A Critical Look at WSJ’s 5-MeO-DMT Documentary

Clip from: https://youtu.be/7cV_KXDmz3Q

SUPPORT:
https://www.patreon.com/psymposia

FOLLOW:
https://www.instagram.com/psymposia/
https://x.com/psymposia
https://bsky.app/profile/psymposia.bsky.social

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] The psychedelics, they will be kind of like Spravado, but instead of coming in every week, you're coming in every two months, three months. And a lot of those narratives for years had been big farm is not going to be okay with this because it's going to cure you with the one and done model and then they're not going to be able to make money. And so you can see how far that discourse has gone where now it's like reassuring the investors know this is a maintenance therapy that people are going to return to on a regular basis. Again the biggest blind spot is that the world is [expletive] burning. The people are ready to [expletive] rise up and burn [expletive] down and like take up pitchforks because they can't afford food, medicine, shelter. They got debt. They got all this.

[00:45] And you get this industry that's coming in and just selling you little things to plug all these holes that keep springing. They want to control the narrative. They want to not only control, they want to control the narrative and they want to control the means of access. So, this next piece in the Wall Street Journal that just came out, they came out with this little mini documentary, 15-minute mini documentary called The Race to Commercialize the World's Most Powerful Psychedelic, which I think is interesting in the timing of the release on this, which is on July 14th, and this was just several days before the At Thai Lily deal was announced. A tie a Thai was just acquired by Eli Lily and you know this documentary gets into pretty much is focused on 5me DMT and kind of the world surrounding that this hype surrounding that.

[01:45] According to the Wall Street Journal, little the description that they had was an obscure and extremely powerful psychedelic drug called 5me DMT or BUFFO is drawing intense interest from the pharmaceutical industry where biotech companies like Aai Beckley and GH research are racing to turn it into a commercially available treatment for severe mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. The Wall Street Journal took a look and took an inside look at how the psychedelic is being used at unregulated clinics in Mexico and why companies are betting that it could soon turn into a billion-doll blockbuster drug. So, we have a handful of clips that we're going to get into here. We got like six clips that we're going to go through. One thing that just stood out to me when you go on the YouTube video, which we'll link, three of the top comments had the most up votes on there.

[02:33] One of them said, "It's only illegal until corporate can commercialize and monopolize." The other comment said, "All the drugs they did in the 90s at raves are becoming the next fuel for private equity." And someone else said, "Boy, I can't wait for private equity to inshitify it." Yeah. Just a few other like highlevel points of like why we thought this was going to be interesting to talk about is that it's really a it's a great time capsule of this moment of the psychedelic hype and you can see the influence of like the still the Burning Man kind of like culty subculture as much as they're trying to appeal to the investors like you can still see that the legacy of where this industry came from and the way that they're talking about the five MO All right, let's get into it.

[03:19] This clip is a few minutes long, so just tell me if you want it to be paused at any point. And on your next exhale, dropping your attention into your body, taking a moment to notice your breathing and simply whatever else is present with you physically, cognitively, emotionally. Every week, a new batch of veterans arrives at the Mission Within, a clinic that specializes in psychedelic therapies. They come here as a last resort after conventional mental health treatments haven't worked. and take another two breaths and then when you feel ready you can bring your attention back to the room. Today a group is preparing to take one of the most powerful psychedelics in the world. All right fellas so we'll talk a little bit about tomorrow's medicine 5 DMT often known as buffo poison secreted from the back of the Colorado river toad or desert toad.

[04:07] And this is what the medicine looks like. It's weighed out by dose in these little vials and they screw into this pipe. 5 MOD DMT is illegal in the US, but here in Mexico, where it's still unregulated, clinics like The Mission Within are using it to treat veterans with severe mental health disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Visits can cost thousands of dollars and need to be booked far in advance. The wait list is currently 6 months long. What led you to seek out 5met? I've tried the traditional route. I've done talk therapy, multiple SSRIs, SNRIs, and I felt like with those the efficacy only lasted so long. The depression that came along with that started to resurface over time.

[04:55] I tried the VA, tried talk therapy, I tried AA, I tried the gym, I tried all the things. I remember even then I would like be in the shower and I was like, "Dude, there is no way life can be this hard." And so just through looking on veteran forums and talking to multiple veterans that I discovered the utilization of these alternative medicines and they were scary. What was scary to you about it? Well, watching videos on YouTube, some very intense experiences with people ingest the medicine. I couldn't see how that would serve me, but at the time I felt like I didn't have another choice. I remember when I was coming down the stairs to be in the space with the medicine. I remember thinking, "Oh, what am I getting myself into?"

[05:41] Can I say a lot of prayer for you? Amen. A 5 Mod DMT trip only lasts about 30 minutes, but it can cause physical shaking, loud noises, and on rare occasions, prolonged dissociation. The Mission Within says that about 5% of its patients describe the experience as too intense. But on the other side, many also find both immediate and longlasting relief. The first thing for me that stands out, I was going to pause it, but the first thing to me that stands out was when he sort of frames it when he's talking about it, he sort of frames that like it's going to be a oneandone. You know, they're going to take it one time and it's going to be lifelong relief.

