CLASSIC: Psilocybin: Fact, Fiction and Future with Robert Lamb

Published Jan 15, 2025, 1:56 PM

Evidence indicates human beings have been using psychedelics since ancient times, and a recent paradigm shift has launched a new renaissance in psychedelic research. Over the years psychedelics (and psilocybin specifically) have been the subject of both extremely positive and severely negative claims -- so what's the truth? In this episode, special guest Robert Lamb, host of Stuff To Blow Your Mind and Invention, joins the guys to explore the fact, fiction and future of psychedelics.

Fellow conspiracy realist, we have an exciting collaborative classic for you this evening. We're big, big fans of a show called Stuff to Blow Your Mind, featuring our good friends Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick. We gotta tell you, they class up the show every time they drop by. Do you guys remember this one?

I don't know, man, I feel like time kind of stood still while we were making this, and I could see the matrix a.

Little little flash forward.

Whatever. The opposite of deja.

Vu is some really good sushi recipes in them, in them lines of code.

Oh wait, wait, maybe it was the shrooms.

Maybe it was.

We know that there is a renaissance in recent years with psychedelic research, especially in processing trauma or PTSD, and back in twenty nineteen, we had Robert over to explore kind of the smoke and mirrors, the hype versus the fact versus the fiction of psychedelics, and this was just such a rewarding and bizarre conversation.

Indeed, let's jump right into said rewarding conversation about psil A Simon and psychedelic experiences.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, her name is Noah.

They call me Ben.

We are joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission control deck, and most.

Importantly, you are you.

You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today we've got to welcome you back. Noel, you've been on some trips recently. You have not been tripping necessarily.

You don't know that.

I don't. I just said necessarily necessarily means I'm not saying Norge.

And I was in San Francisco for for a little while.

That would have been a good opportunity to do that, but it did not cross my path.

And in today's episode, for anyone who didn't bother to read the title, you were so excited you just jumped in. Today's episode is about tripping. It's about.

Psychedelics, hallucinogens, so.

One in particular, and in the past we've talked a little more broadly about hallucinogens and psychedelics in our episodes. Avid listeners would remember, did hallucinogens create religion? Or can hallucinogen's cure addiction? But today we're drilling down into one specific substance, and we've brought someone away along with us to help.

That's right, We are not diving into this rabbit hole alone. Please welcome to the show our good friend, co host of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, co host of Invention, mister Robert Lamb.

Hey, thanks for having me.

We're very excited that you're here. Robert. We very much are looking to you as an expert, well because you not long ago completed a I believe five part series on this very substance on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Yeah, me and my co host Joe McCormick, we did five part look at psilocybin, psychedelics in general, but with very much a focus on psilocybin.

It's an interesting time for that, especially because I think the tide is sort of turning in terms of not only public opinion, but even just the laws surrounding. It's getting loosened up in a lot of places, and there's legitimate research being done using psilocybin to treat things like depression or anxiety or what have you.

Yeah, I think that the research area is perhaps the most exciting area to look at because there's a lot of progress made, you know, back in the fifties and sixties, and then of course things died down almost you know, to a trickle to a crawl for decades, and now we're living in a true renaissance of psychedelic research, you know, where researchers have picked up where others left off and are you know, continuing to really explore the healing potential of these substances.

Yeah, And a lot of this has to do with the social morase, right, the way substances and certain drugs have been viewed over the course of history.

Right.

But before we get too deep into this, let's talk about what we're talking about. What is psilocybin?

Okay, Well, psilocybin, for charters, is a psychedelic and you know, the term itself is from the Greek words for soul or mind and manifesting, but in particular, psilocybin is a trip to mind psychedelic. It naturally occurs in some two hundred different varieties of mushroom, and the primary compounds responsible for its psychedelic effects are psilocybin and silosine, which ultimately amount to pretty much the same thing, since psilocybin breaks down into silicon inside the body, and you know, compared to almost all other known drugs, psilocybin has an exceptionally low potential for abuse and exceptionally few known physiological risks.

Right right, It turns out that many of the urban legends people have heard about people about folks taking magic mushrooms and then going completely insane for the rest of their lives are just that urban legends. They're also I believe, no proven fatalities due to this substance.

Well, it's I guess two things are worth worth pointing out. Like for starters, a certain segment of the population can experience psychological ramification, so people with a predisposition for say, schizophrenia, and that's a something that everyone should always keep in mind. On the other hand, I mean, they are powerful substances. They're not you know, it's not bubblegum. Set and setting are extremely important. The mental state that that one has going into using these substances is extremely important, and so there therefore it's you know, it's very possible for especially as you know, a young person who hasn't, you know, say, put a lot of thought into what is going to happen. It's very possible for them to have a challenging time.

