Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show where we talk about all things drugs. But any views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media, Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even represent my own and nothing contained in this show should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today we're gonna bring you a holiday bonus episode instead of our regular series. In this case, I'm being interviewed for someone else's podcast. It's a friend of mine, gian Carlo kind of s c O, who has a podcast called Mango dot tv. Uh. He asked me to be the first guest in a series he has started called Psychedelic Confessions, in which he interviews various people in the field. I think Dennis McKenna was on at some others who you may have heard on Psychoactive, and in it we reflect on our respective experiences with psychedelics, with with psilocybin, mushrooms, and LSD and ayahuasca, mescal and kennamine, d M T M, d M A, cannabis and others. So, as you can imagine, this was perhaps one of my most personal interviews. I really think you'll enjoy it. Now, before go taking you there, I just want to remind you that the second season of Psychoactive will come to an end in late January three. At that point I'll be looking for new sponsors so we can keep the podcast going and get it up and going again later in the year. So in the meantime, if you've enjoyed Psychoactive, please take this opportunity to spread the word to friends and colleagues, encourage them to listen to it, to download it, leave your comments Wherever you leave comments about podcast, uh, feel free to send me your own comments to either the Psychoactive email address or to Ethan at Nadelman dot net. I'll do my best to respond. And here you go with an episode of psychelic Confessions and Giancarlo kind of SCIO's Mango TV podcast. O God so Nata Nana go go so Nata So Nana go God, So Nata so not go Gods or Nata son go God or nota so not orient go god, so nata so not a. Hello guys, Welcome to the seventh episode of the Mango TV podcast. I'm here with another One. Very excited for this conversation, described by Rolling Stones as the point meant for drug policy reform efforts and the real drugs are Another Man is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform, both in the United States and abroad. He founded and directed first the Linden Smith Center and then the Drug Policy Alliance, from during which time he and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaign to legal as marijuana and advanced other alternatives to the War on drugs. Ethan currently also the leading podcast on all things drugs called Psychoactive. Welcome with and It's a pleasure. So I would like to propose you something different. Rather than me asking questions on your expertise on on drug policy, I would like your help to educate our audience on a bunch of different psychoactive drugs. I want to premise that people listening don't do these drugs alone. Find a guide for the sitter, like you wouldn't go on top of a volcano. Alone, so be mindful. Some of the substances are illegal, some can be very can give very adverse reactions, so be educated and have a have a have an expert guide. So I choose twelve compounds, and we're gonna see if we can go through all of them and and just share our our experience. UM, I want to add two variables. So one thing people usually underestimated when they talk about psychedelic drug effect is the dosage. So some of this compound have a very different effect. So we're gonna try to be mindful of when we talk about the effect UM in in in being clear if it's low, medium or hideos. And then the other thing we have to be mindful when we talk about this UM this compound is the intention. So what are we looking to att eve? Do we want recreational or celebration outcome? Do we want a medical or sako therapetical session, or do we want a spiritual transcendental session? So UM, let me tell, let me tell you the compound I choose, and let me know if you think I should we should remove or at something. So I have for you to discuss today Cannabis, marijuana, mushroom, l S, d M, d M A ayahuasca, pot, some M katamine, cambo, and t C B. Huh okay, Well, I have never done peyote. Um, I've done escaland ones, but you know, I don't know if it's all that different from me than having done mushrooms, um tambo. I've been offered it to it, and I somehow the notion of purging in the way that tambo does I turned away from that. And I haven't done some pedro either, So I think the the other ones I have anything ranging from a single experience to half dozen many years ago to much more recent experience. Right, So let's start from the beginning. So marijuana, what's your favorite use? How tell us a little your your relationship with that plant. Well, I mean I'll tell you first of all, that has been marijuana has been basically my friend for many years. I didn't start until I was eighteen years old. I'm now sixty four, so you know, we've been friends for forty six years, and I say it's been an overwhelmingly positive relationship. I should preface that first by saying, I know people for who marijuana is a terrible relationship, People who not just become paranoid but become delusional. So, you know, people who become addicted to it in a way that's problematic in their lives. So I don't want to say marijuana's for everybody. I'm lucky and that virtually all my drug relationships have been generally or almost entirely positive. So but I understand that's not the case for everybody else but marijuana. I mean, I've never been a daily consumer. I mean, there might be moments when I'm at a festival or with a certain friends who gets high every day, and I might smoke multiple days in a row, but I almost have an anti addictive personality. So if I smoked three for days in a row, like, I don't want to even smoke the following day, you know, I just want to clear out. What I like is if I if I've not smoked marijuana for a week or two or more, the first time I do it, it's delicious, right, and especially good marijuana. And what happens to me is I start to stretch. I get this incredible desire to stretch and to be in my body. I remember it was funny when I was younger. I might be walking along my daughter down the streets in Manhattan, and she would be so embarrassed when I was in the middle of the road, I'd stop and stretch. You know. Now she's growing accustomed to it. But marijuana, it helps me get in my body. I love it with things like um uh, swimming, I mean that. I mean, look, we all know about marijuana and food. We know about marijuana, go in the movies. You know, marijuana, including edible form. For going to the symphony has been beautiful. Um for me the least developed of my sensibilities. You know, food tastes, sense and all that is my aesthetic sensibility. So for me, getting high before I go to a museum really significantly elevates the experience. I have a vivid memory of being in Prague and going to this house in Prague that was the museum of a famous turn of the century, you know, check artists who have done in all sorts of forms, and just being captivated in a way that I never would have without the marijuana. But when it comes to the present day, my typical use of marijuana now, my favorite juse is once a week when I'm home in New York, I take ten milligrams of edible marijuana, grab my headphones and head down to the corner where there's a Chinese massage place, and I have a multi hour massage and for very deep massage, you know, walking on the backs of my legs and my sides. And for me, I think that keeps me centered. It's my own basis, my closest thing I have to a real irritation in my life. My brain just floats. I come out of there feeling great, and I think of it as an integral part of my process of healthy aging. Amazing, amazing and and and for me it's complicated. You know, I had a problem of abuse. I end up being in a rehability. I went on a rehab for wheat. Yeah, they were there. Everybody was like why you here. Crystal met the heroine, crack, cocaine and alcohol, and I was like, kind of bit and you know it's for me. It was very difficult to use without abuse. And the Graham Hackck says that every plant has a spirit, and every spirit as a personality. So the myaska as the loving grandmother, the or the boga is the stern grandfather, and the marijuana is the trickster spirit. So it tricks you in belief that you needed every day and