Q&A: The Science of Psychedelics - with Michael Pollan
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2024
- What's the best way of administering medicines to a large group of people? Can you be tripping and doing science at the same time? Michael Pollan answers audience questions following his talk.
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Watch the talk: • The Science of Psyched...
Michael Pollan is a bestselling author of books on human nature and nutrition. In mid-life, he turned his attention to one of the most intriguing stories of the 20th century; the scientific promise and cultural burial of psychedelic research and its renaissance today in the public conversation around mental health, palliative care, addictive behaviours and a loss of personal meaning and connection in modern societies.
The Q&A was hosted by Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, Head of Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London.
This talk and Q&A session was filmed in the Ri on 11 June 2018.
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RI is totally underrated. The amount of interesting Information is astounding.
Aww you.
I could listen to Pollan speak for hours.
Been mircodosing for 2 months now, and my mood everyday is substantially better, depression has been non existent. This is the key to a better world for those who struggle with mental issues and we need to change our perception of psychedelics
How do you personally cycle and dose?
"Love is the most important thing in this world" but more than likely also throughout our conscious universe/existence! ❤🙏🏽✊🏽
I see the clampdown and fear of psychedelics as a manifestation of the ego out of control. The ego realizes the danger to itself in these substances and the infinitely objective experiences they relate, and reacts accordingly with fear, paranoia, and hysteria.
That really reasonates with my thoughts right now. I'm about to embark on an experience and the light anxiety I'm going through at the moment didn't make sense before reading this.
Yes. These things need to be studied! Good work, keep it up.
this channel has the best content
Let's change our relationship with drugs to become more healthy and reasonable.
Robin Carhart-Harris legend
Great starting question! Fight the man!
I'd like to applaud both speakers for recognizing the deep history and competence of traditional systems and cultural models for dealing with these pathworkings. I would also like to point out that such things can be and are done without the "crutch molecules." It takes more time and effort, but the results are achieved more evolutionarily with less variability or risks of unfavorable side-effects and distractions. Building it as a skill set results in a stronger foundation more integrated with daily experience, as behavioral/perceptual enrichment and not just a shock treatment.
The overall educational practice approach allows a person to expand incrementally from where they actually, with the opportunity to integrate each level and region of perception and transformation along the way. The best development is built upon clarity and exploration rather than just being overrun by weirdness. The weirdness will still come along as a natural consequence of learning to understand and personalize the true nature of the interconnectedness of Nature.
Most shamanic practitioners will tell you: "You don't belong anywhere you can't get on your own," although in some cases or for non-practitioners, sometimes a little guided boost from these substances can at least give the novice a taste of what will later be a persistent realization. This requires discernment in all its applications.
Ayahuasca is legal in Brazil when practiced as part of a Shamanic Ritual. Those who wish to have the experience can but do, not only under monitored guidance, but also under a strict rule of respect - making no noise, no speaking, and most importantly, not interrupting anybody else's experience. Having had this experience myself, i can attest that it doesn't matter whether you attribute the trip to a divine spirit or to the mechanics of neural assemblies, the experience is undeniably profound and the observations and realisations that you have are clear and stay with you. DMT (ayahuasca), unlike LSD, does not have any averse come down, hangover or sense of fragmentation. It shold be noted that DMT is remarkably different to LSD or Psilocybin. Done in the right setting (in this case a Shamanic Institute with 100 other people) it is a safe and positive experience. There is no 'religion' in these communties. These are people of all types who come together for one common good - Lady Ayahusaca. As an atheist, my experience was no different to cristians. We just named them differently. In The US and Australia, they call a Lorry a truck :)
Psilocybin is a DMT / tryptamine though, and LSD works cause it contains the same indole structure chemically as the tryptamines. ALL of them (including non-indoles) are safe if you do them in the right set & setting, and have a long history of such usage.