I guess the thing I'm clarifying here is while all of that is true, there has also been this persistent this this persistent public image of psilocybin or hallucinogens in general as something that someone would ingest one at one point in their lives and then for the rest of the natural span of their of their life they would be functionally insane or unwell or unable to perform as a regular member of society. And I think that's fake. That's propaganda, right, that's negative PR and the War on drugs.

And speaking of PR, just really quickly, we're not, as we do with any ideas we discuss, not saying you should believe this or this is something you should go out and do, or saying you should go out and microdose and take psilocybin today it'll improve your life. We're just going through some of the effects, some of the history and some of the current research and the news behind it. And speaking of that, there was a study that just came out from Global Drug Survey to your point. Band that pulled close to one hundred and twenty thousand people in fifty different countries about their drug and alcohol consumption, and twelve thousand people in that survey said they did mushrooms in twenty sixteen, and only zero point two percent of them said they needed emergency medical care afterward, as opposed to that was five or six times lower than LSD, cocaine, MDMA, and alcohol, and three times lower than marijuana.

So well, and there's also something to be said here about combination of substance. When you do those, there's always a danger there.

If someone could die being in an unsafe setting or a situation. Right, Yeah, they caused them to behave erratically.

Oh absolutely, And just to kind of harp one last time on this point both that everybody's kind of making here. There is a small segment of the population that should never likely should never try psilocybin, but for the overwhelming majority, it is not something that's going to cause deleterious effects, right.

Yeah, one more statistic here. It looks like about eight percent of the US population people counting people over twenty six eight percent of people over twenty six years old have at least self reported using some sort of hallucinogen. Is that number higher in actuality maybe, but not that much. So again, this war on drugs meantality doesn't really track. It is not as if one out of three people on the street are tripping their balls off or something, you know what I mean. And to Robert's point, it's not something Well, historically psychedelics played a more formal role in human experience, or a more spiritual role, rather than a recreational role.

One hundred percent.

And that's I think in terms of the tide turning. It's starting to be seen more like that instead of just some thing that you pop for Jolly's at a concert or something like that.

You know, this is something that fascinating me about your discussion on stuff to blow your mind, Robert. When we get to the nuts and bolts of psilocybin specifically, how much do we know about how it actually works in the human brain.

Yeah, well, we still don't know for sure the exact neurochemical mechanism, but classic psychedelics appear to bind to a specific subclass of serotonin receptor, the serotonin serotonin two A receptor, and these receptors are found concentrated in the human cortex, which is the outer layer of the cerebellum, which is associated with a lot of the lot of higher brain functions, you know, sensation, speech, of course, language, voluntary action. You know. So when you take a psychedelic like LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, the active ingredient, the active compounds make their way into the brain and sort of act as act as serotonin binding to these receptors. But yeah, there are a lot of a lot of questions to still remain about exactly how it works. So a lot of questions remain exactly regarding how serotonin really works in our minds.

Well, there are a lot of stories that are a little more anecdotal about or I guess, let's say, tales of what psilocybin actually is and how it functions within the body outside of the medical research right about it being conscious way, I mean, there are all kinds of things we can get into later in here. I mean, there are stories that you will find across the internet and perhaps hear from acquaintances of yours that go and go a little deeper into the strangeness.

But let's imagine that there was like a big pharma type commercial for psilocybin. And let's let's think about what would be rattled off at the end, the things that could be caused, things like nazi obomitaing, abominal crams and diary and muscle relaxation, weak dis in, twitches, yawning, drowsiness, dizziness, light headedness, and lack of coordination, people dilation, tearing, dry mouth and facial flushing, increased heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature, sweating followed by shells and shivering, none us of tongue, lips or mouth, feeling of physical heaviness or lightness, and feeling of floating.

Yeah, and I was just reading the other day about how how DARPA is interested in in basically harnessing all of this without the mind altering aspect.

Just to weaponize it essentially, U DARPA our our eternal fourth co host.

You know. So there's there's another thing here.

When we're when we're dwelling on the anecdotal stuff, we do have to say that this very quickly gets us into some of the more out there or fringe concepts, beliefs, authors and before we get to those ideas which are grand and many are as beautiful as they are unprovable, but they're all based on not so much the physical sensations people encounter, but the psychological situations they encounter. And this I think Matt is directly tying into some of the anecdotes you've mentioned. Everybody has sort of a lot of people rather who try hallucinogens have this kind of hero's journey tail, right, And sometimes it's full of young yn archetypes. Sometimes it's just full of strange perceptions of time and space or even senasthesia.

Things much less easy to quantify in a rattled off list at rapid fire at the end of a television commercial.

