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SYSK Selects: Can you Treat Mental Illness with Psychedelics? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
0:03
Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen can we treat
0:06
Speaker 1: mental illness with psychedelics? Spoiler alert The answer is a big,
0:11
Speaker 1: big yes. This is one of those neat pieces of
0:14
Speaker 1: history where things just kind of fell out of place
0:17
Speaker 1: for something important, and we also have the rare luxury
0:21
Speaker 1: of seeing where it went wrong and exactly who was responsible.
0:25
Speaker 1: So enjoy this really interesting episode of Stuff you Should Know.
0:31
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:34
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. WHOA and welcome to the podcast.
0:44
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Cheek, Bryant Cheech. Yeah, man, yeah,
0:49
Speaker 1: I wanted to start this one out like a twelve
0:51
Speaker 1: year old, so that's when I'm going with a twelve
0:53
Speaker 1: year old on acid maybe maybe, which has happened before
0:59
Speaker 1: in France. Actually really thanks to our old friends the
1:02
Speaker 1: c I A. Oh, they dosed kids. They just a
1:05
Speaker 1: whole town wow to see what would happen. And one
1:08
Speaker 1: kid came at his grandmother and tried to strangle her.
1:10
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I can't remember the name of the town.
1:12
Speaker 1: I can see you would find that funny, but well,
1:15
Speaker 1: no people were like showing up at the hospital. There
1:18
Speaker 1: a lot of it was funny and that like, you know,
1:22
Speaker 1: all these nineteen fifties frenchees are losing their stuff for
1:26
Speaker 1: no apparent reason, right, right, but you know the suicides
1:31
Speaker 1: that resulted from that not very funny. Before we get started,
1:35
Speaker 1: I think we should do like an official c o
1:37
Speaker 1: A for this one. I think that is a very
1:39
Speaker 1: good idea because what Josh and I are about to
1:41
Speaker 1: talk about are illegal drugs. But we just find it
1:45
Speaker 1: fascinating that they used to be used for certain things
1:48
Speaker 1: and they're starting to be used again in certain scientific
1:51
Speaker 1: research labs for these things. It is extremely fascinating, which
1:54
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about, right exactly. I guess this
1:57
Speaker 1: could be a follow up to our our mk Ultra cast.
2:00
Speaker 1: It's a follow up and uh it's an epilogue and
2:03
Speaker 1: a prologue. Yes, yeah, very nice because we kind of
2:07
Speaker 1: came into the the c I A L. S D
2:10
Speaker 1: MK Ultra podcast like right in the middle of the
2:14
Speaker 1: history of LSD pretty much well towards the beginning, but
2:18
Speaker 1: um one of the things after when Albert Hoffman, right,
2:24
Speaker 1: the chemist who created LSD L tried it. Yeah, it
2:30
Speaker 1: was attempt uh, and tried it on himself intravenously. As
2:35
Speaker 1: I understand it, he injected it. We always says, first
2:38
Speaker 1: he took it by mistake, yeah, because it was a
2:40
Speaker 1: blood thinner. And then he took it for real. Yeah.
2:43
Speaker 1: After that first bike ride home he was like, I
2:46
Speaker 1: gotta do some more. And then I read his quote, please,
2:48
Speaker 1: I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence
2:51
Speaker 1: of nature. Yes, to create Dr Hoffman. Yeah, and he
2:55
Speaker 1: was just some Swiss guy, Sam chemist. Um. He was
2:58
Speaker 1: at the first person to come up with a synthetic
3:01
Speaker 1: hallucin Jim back in nineteen fourteen, a German chemist who
3:06
Speaker 1: worked for Merk the pharmaceutical company, came up with M
3:09
Speaker 1: d M A better known as ecstasy that far back. Uh. Yeah,
3:13
Speaker 1: And here's a tip for you, chuckers Um. Anytime, according
3:17
Speaker 1: to the Associated Press, you write about a designer drug
3:21
Speaker 1: and use it by its designer name, capitalize it. So
3:24
Speaker 1: ecstasy is always capitalized the word ecstasy when you're talking
3:29
Speaker 1: about the drug, Yes, and not just the euphoric feeling
3:33
Speaker 1: you get from life. That's different. That's a lower case okay,
3:37
Speaker 1: but it should be all caps. Yeah. Sure, so it
3:41
Speaker 1: was nineteen that m d M A was created. Yeah,
3:44
Speaker 1: and it was. Um, I guess it served as a
3:48
Speaker 1: it's not a catalyst, because I think it's changed, but
3:50
Speaker 1: it was to be used in the synthesis of other chemicals.