and so so it's a it's a it's a tricky one. Okay, what about mushrooms. So just for our audience, a typical load dose of mushrooms, I mean in the of those. Now, there is also the micro dose, which is very popular, which is the James Fatima protocol of zero twenties, zero fifteen just pre perceptional, uh, one day every three days. Um So this is becoming very popular now. But the low dos is roughly I would say half a gram. A medium dose also called museum those is like maybe a two grams, and then high dose is when we go into you know, five plus into full ego dissolution. Um So, tell us about your relationship. I'll tell you. I mean, for me, I've rarely done the low dos. In fact, the first time I ever really did it. Uh, there was a friend of mine having a fiftieth birthday party whose name happens to be Gi and Carlo Canevstia. And at that party, he he was making available to his guests some chocolate, you know, mushrooms at about one graham half a gram one graham, and I think some other substances maybe chocolate cannabis as well, and I had I just perfect dose. And I will say I danced that night like I don't think I've ever danced in my life. I had a spectacular time at your birthday party, Jen Carle, and I came away going I didn't know mushrooms could be so much fun in the low dose, and so you know. But then, quite frankly, a few weeks ago, I was in Europe um and uh I actually it was, I'll say, in Scandinavia. I want to see the exact city, and somebody was offering chocolate mushrooms and I took it out about the same dose, thinking I was going to go to a place with a wonderful DJ and let loose and dance, and it turned out to be a whole bunch of people standing around an ugly looking bar type thing, and I just had a you know, get through it finds, you know, somebody I could talk to and focus on them and just not be too bummed out about the whole thing. So I'm increasingly intrigued by that, um, the lower dose use of mushrooms, maybe combined with with some cannabis um for you know, having fun. That said almost My entire experience with mushrooms has been the high dos. It's been the four or five six grams of mariana, of mushrooms, of dry mushrooms. And I started when I was about twenty three. I must have done them about ten times back then, and they have played an incredibly important role in my life. So blindfolded with the headson, I never have done them blindfold. And I have friends who told me, if you haven't done on blindfold, you haven't really done them. But I would tend to do them, um, going out maybe in nature, maybe at the beach, maybe going outside to come on and then coming back to my apartment or my friend a friend's place. Um. But I'll tell you if I think about, let's say I've done mushrooms at a high dose maybe twenty five times in my life. And then if you take the the say, the four hours between the time when you're peaking and then when the kind of you start to come down. Um, in those hundred hours of my life, I have had some of the most important sort of uh intellectual insights of my life. I used to be a professor that really made a difference to me. I've had the most amazing culinary experience of my life. I had what, in some respects was the most extraordinary orgasm of my life. I saw the most beautiful sunset of my life. And and the moment um when I was thirty two and actually had to tell your ride Mushroom conferencing in Colorado that Andrew Wild used to organize with others. Um, you know, I had a moment there which where my sort of vision of what my life was going to be, this life in drug policy reform sort of crystallized for me. You know. It wasn't an epiphany, but it really crystallized in that way. And so I'd say, mushrooms have just played this really really powerful um uh, you know, spiritual, intellectual, psychological, social role in my life. So that there was a there was if you want, like an ARC on those twenty five session, would you go back to where you left? Then? Then on EA, what's funny you asked that? Because I did it I think nine times between the age of twenty three and and uh, And that was and then, you know, very good experiences, overwhelmingly no bad, no bad ones, although I do have two bad ones I could talk about. But then what happened was the last one of these experiences. I was twenty five. I was, you know, approaching the end of a long term relationship that I've been in was since the beginning of college. I was trying to think through what my focus was going to be in life. Was I going to become an activist or become an academic. Was I going to keep studying what was in my specialty Middle East politics or go into something news is Right before I got into the drug thing, and at the remember the mushrooms came on and I started muttering like conflict, conflict. I was just muttering conflict. I was soon this energy coursing through my body, but just feeling conflict conflict. Anyway, my life changed quite a bit. I shifted my focus, change relationships, met the woman was going to become my wife. Did not do mushrooms for seven years, and then until your right, for seven years. I take them for the first time in seven years, and the drug starts to come on fairly strong, and it's like just jumping right back to her I had been seven years earlier, like conflict gods like. But then the thing I started to get up And sometimes when the emotional energy is coming on very strong at that high dose. I like to be very physical, so I started running through this field. It was actually to tell your right high school on a summer weekend, right, and and and running, running, getting all the energy going. And then the constantly kind of dissolved. And it was in that session that I really reached the realization that, you know, that my life was really going to be about teaching about drugs, about psychoactive drugs, and then it did not matter whether I stayed in the university or went into politics or journalism or advocacy, but that this was going to be my calling in life, and that teaching about drugs would be a vehicle for speaking out about some of the broader issues that we were confronting in our socim and use company. For me, it was just it was just a settling. It was a centering that was very beautiful and very calming. A few weeks later, well a week later less than that, I went into It was a TV show, Dan Rather forty eight hours on Crack Street or whatever is one of these, you know, in the height of the drug one, and I walked in. I realized it's a set up. You know, there's somebody who's been devastated by drugs and a d agent and so you know, and there's all set up, but I just centered right down. And for me, you know, I've never looked back since that moment. I've known that this was my calling in life. And I feel quite blessed to have realized this. It's such a young but because I think, you know, Michael Poland, compared to the full moder network that we now know is the neurocircuitry that gets subdued with the trip to means, so including magic mushroom, and Michael Poland says, is the closest thing to your egoic armor. And he says that it's like the director of the orchestra of your brain who then fall asleep. So for the first time, all the different instruments are now free to be them now independent, So there is not the the structure of your conditioning, cultural conditioning, of your biography. So in that moment, you are really allowed to see who you are without this armor of of your ego. You know, it's interesting. I mean, for me, I don't know that I ever achieve ego dissolution, even with a very high dose mushrooms. I mean, I know I'm told that I look psychotic and I can't be out in public. I'm sort of walking around. My arms are flying and my eyes look demonic. I mean, you know, so I have my my partner who's with me, and she's you know, watching out for me. And in this sort of stuff. Um, it's it's extremely intense, but it's very in the body, and I sometimes think of mushrooms. It's almost like putting a power pack on my back, and that power pack like like you're gonna fly, like you know those all things, you know, the cartoons or whatever puts a power pack on their on their back and they can go fly. And it's like I'm gonna be out there flying in a way, but grounded. And it can go into an intellectual, a spiritual, a sexual, a physical direction and I can guide it a bit, but I can't control it. And if I try to assert my will too much, the mushrooms will funk with me. So I have to