FDA's Psychedelics Hearing Was an Industry Trade Show

The crew discusses the FDA's September 14 psychedelic hearing, including Neşe's experience being in attendance, the financial conflicts of interest at the event, and the pseudoscientific beliefs of practitioners who gave testimony.

Footnotes:

Submit written comment to the FDA by October 5, 2026 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/14/2026-14155/considerations-for-potential-future-therapeutic-use-of-psychedelic-drugs-public-hearing-request-for

FDA Psychedelic Hearing Speaker List: https://www.instagram.com/p/DdNNLD4EcB5/

A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program (Psymposia): https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/a-channel-for-magic-ralph-hoods-mysticism-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-johns-hopkins-psychedelic-research-program/

Alan Piper - Strange Nazis (Psymposia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPmwOCyzVE

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] This hearing which was called the considerations for potential future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs public hearing hosted by the FDA. The background on it was that the US FDA is announcing a public hearing held in collaboration with federal partners to obtain feedback and perspective on issues associated with the potential future therapeutic use of drug products containing a psychedelic drug substance in supervised and supportive settings. The room is set up with a bunch of screens around the side. Most people are assembling kind of in the middle. It is weird to have like a lot of friends and people who are so opposed [laughter] to my work in the same space. But it also has felt pretty powerful to just continue to show up and after so many attempts to really intimidate us into kind of staying away and walking away to continue to show up and to be part of the conversation.

[00:53] I have financial interest in psychedelic therapy training and clinical care through our charitable foundation. My husband and I invest in psychedelic related companies. I do have financial interest in psychedelics clinical services and facilitator education. My nonprofit receives its money from private family foundations committed to the advancement of psychedelic work. We have five botanical drug programs moving through the FDA pathway. Everything I'm about to say advantages my business. It would take me longer than my two minutes to disclose every way I embedded by investment, by my foundation's grants, by the boards I sit on. So for the record, please assume all of them.

[01:40] Welcome to the Psymposia podcast. I'm Russell here today with Normie, Nishay, and Mike. We're going to be talking about one story in particular as we jump in today. It's kind of been the psychedelic news of the month of September, which was that the FDA hosted this big psychedelic public hearing. We're going to chat about that. Nay was on the ground there. So, we're going to talk about their experience there, some of the speakers who were in attendance and some of the broader implications of that hearing. After that, we're also going to be relaunching our mailbag section, which was a segment that we had in some older podcasts where we would take comments and emails from our listeners and kind of read them and discuss them on air. It's been a while since we read hate mail.

[02:27] Yeah, [laughter] yes. So, hate us, love us, shoot us a message, maybe we'll read it on air and discuss your commentary. So starting out here, we can just jump in on what this hearing was all about. This hearing which was called the considerations for potential future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs public hearing hosted by the FDA. This was on September 14th. This was their description of the event. The background on it was that the US FDA is announcing a public hearing held in collaboration with federal partners to obtain feedback and perspective on issues associated with the potential future therapeutic use of drug products containing a psychedelic drug substance in supervised and supportive settings.

[03:12] This included a number of speakers and there was kind of a speaker application process. Nay, I know you applied to speak at this hearing and were not accepted. Do you want to talk a little bit about that speaker application process? Yeah, and just as some other context, commentators on the field have talked about how this was an initiative connected to the Trump administration's executive order related to psychedelics that we've covered previously on this channel. And so specifically, that order kind of like directed the various federal agencies to move and do things in relation to the field of psychedelic medicine. And so this was a high visibility but low impact in the sense of it's non-binding.

[03:58] You know, the FDA doesn't have to follow through on anything that's shared. So it was seen as like in a way like a checkbox towards kind of signaling to the administration and the public that there is movement. But even in the title, it's like future applications of psychedelic therapy. So it's not necessarily doing much per se, but it was an opportunity for the field and people who have opinions to come forward. We should mention also that there remains a written comment option that if anyone would like to submit their perspective, you can submit it to the online docket that the FDA has opened for this initiative. and we can probably include that in the show notes in case anyone does want to chime in and have their perspective heard.

[04:46] But as far as the actual meeting is concerned, they had a very simple sign up form. I think you had to sign up by a request to speak by August 21st or something like that. And they had like four I forget what they were now, but four sort of topics that you could speak on like patient safety, that kind of thing. and you could select multiple and then there's no room for you to kind of describe what it was you wanted to say. So you just registered your interest that if you're associated with a kind of organization and then sent it in and the speakers list ended up being kind of a industry focused for the most part group of speakers. Whether that was the intention of the FDA is sort of to be speculated upon. They I believe claimed that it was a lottery process of how they accepted speakers.

[05:34] Is that correct? Yeah, they gave more specifics at the start of the hearing than they gave in their written notice about the selection. So, there's more information there, but yeah, they said it was they described the process as essentially removing any duplicates like if people had submitted twice. I think they also said they took into account you know if there were multiple people from speaking from one organization I think they were saying they tried to diversify from that but other than a few metrics they said it was a randomized system and it was both they wanted to balance both the inerson and also the zoom speakers so there were about half of the presenters were speaking not from in person in Maryland but from other places.

[06:20] Got it. And just before the event, they released the list of speakers and we got a hold of it and were able to kind of analyze it a little bit and put out some commentary on the speakers list prior to this taking place. And this is what we wrote in advance of the event. So FDA's September 14th psychedelic hearing agenda and speaker selection. The FDA's hearing on considerations for potential future therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs presents itself as a public forum, but the speaker roster tells a different story. The lengthy speaker list is dominated by industry players with financial stakes in psychedelic commercialization, including Peter Teal backed companies like Mind Bloom and Compass Pathways. The list also includes therapy cult practitioners, susketamine providers, and AIdriven psychedelic therapy platform founders.

[07:09] Of the 81 confirmed speakers, astrourf professional associations and lobbying vehicles for industry are well represented. Nearly absent are independent researchers examining harms, patient advocates, clinical trial participants who have experienced adverse events, ethicists raising qu concerns about the commercialization rush, and journalists who document misconduct in psychedelic clinical settings. RFK Junior's FDA has provided no transparency about how speakers were selected from presumably hundreds of applicants, what criteria guided inclusion, or why the deck is stacked against critical voices. As the Trump administration continues to dismantle public institutions, the agency has chosen to host what looks less like a public hearing and more like a rigged investor conference. A hearing this transparently rigged tells us the FDA cannot be trusted to prioritize public health in its oversight of psychedelics.

[07:56] From that the beginning of the hearing where they added more information. This was from Dale Christenzio. I don't know how you probably pronounced her name, but she said the FDA received over 200 speaker requests and that means that they could offer speaker slots to under half of the people who applied. And it says individuals who submitted requests were contacted to confirm their availability and continued interest and they in parallel the FDA was reviewing the request for any errors in the submissions and then they re reiterated that it was randomly selected. Got it. And the day of you actually were able to be in attendance of this hearing I believe for the full time it was going on and maybe with a front row seat. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were up in the front right in front of the table. So, it was a I don't know if interesting is necessarily the right word, but it was a significant experience for me in the sense that it's the first time that I've been in those types of spaces with so much of the field like since all the FDA stuff went down two

[08:57] Years ago where Psymposia kind of was involved in presenting critical views to the FDA. Yeah. And I think we've got a quick video of you on the ground there if we want to play that real quick just to show viewers kind of where this was taking place and what everything was looking like there. Whoops. Play that real quick. Got you in the Psymposia. Get us. So, there's still a little while before it starts. The room is set up with a bunch of screens around the side. Most people are assembling kind of in the middle across from the main table. There you can see where people talking. It's been interesting for me just knowing so many people being involved in this field for so long. I also just ran into someone else who said that they are you know kind of polarized polarizing figure in the space and that it's a bit odd for them to be in spaces where they're is a lot of hostility towards them but you know I just kind of accept it.

[09:57] I mean it is weird to have like a lot of friends and people who are so opposed to my work in the same space. But it also has felt pretty powerful to just continue to show up and after so many attempts to really intimidate us into kind of staying away and walking away to continue to show up and to be part of the conversation because the topics that we're raising are so important for the broader field to reckon with. So just to continue to not allow that intimidation to work, means a lot to me personally, just to continue to show up in that way. Yeah. So, yes. So, Russ mentioned the Psymposia gear. I specifically, maybe I can show this picture. I'll pop it up on screen, too.

[10:43] [laughter] I was wearing the OG Psymposia siren shirt and I never thought to wear it with that red blazer, but I thought it worked with [laughter] Psymposia color scheme and I added a sticker to my a Psymposia sticker to my water bottle just because there was a lot of discourse as we've talked about before about how we showed up at the FDA as undisclosed Psymposia activists. And so I really wanted to be there and have Psymposia's presence like visible in the room. And also just on a personal level and I kind of alluded to this in the video that we just shared, but there had been a time especially two years ago in the immediate aftermath of us presenting at the advisory committee meeting with our concerns about the MDMA clinical trials.

[11:29] We were receiving a lot of like up to over death threats, harassment. There was a lot of like very scary stuff going on. And it just for me going back into a space like that after everything that happened felt like kind of reclaiming my own agency and kind of moving past that phase where because there was a really scary time just like point blank, you know, it was very like dicey for a while. So, so just to show up at as Psymposia and to not be afraid and to show that the intimidation is not going to work was like even if nothing else like that that to me was a really big deal. Yeah, I think it's awesome. And there was like you mentioned there was a concerted effort to basically tell us to like shut up and go away.

[12:18] And there was even a concerted effort to just like falsely say that we had completely dissolved by a lot of speakers in the space just being like Psymposia is gone. They're they don't even exist anymore. [laughter] Like they're not even around. And so this group were terrorizing everyone in the psychedelic world that were called Psymposia. They've actually just totally self-destructed at this point. And it's like we didn't go anywhere. [laughter] Here we are. It's really funny actually. just completely disconnected from reality. What were the vibes like from everyone around? I mean, it seems like there were mostly that type of people that would be like, you know, the intimidators or whatever, but with you like in that show of force, how did you know social like vibe come across?

[13:08] Yeah, it was really interesting. I didn't 100% know what to expect. because I figured that a lot of the haters would be there, but it was surprisingly like respectful. Like I had a lot of friends there and people who knew that the discourse around us as these like leftist agitators sabotaging things that that was that discourse was not like an accurate representation of reality. I also think that the broader zeitgeist has shifted a lot in the last two years like has happened around the Israel like you know Israel and Palestine and that whole dynamic that people who were correct two years ago like that's becoming more of a shared reality for people and like you know the fact that so many of the things that Psymposia has been warning about for years are more and more recognized as being the case today I think that that is leading to a lot of shift in people's perspective.

