003 Mark Haden from MAPS Canada

In this episode we talk with Mark Haden, Executive Director of MAPS Canada about the clinical trails they are conducting using MDMA for people who suffer with PTSD. We also talk about the history of psychedelics in Canada and the United States. 

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Episode Transcript

Dave (00:14):
welcome to the psychedelic suitcase.
I'm Dave McNee.
In this episode we talk withMark Hayden.
Mark has worked in the field ofaddiction counseling for close
to 30 years.
He's also the executive directorof maps Canada.
Maps is the multidisciplinaryassociation for psychedelic

(00:35):
studies.
And what do they do?
Well, they're currently on theirthird phase of a clinical study
where they are treating peoplewith post traumatic stress
disorder with the drug MDMA andgetting really good results.
We talk about that, the historyof psychedelics in Canada, in
the U S drug reform and what heenvisions coming down the road
in terms of facilitatedpsychedelic drug therapy.

(00:55):
I hope you enjoy ourconversation.
Here's Mark Hayden.
Mark, thank you very much forcoming on the show.

Mark (01:00):
You're welcome.
It's a pleasure to be here.

Dave (01:02):
I've heard you talk a few times about sort of the history
of, psychedelics in particularlyCanada.
and I was wondering, before weget back to that, where do you
think we went wrong, if thatmakes any sense?
U m, compared to the indigenouscultures around the world, it
seems that w e sort of losttrack a little bit of what we
really should be going after inlife in some ways.

(01:24):
And it seems that we maybe hadthat at some point, but maybe
through bad laws or, just thesort of demonization of things
like psychedelics.
We didn't actually incorporatethem into our culture the way
that other people have.
U m, and i wa just wondering,where was the point where it

(01:45):
sort of went off the rails?

Mark (01:46):
Well, if you think about indigenous communities and how
they have integratedpsychedelics into their
societies, they always controland contain the psychedelic
experience through the practiceof ritual and structure and
leadership by elders.
And it doesn't matter whichcommunity you go to, it's always

(02:06):
that it's, it's, it's never justa teenage thing.
It's always woven into thefabric and it's about connection
.
It's about connection to theland.
It's about connection to thespirit that our connection to
that community, it's aboutconnection to the medicine is
there's a process of, ofconnecting.
It is woven into how indigenouspeople have used psychedelics
forever.

(02:27):
And for the first time ever inthe 1960s, Tim Leary links
psychedelics with thedisconnection message to an
intern on a dropout.
And it was a younger folksthing.
I mean the backdrop of theVietnam war and the fear of the
baby boomers just putpsychedelics in a completely
different place than all otherindigenous communities have had

(02:49):
them.
And there was a backlash andthere was backlash not just
against psychedelics but backagainst the whole baby booming
generation and cannabis anddrugs and psychedelics.
And, and so we, um, we're slowlydigging ourselves out of that
particular mess that we createda few years back.

Dave (03:07):
Well, also to introduce yourself as well.
You're the chair of maps Canada,uh, which is the
multidisciplinary associationfor psychedelic studies.
And they are currently I'minvolved in a series of tests
with the MDMA to treat PTSD.
If you could talk about theresults, that'd be great.

Mark (03:23):
The current treatments for p osttraumatic stress disorder
don't work very well.
U m, t hose somewhere theliterature says about 10% and
people are selling posttraumaticstress disorders t o the
military w ill claim up to 25%effective.
So the range is somewherebetween 10 and 25.
The first study that was donewith Michael demonstrate an 83%

(03:44):
level of effectiveness.
That was kind of the exploratoryopen label study and, um, and it
got everybody's attention.
So the question, if you're acompletely skeptical exterior
person looking at that data, ifyou're proposing an 83% level of
action invest versus the 10 to25%, you would say that they're
lying.

