Exceptional Experiences with Psychedelics and Beyond with Dr. David Luke

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Hello, and welcome to the further podcast where
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we explore the far reaches of the human experience
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from missions to Mars to skydiving to blowing
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one's mind of psychoactive substances. These
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conversations offer insight into how these extreme
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experiences showcase the human spirit and just
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might teach us how to live our everyday lives
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a bit better. I'm your host, Haley Miranda -Rod.
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and I study the effects of psychedelics and other
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out there experiences on people's minds and brains.
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So this is one of the most fun and wide -ranging
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conversations I've had on further in a while,
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and probably one of the weirder ones. Dr. David
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Luke, author of Other Worlds, Psychedelics and
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Exceptional Human Experiences, has quite the
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interesting research career. He investigates
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everything from how psychedelics might increase
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the odds of ESP -like experiences and paranormal
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beliefs to how people cope with existential distress.
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stress after challenging experiences with psychedelics.
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He also has been, let's just say, his own guinea
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pig for science and isn't afraid to tell us that
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tale. Even though studying ESP -related phenomena
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and psychedelics might seem a bit out there,
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maybe even unicorn dimension level weirdness,
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um... There's no denying that there are pretty
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strong historical roots in the history of psychedelics
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of people being intrigued by such phenomenon.
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So everybody from serious scientists in the 1950s
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to indigenous cultures worldwide or who use psychedelics
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are a bit entwined with it. We also get into
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a bit of the challenging experiences project
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which investigates how people cope with adverse
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effects after using psychedelics. I think this
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part of the podcast is be best. We get into a
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lot of nuances about just how little is really
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known about what can go wrong after challenging
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experiences and it's great because there are
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a few people out there that are exploring what
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can go wrong with more nuance and just saying,
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oh hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder
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or psychosis -like experiences. This is building
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from the ground up, a sort of taxonomy and also
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what people find helpful, which I think is extremely
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important that people start to investigate. In
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a lot of ways, our discussion of the challenging
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experiences project kind of parallels some of
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the discussions I had with Dr. Willoughby Britton
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in our episode on meditation gone wrong, which
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looks at meditation related side effects. If
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you find this part of the discussion with Dr.
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David Luke interesting, be sure to check out
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that episode as well. And now let's turn to the
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actual conversation. So I am here with Dr. David
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Luke, who has, I think, some of the most interesting
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areas of focus in psychedelic science. Definitely
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focusing on some weird and out there experiences.
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Dr. Luke is especially known for studying exceptional
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experiences. And a lot of these experiences are
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a bit outside, I guess, typical academic norms,
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you could say. Maybe you could tell us a bit
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about how you got interested in studying such
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weird phenomena and what exceptional experiences
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are. Thank you, Hayley. Thanks for having me
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along. Yeah, I think I was always interested
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in weird experiences. I guess I had quite a few
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strange experiences as a kid. I had a very, very
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active dream life. You know, like I would just
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be off having cosmic battles. most nights and
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strange hypnagogic phenomena and body experiences.
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And so I was always drawn towards exploring that
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end of the spectrum of psychology, which led
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me to also kind of treat my brain like a neurochemistry
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playset as a teenager and explore psychedelics,
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which led to me going away to study psychology
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at university. Although hopefully disappointed
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when I got to do a degree that you basically
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don't learn anything about this stuff about psychedelic
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experiences or exceptional experiences. And so
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I was kind of forced to go back and do a PhD
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and try and inject into the academy what I found
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to be missing. So exceptional experiences is
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a kind of really broad heading for all of the
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weird and wonderful stuff you don't normally
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get in a psychology degree. So can be psychedelic
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experiences or paranormal or spiritual or anomalous
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experiences, unusual experiences which don't
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fit the norm, which I also include kind of neurodivergence
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in there as well. So things like aphantasia and
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synesthesia, which are not necessarily paranormal,
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spiritual or psychedelic, but at least they're
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not the kind of usual kind of everyday experience
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for most people. So it covers everything that
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falls down the cracks in usual psychology and
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it also points to and illuminates some interesting
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dimensions of consciousness which I think have
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been woefully ignored. So you were just a kid
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having strange dreams basically. And you're like,
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I need to go study psychology to understand what
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the heck is going on here. And that led you down
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quite a rabbit hole. And one thing that I appreciate
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about your work is it's not just psychedelic
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experiences. You use psychedelics as a lens to
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study other things like psi phenomena and near
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-death experiences. So the interesting thing
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about psychedelics is They are a very reliable
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way of inducing these kinds of exceptional experiences.
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Exceptional experiences tend to occur more with
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psychedelics than any other kind of access route
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due to their potency. But I think the kinds of
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experiences you can access through these substances
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you can access through any other means of altered
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states of consciousness, pretty much the most
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phenomena. And so like more broadly, it's the
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study of altered states, which includes psychedelics
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and these kinds of experiences. ESP and psychedelics,
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like that's something that kind of I think gets
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sanitized out of more medicalized discussions
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of like, oh, this could be a treatment for depression,
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addiction and what have you. But it seems that
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in indigenous cultures at least, that that was
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one of sort of the main ways that people were
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examining psychedelics being useful. Using things
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like ayahuasca to be able to tell what somebody
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was sick with, for example, right? Yes. So I
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think this is an interesting thing. You know,
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psychedelics as they used by indigenous people
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are just part of an armory of techniques for
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accessing our states of consciousness. So in
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lots of indigenous cultures that engage in what
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we might call shamanism, it's a practice by whereby
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you go into an altered state of consciousness
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to transcend time and space and bring back useful
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information for your community. So it's very
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pragmatic, magical, spiritual practice. And psychedelics
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are just one means of going into those states
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to transcend time and space. It's not something
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we have kind of continued with in the kind of
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the global north particularly. So like the anthropologist
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Charles Loughlin talks about how we have, you
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can separate the world into monophasic and polyphasic
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cultures. So monophasic cultures are those cultures
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like in Euro America that only really value and
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engage with the ordinary waking state of consciousness,
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like one phase of consciousness. Everything else
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is denigrated. It's like, oh, that's just hallucination.
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really pay attention to that. So dreams aren't
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really... paid attention to psychedelic drugs
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are frowned upon, other altered states practices
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are frowned upon, or at least they were. And
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you know, you get some special dispensation to
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have coffee to make you function and work harder.
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And maybe you can have a few beers on the weekend
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as a way of relaxing. But you know, we don't
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really value the drunken state is any way important
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to our kind of civic responsibilities. Whereas
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in polyphasic cultures, you know, the information
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coming from altered states such as dreams or
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psychedelic experiences are very much valued
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and engaged with at least on a level with ordinary
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waking consciousness, if not more so. And there
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are means of accessing information like it's
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a system of epistemology, the way in which we
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obtain knowledge. part of the world. It's generally
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through observation and science and education
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and logic and philosophy. Whereas in a lot of
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indigenous cultures, their epistemology derives
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through altered states, through engaging with
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the natural world. through kind of shamanic practices.
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Like if you want to understand what the medicinal
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properties of a plant are, you may drink ayahuasca
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and dieta and diet with that plant and then come
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to know the plant in a relational way, on a subjective
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way and understand what its healing properties
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are. So these are two very different worldviews
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and epistemologies and ontologies that we have
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where one is accepted that altostates are good
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and useful and the other is where they are denigrated.
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hated and denied. So I guess that kind of explains
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why for a period of time you went to Mexico to
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try to learn more about shamanism in a more polyphasic
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cultural setting, it sounds like. Maybe you could
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tell us a bit about what you got out of that
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experience. Well, I've got a fine collection
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of Mexican shirts. As you can see, that was one
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of the most important things for me. I also got
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to learn a little bit about what is the nature
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of shamanism and these very different ways of
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interacting and seeing the world. northern global
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people, I was very naive to what these realities
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entail. But I would say that as a general rule
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bull who live within a magical spiritual kind
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of culture, which engages with shamanism, live
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in a kind of permanent magical reality, which
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is at odds with our kind of cultural reality
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in the global north. And that is, you know, it
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is possible to transcend time and space and obtain
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information from those states of consciousness.
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They do so to communicate and mediate with what
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we might call the spirits of nature, but the
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rest of the ecological world. and to negotiate
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and discover animals to go and hunt or ways of
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healing or to divine the future or to find lost
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objects or to negotiate spiritual contracts.
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And that's a lot for somebody from the global
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North to get their head around in any kind of
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open way without either just denigrating it,
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denying it or on the opposite side of it, you
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know, kind of elevating it in a kind of way,
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which, yeah, puts it on a pedestal. So it's just
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another mode of being, I think, that we probably
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also engaged with in our history, you know, our
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ancestors would almost certainly have been animists,
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but it's something that's been kind of ironed
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out of the Global North's kind of working ontology.