[06:29] And that might happen, but to go into it thinking that that is like what is going to happen is not the way to go into it. Well, that actually comes up explicitly in a later clip where it's like the interviewer is like and yet you're back here for like, you know, a refresh. So, and like they don't really fully connect the dots that there's this claim for lasting efficacy and yet there was a need to return there. So yeah, the claims for confidence that this is like addressing the underlying root of trauma is not a surefire thing in the research literature in people's lives, you know, as we see people who've had these types of experiences.

[07:16] So I it's one of the indicators that this is a very hype oriented narrative. Also we should mention that the fact of the focus on veterans, this is something that a lot of the funders in the industry taking a page out of the playbook of the opioid industry has specifically cultivated these veteran retreats and, you know, bringing veterans to have these experiences in order to produce exactly these types of documentaries to have people watch them and say, you know, of course we have to do this. who would stand in the way of healing veterans who are so respected in the society. That was all engineered. It is a performance paid for by the investors in the industry and the overpromising at a time when the safety nets are not developed of cures are going to be at the expense of veterans as we have described over and over again.

[08:12] And the other thing I wanted to call attention to is just the spirituality that was involved in that. I mean, this video is being portrayed as like this is the future of mental health care and yet it's like even some of the words that were shown on this, you know, in terms of this the ceremonies, it was like praying for the veterans to be shown what they need to see. That's not how we usually approach medicine in the West, certainly. So, I thought it was interesting that they're showing that side of it, but there's not a lot of unpacking about the implications of having this sort of like a spiritual medicine in the hands of big pharma. Well, I think the claim that the man was making in that about like you were saying, you can just do it once and you're like healed.

[09:01] You know, there isn't good durability data on 5me. I mean, there's barely even blinding, you know, in a proper randomly controlled trial. The blind, you know, it's functional unblinding anyway because, you know, if you're taking a ego dissolving substance, but they really have no idea how long it can last. And like you said, they're going back. So, so I don't understand if they're marketing it as this durable silver bullet cure because it seems to be like a pretty common perception that these things are just one and done and you're you know your depression is healed. I think the majority of like if we were to have a lot of data on you know across psychedelics from and you can expand it take ketamine to MDMA to psilocybin to five I think that you're going to see for the most amount of people they're going to need to redose every between two and six months continuously.

[10:00] I think that that could probably change if during that integration process, the things that were most affecting them were changed, right? So, it's obviously going to be all over the place for everybody. I think you know in a perfect world if they were able to oh my the source of my depression is related to financial related things or it's a problem with my father that I you know I think if those things are actually worked on you're going to end up seeing a probably an improvement and maybe you are going to be done but I think for a lot of people those changes won't be made and they're going to need to continually go go back And what's the difference between an afterglow of a super intense mystical experience and actually cure you know treating the cause of the depression that you have whether that's material or

[11:01] You know some underlying thing we just don't know. Well and this question gets back to what you were saying about the blinding issues. A lot of people in the psychedelic field, they get annoyed because they're like, "Oh, it's this weird rule that we're just imposing from the way old pharma worked onto this thing where it's like we don't need to care about blinding." But if you think through the implications of like you could see that people were really being held and cared for in that setting way beyond what people experience in regular medical care whether it's like you know you're part of this you know community of brothers who have all are all working to heal each other in this you know you have to travel the country because this is such a repressed kind of like thing and you're treated with so much respect and told that you're part of something that's going to be able to help others.

[11:52] It's like all of that in the mix with this huge experience of like really transforming your perspective on reality. You can convince people, you can persuade them that they are healed when they are not always as healed as they might assert. We hear this over and over again with people who have had these types of psychedelic experiences and then they believe that they're healed, but there's all kinds of ongoing problems in their lives, but they're kind of just overlooking those because of this narrative that they're strongly believing in. So, we have to be able to disentangle those factors in order to be able to make claims about efficacy for people in general. Yeah. And it brings it, you know, it's like a lot of the studies are talking about the purely pharmaceutical or pharmacological effects of these substances as like a therapy or a treatment for, you know, mental health disorders.

[12:48] And if they ignore the therapy or the set and setting, which you can't put on a label, you know, you can't prescribe one dose of 5 MO per week with, you know, your buddies at a nice retreat on the beach. There are studies that show that it's no better than label anti-depressants, SSRIs, which aren't super effective. So, it's like if we did the same thing for the current psychiatric medication world, if we said, "Yeah, you're taking Prozac now, you know, for 3 months, but you're going to be on a beach in this cool house with all these like, you know, spiritually enlightened people." You know, what does the data look like there? 100%. That's not exciting, though, is it? I mean, if someone put me on Prozac on a beach for three months, could be cool, right? Yeah.

[13:34] But also, and the people backing mission with him is the industry. Just to little disclaimer there as well. So, what happens when they label these medicines and it doesn't come with the therapy and it doesn't come with these retreats and it doesn't come with these spiritual gu you know, spiritual guides and all these things. What do we, you know, what are the results going to look like? Have they ever tried it? I would say the closest thing right now, at least scalable thing is probably somebody like Mind Bloom, right? It's probably the closest thing. Just give people ketamine, go through the motions with a Zoom meeting and let them do it on their own. Yeah.

