All language subtitles for Psychonautics.A.Comics.Exploration.Of.Psychedelics.2018.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG.eng.sdh

♪♪♪

I'm Shane Mauss, and I'm about
to do one of the world's most
powerful psychedelics.

[Shane] Two weeks ago
I made my first trip
to a psych ward, everybody.

-Hey. Yay!
-[audience clapping]

I'm out.

I, uh,

yeah, this is my first set,
uh, since that happened.

I was there for seven days.

It was just like a cute stop,
um, to a psyche ward.

-[laughing]
-And, um, what happened was

that I wanted to prove, uh,
that psychedelics are not
as scary as they seem.

-So I did all of them.
-[audience laughing]

And so I just got out
of a psyche ward.

Um,

[laughing] and,

uh, yeah.

What happened.

I don't even like, uh, I don't
really know where to start.

[off] I grew up in a small
wholesome suburb

outside this little city called La Crosse, Wisconsin.

And I had a very Leave It
To Beaver upbringing
that I never really fit into.

I was always an awkward kid
and always had big dreams

of one day becoming
a famous standup comedian.

When I was young, I didn't
know that I was bipolar.

I just knew that I was
constantly depressed,

and the only thing that kept
me going were these
grandiose fantasies.

At 15, I started experimenting
with drugs, the same way
a lot of teenagers do,

exceptionally irresponsibly.

First of all, this was
the mid '90s.

We weren't using scales
to measure a well-tested
recommended dose.

We weren't testing
drugs for purity.

We just took the biggest
and therefore coolest
doses we could handle.

Our best source was hopefully
a friend had a dirt bag uncle

trying to make a few bucks selling teenagers some crap that he couldn't sell to his friends.

We were just lucky
if someone's parents were
gone for the weekend.

Otherwise, we were trespassing in some old abandoned building.

We weren't doing them in a therapist's office or some spiritual ceremony

that's been shaped
over thousands
of years of tradition.

There was no shamans.

I was the closest
thing to a shaman.

That's because I had a few
more trips than everybody else.

In 2004, I moved from
Wisconsin to Boston to
start my comedy career.

Actually, uh, I just
found out recently

that when somebody
calls you a pussy

they mean that you're
weak or cowardly.

All of my life, I thought
that people were calling me

-the best thing ever.
-[audience laughing]

[off] I even started doing TV
appearances within three years

and my career was off
and running after that.

Please welcome the very
funny, Shane Mauss.

[Zach] I've known Shane since
about 2006 when I started doing
comedy in the Boston scene.

Shane was several steps ahead
of me in comedy at the time.

And I was having a good
set and I looked over
and I saw Shane

kind of smiling at me
while I was performing.

And it was like seeing one
of your heroes approving
of what you were doing.

And I remember early on
that was a really cool,

"Oh I'm meeting the big guys in
the scene" kind of experience.

He does a good job of being
able to sneak science and
facts into jokes to people.

They're kind of
like joke bombs.

Or people would be laughing
because it's very relatable,

but at the same time, it's like,
"Oh, I'm laughing.

Oh, shit, he made
me learn something."

He's, uh, he's so quick and,
and loose and fuckin' fun.

Uh, I-I think he's the best.

I met Shane about a year
and a half ago, I would say.
He's a smart guy.

I think it's cool that he
does a science podcast.

Uh, I met Shane doing comedy
in Austin, Texas.

He's done theme shows,
like he did a whole CD about
when he broke both his feet,

it was called, "My Big Break".

And I think before that he had
the one about animals fuckin'
or somethin' like that.

And to have, no pun
intended, evolved yet again

into the material about
psychedelics that
he's doing right now,

it's all of a piece, but I think
not every comic's career

is so obviously segmented
into these different phases.

Yeah, the reason
I called him, uh, Dr. Drugs

is he's a guy that
explains drugs too much.

[Ramin] I like his,
uh, curiosity.

He's always asking questions,
he's always trying to put
together the whole picture.

I mean he does get a little
trippy, but it's not like

talking to somebody,
you know, that's a real
crunchy hippie or some shit.

I would say that Shane is
fearless, he's a wild man.

He's kind of taking it for the
team, for the rest of us
as the shaman guinea pig.

[Shane] I'm here to kind of
reset my body and my mind.

I just got off of a hundred
and 11 city tour.

I've beat the hell
out of myself.
I didn't sleep right.

I drank like a maniac.

I partied way too much.
I didn't exercise.

I ate fast food and all sorts
of garbage, and
I just want to reset.

I want to clear my head
and my body and that's
what this trip is all about.

Humans have been doing
psychedelics forever.

This is the least amount
of psychedelic use in human
history. I assure you.

Any hunter-gatherer tribe
that's still out there,

psychedelics are a regular
part of their lives.

Any records, old records
they find or come across,

people who are untouched by
modern civilization, same thing.

Look at the Native Americans.

They can still legally do like
peyote and all these
various psychedelics.

They got all their land
stolen and in the
negotiations were like,

"Yeah, but we're keeping
the fuckin' peyote, all right?
We will not bend on the peyote."

[audience laughing]

♪♪♪

The indigenous people
have undoubtedly been using
them for thousands of years.

They found mushrooms
on the Iceman.

The five-thousand-year-old
frozen mummy had
mushrooms on him.

[James] Imagine if you're
a hunter-gatherer society

and obviously you-you
try and taste things

and imagine that you've tasted
something and that

your hunting ability has
been slightly enhanced.

Let's say 10 percent.

That matters a huge amount
in a hunter-gatherer society.

It improves the cohesion
of a tribal unit.

If you have a little
more acuity and a little
more physical agility

and you are able to
strategize a little faster
and a little better,

these are incredibly
important tools.

[Michael] Human language
and consciousness emerged
out of this need for trippers

to communicate their
experience, leading to
all art, music and poetry.

Because the most eloquent
person in psychedelics

arguably do make you
a more eloquent person

in your attempt to grasp
this ungraspable,
inexpressible thing.

Because what we're
really trying to do is say

like, "Baby, I saw
the most amazing thing,
let me tell you about it."

♪♪♪

It used to be that shaman's
were the leaders of tribes.

They were the
leaders of people.

They were like, "Hey, that dude
can trip the hardest,
let's put him in charge."

[audience laughing]

That's the way it used to be.

[James] You've got somebody
who's severely depressed.

Been depressed for years,
nothing works.

And you give them a dose
of a psilocybin and they're
not depressed anymore.

What happened?

And the answer is,

like most things that
are important in our world,
we haven't the faintest idea.

But what if you have to think
about it, if you're taking
something into your body

there's a kind of myth that
psychedelics go to your brain.

Now in reality, anything
you put in your body goes
into your bloodstream

and goes to every
cell of the body.

So what we're seeing
is when people report
less physical pain,

uh, better eating habits,
social behavior,

um, we found people with
skin conditions that clear up,

and of course a lot of-of mental
and behavioral changes.

But what we're seeing is that
it seems to reestablish a
healthy equilibrium in the body.

So, psychedelics is really
a combination of, uh,

neuroscience, pharmacology,
and psychology

in a single treatment
instead of separating
things as it's usually done.

The current pharmacotherapy

would be picking different
drugs to try to hit
those targets.

This is kind of like having a
dysfunctional electronic circuit

and you don't know what's
wrong with it,

so you just start
replacing pieces until it starts
working again.

That's the way
pharmacotherapy works
for a lot of these conditions.

