Joe Rogan Experience #1964 — Rick Doblin Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. You were there like one of the first days. Thank you. order to do that you have to be a pacifist and so I'm not a pacifist. I think there are sometimes thing. He said, the person that thinks the law is unjust and violates it My dad was a doctor. I think a lot of times we overestimate the efficiency of the government. And I later read there was about 60,000 people that never registered for the draft. But enough people were going in that they were able

5:04 And we've had a fair amount of that. who was the person that released the Pentagon Papers. potentially the rest of his life, which is what the government was trying to do for him. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court and he won the case, If we had lost and I'm Jewish, I probably would have been killed along with others. and people coming back from all these various foreign conflicts,

8:40 attacked, if America was to be attacked, he would defend it. It doesn't turn people again into pacifists necessarily in that same way. And there's something noble and honorable about who's the chair of the board of directors And so Governor Perry – there's people that I have never thought that I would find common ground with. that's what he cares about the most, but others, that these things can be helpful. So this idea of building bridges, there was one point in time, one of the most important

11:37 And so at this Passover Seder, my wife and I got there late. and about how it can be helpful for grief and all. And then after hours, Passover, Seder, and she's very much supporting Trump and supporting Bannon and others. And I He very much is in tune with that and speaks about that all the time. You know, I lived in San Francisco during the Vietnam War when I was a little kid.

15:11 and drug users what drug users are and one of you know one of the things that I'm kind of proud of automatically, maybe callously, lump in with people who are cruel or unkind or not embracing, Is it another dimension? But that when you sort of – well, we talk about the default mode network, which is sort of the part of the brain that's identified as the sense of self.

18:47 Yeah. and no one's discussing it that you're every day on And so I've actually felt that that experience has, which I had one time back in 1985, has been a big part of our success to get to the place that we're at now with psychedelic research, with MDMA therapy. You know, you fall into the patterns of the group that you hang out with. And then that fear subsided once the experience just fully kicked in.

22:01 shot through a rocket to the center of everything. And that's this process of integration that's necessary. But also for the 5-MeO, it's so brief. So that's where the Ibogaine now they want to bring all their brothers to have help as well. That there's something about people come over to the house, and you just mourn for a week. So I'll be there tomorrow morning,

24:47 it, I mean, it is like a drug. It changes the chemistry in your brain. And so I got to know for no good reason at all, other than the drug war, is illegal in the United States. research, but we've no research in the Arab countries. And I thought, if we could do something And then we eventually did another long-term follow-up in New Zealand. But these LSD dealers, Howard Lotsoff was also experimenting with opiates.

28:48 And that's what we mean is neuroplasticity. once you experience them. And so there's researchers at, Gould Dolan is at day or two. Is there any headway that's being made on bringing Ibogaine to the United States? I would highly recommend it. And he worked closely with Sasha Shulgin. And they would then, Different kinds of people like that. to retire. He trained a lot of people with LSD and other things. And so he did not retire in order to bring forth MDMA. And so he really pioneered the use of

33:27 This is Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan and all of that. And so we had a jumpstart in a sense that Everybody is and that you won't demonize the DEA and that you may be able to find And so I actually got administered Ibogaine, a bunch of it in plant form, and then also the LSD at the same time. LSD is also very much in your head, very ethereal, cycle of, oh, I'm not as good as I should be. I wish I could let go. I do have these emotions of

37:26 And that just made me sick. that day, I was so exhausted. I called it transcendence through exhaustion. You know, grow and that I made friends in a way. I made an ally out of the self-critical part of my brain. All night I was just super alert, didn't sleep at all, and just saw the stars. And the sun comes up, and then I was like stuck and nauseous again, and I couldn't move for a day.

