about uh, you know, the concept of
of spirituality and mental life and why this is so
elucidated by and associated with psychedelic compounds. Right, And it

(04:51):
is just an excellent book, you know, It's gotten rave
reviews for for for excellent reasons. It's it's one of
these where you can pick it up without knowing anything
really about psychedelic culture or you know, or the you know,
the nineteen sixties, or or or botany and ethnobotany. You know,
you don't really have to have a background in any
of these things. And Paullen, as with his other major works,

(05:12):
and it just really walks you through. It adds in
personal experiences and is very much approaching it as an
older individual who did not have a lot of experiences
with psychedelic substances. And I think that's very interesting and
appropriate treatment because a lot of what I've at least
learned recently about psychedelics makes it seem like psychedelics maybe

(05:33):
of much greater use and of much greater interest actually
two older, more mature people dealing with thoughts of life
and death and the meaning of life and all that,
than as say, as it is often presented as sort
of a party drug to you know, experience by teenagers. Right, Yeah,
I think I can't remember it was Paulin said this,

(05:54):
or who was quoting somebody else is saying that psychedelics
are are wasted on the young. It might have been
Carl Young. Was it Carl Young that said that? Okay,
maybe Paulin was counting was quoting Young on that, but
but yeah, I can see there being an argument to
that to a certain extent. However, that's not to discount
the possible benefits to younger individuals as well. Um, but

(06:14):
we'll get into all that as we proceed. Well, I
just think it seems very plausible to me that it's
actually much more useful in general for older people to
be given tools to when they're doing that mental introspection,
you know, looking through the window into their own mind,
to have the tools to see more clearly what's inside
and to go in and move the furniture around, right,
or to sort of knock the barnacles off the hull

(06:35):
of the ship. Because that's that's one way of looking
at it. Is just the the younger vessel may have
fewer barnacles or or or at least for a lot
of people, when you were younger, perhaps you were fortunate enough,
privileged enough to not have that many psychic barnacles that
need to be dislodged or could conceivably be dislodged, etcetera. Yeah. Uh, Though,

(06:55):
despite everything we're saying right now, I also want to
make clear that our approach over these following episodes is
going to be mainly a sort of like a descriptive
and and analytical discussion, not one where we are advocating
any sort of personal course of action. So we're not
going to tell you to take psychedelics. We're not going
to tell you not to take psychedelics. Uh that that's
not our goal. Instead, we want to talk about what

(07:17):
they can do and what they mean. Right. But in
addition to mentioning Pollen's book, another important book that I
haven't read but that you have and I've read about
is a book by Terrence McKenna that I know you've
been enjoying greatly, which I think is out in uh
maybe is uh you might say on less solid footing
or a little squishy or territory. But it's also very interesting.

(07:37):
Well yeah, one thing about about Fit of the Gods,
And first of all, it's book, so a lot of
time has passed since it came out. And then also
it is it is kind of a mixture, you know.
So McKenna, you know, brings his background in ethnobotany, ecology
and an understanding of shamanism uh into this uh, this book,

(07:58):
and he's ultimately making a a rather grand hypothesis um
that that I'll talk about here in a bit. But yeah,
I feel like with with the Food of the God's
one has to be a little bit choosy and what
what you really like grab onto, But but he has
a lot of very interesting things to say, some wonderful
insight that still stands up to this day. But it

(08:18):
is a book that I think needs to be appreciated
alongside aside other sources, especially today. Well yeah, I mean,
I think, especially in the kind of perspective we tend
to present on the show, I feel like there's a
lot of great literature in the realm of psychedelia that
falls into this category where it's stuff written by people
who are genuine experts who you know, really do know

(08:38):
what they're talking about in the realm of psych psychedelic compounds,
the chemistry, the botany, the cultural practices and all of that,
and have great things to say on those subjects, but
then also tend to be prone, i would say, much
more often than people in other subject domains to kind
of get out into highly speculative and even seemingly supernatural territory. Right,

(09:00):
So you have that tendency, but also just the you know,
the post nineteen sixties taboo aspect of the subject, where
for for as well, we'll discuss for decades, Uh, it
was not something that that was an accepted area of study.
It was left to the fringes and the counterculture, and
so there was a lot of baggage there, you know that.
But both of those those things can sort of hurt

(09:22):
in individual's work in this area. But another sort of
compelling inspiration for these episodes is of when I attended
the recent World Science Festival in New York. There was
a panel on psychedelics as well. Oh yeah, when eduard
O Cone was on. Yes, Cone was on here. This
is where I learned about him and his work, Plus
a few other individuals that will discuss as we proceed.
So obviously we've covered psychedelics and stuff to build your

(09:44):
mind numerous times in the past, discussing LSD, SO, sybin
as well as such counterculture figures as tom As, Timothy Leary,
and John C. Lily, and we've we've been meaning to
come back to psychedelics for a deeper die for a while.
But one of the real reasons that we're reaching back
into the subject right now is that we are living
in a very exciting time as far as these substances

(10:07):
are concerned, because in research terms, in research terms, yeah,
because basically, these are substances that modern Western medicine explored
for a brief time in the mid twentieth century, and
then and then, and when they were looking at them, um,
they were encountering many promising results indicating how they might
be used to treat addiction, address psychological problems, and even

(10:29):
unlock a better understanding of the human mind. But due
to political and societal pressures, uh, they were all in
turn declared illegal substances Schedule one drugs in the United States.
I think it was psilocybin I think was made illegal
in the United States in nineteen sixty eight and then
made a schedule one substance in I think nineteen seventy. Yeah,

(10:51):
I believe that that was the timeline. And uh, and
of course this also in in you know, involved LSD
and various other substances. But basically the result was that
decades of potential explora floration were lost when modern science
had scarcely explored, you know, more than what ancient people's
understood about the substances involved, or you know, to a

(11:12):
certain extent, understood them less well, uh compared to ancient societies.
So I mean we're talking three plus decades during which
these powerful substances were purely the domains of counterculture and
illegal activity in the West. You know, no nobody was
studying so well, there was some study, but it was
sort of driven underground or not taken very seriously in

(11:34):
the academic community, right. It was it was considered like
risky to propose, say a psilocybin study for a while. Yeah,
like if you're a pharmacologist, psychopharmacologists pursuing uh psilocybin, it
could be a bad career move, right, Yeah, I mean
so it was almost treated as if all of these
substances were dead ends, as if you know, would reach

(11:56):
the point where it was like, oh, well, this is
a this is just a poison that you know, for
that that some people are going to dangerously use for
recreational purposes, which you know, as as will explore, is
wrong in two ways. Like it's wrong in the historical
context when you see how substances like this have been
used for thousands of years, and it's wrong on the
medical research front. Yeah. I mean one of the funny

(12:18):
things is, given our view of the very like square
buttoned up nineteen fifties, the nineteen fifties were relatively a
time of uh you know, abundant research and permissiveness exploring
these topics. So yeah, there were some decades there, some
some pretty dry decades as far as psychedelic research was concerned.
But as we emerged from the nineteen nineties, the culture

(12:40):
began to shift and we began to see new experimentation
into how especially psilocybin could be used to treat specific conditions.
And you know, this is what we've covered in the
past on the show and what you've you've heard covered
a lot elsewhere. You know, the studies here and there
that reveal new potential and perhaps point the way for
greater and renewed study and even de criminal is zation
at least for clinical uses, you know, in study and

(13:03):
studies if nothing else. And so as Michael Pollen points
out and how to change your mind, you know, we're
living in a true renaissance of psychedelic study. And I
don't think that's, uh, you know, an overstatement to say that.
I think, especially since around the year two thousand six
when there was a big seminal research paper out about
psilocybin that we will talk about in detail in a
later episode in the series. Right, And I'm not and

(13:25):
I'm not referring to say, like what Colorado efforts in
Colorado to decriminalize them for you know, perhaps with with
recreational usage in mind, Uh, you know, I'm talking about
like clinical uses. The potential benefits here are profound, and
if the trends you know, continue here, you know, modern
medical science has a has a lot to gain from it.

