Drug Talk Q&A with Dr. Julie Holland

I wanted to try something different with this episode: to team up with a brilliant friend and colleague to answer questions from PSYCHOACTIVE listeners. Dr. Julie Holland is a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist who has written many outstanding books, including most recently Good Chemistry: The Science of Connection, from Soul to Psychedelics. Julie is a long-time believer in the potential of psychoactive experiences to open our worlds and heal our minds. And, as you'll hear in her answers, she also has first-hand experience with many drugs, both good and bad.

Julie and I had such a great time that we plan to do more Q&A episodes in the future. We'll give you a heads up on when to expect the next one, but feel free to send us your questions in the meantime! Our number is 1-833-779-2460 for voicemails. Our email is [e-mail], and we love getting voice notes recorded on your phone there. Or tweet at me, @ethannadelmann.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
of iHeart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the show
where we talk about all things drugs. But any views
expressed here do not represent those of iHeart Media, Protozoa Pictures,
or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed as an inveterate contrarian,

(00:25):
I can tell you they may not even represent my own.
And nothing contained in this show should be used as
medical advice or encouragement to use any type of drug. Hello,
Psychoactive listeners. Today we're gonna do something different. It's not

(00:46):
just gonna be me talking one on one with a guest.
But I've invited an old friend of mine who I've
known god for a few decades. It's the nineties now,
Julie Holland, Dr Julie Holland, who's really just a spa
tacular writer, thinker, clinician, you name it, I mean, and
she's written numerous books. I mean, she wrote one about
working in the emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

(01:08):
She's written books about medical marijuana and m d M
a h. She wrote a book called Moody bitches about
women and psychoactive drugs and all sorts of other things
as well, and she's been on major national TV as
a correspondent, you name it. So what we decided to
do was that we were going to do a little
things sort of like car talk on drugs, you know,

(01:29):
but rest ashore. We're not driving when we're doing this,
And actually I don't think we're on drugs at the
moment um. But Julie, it's great to have you joined
me for answering these questions that have come in from
our listeners. I'm very happy to be here. I don't
have to pee in a cup to talk to you,
do I ethan? Oh? Well, you know people used to
say if you wanted a job at Drug Policy Alliance,
you needed to fail a drug test, but that was
never true. I am not driving. Let's just say, um,

(01:53):
you know, I have to give just one extra little plug,
which is that my most recent book that came out
is called Good Chemistry, and it about cannabis and psychedelics
and antidepressants and lots of the things we're probably gonna
be talking about. That sounds fascinating. So today we're gonna
roll off a bunch of questions. So let's go to
the callers. Hey, um, you know, Michael Pollan has been

(02:18):
doing a book tour for his latest book about psychedelics
and keeps repeating the idea that the jury is still
out on micro dosing, that it could all be placebo.
And if someone who's been micro docing for several years
and has read James Fadiman's book, I'd like to get
your perspective on whether you believe that uh, micro docing

(02:40):
should be in completely subperceptual doses or you should be
taking enough of a micro doce that you definitely feel something.
My impression and other people I've talked to who are
micro dosing is that they're taking effective doses where the
effects are noticeable and significant, whether or not it's a
cure for anything ing or the impact that has UM.

(03:02):
I can understand the jury still out, but I keep
seeing Michael Pollen repeating that these are entirely sub perceptual doses,
and that seems to me erroneous, And I wonder if
you have taught I definitely have thoughts. First of all,
I think there's different ways to micro dos and you
could have a goal that you want sub perceptual doses,
and then you know what I usually recommend with my patients.

(03:23):
Is One easy way to figure out whether it's sub
perceptual or not is if you're trying to read a
book and the words are sort of breathing and swimming
and moving around, that's probably not sub perceptual. But I
feel like I know a lot of people who feel
good when the micro dose. I was micro docing before
it was called micro dosing. I didn't know that's what
I was doing. But I'm not much of a drinker.
When I was an undergrad and a premed I didn't

(03:44):
really want to get drunk, but I wanted to have
a certain levity in the proceedings for the night, and
I would just have like a tiny little stem of
a mushroom and I felt sort of a brilliant and
connected and enjoyed myself and didn't have a hangover. I
think there's a lot of different ways to micro dose.
The study that Michael Pollen is referencing came out of Imperial.
It allowed participants to self blind at home, so they

(04:07):
referred to this as citizen science. It's not a clinical study.
As a psychiatrist, I will say that the psychedelics lend
a certain cognitive flexibility that can be very, very helpful
for a broad range of psychiatric diagnoses. Certainly there's less rumination,
less fixation. You know, it's a mind opening, heart opening.

(04:27):
This can lead to creativity or emotional enhancement. I think
there's a lot of pluses to micro dosing. And I
will also say, don't knock the placebo effect. You know,
it's real. People expect to get better. They do get better,
and thank God for the placebo effect in psychiatry, or
things would be even worse than they already are. Yeah. Well,
you know it's funny. During the beginning of pandemic, I

(04:50):
was determined I was going to start micro docing myself,
but I just kept spacing out on it every morning,
so I never really got into it, never really tried it.
I have done what I would call mini dozing, which
is the twenty micrograms thirty micrograms which actually feel and
I've enjoyed that. All I have to say, it does
kind of knock me out the next day. Now on

(05:11):
this issue, I mean, I want to believe, and I
have enormous respect for Jim Fattiman who has done so
much of the research on this thing, and he's collected
I think a couple of thousands of anecdotal reports from people.
He's really done a huge amount of work and found
real positive benefits, and so I tend to lean that direction. Now,
that study you mentioned by the Hungarian fellow abolished Saghetti

(05:33):
at Imperial College in London with Dave rit So he
found yeah, no better in the placebo. So and then
there's Ilett Waldman's book, right, a very good book about
her experience micro dosing and how she found it useful.
So my sense is there's not much evidence of real
potential harm. I understand why Michael is looking at Shaghetti
study and saying, you know, the jury is out. Fatiman

(05:54):
collecting thousands of reports suggests there's something really there, So
I think it's definitely worth more research. Speaking of research
and Fatiman, I love Jim Fatiman. He is, you know,
an elder in the psychedelic community. But I really want
to give a shout out to Sophia Corb, who is
the person who's really gathering and collating the data and
doing a lot of the work. That may be an

(06:16):
ongoing theme when we talk about things, and I'm citing
studies as I am always trying to shed some light
on the people right behind the people who are getting
quoted ethan Um. I'm a huge fan of the podcast
and also high Julie, a huge fan of your books. Um.
I'm curious to know if you guys take any psycho
active of drugs yourself, and if you do, how you

(06:38):
determine for yourself whether to use the drug or how
frequently to use it, and if there's anything off limits.
Thank you guys so much. Sorry to hear the answer. Well, Julie,
you want to go first or show I jump in
on that. Oh, maybe you should start, okay. I mean,
you know, I sort of regard as a professional obligation
first of all, to try as many subs as I