[14:09] So it was actually like a lot of people there were very friendly [laughter] and very like nice to me and people who I've known for you know 15 plus years in some cases and some of them I hadn't seen for a decade and just it was really nice to reconnect. There were some people a lot there were a lot of maps people there and they kind of kept their distance. a lot of veteran kind of connected. I mean, half of the veteran group that was there that I interacted with were like, you know, some people were like thanking me and us for our work, which was surprising. And then the other people, there were like some scowls and just didn't, you know, people staying apart, but not nothing overtly like antagonistic, which was [laughter] I feel like you could guess, but I'm not going to mention it.

[14:58] I don't want to call people out, but I did hear someone, so I can't confirm this, but someone told me that Javier, who I forget his last name, but he was evidently closely involved in negotiating with the FDA slash, you know, corruption to go back on what they had required for this new phase three with the resilient for MDMA assisted therapy and actually to just be able to resubmit it and push it through. that there was someone there who was very integral to that corrupt decision. And that person, someone told me, saw me with the Psymposia gear and looked very concerned. Javier Munes Munz. Yeah. He was a scowler. And he's someone who was like he's one of these revolving door types, right? Cuz wasn't he at the FDA before and then went into the psychedelic industry and is now kind of the go-between there.

[15:51] Yeah. I recall I forget what he was before. Oh, wait. He went from FDA to LIOS. Is that what it is? Yeah. And now Brazilian I think. So So I mean that's very classic for the whole pharmaceutical industry that there's people you know that work at FDA from industry go back to industry and then help open doors. Yeah. And we've talked about it specifically in relation to the psychedelic field that it's like it's even accelerated. Like it's before there's even really an industry. There's already a revolving door beginning to happen for people coming from the government into positions to lobby the government to create an industry. It's been in place for a while. Maps was leaning on one of the former I'm blanking on his name right now, but he was there basically the liaison to FDA Tom Lren.

[16:39] While you were there, was there any people that you were either excited to hear speak, surprised to hear speak, or was there any bombshells there while you were there, or was it kind of underwhelming overall? I mean, it was there was a lot of very like vapid kind of from my perspective like very like boring cheerleading. A lot of people used it as their like 10 minutes of or two minutes of fame to like to rep their companies or their you know AI therapy initiatives and things like that. So it was very yeah investor kind of conferencey as we said in that initial statement. So I mean it was interesting to hear. I appreciated Eddie Jacobs from Hopkins in bioeththics had presented you know a cautionary note.

[17:28] There was some nuance for sure represented that this you know there are things to be concerned about and you know keeping an eye on building systems to address that kind of thing. But for the most part it was very like you know we can't wait for this. We must push this through. this works, the clinicians don't get burnt out because it's so effective. Like a bunch of hype and propaganda essentially. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think to kind of illustrate the speakers that were there, I put together this little cut of people introducing themselves and their financial interests. And I thought that might be an interesting thing to watch through just to provide an idea of the kind of people that were speaking at this hearing. And I don't mean to make it seem like this was every speaker.

[18:13] I want to be clear before I present this that this is not all the speakers at the event necessarily, but I do think it provides an insightful picture of the kind of financial interests on display at this conference here. So I'll play that really quick. I'm Jennese Hersburg, co-founder of Sage Integrative Health, Alchemy Community Therapy Center, and the Psychedelic Therapy Alliance. I have financial interest in psychedelic therapy training and clinical care. Through our charitable foundation, my husband and I invest in psychedelic related companies. I am Dr. Angela Fischer, the founder of Bionic Bloom, Sacred Bloom, and Sacred Bloom College of Hearing Healing Arts. I do have financial interest in psychedelics clinical services and facilitate our education. We're an independent ketamine clinic in New Orleans and our goal is to expand access to new psychedelic medicines as they become approved.

[19:05] I have a mental health and ketamine clinic in Arizona. My nonprofit, East West Global Healing, which is doing research, receives its money from private family foundations committed to the advancement of psychedelic work. I'm the founder and CEO of Saba Collective, building training and credentiing infrastructure for psychedelic therapies. I'm Rhonda D. Sanchez, founder of Silutions, Colorado's first licensed psilocybin cultivator and manufacturer. Founder and CEO of Azna Biosciences in Denver, Colorado. We have five botanical drug programs moving through the FDA pathway. I'm the founder and CEO of Conscious Physicians Psychedelics Academy, training healthcare professionals to heal themselves so they can heal the community.

[19:51] Founder and CEO of Psychedelic Medicine Coalition, the only Washington DC based organization focused on federal policy and the responsible integration of psychedelic medicine. I am a founder and CEO of Research Lambda. We build real world evidence standards and AI based solutions that accelerate clinical research. My name is Justice League. I'm founder and inventor of therapod. We're developing enriched environments informed by real-time biometrics in support of psychedelic medicine. Good morning. My name is Nicholas Kades. I'm the CEO of Pharmala Biotech. We're a publicly traded company in Canada. Before anything else, my conflicts. Phmala manufactures GMP grade MDMA which we supply to clinical trials and patients. We've supplied US government funded clinical research including VA and DHA. Everything I'm about to say advantages my business.

[20:37] Retired from Johnson and Johnson Medtech. Currently a solution strategist for Telos 6, a CRO and principal at Pacific Medical Device Consulting. I am also an early stage in early stage development of methods pairing psychedelics with specialized training for colear implants. Good afternoon. Simeon Schnapper, managing partner of JLS, a venture capital fund investing in psychedelic medicine and brain health. First disclosures. It would take me longer than my two minutes to disclose every way I embedded by investment, by my foundation's grants, by the boards I sit on. So, for the record, please assume all of them. So, you can see there was a whole lot of financial interest at play in these hearings.

[21:23] I think Simeon Schnapper is maybe the best example of what was going on there. He has been around the space for a long time. I first came across him at one of the early Micro Dose conferences, the conference before the one we were banned at. It was like their first annual one produced like through JLS and the Conscious Fund. And he was just this kind of random dude who showed up on every panel all of a sudden who I'd never seen in my life but had sort of embedded himself through his money in the space through his investments and all of this and was then getting to talk to people like Robin Carheart Harris and all of these people on panels at that that initial micro do conference. Yeah, he's very involved in a lot of things at a high level for sure.

[22:10] He spoke to me briefly there and had listened to my I have a interview with I was on William Leonard Bard's podcast. I don't think it's out publicly yet but maybe on his Patreon and we just talked like literature poetic psychedelic poetics there and so he said he appreciated that. not gonna get all the industry stuff, but some of those, like you said, were it did feel like it was the first time I was seeing some of these people at the hearing, and it really did strike me as applying to speak at these hearings to be like the two minutes of fame, like, hey, I'm doing something psychedelic, too. Hey, I'm showing up here. It's like a pitch, you know, like to get your name, the name of your company, what you're doing out there when everyone's paying attention, right? Or at least the industry people were paying attention.

[22:58] It sounds a lot like just kind of a pitch thing. I had a friend there, Zayn, who said, "Everyone seemed to have personal and financial interests behind their statements, even if they said they didn't." And lots of people who run training programs were trying to promote their psychedelic training program as the one that is doing it best, which was pretty clear. I mean, I sat through it on YouTube and it was a it was like a, you know, pitching for Shark Tank or something, except that there's no downside. I mean, this is what the whole government is like now. I mean, it's always been like this, you know, kind of under the radar. It's just very explicit now that this is what it is. The whole Trump administration is pay to play. Yeah. Even like I spoke to a commentator in this of the psychedelic industry who was saying that some people were, you know, very critical of the fact that the industry was so represented and it was being called a public hearing. like this wasn't just like the public's perspective.

[23:56] It was mostly industry perspective. I think ind it's fine to have industry represented. I don't have an issue with that. But for it to be kind of I don't know if it was the m it's the majority. There's different aspects of the industry that were there and I don't even know how it happens that like representatives from mind bloom and compass pathways are there. Like compasses has a pending like application. What are they doing in speaking there? I just don't get it. Everybody there, maybe you can bring up that tweet, Russ, but so my initial reaction was I was listening at like I don't know two 2x speed. I fell asleep at one point and but it was overwhelmingly like pro just in like it had the it kind of had the vibes of something.

[24:47] It was like cheap. It was really cheap like it felt like it was selling like one of those red hair replacement like red light hair replacement therapy kind of conference. It had like real infomercial vibes, right? Like [laughter] real cheap infomercial vibes like there was no integrity to the to it really except make maybe a few comments. But it was it felt like very a very fabricated orchestrated you know thing like you said nay to check a box. It was a propaganda event. It was very boring. This was my I saw this tweet afterwards from this guy Anthony Martinelli. So he said the FDA's first public hearing dedicated to psychedelic therapies just concluded after 81 speakers including dozens of medical and mental health professionals.

[25:36] Over 90 90% spoke in favor of psychedelic therapies with only a handful expressing opposition or significant reservations. Who was the only one expressing opposition? Was it Sabbitt? Yeah. Well, he was definitely one of them, which the only one I noticed. He was the He's the only one I noticed and he's actually one of the maybe the only one I noticed saying that he has no financial disclosures as well. Yeah. So, Kevin Savit is the president and CEO of SAM, which is Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which is essentially an anti-marijuana group and kind of wrapped in anti- big marijuana. And I think he's made good points on on psychedelics. We disagree on a lot of things though. Yeah, he's a prohibitionist and you I met him at when I was on the Dr.

[26:23] Phil show in LA. He was like kind of the critical voice there and he was very supportive of what I said on that show where which is essentially that the hype is more dangerous than the drugs that that people are being kind of misrepresented about the actual risk possibility with psychedelics and that that the hype narrative is not kind of educating people about what they're what they need to expect. He's a significant figure and like that prohibition influence is like an important thing to be aware of and also to distance ourselves from. It's interesting. It's something I wanted to just like touch on briefly because a lot of people there are a range of differences among the critical perspectives on the psychedelic industry.

[27:09] So we are not prohibitionists. We have a nuanced critique that some of the ways that this industry is getting ruled out is unnecessarily putting people at risk of harm. That does not mean that we are in favor of prohibition. We are anti- prohibition [laughter] of drugs, believe in drug decriminalization, etc. But a lot of people do lump us in with full prohibitionists. Yeah. the kind of Sabbath and the Sabbaths of the prohibitionist space will occasionally pick up and endorse the critiques of the space, but it's more of like an exploitative opportunistic grasping of these concepts in favor of kind of their prohibitionist agenda as opposed to what we're shooting for here. Mike, you had mentioned kind of this pitching of training programs and pitching of like my program is the best program and all of this stuff.