(04:04):
They're falsifying their data.
So the way you prove that you'renot, as you do it with more
sites, with more therapists inmultiple countries, and you have
loss of oversight like the FDAin the United States like health
Canada and Canada.
And so far we are continuing todemonstrate a high level of
effectiveness.
It isn't quite 83%, but it'sreally good and it's way better

(04:26):
than traditional treatments.
So that with, with encouragement, um, we're plowing forward.
In fact, the FDA in UnitedStates looked at our data and
said, we want to give you abreakthrough status.
That means it's so effective andit, they just want to speed
speed the access.

(04:47):
They want to allow people toaccess it as quickly as
possible.
So it's exciting.
So is the plan yeah.
To open up centers where andhow, how would this be
administered to the patients?
Well, in Canada we'll finish ourphase three and we will give
that data to federal governmentand then fingers crossed, I'm
optimistic that they will sayyes, this is now illegal

(05:08):
prescription drug.
And the sponsor of the drug getsto say what the rollout looks
like and sponsor of the drug ismaps USA and they will
essentially license facilitieslicense, um, or certify trained
practitioners and sell MBMA tothem.
And so we'll have a, a rush onour hands of people really

(05:30):
wanting to provide this service.
So how quickly can we roll itout in a way that still
maintains the quality of theservice?
Is the things that we'rethinking about now.
Would it be something that wouldbe an additional cost to people
or would it be something that'ssort of being considered under
the coverage of Columbia normalhealthcare?
Right now?
I don't think I've, federalgovernment has even started to

(05:51):
think about that question.
I would anticipate initially itwould be a private pay, right?
Maybe later if we can prove thatit's saving the government
money.
Essentially the costs of havingveterans on disability allowance
, um, is challenging.
I mean that's a huge issue inthe States is not as much in
Canada, but it's the, these arethe kinds of things you use, the

(06:13):
cost benefit analysis you haveto do to show the government
that it's actually worthwhileinvestment.

Dave (06:19):
I heard your counterpart in the States talking about how
these centers that you're hopingto open up at some point.
U m, and maybe this is just inthe States, I'm not quite sure.
I t would be more than just forhealing and more for, But also
he was talking, you know,everything from couples therapy
to spiritual experiences th at someone could have.

Mark (06:39):
There are multiple initiatives that are shifting
how people think about drugs andspecifically psychedelics i s
the research initiatives.
So there's the, once you havepassed a phase one, two and
three clinical trial, you canlegally prescribe that medicine
in the context t hat specified.
So, u m, that's, that's onetrack, but there's a whole other

(06:59):
track.
The track is the legalization ofpsilocybin mushrooms initiatives
in the States and there'smultiple of them.
And t here's an initiative hereas well to allow therapists use
it for end of life anxiety.
So does that sort of drug policyreform piece to psychedelics.
And then there's the researchpiece and they're both pushing

(07:20):
public opinion, but, u h, Idon't know which will happen
quicker.
I mean, if they said we're goingto decriminalize all
psychedelics or even all drugs,u m, in the Portuguese kind of
model, what would we do?
I mean, that would, hopefullythey, the elders of the
psychedelic community would,would start to do training.

(07:41):
U m, and t here w ill be, u m,the service would slowly unfold
in a way that maximize benefitsand minimize the harms.

Dave (07:49):
Right.
And regulation and how it wouldbe regulated as opposed is my
next question is how do you, insort of perfect world, how do
you see it being regulated andadministered?

Mark (08:00):
Well, if you want to, if you look at second psychedelic
drives, there's essentially onepotential harm.
Um, if you, I Google, I haveGoogle words on my computer for
all the different psychedelicsand so everyday I get the media
news dump in my box and a lot ofit about things that went wrong
was psychedelics.