(07:00):
can that they are in the realm of safety, and
that means, you know, I've tried not just cannabis and
many of the psychedelics, but I also there have been
where I have tried cocaine, and I have to say,
cocaine I never really enjoyed it all that much. For me.
It was like drinking too much coffee and having post
nasal drip and heroin. You know, years ago I did

(07:21):
try it in various ways with friends I trusted, so
it will load dose. I never did a high dose
injection of heroin. I've never tried method on. I've never
smoked cocaine, and I feel a little bit of professional
and responsibility on my part for not having tried it. Um,
But when it comes to which drugs I used, you know,
I just try to follow all the principles of harm

(07:43):
reduction and how my body feels and my mind feels.
When it comes to marijuana, I've been enjoying it, you know,
since I was eighteen years old, and um, I've never
really been a daily consumer. I can go weeks without
it and then, may you know, in the right situation,
do it for a few days in a row. Recently,
my principal cannabis consumption is a weekly ritual I have,

(08:04):
which is, uh, ten milligrams of marijuana, take my headphones,
and go for a long massage. So that's part of
my healthy aging process. On the other hand, I also
say with alcohol, I'm finding my body seems a little
less tolerant these days, so I find myself just cutting
back on that, and truth be told, I needed to
cut back a bit on coffee as well when it

(08:26):
seemed to be upsetting my stomach. So I still do
my morning a day, and i still have my you know,
drink of wall glass of wine occasionally with dinner. But
I'm just waiting to see how my body feels about this. Now.
I could go on and on, but let me give
Julia a chance to answer this one. Well, the joke
I usually make is that I've been a drug researcher
from a very young age. I really knew what I
wanted to do in life, and I got an early start,

(08:48):
and I'm a bit of a workaholic. So I grew
up in the seventies, lots of drugs available to me,
lots of things to try, unfortunately sometimes not knowing that
I was trying thing and getting another. I mean, I
one of my sort of what do you call it
when like the comic has a backstory, like their creation story,
what is that called? I can't remember? Mine is that

(09:09):
when I was in high school, in an effort to
try mescaline, I inadvertently experienced PCP. So I had a
pretty early, sort of not completely positive drug experience. Although
honestly it gave me tremendous empathy for people who are
psychotic and going through a psychotic process. So it ended
up being foundational to my wanting to be a psychiatrist,
wanting to study drugs. But I, you know, I've tried

(09:31):
just about everything. When I was an undergrad, I was
also a singer in a band, and people were very
generous with their drugs, so I got to try more things.
And then as I became more sort of enmeshed and
intertwined with the psychedelic research community, people would also offer
me various things to try. So I feel like I've
had a lot of various drug experiences and they helped

(09:54):
to inform me about the brain and how it works,
and my mind and how that works. And I have
found certain things that really helped me open my heart
and feel more connected and helped to put me in
a in a sort of a healing, parasympathetic state. I
spent time going to raves in the nineties and and
had these really blissful, you know, group dance experiences. I

(10:15):
went to Grateful Dead shows and had that sort of
magical group experience. What was your worst experience, Julie, Well,
the PCP was pretty tough. I'll tell you. Everything was
sort of like a secret sign I had to interpret,
and uh, you know, I thought that the because the
radio was playing Jimmy Hendricks and Jimmy Hendricks had died
of a drug overdose, that meant I was going to
die of a drug overdose. It was It was pretty scary.

(10:37):
One of the really scariest, most powerful things for me
was that I had UM five m e O d
M T, which is more potent than d M T uh,
and I had a pretty pretty solid dose and that
was a lot. It took me a long time to
sort of process that or integrate that, and it kept
me away from psychedelics actually for about two or three years,

(10:57):
because I was so kind of a canna say, literally
blown away by it. And I feel like in this
case it maybe it maybe living by a long time,
you mean, like weeks or months thereafter. No, I mean,
I just I was impressed by how potent it was,
how strong it was. I did have a little bit
of like a flashback the next day where the towels

(11:18):
looked like they were breathing to me and I wasn't
on the drug, and that really upset me because I
had spent a long time sort of arguing against this
idea that flashbacks even exist. So again, every experience as
I have had has really informed me tremendously and been
a sort of a jumping point for me to educate
myself even more about whatever I've been experiencing. Yeah, I

(11:41):
gotta see if I think about some of my worst
I remember one time, being eighteen or nineteen, I used
to go to a sauna if they had at my
college up at McGill in Montreal, and my friends and
I was sometimes played backgam and see how long we
could get into the game before we had to get
out of sauna. But one time I got pretty high
before I did that, and when I came out a sauna,
I almost passed out. And the next day it was

(12:03):
like that high was impregnated, just buried in my brain.
It took me a day and a half to clear it.
And with alcohol, you know, I mean like most people going,
you know, in their young twenties, you know, I had
my drink too much throw up. I found getting too
drunk on bourbon worse than getting too drunk on tequila.
I'll tell you that one. But I remember there was
one point I was starting to drink a little more

(12:23):
and I realized one morning that I had had a
blackout like I saw in my room. I've been playing
all these records for friends and had no recollection of it.
And that was just a signal to me, like, uh,
enough's enough here. You and I both are not really
big drinkers. And I talked to you about my theory.
I mean, I think it's more than a theory, but um,
there are many people who really don't metabolize alcohol very well,

(12:44):
and if they still want to alter themselves, they're gonna
have to find something else to do. And I'm one
of those people. I really, I'm just not a good drinker.
If I have more than two drinks, I feel absolutely
nauseous and vomit and hangovers even from one or two
drinks happened to me. So I'm not much of a drinker. Yeah,
And I seem to know a lot of people of
the Jewish persuasion who aren't great drinkers but are great

(13:07):
drug takers or drug policy advocates or drug researchers. And
the truth is that Jews don't have a lot of
alcohol dehydrogen ase. Hm. Well, it's what's interesting, man, is Jews,
you know, probably a higher percentage of Jews drink some
alcohol than most other ethnic groups. I mean, you know,
I sometimes joked the first time I ever had any
wine was when I was seven days old, and they
came with that knife at my brists, you know. And

(13:28):
then I grew up drinking you know, little bits of
wine as a kid when I was just you know, eight, nine,
ten years old, and stuff like that. So we sort
of grow up with familiarity. We do it in a
familial context if it's done in that traditional way, and
I sometimes think there was a real social protective element
of that kind of a culturation, the same way some
of these people talk about Italians and Italian families and

(13:48):
drinking all that. Jews tend to drink less, I think. Um,
but if you're doing in that ritual context, you get
a certain familiarity. So Julie, is anything that you would
not try? Oh oh well, you know, I've always sort
of drawn the line that I won't personally inject anything
into my body for whatever reason. So you know, I
have snorted things and smoked things, and on the very