[14:19] No idea. Okay, so let's see this next clip. the change, how quickly the change happened and the relief that was almost instantaneous after partaking in the medicine have lasted until today. That was 15 months ago when I had my first 5 MOD DMT experience. So, this is like maintenance or it's like a reset to get you back to where you were 15 months ago. the healing journey that I'm on, it's not going to be over anytime soon. But utilizing this has been a significant step change for me. I think the best way for me to describe my first 5 Mod DMT experience was when I walked away from it, it was like I had had many years of therapy just in a weekend. I can't help but laugh at that janky pipe.

[15:05] I don't know. I don't know why. Why don't they use something nicer if [laughter] there are so many nicer options for sure there I just want I want to point out a few things that that was the clip I was referring to when you were talking about efficacy because he was saying you know until today you know it has lasted and then the interviewer is like oh so you're just here for a refresh you know and it didn't just start to taper off that day you know like it's like there's a reason why he's coming back and so it's like there's already a disconnect between the story he's saying. It's like he's saying the story that is the industry hype narrative which I find very suspicious. Same with the aspect of like it was like I had all this therapy in a single day. That is the way that investors talk about this field.

[15:53] And so it's like because we know all this stuff about suggestability and then people having these big meaningful experiences in the context of these narratives, it's very possible that those industry narratives are in are influencing the way that people are talking about this. Yeah. I appreciated his honesty in saying that his healing journey is going to take a long time. Like that's the reality. And I think a lot of people in this space don't acknowledge that. I've spoken to some practitioners and like the reality is some people are not going to be healed at all. Like and we don't hear that at all. Well, this also connects to I mean there there's some truth to it of course, but it's also it functions as a thought-terminating cliche in the industry as well where it's like when people are pressed on but why are you still doing it if you're so healed or why do you have these distressing symptoms if you're healed or you're abusing your family members if you're healed?

[16:52] People will say, "Well, my healing journey is ongoing." And it's kind of like a get out of jail free card oftentimes. Like I even included this in my commentary to the FDA about the MAPS therapy because it's like the way that they describe it is that any outcome is proof of the effectiveness because they have created rhetorical justifications to explain anything that can occur as evidence of the unfolding he healing process. Well, it also like it brings to mind what the definition of healing healed is, you know, like what you're saying. It's a thought terminating rhetorical tool. Anyone can say they're not healed for as long as they want to. And who's actually defining healing? If it's the insurance companies, it's are you able to work again, you know, from your disorder or what?

[17:38] And if they say yes, does that just mean they can't ever take it again? It's complicated. All right, so we're going to move on to this next clip. This is Shernavas Rao on the benefits of psychedelics. He's the co-founder and CEO of ATAI. The medical promise of 5M DMT has also captured the attention of the pharmaceutical industry where the market for psychedelic therapies is projected to reach $10 billion by 2034. Today, a growing pool of biotech Do you think that was intentional when they put the what's that called? What's that guy called? I don't know what he's called. I have one. It's right there. It's got the glasses on. That's the pseudocience thing. They believe that no chronology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think this is an intentional like editorial like I don't know, but I know that that that a Thai fan for sure is.

[18:25] Right. Where is it? The market for psychedelic therapies is projected to reach 10 billion by 2034. Today, a growing pool of biotech companies are racing to turn 5DMT into a commercially available medicine. Is this a Burning Man? This is a Burning Man. This is a Burning Man. This is in 2019 and I think I may be one of the few people that was actually able to expense Burning Man as a business expense. Trina Vas Ralph is the co-founder and CEO of Atai Beckley, a publicly traded biotech company that's trying to bring psychedelic therapies to market. A Tai Beckley's leading candidate is a synthesized version of 5 Mod DMT. Most anti-depressants, you get a pill and you know get a bottle and you go home and you take it every day. That's basically how it's been for a very long time.

[19:11] The problem has been that people get side effects immediately. They don't get benefit immediately and many of them don't get benefit at all. The big benefit with the psychedelics, you got rapid onset and you got durability. Well, the second part of that is totally unknown whether they have durability or not. The durability studies have [expletive] sucked so far. Yeah. Definitely over promising on the data there. And I also just wanted to talk a bit about the what do you all think of that Burning Man reference because it's kind of like bizarrely just inserted with no explanation and no context for it. There's no reason like the video doesn't say why. Yeah. It kind of like boom I think it's kind of like boomer is boomer [expletive] I don't know. I think Bernie man is like super cringe.

[19:58] Like just as cringe as a cybert truck at this point. So like I think it's him think he's like boomer guy thinking it's cool. he's going to get some street cred by saying it. I don't know that that's my maybe that's my super cynical take on it. But I don't think because it's like the fact that a psychedelic CEO was business expensing trips to Burning Man. If you read between the lines says a lot about the state and the recent history of the psychedelic industry where it's like so much of this has emerged from networking at Burning Man and you know where a lot of people were taking some of these various substances. We reported in the psychedelic syndicate about how people like Rick Doblin of MAPS was for a long time using Burning Man as like fun funer recruiting ground. So it's like there that whole psychedelic tech culture that this comes from was was hinted at there, but they didn't really explain the details.

[20:49] But I think you're right that it was a little bit of a flex to kind of make this seem cool as well. Yeah, I think it's both. I mean he's giving us a window into how these like first of all the state of what Burning Man and the counterculture as we have called it in the past has turned into and still thinks it's this counterculture thing and it's kind of cool. So maybe some people will you know maybe he'll be able to bring in some more alternative folks or something. So yeah I think it's a mix of street cred and like actual credentials. He's like, I officially have, you know, expensed Burning Man on my, you know, CEO card. And it actually was an expensible thing cuz it was, you know, he was chatting up investors.