Psychiatry hasn't got new drugs.

Antidepressants work in, you
know, half the people, maybe.

[Shane off] When I got into
mushrooms, they
absolutely changed my life.

They changed the way
that I saw everything.

Before mushrooms, the world
was a confusing place that
made little sense to me.

And after mushrooms, well the world's still a confusing place,

but I at least appreciate
a lot more aspects of it
than I ever did before that.

It was like I finally get it.

There's more to life
than I realized.

It opened these doors to all
these new interests in science
and how the mind works.

Mushrooms gave me empathy.

They gave me a sense
of wonder and appreciation
for the beauty of nature.

I never cared about nice
scenic views and sunsets
before mushrooms.

After mushrooms, I was
like, "Oh, I get it now.

That's why people like trees."

My belief is that these, um,
experiences of psilocybin,

it's kind of like the key
that opens your mind

to allow access to this true
nature, um, this authentic self.

And I believe that is love,
that connection and
the-this connection

and it's what connects us
to ourselves, to each other
and to everything.

[Shane] Here we are in Kentucky,
home of the Kentucky
Derby, bourbon,

and hopefully some mushrooms.

Eric Osborne normally leads
psilocybin retreats in Jamaica

where you can do psilocybin
mushrooms legally.

You're welcome
for that knowledge.

And today, he's going to be
showing us how to identify, harvest and pick wild mushrooms.

Where are we right now?

Uh, just a random
park in the city.

Yeah, there's like children's
birthday parties and people
walking their dogs.

How'd you get into doing this?

Uh, somebody gave me a bag
of mushrooms when I was 20 and
that changed my life forever.

Uh, but no, I mean I-I started
picking wild mushrooms for food.

Uh, it was after
I had psychoactive
mushrooms, uh, I-I

kind of fell in love with
psilocybin, uh, immediately.

Like, when I had that first
like swoosh of shadows

and ah-ha, oh this is,
this is what I want.

Um, and then that just
like led to a general
intrigue about fungus,

uh, and watching animals
eat mushrooms in the wild

and just got curious of how many
edibles there were out there.

And then learned that I could
clone and grow my own mushrooms.

It satisfied the-the
nerd part of myself.

If we're looking for
psychoactives then we're not
going to be looking in dung;

we're going to be
looking in mulch.

Vast majority of the
psychoactive mushrooms
grow in wood debris.

There are a few species
that do grow in dung,
but not majorly.

What I thought I liked
about them was that
they taste like shit,

and now I feel like
they're just tasting like
wood chips, but I guess...

Uh, well these taste different
than your cubensis.

Right? Cubensis is the one that
most people are familiar with,

are definitely a dung
dwelling mushroom.
That's where they originated.

They don't have to grow in dung;
you can grow them in like straw
or paper, all kinds of stuff.

-But, but...
-But you get to.

You can indeed, yes.

-You certainly can
grow them in dung.
-Yes.

Uh, people are very reluctant
to pick mushrooms

because there are obviously some
very toxic species out there.

And the psychoactive mushrooms
that we're looking for today
were only identified in 2003.

So it's relatively new, uh,
even to regular pickers.

I've been looking for psilocybin
for like 15 years in the wild

and only last year
I finally found it.

They kind of run in veins along
the mycelium so here's some
real young ones there.

[Shane] Ah, look at that.
It's beautiful.

We are quite literally
three feet from the road

and there's families and stuff
just driving right by the truth,

and uh, if only-if
only they knew.

Um, just what I'm looking
at here is, looks like it would
be a few hundred dollars'

worth of mushrooms
that I've seen just sitting
in this one place.

There's definitely a few
hundred trips right
here where we're sitting.

If you were to eat this,
this, this, this, and this,

you're gonna be solid
for several hours.

So how long does it take for one
of these little babies to turn
into one of these big fellas?

Uh, about three to five days.

So how often do you come here?

-
-About every three to five days.
-[laughing]

Just every single time
there's mushrooms to be
picked you will be here.

Uh, yeah.

-Of course.
-I make my rounds, yeah.

Tell me about this mulch.
What's, uh, what's it doing
here in the first place?

Oh, yeah, so the mulch
is courtesy of the city
park system.

So interesting to note that
the municipal parks are the,
uh, largest cultivator

of psilocybin mushrooms
definitely in this city
and probably nationwide.

♪♪♪

[laughing]

My mom was always telling me
that I should go and play
outside when I was younger

-and I would have been
more inclined to do that...
-Yeah.

...had I known that this
was going to be the case.

This is better than picking
apples, that's for sure.

This is actually, this is one
of the best first dates that
I've been on in some time.

How many trips am I holding
in my hand right now?

Seven.

-Seven?
-About five to seven.

-Oh.
-Maybe more, depending on,
depending how, uh...

-Yeah.
-...how strong
you like your trip.

Yeah, it's two
Shane trips worth.

So what's the next step?

Find a safe place to eat them.

The first lesson about setting
setting, do not do it in an
inappropriate setting. You know?

I mean if you're out
there with saber-toothed tigers
stay off the stuff or, you know,

if you're on the freeway at 80
miles an hour it's probably not
the place you'll want to do it.

I mean there's no overestimating
the stupidity of people

and that they're very
ingenious at finding
inappropriate settings.

But the point is why,
it diminishes its value if it
may be dangerous? You know.

Ninety, 95 percent of bad trip
stories I hear is that someone,

"Oh, I did them once in college,
uh, I had some mushrooms, went
to a kegger, oh it was awful."

[audience laughing]

-Oh yeah, it was.
-[audience laughing]

Yep.

Pretty sure I know where
you went wrong there.

-Keggers are awful.
-[audience laughing]

They are an awful, awful time.

Mushrooms tried
to show you that.

[audience laughing
and clapping]

People used to do yoga and
self-flagellation and torture

and all of these things
for sometimes a lifetime

and in hopes that they
would get one of these
meaningful experiences.

If they were lucky, they did.

Well, now, 30 milligrams
of psilocybin in the right
circumstances

and with the right people
looking after you,

pretty much any schmuck
can have a mystical experience.
You don't have to be a saint.

It's just built into
your neural chemistry.

Starting to get gaggy yet?

-Well, that's why I want
to just mow 'em down.
-Oh.

Fuck it.

-When is it gonna be done?
-Done. I don't like
thinking about it.

We've come to believe that
the wise responsible use of
drugs like psilocybin

constitute a major
frontier in psychiatry,

can be incredibly effective
in helping people, uh,
deal with depression, anxiety,

addictions, simply
to live more fully.

And the interesting thing
with these drugs, you don't
have to keep taking them.

What's helpful is the memory
often of a single experience,

so it's the experience that is
helpful versus the biochemical
effect of the medication.

Even people that have
done psychedelics, people
that are interested,

open minded about
it, be like, "But what if you
stay like that forever?

Oh, that mythical perma trip.
What if you stay
like that forever?"

Which is not how drugs work.

Let's, I mean you can have
experiences that can
change you certainly

because every experience
in life changes you
in way or another.

But you can't just magically
have psilocybin chemicals

floating around in
your brain forever.

I don't know why
people think that.

You never see anyone have a
bunch of drinks and be like,

-"Oh, what if I'm just stuck
like this now? Huh?"
-[audience laughing]

"Guess I'm never
wearing pants again."

That's not how drugs work.

I've had some terrifying
experiences on psychedelics,

um, where I experienced
things that I can't explain

and don't really like to talk
about that much 'cause they
were so scary and powerful.

