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# The M-Scale and the Occult Roots of the JHU Psychedelic Research Program | Plus Three #56
- URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/the-m-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-jhu-psychedelic-research-program-plus-three-56/
- Published: 2023-02-15T23:33:21.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T06:31:10.000Z
- Description: In this episode, the Psymposia team speaks with writer Travis Kitchens about his recent piece "A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program"
- Author: Mike Elliott
- Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript

In this episode, the Psymposia team speaks with writer Travis Kitchens about his recent piece "A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program"

[https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/a-channel-for-magic-ralph-hoods-mysticism-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-johns-hopkins-psychedelic-research-program/](https://ghost.psymposia.com/a-channel-for-magic-ralph-hoods-mysticism-scale-and-the-occult-roots-of-the-johns-hopkins-psychedelic-research-program/)

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## 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.*

[\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Foreign so today we are joined by Travis kitchens Travis is a writer from Kentucky his writing has appeared in the Baltimore City paper the Christian Science Monitor and other outlets in 2014 he volunteered for one of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic trials that was the effects of hallucinogens and Other Drugs on mood and performance which is referred to as the club drug study for which he's writing a book on and symposio recently published Travis's story a channel for magic Ralph Hood's mysticism scale and the Occult roots of the Johns Hopkins psychedelic research program which is what we're gonna mostly be talking about today so Travis welcome thank you thank you for having me yeah it's thanks for being in China yeah we've been trying to schedule this podcast for a while it's been a little difficult with scheduling but I'm glad that we're finally it's only been a year

[\[01:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=62s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) What are you talking about well yeah initially for the peace yeah but this p I mean your piece touches on I think a lot of War kind of Concepts that are sort of at the center of the thing we call the Psychedelic Renaissance yeah actually what I think it was published September 9th and the initial interview that I did with hood was September 11 2019 so it was was it three years or two yeah three almost three years from the time I interviewed airware anymore I know from the interview it was three years Joe wow and still relevant highly relevant yeah so you were in that study back in 2014 were you did you get interested kind of in the roots of psychedelia after that was it something that you became

[\[02:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=124s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Interested were you already interested in psychedelics prior to going into that study yeah I mean I think I've always when my brother and I whenever we were little used to watch from the public library we'd get Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World which is a paranormal show and they would do ancient civilization I didn't do psychedelics but that I remember but John C Lilly was on it once you know it's out telepathy ancient civilizations just the whole sort of smorgasbord of paranormal stuff so I've always been interested in science and weird stuff and then I lived in Virginia my brother was in the military and I when I graduated high school I moved out to San Diego and lived with him and then he got transferred to Virginia Beach and there happens to be in Virginia Beach a organization called the association for research and Enlightenment that was started by a man from Kentucky named Edgar Casey who's sort of a pretty sure he was a

[\[03:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=185s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Crank I'm not going to say I'm a scholar he has the doesn't he have like the Planet X or something was that like Planet X he did a lot of Atlantis oh no I'm confusing him with Zacharias sitchin sorry yeah listen to Coast when I was a team yeah that was like a big deal on there yeah well there's a bookstore there and I think this is the best beginning is because the there was a bookstore called The Heritage bookstore it's a typical new age bookstore but Casey was in the holistic health you name it everything you know Pharrell from the Neptunes is a big Edgar Casey guy but also Johnny Cash was a big Edgar Casey guy people were I mean he was enormously popular I mean he was I don't even know he would compare him to but you know like oh not Oprah level but like the Oprah the secret lady or something it was a very popular thing you know go to Edgar Casey he'll read your fortune and tell you about your ancient Egyptian ancestors so there was a bookstore there a typical new age bookstore and so they had Robert Anton Wilson Terence McKenna

[\[04:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=248s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) John C Lilly and then again all the new age stuff Native American all that stuff that you guys know about so I got a Leary's info psychology there and was became more interested in psychedelics and so of course when I moved to Baltimore I didn't even know the studies were happening I just happened to was writing for the Baltimore City paper writing a column about country and bluegrass music and I saw the ad you know Hopkins I don't know how I don't know I toggled it I don't know how widely they advertise but they at least advertise in the Baltimore City paper and it said have you used psychedelics I was like Oh and it said we will pay you to do psychedelics and so I was like oh hell yeah I called right then and Ethan heard which picked up the phone the program coordinator and you know they got they didn't call me back for two or three weeks I'd sort

[\[05:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=309s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Of forgotten about it but then finally they called back and said hey will you come in and we'll do some extra screening he probably asked questions over the phone too you know or any of your family members mentally ill luckily at that time I didn't know that much about my family members my mom didn't know her dad and my dad didn't really know his dad and only really in the past couple years have I found out things about them including that my mother's dad committed suicide I don't if I told him that I don't think they would have left but I didn't know neither did my mom anyway it wasn't a mental illness thing he had cancer anyway yeah so they call you know that I would already the answer the short answer to your question is yes I had already been interested in psychedelics I had no sophisticated knowledge of I knew the basic 1960s story and I was very you know Leery and all those guys are very romantic you know against Authority I grew up I was born in 1982.

[\[06:07\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=367s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I'm really interested in music so you know I've always liked the early 90s were like a gold mine if you like subversive music Tupac Ice Cube I love stuff like that you know the President Dan Quayle trying to ban records so I've always been into subversive stuff and at that time Leary to me it was like wow this is the most subversive stuff and of course Terence McKenna that you know this is before people really use YouTube so there was a mail order catalog out of California called sound photosynthesis that you can order DVDs and so I've got a massive collection of sound photosynthesis CDs I mean DVDs so I yeah I had been listening to psychedelic thought but not really taking them that much I had taken them but never in any ceremonial way they did I puked and I thought it was funny but I never was like wow I had a religious experience no so the after the Hopkins study I became interested in tracing the roots because I asked Roland I thought for sure he

[\[07:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=428s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Would have an explanation after the first session I was like wow this is really \[expletive\] weird you know and I was just sitting there on the couch and after the session's over they all come in rolling and mad and Fred everybody comes in and they sit around you what happened and I'm just like oh man that was heavy and then so I remember asking Roland you know like what is it I just you know look you're at Johns Hopkins very prestigious Medical Institution I was just rolling you know he like seems like a sign like a scientist out of a movie I was like this guy's really smart he's got to know like I thought they would have some sort of well you know something in your brain happen and It produced this experience but he's like I don't know and I was like I don't know he said yeah I think your guess is as good as mine so all right so when so so one of the things we're going to talk about today is a few things we'll rewind a little bit but we're going to talk about what the M scale is

[\[08:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=489s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) We're going to talk about sort of the paper that established the foundation for the research now which is the psilocybin can occasion mystical experiences paper which the full title of that is always a good one and psilocybin can occasion mystical type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance not exactly a catchy title though so talk to Roland about titles yeah absolutely yeah Roland we're referring to Roland Griffiths who's who is the primary researcher who got psychedelic research sort of on the map again I know prior to that it was actually Strassman that restarted DMT research I know I actually don't know why we say it was kind of the Hopkins team I guess that's

[\[09:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=552s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Maybe because they're prestigious like institution or whatever or it was just and they're still kind of kicking and doing what they're doing I feel like Strassman kind of did his thing and then didn't he kind of stopped for a while I don't know what he's doing at the moment yeah so that's right yeah so the important measurement tool that this psilocybin can occasion mystical experiences paper used was something called the M scale and your piece the channel for magic piece it's about Ralph hood and Ralph hood is a he's a psychologist who developed the M scale back in the 70s is that correct yep and that is also based on some prior research yeah from other people that he had picked up on and then there's a long strand that goes back a hundred years back to William James and so