[21:34] That's where they all meet. I think that's where Doblin within the last couple years had met Antonio Gracius who's his new sugar daddy. Well, and we know like Kimble Musk, he was on the board. Elon Musk used to fly in on jets. He probably still does. Like it's a billionaire paradise now. In one of the upcoming clips, there's another moment where I think red in light of this clip, you could also say that he might be throwing some breadcrumbs to the people who are from the psychedelic community who might see this sort of like big pharma approach to these substances as threatening, you know, to their culture to say like, "No, no, no. I came from this." And we'll see with the other clip what I'm talking about as well. Is it in the next clip? So this next clip is about the Spravado comparison.

[22:23] What do you think the sort of market would be for a drug like 5 Mod DMT if your version was was approved? I mean so the analysts that follow us do put out estimates and it's all several billion dollars. Spado Johnson and Johnson's ketamine derived nasal spray has already proven the concept. The first and still only commercially available psychedelic therapy is being administered under supervision at clinical sites throughout the country and it's ballooned into a nearly $2 billion blockbuster drug. The psychedelics they will be kind of like Spado. You go in, you get dosed, get monitored for 2 hours, you get discharged, but instead of coming in every week, you're coming in every two months, three years. Oh, the paradigm of going to the doctor's office was established by Spado and that's what we're everybody I feel like everybody knows it and it's just not it's the thing that's really not talked about cuz that's it's going to be similar probably to psilocybin once approved or MDMA once

[23:23] Approved. I know and I know initially the FDA in the negotiations with Doablin and Doblin's team, they were going to be they were considering I don't know where this has gone, but they were considering putting in like a maximum amount of time that you could actually be dosed lifetime amount. I have not heard that. That's interesting. Yeah, it was in negotiations. I'm not sure where it ended up where it ended up going. And I was also about that going to say, you know, we were talking about the big pharma accusations that we were funded by big pharma and a lot of those narratives for years had been kind of encouraged by this false narrative that big pharma is not going to be okay with this because it's going to cure you with the oneandone model and then they're not going to be able to make money. And so you can see how far that discourse has gone where now it's like reassuring the investors no this is a maintenance therapy that people are going to return to on a regular basis 100%.

[24:19] All right so we're going to move on to this next clip and it's no longer just the private sector that's rooting them on. All right so here's where the magic happens. This is certainly not a job that I thought I was going to have a few years ago. Matt Zorn spent years challenging the federal government's chokeold on schedule one drugs. Now he's on the other side working within the administration to help speed up research. I think that we have a mental health issue where, you know, I'm not going to sort of disparage the current treatment. It's just as a factual matter. They just don't reach everyone. They're not efficacious for everyone. A lot of people just don't have alternatives. And if a drug is shown to be efficacious or has a chance of working, like why wouldn't you want that to be available?

[25:07] Zorn's boss, health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has gone even further. This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting, and we are working very hard to make sure that that happens within 12 months. In April, President Trump signed an executive order to expand access and research into psychedelic therapies. It was written by Zorn. Mr. President, I want to thank Matt Zord, who's hiding in the back there, who actually on Sunday wrote a draft for this. Why are psychedelic therapies and support for research around psychedelic therapies a priority for this department? You know, there there are medicines that are approved that are incremental improvements, but there hasn't kind of been a paradigm shift that's really been transformative. And I think the hope and what preliminary evidence is suggesting is that these medicines are more than just a marginal improvement.

[25:59] It seems to me like in a few years it's not unreasonable to think that some of these will be available to people who've been seeking them out in like the gray market going down to Mexico to seek them out for a long time now. 5me is is a it's a promising compound that you know potentially can have negative you know adverse events negative experiences like everybody knows about so-called bad trips this is across the board even with the current compounds I mean I think that the evidence is like sufficient for approval but it's like how do these things perform out in the wild is going to be like a super important thing for us to understand since Trump took office last year biotech startups developing psychedelic therapies have seen their stock prices surge, a Tybeckley's is up by about 250%. We just want to get these drugs to as many people as possible and help as many people as possible.

[26:51] And that really does require this more medical approach. That is how you get scalability. That is how you get it to as many people as you can. It's such a blatant foreshadowing of the Eli Liy deal. I mean, it's like it was two days before the deal was announced and like they're showing a tie, you know, swag in the retreat center and they're, you know, pumping up the stock price on the thing and it's quite obvious and blatant. Yeah. I mean, there's the consulting class is very good at, you know, timing I [laughter] was going to thinking. Yeah. Timing the public's like exposure to specific kinds of narratives. they've like refined this many decades of the dark arts of mass persuasion and so we can see that playing out here.

[27:41] I also want to mention so Zorn, you know, we can [laughter] I was going to do a disclaimer I think. Yeah, go ahead. No, just a disclaimer that Matt Zorn was our lawyer in the Church of Silthoxin case. He was our lead lawyer. I helped to bring him on to our defense team. I've been friends with him for several years now. So, just throwing that out there. I think it's important. I disagree with him on a handful of things that he said. He's someone that I've been able to openly disagree with and in conversations about our thoughts on these things. And yeah, he said something at the beginning there that I was I actually want to bring it up again. There was one point to help speed up research. I think that we have a mental health issue where, you know, I'm not going to sort of disparage the current treatment.