3:54
Speaker 1: And it kind of sat on the shelves for a
3:56
Speaker 1: little while until somebody along the way and then I
4:00
Speaker 1: wonder what happens if I take this stuff? And they did,
4:04
Speaker 1: and the CIA again looked at it. I wanted to
4:08
Speaker 1: see what it could do, passed it up. Um, and
4:12
Speaker 1: a guy by the name of Alexander Shulgin right, Yes,
4:18
Speaker 1: he's a dow chemist. And in eight at the age
4:21
Speaker 1: of seventy four, he published a study on the uthork
4:25
Speaker 1: effects of m d m A. It was the first
4:26
Speaker 1: time anyone had ever published a study here. But he
4:30
Speaker 1: was seventy four and he first noticed the uthork effects
4:33
Speaker 1: because he liked to take it and go to cocktail parties. Yeah. Um,
4:38
Speaker 1: so he's like, hey, man, this stuff is the bomb,
4:41
Speaker 1: and here's my study on it. Here that my findings,
4:45
Speaker 1: and let's everybody start taking this. So he starts giving
4:49
Speaker 1: it to his friends, Um, including some psychiatrists. Did he
4:53
Speaker 1: give out passifiers? Not yet, that's coming though. That's very
4:57
Speaker 1: very close past fires came about UM. So Shilgin gives
5:04
Speaker 1: them to a friend who's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist some of
5:08
Speaker 1: the more avant garde psychiatrists UM start giving it to
5:12
Speaker 1: their patients, and then it gets called ADAM. For a
5:15
Speaker 1: little while while this is going on, it is being
5:18
Speaker 1: used by established psychiatrist. A mysterious financier in Dallas, Texas
5:24
Speaker 1: finds out about this stuff and starts taking it, hires
5:26
Speaker 1: an underground chemist and has it made himself, and then
5:31
Speaker 1: start selling it at clubs all over Dallas. And so this,
5:36
Speaker 1: this illicit use of this substance, simultaneous to its emergence
5:42
Speaker 1: on the club scene and about the mid eighties led
5:44
Speaker 1: to the outlaw of M D M A. We'll get
5:47
Speaker 1: into it more, but the point is to this very
5:52
Speaker 1: long and rambling intro, both of these drugs and others
5:58
Speaker 1: were legal at one time, were put to good use,
6:01
Speaker 1: beneficial use, and then outlawed, possibly unfairly, and then now
6:08
Speaker 1: we're starting to see them come back into use, hallucinogens
6:12
Speaker 1: being used to treat mental illness and mental harm in
6:16
Speaker 1: legitimate circles, very legitimate. Quick question was that Dallas person
6:21
Speaker 1: was at Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. I don't know. I
6:25
Speaker 1: don't think anybody knows who it is. Still gotta start
6:27
Speaker 1: maybe probably, I think to begin with So, Josh, you
6:32
Speaker 1: mentioned the c I A. I do want to point
6:34
Speaker 1: out it wasn't just the Americans, Uh, the Canadian government
6:38
Speaker 1: and British's British's It Works. Britain's m I six also
6:45
Speaker 1: experimented with LSD and between ninety and sixty five, forty
6:51
Speaker 1: people all over the world had been treated with LSD
6:55
Speaker 1: in treatments. Yeah, um, Carrie Grant, Yeah, can we go
7:00
Speaker 1: back to Hollywood In the nineteen yoursis so, a couple
7:06
Speaker 1: of guys set up shop. Arthur Chandler. What was the
7:10
Speaker 1: other guy's name, Oh, Hartman Hartman, Mortimer Hartman, who was
7:14
Speaker 1: a radiologist, took acid and said, you know, I'm gonna
7:18
Speaker 1: get into psychiatry. These guys set up a shop called
7:21
Speaker 1: the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills right in the middle
7:26
Speaker 1: of Beverly Hills. And this is back in the day
7:28
Speaker 1: when things were it was clean living going on, aside
7:32
Speaker 1: from the rampant alcoholism and cigarettes being smoked, adultery. Probably
7:38
Speaker 1: some marijuana use going on here there, but that was
7:41
Speaker 1: among the hopheads, Yeah, exactly. So he sets up a
7:44
Speaker 1: couple of rooms with a couch and uh starts booking
7:48
Speaker 1: patients at a rate of like six or eight hours
7:53
Speaker 1: of session, depending on what was going on with the person,
7:55
Speaker 1: and five days a week. There were books solid hundred
7:57
Speaker 1: bucks of pop Hunter, which is a lot of any
8:00
Speaker 1: back then. And I guess that included the drugs. The
8:03
Speaker 1: drugs and the time that you were there. So they
8:06
Speaker 1: would sit with you, they would give you some blinders
8:08
Speaker 1: to block out distractions, and then you would go into
8:11
Speaker 1: sort of like the more meditative sort of acid trip.
8:15
Speaker 1: Essentially you were tripping hard would because you were on
8:20
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical grade LSD produced by the Sandoz company. We're talking
8:25
Speaker 1: about Alice Huxley, novelist, and actually he died tripping. Did
8:31
Speaker 1: you know that? Really? Yeah, he was. He had um
8:33
Speaker 1: throat cancer, I think, and uh, the last thing he
8:36
Speaker 1: ever wrote was a note to his wife requesting um
8:40
Speaker 1: such and such milligrams of LSD or micrograms of LSD
8:44
Speaker 1: injected intramuscular intramuscularly really, and that was about six hours
8:50
Speaker 1: before he died. So he died tripping and a grateful
8:53
Speaker 1: Dead record. That was his last request before the Grateful
8:56
Speaker 1: der Uh. Screen screenwriter Charles Brackett took it. Director Sidney
9:05
Speaker 1: Lament as it lay or Lament I think okay. I
9:08
Speaker 1: always said may, but I think I'm wrong. He took
9:11
Speaker 1: it a few times, went through sessions, called it wonderful.
9:13
Speaker 1: He re experienced his own birth, which apparently a few
9:16
Speaker 1: people did. I've never heard of that. I haven't either.
9:19
Speaker 1: And um Claire Booth Loose was a playwright married to
9:23
Speaker 1: Time magazine publisher Henry Loose. She was also an ambassador
9:27
Speaker 1: and possibly an agent um for the US government, and
9:31
Speaker 1: they both took acid so much that Henry Loose and
9:35
Speaker 1: Time Magazine said we need to write about this. This
9:37
Speaker 1: is awesome. Yeah, there's a lot of good press that
9:40
Speaker 1: Time Magazine gave LSD in the fifties, um as a
9:43
Speaker 1: basically a cure. All Um, and again, Carrie Grant got
9:48
Speaker 1: into it big time. Apparently he had like at least
9:51
Speaker 1: a hundred trips. I believe. Yeah he was. Yeah, let's
9:55
Speaker 1: talk about him for a second, because he was one
9:57
Speaker 1: of these guys that carefully constru truct did his persona.
