PTSF57 - New Compounds, Psychedelic Business, and Neurogenesis

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Psychedelics Today, Solidarity Fridays. This is your April 30 issue. It's just me and Kyle today. Michelle had some power issues, but she'll be back real soon. How are you doing today, Kyle? Pretty good, Joe. How are you doing today? Lovely. Had a few runs on the mountain. It was really nice. Six inches overnight on top of very firm ice. So you guys are still open out there. Nice. Oh, yeah. We might be open till the end of May. Yeah. This is one of my most personal incentives around climate change is keeping the season really big. But it also has implications for fires and all sorts of stuff about living in Colorado. We had a really rough summer last year with all the fire. So fire plus COVID, it's quite the time. Climate change is one reason why I didn't get involved in the ski industry. Yeah. For those that don't know, I actually, before going to get my transpersonal psychology degree, I went out to Colorado to look at a program in mountain operations. And I was reading in some of the news that some banks were being cautious about getting loans out to skiers or due to the impending consequences of climate change and how that could really disrupt the ski industry. So I was like, maybe there's no security in that long term. Exactly. Yeah. It's an interesting thing. It's always been a troubled industry. It's been really hard for them to make money, but some groups are figuring it out. It's kind of nice to see less resorts failing. Because for a period there, it was like, few resorts would have to close every single year, at least swapping ownership and trying their best, but whatever. It's getting to that point. And yeah, climate is going to be a big impact there. Colorado is going to be a very different place in 20 years. Already is a really different place from five years ago. So anyway, digging in, well, before we dig in, let's talk navigating psychedelics. So May 20, we kick off our next cohort, both cohorts, we're groups. We've got a, I only know my time zone, noon and five mountain time zone. I guess that's two and seven Eastern. And that works well for some folks in the UK. And we actually have had a lot of folks from Australia join as well. So don't be afraid of the time zone. We can make it work. I promise. And you can learn more at Psychedelic Education Center. If the live one isn't really for you, we've got the pre-recorded independent learner package available there as well. And some few other good courses. Kyle, can you tell us about the serotonergic psychedelics course that's coming up soon? Yeah. So this is going to be a live webinar on Tuesday, May 18th at 7 PM Eastern time. And that will run for an hour and a half. And this will be presented by Dr. Melanie Pincus. So she ran a webinar in the past where she's created a series called Mind Bending, Mind Mending. And we're looking at the different effects of on the brain. So the last one was on ketamine. And this one will be on the serotonergic psychedelics or the classical tryptamine psychedelics, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. So yeah, it's CE approved. So if you're looking for 1.5 CE credits, that will be approved. And it's just for the live portion. There won't be any CE credits for replay. And yeah, so you can sign up. You go to psychedelicsday.com. Go to psychedelicsday.com. And you can sign up for a free trial. And you can click the little events tab or hover over it. And you'll see the series there. And if you follow us on Instagram, you can click the link in our bio there. And there's a picture of the series there. And that will bring you to our psychedelics today shop. And you can purchase your ticket. It's $15 and $40, $45 for CE credits. I forget something like that. But yeah, it should be fun. People really, really enjoy the ketamine series. I've got a lot of great feedback on that and just super pumped to be working with Dr. Pinkett's on this one again. Awesome. And if someone misses it, will it be recorded? We will probably have a limited replay for the people that pay. We'll probably only keep it up for a week or so. And then the idea is we'll run it again live. So if you miss it, just stay tuned. We'll probably run it again live or we'll have. A course in the future that will be the material. Awesome. Cool. All right. So digging into some news. This Business Wire press release titled Sibon Selects Alcohol Use Disorder Indication for Psychedelic Molecule CYB003. Now, first reaction to the title. Okay, there's a new molecule. You would want to assume it was a derivative of psilocybin, but it's not. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's a new molecule. It's not obvious by the title of the article, but they say it is a deuterated psychedelic tryptamine. I didn't look up the deuterated word yet. Did you? I had to look it up, which means. To replace one or more hydrogen atoms in a molecule with deuterium. That's fascinating. So that's a really neat way of modifying molecules to create new analogs. So fascinating. Yeah. Cool. And it's nice to see that a company. A company is actually going to address alcohol use disorder. Obviously a big deal in America, worldwide even. And there's secondary issues related to alcohol use disorder, right? I'm sure, Kyle, you've had some friends die from car crashes related to alcohol. I have too. It's horrible, especially when you're young, right? I remember somebody dying before I even went to college, alcohol-related incident. It's horrible. Yeah. And not to mention spreading of AIDS and other diseases. It's horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah. And I think that's a really important thing to think about. Because think about the time of COVID too. People with alcohol use disorder are probably more likely to be in a bar throughout COVID than perhaps sober people or people without alcohol use disorder. So there's reasons to look at this. And I've been personally very affected by alcohol use disorder in my family life. So I've seen why this is necessary. And I hope you have too out there, listeners. Yeah. So they're working it through. They've got a IND, so Investigation on New Drug designation, I think. Or they're applying for the IND. Is that right? I have to pull it up. So Simon is confident. Here's a quote. Simon is confident that its proprietary deuterated CYB003 new chemical entity could be an ideal investigational new drug IND candidate for a future AUD clinical trial once further preclinical data has been collected. So they've set up this molecule to work it through the whole system. So it'll probably be a traditional pharma project. It might take years, which drugs take years getting through the FDA often. So stay tuned. We're not in human trials yet, but preclinical trials don't take super duper long from what I understand. So yeah, stay tuned. It's going to be an interesting thing. Did you