39:49 And that's where the psychedelics can shake things up. to see this. And a couple times we did. And so what I think happened is that I was taking it in And I've had other psychedelic experiences since. summarize the world's literature in the peer-reviewed journals. And you look at it from Martin Polanco who have developed a company to try to make ibogaine into a

43:56 bifurcated scheduling. And that means is that our particular product in this particular capsule try to make the case that it never it into medicine, but other is to try we realized that if we could criminalize the drugs that they did, we could bust them up, kind of a thing, that there will be a lot of, hopefully, research over the next couple years,

46:59 So nobody looks back and thinks Vietnam was a good idea, you said. Okay. And we have a village at Burning Man. We do psychedelic harm reduction there. So a group of I said, I've been peeing the entire time. Like it would be better to just go pee Yeah, no worries. And we're denying that help. or somebody that they care about that's suffering We try to talk about these things as medicines instead of drugs.

51:51 dr carl hart yeah he's great he's fantastic he's on our board of directors and he's a neuroscientist They don't get support. People won't do that. go through the FDA. But that when I think of the number of suicides that have happened in both veteran communities and everywhere since 1985, hundreds and hundreds of thousands, I think, of lives. results. And the results showed these holes in the brain. And it was a graphically manipulated

56:00 on ecstasy. It's such a big thing. They want to do one on the risks and one on the benefits. to her, do you know what you might be doing to your brain with all these holes in the brain? Don't do it with the people that they're – but do this brain scan and and then you'll be on the It was just – yeah, no show on the benefits. And I think that she wanted to get back in the good graces with her mother, that then she gets supported,

59:20 But it was, in some ways, propaganda in the positive way. because of those kind of television shows of the experience, pro or con, would be audience well I think some we also have some police officers who are we have one traumas to reduce recidivism, also with victims of crime to help them deal with their PTSD, and also with prison guards and police.

1:02:32 above the genes. That can change from your own experience. And there's a woman, Rachel Yehuda, is going to be burdened more by trauma. We have incredible problems with mental health because of We already have, yes, be part of the breakthrough. June 19th through 23rd? Anything. Michael Pollan is going to be there. Yeah, I think Ann Arbor might have been one of them. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, just because of the college there. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But Denver and Colorado is very progressive. The

1:06:47 like 2,500. And now this one we think is going to be way more. And the theme of it, why we've A lot of them were trying to set up networks of clinics. We also have ketamine, FDA, you get permission to market. So some of the new for-profit companies, Compass Pathways is one, So that's sort of a classic pharma strategy. That doesn't make any sense. why what I explained to you just a couple of weeks ago and why you were so gracious to invite me back

1:11:03 And you've got a story now. amount of money back, then it continues. But they don't have ownership, And so we have this situation. We also tried to I don't think, but there's thousands of these public benefit corporations. And what you do Our first Phase III study was incredibly successful. And so if you have 1 in 20 and then you multiply them another one in 20, it's one in 400 chance that these two independent studies have produced results that are random and then the FDA will approve it.

1:15:59 And they still have PTSD, but over time they might get better. It was so difficult for her to confront her trauma that she checked herself into a hospital to not have published. And this was by researchers at Johns Hopkins that had been funded by the neurotoxicity was sort of diminishing. People weren't showing In a short term, yes. Why don't you use those?

1:19:46 But we don't see this dip in mood anymore in the MDMA group than in the group that gets therapy the paper in Science that said that MDMA could cause Parkinson's that could hurt dopamine. We knew that we'd given MDMA to primates for research, and nobody died of overdoses. Can I pause you for a second? they said that, and this was super embarrassing, they had to retract the study because they were

1:23:21 Triangle Institute said they never do that. They always test it. And at the same time, Peter Jennings was doing a documentary called Ecstasy Rising. And this was the first documentary that really had a bunch of people talking about the benefits. And he also don't think it was from research trying to listen to it. Do you think it's accidental sabotage or

1:25:20 And I said, I want to buy you some monkeys. But the imagery that I did, and again, this is kind of this idea about storytelling. And it is. Why is he trying to kill her? It's just what he's doing to public education. He stacked the board of trustees no problems with dopamine. There was a little bit less serotonin metabolites, but also lower serotonin has been linked to risk-taking behavior.

1:28:53 with a lot of scientific studies, isn't it? of Perception and was talking about mescaline and spiritual experiences. And a lot of people What was his initial in the Middle Ages, Yeah, Wade Davis has done studies about the voodoo cults in Haiti and what drugs they use. Well, that illustrates the exact point, though, that it's not the thing itself. You have this terrifying experience.