(08:20):
And so, but it all comes down toone thing, which is lack of
supervision, right?
Lack of skillful control ofdosage of set, which is the
expectation of setting, which isthe environment of setting
people up for the experience,debriefing appropriately
allowing for integration work ifthat's done skillfully.
The problems with psychedelicsgo down to incredibly a, it's

(08:43):
not zero, but it's incrediblylow.
Right?
Oh, in a post prohibition world,psychedelics would be, the
psychedelic experience would beavailable to people, but it'd be
available by trainedpractitioners, knew how to set
people up for the experience andhopefully we're wise elders,
which is essentially what theindigenous communities have been

(09:03):
saying for years is that thisthing has to be structured in a
way that isn't just about peoplerunning into the grocery store
and grabbing something andrunning out going, gee, let's go
driving.
I mean that would produce a realproblem for us as a society, but
if it's available through[inaudible] skilled practitioner
is, and the context of theskilled practitioners could vary
widely.
I mean it could be indigenousIowasca circles.

(09:25):
It can be indigenous payoticircles, which are very
different.
It could be psychedelicpsychotherapy using LSD or
psilocybin for anxiety ordepression.
It could be MGMA therapy forPTSD.
It could be, it could bemulti-day.
Dance has goals, you know, itdoesn't really matter what the
context is.
As long as somebody is in chargeand they're trained and they

(09:48):
screen appropriately and theydebrief appropriately and they
structure the situation tomaximize the benefit.
At the end of the day, I don'tthink there's just one model.
You know, indigenous groupscould continue to do it and
judicial groups have always doneso the peyote people would still
do it in the same way they'vealways done at the ayahuasca
folks will do it the same waythey've done it.
If somebody wants to go and getpsychedelic psychotherapy with

(10:10):
MGMA for PTSD, they probablyexperienced a maps type
protocol, right?
Yep.
Really matter the circumstances.
You just need somebody incharge, managing set setting and
safety and dosage issues, andthere's a lot of room in that
for a wide range of differentexperiences.
Many people have experienced iOSat the ceremonies.
In fact, it's really, if I thinkabout the shift in how people

(10:33):
work with these kinds ofmedicines as a result of doing a
ton of ayahuasca ceremonies, itchanges things because people
are now bringing the ceremonialaspect to other substances
because they see the beauty of astructure of a structured
ceremony.
Right?
Throughout Vancouver, there'sgreen ceremonies and people in a
yoga with cannabis ceremonies.
There's a whole variety ofdifferent people who are taking

(10:55):
sort of, I would describe themas indigenous like structures
and applying it to cannabis,which I actually think is a
great idea and more ritualisticcontrol that we weave around a
substance in a society.
The less problematic ourcollective relationship with
that substances.
Right.

Dave (11:11):
Yeah, no that, that makes a lot of sense.
Um, and also just once againprovides a connection with a
group of people and it's, it'snice to, to know that there are
efforts being made to sort ofhave that connection restored
your conference on November 2nd,uh, in Vancouver.
What are you planning on talkingabout there?

Mark (11:28):
Oh, the spirit plant medicine conference.

Dave (11:30):
Yes.

Mark (11:31):
I'm running a panel that asks an interesting question.
Is underground therapy helpfulor harmful t o the process of
legalization?
A nd that's a really interestingquestion because it's not clear.
I think one way of thinkingabout it is what city really
tight city a rchitecture rules do t o buildings because it, when

(11:54):
I have a brother who's anarchitect and he o bserves that
when the city comes in andregulates a lot, what happens is
you lose all the best and y oulose all the worst.
So the top wildly beautiful,extravagant, artistically
decadent buildings aren'tappropriate and the horrible
buildings aren't appropriate.
So what you've got is thislittle mediocre thing in the

(12:16):
middle, right?
So it's interesting to look atpsychedelics through that lens
is I think the more we regulate,um, the more we'll lose.
Oh, thanks.
I mean, there were someunderground therapists that are
absolutely fabulous and othersthat are very unskilled, they
don't have the knowledge or thetraining or the personality to

(12:37):
do the work.
Right?
So there's a real mixture outthere.
And so the people who do itexcellently help the messaging
and the people that do itterribly are harmful to the
messaging.

Dave (12:49):
I've heard you talk also about the language of
psychedelics and, and I thinkthat's really important as well.
Even just the term psychedelics.

