Theyve done these these assessments of relative harms magic mushrooms which have. A long history of uses plant based medicines by certain cultures are right down the both of quite reliably so it would be wrong in any way associate them with with alcohol which is a much more dangerous drug it should be said the magic mushrooms used out of context used in the wrong way carry carry potential harms like any any psychoactive substance. But its used in the right way they seem to have quite a. Profound therapy to potential and quite a good safety profile as well and then a really important consideration here is to compare it with whats presently available and so you know the main options for people suffering with a dangerous disorder like to pressure an associated. So much with suicide for example is that they tell. Drugs every day every day popping pills and the model with. Therapy is rather to have one or 2 isolated experiences rather than popping drugs every day so we know that even mary why now which is considered by many countries light enough of a drug to be legalized camp mental disorders and very fragile minds if you use it too much what are the risks bad a strong psychedelic substance like l. S. D. For instance can tilt the balance of the mind towards insanity not away from it i mean ive seen people on festivals where there are mines kind of burned with asset sell. Burned with us is right its difficult to know what people are on at festivals as a lot of being conceived and other drugs as well and if psychedelics are being used to festivals typically. Being used out of context when we study psychedelics were doing so in a controlled way and if we give in to people with psychological vulnerabilities then theres some careful screening and a lot of therapeutic support so something very different the kind of reckless so or you know general Recreational Use of a lot of drugs. The dangers of. Introducing a worsening of psychological state yes you here are some anecdotes really this is more in the space of anecdote Scientific Data the what we call measure analyses of large data pools from controlled Research Also population surveys of people whove taken psychedelics tend to associates use of these compounds with Better Mental Health outcomes so thats thats probably quite. Surprised to see your viewers who are you know because of a lot of the sensationalism and stigma thats going to go together with these compounds from from the 1960 s. And cultural happenings then for example tend to think these are drugs that very easily trigger you know psychotic disorders insanity but while the experience itself may mimic aspects of what we call psychosis or or madness to use. A general. The longer term effects seem to be in the other direction so this interesting very interesting paradox the experience itself can be challenging but in the long. After the drug effects are worn off people describe a kind of a lightening of. Clarity of vision they often report being freer of some of the bias see. And focus on self uneek after these experiences there is that interesting paradox there but i cant emphasize enough the importance of context when psychedelics they use them when they are used with an intention for self discovery self realisation and therapeutic intentions the outcomes are very different to what you see when people take any drugs in any kind of responsible reckless so i want to ask you about the south american psychedelics like i was theres so much talk around it lately and they provoke a near death experience in users and i read that researchers like you are actually at the users to consider it beneficial how is it beneficial i mean dying experience it makes me really scared to think about it. Yeah i guess this is speaking to that paradox again that when you look at near death experiences themselves whether the from illness or injury people often report. A kind of. Renewed appreciation of life after theyve come so close to literal death in the case of actually near death experiences and then come back so its suggesting that if you model or mimic this experience your body isnt dying in fact these compounds physiologically very well tolerated so there isnt any actual. Little you know physical risk of dying but whats being suggested is that somethings going on in peoples brains thats mimicking paps what happens in the brain when people are dying and then there is this curious paradoxical. Change after the experience where people report somehow the experience that theyve had has been transformative and they feel particularly good afterwards they might report that their perspective on themselves and on their loved ones and on life has changed and theyre much more appreciative and grateful for the having a life and aunt taking it for granted so much and so am i just so i was asked to and different cactus derived substances d. M. T. Based rocks are considered mental medicine in south american tradition what is saying about traditional media saying. That ceremony is just a reseller issue will or can actually have some real healing powers. I think it has to be done in a certain way and really that such a key message for people interested in learning about these compounds is that i like to describe them as a hybrid therapy to model theyre not just a drug and neither are they just psychotherapy you know this is something in between the 2 where theres this special synergistic. Component to things when you put the drug and what it does to the mind and the brain together with a nurturing supportive. Inquiring context it seems to have these these interesting therapeutic outcomes but in emphasizing that as well. These experiences while people are you know in the throes of experience or a magic mushroom experience theyre often very challenging though theyre often actually quite frightening. Again that speaks to the importance of having a therapeutic context i would say with the ritualistic use of violence because of the old traditions and cultures. There can be a lot of sort of magic and you know adam is. Tied up with the model. Whether or not thats thats useful is an interesting question as a scientist i tend to think that whats going on is. Better understood from a naturalistic perspective understanding the the biology and the deep psychology of the experiences rather than invoking notions of magic but equally its important i think perhaps