[\[10:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=613s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That's like come some of the stuff that that I want to get into but I guess quickly can you just explain basically just so we have some shared understanding here what the M scale actually is it's a psychometric scale a cyclo psychometric measurement tool or based on something called the likert scale it's a way to try to measure a psychological experience some of the early ones in fact the one that James James was based off of I mean the fact that were used back in James time were not used to measure drug-induced experiences but religious conversion so all it is is somebody has an experience say you go to vote in fact some of the early scales were just this you go to vote and then afterwards they hand you a questionnaire how easy was it to vote is there any way we could make it better or you know a

[\[11:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=674s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Questionnaire at a restaurant like Cracker Barrel used to have them you know where Cracker Barrel the little game that they would have the thing you know how was your chicken fried chicken is could it be better was it cold so that's really all it is it's measuring people's responses to an experience there's some way to get an idea of what exactly happened since the experience is hidden the only way that we have to express those experiences is through stories subjective self-report exactly yeah so that's all it is is a way to consistently measure people's responses to a particular experience you know and I think that you could do that with anything you know maybe you know have somebody to get 10 people in a row and smack the \[expletive\] out of them or something and have a questionnaire you know how did it hurt did it really hurt was it did it sting what was the nature of the sting you know or whatever you know you can come up with anything you want so that's all it is is you have

[\[12:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=735s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This mysterious experience how are you going to correlate this experience to some type of therapeutic effect how are you going to collect data in order to convince people that that this is a an experience that can be consistently replicated and that has particular features you're trying to define a phenomenology a phenomenological experience well and I think that's and it's oh sorry go ahead real quick yeah there was a point I appreciated Hood made in your interview where he says explicitly he says I never ever said that I measured mystical experience I don't have that much hubris I measure people's response to an experience maybe you lied or maybe my questions were good enough so that you said I'm gonna mark it this way because there's something there that Rings true and I think that is a you know like even as we can acknowledge that these are subjective self-reports if we look at the way so much of this is discussed both in the media and the broader sort of psychedelic discourse in psychedelic

[\[13:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=798s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Spaces I think that distinction gets lost frequently and it's a really important distinction yes I love how Dave just skipped to the end of my notes and I had that it seems relevant for where we were at sorry definitely the other thing that was I feel like I remember being sort of important was the generalizability of the scale like the between different religions different techniques of like mystical experience and that kind of stuff being one of the reasons that psychedelic researchers might have sort of latched on to it and been interested in it that yeah correct yeah that's right because Hood had an earlier scale if you read say Ann Taves has a very if you're people are interested in the literature there's a big literature just on the scales so Ann Taves is Hood's main historian and critic she's got a paper called psychology of religion approaches to the study of religious experience I can send you the link anyhow one thing she points out is that one of Hood's earlier scales I think it was called the ream scale that it

[\[14:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=860s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Wasn't stable cross-culturally so they took it to Sweden or somewhere and the categories were from James variety's religious experience this is where the attributes of the NF ability and all these characteristics well it didn't work there and so he changed out the measurement the statements to that were derived from Nordic fairy tales and then it worked and so that then Hood said okay he said this is only good for Liberal Protestants this is James right liberal Protestant background this is too specific let me design a new one that's more generalized so yeah interesting there's two really like things that that jogs to my mind are like one in the case of maps doing the you know for their MDMA for PTSD they use the Caps assessment and for the studies that they did in Israel they just translated the Caps assessment into Hebrew but I don't know that they ever validated that translation I don't know that they ever you know and actually funny enough

[\[15:21\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=921s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They didn't tweak things after they brought it back to Canada and so one of the inclusion criteria for one of the Canadian studies was being fluent in Hebrew but put putting that aside just that that question of whether things are culturally consistent and you know especially like when you translate things or when you bring them into new cultural contexts and then combining that with generalizability you know you mentioned Strassman and Strassman went on this big kick around like kabbalistic Judaism and mapping DMT state dates onto kabbalistic Judaism claiming that it was sort of the most universal language for mystical experiences which I challenged at a breaking convention conference years ago and it got kind of interesting but this question of when we're looking at mapping spaces you know one of the reasons Strassman gave for going with that is he thought there was a universality there he thought it was a universal language and this question of generalizability and how easy it is for people to relate to just

[\[16:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=984s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Because a map is easy to relate to doesn't necessarily mean that it accurately Maps the territory it's seeking out you know to map and I think that's sort of a significant point at the Crux of mapping the ineffable yeah yeah and you know Anne's basic criticism again read our paper because I'm going to over I'm going to simplify it but her basic criticism is that the mystical experience what they're calling a mystical experience is essentially a literary construct that's used to neatly package what is really an Indescribable experience that features positive and negative has a positive and negative attributes but it gives it form and it gives it a narrative outline and it also has the benefit of placing it in a historical context that's a whole that's a lot and so her criticism is it's very fine but it's very interesting I don't know what you do in response to it if you're using the scale oh well

[\[17:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1045s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They she has a new she has another scale inventory of non-ordinary states and I know that they've developed a lot of different scales that separate the experience from the appraisal or they think separates the experience from the appraisal because the problem that you run into is that the object of study is the object it's not just the object of study okay we're gonna appraise the mystical experience but the entire concept was shaped by the literature around the concept that's supposed to be the object of study so there's a it's kind of a mind \[expletive\] to think about plus you're studying it through somebody's subjective experience of right you know quote the object that you're trying to study like the layers of meaning making that are inherently piled onto that it's some might suggest it's impossible to unravel yeah and you know Hood would say we're here and he says it in the article

[\[18:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1105s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You know we've translated it into 30 languages it goes for Hindus and Buddhists there's and there's a good reliability and I believe that I've gone through in eight years of both sides I can see both sides I don't think it's there's an easy answer to it I and has a lot makes a lot of good points and I don't have a CL I don't land on any clear side even having done the study and failed at the questionnaires because my experience with the questionnaires is look you just took a very powerful drug and hey you know for you're sitting there for eight hours you know you're not like oh now I get to fill out the questionnaires I was like let get me out here I hadn't eaten all day I wanted to go so yeah so so how soon after like the experience is wearing off are you filling out this questionnaire and how long does it take about well they got they've got a lot of scales there's like 10 to 15 different scales and questionnaires you have to fill out so it's almost immediately they

[\[19:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1166s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Get you up you know when the drug doesn't care it's that it doesn't jump it's not gonna stop because the day's over so some one time maybe twice it was like you know you could tell you could hear people leaving the office and it was like you could obviously tell it was you know checkout time and I was like whoa you know it again you can't just turn it off and so they come in you talk everybody talks and then they give you the scales and you sit there on the couch you know with your shoes off and you're they give you an iPad and you're filling it out well you you've got an eye mask on all day so also the iPad hurts your eyes because you're just like you don't even want to look at it you're just like oh I've had my eyes closed all day and you're in a very dark room on this study so this is the study that correct me if I'm wrong but there were so you either got different dosages of psilocybin or Placebo or DXM

[\[20:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1226s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah and of course the list they said it might be to try to throw you off as there were about 20 different ones you know right they listed like a bunch of different just all kinds of drugs right yeah that was part of the appeal is when they give you the paperwork they're like it could be any of these drugs you're like reach into this bag of candy do you know where on that paper do you know where DXM Falls and mystical experiences does it not it doesn't I guess since that's not the name of the paper it doesn't occasion mystical experiences Oh you mean the paper on the study I did I could send it to you they it was a comparison between psilocybin and DXM and I don't remember it being very interesting but I can send it to you I don't remember what the title of it is I think it's just called comparing the DXM effects to psilocybin or something okay so all right going back to before the Hopkins program is so back in its planning stages which I actually don't know exactly what year maybe you know the year on on that so that paper is a 2006 when do you know what because I