[28:03] And there were a few of the speakers comments that we wanted to watch and break down in more detail. And one of those was Jennese Herzburg who was a trainer and consultant on the lycose therapeutics trials is the co-founder of the psychedelic therapy alliance and a co-founder and executive director of sage integrative health which is a mental health and wellness provider that does ketamine therapy and I believe is looking to roll out psychedelic therapies when they are available to the public. Thank you. I'm Jennese Herszburg, co-founder of Sage Integrative Health, Alchemy Community Therapy Center, and the Psychedelic Therapy Alliance. I have financial interests in psychedelic therapy training and clinical care.

[28:52] I'm speaking on behalf of the leadership of the Psychedelic Therapy Alliance, a professional association of experienced psychedelic therapists, researchers, trainers, and supervisors who have collectively delivered tens of thousands of hours of psychedelic assisted therapy in clinical trials and real world practice. I'd like to make three points. First, our collective experience tells us that a trained, skilled therapist or guide is essential to safe and effective psychedelic therapy. were concerned about the movement towards removing the therapist from treatment. Recent research has relabeled therapists as dosing session monitors. Yet, they are required to be licensed clinicians and rely on their therapeutic training. And I think we can pause it really quick just to comment on her first point there.

[29:37] Nay, you mentioned something in chat as we were watching. Yeah. Yeah. So, she mentioned the tens of thousands of hours of collective experience and that's a tell that this group has mostly extensive experience in the underground because there were not enough clinical trials for that many hours to be in the clinical trial context which tracks with a lot else that we know about Jennese Horsesburg and her kind of general advocacy for this underground therapy model. Yeah. Which she'll get into a little bit further as the clip continues here. therapists as dosing session monitors. Yet, they are required to be licensed clinicians and rely on their therapeutic training. We urge the FDA to proceed with caution before allowing these medicines to be dispensed without a competent guide present.

[30:25] Second, therapeutic touch must remain available to those who need it. Not everyone requires touch, but for some, it's foundational to healing. We're appalled by the ethical violations and sexual misconduct by several prominent psychedelic therapists, including one in MAPS phase 2 research, and we share the concern that this could recur as the field grows. At the same time, we don't believe it's ethical to categorically deny a client's request for a hand to hold while processing trauma. In these vulnerable states, refusing all physical comfort can be experienced as abandonment. Do we want to comment on that? I know when we were watching this hearing, you mentioned that that was one of the only things that the panel of FDA specialists reacted to from the speakers.

[31:11] Yeah. So the at the front of the room there was a long table with a bunch of people from FDA, but also representatives from other federal agencies were also there. In that section she was just talking about where she described the abuse that occurred during phase 2. the table was that it was the only time I saw during the whole hearing where the people at the table were emphatically nodding along about how unacceptable the phase 2 abuse was. And I just find this whole situation with Jennese egregious because it is recuperating our critique in order to say that there must be the type of touch that her group is advocating for, which we have extensively shown is the mechanism by which that abuse happened.

[32:05] And so it's making it seem like they are the safe and ethical qualified therapists when actually they are insisting on maintaining the sorts of telepathic connection through touch and exacerbating people's amplifying people's traumatic experiences through touch in their writings. Yeah, it's notable that she specifies handholding because that's the one thing that they all consistently go back to when they discuss this in public is, oh, we shouldn't be denying the right of or we shouldn't be denying the experience of holding a client's hand while they're under these therapies. And that was kind of the same argument that was being made at the same time the abuse was happening.

[32:52] And it's like when you read what is actually allowed and when you read what they're actually attempting to put into practice, it's simply not just handholding as they like to go back to in public. Yeah. And to reiterate, I mean, there has been no reckoning with the types of touch that they have long been advocating for. And so to me, they are completely disqualified to be people who are making a case for a specific type of touch being allowed in these contexts. And she mentions it as like, oh, these patients can assume abandonment. They can make it feels like they're being abandoned during these therapies. But as far as I'm aware, there's not evidence at all about any no research has been done on how much people want touch during these, you know, therapies.

[33:37] There there have been some like qualitative interview like feedback from people who have been through the trials but they have already been primed with people like that saying you'll be abandoned you'll feel abandoned if you're not given like touch in this way and this is the rationale so it's not any kind of meaningful research right yeah just to point this is what they tell the public is the handholding thing and during the phase that the Richardson in and dy Donna Dryer abuse with Megan Buson, the phase 2 abuse, the phase 2 abuse. One of the reasons that that was never pointed out or it was never flagged about everything I'm not going to describe the whole video, but every everything that was going on in that video like that was seen as sort of normal within their practice.

[34:31] That wasn't seen as abusive at all. Right. So like this is what they were doing. This is a practice that has been normalized. Spooning, gagging, pressuring. What was that? Restraining. Yeah. These techniques were normalized within the underground and specifically within the MAPS kind of network of underground therapists and then they were, you know, blown up with the New York Magazine release of all that. And now it is. Yeah. that's just been recuperated and I thought that like the recuperation was kind of like distributed throughout a lot of speakers here. There was some sort of nod to the risk or we're going to take the risk a little bit more seriously.

[35:18] I think it was generally feel like plausible deniability type thing sort of I don't think many of them take this seriously at all. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same vibe that Jennese brought. We were appalled by this abuse and yet we were also the trainers in this trial and we think that touch should still exist. I'm always sort of baffled by the solution that they come up with which is that touch is integral to the therapy and needs to remain an option as opposed to touch should be something that's discussed in the informed consent process and discussed upfront with patients. that just like in most other psychological medical settings is not going to be utilized because there can be crossing of boundaries and that's something that's generally understood in like a psychotherapy con like you're not going to go to talk therapy and have your therapist like rubbing your shoulders and stuff like that.

[36:16] It's like a very common thing and to me it seems like an obvious solution that the therapist before any kind of tripping starts just says we have a responsibility not to cross your boundaries and to respect your personal space and a professional boundary of our own to maintain. There is no abandonment happening here and we don't want you to understand it that way in the midst of a trip or anything. we just have to be upfront about this kind of stuff in order to treat you properly in this professional setting. Well, and I think part of the issue here is that they're not being forthcoming about their true beliefs. Like this community of practice believes that they are healing people through their own like love and their own personal spiritual evolution.

[37:04] So touch is a vehicle for that spiritual loving transmission. It's not just like this is a nurse at your bedside who's trying to comfort you. And the fact that they're not admitting that publicly when they do in their writings and their podcast conversations is another red flag around this. I mean they even create graphics to explain the importance of this kind of touch and this kind of therapeutic relationship. I know you had singled out a graphic from one of Genese's chapters in what was the book it was integral psychedelic therapy and we should probably say a quick word about that because it was such a huge part of our you know perspective you know my perspective at when I presented to the FDA advisory committee back in 2024 specifically because they included a chapter in that anthology by Veronica Gold where Gold was advocating for the exact abusive methodology that led to the

[38:04] Phase 2 abuse describing, you know, a patient who was screaming out in distress and saying, you know, no. And then the meanwhile, the therapist is still applying pressure, reenacting the assault despite what the patient is verbalizing. That was really concerning. That was published in that book. And then Jennese has her own chapter in there that's also equally concerning in different ways. So, we'll take a quick look here before we get back to the video of some of the text from this chapter. I'm just going to share my screen here. So, we just wanted to look at some of the text from this and we can read through it. She specifically gets into things like the relational field and things like that. And if you want to get a better picture of what some of the mainstream psychedelic therapists are talking about when they discuss these things, we put out a great talk by Niche on sort of psychedelic telepathy in these therapy contexts.

[39:00] You can check that out for more detailed explanation of some of this stuff. But Nishay, can you give us a quick rundown of what they mean by a relational field? Yeah. Well, and what's so challenging about text like this is that there's so many metaphors and like weird references that it can be hard. What? No, I'm just laughing at the text what you're talking about. I thought it was a typo instead of each plant. I didn't realize she was going to go that hardcore into the metaphor intending. Yeah. No. And it's like some of this when we first read this before the eyes committee meeting I was sharing like I'm like disbelieving notes from it to our group chat and it's almost like they are wearing a like a VR AR headset and they're looking at their patients and they believe that they can like scan intuitively what it is that's going on, what's emerging from their transpersonal ancestral traumas.

[40:00] Things from like other spiritual dimensions and then they are like pruning and metabolizing the trauma and doing all of this like multi-dimensional stuff when they're from my perspective this is all just a complicated culty belief system that they have built up in their heads like it's essentially premised on telepathy the idea that you can take a lot of drugs yourself especially under the initiatory oversight of a more expensive or a more experienced therapist who has themselves taken a lot of drugs and then cultivate this spiritual capacity to attune to the inner experience of your client. And so they're describing that here.

[40:45] Yeah. For any audio listeners, the text we're looking at here from Genesis chapter begins with the therapist. The therapist's quote unquote tending of the relational field is analogous to tending a garden. First, we attune to the condition and needs of each plant by taking its aesthetic presentation, the qualities present in the soil, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit by opening our hearts to their displays of image, vibrancy, fragrant einations, and any other communications. We might enter a state of embodied presence and notice how we feel as we take the plant in. We can then respond to the needs and communications we perceive by trimming away dead leaves, watering, offering nourishment, and providing appropriate environmental conditions, and harvesting the fruit.

[41:33] There's a lot of bananas stuff in here that I feel like is worth like talking about. Do we want to kind of popcorn it? So, I read the first one. Somebody else jump in on the second, then we'll just kind of go around the circle. I'll do it. Even though reading this [expletive] gives me bad feelings. I mean during the like in the leadup to like FDA and after the 2024 FDA and then in like the year afterwards we where we were writing the psychedelic syndicate. We would just go through so many of their writings and I think a lot of people who were supportive of psychedelic therapy I would put the number extremely high have never read the primary like source materials at all. If they do, some of them do and they just like it glazes over because it's so like it's so bizarre that they're they don't really take it seriously.

[42:26] Yeah. For the Yeah. I think most people have actually never read like the writings of the Midhoffers or like the people who are really central to like evangelizing, you know, the psychedelic gospel according to maps like never read what they're actually saying. And so much of it is just like [expletive] crazy [expletive] All right, so I'll read this one. Likewise, the therapist tends the relational field through receptivity and responsiveness to the aesthetics of the emergent expressions of the therapist client encounter. The relational field is perceptible through mindful observation of the client and therapist's emotional experience and expression, somatic sensations, revery, thought processes, flow of subtle energies and non-verbal cues, I.e.

[43:18] Facial expressions, gaze, skin tone, subtle movements, nervous ticks, etc. Can I just can we stop there for a second? I mean that list it's like they believe that they have developed the capacity to like read what's coming up inside their own bodies like their own vibes about things and to interpret the significance of body language of strangers whose backgrounds they do not know well and it's just a completely bananas pseudoscientific assumption to make. It's like this DMT state mixed with some matrix state. And now and they're like the scanner and this [expletive] going on and they're like in the they're now in the relational field [laughter] and they're in the process of attuning to this [expletive] hyperdimensional scanner thing and they're supposed [laughter] to like see everything that's coming up and simultaneously through their own internal feelings be able to like identify like disruptions in the force.