see anything in there that was special, Kyle? No, not so much. I mean, exciting that they're working on a new compound and they also kind of pointing to the increase of alcohol use during the pandemic. So just kind of stressing, we need to look for new treatments and things as mental health need increases. And yeah, just rooting for this company, our friend and colleague Brett is a part of the team here. So I feel like they'll probably end up doing some good things. I always forget. I always confuse Cybio and Cybin for some reason. It'll happen. So we'll have a link to this press release in the show notes. So check it out if you want to. Next up here, Hopkins is looking for participants in an Alzheimer's trial. So here's the title. Psilocybin is being studied as a potential aid for depression in early Alzheimer's disease. Interesting. So if you've got a diagnosis, you're feeling depressed, you might be able to get into this study if that's of interest. Alzheimer's is, correct me if I'm wrong, Kyle, like I might be. And listeners, please correct me too. I think Alzheimer's is one of the few things where you can get brain scans done and have a positive diagnosis based on the brain scan for Alzheimer's, which because there's all these amyloid plaques and tau proteins blocking stuff and kind of looking like substantial damage from what I understand. So like that, you know, that's one of the more interesting things around brain imaging, right? Like how many diseases are actually identifiable, right? Yeah. Like lesions, of course, but yeah. Yeah. Anyway, mild cognitive impairment from Alzheimer's can be really stressful. So it's, it's kind of nice to see that people working on it. Albert Garcia, Romeu, a PhD and Paul Rosenberg, MD. Those are the PIs. So we'll have a link to to this if you want to check it out, learn more. You know, I suspect expect there could be a possibility of helping decrease the progress of Alzheimer's on the brain you know I think there are people looking at this with Ibogaine as well um not that long ayahuasca I thought there was some stuff with ayahuasca and Alzheimer's I could be wrong on that yeah and you know like it makes sense that we would want to look at that right I recently read um book and sent it to my parents too uh so it's something about reversing Alzheimer's and this doctor came up with this concept of a cognoscopy so like at a certain age you get a colonoscopy right so like at a certain age you should get a cognoscopy just to see like where you're at and it'll check like certain genetic markers biomarkers your health in general and say like okay like you're probably good to roll for a while you know you follow these protocols you're going to do okay and um you know a lot of it comes down to our our lifestyle choices you know a they suggest a you know very specific diet and very specific spacing between feed times and and sleep like three to five hours I think after you eat it's okay to go to sleep like but a lot of us will eat and go right to bed right right and it's this is something about like the you know body resting it it's able to clean things up in the body if it doesn't have more more inputs I think this is why fasting is getting a lot of attention these days similar concept yeah cool so yeah uh tell your friends about this study everybody this is going to be an interesting one I can't wait to see again it's for depression it's not for the Alzheimer's itself so check it out yeah there was something back in uh what is this here to uh September 2020 there's a paper exploring uh DMT for neurogenesis and so maybe looking at that for for Alzheimer's new uh yeah new new neuron growth neural pathways being made and uh yeah what did it say here this uh there's a quote here this is the New York Post just really quick um about this is the headline ayahuasca tea could be a breakthrough treatment for Alzheimer's so there's a quote here the challenge uh is to activate our dormant capacity to form new neurons and thus replace the neurons that die as a result of the disease uh the study shows that DMT is capable of activating neural stem cells and forming new neurons and that was Lopez from one of the co-authors of this paper here interesting okay yeah I think there's potential uh potentiality here exciting I think we need to do more research and yeah I mean Alzheimer's and dementia it's terrible disease I know people that you know have been through it with their family members and it just sounds brutal so be nice to be able to explore this and understand yeah maybe are we able to create new new neurons with uh psychedelics and could that help to promote you know maybe healing in in there it's interesting that Hopkins is looking at depression so it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that right this reminds me of um I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast just because they had he he had the um one of the leads from the UCSF um psychedelic group and NeuroScape I guess group and they developed software called NeuroRacer that allowed like 60 year old brains and it went through the whole FDA de novo like approval process it is an approved software and it treats cognitive decline age related cognitive decline and um it's really interesting suggesting that you know people at age 60 could return to having the cognition of a 20 year old through using this game yeah it was uh it's pretty interesting so I think software plus drugs are really promising you know probably also going to require some um substantial lifestyle changes of course so we'll see yeah now some other really great news new non-profit Porta Sophia portasophia.org has developed a psychedelic prior art library they're a non-profit created for patent reviewers around the world to help them find relevant prior art in the field of psychedelics so it's got a simple search interface to look through literature previous patents historical archives internet forums and more so that people can see like is this actually you know this company X's invention because companies often have no shame about what they'll patent even if it was somebody else's idea so we have to really watch that and um it's it's going to be a really interesting project and I I have hope you know that this this will actually protect the commons commons needs protection yeah you familiar with this idea the tragedy of the commons Kyle I don't think so no what is that it's like a economic idea so say for example you know everybody's got like two or three personal cows like say a few hundred years back and there's a few cow herders just like cruising around these cows I don't know cow herders just like cruising around these fields somewhere and everybody like has public property right and it's not like your own private field so it's shared and people want to at first you become kind of a steward of it and you're like oh cool this is nice but all of a sudden like somebody starts to overuse it and like take