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Yeah, I can see how it would be easy to either
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idealize it or just be like, oh, there must be
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some other explanation to whatever you're witnessing
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just because it is such a different worldview.
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But were there any specific instances you can
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think of that you encountered where you were
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just so surprised at how people interacted, I
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guess, with that more magical realm or way of
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thinking? I mean, always surprised. I mean, my
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time working with the Borradica in Mexico, they're
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otherwise known as the Huicholis, but that's
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not what they call themselves. And they have
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a really interesting tradition in that their
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use of peyote, which is psychedelic cactuses,
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is core to their whole cultural identity and
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their annual calendar and their way of life.
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So I guess while you were there in Mexico, you
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probably encountered a lot of instances where
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people were interacting with that sort of more
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magical worldview in a way that was kind of shocking
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or surprising to you. What were some of the more
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weird, to you at least, instances that you encountered.
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I guess one of the kind of wildest things I saw
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or experienced was that the Warradica, like many
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indigenous people around the world, professed
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to have some control over local weather systems,
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which is something that lots of rainmakers do
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around the world. And one time we had this encounter
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where it was the first time we were going to
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go on their sacred pilgrimage and I think it
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was the first time they'd taken any gringos on
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the pilgrimage. It's like a thousand kilometer
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round trip to go and harvest the peyote. And
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we rocked up on the edge of their territory.
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with this one Marakami, that's what they call
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their shamans. And we met with a whole bunch
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of other Marakamis from their ceremonial group.
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And they came in one pickup truck and we came
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the other way in a pickup truck and we all got
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out. And we were just about to kind of introduce
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ourselves and say hello. And they immediately
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got to arguing with the Marakami we were with.
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And so there was like five or six of these shamans
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all arguing. And we were just stood there like
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lemons going, okay. This is a bit awkward. And
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then like this huge dust devil got up in the
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field behind them. They like they had their backs
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to it. And we could see this thing, you know,
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like a tornado, like not a tornado, but a very,
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very big dust devil and a couple of hundred feet
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high, 30, 40 foot across. And it was sucking
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up all the dried maize leaves in the field. and
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started coming towards us. And myself and my
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kind of gringo buddies were all stood there going,
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wow, what's going on here? And it was moving
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in a direct line towards us and getting closer
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and closer. These guys were still arguing and
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at some point it was, it was going to hit us.
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And I was like, I kind of interrupted them and
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said, Hey guys, like, you know, look behind you.
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And they saw it and they were completely unfazed.
00:14:45.700 --> 00:14:47.580
Like one of them, two of them did this kind of
00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:49.840
gesture with their arms. One had their arms crossed
00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:53.649
and kind of shoved. the dust devil with his arms
00:14:53.649 --> 00:14:55.429
and the other one just pushed it with his hands.
00:14:55.929 --> 00:14:58.049
And the whole thing changed direction suddenly
00:14:58.049 --> 00:15:00.370
in the direction in which they were kind of gesturing
00:15:00.370 --> 00:15:03.090
with their hands. And it went round us in an
00:15:03.090 --> 00:15:05.909
arc. We watched the whole thing kind of bend
00:15:05.909 --> 00:15:08.710
around us on his direction and then continued
00:15:08.710 --> 00:15:11.710
on this kind of the trajectory that it had previous
00:15:11.710 --> 00:15:14.230
to being seemingly shoved. So it looked like
00:15:14.230 --> 00:15:16.950
they, for all intents and purposes, just pushed
00:15:16.950 --> 00:15:21.100
a ginormous dust devil out of the way. or a bit
00:15:21.100 --> 00:15:24.240
gobsmacked to say the least. We're like, did
00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:28.399
you see that? I saw that. Meanwhile, the interesting
00:15:28.399 --> 00:15:30.759
thing is they did this gesture with their hands
00:15:30.759 --> 00:15:33.299
and then immediately got back to arguing. They
00:15:33.299 --> 00:15:35.360
didn't even pay the dust devil any attention.
00:15:37.580 --> 00:15:40.679
aren't more important. We were all just completely
00:15:40.679 --> 00:15:43.299
gobsmacked. That was at the start of the trip.
00:15:43.639 --> 00:15:46.259
We'd literally just met them. We were like, well,
00:15:46.559 --> 00:15:48.720
if that happens now, what's going to happen on
00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:53.179
the rest of this journey? That was the most exotic
00:15:53.179 --> 00:15:55.460
phenomenon we saw. I think maybe perhaps they
00:15:55.460 --> 00:15:58.039
were just showing off or something. I don't know.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:00.559
For all intents and purposes, it looked very
00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:03.750
much like ... They just manipulated this weather
00:16:03.750 --> 00:16:07.090
phenomena in a way in which we have no concept
00:16:07.090 --> 00:16:10.049
of. Now it could just have been some kind of
00:16:10.049 --> 00:16:13.009
coincidence or, you know, trick of the light,
00:16:13.230 --> 00:16:16.649
but I doubt it. So, you know, stuff like that
00:16:16.649 --> 00:16:20.470
kind of gives you some sense in which when they
00:16:20.470 --> 00:16:23.549
talk about their magical reality, they aren't
00:16:23.549 --> 00:16:26.610
saying it flippantly or in any kind of illusionary
00:16:26.610 --> 00:16:31.269
way. They genuinely believe in this and you begin
00:16:31.269 --> 00:16:33.929
to have the inclination that what they're saying
00:16:33.929 --> 00:16:38.169
might actually be real. It leads you to question
00:16:38.169 --> 00:16:42.500
your own take on consensus reality. Or maybe
00:16:42.500 --> 00:16:44.860
they were just trying to get you very entranced
00:16:44.860 --> 00:16:48.279
with their magical skills and do a little show
00:16:48.279 --> 00:16:52.799
for you basically. But how did their experiences...
00:16:52.860 --> 00:16:56.759
and I guess use of peyote relate to this whole
00:16:56.759 --> 00:17:00.639
ability to change the weather or whatnot? Did
00:17:00.639 --> 00:17:03.440
there seem to be a relationship between their
00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:05.960
magical abilities, I guess you could say, and
00:17:05.960 --> 00:17:08.460
their use of psychedelics? Or were those separate
00:17:08.460 --> 00:17:11.839
things? Yeah, it's all very much embedded in
00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:15.900
a deeper core magico -spiritual practice at which,
00:17:15.900 --> 00:17:19.319
you know, peyote is at the center in that this
00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:23.630
is how they form their deep connection with nature.
00:17:23.970 --> 00:17:27.150
Everything is sacred in the natural world and
00:17:27.150 --> 00:17:31.089
they utilize peyote as a means of training and
00:17:31.089 --> 00:17:34.809
negotiation in this shamanic world. It's an ecological
00:17:34.809 --> 00:17:38.890
epistemology where they're very much engaging
00:17:38.890 --> 00:17:41.390
with the natural world and everything is sacred
00:17:41.390 --> 00:17:45.599
and sanctified. They'll train to be a Murakami,
00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:48.859
a shaman for 12 years, which includes all kinds
00:17:48.859 --> 00:17:52.400
of ordeals and a lot of time, all of the time
00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:57.599
is spent in nature. So, and they work very elementally,
00:17:58.059 --> 00:18:01.779
like they're most important. Praxis is around
00:18:01.779 --> 00:18:04.859
kind of the elements, the four elements as they
00:18:04.859 --> 00:18:08.279
break it down, earth, air, fire and water. And
00:18:08.279 --> 00:18:11.000
they primarily work with fire. That's their central.
00:18:11.339 --> 00:18:15.220
deity, if you like, and the most important element.
00:18:15.619 --> 00:18:18.039
So it's a kind of elemental and ecological kind
00:18:18.039 --> 00:18:22.000
of animism, which means for them, they can engage
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:25.859
with and negotiate with all the forces and species
00:18:25.859 --> 00:18:28.500
of the natural world through their use of peyote.