10:01
Speaker 1: He worked very hard apparently he was the The line
10:06
Speaker 1: he always gave was a lot of people want to
10:08
Speaker 1: be carried grant, and I'm one of them, indicating that
10:11
Speaker 1: this suave, Mr cool persona was completely fabricating, created by
10:15
Speaker 1: himself so he could get you know, the fame and everything,
10:19
Speaker 1: but deep down he suffered as a human until he
10:25
Speaker 1: started taking acid, right, and then he had um, well,
10:29
Speaker 1: he had some pretty interesting revelations, one of which I
10:33
Speaker 1: read one of the somebody thought to write down the
10:36
Speaker 1: stuff that he Some of the insights he had, um,
10:40
Speaker 1: some were kind of deep. Others were like, if I
10:43
Speaker 1: have to look at a man, he should be required
10:47
Speaker 1: to comb his hair and brush his teeth and wear
10:50
Speaker 1: a clean shirt. Yes, it was interesting, so it kind
10:54
Speaker 1: of ran the gamut. But yeah, he um he became
10:57
Speaker 1: a real devotee of l s D. He's yeah, and
11:03
Speaker 1: um well she got him into it, right. I think
11:06
Speaker 1: who wrote that We're we're part of this. We're basing
11:09
Speaker 1: this part on a Vanity Fair article art. Yeah. Um,
11:12
Speaker 1: it's called the Carrying the Sky with Diamonds. But he
11:17
Speaker 1: was a huge advocate for LSD. He wasn't the only one, um,
11:20
Speaker 1: but he lived to see it outlawed and public sentiment
11:24
Speaker 1: turn against it, right, just like m D, m a UM, pilocybin, magic,
11:29
Speaker 1: mushrooms and part of the well really one of the
11:34
Speaker 1: You could say that Timothy Leary almost single handedly led
11:39
Speaker 1: to the tremendous suffering of a lot of people who
11:42
Speaker 1: might otherwise have been helped by LSD with his his
11:46
Speaker 1: naive bravado of you know, the establishment just needs to
11:50
Speaker 1: get over its hang ups and we should all take acid.
11:52
Speaker 1: Whether or not you agree that that's a good idea,
11:55
Speaker 1: it's a stupid thing to say. Leary was originally a
11:59
Speaker 1: Harvard side chiatrist, right, yes, and he started taking I
12:03
Speaker 1: think mushrooms and then he eventually started taking LSD and
12:08
Speaker 1: was fired from Harvard because he turned into a hippie. Yeah,
12:12
Speaker 1: and um, that was pretty much the beginning of the
12:16
Speaker 1: end of LSD. Yeah, they may have continued to use
12:19
Speaker 1: LSD as treatment for mental patients, mental illness and depression
12:24
Speaker 1: if not for Timothy Leary, who was trying to spread
12:27
Speaker 1: the word about acid. That's right. Uh, back to carry
12:30
Speaker 1: Grant real quick. He was so into it, Josh. He
12:33
Speaker 1: had a couple of stories written about him in nineteen
12:36
Speaker 1: fifty nine and Look magazine, the Curious Story behind the
12:39
Speaker 1: New Carry. Grant gave a glowing account of LSD and
12:43
Speaker 1: then this is the best the following year the Good
12:47
Speaker 1: Housekeeping magazine. It got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval
12:50
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty issue and they called it the
12:53
Speaker 1: Secret of Grant's Second youth. I want to get a
12:55
Speaker 1: copy of that magazine. How awesome would that be? Yeah?
12:58
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like the theme of this podcast
13:01
Speaker 1: is so weird that these things were considered incredibly wonderful
13:06
Speaker 1: and benign um and now they're they're just viewed as
13:11
Speaker 1: just so they're evil and their outlaws simply because they
13:15
Speaker 1: were made illegal right prohibited um. And again there's kind
13:21
Speaker 1: of a movement toward saying, hey, you know, maybe Timothy
13:24
Speaker 1: Leary did give this a bad name. Maybe that that
13:28
Speaker 1: um underground chemist in Dallas, uh really kind of put
13:32
Speaker 1: a terrible spread on this, and we should look at
13:34
Speaker 1: these again, right, she cannot tell one more story? Yes?
13:37
Speaker 1: From Hollywood of the nineteen sixties. Yes, Esther Williams, famous
13:41
Speaker 1: UH diva actress from the n g M studio friend
13:44
Speaker 1: of Carrie Grants, called Carrie Grant up after these articles
13:48
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, can you introduce me to your doctor,
13:50
Speaker 1: Dr Hartman? He did so. At the time, she was aging,
13:54
Speaker 1: just had gone through a divorce, Her husband left her
13:58
Speaker 1: with huge debt with the I R S. And she
14:01
Speaker 1: was still struggling with the death of her sixteen year
14:04
Speaker 1: old brother. She goes in the office, she takes acid,
14:08
Speaker 1: does her session, goes home to her parents, still on acid,
14:12
Speaker 1: has dinner with them, and then goes into the bathroom mirror,
14:18
Speaker 1: says good night to her parents, looks in the mirror,
14:20
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna read this quote. I was startled by
14:23
Speaker 1: a split image one half of my face, the right
14:25
Speaker 1: half was me, the other half was the face of
14:28
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old boy. The left side of my
14:30
Speaker 1: upper body was flat and muscular. I reached up with
14:33
Speaker 1: my boys hand to touch my right breast and felt
14:38
Speaker 1: my penis stirring. It was a hermaphroditic phantasm. And I
14:42
Speaker 1: understood perfectly in that moment. When my brother died, I
14:46
Speaker 1: took him into my life so completely he became part
14:48
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah, that's a pretty huge thing to understand
14:52
Speaker 1: and pretty jarring way to come to terms with that, right. Yeah,
14:56
Speaker 1: but that's what they're finding out now though, is that
14:58
Speaker 1: these people are having these breakthroughs in the throes of
15:02
Speaker 1: their final days of let's say cancer, and they have
15:05
Speaker 1: these epiphanies. So LSD is outlawed. We're following a timeline here. Yes,
15:29
Speaker 1: LSD is outlawed in I think sixty five something like that.