(13:46):
You know, it's it's it's frustrating to to think about
those decades in which you know, less was being done
with them. But but you know, we could have easily
remained in kind of a dark age and had several
more decades in which the substances for not being studied.
So it's a remarkable time really. All right, Well, I
think before we dive into especially psilocybin, with the psychedelics

(14:07):
in general, maybe we should do a little foundation work
because I know one thing that you were talking to
me about that Terence McKenna gets into a good bit
and in his work is the idea of like what
is a drug? What are drugs? And what do people
see as drugs? Yeah? Yeah, he he had a lot
of great thoughts on this, on this matter that I
think a really good sort of disrupting the sort of

(14:28):
like mental concrete that ends up getting embedded in our
head regarding the different substances that we take into our body.
So yeah, let's I think we should talk about like
what a drug is, because, for instance, if you look
at just the basics, say Webster's definition, a drug is
a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect
when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body. Now, how

(14:50):
this certainly applies to say cocaine or ibuprofen. It also
applies to coffee and alcohol, It applies to melatonin, herbal supplement.
It's chocolate, tea, wheat, grass shots, camera meal, sugar, licorice, oatmeal,
you name it. Yeah, we were talking the other day,
I know about it was it was it melotonin supplements.

(15:10):
You were looking at that. Oh no, I heard uh
an ad on the radio for them. Yeah, that we're
calling them drug free and all these drugs people take
that advertise themselves as drug free, which I think is
just I'm not sure what people mean by that. I
think they mean maybe like not containing synthetically or lab
isolated chemicals that you can't pronounce the names of. Yeah,

(15:31):
it's you know, all natural or something. Well. Yeah, it's
weird how we we use the term drug to sort
of refer to things that are either in the domain
of the illegal is in like the War on drugs,
or something that is in the domain of medical professionals. Yeah,
maybe something that requires a prescription is produced by the
pharmaceutical industry. Yeah, but yeah, I don't see any reason

(15:51):
why these all natural substances are not drugs. They certainly
are drugs. I mean, I'm doing drugs right now. I've
got my coffee cup next to me. The whole drug
free thing kind of reminds me of like the people
who say I don't put any chemicals in my body.
I know what they're talking about, Like they, you know,
they want to eat sort of like all natural whole foods.
You know, I I'll eat an apple. I'm not going

(16:12):
to eat an apple bar that was made in a
factory and has all these chemical ingredients listed that I
can't pronounce. You know, I don't know what that stuff is,
So I mean, I understand that. And of course, you know,
there there are some reasons that you might, in truth
want to avoid certain kinds of industrial food additives. But
the whole idea that you don't put any chemicals in

(16:32):
your body is ridiculous. Yeah, And and of course we're
not arguing that one should put everything into your body
by any means that you know. And ultimately we all
have to draw lines in the sand concerning this sort
of thing. And those those lines may you know, not
make you know, a whole lot of sense if you
really analyze them. But I think one of the important
things is to be able to realize where we're drawing
the line in the sand, and where that line is

(16:53):
being drawn for us by you know, other other parties.
In society. But anyway, this is one of the the
ideas that Terence mckinna discusses and Food of the Gods,
And I think before we go any any further, I
should just go ahead and like summarize like what this
book is about. It's kind of about a lot of things,
but but ultimately he has this central hypothesis that he's pushing. Um.

(17:18):
You know, he makes a passionate case for not only
humanities connection with psychedelic substances and the promise of their power,
but also with the notion that they played a role
in the emergence of consciousness. Yeah. Well and sort of
like in language and and human intellectual abilities, right right, right,
ums self reflection in language in particular, And Michael Paulin

(17:39):
actually mentions it in his book as well. He refers
to it as quote the epitome of all mico centric speculation. Right. Uh.
And really, you do encounter some people in this world
who maybe their enthusiasm for for psilocybin and the effects
of these psychoactive mushrooms or psychedelic mushrooms. Uh, you get
the since that they have had such positive experiences with

(18:03):
them that it drives them to think about you know,
mushrooms is a sort of like center of everything good
and holy in the world. I mean, in a way
that might be unfair. Maybe that's over psychologizing their their
hypotheses and points of view. But like, for example, the
mycologist Paul Statements or Stammits, who comes up in Michael
Pollan's book, who we've talked about on the show before.
I think we talked about him in our Dune episode

(18:25):
because I think he was friends with Frank Herbert. Yes,
I believe so. But you know, he's got a very
like mushrooms centric view of the world, where in a
way sort of mushrooms rule everything and that the mushrooms
are like trying to communicate with us through these compounds
and all that. And mckennic kind of falls in this
category too. He's sort of like sees the mushroom regime

(18:45):
everywhere on Earth. Yeah, I think that's that's undeniable. At
the same time, I mean, he does make a very
mean in a very robust case in this book. Again books,
so you know, a lot has happened since then, But
as Ancopolin also points out, you know, it's ultimately not
something that's not really susceptible to proof or disproof, and

(19:07):
ultimately McKinnon never really fills in the blanks on how
this would have actually affected biological evolution. Right, so you
probably can't put a lot of stock in his hypothesis
being correct, barring some of their evidence that we're not
aware of yet. But basically, you know, his idea is that,
like well, humanity owes its mental and cognitive capacities to
mushrooms because, for example, I know one of the arguments

(19:29):
he adduces is that because psilocybin, mushrooms caused the experience
of synesthesia, you know, the cross pollination of senses, so
like colors have sounds or or music has colors or whatever.
You know, uh, sounds have a taste or something. That
this led to the creation of language, because the language

(19:51):
is a sort of cross pollination between the idea of
a sound and the idea of a concept. And so
this kind of like a mental boundary crossing that would
and have been useful in animals. UH, suddenly is spurred
by ingestion of psychedelic substances in this case, I think psilocybin,
and then that leads to humans creating language. Again, I

(20:12):
don't know what the direct evidence for this would be.
It's it's like an interesting speculation, but I don't know
how you would prove it, right, Yeah, I think ultimately
you would not be able to prove it or really
disprove it, And which makes it, I guess, kind of
a safe hypothesis in that regard, but also a hypothesis
that will probably never evolve beyond the hypothesis level. Yeah,

(20:33):
this is kind of stuck at the interesting speculation station. Yeah,
and it is interesting speculation. But anyway, I just want
to go ahead and describe what that is because I
feel like with mckinna, especially depending on what you know
about him and his work, you might enter into it
thinking only about same machine elves and the time wave
zero and some of the the you know, the fringier
things that he discussed, um the thing you know his

(20:55):
discussion too of things that he saw Sanan on d
m T. But but on the other hand, you know,
he was that was an accomplished ethnobotanist, and when he
was talking about about mushrooms, he certainly knew what he
was talking about. And uh and and he also just
had a lot of wonderful insight into just what was
culturally going on and had been going on at this
point in time, especially in the United States, concerning the

(21:18):
subject of drugs. So he points out that drug is
a you know, is at times an amorphous term that
we used to apply to certain substances, you know, especially
if we want to demonize one substance or elevate another
exclusively to the domain and control of medical professionals. But
he he writes this quote, eating a plant or an

(21:39):
animal is a way of claiming its power, a way
of assimilating its magic to one's self. In the minds
of preliterate people, the lines between drugs, foods, and spices
are rarely clearly drawn. The shaman who gorges himself on
chili peppers to raise inner heat is hardly in a
less altered state than the nitrous oxide enthusiast after a

(22:00):
long inhalation. In our perception of flavor, in our pursuit
of variety, in the sensation of eating, we are markedly
different from even our primate cousins. Somewhere along the line,
our new omnivorous eating habits and our evolving brain, with
its capacity to process sensory data, were united in the
happy notion that food can be experienced. Gastronomy was born,

(22:22):
born to join pharmacology, which must surely have preceded it
since maintenance of health through regulation of diet is seen
among many animals. That offers you a little bit of
a glimpse that. You know, McKenna has a fantastic way
with words, and I think he's also a fantastic public speaker.
If you've ever seen videos of him giving his you
know which are you know, he's one of those people

(22:44):
who I think is able to put things in a
way that's captivating that maybe makes the ideas uh shine
as if they have more merit than they would have
put in a less captivating way by another speaker. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
And you know he's certainly there's a little bit of
shamanistic flavor at the beginning of that passage. It I
think what he's saying here, we can we can all
really agree with. I mean, we are what we eat

(23:05):
in so many many ways. You know, we're continually rebuilding
our ephemeral bodies out of the materials we consume, the
chemicals and the nutrients. And they can also said quote
the strategy of early hominid omnivores was to eat everything
that seemed food like in to vomit whatever was unpalatable. Plants, insects,
and small animals found edible by this method were then
inculcated into their diet. I mean, that's certainly I see

(23:26):
that in other animals. You know, you think about the
way even domestic dogs who are tend to be quite
well fed, you know, like it's not like they're lacking
for nutrition, but it's just like if there's a thing
that even might be food, they're gonna try to eat it.
They're gonna give it a shot, and if it doesn't
work out, they just vomit it up. Yeah, I mean,
it's this is one of those areas that it is
I think really remarkable when we stop and try to

(23:49):
imagine the process of human beings, especially figuring out what
they can eat, what they can't eat, what what substances
they can use just the rite amount of and not
kill themselves and potentially you know, have some sort of
benish official effect, medicinal culinaria or otherwise. Uh, you know,

(24:09):
because ultimately we're talking about a long, multigenerational process of
human beings figuring out the properties of plants in their
immediate surrounding and then passing that knowledge on. And it's
you know, it's really it's it's enough to tempt us
with the tales of ancient astronauts, you know, the idea
there was surely some other force, some alien or some
angel came to us and told us what we could eat.