[28:33] It's just as a factual matter. They just don't reach everyone. They're not efficacious for everyone. I don't know exactly what he's getting at when he says they don't reach everyone. It just means that there are people who it doesn't resolve the issue for. Is that Yeah. So it works for some people, but it doesn't work for everyone. So he doesn't want to do the pill shaming kind of the SSR shaming that a lot of people in the industry do. So he's saying like, yes, they're helpful to some people, but there's an unmet need still with the existing treatment options. Okay. I wasn't sure the reach if that's if that was intended by what the word reach meant there. Okay, then I don't disagree with them on that. I wanted to point out I mean part of the we have a big I think like I personally have a big worldview difference from Matt Zorn and his perspective there and I think you know potentially illuminating from Zoran's perspective.

[29:31] He did an interview with psychedelic alpha some years ago. it was that the chaos piece that they put out and he mentions I think that there's a really good case that we shouldn't be testing for efficacy and that we and that can be done post approval or that there are ways to have medicines on the market in an off label or no label way while still testing for efficacy. So what he's saying there is like, you know, he's I think that's potentially part of why he was brought into the FDA. It was this interest in pairing back the requirements to get a drug approved for the market to make it easier, less expensive for that to happen. But part of the issue here is that safety is not a absolute framework.

[30:19] Safety and the risk that people are, you know, willing to take on or not is a function of how effective the treatment is seen as potentially being. So something that is potentially curative, if you have cancer, you're willing to take on safety risks in order to potentially access that and you can have as a, you know, you can make that informed call about whether you're willing to take on the risk. The idea that we can separate safety and efficacy when we're approving medicines for the public is putting a lot of risk onto the public in a similar way that when I was mentioning open eye chatbt earlier it's kind of like using the public as guinea pigs forecally medicines and especially when he goes on to say this why are psychedelic therapies and support for research around psychedelic therapies a priority for this department.

[31:18] You know, there there are medicines that are approved that are incremental improvements, but there hasn't kind of been a paradigm shift that's really been transformative. And I think the hope and what preliminary evidence is suggesting is that these medicines are more than just a marginal improvement. It seems to me, so first off, that is I think quite disputed. I don't think that is a an accurate statement to say first off and then further and then he goes on to say something else. In a few years it's not unreasonable to think that some of these will be available to people who've been seeking them out in like the gray market going down to Mexico to seek them out for a long time now. 5 is is it's a promising compound that you know potentially can have negative you know adverse events, negative experiences like everybody knows about so-called bad trips.

[32:09] This is across the board even with the current compounds. I mean, I think that the evidence is like sufficient for approval, but it's like how do these things perform out in the Yeah, it's that like we think it's sufficient for approval, but how are they going to actually be out in the wild when you know they scale up to this is one of the biggest plagues in this industry is most of these trials are not many people like you know I think the favorite is basically n equals 12 and then let's make some statement about that and then let's hype the [expletive] out of it, you know, like in the smoking order or some of these other some of these other things. So the phase three clinical trials are bigger like hundreds of people but still not sure comparable to a lot of other research.

[32:58] Yeah. I just think his position is based on kind of flimsy assumptions in a lot of you know and the higher it gets it seems to get a little more flimsy big time and I think it's I think he knows this and I think he knows this and I think with Matt it's a risk that he believes is worth taking. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is also playing into the wellness vacation of public health that we have talked about before where it's like it's the golden age of like snake oil, you know, with the maha movement and it's like this is exactly the regulatory landscape that that wellness grifters would want is like, yeah, we just make sure that something's not going to kill people and then we can like overpromise and just let the bodies Yeah.

[33:45] Let it rip. let the bodies figure things out down the line. And it's the people who are the most vulnerable, the most marginalized in society that are going to bear the highest cost for that kind of an attitude. And again, if I was an alien just like watching all of this, I would think this whole movement is so it's so the again the biggest blind spot is that they're trying the world is [expletive] burning right now and they're trying to they're like trying to plug these holes. Like the people are ready to [expletive] rise up and burn [expletive] down and like take up pitchforks because they can't afford food, medicine, shelter. They got debt. They got all this and you get this like largely, you know, you get this industry that's coming in and just selling you little things to plug all these holes that keep springing and it just seems kind of goofy to me to like this is the

[34:49] Solution. You're not you don't see the invisible thing that's right in front of your [expletive] face. like this is why are people getting so depressed and sad and you know I can't escape from it. I sometimes I sound like a broken record with this, but I think it's I think it is I think it is the most important [expletive] that there is. Like you're not a serious person if you're talking about mental health and you're not advocating for what are probably like socialist positions to help fix society. You're not a serious person. And if you think that you're going to treat this issue through like corporate solutions, you're goofball. I don't like know how else to say that. You're not serious about this.