00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:31.099
But they weren't tripping at the time. I don't
00:18:31.099 --> 00:18:36.079
think they're living a trip, basically. Well,
00:18:36.240 --> 00:18:40.180
later on, you went on to investigate whether
00:18:40.410 --> 00:18:43.670
a different mescaline containing cactus, San
00:18:43.670 --> 00:18:48.609
Pedro, could increase ESP abilities and you ended
00:18:48.609 --> 00:18:51.470
up using yourself as a guinea pig. Why were you
00:18:51.470 --> 00:18:54.529
looking at San Pedro? Yeah, actually this was
00:18:54.529 --> 00:18:57.410
before I connected with the Borradica and I was
00:18:57.410 --> 00:19:00.569
in South America in Ecuador. I'd previously been
00:19:00.569 --> 00:19:03.009
doing some research on extrasensory perception
00:19:03.009 --> 00:19:06.109
with ayahuasca, but that was problematic for
00:19:06.170 --> 00:19:08.589
various reasons. And while I was in Ecuador,
00:19:08.789 --> 00:19:11.829
I figured it would be more sense to work with
00:19:11.829 --> 00:19:15.009
San Pedro, which is just a bit easier to manage
00:19:15.009 --> 00:19:18.210
in many ways than ayahuasca. And I certainly
00:19:18.210 --> 00:19:20.789
get on with it better. I'd attempted to do an
00:19:20.789 --> 00:19:24.210
experiment with people taking San Pedro and they
00:19:24.210 --> 00:19:26.779
were going to engage in a precognition task,
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:29.680
a kind of computerized randomized precognition
00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:32.279
task, which was pretty, pretty fail safe. You
00:19:32.279 --> 00:19:34.380
know, the results of which could only be due
00:19:34.380 --> 00:19:39.130
to like probability, which we controlled or the
00:19:39.130 --> 00:19:41.849
possibility of some kind of precognition. However,
00:19:41.990 --> 00:19:44.130
when I'd attempted to recruit people to take
00:19:44.130 --> 00:19:46.690
part in this experiment, the currendiro, the
00:19:46.690 --> 00:19:49.029
shaman, the healer I was working with, refused
00:19:49.029 --> 00:19:52.269
to let me bring my laptop into his ceremony.
00:19:52.470 --> 00:19:54.309
And I was running out of time. So I figured instead
00:19:54.309 --> 00:19:57.670
of getting 20 people to do a trial each of my
00:19:57.670 --> 00:20:00.269
task, the cognition task whilst they're on San
00:20:00.269 --> 00:20:03.519
Pedro cactus, I would do all 20 trials myself
00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:06.640
under the influence of San Pedro, which fortunately,
00:20:06.700 --> 00:20:09.519
you know, the mescaline lasts about 12 hours.
00:20:09.680 --> 00:20:12.420
So you've got plenty of time to run 20 trials
00:20:12.420 --> 00:20:14.660
of a precognition experiment. And that was quite
00:20:14.660 --> 00:20:17.160
illuminating in that, you know, the design is
00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:19.279
such that you can't cheat it. Like, you know,
00:20:19.359 --> 00:20:22.579
the, the targets aren't even chosen until the
00:20:22.579 --> 00:20:26.299
future. And so it's got a safe design. So you
00:20:26.299 --> 00:20:29.220
can be both a participant and experimenter without
00:20:29.220 --> 00:20:32.180
compromising the experiment because because you
00:20:32.180 --> 00:20:35.299
actually have to use precognition to do well
00:20:35.299 --> 00:20:40.140
at the task. I got a significant result, which
00:20:40.140 --> 00:20:42.779
was great. It's a kind of proof of process. I
00:20:42.779 --> 00:20:45.440
wouldn't say it's necessarily evidential, but
00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:50.130
it shows that the study design is feasible. a
00:20:50.130 --> 00:20:54.170
lot about the potential medium and process through
00:20:54.170 --> 00:20:56.710
which this could work in that, you know, I had
00:20:56.710 --> 00:20:59.809
to basically, I would set the intention to try
00:20:59.809 --> 00:21:02.849
and identify the future target. which would be
00:21:02.849 --> 00:21:05.710
one of four one minute video clips, which I didn't
00:21:05.710 --> 00:21:07.930
know which one would be the target or what the
00:21:07.930 --> 00:21:10.490
video clips were. And so I'd like try and visualize
00:21:10.490 --> 00:21:14.329
this video clip and I would get some wild mental
00:21:14.329 --> 00:21:17.190
imagery and I'd write it down if I could actually
00:21:17.190 --> 00:21:19.809
put it into words. And then I would see the four
00:21:19.809 --> 00:21:22.069
one minute video clips and I would rate them
00:21:22.069 --> 00:21:24.430
according to how similar they were to my mescaline
00:21:24.430 --> 00:21:27.450
vision. And then the computer would then randomly
00:21:27.450 --> 00:21:30.609
select the target using a random number generator
00:21:30.609 --> 00:21:33.069
and we'd see whether or not I was correct or
00:21:33.069 --> 00:21:34.769
not. And through this process, you could see
00:21:34.769 --> 00:21:37.369
that there was kind of thematic elements. Like
00:21:37.369 --> 00:21:40.950
I never actually fully saw any one of those video
00:21:40.950 --> 00:21:44.369
clips in its entirety in my vision, but there
00:21:44.369 --> 00:21:47.730
were very much kind of themes and elements which
00:21:47.730 --> 00:21:51.109
corresponded to the actual targets. And often
00:21:51.109 --> 00:21:53.369
in quite surprising ways. Sometimes they were
00:21:53.369 --> 00:21:56.430
quite spot on. Like one was like the sands of
00:21:56.430 --> 00:22:00.009
time, desert dunes, and there was a scene of
00:22:00.009 --> 00:22:02.609
a side wind. going across the desert, which I
00:22:02.609 --> 00:22:05.109
chose as the target and the random number generator
00:22:05.109 --> 00:22:08.150
also selected afterwards. So, but then there
00:22:08.150 --> 00:22:10.950
was other elements whereby there was like a,
00:22:10.950 --> 00:22:13.470
you know, these were random pools of all one
00:22:13.470 --> 00:22:15.569
minute video clips, which had been selected by
00:22:15.569 --> 00:22:18.450
another researcher to be as heterogeneous as
00:22:18.450 --> 00:22:20.769
possible. That is they, to be as different from
00:22:20.769 --> 00:22:23.170
each other as possible so that it was easier
00:22:23.170 --> 00:22:26.069
to determine, you know, like which video clip
00:22:26.069 --> 00:22:28.869
was most like your visual mentations. If they're
00:22:28.869 --> 00:22:31.700
all really similar, it's harder to discern any
00:22:31.700 --> 00:22:35.039
differences between them. And yet on this one
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:39.880
trial, I'd had a vision of a broken limb. That's
00:22:39.880 --> 00:22:42.200
what I'd written down, a broken limb. And then
00:22:42.200 --> 00:22:44.390
it turned out... Then when I watched the four
00:22:44.390 --> 00:22:46.950
video clips, although they were all very, very
00:22:46.950 --> 00:22:50.069
different in content and theme and style, three
00:22:50.069 --> 00:22:53.009
of them had broken limbs in them, right? Which
00:22:53.009 --> 00:22:56.410
led me to have some difficulty discerning what
00:22:56.410 --> 00:22:59.829
the target might be. But weirdly, you know, my
00:22:59.829 --> 00:23:03.589
bemescalined mind had picked up on a theme that
00:23:03.589 --> 00:23:06.190
was apparent in this pool of four video clips
00:23:06.190 --> 00:23:09.009
that I had no idea was there because I hadn't
00:23:09.009 --> 00:23:12.960
even seen the videos. So Sometimes it was doing
00:23:12.960 --> 00:23:16.279
things in weird ways which wouldn't necessarily
00:23:16.279 --> 00:23:20.400
translate into a statistically significant result.
00:23:20.759 --> 00:23:22.619
So that tells you something about the nature
00:23:22.619 --> 00:23:26.579
of this process if it is indeed real. It's definitely
00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:29.779
fascinating and it sounds like a fine experiment
00:23:29.779 --> 00:23:32.059
to put yourself through being the guinea pig
00:23:32.059 --> 00:23:35.319
for. It's interesting because even though, you
00:23:35.319 --> 00:23:38.619
know, in modern research this ESP stuff doesn't
00:23:38.619 --> 00:23:41.799
seem to be a focus, it seems like in the 1950s
00:23:41.799 --> 00:23:45.359
and 60s a lot of sort of the founders of psychedelic
00:23:45.359 --> 00:23:48.240
research were somewhat into it. Like apparently
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:52.150
Groff was guessing correctly on a remote viewing
00:23:52.150 --> 00:23:55.289
task several times in a row and like got freaked
00:23:55.289 --> 00:23:57.609
out or something and had to stop. And there are,
00:23:57.609 --> 00:24:00.769
I think, other instances as well. Maybe you could
00:24:00.769 --> 00:24:03.569
tell us a bit about those. Yeah, Groff famously
00:24:03.569 --> 00:24:06.970
did do, he did extremely well on this, I think
00:24:06.970 --> 00:24:09.650
it was a telepathy task or a precognition task.