15:33
Speaker 1: UM at the very at the latest nineteen seventy they
15:36
Speaker 1: shut down the shop in Beverly Hills. Yeah, and Sandos
15:40
Speaker 1: stopped making it and it got it was outlawed and
15:43
Speaker 1: pushed underground. M D m A made it until and
15:47
Speaker 1: M D m A story is linked very closely to
15:50
Speaker 1: a guy named Dr George Quarte, who is JOHNS. Hopkins researcher.
15:55
Speaker 1: This floored me so in about the time the UM
16:00
Speaker 1: D e A is reeling from being caught totally unaware
16:04
Speaker 1: by the crack epidemic. Uh and basically a lot of
16:09
Speaker 1: people think looking for a whipping post um they they
16:15
Speaker 1: start considering outlawing M D m A. At that moment,
16:19
Speaker 1: this guy, Dr George roccarde Um publishes a study that
16:24
Speaker 1: he says, this drug deplete your serotonin levels permanently, causing
16:30
Speaker 1: brain damage. Right, it can kill you. Yeah, Well that
16:33
Speaker 1: that didn't that came. So this guy, who is unknown
16:37
Speaker 1: at the time, publishes the study, starts to get UM
16:41
Speaker 1: National Institute of Drug Abuse funding. So basically this is
16:44
Speaker 1: his job. He starts a career UM creating scientific evidence
16:51
Speaker 1: in favor of banning drugs leads to the outlaw of
16:55
Speaker 1: m d M. A right. That wasn't quite enough. They
16:59
Speaker 1: scheduled it. Uh. The FEDS went after m d M
17:03
Speaker 1: A even harder, and in two thousand two they came
17:05
Speaker 1: up with this thing called the Rave Act. It's um,
17:10
Speaker 1: what does rave stand for? Reducing Americans vulnerability to ecstasy?
17:15
Speaker 1: I wonder how long they sat around looking at the
17:18
Speaker 1: word rave, saying we've gotta make it fit, Yeah, to
17:20
Speaker 1: make it fit Yeah. So um, the the Rave Act
17:24
Speaker 1: basically said, if you are a club owner and somebody
17:29
Speaker 1: gets caught taking ecstasy or has ecstasy at your club,
17:32
Speaker 1: we're going to shut down your club. It was a huge,
17:35
Speaker 1: huge law, and it was bolstered by another UM another
17:39
Speaker 1: study by Dr George rocquarde Um that found that he
17:43
Speaker 1: tested on ten monkeys one he injected them with m
17:47
Speaker 1: d M a UM, A bunch of them went psychotic.
17:51
Speaker 1: Some of them UM showed early signs of Parkinson's all
17:54
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and two of them died almost immediately
17:58
Speaker 1: after being injected. So people started asking questions about this, like,
18:02
Speaker 1: what what are you talking about? People have been taking
18:04
Speaker 1: this drug forever and this has never happened. So they
18:08
Speaker 1: started kind of going after recording and UM, they found
18:13
Speaker 1: out that he had actually injected him with methamphetamine. The
18:18
Speaker 1: first thing that tipped them off as he injected him,
18:20
Speaker 1: because people were like, well, you don't inject ecstasy, so
18:22
Speaker 1: that's kind of a weird way to do it. And
18:24
Speaker 1: then they found out it was methamphetamines, which he blamed
18:28
Speaker 1: on a mislabeling of a drug shipment which they traced
18:31
Speaker 1: back and they went the label right here. Yeah, the
18:34
Speaker 1: drug providers like, don't blame must, it's pretty clear. So
18:38
Speaker 1: this is by this time, the Rave Act has already
18:40
Speaker 1: passed her and the Rave Act didn't get past but
18:43
Speaker 1: something that included that UM was passed by that time.
18:47
Speaker 1: The study that recorded a produced was pretty was published
18:50
Speaker 1: in Science, the journal Science. Like that's as hyebrow as
18:53
Speaker 1: you get as far as scientific journals. Um, And finally
18:59
Speaker 1: he gets beaten up and up that he he prints
19:01
Speaker 1: a full retraction came clean. The Science runs this retraction
19:06
Speaker 1: saying the whole, the whole study that I produced just
19:10
Speaker 1: forget it ever existed. But that doesn't happen much, No,
19:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't. That's very unusual. So record A I get
19:16
Speaker 1: the impression is kind of this. Um, well, it just
19:20
Speaker 1: kind of seems like the scientific community views him largely
19:23
Speaker 1: as a shill to the government. Yeah. Um. There's a
19:26
Speaker 1: couple of articles that he shows up in on a
19:29
Speaker 1: Reason and Reason magazines were checking out. Yeah. And you know,
19:32
Speaker 1: the other interesting thing about that whole story about the
19:35
Speaker 1: big fake study he did with meth amphetamines as ecstasy
19:39
Speaker 1: is that the Parkinson's Foundation, the people Parkinson's researchers, said,
19:44
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's true. That doesn't make much
19:48
Speaker 1: sense to us either, that they would show signs of
19:50
Speaker 1: Parkinson's right, so they looked into it. People went about
19:52
Speaker 1: reproducing his study. Yeah. Um, and the people who run
19:57
Speaker 1: the Parkinson's Foundation actually issued a statement saying ecstasy does
20:02
Speaker 1: not do this, So they basically came out in favor
20:05
Speaker 1: of ecstasy. It's kind of neat to watch from the
20:08
Speaker 1: outside because there's this guy who's again kind of viewed
20:12
Speaker 1: as a shill for the government who's beating up on
20:15
Speaker 1: this drug that a lot of people who are also
20:18
Speaker 1: in the scientific community feel is being unfairly outlawed, and
20:24
Speaker 1: so there's kind of beating up on him in retaliation.
20:27
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat to see eggheads beat up on
20:29
Speaker 1: one another, NERD fights and the n I d A.