you know, I'm going there. I don't go in typically with a lot of intent. It's more like, let's see what's brewing inside me and what these mushrooms will bring out. And so it's in that, but I will say, you know, it's a very sometimes quite physical for me. I'm in my body in a deep and profound way. I'm feeling the energy coursing. I sometimes feel almost animalistic when I'm under the influence of these things. Um. I also will say, I'm not very good at listening if I'm with somebody. I I've learned, don't do hide those mushrooms with other people, like just be in my own trip and hopefully if somebody who can keep an eye on me to make sure I'm like, you know, not chewing my arm off or something. And yeah, I had so I had a very interesting high those mushrooms when I was just start dating stuff. My wife and that we decided to do this to be together really seriously exclusively, and so she had closer apartment in Paris and all her staff would I had arrived in New York and it was also Christmas, and my mother and my father and her daughter, all the family was here. So the combination of the move in my subconscious created a sense of completely you know, I felt really disoriented and I didn't know what to do. So I did five grand of mush and and uh and that was a full on ego dissolution and it remains one of the one of the most beautiful but also terrifying experience. And in that moment of nothingness where your identity is gone and you feel part of nothing, it's really frightening. But then the me together, the real coagulation of your identity, then it's really beautiful because you realize that the key to rebuild yourself is your personal relation is love. You know, it's all about love. And the sixty I really understand what they meant because when you're completely gone and you you lost not just your body but your identity and you when you come back, you realize that the key to understand who you are, it's complete linked to the people you love around you. So to this day it's it's definitely sometimes says can you please dose five grandmom, because we had given this love declaration and then I came out and I have my mother. It was like like like a Ginsberg. Yeah, well you know how I'll tell you. I mean, for me, there have been two times when the mushrooms went in a very dark direction and and it was like where everything is just blacked, where you really I've never suffered from severe depression and I've only ever gone through a depressive episode once for a few months in my life. But it was like where everything has a black edge. Everything looks like you see the dead side right on the live side. And and and and I used two different approaches. One which felt a little like cheating, was I took some M D M A and that helped lift me out and make a softer, gentler experience. But the other one, which is the one I think is the one that one should aspire to, is I was on a beach actually in Montauk, New York, at the end of Long Island, and and just in a very dark place. I mean, the sand all looked like decaying um, you know, uh, skeletal matter. And there was some homes up top above the beach, and they looked oppressive, and the greens looked you know, ominous, and all of this, and I couldn't escape it. You can't run from a bad trip, I mean, that's the thing. And so then I and I conceived in a way of this trip as this big ominous wave. And for anybody who's ever gone swimming in the ocean, you know you can't run from a big way, which you need to do is to dive into it, dive under it. And so I kind of almost you know, figuratively, but even literally, I almost like died downward, like going into child's post position on the beach and into the thing. And I came out the other end of this thing in my consciousness, and the depression lifted, and every all of a sudden, those ominous looking trees now look like a beautiful jungle in four dimensions, and the homes were the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen, and the beach was gorgeous and I was and it just lifted. And so I think that understanding that when it's really bad, I mean, yes, people can just hold on and try it be you can't run, and if you can, if you can dive into the blackness, sometimes that's what actually brings you out the other side. How amazing, amazing um ell is the well I have to say, LSD, I've never done the quote unquote rowic dose. I'm a little embarrassed to say that, you know. I mean, I've done the kind of hundred microgram numerous times and and that's been good to me. It feels a bit like a mushroom experience, but it's got that kind of chugger chugger chugger, you know, stimulant side to it just keeps going and going, and it feels like it feels like at the hundred micram level. For me, it feels like doing a kind of three or four grams of mushrooms but with a strong amphetamine underneath it. And so it's been good. UM. More commonly, what I've done is to do and I don't know, I I you know, so I don't know what I call. I tend to think of micro docing as being you know, three five below ten micrograms, and what I would normally do would be between twenty and thirty, maybe forty. And I regard that as mini does. Now. I just came from this amazing psychedelics and business conference in Miami, the Wonderland Miami Conference, and there was somebody involved in the whole micro dose failed and he was like, no, Ethan, actually micro docing really is in the twenty area, you know. But I felt that when I did to that level, UM, I find I I like it. It's not you know, I've had some wonderful times sometimes combining it with a little cannabis. UM. I found that sexually. Sometimes that can be a wonderful combination. Low dose, you know, micro docing of say twenty micrograms grams for me to get a little bit of available cannabis um is a beautiful combination for that. So I've had wonderful times with friends, but I don't have that kind of spiritual connection to LSD. And I've never done, you know, as I said, the heroic dose, and i haven't ever pursued it, and I'm maybe a little scared, and I feel like I really should give it a go. But what about you? What's your experience there? Um? Similar? Similar? I never did the rug dose. I've done a bunch of hundred hundred and fifty you know. Amanda Nepath initiated me in and the that was that beautiful. I think it was more like fifth the microgram. UM. I had some difficult time. Um. You know. The thing with for me, the less this that I never did this ceremonially, so I never really feel safe. But like you, I'm intrigued. At some stage in one of my usually up and down I called Rick Dublin and he said, listen, I'm ready. I want to do a high dose. I want to you know that was it wasn't one of my many middle life crisis. And so we cooked me up with this guide in California somewhere um and they had a protocol of three days where the first day you just you know, get closer to disper to the guide and and then you do some breathing and so yoga. You get ready for day two, they give a little bit of the m DM A just too ease, and then you go for five anthrem and I was booked, and then something happened. So the universe thought that I wasn't ready. But I'm I'm curious, and I don't know. You're familiar with the Christopher Bash, this professor of theology. I know the name, but I haven't read or know him. He did seventy three high dose this session in the course of twenty years, so roughly every three or four months he would go from under micagram. And I was in a psychedelic conference in London and he was there and he says that, you know, twenty years every four months, that's a big commitment. And he said that at the beginning, you would you know, go in the LSD Real as a as a visitor, but then after so many times you become a resident and he's really so the future of humankind. He's really become part of this commist cosmic consciousness. And and yeah, yeah, no, it sounds like it's funny. You mentioned lady Amanda. And you know my one and only time in Burning Man about ten twelve years ago, and I was in Rick Doublin's maps camp and Alex Gray and Allison had their tent there. It was really wonderful and and Sasha Shogun and and later Amanda were just around the corner for me. And I won't say who exactly gave me the hundred micrograhams of LSD, but it was the last night averting Man and a friend and I just biked all around the player and it was a weird night because everybody's leaving and so your landmarks are disappearing, so you're