[44:18] And then they're like going to like and then they gobble up they metab metabolize the trauma they like gobble it metaphysically. Yeah. Yeah. Skin tone is a wild addition to that list to me. It's like are they talking about like if they get flushed or something or are they like [laughter] I'm just imagining cyanotic they're like turning blue for some reason or I don't know. I'll continue. Sensitive attention to the aesthetics of the co-created field enables the therapist to cultiv cultivate empathic attunement, modulate effective exchanges and levels of arousal, support the containment and metabolization of trauma related affect and identify and attend to emergent transfer transference reactions and enactments.

[45:05] This is really hard [expletive] to read. And I It's like it's not possible for a human to be able to make the amount of calculations in the moment that this paragraph like actually says there's like [laughter] [expletive] a thousand variables here in like concepts that are not existent in reality other than the reality of their own minds. They believe that they can they believe that they are superheroes who are here to like liberate humanity. Yeah. Well, and they once again recuperate the language that is actually important in criticizing them in my opinion, which is this what they say at the end here, attend to emergent transference reactions, which just speaking to transference in like a medical professional context. That's like transference and counter transference is like you know what either what the patient brings to the session and projects onto the therapist or what the therapist brings to the session projects onto the patient.

[46:02] And that's literally what they're describing here, right? Which is the therapist bringing their intuition into the session to interpret the client and they're saying they're attending to that which is just obviously not true to me by what they're writing. they're actually doing, right? Well, it's usually used in the sense of like romantic feeling, I feel like. I'm sure that's not the general meaning, but or parental feelings or bad experience with your father. You project that on your male therapist or vice versa or you had a child that died by suicide or some, you know, those things that you bring to the session. Yeah. Well, that that's part of it and that is exactly Russ. You're right that they build in the language that would make it sound like they're attentive to power dynamics and that sort of thing, but they build also in a loophole for themselves, which is that they say that they have like part of that cultivated spiritual capacity is also the capacity to discern the difference between like what's coming up

[47:03] For them and what's part of the relational field in the process and what's coming up for the other person. like they believe that they can make those distinctions when clearly they can't based on these descriptions. As you're saying, it's actually they've hard back their transference assumptions so far that they have realized the pure intuition for some reason to interpret the patients inner workings. It's not it's definitely not their own transference at play there, but it's like that requires a level of belief in pure intuition that I think is irresponsible to bring into these settings. Counter to all of the research on intuition and bias and that kind of thing. The way that we can mistake our own judgments for, you know, coming from the outside over and over again.

[47:51] Yeah, there's so many reasons to be concerned about this belief system in psychedelic therapy. Yeah. And the word enactments scares me because those are the traumatic reenactments. Exactly. That's so they're attending to these emerging transference reactions and enactments and then they enact them, you know. Yeah. Knowing the appropriate way to respond, which in many cases under this kind of graphy and influenced therapy framework is amplifying the distress by engaging as the perpetrator in order to purge the trauma. Are you going to read Are you going to read that paragraph that I left off? I've been waiting for I've been waiting for it. Okay. At onement in the therapeutic diad is contingent on the therapist's ability to cultivate deep emotional interconnectedness.

[48:42] This the experience of at onement is similar to the phenomenon of resonance between musical instruments. And then goes on to say consider a tuning fork used to tune a piano. Striking the fork against a solid surface will set it vibrating at a specific frequency producing a reference pitch. The relevant string on a piano can then be adjusted, tightened or loosened so that the string resonates at the same frequency so that the pitches match. In fact, if the vibrating fork is to put in is put in proximity with the tuned string, this will then begin to vibrate with the same frequency, the two are said to be in resonance. So drawing a parallel to the psychotherapy process, Camry adds that the resonance is a form of attunement among elements or agents in a field which in turn amplifies the field's emergent properties.

[49:27] These properties include synchronicity, emotionally resonant counter and transference, empathic revery, concordant sematic experience, co-regulation, telepathic thoughts, and other subtle field phenomena. They literally admit it. How does this is like these several paragraphs are like the definition of pseudocience 100%. I actually assigned this to my students to when I was teaching pseudocience. So, we kind of we walked through it. This is exactly why niche and we have come to the conclusion that this is a therapy cult because it is these beliefs are like solidified and exported to the entire field and it's not that the people who are practicing this they might not even like realize they might not even realize what it is that they're internalizing or practicing like the origins of it.

[50:24] But yeah, I don't know. Something that's bugging me about it too is how they keep using this language of like this relational like this two-way street. It's this diad, but then are very explicit about how the therapist is the garden tender. It like there's a super explicit power dynamic that the therapist is the one that knows how to like read your mind. Literally, it's like such beyond [expletive] hubris. I have a plant science background. Like I actually studied plant science like to even let's just go with this. Let's just go with this metaphor. To think that you as like a gardener or a gardener like can control all of the variables is just that's hubris alone.

[51:09] You can control some of the settings of how much you water at yeah looking at the plants observing the plants. you're not going to there's a lot of variables that you're just not going to be able to control for at all. To think that you're the [expletive] master who's going to be able to like have a perfect harvest or not have a certain type of bug or something like that is is is absurd. Then there's that the tuning fork metaphor as well is bizarre because just because you can have sympathetic resonance happening in a physical object in the cast string does not mean that you can as a therapist refine this tool of your intuition to accurately resonate in a way that makes your telepathic sense a valid read of what's going on for your patient.

[52:01] And the problem though is that because these communities are initiated in the underground, you can have very persuasive experiences that then you're given this interpret interpretive lens around it and then people can strongly believe it. So a lot of these people I mean they I they strongly believe it because that's how cults work. It's like a self-encclosed ideological system that that provides explanations for everything in a way that doesn't allow you to see other ways of looking at the situation. And that's extremely dangerous for the vulnerable people that are seeking out psychedelic therapy. And these people, these underground therapists are not the ones who should be determining any kinds of guidelines around therapeutic practice. Yeah. I just don't know what like a tuning fork or gardening has anything to do with giving like in a doctor patient setting like or therapeutic setting giving a person drugs for a trauma where like other than

[53:03] A metaphor because it sounded good to you what does this have to do with [expletive] anything? I don't get it. I think that's the metaphor itself is is a tool to be more convincing. It's the use of story, right? Like to be Yeah, that's the trick. That's the trick. Yeah. Maybe we want to jump back in and wrap some of this up here. So, we just finished this paragraph here. It goes on, as psychedelic medicines generate an upwelling of the client's unconscious processes, the vibrations of these literally use the word vibrations is wild to me. The vibrations of these expressions saturate the shared space of the relational field with a broad range of empathetic possibilities. The amplification of unformulated affect evoked by psychedelic medicines heightens the probability that these will affect the therapist's inner experience.

[53:56] When these frequencies are empathetically met by the psychedelic therapist's open and receptive mind, a strong form of intersubjective resonance and attunement between client and therapist takes shape and a highly dynamic relational field emerges. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the like transference and transference stuff, right? Like they're just putting a different spin on this experience to say it good actually. Yeah. Yeah. that their counter transference is like an accurate like read. [laughter] They're beyond counter transference is all they're saying. And we'll just finish it. This is the last paragraph we have. In relational psychedelic therapy, the therapist aims to use their resonant count resonant [laughter] counter transference feelings.

[54:42] The therapist aims to use their resonant counter transference feelings, sematic and energetic experiences, unbidden rearies, and intuitive perceptions to join the client in deep emotional connectedness. Carefully tending the relational field gives the therapist access to a multi-dimensional framework and approach for helping the client contain, metabolize and understand the raw emotional intensity and meaningful implications embedded in the psychedelic visions in their psychedelic visions unformulated emotional and sematic experiences unconscious interpersonal dynamics and verbal expressions. This is why I mean this book integral psychedelic therapy is one of the most important books to understand the psychedelic renaissance because this is where the mask comes off and they actually describe what it is they do and what they believe and it's so overt.

[55:35] It's everything that we've been saying that they do because we only said it upon researching this for years and piecing everything together. And just one other point that I'll make that I mentioned as well in the telepathy talk on our channel is that this is at the expense of anyone who's not in their inroup most of all. So people who have like differences socioeconomic you know backgrounds that are more from poverty people who are not in this kind of new age spiritual belief system other cultures. If your vibe check of someone is an accurate read of what's going on for them, it's a vector for you to project your own biased assumptions and feel like that's a actual readout of something wrong with the other person when it's just you being an [expletive] Right.

[56:26] Right. And [laughter] if as like really interested in reading primary material here and in instead of just like assuming what psychedelic therapy is, I would really recommend their paper, the conceptual framework for the therapeutic approach used in phase three trials of MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD. It's essentially what we just read like several hundred times. it just it's just over and over and over again like these concepts, but it's more euphemistic than this. So, it's helpful to read this kind of like kind of look at their more overt examples because that chapter was still them talking to the FDA. And so they kind of loosely describe some stuff that integral psychedelic therapy provides more concerning details about, but it just shows how much this was the model that they were building out the MDMA clinical trials to promote.

[57:24] And that was actually from Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS. His whole mission was not just about MDMA. It was in order to, you know, get this therapy model out to the masses. Yeah. Yeah. And when we talk about the influence of integral psychedelic therapy, it's not like this was just some random book that came out like we said this was an essay by Jennese who we were watching speak at the FDA hearings and who was a trainer for the LOS trials. It also involved a number of other trainers for the Lake Coast trials writing essays on their techniques and things like that and I believe had editorial leadership from people leading the Lake Coast maps trials. Is that correct? Yeah. So she was Jennese was a trainer for the other therapists.

[58:12] There were a bunch of people involved who were maps connected and in some way and then the endorsements on the book came from like Rick Doblin and Michael Mhoer who did the maps therapy model protocol and just as a final note about like how these dynamics like harm people because this is very common in all kinds of cults whereas like the cult leader or people who are high up in the cult that have this spiritual connection to a level of reality that is more true than what other people are able to access. Any kind of disagreement with that truth holder who's connected to the transpersonal field is a sign of a problem in the person. And there's not like a so it's just such a dangerous model to teach people because it gives the tools to really [expletive] with people and like to blame them for anything that the pure person connected to spirituality is not vibing with in

[59:13] The moment. So maybe as the last thing we could just show that picture from this chapter as a kind of an indication of that. Yeah, they've gone so far as to illustrate these concepts that we were just discussing. So for our video watchers here, this is the inside of the relational field. You've got the transpersonal field on the very outside working your way into the cultural field setting. And then the relational field that's the conscious consciousness and communication interacting with one of one another and the unconscious and communication interacting with one another. There the therapist is represented by a chalice and the client is represented by like a vase or a water holder pouring out material that would go into the chalice. Yeah.