[\[21:27\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1287s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Know the Hopkins program was sort of like clandestine for a little while it wasn't publicized or anything do you know a year that actually got up and running I think it was 2 000 but correct me if I'm wrong if any of y'all know I think you're right so okay so prior to that you basically have you have Roland Griffiths you have Bob Jesse you have so Roland is at Hopkins you have Bob Jesse who does the Council on spiritual practices and he's with you Sona now among some other things and you have Bill Richards can you talk a little bit about how Ralph Hood got into the conversation how did Ralph become involved with the Hopkins crew and why well they were getting you know the late 90s they're you know Bob Jesse

[\[22:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1348s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Suggests to Roland let's you know let's do this study Roland starts reading the literature this is what I knew about it he starts reading the literature and then they there's how you know what scale are we going to use there's different scales and so you know the Good Friday experiment of course they used the mystical experience questionnaire not Ralph's but one that Leary had one that Leary had created and so all it was is you know what Ralph told me was hey there's a we had a meeting in California they everybody get together how you know they're planning how to do this study and there's only a couple of different scales and Ralph's scale was by the most reputable by that time he had been doing it all through the 70s he had been refining his scale he had already had it validated and used all over the world and so he as Roland said that the meeting they had if I made it seemed like in the beginning of the article I didn't mean to that the meeting was centered on Ralph I didn't mean to

[\[23:29\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1409s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Say that it was just a general meeting with Jesse and Roland and Bill and Ralph and other people and was that the one that Jordan Peterson was at Jordan Peterson was there yeah yeah and they talked about the best scales to use and Ralph according to Roland Ralph argued persuasively my scale's the best one to use okay I want to read you so this is a passage of Travis in the article in your coding Hood and you say it would allow them to do two things they being Hopkins Hood said they could fight the argument that the measurement was just objective nonsense because they could say could scale has shown that you can identify mystical experiences across religious Traditions among Buddhists Hindus Catholics Protestants Jews Muslims and the people who have no religious beliefs and you can identify that same experience with people in deep meditative prayer people who have it occur spontaneously

[\[24:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1470s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) People who practice the presence of God with a kind of contemplative prayer and among people who take drugs right so not one of those things exclusively produces the experiences there are occasions that's right so that's based on stace's idea of causal indifference right let's see you know as Ralph says gazing at the sunset or you know I remember Terence McKenna like that last interview he did with Eric Davis he said oh I saw you know he's dying of cancer he says oh I saw a ladybug on a dew drop and I had a mystical experience so people have these experiences and their argument is you look back at Catholic mystical literature and you'll find these things that were induced in all different kind of ways you know that you read Walter Hilton's book Stairway to Stairway of perfection there were these Catholic anchoruses and they would build them they would trap them in the wall and they would you know it's like a

[\[25:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1533s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Sensory isolation mixed with prayer mixed with contemplation and they they're trapped in the wall and then they're like there's a hole and they put like water and food to it but you know as we know you read Jail narratives of people being stuck in isolation and they start hallucinating and all kinds of stuff so we already knew I think James Kent writes about that actually in psychedelic information Theory prison prisoners Cinema I think is the term he uses on yeah hallucinations that occur in prisoners who are in solitary yeah yeah the John C John C Lilly book The Deep self he goes into those he goes into he pulls from different jail narratives when arguing for his isolation tank and saying this is more proof that isolation you know he actually he's trying to parse out what are negative experiences and positive experience because obviously most people in solitary confinement don't want to be there and it's probably not going to be a great experience you mentioned Stace now so

[\[26:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1598s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Who is Stace and how does Stace actually link together Hood's work and kind of the counterculture leery Panky and Good Friday experiment we're sort of going backwards here yeah yeah because you got well because you got James variety of religious experiences the source text from which they're all drawing these attributes everybody is very impressed with the way James says look James has all these literary examples from again Saint Teresa St John and the cross George Fox people that had been inhaling nitrous oxide Walt Whitman whatever it's a whole grab bag and he says these are the attributes if you do a cross comparison these are the attributes that we can say these are the characteristics of the experience well Stace was just one Walter Stace was a British philosopher and then he was a Princeton University professor and wrote books on mysticism one's called teachings of the mystics it's a compendium of where he's pulling particular narratives out of different books which again is another whole kind of book there were there's just

[\[27:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1658s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Millions of them if you go into these New York or these new which bookstores what book did the cause it's called causal indifference no the book that their youth that we're doing no what book did that is that the term mysticism and philosophy do you know about what year that is oh I think it's the early 60s I'm just going to guess maybe it's late 50s early 60s that comes out decades after James yeah yep he was just borrowing from James and you know like I said there were already questionnaires James book Friday's a religious experience contains data from questionnaires but they weren't from drug-induced experiences they were from naturally occurring what Evangelical conversion experiences and what James did was you having his grad students do it here take these questionnaires out there and talk to these people and let's see so a lot of the data comes it's not his he didn't collect it was a star one of his students Edwin Starbuck hmm

[\[28:39\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1719s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So you can see the development from trying to measure religious experience from the mid late 19th century all the way through and then you get to Walter State so that's the connection between states and station hood and then hood is pulling from hood is pulling from Stace and so it's just a it's a process of refinement you know did and Hood scale was that developed because the origins of that are interesting too and with all of his snake handling research and stuff it was did he develop the scale to look into that or was he already working on that scale before he got into the snake handling he was he'd already done the scale before the snake handling so he went if I can remember correctly well Ralph was he grew up in Venice Beach raised by a single mother in Venice Beach

[\[29:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1780s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And he went to grad school I think in North Dakota and he was studying suicidality people in a he was in an emergency room in a hospital I think there and studying suicidality and it was there at North Dakota where someone introduced him to William James book and you can imagine if you're into William James and we're you know weird religious people how the Allure of or hey there's these people going into trance States handling deadly serpents I mean like that had to be like the best thing ever so yeah it was before he did the scale before cool yeah yeah and it's obviously if you haven't read the piece a big portion of the piece is on Ralph Hood's research on snake handling which is just super fascinating yeah and Travis is just a great writer on sort of that Appalachian history that was one of my favorite Parts about the piece was just that sort

[\[30:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1841s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Of kind of path down the history of sort of folk medicine in Appalachia and stuff and I feel like so often that region gets simplified or stereotyped and stuff and that sort of cultural histories and isn't as remembered and so it's just really cool part of the piece that I enjoyed yeah thank you yeah the folk medicine aspect I find particularly interesting especially if you're trying to think of some alternative to Industrial Medicine venture capitalist did you know when did people lose if you know I had been reading a lot of the work of there's a two big two great Scholars of ancient medicine John riddle who was I think he's still alive down in North Carolina r-I-d-l-e and then John it's not Strauss Bell I'm gonna mess it up anyway they're about they're expert riddle wrote a book on galen's book all right no I'm sorry on diascority's book Materia Medica which is the first

[\[31:44\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1904s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Like Physician's Desk Reference he was the first one that that had a drug book he took all this earlier drug knowledge and he grouped it by Affinity drug effect and that was the that was a big innovation but I thought that was interesting because you know you read these books from 2000 years ago and it was amazing reading about these drug markets and they you know they're talking openly there's drug dealers and the farmers were also drug dealers and I'm like wow this is cool like this seems like a way better idea what we're doing than doctors being paid by corporations to prescribe you can kill people and then the corporations hiring strippers and all these other people to reward the doctors I was just talking about this with Wendell Mary the other day it's like this is just obscene well and when you talk about how or explore a bit of how industrialization really changed the terrain like literally the terrain right coal mining fundamentally altered the Appalachian terrain but then like the social

[\[32:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=1965s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Terrain the notion that you know introducing sort of time clocks around wage labor and sort of shift work and all of that disrupted the social training it's funny because normally always gives me \[expletive\] for choosing to use like industrial countries rather than western or whatever okay fine you point out that it makes it sound like I'm talking about the early 1900s it's called just busting your ass fair enough but the point that I like it just feels like reading your passages on that I think really underscore some of the similarities to the medicalization of psychedelics and the unintended consequences and the shifts that come with that I mean one of the things that we've talked about for a while now and more recently we've been having some discussions about how medicalization changes the bar just around like drug prohibition drug policy