Yeah, I mean, the the ineffable aspect of it is is always a key factor. Michael Polin has an excellent book that came out this year about psychedelics's called How to Change Your Mind, which which I recommend to everybody, just just a wonderful read. But in an interview with Terry Gross, he mentioned that William James once said that the mystical experience of psychedelics is ineffable, yet we try very hard to ef it. So yeah, so I think that's a big thing to keep in mind with the subjective experiences of psychedelics is that, first of all, it's highly susceptible to set in setting, it's highly susceptible to your mindset going into it. Therefore, it's also highly susceptible to stories you've heard about the use of psychedelics, be it inspiring tales from you know, various you know, psychonauts, or the scare tactics of the moral panic and the war on drugs that you know that popped up in the wake of the counterculture. And then after we had those experiences, we of course have memories of those experiences, and memories are highly susceptible to us then tinkering the narrative.

That's I'm sorry for anyone who who can't see because this is an audio podcast. When you said that, Robert, that's I had the point across the table, because yes, memory is a treacherous territory, right, it's a it's a domain where you cannot really trust the geography you encounter. And I want to go back to hallucinogens in general. I think, growing up, at least here in the West, many many children, when they encounter the idea of hallucinogens, they encounter a very fictionalized representation of this, right, somebody ingest something, maybe Alice in Wonderland would be a good example. Somebody ingests something and then their concept the time and space changes right or size right, and then they begin to see visibly strange creatures, right, the white rabbits and so on. But is that nonsense? Is that true when people take psilocybin? Is are they seeing visual entities?

Or it seems like.

There's a lot of Uh, there's a lot of malarkey about hallucination out there.

So what's the fact. What's the fiction?

Well, I mean, I think a lot of the mallarchy does come from media representations of it. And part of that is that it's difficult to capture the psychoedepic experience in a fictional medium, be it a book, certainly in a movie. And then so a lot of the examples we have, they're gonna they're gonna be more like a dream sequence. They're going to you know, they might not be that well executed, and they are also probably going to play into something that's more dramatic, right, maybe even something more horrific as a means of just advancing whatever story they're telling.

Do you guys remember the go ask Alice No. So it was a.

Nineteen seventy one fictional book for young adults written by written anonymously, and at the time, like when I was a kid, it was a required book we had to read. And it's basically the story of this young girl who starts taking drugs and ultimately takes psychedelics and ends up like throwing herself off a building and like die. And it's now looked at as utter propaganda, but I was forced to read it, and it was in the era of Dare where they come through the school with like a giant suitcase full of every drug and point.

It out and tell you all about it, all of these horror stories.

But I gotta say, the giant suitcase of drugs, just as a kid, I'm like, oh, I want to try that one and that one and that one.

Well, it makes you think of Hunter S. Thompson exactly, of course, which, of course the book and of certainly the movie are I think for a lot of people were kind of like their first or at least an early introduction into what the psychedelic experience might consist of. And yet at the same time that movie is completely ridiculous, course of course depiction of things, you know, like, I mean, it's wonderful, but it is. It's a highly uh it highly depends on depictions of hallucination, visual hallucination, the Las Vegas movie in.

Yeah, just so and this This is interesting though, especially the point about Hunter S. Thompson, because while that is still very much gonzo right, very much his genre, there are true events there that formed the kernel of this. So we are reading what do they always say, you know, a made for TV movie is more or less bs when that little card comes up at the front of the show and it says inspired by true events, inspired by actual events. So we can say then that a lot of a lot of Hunter S. Thompson's work was inspired by true events, if not, you know, with a lot of poetic license, but there's still a factual account.

And if we look.

Back through the canon, you know, Hunter S. Thompson go ask Alice various shamanic experiences, we see that people have been writing about this stuff for a very very long time, and have been doing it since before we figured out how to write things right.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, really, you look at so many ancient cultures and it's difficult to find an example of one where there's not a case or a definite a strong case or a definite case to be made for leucinogenics playing psychedelics playing some sort of role in their society. I mean, it was part of shamanistic practices and still remains a part of shamanistic practices in certain parts of the world.

I'd just like to jump back really fast to the Maryland Center physiological effects of ingesting psilocybin, because I think there are a couple in here that speak directly to what we're talking about that are the reason that this type of substance is used in shamanistic practices and has been for so long. Just very very specifically, the heightened sensory perceptions that can occur.

That's probably when dark is most interested in.

Oh yeah, exactly, the time and space being altered, like the feelings of time and space being altered, right, as well as the detachment from the self from the body, basically the third personing that can occur with these substances, and it is it's those three combined becomes such a potent avenue to explore I guess, your own consciousness or the feelings that you're having within that moment and the single person's connection to the greater universe or nature or the spirit whatever is being worshiped. You know, you can really see it as a potent tool.

And it's not as it doesn't have to be even that lofty. It could be something as simple as your connection to something like television, the concept of like watching television and what that means, and how you interact with something like that, and don't even think about what it is. Under the influence of something like this, you might see it completely different. In question how much time you spend with this box, watching other people doing things on TV and your relationship that might seem very normal. Otherwise, all of a sudden you start to question and be like, why am I doing this? Why am I putting so much emphasis on this experience.