(14:11):
rare occasion, put things into other orifices of my body.
But you know, my motto growing up was sort of
moderation and all things including moderation, like sometimes you've got
to kick out the jams and do things that you
wouldn't typically do, So maybe never say never. I think
I could probably be talked into trying most things once
as long as I knew it wouldn't you know, irreversible

(14:34):
harm me m hmm, yeah, I used this funny I try.
I think there's probably a few of the psychedelics. I
remember going to the Tell Your Ride Mushroom conference many
years ago that Andy Wyle and others ran, and I
met Gary Linkoff, the author of the Automo Guide to
Wild Mushrooms, who was very interested in the psychedelic aspects
of these things, and he described some experiences I think

(14:56):
it was with Datura or some other very powerful fung
u from mushroom out of Siberia just doing things to
his body that you never want to have happened again.
So I could see some things that are kind of
off limits. And I think also with the injecting, although
I've done that one or two times just with a
very trusted friends, uh ministering it, it's not something I

(15:18):
pursue wherever would recommend, that's for sure. We'll be talking
more after we hear this add Okay, well, let's go

(15:41):
to the next question. Hey, Ethan, loving the show. I've
got a question. You've talked a lot about the medical
and legal implications of a variety of drugs. I'm curious
about the humanitarian implications Specifically, I'm wondering about cocaine. Is
there a ethical way to do or buy cocaine or

(16:04):
is the cocaine trade so sort of dirty and painted
with humanitarian issues that it's not ethical at all. Yeah,
I mean, there's no easy answer to that one, right,
because on the one hand, you know, the fact that
this stuff is illegal means that there's no real way

(16:25):
to get it. Otherwise, if you want to use it. Now,
with cannabis, you could always argue the only ethical way
to do it would be to say, grow your own,
and that if you were buying it from people who
had grown it, you know, whether in Mexico or Afghanistan
or Columbia or California, that's somehow you are participating, contributing
to an illicit market, you know, So is cocaine like

(16:47):
you know, blood diamonds. In one sense, that's true, right,
there are people being exploited, there's violence, there's global criminal
organizations that are profiting on this stuff. On the other hand,
it's also the case that there are hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of relatively impoverished people, whether you're talking
about coca growing peasants in South America or whether you're

(17:08):
talking about poor people are involved in the retail sale
of this stuff who are earning a decent living, sometimes
in ways that they could not otherwise earn it. So
I think the really responsible thing here is to say
that the government should find better ways of legally regulating
this so that people can obtain it in a legitimate,

(17:28):
safe way without participating in a global black market. But
you know, you go back to alcohol prohibition. I mean,
the same arguments were made back then, where the alcohol
prohibitions were saying, anybody who drinks, which included at that
point maybe a good third or more of the country,
you know, you're aiding in at betting, the black market
and the components and the gangsters and all that. And
that was true as far as it went. On the

(17:50):
other hand, it was an idiotic prohibitionist policy by the
government that was putting this whole business in the hands
of the gangsters to begin with. So you know, I've
never been much of a cocaine consumer. My principal elicits
are something like mushrooms or cannabis, which don't really have
all that much in the way of substantial ugly criminal
organization markets. There's some of that, but it's with cannabis,

(18:12):
but not a huge part of it. You know. Look,
for most people, I'd say stay away from cocaine anyway,
but if you do, it's not going to be the
principal concern in the ethics of it. I want to
say a few quick things about cocaine. I mean, you know,
whenever something is made illegal, we end up making it
stronger and stronger, and that is certainly what happened. The
coca leaf went from being something where a person would

(18:33):
make a tea out of the leaves or put a
leaf or two in there between their cheek and gum,
to making a much more strong in terms of a
white powder that you could snort or inject, and then
even stronger with turning it into the free base crack cocaine.
So the truth is that you can buy coca leaves
from a farmer and just make the tea or put

(18:54):
them in your mouth, and I think that is the
sort of safest and most natural way to use cocaine.
When you make it stronger, you know, especially when you're
snorting it, that is a really short half life. And
you know, the joke I used to make back in
the nineties is the only way you really appreciate cocaine
is once you've been addicted to it and it makes
your headache go away, then you like it. It's too

(19:15):
quick acting. I think that there are better stimulants that
do a better job sort of opening your heart and mind,
and I feel like cocaine is a bit of a
narrower that it certainly helps with focus and motivation, but
it's it's a bit fleeting. Okay, let's go to the
next question. Hi, my name is Rachel. I've been working
in mica shelters or shelters for people who are mentally

(19:37):
ill with chemical addiction for about five years now in
New York City, and I've encountered all sorts of substance use. However,
I have to say that the most common types of
substance use that I see our alcohol used disorder and
tobacco used disorder. And I've actually seen more casualties as

(20:01):
a result of alcohol use disorder than anything else, and
that's with the fentanel crisis in New York City and
elsewhere throughout the States. I noticed that a lot of
my clients, who especially clients who have psychotic disorders, choose
to use alcohol and tobacco to dull their symptoms. Um

(20:23):
many of them wind up very physically dependent on alcohol,
and some of the casualties that I've seen have actually
been from a lack of alcohol or alcohol withdrawal. I'm
wondering why there's so little media coverage about alcohol use disorder,

(20:44):
specifically because it's such a huge problem. Spending nine years
running the Psyche or at Bellevue, I can tell you
that the most casualties that we saw at the Psyche
or at Bellevue were absolutely related to alcohol and cocaine
and not really any other drugs in terms of statistically
being significant. So I saw a real lot of fallout
from people getting tremendously depressed, tremendously addicted, crashing hard, wanting

(21:08):
to die, having spent money they didn't have or other
people's money, and selling people's positions. And it does seem
like it really does a number on people and on
communities more than a lot of other drugs that we
have access to. I also got very frustrated that alcohol
wasn't really being portrayed accurately, and there wasn't accurate information
about alcohol really being disseminated, because alcohol is actually the

(21:30):
only drug that can kill you in withdrawal. It's medically
dangerous to abruptly discontinue alcohol if you're using a high
dose every day, and there's a thirty percent chance that
you will have seizures that don't stop, and that is
typically the thing that will kill you. Alcohol also is
absolutely toxic to your liver and to your brain. And
as much as we have this idea, which is really

(21:52):
wrong that drugs are toxic to your brain, for the
most part, there's nothing that's going to compare with alcohol
in terms of chronic consumption and shrinking your cerebellum and
causing tremendous memory problems and causing dementia. So, you know,
we're doing her a favor, and we're doing everybody a
favor by really letting people know that alcohol is really

(22:12):
a toxic drug. There is a higher rate of addiction
with alcohol than there is with some other drugs. I mean,
I know that in the drug policy community we're not
supposed to sort of put down one drug and elevate another.
But I will say that at Bellevue, most of the
casualties we saw were from alcohol and cocaine, and so
it's hard for me to sort of vault their use
except for in very low dose, ritualized kind of settings. Yeah,

(22:36):
but I mean this also will be clear, right, I
mean we're talking about high dose alcohol, right, I mean,
a large majority of our population others are doing low
dose alcohol. Um, there's obviously I agree with the risk
and about being the really bad drug out there in
many regards. On the other hand, there's also this really
interesting evidence from around the world that moderate consumption is
when goes older, it can reduce cardio rat vascular risks

(22:58):
and perhaps lent in life. Um. You know, there's a
campaign by World Health Organization that's almost an abstinence only
campaign with alcohol now that we have to ward against.
But when it comes to the shelters and things like that.
You know, one thing people should know about is there's
a type of policy or innovation in some cities called
quote unquote wet housing has other names for it as well.