tripping and landmarks are disappearing, and you know, but that was a very pleasurable experiences, incredible. The same thing happened to me because you know, the dome's gone, right, and so they take the name of the street down. So it was exactly so maybe maybe one day we'll go together and them. I liked the Humans California md A. Yeah, I mean M D m A played an important role in my life. Um. You know, there was a moment in my early thirties, uh, when I had never done it before, and my marriage was you know, not in a good place, really bad, and uh, you know, we're going to marriage counseling and it wasn't really looking very optimistic and my wife and I um did M D m A and it was, oh my god. It was like you know, chains peeling away, like things lifting, and the sense of love that we felt. And I remember we were thinking, what we can't do this all the time. So we you know, we sat down and thought, how do we come back to this space without the drug? And we agreed on certain things while we runder the influence that here's what we would do. I remember going to see the marriage counselor a few days later and she was blowing away. She had heard about this, but to see it. And in the end we still split up, but I think it helped us to a softer landing where my X and I have been good friends and very good co parents for our you know, wonderful daughter for you know, the last you know, three decades or whatever. So it was great in that respect, and I think it played a It's played an important role in my other relationships since then, really and being able to clear the air, being able to talk and hear in a very heartfelt way. And my great regret, Jan Carlo is it really hasn't worked for me for the last fifteen years. You know. I loved it in my thirties and forties, and now I don't get that much of the upside. I definitely get the downside, and my body's like telling me Ethan, don't, don't do it. You know. Friends suggested that I try m D A that which was kind of the predecessor M to m D m A, the popular one back in the seventies. And I tried that not long ago, and I got a little more of the M D m ash effect and it lasted a little longer, but it kicked a shed at me physically for a few days. So I think now I relish the experience that I had. Some of my most beautiful memories, especially in relationships with UH with women, have been with those times, and I think it helps sustain me in a longer relationship. Um. But I regret that you know, I have to say it's in my past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also for me for for a couple of therapy. For me, the magic happens because you can see from the other person points of view. I you know, with Stephanie, I you know, under this this influence, I would see how she sees me and that really helped. And we have a friend that they have this yearly tradition they go to a uh this couple they offer a couple of therapy in England and it's basically again three days affair. They have this questionnaire for the couple that you fill up before taking m d M A, during and after and it's you know, question geared towards you know, acknowledgement of what is the thing that don't work for you, which way your needs are not met and and you know, give you such a clear perspective. So I remember Sasha Shergin Burnia Man told me that you can do MBM A once a year. There was actually said yeah, because you need time for the serotonin in and and so so you know which I also wonder are men more likely to burn out on mdmad women? I mean, just anecdotally, I think I think you know, women seemed able to use it longer and so get the effect, and I seem to remember that Sasha's wife and continue to like m dm ay and maybe using more often, even as Sasha was becoming more reserved. Rick Rick once told me that you have the down when you try to cope too early. Basically, when you have the serratony in depletion, then you have to take the day off. You have to like, you know, the Tuesday blows. You need to like, you know, be in the countryside, not having your phone, not having to deal the moment you try to cope, then you have to down. So so you need to really even more than the preparation for the integration. You need a full day where you're not solicited intellectually. And then of course there is the seratonin in integrator f HTP that that helps. But it's true that with me too, with age, the recovery is harder. Well, I even find that the experience itself. And so somebody suggests I've been trying, like opping the dose. I think I might try. Somebody suggests try a much lower dose, one that I would think that I would barely feel it and see see what that's like. So I might try that, but I've literally only done it, I don't know, maybe four or five times in the last fifteen plus years, and and none of them have really been right. So I want to add one thing, because you know, America is very pure ton around the idea of the recreational, and so I like to, you know, instead of using the word recreation, if you call it like celebratory. I remember two years ago I did the next as the other party, and a little bit like your experience of my my birthday party with the mushroom, I had ten hours of dancing in an ecstatic celebration of life. And that also is um it's good. I seem to recall I may have taken a very low dose of M d M a your party in carl It together with the other stuff. It may have been the only time it's really worked for me in the last fifteen years. Now. This is my favorite, of course, ayowatcom Yeah, well, you know I've done it a couple of times, once in a Santo Dime ceremony in New York. Actually, um, I remember going into that when I was a little apprehensive, because you know, I'm fairly grounded in my Jewish tradition. I have a very strong Jewish identity. My father was a rabbi, you know, it's been part of my my life. And Santo Dime. You know, at the end of the ceremony, they're bringing up people you know who have you know, have been through a serious thing to put Jesus into their lives. And a friend of mine said, Ethan, just relaxed, see it as you're creating a vessel for you to enjoy this experience. And so that was really it was an interesting experience for me. I had met the shaman from Rio before. I liked them, you know. Um it was you know, fairly strict. You know, men and women separate and you have to sit in your chairs and you can't cross your legs or your arms. So that was unusual. Um. But it was interesting experience and I would shift back and forth like as a participant observer. The first time I did it, um, which was a years before that, maybe fifteen eighteen years ago, was with a friend um and in a Barbara who's led many people on their ayahuasca experiences. In fact, the way I met Darren Aronovski, the movie director who was the producer of my podcast, was this fellow Gongo White, was our mutual guide on our first trips, and that one that was really remarkable experience where I basically I had a sort of telepathic connection with somebody, you know, just I. It was actually, it's a strange thing you went think would think about this on Iowaski experience. But there was a billionaire who played a pivotal role in the kind of marijuana legalization movement, and I had a very kind of tempestuous relationship with him, and he had sort of ritten me off, told people he didn't you know, he didn't want to deal with me anymore. It was all just kind of a weird and a personal thing. But I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no way we're going to succeed in legalizing marijuana until unless he relaxed and we had a partnership. And during the course of that experience, I began communicating in a sort of telepathic way, doing this kind of emotional scans of him and drafting this letter to him in my mind about about love and letting go and fathers and sons and all this sort of stuff. And I wrote the letter, but nobody saw it, and a few days later, out of the blue, he calls me and says, Ethan, I'm going to give you the money you asked for, and I'm doing this to show you I love I love you. And he never used that word with me before. So could it be coincidence, sure, But the circumstantial, you know, elements of that was just remarkable. So so that was um that was a great, beautiful experience and actually worked out quite well for my organization because it ended up being a million dollars. He came through with you. I sometimes joke about, you know, fundraising through Ayahuaska, even