[\[33:45\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2025s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Right the fact that now rather than being able to claim simply that prohibition is a failed policy that doesn't achieve its stated ends causes a shitload of harm and does all this other stuff you also have to show that these drugs are safe and effective for whatever sort of indications that you're claiming and you invite in all of the Venture capitalists the patent attorneys you know the whole Machinery that Industrial Medicine requires tires and I just thought there were some real similarities between what Appalachia has been through and what sort of psychedelia is is Reckoning with at the moment yeah well if you read the folk books on folk medicine I mentioned catfish gray I mentioned Tommy bass what folk healers who were from the early 1900s even into the 1950s and 60s said it said we never had any problem with obesity drug addiction or any of these problems until the Industrial Medicine came in here and it was a shift in mentality to where people like say my grandmother for example every

[\[34:46\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2086s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Single thing she ate was out of a garden and so if you ever had something wrong with you it was all not only did she have a extremely indicated understanding of roots and trees and all made all kind of little different tinctures and extracts but if you had something wrong with you one yeah your garden is your Pharmacy in nature is your Pharmacy but also you turn to alteration of diet in the mentality here and I can tell you is I'm from here and I live here is well just do whatever you want and if anything goes wrong just get surgery or now you go to the doctor and they'll tell you that you have some recognizable condition but they never will say well a whole lot you know what are you eating what's your lifestyle like what's your job like well once you do that or once you cut all that out there's no way to heal because if you read Hippocratic Oath you read early you read Galen the role of the doctor is not to treat symptoms it's to move any obstructions out of the way so that the body can heal itself that's what a doctor's supposed to do but we've gone

[\[35:47\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2147s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) So far past doctors violating their sacred oath and being co-opted by the pharmaceutical companies insurance companies and every other industry that there's not even a I work at I've worked in the medical field for over a decade I used to repair medical equipment that's what my education's in biomedical engineering they don't even pretend that it's about that anymore because once people for once people if you don't demand it you're not going to get it and if all you demand is more drugs then that's what you're going to get and you have a populist now especially where I lived not everybody I don't want to generalize but a lot of people that that's what they want is another drug and if they say now psychedelics are going to fix it I know a lot of people around here that you know that everybody's picked up on this psychedelic thing everybody it's Michael Pollan mainstreamed it people I know from my little home county even though they don't read or even use the internet they know they have picked up on the line psychedelics heal this it's just in the air yeah I was just saying the other day like in our chat I was watching a CNBC

[\[36:49\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2209s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Little mini like 11 minute little section that they were playing on on on the five day work week the 40 hour work week and how that's impacting mental health and talking with various researchers and non-profit people about how cutting down to a four day work week 32 hours getting the same pay how that could positively affect mental health and I sent the team like a message and I was like in that 11 minutes I heard more like argument valid arguments about mental health and causes then I hear in you know the Psychedelic Renaissance space so that's rare to hear something like that from for me it's just more of take the pill don't worry don't we don't even talk about we don't even talk about how the environment has changed and how the social fabric has changed that's

[\[37:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2270s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I don't want to say it's off limits but it's really not part of the discussion it's minimal yeah and let me say something that connects to what David was saying if you have if you're a scientist and you think scientifically and you have one set of conditions to where there was essentially no mental illness there was no all these problems that we have today there was no deaths of Despair no opioid crisis let's just use those no record alcoholism and suicidality and then you have another set of conditions clearly definable mostly that you can draw right to public policy and economic policy and one of them produces terrible results and the other one doesn't a science you can there's two paths science which would say well let's take all that stuff away and see if it gets better first the path of magic says well let's add a new drug and magically it'll heal the world that's not scientific that's magical thinking well yeah and you know seeing the pushback we've gotten for trying

[\[38:50\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2330s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) To advance some systemic critique to sort of look at those larger components systems structures what have you and you know being told either that that's too big or that's beyond the scope of say psychologists like there's two people who sort of bring to mind that are Mark Fisher Jordan Peterson right where on the one hand you've got Mark Fisher saying it goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated but this says nothing about their causation if it if it's true for instance that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of Serotonin this requires a social and political explanation and the task of re-politicizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to fight sorry left wants to challenge capitalist realism and then on the other hand you've got someone like Jordan Peterson who you know I appreciate him for stating it so bluntly some years ago who basically said look the role of

[\[39:52\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2392s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The psychologist is to return people to some sort of functionality within you know the pre-existing structures and it's sort of like okay so you see your role as restoring people to functionality with an inherently \[expletive\] up system no need to change the system no need to restructure that and I think you know those are fundamental differences and questions that are facing psychedelia at the moment if they don't want to face them then you just there's not even any reason to pay what's that's just \[expletive\] if we know who there is they're just trying to sell something that's all it is so there's no need to really there's nothing past that it's totally obvious they're just trying to sell something it's a new industry a bunch of people want to make a bunch of money they're going to tell anybody who questions it to shut up and then later they'll say God can you believe that happened it was yeah we were trying to tell you about people you know that's what I tell you know my Dad I'll say my dad just he's not anymore but he was always very conservative and my brother

[\[40:53\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2453s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) I graduated high school in 2001 2000 you know of course the I graduate in June September the September 11th attack happens my brother was over there won the first boat over so-called operation Iraqi freedom anyway my dad was all for the war he's going to hit me for saying that but it's true all these we got to get them they attacked us blah blah blah well 20 years later now he says can you believe that bankrupted the country ruined that country this country yeah actually I can't believe it because I was reading no time don't do it so it's this and this just happens over and over as you all know it just happens over and over and over again and every new thing that's why the this big Silicon Valley is so tied into it Elizabeth Holmes I was reading Sam Bateman freed last night this is going to change the world it's going to fix everything every as soon as they say that you wouldn't already know reach for your wallet is this gonna fix it all that's what they said about computers

[\[41:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2515s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Everybody should read there was a harp a few years ago January 2017 I think Fred Turner who's a great historian at Stanford wrote a book wrote a front page article cover article for Harper's and it was about the history of the internet he writes books about the Counter Culture history of the internet he's phenomenal in the what he showed was the rhetoric that was being used when the internet came out and he has a speech by Ronald Reagan and Ronald Reagan says the microchip will be the greatest advancement for human Freedom ever everybody said it's going to be a interconnected Utopia of just totally Cooperative angels and then Fred Turner says and then it led to the election of Donald Trump and the bolster of authoritarianism one of the things that jumps to mind is is Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin claiming that color TV and weed was going to lead to the revolution that people would get stoned and see it in Vivid yeah Technicolor and that would Inspire such

[\[42:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2575s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Change and like big if true but 60 years later we look and we see and it's like I don't know about that look how quick the conversation around social media evolved you know it was social media I mean okay you let's take Myspace out of it because Myspace was I don't know you can even put that in a conversation but it didn't last Facebook wiped it out really quickly right yeah I think Facebook pretty much opened the doors to non-college people when something like 2007 but all those people promoting social media as you know this fix this interconnection all the things that can be done about it and then you know Zoom forward not even 10 years 10 years a little bit plus 10 years and now now the conversation those

[\[43:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2638s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) People who are the people who are raising legitimate criticism at the time of what social media could be used for they were shut down they were the skunk at the you know Silicon Valley party and now you fast forward and it's like a gigantic \[expletive\] fire of fascists everywhere on online and the conversation is around you know how do we censor you know and how do we prevent that from being out there it doesn't take too long for these like capitalist fixations to kind of come full circle you know Boomerang I mean what was that Dave Boomerang like yeah it doesn't take long it's just that initial descent is really suppressed at the beginning because it's inconvenient to a whole lot of people I mean the crypto industry right now is is facing so many like you brought up