00:24:09.829 --> 00:24:11.630
And yeah, he had to stop basically because he
00:24:11.630 --> 00:24:14.410
was he was doing so well, it kind of weirded
00:24:14.410 --> 00:24:16.849
him out. And there are similar stories like that.
00:24:16.990 --> 00:24:19.569
I think it was John Smithies and Duncan Blewett.
00:24:19.730 --> 00:24:23.049
Smithies worked with Humphrey Osmond, who coined
00:24:23.049 --> 00:24:25.670
the term psychedelic. And Humphrey Osmond was
00:24:25.670 --> 00:24:27.809
also interested in this research and they run
00:24:27.809 --> 00:24:30.970
an ESP experiment on mescaline, which freaked
00:24:30.970 --> 00:24:33.549
out their research assistant because they were
00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:36.299
so successful that they had again had to stop
00:24:36.299 --> 00:24:38.819
the experiment because it was like too uncanny
00:24:38.819 --> 00:24:41.900
and it was making people quite nervous. And so,
00:24:42.019 --> 00:24:44.859
you know, a lot of these early psychedelic pioneers
00:24:44.859 --> 00:24:48.039
often had their own paranormal -like experiences
00:24:48.039 --> 00:24:51.039
or psy -like experiences. Albert Hoffman on his
00:24:51.039 --> 00:24:54.180
first LSD trip basically had a kind of out of
00:24:54.180 --> 00:24:57.240
body experience or something akin to a near -death
00:24:57.240 --> 00:24:59.940
experience and felt like he'd left his body and
00:24:59.940 --> 00:25:02.319
he was looking down on his body and thought he
00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:04.380
might have died and that kind of freaked him
00:25:04.380 --> 00:25:06.920
out. Gordon Wasson as well, the first time they
00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:10.630
encountered a Mazatec Corundiro, who ran the
00:25:10.630 --> 00:25:14.230
first ever account of a Westerner gringo engaging
00:25:14.230 --> 00:25:19.029
in a mushroom ceremony. The Corundiro Donarulio
00:25:19.029 --> 00:25:21.630
told him all these things about his son back
00:25:21.630 --> 00:25:24.349
home in the States that he didn't know about.
00:25:24.769 --> 00:25:26.789
And when they got back to the States after their
00:25:26.789 --> 00:25:28.910
research trip in Mexico, they found out it was
00:25:28.910 --> 00:25:32.490
all true. So you pretty much all of the big pioneers
00:25:32.490 --> 00:25:35.750
of psychedelic research. in the fifties and sixties
00:25:35.750 --> 00:25:39.130
had their own encounters with psi phenomena and
00:25:39.130 --> 00:25:42.529
were engaged with it. Even Walter Panke, we did
00:25:42.529 --> 00:25:44.829
the first Good Friday, the Good Friday experiment
00:25:44.829 --> 00:25:49.009
ran his own psilocybin ESP experiments as well.
00:25:49.309 --> 00:25:51.609
And then of course, prohibition happened and
00:25:51.609 --> 00:25:54.329
parapsychologists like not wanting to tarnish
00:25:54.329 --> 00:25:57.130
their reputation very quickly moved away from
00:25:57.130 --> 00:26:00.579
psychedelics. which was seen as more taboo than
00:26:00.579 --> 00:26:03.279
parapsychology, although that now has kind of
00:26:03.279 --> 00:26:05.740
completely flipped. It's definitely interesting
00:26:05.740 --> 00:26:09.940
how there seems to be this line studying or at
00:26:09.940 --> 00:26:13.220
least considering parapsychology in indigenous
00:26:13.220 --> 00:26:17.059
cultures in the 50s and 60s with your previous
00:26:17.059 --> 00:26:21.019
work. there does seem to be something going on
00:26:21.019 --> 00:26:23.720
where at least people are experiencing things
00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:26.480
like clairvoyance, like, you know, being able
00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.680
to predict videos and whatnot. But even though
00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:32.519
they're having that experience, maybe it's not
00:26:32.519 --> 00:26:35.099
really, you know, they're developing some sort
00:26:35.099 --> 00:26:38.119
of paranormal capabilities, but it just feels
00:26:38.119 --> 00:26:41.619
like it. And I guess it's possible that, I don't
00:26:41.619 --> 00:26:44.519
know, I spend a lot of time comparing psychosis
00:26:44.519 --> 00:26:46.960
and psychedelics and that's kind of my lens and
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:49.279
in some ways a lot of these experiences sound
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:52.519
a little bit psychotic like, a little bit like
00:26:52.519 --> 00:26:55.579
maybe somebody has some aberrant salience where
00:26:55.579 --> 00:26:59.579
they're assigning meaning to small things and
00:26:59.579 --> 00:27:03.500
making big symbols out of these tiny coincidences.
00:27:03.839 --> 00:27:07.049
How would you push back against that? sort of
00:27:07.049 --> 00:27:09.390
guess interpretation that this is just a kind
00:27:09.390 --> 00:27:12.329
of a psychotic like thinking that people are
00:27:12.329 --> 00:27:15.250
having during these experiences. Yeah. It's interesting.
00:27:15.269 --> 00:27:17.250
And I think, you know, there is an overlap because
00:27:17.250 --> 00:27:20.049
of course in, in states of psychosis, everything
00:27:20.049 --> 00:27:23.109
becomes meaningful. We have a massive increase
00:27:23.109 --> 00:27:26.950
in what we might call apophenia in kind of like
00:27:26.950 --> 00:27:31.549
super high gain sensitivity on our pattern recognition
00:27:31.549 --> 00:27:34.509
and thereby making associations and things and
00:27:34.509 --> 00:27:37.140
finding synchronicities and coincidences and
00:27:37.140 --> 00:27:39.680
everything. It's hard to draw the line. Sometimes
00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:43.819
the point is that, is that a symptom of psychosis?
00:27:44.180 --> 00:27:47.819
At what point is that? There's genuinely something
00:27:47.819 --> 00:27:50.960
unusual happening. There are other ways in which
00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:52.900
we can discern whether or not it's psychosis
00:27:52.900 --> 00:27:56.480
or not, but it may be partly a matter of degree
00:27:56.480 --> 00:28:00.279
and partly qualitative. Nevertheless, lots of
00:28:00.279 --> 00:28:04.299
people who are not psychotic have these experiences
00:28:04.299 --> 00:28:07.099
and they're very common actually with psychedelics.
00:28:07.359 --> 00:28:09.180
Something like half of all people have taken
00:28:09.180 --> 00:28:11.460
psychedelics have had a telepathic experience
00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:14.599
according to some of my survey research, less
00:28:14.599 --> 00:28:16.779
so with precognition. And of course it tends
00:28:16.779 --> 00:28:21.099
to increase people's belief in psi, in extrasensory
00:28:21.099 --> 00:28:23.880
perception and other paranormal like phenomena.
00:28:24.079 --> 00:28:26.920
Having taken psychedelics, you know, people change
00:28:26.920 --> 00:28:29.339
their worldview around the nature of these things,
00:28:29.539 --> 00:28:32.259
but not all those people are psychotic, far from
00:28:32.259 --> 00:28:34.779
it. Whether or not they're genuine or not is
00:28:34.779 --> 00:28:38.240
a very different question. We can only really
00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:41.220
discern that through controlled experimental
00:28:41.220 --> 00:28:44.640
research, but there's a long history of parapsychological
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:47.799
research going back about 140 years predating
00:28:47.799 --> 00:28:50.539
the study of psychology really as a discipline.