though that was not my intention going in. I think if I had gone into iOS experience thinking I want to focus on this, the ayahuasca would have kicked the ship out of me. It's just that it came up naturally in the way it did that. I think it allowed that to happen. So my my mother explanation of this phenomenon is that, you know, we have this electromagnetic field, right, but they are regulated by the ego, but by by this the full mode network. So when d MT like Salo Sabin reduced the full mode network, they need allow the electromoty field to expand and and that's how do you explain why in Burning Man everybody experiences incredible telepathic synchronicity. People you want to meet, people don't want to meet that it's incredible. How you know? My idea is that fifty people or sixty to eighty people with reduced the full mode network create these energetic highways where people can tap into and make things happen. I mean, sounds reasonable to me. I will admit that I sometimes spent a lot less time thinking about how this actually happens or why, or the sciences. In all my studies and work on drug policy, I've typically looked at the science or the explanations for what's going on and the role the brain, and I say, okay, that's for other people to kind of dumb down for me and explain. But in terms of why, and then also why, I awuaska, I mean, you know, it has more of a reputation for the telepathic experience then does I think most of the other psychedelics. I mean, the other ones have their stories as well, but there seems to be something special going on there and maybe it's what you described in Carlisle. I don't I don't know. Yeah, I mean for me i Awaska. Yeah, my wife and I wed the seven Years practice where we drank it maybe five hundred times. You know we where we I mean, it's no secret we've been very public about our addictions in the past, and you know, we definitely, definitely definitely credit ayahuasca. If you know, if we're still together, and you know, it was like maybe two or three times of years we will go to retreat. There was like a couple of shamans we would work with and and and you know, we had a lot of reconditioning to do. We were both um you know, in the grip of addiction and and it helps us a lot. So you know, sometimes when you do this gratitude exercise when you have to think about event that you know, they have to think event when you're that you felt really grateful and memory of the mornings after Nyawaska when you keep on coming back, when you're really heart open and really connected and you see this incredible sunrise and the nature and it's it's incredible. Well, you know it's funny, I mean, because this goes back to you and I'm meeting right at the first World Ayahuaska Congress and I think it was two thousand fourteen on the island of Vidisa, where you're now living. And I remember you. I think you were showing a film there and you and I kind of hit it off. And I remember also seeing a really interesting film there um with Gabor Mate, the Jungle Prescription. Yeah, and I guess, but it's one where he was working with people who were like engaged in the harmyduction program or needle exchange program in Vancouver. So people think about, oh, this is just for the wealthy or this and that, but it's act he was. I think I thought it might have been Aowaska if I remember correctly, with people who were really had been struggling with serious addiction. You know. So, I mean, I think the potential I mean obviously not just the Aawaska, but obviously it's still a cyber and d m A and a whole range of others for helping people have struggled with addiction and PTSD. I mean, you know, well, I mean everybody's reading about what's going on now in terms of scientific research. For me, it makes sense. I know you're not that interested on the neuroscience, but you know, when when the ego is reduced because suffering comes from this idea of the ego. If if you if the ego is subdued, you can associate the painful memory, You can detach the painful memory with the emotion. So so the addict too has in this loop of pain, can as the opportunity of detaching the pain from the memory. So the abusive parents, the childhood trauma becomes visible without the pain, so you can transcend them. I mean, for sure, these compounds are revolutionized in psychiatry. For sure. This is this yeah. I mean, just being down at this conference in Miami and just seeing the presentations and of course following the literature, it's extraordinary was coming out. I mean, I mean, I mean, whether it actually, you know, seriously undermine some of the pharmaceutical industry with their daily medications for depression and anxiety, all these other sorts of things, it would be great. I mean, we have to be careful because there will be abuses, there will be problems, people are over selling and all this sort of stuff. But I think we're starting off in mostly the right place with people looking at this um, how do we be responsible about this? And hopefully stupidity and greed will not undermine the progress. So so let's talk about that for a second. I wanted to keep it on the personal experience, but but since we're talking about the medicalization. So one of the risks of the of this big company is that you know, you can't integration is not scalable. So in a capital stic environment where psychedelic company will compete for customers, the temptation to cut corners in things like the integration. For example, if you you know it's going to be cheaper if you have a psychedelic assists psychotherapy just for two hours instead of six for the integration. So it's it's it's very difficult to you know, we'll see how this thing plays out, but we do well. I mean, look what's going on with Academy now right. You have some very smart and responsible people who are doing kedemy, providing kenemine and doing it with proper integration thereafter. You know, I think people should look at the website of Phil Wolfson, who is one of the godfathers of the kenemine therapy, and I've bet a bunch of others of late I see these popping all up. But then he also run into people who are you know, some anesthesiologists or something else who just sees an opportunity to make more money and they can get paid a lot of money for you know, administering the very expensive version of Kenemine that the insurance companies will pay for, even though ketteman actually is a very inexpensive drug, and they're doing it in a kind of glary lights medical environment. Maybe you put the ice shades on, but you come out of it. There's not serious integration. So I mean, Kennemane gives us and it's short acting, which fits the kind of capitalist you know, short amount of time model, but kenna means an opportunity to try to get this thing right. Um, hopefully we can, uh you know the other question, of course, I mean maybe this is just perhaps too ambitious. But because the role of the importance integration is so important after an experience, and because that can also be done in a group setting, you know, it begins to present the idea of this encouraging more of a group model for this, and I know, you know you think about Look one of the upsides of the twelve Steps program. I mean, they don't have a very high success rate. They have lots of problems but they do offer a sense of community for people, which is really pivotal. And just in the last week, I've heard about three different people and organizations trying to do online UM either integration of psycholic experiences or alternately working with people struggling with addiction, where they're creating not just one on one sessions, but also group sessions. You know, one of the silver lines of COVID was it forced so much of this stuff to move online where you can dramatically reduce costs and it allows people to be in a group environment to oftentimes maintain some degree of anonymity and comfort UM, but where that community can be you know, created, And if you then look at some of the potentials around virtual reality of making a community you know, feel more intimate than it currently does over the internet, but at a much lower cost in terms of people having to travel to one place to be somewhere. You know, there are some promising things on the horizon. So I think a lot of good stuff is going to emerge, but there's no way to get rid of all the scoundrels in this. But so since let's go back to the personal experience the UM. What's your