(23:20):
But it basically is the basic idea that you have
people who are severely addicted to alcohol, who, as Julie
would say, would quite likely, you know, go through the
dts and die if they were suddenly withdrawn. They are
frequently being arrested, landing up in emergency rooms. So a
number of cities, from Seattle to Toronto to a range
of others, even some of the Midwest set up this
housing where people can live there and they're allowed to drink,

(23:45):
and there's some rules. I mean, you know, you can't
be an asshole, you can't be violent, but you're allowed
to drink in this place. Some places will even provide
some of the alcohol. And the evaluations of this wet
housing have found, in fact that what happens is that
the people in this wet housing land up drinking less
than they did on the streets because they don't need

(24:05):
it as much anymore. They land up being arrested less
than even emergency is less more likely to reconnect with
their families or get low level jobs and things like that.
So it's a great innovation, not unlike you know, other
harm reduction programs, needle exchange programs, what have you, I
wish we had more of this, you know, in New
York City and a range of other places. I mean,
it's almost like a supervised injection facility. So I support

(24:27):
the idea of supervised injection facilities, and I definitely love
this idea of what housing. It is harm reduction at
its finest, you're really reducing medical harm, social harm. You know,
high dose alcohol is associated with violence, with homicide, and
with suicide, which is something that we don't talk about
very much. Suicide is a leading cause. It's one of
the leading causes of death in America. It probably is

(24:49):
the leading cause of accidental death. Now it's overtaken motor
vehicle accidents. And you know, then there's all those overdoses,
and you can overdose on alcohol. So anything where you're supervised,
where you're educated, where you're supported, you're gonna end up safer,
maybe using less and more importantly, like you were talking
about ethan, re establishing connections, creating a new support system

(25:10):
so you're not so isolated, because the pain of isolation
sometimes drives unhealthy choices around alcohol and other drugs. Yeah,
and it's not just right that you can overdose just
by drinking too much alcohol by itself, but that until
the advent of fentonel, many or most opioid overdoses. When
you saw that headline saying heroin over those he and
over almost inevitably it involved combining heroin with either alcohol

(25:35):
or benzos, which is the other drug like alcohol where
if you suddenly withdraw you might die, and the other
one that can be very deadly when you're combining with
things like opioids or alcohol. In terms of dramatically increasing
the risk of overdose, I mean, fentonel, of course, is
something we're all by itself. It's powerful enough that you
can just dive in overdose. But with most street heroin

(25:55):
that was not really the case. Alcohol was the hidden killer.
But the headlines they could have say at alcohol over
those deaths and then report in the background at all
there was heroin evolved as well, but it was really
the combo of those two things. Yeah, Hi, this question
is for Dr Holland. I'm a big fan of your
work and your writing and m appreciative that I get

(26:16):
to ask you a question. I was hoping you could
speak to the potential benefits of psilocybin therapy versus the
risks of people coming off of long term medications such
as benzodiazepines and things that help with anxiety or depression,
knowing that from what I understand, you have to kind

(26:36):
of taper off those medications before you can try psilocybin
for therapy. So I was hoping you could speak to
um the protocol of coming off of meds and how
soon a person can start to try to use mushrooms
therapeutically once they've come off of their meds. This is
a really great question, and I get asked this uh
in various forms a lot, which is this idea. Basically,

(27:00):
I'm on psych meds, I want to try psychedelics. What
do I do? And it's really complicated because there are
different psychedelics that have different rules, and sometimes you're talking
about medical safety and other times you're just talking about efficacy.
For instance, it may not be terribly dangerous to take
m d M A with an S s R I,
but you really won't feel the m D M A,

(27:20):
so there's not much point and it probably is not
good for you. But there's growing evidence that you may
be able to take psilocybin even though you're on S
S R I S for a long time, I was saying,
we don't have data, we don't have data, but they
just started to be the tiniest bit of data showing.
There was a study that I think it was Mattias Leakda,
but I'm not positive and I don't want to misspeak,

(27:40):
but there was a study that just came out showing
that they gave S S R S for two weeks
before they gave psilocybin and people still did feel the psilocybin. So, anyway,
the most dangerous combinations really have to do with ayahuasca,
where there are certain medicines you absolutely cannot take. But
the other question that got brought up, which is about
coming off medicines so you can have an experience, right,

(28:01):
and this is a really fragile, difficult experiment to do.
If you've been on psycho medicine for a long time
and you want to come off them for any reason,
you have to do it with somebody who is a psychiatrist,
who is at least a medical doctor who knows you,
who can work with you, because you have to very
very slowly taper, preferably with something else in place. You know,
there are some medicines that I use that you can

(28:22):
safely combine with psilocybin or other medicine so that you
don't have to be totally off meds. But it is
a very vulnerable place if you've come off meds, and
also if you've had a very intense psychedelic experience, you're
in a vulnerable place. You need support and integration, and
you're off meds. That's dangerous. So these things really have

(28:42):
to be done. I'm not saying it has to be
a medical model, but I am saying that if you're
coming off of medicines, that does have to be a
medical model, and that anybody who's having macro doses needs
a lot of support before, during, and after so they
can process everything that happened. And sometimes you have to
go back on your meds. It's just too much to

(29:03):
have just unearthed the trauma and be off meds. It
is a dangerous process, and I'm glad that people are
asking about it and talking about it. I mean, Julie,
what do you think in terms of uh, you know,
when people are saying that as psychedelic medicine proceeds, this
could actually displace a not insignificant part of the broader
s s R I and other sort of pharmaceutical treatments

(29:26):
of mood disorders, depression, things like that. What's your thought
about that? I say yes please, and when absolutely, I
mean we you know, I've been doing psycho farm since
it has not changed very much. It's the daily dose.
It's sweeping a lot of things under the carpet and
just not minding that you have a lumpy carpet. And
as you know, I mean a macro dose of psychedelics