[35:35] Well, this also relates to the Death Notes Substack by Jeff Shance that I'm a fan of. There was just three days ago he put another piece out called proletarian barbarism and it opens kind of alluding to what's going on here. He says for those about to be called in this sort of phase of snuff capitalism that we're moving into or democide palative paliotative democracy aims to sedate us as we dutifully accept our looming demise. Civilizing processes seek to inculturate us to restrain ourselves within systems of domination and elimination. I mean that's like what the capitalists are doing here. It's like there is a fire like you're saying going on that like the planet is is being destroyed and they're realizing the there is this rising anger and so you know trying to just remove the barriers to mass medicating people with these suggestability enhancing treatments is pretty nefarious

[36:36] To me. It's like how many cases of cancer do we have now in like Iowa because of just pumping chemicals into people's water supply? Ohio right now is is there's a ton of heat in Ohio because the EPA appears to be potentially making a move. It's not finalized because there's been a lot of push back as far as my understanding, but like lowering emissions standards for the data centers so they can pump it back into public water supplies. And we're like arguing. We're like bickering over these like little psychedelics that are gonna affect like a Well, it's like what Anger Meer was talking about when we talked about in the Anger Meer episode about societal adjustment disorder, right? Like we're treating this, you know, what we're calling depression. like all these people are depressed and they're angry and so we're just going to like you know sedate them with these new suggestible substances that you know have a lot of

[37:36] Benefits for the capitalist class to be able to shut them up, calm them down, heal them maybe and you know they'll get money out of it too. You know I'm going to push back just to have some fun. I'm going to push back with you on this because if that they were if they really wanted to do that, if they really wanted to unleash the soma upon the plebs, wouldn't they be just pushing for just straight up decriminalization? Like more in the way of marijuana, like getting marijuana into the brains of everybody to like to soothe them over from the [expletive] societal collapse and chaos. Well, I think that they know that it is a pluropotent. The these psychedelics are suggestible in any way.

[38:23] They want to control the narrative. They want to not only control they want to control the narrative and they want to control the means of access. So, by controlling the access and the narrative, they don't want everybody to just have it willy-nilly. They want to be able to say who gets it when and why because then they can ensure that the Soma gets to the right people and appease. But wouldn't you want all the people? But wouldn't you want all the people to have it if it worked that way? Why would you know that it doesn't slice? If it worked that way and if it worked the way that, you know, I guess historical misconceptions would have it be that it is, you know, it just makes everyone calm and chill and everyone happy or whatever, but they know that that's not the case. Nay's written papers on that not being the case. you know, right-wing psychedelia, the whole situation of the suggestability thing being, you know, psychedelics make your priors more intense or like, you know, if you believed in authoritarianism to a strong degree, taking psychedelics isn't going to just suddenly make you, you know, libertarian, anti- athoritarian.

[39:26] It's going to make you depending on your set and setting and influence and cultural, you know, situation. I guess my question here is if they were effective at doing this is it doesn't seem that this plan is sufficient to alleviate pressures against them. But this gets back to what we were talking about in that other one about that sci-fi what's that movie where it's like you're like Logan's Run. It's like when you're able to loves Rogan Logan's Run. It's the perfect metaphor for what's happening. I mean it's like if you are able it's not just about the drugs in general. It's about when you create this pomp and circum circumstance, you know, this these bread and circuses around your ideological project, then you can get people to, you know, feel like they are that they have a that they have a they have hope or feel like they are intrinsically finding their true self when they're actually coming into touch with your, you know,

[40:27] This is actually going to connect to our last se segment about the grifter psychedelic narcissist gurus where it's like there is a whole you know the something that we haven't talked about yet that maybe we could touch on in a future episode especially now that the tape brothers are in hot water is that there is a big overlap between pickup artistry techniques and like influence techniques with suggestability enhancement and if you can control the framework the definition of healing the acceptable narratives and you're giving people these professional, you know, medical treatments, you're better able to control the outcomes than if it's just loose in the population and you have anarchists doing mutual aid support for their own communities.

[41:18] That's not what they want. They want this, you know, healed is not resisting narrative, not resisting with their version of where society should be going. Yeah. I think one of my pet conspiracy theories is maybe that's a big part of why they're starting with veterans. You know, I mean, they have veterans have been through the whole rigma roll of, you know, authority and everything like that and they're, you know, patriotic and whatnot. They're not going to give this to anarchists that are depressed. they're going to give it to veterans with PTSD and like at least for now that's it's kind of a window into I think the plan and why it's actually you know to answer your question I think that's why they're doing it. They're not they won't unleash it to the masses because the masses aren't who they care about. I just have I just and this is always like kind of the source of some internal disagreements that we have on a team and I'm kind of usually this guy.

[42:12] I just when I look at like the investor class and some of these guys, I just tend to think that they are happy to make the money. They don't really give a [expletive] as long as they can put out data, as long as they can make a bunch of money here. I think that's true. I just don't think that it's I think there's I'm not saying everybody Yeah. I think there's many angles here, right? Like they know they can make money and keep making money by doing it's a long strategy, right? And maybe not all of this is like super explicit to them, but it's clear, I think, to people that are really paying attention that some of these patterns are just like it's how they make money. It's how they keep control. It's how they perpetuate the systems that allow them to continue to make money and keep control. Cuz I don't think it is an accident that they picked psychedelics.

[43:00] There were other areas that they could have hyped up and said, you know, oh, this is healing. I think it, you know, on the Teal side, I think Peter Teal has a very coherent political project that all of his investments are rowing in the same direction of. And I think it does get back to this. You know, he's been very open about democracy being a barrier to, you know, I think my push back to there would I agree with you with that point. I think that Teal is kind of I don't want to say singular, but in that direction like there's like everybody and then there's Teal, you know, he's one of prote like Sam Alman look I mean even yeah, you know, Anger Meer said it himself, right?