It is great to hear from an intelligent atheist who has experienced ayahuasca. i have often balked at (and sometimes been irritated by) the spiritual and mystical claims made by so many who have used psychedelics recreationally or for therapeutic purposes - and always suspected that there was some neurochemical mechanism at play. Perhaps it is the same neurochemical mechanism that many religious rituals have sought to induce in their religion's adherents. (Frankly, how DO you explain the europhoric and often delusional states that seem to take hold of people in things like pentacostal 'witnessing' and 'speaking on tongues' - or the higher states of mind and depersonalized states of being that some Buddhist monks claim can be achieved through meditation. Examples abound.) Maybe this some leftover piece of our lizard brains, evolved long ago in the paleolithic era to help us cope with the challenges surviving a perilously dangerous environment. Perhaps it is the appendix of the brain, so to speak - but I suspect not.
I'm now considering pursuing some version of psychedelic therapy for myself, if I can find a way to do it safely. Probably not ayahuasca in the Amazon, but something more affordable and nearer home.
@@ems7623 mushrooms might very well offer you that. Circumstantially, Ayahuasca us ubiquitous here. It should be noted that good or bad trip generally result in a positive end result. I had a 'bad' mushroom trip last year. It was exhausting and intense. As a result of it, i quit drinking alcohol the next day, and haven't touched a drop for 18 months or so. You can't overdose on psychadelics, so in the right setting (not blancing on the the railing of your 17 storey balcony), it can be life changing.
I didn't mention in the first comment, but i had suffered suicidal anxiety most of my teen and adult life. After my first Ayahuasca ritual, i purged this (as nonsense as this may sound). I had a vision from my youth, that i suppose my mind associated with a great deal of anxiety, and under ayahusanca, i saw that vision differetly. immediately folloiwng i vomited (more common to Ayahuasca than other psychadelics - part of the ritual in fact).
The next day, though, 100% of my uncontrollable anxiety was gone. I never knew, actually, that i had had anxeity until i woke up one monrning and it was gone. It was like a knee had been taken off the back of my head. I felt light. This was in 2019, and i still feel this way. As if the wires of the brain untangled and reset.
Thank you feel a little more connected.
It's nice to see a mature discussion about psychedelics at the prestigious Royal Institution. It's important to note that cannabis is a psychedelic capable of producing seriously powerful psychological impact (e.g. slamming into multiple concentrates), so I disagree that the models of public impact should be different between cannabis and other psychedelics. To reinforce that disagreement, LSD and so on can be taken in very mild dosages that most slightly deviate from sobriety, so the usage risk is minimal. I believe the bottom line is the safety of these drugs comes from the quality of public education -- something unacceptably hindered by demonstrably purely destructive law. There's literally no concrete evidence proving any public benefit from the war on drugs, so intelligence and civility in effect demands an immediate end to that war against countless non-rights-infringing people.
Cannabis can certainly and unquestionably exhibit psychedelic-like qualities, but to call it a fully fledged psychedelic is a bit disingenuous.
Haven't ever had the same effects from cannabis to lad. I don't think anyone ever has. It's a scare tactics from prohibitionist. And before you bs and say you have 😂 take acid and then compare. 😂😂😂
For obvious reasons, Mr. Loveridge, I leave it entirely up to speculation as to whether or not I have ample top-notch LSD experience. Responsibly blast off on multiple cannabis strains (and/or take moon rocks, and/or powerful edibles, and/or so on) and tell me how cannabis cannot provide seriously powerful psychological effects worthy of equal consideration in terms of public access (as discussed in the video). I'm not talking about a couple of bong hits or such here.
Also, gents, I spoke with Rick Doblin (founder of MAPS, if unclear) himself about cannabis being a psychedelic, and he agreed that it is one.
Spirit Wave Having eaten several space cakes in Amsterdam, I would have to agree that edibles do wonderful things. What I would suggest is that cannabis is more like a bicycle while lsd is more like a sports car.