Mark (12:58):
When psychedelics first came into the Western culture,
they, the belief after AlbertHoffman invented LSD that they
were essentially made availableto psychiatrists and the belief
at the time was that it wouldhelp psychiatrists to understand
this schizophrenia.
So the language that they usedwas appropriate for that belief,

(13:19):
which was psychotomimetic, whichmeans mimicking a mental
illness.
And then they continued usingfor awhile and then decided that
actually it wasn't particularlyhelpful for helping them to
understand schizophrenia andthey, but they noticed people
had some pretty visual,dramatic, dramatic visuals
around the whole experience.
So they called themhallucinogens, which basically
means seeing stuff and as theycontinue to develop some

(13:42):
maturity and understanding it,they understood that there's a
lot more going on.
This really isn't about seeingstuff.
This is really about manifestingthe mind.
It's about access to unconsciousmaterial.
People become a lot moreintrospective and able to share
levels of the personality thatthey can't normally.
So the word psychedelicessentially means mind

(14:04):
manifesting and that's the wordthat essentially the researchers
have decided to use because it'sthe most accurate.
Now, the downside is the wordpsychedelic does, it also has a
lot of cultural baggage as inpsychedelic art and psychedelic
culture.
So researchers aren't applaudingthat use of the word

(14:25):
psychedelics.
They're just applauding the,what the word actually means,
which is mind manifesting.
Now subsequent to that, otherpeople who came along and said,
well, these, these medicines hadbeen used by indigenous cultures
for years to explorespirituality.
And that's the word andtheologian, which is, you know,
a manifesting of the spirit.

(14:45):
And then other people came alongand said, well, you know, if you
include MGMA and MDA and that,that whole empathogen group that
really needs a new and some newlanguaging around that.
So in pathogen, which meansconnecting to others and
somebody tossed out entactogen,which is acting to sell on your
own larger sense of yourpersonality and the depth of

(15:08):
your personality.
So it does mean a lot of wordsbounced around.
Um, the fur for the mostresearchers believe the most
neutral word is psychedelic it.
Yeah.
Other ones are flavored more.
And so the most, the mostaccurate word to use is not
biased, is psychedelic.

Dave (15:28):
In Canada.
Here are we a ffected much bythe American policies?

Mark (15:32):
That's not a simple question.
Some complexity to that causeessentially Canadian popular
opinion changed dramaticallywith cannabis as a result of the
legalization of initiatives inStates.
So we looked at what washappening in the States, the
majority of Canadians and said,we need to do this.
And Justin Trudeau about infront of the podium or in front
of the parade on the podium andsaid, okay, we're going to fully

(15:55):
legalize cannabis.
He did that because he read thepolls, the polls supported it.
And the reason why was becausethe Americans started the
discussion now that we fullylegalized it and it seems to be
just fine by fully legalized.
You know, the American, it's astate by state state initiative
in Canada.
It's a federal initiative, right?
So what the United States seesis the whole country has done it

(16:17):
and it seems to be just fine andfact people are making money.
And so it's all medically viablefor lots of folks.
So, yes, we, we do push eachother back and forth.
Within the world ofpsychedelics, it's a little more
different.
It's a little different becausethe MDM will be legalized in

(16:40):
both Canada, the States aroundthe same time because it's a
multi-country study.
The silicide initiatives in theStates are unique to the States.
We don't have, you know, the endof life anxiety with psilocybin
and with depression forpsilocybin isn't a Canadian
initiative.
It's an American initiative.
Right.
Oh, um, that will push ushopefully, but we won't
immediately roll it out in thesame way.