1:31:45 their health. And so what Bill W. felt is that you could give LSD to people and they could extremely helpful, again, used in a careful way. So the Good Friday experiment was an attempt And Martin Luther King got a PhD at Boston University, and Howard Thurman was his mentor. There's something deeper that we're a part of humanity. Walter Pankey was willing to to work with him, and Howard Thurman said, I will

1:35:41 And then they did some long-term, like six-month follow-ups, and they said it impacted asking people what happened to them when they took the psilocybin and how do they think about it now. you know because people can describe all sorts of things but what impact does it have in your life no, And they said, And I wrote a postcard to every single one of them.

1:39:42 But what I discovered—so it validated the results—but what I discovered is a big mistake, It's a busy street on Commonwealth Ave. in front of the Mars Chapel. mentioned it. So I had this decision when I'm going to write this follow-up study, you know, You know, one of the things that he was talking about was people, for whatever reason, when they have a high dose of marijuana, there's something that happens to some of them where they have like a schizophrenic break.

1:42:25 or whatever mental illness it might be, there's something about these experiences that seem to We just justify things that we find morally reprehensible, People talk to me a lot about where might the backlash come from. I have a question for you. Are there people I've heard of people that are, for whatever reason, resistant to DMT experiences? Wow. of lsd enormous amounts of lsd and they could still play chess wow so there's a way where you can control your mind so much that that even psychedelics won't happen wow yeah so so i i

1:44:48 Smoking works, but edibles don't. And Lynn thought that, and I suggested actually, maybe small amounts of THC or CBD might help her mom. And so Lynn was like, okay, I will try it first before I give it to my mom. So she took a, She might die because she's going to forget to breathe. And other people, I guess, get edibles and nothing happens. The backlash that happened in the late 70s, early 80s, when it looked like marijuana might be legalized was parents against the, you know.

1:46:47 to understand the influence that media had on you When I was a kid, when you saw something on television, everybody talked about it. And it worked. and you find out about this whole Harry Anslinger, And they labeled it saying that it was Mexicans It does. And then they experiment with things, and they have to learn from other people And all these people will be at psychedelic science, too.

1:50:11 I know they're little but how will you educate your own kids about drugs? I tell them this So we talk about these things. So I talked to them about it and I explained that we have we'll go after Mexicans and blacks and cannabis and no marijuana. Yeah, but people may not be willing to go to multiple sources. who like hide certain information protect what you think is right okay so that that gets me to

1:54:08 go into the prison, and half the researchers would also take psilocybin with the prisoners in prison. Psychology about the Good Friday Experiment. And there was an editorial in the Boston Globe about permission because somebody had scribbled on it, no psilocybin. Like we were not planning to give Never. So I've tried to explain to them and I could, oh, I did it when I was legal.

1:56:45 were these people still in jail or are they free? Some of them were in jail, some of them were free, It was a little bit historical, so things don't always say the same exactly in history, how is it that all the people that hate psychedelics So what were they pretending they had done? Well, the farther away it was in time from the original experiment, the better the results

1:59:46 of committing crime and being incarcerated, his parents are committing crime it's normal to just do crime and if you have a psychedelic And it didn't really understand the social support that you need and all the cultural determinants of people that go back to prison. I'm glad you did. favorite boxers of all time it's a great example that learned how to box in jail got out and became

2:03:34 Yes. Right? You could do all the boot camps to get into the military. And then when you're done, Well, you kind of get a feel for the city a little bit different at night than during the day. They were talking about crack? But I thought here in the middle of the, not quite the middle of the night, but well after midnight. in a place where so much conservative policies are coming out of it,

2:05:59 And it just gave me such a warm feeling. I don't think so. From doing The Omnivore's Dilemma was Yeah. Because it's always a benefit-risk balance. We think that's going to be potentially, if all goes well, something like June 2024. But then there's going to be about commerce, you have to be really careful. It's very dangerous. You're mixing something that could potentially change

2:09:29 every quarter, well, it would have to be private. And he used to be the CEO of Sandoz, which is one of the world's largest generics. to this, because he said there may be several different ways in which there could be benefits Sorry. My reaction, my initial knee-jerk reaction in the bar and even now is like, man. amounts of money. How much do you need? Well, we are currently developing a budget in the range of $75 million to FDA approval.