personal experience with not I haven't had a lot of it, um, but I will say um uh there were two uh one some years ago there was a fellow named Sean Haley. Did you know Sean Haley at all? Sean, I made a lot of money, um, you know Silicon Valley, an unusual guy. Um. And then he started experimenting with um sort of drug concoctions um. And he was trying to deal with his own lifelong depression. And he came up with a combination of high dose a Cademy high dose d MT low dos kedemine and he began going around administering these two friends. And so I did that once and that was like like a rocket, you know, and I mean for forty five minutes, but almost thought about it was almost like a cliff Notes version of a of of a of a mushroom experience or something clip. So what what what was that dose? It? I don't know the actual doors. All I know is the d m T was a high dose smoke. Actually it was with a needle where intramuscular why a little jab in the butt cheek um. And I had told him that Sasha Shulguns called called said I was a hardhead. So I need an extra dose, so he gave me two shots. So it was like a rocket taken off. But then after forty five minutes, it was like parachute opens and I'm kind of come floating down to earth and I stand up. My legs are kind of wobbly from the kenemine And a few hours later, I'm going out to dinner in a movie, right, so you know, and I would say afterwards, for weeks afterwards, I felt like my mood was slightly elevated, my sexuality seemed slightly depressed, and there was this funny little humming feeling in my forehead which wasn't bothers him, but it was just kind of there. And so that was one experience. The other one was last year a friend of mine who is herself a kenemine therapist. UM I did it with her at her home and she was there taking here of the music and you know a little notebook in case any notes. And total was my first time doing a real blindfold, and I did it with dissolving a couple of abs under my tongue. I realized in retrospect it might have been a lot smoother just to do the intramuscular but she didn't have that available, and and I was surprised how how profound it was, you know, I mean it was first of all, I mean, I mean, there was I won't go into the longer story, but the key thing was there was one moment um where I had kind of turned over onto my belly and uh um and and and I was almost entering into almost like this avatar like environment. And I was underneath like in some water, like in a swamp or a lake, and it's dark, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm underwater, I can't breathe. And then I go, but I'm breathing. And then I'm going, it's dark. I can't see anything. This is this should be scary. There could be snakes, and I realized I'm not scared, and I just keep moving forward. And also I go, oh my god, I could pass through death like this. And it was the first and only time I've had that kind of sensation. And I was taking with how gentle it was and only lasted for an hour or something like that, but it was very gentle. It was even with the high dose mushrooms. I hadn't kind of had that, you know, UM escaped from the body. But with that ketemy, which I think relatively high dose. I don't know what it was, but I was told it was a relatively high dose. Yeah, I really felt like I kind of left my body in a way, or I was sort of in and out of it. But in this you know, avatar place that turned out to be scary but beautiful. Well, yeah, like I also had not very meaningful experience. I mean, probably not with the right set of set set and settings. But actually, yesterday I met a friend who did the full three injection in a cleaning here in New York, and he said it was the most a bit of experience with his life. It was like a heavenly experience. It felt it felt heaven. He felt it like abounded compassion, stion and and and and this incredible sense of of of of abundant compassion and love and sounds amazing. Well, I mean you also see him now that it's been approved for you know, management of intractable depression, I mean, that's very promising. And the fact that you know, until a few months ago, it was the only psychedelic that the National Student Drug Abuse would give any grants for it to research for treating addiction. UM. On my podcast, I interviewed a fellow alias Dakwar, professor of Columbia who's using a combination of ketamine and mindfulness meditation to treat addiction and depression. And so I just think it really has enormous potential, and I hope it doesn't get corrupted and get a bad reputation because of people being reckless and stupid with it. But why do you think I meany scheduled three and having scheduled one. Probably first of all, the fact that it already had extensive use both UM in emergency medicine and wartime medicine and veterinary medicine meant that people were already familiar with it. They've been administering it to human beings for a very long time. So I think that helped make people, you know, feel okay about it. I think secondly, the fact that it's relatively short acting UM maybe maybe a thing about it. Uh. Thirdly, maybe a lower people A lot of people are taking lower doses where the kind of psychedelic effect was seen as a kind of negative, you know, side effect or something like that. But you were dealing with people dealing you know, you know, emergency responders who were in parts of the kind of world where they don't have opioids available using ketamine, or people in the battlefield. So I think for all sorts of reasons it kind of got in there were tolerated with the psychedelic side was seen as just negative side effects, um, whereas these other things. And it also did not start off becoming popular in the underground. It wasn't It wasn't a creator. Yeah, I mean allstie. You know, I had a early history in the fifties early sixties before he got popularized by Timothy Leary and others. Um, But mushrooms have always had that REQUI anational side to it, so uh, you know. And I don't think there were really news reports the people jumping off balconies or you know, that kind of thing. So I think we're lucky in that regard that it actually was able to get get through. What about some pedro, did you have an experience? I've never done something pedro. I've never done peyote. You know, maybe that was in my future. Uh, what about you? So I've done it? Sometimes some shalman will give it to you in the morning after then Ayahuaska session to to open your heart to like too easy A little bit in the in the in the post ayahuasca um I never but but recently Nibiza, I did the full on two liters. They give you this this I can't remember which tradition is it, but where you have the old plant, not just the not just the button. I think, no, that's that's anyway. It was a type of It was very diluted by a lot like you drink this like two litter. You keep on drink and drink and drinking. And and it was it was you know they always say that, you know, the first session is a bit disorienting, and then the second time you find your bearing. It was a combination of of of LSD and there was something really unusual about about it. Then the guy let us going free, actually encouraged us to go and walk around, and and I remember I was sitting there very confused. I would have had this image of of of of some big leadies from Louisiana. I don't know. I was really disoriented. And so this other person will come by and say, remember this is a cactus that it's very hard because it lives in the desert. But then there is a flower and so that that that comment turned my trip into something a little bit more beautiful. But I'm not friend with the San Pedro yet. Yeah, you know, I learned a lot. You know. I had Michael Power on my podcast a few months ago, and his latest book, one of the big chapters is on mescaline and and he finds it a very powerful experience. I think he also makes an important point that, you know, given how limited peyote is, and given that there's a really highly respected indigenous use of this in a Native American church, then unless somebody is specifically invited in by that community to do it, that buying large people outside that community should generally, you know, not take advantage of used peyote that you can get more or less the same thing from San Pedro. I mean, it is essentially mescalin as well, and do that. Um so I I think I will. I'm curious to try Son Pedro and to try mescalind I only I only did mescalind