And, uh, I, you know,
it's like I don't regret
having those experiences,

having come through them.

Certainly while I was having
them I thought boy I'll
be glad when this is over.

I need to remind myself
that it is going to be
over at some point.

This isn't just it forever.

So I think being scared and
being unsettled and experiencing
the negative emotions

that can be associated with that
are definitely one risk

that you run by messing
around with this stuff.

Maybe for people
who have existing
psychological conditions

or are just more prone to being
sensitive to this kind of thing,

it can be even more severe
than it has been for me.

When you totally
shatter your brain

and your personality
comes apart and your
ego is dissolved,

and you know, you're on the
cosmos somewhere and, but when
you start to come back together

it's kind of like rebooting
your hard drive.

It's like defragging
your hard drive.

When you-when it falls back
together you leave behind a lot
of crap that you didn't need,

you know, that were kind of-
that was kind of clogging
up the system.

That's the therapeutic idea.

[Shane] Here's what we actually know is happening in the brain.

[Amanda] The Eco mechanism,
the controlling debt rock
in the brain,

is called the Default
Mode Network.

It's a network superimposed
on other networks

which basically censors
what enters consciousness
and what does not.

A psychedelic, um, tends to
disrupt this controlling system
in the brain,

reducing the blood supply to it,

and it's rather like
a government or a conductor
in an orchestra.

♪♪♪

When its repressive
control is reduced

all the parts of the brain start
to communicate to each other.

Instead of being a limited form
of communication between
permitted networks in the brain,

suddenly you have,
it's like anarchy.

♪♪♪

So we have more brain cells
functioning simultaneously

and with that comes a lessening
of the control of the Default
Mode Network,

which is used
to be called the ego.

So you have less
repressive control.

It's comin' on.

You do an average
dose of mushrooms it should
take about an hour

before you start tripping, but
you will start feeling something
around 45, maybe in 30 minutes.

That is not the trip.
That is a biological reaction.

That is your gut going,
"Did you just eat poison?

-What the hell are
you doin' up there?"
-[audience laughing]

"Oh great, well pull the
alarms, let's get nausea going,

let's get sweaty,
adrenaline, anxiety, panic.

Where's that sweat?
Fire the auxiliary sweat.

There's too much
color in our face."

The psilocybin is definitely
making things, uh, move in a
more, um, pronounced way.

-I think these trees are gonna
start talking to me.
-[laughing]

-Yeah.
-Any minute now.

-Hey, dude, check this
curvy one out here.
-Yeah.

It's already looks
like it's moving to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shane] This is what
psychedelics are all about.

Making you childlike again.

Waking up those parts
of the brain that haven't
been active in years.

So many people
get set in their ways

and the more set in your
ways you get the more limited
your options become.

After a while, you can't see
possibilities anymore, you're just going through the routines.

♪♪♪

Every one of us needs help.

I need help.
Everyone needs help.

And, but some people
are so scared to confront that

and psychedelics can really
bring that to the surface.

And so one of the things
that's always brought to the
surface early on in trips for me

is the idea of, you know,
my extended family,

You know, when you get
together to-with the holidays,
uh, what-what do you do?

And I'm the psychedelic comedian
and you're a guy who leads
mushroom retreats...

-Yeah.
-...in Jamaica.

Uh...

Like what-what do you-what
do you do? I do drugs.

And I, uh, figured out a way
to make a living doing that.

[Eric] Because I'm doing
it legally and it helps
so many people,

that when people ask me what
I do and I know that they're
gonna be uncomfortable with it,

like I kind of get a kick
out of, uh, the initial,
they're like.

And then in that like
moment where they're
kind of freaked out

and you can like dump
information on them
about the benefits.

And they're like, they're
surprisingly open

because they're- they're
in that state of shock.

And then they're like,
"Oh, oh." You're like,
and you see like a reversal.

People just know that plants
have so much potential

and that the medicines exist
in nature and not in some
pharmaceutical

laboratory where
they're being pumped out.

We have a study at University
of Alabama going on now

lookin' at the ability
of psilocybin to treat, uh,
hardcore cocaine addicts.

Um, we think probably they'll
work in eating disorders.

These are intractable
diseases that have no
real treatments now.

You know, if you had a drug for
HIV and it-it looked promising,

like this looks like it will
really cure people,

the scientists and funding
agencies would be beating
the doors down to find this.

But because it's psychedelics,
there's still this- these
echoes of the '60s.

America's public enemy
number one in the United
States is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat
this enemy, it is necessary to
wage a new, all-out offensive.

The history of drug
prohibition, it's never been
about stopping drug abuse,

it's always been about
persecution of minorities
or about power or jobs.

We just started getting a
little bit of, uh, the hint of,
uh, prohibition of marijuana

in the early part of the
century, but then we have
alcohol prohibition.

Which was sort of a
moralistic campaign.

Not really too well
thought out and very
short lived, fortunately.

And then after prohibition
we have all these
prohibition agents,

and what are they gonna do?

And Harry Anslinger, who was
in charge of them, uh, started
the big scare about marijuana.

[announcer] Marijuana,
the burning weed
with its roots in hell.

[Rick] Marijuana
became illegal in '37

and took out the pharmacopoeias
in medicine in '42.

Then marijuana was used
by Mexicans and by blacks
and jazz musicians.

So it was another kind of way
to go after minorities.

♪♪♪

And then we have marijuana
picked up in the '60s
by young people,

along with LSD and
other psychedelics.

And we have this big
counterculture where drugs are
integral to their, uh, identity

and they're also identified
as counterculture,

as against the Vietnam War,
as protesting the government.

So psychedelics as agents
of counterculture, we have
Nixon and Haldeman,

they said that their biggest
enemies were Civil Rights people
and also, uh, the hippies.

And they couldn't
criminalize their ideas,

but they could criminalize the
drugs they were using

and try to break up their
meetings and put their leaders
in jail and go after them.

When Nixon was
escalating the drug war,

he decided to pass
the Controlled Substance
Act in 1970,

and that's what created
the schedules.

Schedule I is for drugs that
have no accepted medical use,

no accepted safety for use
under medical supervision,
and a high potential for abuse.

And one thing that's confusing
to people is schedule I

doesn't mean that the
government has decided there
never will be a medical use,

just that there is
no accepted medical use.

Schedule II is for drugs that
do have an accepted medical use

and accepted safety under
medical supervision, but still
have a high potential for abuse.

Schedule two drugs
include cocaine.

They're so scared about cocaine,
but cocaine has a medical use

and it's not a schedule I drug.

I'm not sure what this
big important medical
value of cocaine is

to qualify for a schedule II.

I guess if you're super
sleepy and constipated

-and don't have time for 50 cups
of coffee, I can see that.
-[audience laughing]

So schedule II drugs
are high potential abuse,
but they are medicines.

Schedule III is medicines

that have a medium
potential for abuse.

Schedule IV and V get lower
and lower potentials of abuse

and less and less control.

And then you get, uh, over
the counter medicines.

[Shane] I had an Adderall
for the first time like
two years ago.

I was just like, "Oh, I'll just
try it and see if it's as crazy
as science says that it is."

And I tried one of those things
and I was like right away, I
was like, "Oh, this is cocaine."

"Whoa, we're giving cocaine
to children. That's crazy."

And then it just refused
to wear off.

It's like, "Oh, this
is meth. Yeah."

We are giving
meth to children.