I like that you mentioned that because there are some studies that indicate, if not necessarily psilocybin, some hallucinogens are very helpful with people who are struggling with habits or addictions, right anything from smoking to I imagine, I haven't seen a study on it, but I imagine what if there's someone who watches too much TV and they're like, drop this, now watch this Marathon as Seinfeld.

It's just associations in general, right, the idea. Let's say I'm addicted to cigarettes. In my mind, this is a steadfast part of who I am under the influence of psychedelics. You might be able to take a step back and see it as something that you can just very easily cast off or take or leave, you know.

So there's a high level look at the nuts and bolts of psilocybin in specific, some of the history, some of the current research, and I think a pretty accurate look at the controversy and the mechanics of the experience. Right, But what if there is more to the story. What if there is something beyond these psychological effects that compels our species and has compelled it for thousands of years to pursue these hallucinogenic experiences. Here's where it gets crazy. There's this author named Terrence McKenna. Terrence McKenna was born in nineteen forty six. And if you are familiar with characters such as Timothy Leary, if you are familiar with the revolution of hallucinogens right through the sixties into the seventies and so on, then you have heard this name before. You may have read books like Food of the Gods, the Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, and shout out to my friend Henry if you are listening, because this is the part of the episode that I think you will find incredibly fascinating. This guy's a friend of ours. Will sometimes write to me and try to get us to do another psychedelic episode. So you're helping us very much, Robert, because you've read some Terrence McKenna, right.

Yeah, yeah, I've been on something of a Terrence McKenna kick recently, And yeah, McKenna is a fascinating individual, wonderful writer, wonderful speaker too. There's no shortage of YouTube streams and whatnot available out there. You can you can listen to him present his ideas to people. He you know, I think it's it's fair to compare him to Timothy Leary in a sense, like in kind of a way, he was kind of feeling that the void, you know, feeling that the place for a you know, spokesperson for the psychedelic experience in the counter country culture, especially during the nineteen nineties. But he also, I think, in many respects, is more it feels felt more authentic than Leary. Leary was also a fascinating individual who certainly said some profound things and played a powerful role in the counterculture. At the same time, had plenty of faults to go around as well. Yes, and it definitely like leaned into the sort of guru nature that was you know, that was given to him. But McKinnon is fascinating from a number of standpoints. Certainly is his commentary on psychedelic but he also wrote and spoke about it's various aspects of the human experience.

This name may be unfamiliar to some of us listening today, but you may have already encountered some of his ideas, right, because when we talk about a hallucinogenic psychedelic experience, we're humans, right. Our brains are built to kind of categorize and group things, and so it's no surprise that, similar to reports of near death experiences, some hallucinogens and some people's experience using them appear to have trends. And that's when you'll hear people tell you with complete conviction that they have not only gone to a new realm of consciousness, but they encountered something there when they took the substance.

Right, and the big question for me here when we're discussing something like this is if you are going to go down that route, there is a shared experience in some way when using these substances. Is it a shared thing with the humans and our biological systems and the history of our biological systems, or is it something with the substance itself that is either unlocking something within us or is imparting something, Which is always an interesting sort.

Of the idea of a collective unconsciousness that people are tapping unconscious people are tapping into kind.

Of yeah, And I think a big part of it comes back to what we do believe that psychedelics are doing. Basic One of the analogies I love is the shaking of the snow globe, shaking things up, changing your perspective, putting you in a mindset that could enable you to overcome various addictions. Again, that's one of the area where we see some wonderful, you know, research results. But and again, it's not the psychedelic substances themselves that are treating or could be used to treat addictions, but it is the state that they invoke, the psychedelic experience itself. And and so if you're you know, if you're put in a state where suddenly you're seeing everything from new perspectives, it can certainly put you in a state where you can you can have some rather you know, almost alien interpretations of of what's going on inside your brain and what's going on inside reality.

Really quick, as far as the research, do you know we can look this up if if no one does, is there any study that goes into like does it change your brain on a physiological level or level?

Yeah?

Or is it more about you remembering the experience and applying that to your life in terms of using it as treatment or in terms of the lasting impact of an experience like this.

Unless I'm forgetting a key study, I don't don't believe there are any any studies that point to like fixed changes. And you know the structure of the brain.

I wouldn't have thought so either.

To me, it seems more like I'm learning, I'm having a session where I'm experiencing something that I'm remembering that and almost it doesn't require you to repeat the experiences over and over again. You can just do it a handful of time, in the same way you can go to therapy. You don't have to be in therapy twenty four to seven. You go occasionally and you learn from that and take your experiences and apply them to your life.