not to be too arrogant from a western scientific perspective and entirely do away with this cultural aspects of things that my actually be in some ways part of the therapy to process some so when you know that that experience happens in south america with. Sham and serve as at. I dont know like a guy it so to say he he makes sure that the person who goes through the experience is ok when you cant act and experiment can you or your staff really control the effects of the substance on their patients and many of the patients starts to drift away somewhere they dont want to be can you bring them back to the real world so to say. Well the interesting thing is that we dont always necessarily strive to bring them back as such we have this approach of trusting where their mind is taking them trusting the natural flow of the experience there seems to be something very curious about these experiences that the mind tends to gravitate. Within these experiences towards psychologically important material therapeutically important material and our philosophy i suppose is that its right that they go there even if its challenging even if its you know a pos trauma for example if we set things up in in the right no cheering supportive way then we can hold hold peoples hands during these experiences encourage them to literally look their demons in the are i and what we see when people do this with with with some degree of confidence then they experience a kind of breakthrough. Often experiences of insight and revelation and a shift shift in their perspective that they reported as being very cathartic or releasing in a motion away and so urgent a. Way that were going to take a short break right now when were back well continue talking about the magical potential of Psychedelic Drugs west dr Robin Hood Harris had of the center for a Psychedelic Research at a Comparable College london stay with us. As we speak large organized. Are on the march to the united. Player coming out for the gaming. Wars remains. This is a virtual invasion of our country. In the form of. You know its going to. Lose. If you go to. The. Financial side. I honestly. Think most of. Us a lot of summer buy into the future. And were back with dr robin. College london talking about the effects of Psychedelic Drugs on human brain and psychic so i mean you said that. They brain sort of begins routing the signals differently so in a normal state this part mostly talks to that regions and thats a. But on drugs almost all regions communicate with pretty much everyone else i mean that sounds to me like walking into a room where everyone is shouting at each other doesnt that just mess up you your brain and you know i said about opening new horizons. Well thats one way to spin it but another way to look at it is that you know you could think of a party or a social context where ordinarily you might have systems or networks where the components that make up those systems only talk to each other and theres a kind of insular so the clique ish quality to to the conversations but imagine a more open conversation where people are exchanging different ideas and theres more creativity and potential insight occurring so thats the whole the way of spinning it but perhaps if we do away with spin entirely and just think about what the mind in the brain is like as we develop what were seeing under psychedelics and not drugs generally its wrong to lump psychedelics in just as drugs you know way too simplistic you know drug caffeines a drug but under psychedelics theres this more globally interconnected brain state which is actually quite similar to what you see in a very young brain and there are you know good and bad aspects to the quality of mind in a very young person for example in a in an infant so as far as i understand the human body develops a tolerance for solace and then pretty fast does that leave that for a curing depression youll have to crank up the da all the time. Well thankfully not so one of the issues with drugs of potential misuse is that if they juice tolerance theres a kind of. Seeking searching quality to the way people take the drugs that if theyre rewarding which most drugs are ill call heroin and such like ok people if theres some tolerance that they start you know drinking more or taking more heroin to overcome that tolerance what you see with psychedelics is that theyre not naturally rewarding drugs people under these these compounds dont often like it you know it can be psychologically confronting it can be scary and so typically after a psychedelic experience even though in the days and weeks and months afterwards they can report a profound positive transformation theyre not theyre not so eager to go back there and have that scary experience again depression. Goes hand in hand with drug abuse and drugs can lead to cross tolerance in other words tolerance across whole families of substances and the already tried your treatment on patients with a history of drug abuse i mean can there be any trouble on that front. Yes theres some evidence that psilocybin therapy can be effective in the treatment of dependence smoking addiction. Theres also some reports of sort of sister compounds to solace of him being effective in the treatment of cocaine addiction and opiate addiction as well so these compounds used in the right way used in a therapeutic way whether about psychological insight and emotional release seem to be anti addictive rolls of addictive themselves and no evidence of any switching over from a truly addictive drug to see psilocybin or another psychedelic so listen i read you say that its hard for you to get grants for research because grant judges think youre just a. Serious scientists how do you convince them otherwise. Well i think you have to. Be dispassionate an objective and lay out compelling argument. When done in that way i do feel confident that some of the stake in the spin and the projection and the politicization around these compounds should hopefully fall away and people can listen and be led by the data and if its compelling and i just think theyll be a Tipping Point where. Be in some way blocking this kind of research is just going to be counterproductive and i also think Public Opinion will change where you know when we hit these impulses with such high prevalence rates of Mental Illness that people will be disillusioned with the current treatments