Perhaps these substances are somehow blurring the line between conscious and subconscious, allowing things that would normally escape, or be ignored by, our conscious awareness, suddenly become seemingly new, re-realized, and subsequently creating a better understanding of our perceptions, etc., and a better appreciation of life.
definitely
Soul medicines healing trauma, addiction,& depression
Great inspiring important video 👍❤
Okay, I'll. Ty for the info
Cracking last question.
Please let Robin talk!!! He is really knowledgable, should have had more time to speak
Is the full talk preceding this Q&A section available online anywhere? Have watched each of them individually but would be very interested to hear more of them together..
Of course! ruclips.net/video/LcAj1oxMT9U/видео.html
I am not a neuroscientist or a PhD, but I feel like addressing the person's question at 14:30 - on keeping the "world as it reveals itself" under the "scientific lens."
If I understand him correctly, the questioner states explaining "revelations about ourselves simply as manifestations of a different frame of neural activity" is "scientifically untroubling" but a psychedelic-produced belief in the reality of god or transcendence leading to transformation is troubling to science.
My response is that if what we mean by a materialist, scientific understanding is a correlative understanding between neural activity and subjective experience, I don't think one even needs to invoke this particular conundrum produced by psychedelics - because everyday consciousness poses the same exact problem under the scientific paradigm. How do molecules on the tongue give way to an experience of taste? How does a melody become an experience of sadness? In short, how does anything observed to be outside of ourselves actually happen inside our minds? The neural correlates to these various states may have been mapped, sure, but here, one can pose the same question: how do those specific neural movements, giving rise to a conscious and personal experience, fit our mold of science when nowhere in those movements is the experience ever revealed?
The way I see it, the problem really isn't "personal revelation" versus "god revelation." (Neither is "scientific".) The problem is third-person versus first-person. How will the third-person eye of the scientific enterprise ever successfully bring under its lens the definitive first-person phenomenon of consciousness? Is that even theoretically plausible?
I feel the challenge the questioner is invoking is just another way of describing that old, fundamental problem of science - the hard problem of consciousness - highlighted by the particular eccentricities of psychedelics.
Observe yourself observing yourself - how does the brain do that too.....what you wrote reminds me a bit of a part of The Secret of the Golden Flower text, where it warns against looking at things that way. But I think it is relevant - yes consciousness can be 'reduced' to 'just' firing neurons and chemistry, which is a way of looking at frequency vibrations as distinct things - looking at the body at the physiological level, nuts and bolts kind of thing, rather than as a holistic collection of frequencies, but in either case - as you say, how indeed does that make you conscious of it, and of course how does it allow your consciousness to observe itself, observing itself. To observe the type of ego which is all about observing things on whatever level - observe it observing itself molecularly or in terms of frequency.
Now, now. There's no room for serious philosophical inquiry in this modern world. Surely, you realize that. ;)
The study of psychology does provide a basis and language for describing and parsing through subjective experiences. I suspect psychologists will continue to work on that problem and refine the models and language they have to explain psychedelic subjective experiences ("first-person" in your words).
If we are ever to be satisfied with their efforts, however, I think our understanding of the brain needs to be significantly improved. Current attempts at mapping the brain could eventually get us to a point where we can match specific subjective experiences (defined and categorized by psychologists) with objective neurobiological and neurochemical processes. Perhaps, the "personal/god revelation" or that "ineffable sense of the unity of being or of 'God'/'the universal'" that people claim to experience under psilocybin can ultimately be linked to a specific kind of activity in a specific part of the brain.
It is theoretically possible.
All that said, should this be achieved, it SHOULD be the end of religion as we know it. Every person having a 'divine experience' in one or another religious rite would then be able to know that their experience of "god" in that moment is actually happening in a specific spot in their brain - and so, they would have to either accept or psychologically deny their knowledge that "god" is literally in their heads.