Yeah, it's behavior, not going to change your DNA, which I think there were something some grand his stories about that back in the day. But yeah, I think it's it's it comes back to the idea that they are physiologically rather benign, but psychologically powerful and that's where the impact is.

I did see I did see a study about some hallucinogen I think it was those the psychedelic drugs LSD and ecstasy, not mushrooms.

And now technically in DMA is not a psychedelic.

Right right that I think they grouped it specifically LSD, and then they also studied ecstasy or in DMA, and they've found that there can be some physical alteration of the brain. But to these researchers, let's see who was this. This is de Olsen, who's an assistant professor of chemistry and molecular Medicine at UC Davis. What they found seemed to be potentially beneficial or rather than something damaging. They thought it could have benefits for people with certain mood disorders. But I haven't I haven't seen a ton of the a ton of the research that would indicate, you know what you're talking about, in all some kind of massive system wide physical change in the brain. And I think part of that is because our research was stymied for so long, right, due to some of the social concerns and taboos mentioned earlier. And that's why, that's why some of these concepts that are still so very very out there. You know, the idea that accidental ingestion and then later purposeful ingestion of hallucinogenic materials led to religion, right or what's the The other one is the Terrence McKenna talked about.

The stoned ape there, yeah, that, yeah.

Yeah, the stoned ape hypothesis, which is which is a fabulous, a very entertaining hypothesis. And his book Food to the Gods is is is really I found a really rewarding read.

Tell us a bit about that, because this goes into those the heightened sensory perception that we talked to.

That's one of the that's one of the key. So he makes this argument that that human consciousness emerges in large part due to the consumption of psychedelics by our our prehistoric ancestors, and he made the case he makes is you know, incomplete. It's you know, there's no way to prove it, and maybe no way to really disprove it. But yeah, he points to heightened perception, which I believe there's been a recent study with with canines or or canines or wolves, I forget which that that that showed a similar situation like enhancing their ability to uh in the case of dogs, you know, to to define their food in the case of hunter gatherers, it could have had an effect there. McKinnon also made an argument for like enhancing the libido leading to more breeding, and then just sort of a you know, an evolution of thought and the rise of language and so forth. And then he plays a lot too with like looking at like where this would have occurred and how it would have occurred, what substances might have occurred. Well, at the same time acknowledging that it was written during the dark age of psychedelic research, that there were still a lot of questions remaining and certain archaeological finds he said, would need to be made to like fully support his case.

And that's you know, that's one thing that gives him a ton of street cred in my opinion, is being able to say, okay, also we have to, you know, wait for proof. Yeah, I think this is possible, but let's wait till we see we see the bones. One of the biggest walk aways I have whenever I read some of the kind of stuff is I'll say, all right, this is very this is very far away from what maybe the mainstream thinks.

Right.

Certainly, it's far away from what the US federal government officially thinks about psychedelics.

However, you know, you read stuff like that.

And you go back to medieval text that some really probably intoxicated monks have been working on, and then you see this strange art and you.

Think, you know, okay, it's plausible.

Maybe more people were using psychedelics than we thought. Right, And the symbolism right in meso America, and I think we mentioned two various different manuscripts seem to have what appears to be mushrooms of some sort playing these incredibly important, significant symbolic roles.

Really quick diversion, I think the supplies though.

I've been reading this book called Sapiens by you've all, Noah Harari, and it's the idea of the evolution of man and I didn't realize that a lot of pre Homo sapien species existed on the planet at the same time. You have this sense of there being this like this graph of like the you know, the slumped over pre man developing into the upright man. But apparently all of these kind of developed at the same time, and it was Homo sapien's ability to develop language and be able to tell stories and almost create these sort of belief systems that led to us becoming the top of the food chain. That's sort of the hypothesis in this book, and it makes a lot of sense. And to me, you know, maybe the ape that ate the psychedelic munth room and kind of had his perception change would have been the one that started to develop language or create these more abstract ideas of storytelling. And it's something as simple as me telling you a sort of fictional tale about some animals interacting to inventing something like an LLC like a corporation, or like the idea of money. That's all just kind of fictions that we believe and we accept. But that's what separates us from other species that can only say the dog is over there, but they can't say, you know, the dog talk to the cat and create this narrative surrounding them, what.

The dog is over there, because that is the way to access the afterlife.

Exactly exactly, guys. It's because they accessed the overmind. They got down into the my celial connections. They figured out, oh, it's all one big thing, you guys, and we're just a part of it.

And I get the stone up thing is very unprovable, but I think I'm on the same page with you, Robert, that it's fascinating and I can kind of see how that could be a leg up.

Yeah, Like I'm not I'm not really into saying like it's the thing, sure, but I think there you can certainly make a case that any substance or event or experience that causes a person to sort of step outside of their normal way of thinking, and that can be anything. It could be It could be still ascybment, it could be trauma, it could be a sickness. You know, there are numerous things that can bring on these states like those would undoubtedly have effects on the course of human culture over time, just because they would be moments where people would stop and say, why are we doing it?