Then throughout the '70s
there was, um,

more of an attitude of openness;
there was some sort of hope

about marijuana
becoming decriminalized.

Jimmy Carter, in '76, was
elected on that,

but then there started to be the
backlash of the parents.

And then in 1980, we got Ronald
Regan and Nancy Regan

and a massive escalation
of the drug war.

Thirty-seven federal agencies
are working together
in a vigorous national effort,

and by next year our spending
for drug law enforcement

will have more than tripled
from its 1981 levels.

♪♪♪

[Rick] And just at that time,
MDMA was becoming
more widely known.

It had been used as the secret
therapy drug from the middle
'70s to the early '80s.

And some of the people
that used it in that context

thought that more people
should have it available.

And so they named it Ecstasy
and it became a party drug.

♪♪♪

[male newscaster] Chemists
call it MDMA for short.

Users have a word
for it: Ecstasy.

Federal officials call it
an underground drug
that's going nationwide.

Soon they hope
to call it illegal.

As the awareness of its, uh,
use as a party drug grew

and Nancy Regan was escalating
'just say no' and the drug war,

it was inevitable that MDMA
was going to be criminalized.

Prohibition and drug was
culture manifests the very
misuse and abuse of drugs

that it pretends
it's preventing, because
it sends the message

to young people these drugs only
have risks, there's no benefits.

If you use them you must
be a hedonist, uh,
you-- you're immoral.

And that colors the perception
that young people have
about these substances

and they enter
into a relationship with
them that's unhealthy.

They think this is a rebellious
thing; I'm being bad.

And consequently,
they use too much.

They don't-- they aren't
moderate in their use.

We don't model healthy
psychedelic use for young people

in the way that we
do with alcohol.

You know, we have a glass
of wine with our kids when
they get to be teenagers

and they, you know, so that they
don't binge drink later on

and we show them how these, how
alcohol can be used responsibly.

We need to do the same
thing with psychedelics.

So there's no drug market
more highly adulterated
than the MDMA market.

But adulterant isn't
really the right word.

What's happening is that
other drugs are being
substituted for MDMA

because the precursors
to make MDMA are expensive
or risky to obtain.

So instead of producing MDMA,

criminals are producing
paramethoxyamphetamine,

um, all these bath salts now,
a class of drugs
called cathinone's,

uh, pressing them into tablets
and selling them as Ecstasy

or selling them as Molly
and young people think
they're getting MDMA.

[Shane] My friend, comedian
Bert Kreischer, knows a thing
or two about partying.

In fact, in 1997, Rolling Stone
called him the number
one partier

at the number one party school.

That is real.

My wife's a redneck.
She's like, "Oh, we'll just
be honest with them."

We're talking about
raising the girls.

I was like, "I can't do that,
I've partied too much."

Like what would-- what would
I say to them when they go,
"What about drugs, Dad?"

"Oh just take half."
Like it just doesn't
make fuckin' sense.

Like...

Yeah, but I mean you, didn't you
nearly get raped by a bear once?

Yeah.

So I mean I'm not sure
you need to be that concerned
about your daughters

trying to follow in
your-- in your footsteps.

-I have a big--I have a--
-As lo-as long as you share
those stories as well.

I have a long stride.
I have a long stride.

But if they have to do
hallucinates I--I hope they
do them in light doses...

-Yeah.
-...and-- and enjoy them.

You know? And have some really
spiritual experiences on a
mountain top in the Southwest

and look at watermelon sunsets
and see the world differently.

Me and my girlfriend eat MDMA
all the time, and it brings us
so much closer together.

We forgive each other
for any of our fucking
bullshit that we have,

or we get it all out
and in a loving we--way

we share shit we never
thought we'd be sharing
with one another.

We could have used Molly
on this bike ride today.

Ecstasy is pretty cool.

Ecstasy is awesome.

One of the amazing things
about MDMA is that it actually

decreases the activity
of the amygdala, so,

and subjectively
patients report,

like it-- it being easier to
access difficult memories

and easier to talk about
difficult things

that the amygdala
would normally inhibit them
from being comfortable

or able even to talk about.

[Shane] There are twenty-four
million Americans with
posttraumatic stress disorder.

[dog barking]

My friend, Heather,
is one of them.

Hey! How are you?

[Heather] In my experience with
PTSD, sex, trauma, depression,

it's the Bermuda Triangle
of my experience.

One thing leads to the other,
leads to the other,
leads to the other.

What the MDMA allows
is for a connection,

uh, an openness that
may not even be achievable
in regular therapy,

and if it is it requires
building so much trust.

It's like, you know, you're
talking about months of therapy

just building the trust
so somebody can talk about
such a horrible thing.

[Marcela] Trauma is housed in
the body and the body remembers.

In 1984, I had MDMA
to treat PTSD.

And, um, it was very successful
and it was wonderful,

um, and it was
an amazing experience.

Saved my life.

So I embarked in, um,
wanting to help others.

There's only two drugs that
are approved by the FDA for
posttraumatic stress disorder.

Both of them are SSRI's:
Zoloft and Paxil.

They tend to just
have a mild effect.

They just reduce symptoms,
but they leave most
people still with PTSD.

MAPS, uh, stands for the
Multidisciplinary Association
for Psychedelic Studies.

The essence of what we do is,
um, FDA-approved research

trying to make psychedelics
and marijuana into prescription
medicines.

MAPS, uh, has, you know,
funded the studies

to actually go through the full
FDA approval process that a
normal psychiatric drug would.

People, uh, in the studies
have a really difficult time.

It's not an easy process,
mostly because they have to be
off all their medications.

And some of them, we--
we had people that took ten
medications,

ten different medications,
twelve different medications,

and have been taking
medications for twenty years.

So getting off of all those
medications was
already a challenge

and a difficult, uh,
thing for them to do.

My experience with the MDMA
and working with this therapist,

it was like going to five
hundred years of therapy
in five or six hours.

Lifetime of therapy
in five hours.

And the reintegration process
with the MDMA,

after the MDMA, [inhaling]

it changed my whole entire life.

You know, I am no longer
in profound pain

on a continual daily basis.

People with PTSD spend
a lot of- most of their time
warding off the feeling,

warding off the trauma
so that it doesn't come up.

We don't want to, you know,
manage your symptoms;

we want you to go into your
symptoms and into the feelings
and into what happened

and in a safe place with the
help of MDMA as a resource.

The way in which psychedelic
assisted psychotherapy is going
to be approved by the FDA

is with a set of special
regulations that require that
the people that prescribe it,

that are with people, have had
training in how to use the drug,

and that the administration
of these drugs will only be in
these licensed clinic settings.

Our treatment is two
or three MDMA sessions

and then three integrated
psychotherapy sessions

of ninety minutes
after each MDMA session,

and then each MDMA session
is three to five weeks apart.

And so we have now treated
a hundred and seven
people in that way.

And one year after the last
MDMA session,

so this is not just looking at
short-term effects, but long-
term effects.

Two thirds of the people
who had treatment-
resistant chronic PTSD,

um, no longer had PTSD.

The tragedy of this field is,
uh, that we're seeing
with these studies now,

the power that these drugs
potentially have.

And the early psychiatrists,
they said that.

[man] LSD was isolated
by a Stolen Hofmann

in a Sandoz Pharmaceutical
Company of Basel, Switzerland.

[Erika] There was a lot
of promising research
that unfolded in the 1950's

and by 1961, there were
over a thousand published
articles using LSD.