00:28:50.920 --> 00:28:54.279
That's amassed a great deal of evidence to quite
00:28:54.279 --> 00:28:56.940
strongly suggest that, you know, psi phenomena
00:28:56.940 --> 00:29:01.480
is genuine, albeit very, very subtle and almost
00:29:01.480 --> 00:29:03.859
entirely unconscious. So it's very difficult
00:29:03.859 --> 00:29:07.460
to pin down and establish experimentally. But
00:29:07.460 --> 00:29:10.859
if you look at the mass of studies that have
00:29:10.859 --> 00:29:15.000
been conducted and meta -analyses, they're extremely
00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.720
significant. So it seems like a latent or unconscious
00:29:19.720 --> 00:29:23.299
and therefore largely ignored and unidentified
00:29:23.299 --> 00:29:27.579
possibility that we can genuinely transcend time
00:29:27.579 --> 00:29:30.839
and space and access information from beyond
00:29:30.839 --> 00:29:34.559
these spatial time coordinates, right? But it's
00:29:34.559 --> 00:29:37.539
not an everyday phenomena and people like shamans
00:29:37.539 --> 00:29:40.319
actively utilize this, right? At least that's
00:29:40.319 --> 00:29:42.859
what they profess to do. So it's a fine thin
00:29:42.859 --> 00:29:46.420
line in many ways because that way psychosis
00:29:46.420 --> 00:29:49.140
also lies. I wouldn't say having a psych experience
00:29:49.140 --> 00:29:52.619
makes you psychotic, but people with psychosis
00:29:52.619 --> 00:29:55.779
may be professing to have. you know, certainly
00:29:55.779 --> 00:29:58.980
a high degree of coincidences and also occasionally
00:29:58.980 --> 00:30:01.779
they have symptoms of, you know, thought transference
00:30:01.779 --> 00:30:03.420
that, you know, people are reading their minds
00:30:03.420 --> 00:30:06.500
as CIA's beaming thoughts into their brain directly
00:30:06.500 --> 00:30:08.450
and all this kind of stuff. But the kinds of
00:30:08.450 --> 00:30:10.609
experiences that people are having are a bit
00:30:10.609 --> 00:30:13.470
more contained and prosaic than that. You know,
00:30:13.569 --> 00:30:16.450
it's not kind of like everything is associative
00:30:16.450 --> 00:30:18.650
and meaningful like you would have with psychosis,
00:30:19.009 --> 00:30:21.690
but people are having kind of quite discrete,
00:30:21.710 --> 00:30:25.109
very meaningful experiences, which may be passed
00:30:25.109 --> 00:30:27.730
off as a coincidence, or they could be explored
00:30:27.730 --> 00:30:32.349
for their potential for a genuine trans cerebral
00:30:32.349 --> 00:30:34.809
kind of phenomena. It depends on which way you
00:30:34.809 --> 00:30:37.640
want to look at it. Yeah, there's definitely
00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:40.920
quite a history of people, I think, interpreting
00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:44.380
adverse events, especially related to psychedelics,
00:30:44.579 --> 00:30:47.180
through the lens of them being somehow psychosis
00:30:47.180 --> 00:30:50.279
-like, even though I think oftentimes the reality
00:30:50.279 --> 00:30:54.640
is a bit more complicated. Recently, a paper
00:30:54.640 --> 00:30:56.720
that you were on came out that was exploring
00:30:56.720 --> 00:31:01.559
how people responded to ontological shock and
00:31:01.559 --> 00:31:04.900
existential distress. after using psychedelics
00:31:04.900 --> 00:31:07.759
and that paper to me was quite fascinating because
00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:11.180
it covered how their often are like worldview
00:31:11.180 --> 00:31:13.940
shifts and people can think that they're going
00:31:13.940 --> 00:31:16.740
crazy or whatever and become very kind of obsessed
00:31:16.740 --> 00:31:19.579
with understanding these different metaphysical
00:31:19.579 --> 00:31:23.099
like frameworks. Yeah. It's not really psychosis
00:31:23.099 --> 00:31:26.180
like per se. Yeah. I think, and I think ontological
00:31:26.180 --> 00:31:28.440
shock is, I think ontological shock is often
00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:31.400
part and parcel of, of profound psychedelic experiences.
00:31:31.559 --> 00:31:35.380
Unless your prior worldview already has room
00:31:35.380 --> 00:31:38.819
for a mystical kind of experience within it.
00:31:38.799 --> 00:31:42.299
frame, then if you have a full blown psychedelic
00:31:42.299 --> 00:31:44.799
slash mystical experience, it is going to throw
00:31:44.799 --> 00:31:48.200
up some challenges to your reality and worldview.
00:31:48.500 --> 00:31:50.059
You know, often people describe having these
00:31:50.059 --> 00:31:53.099
experiences as going beyond what they imagined
00:31:53.099 --> 00:31:56.680
was even possible to experience. And so for many
00:31:56.680 --> 00:31:59.880
people, I think the ontological shock is well
00:31:59.880 --> 00:32:02.740
integrated and incorporated into their life.
00:32:03.099 --> 00:32:05.740
often leads to people taking a more spiritual
00:32:05.740 --> 00:32:09.099
orientation or shifting their metaphysical beliefs.
00:32:09.779 --> 00:32:12.900
But often as well, this can often be a challenge
00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:16.099
and can lead to extended difficulties and of
00:32:16.099 --> 00:32:18.940
course people fearing for their sanity. So in
00:32:18.940 --> 00:32:20.960
the Challenging Psychedelic Experience Project,
00:32:21.160 --> 00:32:22.960
You know, we've been particularly exploring people
00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:25.319
who have difficulties longer than a day. And
00:32:25.319 --> 00:32:27.619
sometimes these can last for weeks, months or
00:32:27.619 --> 00:32:30.299
years. And they comprise lots of different symptoms,
00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:33.200
but one of the recurring symptoms that is most
00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:36.779
prevalent and also The longest lasting and also
00:32:36.779 --> 00:32:40.299
the most challenging typically is ontological
00:32:40.299 --> 00:32:44.180
shock. We find it in upwards of half of all people
00:32:44.180 --> 00:32:47.220
expressing extended difficulties following psychedelic
00:32:47.220 --> 00:32:49.599
experiences. And that is that they have a kind
00:32:49.599 --> 00:32:52.960
of cognitive dissonance between their prior worldview.
00:32:53.480 --> 00:32:57.279
and the worldview that their psychedelic experience
00:32:57.279 --> 00:33:00.460
presents at face value. And that can be challenging
00:33:00.460 --> 00:33:03.579
for people to negotiate and integrate. It threatens
00:33:03.579 --> 00:33:06.819
what we call their ontological security, a sense
00:33:06.819 --> 00:33:09.359
in which you kind of understand the world and
00:33:09.359 --> 00:33:12.359
how it works and reality. And then suddenly this
00:33:12.359 --> 00:33:14.279
experience comes along and it kind of throws
00:33:14.279 --> 00:33:17.259
all your prior beliefs about the nature of reality
00:33:17.259 --> 00:33:20.259
into disarray. And that can be very destabilizing.
00:33:20.420 --> 00:33:22.720
So yeah, that paper was focusing on that particular
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:24.960
phenomenon. phenomena and ways in which people
00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:28.460
found useful in helping them cope or stabilize
00:33:28.460 --> 00:33:31.579
their experience to lead towards a kind of more
00:33:31.579 --> 00:33:35.079
whole integration. Yeah, it's definitely important
00:33:35.079 --> 00:33:38.579
work because I feel like understanding what goes
00:33:38.579 --> 00:33:41.319
wrong with psychedelics when things do go wrong
00:33:41.319 --> 00:33:45.019
is really under categorized at this point and
00:33:45.019 --> 00:33:47.880
anything that sort of builds what can go wrong
00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:51.099
from the bottom up. Doing qualitative interviews
00:33:51.099 --> 00:33:53.339
with people that are in depth can really, I think,
00:33:53.660 --> 00:33:57.000
facilitate a better understanding. Any sort of
00:33:57.000 --> 00:34:00.480
patterns in the sorts of people maybe prone to
00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:03.920
having ontological shock or existential distress,
00:34:03.920 --> 00:34:07.279
did any patterns emerge? Any specific sorts of
00:34:07.279 --> 00:34:10.519
experience that seemed more risky than others?
00:34:10.719 --> 00:34:13.619
Well, it's hard to kind of extrapolate because
00:34:13.619 --> 00:34:17.699
it's a relatively small sample. because it is
00:34:17.699 --> 00:34:22.880
qualitative. So it's more about the depth of
00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:25.579
the lived experience and what they were going
00:34:25.579 --> 00:34:27.300
through and what they found useful in coping
00:34:27.300 --> 00:34:31.230
rather than identifying. trends in particular.