more and more and more and at a certain point everybody else starts taking more and more and more um so there's like nothing left in the comments for everybody to share so it's I believe I did not butcher it but that has a pretty clean you know pathway for analogy in the psychedelic space so right you know let's let's watch it you know learn about the tragedy of the commons and let's be good stewards of the commons and I was really excited about this idea of companies kind of teaming up and having kind of like collective pools like some of your own IP is like personal but some of it's kind of like shared yeah yeah so that it's like you know not anti-competitive yeah you know like it's it's scary seeing the businesses come in but we've got to realize like this is the way to get these treatments to many millions of people yeah and it feels uncomfortable because it's so different and these are kind of different people coming in that we're not used to dealing with so yeah how do we figure this way this thing out it's a weird balance right because I feel like part of like I guess like the psychedelic ethos is like really trying to shift the current paradigm and like what happens when the current paradigm like comes in I mean obviously that's what we live in right so it's like how do you really shift that but I guess like you know how could we shift to more uh cooperative actions versus like you know competition all the time I was talking to this wild hippie last night spent a lot of time living in the woods and uh his uh his his line was we don't have to like you know right action like we might reframe right action as being like how can we do like the the least amount of harm to others when we make decisions like is this like going to explicitly like hurt this person when I make this decision like if no cool if yes like maybe hit the pause button so it's it was an interesting frame it's like yeah that's like a very different baseline because a lot of decisions these days are made specifically to harm folks um yeah or not even thinking about the harm that that's going to come out of it right um and I guess that kind of comes back to that like you know seven generation thinking like are my actions gonna cause you know a big impact for you know the generations to come I think about that a lot and I don't know yeah I think about it a lot too and I think maybe a lot of business doesn't think about it because it's very short-term oriented how to make the most in the short-term gains versus like all right how is this really going to change how is this going to change how is this going to change really going to impact my children's grandchildren you know it's uh we need to start thinking a little bit longer term at times even though I yeah I always kind of come back to like thinking about like reincarnation you know if you believe it sometimes I do sometimes I wonder maybe other theories but it's like you know if reincarnation's real do you want to kind of create the cesspool to come back to my answer would be no I hope we would you know take care of the things around us to create a nice world to come back to it'd really suck to create a hellscape to come back to so you know how do we how do we maybe have that uh vision moving forward creating a world that we would want to come back to mm-hmm exactly and you know like that's a great way to frame it too but it's like you know you have family that's going to be alive probably 80 years so like what on Earth are you doing and why are you doing it that way when so many people could get so hurt and suffer so much so you know this is not just in the psychedelic space like the psychedelic space is interesting and we've talked about this endlessly right like you know Maps has done a great thing they brought it really far they required a lot of you know non-profit dollars to get this far and now private capital is able to do essentially what they've been doing in just a short number of years geez yeah so do we want like how many people should suffer so that the economics look appropriate you know to us as kind of radicals in the space maybe or radicals relative to the mainstream so like it's a complicated deal but we've got to really think about it yeah so i'm i'm all for it and again like companies just please try to have a little bit of compassion for those of us out here in the field you know i've been here for a while and yeah just please uh to the best of your ability play nice and we'll try i'll personally try to play nice until i see something it's all playing the sandbox together you know what this is actually a good tangent kyle so i was listening to psychedelic salon with uh leonard pickard picard and um he's the gentleman that was recently uh released after 20 years in max security prison for lsd manufacturer um first most interesting thing he got to spend a year with ross ulrich the guy that made the silk road oh wow so i thought that was really fascinating i might actually try to strike up some conversation with ross in the near future i think that would be nice um and then the other thing you know not it seems like a really beautiful soul like 20 years and of incarceration will really change somebody so he you know spent years reading all the classics from you know the english canon and um eventually wrote a book like a nearly 700 page book rosa i'm not sure if that's true but i think it's a really good book and i think that's a really good book and i think that's a really good book and i think that's a really good book and i think that's probably kind of fictionalized here and there so it's hard to tell what's real and what's not it's all based on how his court case went down and beautifully done apparently it's like poetry prose it's like imagine like victorian literature and the next one is uh near the end he had a lot of really strong positive things to say about all these companies like he called jr ron a visionary for instance based on all the stuff he's saying like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't on linkedin and then um you know i had a lot of really positive things to say about compass which i found a little awkward like i i do get the compass is probably in part doing some good things but they really creep us out for a few reasons yeah and uh i just found it a little awkward and there's minimal critique on the drug war he i'll get this he like uh as part of some work he was doing at harvard was able to predict a fentanyl crisis i've i think i remember that i think i remember uh talking about that on the podcast that we did when he was released yeah really interesting yeah just like the stuff wasn't controlled and um it was relatively simple to make and the profit margins are crazy so of course this is going to happen yeah yeah so i thought that was really curious and you know he at a certain point said i don't know what the solution to the fentanyl crisis is i'm like okay like you haven't really been part of