(17:00):
We'll immediately rollout MDMAfor PTSD because that is
Canadian study.
It's a multi-country study andthen Canada as part of it.
How do you see psychedelicsbenefiting, um, just medicine in
general?
How do you, what do they offerthat other things don't offer?
Well, I think on the scale ofevangelical, I'm somewhere in

(17:21):
the middle.
I mean, there's some people outthere that really talk about,
you know, healing therelationship with the universe.
And I think that we need tostart with more realistic, more
realistic, uh, expectations.
I mean, yes, it will helpspecific treatment indications,
you know, it will help peoplewith depression, anxiety and
life anxiety, PTSD.
So sort of cluster headaches,you know, so there'll be

(17:43):
specific indications.
Um, we're, we're talking aboutdoing an eating disorder study.
We believe that we could reallyhelp eating disorders.
So there'll be some indicationsthat come down the pipe that
psychedelics won't fully cure,but they'll certainly probably
be a more effective treatmentthan traditional treatments.
And so that will shift publicopinion and hopefully then the

(18:04):
public will push the federalgovernment to legalize it a nd
then hopefully be a vailable and t o c ontained i n t hat way.

Dave (18:10):
For the MDMA trials, For example, what is MDMA doing that
, uh, other things can't do tothe brain?

(18:19):
we can guess at the answer to that question because we don't
actually know.
But we can guess.
So the model that mostresearchers discuss is
essentially psychedelics giveyou access to your unconscious
mind.
They reduce the permeability.
And if you think about what yourunconscious mind is, it's what
drove the car today.

(18:40):
If you happen to drive a car,you know you're, you weren't
thinking about your feet at all.
What you're thinking about islunch in the meeting.
You going to have your consciousmind is doing, you know, random
comments to yourself about howthe world is working and what
your immediate planning, whatyou think about what's going on
in the radio.
Your unconscious mind is ridingthe car.

(19:00):
You don't go left foot, rightfoot push now with your
conscious mind, right?
But we have lots of stuff thathappens in our unconscious mind
all the times.
It essentially runs our life anddo no regards to feelings.
And as we meet people and werespond emotionally, that's all
coming from on and offunconscious mind.
And so PTSD is a buried tapeloop in the unconscious mind and

(19:20):
does it reduce permeability soyou can kind of get into it,
into your unconscious mind andfind the tape loop.
And the second aspect istraditional therapies when they
become close to that take Lukeas a huge fear response.
And so with MGMA it reduces thefear response.
You can actually go into thetape loop and kind of rework it
in a way that seems to releasesome of the emotional energy

(19:43):
around it that's so disruptivein people's lives.

Mark (19:46):
I ran into an individual, for example, who has
schizophrenia and he'sessentially over a multi decade
process.
He figured out that high dosagesof anything cannabis or
psychedelics are really horriblefor him.
They de stabilize him and hislife goes completely off the
rails.
But what he discovered is very,very small dose of either LSD or

(20:06):
mushrooms.
Um, seems to change the voices.
And the voices that he has inhis head are normally negative,
judgmental, um, destructive, um,nasty voices that are, uh, very
condemning of him.
And when he takes a psychedelicmicro-dose tiny, tiny mouth, the
voices are still there, but theychange and they become very
loving and positive to him,which is quite something.

(20:30):
And so, um, I've just neverheard that story.
I, I dug around in theliterature and I found one paper
that observed that schizophreniain groups when given a low dose
of LSD function better.
It was just one paper.
And that was in 1956 I think itwas published.
So I've really dug in, I reallycan't find any literature that

(20:50):
that explores the relationshipof low dose of psychedelics with
schizophrenia.
All of the literature with highdose has this problem.
It's very destabilizing.
Right.
I think it's an interestingenough story that I've decided
to write up the story of hislife.
So I'm kind of writing hisbiography.
It's an interesting story.
And treatments for schizophreniaright now really don't work very
well.
They're very sedating and havelots of side effects.

(21:12):
And if there was something outthere that would help treat
schizophrenia.
Now admittedly in the researchworld, that's the high hanging
fruit, you know?
No, we search those are talkingabout that.
So it's a, that's going to belong, slow one.

Dave (21:22):
Yeah, no, it's interesting that there seems to be, for this
gentleman anyway, or thepatient, it seems to be there is
a threshold in which it turnsfrom positive to negative.