[43:45] He's investing Well, you're naming the people who I'm going to agree with you with that I think are in that camp, but they're the hardcore tes realists, right? If you want to call it that. like they're the ones that have a purposeful coherent narrative around this. Maybe some has been the most explicit in all of them. And yeah, so maybe there are like, you know, a significant number of these other investors that are just in it for the money and hoping to ride. They don't know what's going on. There's some drug here. I don't there's some drug here that's going to make me, you know, what's my ROI on that? Okay. Sure. Yeah. and they probably want it to the masses to a, you know, stronger degree, but I think there's more calculation going on a little bit behind the scenes by the folks that do have like a real strategy written down.

[44:33] Yeah, it's certainly not all the investors. Some are just hitching their wagons onto something that they see as a money maker. But between all of the explicit quotes that we have from this testal cohort of psychedelic investors, this has a bigger role beyond just healing for them in terms of like you know this another quote from Jeff's piece, the Death Notes piece is threats to the market are posed as threats to civilization itself. There are threats to the market right now with the way that society is changing. Anger has openly identified that this could be a way of addressing it. And I think the capitalists are extra excited about investing in something that promises to subdue the barbarity of the masses who are not going along with the program of civilization.

[45:26] I mean the other thing is they're like running out of capitalism is starting to run out of things in a sense like everything just everything's AI at this point you know even things that you don't necessarily think are AI or attached to AI at this point it's sort of one trade at this point and what newer you get AI you get psychedelics what betting markets like what are the new things so they're reaching further out I think you know yeah that's a good point I mean an inherent, you know, characteristic of capitalism is to just exploit everything, right? I mean, it needs to consume in order to continue. And so, we're going to start reaching the margins eventually of the earth, which we are, you know, and when they run out, you put a conservative government in there to cleave off parts of the state so we can privatize them.

[46:17] This is the whole Bush administration. This is what they've always wanted to do. This is why they want to deregulate, specifically deregulate so we can steal it from the state. When you get back to people like Steve Jervson saying that con traditional religion is a threat to the Silicon Valley plans for the future and saying, you know, kind of really leaning into the psychedelic religion both in the state models, you know, really talking in that language about psychedelics and supporting the non-medical because it's they are supporting hierarchical versions of psychedelic access some of the funders in the state models. We covered that in psychedelic syndicate. So it's not like it's only medicine but they do want to control through hierarchical ways of accessing psychedelics and the narratives surrounding them.

[47:11] There are competing factions within the psychedelic investor club who are you know they want their own little piece of the pie. Like my understanding is anger doesn't really [expletive] with the PSFC people. He's his own. He's got his own thing going on. PSFC has their own thing going on. Everybody wants to kind of carve up their own little thief of psychedelia at this point at this moment in time when all of these investors are saying the quiet part out loud about how this isn't just about healing for them that they see they have a particular vision of what how they want the masses to behave and they think that psychedelics are a tool to help get people in line with that vision. I don't think it's like in workers interest to just assume that this is just about money and to kind of give them the benefit of the doubt on this because I don't think they've earned that benefit of the doubt.

[48:04] I think the writing is on the wall personally. Yeah. And I also think that they will fail. And I'm not trying to just assume that. I think there are I think there are notable investors in this space who have their own whatever sinister whackadoodle kind of weird sci-fi testal agenda. And then I do think there are people who they don't know what's going on. They want money. They're totally ignorant. They're idiots. They just invest in whatever. You know, I'm not trying to dismiss the kind of the dystopian investors out there at all. Yeah. Let's get into this last clip. Barring a major setback, a Tybec's drug could hit the market in as little as four or 5 years. Until then, international clinics like the Mission Within will remain the only legal route.

[48:51] A few hours after their treatment, the veterans gathered at the beach to reflect on their experience. How you feeling, man? Incredible. And to be clear, you're not on 5 MO DMT right now. This is me all natty, baby. Yeah, this is Yeah, this is me not on the 5 MO DMC at all whatsoever. Since I got out of the room, I've been, you know, deeply contemplative, but also just kind of full of joy. I feel like you had a really clear sense of what you were hoping to get out of this. Are you where you were hoping to be? Absolutely. It was very cathartic and I felt that it was rebirth of sorts. This is like the last door that I knocked on, you know, and I like I know it works.

[49:37] So, yeah, part the reason I wanted to show the end of that clip and talk about it is because of just how irresponsible that framing was to have people who are grinning ear to ear in the immediate afterlow and then to portray that as all natty like this is just they're back to baseline. This is their new baseline. no acknowledgement of the fact that the afterglow period can be its own altered state of you know enthusiasm that doesn't always translate into enduring isn't that why we're all here. So it's like just the and the field knows that the field is very aware that that's the case. So, the fact that this is the narrative that they're pushing just shows how manipulative the industry is being at this moment in time, trying to portray this as like, well, look at these guys.