The idea of treating people
for alcoholism with LSD

came about when they
watched people going
through delirium tremens,

and they watched the pain
and suffering that
people experienced

when they hit rock bottom.

And they thought it was
possible that perhaps you could
hijack that experience

by giving people LSD
before they physiologically
reach rock bottom.

And they thought this would
work by kind of scaring people
that they would, you know,

subjects would have a very
terrible experience and
it would frighten them

and they would seek
help as a result.

But it didn't really
work out that way.

What happened was
alcoholic patients would
come through this treatment

and they actually had
very reflective experiences.

Some of them were quite
beautiful, many of them were
overwhelmingly spiritual.

I've never seen this
intimate beauty in my life.

It's like a--

a curtain or a spider web.

Can you see it? It's right
here in front of me. Right now.

Watch.

No.

Good heavens.

You know, it went through me?

It passed right through me!

[Erika] And so we know
that Bill Wilson, or Bill W.,

one of the cofounders
of Alcoholics Anonymous,

sought out psychedelic
researchers in-- in the United
States and also came to Canada

in search of this mechanism
to determine whether or not
there was a way

to get more people into
Alcoholics Anonymous by having
an LSD treatment initially.

One of the things that
Alcoholics Anonymous
offered to people

that wasn't necessarily
offered in a hospital setting

was step two, which
was recognizing that
there was a God.

And for many of the alcoholics
who were asked to come in and
talk about their feelings

or accept that there is a God,
uh, this wasn't really something
that they were paired--

prepared to do.

As one of the subjects told me,
you know, "I wanted to get drunk
and I wanted to, you know,

hit on women and
I wanted to fight guys.

I didn't want to sit around
talking about my feelings
and thinking about God."

He said, "But after I took
LSD, I saw God and
I was prepared to come in

and listen to other people
uh, talk about their feelings.

And I appreciated
and understood why I needed
that context to get there.

And within a few years, people
being treated with psychedelic
therapy for alcoholism

were claiming, um, success
rates of, in some units,

up to ninety percent success
rate with a two year follow-up.

And that's with
complete abstinence.

No research units had
ever claimed any kind
of success at that level

for any alcoholism treatment.

For a lot of people, it's just
becoming this miracle drug
and the cutting edge of science

and psychologists
and therapists were rushing
into this new field.

Then the U.S. found out
about it and they're like,

"Ooh, can we weaponize it?"

Cause that's what we do.

And they thought maybe
you could dump a bunch of it
in enemies drinking water

to drive them crazy
or to pacify them

or maybe you could torture
people with it, you know,
and use it as a truth serum.

Who knows the amazing
possibilities?

Every other country was like,
"Seems like we're helping a lot
of people with this stuff."

The US is like,
"But can we destroy them?"

-It's just cultural differences;
it's the wackiest thing.
-[audience laughing]

So they start doing all these
weird studies that
you can, you know,

all the stuff's declassified
so you can read about it,

but they do-- they strap
military troops to chairs

and give them way too much LSD
to see if they could drive them
out of their minds or whatever.

So this didn't go the
way that they'd hoped.

All that happened was everyone
in the study was just like,
"Huh, why am I in the military?"

[audience laughing and clapping]

LSD is the one that
scares me the most

because you can have a vile
that's like two hundred hits,
you don't know who's making it.

Ideally, if prohibition wasn't
a thing you'd have like a pill

and you would know exactly
how much was in that pill

and you could have that and
not accidentally have five, six
hits of LSD and lose your mind.

I wish LSD was only done
in therapy settings.

I'm not saying everyone should
go out and do psychedelics.

I honestly don't believe
they're for everybody.
I believe they're for me.

Uh, I don't believe
they're for everybody.

And I'm a psychonaut.

Like I can, uh, I compare
myself, like what I'm
doing with psychedelics,

exploring my mind
is the equivalent
to being an astronaut.

I genuinely believe that's a--
that's a word in the culture

and that's where I fall
in the culture.

And-- and so I'm not like peer
pressuring people to do it.

Just because I'm like pro NASA
doesn't mean I'm like, "Hey,
everybody, get in the shuttle.

You have to."
"No, I'm okay here. I'm
just enjoying myself here."

"No, the world's going to look
totally different from out
there. You got to try it."

"Don't they explode
sometimes?"

"Well, yeah, sure, once in
a while, but that's
overplayed in the news."

[audience laughing]

And I'll be honest with you,
sometimes I do meet someone
who's just like a little off.

[audience laughing]

And it's always,
they always went a little
overboard with the LSD

and decided to try a forties
trip or something like that.

Yeah, it's, uh, some
of us are explorers.

So it's so-- sometimes the--

the moon isn't' good enough,
you got to get to Mars.

And-- [laughing]

and you're like, "What's
it going to be like out?"
"Who knows? Let's just go."

"We're not going to pack
or anything?" "Fuck no!"

"Shouldn't we do some
calculations?" "Uh-uh.

We got the fuel, let's go."

So now for the first time we can
do psychedelic research,

uh, combining the subjective
side, psychological interviews

and psychological
questionnaires,
the physiological side,

which is studying the--
the bloodstream and the heart
rate and the respiratory rhythm

and looking at the brain
of live humans, awake,
in healthy conditions.

This is completely unprecedented
and it also can shed light

on how LSD can have
therapeutic effects

once we better understand
what's doing to the brain
and to the mind.

[Shane] A standard hit of LSD
is a hundred micrograms.

I've done up to five
hundred micrograms.

And sometimes you hear
of people doing a thousand,

ten thousand micrograms
and that seems crazy.

All my LSD experiences
are-- are just like,
"Oh, this is chill."

A lot of times I do like
housework on LSD.

It's just nice to sit
and be thinking
a little bit differently.

But, I don't see like
crazy patterns like
a lot of people do.

Each researcher tends to have
its own metaphor to try
to explain what's going on.

Uh, my favorite, uh,
analogy is the radio.

[radio dialing]

So if you're driving your car
and you're listening to one
radio station,

what you're doing
is you're-- you're filtering
all of the others.

They are transmitting
in other frequencies

and you're killing them
so you just listen to one
specific station.

And that's good because you can
listen clearly,

the- the sound quality's good
and you understand everything
that's playing around.

However, if your radio
is not fine-tuned

you might get two
or three or more stations
at the same time.

What LSD seems to be
doing to the brain
is something like this.

So the brain has a fine-tuning
that in every specific moment
we are paying attention

to some things in our
environment and we
are filtering out the rest.

And what LSD seems to--
to do is to disturb this
filtering mechanism

so we start kind of perceiving

what many brain
regions are doing differently
at the same time.

So one hand, that's quite
confusing because

you-- you can't keep
the focus in-- in one thing.

So if there are many people
talking, you can't really
focus on only one

and you keep shifting
our attention and people
feel, uh, confused.

On the other hand,
this has all to do with
creativity, for example,

because creativity is
connecting together,

uh, things that you
were separating these
different frequencies.

You were considering them
different stations

that have shows about different
topics and now all of a sudden
you're hearing them together

and you make connections
that you were not making before.

Psychiatrist Humphrey
Osmond introduced the word
'psychedelic' in 1956

and he wanted to capture
a sensation of the way in which
the mind is brought to light,

or their subs-or concepts
brought to light.

So he used the word 'psyche'
from the Greed word 'mind'

and the word 'delos' in Greek
is to bring to light,

so he combined these
to mean psychedelic.

So the way that the mind
manifests or brings
things to light.