once. Um and uh, you know, but for me it was something between a mushroom and and LSD experience. I don't know if it was all that distinctive. Um, it was powerful, you know. Um, what about five d MT the toad from the Sonora Desert. Well, you know, I'll tell you a friend of mine said, I was kind of scared to do it. You know, where you smoke it in fifteen minutes, and you know, can seem like you know, you know ages and and people's you know, you know, with everything, you know, all the experiences you hear about the five m O d m T, whether it's the toad medicine or the synthetic. And you know, people you can argue about whether the you know the specialness of the toad medicine as opposed to the synthetic, and I get their point about it. But anyway, this friend of mine, um, you know, I said, okay, I'm ready, and he says, I actually think I'm sorry. I'm out of the smokable type. Um uh, all I have is some snortable five mm e O d m T. I don't know if it's toad from the toad or synthetic. And like, you know, I've never been a cocaine or only snort things. But he goes, yeah, and he put out too long white lines of this stuff, and I said, how long do you think it will last? He goes, why, don't have how much experience with it, but you know, maybe half hour or so. So I snort these two lines, right, And I trusted him because he's got a huge amount of experience as a guy. And first of all, it burned like hell, I mean really burned, like in my scientist you know, cavities and all that sort of stuff. And finally it's settled down. But I'll tell you five hours later, like I'm lying down there. I mean, I'm I'm sort of still in my body. I don't go through the ego dissolution or whatever that is, you know, but it was like a kind of different version of a mushroom trip. At one point, my energy is shooting out of my legs. I mean, I mean afterwards, you know, my host said, you know, were you doing candalini exercises? I said, like, what's contalini? You know, I don't what you may not know what it is, but you were looking like you were doing it right there. And then literally five hours later, I'm coming out of it and I get up to talk to my friends and I sound like what I could not I actually pronounced my words, and I was until the next morning that I could actually get out like talk normally again. And even then I felt like I had to drive back to another friend's house. I felt disoriented in terms of I could drive safely, but where I was was kind of been down. So it was a strange and u experience. And and I don't know that this is about about four years ago. Um, I don't know what to say about it. Really. I do think I need to try the fift you know, smokeable version and try to telling medicine. Um. That sounds like people have described wonderful things about it, but some people say it's taken them a good weeks or month to fully get back to some form of yes. Yes. For me, it was one of the most beautiful experience of my life. And I did it in the perfect condition because you know, we have a man group. It's ten of us. Every year we spent five days mostly during Ayahuaska during the day as a personal experience, but also as a collective. We would then share and and so at the end of day five, when we already have this strong morpho genetic field of of of you know, support of our friends, then we did we did this. We smoked the toad and and you feel very safe. It was like in a temple in England. Then it's like if I don't do it now, I don't know what I'm gonna do it. We were, you know, we were like five days working together. There was all this strong bond and it was it was it was like one of us says, touching the heart of God, you felt really catapulted in heaven, in this blue light where you have this sense of forgiveness and compassion and the closest thing to happen. Wow. Wow, I look forward to it. It's funny. At this conference and I was said in Miami, Mike Tyson was there and just singing the praises of the toad medicine. You know, I've heard other people just talking about how for them that's gonna they feel it's going to be their go to substance for the rest of their lives. We'll try the other ones and whatever, they'll do them, but that five m e oh is the one that really spoke to him. It's funny because I don't really feel the need to revisit that. It's interesting, you know, I would, I would do other things, but that's so precious. I don't know, So why don't we conclude with them with normal D empty except the couple of injection you had. Did you ever had the smoke? NORMALM No? I mean actually the one we could talk about is two C B. Yeah, because um, that was when I thought I was gonna do it a few weeks ago, but it turned out not to happen. But I did it a number of times about twenty years ago or so. Um and uh. The funny thing about about to ce bit is is the kind of um odd impact in terms of drugs set and setting that the book by Sasha and Shilgin Peakal. You know their books, Pet Peakal fin Athletes, I Don't in Love. There's a little section there about two C B and and describes the experience under whose pseudonym of taking the two C B and lapsing into the most devastating self critical ego wipe outing, horrible, feel terrible about yourself. I mean, just just a nightmarish experience and just wallowing and not knowing what to do. And then Sasha or pseudonym appears at the door and this beaming light emerges and the thing begins to transform. And the next thing that happens is she is having the most multi orgasmic experience with him that she that she's ever had. And and so you read that and you go, okay, like multi orgasmic experience, let's let's do it, right, um. But in point of fact, I mean, I'll tell you, I mean this is actually after my marriage, I met this beautiful woman a journalists American journalists have grown up in Europe. It was in Paris in the early mid nineties. And I went back to visit her about a month later, and and we did M D M A together and it was beautiful. And she lived near the Plus Devotion in Paris and an old you know building the air that had been modernized. And but I remember we went out and everything was gorgeous and beautiful, and and we came back and we were in the vegetable of her apartment building, like you know how somebody want to stand on corners, like people won't go stand on a shell from me. I was doing this stuff, filling up the space, and then we went upstairs. It was just loving and beautiful and all this, you know, it's just great. Anyway, two days later, I said, let's try the two CV. So we do the two CB. We retrace our steps right and it's like, what's this? And God, that needs to be fixed and that's that. And it was this kind of critical mode and I realized it was this critical you know, like and then and then we finally come back and I look at the vegetable which looks so marvelous under you know, M D M A, and I'm going, who are designed it? You know? And then we go upstairs, um, and we started relaxing and we start making love. And I remember about the love making was that was that it was that that my tactile sense was didn't feel right, it felt almost clammy. But that the said, the different sensations of sex were almost colorized in a really and so there was some depth and specialness to the sexual encounter all of that. So that was But I mean, after that, I realized, Eathan, don't do two c B with your lover, right, this is the drug. Take it by yourself, right. It's like doing a lower dose mushroom for me. And when you want to kick the ship out of yourself, you know, do it that way. And so I did it. One time. I was in Venice and I was just broken up actually with this woman, and I was you know, I was a rainy February day in Venice, and I remember just going down, like walking around Venice by myself and going to the Jewish ghetto and feel having a very spiritual connection with it, the Jewish Ghetto in Venice. And then another time back home in New York. I've never liked the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I decided I'm gonna examine my prejudices. So I took the two c b this girlfriend and given me a pigskin vest. Now I still keep kosher, right, so that it felt like a little passive aggressive or giving me a pigskin vessel, like technically Jews can wear pigskin, right, Um, I put the pigskin vest down, I can ready did something else. I walked across the park from my where I live on the airports side to the museum. I went to the museum, which I you know, I don't generally