(29:47):
really takes the carpet out back and you whack it
and you can vacuum up the floor in the meantime,
I mean, you can get a lot of deep work done.
And everybody's got trauma, right, every person, no matter how
easy your childhood was. Even if you were born with
a silver spoon, at some point somebody was looking the
other way and the spoon went into your eye. You know,

(30:08):
you were not parented perfectly all the time, I guarantee it.
And everybody has trauma and everybody needs to sort of
sift through some of that to feel better. And the
way we've been doing in psychiatry lately is that you
just take the meds to feel better and you don't
necessarily deal with all the trauma um And I would
even go further and say that our country has childhood

(30:29):
trauma that you know, the way we treated indigenous populations
and the way that we treated the Black community, our
country has deep childhood wounding and trauma that needs to
be processed. And all of us on our screens and
taking our meds and not dealing with our own trauma,
not dealing with our country's trauma, it's creating a big mess.
So I think psychedelics can help us really unearthed some

(30:52):
of the causes for psychiatric symptoms. Yeah, you know, it
was interesting on a discussion with Michael paul In a
little while back, we talked about peyote in Native American
church and how part of that, you know, the value
there is in dealing with the sorts of traumas that
you're talking about right there. And it's also why I
think there's you know, a more and more vigorous effort
to try to engage with African American communities, black people

(31:15):
about seeing it can there be because there's been this resistance,
you know, to all drugs and psychedelics being thrown in
with all the bad drugs, But could this actually play
a constructive and positive role in some of those regards. Well,
you know, there was this work looking at racial trauma
and using psychedelics to start to address the effects of
racial trauma, and you know that was Monica Williams work

(31:35):
just came out, and one of the things that they
were looking at that really made a difference is just
this sort of cognitive flexibility of starting to just open
up your perspectives a little bit. Yeah, but Julia, I
have more and more people asking me like, hey, where
can I find a guided session using psilocybin or something
like that? And it's still unless you get yourself enrolled

(31:56):
in some kind of research study, it's still essentially an
underground enterprise, right. I mean, nobody's really be getting busted
for this stuff, but nobody's really advertising it on the
internet either. Well I don't know. I mean I don't
go on the you know, dark web or whatever, so
I can't say what's available where. But you know, this
is a really weird phase in psychiatry where we've got

(32:17):
a bunch of new treatments that are really going to
be at our disposal but not quite yet. And you know,
the only one that's legal right now is ketamine and
a lot of the ketamine clinics are set up and
they've got the infrastructure set up, but they're planning on
offering other drugs once those things are available. M hm, well,
I think we got a question about ketamine. Yeah, this

(32:37):
is Jill By. I was calling to um read a
message for Dr Needleman and Dr Hollard. Um. It's just
wondering what her opinion is on psychotherapy. It's just and
husion and she's done them and if she thinks they're valuable,
thank you very much. So, I mean, Julie, what about

(32:58):
the role of ketamine here? I mean it's like the one,
you know, legal thing out there. How big a role
do you think it's going to play in all this,
whether it's in depression or in other sorts of conditions. Um,
Ketamine has has been a real bush whacker really for
the field of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. You know, this is
an FDA approved drug for treatment resistant depression. First of all,

(33:18):
what's a bush whacker Like somebody who goes ahead and
cuts down all the bushes so that it's easier for
you to walk behind them. What would you call that?
It's building a foundation for psychedelic assistant psychotherapy. It is
the one that's legal now, and it's not nothing. I mean,
it absolutely puts you in I'm not going to say
that it's a psychedelic state exactly. I mean this, Look,

(33:40):
I'm doing a whole interview pretty soon about whether ketamine
is a psychedelic. Why are we calling it a psychedelic.
It is a dissociative anesthetic. It's not officially a psychedelic.
It's not a classical psychedelic. It does not tickle the
five H T two a receptor, which you could sort
of think of as like the psychedelic receptor. Ketamine acts
on the glutamate system. It actually acts in a way

(34:00):
that is similar to both dexter methorphan, which is a
copt suppressant, and PCP. So it is a dissociate anesthetic.
But when you are in that dissociated state, you're in
sort of a space where you can think about your issues,
or your behavior or your trauma um. You are in
an altered state, and it is a state that you

(34:21):
can engage in psychotherapy. You could be talking to a therapist,
you could be taking notes, writing things. I know people
who sort of surface right down some notes and then
they go back in to see what's going on. Then
they come up right in a few more things. I
think that it is a catalyst to help psychotherapy go
deeper and possibly be more efficient at getting to traumas

(34:41):
and starting to work through traumas. So in that way,
it's great in terms of treating depression. Some people have
really strong reactions to it and get better. Most people,
even if they get better, they don't stay better, so
they need sort of like booster treatments. But that tends
to be just the IVY without the talking. Ken Amine
assisted psychotherapy is when you're really talking through the therapy,

(35:01):
which is what you would do with m D m
A or with psilocybin um. I know it can be done.
It is done. I have patients who are slowly sort
of unwinding their cognitive rigidity around certain compulsions or rituals
or ways of thinking. You know, maybe you can sort
of change the tapes that are running in your playing
in your mind in the background. So I definitely think

(35:23):
that it has therapeutic potential. But in terms of M
D m A or psilocybin I would say, you know,
you ain't seen nothing yet. If he think ketamine works.
Wait till what's coming down the pike. Yeah, I mean
she'll say, you know, I think with ketamine for people
are interested in One of the godfathers is not the
guide father research in this area is a fellow named
Phil Wolfson, and it's worth you know, googling him checking

(35:44):
out his website for his fantastic information. Interviews that are there,
and a forthcoming episode of Psychoactive will be an interview
with professionalized Daquar Columbia, who has one of the few
federally approved grants in which he was doing ketamine administration
with meditation in in order to help people deal with
substance abuse. So there really is potential there. There's also

(36:05):
using it at a high dose intervention as well as
low dose, so there's different methodologies that are people trying
to work out well. Worries me is to see these
kind of fly by night places beginning to pop up
all around the country. You know, you get some anesthesiologists
who wants it will make a little extra money on
the side. They set it up there administering it in
a kind of non healthy environment. They're not doing the

(36:26):
processing and the integration, and I think that's one of
the concerns where Kennyman could actually land up getting a
bad name because of this proliferation of people using it
without even never having tried it themselves or really knowing
the literature and knowing the proper way to do this.
I absolutely agree. I've had patients of pretty bad experiences
because they're just left on a stretcher with an I
V running and no one to talk to. And it's

(36:48):
a pretty weird state to be in if you're not
used to altered states. Um. The other thing it's worth
mentioning is that it absolutely has a much higher abuse
potential addiction potential than any of the classic psychedelics. My
chire and I have patients who go to NA meetings
or other twelve step meetings with all sorts of different
people and groups, and they're saying that they're seeing more

(37:10):
people coming in from Kenemine. So, you know, we have
heard over the years. I don't know even you and
I know some of the same people. Every once in
a while you heard about somebody having a little bit
of an issue with Kenemine. They usually, you know, get
through it, get around it, but it does kind of
pull some people in for some reason. People it can
be addicted. You gotta be careful, you know. I will
say that I had my own experience doing it last

(37:30):
year with somebody who was at Kennemine therapist. I was
surprised at its power. It was short, only hour and
a half. You know. I'm usually pretty grounded even when
I'm doing high dose psilocybe and lushrooms, but this one
took me some places and I found it really valuable
in terms of some of the insights that I took
away from there. Definitely, it is a bit untethering, you know,
so you do sort of end up out there a bit.