[59:58] And so it's like the immediate setting of the session surrounded by the cultural field and then the broader transpersonal field and they're porous all of those levels. So it's like the transpersonal field is able to communicate through the cultural field, the setting and like the intuition of the therapist of the relational field in that dosing session. Is this sort of like the mind meld or the at onement in the center where they're like one and the same or into like the same? There's like a vortex in the middle. Do you see that? It's like spinning together. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is like the main reason why MAPS has, you know, grasped so hard and advocated so much for the therapy to be included in all of this. It's not just about the and obviously like on the surface they say, yeah, the treatment is going to be much more effective with the therapy, but it's not just about that.

[1:00:51] There's another level that it's not just about the drug. It's about ex them exporting their like ideology, their cultic view, their model out into the world, you know, and just to we've touched on this before, but it just I think there's more context for it now that we've talked this through. So this was the therapists talking in like kind of this association that underground group of therapists talking to Jules Evans and the quote from ecstatic integration says the community of maths therapists is still reeling from the FDA rejection. We went in with so much trust and excitement. Now we feel like paras we were all traumatized by what happened and by Psymposia's mission against us and I don't think we've recovered.

[1:01:37] Resilient has been strangely hostile to therapists who worked on the trials. They say they'll only work with academic centers and they want to minimize the psychotherapy component like the other drug companies. So these underground therapists are now saying this is an issue with like the corporatization and money seeeking like side of the field kind of wanting to cut costs. But there's a huge component of this that smart money quote unquote doesn't want to be involved with these cultists anymore. It's like we alerted the public to the fact that this was a cult and now the cultists are, you know, upset about having lost their power. Any competent pharmaceutical company with a legal team understands that that what we just read is [expletive] nonsense. Gibberish nonsense.

[1:02:24] And it represents like it's a huge liability. It will probably be submitted to a court one day 100%. Like just a little tangent here, but if anybody like watched the Lindsay Clansancy trial, there was a lot of interesting testimony from mental health pro healthcare providers and stuff like that and experts. The case was essentially like a battle of experts between one another when I was watching. I was saying I was shooting some messages on like our chat. It's like I can see in the future where some type of psychedelic therapy like this goes haywire and that person is on the stand like testifying to like the practices that they did and oh my god like any even somewhat competent lawyer is going to be able to just dismantle like their theory of change here.

[1:03:19] Yeah. You mean the their at oneness didn't go over correctly? And there's no scientific basis for any of these claims or most of these claims. They're nonsense. I don't I can't say it in any other way. Like these are ideas that popped into these people's brains. They were reinforced because they were an echo chamber and they have formalized into some practice. This is just a religious practice. This is just like and it's become like some orthodox dogmatic like view that they have of this is what happens when you take psychedelics and we do our we wave our arms over you. It's [laughter] it's and the thing is yeah the drug might actually be having positive effects underneath all that but this isn't real. It's not because the therapist is telepathic right?

[1:04:07] Imagine that like imagine that court scene. It's like I was tending your honor. But I was tending the relational field with my telepathy. Like it's really I was tuning I was in tuning like a gardener or a guitar player does with their band mates. Yeah. Well, and to the point of the echo chamber. Oh, sorry Norman, you got something? I was going to say it just makes me like upset like reading these paragraphs and it was like people came at us for just exposing this [expletive] They have never even read this. I guarantee most of our critics have never even read the primary source materials that like the practitioners themselves. It's either they know it and believe it or they've never been exposed to it.

[1:04:53] Like I've said that a lot. I was the first person in my research to find out as much about what they were actually doing who didn't believe it already. The investors in Lose, my belief, this is my belief, the investors in Lost that they ended up bringing in had no idea what they were investing in. They had no idea that this was it was like this kind of Scientology type woo that company that they were investing in because this is so hard to wrap your mind around if you haven't like spent a lot of time with what they're actually doing. And so they invested in they bought the [expletive] that Rick was selling them. And it on one level it makes sense.

[1:05:39] Yeah. The world is in a mental health crisis like this, you know, the data look good, blah blah blah, but yeah, let's invest in it. Seems like the time is now, right? And they get it and it blows up in their face and they're like, "What the [expletive] was this?" And so now they've gone back and they've now done due diligence. I'm assuming like some kind of halfass like retroactive due diligence that they that they've done. And you know, I think that comment that you read, Niche, is is interesting because it shows that I'm assuming that due diligence that they I don't even want to call it due diligence. It's not due diligence. It's like it's not due diligence after like you didn't audit it properly, right? But I'm assuming that they've now like looked back at the practices and the people who were doing this and like we want no part of that.

[1:06:30] I don't know if that's exactly true. Yeah. I don't know if it's true. I don't have like, you know, I'm not a fly on the wall of their negotiations and whatnot that's going on, but I can't imagine that any like legal team or any competent business person is is going to like endorse what was going on, right? And not only this, it's what's wild about all of this to me is it's like the same people who are pushing these views, they're the same people who were like compiling the data, you know, it's like it's not just Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. And this is what like the former employees who were our sources were telling us, you know, it's like these were the people who were responsible for like rapidly trying to scale up like a professional side of the company, you know, data safety, safety, all these other things, the whole commercialization process.

[1:07:28] Yeah. Which is complicated and it requires serious people. This is not a serious person, you know. No. [laughter] And to the point that you made earlier about echo chambers, Nishay shared a clip earlier today from a Psychedelics Today interview with Genesee that I think is notable as notable towards what we've been talking about here, which was that a lot of these kind of psychedelic wellness clinics that were taking off in I believe the California area were the Bay Area. Yeah, the kind of Bay Area were all collaborating with one another and all sort of sharing best practices when they were taking off the ground. So, I'll just play that real quick. Then, so, you know, that was a big part of what I see as my own training was actually with colleagues.

[1:08:19] We kind of early on there were a group of different ketamine assisted therapy clinics who we were all launching at the same time Sage and Polaris and healing realms and teos all clinics in the Bay Area. We were supported by Raquel Bennett of Korea who had trained us all. And so we came together and had a consultation group and also a practice group and started to kind of practice using these medicines in kind of novel ways and you know understanding better how to sit with folks before stepping into actually doing the work. And I'm very passionate about this personally that you really should only be holding space and guiding people in realms that you know yourself. And I realize that that's complicated.

[1:09:04] I realize that you know there some people have medical reasons for not being able to you know delve into certain realms or explore certain medicines and there are also many many ways to access altered states of consciousness. So just wanted to share that to show that the these are at least two clinics that we've talked about pretty problematic practices with before. between what Jennese Hersburg has described as her foundational kind of beliefs behind this therapy and her work with Sage and then Veronica Gold who was sort of spotlighted in Nishay's M MDMMA hearing commentary as problematic practices also laid out in integral psychedelic therapy through Polaris and Harvey Schwarz who's who works with Veronica Gold who's at Polaris has talked about how these types of networks amongst the different underground therapy school groups are have encouraged each other to believe that they have extra sensory powers of perception.

[1:10:04] So there's this quote where he says, "I've seen this happen on I've seen this happen on retreats where therapists who had previously been more nontranspersonal, so that spiritual level of reality actually open up to this more intuitive gift or intuitive ability they have. And then they start going through a big identity crisis around like well what if I go back and tell my colleagues mainstream therapist colleagues back home that I'm you know hearing ancestral voices or you know picking up things which means telepathically. And so I think there's a lot of support needed for therapists who are going through the transformation to become psychedelic therapists. So he's talking about this type of a network that she just described. This is like to shepherd and encourage people to go in with their own delusions that they've had about the drug space, right?

[1:10:55] Like you do you know this has happened to me before. You're tripping. You're with someone and you have like it feels like a mind meld or you have a lot of what I would say in a normal rational sober state are they're hallucinations. They are delusions. You should, in my opinion, you when you kind of come to and you come back and you integrate that, you should treat that like altered state with a lot of [expletive] suspicion, right? What it seems like he's doing there and what you read, Niche, is that would be like a friend of yours encouraging you to go deeper into those hallucinations or the yes, you actually were there like that that is the true one state. go go deeper in with that and then you eventually convince yourself and I think you've pointed this out you can correct me if I'm wrong here nay but essentially in what's the ventriloquist example with facil oh wait what

[1:11:56] With yeah exactly with facilitated communication like convincing yourself you know in your ability now to act as a vessel for their communications totally I mean it's like a sickopanic chatbot saying like it's not psychosis, you're actually enlightened. And you know, now there it's like and there there are cases that we know of where it's like that's not just amongst therapists treating each other, it's also how some of them communicate with their clients. Yeah, I think Jennese has given us a lot to think about in her two-minute talk even. So maybe we can wrap that up. I think there's about 30 seconds left of her clip and then I think we can I think we can jump into Justice Justice League thing. I don't think we'll have quite as much to say about his, but I think it's interesting to go over if we have time.

[1:12:43] I think we stopped her testimony right about here, so we'll play it. I think she was just getting around to her third point. Rather than ban touch outright, we recommend a certifying body requiring every guide to complete training in ethics, consent, power dynamics, and therapeutic touch. Third, many protocol elements including dose, session frequency, treatment length, and total number of sessions were standardized for the needs of controlled trials. In real world practice, these should be decided case by case, not locked into a rigid protocol. These decisions should rest with treating practitioners, not be dictated by trial sponsors. I'll include a written statement that includes a client's narrative about the impact of therapeutic touch. Thank you very much.

[1:13:30] Thank you, Jennese. Next, the certifying body, they want the certifying body to be comprised of them, and this is what they were explicitly trying to do in Oregon. That's what I was going to say. You can read more in the psychedelic syndicate on that if you want to go deeper. Yeah, totally. And that's what I was going to say is the in a two-minute pitch to the FDA, that that all sounds okay, right? like maybe like a little bit of handholding and there should be focus on the abuse that's happened in the past and there should be certifying bodies that stress ethics and consent, right? Like th those themselves aren't bad suggestions, but then you start digging into the speaker and what they actually believe around these things and the fact that they want to be involved in what is and isn't okay in these scenarios is alarming to say the least.

[1:14:23] Yeah, it sounds great if you're not informed. Just like autism causing vaccines sounds great if you're not informed, right? Yeah. And so, unless anybody has anything else on that particular talk, I think we've got one more that we wanted to watch through from someone named Justice League, who I don't know if you all were familiar with him prior to this. This was my first encounter with Justice League. Yeah. He came up when I did the South by Southwest talk with Matthew Johnson at this was a few years ago during the Q Q&A. He kind of ran up and then used it as a speech for the same topics that he's presenting here which was not at all related to the conversation we were having. So yeah, I had heard this before. Well, again speaks to how people were using this hearing.