[\[44:58\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2698s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) SBA like there they've become you know Bitcoin was started because of the financial crash the first block has whatever the I don't know if the New York Times The Wall Street Journal whatever has the newspaper headline on it that was the whole point of it and now it's like within a very short period of time that whole movement was it's Wall Street now right and so they're trying to undo certain aspects of what it became you couldn't imagine 10 10 12 years ago that I guess some people could imagine it was probably going to be become what it's become but I don't know it's just interesting seeing the same sort of Arc in psychedelia has played out in so many other Industries and it's just endlessly fascinating to me to

[\[46:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2760s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) See yeah just the same marketing campaign that's why that's what a part of the same economic system underneath the same economic system the same people the same marketing campaign that is how do we everything's screwed up is there any quick way to fix it that's what it amounts to well the gap between the rich and the poor is huge well Sam Bateman freed I'll take the money from the rich people and give it to the poor it was a Robin Hood thing okay yeah man we'll create something for nothing we'll fix everything without doing any actual work or changing anything that's what it all boils down to win yeah everybody wins no one has everybody been up yeah the weird thing recently was I forget what magazine that was everyone was over the summer or something I don't know if it was time or whatever the headline of the Prozac they were comparing it I just saw someone tweet about it today even that it was just weird Zach versus you know it was weird because it was in a non-ironic way you

[\[47:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2820s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Know it was like comparing putting both Prozac and psychedelics and like this conversation of this is going to be this new wonder drug and no consideration of the trajectory of Prozac and what actually happened it's like hey look mushrooms are now inhabiting the throne yeah so so one of the other things that you write about in the piece which I think was surprising to some people is so you have Ralph Hood he comes up with the scale to measure people's responses to Mystical experiences that then gets incorporated in to Johns Hopkins and is is sort of the primary scale that they're using to write this paper put that paper out and so much of what's happened over the last 15 16 years now is that paper sort of at the Genesis in a sense of this new movement right now sort of the New medicalization Movement but you write

[\[48:02\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2882s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) About how Ralph is opposed to medicalization now can you talk a little bit about sort of Ralph's orientation around medicalization and some of his thoughts about how you know how his scale is has sort of been lent to the university who's yeah well he's led to this expanded yeah field now well he's not as he's I think it's in there in the very beginning he says you know I'm not against it he's not against the medical research he's friends with Bill Richards he loves Roland and all them he's not against the research but the research doesn't necessarily have to be used to just hand it over like everything else like the tech we were talking about early computers it's developed with public money under the guise of the military and then hand it over to Microsoft so they can make money off of it after we pay for it and then sold backwards and this isn't so that's if this isn't this is philanthropy money

[\[49:03\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=2943s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) They're getting some NIH money now for a smoking cessation but it's philanthropy money but yeah he's against the medical research he's for them he's for the research hey let's find out as much as we can about it I'm for the research I volunteered for it I don't think there's anything wrong with it but he's against it being used as an incubator for pharmaceutical products why can't we just why can't we just investigate the nature of the experience and Roland's for that you know I think he's for that that the money as he says the money comes from people that are interested in developing Therapeutics that's where the money comes from but hoods Hood's view is just that he I mean he says right in the beginning of the article he says pharmaceutical companies will do anything to get you hooked on a drug that you have to take for the rest of your life and they're doing everything they can to prove him right all you have to do is read nature neuron all these new papers that are coming out oh can we do them without the trip because then it'll be cheaper and the interest company can pay for it and you can take it all the time if you there was an interview there was a great everybody should watch this interview where Uma Thurman interviews Christian

[\[50:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3005s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Anger Meyer oh yeah he says she says well what the problem with this stuff is you only have to take it once he said what can you do about that and he's if anybody's watching no he goes oh well we'll just come up with new diseases all the time he goes there's all I haven't even discovered yet he goes being afraid of the world the future we'll just create new diseases and he said don't we'll never run out of course yeah I've listened to a podcast with him where he basically said like now we should kind of keep ramping up industrial cities and all this and then people will be a nice like maintenance thing for this condition that we've now put ourselves in for our mental States and stuff you know that interview is amazing that that interview is amazing because she says what do you think is causing all this mental illness and he says oh definitely technology he goes it's causing all that and he goes but it's good because then the audience is like hold up what and she's like she has this look on her face watch the interview look at her face she's stunned by what he's saying and he goes well yeah he goes but it's because we're on our way to the future he goes

[\[51:05\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3065s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The future will be awesome but you know this riffraff they're having a hard time understanding what us smart guys know the US seers and Mystics we see this amazing future with Elon Musk and space shuttles and we're gonna go to Mars blah blah blah but on the way everybody's gone nuts but I'm going to fix it with this drug that everybody's gonna have to take yeah it's the most amazing interview I've ever seen related but this is the beauty of like people like that or like you know reading things in the business press like they'll just tell you what they think you know and there's no recognition of like the horrific consequences of that or like the pathologization of Aging or like just looking at you know I mean and thinking back too to his comments during the initial outbreak of the pandemic and pushing hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and insisting that he knew it was right even though there'd been you know it was all like early he was telling people to take it oh yeah a heart hardcore he said

[\[52:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3126s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It should be that that he's probably got money should go ahead and just like make it available for covet sufferers he challenged us to a debate when we pushed back and then of course the actual evidence came in and we it's been crickets ever since you should get him on a debate I don't know he won't answer my email yeah well I think that that disregard for your friends for reality is important in context of people like this pushing pharmaceutical products right like personally I'm with you I'm agnostic when it comes to psychedelic research I think it would be fascinating to see some more sort of phenomenological people research like personally like I find on mushrooms like I get I see consistent like body patterning that that's there from one trip to the next I've talked with other people who also have similar visual experiences it's like is that coming from something relating to the ocular nerve is that coming from something in the brain like where what is the

[\[53:06\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3186s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) What is the source of this is this something like you know like probing like figuring out ways to actually tease apart some of that maybe you don't get anything actionable out of it but also like what the hell is going on not in the sense that we somehow might crack the ultimate riddle of life the universe and everything but really just to be able to ask more and more interesting questions about whatever the hell is going on yeah and you know I do think it's important to separate what Hopkins is doing and I can't speak of any other psychedelic research program because I don't know about any of the other ones except for Hopkins and to separate what they're that is as Roland pointed out to me it's a bunch of different there's five six seven eight different people there they've all got their own opinions what Christianity I would not try to associate Christian anger Meyer and his views with Roland I let's do the research but that has nothing to do with someone like anger Meyer saying you know the example I always use tell me if this makes sense or not it one thing I learned reading Riddle's

[\[54:08\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3248s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Book about Galen or yeah about Galen ancient physician from the I think the second century very famous position known all over the land for how what a great doctor he was but he also wrote all these books hundreds and hundreds of books about drugs and Pharmacy and healing but he says this is the Hippocratic Oath a doctor must this is what separates a doctor from a priest and a magician this is two thousand years ago and it stands still today the doctor refuses untreatable patients if I go to the doctor and I say my girlfriend broke up with me you know what he should say that's not a medical problem go talk to your mom or something because they don't if they give you pills that's a violation but the priest and the magician Galen says they will treat anything including diseases and especially diseases they created himself so appreciate says you've got sin but good news I can fix it right so Christian anger Meyer says okay we caused everybody mental illness with this other business I got going on but I have the Cure too I don't think he go I

[\[55:09\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3309s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Don't think he's I don't think he doesn't acknowledge but that he's involved in Tech he sort of has I've listened to interviews where he sort of acknowledges the trajectory that cities are going to be like nature is going to become more and more sparse as technology and industrial cities become more and more populous and this becomes more of a thing and that we'll need drugs like psychedelics to sort of assuage that that declining of natural exposure and things like that and he is involved in all the tech stuff he's involved with it and in the Uma Thurman interview he says he quickly corrects himself and he says he goes I'm a super fan of disruption that's a quote he says I'm a super fan of disruption meaning I'm a super fan of the disruption meaning people killing themselves and all the problems Raven That's the disruption he's a fan of that he considers these are okay casualties because the future is going to be so awesome this is not a over collateral damage this collateral