the drug treatments and psychotherapies that you can be locked in for years without any real major breakthrough in the. More human and holistic solution to the problem so i am quite optimistic that things will change. And they are actually they are changing where but heres the thing like in the world of Psychedelic Drug research i imagine there is a lot of scientists who are actually hippies and who produce poorly backed research and are not careful with evidence and results i mean so you only need to go on the internet and type in the area and you will find a 1000000 websites claiming that it is a cure for everything from cancer to world hunger how do you tell serious scientists in your field from those who are you know just on a trip yeah well you know you go on the internet and search and theres no Quality Control you know within the Scientific Community we have a Peer Reviewed process and i would actually say in this day and age. The scientists who working with psychedelics are doing so in a much more responsible and mature way than paps. It was done in the 1960 s. For example and major mistakes were made around a kind of. Overzealous. Romanticize ation of these compounds so i would say that the good scientists in this field which make up the majority really. Do you carry out their research in quite a methodical and proper way. And then theres you know thankfully theres a very self correcting quality to science where trial and error you know you come up with a prediction and you test your prediction and then you go by the results that you see and so the process continues and i do think the scientists in this area are really adhering to the classic model servant during the cold war both the soviets and the cia experimented with various drugs in search of mental truth sarum as well as weapons of psychological war more recently it looks like the cia briefly considered looking into drag assisted interrogations after 911. 00 probably sounds like something from a thriller movie but special siriuss ever try tapping into your knowledge to know that. Well if they were effective i wouldnt know it. So. Overtly ive never seen that. But no its curious that militaries have looked into these compounds i suppose it speaks to the power as agents to profoundly alter the mind but its such a kind of perversion of the way these compounds should be rightly used ethically use you know where its about an openness to building a trusting relationship and about insight and selfawareness and self discovery to think that they were used in a manipulative way is of course very sad and we hope that as we go on into the future is that that approach is a is an attempt that again. Now real talk and fathom and was widely issued to soldiers during world war 2 and as far as i know the nonso barahona smoked across the board and steroids issued to special forces and our drugs are issued to servicemen even now for instance air force issues dexidrine to pilots and Long Missions so if the military is so keen on researching stimulants why isnt it also the Main Customer for are in danger psychedelics. Yeah i guess drugs can be very different to each other so stimulants are going to give People Energy they might help in terms of the tea but theyre addictive and theres theres a crash with the with the energized high that comes with a stimulant so theres often these these downsides and i think with psychedelics they are not so easy to control in a sense so when people are under the influence of a psychedelic perhaps it isnt so easy to direct the mind in a minute manipulative way and part of the. The view on the use in a military context was that this is why they may have been dropped as mind control agents in the sense that instead of. People putting people into this highly manipulative state instead there was something going on that was more about self realisation and suchlike so i just dont think the right kind of drugs for military purposes necessarily so my career goes ingolf psychedelics is apparently a thing now a signature practice of Silicon Valley with kids and i heard a dallas he said there is no hard science on it yeah but this could in fact be overhyped and you keep saying this i could alex are not party drugs from your perspective shit things like this remain in the medical domain or is it ok for the public to just sit deliberate drugs like coffee. Well the micro does seem phenomenon it is true were yet to see any really rigorous studies carried out. Going by the principle that you should be led by the evidence the evidence isnt really there you know and so should we listen to the anecdotal well we could in terms of designing studies to test this i would say a kind of theoretical sort of rational concern i have about my criticism is that its not controlled so the model that im talking about in terms of the therapeutic application of psychedelics is very controlled you know the clinician lead people wouldnt be given the compound and then invited to go home and take it they would be taking it under the supervision of Mental Health professionals who know what theyre doing can prepare the individuals for the experience guide them through it and then look after them afterwards as well with seeing that doesnt happen typically its more about taking these very small doses and then you know going about your your usual day. Its difficult to determine at this stage how easy it is to dose with a micro dose you know how easy is it for a micro devices very small dose to become too high a dose you know and if people are meant to according to the the the idea go about their every day activities you know they get in their car and off they go and actually theyre feeling the effects of of a reasonable dose of l. S. D. It doesnt doesnt feel like a realistic and safe model for rolling out so i can really see it happening people might just do it anyway but thats no reason to advocate it in any way so it doesnt really have my support to this point robin thanks a lot for this interesting chat and good luck with everything i had and as you know this interview were talking to dr robbing harris hatter of center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College london. Discussing Psychedelic Drugs and how they can transform the way we treat depression and other mental disorders thats it for this edition of. 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