the debate for a while so i don't know what the solution to the fentanyl crisis is i'm like okay like you we should let it slide for now but like really the solution is legalized and regulated so we have a clean safe supply and it's you know not spending more money on tanks or like international sanctions on like china for a fentanyl manufacturer or something yeah because it's also coming from mexico the economics just aren't there like it's too easy to start a lab and find a chemist so yeah maybe when i get a chance to talk to him which i probably should be able to we can have that discussion it was just interesting to hear kind of an older head that's been around for ages have these kinds of uh comments about you know psychedelics used to be very secret like lsd was a secret thing he said don't tell anybody about this and we'll have some lsd one night well i wonder like what his perception is i mean being well i guess yeah manufacturer right alleged and alleged right yeah alleged manufacturer sorry thanks for correcting me yeah i mean i guess like with that i guess that mindset of trying to bring it to the masses right to some degree um being able to provide that to people um and then just thinking on like the bigger public scale with companies trying to do the same thing to some degree right so i wonder if there's like just the similarities there of like wanting this medicine to get to the people and maybe seeing like you know i guess if there's like the capital behind it it starts to happen a little bit quicker and i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point and you know policy change can happen and yeah it's just amazing like the you know more people i talk to um especially conservative people becoming really interested in this stuff i just ran into somebody that one of my dad's friends and he was asking me what i was up to he's like oh man you know like a friend of mine just told me about this like psychedelic stock and you know i'm just sitting there scratching my head going like you know there's a lot of people starting to become really interested in this topic and there's a lot of people starting to the taboo around it is starting to shift a little bit i think and i think overall that's a good thing right i mean isn't that what we're all trying to to root for is to make some sort of policy shift and a cultural shift and a stigma around these substances and to one degree it seems like you know bringing it to the public like this is starting to have that that type of effect and so it's yeah it's a weird double-edged sword right it's like this is what we want it's also i guess scary when we think about the big money coming in and people that might want to try to dominate the scene when these are very some of us feel like they're very sacred and you know how do you balance that at times so yeah i don't know it's double-edged sword yeah many kind of just come straight people for example are getting wildly interested in the stocks yeah and you know i get it right like this is where this is um you know where people think they might be able to make some edges into their retirement that they're trying to save for right yeah and you know we should this is where i love robert anton wilson because it's like to analyze something we need to put on like 10 different lenses right yeah otherwise are we doing an adequate enough job like looking at a scenario so like christine hauskeller at the exeter conference was really into this critical theory which is kind of like evolved marxism i guess in a way and anything that can be capitalized on will be and she's nervous that if we make a legalized and regulated framework that it's going to be abused and possibly manipulated to a degree where those of us and with some like a little bit of space in the underground like really don't like that idea so think punk rock for instance like you had all this fashion all of a sudden you can buy it at you know macy's or something or like uh you know fancy department's store and you know similar to psychedelic art and culture like it was an underground phenomenon really obscure now it's like very much everywhere and um you know what happens when psychedelic therapy comes online and it's kind of like not a prescribable thing so we're doing kind of like cosmetic psychiatry or are we doing spiritual exploration and how can we differentiate the two is one safer than the other you know yeah so cosmetic psychiatry i think i heard that before i didn't make that up interesting term you know it's an interesting jam right yeah yeah like after so i finished saving normal kind of recently that's the book about what's the guy that was on the board or i think the lead of the group developing dsm4 and he was very upset with how it went and um he had some comments like that so it's like if we can pathologize normal than like what's left you know and like the pathologies really mean anything anymore so it's a really interesting discussion i think people should read it he gets a lot of shit i guess for being a regular citation by the anti-psychiatry movement but he's certainly not anti-psychiatry he just wants psychiatric reform like let's make sure not only can we diagnose but we can treat and like things aren't that you know sloppy like uh yeah he had a lot of great examples in the book i won't try to do it right now but i think folks should read that one if you want to understand like where this psychedelic path may go but i'm optimistic because a lot of these companies are focusing on serious disorders that there's not very great treatments for very many great treatments for at this point yeah so i don't know like i here's another thing kyle this idea of like we hear a single story and then we believe the narrative in the story as and we and we don't believe the peer-reviewed published literature to the same degree right you have an example so just the endless optimism about psychedelics you're feeling primarily yeah or flat earth you know for instance like you hear one thing but you don't believe the rest of the data so you've got like a confirmation bias like cognitive dissonance built in and it's hard for humans to shift away from this n of one thing so for instance like my life has been very thrashed by covid people whose lives have not been very thrashed by covid when they want to talk about the vaccine they're coming from a very different place than i am right so they're hearing n of one like oh this athlete had a stroke or had a blood clot but you know after a single injection it's like well you know was that in line with the natural like number for you know how many people are going to how many people would have a stroke or blood clot during that period of time. Right. we want to see that stuff on the fringes of the bell curve as normal when we're making safety decisions. But then we kind of contrast that. We're like, well, these extraordinary exceptional cases are also very interesting. But