[\[56:10\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3370s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Damage of going to the what he calls the future this is not a caricature of what he says this is exactly what he says but okay so so and hopefully this doesn't put anyone in too awkward of a position but that that collateral damage framing does have parallels with things that have come out of Hopkins like as far as you know Matt Johnson getting up at the horizons conference and saying look as this scales up people are gonna get hurt or you know some of the dismissive responses we've gotten from Bill Richards when we and other Hopkins researchers when we've tried to bring some of the participant harms to them and say hey this is going on like would you engage with this would you hey you're advising a company in Australia that's doing some really harmful stuff would you consider distancing and the lack of Engagement there and it's not everyone at Hopkins but like getting some of those responses where it's like how to break up some of that magical thinking how to disrupt the narratives about collateral damage

[\[57:11\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3431s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And the notion that the ends somehow justify the means I mean it's disturbing to hear people so willing to write off study participants in the you know in service to a narrative about a better brighter future that psychedelics will eventually bring us if only we can do what more research that that in some cases really disregards participants like where how does that resolve itself what is that you know how to tease those apart so you're saying in the Hopkins specifically concerning Hopkins you're saying people that got hurt in the trial like I did like I do the trial and so they get messed up and then is that what you mean so well you know more because I just want to say that all you guys know more about psychedelic research than I do as far as the big overview I've you guys have been reporting on it as journalists breaking stories I haven't done that and though I keep up with some of it I don't know everything about it totally no and I think so things that have been

[\[58:12\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3492s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Put on the record I think at this point are you know in the case well actually I'll flag that one later because I want to ask you some questions about epistemic Authority and sort of who gets to you know the tension between researcher and participants particularly in Reflections on mystical experiences but like the things that come to mind so we were just talking about say Hopkins and the Christian anger Meyer or Compass or a tie and you know when we early days when we tried to bring some of our concerns about Compass to Bill Richards you know he just dismissed them out of hand didn't want to hear anything about it referred to some of our follow-up reporting as sort of tabloid journalism did an interview where he sort of I don't know how authentic they were or weren't but he cried very big tears about the idea that that people were unfairly attacking George Goldsmith and Compass Pathways and you know they certainly didn't want to patent and lock everything down in the way that they were being made out to

[\[59:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3553s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Be and you know or the other thing that comes to mind is like I said at Horizons in the wake of some of our reporting as researchers were I guess publicly grappling with some of this you know with Matt Johnson sort of again espousing this collateral damage idea that yes psychedelic medicine is going to scale up and people are going to get hurt and sort of presented as a matter of fact that's just the way it is like do you think and by the is the way you interpreted that that okay field trip out there there's all these patients going and somebody's gonna you know take a trip and go crazy and go kill somebody do you think that's what he was referred to what do you think he was further or all different varieties of \[expletive\] up \[expletive\] I took it like I would like to take it I guess at face value and you know take it as broadly As I understood it as it was relayed to me just that like there are things like things are unforeseen things are going to happen

[\[1:00:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3613s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) You know I would point to it being like there's a currently a very small research participant pool there's been you know the studies are small and this is what I'm saying I'm not opposed to psychedelic research I'm agnostic I think too one of the big things to consider in the moment and this goes to some of Hood's concerns about medicalization as well if this is not about you know just sort of asking interesting questions about drugs but developing pharmaceutical products and agents that can be sold to people to cure whatever ails them suddenly it's not about weirdos who are excited to go into a Hopkins study for the grab bag of drug and it becomes maybe people who would never do a psychedelic who have who might say I have no interest in ontologically you know blowing up my ontological understanding of everything around you know or experiencing really weird Altered States or feeling you know having out-of-body experiences but I'm a trauma sufferer I'm a depression I've suffered depression

[\[1:01:14\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3674s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) For years and nothing else has worked and I've heard that this might be it so you know I will White Knuckle it and strap in for a psychedelic experience in the hope of curing that and all of a sudden you have entirely different people flocking to this drug on the back of those narratives or these drugs I think that's a really good point and I think two things one there's a something I told Roland it was a quote out of a book and here's what it is and it applies just to what you're saying Wendell Berry asked in his newest book on what scale is it possible for humans to think and eventually not be surprised by large-scale bad results on what possible because it's on what scale is it possible for humans to think and eventually not be surprised by large-scale bad results right to technology amplifies oh we'll scale this up really quick yeah well then they would answer your question is they should be held responsible if you know that what you're going to do is going to cause this then it's no different than the invasion of Iraq Iraq you so what do you pay fake

[\[1:02:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3735s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Experts and Industry people that work for the defense department no it'll work out perfect there was a front page of the New York Review books the other day an article this United States it was a guy he said I handled the war in Iraq I know all about them and I made sure that it went okay well we know how well that went and he said now and he goes now we need to split up the North and the South of America and he said I'm going to handle it and I know the way it should be done blah blah blah so the point I'm trying to make is yeah if the evidence that we have is based on a couple hundred people and all those people well they cannot they can't be 20 to 50 no problems well the people that need help the most are all \[expletive\] up on drugs the people I know are you gonna just who's the who's gonna get to do it because all we know is about people that are already doing okay does that make sense I mean that's just my opinion is I think yeah there's no telling what could happen if you start get if you start giving psychedelics and I think Roland would agree with that I'm trying to think back to what the last time I

[\[1:03:15\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3795s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Talked to him what he said but yeah there's no way to know and so it is a well \[expletive\] it let's scale it up and see what happens I think that you generally this is just my opinion but I think what you'll generally see is that there'll be a lot of positive results from people whatever mental condition that they have I think that the unit so you're gonna scale that up I think and I think that you're also going to scale up the Adverse Events you know you're gonna have a reasonable portion of people who are worse off than they went in to the trial or the therapy in the current hype in the industry we just don't really talk about that the underbelly of that too much it's being talked about more over the last year it's certainly been picked up on and discussed more and the adverse Events in

[\[1:04:17\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3857s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) In the compass trial more people are picking up on that more non-psychedelic people are picking up on that but yeah that's what I generally think will happen is you're gonna you're scaling up what if you're scaling up what's already present in the trials you're gonna have just that's just gonna you're gonna have way more Yeah well yeah and like we've said a couple times recently on podcasts is like this is the most supervised it's ever gonna be or like this is like the most attention that's ever going to be paid to like oversight too and that's a little scary too as you think about scaling it up really quickly and there's already Adverse Events going on and stuff not being sort of paused and reflected on and improved learned from yeah and you know I can see an argument being made of somebody saying look everything's you know why not maybe it'll work it's like you know but that seems to be the attitude with everything well let's just see if it works like we were talking about Appalachia whoa well we're going to bring you into the future we know you got a system that works it's

[\[1:05:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3918s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Not perfect but we're going to bring you into the future and make a bunch of money while we're doing it and if it you know a couple hundred years you're whatever his disruption you know causes Grandma to die well oh well you know so well in many cases that disruption is pretty immediate like say with Rideshare companies who just obliterated taxis taxi workers who just paid multiple hundred thousand dollars for their Medallion they go kill themselves because of it you know because their Medallion just totally got wiped out you know this happened all over the place you know I just want to say this I don't think you can talk about what we were just talking about without talking about the nature of the problem it's supposed to treat it's being sold as a medical treatment so what medical condition does it treat most of the people I know the problem all of them yes most people's problem is I've done the study I know it's great it can give you a new philosophy of Life