[50:30] They're happy and healed now. Don't you want your family to be like these guys? And then it also frames people like us who are trying to raise reasonable concerns about things that can be done safer that's not going to be the at the expense of the most vulnerable people in society. It frames us as standing in the way as responsible for the deaths of veterans and that's dangerous in itself to kind of put people who are raising genuine concerns into that kind of a position. I mean that last clip looks like an ad. It looks like you know what are the it's like the old Prozac ads of like you know then it shows that the sun comes out and the smile goes up and they're on a beach and it's just like absurdly blatant and I think it is to your I mean it is dangerous and there's no acknowledgement of that.

[51:20] They don't even say that it was in the immediate afterlow. This guy's like laughing his ass off like he is on something. It's not all natty, you know. Yeah. So it just all of that is so sad and concerning to me just that we're at this phase with the industry where this is I mean all of this is going to be a cautionary tale in retrospect. There's going to be you know entire fields of public health if academia survives as society survives unpacking this like the false glorification of SSRIs before. imagine if you had like that Silicon Valley investor bro class back in the 60s in the late 50s early 60s what they would have done well Steve Jobs you know it wasn't he but what I'm saying that first wave if you had the c the amount of capital like imagine what psychedelics would have turned into back then like you got wildly irresponsible trials all over the place I think a lot of the trials now have like a very close

[52:20] Resemblance to those trials back in the 60s. One of the main difference differences now is you don't have you don't nick in there first off, but you get a ton of money and you get a ton of like, you know, regulatory power that you can you have wind at your sales in that regard, you know, so you could just push through things. And I think that's what's going on in so many with so many of these classes of drugs now. They already greased the public into acceptance. Go go go go go talk to random people on the streets, especially younger people. They're going to tell you something about micro doing. They're going to know they know something. There's generally a base level understanding of psychedelics in some way at this point. I think it'd be I think it'd be pretty hard to find someone who's very ignorant about and they're going to tell you something about mental health or you know and it's like the public's understanding is so far ahead of what the science actually even says.

[53:17] And I think to your point that you made earlier in the controlling of the narrative, that's like a controlling of the narrative where you don't even need the drug to have worked or you don't even have to have good data for the public at large to just like think it right. That's what this was the point of advertising. The point propaganda, right? This is propaganda. I was always confused when I was younger, not even that younger, about like what the [expletive] the point of a commercial because you don't like especially a commercial on a TV, right? You don't watch it and be like, "Holy [expletive] I need that product right now, right? That's not what the point of it is. The point of it is is to remind you that it exists and to put the image and to put the branding and whatever the little story in your mind so the next time you're at the store randomly, you think about it, you see, oh, I want a Coke, blah blah blah."

[54:11] Right? familiarity. Yeah. I mean, there's a psychological word for this that escapes me, but yeah, it's all very calculated. Yeah. And so that's kind of what I can see the point that you were making earlier on like that's a controlling the narrative cuz you probably get a ton of, you know, DSA people walking around right now who hate Peter Teal's guts and don't know the thoughts that they have in their head about psychedelics in their head because of little things like this. Right. Exactly. Totally. like this that they never even and I don't blame them, you know, because I'm sure we got a lot of [expletive] in our heads that was planted there by someone with dollars and an agenda, right?

[54:56] But yeah, I that seems like the effective way to me to control the narrative that you might have a chance of healing like you know, you're not like there's something out there for you at some point. I don't know. Well, this is going to also drive people into the underground where people you know there's so many abusive practitioners and you know I even saw Martin Ball I shared with the chat is is has announced new so Martin Ball's context we had you know chatted about in the past had some videos about for advocating and specifically teaching people that using intuition to touch people's genitals and stick your tongue down the throats of unresponsive older people patients is acceptable and even best practice of psychedelic facilitation.

[55:51] So he which a lot of people when we pointed these things out as very dangerous ideas not to just be even saying about what you do but to recommend that other people do. People would come to us and say, "Oh, you're just bullying this small bean. He's like retired and like you're just beating up on him and it's like no he is still training people and he's using the Atai referencing the Atai you know purchase by Eli Liy as a reason why we need to have more people trained to do 5 MO integration right so it's like the that's the other aspect of why this is so concerning because it's going to be funneling desperate people into the underground where there are so many bad actors and that's been all I think within all of Psychedel Psychedelia, the 5me crew has been the [expletive] weirdest, cultiest of all of them, to be honest.

[56:46] They've always been the most sus to me. Yeah, that's where people are shocking people with like tasers and waterboarding them when they're on 5me. I mean, like really far out disturbing stuff for sure. Yeah. And for people who are watching or listening to this, like look up what we did on Martin Ball. was a practitioner who was generally he's a [expletive] weird guy but he was generally accepted by the industry in so far that maps Canada was like co-publishing books with him and he had videos openly giving public lectures about vomiting on people's faces and then saying how they appreciated it and we saw this and we were like what the [expletive] I remember watching it someone I think Brian Pace had sent me the videos I was like is this real like what the [expletive] how is no one said anything about this.

[57:36] And of course, we talk about it. We publish some stuff on it and we get [expletive] hammered by people. We're being, you know, you guys are being so critical. Martin's a good guy. Blah blah blah. And it's like, I don't give a [expletive] if who he is. Like, what is he doing? Why aren't you talking about this? Like if you give a [expletive] about the industry or the space or anything like that, how about you call out [expletive] like this when they're putting when they're doing dangerous practices? It's crazy. And when they're represented as the experts that others are looking to for models for what they should Go.