If everyone felt that they were just a part of a living "universe" like a finger is a part of your body, I think they'd be more likely to protect, cooperate, share, enhance each other, rather than tearing down, separating and hurting the other. When you feel there is no true division between you and "not you", it becomes much more difficult to cause harm. When you see that life and death are 2 sides of reality more than a beginning or end of anything , .. Of course, in the world at large, the only value of life is how much wealth it creates for the already wealthy... Until we lose this disgusting paradigm, all the awesome insights available will be useless. With a guide, or "sitter", with the proper mindset/goal, there is the potential of a real mystical, life-changing glimpse into a different world. It is NOT a party drug, it is a gateway to another reality, uncoloured by our "rules and expectations" It is a means of realizing that we can comprehend the 'incomprehensible' (if not explain it in words that can only describe the mundane. .). I have thought for a long while, that certain psychedelics would be indispensable for those facing agonizing pain, impending death, depression...as it not only mitigates, but destroys fear of death, offers a very real temporary escape from the body, illustrates the connectedness between all that is, the value of the life we know, ego is dissolved and you realize that even without your body, without your name, without your history,. You Are and you have always been, and what you previously considered "you" "your life" "your family" "your problems" are just you. There is no other. Death, where is thy sting?
7.30mins - discussion ref therapy, people 'trapped in stories', the 'stickiness' of change
11.30 - c.1000 people tried in modern era, with 0 adverse side effects so far
19.30 that the world and our mental lives is so much vaster than previously imagined
Can't we take a look to the Netherlands, where magic mushroom growkits and some kinds of psychedelic fungus are legal for addults?
Are there many accidents?
Does it affect society in a bad way. I have not heard about it yet.
8:19 RCH: Yeah the clarity is quite incredible and something we've observed a lot in our studies, where, you know, it's really a long way from being in the company - so it feels - of someone who is in a psychotic episode. it feels like you're in the company of someone who is profoundly wise - often, actually.
Thank You! Great to hear you say this, Robin.
Is every single person in that audience a professional narrator?
USA and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals is allowed.
How different would it be if pharmaceuticals, like tobacco, were no longer advertised?
I have thought through the "Mental Health Club"... But I'm lacking the temperament to settle or refine all aspects of the process & RUN such responsibility with a level head, Yet. I need a Mental Health Club... lol
The question about the abuse of mushrooms and psychedelics toward the end of the Q&A was a softball... surprised they didn't get that one. There's a low risk of abuse because psychedelics are non-addictive, and after multiple days in a row of taking them, they don't really work.
LSD and psilocybin produce very different experiences. I am disappointed this was not addressed.
Agreed. LSD goes to 12 receptors of the brain, taking away free choice in the experience. Psilocybin only takes 2 and doesn't take away free choice. Psilocybin you are in control the whole times.
I find that pretty irrelevant since psilocybin alone can produce a very different experience with each ingestion, as with LSD. Psilocybin and LSD experiences do share certain qualities though. The two are far more similar than say salvia and LSD, or psilocybin and ketamine. He has longer interviews where this is addressed.
Well, for me the road is the same, the destination is the same... only the vehicule changes.
Each trip is a different experience.
@@rawreligion2326 What do you mean by taking away free choice? I never found any trip with anything is something that can be controlled - in the sense that whatever it is going to show you, that is not up to you! Maybe if you were using them for a specific purpose, rather than just letting it show you whatever, then it is different - but still, you can't tell it what visions etc to show you, and so forth, though obviously whatever you think about is going to affect and colour the experience.
The psychological risk is facing the fear people carry their entire lives. The hospitals are filled with people who hurt themselves on alcohol everyday… psychedelics are less likely to lead people into dangerous situations. People are already inherently dangerous… psychedelics might just help them slow down and become more aware.
Guest is a deer in the headlights @ 3:33
Poor dr. Robin Carhart-Harris.. no mention anywhere.. :'(
Robin Willson thank you for telling me his name lmao I was looking everywhere and he didn’t even introduce him besides Robbin
Ah, apologies, the speaker information is taken from the original event bio which gets written before the host has been confirmed.
Thank you!
I found combining meditation with psilocybin offered the most profound experiences. Similar to Terrence McKenna's advice of 5 dried grams in silent darkness, though you need to build yourself up a half gram at a time from .5 to 5.0 on a weekly basis, I chose Sunday and I let the mushroom be my guide.