[\[1:06:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=3979s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Most people I know their problem isn't they need a new philosophy on life most of them are they there's no jobs all the problems that y'all already know and it's we're back to material reality everybody material reality their problem isn't that they need a Transcendent experience I'm for it I hope they do but there's a lot of other things they need and we shouldn't allow people to experiment on people that already got so many \[expletive\] problems they don't need you experimenting on them so awesome \[expletive\] so I think this actually really interestingly mirrors the point that that Taves makes right where this when she says if scientists fail to make a clear distinction between scientific claims based on empirical evidence and Theological claims based on Revelation or tradition they risk setting mystical experiences apart from similar experiences on theological rather than scientific grounds and if we look at some of the sort of you know what makes psychedelics different what makes psychedelics special oh well they can occasion mystical experiences that will give you this moment of New

[\[1:07:20\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4040s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Perspective and reflection on life and appreciation for this that and the other but as you point out when you're when your material conditions remain unaffected and those are you know at the Crux of what is driving whatever issues you're dealing with like it seems like there's this belief this almost theological belief that psychedelics will somehow overcome that in face of empirical evidence that suggests otherwise that's purely what it is too it's important for people to understand it that's purely what it is a magical belief traceable back to some of it romantic novels like Aldous huxley's Island published in 1962 that can you unpack yeah he just made a bald claim and I'd love for you know yeah exactly sure yeah I've heard Rick noblin talk numerous times and I talked to him on the phone once and he brought up not me he brought reference out to Sox's Island and he said look what I learned from Alice huxley's island is that you can't just have it can't

[\[1:08:22\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4102s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Just be small groups of people here and there cloistered about we can't just any longer be little pockets of people using psychedelics it has to be worldwide and what happens in Ireland is they take psychedelics and they turn it into the religion and they incorporate it into life it was out of sucks Lee's Last book and it was the opposite of Brave New World if you put them together Brave New Worlds the bad way it can go in Islands the good way it can go right and so but I should also say to back up my bold claim is that all of this literature is romantic literature including William James religion is a subcategory of religious literature or romantic literature utopianism is a form of Romanticism D.H Lawrence William Blake who FR who coined the doors of perception Aldous Huxley is a romantic novelist he's being cited in scientific papers that's you don't really need any more evidence than that

[\[1:09:24\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4164s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Is not a scientist he is a romantic novelist and he's a very interesting guy he's \[expletive\] smart but he's sort of I don't know I wouldn't trust him and he made his money as a Hollywood screenwriter he's made his money as a Hollywood screenwriter do you see how does Huxley is not an authority on anything he was a disillusioned artist so I don't know how far I'm gonna go with a plan that's let's mix Central planning with pharmaceutical companies and the dreams of a dead disillusioned artist to create some new worldwide religion or something that's going to fix it this is roughly what you're talking about is what you're talking about more than roughly that that was beautifully articulated yeah let's probably rap on I want to talk about this thing and then maybe we can rap but one of the things he talked about is the psych you know quote psychedelic religion of mystical Consciousness you get into it later down in the piece I just want to read a couple paragraphs here you write that some believe that these theological

[\[1:10:25\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4225s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Premises are being obscured by researchers who have both an ideological and in some cases financial interest in bringing psychedelics to Market add to this fact that psychedelics are now being hyped as the answer to all our problems in a troubling picture emerges that the scientists of religion attempting to model the Natural Sciences and systematize religions accidentally synthesize them creating a new scientific sub-genre of Christianity that they themselves could believe in what's really happening at Johns Hopkins might be the flowering of a new psychedelic spirituality grounded in jamesian mysticism with psilocybin quote unquote therapy replacing the ancient initiation ceremony Dr Rick Strassman calls it the Psychedelic religion of mystical Consciousness it's a messiah Messianic movement Strassman told me they want to bring about a Utopia and in this case the Messiah is the mushroom yeah oh sorry go ahead let me just yeah let me just finish yeah sorry this

[\[1:11:26\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4286s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) One just one more paragraph here the current psychic psychedelic movement or Renaissance he says is essentially the emergence of a new mystico scientific religion quote camouflaged by scientific studies and statistical Firepower end quote with its own Moses William James and cult vocabulary psychedelics occasion effects adverse effects are now challenging flashbacks are reactivations and if you read the articles they'll start to borrow the same language there's a philosophy of James Strassman says and then there's his theology which was inspired by his connection with Swami Vivid kananda I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right I think that's right yeah so oh this is something this was interesting for me to read Strassman talk about this because this is like something that's been I think bouncing around in my mind quite a while is that it does it

[\[1:12:27\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4347s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Gives me the Vibes of sort of like a new especially thinking about Bill Richards and his influence at Hopkins and his book sacred knowledge if you've read that and then just thinking about perennialism and in the roots of all these things it does give those vibes of this new kind of sub-genre of Christianity how can you not like kind of feel that yeah well two things the one religious studies if you read the latest religious well they've been arguing this for decades but if you read the biggest Scholars and the main scholars in the U.S I'll say Jason Joseph's storm over in Europe in Vienna there's Stu Julian strube what you'll learn is that the history of religious studies is not a secularizing force the field of religious studies has really been used to constantly there's constant new religious revivals in mystical revivals as a result of a lot of the if you read Jeff \[expletive\] for

[\[1:13:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4408s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Instance who's really interested in psychedelic research he makes the same argument that most of the people it's like psychedelic research the people who are in religious studies usually believe the stuff there are people that are interested in Magic and religion do you see what I'm saying it's sold as a religious studies people argued against it they'd say well it's a secularizing force that's not really true if you look at it it's all intertwined with theosophy and spiritualism and all the occultists and all the people are all mixed in with it so what I'm saying is this if you if is it the emergence of a new mystical scientific religion well you're taking specific religion specific religious teachings like the idea of a common core perennial mysticisms and all this which are the most common thing in religious studies it's just a huge part of it and the people that have believed this go back hundreds and hundreds of years

[\[1:14:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4468s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Mysticism I was just talking to Jason Joseph from storm today and he told me that that even that word mysticism is a really a theological concept it's not a scientific concept but what Str I'll just say this about stressman I don't think I'm being clear but what's strassman's really talking about is if you read Western labor if you're interested in psychedelics you should read Weston labar's book The Ghost Dance it's one of the best books on on Palouse what he called hallucinogens and religion and what he what the whole book's about is Crisis Cults and their relationship to psychedelics and so what Strassman is essentially saying is that it's a crisis cult and if you listen to the rhetoric from the scientific from the Psychedelic researchers and from the people selling them they will constantly tell you that the species is threatened and this is one of the main reason my questions must be suppressed by anthropological definition that's a crisis cult so this is part of the that's part of what he's arguing and then I think the rest

[\[1:15:28\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4528s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Is in the article yeah there's I love that it's they you got to love that in America everything is just constantly given some new futuristic sounding language and that's why you're gonna it's an activate well I want to have an activation it's like total call it makes it sound cool everybody wants to have it anyway I don't know the religious or the I could go so deep into this but the science of religion the people said worst if you read the literature they were not studying religion from a scientific perspective that's not what that's really not what they were doing all of them were interested in religion and they would pull particular texts from particular places they thought it was secular looking at it but they could only get take Max Mueller who's a predecessor to William James he can only get a certain number of texts from India and these other places in order to make these presumptions that yep there's a common core and so what it has done is after it's filtered out so long even by the time it got to James it had already reached a level of refinement and that's why tave says

[\[1:16:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4590s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Mystical experience is a high-end product it's essentially an artistic literary concept it's a really hot you know the swasters there's a great book by swasterson called religion after religion sometimes they call it religion 2.0 what this was going to be is a more scientific version of religion and people like James they couldn't buy into the going to church every day and worshiping God they didn't want to have anything to do with that they needed something that they could believe and that was give me a shot like they could believe that and so that's essentially what it is is they've pushed all the just like if you're mine and coal if you have a mountain down in Eastern Kentucky they say well you look at the mountain you go wow that's beautiful a natural source of all and wonder they say no it's not it's a collection of minerals some of them are worth money and some of them aren't so they blow the whole thing apart they take five six hundred dollars worth of coal and then you're left with the end result and essentially what these people are doing is saying well \[expletive\] Community \[expletive\] the church \[expletive\] morality let's just