(24:31):
But resist that impulse. No, you're looking at real scientific
labor in the ancient world. Yeah, the kind of scientific
labor that was on the subject of the self and
like putting your own life on the line. Yeah. Absolutely.
Anytime we we touch on this topic, I'm always reminded
of a particular Chinese myth. Uh, the mythical emperor shin Nong,

(24:51):
the divine farmer and ultimately the founder or the mythological
founder of Chinese herbal medicine as well as agriculture itself. No,
there's the link again between medicine and food. Yeah. Absolutely,
and Uh, anyway, he's credited as having authored, you know,
a couple of really important books on you know, the

(25:12):
herbal world, and according to the myths, she Nong either
tasted hundreds of herbs or thrash them with a magic
whip in order to learn their properties. According to one legend,
he consumed seventy different poisons in a single day, uh
in order to just you know, continue this examination of
the natural world. I also ran across some variants of

(25:34):
the story online that mentioned him having a transparent stomach,
so that he that allowed him to see, you know,
how food is being broken down in his body. But
I didn't see that. This is not referenced in either
of the main Chinese mythology text books that I I
frequently referred to, So I don't know, you know, to
what extent there's falility to do that, or if it's
an accurate translation, etcetera. But still, you know, in in mythology,

(25:58):
Shong is essentially uh classifying all drugs. He's humanity's multi
generational process of food testing condensed into a single individual.
Because you know, of course climates change, humans moving to
new environments and destabilize their own environment. Ancient people's would
have figured out roughly what was in their immediate vicinity,

(26:18):
and then they would have perhaps tried to take their
important plants with them, But not every plan is easily
suited for agriculture or new environments, and new plants would
have continually presented themselves in the course of their migration.
You've got this image of Shinong here in the outline,
and he's just sticking something in his mouth and grimacing. Yeah,

(26:39):
there's some wonderful paintings and drawings of Shinnong where you know,
he seems to be just doing the work, you know,
just out there chewing on a twig or a leaf
here and there and and sensing it out seeing what. Well, okay,
what is this good for? What can this be used for?
What can this be used as a treatment for? And
uh and in the writings attributed to him mentioned a
host of different substances. At one point, cannabis comes up

(27:01):
and said it quote, will produce hallucinations, have taken over
a long term. It makes one communicate with spirits and
enlightens one's body. And while cannabis is not generally considered
a psychedelic, this does bring us to contemplation of psychedelics,
which are our primary concern here in these episodes, especially
the two major psychedelics that have played a role in

(27:23):
the often stunted Western exploration of their potent powers to
bring about a different state of consciousness. All right, well,
maybe we should take a quick break, and then when
we come back we can dive more into the question
of what are psychedelics. Today's episode is brought to you
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thank all right, we're back. So we've been talking about
psychedelics in this first of our series exploring the subject,

(30:16):
and I guess let's go into the origin of this term.
Why why do people use the word psychedelic as opposed
to other terms that might mean similar things are the
same thing. Well, the term psychedelic derives from the Greek
words for soul or mind and manifesting, and this name
was bestowed in nine by British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond. Yeah.

(30:38):
Another frame for the etymology is, so it's mind manifesting.
Of course, you know the Greek see you spelled like
psyche is a term for mind or soul. Uh. The
Greek word delun, where the psychedelic part comes from, can
mean multiple things, might mean manifesting. It can also I
think mean like to reveal, to make visible, or make
clear and This is interesting because it fits with the

(31:01):
early uses of psychedelics and psychiatry and neuroscience in the
nineteen fifties and sixties when they were considered a revolutionary
research tool. And multiple people I think have made this comparison,
but one of them is the psychedelic enthusiast Stanislav Graff,
who wrote that quote the potential significance of LSD and
other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the

(31:22):
value of the microscope for biology or the telescope for astronomy.
Uh So he's framing it as like a tool of
magnification and clarification. It's something that allows you to see
farther or see inside at a greater resolution. Yeah. Now,
the term psychedelic, you know, ended up taking on a

(31:43):
lot of additional baggage because this term was was definitely
taken up by the champion, by Timothy Leary. I know
there's Timothy Leary. Of course, we have a couple of
episodes of stuff to blow your mind on him um
that I recorded with Christians several years back, and as
we discussed there, like Leary, Leary ultimately I think did
a lot of damage to the perceptions of psychedelic he

(32:05):
became he was he was ultimately more of a more
of a guru type as opposed to you know, you know,
a pure and dedicated scientist. He began as a you know,
Harvard academic researchers studying psychedelics. But yeah, he clearly he
became the dice word I think would be an enthusiast,
somebody who was clearly at a certain point not studying

(32:28):
the subject in an objective and dispassionate way, but was
more just sort of like an advocate for psychedelics, like
these things are great and everybody should be taken him right,
And then he did willingly embrace the the position of
being so sort of this leader, almost this unofficial um
and you know, guru figure that was at the forefront

(32:50):
of this counterculture movement, both in in the the ups
and downs of that counterculture as well. Yeah, and so
I think this is your correct one reason why the
term psychedelic has acquired some perhaps negative baggage. I think
sometimes people think of that word more having to do
with like recreational and sort of music associated or party

(33:12):
associated uses of of these compounds that tend to cause
you know, hallucinations or highly altered states of consciousness, and
I I don't I don't think that's quite fair. I mean,
I think psychedelic is a good term, and I want
to keep using it throughout these episodes. Yeah, and I
think there's a reason that people have stuck with it
despite other terms having been presented. For instance, in Theogen's

(33:33):
is one that comes up the most and has been
U taken up in Champion by you know, in some respects,
but more and more you do see people coming back
to U psychedelics, and that's what we're going to use
in these episodes, and of course in Theogens. I think
one reason that's difficult is because in the Agens means
like sort of like you know, god revealing, like it

(33:56):
conjures up, it brings up the gods or brings up
the fine right, It didn't bring up the nineteen sixties
as much, to its credit, Like that's I think the
benefit of it. But then when he actually, uh, you know,
take it apart and look at what it means, it
is perhaps leaning more heavily into the mystic Yeah, which
is fine because I mean, to be fair, the mystical

(34:16):
experience is very important part of the sort of research
history of what the what these what affects these drugs produced,
and the most common reports about the effects that they
have on people's thinking and on their lives. They very
often do encourage types of mystical thinking. They very often
do lead to people reporting mystical experiences or experiences that

(34:37):
people you know, relate to God or God's or some
kind of divine spirit. But at the same time, not
everybody has those experiences on them, and not everybody who
has those kinds of experiences on them would attribute it
to any kind of real spiritual force, though a lot would.
So I think in the Agen's does have the negative
property of maybe assuming a little too much of a

(35:00):
thorough association with the spiritual um and so so. Yeah,
I like the idea of psychedelics. It is. It is
mind revealing. Now they're also sometimes called hallucinogens, you know,
just sort of roughly, which of course is is confusing
as well for starters. Something can be an hallucinogen and
not be a psychedelic compound for sure, it isn't. Cannabis

(35:23):
sometimes classified as a hallucinogen. I think I think I've
seen it classified as such. Yeah, one part of this,
of course, is you don't have to take a psychedelic
to have an audible or visual hallucination. There are many
other causes and conditions that can be involved, and you
can make a strong case that our default perception of
reality is nothing short of an hallucination. Likewise, psychedelics don't

(35:46):
always cause hallucinations. In fact, full blown hallucinations are actually uncommon,
and they're probably not going to be like the hallucinations
you've seen in a psychedelic film, right. I mean, I
think often the hallucinations that are picked it in psychedelic
movies are given far too um, far too concrete of
a character that makes sense, Like so you see a

(36:09):
glass dragon flying out of the Andromeda galaxy to eat
your pain, and you know, rebirth you as a fire
child or something, where Whereas that kind of thing you
might see, especially on some higher doses of some of
these psychedelics. But more often, you know, people especially on
lower doses, will have some states have altered perception, but
they're not necessarily going to see like whole concrete visions