(37:52):
And also the fact that it's short acting is great
for therapy, you know. One of the issues with these
medicines like m D m A maybe maybe three or
four hours little I've been made before to six hours LSD,
you're looking at easily ten or twelve hours. That's a
long time to sit and talk to your therapist, you know.
So some of the companies are looking to make some
of these drugs shorter acting so that you can have

(38:12):
more like an hour or two experience and then kind
of get your head together and go back out in
the world. And that will be interesting to see. But
that is one of the advantages of ketamine is that
it is fairly short acting. In fact, I understand that,
you know, one of the reasons why you don't hear
as much about LSD or mescaline as you do about
psilocybin for some of these research studies is that there
could be twelve hour experiences, and the amount of time

(38:34):
and the cost of having a therapist sit there for
that long is a major impediment to trying to make
this stuff more widely available. Yeah, it's too much. You know.
The thing I used to say about LSD back in
the day is like you're pretty much guaranteed to see
the sunrise when you take acides. You know, it's just
it's doesn't matter when you take it. You know, it's
just you're still going. Maybe you're done, maybe you've got
the message, you want to hang up the phone, but

(38:56):
the phone still calling you. So I think, especially if yeah,
if you're doing research, you know, it's tiring for the patient,
it's tiring for the therapist, everybody who's you know, monitoring
the session. And you know, I think one of the
things that mine met is looking to do is to
basically cap the experience, so it's shorter. They and some
other companies I believe are looking at ways too, so
that they can use LSD, but that they can make

(39:17):
it shorter. Acting. Let's take a break here and go
to an ad. Yes, this is Marcia Rosenbomb in San Francisco.
My question to Julie and Ethan comes as a parent,

(39:42):
I need to ask always with the drug issue, what
about the kids? Specifically? I'm interested in your take on
the new emergence of psychedelics and also vaping and e cigarettes.
Those two, it seems to me, are key issues when
it comes to kids today. And you're both parents, How

(40:06):
did you deal personally with these issues when your kids
were teenagers? What did you say to them? What would
you say to other parents who are concerned about kids
and drugs? Well, I guess I should reveal our audience.
That's a bit of a loaded planted question there. The
caller Marcia Rosenbaum, um, who is my my dear, dear

(40:29):
friend and longtime colleague, and also who Julian knows well.
She really pioneered and founded the safety first approach to
drug education, basically introducing a sex education model or harm
education approach to drug education with adolescence and emphasizing that
you don't want kids using drugs, but if they do,
the bottom line has got to be about keeping them safe.

(40:50):
So you know, I mean what I would say to
Marcia on this, and I really to our listeners, um
is you know it's funny. I was talking to my
daughter about this. Who now? Who's now? And are you thirties?
And you know our understanding is I don't talk about
anything involving what she may or may not have done,
or we might have done together or whatever. But you
know what she said to me was Dad. You know
what you can say is that you always talked very

(41:12):
openly to me about this and honestly and non judgmentally.
And it meant that when there was an issue with
me or my friends or something I knew, I could
give you a call and get the best possible advice
about whether it was a friend going through a bad
trip with to deal with that, or had it relate
to the whole cannabis stuff or tobacco and nicotine stuff. Um,

(41:32):
you know that that was valuable. And I can also
say that when it comes to psychedelics, I know quite
a number of people who either did mushrooms, typically with
their teenage child or people who are now growing who
did it with their parents when they were young. And
I have to say in those cases, I mean, I
tend to know more responsible people where those things generally

(41:54):
worked out pretty well. That's not to recommend it, it's
just to say it's not that remarkably unusual or heretical.
But Julie, what do you say. Well, I've been sort
of preaching harm reduction since the mid eighties, and I
had my kids in two thousand, two thousand four, so
they were really born into Amilia where there was a

(42:16):
lot of talk and of drug use and drug safety
and benefit maximization and harm minimization and the importance of education.
Like my kids have been hearing this since, you know,
before they could talk. The biggest thing, I think it's
the same for me and for you, Ethan. You know,
the biggest thing to me was always that I wanted
them to be able to come to me. I wanted
them to be able to ask me any question and
know that they were going to get an answer. I

(42:37):
wanted them to know that there was no shame in
any of it. Sex, drugs, it's all natural, it's all
normal to want to alter yourself, to want to connect
with other people, or connect with yourself, or connect with nature. So, UM,
my daughter, she's not very into drugs at all. And
you know, I think one of her ways of sort
of defining herself, you know, apart from me, is that

(42:59):
she does alcohol and she doesn't really like drugs very much. UM.
Our son, his tastes go more towards where my taste
go in terms of drugs he likes or drugs he's
interested in. UM. But we you know, we are in
a town where there really is a lot of stigma
and shame around drug use. It's very conservative town. It's
a very churchy town. I love it here, but the

(43:19):
drug education in the high school is terrible. And I've
sort of decided my son as a senior now. And
you know, one of the things that my to do
list is that once he leaves and I won't embarrass him,
I really want to work with them on their curriculum
to change things. Because the drugs that are mostly used
here with with my kids in this in this town
is alcohol and vaping. And either this is when we're

(43:40):
going to kind of get into it, I'm afraid, but
a lot of my son's friends are addicted to nicotine
and are having trouble stopping. And I was a cigarette
smoker for many, many years. I actually started smoking this
is fun in fifth grade when I was ten. I
was very tough with the girl James Dean was completely
like my hero. I had like a denim jacket with

(44:00):
the collar up and the cigarette hanging out of my mouth.
Nobody bothered to tell me I was a girl at
that point. I was just like a total tomboy. But
I've been smoking cigarettes offen on since I was ten
years old, and it was hard for me to quit.
As you can imagine. It took me several times. I
quit for a couple of years, I would come back
to it, quit for a couple of years, come back
to it. And you know, I was honest with the
kids about how hard it was for me to quit smoking,
and how I really didn't want them to smoke cigarettes.