This way.

Why am I thinking about the world this way? What if we did it like this instead?

Is in tradition just peer pressure from dead people. Come on, guys, the sun will rise whether or not we sacrifice someone. That's be very glib there. I do want to point out, though, while Harari is an excellent writer, Sapiens toward the end feels a lot more speculative, and it feels like more of his opinions and his beliefs. And that's something we run into with McKenna. Both of these authors. However, I believe we're careful to know are careful to couch things as their beliefs. Right, Like you said, they're not necessarily saying this is the way, this is the one hundred percent consistent experience people have. But we do see some trends, and some of those trends are inarguable and they are easily proven, such as the spiritual use of these substances to sometimes unite communities. Right, somebody goes maybe sometimes to change someone's place in a society. Right, you have you have undergone this right, this ritual. Therefore you are a holy person, or maybe you are now an adult something like that. And then also there's this connection to the concept of the other world, the dream world, right, and we I wonder how that translates to the modern day. We know that there's still some traditional use of hallucinogens like ayahuasca, right, is still traditionally used by several different communities. But are there are there other things? Are there modern analogues? I mean, is I guess part of the question is people go to Burning Man, right, and they and they take a hallucinogenic substance. Are they are they doing something similar to the shamanistic quest? Or is it is it just recreational?

I don't know.

That's also a very personal question, like how has our use of these substances changed.

Well, you know, I think you know, McKenna would have certainly agreed that Burning Man is part of like this bohemian thread that he called it, this thing that's you know, moving us towards an archaic revival return to especially in Western civilization, to to sort of almost a neolithic state of not necessarily not really technology or a culture, but our connection with each other and our connection with nature. That being said, yeah, I'm sure there are people at Burning Man who are just taking substances without a lot of forethought and doing it just for you know, entertainment purposes, if you will. And then there are people who are having profound experiences and setting out to have profound experiences.

Another big psychonaut. I guess who is still very much active. Today's Alex Gray, who I know you're a fan of. He's an incredible Yeah, he's a visual artist. He does these I don't know how you describe them. They're almost these mandala esque kind of where this flesh is stripped away of figures. A lot of times there's sort of mother and child kind of imagery, and it's very much this idea.

Of us as being soul.

And we haven't really talked about that aspect of the psychedelic experience, but but i'd like to. But he has been associated with the band Tool for years, doing art for them, and they did like a listening party for this new Tool record that came out on this giant dragon like mad Max looking dragon boat truck thing. I don't know what you call it. But he's a guy who it's so funny like Terrence McKenna, very funny sounding guy. His voice, the way he speaks, Alex Gray sounds very similar. I wonder if that if there's something about the fact that they've been using these substances so frequently that causes them to almost become a certain way.

Well, I don't know.

I mean we really can know, though, I mean, we won't know until there's an opportunity to do a longitudinal study.

Absolutely, and I'm not making fun or light at all.

They just both have a very similar way that they speak, in a way that they kind of carry themselves.

And I don't know.

I only just heard Alex Gray speak like the other day and I was like, he sounds just like Terrence McKenna.

Well, well maybe to a certain extent teriance that definitely had a real knack for speaking in a way of stressing certain words come out of his mouth like he had a wonderful cadence. Again, he's all over YouTube, so you can findious talks.

He's on a tool song.

I believe Third Eye isn't isn't there sample.

But he does show up in some I've heard some electronic tracks. There's a there's actually an artist by the name of We Plants Are Happy Plants, and they have an album that has an extended sample from mckennada.

It's really cool.

And I think that artist also did a like a full length sort of documentary that's that's available just for free on YouTube.

Yeah, yeh.

DJs love sampling Terence McKinnon because again he has such this vast catalog of recorded recorded speeches and monologues. And also I mentioned the longitudinal study not to not to woosh on a joke, but to return to one of the things you said at the very top of the show today, Robert, you talked about this renaissance, right which in which we are currently living. We're recording this during a renaissance of research into psychedelics, into psilocybin. But we can't have a renaissance unless it is preceded by some sort of dark age, and and that's we call these things a renaissance. So we know that during the seventies and eighties there was intense and to the nineties as well, there was an intense push by Uncle Sam to make sure people were aware of at least the US legal opinion of psychedelics, which was that they were up that any dare kid can tell you they were up there with heroin, with crack and things like that.

Yeah, there's Schedule one still in most places.

And it's funny to call it schedule one, you know what I mean, like when does the train leave?

I don't know. That's confusing when you're a child.

Oh yeah, I mean it's complete nonsense, obviously. I mean, schedule one means that there's this supposed to have no medical properties at all. But and yet so you have psilocybin schedule one, marijuana schedule one, cocaine schedule two.