like when I would see an exhibit like twelve century medieval tapestries, which I would never go to. I go to it, right, and it was a little more interesting because the tapestries were kind of going up and down the ceiling because I was loosening a little bit. But I actually had a chance to spend the whole afternoon in the museum at the quote unquote Sasha museum level dose, you know, beginning to get a feeling about what why did I like this place? And what might I like? And and with my aesthetic sensibilities were enhanced and so for me to see b was really the one for intensive, you know, pretty hard nosed, you know, critical self examination. And then I kind of lost my source to it, and uh, haven't done it in the last couple of decades, but I'm definitely keen to try it again. Interesting. Interesting, So let me ask you the reason why I was asking you d MT s because do you remember ricks Trust money in the in the in the eighties, they did this clinical trial injecting the MT to a bunch of a healthy volunteer I think, and and and basically they find some similarities in terms of the entities that the volunteer would encounter. And so now the Imperial College accountant too much because it's it's still under under. It's it's still under They just they just started administrating the trial those but they're basing using a I V machine to put the volunteer into d MT dose for much longer than the ten minutes. And so this idea of of the sponsor is that you know, maybe that compound would allow access to these beings, that they might be independent and sent an independent center, beings that we more time you can develop a relationship. And what do you think about this? I don't know. I mean, look for me, you know the notion of this, you know, as witnessed by my experience with very high dose mushrooms or the high dose d MT, I don't seem to go through this ego dissolution stuff. I seem to retain my sense of being present in my body with the exception of that brief academy and experience last year. Um. And it may be because I haven't really done it with the blindfold on, and maybe that might make the difference. Um. No entities, not that I can recall. You know, I'm not seeing jaguars. I'm not seeing entities. I'm not doing that sort of thing. I'm not going through horrifying loss of dissolution of identity. UM. I seem to me, it's it's this, it's a way of of of of doing things to my mind and my body that are just just creating new connections and thoughts and things and all of this that that that that just feels kind of life affirming and once in a while scary and hard. Um. But you know, I wonder about that because I hear about people go through the e and you know, and part of this I think I've always I don't think I've lived with much trauma in my life. I mean, there's been a few things, you know, but uh, but I don't know why that is. And maybe I'm just I'm a very grounded person. And so I wonder if the day will come when I do high dose hiahuasca or d m T in the more pure form or something where I actually go through that we'll see. And we've been together an hour. You've been so generous with your personal story and sharing your your intimate situation. Thank you so much. I should also just say, I mean, what I also love is the fact that here it is in late the world appears to be going in some very dangerous and scary places. But one of the nice things that's happening is that you and I can talk openly about this and do it for other people, for strangers to listen to, and to do it without real fear, you know, I mean the willing the ability of people to be in talking first about their own cannabis use a few years ago and now about psychedelic use. It's really represents, you know, a transformation or society. There's a coming out, not unlike what happened with gay people being able to come out over time. And you know, I live. I realized there's always the possibility that the forces of repression will try to shove this genie back in the bottle and try to hurt some of us who have spoken out and come out, because we know historically those things, these things do go in waves and things can go backwards. Um, so I think we need to be careful. But you know, I'm you and I are both out there speaking openly about these things, and uh, you know, none of us. We're all talking about our own personal consumption. We're not talking about selling these things or making money from them illegally or things like that. For me, the podcast has just been a blast because I'm having all these wonderful people on. You know, it might be Andrew Wild and Michael Pollen, it might be the academic doing a cannemine research. It was former you know, the U. S. Senator Chuck Schumer, you know, who's the majority leader, talking to him about his marijuana legalization bill. I had the former president of Colombia, the country Wamali Ol Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize five years ago. I had the head of National Student on Drug Abuse, Nora Vocal, who used to run away from me and now she's willing to be on my podcast. I've had some activists and some brilliant journalists and you know, so it's everything from talking having conversations like the one you and I are having here too, talking to politicians, talking to I had the District Attorney of Philadelphia, who's a progressive DA. So it's really spanning the spectrum. And the question for me is whether there will be an audience of people who want to hear one day about ketamine therapy and the next day about the politics of marijuana bill, the next day about the overdose crisis in America, and the next day about how New York legalized marijuana, the next day about the head of the U. S. Government's you know, drug Research funding Agency. But I think I'm I'm meeting more and more people strangers coming up to me not just in the US, but in Europe and elsewhere, saying, wow, I listen to your podcast, and so I'm I'm feeling optimistic that there's going to be an audience. And you know, I'm very grateful that Darren Aronovski, the movie director, reached out to me. I knew him a little bit from the Drug Policy Alliance days. He said, you want to do a podcast in the psychedelics. I said, no, I want to do one in all drugs. He said, let's do it, and then he had teamed up with My Heart. So he's made a lot of famous movies, but this is his first podcast venture. So it's a good team. It's professional. It means there's commercials on it, which I don't like, but that's the model. Um and uh. I can see I can see him behind the scene, because you're always looking a little bit for the conflicts. You know, you'll find a way to disagree with your guests. I see dar and behind saying you know you need the coach. No, actually he didn't need. He never said anything like that. As I say in the opening episode, I am a contrarian deep down, and I think also that to have a podcast where you I mostly had people on there who I'm who I've learned from, who I generally agree with. But he can get boring if you were just agree And therefore I see it's my role to play Devil's advocate. It's my role to challenge them, um even if I agree with them, and to say, how do you respond to the critics who say this, um so. I think that's part of what makes it more interesting amazing. Thank you very much. What's the name of the podcast and where they can find it again? It's called Psychoactive and it is on all the major platforms. Thank you very much. Was a pleasure to chat with you. Good luck with this podcast as well, and I look forward to seeing you one of these days and visa for sure, come and visit. Thank you very much. Focus so natas so no noond cock so nata so nana irond go god so nata sona go God so Nata so nat go god so not so not go God so na son. Next week I'll be talking with Professor Neil Carrier at the University of Bristol in the UK about cut the fascinating drug plant from the Horn of Africa and Yemen. A friend of mine actually had a really really nice way of describing the effects of CAT as being something that if you sit down in an armchair and you're not quite comfortable, but then suddenly you just shift your body and you find that place where you know your body is completely comfortable. CAT seems to be a little bit like that. It is quite a quite a subtle effect. You know that, the way it makes you makes you feel, but it you know it. It is quite a quite a pleasant substance. Subscribe to Psychoactive now see it all, miss it