(36:32):
of agents and objects coming towards them that aren't there. Yeah,
I mean, we have to cut films a little bit
of slack, I think, because ultimately it's a largely visual medium.
That's what they're telling their stories with, so of course
they're going to gravitate towards hallucinations and visualizations of psychedelic experience,
some of which are just laughable. Uh. And and occasionally

(36:53):
you'll have a film that that really does a good
job of capturing something that feels like an authentic psychedelic
uh experience, But I don't know, I find those to
be few and far between. Yeah. Oh, and I should
also point out that if you, when they're you classify
psychedelicy as an hallucinogen, you're also kind of limiting it,
you know, because ultimately these substances do a number of

(37:15):
different things outside of something that you could even loosely
describe as an hallucination. Yeah. I mean again, I think
psychedelic is a good term. They are more generally mind
revealing or mind manifesting. Yeah. By downplaying the role of hallucinations,
we don't want to suggest that these drugs can't cause hallucinations.
They very often do, especially at higher doses, right, Yeah, absolutely,

(37:36):
especially when you're also things are a little different as well.
Discuss when you get into clinical situations where you know,
just the way that a particular substances is uh it
administered can make it more potent. However, you know, on
the subject of visualization. UM. At that World Science Festival
panel that I attended, one of the speakers was it

(37:58):
was a British professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at
the University of Sussex uh And L. Seth, and he
pointed to the Google Deep Dream Generator as actually being
a decent approximation of the sort of visuals that can
go on during a psychedelic experience. UM. I think everybody's
probably seen images or video that you utilize this Deep

(38:21):
Dream generator, but it's the kind of thing where it's
like there's a face of a dog and everything exactly. Yeah,
so if you've never seen it. Basically, what it was
was it was an algorithm that would take a photo
that you supplied. You know, you'd upload a photo and
then you'd run it through the system. You could I
think determine like to what degree it would get, you know,

(38:42):
how crazy it would get basically, and it would start
to reveal fractal patterns emerging from the lines and boundaries
in the image. And very often, Yeah, like faces and
other recognizable forms that would show up in images from
around the internet would start showing up. In the image.
You might see forms of plan very often forms of
animal faces, dog faces, and the couch cushions. Yeah. Yeah,

(39:05):
And this this absolutely matches up with with my experiences
where it's not like you're going, oh my goodness, there
are dogs everywhere. But it would be more like there's
a there's a fractal pattern to my immediate environment that
I that is not there usually, or it looks like
the grass is breathing, or you know, perhaps you're looking
at something like say a work of art, or in

(39:26):
my experience of hanging African mask and it seems to
be alive and a certain to a certain extent, not
in a way where you're like, oh my god, the
mask is coming alive, you know, or anything like that.
It's uh, it's uh, you know, I guess it's rather
hard to put into words, but there is a you know,
a sense of fractal life to everyday objects that is

(39:48):
that is not there otherwise. Yeah. And I think another
way that the deep dream is appropriately compared to psychedelics
is that the deep dream generator I think basically worked
by a recurrent pattern of extrapolation and amplification. So, you know,
it sees something that's zero point five percent like a
dog face, and it recognizes that because it's tried to

(40:10):
track a lot of dog faces across the Internet, and
it says, let's lean into that, and then it makes
it two percent like a dog face, then ten percent
like a race, and finds more dog faces in what
it's been extrapolating from the original image. So I can't
help but notice that, you know, one tendency of the
hallucinatory experience, or of the psychedelic experience, seems to be

(40:31):
extrapolating and amplifying perceived significant patterns from random noise. So
let's take another step back and and talk just in
general about psychedelics and what particular substances we're talking about. Yeah,
I guess we we need to briefly address the chemistry
part of this, right, Yeah, So we're largely talking about
the the indull psychedelics. There's lysergic acid diathylamide l s D.

(40:54):
There's psilocybin, which occurs you know naturally in um, several
different varieties of mushrooms. What I think two hundred different varieties.
Then there's also in in a die methyl trip to
mean which is d MT. There's uh the eb a
gain and they're the beta carbo lines. The ones that
we're going to be discussing the most here are psilocybin,

(41:16):
which again occurs naturally in mushrooms, and then of course LSD,
which is is a synthetic psychedelic that was first generated
by Albert Hoffman in eight from lysergic acid, a chemical
from the for the fungus or god, which we've discussed
on the show before. H and Hoffman actually played an
important role in isolating the compounds from the philocopies mushrooms

(41:39):
as well. Yes, yeah, so he sort of figures in
both of the main streams here. But one thing I
want to make clear that I didn't understand for a
long time is that there there is not just one
species of mushroom that is the psilocybin mushroom and it's
that species. There is this whole class of the peloscopies
or the psilocybin mushrooms that is a you know, a

(42:01):
multi species, huge range of hundreds of varieties of mushrooms
that have these related effects. I think mainly based on
the compounds silicon and psilocybin, which breaks down into silicon
in the body. D MT, by the way, is a
naturally occurring compound as well. It's found in many different
plants and animals and is found up inside the human
brain as well. But it was also first synthesized in

(42:24):
ninety one by chemist Richard Hillmuth Frederick Matzk There, but
there are plenty of other additional psychedelics that that occur
and to pop up in the research and all there
that occur naturally in the world. There the i A
gain substances that are found in two related African and
South American tree genera UM, mostly known as an aphrodisiac

(42:44):
in Africa, but it also has psychedelic properties that higher doses. Uh,
there's a There's the hallucinogenic mescaline, which is found in
the spineless cactus pote. It's a fin ethylamine, as is
m d M A, as is methamphetamine, and as are
a host of other drugs, including just like basic decongestions. Uh, yeah,
you mentioned m d M A. Yeah, and Christian did

(43:05):
a whole couple of episodes I think on m DMA
years ago. Yeah, and we we're not really focusing on
m D m A here, but you know, it is
also a powerful Schedule one substance with some promising possibilities
for therapeutic therapeutic use and also some promising history of
therapeutic use. But it kind of fell victim to the
same anti drug efforts and the sort of moral panic

(43:29):
that was associated with the with the hallucinogens as well.
But according to Stephen Ross, m d. Of the n
y U Pslocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, speaking at the two
thousand nineteen World Science Festival, he said that we're you know,
there's a very strong chance we're going to see m
D m A rescheduled in the next couple of years
due to, uh, you know, the promising research that's going

(43:50):
on using yet you know, particularly dealing I believe with PTSD.
And you're talking there about it being reclassified as a
less dangerous and less legally prohibited drug in the United States,
right because the Schedule one in the US means like
there's nothing, there's nothing you can do with it. There's
not even like a medical use for it. Uh And uh,
I think in in some times in the past and

(44:12):
to some degree. Still in the present, the schedule one classification,
I think is treated more as a sort of punitive
category than say, truly you know, research or science based category. Right.
For instance, so at cannabis schedule one in d m
A schedule one, psilocybin schedule one, LSD schedule one, cocaine
schedule two. There you go. Interesting. Well, since we're gonna

(44:33):
be focusing more on psilocybin mushrooms than on other psychedelics,
I also thought it might be useful to just quickly
mention a few of its more straightforward medically recognized effects
and medical significance before we get on into the uh,
the more phenomenological common reports. So I mentioned this a
minute ago, I think, but the primary compounds responsible for
the psychedelic effects of psilocybin mushrooms are the compound psilocybin

(44:57):
and silison, which ultimately amount to sort of the same thing.
Since psilocybin breaks down into silicon once inside the body,
silicen is a more potent compound, but it occurs in
smaller original quantities within the mushroom flesh. Uh, and compared
to almost all other known drugs, psilocybin has an exceptionally
low potential for abuse and exceptionally few known risks. According

(45:22):
to the University of Maryland Center for Substance Abuse Research, quote,
there are no reports that psilocybin mushrooms are psychologically or
physically addictive, and use does not lead to dependence. For
several days. Following the use of mushrooms, users may experience
a period of psychological withdrawal and have difficulty discerning reality.
So that's like a potential drawback. But right, the way

(45:44):
I've seen it described is that there's there's virtually no
physical uh ramifications, you know, like in terms of like
just physiological damage to the body as you would encounter
with various other substances. That's that's not the risk. There
is like a small risk uh psychologically, especially for namely
for individuals with a family history of say psychosis or