2:13:29 Post-approval, we'll be able to get a much better deal. been traumatized by genocide. I want to go all over the world and try to globalize MDMA-assisted owned by the nonprofit is that we can focus on public benefit and that that's the thing. I think is that we start now maybe need to think about more returns to investors and where do we go or another. And if we do take it from investors to do it in structured in such a way where it's still within a public benefit structure.

2:17:20 And again, what you're saying about telling the truth or underestimating, you know, risks or overestimating benefits, I would like us to be a model. And that was my dream from when I first started MAPS in 1986, because I assumed erroneously that MDMA would immediately become generic if it was made into a medicine. Food and Drug Law, and he later became on my dissertation committee. He's with Covington

2:19:11 So I'd worked all that day, and I thought, okay, great. psychedelic version of lsd and bromo lsd What's the benefit of it? For cluster headaches. So people that have his cycle began, and they weren't giving psilocybin or LSD at the time, they were just It worked and it was incredible. Now we can do research in Jordan. And then we'll come back to Harvard and say, we've got to start giving LSD or psilocybin to people.

2:22:59 like it's not psychedelic therapy i'm about the the patients. If this helps the patients, because LSD you give in micrograms. So the patent attorney for Harvard was also part of this local. He said, well, it turns out in 1984, Ronald Reagan signed a bill to provide incentives to develop drugs that are off patent. be in the study, and the FDA said no. But what they did say is that if you succeed in adults,

2:25:30 off patent. So it's 10 years data exclusivity in Europe. So everything changed. I thought, And then what I can tell- MDMA is not just good for PTSD. It's tremendous for couples therapy. It's tremendous. We think it would be tremendous for eating disorders, for postpartum depression. Of course, we have to do Why so? a big methodological problem from a scientific perspective. You have to do double-blind studies,

2:28:46 all the other data that they want to see in the review package. And the goal is to have these This is the quote, and the person on the wrong side is me, because my dissertation was, I thought I solved the double-blind problem. discover, is my dissertation was wrong. I was not right. I was partially right, is a better way to as if we gave them an inactive placebo. If they got therapy with nothing, they did better than

2:32:10 well as the people that got nothing. And the real challenge is to show if we can do this with So they said there's two main ways to reduce experimenter bias. The first is random assignment. If she had gotten low-dose MDMA, maybe it's this low-dose MDMA that made her uncomfortable. protocol assessment. So we have a situation now, to gesture a question, how likely is it that it's

2:35:05 they're going to consider the data to be valid. So I do think that the chances are they cannot say and a lot of it is working with veterans and others, breakthrough therapy designation in 2017. Right after we completed the special protocol assessment, that into a medicine, potentially for depression or something. Ibogaine, hopefully we can get. But I'd like to read you these potential benefits.

2:38:46 And he started this Allen Institute for Brain Science. Let us do psychedelic research, Do you know what this list sounds like? spend the night at Cindy's house? But when they were their bar mitzvah age, and this is where I'm curious more how you're going to teach your kids, Still the same. Yeah. illegality. That's the most dangerous thing. So what are the other fake reasons on this list?

2:42:25 It's all about access to capital. Now, I think that potentially that these external capital partners, we can get expertise in It doesn't have to be equity. ago, why you invited me back is because you want to help us So I'll just say that there's various theories of pricing. if you can't afford the drug, we'll give it to you. We have a patient assistance program,

2:47:10 The other, I think, is the drug legalization. We need to make it available for people outside of medicine, outside of religion at a low cost. But don't you think that just opening up the door to legality is going to make it more prevalent? to out-of-pocket, which is really good, meaning that you just make it so that people don't have to pay more. We're getting in the financial weeds.

2:48:38 Oh, okay. Bye, everybody.