[1:15:12] So I'll play his testimony real quick. Next, I'll recognize Justice League. Hello. Thank you for allowing me to be here. It's a very exciting day. My name is Justice League. I'm founder and inventor of Therapod. We're developing enriched environments informed by real-time biometrics in support of psychedelic medicine. When you walked into this room, something shifted in your body. Whether you noticed it or not, the flicker of a light, the edge of a table, the sounds, the silence, all of it leaves fingerprints in the nervous system. Now, imagine walking into this room on LSD. I just got to pause real quick.

[1:15:58] I think these two clips relate to one another in [laughter] a way that I didn't even realize when I cut them. Yeah. which is he's discussing that setting portion of that illustration we just looked at which is the way that the setting bleeds into the transpersonal bleeds into the relational field. So yeah [laughter] every element in the envirment in the environment is is taken into a consideration with psychedelic treatment. This isn't take a pill and call me in the morning. It's take a pill and have an experience. Sessions run 6 to 12 hours. Ibegan's cardiac risk window extends days beyond the dose. And through all of it, the person responsible for safety is largely using one tool, observation.

[1:16:43] These providers aren't pumping platelets into the body. They're pumping music into the ears and having to wing it when the trouble arises. But new technology exists. Research grade wearables, controllable room elements. We all have smart homes, right? And learning systems can be recorded to in both streams. What the body did and what the room did. The body reveals what the person can't say. And the practitioner can seize it without breaking the session. The room adjust. I just got to say this is like this is the tech like Silicon Valley influence that's become like so prevalent in the space meshing with the new age belief system that we just went over from [laughter] 100%.

[1:17:31] Yeah. And I fully also did not make that connection but that's exactly right. before stress becomes crisis. Capture setting, light, sound, temperature as standard data elements in supervised care can be taught across sites and scaled from evidence. The only reason I'm here today is because I experienced this firsthand in 2019, giving my mother with a rare form of Alzheimer's that was causing her go blind, high doses of psilocybin. She would often stutter, unable to dress herself, find the kitchen, and the next day she was not just dressed, she was singing and dancing through the kitchen. The new future of protocols will involve more than an eye mask and headphones.

[1:18:19] We got a lot to be excited about. Look, your guidance that pause there. Sorry. It just in my head I'm like he just realized that he just admitted to something pretty insane in a government [laughter] hearing. Yeah, I don't think that he has any insight about that. No. It released in July requires two monitors and a physician within 15 minutes. But it says nothing about the room. So setting continues to be the field's largest unmeasured variable just as it was when Ramdas was still Richard Albert. And as of today psychedelics are the element no one is addressing. you know, when it's addressed, just time to address the room. Now, it's just time to address the room. Do you think his mom consented? You think his mom like, "Yeah, go ahead."

[1:19:06] Well, the reason I sounded like she didn't really have the capacity to consent from that description. And so that's part of the reason I wanted to look at this because it connects to our Tyler Black conversation where we discuss this like enthusiastic push into dosing the elderly people who don't have the capacity to consent with these types of stories that will drive other people to experiment with high doses with their own family members. So yeah, very concerning. Do you think he was monitoring her vitals [laughter] during this high, you know, like maybe [laughter] with that not within like a medical kit? Yeah. Yeah. But I think I mean I think I said what I thought of that clip as it was going, which is this.

[1:19:53] It's that meshing of the new age and the Silicon Valley tech scene that's coming together to and just grift culture industry. Just like internet grift culture like what's this thing called? Fropod. Yeah. which I can't help but also think back to our the sort of fictionalized scene we wrote for the psychedelic syndicate of Steve Gervson's future idealized psychedelic therapy through AI with a human watching the door and multiple screens to make sure nobody's leaving their sort of pod that's monitoring all their vitals and their heart rate and skin tone flushness all that kind of stuff like the what they imagine is going to come in the future. is is psychedelic therapy within a therapod monitored by AI systems.

[1:20:38] It's disturbing. So, those are a couple of the commentary that appeared at this meeting that we wanted to dive into a little bit deeper. I think the Genesee one especially gave us a lot to comment on and I think is really a useful piece of material to discuss. We wanted to kind of from here zoom out about what we were seeing the sort of climate like around the hearing, which was that some people described this as sort of a celebration for advocates was sort of how I saw this described. Josh Hardman was there from Psychedelics Alpha. Psychedelic Alpha and his sort of TLDDR write up of yet the FDA public hearing was nothing new was really shared.

[1:21:26] Federal panelists sat silently. Almost all comments were positive and this seemed to be a fun day out for psychedelic advocates. I know there were some afterparties happening among advocates from the event. Nishay, did you mention that psychedelics today, the kind of pro- psychedelic interview podcast was hosting one? We watched a video earlier from one of their hosts interviewing Jennese Herzburg. Yeah. and they're kind of like the podcast equivalent of integral psychedelic therapy in the sense that it's a really important archive of people talking about what they're doing in psychedelic therapy mask off the non- euphemistic version is like described there but so yeah it was them with I think it was SSDP students for sensible drug policy and a maps fundraiser kind of event afterwards and they had a I think it was like a live podcast recorded there as well.

[1:22:20] Yeah. So you can see they were organizing all of these like pro- psychedelics kind of mixers around this FDA hearing. And I think just to kind of illustrate the kind of groups that were organizing mixers around this event, we had a couple clips of the host of Psychedelics Today that we've been sitting on for a while and thought this might be a good time to whip those out and just examine them. This is Joe Moore, who's kind of the main host of Psychedelics Today. Kyle Buller, who's the other co-host, was the one we saw in the earlier video interviewing Jennese. So, I'll play a couple of those and we can just briefly comment on them. I just think it's good color for the kinds of people that were organizing events around the FDA hearing. So, let's see here. We've got Joe. Integration can be horrifying.

[1:23:08] For instance, at one point I just became the case that I couldn't sleep for 5 months and it was horrible. You think from a psychedelic experience in part. So it's like I was deeply stressed from all sorts of invol situational things in my world and then you know let's go have 3 days of robust psychedelic experiences and then it just kind of unfolded a process for me. I'm thankful for it now. It was a really helpful set of experiences and really challenging. Mhm. That's a sort of integration. It's just can be a hard struggle for a number of months, in some cases years for people. Normie, I know you had said some things about this clip when you shared it with us. You said it was like a Tim Haidiger, but like [laughter] I thought it would I thought that was the other clip.

[1:23:55] Oh, I think both of them. I think so. I think it applies to both. I mean, honestly, it comes like if you if I did not know Joe and someone showed this to me, I would think it was a satire, like intended to be a satire of the psychedelic field, and yet he seemingly has no insight into the fact that it comes across that way. Like they're just so into this where it seems completely normal. And what he's saying is also so concerning. Like these are people that are pushing, you know, accelerating access to vulnerable groups and, you know, coming after the people that are trying to raise concerns and then admitting that they had these really longlasting outcomes. Like he couldn't sleep for like 5 months afterwards. That's a big deal. And you know, he's the one who's really advocating for this moving forward, but he's grateful for it.

[1:24:44] That the integration process was five months of no sleep that he's grateful for. Yeah. And that's always what happens amongst that circle where it wasn't just about the psychedelic. There was some other factor. So you can't like blame the psychedelics for it. And it is this like unfolding process that is ultimately for the greater good. And then people don't question it. One of the bigger issues here is that the people who are working, you know, 9 to5 or other crazy hour jobs, working three jobs and barely able to make ends meet, don't have the bandwidth to navigate not being able to sleep for 5 months and having this like boutique integration therapy provided. So, and yet there's so little discussion of that.

[1:25:32] Yeah. We call this an adverse effect. Yeah, and I think it's something that I remember Pace bringing up in the Reggie Watts episode that we just released, which is that these are people who, not to say they can afford this, but can in a sense afford to destabilize themselves for some fivemon period because they're just showing up to podcast here and there or being treated like a psychedelic celebrity or going and I think Joe and Kyle lead breath work sessions and things like that where they get to turn inward and focus on themselves 24/7 to some extent. Not to assume too much there, but like I don't think the average person can like you say afford to destabilize themselves for a fivemon period where they just can't sleep.

[1:26:19] Like that's intense. And then to say that you're just grateful for that experience overall is is wild to me. I think [laughter] we have one more that to the point that this could be seen as satire, I think is notable. I think this is a clip from the same podcast promotion that Joe was on there. There was one case in whole breath work which you know I'm really interested in non-drug methods as well as drug methods because it's you know one organism one process but with a lot of really interesting access to the outer world and this woman started chanting in some really strange language. She didn't know it. Nobody in the room knew it. they were able to record it and they sent it off to a scholar of dead language and I think it might have been Aramaic which is interesting in its own right and it was kind of like a witch kind of cult thing where she was just chanting I have suffered we have suffered you have suffered just over and over again for an hour or two and you know quite cogent Aramaic

[1:27:20] Interesting and you know who knows Aramaic like I don't know 40 people right and this wasn't even on psychedelics This was during a breath work session and it's very similar wild stuff on psychedelics as well. Okay, that that didn't [laughter] happen. Yeah, there's so many things in like a 59 second clip there to break down. like just replace the neurojourney in the top left corner with I think Tim and Eric's channel was like the channel five news was like their original thing where they would have Steve Brule and stuff like that giving reports you know it's really the only thing that you can compare it to you know that's why we compare it so often because it's so absurd it's like it's what Nay said they don't know they don't have the self-awareness to like recognize their own absurdity like they've internalized it.

[1:28:14] They take it seriously. Like Joe is taking seriously the notion that like a woman through rapid breathing suddenly discovered Aramaic. It makes sense within the graphian transpersonal field framework because you can tap into this like aosic record type level of reality where you can access you know other languages and all of you know experiential history that live. Even when I was younger, I would listen to like Coast to Coast AM the overnight radio show and they would always this they would have like the you know the standard thing spontaneous combustion that that was a popular one for a while or and there were some of these like spontaneous language things of course mixed with like a lot of UFO type stuff and remote viewing and stuff like that.

[1:29:07] This is just in that bucket. Well, also just kind of hilariously, in 2013 it was reported that nearly 500,000 people still speak Aramaic. Yeah, that's up to one million depending on how you count. 40 people. Well, also it's like, did he actually record this person and then send it to a scholar of dead languages? That's Yeah, he claims so insane. It's fun thought. But yeah, suffice to say with all of that, I mean, these are the people at the cutting edge of the field advocating for, you know, guidelines and policies and therapeutic training. And so just because the FDA claims there was some kind of review of whatever MAPS MDMA file data, there's a lot of reason to be concerned about the direction this field is going with an impending roll out to the public.