Fortified Mind a weekly buildup doesn't seem necessary. In fact, I have seen many people freak out on lower doses because they still have some semblance of control. I'd say a first attempt at 2-3.5g based on comfort level is fine. And then jump straight to 5g once you're comfortable with 3.5g and are looking for a deeper experience.
@@das_it_mane True. Yeah the ego is still active at lower doses, though I liked to observe the different doses, but my ex ate 3,5 the first time and had an Ayahuasca-like experience.
ad about anti addiction organization
I paraphrase: "Psychedelics are substances that can induce a psycotic response in people who haven't taken them."
Absolutely not a good paraphrase. They specifically said how the psychedelic experience is NOT the same as what it is like to experience psychosis.
@@ems7623 You completely missed the point: the meaning is that psychedelics do upset people that most of the time never took them and don't know what they are talking about.
In regard to the second to the last question, tolerance doesn't allow overuse. If you were to take LSD every day, it just wouldn't do anything for you after a short while. In regard to the last question, if a pharmaceutical company can patent a ritual for the use of a substance who's patent has long expired, they'll do it.
What are they thinking now that Denver and Oakland,California?
It is outrageous at some fundamental level that my right to eat mushrooms that grow on my land be outlawed to me
Although your right to purchase the spores is not outlawed
Slip trump a “Mickey”!
We would see the best tweets ever🤣
The Dead played over 2300 shows, to millions , there is no reports of people having major issues, if there was they would not have been allowed to continue playing, , Just think about that, how many people have taken LSD at Dead shows, I love the way these professionals, never draw on the this
Tfw life is the biggest trip of all and I wont stop doing mushrooms ever. Lots of judgments and I'll have freedom
Wisdom, has some merits, but its not only merits. Tradition has flaws. And these substances promote anti-authoritarianism in some regard, they might have a natural propensity to not need a ritualistic context. I think they are afraid of the push-back of the regular population. I think they want it in the hands of who they deem worthy? But poor people should have access too. And then they think the spiritual element is required for betterment, when its not, a trip is required that is meaningful. A person can be a materialist, and actually get more out of it, because they will make fewer assumptions about the content. Like watching a movie, you can find meaning without directly agreeing, or without believing its more than a movie. And its more objective, and more flexible if it can be kept open-ended because people have all kinds of belief backgrounds. You want as much people to be helped as possible, then you don't want to over-engineer a spiritual environment. And context is important, and a group setting may increase the one-ness experiences and all. But what about watching a beautiful mountainside? The ocean? Its possible for powerful solitary experiences as well. Just because we are a social species, doesn't mean we need to be immersed in it 24/7.
Does anyone else feel like chocolate reactivates hallucinogens in your system, or just brings back those good feelings? Like they make you feel different than before you had Hallucinogens?
Something Something The Eschaton at the End of History
And Pollan made this PC-obligatory, yet totally irrelevant, mention of President Trump; some kind of virtue-signaling, perhaps?
Actually, even the slaves would take part in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The Eleusinian would actually make a good role model for public application
The Eleusinian Mysteries, to my understanding, was open to all, and in their rites there were no Emperors or slaves, regardless what their lives outside might be.
what is islamic view on psychidelics?
Probably negative. Would it stop you?
Think religion in general is creates because of psychedelics, but became corrupted. only high positions kept the door to the Devine to have power and control.
Bilal ask yourself what islams view is on alcohol ?
Islam is against anything foreign . Don't be surprised if they cut off your head for it.
Who cares?
Read what Michiel Zoman said
You really shouldn’t politicize these treatments. Look at the mess the US is in now..
I'd appreciate your comment
I bought some psychedelic products from a Drugstore online
They are on Instagram
FROM
TRIP_PHARMACIST
Keep pharmaceutical companies out of this. Gross!
Pharmaceutical companies have been home to world-shaping advancements in medicine for a long time. Some of their CEOs and business tactics have done highly questionable things, particularly in recent years.