(44:22):
I really don't want them anywhere near white powders because
they don't know what they are. And you know, it's
pretty hard to counterfeit, and most people don't counterfeit things
like cannabis and mushrooms and and things that you can
easily look at them and know what they are. My
kids know not to smoke pot if it's wet or
smells like from aldehyde. Um. I know a lot about
PCP and from the inside out, and you know, my

(44:43):
kids know that that may be one that they would
like to avoid, and they tell their friends. So, you know,
for for me, I feel like it's kind of worked out.
My kids are good, they're healthy, they understand harm reduction philosophy,
and they've chosen really sort of different paths. Yeah, you know,
Julia if I one of my outest moments was when
my daughter Lila was I think in junior high school

(45:04):
and the DARE officer was there and getting a little
talk and Lyla raises her hand and says, first of all,
have you read the book Marijuana Miss Marijuana Facts by
John Morrigan and lind Zimmer, which was the outstanding book
in the nineties and early two thousands, you know, analyzing
the dad of marijuana. And he shook his head, and
then he said, and what about the medical value of marijuana?

(45:25):
You know? So I was immensely proud of my daughter
standing up to him. The other thing is this whole
issue about parents being on in front of their kids.
I mean in a way because I first became a
public figure the year Lyla was born in and you know,
I've been in a world where marijuana is just sort
of part of the milieu. So she grew up knowing
that her dad would, you know, smoke this thing. And

(45:47):
I was very anti tobacco, anti cigarettes, something of my
friends who were professors, and she might be with us
when she was a kid, and she would see us
smoking and joint sharing a joint. We and we didn't change,
our personalities didn't change. These were people who were like
her uncles and aunts. So she developed a kind of understanding.
And now I wasn't living in a community like you are.

(46:07):
That's so conservative, you know, Lila. I had to teach
her at the age of six, in the age of
nine and twelve as she grew up different ways of
understanding that and how to relate to it, and how
to talk about it, and talking to her about unjust
laws and why this is not right, and also making
a distinction between something that somebody does occasionally and something

(46:28):
that people do too much of, and between cannabis on
the one hand and tobacco on the other. Now, when
it comes to this issue of tobacco and with a
whole vaping, e cigarette vaping thing and stuff like that.
I mean, obviously, no kids out of lessons we know
knowledge and they not smoke, they shouldn't be vaping. Let's
just establish that, right. It's not a good idea, you know,

(46:48):
for at all this to be doing any of these
drugs quite frankly, right. But when you look closely at
the evidence, just a number of things that I think
are really important to understand. The first one that is
that overwhelmingly the evid it indicates that vaping, these e cigarettes, jeweling,
you name it, are dramatically less dangerous than cigarettes, just
because most of what's dangerous about cigarettes is the burnt

(47:11):
particle matter. Right, It's not the nicotine. Nicotine hooks you,
but nicotine is not a particularly bad drug for your health.
It's that it hooks you so easily, and if you
then start consuming the nicotine and a smokable form, that's
what's really deadly about it. And I think the evidence
is still out and it's probably gonna turn out that
vaping and thesics turn out to be less addictive than cigarettes. Secondly,

(47:31):
when you look really closely at the evidence. It turns
out that most kids who are vaping are not sticking
with it, and they're not getting dependent upon it. And
oftentimes the one who do are the ones who already
had some experiences consuming tobacco or cigarettes in other forms,
right they were not necessarily there, tend to be less
likely to have been the tobacco naive folks, or they're

(47:53):
the ones who are more open to risk taking behavior.
So I think we need to understand that variable as well.
There's almost no evidence of people moving from vaping into
smoking cigarettes, although it concerns made is that a majority
of Americans now believe that vaping is as or more
dangerous than cigarettes. And that's one n eighty degrees different

(48:16):
than the truth. But it's a kind of information that's
being promoted by the anti you know, nicotine organizations and
by government agencies. Most people still believe that what happened
a couple of years ago where people were landing up
in the hospital with something called the Valley of vaping
related disease and lung disease, and there were two thousand
hospitalizations and dozens of deaths, They still think that was

(48:38):
about the cigarettes, when in fact it had essentially nothing
to do with these cigarettes. It was entirely about illegally
produced tainted THHC cartridges. So I think there's reason for
concern about less and vaping. But when you look at
the benefit for adult smokers, where e cigarettes turn out
to be more effective than anything else we now have available,

(49:01):
more effective than patches and gums and medications in helping
people stop smoking. The benefits of making this stuff easily available,
including in non tobacco flavors for adults, is a huge advantage,
and the risk and downside for young people of getting
into this is you know, modest at best. When the

(49:22):
leading experts in the world about this, Ken Warner, the
former Dina University of Michigan School of Public Health, who's
modeled this out, comparing you know, the potential risk to
kids with benefits to adult smokers, what you see is
an overwhelming benefit in terms of years of life saved
if we can popularize the cigarettes among adults and hopefully

(49:43):
keep it down and discourage it among young people. But
we shouldn't be freaking out and it shouldn't be driving
policy the way it has. Hey, Ethan actually love the show.
I know you're involved in drug policy and activism for
a while. But now that you stepped down from that,
have you begoten more involved in the business side of drugs?
Have you invested in any cannabis and psyched Dallas businesses?

(50:07):
And where do you think that whole industry is heading? Yeah,
or ethan? Are you on any payrolls of any of
these vape companies. I take absolutely not a penny from
anybody in the tobacco, nicotine, vape, you name it. And
I think it's not because I have a huge ethical
reservation against doing it. I just think that the smearing
of reputations and the ad hominant attacks in this area

(50:28):
around tobacco harm reduction versus absence only tobacco policies is
more vicious than anything I ever encountered in the entire
drug war, drug policy reform areas. So I stay clear
of that. I remember you saying that at Horizons a
while back. Yeah, but you know, I'll tell you when
it comes to it. Was interesting when I stepped down
from running Drug Policy Alliance four or four and at
years ago, all sorts of people you know, were saying ethan, ethan.