00:34:31.670 --> 00:34:34.070
So it's kind of more like the themes that emerge
00:34:34.070 --> 00:34:37.429
rather than, okay, this kind of personality leads
00:34:37.429 --> 00:34:40.070
to this kind of difficulty. But the kinds of
00:34:40.070 --> 00:34:44.550
things that come up are crisis, despair, confusion,
00:34:45.090 --> 00:34:49.630
questioning one's identity, grief over the loss
00:34:49.630 --> 00:34:52.469
of you know, your previous self is like often
00:34:52.469 --> 00:34:55.510
seen as a bit of a one way street in that, you
00:34:55.510 --> 00:34:57.730
know, you, you can't necessarily unsee what you've
00:34:57.730 --> 00:35:00.869
seen or experienced and that's changing your
00:35:00.869 --> 00:35:04.329
reality permanently, you know, fears of psychosis
00:35:04.329 --> 00:35:08.429
or paranoia and so on. So the roadmap is kind
00:35:08.429 --> 00:35:10.750
of what's interesting in this is this is coming
00:35:10.750 --> 00:35:13.190
from psychedelic experiences, but there's, there's
00:35:13.190 --> 00:35:15.530
people have already mapped this kind of trajectory
00:35:15.530 --> 00:35:18.050
out with exceptional experiences more generally,
00:35:18.050 --> 00:35:21.449
and it tends to follow. a similar kind of path,
00:35:21.610 --> 00:35:24.550
if you like. There's this deep period of questioning
00:35:24.550 --> 00:35:27.590
and confusion that follows these ontologically
00:35:27.590 --> 00:35:30.329
challenging experiences or exceptional experiences,
00:35:30.469 --> 00:35:33.750
which can lead to various pitfalls and challenges
00:35:33.750 --> 00:35:36.710
such as you may end up kind of joining a cult.
00:35:37.150 --> 00:35:40.050
falling into guru worship and handing over your
00:35:40.050 --> 00:35:43.610
entire bank account or personal self -aggrandizement,
00:35:43.849 --> 00:35:46.929
narcissism, spiritual bypassing, believing that
00:35:46.929 --> 00:35:50.489
you're psychotic. So there's many potential risks
00:35:50.489 --> 00:35:54.010
in having one of these really kind of worldview
00:35:54.010 --> 00:35:56.550
destabilizing experiences. But then there's also
00:35:56.550 --> 00:35:59.349
a kind of pathway through into growth and maybe
00:35:59.349 --> 00:36:01.789
in a similar way into which we see like post
00:36:01.789 --> 00:36:04.539
-traumatic growth. as well. There's a period
00:36:04.539 --> 00:36:07.840
of destabilization, but then there is a movement
00:36:07.840 --> 00:36:11.679
towards feeling more whole and integrated and
00:36:11.679 --> 00:36:15.119
largely coming out the other side, a bigger and
00:36:15.119 --> 00:36:17.380
better person, if you like, more experienced
00:36:17.380 --> 00:36:21.659
and more whole. Yeah, I wonder if other cultures
00:36:21.659 --> 00:36:25.119
where sort of magical frameworks are more embedded
00:36:25.119 --> 00:36:28.539
and accepted in their society. If they have...
00:36:28.639 --> 00:36:32.820
a way to make sense of rapid ontological changes.
00:36:32.980 --> 00:36:36.019
I don't know if they would be prone to experiencing
00:36:36.019 --> 00:36:39.460
such a thing or not. Did the people that you
00:36:39.670 --> 00:36:42.070
who are around in Mexico, did they have a framework?
00:36:42.289 --> 00:36:45.150
Did any other shamanistic sort of traditions
00:36:45.150 --> 00:36:48.349
that you're aware of have a pathway forward for
00:36:48.349 --> 00:36:52.269
people who are somehow distressed by their vague
00:36:52.269 --> 00:36:54.489
experiences, I guess you could say? Interestingly,
00:36:54.690 --> 00:36:56.670
I mean, it's not like we've had like, have studied
00:36:56.670 --> 00:37:00.190
it directly, but I do think they already have
00:37:00.190 --> 00:37:05.110
a cultural cosmology, an ontology, which is accepting
00:37:05.110 --> 00:37:07.570
immediately of those experiences. So I think
00:37:07.570 --> 00:37:10.650
there's less of a kind of ontological shock.
00:37:10.829 --> 00:37:13.449
And this is just my kind of interpretation in
00:37:13.449 --> 00:37:15.889
that, you know, it already fits within their
00:37:15.889 --> 00:37:18.750
cultural framework to have these kinds of experiences
00:37:18.750 --> 00:37:21.699
and it not. just to be psychosis. It's like,
00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:24.260
oh, you, you know, you had some kind of spiritual
00:37:24.260 --> 00:37:27.000
attack or, you know, whatever it might be. And
00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:29.719
yet the way of dealing with it is, is, is, is
00:37:29.719 --> 00:37:31.400
different as well. So like, you know, for instance,
00:37:31.440 --> 00:37:33.840
I've been in ceremonies where for all intents
00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:35.519
and purposes, somebody looked like they were
00:37:35.519 --> 00:37:38.260
possessed and had to be kind of held down. This
00:37:38.260 --> 00:37:41.780
was gringos, right? And the shaman's going, yeah,
00:37:42.079 --> 00:37:44.039
don't worry about it. You know, this happens
00:37:44.039 --> 00:37:46.460
all the time and just tie them up and wait for
00:37:46.460 --> 00:37:49.949
them to come back. And, and basically if you
00:37:49.949 --> 00:37:52.670
want to be a shaman, yes, I just tied them up
00:37:52.670 --> 00:37:54.630
till they come back. And, you know, if you want
00:37:54.630 --> 00:37:56.809
to be a shaman, you're going to have to go through
00:37:56.809 --> 00:37:59.690
that. That's actually part of the journey. Like
00:37:59.690 --> 00:38:02.269
this is like, this isn't anything bad. This is
00:38:02.269 --> 00:38:05.530
just like a natural step in the process. Like
00:38:05.530 --> 00:38:08.130
we see it all the time. It's no big deal, you
00:38:08.130 --> 00:38:10.829
know? So they've got kind of a bit more of a
00:38:10.829 --> 00:38:14.119
relaxed approach to this kind of. these kinds
00:38:14.119 --> 00:38:17.239
of experiences of phenomena and a home for them
00:38:17.239 --> 00:38:20.340
as well in which they hithered or pathologized,
00:38:20.619 --> 00:38:22.940
right? Which I do think probably makes a big
00:38:22.940 --> 00:38:25.940
difference. So going back to, I guess, Westerners'
00:38:26.079 --> 00:38:28.619
experiences, what were some of the things that
00:38:28.619 --> 00:38:32.199
helped people make sense of ontological shock
00:38:32.199 --> 00:38:35.340
or existential distress? Yeah. So there's, you
00:38:35.340 --> 00:38:38.179
know, there's a variety of different coping practices.
00:38:38.440 --> 00:38:40.340
I think one of the biggest ones we found certainly
00:38:40.340 --> 00:38:43.019
from our survey data, not necessarily the interviews
00:38:43.019 --> 00:38:45.800
is kind of psycho education. Like, you know,
00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:47.619
some people would turn to therapists and things
00:38:47.619 --> 00:38:50.639
like that and they didn't necessarily find that
00:38:50.639 --> 00:38:52.860
the most helpful. And that could be just a sign
00:38:52.860 --> 00:38:56.420
of the times in that most therapists are probably
00:38:56.420 --> 00:38:58.960
A, not familiar with psychedelic experiences
00:38:58.960 --> 00:39:01.760
and B, not familiar with the weirder end of the
00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:04.190
psychedelic experience spectrum. of those kinds
00:39:04.190 --> 00:39:06.829
of ontologically challenging experiences, like
00:39:06.829 --> 00:39:08.690
feeling like you've been possessed or whatever,
00:39:08.929 --> 00:39:12.969
right? So classic CBT, for instance, doesn't
00:39:12.969 --> 00:39:15.630
really have a space for dealing with that kind
00:39:15.630 --> 00:39:18.869
of experience. So on the whole, people tended
00:39:18.869 --> 00:39:22.570
not to say that therapy was not the kind of go
00:39:22.570 --> 00:39:26.150
-to route of helping to integrate these experiences.
00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:30.179
It was about typically like finding other people
00:39:30.179 --> 00:39:33.219
or resources where people have gone through similar
00:39:33.219 --> 00:39:35.679
processes and come out the other side and they
00:39:35.679 --> 00:39:38.920
weren't psychotic or stabilizing their experiencing
00:39:38.920 --> 00:39:42.380
and grounding themselves through maybe spending
00:39:42.380 --> 00:39:47.019
time in nature, changing their diet. doing yoga
00:39:47.019 --> 00:39:49.840
or some kind of bodywork practice. So often these
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:53.360
kinds of things were seen to be useful. Yeah.