Mark (21:32):
Um, yeah.
Which is fascinating.
Yeah.

Dave (21:35):
And so maybe one day I'm, this will, I know I have no
idea, but it may want to helpthem improving treatments for
schizophrenia.
Yeah, yeah.
That's great.
I'm writing the book of his lifeand his relationship with
psychedelics, but I'm alsofinding a survey cause I'd like
to, uh, ask, you know, withmicrodosing, does anybody have,
um, schizophrenia and what, whatare the, why are they taking

(21:57):
life for those?
What impact is it having?
Because some of the surveys havenoticed that there was a small
number of people with majormental health disorders that
microdose but we don't know why.
So I'd really like to add to asurvey to find out that it seems
microdosing is in the last fewyears just sort of been this,
this buzzword, but it's, itseems to be attributed to, you
know, people in Silicon Valleytrying to, you know, get more

(22:19):
out of their Workday sort of athing.
Um, I wonder at what level ofdose, um, it would change for
that, that, that person, uh,yeah, that's, that's, it's
fascinating.
I know it'd be interesting tosee the results of the survey as
well.
Um, cause he, you might, youmight've hit on something that,
uh, yeah, like you said, notmany people there or looking
into.
So that's great.

Mark (22:38):
In terms of other interesting projects, I d id a
publication o n paper where I, Ifound three people who had taken
massive accidental overdoses ofLSD.
Right.
And we would never in any kindof research study be able to
give people l ike those k indsof dosages.
So w e'll never know unless wefind people w ho have taken a
lot and then find out what theirexperience was and what, it was

(23:00):
quite interesting because one ofthe individuals had had a long
history of bipolar, like manicdepression, right.
And u m, and had essentially been healed by the experience and
it had been documented becauseshe was under the care of a
mental health team.
So it was documented, g et along history.
So she was under, she had, shehad had both psychiatric and

(23:22):
case note and counselor casenote notes.
And then she had this, u m,unfortunate i t at the time
event.
And afterwards she went back toher psychologist and a
psychiatrist and they werereally puzzled and they
documented again and again thatshe seems to be just fine.
And, uh, so it was aninteresting case because I had

(23:42):
so much medical documentationindicating that she really quite
unwell[inaudible] experienceessentially heal after the
experience.

Dave (23:51):
W as i t was the experience, u h, itself o f t
he, it's obviously if y ou tooki t that much, it was probably
not a very pleasant experience with the actual LSD experience.

Mark (24:01):
Yeah.
It was always all of theoverdoses that I talked to had a
horrible experience that wasreally unpleasant.
Lots of vomiting, just rollingaround completely out of
control.
I t took a lot and it wasextremely unpleasant for them
and extremely unpleasant a ndpeople around them.
It is incredible that somethingpositive w ould come out of
that.
U h, yeah, I s tudied threecases and one s eemed to have c

(24:23):
ure h er bipolar the second, um, was i t a woman who was
pregnant at the time a nd shegave birth to a very happy,
healthy boy who's now grown up.
The incident was 18 years ago when, so, right.
U m, it's, he's fine.
So that was interesting b ecauseshe was two weeks pregnant.
And the third case was, u m, anindividual who had done
absolutely massive dose.

(24:45):
I mean she thought she found aline of cocaine in her
boyfriends, A nd snorted it.
It wasn't cocaine.
It was LSD.
So she was really, really sick.
She had vomited and vomited forhours.
But what came out of it aftershe eventually came down was, y
eah, she had, she had a morphineaddiction going into it and she

(25:06):
came off h er morphine with no withdrawals, which is unheard of.
And s he h ad, she was on amorphine because of a lot of
physical pain.
And t hen the physical painseemed to resolve itself for a w
hile.
And then she was playingafterwards trying to see if she
could manage physical pain.
She subsequently played withmorphine a little bit and she
would use LSD to start to workwith that and then to try to

(25:28):
improve her relationship withboth pain and morphine.
And to some extent at work, youknow, it wasn't outrageous
success, but it certainly was aninteresting case study.