[\[1:17:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4651s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Turn it into a drug and that's what it is Main Line some essential perennialism you know it is interesting and it is an interesting so I'm not that it's not interesting and that I don't find even the Huxley idea and the Dublin idea hey whatever I mean we've been through so much here where I live from one we've been going to the Future for hundreds of years now and you see where we're at so where are we going next Elon Musk president will go to Mars if Dublin's president we'll go to a \[expletive\] mystery hyper mystery School wow I really appreciate the crisis cult framing that's fascinating and something that on Surface like seems to click and jive with a lot that we've discussed lately and I definitely want to dive more into that but also thinking about sort of some of strassman's positionality around this where it's like it's so interesting to

[\[1:18:33\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4713s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Read some of the critiques or commentary he offers in your article because it's like you know he's got or at least he had a horse in that race and thinking about the whats and the whys of his own horse whether it's his affinity for kabbalistic Judaism or if it's you know looking at him shutting down his studies as people were having these really uncomfortable entity encounters maybe rather than experiences of the Divine mystery or clearly explicit sort of religious themes or what have you like there's I think almost in a sense mirroring psychedelic experiences themselves there's a lack of sort of lining up in a really clear way with some of I don't know his professed interests or his desires or what he was hoping to get from the study I mean it's been ages since I read The Spirit Molecule but thinking about

[\[1:19:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4774s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Some of the commentary especially as things got real weird towards the end of the study and then sort of pulling the plug and thinking too about like why so to the earlier question of why does Hopkins maybe get all the glory for sort of restarting the Psychedelic Renaissance or whatever you know Hopkins is still around still kicking doing whatever rather than having a bunch of people still trying to Grapple with why the hell did I meet this insectoid and think that they were gonna do odd medical experiments on me yeah I mean wasn't Strassman kind of concluding towards the end and why he stopped that it was sort of bigger than science that it was like an experience that he wasn't quite grappling or like that he didn't feel like it was hard to quantify well also that he they had him in down in New Mexico they had him in like the closet of some emergency room or something so he never you know they approved him to do psilocybin and so he was going to try to do therapeutic stuff but it just he didn't have a suitable place and he quit he stopped the research because he said look we need to move this off base somewhere we can really do this scientifically and they said no way in

[\[1:20:34\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4834s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Hell we're approving that so then gotcha too bad what could have been is it I want to do a study with restaurants he's far out it's so fascinating just think about where we'll be in 10 years with you know psychedelic medicalization will will it have succeeded will it have failed will it have been like will we be having the FTX conversation of how the \[expletive\] did we allow that to happen is it going to get you know is it going to go so sideways you know I think the ketamine thing going on right now will end up going sideways but you know we don't really don't know how it's actually going to play out so much stuff has just changed you know I was thinking about in this conversation of it's like in the in this in the Psychedelic Renaissance now it's just so common to say psychedelic says medicines I don't hear that in the 60s though it's

[\[1:21:36\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4896s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's more Consciousness Focus right you know you don't really hear I don't know about it like as referring to medicines back in the 60s and what's that going to do when we're trying to really Force these compounds into a box you know into a very tightly well it's going to put them into the hands of like a certain class of people and I don't know leave some people out but I guess and if they can get Medicaid to pay for it is that that's the whole thing is to get it because then you can see it happening but I don't know if you I don't know if it will I wouldn't be surprised but otherwise I don't think it'll be that successful I think people are just going to do it on their own even here they don't have any technology in which you can't figure out you know I had no soap this is a small state hell everybody takes psychedelics colluding with everything else and they don't have no mystical none of that they just take psychedelics with this that and take it

[\[1:22:38\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=4958s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Whatever you know they're not most of the people I know are doing it just willy-nilly con concerts and this and that but I don't think you'll be able to the knowledge is out there hell you can read sacred knowledge and get the playlist and everything and try to recap about yourself yeah but there's so much there's a group of people who want to do DIY type stuff who want to do that but like look all the information say so much drug information is just sitting there for free on Arrowood but yet there's like this huge market for coaches and you know people don't want to do their own research they want to be told you know this is how you do it blah blah blah so well that goes right back to huxley's Island because the question Huxley island is here's the question Huxley asked an island and sets out to illustrate he says is the human predicament solvable by growth and awareness he essentially it can psychedelics cure stupidity if not it ain't gonna work that's so it ain't

[\[1:23:39\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=5019s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Gonna work because it goes to what you're saying people I don't know just give it to me so many people are like that yeah and there's I think we're all in that like that in some ways so I don't want to set myself apart people some people pay really close attention to some things and other things they don't you know maybe they're very careful about what they eat but they whatever I mean yeah and if your depression is caused because you're like everybody else and you're in medical bankruptcy it's much easier to just pop a pill than like even contemplate this yeah Everest of \[expletive\] up I mean there's also like what are you gonna do just to bring it back to like that at that point you know systemic realities and material conditions I mean at the point where if you're working two jobs that are paying 715 an hour to just barely you know to hover below the poverty line you know where do you find the time yeah how are you gonna require how are you going to reconnect with nature if that's if you work at a \[expletive\] Amazon warehouse and we got five

[\[1:24:40\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=5080s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Or six of them right around where I live nature you know that's one of the things psychedelics will make you reconnect with nature hell most people a lot of people never even nature they're going to reconnect with nature it shows you the Romantic essentially romantic notion of it oh we'll reconnect with nature what you know I don't know it's the end of it's the end of spoiler alert for silent green but it's like the end of the soil it's a scene that I not even the big scene but when his buddy goes into the into that like the death place when you go to die they have giant screens and you watch like the most beautiful parts of nature you know before your processed into food that's how you go out you know in a city that you know I think something I haven't watched the movie in years but I think there's like a scene where because they just have Soylent Green you know and it's like subversive it's against the law and I think he brings in a strawberry or

[\[1:25:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=5141s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Something like that you know it's like this far out thing you actually get a real you actually get a real fruit a real piece of food this is weird when you say that it reminds me of this the drive to connect psychedelics and virtual reality and even leaving aside the whole question of data mining and surveillance capitalism and the whole dystopia that is emerging around that like just looking at that your point about Soylent Green right like this notion of psychedelics afford nature connectedness so here we have loaded your VR headset with the most Lush verdant land let me tell you something you could possibly imagine and you will cruise through them on your 25 milligrams of silicide it's really funny a few years ago a few years ago I was hanging out with Bill Richards and I brought the question up about

[\[1:26:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=5201s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The differences it was something like this about the differences of taking psilocybin in a in like a clinical setting versus in nature you know outside or something like that it's really funny but his answer to me as well it's better inside because you know you're tripping you could be out in the woods and you could trip on a route \[Laughter\] trip on a route I like that trip on a route oh it's probably a good spot to wrap yeah so I would definitely go check out if you're interested in any of this check out Travis's piece channel for magic it's really fascinating you put a lot of ideas into my mind thank you guys for publishing yeah of course yeah our pleasure for sure I'm gonna do more in the future welcome back anytime I we've been

[\[1:27:42\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ued8NNIraFs&t=5262s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Talking in like a signal chat about just about other things and I've just continually been impressed and like your depth of like the history and the connections to you know the breadth we're not going to get in it's like yeah of all the different ideas like I'm yeah yeah but just like the you know the old school stuff Cults of asclepius and all that stuff are really we can't go down that rabbit hole now but it's been really that could almost be a whole episode sometimes I really want to talk about that I know well we're definitely gonna have well we'll have you back yeah to talk about all that and but yeah it's been great thanks for thank you guys so much I appreciate it was good talking to you likewise thank you foreign