00:39:53.579 --> 00:39:57.179
I could see how a therapist who really wasn't
00:39:57.179 --> 00:40:00.480
all that familiar with psychedelics would be
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:03.320
startled by somebody coming to the session being
00:40:03.320 --> 00:40:05.699
like, I felt like I got possessed when I did
00:40:05.699 --> 00:40:08.219
an ayahuasca ceremony. How do I make sense of
00:40:08.219 --> 00:40:10.719
this? Like, yeah. Of course, that's going to
00:40:10.719 --> 00:40:15.239
be not necessarily the ideal environment. There's
00:40:15.239 --> 00:40:18.320
this whole history of psychedelics and psychosis
00:40:18.320 --> 00:40:21.800
being the main concern that people have, even
00:40:21.800 --> 00:40:24.800
though that could be a concern, but it's not
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:27.760
necessarily the main adverse effect that people
00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:30.539
are most prone to. So a therapist hearing that
00:40:30.539 --> 00:40:33.420
somebody is having a challenging time, they might
00:40:33.420 --> 00:40:35.940
just think, are they becoming psychotic? and
00:40:35.940 --> 00:40:38.719
I could see how that could be difficult. Going
00:40:38.719 --> 00:40:41.539
forward, what do you think needs to happen for
00:40:41.539 --> 00:40:45.139
people to be more informed about how to handle
00:40:45.139 --> 00:40:48.599
challenging experiences? Yeah, I think we just
00:40:48.599 --> 00:40:52.960
need a better literacy generally around exceptional
00:40:52.960 --> 00:40:57.460
experiences and challenging experiences and metaphysical
00:40:57.460 --> 00:40:59.519
challenges too, you know, ontological shock,
00:40:59.699 --> 00:41:03.630
etc. which I don't think is necessarily there
00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:07.110
in most kind of generic types of psychotherapy.
00:41:07.550 --> 00:41:10.309
Perhaps existential psychology or therapy may
00:41:10.309 --> 00:41:13.030
be better suited or transpersonal. Psychotherapy
00:41:13.030 --> 00:41:16.250
are probably more able to engage with this kind
00:41:16.250 --> 00:41:18.610
of phenomena. But as a general rule, I think
00:41:18.610 --> 00:41:21.969
people aren't very familiar with the range of
00:41:21.969 --> 00:41:24.190
exceptional experiences that people may have
00:41:24.190 --> 00:41:27.730
and just a kind of understanding of those. More
00:41:27.730 --> 00:41:30.190
broadly, I mean, these aren't always the stuff
00:41:30.190 --> 00:41:32.369
that comes up. You know, often people's challenges
00:41:32.369 --> 00:41:34.949
are of an intrapersonal nature, right? They may
00:41:34.949 --> 00:41:36.769
be rather than transpersonal, you know, maybe
00:41:36.769 --> 00:41:39.349
kind of dealing with childhood trauma that they
00:41:39.349 --> 00:41:41.489
were unaware of or this kind of stuff. You know,
00:41:41.889 --> 00:41:44.750
also we get a lot of these kind of more transpersonal
00:41:44.750 --> 00:41:47.809
kind of challenges. And so I think there is a
00:41:47.809 --> 00:41:50.730
need for better education around this. I think
00:41:50.730 --> 00:41:54.179
it really needs to be embedded in kind of sitter
00:41:54.179 --> 00:41:56.739
guide therapist training for people wanting to
00:41:56.739 --> 00:41:59.179
work with psychedelics. So they at least have
00:41:59.179 --> 00:42:02.699
a working awareness of it. And it requires a
00:42:02.699 --> 00:42:06.079
kind of metaphysical neutrality as well, you
00:42:06.079 --> 00:42:08.860
know, an openness on behalf of the therapists
00:42:08.860 --> 00:42:11.519
or sitters and guides in that, you know, you're
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:14.500
not automatically prejudging and having a sense
00:42:14.500 --> 00:42:16.800
of self -awareness and enough of a container
00:42:16.800 --> 00:42:19.500
that you're not projecting your own metaphysical
00:42:19.500 --> 00:42:22.500
worldviews onto your client as well as all your
00:42:22.500 --> 00:42:25.639
kind of cultural, social and interpersonal ones
00:42:25.639 --> 00:42:28.619
as well. So it just adds another level to the
00:42:28.619 --> 00:42:32.539
onion of things that therapists need to be kind
00:42:32.539 --> 00:42:34.960
of aware of when they're dealing with people
00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:37.199
having challenging psychedelic experiences, I
00:42:37.199 --> 00:42:40.099
would say. Yeah, it's definitely true. I mean,
00:42:40.420 --> 00:42:43.159
I guess psychedelics have long had an association
00:42:43.159 --> 00:42:47.079
with more like woo woo out there things. So that
00:42:47.079 --> 00:42:50.039
these side effects can also be a bit out there.
00:42:50.230 --> 00:42:53.349
to me does not seem that weird. Another thing
00:42:53.349 --> 00:42:55.909
that people frequently do, I find, is that they
00:42:55.909 --> 00:43:00.289
compare psychedelic experiences to other extreme
00:43:00.289 --> 00:43:02.889
experiences. So there's this whole thing about
00:43:02.889 --> 00:43:07.050
comparing 5 -MeO DMT to near -death experiences
00:43:07.050 --> 00:43:10.070
that you've also written a bit about. Maybe you
00:43:10.070 --> 00:43:12.289
could tell us about that as well? Yeah, so this
00:43:12.289 --> 00:43:14.590
has kind of been an ongoing research project
00:43:14.590 --> 00:43:17.389
and interest, particularly of my ex -PhD student,
00:43:17.690 --> 00:43:20.800
Pascal Michael. who's kind of the expert on this,
00:43:20.980 --> 00:43:23.699
but there is a sense in which there is a large
00:43:23.699 --> 00:43:26.800
degree of similarity between near -death experiences
00:43:26.800 --> 00:43:29.340
and psychedelic experiences, particularly with
00:43:29.340 --> 00:43:33.019
things like DMT and fibemia, and not just in
00:43:33.019 --> 00:43:35.500
the acute phenomenology, like the experiences
00:43:35.500 --> 00:43:39.530
themselves have a great deal. deal of resemblance
00:43:39.530 --> 00:43:42.449
and also some mismatches, but also the outcomes
00:43:42.449 --> 00:43:46.110
in that we see similar things emerging from people
00:43:46.110 --> 00:43:48.909
who have near -death experiences as we do from
00:43:48.909 --> 00:43:52.190
good or successful psychedelic experiences like
00:43:52.190 --> 00:43:55.769
a change in worldview, often a spiritual reorientation.
00:43:56.039 --> 00:44:01.179
enhanced kind of empathy and re -evaluation of
00:44:01.179 --> 00:44:04.039
one's moral compass, deeper connection to nature,
00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:07.300
all of these kinds of things. So in a way, near
00:44:07.300 --> 00:44:11.820
-death experiences are a kind of prototype spontaneous
00:44:11.820 --> 00:44:16.519
phenomena that psychedelic experiences and psychedelic
00:44:16.519 --> 00:44:19.059
-assisted psychotherapy kind of emulate in a
00:44:19.059 --> 00:44:21.699
way. They are spontaneous. spiritual mystical
00:44:21.699 --> 00:44:24.900
like experiences, which have typically profound
00:44:24.900 --> 00:44:27.980
and positive outcomes, but maybe quite challenging,
00:44:28.179 --> 00:44:30.739
not least because you have to usually come very
00:44:30.739 --> 00:44:34.599
close to death to have one. There's also some
00:44:34.599 --> 00:44:37.940
mismatches. Not an easy prerequisite. No, no,
00:44:37.960 --> 00:44:40.840
don't try this one at home. In many ways, like
00:44:40.840 --> 00:44:43.880
having a profound psychedelic experience is like
00:44:43.880 --> 00:44:46.760
you can go to the brink of death and at least
00:44:46.760 --> 00:44:49.500
psychologically and come back without any genuine
00:44:49.500 --> 00:44:52.099
risk of death or a very minimal risk of death.
00:44:52.239 --> 00:44:54.639
You know, ayahuasca translates as the vine of
00:44:54.639 --> 00:44:57.219
the dead. It's like you can have an experience
00:44:57.219 --> 00:44:59.989
of dying without actually dying. in a metaphorical
00:44:59.989 --> 00:45:03.070
way, right? And in some sense, you may be having
00:45:03.070 --> 00:45:06.250
a kind of mini death, like an ego death experience,
00:45:06.250 --> 00:45:09.369
if we can use that term quite loosely, because
00:45:09.369 --> 00:45:11.650
it's not well defined what we mean by ego death.
00:45:11.989 --> 00:45:14.210
But there are matches and mismatches. Like when
00:45:14.210 --> 00:45:16.829
we drill down into the phenomenology on the surface
00:45:16.829 --> 00:45:20.090
of it, yes, DMT experiences look very similar
00:45:20.090 --> 00:45:22.449
to near death experiences. And if you give people
00:45:22.449 --> 00:45:25.610
having high dose DMT, the near death experience
00:45:25.610 --> 00:45:28.070
scale, which is a psychometric measure to, you
00:45:28.070 --> 00:45:31.449
know, try and identify or log the kind of near
00:45:31.449 --> 00:45:33.949
-death experience, you find that they tend to
00:45:33.949 --> 00:45:37.289
score in a way which looks fairly identical with
00:45:37.289 --> 00:45:40.050
people having cardiac arrest induced near death
00:45:40.050 --> 00:45:42.309
experiences, right? But then they're also mismatched.