(46:09):
um schizophrenia. Right, So, no psychoactive drug is completely without risks,
and we're not encouraging people to take psilocybin mushrooms or
any other drug. If you decide to take a psychedelic
any psychedelic compound you or any compound at all, really
you should thoroughly research it's its effects for yourself. Any
possible risk factors from trustworthy and science based sources. Right,

(46:31):
And I think this is an area where, like people
talking about recreational drug use, I think that can be
it can ultimately be kind of damaging because it implies
that powerful substances like this can be purely recreational. It's
kind of like, are you flying this F fourteen fighter
jet recreationally? Or you know, are you taking it seriously?
Like you know, it's a powerful thing, it's a powerful tool. Uh,

(46:55):
you should if you're going to choose to engage with it,
do so with with forethought exactly. So, yeah, like you
were just sort of alluding to. While paulocybin has an
exceptionally low level of recognized risk when compared with other drugs,
it still is possible to experience negative psychological consequences. For example,
if you have pre existing risk factors like high anxiety
or past episodes of derealization, then of course also we

(47:18):
should just mention the sort of practically associated risks. As
the mycologist Paul Stamitz makes clear, psychedelic species of philoscopies,
you know, the psilocybin mushrooms look extremely similar to many
other species of poisonous little brown mushrooms that can lead
to an agonizing death if ingested. So people who plan
to take psilocybin mushrooms should get them from an experienced,

(47:39):
knowledgeable source who knows exactly how to identify them reliably.
You don't want somebody who doesn't know what they're doing
foraging psilocybin mushrooms. For of course, when you have a
substances outlawed um, that's kind of the thing a lot
of people end up falling back on. So I mean,
that's one of the other benefits of I think personally,
of decriminalizing this sort of thing. Yeah, I would agree now.
All so, according to the Maryland Center, there are plenty

(48:02):
of possible physiological effects of ingestion, depending on tons of
different factors like the exact species of mushroom you're dealing
with and the preparation method, which you know can affect these,
but they include, just to read through a few of these, nausea, vomiting,
abdominal cramps and diarrhea, muscle relaxation, weakness and twitches, drowsiness, dizziness,
lack of coordination, lightheadedness, pupil dilation, dry mouth, facial flushing.

(48:27):
You might have increased heart rate or blood pressure, body temperature, sweating, chills, shivering,
numbness of the tongue, lips, or mouth, and then feelings
of physical heaviness or immobility, um or feelings of lightness
or floating uh. And then of course that you get
to the psychological consequences. These aren't all the possibilities, but
just to mention a few, you of course have the

(48:48):
possibility of hallucinations, heightened sensory perceptions where maybe colors seem
more vivid, or sounds are more cute, flavors more explosive,
smells are stranger we mentioned earlier, since these you know,
the cross sensory contamination, colors make sounds, sounds of colors,
that kind of thing. The lack of ability to focus
is commonly cited alterations and perception of space and time.

(49:12):
You might kind of like time seems dilated or sped up.
Anxiety and restlessness, or a sense of detachment from the
self or from the surroundings, including the concept known as
ego loss, which we'll get into in more detail later.
But beyond all those sort of like top line descriptions
of psychological consequences, I think maybe we should take a

(49:32):
break and when we come back we can discuss in
a little more detail, like the kinds of common reports
that people actually make about their experiences with psychedelics and
and the more complex phenomenological responses to them. This is
Roxande Gay, host of The Roxande Gay Agenda, the Bad
Womins Podcast of Your Dreams. Now what is the Roxande

(49:55):
Gay Agenda, you might ask what. It's a podcast where
I'm going to speak my mind in about what's on
my mind, and that could be anything. Every week I
will be in conversation with an interesting person who has
something to say. We're going to talk about feminism, race,
writing in books, and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics.

(50:16):
I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going
to share with you a movie or a book, or
maybe some music or a comedy set, something that I
really want you to be aware of and maybe engage
with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The
Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams,

(50:37):
every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Mini Driver
and on my podcast Mini Questions, I asked trailblazes across
different disciplines the same seven questions, questions about the inflection
points in their life, what they like least about themselves,

(50:58):
and what relationship has defined love for them. This season,
I'm coming back with new trailblazers like Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry,
journalist and television host Jeremy Clarkson, editor in chief of
Instar magazine Laura Brown, and creative juggernaut Goldie. Join me
as we continue this exploration on season two of many
questions on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or

(51:20):
wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Have you ever felt
depressed about work only to have your dad be like,
why are you so down? So you told him you
hate your job, and he said, well, you better talk
yourself out of it, and then you thought, hmm, I
love to talk. I could host a podcast. And then
you went to Speaker from my Heart and started a
podcast and got good at it, then monetized it, then
quit your boring job and told your dad thanks for

(51:40):
the advice, and he was like, well, that's not what
I meant, and I don't understand what a podcast is,
but you seem happy, so that's great, kiddo, you ever
do that? Well, you could at speaker dot com. That's
spr e A k E R ask your dad. You
actually don't. All right, we're back. We're talking about the
psychedelics and some of the we're about to get into

(52:03):
some of the common reports about the the the psychological
effects of taking them. Yeah. Now, I we are talking
sort of about psychedelics in general, but with a special
emphasis on psilocybin, mushrooms or the philospies, right, and uh,
you know, and we should probably mentioned, you know, one
of the reasons we focused on on psilocybin but also
l s D to a certain extent, is that when

(52:24):
you look at the studies that we're done with these
early on, like you know, in the the fifties and
in early sixties, when they were when they were you know,
widespread studies being they were looking into psychedelics, they were
mostly using LSD because that was what was readily available
at the time. Today's studies are going to be almost
exclusively using psilocybin for a couple of different reasons that

(52:47):
will explore later. Yeah. I think we're going to especially
get into those more recent studies, maybe in our third
episode so yeah, so what what are these common reports,
the phenomenological reports. One thing that I think we should
emphasize up runt is the thing that a lot of people,
maybe who would take these for the first time, don't
quite realize, is the extreme importance of what's known in

(53:08):
the psychedelic literature is set and setting. So the psychedelic
drug is a fairly reliable gateway to an altered state
of consciousness, possibly containing hallucinations uh and feelings that parallel
the classical forms of mystical experience. You know. Well, we'll
get into more on the mystical experience in a minute here,
but the experience produced by the compound is not standardized

(53:30):
by the psychopharmacology itself. It appears to be extremely sensitive
to external factors like the personality, the emotions, the thoughts
and expectations of the person ingesting the compound. Uh. You know.
This is referred to as the set or the mindset,
and the physical environment and stimuli encountered while on the trip,

(53:50):
which is the setting. Uh. And in my experience, a
hallmark of the majority of especially negative experiences people report
with psychedelics come from in attention to set and setting, right, Yeah,
Like I remember speaking to somebody and they said that, like,
they had a terrible experience on mushrooms, ory l s
D and UH and but but the the setting that

(54:12):
they had was like really trying to drive away from
a firework show and having their car overheat on the
side of the road. That's a terrible, terrible set and setting. Yeah,
I mean this might seem kind of obvious, but like,
these are the kind of things that if someone is
going to experiment with them, And in addition to all
the you know, research you should do beforehand, making sure
that you feel safe and you know what you're doing

(54:32):
and all that, it's also important to pay attention to
set and setting, to approach it with the right mindset,
maybe to approach it in the company of someone who
can be a positive guide for you, and also to
approach it within a setting that feels positive and comfortable,
such as a place where you feel at ease and
at home, maybe with access to nature and natural settings.