And he used a clever rhyming
couplet when he did this.

To fall in hell or soar
angelic, you'll need
a pinch of psychedelic.

[Shane] Today, I'm doing
Ketamine for the first time.

It's also my first time doing
psychedelics in a professional
therapeutic setting,

something that I very
much believe in.

And I'm more excited
than nervous, but
I'm a little nervous.

Ketamine is actually
something that I don't
know a whole lot about.

All I really know is it's
notorious for something
called the K hole,

which I don't totally
know what that is or means,
and it sounds horrible.

Most hole-based
terminology is never positive.

Ketamine is
a schedule III drug.

That basically means that
the FDA and DEA classify it

as having accepted medical
use and lower potential
for dependence

than the more strictly
regulated schedule I
and schedule II drugs.

[distant explosion]

[woman] Here's
something depressing.

The Centers for Disease Control says roughly one in ten Americans today is depressed.

One in ten Americans
take antidepressants.

I think we go in swings
and cycles in social
and medical history.

[Shane] If one third of
depressed people are not
responding to antidepressants,

clearly, something
isn't working.

When a drug comes on the market,
uh, pharmaceutical companies
are interested in launching it

and trying to get it
out there where it
can begin to make money.

And, uh, so they actually
screen out, in most cases,

patients with treatment
resistant mood disorders and so,

uh, the original work that gets
drugs on the market

often it doesn't apply to
patients that have multiple
comorbid and psychiatric soars

and have failed two or three
different antidepressants.

Uh, treatments exist
in something like
an ecosystem, okay?

Where they are like little
replicators competing for use.

They compete for things like
money and time and interest.

One of the things that makes
them compete well

is that they're effective
treatments, but that's
only one factor,

and it's very easily overwhelmed
by other factors that may make a
good treatment fail

because it doesn't replicate
well economically
in the medical marketplace.

Uh, unfortunately, there's no
money to be made with Ketamine
because it's off patent,

so there isn't the financial
incentive that there
would be otherwise

for such a promising drug.

[Terrance] Ketamine is a
dissociative anesthetication

that's been around
since the late '60s.

It seems to help
the brain rewire itself.

And several work has been
done demonstrating, uh,
the benefits of Ketamine,

uh, uh, for treatments of, uh,
depression, bipolar depression,
some work with PTSD.

And we probably have
more data about Ketamine

than any other medicine
that's used to treat,
uh, treat mood disorders.

You mentioned that depression
going back about age
ten or thereabouts.

-[Shane] Mm-hm.
-And when you-- when
you had depression

over the years, what
happened to your sleep?

-I think that I would
sleep a lot more.
-Okay.

Uh, I-- I could-- I could sleep
and sleep and that's the
problem,

I have a very, very,
very difficult time getting
out of bed.

When you have depression, would
it just come out of the blue

or would it, would
something happen that
would precipitate it?

Seems like it's out of the blue.

It seems like I could be
having the best things
in my life happening.

Uh, tell me about
medical problems.

I had a foot injury about three
years ago that was really severe

and it required a couple
surgeries, but outside
of that I have been, uh,

about as healthy
as a person can be.

And, uh, how much alcohol
would you drink per week?

Eight drinks a day.

Okay.

And-- and what kind of drinks?

Uh, a couple bottles of wine
in the night really easily.

I tried to keep it down
to like a bottle.

If I start drinking
hard alcohol,

probably like fifteen
or twenty shots worth in
a given night and black out.

Okay. So that's-- that's---
that is an issue for you.

Mm-hmm.

Um, okay, what about,
uh, cannabis or anything?

-Yeah, that's not
really my thing.
-Okay.

Once in a while.

Do you have any, uh,
thoughts of suicide ever?

-Not lately.
I used to constantly.
-Okay. Okay.

[Shane] I'm comfortable
and I'm relaxed.

All right, a little stick.

[heart beating]

[Shane exhales]

♪♪♪

-Oh, God. Oh, there's
this rushing feeling.
-[Terrance] Yeah.

[Shane] There's this like
beautiful like flowing feeling

of like all's like moving
through me and it's out.

The sense of connectedness
is everything.

It's, whoa, yeah.

There's this weird feeling
that sometimes I created all
of this or something like that.

When I'm tripping, what that
looks like is that I am God

and I created all of this,
and I feel responsible
for the ugliness of this world.

I can take time and space--

-Mm-hmm.
-and manipulate it.

I-- I'm trying to explore
how the brain works.

We are all Gods
of our own minds

and so we did create
what's in our heads
on some level.

So if you are seeing
this universe that's
inside of your head

it is you and you are in charge
of it and you did make it.

Guilt and responsibility. Yes.

Those are big, big,
big parts of my life.

I have reoccurring themes
of guilt and responsibility.

I think that's something that's
been there since childhood

was instilled in me by schools
and everything else.

And I wasn't responsible
enough and I should
be ashamed of myself.

-Terry--
-Yes.

I was fiddling around
with the universe in there.

-[giggling]
-Hoo!

[Shane] Ketamine
is a wonderful drug.

I will say that.

-Can I take these off?
-Sure.

Whoa, I am still
going real hard.

[Cole] Ketamine, the fact that
it works for unipolar and
bipolar depression, you know,

fifty-three percent of the time
it works the, you know,
on the first treatment.

With repeat dosing, about
two thirds of people have
a response, which is incredible.

So right now I'm shaky.

When you're on Ketamine,
you have a faint memory
of what it was like to be human.

And now that I'm a human,
uh, I have a faint memory
of remembering

what Ketamine was like.

-I was talking through
the whole thing?
-Mm-hmm.

Oh, boy.

Sort of the holy grail
of antidepressant treatment

that is a game changer
about, uh, Ketamine
is that it works rapidly.

Dimethyltryptamine,
it's in most living things.
It's already in your brain.

People don't know what it's
doing or, some researchers think
it's responsible for dreaming

and I get from some trips that
I had and other people are--
are, uh, some researchers think

that it gets released
in high volumes right before
you die and that's why,

um, uh, if people are lucky
enough to be revived they have
these stories seeing tunnels

and Gods and spirits and,
you know, kingdoms, whatnot.

Anyhow, you can smoke
that shit and, uh, have a little
peek see for yourself.

-So--
-[audience laughing]

The first time I smoked DMT
I was like, whoa, man.

Like so the first forty-five
seconds of my DMT
trip was total chaos.

In my mind.

Uh, in reality, I was just
slumped on a couch.

I find that DMT is scarier
every time you do it.

There's no cautiousness.

DMT says you got to jump off
the thirty meter dive.
That's where it starts.

Most people believe in Gods
that they've never seen.

I don't understand how
that's somehow less crazy

than believing in the one
that you got to chill with
for eight minutes in eternity.

[audience laughing]

If you feel like, um,
you're going to die, die.

If you feel like you're going
to go crazy, go crazy.

If you feel like, um, you know,
you're going into this deep
well with darkness, go into it.

Dive into it.

If you're experiencing
that it is real and it is--
can be terrifying.

MAOI is this, uh, is this
chemical that breaks
up DMT in your brain.

I know this person that
takes Syrian rue and makes
it into a body paint.

So you can put the glow
in the dark body paint
with this MAOI inhibitor

and it's like just a natural
antidepressant if
you're not doing DMT,

but if you do DMT
it also just increases
it and makes it last longer.

I wanted to like look really
crazy to do like an
attention-grabbing scene just

to get people's attention
and then show how normal
psychedelics actually are.