that's not the point of this part. It's like, we should respect the data and statistics, but we should also like, let's figure out what's going on on these fringes. Like, can we just write it off? Didn't you bring this point up during Ralph's episode? Probably. Yeah. These really cool fringe cases, like, you know, your story, for instance. Yeah. Or like all of these UFO experiencers. I remember talking to one of my friends who's doing a master's, like bird stuff, ornithology, maybe. And I got into it with him at one point about like these fringe psychedelic cases and how like, we're not, our map of, of reality is minimized inappropriately when we exclude these fringe cases. And this is kind of like a riff on a William James thing of like, we have to account for all of these experiences. Otherwise, what are we doing? We're doing an incomplete job in our physics, metaphysics, et cetera. And yeah, like, what does it mean that, you know, somebody can present as psychic or present as a spirit or meet these spirits or go to the underworld and come back in your case, and then, you know, get set on an interesting trajectory view. Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. This is not what doctors can deal with, but this is what those of us outside of medicine can kind of deal with as a philosophical, you know, endeavor. You know, medicine has to deal with statistics and it's for a good reason. Yeah. We have limited resources to put these things through and to help people. So we've got to make the smartest, you know, use of our money. And large scale trials, like 40,000 individuals getting a vaccine is a pretty good sample set. We don't have that many people through the MDMA trials yet. No, not even close. We're super optimistic about the maps work, but we're some of some folks are really pessimistic about the vaccine. It's like, well, one has a way bigger sample set and had way more money dumped into it. So, oh, and then it's funny. It's like vaccine took less than a year to, or maybe. Close to a year to get pushed through MDMA, you know, safety data has been around for a bit. And how long have they been researching this just to make sure it's like effective and safe when it's like, wait, some of this stuff has been around for a while versus like a vaccine. So, you know, I get confused by that too. Right. It's like, wait, and I get it. We're in the middle of a pandemic and there needs to be that, you know, push. But one could argue that, you know, why aren't we pushing these medicines? It's through, even though, you know, why aren't we using like emergency use cases for people with mental health disorders that have really got exacerbated during the pandemic and people that are really struggling? Like, I don't know. Couldn't we make a use case there for emergency use and push things through? Yeah, I think so. And I know some doctors have. No, I was just going to say, and I know some, some doctors have made that statement. We've talked about it. I think when COVID first started to happen, there were some people. Kind of arguing that. But yeah, I mean, the difference is that there's a global virus out that's like, you know, taking a toll. And so I get it, you know, just kind of playing the other side. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, rethinking how we approach data is important. And, you know, depending on our context, the decision is the way we approach the data should be, I guess, context dependent. Unless we're trying to do a very multifaceted. A very multifaceted analysis and like provide a very detailed, broken out thing of like, you know, there's these 20 implications here of this study. That was one of the things I always got hung up on in my undergrad in philosophy is like, okay, like if all this is true, what are the implications of this? And nobody could really like lay that out for me. And it really was kind of bothered me a lot. You know, for instance, we spent a lot of time talking about, you know, meditation, mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, et cetera. And yeah, psychedelic stuff too. So, you know, I spent a lot of time, you know, edge case kind of parapsychology type stuff, paranormal stuff. And, you know, some of it's really well documented as we got into in the Ralph episode, some of it, not so much. So, what are the rules of evidence of these extraordinary claims? Yeah, like my friend that was, you know, had his psoriasis cleared up in the jungle because of his time with ayahuasca shamans. Like, well, was it ayahuasca? He's like, well, they did a lot to me. And they had me change my diet radically. Right. And then you throw in all these different variables and it's like, what's what at that point, right? How do you make, how do you tease it apart and make sense of it? Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, let's jump to this next one, Puerto Sophia. So, thanks everybody at Puerto Sophia for doing what you do. You can donate there. There's a number of partners. I guess let's look at that real quick. Yeah, Usona, Casimir Jones, U Wisconsin School of Pharmacy, American Institute, History of Pharmacy. Betsy Gordon, Psychoactive Substance Research Collective at Purdue. Forgot that was at Purdue. DMT Nexus and bluelight.org, awesome. Had some great partners there. Bluelight's still around? Yeah, Bluelight, yeah, it's been around for ages. I remember sitting on, I found out about Bluelight in New York City at the first Horizons I went to, and it was, well, it's been around for ages, I remember sitting on, I found out about Bluelight in New York City at the first Horizons I went to, and it was, well, it's been around for ages. went to and it was while Sasha Shulgin was there with his wife and they were filming for dirty pictures. There's these cuts and dirty pictures where he's in, he's in front of the Judson church on the steps. And I was just on the other side going, Oh, that's fucking awesome. And Sasha's right there. And I'm talking to this wild dude, like telling me all about blue light. And I was like, wait, what? Like I've been on these drug forums for a few years now, man. And like, I never heard of blue light. So I'm mostly on like DMT, Nexus, Shroomery, Mycotopia, I think the grow report. Like there's a forum I don't even know about. So it was just kind of blew my mind. Wasn't maps kind of behind blue light or they had a plan? I think they had a sub forum inside blue light if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's what it was. And you know, I, I was interested in maps, but they're, they seemed like a much smaller player back then, like 2008, nine. I was more interested in like the, the culture that people were actually growing and could talk about it, all that kind of stuff at that point in history. Now I'm, you know, much more interested in what maps is up to. Yeah. Lenny helped for sure. He was definitely pushing it. It's like, this is a big deal. It's like, well, yeah, you're right. Probably should have been paying attention since 2003 when he started talking to me about it, Lenny. Anyway. All right. Marijuana moment. It takes a while to sink in. So big moves in drum roll. There's a drum roll button here. I need to learn how to use it, but Texas lawmakers approve marijuana and psychedelics reform bills. So. Kyle Yeager at Marijuana Moment put this out on the 27th. So yesterday, and it's pretty exciting. The House of Reps Tuesday approved a bill to reduce penalties for possession of marijuana concentrates and lawmakers separately advanced legislations to require studies on the therapeutic potential of certain psychedelics for military veterans. I thought that was a really interesting thing. I remember at one point in the article, they were saying like, this is for veterans only. And like, given it being Texas and there's a lot of veterans in Texas, like it's a really interesting play. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Do you have any interesting takeaways? And I think they limited it to just vets with PTSD. So they limited it to a diagnosis. So that's what they're looking at. I thought it was interesting that this marijuana bill only included concentrates. And so I was kind of curious, like what's going on there? Like, why is like flower not available? There? It says, yeah, this, this concentrates measure would make it so possessions up to two ounces of those products would be downgraded to a class B misdemeanor. And I wonder like what two ounces of concentrate is a lot. Yeah, that's that is a lot. And they don't have anything for like decriminalization. It sounded like they had something in the past for decriminalization, and it didn't get approved. So here's this up to an ounce of marijuana to be a class C misdemeanor that carries a fine, but no threat of jail time up to an ounce. So that's, you know, they're saying marijuana, so they probably mean flower, not concentrate in that particular part. Right? Yeah, that THC cap from point 5% to 5% was interesting. I don't really understand that. But, you know, things are coming. It sounds like normal is really active there, which is awesome. Yeah. And you know, like, as the medical benefits, if cannabis come forward and get more established, or a lawmaker in Texas, for instance, which I think was the case in this article, had a family member who is helped to an extraordinary degree by cannabis, that's when I think things begin to shift and evolve. Usually, they'd rather make their money from putting people in jail than than making cannabis products available. So, you know, not to be too cynical, but a lot of the politicians are in the mix and investors in these private prison funds. It's horrifying that there's a fund for private prisons. Yeah. And there's something here about quarterly reports and like a final report in 2024. So the Health and Human Services Commission would have to submit quarterly reports on their progress around the psychedelic project with a full report of the panel's findings. due by december 2024 so that's you know feels far away but it's not that far off right like it seems like they're going to fund this project so they can have their own kind of statewide research initiative and the political stance here texas is wildly interesting for those who don't know terrifying sometimes but wildly interesting in that they take a really strong stance for state rights which allows for this american experiment to do some really interesting things like oregon for instance what is doing a federally illegal thing based on the state's rights idea that where states are kind of like their own country in a sense but they've got some mutually agreed upon rules at the federal level well agreed upon is a funny term but sometimes sometimes they want to comply sometimes they don't and um this allows for a lot more experimentation than a you know a single country with a single monolithic government like canada though canada's got some really interesting things happening like theracil too so so there's angles and there's room so we just have to get creative and try a lot probably gonna fail a lot i was watching a documentary about why a lot of companies are moving to texas for the freedom that you're talking about with state rights just like the flexibility to do certain things that a lot of companies possibly couldn't do in california also the like the taxes too obviously california is wildly expensive but yeah i thought that was interesting to hear about those state rights and kind of like the flexibility that it offers for certain companies and things to do certain things yeah it's um it's a precarious state like i talked about the uh the water knife book a while back and you know if the weather patterns change substantially are there enough aquifers and you know water on hand to to help texas survive i hope so i know in phoenix it's uh like the arizona water rights are insane like the you know there's a lot of fraud going on and like water prediction and like yeah here's we're gonna do fine except they just keep watering golf courses in arizona which seems insane to me and you know no real foresight like what happens in 10 years we have a crazy drought in colorado and the rest of the world like well the rest of the colorado river basin doesn't have what it needs does arizona get cut off you know how hurt is texas going to be and what happens in arizona i don't know i don't know what happens like do people have to migrate if they can't get water like if nestle is their only source of water like perhaps they're gonna have to leave so i i'm a little less pessimistic about texas but i do think texas could be really hurt by these substantial droughts otherwise you know it makes sense like you don't need to heat your house all the time though ac might be necessary yeah anyway it's probably enough on texas on that angle yeah but it's exciting i will i mean it'll be cool to see uh what studies they'll be able to do it looks like they'll be examining psilocybin mdma and ketamine and just to be able to get the data on that i think will be huge um just for the movement in general right because um yeah i mean more more data right we need it so hopefully that passes fingers crossed that they'll be able to do that so i recorded yesterday with uh franklin king md friend of ours who's attached to mass general hospital's new psychedelic research group and another psychiatrist at mass general of fernando sb farzan and uh he's actually got a major psychedelic podcast in spanish which is neat oh no way cool and um yeah he's got great numbers in latin america uh in spanish us as well so i think that's really great and um we had some really great stuff uh from them i i think we'll bump a few podcasts and insert them sooner than later because it's kind of topical and timely and uh i asked them as medical doctors what their impression was of the stuff in oregon like well as medical doctor i would like urge caution and