(54:54):
People often report wanting to be outside, wanting to be
among plants and things. And it's interesting how all of
these these things are matching up with some of the
UH what really most of the the traditional ritualistic and
shamanistic practices concerning these substances that were around for thousands
and thousands of years before you know, anybody thought about

(55:14):
going to woodstock or burning man, right, I mean very
often these compounds were ingested as part of a ritual
and a huge part of what rituals are. I mean,
even outside the consumption of psychedelics are set and setting manipulations.
What is it when you go into a Gothic cathedral
and there is music, you know, their sacred sounding music

(55:35):
echoing throughout the stone architecture in the room is dim
and lit by candles, and someone passes you by with
a sensor. You know that incense smoke is coming out
of and and it alters your senses with the smells
and the sites and the sounds. This is creating a
sort of a set and setting for you to have
a slight mystical experience even though you're not ingesting psychoactive compounds. No. Well,

(55:58):
but then again, when I go to chair, they always
have coffee out front, sugar and cookies for the kids.
There's tea, and if you're going to church in the
Middle Ages, you might be getting some of that. Eric
Rye always always a potential risk. But yeah, I mean
that's just one example. I mean a huge part of
what people do in religious rituals. I think his manipulation

(56:19):
of set and setting to create a sort of sacred
or altered mind state in which you have a certain
kind of experience. One thing I wanted to talk about
is something that Michael Paullen mentioned and how to change
your mind. At one point, he's describing his own personal
experiments with psilocybin. At one point, I know, he talks
about how he he took someone he was much younger,
and he had kind of a bad time because he

(56:41):
was out away from home. I think he was out
in a park in New York City and he was
getting worried about if people could tell when they were
looking at it. Sounds like he was not in a
comfortable environment. Yeah, well, I think he were he related
to and one was further out of the city and
one was in the park, And the one in the
park was a little more anxious because it was like, oh,
can they tell that I'm in drugs? Thing. He also
describes one that he did much later as an adult,

(57:02):
when he was preparing to write the book, and so
he describes the altered sensory and conceptual experiences that he
has on the drug. This is interesting not as hallucinations,
but as quote projections, And so he says, you know,
projections are determined largely by his physical surroundings and by
his own present thoughts and preoccupations. He defines a projection

(57:24):
as quote, when we mix our emotions with certain objects
that then reflect those feelings back to us so that
they appear to glisten with meaning. So again, you know,
he's not seeing the dragon flying out of the Andromeda galaxy. Uh.
Instead he sees two different trees standing in a meadow
when he feels deep insights about his parents looking at
these two trees. And this experience is largely determined not

(57:48):
just by the drug, but by the environment that he's
in and what's his preoccupations, what's on his mind. But
certainly set and setting our are essential really in all
the literature concerning psychedelic experience, be it uh, you know,
ancient rituals, counterculture usage, usages of the substances, or the
various clinical trials that are ongoing. Now, yeah, so let's

(58:10):
go to the next big common report that's pretty interesting.
This one we should call ineff ability. This extremely common
report is that the psychedelic experiences one either difficult or
impossible to put into words, or two, if it is
put into words, the words do not accurately capture the
nature of the experience. And and this is interesting in

(58:32):
the way that it's both similar and dissimilar to everyday
experience is totally mundane ones. You know we're all familiar
with You were hanging out with some friends and something happened,
and you know, you have an experience that has features
that are hard to put into words, Like anytime you're
telling a personal story and you end with the conclusion, well,
I guess you had to be there. You're saying, well,

(58:53):
you're saying there was something interesting or funny or notable
about the experience that you don't know how to recreate
with words, and that maybe your shortcoming. Maybe you're not
very good with words and you can't do it. Or
maybe there's something that nobody could adequately put into words.
Or I always am suspicious. Maybe they're just too lazy
to tell me. That's not care enough about conveying this

(59:14):
experience to Maybe you can't just take take a few
steps back, put it, put it in some better words
and then have another go at it. Don't play so holy.
I know you've said it. I know you've said it
at some point. I don't know. Um, I don't. I
don't remember having said it, but I may have well
said it. You are very good with words. Well. I
think there is a tendency with a background in writing

(59:35):
is that you tend to think that writing can do anything,
anything can be captured in words. But then again, it's
it's interesting to to then turn that on its head
and think about what our words to do. Our words
don't always sometimes they do capture an experience, and in
capturing it, they cage it, and they cage it within
the limitations of those words. You know. So we're so

(59:57):
used to doing this with a lot of different experiences,
we don't and think about how we're we're taking something
that was observed. We're taking this this experience of reality
that is rather different than you know from the paragraph
that you create out of it. But we think of
that paragraph isn't accurate depiction of reality? Yeah, I mean, something,
of course is always lost in the translation to words.

(01:00:19):
And everybody has had this experience every now and then
of not being able to explain things, but it is notable.
How often, how almost always, ineff ability emerges as one
of the most salient features of psychedelic experience. You pretty
much always just had to be there, uh, you know,
you had to be me basically is the only way
you can understand what the experience was. And often, if you,

(01:00:41):
at least in my experience, if you read a description
of somebody else's experience with LSD or psilocybin that it
was incredibly profound and meaningful and notable to them, you
might think, Okay, I don't get what's so profound about this.
Something important is lost in the translation of the experience
into a verbal narrative. Well, I mean it's kind of
like dreams, right, I mean, you know, there's the old

(01:01:03):
thing that you know, or the old observation that we
we only find our own dreams interesting and we're not
interested in or we don't understand other people's dreams. More certainly,
the sort of you had to be there that applies
to dreams all the time. I'm I certainly I'm always
having dreams that when you're having them, they're profound or
scary or frightening or beautiful or weird and then when

(01:01:23):
you try and describe them later outside of the trappings
of dream, you realize that sounds kind of hokey. Yeah,
there's a quality that you can't really identify in words.
And here here's an interesting distinction. Maybe we can come
back to this as the episodes go on. But I wonder,
is this quality of ineffability that's so common to psychedelic
experience because we don't have the vocabulary yet, or because

(01:01:45):
there is a quality of the experience that's inherently indescribable
in any words. I mean, I've heard some psychedelic enthusiasts
frame it in the first way. It's like, you know,
there's someone who's quoted in Pollen's book. I think it
might have been ob Jesse, but I don't want to
it could have been somebody else. But anyway, Uh, he's
describing psychedelic experiences and saying, you know, it's like you

(01:02:07):
took a paleolithic person and then transported them through time
to modern day Manhattan and sat them down, let them
look around, and and then sent them back and had
them try to explain their experience. They wouldn't have the
words to describe what they were looking at. Cell phones
and skyscrapers and all that. So that's one way of
looking at why psychedelic experiences are hard to describe. It's
like we we don't have the words to put it

(01:02:28):
into yet. But there's another way of looking at it says, no,
it's not that we lack the words. It's just that
it can't be put into words. There's a there's a permanently,
irresolvably unexplainable quality to the experience. Well, it's kind of
in a way maybe too, it's we're removed of some
of the shackles of of language and our linguistic thinking

(01:02:49):
for a little bit. You know. It's kind of like
you go on a trip and your cell phone battery
is dead. You don't bring back any pictures because your
cell phone wasn't operational during that time. You know. It's interesting, yeah,
Paul and the way, there was an excellent interview with
him from Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and in that
he talks about this, uh, the the ineffable aspect of
the experience, and he mentions that William James said that

(01:03:11):
the mystical experience is ineffable, yet we try very hard
to effit, which I thought was was clever. Yeah, that
is good. William James is going to come up a
lot in the in the next few minutes. But you know,
I think back, you know, just on the power of
language and and and also you have to I always
have to realize that, you know, there are plenty of
very talented writers and speakers who have discussed this, people

(01:03:32):
that that surely have the tools to communicate what they experienced.
But then again, like Terence McKenna, I think is an
example of someone who, you know, he only speaks of
the ineffable rarely and is otherwise more than up to
the task of discussing and describing what he experienced on
psychedelics or you know, interpreting and reinterpreting what he experienced.
But even he at times kind of falls back on

(01:03:53):
the hey, look, you had to be there explanation, particularly
when he was talking about experiencing this other like the
idea of like experiencing an other entity while on d
MT he was, he kind of sort of leaves it
with with like, hey, you you tried it as well,
you tell me what it is. Well, that experience of
the other, I think is the next thing I want

(01:04:13):
to get into. Oh yeah, you're right, This does flow
directly into the next area where you're going to discuss. Yeah,
so the next feature that's a common phenomenological report of
the psychedelic experiences verticality. That's what i'd call it. William
James called this the noetic quality. So, this feature of
psychedelic experience, which has long interested me, is the way

(01:04:35):
that a lot of people emerge from their experiences on
psilocybin or on LST or something believing not just that
they had an experience that was fun or was interesting
or was unique, but that they learned something crucial and
objectively true, That they acquired real true information or genuine

(01:04:57):
understanding that they did not have before or uh. And
you know. So the American psychologist William James, we've mentioned
a couple of times already, he called this the no
edic quality. And he noted very pointedly that it's different
from the way people feel about dreams. Where you go
into a dream, you might have a very altered state
of consciousness, some strange things happen. You feel maybe in

(01:05:19):
the dream like you learn things that are important, But
you almost never wake up from a dream and think,
you know, I learned objectively true information from the dream, right, Like,
there's there's this knowledge, there's this understanding that it was
not reality. Even if in the more you know, extreme
cases of nightmares or disturbing dream content, we might still