20:32
Speaker 1: It went so far that the n I d A
20:34
Speaker 1: just kind of quietly pulled their fact sheet on ecstasy
20:37
Speaker 1: and I was like, Um, let's just take this down
20:38
Speaker 1: off the website. After the retraction, we'll rewrite it. I'm
20:42
Speaker 1: sure it's back up now as something else. Yeah, but
20:45
Speaker 1: it doesn't include immediate death and Parkinson's disease. I would
20:48
Speaker 1: imagine that's right. So Timothy Larry dies, he gets shot
20:52
Speaker 1: into space, he's out of the picture entirely. Everybody gets
20:56
Speaker 1: sick of hippies generally. Yeah, Um, George Record is basically
21:02
Speaker 1: the guy who's single handedly getting ecstasy outlawed. His work
21:06
Speaker 1: comes into great, great question, and people start going back
21:10
Speaker 1: and looking at M D m A again, and they
21:12
Speaker 1: start looking at LSD again, and that's where we find
21:15
Speaker 1: ourselves right now. Slowly but surely, people are starting to
21:19
Speaker 1: run studies on whether or not you can use these
21:23
Speaker 1: hallucinogens to treat mental illness. And the results are pretty
21:27
Speaker 1: astounding actually, and you know where they're leading the charge
21:30
Speaker 1: in Switzerland, in Los Angeles all these years later, same place, Yes,
21:36
Speaker 1: hippie freaks. Yeah, so yeah, Josh, they are I think
21:40
Speaker 1: in Switzerland. Uh, in Solo then Switzerland. They have been
21:46
Speaker 1: experimenting with lsd um psilocybin, which you might know his
21:51
Speaker 1: magic mushrooms. Yes, ketamine you might know, a special k.
21:55
Speaker 1: That kind of surprised me that that was in there. Yeah,
21:57
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard much about that one either. And getting
22:00
Speaker 1: these uh, these studies published in Nature Reviews, Neuroscience, and
22:05
Speaker 1: other you know, leading industry peer reviewed publications. Yeah, it's
22:10
Speaker 1: not all under the table back room experiments. Oh no,
22:13
Speaker 1: these are very heavily um overseen. You have to be
22:18
Speaker 1: a very legitimate researcher to get government approval. They're not
22:22
Speaker 1: funded though still there's they say they're still having a
22:24
Speaker 1: hard time with funding, and they're just they're sort of
22:27
Speaker 1: looking to get some restrictions loosen. They're not saying make
22:30
Speaker 1: all this stuff legal, right, They're not battling a legalization
22:33
Speaker 1: on the legalization front at all. But what they're one
22:36
Speaker 1: of the reason why so many people are kind of
22:39
Speaker 1: starting to put their reputations on the line. Um, it's
22:43
Speaker 1: because the results that they're seeing. So we have antidepressants, right, UM,
22:48
Speaker 1: they take weeks to kick in, they have all sorts
22:51
Speaker 1: of side effects. And what they're what we're seeing in
22:55
Speaker 1: these studies now, are that the the things like ketamine,
22:59
Speaker 1: uh m d m A, LSD are having like a
23:02
Speaker 1: huge impact right out of the gate. There's one study,
23:05
Speaker 1: um that came out in July, I believe, UM, and
23:09
Speaker 1: it found it was a study of twelve people who
23:12
Speaker 1: were diagnosed with PTSD post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, that's
23:16
Speaker 1: one of the big ones. Yeah, that's huge that they're
23:18
Speaker 1: looking at. UM. That's where you well, it's what we
23:22
Speaker 1: used to call shell shock. You go through traumatic experience
23:25
Speaker 1: and you relive it over and over again. UM, and
23:27
Speaker 1: it's it's debilitating. Um. They found that of the twelve
23:33
Speaker 1: people in the study, ten of them, after going through
23:36
Speaker 1: the study, UM, after taking M D m A no
23:41
Speaker 1: longer met the criteria to be diagnosed with PTSD afterwards.
23:44
Speaker 1: Ten of the twelve. Yeah, and for my understanding, and
23:46
Speaker 1: most of these studies is it's not like you have
23:48
Speaker 1: to stay on ecstasy your whole life, Like a lot
23:51
Speaker 1: of people have these epiphanies and they quit taking it
23:54
Speaker 1: and they have changed their outlook and that right, Yeah,
23:57
Speaker 1: that's the impression I'm getting to. Um, Ketamine's good for
24:00
Speaker 1: depression in the same way. Um, just a very tiny
24:04
Speaker 1: dose I can get you over severe clinical depression. Or
24:08
Speaker 1: that's the results, the early results, we should say, yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: um and everything from quitting smoking two suicidal thought, Yeah,
24:17
Speaker 1: cluster headaches Harvard studying. Those are migraines for men, right,
24:23
Speaker 1: what they called my migraines. I think I know they're
24:25
Speaker 1: so debilitating that you consider suicide or you know not
24:29
Speaker 1: everyone does obviously, but it's just this awful, awful pain.
24:32
Speaker 1: You can't leave your house, you get to sit in
24:34
Speaker 1: a dark room, and so it's helping there. And um,
24:37
Speaker 1: what I thought was interesting Johns Hopkins, you might have
24:40
Speaker 1: heard of them, a little reputable institutions required is from
24:45
Speaker 1: was it they did an experiment where they gave psilocybin
24:48
Speaker 1: too emotionally stable individuals like this wasn't even people that
24:52
Speaker 1: were mentally ill, people that had never taken hallucinogens before,
24:56
Speaker 1: which is interesting that you would be. I think they
24:59
Speaker 1: had a sixty four year old that signed up for this. Yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: it's crazy, and they said a sixty four and they
25:05
Speaker 1: said the experiment. A year later, they said the experience
25:09
Speaker 1: is one of the most meaningful and spiritual experiences of
25:11
Speaker 1: their entire lives, and that those were mentally stable folks,
25:16
Speaker 1: And this is a year on it's still had an
25:20
Speaker 1: impact on them. UM. They're also finding that UH O,
25:24
Speaker 1: c D and basically mood disorders are the primary target
25:30
Speaker 1: of hallucinogenic treatment, right, psychedelics for treatment, and the reason being,
25:35
Speaker 1: we think, is because they target serotonin in the brain.