if someone had like an acute diagnosis that you should probably get at least screened by a physician and um you know be really careful and go to a more clinical environment than a little more like uh i guess we'll call it just non-clinical i don't want to describe things but you know stuff that's a little non-standard so maybe go to like the one that looks more like hopkins than the one that looks more like uh you know what you and i personally might fantasize more about you know creating and i'm like it kind of makes sense i threw in that you know someone should probably go to talk therapy a bunch first too um if they can make it work but we'll see i heard oregon just um is still working on developing their training team roster it's like who's going to be providing input to the state for what the training needs to look like yeah yeah hmm well it'll be interesting to see how all that develops right um it's always so hard right when we when we get these questions of like how do i get involved like you know what's going on it's like uh man i don't know like what's gonna happen in oregon you know what's gonna happen here uh hawaii's hawaii and florida are looking at similar initiatives and bills i mean yeah it's like for a long time it was only like down this clinical route and now these other potential options may be opening up and allowing people maybe without the the clinical background to participate right so yeah evolving so rapidly and hard hard to predict the future all the time right yeah like how can we like we understand kind of like what happens generally speaking with capital you know there's definitely positives there's definitely negatives you know hopefully you know with this broad experimentation across the us we've got these companies doing their fda thing we've got some states experimenting you know we've also got jamaica and netherlands going you know it's really interesting i'm excited about the diversity of applications i'm really excited about omar omar thomas's diaspora psychedelic society and listeners this doesn't count as an endorsement i don't i haven't been there yet but you know his approach looks really cool about healing people in jamaica training people in jamaica like why do why should jamaica have to necessarily import therapists from the united states or canada or europe when they've got a good question pretty big population already with a decent education like a lot yeah of jamaicans have a really great education yeah a lot of families push really hard to get people into like great schools in jamaica and elsewhere outside the country so yeah it's some really bright people there and um yeah it would be just really amazing to see what happens when it kind of shifts and you know it's going to get better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and better and it shifts from like treating largely rich white people to like let's let's treat this particular culture how cheap can we make it for these people is it okay to use mushrooms instead of lab produced molecules yes is my answer but you know i get why people want a straight molecule yeah cool so um louisiana right so on marijuana moment and staying on the marijuana trend the governor louisiana i guess just uh advanced a bill for legalization or has great interest in in the bill so another southern state uh moving towards that what was that virginia was the uh first southern state to pass legalization so it's cool to see see the south pick up on this yeah absolutely things don't always move as quickly down there which is fine like you gotta catch up eventually and and they do so it's really nice to see this i think they see the logic yeah of doing this like uh racial uh disparities in sentencing in louisiana horrifying same with texas so this is a move in that direction though i i would note that they can't necessarily lead with that kind of discussion in those states right because you know they might lose some votes racism is alive and well in some of those states still well everywhere really but it's um it can be really explicit in in the south so yeah yeah they don't necessarily want to hear about racial sentencing disparities like i you know that guy in texas that got many years for a gram joint recently oh do you remember when i brought up the dubai situation this guy went to dubai he had a um like appendicitis i think and needed to be hospitalized he tested positive this guy that was in california and was just traveling to dubai for some reason tested positive for cannabis in his blood and he was detained in his hotel room awaiting trial for a long time it was looking like he could face multiple years uh incarceration in dubai uh they eventually sent him back so that's the update so they sent him out and um thankfully he's no longer uh incarcerated there i don't remember that that's yeah this is uh two three weeks back maybe and the update i think just came in like uh late last week yeah it's an interesting one so you know if you're going to dubai be careful uh yes some countries still have very intense drug laws so yeah be careful right yeah and just in general be careful like we're really optimistic about this psychedelic movement but how do you avoid going to prison um you should be really explicitly careful when you can be you know yeah i found an article just in terms of like legalization decriminalization a santa cruz man uh got 10 years in federal prison for selling psychedelic drugs at college he uh pleaded guilty for selling lsd psilocybin mushrooms and ndma so you know lsd and mdma weren't part of the plant medicine decriminalization, and obviously selling isn't part of that. But I think it's just a reminder, right? Santa Cruz, you might think, oh, they've decriminalized plant medicines. Maybe I could get away with selling some mushrooms or doing that. But yeah, as we always say, decriminalization isn't legalization, right? So could still get in trouble there. And obviously, I mean, there is more to the story there, but just an example, right? We can be really optimistic and maybe want to push forward in different ways. And if your risk tolerance is high like that, hey, I guess you're going to do what you're going to do. But just realize that the law is a law still. And we still have a lot of progress to be made when it comes to this. Mm. Right. Yeah, we've got a lot of progress to make. Yeah, we've got a lot. We've got a long way to go. And yeah, I hope we find a great way forward here. At times it gets quite scary, but have some faith. I'm optimistic that millennials are going to be a lot more rational than a lot of us older generations. As I develop arthritis in my hands and elsewhere, I'm like, okay, you guys are actually pretty smart. I might've thought your life would be a little too much TikTok once in a while, but you know, things are like the values are evolving. Stuff that older generations valued are just falling away. Like how many younger folks are just going