Yeah, I feel like that's Dennis. They can Dennis use cocaine.

Yeah, I feel like.

That that says something about the people who made the list. And someone was like, I don't know, man, you know, if i've uh, if I've had if I if I need a little extra kick before the meeting. Yeah, it's cocaine as schedule too. It's it's as it's as flawed as the food pyramid, honestly. But now we see these indications that we've been sort of foreshadowing and talking about during the length of today's show, which are research forays or pushes into things like treating addiction PTSD.

Right, could you could you.

Tell us a little bit about I don't want to enter into speculation, but if you tell us a little bit about what possibilities people are seeing out there for the you know, the future of humanity's relationship to psychedelics, as well as the potential findings research trends we might see in the future.

Well, I'd say the big research trends are of course the treatment of various addictions and and a lot of that's going back. Like one of the real precursors to that was like pre nineteen seventies studies that looked at its usefulness to treat alcoholism specifically, they were using LSD because that's what was available back then, And now most of the studies are using psilocybin because it is more readily available, it is less made taboo by the nineteen sixties.

Also a less long act.

Yeah, yeah, you can do it without the doctors having to babysit right people for an extended period time. People can go home in the evening. But yeah, we're seeing a lot of advancements in the treatment of various addictions, but also the treatment of end of life anxiety and cancer depression.

That to me is its huge because if we can imagine long term in the world using a substance like this to make people just almost if it's just a thing that occurs from some point moving forward where people are just okay, satisfied with the life that they've lived, no matter what good or terrible things have occurred within that life, but they are satisfied that the end is coming and it is, you know, either not the end, you know, not fully the end because of the way this substance is making me feel, or that I'm going to be recombined in some way with the universe. Just having those positive feelings towards the ends of life for everyone could be an incredible thing for I think humanity.

I think it just again, it's all about reframing an experience. It's less about oh, everything's gonna be okay because I see a beautiful light and I'm going to quote unquote heaven or some kind of beyond or universe connective thing.

To me.

It's like, in the same way that psychedelis could reframe your thinking about smoking cigarettes, it could also reframe your thinking about death.

Yeah, and I think that's the important part.

And it's something we didn't already touched on earlier, but it's very important, I think, to make make it clear that there is this whole dichotomy of like bad trip, good trip is kind of nonsense. Like essentially any report you look at, any any serious study, that people are going to have a mix. They're going to have challenging moments and they're going to have rewarding moments. And that is part of shaking up the snow glow, is that it's going to put things in a new context. It may put your fear in a new context, but it also may put some of the things you hold very dear in a new context and force you to reanalyze them.

I think, at it at its most powerful, one of the one of the analogs anecdotally for this kind of experience, at least the more positive end of it, is the revelation that many astronauts or cosmonauts report when they see the planet by itself for the first time and they return back to Earth hopefully safely, and they're you know, nothing has physiologically changed in their brain, right, nothing is nothing other than the clearly dramatic experience of having to exist in space. Nothing other than has changed them. They literally just saw something and they had this moment that psychologically sent them to a different place, and that's where they've stayed. And so when we see people having, you know, tremendously powerful whether for the good or the ill, experiences on hallucinogens, we have to understand that even if the brain cells don't stay, and even if memory does consistently erode and shift every time you're not looking directly at it, that there is a value to that. And I have to wonder, you know, when did the needle begin to swing away from you know, this stuff being forbidden into this stuff being I wouldn't say accepted, because numbers of usage statistics are still really low, but I would say it's increasingly going to the mainstream. Especially you know, we've got a lot of Silicon Valley elites who are very much on board with hallucinogen. It's not just a burning man, right, And I think we see these people as successful individuals in these are modern days. So now there seems to be this logical I don't know, I'm tracing it too Silicon Valley, but that's very cocktail napkin math.

You know.

Now there seems to be the psychological association that says one can be successful and use psychedelics.

We think about this like, what if you combined use of psilocybin with a therapist who is very versed in that. In the same way you might have a shaman or somebody in a ritualistic experience guiding you, you know, through this experience. What if you could combine and we haven't even talked about microdosing, the idea of taking small amounts of hallucinogens that can have less of a lucinogenic effect and more of just a changing your base.

Level kind of effect.

But I love the potential for pushing this into the mainstream even more, you know, like going to a therapist who is very well versed in hallucinogenic experiences and can you can dose and then have your session where they may be in the same as a guided meditation or a dream you know, reversion or whatever whatever what have you.

You know, I think there's a lot of potential for that we haven't seen yet.

Yeah.