25:38
Speaker 1: This is another reason why they're not addictive. They don't
25:41
Speaker 1: they don't employ the reward circuit in the brain, which
25:45
Speaker 1: is how we become addicted to things were flooded with dopamine. Member,
25:49
Speaker 1: it just affects the mood circuits in the right serotonin.
25:52
Speaker 1: And we don't really have a very good grasp on
25:54
Speaker 1: serotonin and exactly how that works, but we do know
25:58
Speaker 1: that UM, there's correlations between uh high levels of serotonin
26:04
Speaker 1: or low levels of serotonin and depression, right, and we
26:09
Speaker 1: know that UM using antidepressants which block the reuptake of
26:13
Speaker 1: serotonin UM reduces symptoms of clinical depression in people. So
26:18
Speaker 1: we know that serotonins in there somewhere. We know that
26:21
Speaker 1: the more serotonin you have, the better generally or low
26:25
Speaker 1: serotonin's bad. Uh. And then we also know that hallucinogens
26:29
Speaker 1: target this somehow. That's pretty much where the research stands
26:32
Speaker 1: right now. It makes you wonder where would we be
26:36
Speaker 1: if LSD and m d m A hadn't been in
26:38
Speaker 1: the wilderness for the last few decades. Well, yeah, they
26:40
Speaker 1: may have a pill, like a low dose pill, because
26:43
Speaker 1: a lot of these studies, just so you know, back
26:46
Speaker 1: in carry Grand State, that mean it was full, full
26:49
Speaker 1: on acid trips. But a lot of these, like the
26:51
Speaker 1: psilocybin pills, they will give you be very low dose.
26:54
Speaker 1: So I don't I get the feeling that it's not
26:56
Speaker 1: like this huge mushroom trip that a lot of patients
27:00
Speaker 1: are going through because it said I think of the
27:03
Speaker 1: people recognized when they did not have the placebo. So
27:07
Speaker 1: if it wasn't then it was probably a pretty low dose. Yes,
27:11
Speaker 1: it would be. My guess, um, would you if if
27:17
Speaker 1: everything was legalized UM and M D m A came
27:23
Speaker 1: to be prescribed for just happiness, right, would you take it?
27:29
Speaker 1: Would you take a happy pill that was legal and
27:32
Speaker 1: didn't have side effects? Not to say m d M
27:34
Speaker 1: A doesn't have side effects, there's a um like basically
27:37
Speaker 1: the three days after a depression that follows when your
27:40
Speaker 1: serotonin levels are repleting themselves. I don't think I would
27:45
Speaker 1: because there are quote unquote happy pills now. And I
27:49
Speaker 1: mean it's not like I'm against anti depressants or things
27:52
Speaker 1: like that, because people definitely benefit from those who need them.
27:55
Speaker 1: But I just I don't need that kind of thing,
27:57
Speaker 1: so I would not. Uh, I would not, sir, you
28:01
Speaker 1: are not alone, Chuck. There is a survey conducted for
28:05
Speaker 1: this BBC series on Britain of British people that found
28:10
Speaker 1: that seventy of them said that they would not take
28:14
Speaker 1: a happy pill it was legal and had no side effects.
28:17
Speaker 1: It's interesting, yeah, because it kind of I think that
28:21
Speaker 1: for a large segment of the population there's just the
28:25
Speaker 1: idea of synthesizing happiness is untoward. Yeah, you know, yeah,
28:32
Speaker 1: it's it's a little weird. I mean that's not to
28:34
Speaker 1: say I'm a square and I don't like to get
28:35
Speaker 1: down another aspect, Josh. I mean, we're we're talking right
28:41
Speaker 1: now about literally the effect it has on your brain
28:44
Speaker 1: and your serotonin levels and your moods. They've also found
28:47
Speaker 1: that patients cancer patients in particular, who consume hallucinogens, or
28:54
Speaker 1: people with just um traumatic events from earlier in their life,
28:58
Speaker 1: they have the ability to relive some of these memories
29:01
Speaker 1: and events from their past. They can unlock buried traumatic episodes,
29:06
Speaker 1: deal with them psychologically, put them to rest, and come
29:10
Speaker 1: out the other side with a new understanding free from
29:14
Speaker 1: these demons. Right. Um. You remember when in the hypnosis
29:18
Speaker 1: episode where we were talking about how the way it's
29:22
Speaker 1: viewed now is that you you are You're accessing the
29:26
Speaker 1: subconscious eesah more easily. It's like popping open a control panel.
29:31
Speaker 1: That's what this. This is what they're seeing with M
29:34
Speaker 1: D m A. Apparently, Uh, you are able to access
29:38
Speaker 1: things UM from a very empathetic way. I think the
29:42
Speaker 1: term I've heard for it is called UM a psychotherapeutic catalyst. Yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: kick starts right things And I think one researcher called
29:53
Speaker 1: it it's psychotherapy sped up. The psychiatrists call them. Yeah,
29:59
Speaker 1: it's like psycho arap on acid L s D. Specifically,
30:25
Speaker 1: hasn't been the greatest friend to everybody who's ever taken it.