(50:50):
I mean, you played a pivotal role in inventing this industry.
It wouldn't exist at this point, but for the work
you did, you should get in there and profit in it.
And so a whole bunch of companies were interested in
having me on their advisory boards, and I would have
been paid something for that, and I couldn't bring myself
to do it. You know, it just seemed unseemly to
jump from being a nonprofit advocate for policy reform for

(51:13):
ethical and policy reasons to being on the for profit side.
And I was wary of getting involved with any one
individual company because in case they got in trouble, you know,
then my being involved with them publicly would be um
kind of negative news item and affect my reputation and such.
And I think, you know, I also just even avoided
investing at all. But then this year I decided to

(51:34):
change a bit. So what I've done is I'm still
not getting involved with any individual companies. I did earlier
this year invest in one of the marijuana hedge funds,
where basically I don't even know what they're invested in.
So it's a way for me to kind of be
involved in the industry when my own money without having
any conflicts in the sense that I don't know which

(51:54):
company they're doing or any of that sort of stuff.
Of course, I invested exactly the wrong time early in
the year, so my investment is probably down twenty five
percent since I put the money in UM. The second
thing I did was that a few months ago I
got a phone call UM from a fellow Tom Blaney,
who had been the outside accountant and his firm for

(52:15):
Drug Policy Alliance for like twenty years and done a
great job. And he explained to me that his firm
was actually involved with on the few big firms doing this,
p KF O'Connor Davies UM. So I just recently the
summer signed a little contract with them to advise them
and to try to open up some doors for them
UM so that they can be you know, prideing financial
services for people in the industry. So that's been my

(52:37):
involvement there. And just very recently, after actually a little
consultation with Julie, I joined the advisory board of one
of the psychedelics investment funds. But Julie, what about you?
What about me? So I am on the scientific advisory
board of a few companies. One is a cannabis grow
operation called Maui Grown Therapies that's in Hawaii, And I

(52:59):
advise a psychedelic VC firm called Paulo Santo UM and
a few other things. I mean, there's a really interesting
company called a Pathica that's working with artificial intelligence and
the psychedelic space that I think is going to do well.
So I'm advising them. Yeah, anything working out well for
you as yet or right now, they're all kind of
long term bits. Yeah. Well, you know, actually one of

(53:20):
the things I'm really excited about UM and you know,
Dimitri mugianis and maybe Ross Ellenhorn, I know, you know Dmitri.
I'm not sure if you know Ross, But they and
I are trying to sort of create a psychedelic retreat
company but also to have a presence in in Manhattan,
and they're called Cardia UM. They want to have a
retreat in Costa Rica and Jamaica and here in the

(53:43):
United States once once that is legal to do, so
maybe Oregon, you know, if our listeners are interested. I mean,
Dmitri Mugian is a wonderful human being. Here. There's a
documentary about his work with Ibi Gaine. Do you remember
the name of it. Julie. Yes. Dangerous with Love. Dangerous
with Love I highly recommend is a very honest, uh
documentary about his experience administering I Begain and then doing eboga,

(54:04):
the the root origin of I begin himself. Yeah, and
I'll tell them it's like yellice thing. I'm really just
learning it. I mean, I've begun speaking a few events,
this one fund, the Jails Fund that's been you know,
one of the startup funds in this I'm kind of
intrigued to see if I can be helpful to them
and learn as I go. So I don't feel the
same um resistance I did before I sort of developed.

(54:25):
And it was frustrating, of course, because when you do
the work I do, you sometimes get a sense of
which companies and which people are going to be most successful.
And so when I look back, I realized that some
of the people I most liked and appreciated and who
I might have invested with are the ones who in
fact have done the best in this industry. So I
do have little bits of regret, but I feel in

(54:45):
the end, I'm doing okay, and uh, you know, I'm
happy to have created this change without having profited from it.
As yet yeah, you and I are also sort of
involved in non various nonprofit projects and things like that.
I mean, I've always felt very uh maybe not officially
involved with dp A, but certainly unofficially adjacently always involved

(55:07):
with d p A. And you know, with MAPS, have
been the medical monitor that's the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies MAPS dot org and be the medical monitor off
and on for them for like twenty years, and now
i'm their medical advisor. But none of these things really
pay anything, I should say, you know, it's not really
about the money. No, that's right. You know, I decided
on LEFTB I was not going to stand on the board,

(55:27):
but I haven'tformally continued to advise, and I'm on the
advisory board. I see US, for example, which is a
wonderful organization that organizes the World Ayahuaska Congress. I'm on
their advisory board. There's another advisory board in terms of
representing the perspectives and interests of people who are responsibly
receiving opioid medications but are getting discriminated against because of

(55:47):
the way the pendulum has swung against proper pain management
because of some of the abuses on that we're done
in the past. So yeah, I know there's a lot
of that, but none of the service on these nonprofits
pays anything. It's really something we do because we care
about the cause and never stop will that never will
stop caring, never stop will. Couldn't have said a better myself. Yeah, yeah,
big Stonor look at you, Yeah, Julie. Well you know

(56:12):
we do. We do. We we live good lives, We
have fun in this stuff. We fight the evils of
the drug war, Yes we do. We're very healthy. People
tell us how young we look all the time because
we put anti inflammatories into our system on a regular basis. Okay,
that's when we're looking at it. A lot of people,
I think, realize that cannabis is anti inflammatory, but many
people don't realize that psychedelics also are really potent anti

(56:33):
inflammatory medicines. And you're going to be hearing more about
this and it will help to keep you young and healthy.
You mean, so I should be supplementing my tumeric black
pepper anti inflammatory with more of this stuff, huh like
micro docing. Well, Paul Stammet's would tell you that, yes,
you you should. You should be having mushrooms and other
mushrooms and be vitamins. Oh my god. I look forward

(56:55):
to having Paul on the show. I mean I just
watched that documentary Fantastic Fun Guy. That is fantastic thing.
I probably know most of the people interviewed in it.
But Paul will be a great guest and we eventually
have him. I mean, he is really the guru of mushrooms.
Absolutely too well, Julie listen, thanks ever so much for
joining me on this in our car talk on drugs

(57:15):
without driving. But I hope we do this again. This
was really good, really fun, and uh you know, let's
let's see if we get some more questions in the
future and we'll come back at this. I would love that.
That would be great. Count me in. In the meantime,
I would love for you to reach out to me
on Twitter and over voicemail. The number we've set up
is eight three three seven seven nine two four six,

(57:38):
So I want to know what you find interesting and
what you disagree with. I want to hear your suggestions
for topics and guests, and I want to hear your experiences.
Please leave us a message at eight three three seven
seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho Zero

(57:59):
and if you couldn't keep track of all this, find
the information in the show notes. Psychoactive is a production
of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by
me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by Kacha Kumkova and Ben Cabrick.
The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus
and Darren Aronovski for Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt

(58:22):
Frederick for I Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our
music is by Ari Blusian and a special thanks to
Aviv Brio, SF Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty. My next
conversation will be with Professor Elias Dokuar, a research or
at Columbia University doing fascinating work in using ketamine and

(58:43):
meditation to treat drug addiction, reading about you know your
research on dealing with people struggling with alcohol, cocaine, cannabis,
and basically using ketamine as a way to get people
to move into meditation correct by approximating the meditative experience,
by making it easier to practice, and also by motivating people.

(59:04):
Demoralization is I think a big part of addiction. So
I also hope that the medicine would disrupt that, that
it would provide a sense of refresh possibility. Subscribe to Cycleactive.
Now see it, an'll miss it.