like, why would I get a car? I can just get a Lyft, you know, or Uber or whatever. Right. Yeah. So like possession decrease. Yeah. It was really interesting working with like teenagers years ago and just seeing like, I wasn't even like that old. You know, I think I started working in residential when I was 25. But just even noticing like the generational differences there and just hearing how they're approaching things and the things that they were like, you know, really into social justice issues. And I was like, man, I would definitely was not thinking about this stuff when I was like 15 or whatever age. I mean, to some degree, but yeah, I just feel like those generations are exposed to so much more than maybe we were, you know, the internet. I mean, I can't even remember. I think I got a smartphone definitely when I was at high school at that point. And, you know, a lot of these kids have smartphones at very young ages and access to so much stuff at their fingertips. They don't remember the days of the, you know, the dial-up modem and maybe one computer in the house and having to share it and this and that. Yeah. So culture is evolving. We're part of it. The youth often accelerate the culture change far more than, you know, people over 30 can. So thank you all for playing a part. This is, it's going to be a really weird ride. There's going to be so many bumps in the road. There's going to be some fights. Stuff's going to get heated here and there. So let's just try our best to keep an even head when we can. Yeah. I know it's not always easy, but I think we can do it. Yeah. Cool. We have to do it. Well, the consequences are quite dire if we do not. So, all right. Kyle, anything else you want to jump into? Let's see. There was another article. This is on SciTech Daily. Scientists discover a psychedelic-like drug without hallucinogenic side effects. So just, yeah, interesting that they're continuing to explore those drugs. The one thing I thought was interesting from this article, it was published in Cell, April 28th, but they have developed a study that was done in the United States called the Serotonin 2A Receptor, which is a drug called Serotonin 2A, or Serotonin 2A Glide, that can screen for hallucinogenic potential by indicating when a compound activates the Serotonin 2A Receptor. I thought that was really interesting, like technology to like, I guess, like figure out what compounds are like interacting there and how to, I guess, like for drug development. I'm sure they have that stuff, but I don't work in a lab or understand that. So when I read that, I was like, wow. Sounds pretty interesting. Well, that paired with AI. Yeah. It could be some really interesting stuff. And I know some companies are doing that AI stuff for new drug research, and it's quite interesting. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot more drugs available. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, this is back to that, well, my drug policy comment would be when things get prohibited, more dangerous alternatives come to the table, like the spice, the K2 thing. It's a great example of that. And, you know, when prohibition of alcohol happened, liquor sales went crazy and beer, not so much because it wasn't as much a kick per gram. So was it the iron law of prohibition, you know, fentanyl, same thing, like fentanyl is far more valuable and interesting to a lot of drug dealers, traffickers, cartels, et cetera, based on the price per gram, like your value per cubic foot and weight measure is like way higher. So, yeah. As these new drugs come to market, and things aren't yet regulated or got some loosey-goosey regulation somewhere, but not elsewhere, these novel drugs are going to come in and people are going to use them in the underground in illegal settings. And people will be hurt because, you know, some of these drugs aren't going to be as safe as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA. If we had a safe regulated MDMA supply, LSD and psilocybin supply, how many people are going to fringe out and like experiment with these research and these things that people think are acid when it's acid for a lot of drug dealers is a catch-all term for a 2,5-ion bomb and other weirdo research chemicals that are potentially dangerous. Yeah. And I wonder with like, you know, just new drug development, you know, just thinking about like long-term studies and data where it's like, yeah, some of these new compounds, like, I guess it's exciting. And, you know, you always say we need new drugs, but it's like, I guess if we don't even have the ones that we have, like a history of use and they're not being, like, the application there to study even more in depth, like, I don't know, why is there a race for new drugs when we're not even using the ones to their full potential that are not even on the market right now? So that's what I think about too. I mean, obviously for this non-hallucinogenic one, you know, their quote here was, you know, one of the problems with psychedelic therapies is that they require close guidance and supervision from a medical team. A drug that doesn't cause hallucinations could be taken home. So, you know, I get it from that perspective, perspective but um yeah just thinking about all the new companies coming online trying to just find new drugs for patents and um and development when it's like have we really explored the potential of you know the ones that have been around for a while like yeah lsd psilocybin ayahuasca mdma even all the shulgin compounds right i mean um has there been any clinical research on like 2cb yet i don't know i think somebody is working on it i forget who it is offhand can't wait yeah i'd love to get me some cheaper 2cb it's so expensive here yeah just a quick google i can't see if anybody's researching it but i i do recall yeah i'm interested in the other 2c compounds but i'm like i think 2cb might be the safest uh but that also could be very wild speculation so sorry everybody but yeah please do research 2cb chemists there's a 2cb shortage chemist is also a synthetic mescaline shortage so please help yeah all right anything else kyle no i think that's it yeah we're an hour we got to wrap up here cool yeah thanks joe yeah you got it thanks kyle check out our course offerings at psychedeliceducationcenter.com kyle's got this um serotonergic class coming up with dr melanie pinkis um neuroscientist great resume by the way i finally looked up her linkedin i was kind of shocked and really excited we get to work with dr uh dr melanie pinkis and navigating psychedelics for clinicians and therapists kicks off may 20 seats are selling out it will sell out so if you want to secure your spot come on down psychedeliceducationcenter.com to learn more all right i think that's it for now thank you everybody thank you kyle and we'll see you all in the next episode yeah thank you you Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you next time.