30:30
Speaker 1: And what's funny in this article that UM that's on
30:33
Speaker 1: the site. Can we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? Tom
30:36
Speaker 1: Sheaf has to go to the sixties psychedelic rock scene
30:42
Speaker 1: to find examples of people who have had a bad,
30:46
Speaker 1: bad time on acid. Uh, And apparently, what what the
30:51
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom is if you are predisposed to mental illness,
30:55
Speaker 1: LSD can exacerbate that. If you have a bad trip up,
31:00
Speaker 1: you're going to have a really, really bad trip because
31:02
Speaker 1: you're already predisposed to mental illness. Yeah, he's Brian Wilson
31:05
Speaker 1: and Sid Barrett as the two examples, and those are
31:08
Speaker 1: stellar examples, they really got to say. But they're also
31:11
Speaker 1: counterintwo to what we're seeing with UM. Like PTSD, you
31:16
Speaker 1: are already suffering from a mental illness. So here's some
31:21
Speaker 1: m D m A right, Probably LSD would be horrible
31:24
Speaker 1: to give to a PTSD survivor. Yeah, yeah, right, I
31:27
Speaker 1: would say, so, UM And what else, Chuck, can we
31:30
Speaker 1: talk about Pamela Secuda? Sure? Yeah, it's a very interesting story.
31:35
Speaker 1: This was a woman UM aged fifty seven at the
31:38
Speaker 1: time of this article, who was in the final stages
31:41
Speaker 1: of colon cancer. She had outlived her prognosis. She was
31:46
Speaker 1: anxious and depressed. She was worried about her family, her husband,
31:50
Speaker 1: and what they were going to do without her. It
31:52
Speaker 1: was not a good life. She was living here at
31:54
Speaker 1: the end and she was prescribed any depressants. Of course,
31:58
Speaker 1: it didn't work, didn't do a thing for so she
32:01
Speaker 1: volunteered for an experiment at u c l A in
32:03
Speaker 1: two thousand five and started taking psilocybin, the magic mushroom
32:08
Speaker 1: pill in pill form. She had a lot of breakthroughs. Uh.
32:13
Speaker 1: They brought her husband in at the end of one
32:15
Speaker 1: of the sessions and he said, there's my Pammy. She
32:19
Speaker 1: was just beaming with light and I haven't seen her
32:21
Speaker 1: that joyous and so long. She was totally alive and happy.
32:25
Speaker 1: And she continued to take it until she didn't need
32:28
Speaker 1: it anymore. She had these breakthroughs, and then all of
32:31
Speaker 1: a sudden, her husband and uh, Pamela were going to concerts,
32:36
Speaker 1: they went hiking at the Grand Canyon, they went on vacations.
32:38
Speaker 1: They did all these things that she hadn't been doing
32:41
Speaker 1: in a long time. Because of these epiphanies she had
32:44
Speaker 1: under the influence of psilocybin and sadly she died, well,
32:48
Speaker 1: she had cancer. Yeah, she died. Yeah, that's what she
32:51
Speaker 1: died from in two thousand six. And her husband said
32:56
Speaker 1: she died in his arms. But her husband was very
32:59
Speaker 1: a pre shive and they actually did a benefit about
33:02
Speaker 1: a week before she died for the institute that was
33:05
Speaker 1: doing this work at U c l A. So it's
33:07
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Yeah, the definitely, And one of the applications
33:11
Speaker 1: that they're finding is end of life care for UM
33:15
Speaker 1: using M D m A or LSD R PSILOCYBIN'M sure
33:18
Speaker 1: we're special, k. Apparently what about this eyeba gain. They're
33:23
Speaker 1: finding the eyeba gain works really well. Iber gain is
33:26
Speaker 1: a UM it's from a hallucinatory root plant in Africa,
33:30
Speaker 1: I believe UM. And they're finding that you go on
33:33
Speaker 1: a thirty six hour trip. That's a long time. It's
33:37
Speaker 1: a long time, but they're finding that it's really effective
33:40
Speaker 1: in breaking UM addiction and like serious addictions to like heroin,
33:44
Speaker 1: yeah and cocaine. So being on this stuff just for
33:47
Speaker 1: thirty six hours creates a break in the addiction cycle itself.
33:52
Speaker 1: But what they're finding this. Most notable about it is
33:55
Speaker 1: it there's a lack of withdrawal symptoms that you see
33:59
Speaker 1: in every other type of addiction removal. Yeah, especially with heroin.
34:05
Speaker 1: Like heroin, you're supposed to have physical withdraw sintom withdrawal symptoms,
34:09
Speaker 1: and people who are taking eyeba gain are not experiencing
34:12
Speaker 1: that like they would if if they tried to kick
34:15
Speaker 1: the habit without it. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah, it is
34:19
Speaker 1: very remarkable. It's very interesting. We should probably say, I
34:22
Speaker 1: don't know if we have yet that this podcast is
34:25
Speaker 1: in no way an endorsement of going out and buying
34:28
Speaker 1: yourself some street drugs and you know, seeing what happens.
34:32
Speaker 1: It's a study of what we finally be very fascinating.
34:35
Speaker 1: The fact that this is there's been a resurgence in
34:37
Speaker 1: this and these you know, qualified doctors U. C. L. A.
34:40
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins, they're saying we should look into this stuff. Yeah,
34:43
Speaker 1: and they definitely are, and they're getting some very interesting results.
34:46
Speaker 1: What about the A A guy, We should mention that
34:47
Speaker 1: really quickly. That was pretty funny. Oh yeah, Bill Wilson
34:51
Speaker 1: yet one of the co founders of A A. Yeah,
34:53
Speaker 1: he uh he apparently took LSD in the fifties, wasn't Yeah,
34:59
Speaker 1: And this is after he was long after he was
35:01
Speaker 1: sober from alcohol. Yeah, can found ance the thirties? I think, yeah. Um.
35:06
Speaker 1: And so he takes LSD in the fifties and is like,
35:10
Speaker 1: this is really helpful. Um, so I think everybody who
35:14
Speaker 1: comes into a should take LSD. Uh. And they were like,
35:19
Speaker 1: he should probably not do that, so they talked him
35:22
Speaker 1: out of it. But the reason why he found it
35:24
Speaker 1: helpful one is that hallucinogen's part of a twelve step
35:28
Speaker 1: program is to really reflect on past wrongdoings and then
35:35
Speaker 1: elucidate them to another human being. And apparently LSD, M
35:40
Speaker 1: D M A UM, these other drugs help. They serve
35:44
Speaker 1: as a catalyst for that process, so tap into that.