However, that strikes me as a problem of improper incentives and inadequate regulation and monitoring, not a problem with the pharmaceutical industry itself. The chemists who work in their labs are carrying on the great work of people like Pasteur.
Colorado has legalized the use of magic mushrooms, so Pollan was wrong about his prediction regarding legalization in that instance. One thing needs to be considered regarding all this screening, regulation, insistence on accredited guides and medical contexts is this: what if the only way to save the planet is to have large numbers of people have this experience? As it is, we are rushing off a cliff due to objectification of nature and lack of empathy. Something has to happen soon to end this highway to hell we are on. Political change is not going to be fast enough to save the millions of species that are in danger of extinction due to human habitat destruction paired with climate change.
He wasn't trying to be right tho, PR is huge they don't want another scare, little do those boomers know theres this thing called the internet.
I find the political utopianism of that way of thinking far too optimistic. There's no reason to think that making people trip balls will change their political views.
I cant imagine a non-curious mind or SO ego centric would do very well on a trip. The loss of ego for someone like Trump for example could be devastating to his mind. If effective at all.
Like 420 yeahhhhhhh
Weed and the psychedelics aren't the creativity enhancers everyone give them credit for. The new interneuronal synapse connections thanks to the serotonin are a temporary (which can be made permanent) wiring upgrade giving our brain new routes to reach both old memories as well as current experiences and so is like a physical empathy. Artists creating their art with these new connections are better able to imagine how their art will communicate with a diverse audience by putting themselves in their perspectives which has the result of seeming like a creativity enhancement, but it's actually due to the empathy boost.
seems feasible
Makes no sense to me. I am an artist and these experiences showed me things clearly and changed my perception so that i would be able to reproduce this content it showed me. I was literally possessed/obsessed to reproduce what i saw as long as i could remember it. It has nothing to do with empathy or thinking about my audience but with an very clear experience of something which wasn't available before. So yes, i regard them as creativity enhancers because without them i would never be able to produce what i did with them.
Even drink can be such an enhancer, if that is what you use it for. Whether that is due to empathy or not, well, I find drink and psychedelics etc certainly make you more open to the-other - but they are still able to be used as enhancers of whatever you decide to utilise them for.
Interesting interpretation. i would also note that it is harder to find writers who use cannabis or psychedelics for creative purposes than it is visual artists and musicians. Those that do exist tend not to write using a lot of analytical language, but instead lean on expressive and imaginative writing styles.
Here's the thing with your idea about empathy and artists who use psychedelics. A great deal of contemporary visual art is very focused on visual stimuli and a portion of it is actually relatively conceptual and intellectual. None of those aspects of art really rely much on empathy. That's not a debunk of your argument - just a caveat.
Correct maybe not right for me tho dont judge me for wanting peace and freedom. Magic mushrooms for me.
If u give me adds I will report u
Eats plant, thinks plants are profoundly important after. Seems legit.
Mushrooms arent plants
I think psychedelics can become profoundly important when it comes to understanding how consciousness works, because these substances actually warp consciousness very reliably. Nothing else does that as reliably and with such a low risk.
I postulate that all of the benefits that could be achieved through psychedelics drugs could be achieved through hypnosis.
Possibly, but hypnosis slows brainwaves psychedelics speed them up.
Psychedelics make hypnosis look like a weak and sloppy tool that only works sometimes for some people.
You might be right. Than again, there's also no reason to think that hypnosis and psychedelics are doing the same thing in the brain
Say what you want about Trump, at least he’s giving power to states to decide issues themselves like legal cannibas, even mushrooms, education, abortion etc.... and lowering taxes and wants to lower prescription drug prices which the Democrats are fighting him on oddly. Obama was the opposite in all these areas.
Yeah one of the few things he did right. States should specialize, not all of them are the same and to treat them the same would be criminal.
Since when did any of trumps decisions actually allow the states to do that? They already had the power to do so within their own borders.
MAGA