[1:30:01] Yeah. These are the people who want to give drugs to a potentially suicidal family member. Yeah. To the training point again, Joe and Kyle run vital training, like a training program for psychedelic practitioners internationally, too. Yeah. Yeah. So, I take it that you didn't make it to the Psychedelics Today afterparty for the FDA hearing. [laughter] I did not. No. Joe has talked on Psychedelics Today podcast about, you know, being essentially like afraid of being in the same space with me at a conference or kind of being willing to be the brave one in kind of dealing with Psymposia. So, yeah, he's been kind of a funny character throughout all of this. He's also spoken specifically just to the point that like some of these people are completely unaware of the critiques with their own practices.

[1:30:53] I believe Joe has gone on record saying he specifically avoids reading our work and avoids associating with us. Niche's test hallucinations. Have you read that? I try not to read any of [laughter] the stuff. I think one of the things is it's like for these people who really believe in this, they can't really take criticism deeply because it would undo it would like sort of collapse their fabricated like delusion that's built on thoughts. It's not built on anything, you know? So like when you open the door to criticism, it's really like this deep identification with themselves for a long time that they would be challenging like there's a huge, you know, social, psychological, financial foundation that's built upon that.

[1:31:51] So keep those doors locked up, you know? Well, it's like any religion, right? Like religions are taught people in religions are taught not to read anti-religious literature because you know it's partly because turns out that they're wrong sometimes and like you know they have that deep identity with it but also because they're taught not to do it like you know they don't want information to get out. There was something that came up in some reporting that we did or that we published a while back on like Ralph Hood and the M scale that was used for like mystical experiences and psychedelic trials and stuff. And Ralph Hood was the person who developed that. And in the reporting that we published there was a quote by Ralph Hood on like fundamentalist religions and fundamentalist Christians and that a lot of people have misconceptions about what that means.

[1:32:42] But that to him at the heart of fundamentalist religion is a lack of interextuality and like a focus on a single text and interpreting and only utilizing a single text and never branching out into interpretations or commentary on that singular text. And I always thought that was an interesting description of fundamentalist religion and sort of what's at the base of fundamentalism. And I think it to some extent tangentially applies to the developing psychedelic culty kind of religion that is at the heart of some of these practices. They have this communication with one another that develops this echo chamber of sort of not exactly a single text necessarily, but this single base of beliefs that everything is is sort of stemming from that you can either telepathically attune to one another or whatever that means.

[1:33:41] It's a lot easier to have to believe that one thing is true than to have to think period, you know? Yeah. Yeah. and I think we wanted to zoom out a little further than just the after parties in the space and discuss a little bit more of the activism around these particular hearings. There's been a stark contrast in the way that we were treated for encouraging people to interact with like the licose therapeutics trials and the engagement that was afforded to the public around those trials and the encouragement around these FDA hearings from some of the main players in the psychedelic space trying to get people to interact and provide positive commentary to the government body that would be in charge of approving these therapies.

[1:34:27] In our experience, we were kind of demonized for it. Do you want to speak a little bit to your experience, Nishay, with the petition leading up to the Lake Coast trials and how that was characterized? Yeah. Well, back then we so we circulated a petition before anyone before the public knew that there was going to be an advisory committee meeting. We were kind of the way a lot of people found out that you know even what that was. We wrote a citizen petition to the FDA, circulated it to get signatures, and then submitted that to the FDA calling for there to be a an advisory committee meeting which had not been announced at that point. And then be to extend the open public hearing component of the hearing to allow for more voices to participate. And so that was that aspect was confirmed by the FDA.

[1:35:15] They did extend the time period. And then after that or like you know in the leadup to that meeting we at Psymposia shared with our list serve information about how to first participate or apply to participate in that hearing and secondly how to submit written comments. So it was the same type of docket as this current or the recent psychedelic hearing public hearing used where there's both an application to present and also you can submit a written commentary. And at that time, two years ago, there was not a broader advocacy push to encourage the psychedelic movement to participate, whereas like there was a big push this year for this recent hearing. Yeah. And yeah, that was specifically around those LICOS MDMA trials.

[1:36:03] And you can see what we put out here, just general information for the public. This meeting will include a public comment period from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. We shared the kind of email addresses and the docket number. Write comments, written comments can also be submitted through May 23rd. This was just general information and it was characterized in a completely different way after the fact. essentially saying that we like advocated for all of these negative voices to be involved in the hearings and that well they were all it wasn't even that we advocated that was if that had been only the issue it would have been fine. They said that they were all us and that we were behind everything that it was all Psymposia and that was completely false. A small group of radical activists appear to have manipulated the media and possibly derailed a federal regulatory process in a way that could end up denying millions of people a life-saving treatment.

[1:37:00] Psymposia who represents pretty radical anti- capitalist oftentimes anti-military ideologies has been able to infiltrate and manipulate a lot of people in the media and organizations like IER and it seems like the adcom process during the public commentary the panelists heard from a small group of radical activists called Psymposia Psymposia spoke as if they were independent voices yeah they assigned a number of they labeled the kind of our detractors and people like Nirvon Mullik who's a filmmaker who produced kind of a slick PR piece post hearing assigned undisclosed Psymposia activists to a number of people who participated and to our knowledge the extension of the open public comment period allowed for basically anybody that applied to be involved. was not just a bunch of people that we had congregated to be involved in this process.

[1:37:55] It was mostly positive voices in favor. So yeah, and I think you know I use the language in some of the media around that hearing the adcom that year 2024. I mentioned that this was a positive occurrence for us that the concerns were taken seriously and I said that we had organized the opposition and I used that sense and like we were the only ones who were organizing in the sense of making it sharing information about how to participate. There was no one else who was doing that who had concerns. So it was in that technical sense of like community organizing that is not a corrupt or sinister thing but that was warped in a lot of the portrayals of what we did as unjustified act of sabotage.

[1:38:44] Yeah. I mean what they did is what you know like JD Vance or some insert right-winger when a protester says something in a crowd. Oh that's George Soros funded like that's what they did. Yep. Yep. And we've been clear the whole time that this was an act of community engagement. This wasn't something that we were hiding from anyone and that we actually encourage more of this that we need more community engagement and things like this going on especially in this political environment. So especially when there are things that are going on that are at the expense of already vulnerable marginalized groups, we can't just sit back and assume that someone will deal with it. we have to actually like come forward and express our concerns and do something about it.

[1:39:30] And just as another thing that was kind of warped around this is I had posted a picture of myself after the hearing at one of the FDA field offices in Baltimore and I mentioned that it was my Everest. And what I meant by that is like the whole reason I was presenting was because I had this very concerning information from whistleblowers that I wanted to get to the FDA. And so I was like, "Thank God I finally got this information through to the people who are in a position to do something about it." And that was twisted into, "Haha, I succeeded at sabotaging the company, which was not at all the point." Right. Right. So I just want to be clear that as we the next clip that I have kind of queued up is in relation to the pro- psychedelic organizing around this FDA public hearing.

[1:40:18] And I'm not I don't think any of us here are criticizing the idea of encouraging public engagement, but I think where the insight that we want to bring to the table is around the next clip is that we were completely demonized for doing exactly No, no, for doing less. We were demonized for doing way less than they did. For doing way less than they did around this hearing. So, I'm going to play just one of the many clips that were circulating around this the encouraging engagement around this FDA public hearing. This particular clip was originally shared by one account and made SSDP and MAPS also became collaborators on this particular video.

[1:41:04] Dude, dude, did you submit your oral testimony to the FDA yet? Dude, I submitted my energy to the And just up front, this video is pretty cheeseball, but I want to point out the dude on the left who just ran up at the top of the stairs is wearing Maps merch. I believe it's the psychedelic trial participant shirt or and hat is what he's wearing there. So, just start it over. Dude, dude, did you submit your oral testimony to the FDA yet? Dude, I submitted my energy to the universe this morning. Why are we yelling? Because the FDA is having a huge public hearing on the future of psychedelics this September, and they're setting the groundwork for clinical access. This September? That's sweet. I'll make sure to tune in on my laptop.

[1:41:50] No, dude. No, you have to register now because the deadline to attend or speak on the record is today at midnight. Wait, today at midnight? Yes, today. But you can scan this QR code right now to register for the official FDA public hearing this September. All right, man. I'm on it. But like, do people know about this? Who's going to be there? Yes. I'm glad you asked. So, you can scan this other QR code, which will keep you informed about the events going on around the hearing. Two QR codes. You're making me work for this. I know. But you can screenshot this part of the video right now to stay in the loop with what's going on. The deadline is today at midnight. Don't let the feds write the rules without you.

[1:42:37] You still didn't say August 21st. Oh, sorry. I did misspeak there on the participant shirt. It's the psychedelic studies department is what the MAPS merch says. But so in the wake of the hearing as well, MAPS continued to kind of push ways for engagement, sending out an emailer that anyone can submit comment until 11:55 p.m. Eastern time on October 5th. This is kind of what we were talking about earlier, which we're also encouraging of like go ahead and submit comments. That's fine. That includes yours. If you don't want your name publicly attached to it, you can submit anonymously. Your comment does not need to be long and you do not need to be an expert to write one. two or three paragraphs is enough. What you have seen or lived through is part of the record no one else can offer and exactly what a public docket is for.

[1:43:26] I do not disagree with any of that. But again, we were demonized for saying all of that. And now the same entities that were behind our demonization are doing exactly what they claimed was wrong when we did it. Remember there's a public written comment until October 5th, right? Yep. Yeah. So, yeah. Don't let the feds write the regulation without you. Yeah. So, and you know, as a result of the kind of result of that sort of blanket advocating for people to come and present that maps was encouraging is also, you know, flooding the zone with perspectives to drown out the critical perspectives in that case. like there were no like the types of concerns that Psymposia has been calling attention to and rigorously researching and sharing our evidence around were not present in that conversation and that is going to be at the expense of public health as things move forward that people are not having those types of

[1:44:26] Conversations. So there is an opportunity cost of like not taking the time to really hear out the people who have specific concerns and the FDA I don't think are going to you know as much as I will encourage people to submit something to even to be part of the record for people to look back on later when things go sideways they're not going to take those into account for what their plans are because their plans are aligned with financial interests and trying to push this thing through. So, so yeah, I think that's what we've got to say about the FDA hearings as it stands right now. Obviously, as the psychedelic drug approvals through the FDA continue on, you'll be hearing more from us about psychedelics, FDA, and everything that goes into that. I think we're going to take a quick break and then we'll hop back on the other side of our break with some comments from you all from our mailbag section.