Dave (25:38):
I want to talk to you a little bit about, and this is
kind of going back a little bit,uh, I'm just sort of fascinated
about the history of it.
I guess and more about that asoppose.

Mark (25:46):
I mean t here were historical Aboriginal for
divisions, u m, that we don'tknow a whole lot about.
But then, u m, t he AlbertHoffman invented LSD and it went
into the community ofpsychiatrists and Weyburn
Saskatchewan was the hospitalwhere there was doing most of
the research.
T here was a hospital in n ewWest minister are called
Hollywood hospital.
T hat was also having, givingpsychedelic experiences to

(26:08):
people and documenting what theydid and doing a little bit of
research.
So between those two centers, itwas about a 15 year period, u m,
where it was promising.
And if I was g onna say w hatwas one piece of research that t
hey most excited by, it was LSDfor the treatment of alcoholism
and then, a nd they werecontinuing to publish and they
were completely optimistic thatthis would transform a lot of

(26:32):
different t imes, psychiatrictreatments.
And then the whole sixtiesthing, t he, the rebellion
against, u m, the parents thatrebellion against the Vietnam
war and t hey huge number ofyoung people who are loudly
yelling.
U m, and then the young p eoplesmoking cannabis and then taking
psychedelics and, and advocatingdisconnection a nd, and, and

(26:54):
complaining loudly about theirparents, you know, industrial
jobs.
And they were part of the systemthat was corrupt.
And so there was a kind of abattle.
And in that case, the governmentdid, what they often do is they
take the people i n t heirtargeting and they criminalize
their drugs.
They criminalized cannabis andthey criminalized psychedelics.
And it could have been verydifferent time, you know, worth

(27:16):
that number of young people allat one time.
And it was introduced slowlythrough indigenous communities.
And it was, um, it would jointhe churches and then talk about
how it helped them to functionwell in their lives.
And it could have beendifferent, but just cultural
context at the time resulted ina huge backlash against
psychedelics and cannabis anddrugs were criminalized.

(27:39):
Yeah.
So it's just only, it seems onlyrecently in the last few years
that, uh, it's opened up again.
And what, so what made it openedup again?
What, what was the cause of, howis the research now started up?
Well, I think there's not asimple answer to that question.
I think there's multiple, Ithink the baby boomers grew up
so there's no threat of themanymore.
And the baby boomers are now inpositions of power and they're

(27:59):
going, that wasn't such a badexperience back in my teenage
days.
And um, okay.
And there's a desperate need fornew mental health diagnoses, you
know, or, or new mental healthtreatments and, and the, the,
the brilliance of Rick Doblinsaying we want to treat soldiers
and police really shiftsmessaging, you know, completely.

(28:21):
Cause it's, you know, whenyou're, you're treating soldiers
and police with PTSD.
Yeah.
And messaging is that we'retreating people who are revered
by our society and we're givingthem psychedelics.
So, so the messaging iscompletely different now.
And that's really what'sbringing it back slowly.
But there was somebody, and Idon't know who it was, but
somebody made a decision toallow psychedelic medicine, is

(28:43):
to be, to allow it to go throughthe stage one, two and three
clinical process, which allother molecules go through.
You know, if you want to scrapethe guts of a sea cucumber and
see if you've got a bowel andabout inflammation, problem
solution in that, got what youhave to go through with stage
one, two and three clinicaltrial.
And it's, yes, that thing thatyou've scraped out of the bio
concentrator of the ocean doesreduce the inflammation

(29:06):
[inaudible] and it's not toxicto animals or people.
And it will be marketed as alittle pink pill and it's
stringent.
It's hard to go through thismillions and millions of dollars
to go through that process.
So why don't we just allow thatprocess to function with
psychedelics?
And essentially that was it.
Just a note was made and that'swhat's happening.