35:47
Speaker 1: That's why Bill Wilson I thought this is this is
35:50
Speaker 1: really helpful because again it'sycho therapy sped up, fascinating, very fascinating.
35:55
Speaker 1: I will say this though, I'm gonna go out on
35:57
Speaker 1: a limb and say, even though we're not saying, oh,
35:58
Speaker 1: you should go out and do these things, I will
36:01
Speaker 1: say that some chemically created in a lab pill called
36:06
Speaker 1: an antidepressant, isn't I mean what's the difference. The difference
36:11
Speaker 1: is I think, in my opinion from what I've seen, Uh,
36:16
Speaker 1: one's marketed and legal and the other is illegal. Yeah,
36:20
Speaker 1: it's as simple as that one is made by murk
36:24
Speaker 1: and one is not made by murk but used to
36:27
Speaker 1: make this, which is ironic. Public sentiment counts for everything. Yeah,
36:30
Speaker 1: you know, it's the same reason the alcohol. You can
36:33
Speaker 1: go into a bar and get completely wasted out of
36:35
Speaker 1: your mind and get in a car, but you can't
36:38
Speaker 1: walk into a bar and smoke a joint or shoot
36:41
Speaker 1: heroin or shoot heroin. And we're not labbying for anything.
36:44
Speaker 1: It's just interesting that the things that society has deemed
36:47
Speaker 1: acceptable alcoholism is just fine. Well it's not just fine,
36:51
Speaker 1: but it's it's legal, and you can do it even
36:54
Speaker 1: though it kills all these people, and this is not acceptable.
36:56
Speaker 1: It's just it's funny how we've evolved to think things
37:00
Speaker 1: are evil and some things are just great. I wonder
37:03
Speaker 1: where the future holds, Josh, I wonder myself. We'll find out, Yes,
37:06
Speaker 1: we will, if we lived that long. That is about
37:10
Speaker 1: it for this one. You should probably check out Can
37:13
Speaker 1: we treat mental illness with hallucinogens? On the site. Be
37:17
Speaker 1: sure to check out Carrying the Sky with Diamonds Vanity
37:21
Speaker 1: Fair article type in George Rick Quarte r I C
37:25
Speaker 1: U A R T e uh into Reasons website that
37:29
Speaker 1: will bring up some cool stuff. There's a killer Time
37:33
Speaker 1: magazine article from I think two thousand or two thousand
37:37
Speaker 1: one um on ecstasy on M D M A uh
37:42
Speaker 1: it was. That's really It's called the Happiness and a Pill.
37:47
Speaker 1: I guess it's time now for listener mail, right, Yes,
37:53
Speaker 1: I have a listener mail Josh from Rhea and this
37:55
Speaker 1: was about octopus or octopi, but we were corrected octopies
38:00
Speaker 1: not right, but she says it she worked at high
38:03
Speaker 1: so right, well, we had all these people see and
38:04
Speaker 1: actually the Latin thing Jerry just left at that. Hi, guys,
38:11
Speaker 1: your podcast on Octopi made my day to day. Thank you.
38:14
Speaker 1: I work as an aquarist at a San Francisco aquarium
38:17
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite responsibilities is our cephalopod gallery.
38:22
Speaker 1: I get to do enrichment with giant Pacific octopods, make
38:26
Speaker 1: sure all of our eight legged friends stay out of trouble.
38:29
Speaker 1: And I'm currently teaching a two spot octopus how to
38:32
Speaker 1: open a jar to get his favorite food, which is
38:35
Speaker 1: live crabs. I'm right there with you fromstr octopus. Uh.
38:40
Speaker 1: It was great to hear someone besides myself get a
38:42
Speaker 1: little too excited about these critters. And you know, we've
38:44
Speaker 1: got great feedback on this. People love the octopus because
38:48
Speaker 1: they're so freaky. Uh. The story about Lucretia mc evil
38:52
Speaker 1: especially cracked me up. I work with the g p O.
38:54
Speaker 1: That's the giant Pacific octopod that might give her a
38:58
Speaker 1: run for money. For the past few weeks, I've been
39:00
Speaker 1: walking around with what my colleagues call octopus kisses up
39:04
Speaker 1: the length of my arms. But I'm afraid my husband
39:07
Speaker 1: is getting a little suspicious about the number of Vicky's
39:09
Speaker 1: I've been acquiring. So that's from the little suckers. Those
39:12
Speaker 1: little suckers clearly. Uh. These were given to me while
39:15
Speaker 1: I tried to remove the individual from blocking the flow
39:19
Speaker 1: to his tank and stop his flooding of the entire aquarium.
39:23
Speaker 1: It's never a boring day with cephalopods in your life. Guys.
39:25
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the great podcast. If you're ever in
39:27
Speaker 1: San Francisco, one of my favorite places, Josh, let me
39:31
Speaker 1: know and I'll see if I can't work out some
39:32
Speaker 1: behind the scenes cephalopod goodness. And that is from Rhea,
39:37
Speaker 1: and she says, and don't worry, by the way, I
39:39
Speaker 1: have trouble pronouncing hecto caudless as well and have taken
39:44
Speaker 1: to calling in the sperm tentacle. Sperm tentacle works, the spermacle.
39:51
Speaker 1: That's what she says. She says, it's time to rename
39:54
Speaker 1: that organ. Yes, well, thanks Rhea, right, yes, thank you.
39:58
Speaker 1: My dad always said life is better with stuffalo pods
40:02
Speaker 1: in it. Really yeah. Uh, if you have a fantastic
40:06
Speaker 1: saying that your father, mother, grandfather, some old timing person
40:10
Speaker 1: told you, we want to hear it, wrap it up
40:13
Speaker 1: in an email, spank it on the bottom, and then
40:16
Speaker 1: send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
40:24
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
40:26
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40:31
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