[1:45:18] Hey, this is Russell. Just touching base while we're on break here to let you all know about our Patreon page. You can find that at www.patreon.com/psymposia. We talk a lot about some pretty heavy topics here on our channel. But if you're interested in seeing us cut loose a little bit more, at the end of most of these episodes, there is about 15 to 45, sometimes an hour's worth of extra bonus content where we're taking things a little bit looser. Sometimes we might be playing Timothy Liry's video game or talking about psychedelic aesthetics or psychedelic music that's inspired us over the years. We have kind of a running segment on our Patreon called Psymposia aesthetics where we talk about some of the aesthetics of psychedelic culture that we like.

[1:46:04] Whether that's visual, audio, movies, whatever. Sometimes I do like live art demonstrations as well. Whether that is showing you how I build some of the collage stickers that you can find in our merch shop or recently some illustrations that I've done of team members like James and Mike. I'll toss up the quick time lapse of the illustration I did of James here to kind of cap this promotional segment so you guys can see what I'm talking about.

[1:46:50] Heat. Heat. We're coming back from break here and we've got an extra member in the chat here. It looks like at Normy's lap, a pretty nice little cat named George. Hi, George. This is George. He has, if anybody isn't watching, this is George. He has wanted a lot of sungles today. Yeah. And he also had his birthday last month. Yeah. Happy birthday, George. And he is 19 years old now.

[1:47:36] 19year-old. He's my little man. A All right, let's do mailbag. All right, we're hopping into the mailbag today. Less hate mail and some more positive comments today to start off our mailbag section again with. We can get into some negative comments one day, but I figured it'd be nice to start the section off again by going over some comments we've received recently for some of our more recently published videos. So, we've got a few comments from our recent interview with Alex Noel, a comment on our conversion therapy series, and a comment from our recent Reggie Watts video. So, we'll jump in with a comment from our interview with Alex that reads, "It's so refreshing to hear people talking about how horrible Andrew Callahan is. His ascendance has been really frustrating to watch. I went back and rewatched the accusations against him and it was beyond sex pest.

[1:48:25] He had Graham Platner level grape accusations with multiple women. His corroborating evidence from therapist, friends, and text messages from that time. anyone who had their email given away by him deserves it for continuing to follow and support him. So yeah, this comment came in just after that big email scandal that he went through where he gave a bunch of his fans emails to Hunter Biden as he was launching a crypto company. Let's see here. I have nothing to say. I agree with it. Yeah, much appreciated. And the allegations against Andrew are stunning that he was able to make such a comeback in my opinion. They're pretty bad and a lot of people don't seem to have actually again read the primary source material. I think this one was also from that interview to that point.

[1:49:12] I didn't even know about all this agree just Andrew Callahan stuff. Disappointing to learn about this though I'm not totally shocked to be honest. Also refreshing critique of Hamilton Morris. I always felt annoyed at his Nepo baby smuggness, affectation, and casual approach to psychedelics. The critiques in this podcast are not about scandal, drama, and gossip. They are about serious issues of journalistic responsibility and integrity. Agreed. And if they haven't seen it, make sure to watch the Hamilton's Pharmarmacope series which really dives into Hamilton. Definitely. That's the essentially the series that relaunched our platform. Yes. [laughter] Thanks Hamilton for spurring us back into action. We also had some nice commentary that put together some connections from our conversion therapy series.

[1:49:59] This person retweeted our original kind of blue sky post about this saying that a lot of people are surprised that the right-wing would be into psychedelics and things adjacent, but I was raised in a right-wing religious cult. So, I'm not surprised. They have always been drawn to magical truths and solutions and the idea that the universe itself agrees with them on every level. I just thought that was great insight and exactly the kinds of connections that we're hoping people get when they watch our content between the right-wing influence, the sort of new Christian nationalist faction of psychedelic users. Yeah. And the stuff that we were talking about today with Genese's work, right? Yeah. Exactly that. Yeah. Good book here is Alan Piper's Strange Drugs Make for Strange Bed Bed Fellows.

[1:50:45] It's a really quick read, but it's probably one of the earliest earlier examinations of sort of how new age spirituality like merges with right-wing culture. Yeah, totally. And if you're into Allen Piper or not familiar with him, we also have an interview from way back when that Paste did with one of our first podcasts. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good one. Highly recommend. I'll throw a link to that in the footnotes. And then these are from our recent Reggie Watts video which got a pretty incredible response. It was really kind of nice to see people understanding what we were putting down in that. I wasn't part of that video, but I think you guys did a really good job of explaining the issues at play there and people seem to really resonate with it. And you edited it fantastically.

[1:51:31] Thank you. Yeah, much appreciated. [laughter] No, not at all. You guys gave me plenty of good content to work with. So, this comment said that they really liked Watts when he was the band leader on late night chat on that late night chat show, but he's shockingly repulsive now. I thank you all so much for existing. I'm pretty much a loner most of the time. You all feel like my kind of people. I have been an amateur drug nerd as defined by Arrowid in 1965 with first LSD Life magazine cover story when I was 9 years old and you make me feel not so alone. This comment had a lot of things that I liked in it. I too like Reggie Watts for a while and that's something I think I would have said on that episode where I on it. I listened to Comedy Bang Bang religiously. I think James shared a lot of my sort of cultural influences there that he mentioned in my exposure to Reggie Watts.

[1:52:22] But to be honest, reporting on and being kind of in the psychedelic millu has been a an exercise in having to kill your heroes, which has been really kind of an unfortunate thing to have people in the space that you know when you're first coming in seem like they're saying the right things and are interesting people just kind of consistently disappointing you. And when you and just meeting people or learning more about people who on the surface kind of helped introduce you to the space or that you liked originally just being completely disappointing in the end. Yeah. Also love the reference. You're not alone. Yeah. Another part on that alone thing is like all of us I think and especially you all before I was really around but myself included like felt kind of alone in this you know critique of the psychedelic industry of like you know everybody around me if I'm in psychedelics is like on this side of the

[1:53:22] Maps and everything and afraid to be critiquing and challenging a lot of it and so there you know we're out here and I think you know [laughter] Dusk you've all experienced that to a very extreme degree with threats and such. So yeah, we understand. Yeah. And that is literally like a big motivation for us even being an entity at all is that we happened to find each other and we were like, "Thank God, you know, there are other people who think in this way and also feeling a responsibility like not everyone has the privilege of having bumped into other people on the same kind of like wavelength at conferences and things like that. And so trying to make a way for other people to be able to find that other perspective and that we are not separate from the psychedelic kind of we are from a psychedelic culture that is just not the norm normative mainstream one and so kind of continuing to wave that flag I think is really important.

[1:54:23] Yeah. Yeah. I also love the reference to Arowid's discussion of drug nerds or I just looked it up Earth and Fire. Arowid in 2004 published this kind of essay on drug geeks that I always thought was really fun that kind of gave a character sketch of the different like if you were playing like an RPG and you were selecting like a druid or a warrior or something to be like they kind of gave this sketch of like classes of drug geeks. U I just wanted to read them real fast cuz I always thought they were fun. There's like the collector, the taster, the daredevil, plant geeks, chemistry geeks, photo geeks, and many more they write. But I always thought it was kind of fun to think of drug geeks in a class system of like which drug geek are you? Pretty fun. On the Reggie Watts video, Oliver Schultz again.

[1:55:09] Oliver, thanks a lot for interacting with a lot of our videos recently. It seemed like maybe you were having a nice run through of a few of the different videos because I've seen a few of your comments. And I've appreciated them all. But, he wrote that these are very important issues discussed here. rational, educated, ethical critique of some highly problematic and all too common patterns with certain folks in the psychedelic community. Thank you for your work and I have now subscribed to your channel. Always had a weird as in bad feeling about Reggie Watts. Something felt off though. I wanted to like him for his musical comedic performances. His requirements and fee for appearances really says it all. What a narcissistic delusional POS. He's a prime example of how psychedelics can potentially exacerbate rather than attenuate existing pathological personality traits.

[1:55:57] And yeah, that's something I think we see a lot. So then we had a couple more comments on the Reggie Watts video that I wanted to bring up here. These ones, this first one writes, I think I've watched every video on the internet pertaining to Reggie Watts Rolling Stone article, and it was so nice to finally find intelligent, compassionate, and thorough analysis that I was looking for. You guys are great. I look forward to watching more of your videos. Yeah, I really appreciated that because I mean it was hard to do that episode. Like there was a lot of material to walk through and just emotionally like very challenging material, but a big reason we did it was we saw that some of the analysis was lacking, you know, around the dynamics that were going on. So it meant a lot to hear that other people appreciated that.

[1:56:47] Yeah, absolutely. And then the last comment from the Reggie video that we had on Q here was as a facilitator in this space who has been deeply aware and researching the major players here for a long time. I can't emphasize enough how important this conversation is. So many meaningful nuance deeply thoughtful takes here and so many topics, figures, references covered from the cover story podcast to Jules's work, Love him, he's a gem maps MDMA trial failures, the Franuis Borat controversy. Just wow. If I could, I'd give y'all a hug. So good. Also, I've worked in court settings and social services involving supporting DV domestic violence survivors. And you're absolutely right about the coercive control bit. Instant follow.

[1:57:32] Much love and thanks again for this meaningful coverage. Really appreciate hearing that. Yeah. and yeah meant so much to hear in particular for me because as I was speaking on that podcast, I was thinking so many of the times that I would mention something that like how many years it took me to figure out what I just said. And that included me going through my own process of healing from my own abuse dynamics with the exact dynamics I was describing and then like doing a lot of research to understand what happened to me and learning about how widespread this is across the psychedelic industry. So to have that process be you know able to produce the kind of analysis that other people find meaningful is just like profoundly you know moving for me frankly.

[1:58:21] Yeah. And we get so much [expletive] from people who don't seem to know anything about these concepts and issues. So, it's nice to hear from people that we are making it through to the people that we actually care about making it through to like that. And I think that's part something to like note on is this isn't a mailbag excluding hate mail just because we want to be positive. We're actually like the zeitgeist shift right now is that we are getting more positive notes like this. Like people are seeing that this is the case that we aren't full of [expletive] you know, and we what we have been saying for all this time is finally clicking with people in a way that I think is resonating for them to be able to, you know, publicly say it without fear as well.

[1:59:10] Yeah, very good point. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you all for your commentary. Feel free to write us at hi@psymposia.com. Leave a comment on any of our videos, Instagram posts, retweet us on Twitter, Blue Sky, whatever. And you might show up on the show sometime. We love to do reacts. And if you like what we do, feel free to follow us on Patreon, subscribe on Patreon at the five or $10 level if you feel so inclined. If not, give us a sub here on YouTube or a like on the video. Goes a long way to helping people see our content. Thanks for tuning in today and we'll be back next time.