00:45:42.510 --> 00:45:45.469
That's just on a kind of on paper kind of inspection.
00:45:45.929 --> 00:45:48.610
So myself and Pascal and my other colleague,
00:45:48.610 --> 00:45:51.630
Oliver, looked at this more in depth of the phenomenology,
00:45:51.849 --> 00:45:55.489
right? And you'll see that, okay, so on DMT,
00:45:55.809 --> 00:45:58.050
you'll have lots of geometric patterns and top
00:45:58.050 --> 00:46:00.010
ticks, this kind of stuff, which are very rare
00:46:00.010 --> 00:46:02.730
in near death experiences. You'll also have encounter
00:46:02.730 --> 00:46:04.929
experiences, which people have in near death.
00:46:05.199 --> 00:46:08.260
But the encounters may be far weirder with DMT,
00:46:08.559 --> 00:46:11.059
like, you know, self -transforming machine elves
00:46:11.059 --> 00:46:14.480
and jesters and octopoids, which don't tend to
00:46:14.480 --> 00:46:16.900
pop up in near -death experiences, ideally always
00:46:16.900 --> 00:46:20.519
kind of like deceased loved ones or kind of religious
00:46:20.519 --> 00:46:23.400
figures, which also pop up in DMT experiences,
00:46:23.400 --> 00:46:26.079
but not as often as they do with near -death
00:46:26.079 --> 00:46:28.880
experiences. So there's some matches and mismatches,
00:46:28.880 --> 00:46:32.059
you know, and so like, what can we conclude from
00:46:32.059 --> 00:46:35.800
that? Well, that DMT is in endogenous. So it
00:46:35.800 --> 00:46:38.300
could be triggered or part of the near death
00:46:38.300 --> 00:46:41.920
experience, but we don't think it fully explains
00:46:41.920 --> 00:46:45.079
the near death experience because there are certainly
00:46:45.079 --> 00:46:48.179
other things going on and also neurochemically
00:46:48.179 --> 00:46:52.179
as well. DMT may be released in the human brain
00:46:52.179 --> 00:46:55.539
at the point of death or in a near death experience,
00:46:55.739 --> 00:46:57.760
but it's not the only thing. There's a whole
00:46:57.760 --> 00:47:02.489
near death experience cocktail. of really high
00:47:02.489 --> 00:47:05.610
levels of monoamine neurotransmitters, which
00:47:05.610 --> 00:47:08.909
are flooding the human brain, we think, in these
00:47:08.909 --> 00:47:12.349
experiences. So it can help us model the near
00:47:12.349 --> 00:47:14.849
-death experience and perhaps understand it a
00:47:14.849 --> 00:47:17.969
little bit more and vice versa, the psychedelic
00:47:17.969 --> 00:47:21.250
experience, but it's not a one -to -one relationship,
00:47:21.349 --> 00:47:23.969
we don't think. Yeah, it's interesting how people
00:47:23.969 --> 00:47:27.409
seem to want to say psychedelics can model so
00:47:27.409 --> 00:47:30.590
many different things. One minute they're modeling
00:47:30.590 --> 00:47:34.289
mystical experiences or provoking them or provoking
00:47:34.289 --> 00:47:37.289
near -death experiences. Another researcher might
00:47:37.289 --> 00:47:41.489
be like, it's psychosis -like. So it's quite
00:47:41.489 --> 00:47:44.130
strange to me the range of phenomena that people
00:47:44.130 --> 00:47:47.250
claim are possible with psychedelics. If you
00:47:47.250 --> 00:47:50.230
think of them as kind of neural amplifiers, right?
00:47:50.349 --> 00:47:56.150
in a way that is feasible, that they accentuate
00:47:56.150 --> 00:47:59.429
all kind of elements of the human experience,
00:48:00.010 --> 00:48:03.190
then yeah, in a way they can model psychotic
00:48:03.190 --> 00:48:05.550
experience, but in a limited way or near -death
00:48:05.550 --> 00:48:07.710
experience, you know, all models are ultimately
00:48:07.710 --> 00:48:11.610
wrong, but some are useful, right? And that degree
00:48:11.610 --> 00:48:14.889
of usefulness has its limitations, of course.
00:48:15.610 --> 00:48:18.090
Yeah, I mean, it's great because they're never
00:48:18.090 --> 00:48:21.440
not weird. I think is one thing I really enjoy
00:48:21.440 --> 00:48:25.400
studying psychedelics. You can have a very controlled
00:48:25.400 --> 00:48:27.980
clinical trial and people are still going to
00:48:27.980 --> 00:48:32.559
be having odd experiences in some way. Well,
00:48:33.219 --> 00:48:35.659
I think that's everything I have for you today.
00:48:35.880 --> 00:48:38.219
Are there any other things that you think might
00:48:38.219 --> 00:48:41.900
be interesting to mention? I don't know, especially
00:48:41.900 --> 00:48:44.619
weird experiences that you've had or something.
00:48:44.960 --> 00:48:48.519
I mean, I could probably be here all day if I
00:48:48.519 --> 00:48:50.900
was to talk about my own weird experiences. But
00:48:50.900 --> 00:48:54.400
what I will say is that having had my own weird
00:48:54.400 --> 00:48:58.659
experiences, it gives me a useful lens in which
00:48:58.659 --> 00:49:02.159
to frame the research and vice versa, you know,
00:49:02.280 --> 00:49:05.420
that the research also helps me frame my own
00:49:05.420 --> 00:49:08.840
weird experiences. So in the journey of studying
00:49:08.840 --> 00:49:11.539
this phenomenon of exceptional experiences, there's
00:49:11.539 --> 00:49:15.840
an old adage that in studying the transpersonal
00:49:15.840 --> 00:49:19.460
one has to be prepared to be transformed themselves
00:49:19.460 --> 00:49:22.780
in the process of doing that work. And that I
00:49:22.780 --> 00:49:26.599
think it urges us to be reflexive and experiential
00:49:26.599 --> 00:49:29.119
and a bit more authentic and honest in our approach
00:49:29.119 --> 00:49:32.679
to studying these things in that we are also,
00:49:32.920 --> 00:49:35.639
our research is driven by our own personal proclivities.
00:49:35.949 --> 00:49:39.510
and reflects it and vice versa. So yeah, I'd
00:49:39.510 --> 00:49:44.849
like to say that. Just a shout out for the experiential
00:49:44.849 --> 00:49:48.909
strand in all of this work. It shouldn't be downplayed
00:49:48.909 --> 00:49:52.570
or undervalued. It's definitely tricky in this
00:49:52.570 --> 00:49:55.269
field because I feel like a lot of people, if
00:49:55.269 --> 00:49:58.750
you mention your personal experiences, then they
00:49:58.750 --> 00:50:02.460
view everything as you being a bit biased. and
00:50:02.460 --> 00:50:06.000
maybe even fanatical, like you're, I don't know,
00:50:06.199 --> 00:50:09.139
a psychedelic evangelicalist or something like
00:50:09.139 --> 00:50:12.820
that. But I do think it can definitely inform
00:50:12.820 --> 00:50:15.860
interpreting other people's lived experiences.
00:50:16.119 --> 00:50:20.460
I feel like it has influenced some of my interpretations
00:50:20.460 --> 00:50:24.159
with qualitative work that I've done. So yeah,
00:50:24.599 --> 00:50:26.440
I agree with you there. I'm delighted to hear
00:50:26.440 --> 00:50:28.969
that, Haley. Thank you. I really enjoyed our
00:50:28.969 --> 00:50:33.050
chat and happy to talk some more anytime. So
00:50:33.050 --> 00:50:34.989
I enjoyed that. Thanks so much. All right. Well,
00:50:35.010 --> 00:50:39.409
thank you. Alrighty. That's it for today's episode.
00:50:39.789 --> 00:50:42.309
If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it
00:50:42.309 --> 00:50:45.650
with somebody who you think might also find it
00:50:45.650 --> 00:50:49.630
fascinating. And just remember to keep going
00:50:49.630 --> 00:50:53.949
further. Until next time, hope to see you tuning
00:50:53.949 --> 00:50:57.780
in and turning on. to the next episode of the
00:50:57.780 --> 00:50:58.699
further optics.