Dave (29:23):
Oh, that's great.
Okay, I will let you go soon,but I just wanted to ask you one
last thing.
how do you see, obviously thesecenters are will be opened and I
think inevitably they will be,how do you see that changing the
community?
How do see that?
Are we going to get back at somepoint t o the way that the

(29:45):
indigenous people are sort ofconnected to things or, I mean,
i t could only help I suppose,but I just wanted to see y ou.
So your, what your sort ofvision of the future would be
like, u m, once, once thesethings are sort of up and
running in a sense.

Mark (29:57):
Well, I start out simple, which is yes, we will be more
effective at treating specificillnesses.
That stage one, I'm givingpeople a sense of spirituality
and often psychedelics areperceived as the most meaningful
or the most, um, spiritualexperience of people's lives.
So allowing people to haveaccess to that I think would
help people lead more balancedand healthy lives and hopefully

(30:21):
start to reconnect with theplanet in some way.
Our, our disconnection with theplanet is causing us amount of
harm, um, today, you know, asthe hurricanes descend.
Uh, so we, we really need torethink, um, how we're, how we
treat our planet and start toconnect with a larger sense.
And you know, I th I think theseare things that psychedelics

(30:43):
could offer.

Dave (30:44):
Are there any Western countries that have sort of
adopted this in any way, or isit just are we blazing new
ground here?

Mark (30:52):
Well, if I think about what's happened in the
Netherlands, the Netherlandsthat access a historically to
full grown like, you know, likecubensis mushrooms and then that
was shut down and then it becametruffles, which is an
underground site on the nationalright.
For many decades the Netherlandshad had access to psychedelic to
the very, very few problems andthey really haven't put in a,

(31:12):
you can only access throughlicensed trained practitioners
level of safety and still therelatively safe.
So there are people within theculture who have just stepped up
to the plate and are offering aservice in a structured kind of
way that their, it's kind of adhoc.
You can also just go and buythem and do them yourself.
So the Netherlands is aninteresting model.

(31:32):
It hasn't produced harm and they, for the lack of
criminalization probably doesgood.
Um, the discussions in theStates are interesting because
there are decriminalization andlegalization initiatives with,
um, tremendous mushrooms and thedecriminalized, basically it's

(31:53):
say the police will place thoseas low as possible priority, but
it doesn't offer any way ofregulating it.
The Oregon initiative, Oregon2020 is the one that I'm most
interested in.
It's Tom and Sherry Eckard whoare leading the charge on that
one is what they're proposing isthat psychedelics be illegalized
mushrooms be legalized in a veryspecific context, which is
basically trainingpractitioners.

(32:13):
So I'm really rooting for thatparticular one cause I think
just decriminalizationinitiatives aren't particularly
interesting.
I'm much more interested in howwe as a society, you know, weave
these into our society in a waythat maximizes the benefit,
minimizes the harms.
Right.
And so that's really thequestion that I ask is how do
we, how do we guide people inthese experiences in a whole
variety of different ways thatit helps people who live happier

(32:35):
lives.
Yeah.
Counseling, I mean, thepathogens are really helpful for
couples.
You know, we know that we knowthat time bonding and increasing
empathy is a good thing.
And when couples kind of workwith medicines to help their
relationship, um, it can bereally helpful in terms of
strengthening theirrelationships.

Dave (32:55):
Yeah, like you said, I think supervision is, that is
the biggest thing, um, guidepeople through these
experiences.
It's been great talking to youand um, yeah, good luck at the
conference and uh, really use apleasure to talk to you, Mark.
Thank you.

Mark (33:07):
Thank you David.

Dave (33:08):
And that was my conversation with Mark Haden.
To find out more about Mark,head over to a markhaden.com or
visit maps.org or mapscanada.orgto find out more about the
clinical studies they arecurrently involved with.
The psychedelic suitcase isproduced by Carolyn Myers and
myself, your host, Dave McNee.
So join us again when we unpackmore of the psychedelic

(33:29):
suitcase.
Until then, safe travels