But, I wanted to make
myself look like a crazy
lunatic for a minute.

And so I painted my
whole body in Syrian rue

and then I smoked DMT
and right away this alien
comes out, I was like,

"Good, you got the cameras,
now tell people
what they need to know."

And I went, "Whoa,
what the fuck is happening?

Wow.

[whispering] This is nice.

[whispering]

Heaven.

Heaven.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Oh boy.

I'll say it.

How do I even say it? Ah, God.

Uh...

There's like these four

separate--Oh God.

Wow.

Hmm.

There's this place.

There's this place... [echoing]

Oh.

This is like one of many,
many, many, many
realities happening.

Oh, there is this guy.

There is this thing
controlling all of it.

And it just goes,
"You, put it into words."

I'm supposed to find a way
to put it all into words.

-And that was it.
-[audience laughing]

And I was just a hundred
percent back to normal,

as clear-headed as I've ever
been in my entire life going,
"What the fuck was that?"

Afterwards, I was like,
"That was weir-- that was--
that didn't happen.

That was just DMT."

And then I-- a month later

I was like, "I gotta drink
ayahuasca because
it's a slower version of it."

Ayahuasca is a brew.

It's kind of the center of
ethno-medicine in the Amazon.

And it's kind of unique
about traditional
indigenous psychedelics

because it's made from
two plants and they
synergize each other.

There's all this other shit
in ayahuasca that is in DMT

that you need to take to be able
to take it orally that fucks
with your stomach so hard

that it sends off false alarms
way worse than mushrooms,

so much so it tricks your brain
into thinking that you're dying,

people project that
into their hallucinations.

"Oh, I saw my own funeral."
"Oh, I had an ego death.

Let me tell you
about my ego death."

"Oh, you had an ego death,
did ya? Why are you
bragging about it?"

[audience laughing]

"Pretty sure your ego
is alive and well."

I would say ayahuasca
is not unlike dreams, you know.

It's a very-- it's similar
to dreams where you do
have inner visionary states

that are similar to DMT
because it is DMT, but
it's like not super-fast.

So instead of 10 to 15 minutes,
which is what happens
when you smoke DMT,

it's five to seven
or eight hours.

It's much extended.

So what you do, you sit in this
hut and there's a shaman
there, you drink this tea.

And then for the next
four to six hours

what you get to do is
you get to throw up all over
you and your new agey buddies.

And then you realize that
you got to give up your steady
job to focus on pottery.

The person that is leading
the experience
has also a great influence

on the outcome
of the experience.

So it's important to find
someone that you trust,

someone that is experienced,
that is skilled,
that is professional,

and this is not always
the case, you know.

So the combination
of challenging inner experiences

with poor facilitation or poor
support on the outside,

that can be a factor

that really, really makes
an experience difficult
and challenging.

[Shane] So I'm going to do an
underground ayahuasca ceremony.

And we're not going
to be allowed to shoot
it because it's illegal

and the other people
in the ceremony, they
have to protect their identity.

And we could have gone to Peru,
I suppose, and maybe shot this,

but now we get to do a
clandestine ayahuasca ceremony.

And, I really like
the word 'clandestine.'

I'll just give you a brief
summary of what I eventually
started sharing with people

that put me in a psych ward. I--

So I-- I'm bipolar.

I've always been bipolar,
but I've been bipolar II

and then I went up to
bipolar I, that's the big one.

I didn't know like bipolar II
is the coward's bipolar.

[audience laughing]

And like I was just having
dreams of like,

"Maybe I can be a standup
comedian on television."

Uh, and then I'm like "Oh,
maybe I'll kill myself one day."

And tho-- that is like such
a quaint version of bipolar.

Bipolar I is like I can
change the laws of physics
with my mind.

And because I just did that,
now I can't kill myself anymore

because now I'll just show up on
another timeline and who knows
how miserable that one will be.

People get into trouble
I think with psychedelics
when they realize that their--

their sort of models of reality
are melting and shattering
and that's very uncomfortable.

But, well, why'd you take
the damn psychedelic if you
didn't expect this to happen?

That's what they do.

We come back from these
experiences a proselyte,

you know, ranting
and raving, telling people,

"We've got to get our shit
together in the next few
years, it's happening."

Even though it's all
happening at once from it--
the eternal point of view,

that doesn't mean it's happening
within your lifetime.

That would mean
that the prophecy is about
your individual life,

it's about the date that
you're going on tomorrow

and it's about the beginning
and end of the whole cosmos.

[Shane] I'd done
ayahuasca before

and it was pretty mild
compared to smoking DMT
so I had low expectations.

I took more than I think
you're supposed to.

Some sort of universal
consciousness that
I don't normally believe in,

in any way, uh, made
itself very clear to me.

And started telling me
a bunch of things about
history and space, time.

I was just trying
to be accepting.

This time, I think I might
have clicked accept

without really reading
the terms and conditions.

Ayahuasca asked me to be some
sort of messenger, or DMT,

and I was like, 'Sure,' not
really taking it very seriously.

And then I got this massive
download, like it felt
like a bolt of lightning

struck my head and the whole
house started shaking.

I thought I had
hallucinated all of this.

I asked people afterwards
and they had heard
the house nearly collapsing

right where I was as well.

So we went and checked it out
and right under where I was
there was this enormous crack.

Whatever.

I wake up the next morning
and the first text I get
out of the blue

asking me if I will
participate in this new
groundbreaking DMT study.

That's when I started
to freak out a little bit.

Then everything started
feeling like déjà vu.

And not like a couple
seconds of, "Oh, I think
I've done this before."

[echoing] This was minutes,
became hours, became days,

and now I've been up for several
days in a manic state

trying to figure out
the physics of how there's
these other dimensions,

that we're able to communicate
somehow, that we
can't normally perceive.

And I start thinking of these
kind of complicated formulas

of how time works and how
messages could be sent
back through time.

Starting to think that
my ideas are eventually
going to change the future

and because they're
changing the future they're
sending ripples back

through time that are changing
my environment.

After about a week of this,
I went to a concert,
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.

That's when I believed that
Roger Waters was communicating
with me telepathically,

that I had created some hair
in the fabric of space-time,

created these new timelines
that I was trying
to correct with my mind.

So that's when things
started kind of deteriorating.

Skip forward another two weeks
of me not sleeping and now
I'm insanely paranoid.

I believe I'm being
watched, followed.

I don't know if I'm getting
signs from God
or aliens or the universe

or if some sort of time
police are after me
or DEA is after me

because I'd figured out
a way to end prohibition.

If the cartel was coming after
me because I had eliminated
their source of income.

And those are the kind
of thoughts that if
you share with people

you are going to the psych ward.

My girlfriend was like super
tolerant the whole time and like
was really like on her wits-end.

And then I was like, right
at the end, I was like,

"We need to elope
and have a baby."

And that's when she was like,
"You're fuckin' crazy."

And that's when I got
hospitalized for a grand
romantic gesture.

Did you hear everything
else that I said?

I didn't get hospitalized
for all that shit.

I just did the most romantic
thing in my life and that's what
put me in the psych ward.

And then when you think the
world is coming against you

don't put someone in a psych
ward that's filled with cameras

and then someone
on a clipboard who like
monitoring your every move

because, oh God,
they were-- they were
fucking after me.

And, um, turns out I just
needed sleep, I guess.

That's the best explanation
that I have for all of that.