(01:05:41):
feel shaken by it. I mean, we've all I think
at that experience where like the dream leaves you, it
affects you, and it takes maybe a day to shake
it off. But you're not You're not viewing as it.
It's like having seen a horror movie that disturbed you,
as opposed to, oh, my goodness, Jason Vordies attacked me.
You easily discard the dream is nonsensical. Um. Now, not

(01:06:02):
everybody does this. I mean some people think they get
you know, prophetic visions and dreams and stuff, and this
is usually part of some kind of supernatural worldview in
which you believe that there are gods that are communicating
with you and all that. But people don't typically uh
go from you know, not believing in supernatural conveyances and
communications to saying, oh, a dream taught me something objectively

(01:06:24):
true about the universe. But a commonly reported type of
psychedelic experience, for example, is the feeling of having been
put in contact with or in the presence of some
other entity, frequently interpreted as God, or as some you know,
embodied form of an ideal like love, or an embodied

(01:06:45):
form of the universe or some kind of universal consciousness,
or as maybe a loved one who has died, or
as some more obscure others like Terrence mckinna's machine Elves.
You know, he talked about taking d m T and
just encountering these other entities, the machine elves or the
you know whatever he called them, right, yeah, and fit
of the gods. I don't think he refers to them

(01:07:06):
and as machine elves there, but he discusses briefly the
other that has experienced through d m T. And ultimately
he's like, hey, try yourself, set aside three minutes, eight
minutes of your time and go try it for yourself,
and you tell me what you experienced. Yeah, And so
the really interesting thing here is that so many people
come out of these types of experience is not just
thinking wow, that was an interesting hallucination, like they were

(01:07:28):
watching a movie, but believing they've actually been made aware
of the real existence of a real other entity and
carrying this belief of acquired knowledge with them after the
effects of the drug have worn off. Another way, I
would say veridicality presents his uh in ineffable perceptions of
the value of statements and insights. An example of this

(01:07:51):
would be maybe a person on a psychedelic substances realizes that,
you know, some cliche they've heard a million times, realizes
that God is love of and they may have heard
this a million times before, but suddenly the same statement
is interpreted as a profound insight that's revealing and true
in ways that can't really be explained. But you have

(01:08:13):
the feeling that you've discovered a great truth, even if others,
you know, in communicating it to them, they might not
see it as as insightful as you do. Another interesting
feature of this noetic or vertical quality of psychedelic experiences
that it often feels kind of gnostic to me. I
mean nastic in the religious sense, of course. Gnosticism was
an ancient religion in which some form of salvation relied

(01:08:36):
on acquiring secret knowledge or esoteric dogmas and rights that
were only revealed to initiate It's why you know. There
was sort of like the false, uh, fraudulent public face
of the religion that was for just all the people
hanging out and listening in the crowds, and then there
were the real dogmas and the real truths about you know,
the heavens and what you do to get there that

(01:08:58):
that are sort of only talked about in secret if
you're one of the in crowd. And it's not just
that many people think they've gained objectively true information from
psychedelic experiences. It's often interpreted as a sort of deep
secret that they've been allowed to glimpse, like the curtain
has been lifted for them, and they are they've been
let in on the secret. Yeah, they've they've seen through

(01:09:20):
the illusion of of perceived reality and maybe had some
glimpse that absolute reality. Right. So a really common version
here is the idea that people have psychedelic experiences and
then afterwards emerged with a strong conviction that there's more
to life than what we see, or that there's some
dimension of existence that's beyond the better understood material dimension

(01:09:42):
of existence. In the words of William James, the experience
quote forbids a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
Oh that's nice, and and certainly the history of psychedelic
research is filled with examples of this as well. You know,
often very scientifically minded individuals, you know, emerging with a
new sound or developing or enhanced sense of either the

(01:10:04):
mystic or often is the case, you know, a connection
with nature, and there there could be multiple things going
on here. Either way, it's interesting. I mean, one way
of looking at it is that psychedelic experiences do actually
reveal something true to people. In another way of looking
at it is there's a fairly consistent psychological effect they produce,

(01:10:25):
creating the illusion that something objectively true has been revealed.
But either way, it's very psychologically important and powerful and
fascinating that they do this right. I mean, you could
to ground it more in some of the science we've
touched on on the show before, like plasticity. You can
look at it from a plasticity standpoint, and you could say, well,
you know, it's it's allowing the mind to change, you know,

(01:10:49):
I mean, that's kind of a Pollen's whole point in
the title is it's not so much these individual substances
and what they do. It's not like and and that's
certainly one of the hallmarks of the studies will get
too later, but it's the state of mind that it
puts one in and what can be done with an
individual when they are in that state of mind exactly.
I mean. One of the interesting things about the psychedelic

(01:11:11):
states of mind that that of course is brought up
by lots of authors, is the ways that they parallel
what William James wrote about is the traditional qualities of
mystical experience, you know, profound religious experiences that people have.
Both of these first two characteristics we've been talking about,
ineffability and the vertical or no edic quality, are also

(01:11:32):
the first two markers of mystical experience that James writes
about in the book The Varieties of Religious Experience, which
is published around the turn of the twentieth century. Now,
of ineffability, James writes, quote, mystical states are more like
states of feeling than states of intellect. No one can
make clear to another who has never had a certain
feeling in what the quality or worth of it consists.

(01:11:55):
And of the no edic quality or the vertical quality.
He writes that mystical experiences quote our illuminations, revelations full
of significance and importance, all inarticulate, though they remain and
as a rule. They carry with them a curious sense
of authority for after time. This reminds me, you know,
one of the key aspects of traditional psychedelic use, some

(01:12:16):
of the more thought out counterculture uses, as well as
the clinical uses today, is what occurs after the trip,
this period of consolidation and integration, where you're you're stopping
and saying, Okay, what did that mean? How how shall
I interpret this? And then and then move on and
apply it to my life? I think we have to
realize that, you know, our memories of psychedelic experiences are

(01:12:40):
still memories, and they still can be altered by the mind,
and will be altered by the mind every time we
draw them back out again. Of course, yeah, as any
experience would be. Just as a funny note, one thing
I thought we should mention is that, you know, William James,
He's writing around this here end of the twentieth century,
and James was not afforded the many wonderful options for

(01:13:00):
chemical alterations of consciousness that later researchers where apparently he
did a lot of nitrous oxides. Read William James. It's
funny to imagine him trying to like talk about this
experience firsthand and just doing whipp its um. But we
should mention also James has two other markers of mystical experience,

(01:13:20):
so I'm not necessarily counting these as as clear markers
of psychedelic experiences, but just to to continue his exploration
of mystical experiences since there's been a lot of overlap
so far. The other two James mentions are transiency and passivity.
So transiency means the experience is time limited. You know,
it's true enough, of course, for the trip length of

(01:13:41):
psychedelic drugs, h doesn't seem a super relevant. But what
does seem a little more relevant is James's comment that
while the experience itself doesn't last forever quote from one
recurrence to another, it is susceptible of continuous development in
what has felt as inner richness and importance. And Paul
En quote this section as well. And then finally, there's

(01:14:02):
passivity as a James and marker of mystical experience, which
means the person having the mystical experience believes their will
has been subverted or held in abeyance by a superior power.
And there are some psychedelic experiences that have this quality.
You could view it as somewhat though not exactly parallel
to the next characteristic we're about to mention. Yeah, and

(01:14:24):
I think set and setting likely you know, play a
key role here as well, though, though it seems to
be very difficult to shake with with more intense experiments. Uh.
Albert Hoffman reflected this, you know, personifying LSD to a
certain extent, it's like a thing that found him and
uh and mckinno certainly discussed it in these terms as well. Yeah.
So the next big thing that is this very interesting

(01:14:47):
common feature of especially maybe higher doses of psychedelic experience, uh,
is the idea of loss of ego. Uh. It's it's
affected by the ineffability criterion, I would say, because it's
often hard to describe what this is like, but many
who have had psychedelic experiences report the dissolution of the self,
having consciousness reduced to a state of experience in which

(01:15:11):
there is no eye anymore, there is no me uh.
And one way I've always interpreted this is that some
psychedelics have the power to reduce or eliminate the self
world distinction. You know that we have this categorical barrier
we put up in our minds between everything that is
not me and then me, and what happens when that
distinction sort of gets blurred or erased. Yeah, I mean

(01:15:33):
I can certainly relate to this from experience with yoga
and meditation. Um, you know, when not every time, but
occasionally occasionally, if I had like a really good yoga session,
I can reach that point where it's, you know, I
I lose the sense of me. It's a wonderful experience
that that can be, I think difficult to put into word.
I mean, the only way you can describe it is