No, there's a lot of that going on in the underground, you know, you know, due to the legality that's that's where it is. Michael Pollan talks about this in his book A little Bit, where actually shops around for the right people to go to to have this experience because he wants an experience on par with the sort of the clinical therapeutic experiences that are taking place in these studies. And you know, he finds some people that look maybe seemed a little shifty, but then found some people that seemed that seemed like they would be very promising and had a profound experience. But yeah, I would I would love to see that that sort of thing coming. I mean, it's coming back into the world, but coming into Western civilization really for the first time.

Well, and you may be in luck, Robert, because there's this guy named Christian Augermeyer I believe is anger Meyer. Yeah, he is a very wealthy individual, and he's got some very powerful friends who are also extremely wealthy.

And I always trust people like that.

Well, he he has means right, and he has an idea because he had a personal experience with psychedelics that he says, quote was the single most meaningful thing I've ever done or experienced in my life. Nothing has ever come close to it. He wants to or at least he's expressed that he wants to commercialize in some way or at least mainstream psychedelics and in particular psilocybin in some way. Maybe like you're talking about maybe just more of products. Who knows, but it looks as though he's on the route to make those things happen, as the legality route.

Now, one of we said this, it was just made legal in Colorado. It was decriminalized, right, decriminalized. Are you sure it was recreationally passed somewhere?

Okay, I know it's decriminalized in in Colorado. It's I think Oakland, California, like the single place of Oakland, California.

They are still I mean there there are some very strict laws. Yeah, we're still placed all over the country. I mean even when you get down to the plant itself, I mean plants themselves been in this case, the fungus itself. The spores are particularly highly illegal in California and in Georgia. We're recording this.

Because they're easy to transport too, right, So it's not like you're hauling around a huge marijuana plant. It's much easier.

Yes, But not to make the most obvious, like hippie statement ever, but just how ridiculous is it that that certain plants are out by the scented apes that have destroyed most of the planet.

It's true, it's true they use.

Them to gain their prominence over their.

Planet, and perhaps making them illegal is actually preventing them from being a victim of this great extinction in which we live. I'm spitballing there now in Colorado just in case anybody's outside of Denver and thinking.

Oh great, we do have to We do have to. Let you know.

Mushrooms of this sort are decriminalized in Denver, right, They're still illegal in Colorado, and they're still illegal in Denver.

And they're still legal in the United States.

If you are listening to this podcast, chances are you're somewhere where mushrooms where psilocybin mushrooms are quite illegal.

If you're somewhere where they're legal, you know, let us know.

What are you doing this week?

Do you want to do?

You want to hang out?

Speaking of hanging out out, Robert, thank you so much for taking this journey with us today. A lot of our listeners right now are going but you didn't get to this, You didn't get to this. Wait, what else is there? We have some good news because, as as the co host of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you and you and Joe McCormick, who appeared earlier in an episode of Stuff that I want you to know, have done a deep dive into psychedelics. Where can people find this five part series?

So we did. Yeah, the five part series on psychedelics. You can find it's stuff to Blow your Mind dot com or just wherever you get your podcasts. You just look up stuff to Blow your mind and there it is. I do have to say, you know, even though we took a deep dive, you know, we were not able to explore everything either it is you could, you could do an entire series on psychedelics, on even particular psychedelics, and there's still again, so much that we don't know and are figuring out.

And it's a story that changes data to that, especially now that the doors have been kind of blown open with this renaissance, as you describe it, with this research, the sky's kind of the limit, and it does feel like the tide is turning, if a little bit slowly, as things tend to do in the law.

Yeah, I mean right now, the research is very promising. Hopefully we'll see rescheduling in the future. I've heard that there are some serious a serious possibility that MDMA will be rescheduled in the near future due to therapeutic advancements that are being made with it, and in terms of the future with psychedelics. Yeah, I mean, there are, of course so many questions like who who controls it?

Then?

Is it Silicon Valley Bros. Is it the pharmaceutical industry? Does it remain kind of an essential part of the underground.

Of course it won't be that. I mean, someone's gonna commodify it at someone, you know what I mean.

I don't know.

I hate to be negative, but I will say I was reading in one of these articles about some of the studies. Another drug that has been associated with sort of club culture, ketamine, is being used in very very high level clinical trials for treating treatment resistant depression.

Also very controlled.

A friend of mine in New York City is participating and you get a drip of ketamine that is a very very you know, purposeful dose and you are monitored and he said, it's working like crazy. So it's interesting to see some of these things we've associated with, you know, unfairly even maligned substances that are starting to be kind of like taking a little more seriously.

Well, I think it comes back to the idea of change that like, these are substances that when used properly, can induce positive change in individuals. And if they can make those changes in individuals, then perhaps they can make those changes in the culture as well. And then that's one of the reasons that people have to have such hope for. Then that's one of the reasons that the establishment was so fearful of them. And hopefully our future will be defined more by hope than fear' that's what I'm hoping for.

Well said and well said.

And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.

That's right, let us know what you think. You can reach.

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Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. 
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