-So, uh, thank you guys.
-[audience cheering]

Maybe you can explain
these to me?

So I went to make a
documentary about,

uh, these cutting-edge
new treatments

that can hopefully free us
from pharmaceutical drugs.

-And I ended it on--
-I heard you.

--on the most amount
of pharmaceutical drugs I've
ever been on in my entire life.

So those are definitely
what I would expect, you know,
Lorazepam and Gabapentin.

It sounds like you had sort
of the euphoric kind of manic
episode, which man,

you know, like being a doctor
who tries to tell somebody

who is obviously having
a better day than I am

that there's something wrong
and they need to take medicine,
like that's a tough sell.

That's a very dangerous place
that you found yourself in.

People have been known
to blow family fortunes,
not just their own fortune,

other people's fortunes,
the grandiosity leads
to risk-taking behavior.

People who would normally wear
seatbelts don't wear seatbelts,

they drive more dangerously,
they jump off of things,

they, you know, just in general
risk-taking in every fashion.

So do you think that, uh,
psychedelics are responsible

for taking me from
bipolar II to bipolar I?

It's because of this
existing predisposition
to extreme mood states

that that's the way you
reacted to that stressor.

I would be interested
to know if you would have
ever had a manic episode

had you not had
psychedelics. I think,

I wouldn't be surprised
if you wouldn't have had
a manic episode

that required hospitalization.

I-- I know how crazy this sounds

but I still sort of feel
like doing ayahuasca
again to finish the job.

-Would you advise that?
-Uh-huh.

Uh, well, hopefully the science
will be there some day to know
the answer to, you know, like--

Yeah, yeah.

-what it is that happened
in the first place and--
-Yeah.

--whether or not it's safe.

That's the tragedy
of the war on drugs

is we don't know
the answers to like
these ancient compounds

despite all of this sort
of colloquial knowledge and

-but the plural of anecdote
is not data that was, you know.
-Mm-mm.

It's not just a lot of stories
that sound promising,

it's not the same thing
as a really truly well designed,

you know, investigation
of a scientific question.

So, you know, from
a mental health standpoint,

I wouldn't have recommended
doing them in the first place.

I have this good friend
that he's a shaman,

he has learned in Peru
for many, many years and he
does ceremonies in Europe.

And he says it's very easy
to forgive your father
in an ayahuasca session.

What is difficult is to go back
home and to act on that
forgiveness, you know,

to really forgive your father.

And this is what--
what the integration
really means, you know,

to practice, to act on the
teachings and the learnings
that we get from the experience

and that is not that
easy to do, you know.

So if you have an intention,
you know what
you want to work on

and you know what objectives
you have and then

you know that after
the experience you still
need to do something.

So the experience is not like
the magic pill, the experience
is gonna show you some things

and then you're-- you're free
to choose what do you do

with what you've seen
and then another path begins.

We always say that
the actual work begins
after the experience.

When I had to go back
and integrate things,

I had to integrate things
from my life, the open
loops that drive you crazy.

Like, "I said something
stupid in front of a girl
and I was in sixth grade

and embarrassed myself
in front of my crush
and everyone that I liked,"

and I had to revisit
that painful thing.

Or, "Oh, I bullied this kid
and for being gay when
I was in fourth grade

because I didn't understand
and I didn't know better, but
I should have known better."

And you got to go back
and relive that and find a way
to forgive yourself for it.

That's a really hard
process, but you will
have that plaguing you.

Like and that-- that will
be your own personal hell.

We all have these open loops
of just something bad or, uh,
happened to you in your life

or something that you
never fully processed

and so your brain's just
screaming at you like,
"Hey, don't forget about this.

This is a threat in the
environment. You got
to remember this lesson.

It's very important."

And a lot of those lessons
you have no use for anymore

because they happened when
you were a kid or just in
a different phase of your life.

So going back and kind
of reliving them brings closure
and it closes those open loops.

Um, that's how I think
about it anyway.

So that's why
I think integration
is exceptionally important.

But it's still, like I look back
on it and some of the,

like some of the drawings
that I made are
some of the best ideas

still to this day that
I've ever had in my life.

But-- but then I also,

it came along
with the most delusional
ideas that I've ever had.

So then-- and then that's
like really embarrassing and--

and you worry, I don't want
to do that to like my friends
and family again.

But, uh, fuck,
it was interesting.

Careful what you wish for.

That was a bit intense
and a little scarier
than I was anticipating.

I did end up getting
what I wanted.

I've quit drinking.
I quit smoking cigarettes.

I've been taking
better care of myself.

I've been meditating more
with the help of sensory
deprivation tanks.

I've been eating right
and exercising.

And I think I've really
had enough excitement
in my life for a while.

Although psychedelics have been an incredibly positive influence on my life for 21 years,

they do also have the potential to drive you completely
insane for a month or so.

I don't think psychedelics
are everything,

but after spending years
of interviewing scientists

from all sorts of different
fields of science,

psychedelic research,
from my point of view,

has the most potential
to create real positive change
for individuals and societies.

Of course, that could just
be the MDMA talking.

Hopefully, in the future, we'll have more reasonable laws; there will be more research,

and we'll have a better
understanding of how
to use these things correctly.

Some people do psychedelics
and like, "I saw the truth."

Uh, that's just like
how it feels sometimes.

Uh, I think that, uh, I think
that if you quit questioning
you ruin the whole point,

just to question fucking
everything, that is the most
important message in life.

-No, I know.
-[audience clapping]

I mean some people are like,
"Question everything?"
Now you're getting it.

Because--

because I think the-- the reason
why, in case you do ever
have a trip that you're like,

"This is the absolute truth
and there's no way
of looking at it."

Just re-- please, remember this,
and this has helped me out
of that situation many times,

uh, uh, the reason why those
trips seem so real and so true

is because they are for such
a short amount of time

and they are so different
and so intense and so,
uh, crazy seeming.

It's very salient.

Imagine instead that someone
is born, like they're on LSD
all of the time.

That's just normal life
for them and they just live this
weird technicolored existence.

And then one day when--

when they're like, uh, an adult
someone gives them a pill
that brings them to our reality.

It would seem just as crazy
and trippy to them.

"Oh my, God, I get it now.

It's like there's these
things called jobs

and entry level positions
that one can apply for.

It's like there's these weird
hierarchies within these jobs,

where you just kind of show up
on time each day.

And sure, you got to kiss
a little ass here and there,
maybe step on a few toes;

I didn't say it was
going to be pleasant.

But you can potentially
elevate your status
on that hierarchy.

Oh my, God.

It's like there's a potential
boss inside each and every
one of us! Holy shit!"

The point is, guys, life is
a trip and I hope you guys make
yours the best one possible.

-Thank you so much for coming.
-[audience cheering
and clapping]

♪♪♪

♪ Hold me up to the light

♪ And trace our steps

♪ Back into the night

♪ I need a clue

♪ There's nothing for miles

♪ There's nothing
Familiar here ♪

♪ We go left, we go right

♪ We trace our steps

♪ 'Til nothings in sight

♪ It's all we do

♪ There's nothing for miles

♪ There's nothing
Familiar here ♪

♪ Oh, I feel so broken
And I can't fix it now ♪

♪ Yeah, it feels so broken
And I can't fix it now ♪

♪ Can you show me how?

♪ Hold me up to the light

♪ And trace our steps

♪ Back into the night

♪ I need a clue

♪ There's nothing for miles

♪ There's nothing
Familiar here ♪