(01:15:55):
like is ego loss or some use the term ego death,
which I think is a little that's a little harsh.
Let's not pull death into this whole situation experience without
a self. Yeah. Yeah. One way that Terence McKenna describe
these these substances and others you describe them as being
boundary dissolving uh substances and talked about their boundary dissolving properties,

(01:16:16):
which I think is is a perfect description the boundary
between you and others, between you and nature, um or
you and the cosmos. It seems to dissolve, so the
fortress of the self crumbles away of only for a
little bit. And and of course this sort of experience,
like a lot of the experiences involved in the psychedelic experience,
you know, can can can of course be achieved via
other means, but is a number of these commentators have

(01:16:38):
pointed out these these chemical shortcuts are are shortcuts, but
they're also kind of like high speed shortcuts. They're kind
of like express lanes, yet for better or worse, they
require a lot less work than achieving loss of ego
through meditation or something, and a lot less practice. I
would say, probably too right, But but again, I do
really love this description of something being a boundary dissolving

(01:17:00):
substance or even just a boundary dissolving experience. And I
feel like, you know, putting aside, you know, psychedelic substances entirely,
I feel like we do need more boundary dissolving experiences
in life because we just throw up so many boundaries
between ourselves and each other and and uh, certainly against
the nature. Well yeah, I mean this is a common

(01:17:23):
I think way that we will talk more in subsequent
episodes about interesting research about the ways that psychedelics have
been shown to have the potential to actually change adult personality,
which is a fascinating property and makes them kind of
worth their weight in gold, right. But yeah, I mean
some of the ways we can see that as uh
So in the boundary dissolving property to whatever extent that

(01:17:45):
does exist between humans, I think tends to lead people
who consume psychedelics to have a more communitarian mindset after
using them. Uh The nature boundary dissolution thing is very
interesting because you very often see uh people having stronger
affinities with the rest of nature, with plants and animals
and the natural environment after taking these substances. Michael Paulan

(01:18:06):
in his book compares this dissolution of the boundary with
nature to one of my favorites, Alexander von Humboldt. You know,
I think he doesn't name the book, but I think
in the book he alludes to having read The Invention
of Nature by Andrea Wolfe, that biography of Humboldt that
I recommended a couple of years ago and is still
a great read if you get a chance. But von
Humboldt said, you know, one of the great realizations is

(01:18:29):
that you know you are not in nature. He says,
I am nature, and that psychedelics seem to encourage people
to think this way. One last interesting common report is
this thing that is sometimes I think termed the afterglow.
Worth mentioning that some users of psychedelic substances report additional

(01:18:50):
subjective experiences after they've returned to their baseline state of consciousness.
So you're no longer experiencing maybe sensory hallucinations or significantly
altered states of consciousness. But after you're done with the
psychedelic trip on LST or psilocybin, sometimes people reported that
the world just seems very bright and alive and wonderful

(01:19:12):
and full of possibilities. That Michael Paulan describes this is
quote the opposite of a hangover. It's kind of like
the windows have been opened and allowed the air to circulate,
and then after the windows are closed once more or
mostly closed, Uh, the air is still fresh, the air
is still renewed. And and this brings me back to
you know what I just said earlier about consolidation and integration.

(01:19:32):
And I think this is gonna be very important to
keep in mind as we consider you know, traditional shamanistic
and uh, you know, and and scientific uses of these substances.
You know, both in the scientific research is going on
today and also the sort of underground therapy sessions. Uh
that are as well that Michael Pollan writes about in
his book you Know What. Where afterwards during this afterglow,

(01:19:52):
you ask well, what did I learn from the experience?
What can I bring with this? Bring out of this
into the waking world. Uh. It reminds me of one
of and Watt's famous quotes about you know, in which
it compared psychedelic experience to a scientist using a microscope. Yeah. Yeah,
and the idea being that a biologist will use the microscope,
but then but he's not gonna have They're not gonna
have their eye glued to the microscope. They have to

(01:20:15):
leave the microscope. Then in order to understand nature as
it is conceived of, you know, outside of the microscopic
or telescopic experience, right, you don't really see or observe
just by looking at something. You have to also step
back and think about what you saw right now. A
couple of other bits of insight that were brought up

(01:20:35):
in that World Science Festival panel. And el Seth mentioned
that there's increased randomness where there can be and uh
and and he also pointed out that you know, this,
our sense of self is ultimately a perception, and the
default mode network plays a big role in it. He said,
it's important to point out that the self is not
the default fault mode network. We shouldn't like draw too

(01:20:57):
strong of a comparison between the two, but they're still
a strong connection. And he said, the psychedelics temporarily reorganize
these networks, you know, so so forget you know, new hallucinations.
They mess with the primary hallucination of the self, the
hallucination that we have day in and day out, you know,
the idea that we're set off from the natural world,

(01:21:19):
that we're set off from each other. So that's I
think that's a really interesting way of looking at it.
Don't think about the new hallucination that is brought on
by a psychedelic, but the primary hallucination that may be disrupted,
and then what we can learn from that, well, yeah,
I mean, one of the funny things is that, so
the the idea of seeing hallucinations while you're on a
psychedelic can sort of bias you toward thinking that what

(01:21:42):
psychedelics do is they give you an inaccurate perception of nature,
because of course, you know, you hallucinate things on psychedelics
that there's no way to show that they're actually physically there.
But at the same time you shouldn't conclude from that
the corollary that the standard, like the def state of
consciousness is accurate and the altered state of consciousness is

(01:22:04):
thus estranged or inaccurate. It might see things in the
physical environment that aren't physically there, but it's perception of
the self and how the self works maybe no less
accurate or maybe more accurate than your default state. Right,
And then a lot of this too. It's like we're
not necessarily talking about a matrix scenario where you know,
it's like, oh, now I see the real world, but

(01:22:25):
like the details that the emphasis is that we play
some things, etcetera, the values that we place. Another individual
in that panel World Science Festival was Berkeley professor of
psychology and philosophy Alison Gottnick, who we've also discussed in
the program here before because she deals a lot with
the minds of young children and developing mind states. You know,
she discussed how it's it's how these how psychedelics seem

(01:22:48):
to open up exploratory possibilities in individuals, you know, in
keeping with the plasticity of in the mind of a
young child. She calls this lantern consciousness, and you know,
comparing it to the illumination of a lantern. And she said,
she said before that babies and young children are basically
tripping all the time. They're basically having a psychedelic experience.

(01:23:11):
Which is why you know, children can be so trying,
because they're just really will not boil down and be
a part of the rational world. They're continually in psychedelic
exploration mode. And so maybe you know, part of it
is that psychedelics put one or allow one to connect
maybe in a more adult way, with that same level
of plasticity. Yeah, I mean one of the things that's

(01:23:32):
commonly it's a metaphor that's often used by psychologist psychiatrists
who are interested in this mode of thinking that psychedelics, uh,
sort of like they break the automatic cliches of connection
that you make in your mind, so you're able to
see familiar objects as if you're seeing them for the
first time. And our mind is just full of these
nonverbal cliches of connections we make between things. When we

(01:23:55):
see a pen, we know it's for writing, and you
just see and like you, I, or all of the
other strange associations you might make about the form of
the pen in your hand, But the psychedelics, like they
break that automatic connection and instead you see it as
this radically ambiguous form that appears before you, and you
can make connections to all kinds of things. All Right, Well,

(01:24:16):
we're gonna call this episode right here, but we will
continue this exploration in the next at least a couple
of episodes, So a lot of ground to cover. I
think we went kind of long this time, but I
think it was important to get all the grounding there
so we can follow through in in the next few
episodes where we're gonna talk about history and the natural
history of psychedelics and especially psilocybin, to talk about some

(01:24:38):
of the research that's been going on, especially since around
two thousand six, about therapeutic uses of psychedelics and the
ways they can contribute to adult personality change and other things. Yeah,
I think it's it's fascinating how just just in the
history of this show, in the history of stuff to
about your mind, like we we have seen so much
progress made with psychedelic research. So it's gonna be really

(01:24:59):
exciting discuss that in upcoming episodes. Totally all right. In
the meantime, If you want to check out more episodes
Stuff to Blow your Mind, there are a ton of
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(01:25:22):
that's an option to do so, that will help us
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or just to say hi, you can email us at
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(01:25:51):
to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio
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listen to your favorite shows. Hello, Hello, Hi, Oh my god.

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I want to come through the screen and hug you. Hey, everybody.
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I don't know if you heard, but my podcast checking
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a CP lets me know that I made the right choice,
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Black Effect podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app
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